All 14 entries tagged Mab

A Never–ending Journey

A Never-ending Journey

If I am being completely honest, I didn’t enjoy conducting my action research and then writing about it as much as I thought I would, or as much as I enjoyed writing my other post-graduate assignments (if enjoy is the right word?). Despite this, as I go into my NQT year I am almost certain I want to continue my Masters at Warwick and conduct more education-based research, just next time on an area I am slightly more interested in. I’ll give a brief explanation about my reasons for wanting to do this.

Firstly, education is such a big topic and is changing so much and so often that I’m intrigued by the fact that there is still not really any set way to do anything because, essentially, every child is different and every individual has different viewpoints, opinions and ways to do things. In addition, to bring the politics in, every Government wants to bring different ideas to the education system. I’m baffled by the scope of educational research out there and think it is exciting that everything works differently in a different context.

In the light of this, I would love to look at action research on a larger scale and in a familiar context, to try and tackle a specific problem and see its impact and how exciting it can be. One of the students involved in the action research I undertook achieved a positive outcome from my intervention, and the more I think about it, the more I realise how interesting tracking this was. Moreover, it was fascinating to see how the rich qualitative data that I collected from student interviews and questionnaires gave me such an insight into how the project had an impact on students.

Secondly, I wasn’t fully engaged in the action research project I undertook primarily because I didn’t find the topic overly interesting. This meant that reading around the topic became quite a painful experience and I got to the point where I felt some of the literature was stating the obvious. I would like, next time, to choose a topic that engages me more and makes me want to read on. Furthermore, after completing my own action research I feel like I would take more notice of the analysis and discussion sections within the articles I read next time. Although I don’t really want to admit it, I had a tendency to skip these and simply focus on the literature review and the conclusion. I feel that now I’ve done my own action research, and understand it more, I’d be able to find the relevance in those, actually vital, sections.

Thirdly, I want to push myself to find a way to implement something in the classroom that isn’t bogged down by data gathering but still produces results at different intervals. This would mean further researching tools to consider the best way to undertake an intervention. I found that making students fill out something every lesson was definitely not the best way to evaluate, as they just wrote something without really thinking about it, so I doubt the reliability of some of the data I have collected. I’m aware that action research is a continuous reflective, looping journey and, although I don’t really want to do any more research on the project that I have undertaken this time, I’m very aware that I could work to find ways to refine it to develop it further.

To put it simply, I would definitely like to continue to engage in research. As a teacher, I see my own learning journey as continuous and ongoing. For some this may be frustrating, but for me, it is very exciting.

Kate Mawson : 26 Jul 2016 10:00 |  Tags: Action Cpe Mab Research Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Tweet Tweet: Using Social Media to Continue with Educational Research

As I am rapidly approaching the end of my training year, I have begun to consider what place research will have in my career as I take on a fuller timetable and move away from my own academic studies. Will I have the time to sit and read textbooks on educational theory, as I have been doing over this past year? Probably not. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t allow research to continue to shape my teaching and most importantly, my students’ learning, as I have found several time-effective ways to quench my academic thirst.

Although this may seem a little unorthodox to some, the best way I have kept up-to-date with educational research, and also received some excellent advice which has shaped my pedagogy, is through Twitter. We live in an age of social networking, and as practitioners, we should fully embrace that we have access to an international level of support that is literally at our fingertips. This year, I’ve been struggling to come up with ideas to make the teaching of the new GCSE English spec fun and more effective, and my department are at a loss too as they are teaching it for the first time alongside me. I decided to log onto Twitter, and voila! A host of ideas from other teachers popped up, accompanied by a wealth of links to articles and journals which I would have never thought to search for. Seriously, teachers, Twitter has been my saviour this year. For general enquiries and support, look at the EduChat network, either by searching the username or the hash tag. Fellow English teachers, get following @HeadofEnglish, @SianCarter1 and @JamesTheo- their experience in the field, creative ideas, and above all, their obvious love for our subject, inspires me every day.

