Self-Study Activities

Review: 5 mins

Read the case studies on this week’s topic, or the one that is most relevant to the exploratory question you are investigating. As you read, reflect on:

1. how similar this scenario is to your own situation
2. how, despite any differences there may be to your own context, this case study may still be relevant to you
3. what lessons there might be for the way you conduct your own inquiry

Plan: 5 mins

Action planning

In your mentor meeting at the start of this module, you decided with your mentor what your exploratory question would be and how you would collect evidence of the impact upon your pupils of your normal practice.

Plan out how you are going to do that, e.g.

• if you are going to collect some pupil voice feedback, who will you collect it from and when will you do it?
• if you are going to ask a colleague to observe a part of your lesson, who will that be and when will they observe you?
• if you are going to collaborate with a colleague, like Vashti, Louise and Mo, who will that be and how will you manage your time?

The exploratory phase of your inquiry – just like with Modules 6 and 7 – is very short, so you should not attempt to collect large amounts of data. However, do try to ensure that the data you collect is valid for your inquiry, i.e. that it offers evidence to help you answer your question.

Theory to Practice: 40 mins

How you collect your evidence will depend upon the exploratory question you are asking and the sources of evidence you decided you needed. However, it is likely to include the following:

1. Analyse artefact and data

Your question may have been something like:

• ‘To what extent do my lesson plans suggest that I am organising activities around what I want my pupils to think hard about?’
• ‘What aspects of my current teaching of pupils with SEND are recommended within the SEND Code of Practice?’
• ‘Looking at the data I have over a number of assessments, what tentative conclusions can I draw about the patterns of my pupils’ performance?’

It is useful to remember that pupil work – whether it is performed (as in art, drama, music, PE, technology), spoken or written – is a source of evidence. By assessing that work, which you do as a normal part of your professional life, you can bring that evidence to bear on your inquiry question. School policies and codes of practice are useful artefacts to explore, as are curriculum plans and mark books.

When collecting this sort of data, it is helpful to bear in mind:

Validity	The sources you analyse will contain much more data than you need for your inquiry. It may be interesting, but don’t be distracted: only collect the evidence that helps answer your question. For example, if you are investigating the boys in a class, look for the data only on them.
Reliability	The data you find might be true for a particular time in the past – is it still true now? For example, is a pupil’s previous learning record reliable evidence of their learning patterns now?
Manageability	For a short exploratory inquiry such as this, you must be selective: don’t attempt to analyse all possible sources. Creating codes – for when you spot similar issues arising in different sources – is a handy way to make sense of the data.

Vashti analysed progress data to identify particular pupils who needed support with writing, and she conducted a book scrutiny to compile a list of common errors in those pupils’ books. Louise raised an item in a department meeting to discover alternative approaches to marking. Mo filmed himself teaching a typical lesson and then watched it back with the Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning.

All of these methods were manageable and gave them a reliable snapshot of their (or their colleagues’) normal practice.

2. Discuss with pupils

Your question may have been something like:

• ‘To what extent do I currently take account of my pupils’ levels of prior understanding when I introduce new content to them? What do my pupils say about this?’
• ‘Do all my pupils – regardless of prior attainment – agree that I have high expectations of them? Do I adapt lessons appropriately to support and challenge all pupils?’
• ‘When I use peer assessment, is the feedback from the pupils specific enough to help move their learning on?’

For all of these questions, it would be useful to make pupil voice part of your evidence gathering. When collecting evidence of pupils’ attitudes in a short inquiry, it is helpful to bear these three rules in mind when asking your questions:

Are they valid?	Only ask the questions that you need the answers to for your inquiry.
Are they reliable?	Make sure your pupils understand the questions, and that you understand their answers. Can you trust the answers they give you? Pupils might give you more honest answers if they can do it anonymously. Are you asking the ‘right’ pupils? Try to ensure that they are representative of the group you are interested in. Ask enough pupils, but…
Is it manageable?	Don’t collect more data than you can handle in the time. If you teach 30 pupils, it might be sufficient to ask 5 of them; if you teach 7 classes, you could collect data from one of them. Open questions may give you rich data, but it can be arduous to analyse; closed questions (or ones when you ask pupils to place themselves on a 1-5 scale) are easy to analyse but might tell you less than you wish to know. Some combination of open and closed might be a good way forward for you.

3. Self-assessment

In preparation for your mentor meeting, write a simple evidence statement to describe what the evidence seems to be saying about your normal practice. This does not have to be definitive.

e.g.

Andy, in Case Study A, said:

‘At the start of the year with my Year 1s, I arranged my groups randomly because I did not know them very well. I found in my exploratory inquiry, by talking to my TA, that some pupils were apparently reluctant to work with others because they didn’t know them, and others were worried about what the other children might think if they make a mistake with their learning. I realised also that my TA and I were unable to give our pupils the levels of support and challenge they needed. I have decided that I need to build their confidence to work with others, not just their friends. I also need to group them so I can better tailor my support to them.’

Louise, in Case Study C, said:

‘I teach 9 different history classes so it can take me up to 10 hours a week to mark their books according to the department policy. I spoke to the other teachers in my department and found that they were keeping within their policies but taking other approaches, like whole-class verbal feedback. They also told me about something they called ‘minimal marking’ whereby the teacher provides feedback in the form of abbreviations and codes, rather than making corrections and writing out ‘what went well / even better if’ comments in longhand. I definitely need to try methods like these, to see if my pupils can maintain their current progress without me marking so much.’

Next Steps: 5 mins

Bring your simple evidence statement and any supporting data to your mentor meeting next week and be ready to discuss this with them.

In that meeting, you will discuss with your mentor any alteration to your practice that might make a positive difference to your pupils.