Realising and measuring pupil gains and middleclassableness Alastair Wilson

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Realising and measuring pupil gains and
middleclassableness? Alastair Wilson Donald
Gillies University of Strathclyde
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LONDON (Reuters) - A student who scribbled an
expletive on an English language exam paper was
awarded 7.5 percent for accurate spelling and
effective communication, The Times newspaper
reported on Monday.The pupil, who wrote "f---
off" after being asked in an English exam to
"describe the room you are sitting in", got 2
marks out of 27 and would have got more if he had
added some punctuation, chief examiner Peter
Buckroyd told The Times."It does show some very
basic skills we are looking for -- like conveying
some meaning and some spelling," said Buckroyd,
who works for the Assessment and Qualifications
Alliance examinations board. "It shows some
nominal skills but no relevance to the
task"."If it had had an exclamation mark it
would have got a little bit more because it would
have been showing a little bit of
skill".According to The Times, to gain minimum
marks in English GSCE papers -- an exam taken by
hundreds of thousands of 16-year-olds across
England every year -- pupils must demonstrate
"some simple sequencing of ideas" and an ability
to put "some words in appropriate
order".(Reporting by Kate Kelland. Editing by
Keith Weir)
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AERS Learners Learning and Teaching (LLT) Network

• Applied Educational Research Scheme (AERS)
  five year (2004-2008) research programme
  consortium involving Universities of Edinburgh,
  Stirling Strathclyde with four research
  networks
• Learners, Learning and Teaching Network Project
  3 Pupil engagement in learning (2004-2008)

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AERS Learners Learning and Teaching (LLT) Network

• Outline LLT3 project research
• Provide example of small constituent project
• Pose issues from this research for discussion of
  pupil gains

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Engagement in learning - school based project -
Key research questions

• What is the social context within which the
  school is operating?
• In what ways does the school interface with this
  context?
• What is the impact of this context on teaching
  and learning?

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Engagement in learning - school based project

• Ongoing 2 yr plus school based research
• Large secondary school in area of socio-economic
  disadvantage
• Researcher time allocated and teacher-researcher
  position, range of mutually beneficial work
• Research focus from macro-meso -neighbourhood,
  school culture, classroom experience.

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School stats
TABLE 2 Brookhaven school data
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Socio-economic factors

• Reality of statistics Local area/neighbourhood
  health stats, free school meals etc.
• Health survey 60 of children S1-S4 experienced
  death of someone close to them
• Lived experience of pupils as carers, working
  parents/shift work
• Aspirations S4 interview data - hairdresser,
  secretary logical in circumstances?
• Lure of immediate increase in family income?

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Brookhaven neighbourhood statistics

• Brookhaven
  Local council National
• Income/employment deprived 34
  22 13
• Children in workless households 50
  - 18
• Male life expectancy
  65.3 - 73.5
• Female life expectancy
  74.4 - 79.0
• Hospital /alcohol per 100,000 1899
  1240 723
• Hospital /drugs per 100,000 518
  295 127
• Low birthweight per 1000
  78 37 25
• Houses owner occupied 24
  49 63
• Adults without qualifications
  57 - 33
• Single parent households
  35 - 38
• Minority ethnic
  4 - 3.2

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Aspects of school response

• Broad school response to current policy
• Focus on specific pupils and nurture their
  academic achievement
• Largely successful? Small numbers careers
  interviews links to FE
• Engaging pupils meeting pupil cultures, footba,
  outdoor activities S1,library hours
• Learning to Learn making explicit aspects of
  learning, unnecessary in other schools?

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Summarising LLT3 work

• Effectively an action research project focused on
  pupil engagement in learning
• Variety of means of engaging with school/pupils
• Developing VLE for the school, examining teacher
  learning in Learning to Learn project, film
  making etc
• Ongoing allows research to develop in way
  informed by school example PhD studentships

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Case study increasing poupil engagement in
learning - AERS Virtual Environment
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Virtual environments and pupil engagement in
learning

• School initially experimented with a virtual
  environment as a means of supporting an S4/S5
  modern studies class
• Pupil access to notes, resources and support
• Attraction to school of enabling pupils to have
  easy access to their coursework, resources and
  assignments
• Interest in pupils being able to help each other
  in their learning
• Access to discussion with other pupils and
  teachers outside school hours
• Virtual space then expanded to include all those
  pupils in S4-S6

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Teacher response to the virtual space

• Some teachers found the virtual space a valuable
  addition to their teaching and an extremely
  useful way of managing resources and interacting
  with pupils
• Others, less familiar with the technology, had
  difficulty in understanding ways in which the
  environment could be useful to them
• Technology challenging for some in terms of
  logging in and uploading files
• Support weak - researcher development time limited

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Barriers to use of virtual space

• Only small amount of practical support and
  training available
• Restrictions on time teachers could devote
  frustrated their attempts to get to grips with
  the technology
• Initial barriers such as unfamiliar login
  procedures, or knowing how to add files halted
  their (and their pupils) use of the environment

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Pupil use of the virtual environment

• Pupil use of the VRE grew steadily from the
  outset realised usefulness of having all their
  work safely collated in one place and easily
  accessible from home
• It helps you be more independent and kinda
  thing. If youre off then you dont go to the
  teacher and ask him and be dependent on him, you
  actually do everything yourself kinda thing
• Only teacher had access to a networked computer,
  pupils then had little opportunity to access
  their personal work and other resources during
  class time

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Incorporating into classroom

• By the time you get it up and the time you get
  logged onto a laptop your periods over. As a
  classroom resource, were a long way, you know,
  away from that. I think as a school we need to
  address our lack of ICT provision for our pupils.
  Unless we start giving pupils a laptop, which if
  were expecting the kids to do things like this,
  and were expecting them to work hard and do 5
  Highers, then I think they should look at some
  way of providing this for them.

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Developing the use of virtual spaces

• What we did was to present teachers with a
  variety of tools
• This approach confined new ICT to a supportive
  role in existing pedagogy rather than one that
  facilitated new approaches
• Need for teachers to be involved closely with the
  development of the technology.

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Developing the use of virtual spaces

• Pupils interested but did not meet with young
  peoples experience of ICT.
• Anticipation of teacher contact out of
  class/school hours.
• Virtual environments for pupils need to be
  constructed in ways which encourage and nurture
  their active participation rather than passive
  observation.

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A future for virtual environments?

• Our research/development experience is positive
  BUT
• Teachers will need time and support to discover
  the ways in which virtual environments may
  effectively support their teaching
• Teacher use of virtual environments needs to be
  recognized as a legitimate, alternative, and
  effective way of engaging in collaborative
  working and teaching.

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School VLE concluding points

• Example of school VLE - teacher innovation
  problematic
• Collaborative ventures with academia
  underdeveloped
• Accessible knowledge? Access to academic research
  literature problematic
• Time to innovate restricted contrast to other
  schools?

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Wider concluding points

• Appears a dynamic and progressive school HMIE
  no areas of school life weak or
  unsatisfactory.
• Considerable effort of school (in comparison) to
  manage pupil support, needs
• This effort largely unfunded
• Innovation is difficult both to nurture and
  resource (S1 outdoor activities weekend
  suspended)
• Despite getting on with it reality of social
  economic circumstances overshadows school
• Considerable challenge to pupils

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Questions

• How will discourse of pupil gains further impact
  on the school?
• Increased teacher accountability, performativity
  and a threat to innovation?
• Are pupils going to be increasingly required to
  be middleclassable?