Alongside this, I’m looking into starting a blog to continue my research. I feel that there is a significant lack of support for trainees and NQTs out there, who need the reassurance that there are others who are just as exhausted, just as clueless and just as exhilarated by the rollercoaster ride that is teaching! As an English specialist, I feel that using blogging as a creative outlet would help me, and it means that I would continue researching in order to keep my posts updated for other users. I’d love to help people as much as others have helped me during my first year of teaching, and there really is no bigger platform for us as teachers to share our practice through than the World Wide Web. As cheesy as this sounds, our primary aim is to create fun, engaging lessons for students which ultimately help them to achieve above and beyond what they are capable of. To achieve this, a million heads (albeit virtual heads) are definitely better than one! So, my final word of advice to every reader is to exploit social networking for all the benefits it can bring to your research and practice. We get so caught up in the dangers of the Internet nowadays, we forget what it was initially created for: to spread knowledge. Happy tweeting!

Kate Mawson : 25 Jul 2016 10:59 |  Tags: Cpe Mab Research Teacher Tweet Twitter |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Teaching without research, really?

Teaching without research, really?

Although my teacher training year is coming to an end, I feel that my learning and development as a PE teacher is only just beginning. As I sit and reflect on my progress this year, I consider the impact that research has had on my practice; the action research that I have carried out myself as part of my masters, the literature I have read and explored to develop my pedagogy and behavioural management, alongside the continuing professional development sessions I have attended at school, university and teaching school alliance days that have been centralised on research and key practitioners. I cannot think of an element of my teaching that has not had at least some influence from a form of research and therefore I cannot entertain the idea that I will not continue to engage within research as I enter my newly qualified teaching year.

Most importantly for me, I have engaged with research in order to develop my classroom pedagogy. As I enter my NQT year and in my future teaching profession, I have every intention to continually develop my teacher toolbox, so that my teaching is up to date and innovative to ensure pupils make the best possible progress. As a teacher I can experiment with my own ideas within the sports hall and conduct my own research about how successful or unsuccessful these prove to be, even if time is limited to write up the findings. However, I question whether alone I would have been able to develop the variety of ideas, teaching styles and models that exist for the teaching of the PE. For example, the Teaching Games for Understanding Model developed by Bunker and Thorpe has become renowned within PE for teaching pupils the skills through game based contexts and without the research that details how to implement the model, the discussions about the positives and drawbacks of the model within other PE teacher’s lessons, I would not have known about this pedagogical model and therefore may not have taught in such a way. One of my favourite journals that I have engaged with so far is the Association for PE’s “Physical Education Matters”. This has been particularly useful because I can read about the practice of other PE teachers and trial out methods that have already been tried and tested by other practitioners allowing me to make comparisons with my own experience. Not only this but each article within the journal, is both informative but relatively short meaning it doesn’t take too long to read. This removes one of the existing barriers that may prevent practitioners from engaging within literature.

Furthermore, I have had first-hand experience of how research can allow me to perfect and develop elements of my teaching practice through my action research around peer assessment. I intend to continue this approach throughout my career, experimenting with the findings of other researchers and implementing these within my own practice. By conducting research into the effectiveness of strategies used within my own lessons, I will be able to draw conclusions from my observations, the thoughts and feelings of the pupils (if relevant) and the impact of my teaching on pupil progress.

I spent a well-needed day at my alliance, exploring the ways in which we as teachers can help our pupils to make good progress within our lessons. The ideas presented were focused on research, allowing us to explore a variety of strategies and analyse the impact on progress. Without research and the contribution of practitioners sharing and discussing their experiences, we would only have our own singular vision of teaching and how best to do it. Some may consider research to be a very time consuming activity in our already very busy schedules but contrary to this view, seeking more effective ways to enable children to make progress could prove to save us time in the future. This could simply be through learning a new behaviour management strategy, experimenting with a teaching style to push gifted and talented pupils, seeking resources, learning about how best to implement peer assessment or self-assessment activities or understanding the factors of a lesson that allow for pupils to make the best progress. Of course the research doesn’t come with a one size fits all, but it allows you to see what worked for other teachers so you realise you aren’t completely alone!

