Research

How is the research organised?

In each of the three ARTE schools, a team of teachers and a facilitator carry out their own research on how teachers help students 'learn to learn, learn to live and learn to choose'. The University of Cambridge Faculty of Education supports the teams with up-to-date research information, data analysis and help with questionnaire design and interviewing.

The university also provides and funds structured opportunities for the teams to share insights and reflections through a series of meetings - in school, in the university and at a residential centre.

Accreditation is built in so that the research is recognised as a component contributing towards professional certification.

Each facilitator is a teacher with a senior management role who has some research experience in the field of counselling and guidance.

What does the research look like in practice?

Each school has taken a different approach to the central theme of helping pupils to learn to learn, live and choose. Their common purpose is that they are all concerned with the social and personal dimension of learning - they are all investigating the significance of the affective aspects of classroom life and its implications for teaching and learning. They are all using an action research approach to investigate and act upon an area identified as being problematic in their school.

Sharnbrook Upper School is working on the pedagogical qualities and attributes which make for good tutoring and good subject teaching. They asked both teachers and students to list the features which distinguish good tutoring and good teaching. Their research leads them to the view that students define good pedagogical skills primarily in terms of personal and social competence. The team believes these competencies can be transferred from one teacher to another and they are testing this belief by using the outcomes of their research in a training programme for newly qualified teachers.

St Ivo School is investigating how listening affects learning by studying the listening behaviour of teachers and pupils. Their research reveals a tension between students and teachers - most students want to learn through dialogue with a listening teacher; many teachers want to deliver learning to a listening class. They are using their research results to change their own classroom practice and to open up debate about pedagogy with their colleagues.

Ramsey Abbey is focusing on two key areas of student responsibility for individual learning - coursework and work experience. Their research reveals a gap between what teachers think they are giving to students and what students think they are receiving from teachers. This discovery has led the team through a major re-think about the skills and conditions necessary for making successful choices in school. They have used their research findings to change the way in which they prepare and support students for independent learning.

What is emerging from the school investigations?

The data is still being analysed but across the three schools there are common threads emerging:

• the personal and social dimensions of classrooms and schools are central to effective learning
• dialogue between teachers and pupils is the most important part of the process for building good personal/ social relations
• the skills, processes and characteristics of good interpersonal classroom relations are identifiable and can be developed within individual teachers through appropriate training
• actively engaging with the pupil perspective can alter practice and make learning more effective by giving relationships in the classroom priority

How are these findings being acted upon?

Each school is engaged in implementing an action plan to take account of their findings in order to improve the learning context of their pupils. They are presently engaged in evaluating the actions they have taken.

In Ramsey Abbey there was a mismatch between teacher and pupil as to where the responsibility lay for individual learning. Teachers felt that if pupils took more responsibility for their own learning they would be more successful in their endeavours. In the work experience programme, teachers tested out:

• individual induction programmes for vulnerable students designed to help them take responsibility for, and to improve their success rate on, work placement (measured by working days attended)
• using an advocate for vulnerable students to facilitate their encounters with employers and teachers

In the geography department, the teacher tested out:

• individual planning of project coursework
• using one-to-one discussions about work-in-progress
• providing formative marking throughout the coursework process
• giving opportunities for re-writing

So far the results are encouraging - all the work experience pupils attended their work place every day, geography project coursework seems to have been done with a high level of commitment.

In Sharnbrook pupils expressed a belief that staff who showed respect, good listening and communication skills, friendliness and control were the most effective teachers.

The team of teachers in the project responded by:

• exploring their findings with staff through an INSET day
• identifying, with the help of focus groups of pupils, teachers who were good exemplars of effective teaching
• producing a video to show good practice by these exemplar teachers
• running a training day on the research findings for Newly Qualified Teachers
• encouraging Newly Qualified Teachers to examine and reflect on a related aspect of their own teaching which needed improvement

In subsequent interviews, the Newly Qualified Teachers all said that they had successfully incorporated their learning from the induction day into their teaching with good results.

In St Ivo pupils expressed a desire to have listening teachers. The team examined video and audio tape of a class where listening between teacher and pupils had broken down. Teachers felt that pupils were not listening to them but the team found several instances where teachers were not listening to their pupils. Subsequent discussion and questionnaire evidence showed that pupils wanted a clear outline for the lesson, a brisk introduction and opportunities to work independently on challenging material. The particular class resented the time taken up by teacher talk. The ARTE team responded by:

• investigating their own listening practice with the help of another teacher and a pupil who acted as critical friends in what was known as a "focus triangle"
• acting on the observations of the focus triangle
• listening to the pupil voice with a view to improving the learning relationship with their own classes

The facilitator reports that "Research in the ARTE project at St Ivo School has firmly linked cognitive and social learning".