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 without adding to your workload?
• 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 Yemi and Kishan, who will that be and how will you manage your time?

Remember, as with Module 6, this is a very short inquiry, 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. Analysing artefacts and data

Your question may have been something like:

• ‘What does my recent marking and recording of assessment data say about the prior knowledge of middle prior attaining boys?’
• ‘What are the misconceptions that pupils typically have about the topic I am about to start teaching?’
• ‘How appropriate are the textbooks I have for the curriculum I want to teach and the stage my pupils are at?’

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.

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 past behaviour record reliable evidence of their behaviour patterns now?

Manageability

For a short 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.

Kishan and his colleague reviewed samples of pupil work from both their classes on reading comprehension to see if the same problems arose in different types of text. This seemed like a reliable way of checking the problems their pupils had with comprehension and misconceptions.

2. Discuss with pupils

Your question may have been something like:

• ‘What do my pupils say about how effective I am at breaking new material down into smaller steps?’
• ‘How comfortable are my pupils with sharing their ideas when their understanding is still insecure, and they still have points of confusion?’
• ‘How easily do my high prior attaining pupils find it to transfer their knowledge from one area so they can apply it in another?’
• ‘Do my boys like to read?’

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.

Yemi and her colleague got useful data when they asked their pupils to write their answers to questions and to note when they used supporting texts. They followed this up with three or four focused interviews to gain a more reliable understanding of their pupils’ problems in chemistry.

3. Self-assessment

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

e.g.,

Yemi, in Case Study A, said:

‘My Year 10 pupils are really motivated, and they like working independently. Many of them can quickly and accurately solve problems, but others are left behind—which seems to get worse when I make the task more complex. When my colleague and I examined their books and spoke to a few pupils, we found that some lacked knowledge of basic science facts and rules, and so could not move on to more complex tasks. I realise now that I need to give them lots of opportunities to recall and practise the fundamentals. I need to think about when I give extra scaffolded support, and when I can withdraw it.’

Kishan, in Case Study B, said:

‘My pupils seem to be fluent readers, but I noticed that they have problems with reading comprehension. When with a colleague I analysed samples of their work, I found that they appeared to struggle to comprehend motivation when they were unfamiliar with the contexts; that when connected details appeared closer together in a text they seemed to comprehend more readily; and they didn’t easily transfer their comprehension skills in one genre to another. I have decided I need to help build my pupils’ skills with critical thinking and transfer. I suspect the best way of doing this will be to help them become really good at comprehending motivation in short fiction first, before moving to other genres. I also suppose that I could model good questioning, predicting and summarising to help with their comprehension.’

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.