Kate Mawson : 25 Jul 2016 10:54 |  Tags: Cpe Education Mab Physical Research Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Was I already doing research without realising it?

Was I already doing my intervention in other classes without realising it?

When I started to think about my action research project I found it very hard to try and decide what to do. My second placement was in a completely contrasting school to my first and so any ideas I had, had seemed to not really apply to my new setting. I found myself constantly looking at classes and trying to decide what the problem was, how I might tackle it and whether it would work with them – at the same time as trying to get to know a new school, names and schemes of work. In the end I settled on a year 10 GCSE Drama class that had students in it who seemed to be lacking motivation – I wondered how I could turn this around and, from my reading, discovered that self-goal setting supposedly worked to allow students to take a personal interest in the task and consequently increase their motivation.

My plan was to get the class of year 10 students to set themselves a goal every lesson and reflect on it in that lesson and then, suddenly, they would become super-motivated, get lots of work done and be amazing. This proved a lot harder than I thought. Ironically, I found it hard to motivate them to even set a goal every lesson as they didn’t really see any purpose in it. It therefore became a challenge to do an intervention on motivation when my students were not motivated to do something that was attempting to motivate them. I’d been told at the end of my second placement that I needed to take more risks. I found myself really grateful, though, that I hadn’t taken a risk to do this 6 lesson intervention with a class of 30 boisterous year 8s, or even worse, 30 year 9s who had already chosen their options for GCSE and so didn’t see any point in trying in my lessons any more – these classes may have also needed a boost in motivation but I think their motivation to complete the intervention would have been even less.

Despite this, as I moved further through the intervention, I started to realise that I was actually embedding a similar idea in my other lessons, just calling it a different name and not using it for, what I thought, was the same outcome. As part of the whole school initiative and as part of my knowledge gained from University sessions I had been getting my students to set themselves targets on a regular basis. The difference was, I was expecting these targets to work to improve their skills and encourage reflection to help them understand their learning, not improve their motivation. Also, I was calling them by a different name – targets, not goals.

This made me realise that, maybe, my intervention wasn’t having an impact on my teaching in any other areas because to an extent, I was already doing it. I was scared to take it further because I wasn’t seeing the impact on the year 10s and I couldn’t see an impact on motivation in any other classes when they were setting themselves targets.

Another interesting point that made me think about my practice: at the end of my action research project, 10 of the students involved said they prefer the teacher setting them goals than self-goal setting. I really started to think about the reason for this and wondered if it was better for them as I am the one that holds their data and the knowledge about the course. However, I came to the conclusion that it should be a two-way process; that I should continue to share their data and say what I think they need to do, but also get them to reflect and think about where they need to go next, because if they don’t, they are never going to learn how to do it on their own and motivate themselves to succeed.

Something positive that has come out of my action research project is the impact an intervention can have on one single student. Out of 11 students that I did the intervention with, one student came out at the end saying she was more motivated, that she found self-goal setting really helped to push herself and her work actually showed a huge improvement in terms of the detail and focus that was put into it. This is really exciting and, although this action research hasn’t necessarily affected my teaching practice to a great extent, it has taught me a lot – I look forward to the next one.

Kate Mawson : 18 Jul 2016 10:00 |  Tags: Cpe Mab Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Making students of teachers

Action Research: Making Students of Teachers

Beth Currall

As part of the PGCE course, I have had to complete an Action Research project. What is Action Research, some of you might ask? In the simplest terms, it’s where you investigate a particular aspect of teaching and learning, so that both you as a practitioner and your students can improve. In my school, I noticed a particular issue concerned with the autonomy of my Year 12 group, who as lovely and bright as they all are, had no idea how to reflect and improve on their own learning. I began to wonder how we as a school could best prepare our A-Level students for the level of independent study that the majority of them will inevitably undertake at University-level, and to provide them all with a sense of responsibility over their learning and progression. Thus, I devised a simple and (what I presumed would be) effective intervention which invited my students to set their own learning targets at the end of every lesson, for a period of six lessons.

The result? Not life-changing, I’m afraid to admit. I wasn’t measuring for academic progression in such a short time-frame, so for all you mathematicians and scientists, I have no solid data. However, the research taught me a lot about my teaching, my students, and the kind of classroom environment that we like. In terms of my own teaching, I learned the value of dedicating reflection time in my lessons, and teaching my students how to reflect on their academic progress both critically and positively. I talked them through de Bono’s Six Hats Reflective Model, and they enjoyed using this process to consider their own strengths and weaknesses.

However, I also learned that at this age, my students still need my help and guidance. They suggested that, rather than setting their own targets as often as every lesson, that we dedicated time within each half-term where we sit and devise targets together, which they then have a substantial amount of time to demonstrate improvement. The class also collectively agreed that they liked the fact that the dedicated reflection time became a routine in the classroom, and it helped them to continually reflect on what they were learning over the course of each hour. For some of the less confident students in the class, they learned to consider their successes regularly, and this helped to boost their self-esteem.

Overall, my experience with Action Research confirmed to me what I had long suspected: that my students could help me to become a better teacher, as much as I can help them with their learning. Although I will admit my research did not produce any ground-breaking results, it enabled me to get to know my students, and my teaching style, better than I knew before. It is something I would recommend any teacher, either training or experienced, to undergo, as it reinforces a fundamental aspect of teaching: that we should never stop learning.

Kate Mawson : 17 Jul 2016 10:00 |  Tags: Action Cpe Mab Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The pivotal role of Peer Assessment in PE

The Pivotal Role of Peer Assessment in PE… WWW and EBI?

Since learning about assessment for learning within my undergraduate degree and developing this knowledge further within my teacher training year, I have become a keen advocate for embedding, in particular, peer and self-assessment activities within my lessons. As supported by numerous research articles, feedback is critically important in helping pupils to make progress within PE, and peer assessment is key to allowing all pupils to receive immediate, individual feedback - an impossible task of the teacher! A number of sources suggest how peer assessment is not only a great way of engaging pupils within the lesson (rather than just allowing pupil to be stood ‘waiting for their turn’) but also in aiding their peers to progress and scaffold their own progression. As a result they are able to develop a better understanding of the standards they are aiming for within their own performance. With university, literature and my school all advocating the role of peer assessment within PE lessons, it seemed a relevant topic to inform my action research.

As there is already a vast selection of existing research around peer assessment and its benefits within PE, I decided to explore how peer assessment impacts the perceived competence of girls within their PE lessons. It is reported that girls are the more sedentary sex and it is has been found that girls are less likely to lead a lifelong participation in sport; linked to the negative perceptions girls have about their ability in sport and a fear of the negative evaluation they might receive from others. I therefore wanted to explore if the frequent use of a pedagogic tool, peer assessment, would change this. So how did this research impact my practice?

Firstly, the research that I carried out around peer assessment was supportive of the findings of other researchers; peer assessment can support the progress that the pupils make within PE. It also taught me about the importance of structuring peer assessment activities within a lesson. I am sure many teachers are familiar with the more common feedback practices of asking pupils to tell their peers what they did well and what they could to do to improve or to give three stars and a wish- myself included. But this alone without any scaffolding often leads to a lack of quality feedback and instead the pupils identifying and providing superficial feedback such as something “looking good” but not really influencing the way a pupil feels about their ability in an activity. Although, of course, some feedback is better than none at all! I therefore invested time into creating peer assessment resources with an explicit success criteria supported by pictures, alongside key words that the pupils should try to include within their feedback. These resources scaffolded the peer assessment activities really well and the quality of the feedback was much better as well as the pupils cognitive knowledge of teaching points and technical vocabulary increasing. One example of this was that a pupil, during a synchronised swimming lesson, provided feedback suggesting her peer’s body was streamlined and fully extended, as opposed to saying straight, flat or some other synonym. I also learnt that pupils need time to be able to analyse and identify the success criteria within their peer’s performance and pupils need to be clear on what each skill or success criteria should look like, through a modelled example, so that they can more effectively evaluate their peer’s achievements.

My research showed that the participants involved had mixed feelings about how the peer assessment activities impacted their perceived competence, with lots of them saying that this is affected mainly by their own perceptions of their ability and other people’s views. It was very interesting to capture the thoughts and opinions of the pupils about peer assessment activities. Although some of the participants felt that they liked being able to get instant feedback from a peer who was just focusing on them, lots of them doubted their peer’s ability to give accurate feedback and stated they themselves found it hard to give feedback even though the success criteria did make it easier.

The participants expressed lots of concern about offending their peers and admitted that when receiving critical feedback they ignored it due to not valuing or believing what was being said. This suggested to me the importance of my role as a teacher in teaching pupils to peer assess effectively before implementing peer assessment activities, the groupings of pupils for peer assessment and the important role that ICT and videoing performances could have in allowing pupils to show and justify they feedback that they give. Based on my research, it appears the most significant factor could be the facilitation of the peer assessment. It has become evident that I need to support the feedback the pupils make (as long as it is accurate) in order to help develop relationships of trust between the pupils, encourage reflective and justified feedback and dialogue between peers and guide them to see the fully understand the benefits of peer assessment to enhance their learning.

Kate Mawson : 16 Jul 2016 10:00 |  Tags: Cpe Education Mab Pe Physical Research Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

marking – does research help?

Literature Review: How did reading around pedagogy affect my teaching practice? A trainee’s personal reflection.

Feedback within marking

Certainly in terms of my own professional development, reading around effective feedback within marking revealed a lot to me which I had never thought of before, particularly the negative impact that feedback can have. Being a brand new trainee, I assumed that the more feedback the better for the pupils, so had no problem writing swathes of response for each piece of assessed work and spending a lot of my time in the process.

Initially when I first set foot into the world of marking, I wanted to attempt it on my own to see how I would independently respond to a piece of work; the result of which is aforementioned and this of course was unsustainable. I was recommended by colleagues to give lots of praise within my first set of marking as a way to build rapport with the pupils - and it definitely seemed to work, pupils appeared up-beat and engaged in the lesson which followed. Utilising this ‘praise culture’ fitted in well with the school marking policy of ‘two stars and a wish’, a principle used across many schools under various aliases; praise followed by ways to improve.

Being a relatively young teacher who was mistaken as a new year 12 student by year 13s does have its draw backs – you just don’t have the automatic respect which a mature teacher can assume from a class of students. In which case you need to adapt and use your strengths to build respect – this is where praise becomes invaluable and two stars and a wish offered me the opportunity to utilise this tactic. I enjoyed using this method as it gave me scope to praise the students and build rapport whilst also giving me the chance to comment on where they can improve. I assumed this was working well for me without giving it a second thought – I was ticking all of my boxes; praise, improvements and progress.

Praise is an essential tool within a teacher’s arsenal; however what became apparent within reading around my topic was that praise within feedback can have a detrimental impact on a student’s progress; studies have found that students can start to slack and relax when given praise on their work, removing their desire to push themselves further. Discovering this research has really changed my approach to the way I teach and particularly mark, however breaking away from giving lots of praise was something I struggled to do. Worrying I would offend some students about their work was a main concern; my thinking was that giving no written praise could in turn knock their confidence and impact their learning within future lessons.

Working on my new understanding of feedback, I have attempted various techniques to change my marking style; I still feel it is important to feature written praise, however I now use it in far smaller doses. Ultimately what I have taken away from reading around the pedagogy is that whatever principle you are researching, whether it be providing feedback or behaviour management; it should not dictate exactly how you teach but should instead add depth to your style. Use reading to mould your personal approach in a way which best suits you and your personality; the profession is based on all teachers having their own individuality and that is always important to bear in mind in your training year.

Sean Kelly

Kate Mawson : 05 Jun 2016 09:00 |  Tags: Feedback Kelly Mab Marking Research Sean Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Trainee teacher 7: Reading around motivation

I chose to focus my research project for my PGCE around the idea of motivation and its relation to goal setting and self-regulated learning. Following observations of students within my second placement school, there was a seeming lack of motivation coming from some students (even those that had chosen to take the subject up at GCSE) and I wanted to see how I could work to turn this around.

Much of the literature around motivation suggested to me that it was a very inward and personal ideal, but that one’s motivation towards a task or topic depends a lot on their interest with it. I saw this as meaning that I should try and create a place where students could be motivated and thus plan lessons that interested every single student. This idea was definitely not a revelation and running youth theatres before starting my PGCE meant I had been thinking of topics that attempted to engage every student for a long time. I realised though, that within school I had the task of engaging, on average, 30 students at a time whilst teaching them something new, facilitating their progression and following a scheme of work that I didn’t always write. Furthermore, I couldn’t always be sure (without asking every-single-one of them, every lesson) whether or not they took an interest in what I was teaching them about or their task. I have found that in Drama, in a way, there is enough creative scope to allow for individual interests in a topic to foster and for students to adapt performances to suit their interests, therefore increasing their motivation. For example, in a recent scheme of work about current affairs – I presented students with a number of ‘local’ (and albeit quite dry) headlines and they created scenes based on these – twisting and adapting them within their groups. Although this took some encouraging, as they realised they were able to adapt them to fit their interests whilst still showing the effect of the main story and characters, the level of effort and engagement within the classroom seemed to rise.

Reading the literature also made me aware of the importance of self-regulated learning and the impact this can have on a students’ success; essentially, teaching students to take control of their learning is integral to their development. I understood this as applying to the Drama classroom in that I offer more time for pupils to reflect on their own work as well as peer feedback. This means I now ask students in KS3 what they could do to improve in order to encourage self-regulation. I have realised though, that supporting students to become self-regulated learners is quite a long process and not something that can be done immediately. Furthermore, encouraging and facilitating students to become self-regulated learners may have to come from the whole school because, if students are not used to regulating their learning in other lessons, what is to say they will do it in my lesson. I saw an example of this recently when rehearsing with year 11 for their practical exam. Their pieces had been independently devised, with some direction and feedback from their class teacher and myself. The day before her exam a student was, to put it simply, asking me to show her how her monologue should be done and what she should do. I’m not sure whether it was because the panic was setting in, but her and the rest of the group’s efforts to facilitate their own learning and devise and perfect their piece for performance was lacking and they were very much relying on me, as the teacher, to tell them what to do, when to do it, how to do it and whether they were doing right and wrong. I think encouraging self-regulated learning to be a very powerful thing and I hope that in the future, as I teach classes of my own for longer periods, I can attempt to instil it within my lessons more which will work to support students as they progress through education.

 The literature suggested that getting students to set themselves a goal would help to foster their independence as self-regulated learners and increase their motivation. I think it is important for students to set themselves goals, to help them understand and focus on what they need to do to improve and regularly do this within my lessons. I understood from the literature the power of feedback against these goals, as a way of checking students are not setting themselves something too easy, or too hard. This is thus something I have tried to do since doing my literature review and hope to continue to do (hopefully getting more efficient at it so that it takes less time). I hope that as students get more feedback against their goals, they will be able to regulate their learning better and set substantial and reachable goals. Whether this goal-setting actually has an impact on their motivation is what my action research projects attempts to consider.

Sara Voisey

Kate Mawson : 04 Jun 2016 09:00 |  Tags: Cpe Mab Research Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Trainee teacher 7: Varying degrees of success

Although I can sometimes grumble and moan about the extra workload of reading research papers, there can be no doubt that I’ve taken ideas and inspiration from the research I’ve written. Over the year so far, I’ve been trying to take ideas from my reading and implement them in classrooms, with varying degrees of success.

From an early stage, my research into theories of effective marking and feedback yielded some ideas that I could implement into my classroom. Reading work by Hattie and Timperley gave me the idea to use displayed success criteria for written tasks in class. This allows students to constantly self-assess their work as they go, and continuously generate next steps at any stage during the lesson. This allows me to use the criteria to also structure my written feedback, saving a lot of time thinking about what next steps are necessary. I recently took this to another level in terms of student engagement with the criteria, by challenging students to mark a sample piece of work before they started working on their own task. I was impressed with the levels of critical engagement with the criteria, and by their willingness to judge whether a piece of work was worthy of meeting a criteria rather than just being present. The feedback was very focused, and they were very demanding of detail (in hindsight, maybe telling them I had produced the work was a bad idea!).

More recently, I have been reading into theories of discovery learning and how to make it effective in the classroom. The overall picture I obtained from my literature review was that discovery learning can yield improved outcomes, but not in all cases. I identified two main factors that can help discovery learning be more effective:

1. Choose the class carefully. When results were separated out by student ability, a positive effect on higher ability students was observed, often masked in mixed studies by a negative effect on lower ability students. Using this strategy appropriately is an important facet of making it successful. In terms of implementing this, I have primarily used these activities with only one of my classes, where all students are targeted an A or A* grade.

2. Don’t just leave them on their own! Some studies gave students as young as 7 no guidance, and expected them to be able to learn. There is no way that this would yield effective progress and learning at almost any age As a result, when I have used discovery-style activities, I have always provided scaffolding questions and walked around providing support to ensure that students have the supported environment to allow them to make those discoveries.

The opportunity for discovery learning to produce improved outcomes has been particularly of interest to me, and I have been trying to implement more and more in my lessons where appropriate. Recently, I put on an activity where my students used dice to model radioactive decay. Using the structured worksheet, students were able to work through and calculate a half-life for their radioactive ‘sample’. This then led into a discussion of half-life, with students moving on to look at how it relates to carbon dating in their next lesson.

Robert Seaton

Kate Mawson : 03 Jun 2016 09:00 |  Tags: Cpe Mab Research Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Trainee teacher 6: How beneficial can educational literature really be in such a practical vocation?

As a literature student, reading and researching theories has become second nature to me. However, when I began my PGCE I was sceptical- how beneficial can educational literature really be to me in such a practical vocation?

But I was proved wrong, from the very outset of the course. The reading I have undertaken during this academic year has provided me with many different ways to approach core elements of teaching practice, from behaviour management, to differentiation, to subject-specific pedagogy. This year, reading research has been critical to my subject (English), as a result of the reformation of the GCSE and A-Level specifications. Research is constantly evolving about how to approach these changes, and ways in which teachers can deliver information on the new texts that have been included in the specifications. The articles and journals that I have read always contain practical advice, which make it easy to adopt these ideas into my own practice. I have discovered this year that, as a trainee, I have been exposed to more research material than my colleagues at school have been. This means that I have been able to offer new approaches to teaching to my department, and they have been grateful for the information that I have provided. This has caused me to realise that there is no better way to keep my course material fresh and exciting for students than by researching, and ensuring that my teaching reflects current understanding.

Whenever I have encountered a problem in my teaching practice, I have turned to research to help to resolve those issues. Although teaching can at times see like a solitary career, there is a huge network of support to be found in educational research and theory: whatever setback you are currently facing, the likelihood is a preceding practitioner has experienced it before, and has documented the remedy for it! The wealth of knowledge you can find is reassuring, and although there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ technique to apply to the classroom, there will be several approaches you can take until you find one which works for you. During my first term, pace was an aspect of teaching which I struggled with, and my reading of educational theory provided me with techniques to try in order to improve this, such as the benefits of incorporating timers into lessons, and creating timed challenges for students, which simultaneously increases their engagement.

One key question that every practitioner needs to ask themselves during researching is: how will this theory benefit my teaching and, above all, the learning of my students? Placing research into action can be motivating for both teacher and learners who take enjoyment in adopting new strategies and refreshing the classroom environment. Reading research also encourages teachers to maintain self-reflectivity, as you must evaluate how well the theory worked in practice, how your students responded and above all, how it helped or hindered the progress that was made during your lesson. By immersing yourself in research throughout your teaching career, you remain a learner- and this allows teachers to relate to their students, maintaining understanding relationships. I hope that reading research will remain as beneficial to me throughout my teaching practice as it has been to me in this first year.

Beth Currall

Kate Mawson : 02 Jun 2016 10:00 |  Tags: Cpe Mab Research Teacher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem