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LEARNING POWER AND AUTHENTIC INQUIRY IN THE ENGLISH PRIMARY CURRICULUM

A CASE STUDY

The report of a Development & Research Project from January 2012 to July 2013, managed by ViTaL Partnerships

in partnership with Bushfield School, University of Bristol and Open University, using the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI)

and school adaptations to the Authentic Inquiry methodology.

The ViTaL Development & Research Programme

Report No. 12

Authors Tim Small Adeela Shafi

Shaofu Huang Commissioned by: Bushfield School

Date : Feb. 2014 Version : FINAL

Learning Power and Authentic Inquiry in the English Primary Curriculum

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CONTENTS DOCUMENT CONTROL LOG .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 3 1. INTRODUCTION .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 5 2. METHODOLOGY

2.1 Project Aims and Purposes (including Research Questions) 6 2.2 Interventions and data collection .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 6 2.3 Data Analysis .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7 2.4 Selection criteria for evidence in support of findings .. .. 8

3. FINDINGS AND EVIDENCE 3.1 Research question 1 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9

How were ELLI and Authentic Enquries perceived by teachers, leaders and pupils, especially in relation to BLP?

3.2 Research question 2 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 16 How easily would pupils engage with the constructs of ELLI?

3.3 Research question 3 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 22 How well would the ELLI profiles be trusted?

3.4 Research question 4 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 24 What is the value of online profiling over a simpler self-assessment process?

3.5 Research question 5 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 26 How were teaching and learning affected?

3.6 Research question 6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 36 What were the learning power characteristics of the three cohorts, before and after interventions? (Quantitative)

3.7 Research question 7 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 44 Were there any observable patterns in pupils’ learning power and how it changed, such as in comparisons between identified sub-samples? (Quantitative)

3.8 Research question 8 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 57 What added value did these ideas and principles bring to a school already experienced with learning power?

4. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 61 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 62 6. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 64 APPENDICES I. EFFECTIVE LIFELONG LEARNING INVENTORY 65

II. AUTHENTIC INQUIRY METHODOLOGY 70 III. ENQUIRYBLOGGER SOFTWARE 71 IV. TRANSCRIPTS OF QUALITATIVE DATA 77 V. QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYST'S REPORT 125


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Document Control Log

File Name Version Resource Date Purpose

Learning Power and Authentic Enquiry – Report – November 2013 v0.1

0.1 TS 18.11.13 First draft

Learning Power and Authentic Enquiry – Report – December 2013 v0.4

0.4 TS 13.12.13

Near final draft for proof-reading

Learning Power and Authentic Enquiry – Report – December 2013 v1

1 TS 16.12.13

First draft for consultation/amendment

Learning Power and Authentic Enquiry – Report – December 2013 v1

2 TS

Second draft for consultation/amendment

Learning Power and Authentic Inquiry – Report – Feb.2014 v2.1

2.1 SBS OU Appendices

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to express their grateful thanks to: Andrea Curtis (Bushfield Head) and Simon Buckingham Shum (Chair of Governors and Professor of Learning Informatics at The Open University), both for their initial and continuing interest in ELLI and the Research Programme at the University of Bristol and for their critically curious desire to apply these ideas in the special context of Bushfield School; Dr Ruth Deakin Crick (Reader in Systems Learning & Leadership, Univ. Bristol) for her support with the research design and recovery of quantitative data for analysis, despite all obstacles; Hadyn Blakeston (Asst. Head, Curriculum), for his inspirational interpretation and disciplined application of the key principles driving the project; Laura Shirley (Asst. Head, SEN) for leading the Y6 AIPs; Steve Springett-McHugh (Interim Head) for maintaining the support of the School; and not least, all the staff and pupils, parents and wider community of volunteers involved, for their openness, insights, enthusiasm, commitment to a wonderful cause and remarkable creativity.


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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This is the report of a two-year action-research programme at Bushfield School which had two main purposes: firstly, to build on the School’s success in developing children’s capacity to learn; secondly, to track and measure the impact of its interventions for this purpose. Context

By 2010 Bushfield’s leadership, having led the School from being ‘in special measures’, to being described as ‘good with outstanding features’, were looking for new impetus behind their vision of enabling all children to ‘be the best they can be’. The school had already established itself as a flagship primary school using the Building Learning Power (BLP) approach. Knowing of the ‘Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory’ (ELLI) survey tool from the same academic research as BLP, but including a research validated measure and supported by an active research and development programme, the Headteacher and Governors decided to involve Years 5 and 6 in projects using ELLI and Authentic Inquiry. Interventions

In 2011-12, working with Year 6 alone, staff drew on training in ELLI and Authentic Inquiry provided by the ViTaL Partnerships Research and Development programme, administering ELLI profiles to the cohort both before and after running an Authentic Inquiry project in which each child used a personally chosen starting point. In 2012-13, drawing on what had been learned, Years 5 and 6 engaged in Authentic Inquiry projects, with ELLI profiling before and after. Year 6 Inquiries again had individual starting points. Year 5 had a new overall structure within which choice was given to each child: the cohort were enabled and resourced to create a Fashion Show, using the principles of Authentic Inquiry through which pupils were encouraged to take responsibility for their own unique contributions to researching and performing the show. Questions and Evidence

The programme was framed as an Action Research Inquiry, driven by research questions about (i) the applicability and efficacy of ELLI and Authentic Inquiry in this context and (ii) their impact on learning power and professional practice. Quantitative, qualitative and narrative data were collected: the quantitative data through the ELLI surveys and other pupil datasets, the qualitative and narrative data through focus groups with pupils, and semi-structured interviews with staff and leaders. Findings and Outcomes: (i) Quantitative findings

The quantitative data surveys confirmed the hypothesis that levels of Learning Power were already relatively high at Bushfield. The data also indicated that the interventions made a significant positive impact on learning power. The patterns of learning power and its change within and between sub-sets of the sample were generally less conclusive, no doubt in part due to the smaller sample sizes. A range of specific analyses was conducted to explore learning power in different pupil groups of strategic interest to the school. (ii) Qualitative findings

The ELLI constructs found a natural home at Bushfield. Pupils understood the links between BLP and ELLI and enjoyed the way they worked together. They


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expressed a preference for the ELLI Dimensions, finding them easier to remember and identify with. The power and simplicity of the symbolism clearly played its part. Although the online survey caused technical and practical ‘headaches’, none of the interviewed pupils admitted to having any difficulty with the questions, though they thought others might have done, and it was clear that the exercise became easier – and possibly more accurate - second time around. Despite this, the ELLI profiles had a powerful, positive impact. They were significantly better trusted than those produced by simple self-assessment. They were greeted with fascination and contributed to the engagement of pupils, who valued the graphical representation of their strengths and areas for improvement. In the words of the project leader, it gave them ‘a more realistic sense of themselves as a learner’. The second profiles, showing changes, had as much or more impact, giving some pupils confidence and pride in their capacity to change. The provision of regular opportunities, through learning conversations with trusted and trained adults or peer coaches, would further enhance these effects. The opportunities, challenges, feedback and rewards afforded by Authentic Inquiries were responded to very positively by pupils, including some, to their teachers’ surprise, who had been thought likely to struggle with them. The individualised model in Year 6 was clearly more of a challenge than the ‘hood’ model in Year 5, but it gave rise to some sparkling moments and insights. What the Year 5 Fashion Show gave back, in pupil engagement, collaboration, real-world relevance, ‘learning curves’ encountered and problems solved and the brilliant showcase of the final performance, was even more impressive. In summary

The project had a ‘Wow!’ factor, which engendered deep learning and engagement of pupils, including some whom staff were less sure would have benefited as much. The Leaders’ drive was to insist on pupils being encouraged and enabled to take responsibility for their own learning. Not surprisingly, therefore, an echoing theme from staff was about the challenge of letting go of control. The pupils noticed the difference from ‘usual’ lessons, appreciated the opportunity and grasped it. One of them summed up the entire philosophy of lifelong learning: ‘It makes you realise you need to be independent in your life and you can’t rely on everybody else to do something for you.’ The Headteacher concluded that ‘we’ve learned that children are far more capable than we realise, most of the time, in terms of their ability to take responsibility’. These achievements are an important, collective outcome of professional learning which has the potential to change a culture.


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1. INTRODUCTION In the words of OFSTED (June, 2010), ‘Bushfield is a large school serving an area of significant social and ethnic diversity. The large majority of pupils are of White British heritage. A third of pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds, the largest group being Pakistani. Just over a quarter of pupils speak English as an additional language. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is above average. Serving a disadvantaged population is generally challenging. In 2006, the challenge was sharpened, for governors, a new Headteacher and her team, by the fact that the school was failing. What followed is a continuing lesson in leadership, learning and school improvement. Since July 2006, when Bushfield had been described in its OFSTED Report as ‘failing to provide an adequate education for its pupils and (requiring) special measures’, the school first made ‘very good progress’ (OFSTED, February 2008) and then was judged in its most recent report to be a ‘good’ school ‘with outstanding features’ (OFSTED June 2010). The leadership strategy for consolidating and building on early progress was to establish and implement a unifying vision and core values for driving the school further forward. This was (and is) about helping children to ‘be the best they can be’ and, more specifically: being ‘skilful learners, team players and proud of who they are’. The introduction of the ‘Building Learning Power’ (BLP) programme, for which Bushfield became a ‘showcase’, was well-aligned with this vision and gave it a practical vehicle, stimulating an enabling pedagogy which encouraged young learners to become more self-reliant, collaborative and aware of their own learning needs and processes. By 2010/11, the school’s leadership, not satisfied with ‘good’, decided that the gains achieved so far needed both ‘stretching’ further and evaluating more rigorously. Knowing of the ‘Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory’ (ELLI) survey tool (Appendix 1), from the same academic research as BLP (University of Bristol, Graduate School of Education) but including a research validated measure and supported by an active research and development programme, the Headteacher and Governors decided to involve Years 5 and 6 in a project using ELLI and related intervention strategies. The piloting of the ELLI inventory was intended to investigate how the school could generate more robust data in support of school self-evaluation. Assessment of a given student’s Learning Power was relatively informal at that point. In addition, the school decided also to pilot the Authentic Inquiry methodology developed by the ELLI team, as a step towards building more self-directed inquiry skills in pupils. This is summarised in Appendix 2. The evaluation study was designed to generate quantitative, qualitative and narrative data, as a means of understanding the impact of using ELLI, and Authentic Inquiry. This report is both an account of that project and a summary of the findings and outcomes by which it can be judged.


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2. METHODOLOGY 2.1 Project Aims and Purposes The two principle aims of the project were:

1) to investigate the applicability and efficacy of ELLI and Authentic Inquiry in this particular context

2) to measure and evaluate the impact of these and other interventions on learning and learning power throughout the school community.

Each of these were given some practical definition by the following eight research questions, devised by the school, which were (later) further sub-divided by the researcher in the light of all available data, for the purpose of analysis and presentation of findings:

(2.1.1) Questions about applicability and efficacy (2.1.)1.1 (RQ1) how would ELLI and Authentic Inquiry be perceived, by

teachers, leaders and pupils, especially in relation to BLP? a. What was it about ELLI that originally appealed to the

leadership? b. Managing the online inventory c. How ELLI relates to BLP d. The usefulness of the online ELLI profiles (spider diagrams) e. Authentic Inquiry: the ‘standard’, personalised model

1.2 (RQ2) how easily would Year 5 and Year 6 pupils engage with the

language and constructs of ELLI? a. Initial Responses to the Language of ELLI b. Awareness and use of the Seven Constructs c. The power of the Animal Symbolism d. Reported change e. Transferability f. Application to concrete contextual experience

1.3 (RQ3) how well would the ELLI profiles be trusted?

a. Feedback from Staff b. Feedback from Pupils

1.4 (RQ4) what value, if any, does the online ELLI assessment have over

a quicker, intuitive self-assessment process? a. The usefulness of the online ELLI profiles (spider diagrams) b. Comparison with the ‘splat’ profiles

(2.1.2) Questions about measuring the impact of

the interventions (2.1.)2.1 (RQ5) how would teaching and learning practice be affected?

a. The ‘Hood’ model of Authentic Inquiry b. Adults ‘letting go’ of control and giving more responsibility to

pupils c. The meaning of ‘Authentic’ d. Teachers’ learning: Developing Reflective Practice e. ‘EnquiryBlogging’ and social learning f. The ‘Wow!’ factor: engagement and deep learning


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g. The impact on vulnerable groups 2.2 (RQ6) what would be the learning power characteristics of the three

cohorts, before and after the intervention strategies? 2.3 (RQ7) would there be any significant observable patterns in the

learning power, such as in the differences and/or degrees of change, between identified sub-samples, such as vulnerable pupils, or from one year to the next?

2.4 (RQ8) (implied) what value is added by these ideas and practices to

a school already experienced in working with learning power principles?

2.2 Interventions and data collection The research was a mixed methods case study with a pre-experimental research design drawing on action inquiry methodology. The whole staff were given a full-day ELLI briefing in January 2012, followed by a practical workshop for a team of Champions, working on ELLI project management, the Authentic Inquiry (AE) methodology (see Appendix 1) and Flow Coaching, ten days later. ELLI Learning Power surveys were introduced to three cohorts of identified pupils, totalling 230 individual cases, from February 2012 to July 2013. The sample included children from the following cohorts:

• 2011/2012 Year 6 (2012Y6) • 2012/2013 Year 6 (2013Y6) • 2012/2013 Year 5 (2013Y5)

The ELLI survey was taken before (pre-test) and after (post test) the main intervention periods, which fell between May and July in each year. This enabled the collection of baseline quantitative data characterising the sample in terms of learning power both pre- and post- interventions. The Year 5 and Year 6 teachers, either as part of or under the guidance of the Champions team, implemented interventions designed to build learning power, in the following ways:

• offering explanations to prepare pupils for the ELLI surveys and support students in interpreting their ELLI profiles, to enable the self-diagnosis represented by them to shape a strategy for change;

• integrating the ideas and principles of the ELLI research into the language

and format of their teaching;

• planning and preparing the opportunity for each cohort to undertake an Authentic Inquiry during June in each year:

o for Year 6 pupils on an individual basis o for the Year 5 pupils in the form of a collaborative project to

research, design, plan, develop and present a Fashion Show to parents, with enabling facilitation (rather than direction) from adults, who were made up both of staff and community volunteers.


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The Champions were also enlisted as co-researchers to record interventions and gather narrative and qualitative data related to the research questions. ELLI Learning Power surveys were re-introduced (post- intervention) to same cohorts of students, in the case of the Year 6 cohorts 8 weeks after their pre-intervention surveys and in the case of the Year 5 cohort just 4 weeks after their pre-intervention surveys. In July 2013, the Project Manager conducted focus groups with representative sub-samples of each 2013 cohort and and semi-structured interviews with their teachers to elicit qualitative data in relation to the research questions and any perceived change. 2.3 Data analysis The quantitative data generated by these surveys was analysed at the University of Bristol using SPSS software, in relation to the Research Questions in 2.1 above, using:

• Quantitative analysis of raw ELLI data to characterise the sample(s); • Comparative analysis of ELLI data using paired T-tests and Analyses of

Variance for: o Pre- and post- intervention comparisons o Comparisons between the different cohorts o Comparisons between the two Year 6 cohorts o Gender comparisons

• Comparative analysis of ELLI data against: o other in-house data on literacy and numeracy

The qualitative data was analysed in its own right and in relation to the quantitative data analysis, using thematic analysis, analysis of non-participant observation and narrative description. 2.4 Selection criteria for evidence in support of

findings The findings below were arrived at by the researcher immersing himself in the quantitative, qualitative and narrative data collected through the above process, identifying emerging key themes in relation to each research question and verifying these by matching them with available evidence from documentation which met the following criteria: • For qualitative data:

o Being freely offered, orally or in writing, in response to open questions, without leading or prompting

o Either being reported as a personal example of a general observation agreed with by a clear (stated) majority of other respondents or being supported, in its representation of the finding in question, by at least two other independent recorded responses

o Relevance to the research questions o Where relevant, being supported by quantitative data

• For quantitative data (from online surveys pre- and post-intervention):

o being statistically significant or (where stated) at a level approaching statistical significance

o where relevant, being supported by qualitative and narrative evidence that met the above criteria


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3. FINDINGS AND EVIDENCE

3.1 (RQ1) How were ELLI and Authentic Inquiry perceived, by teachers, leaders and pupils, especially in relation to BLP?

3.1.1 What was it about ELLI that originally appealed to the

leadership?

What first appealed to the Headteacher about ELLI was its capacity to generate robust evidence to measure change in some of the skills and qualities the School was keen on fostering, like resilience, ‘which don’t have grade descriptions’.

We hadn’t got a way of evaluating the progress they might be making in their learning areas

(Interview 1: 11.00)

Moreover, ELLI would enable the children themselves to measure how their learning power was progressing:

we realised we weren’t including them (the pupils) in this either... that their self-assessment was really important

(Interview 1: 11.50) For the School’s Project Leader, it was about adding ‘rigour’ to the School’s approach, so that it could be justified to potentially critical outside audiences, such as inspectors:

(ELLI and Authentic Inquiry) gave it the rigour and robustness that we would be willing to show what we were doing to an inspection team... ... ELLI added that crucial rigour – because we had a framework where the children could talk about what they were learning and we had a framework that they could pin that on.

(Interview 2: 5.45 – 7.50) The Headteacher designate saw it as ‘fitting in with the BLP ethos’ and the constant ‘drip-feeding’, including in assemblies and with parents, through which the pupils become familiarised with idea of reflecting on ‘how we learn’, not just ‘what we learn’ (Interview 5: 9.25).

3.1.2 Managing the online inventory

Some of the staff and school leaders were concerned about the length and logistics of the survey and whether all of the pupils would answer (or had answered) all the questions in a valid way. One teacher saw a number of groups of pupils complete the survey and reported that it was found to be easier and quicker the second time round. None of the pupils reported having much difficulty completing the survey. There was some support for it being easier second time around. Though some thought that some other pupils might need guidance to ‘keep them honest’, they all said they themselves had understood the questions and answered honestly.


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Evidence from staff includes:

We’ve ... had issues around 72 questions with this age group, because after 20 some of them were losing the will to live!

(Interview 1: 17.30) the questionnaire itself was quite long I think on a separate point... Yeah and also it's quite... For certain children it was quite... not inaccessible, but difficult to access. We've got quite a lot of low readers who need every question read... towards the end I wasn't sure whether... you were getting the kind of responses you were looking for, or if they were just clicking to get to the end.

(Interview 3: 19.32) I’ve sat through a lot of different groups and... the second time round... they would fly through it much quicker. Because they’d been read the questions the first time and they were used to the type of questions, and I think they understood it a bit more…

(Interview 3: 21.55) my understanding of it is that the logistics of it ...the amount of questions, for our age group, probably make it quite cumbersome if I’m really honest. A lot of our children won’t follow too many detailed questions one after the other. You’ll start getting errant or just random answers just to get through it.

(Interview 5: 11.00) Evidence from pupils includes:

I feel that it was quite good because when you were answering these questions it made you think ‘Yeah I did that.’ And the first time you did it, it was a bit ‘yeah I did that, yeah’, but then the second time you did it you feel a lot more confident.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 12.45) the questions were kind of like... none of them were that difficult to answer. I think they were all good because it kind of related to things that we would know about. So in the end it came with a really precise and accurate spider diagram.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 10.40) It was quite simple, how it’s just a click and then you’ve answered it. But it felt like a few of the questions were quite similar. ... but I think… it should have said “Answer these questions carefully and be honest, don’t lie”. Because maybe some people probably click everything on “Quite a lot” and the spider will be all of them full when it’s not supposed to be. (Did any of you answer the questions how you thought people might want you to answer, or were you honest?) Honest (looking round the group and everyone responds that they were honest.) (How well did you understand the questions, were they ok to understand?) Yeah Yeah, I would say 89%. Yeah a couple of them were a bit tricky, but after a while you could sort of figure it out. By the second time it was alright.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 11.30ff)


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3.1.3 How ELLI relates to BLP School leaders and staff had been very conscious in advance that ELLI was introducing a new conceptual framework for ideas that were already well established in the school’s practice. There was support for the reduction in the number of symbols (to seven animals, rather than seventeen muscles). In practice, all staff reported that it had been relatively easy to relate the muscles to the ELLI animals. BLP had clearly provided the helpful background from which ELLI came as a natural and welcome development. Some of the pupils expressed an even clearer preference for ELLI, finding the ELLI animals more memorable and easier to identify with, as well as fewer in number. They all saw how these constructs linked with the BLP muscles, one finding it ‘clever’ (how they all linked up) and all appeared to see ELLI as building helpfully on what they were already familiar with. Evidence from staff includes:

We quite like that there are ‘seven dimensions’, not ‘seventeen capacities’, although the BLP language is quite solid with us and works quite well

(Interview 1: 16.10) I think they found it easy to distinguish between the BLP muscles that they’d learned before, and now the seven animals. They very quickly realised the difference between the two really, although they are all really linked together... Yeah and they all linked and interlinked and that worked really well and I think really quickly they grasped that.

(Interview 3: 1.50) The animals were picked really nicely to link in with the muscles so they didn’t really have to think about it that much because they were just normal characteristics of that animal.

(Interview 3: 2.50) ...if we’d used BLP muscles in our lessons we’d try and map them on to the ELLI muscles so we’d say ‘Oh we’re going to use collaboration – what animal is that like?’. So they had it kind of reinforced throughout the few weeks before, so they were very comfortable where they sat with them before we started the project

(Interview 3: 4.00) it overlaps with BLP quite... quite a lot...


Yeah because it’s easier to understand than BLP and everything because you don’t notice the symbols... Yeah because the symbols don’t really stick in your head as much as the ELLI animals. Yeah ‘cause BLP’s just... some of them are quite random. There’s so many... Yeah and there’s so many of them (muscles) in BLP, and they’re just a boring name like ‘Resilience’ or something and meta-learning things. But then with ELLI animals it’s the cat which is critical curiosity and stuff. I think it could be used for ages much younger than us.


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The ELLI animals help you to group together learning muscles, which I think was actually quite clever. You actually get... I was looking on my blog website today and I had a look at my homepage before you log on, and it had all the ELLI animals and then all the learning muscles that go into them. It’s really clever Yeah and that was really clever to group them together. (Because they work together?) Yeah they do work together. And it’s also, when I had a look at it, there’s so many learning muscles that can be used for so many different things. Before this I wouldn’t have thought that managing distractions would have been in resilience, but now I understand why. (I see, you understand how they relate?) And because with BLP there’s just so many of them, it just sorts them into the main category. I think that ELLI one day could be the main source of those muscles for schools. Yeah especially for younger ones

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 23.00ff) At school we’ve got lots on our Building Learning Power muscles – so BLP – and ELLI really helped because it was kind of associating animals to different abilities and I think that helped us think about our muscles in more detail.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 1.36)

3.1.4 The usefulness of the online ELLI profiles (spider diagrams)

School and project leaders reported a good level of face validity in the ELLI profiles, which gave the inventory credibility with colleagues. Even where they were found to contradict expectations, the profiles were found to be an ‘incredibly useful’ starting point for conversations. Teachers reported the pupils to be highly engaged – ‘all fascinated’ – by seeing their learning power graphically represented in this way. Pupils expressed a good level of confidence in their spider diagrams, the information conveyed in them and its usefulness to them, especially the second time around. This is further developed in 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 below. Evidence from staff includes:

When the staff saw what the children’s profiles were like, which was their perception of themselves, there were some where we thought ‘that’s absolutely like that child...’ we knew that that was how the child did think about themselves and did approach tasks, so there was a resonance between the staff’s understanding of the children and what the children were saying about themselves – it tallied, which gave it credibility with the staff involved in it

(Interview 1: 14.00) If you’d been shown that profile and been asked to match it with a picture of that child, you wouldn’t have matched it! But that’s incredibly useful as a framework to then talk about... ‘Why do you think you’re like that?’ And


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when you unpick it then they start to get a more realistic sense of themselves as a learner and where they need to go

(Interview 2: 43.10) But what they got from getting their printout – they were all fascinated by the printout... to see their own profiles; they found that really interesting and to see where they were. And then having done the second one, they loved seeing the colours overlapping... you could see the different colours and they were able to see what they’d really improved in. And they felt really proud of themselves

(Interview 3: 20.44) they were really keen to see the differences. So they’ve all got now the two different ones and they were comparing them, so they have been looking at them.


...the second time you did it you feel a lot more confident. You really think about it. And you can say ‘Yeah I can do that, yeah I can do that’. You don’t have to go over it in your head. You just say ‘Yeah I can do that, yeah I can do that’. And I think that’s amazing, because in two weeks... do you want to have a look?


...in the end it came with a really precise and accurate spider diagram. (Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 10.40)

Well when I did my ELLI spider diagram, it showed on my first one that I did quite well. But when I did my second one, I think <teacher> said I was a bit more harsh on myself, so it shows that I was more critical of what I was… where I had improved.


3.1.5 Authentic Inquiry: the ‘standard’, personalised model The fact that a ‘standard’ model of Authentic Inquiry was implemented in Year 6, where each pupil chose their own starting point, whilst a ‘collaborative’ model, was implemented in Year 5, under a common ‘banner’ or ‘hood’, enabled a great deal of reflection by leaders and staff about the relative merits of these two models. Feedback on the ‘personalised’ approach and the comparison between the two are examined here, since they reflect how the original ideas were implemented and then perceived once in practice. Feedback on the ‘hood’ model in its own right is further examined in 4.5.1 below, since it represents an adaptation by the school of the ideas, which affected the nature and quality of teaching and learning. The School’s leadership and Year 6 teachers all reported how hard the personalised inquiry method is to manage with a whole Year Group or class at a time doing their own individual projects. This was due to the diversity of content, pathways and outcomes, the resources required and the absence of any imperative to collaborate. The ‘Inquiry Blogger’ activity helped teachers to keep track and introduced a helpful social dimension to the learning. Some individual stories reported by teachers illustrated the motivational impact of choosing and the levels of responsibility, autonomy and adaptability that were fostered and


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necessitated by this methodology. Overall, though, the strong preference amongst staff was for the collaborative, ‘hood’ model of inquiry (see 4.5.1). The feedback from the Year 6 pupils contained some real insights, though, suggesting the model provided a rich context for learning development, even though it was more difficult for teachers to keep track of. One pupil reported on the opportunities afforded by ‘choosing’ model for ‘stretching’ the learning power dimensions. One had ‘spoken’ to Evelyn Glennie, through her people ‘signing’ to her. One commented on the decision-making involved, like ‘learning life’. Evidence from staff includes:

We reflected a lot on (the Year 6 Authentic Inquiry Project first time round) ... (which) proved to be very taxing, because they had 90 independent projects and we hadn’t given ourselves enough notice Year 6 found having the choice of an independent topic really hard – starting from nowhere...

(Interview 1: 20.15ff)

Ours (Authentic Inquiry in Year 6) wasn’t like Year 5 where it was all about fashion. Ours was… They could do anything they wanted....they went out and met people, people came in… similar to year 5 in terms of the experts coming in, but our children kind of reached out to them, depending on who they thought would be the most useful. They found their own contacts. For example, I’m just thinking of Ellie, her starting object from her homework was an object that was interesting to her and it was a little model of a mini cooper. So she ended up, through all the different stages, making – researching – contacts within Mini, around England. Got hold of one specific contact, made email contact with them, they put her through to people in the one in Milton Keynes, the Milton Keynes people arranged an appointment with Ellie and her Dad - the sales centre in Milton Keynes. So she ended up going there and visiting and learning about how they work, and then she used that information to make a leaflet about minis and how they’re produced... all of the contact was done herself throughout the whole thing, so they (the children) were making the phone calls, sending emails, through the steps. I think this year ran more smoothly than last.

(Interview 4: 3.04ff) It is difficult… because you’ve got 27 children all doing 27 different projects, trying to keep on top of what each child’s doing. But that’s where (Enquiry)Blogger ... was quite useful because at the end of the day you could ... go and read their blog and if you hadn’t ...managed to touch base with someone you could then go ‘Oh ok, so this is what you’ve been learning today’.

(Interview 4: 3.55) A lot of it was reliant on technology ... for the children to be able to get on and do… independently whilst adults were getting on and doing… because every adult in our year 6 team was being used to either support making a contact or… take children on visits really, so the staffing was important.

(Interview 4: 5.07) ...it might have been a family object that’s started off their inquiry but then we got them to create lists of questions ... of things they could find


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out about that object and that would then send them in a different direction, which is what we were trying to teach them the whole time, that ‘that’s fine!’ and you can change… and adapt…

(Interview 4: 6.56) The hardest thing to manage is the fact that they're all going off in different directions... whereas in a normal lesson we all have the same, 'Right, by the end of this lesson we all really need to have achieved this', which is what they were trying to do in that project. 'Right, at the end, I want to have achieved this'. But it's ...not about having that necessarily, it's about the process of getting there... And the spiral steps helped us... there's still ... at the end of the lesson there is a point that they have to achieve

(Interview 4: 16.29) I think putting it under an umbrella like “Fashion” and then allowing the children to look at the boundaries within that and go “actually, it’s not just clothes design, it’s lighting and music and make-up…” and letting them go in that universe, has been more manageable, and easier to build towards an outcome that they get a payback from. Putting them in teams that they choose, under areas that they’ve come up with through discussion, has allowed them to go on a journey together. And they can see an outcome, because there’s something at the end that they can work towards and build their ideas into it. And I’ve already spoken with the year 6 teams to say that next year we need to run it under a banner. What that banner is, I don’t know.


And I think choosing an object that has quite a wide expanse of questions that you can ask does help making your ELLI dimensions… sort of stretching them.


I spoke to Evelyn Glennie. Because she’s deaf I had to speak to her people and then they signed it to her and then she responded. ... I asked her questions about my music because I wanted to create my own piece of music from a different country. It didn’t actually work, I didn’t have enough time

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 7.30) it’s helping make you better at learning in our regular lessons.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 8.57) (What’s helped you to be more mature like that?) I think it’s partly from getting older and doing this project. And sort of finding out more, and our brains getting bigger as you might say. And you’ve got to make more decisions and you’re sort of learning…life.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 19.07) ...most of us, we were thinking “I’ll pick that one because it’s going to be easy”, or “I’ll pick that one because it’s going to be hard”. But I wanted to pick the one that was going to be easy, because I wanted to get more information from it.



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3.2 (RQ2) How easily would pupils engage with the language and constructs of ELLI?

3.2.1 Initial Responses to the Language of ELLI This is developed further in 4.1.3 above and 4.2.2 and 4.2.3 below. The Project Leader was happy with how quickly pupils grasped the ELLI language. One of the teachers reported that some pupils found the ‘official’ research labels for one or two of the Seven Dimensions difficult to understand and use. Evidence from staff includes:

They’ve picked that up (the ELLI Dimension language) really quickly. (Interview 2: 16.30)

It was easier when it was resilience and creativity. When it came to things like critical curiosity, strategic awareness, they found those more difficult because I don’t think they fully understand what that means, despite us telling them the story and trying to break it down for them.


3.2.2 Awareness and use of the Seven Constructs Thanks partly to their familiarity with symbolic language, from BLP (see 4.1.3 above), and partly to their response to the ELLI animals (see 4.2.3 below), the pupils in both years seemed to have engaged quickly and readily with the seven ELLI Dimensions. A teacher reported that some Year 5 pupils had needed time to be able to explain ‘how’ they could manifest the dimensions in their own learning and that some had a limited understanding of Learning Relationships (the Bees) as being only about collaboration, rather than the balance between that and independence. The pupils themselves incorporated the animal imagery naturally into their feedback, relating the constructs accurately to their own learning strengths and needs, without hesitation or affectation. Some used the research language rather than the imagery (‘I had to be strategically aware’). Their use of the constructs in this way made them unusually articulate about their own learning and how it was progressing. Evidence from staff includes:

I think they really grasped the ELLI concept pretty quickly... Yeah! I think the story was a really good way of engaging them

(Interview 3: 1.17) At the start, I think they found it a bit more difficult, to say how they were like an animal... they’d say ‘I’ve been like the bee’, and I’d say ‘Why?’ – ‘Because I collaborated’. Okay, but how did you collaborate? I’d like for them to have been more about the ‘how?’. I think in the second week that was slightly easier I think one of the big things with the bee thing is they had the general misconception that it’s all about collaboration, and actually … it’s about knowing ... when’s the best time to be independent and when’s the best time to collaborate.



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Evidence from pupils includes:

in the second week I definitely felt that I was building on my skills... I was getting more creative... (finding) different ways to do things... My Unicorn and Chameleon were the two that I used the most and they kind of linked into each other – so I had to find creative ways to change and adapt, because when I did change and adapt, to make it sound good, it had to be a bit more creative than it would have been before


I think the cat was really important because when you dug deeper you found it a lot easier, whereas if you didn’t ask any questions then you’d have to figure it out for yourself which can sometimes be quite challenging.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 5.00) Well the ELLI dimensions, they showed you all of the different things that you should be trying to get better at during your lessons and that will help you learn a lot more, rather than just your everyday lessons... And I look at that and I think “In my lessons I’m going to try and use this more, I’m going to try and stretch more…”

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 9.28) I had to search on the internet a long, long, really long time and I feel like giving up, but I have to say no because that’s my resilience. If I’m going to give up that’s going to make my resilience get worse.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 16.40) (What advice would you give a younger learner who was going to start that project?) I’d say “Don’t rush. Plan and be strategically aware. Don’t just think “Oh I’m going to make that, let’s do it now”... You’ve got to probably decide what you’re going to do before you start.... Yeah, that was my area of development. So I had to be strategically aware.


3.2.3 The power of the Animal Symbolism The staff reported that the animal imagery was a powerful medium for engaging with the language and constructs of ELLI. The pupils agreed, clearly finding the personifications more helpful for understanding the qualities and behaviour involved and more memorable than abstract concept words. Evidence from staff includes:

The animals are really powerful symbols for them to be able to do that (pick up the ELLI Dimension language). They really do identify with them

(Interview 2: 16.30) I think having the animals they could cling on to what each one meant and represented. I think that was key, that early on they could think ‘Right, the owl, what does that one represent?’ I think that even for all ranges of children they could all grasp that at different levels. That was great.



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I think instead of just a thing, like the name of the thing, the animals actually help you think of it. They do help you because people know animals and what their behaviour is like. Yeah I thought this was really helpful.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 14.40) I can imagine myself a few years on in a school which doesn’t use it maybe and someone says ‘You need to stick at it’ and I can imagine I’ll say ‘What like the tortoise?’


3.2.4 Reported change The Year 5 teachers reported with some feeling on how the experience of learning in this way had changed the pupils ‘as people’ (not just as children), especially remarking on their gains in confidence and individuality. The feedback from the pupils in every group bore this out, whether they were reporting gaining strengths specifically in one or more of the ELLI dimensions, overcoming shyness, changing their career aspirations or ‘growing more mature in their decision-making’. Evidence from staff includes:

(What’s the most important aspect of the whole thing?) The children and their experience of…the way they’ve changed as chi… as people... and how much more confident they’ve become. And how much more individual they’ve become.


I’ve got a lot more creative... I think I got better at my Resilience in the past two-and-a-half weeks


I changed because before we started I was really shy about posing in front of people... After that she asked us to do it in pairs so I felt more confident. ... I felt really happy because I overcame my shyness. I think I’ve really changed with all this fashion stuff. (As a person or as a learner?) As a person, because I think I might want to go on to university being a fashion thing when actually I just wanted to be a journalist.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 14.06) We were working on our weakest spots and we were doing Smart Targets, so that helped me improve on my critical curiosity and my resilience.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 3.45) (I was particularly working on) resilience and my learning relationships. Because I sometimes think that I don’t really like working with other people that much, but then when I did my ELLI and I looked at what I’d done every day I noticed that this wasn’t really true.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 6.05) ...my critical curiosity wasn’t so great the first time and I improved it the second time.


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My meaning making – the first time it was really high and the second time it got really low, because I was really working on my resilience. I wasn’t really getting on to every other one. I was working mainly on my resilience.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 13.45ff) I’d say we’ve been getting more mature about our decisions.


3.2.5 Transferability There was a substantial amount of (unsolicited) feedback about the transferability of the constructs, the notion of measuring them and the resulting learning gains, to a wide range of contexts. Staff reflected on how both their own teaching and the pupils’ responses ‘in everyday classroom situations’ would be enhanced by the experience. They saw the gains in learning power for pupils, in such things as resilience and in more generic learning skills such as ICT, being transferred to other lessons and contexts. In particular, one School leader remarked on the transferability of the ELLI language into more subject specific contexts such as maths. The Year 5 teachers thought the pupils would be helped in Year 6 by the skills they had gained. The pupils certainly echoed this idea, mentioning maths and literacy as areas they could carry these ideas into. Several of them commented on the future (very strategically aware!) and suggested that ‘ELLI can help you for the rest of your life!’ They were advocating it as something other schools should use, including secondary schools, seeing the constructs as things to learn when young and the ELLI survey as a regular aid to renewing awareness of them throughout life. Evidence from staff includes:

I think in lessons, going back to doing normal lessons... I think they would be choosing better options...from all the stuff that we’ve done, I think they would probably go back and do that.

(Interview 3: 25.53) I think it will help them for next year. They’ve been skilled, and I think actually that will help them in Year 6... Next year they should get the benefits of this project that they’ve done here.

(Interview 3: 27.06) ...it's difficult to facilitate it in an everyday classroom situation I think. ... I just don't think you can, really. But we've all definitely taken it on board, and like we say we're using the language and the children are more aware, and I'm sure there's children now, if you said to them 'How's your resilience going now with this project?', they'd definitely be reflecting on it.

(Interview 4: 14.55) the ICT was really enhanced by it Yeah, definitely because what you can achieve in a one-hour ICT slot once a week is very different to them having a week to pull together those skills.

(Interview 4: 27.55) But the viewpoint for us is that it becomes transferrable and so then in maths we use the same language.



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I think I got better at my Resilience in the past two-and-a-half weeks because ...Maths is a subject that I struggle with a lot... I like to have someone there to help me and I can give up quite easily, but after the last two weeks I had a feeling that I almost couldn’t give up, that giving up wasn’t an option, because we had to get it done... and it wasn’t an option, so I felt it had to get done


I think this can help you for the future. If you kept this with you this could help you for the future because you can see... If I did this every year, I would be able to see how much I’m improving and what I need to work on. And by the time I turn, I don’t know, 15, I should be a really, really high level learner, because I started when I was 10 and I planned it out. I did this every year.


...like Theo said earlier, I think it would be helpful if we took this once a term or something, or once every half term and we all had a separate book where we just stick it in. We have these progress books at school – we could just stick it in there and at the end of each, say, term we could just look through it and see how we’ve improved.


I think ELLI could help you for the rest of your life. ... It’s not just a year 5 and year 6 thing - it can be a sixth form thing. You can carry it on, and if you just think of that in your head, and I think I’m going to try in normal lessons like maths and literacy... I might stick a tortoise to my head to remember to be resilient... that’s going to help me for the rest of my life. ... it’s ...really fun... with all the images of animals... I think kids would really enjoy using it. I think it could even work for years younger than us


I can imagine myself a few years on in a school which doesn’t use it maybe and someone says ‘You need to stick at it’ and I can imagine I’ll say ‘What like the tortoise?’

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 24.56) ELLI helped me to become more aware of how we use these things to help us, and how we can’t really get through anything without using them. (Do you all agree with that?) Yeah

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 2.56) Yeah it will probably definitely be useful for when we go up into our secondary schools... like I said, it would be good to remember when we go to Radcliffe to write it down or something so we remember everything.

(Year 6 - Focus Group 3: 6.30ff) I’ve kept it. I’ve got stronger, and I’ve kept it as well. It’s good to sort of work on them at an early age rather than later on, because then you can work on them all through your life.



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3.2.6 Application to concrete contextual experience There were pupils in each group, but most notably in the second Year 5 group, who were able to cite specific examples of activities and contexts in which they had applied the ELLI constructs to positive effect, underlining the authenticity of their understanding and application of these constructs and illustrating how effective the Authentic Inquiry projects – particularly in Year 5 – were in providing opportunities to practice and develop their learning power. Evidence from pupils includes:

I had to use my Chameleon a lot as well because I was in the film crew. We were constantly going to different places every single day, so I had to adapt for different people because I’m in the film crew, I’ve got a lot more creative with my shots ... I discovered you could take a picture of the screen with the text up and I could insert that by the last week.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 4.50ff) Well at first I was sort of like ‘What’s animals got to do with learning and fashion shows and stuff’. But then when we started the fashion show I was much more aware...

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 2.19ff) I was a model and I was helping with the dancing and we had to do lots of changing and learning and adapting. There wasn’t much room on the stage so we had to adapt the positions and adapt the choreography I think I used the unicorn most because since I was in the photography... and a lot of other groups used the unicorn as well... I think the unicorn was most because you have to be creative in everything you do pretty much.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 3.43ff) I’ve got another example. I wasn’t that keen on planning before the fashion show – I always liked to dive straight in. But because I was in the customising clothes group I couldn’t really just draw on the t-shirt without knowing what I was meant to do and that made me more aware of the real importance of planning... Also, we had to be quite careful because I was making new clothes as well as being a model... you had to be quite aware and make links with your thoughts almost like a spider’s web with your thoughts. I also think creativity and imagination, because we had to imagine what it would be like in the shop and we had to get all the rails in the right place when we didn’t have the rails.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 6.46ff) I really stretched my making links because we really had to make links to our mood boards and our theme that we’d been given.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 14.06) ...in Tudors, I’m not really a history fan so, try and use your resilience and use your learning relationships to work with others to help you keep going.



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3.3 (RQ3) How well would the ELLI profiles be trusted?

3.3.1 Feedback from Staff

Evidence for this question can also be found in staff and pupils’ responses to questions about the difference between online profiling and the ‘splat’ process, in the following section 3.4. The staff understood that the ELLI profiles are simply a reorganisation of the information given in response to the survey. Whilst there were some questions as to how faithfully the survey was completed by some pupils, the resulting profiles were still found useful as a starting point for conversations and self-reflection, which can include reflection on the survey questions and how they were answered. The issue of recalibration was raised when staff mentioned pupils who had ‘lower’ readings in some dimensions on their second profiles, when they thought they had improved. The teachers understood that this could be brought about by a pupil in effect being more self-critical – applying a different standard to their answering – not necessarily meaning they had become weaker. The teachers appeared happy to explain this to the pupils, though a school leader thought the pupils might find it harder to accept. It was clear that it had not been possible to resource ‘learning conversations’ to follow up the profiling as fully as the leadership would have liked. As and when this becomes possible, the staff will have an even better feel for how well the profiles are trusted by the pupils.

At the end of the day it is their profile and their perceptions that it is about.

(Interview 2: 43.40) I wasn't sure whether... towards the end you were getting the kind of responses you were looking for, or if they were just clicking to get to the end. But what they got from getting their printout – they were all fascinated by the printout. (Have you had the chance to let them tell you the story behind their profile?) No, we’ve only really… The opening ones we did, didn’t we? The first time we did them at the beginning, we talked about it. I think some of them were a little bit… some of them could see quite clearly where their areas that they needed to improve were. Others were a bit more puzzled

(Interview 3: 21.25) the actual ELLI (profile) was a really useful tool

(Interview 4: 11.00) there were some surprises … I was speaking to ... and she was saying that her creativity on the profile ... had actually gone down. But she said ‘I don’t feel it has, in fact if anything I feel I’ve been more creative since doing that’. And I said, ‘Well you know, it depends on how you answer those questions as to what comes out’.


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...his focus was resilience, and he really did try over the two weeks to be resilient, and yet when redid his profile, he said ‘Well where is it? It’s become less’. And it’s just how you perceive yourself, it doesn’t mean that it has.

(Interview 4: 12.10) (We’ve noticed a recalibration effect – where someone goes down in a dimension it might be because they are more aware of how possible it is to be strong in that area. They might be more…) ...self-critical, because they know what they can do - yeah… a better understanding of what it should be like.

(Interview 4: 13.35) The idea of measuring on a scale, they’re quite happy with. So the outcome of the profiling and then an outcome a while later – no problem at all ... so the children will be quite keyed in to seeing the result ... and looking at the two things and they’ll be quiet happy to go “Oh yeah I’ve improved” ...that it might contract again and expand again, is probably something that they won’t be so happy with...


3.3.2 Feedback from Pupils

Again, evidence for this finding is also found in responses to questions about how well pupils valued their ELLI online profiles compared with their own self-assessed ones, set out in 3.4 below. The pupils interviewed expressed a high degree of trust in the accuracy and precision of the online profiles and the survey process which generated them. When surprised by the outcome, they were prepared to reflect on why this might be the case, rather than dismissing the profile as wrong.

I believe this one (Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 16.39)

On this (ELLI) you don’t know what the questions are applying to so you come out with an accurate result that’s honest and it’s different to all your friends’.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 11.29) I trust this one

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 12.11) it was quite useful, although I found out with a few of my dimensions that, after looking at it, I didn’t think that.... I’d say it was the second time round that really made me think



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3.4 (RQ4) What is the value of online profiling over a simpler self-assessment process?

3.4.1 The usefulness of the online ELLI profiles (spider

diagrams) When asked how useful the printed spider diagrams were to them in their teaching, the Year 6 teachers in particular reported a number of ways in which they had been able to use them to positive effect. Above all, the printed profiles appeared to stimulate self-reflection and help to develop self-awareness in pupils. The teachers used them to help pupils to focus on what they needed to improve their learning and this in turn led some teaching about target-setting, which the pupils were then able to do for themselves. The Year 6 pupils agreed that the profiles had ‘made them think’, including when they had been surprised by their second profile. Evidence in 3.4.2 below suggests that Year 5 pupils valued the precision and accuracy of the online profiles. Evidence from staff includes:

I think some of the children used them really well, because once we’d completed the questionnaire and they’d been printed off, we had a lesson where we analysed what this showed – how we perceived ourselves as a learner. And they were quite good at recognising ‘Oh well I obviously think I’m not very resilient’. And then throughout the week, you could say ‘What was the area you were focusing on?’ and then they’d put in strategies in place – not all of them but some of them From that lesson, where they were analysing what they thought of themselves, they were coming up with their own targets on how they were going to improve their areas… we taught them about Smart Targets and they created a Smart Target to help them with their weakest area So the actual ELLI (profile) was a really useful tool. Once they had it, it was fine – they really did use it. And we had children at the end reflecting on ‘Oh this area hasn’t changed’, or ‘this area has changed’, and they’d be surprised and they were reflecting on it.

(Interview 4: 11.00) ...it definitely made them think about those areas and be really aware of them, which I thought was useful. But it was just, then when it was a surprise result, that’s difficult to explain to a child who’s saying ‘I tried really hard I was resilient, da da da da… and now I’m less resilient’.



Well it was quite useful, although I found out with a few of my dimensions that, after looking at it, I didn’t think that.... I’d say it was the second time round that really made me think, “Oh, that’s not what I expect”. Yeah.



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3.4.2 Comparison with the ‘splat’ profiles The Headteacher questioned whether the effort and cost of the online profiling was justified by the value of these profiles compared with those produced by a more intuitive self-assessment process. On one hand, there is the ‘scientific’ validity and reliability of the survey process; on the other, the School’s main interest was in the reflection and conversations stimulated by whichever method. The project leader was unsure which method really works best. The Year 5 pupils, on the other hand, were unanimous that they were more inclined to believe and accept the information in the online profiles, which they described as ‘more truthful’, ‘more precise’, ‘more accurate’ and more likely to be ‘honest’ and different from other people’s. Evidence from staff includes:

There’s a tension between the research validity and what matters most to us; I’d be happy to ... get them to spend more time unpacking and developing their understanding of what the dimensions were, so they had more robustness in being able to reflect and talk about those things... and then ... allow them to ‘splat’ how they felt – just self-assess... and do that for each subject, because it’s the basis of the conversation that’s most important

(Interview 1: 18.00) I’m not sure drawing it on a scale yourself is going to create an accurate enough viewpoint, or whether ploughing through the questions really works – I don’t know.



(How does that compare with doing your splat ones?) They were similar, but this one was a bit more truthful when I looked at it. (This was more truthful?) Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah [more truthful] than when I decided on my own because on the questions I thought ‘Yeah, I’m a bit less resilient than I am that’. When I did the drawing one I thought ‘I’m really creative’ and I’m not very creative at all on this one. (And which one do you believe?) I believe this one (online), because you actually have to think about the things separately with all of the 72 questions. I didn’t really think it was exactly on it, but it’s kind of closer than the one we did ourselves

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 16.39) I think the first one (Splat) was quite good but we didn’t realise we had this (ELLI). The first one gave us a rough idea about what we thought and then this one, where you did the survey, I thought it was much more precise... it’s much more accurate On this (ELLI) you don’t know what the questions are applying to so you come out with an accurate result that’s honest and it’s different to all your friends’. I trust this one better because on the one you draw yourself, you could be just looking at your friends and seeing what they do if you want to be the same as them.



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3.5 (RQ5) How were teaching and learning affected?

3.5.1 The ‘Hood’ model of Authentic Inquiry

A stand-out feature of this project was the learning context created for Year 5 by the ‘Fashion Show’ concept, which created a ‘hood’ or ‘banner’ for Authentic Inquiry as a collaborative, rather than individual learning methodology. One group of students were taken to the ‘Fashion Show’ at the NEC and effectively became the ‘design team’. A structure was created giving all pupils options to specialise – replicating the ‘Choosing’ of the individual Authentic Inquiry model. The final ‘Assessment Event’ was a public fashion show performed twice at the school for community audiences, which this researcher can confirm achieved remarkably high standards of presentation, coordination and performance. Although a considerable amount of planning, administration and supervision were clearly required from the staff, the concept allowed for an exceptional degree of autonomy and decision-making to be handed over to the pupils (see 3.5.2 below), fulfilling the Authentic Inquiry principles adopted and supported by the leadership. Feedback from school and project leaders (and, by their report, from parents) was overwhelmingly positive, if realistic about some of the challenges encountered, reporting that the concept had been highly motivating for children and adults alike and attracted people from across the community to become involved. Learning relationships were formed and enhanced at all levels. A strong emphasis on process was in keeping with the ‘learning to learn’ theme and led to the pupils being involved in much more planning than is usual, which was seen as an opportunity to foster Strategic Awareness in particular. The Year 5 teachers noted how positively ELLI learning power dimensions were impacted by the opportunities involved and the pupils themselves were equally aware of this, remarking enthusiastically how this one project had changed their way of learning. Evidence from staff includes:

In year 5 we’ve put it all under a hood topic, but still stayed true to the principles of giving them choice and having all the stages of the inquiry there... and it’s been more seamless and more embedded... because the inquiry stages have been cyclical in every day and parts of days


They were far more driven, far more resilient, far more excited by working together than they perhaps were in Year 6 ... as a school, far easier to keep tabs on

(Interview 1: 26.15) (Assessment for Learning) ...was more rigorously done throughout the project because we had a framework... and children could do the monitoring themselves.... because they had the tools and the language

(Interview 2: 14.00) The amount of planning that goes into it cannot be underestimated. It’s not something you can just pick up and do. You can’t just pick up a lesson plan... It is a complex process, a complex activity...

(Interview 2: 18.30ff) What the project has proved to be is very motivational



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...we were able to motivate so many people to come into the project and help – we have a list of volunteers that is unbelievable... from the community... outside... it’s enabled us to work with much smaller groups of children... and they are able to build up a relationship with that person... a trusting, learning relationship... so there were very powerful examples of, almost, like, grandfather-child relationships

(Interview 2: 22.35) ...we were able to put children into three main groups, a catwalk group, a production group and a shop group and that fitted with our three teacher structure Within that structure it was possible to break the groups down and give the children choices – such as making clothes, modelling, make-up It was a fantastic project to do in terms of what we could tap into in the community – Mums, professionals from hair salons, John Lewis, Barclays Bank, Aston Martin – the resources came within the pupil and teacher network. The breadth and depth surprised me

(Interview 2: 26.15ff) There were times when it was more successful; there were times when it was less successful. The times when it was tough was when there were time constraints. What we didn’t want them to do was focus on the outcomes. We wanted to constantly reinforce ‘This is about learning – processes of learning!’ ... you’re re-focussing all the time on ‘This is about the process!’

(Interview 2: 31.10ff) I'd say there's a lot more planning than they would do in any normal lessons

(Interview 3: 11.24) It's changing and learning, yeah. It's growing isn't it, and you can see it, in two weeks

(Interview 3: 13.40) (What are the feedback forms from parents like?)... positive – extremely positive... ... we’ve had parents coming up to us across the weeks saying “Oh they just keep talking about it, they want to come to school and they’re so enthused by it”

(Interview 5: 20.50) I think that it was really good how they put a fashion show on and then... managed to change our way of learning so much just by putting on this one show.


3.5.2 Adults ‘letting go’ of control and giving more responsibility

to pupils The use of Authentic Inquiry, in both the individual and collaborative models, appears to have sharpened the School’s focus on the challenge of increasing learners’ autonomy in a schooling system generally quite dependent on adult control. The principle of ‘learner ownership’ clearly permeated the leadership discourse, being an expression of the school’s core values and the Year 5 project


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leader made it part of his role to keep people well aware of it and uphold, as far as possible, the pupils’ responsibilities for leadership and management of their own Inquiry. (This is further developed in the next section, 3.5.3.) The staff bought into this principle, reflecting on occasional tensions between this and time and quality pressures, particularly in the run-up to the ‘high-stakes’ Fashion Show. They noticed that pupils had got better at deciding for themselves. It gave rise to professional reflections about optimum levels of - and judgements about - adult intervention in learning and whether such levels should be adjusted in ‘normal’ teaching in the light of what was learned, particularly through the Fashion Show project. The Year 5 teachers were quite emphatic that they had not only conferred ‘freedom and power’ but learned they could trust the pupils with these things. The Year 6 teachers reported that some pupils had struggled with the autonomy required of them for their Authentic Enquiries but remarked on the sense of achievement and growing confidence that had come with exercising it. The Year 5 pupils clearly welcomed the extra responsibility and noticed the difference it represented from ‘usual’ lessons, where they have relatively little input and (one pupil remarked) ‘teachers are learning and we are not’! They remarked how they had taken on tasks, including planning, that they normally count on teachers to do for them. They clearly valued these learning opportunities, which they believed were helping them to become more self-sufficient and better prepared for adult life. Evidence from staff includes:

The principles of giving choice and ...options certainly can come to play (Interview 1: 29.20)

There were a few times when I had to talk to the children and say... if you don’t sort this out, what’s going to happen? My mantra was ‘If you don’t take charge, then the adults will take over.’ So you need to get this sorted out. They wanted to keep ownership of it... They did pull me up a couple of times saying ‘This is supposed to be our show!’

(Interview 2: 33.50ff) I think the challenges actually from my point of view were... stepping back in a way and letting them run what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to steer a little bit, of course you are, but they’re trying to run it.

(Interview 3: 5.48) ... you’re out of your comfort zone aren’t you, and you’re feeling almost out of control sometimes and you’re never really quite sure where you are.

(Interview 3: 6.26) ... everyone had different views, but they eventually all agreed on one thing and that's quite hard. They owned it. So eventually that was their ownership of what it looked like, so it was great.

(Interview 3: 11.24) ...they were just doing it. We were just surplus by that point... I felt almost like I wasn't doing anything. And that I should be - I should be doing something because I'm a teacher, not just standing there ... But towards the end it got easier and easier ...it was almost like you handed it over... over the two weeks their confidence sort of grew and grew and grew and they became more, like you say empowered



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I think the way you intervene is really key... that's a big thing... before I think I would have intervened a lot quicker. But ... actually throughout the two weeks I've intervened less and less and stood back more and more. And that's the difference. And you can take that into all your teaching.

(Interview 3: 15.27) I've always tried to stand back anyway, but it's knowing when to... when to let them go... It's practice isn't it as well, so we've had an opportunity now to let them lead a lot more than you would have done normally, and you can see actually the results are fantastic.

(Interview 3: 15.59) So you know... at the end of the day, they've done brilliantly from it. So you don’t have to be controlled, at the front, intervening every five seconds and planning everything for them... you know they'll come up… (What have you given them?) Freedom Power (And you can trust them to use it?) Definitely ...which I wouldn't have said before doing it... I wouldn't necessarily have said with some of them that you could have done. So maybe that's a lack of trust isn't it? Or a lack of belief perhaps... Yeah it's a lack of belief in what they can achieve...

(Interview 3: 16.49) I think they were getting better at that, at deciding themselves

(Interview 3: 25.53) (How did they respond to that degree of choice in the Year 6 Inquiry?) They find it really hard. Very, very difficult... they’ve got so many things, they don’t know.

(Interview 4: 7.20) ...she was like ‘I really can’t make the phone call, will you?’. And I said, no, to give her a go, and I actually found myself getting really nervous waiting for her to make this phone call. She was fine. She did it and she was really proud of herself. But actually it is quite nerve-wracking. I think there’s a real sense of achievement actually.

(Interview 4: 20.26) I was surprised by the confidence of some of them with… With the telephone calls – it was mainly the connecting side of it, because that’s not something that we’d come across with them on a daily basis. No because we don’t teach that.


I think if we had let the teachers help us as much as they do in usual circumstances, I don’t think we would have learned a lot... if they are doing it for us, I think they are learning and we are not in usual lessons. It’s more about us actually learning, because they know the answer. It’s basically them telling us what the answer is... where actually I think it’s better to work it out for yourself. (How many of you agree with that?) Yeah! (All)



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...at school we usually don’t get the advantage to... take over. ...Have input Yeah or have an input. (You don’t even have input?) Yeah we get lots of input Yeah we do but it’s like the lessons, we don’t really get to plan them like we did with this. Yeah and I think it helped me a bit because I usually count on the teachers to do stuff so like... I just started doing it for myself. Well, it’s like ‘cause it makes you realise you need to be independent in your life and you can’t rely on everybody else to do something for you. For example, someone said to the teacher ‘Where are the scissors?’ and they were like ‘Go and find them for yourself’.


3.5.3 The meaning of ‘Authentic’

This evidence develops the theme of learner ownership, in the previous section. The teachers of Year 5 and 6 saw the ‘authenticity’ of these Authentic Enquiries stemming from the consistency with which pupils’ outcomes are permitted and acknowledged to be their own. They understood this to involve genuineness of trust given, choices made and resilience gained as a result of seeing it through. Evidence from staff includes:

They’re a bit like the fraud police, children, aren’t they! They know when they’re being given a false sense of choice

(Interview 2: 34.20ff) Authentic means something almost new and real... Real, and real from them, not from us. (Like last night in the show?) It was them, not us... And I think if you asked them, they would know it was them that had instigated it.

(Interview 3: 5.07) (the most important thing?) I think it’s trusting the children. I probably have to agree with that one because ... that was something I found extremely difficult. Because I’m very strategic ...to trust that they have taken it on board and that they can do that independently. (And let go?) Yeah, definitely!

(Interview 4: 23.35ff) we know that actually feeling challenged can be a good thing because it makes you think harder, whereas for them, being challenged was the end of the world. It meant ‘I can’t do it anymore’. some of them really saw the success of that – ‘Oh yeah you know what, but I didn’t give up’. But then a lot of them didn’t.



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3.5.4 Teachers’ learning: Developing Reflective Practice It was clear from these interviews that the teachers involved were profoundly reflective on their own practice and that the Authentic Enquiries had stimulated and afforded abundant material for such reflection. Amongst other things, teachers reflected on the level of professional learning required for executing these plans, adaptations made to ‘usual’ practice’, their own learning power and its development, the importance of process over content, looking after the balance between structure and freedom for pupils and managing learning relationships, which require trust, confidence and mutual respect. Evidence from staff includes:

It is a complex process, a complex activity, but I firmly believe that there is that deep learning that comes from that.

(Interview 2: 18.30ff) I knew what the end thing I wanted was, or what they needed to do, but I wasn’t really sure how I was going to get there. So I thought I was using the ELLI muscles myself, a lot. Adapting, particularly! Adapting constantly to what was happening.... I was thinking ‘I’m definitely adapting more than I would normally in teaching’.

(Interview 3: 5.48ff) And my creativity – that’s my weak area – and so for me I found it really challenging to be creative in being part of setting up a shop and being that creative mind. You’ve got the children who are very creative too, so I found that very stretching, those parts.

(Interview 3: 6.26) ...we probably could have done more if you’re being self-critical. Getting more of the year group together to reflect on what we’d all been doing as part of the bigger picture a bit more.

(Interview 3: 8.35) I'm a newer teacher so I'd be probably quicker to intervene because I feel like I need to pull it back. But actually, it's having the confidence to know that if you let it go a little bit further, you can still pull it back because there's that sort of mutual respect.

(Interview 3: 16.49 ) as teachers we can over-structure for children... so they feel like they’ve failed if they haven’t got to that end point, whereas actually it’s important for them to realise that the whole process is important.

(Interview 4: 26.40 ) 3.5.5 ‘EnquiryBlogging’ and social learning

EnquiryBlogger is a reflective blogging tool developed by the Open University to support AIP, and was used in both Year 5 and Year 6 (Appendix 3). The Year 5 staff, managing the ‘Fashion Show’ project, reported that the pupils, understandably enough, gave it more cursory attention. Their project involved a great deal more interaction, by definition, than the Year 6 model. EnquiryBlogger was valued particularly by the Year 6 teachers for the opportunity if gave for individual enquiries to be monitored and shared, adding a social and interpersonal dimension to the individualised methodology. These teachers also remarked on how some of the individual enquiries, with highly personal starting points,


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nevertheless involved managing interactions with family members and other contacts in the community. Evidence from staff includes:

When we were doing the blogging, they had to scroll down to tick … (e.g.) strategic awareness... all the different boxes... a few of them couldn’t remember, because it wasn’t animal related… for whatever reason they had this strange disassociation with those words and what the animals were... And it took them a while before they remembered to do all of the bits, because I think… because we call it blogging, they think ‘well that’s it, I’ve blogged, so I’m done’.

(Interview 3: 22.38) (Enquiry)Blogger ... was quite useful because at the end of the day you could ... go and read their blog and if you hadn’t ...managed to touch base with someone you could then go ‘Oh ok, so this is what you’ve been learning today’.

(Interview 4: 3.55) Jade from my class got an email from the main guy in charge of marketing at VW England, so I mean they were broad contacts that they were speaking to, and we were pleased with the ones they got weren’t we…

(Interview 4: 5.07) ...one in my class ...did a family tree ... so he’d got in touch with all the different people in his family – uncles and aunts ... So his was a very family oriented project, and his started from the object of a picture of him with his grandfather – that was the object he chose I had Hannah who did a lot of sewing with her grandma

(Interview 4: 6.06)

3.5.6 The ‘Wow!’ factor: engagement, reflection and deep

learning The teachers’ feedback gave a strong sense that some of the most profound learning was accompanied – or possibly even provoked - by a ‘surprise element’ in the Authentic Inquiry projects. This was not learning planned and controlled by adults, so it was, by definition ‘emergent’, unpredictable and involved both ‘wonder’ and ‘awe’ as it unfolded. The challenge was to ensure rigour through such a process. The reward was the natural, deep and sustained engagement of the pupils, which itself sometimes took adults by surprise, and great satisfaction in the completion of something which excelled in terms of outcome as well as process. The pupils were seen to become more self-reflective and were articulate in their feedback about their ‘meta-learning’ and how they had changed as a result of it. Evidence from staff includes:

(The biggest challenge?) Rigour! (The biggest reward?) Children! ... The engagement, the self-motivation, the drive, from the children themselves, to make the project work.



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I don’t think they could really see how that was going to fit in... Then when it suddenly all came together they were sort of like: ’Oh, oh ok, so you’re doing that and you’ve done that’. I don’t really think they saw until yesterday maybe how it all came together

(Interview 3: 7.34) But there was that element of awe with the shop because with it boarded off, nobody knew what was going on apart from the shop people. So even the year fives when they saw the shop were like [both] ‘Wow!’... So that was great, you had that factor even for people in the (rest of the) year group.

(Interview 3: 8.35) ...and all I could hear in the background was this whirr of sewing machines and I looked round, and every single child was on them by themselves just getting on with it... ...and at one point the head came in and said ‘Can I talk to them?’ and I said ‘Yeah, go ahead’, and one of them said ‘Sorry, can you just wait I’m just doing this’. And then suddenly it all came together when they machined them and all the other groups were like 'Oh'.

(Interview 3: 8.35ff) It's the awe and wonder at the end though, because the shop group all watched the first performance and they were just amazed by the backdrops, the costumes, the everything, because they hadn't really seen it. They'd heard ... bits and pieces, but then to see it all they were wowed. But I think every other group were wowed by some other things that were done by other groups. I think there was... You want to keep that element of 'wow' for the whole year-group as well as the whole school, so that was great I think.

(Interview 3: 10.07) I think... quite a few of them have said how much it's opened their eyes and quite a few have said 'I would never have got this opportunity'.

(Interview 3: 12.15) you’re trying to get them reflective and I think they were generally very… or they tried to be very reflective of their learning.

(Interview 3: 24.09) (the most important aspect?) I think it’s… the children really... and their experience of… The learning they’ve done and just the joy… the enjoyment they had from it last night, just to watch it, and see how much they all enjoyed… and the pride in everything that they’d done... you could tell there was pride there.

(Interview 3: 27.06) It made them be more reflective of themselves as a learner. Yeah it made them very aware of where they need to be and improve, and how that will help them. Because they’re reflecting on it in their blogs from their (spider)web. And the smart targets thing that was introduced because of their weaker area, they found that useful as well. They’re reflecting on it.

(Interview 4: 1)


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...it made you think about what you were doing a bit more...because we had to learn ourselves. I think that was quite good because it definitely made you think about more... ways to learn. Meta-learning was definitely something that came in – learning about learning.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 1: 13.25) I think that it was really good how they ... managed to change our way of learning so much just by putting on this one show.


3.5.7 The impact on vulnerable groups

In keeping with the School’s inclusive values, the Authentic Inquiry projects were designed, managed and supported to enable all pupils to take a full and active part. The Project Leader and teachers of both Year Groups had anticipated that some of the more vulnerable pupils might have more difficulty with this than turned out to be the case. Some pupils thought to need more structure, or known to be susceptible to distractions, some with limited attention spans, some who were customarily withdrawn and unconfident, turned out to handle the pressures surprisingly well. Quantitative data in relation to this issue is examined in 4.7 below. Evidence from staff includes:

The really powerful moments for me were seeing some of the children (who are thought less capable)... because when you first pitch a project like this, lots of people focus on ‘What about the children that...? What about the children who can’t...? What about the children who won’t...? And that can be a real concern for those people that are then charged with this learning. And some of those children, from experience, don’t cope well without structure, or it’s felt that they don’t work well without structure, and clear boundaries and guidelines... and we definitely have children that we would have said are like that... and (the freedom) can cause anxiety for children like that. There was one boy who was helping set up props on the stage and beach huts and (the volunteer) was getting him to measure and to work it out... and there was background noise and all the things that you wouldn’t think he coped well with... and it was this patient, grandfatherly voice and that was incredibly powerful... quite moving to be honest. ... you could see his concentration and he was listening and it was really intense... and he was able to sustain that throughout, whereas in the normal classroom, we sometimes have a timer for concentration... and ‘Well done... five minutes...!’ (is enough) and I know it was one-to-one, but it was a really powerful thing to see.

(Interview 2: 21.35ff) And certain children who never really volunteer themselves for anything - for any clubs or anything - are actually... one in the shop actually wanted to stay behind today to work in the shop again the next night who never


35

volunteers for anything normally. And it’s that kind of thing you think 'that's made an impact' and they want to be... they feel like they own that shop now and they’re part of it and it's theirs, and they want to stay and do more. That's really interesting because before, this person had never wanted to do anything.

(Interview 3: 12.15) there's the enthusiasm, like you say, from children that you would perceive perhaps not to be enthusiastic about this kind of project who are actually really enthusiastic about it, or their confidence really grew and they became enthusiastic.

(Interview 3: 13.40) There’s one girl in my class and she’s exceptionally quiet and she really didn’t want to make the phone call. She’d found the person that she wanted to call and she’d written up her questions, and she was like ‘Will you do it?’. So I said ‘Well you have a go and we’ll see’, and actually by the end of it she was going through the questions, she was making notes on what they were answering, you know… she really came out of herself.

(Interview 4: 20.26) some children that you wouldn’t have expected to do, took a really mature approach to handling things



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3.6 (RQ6) What were the learning power characteristics of the three cohorts, before and after interventions? (Quantitative)

3.6.1 Distribution of participants

Once the available data from pupils’ completions of the ELLI survey had been screened for validity and reliability, 386 cases of complete profiles from 230 students remained in the working data file. Table 1 shows the distribution across the three cohorts of those who completed pre- and post-intervention surveys.

Pre-test only Both pre- and post-test Post-test only Total

2012y6 12 46 11 69

2013y6 14 59 4 77

2013y5 28 51 5 84

Total 54 156 20 230

Table 1: Numbers of students completing pre-test, post-test or both tests by cohort

3.6.2 Pre-intervention overview

Table 2 summarises the pre-intervention mean scores and standard deviations of the seven learning power dimensions for the whole set (across all three cohorts) and for each cohorts separately.

2012y6 (N=58)

2013y6 (N=73)

2013y5 (N=79)

Whole set (N=210)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

Changing and Learning 1 76.64 (20.21) 79.17 (17.30) 78.27 (17.90) 78.09 (18.41)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.50 (17.95) 68.14 (17.71) 69.41 (17.75) 68.39 (17.77)

Meaning Making 1 73.89 (19.55) 74.82 (18.29) 73.47 (18.41) 74.07 (18.68)

Creativity 1 65.65 (19.53) 69.24 (18.14) 65.36 (18.79) 66.80 (18.83)

Learning Relationships 1 64.67 (17.99) 66.54 (13.45) 66.09 (14.09) 65.82 (15.15)

Strategic Awareness 1 63.77 (19.37) 68.33 (16.22) 66.13 (15.69) 66.20 (17.11)

Resilience 1 52.52 (19.44) 51.23 (17.91) 54.31 (18.01) 52.69 (18.42)

Table 2: Mean scores and standard deviation (SD) of the seven dimensions by cohort before the interventions The histograms that follow visually present the distribution of pre-test scores of each learning power dimension. All scores are fairly normally distributed.

3.6.2 Pre-intervention Finding The pattern of their learning power profiles before the interventions appears to be similar between these three cohorts. Generally the cohorts reported themselves as fairly strong learning power across the seven dimensions with particular strengths in Changing and Learning and Meaning Making, and a relative weakness in Resilience.


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Figure 1: Histograms showing distribution of pre-intervention scores for each dimension

3.6.3 Post-intervention overview

Post-intervention mean scores and standard deviations of the seven learning power dimensions are reported in Table 3 below for each cohort and for the whole set. The histograms that follow visually present the distribution of these post-test scores.

2012y6 (N=57)

2013y6 (N=63)

2013y5 (N=56)

Whole (N=176)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Changing and Learning 2 79.09 (21.08) 79.37 (18.75) 80.80 (16.81) 79.73 (18.87)


Meaning Making 2 77.03 (19.84) 73.62 (18.66) 74.49 (17.73) 75.00 (18.71)

Creativity 2 68.65 (19.77) 69.21 (19.91) 68.81 (18.59) 68.90 (19.34)



Resilience 2 52.87 (21.56) 50.54 (18.83) 53.75 (17.62) 52.32 (19.33)

Table 3: Mean scores and standard deviation (SD) of the seven dimensions by cohort after the interventions


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Figure 2: Histograms showing distribution of post-intervention scores for each dimension

3.6.4 Post-intervention Finding The pattern of these cohorts’ learning power profiles did not change dramatically after the interventions and the patterns of the three cohorts remained similar to each other. Particular strengths are found in the dimensions of Changing and Learning and Meaning Making while relative weakness is found in Resilience.

3.6.5 Change of Learning Power Over Time (the whole set)

Across the cohorts, the mean scores and standard deviation of the seven dimensions in pre and post profile are compared below in Table 4.

Learning Power Dimension

Time Pre=1/Post=2

Whole set (pre-‐test N=210; post-‐test N=176)

Mean (SD) Increase(↑) or decrease(↓)

Changing and Learning 1 76.63 (18.00) ↑

2 79.73 (18.87) Critical Curiosity 1 67.13 (17.32)

↑ 2 69.82 (18.25)

Meaning Making 1 73.20 (18.64) ↑

2 75.00 (18.71) Creativity 1 65.19 (18.33)

↑ 2 68.90 (19.34)

Learning Relationships 1 66.30 (15.23) ↓

2 65.03 (14.99) Strategic Awareness 1 64.85 (16.28)

↑ 2 68.01 (17.79)

Resilience 1 52.95 (17.74) ↓

2 52.32 (19.33) Table 3: Changes in learning power dimension mean scores across the whole set between pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys It is important to note that some students only completed a pre-profile and some only a post-profile hence the pre and post scores compared here are from two slightly different groups of students (see Table 1). Also, some differences between pre and post mean scores are larger and some are relatively small. Therefore, a series of paired sample t-test were conducted on the matched sample (those students who had completed both pre and post tests – N=156) to assess the statistical significance of these differences. These analyses included only students who had completed both pre and post tests. The result is reported in Table 5 below.


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Mean (SD) Mean difference

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference

t df Sig. (2-‐tailed)

Changing and Learning 1 76.92 (17.58) 3.79 (.82 -‐ 6.77) 2.517 155 .013

Changing and Learning 2 80.72 (17.91)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.07 (17.17) 3.73 (.83 -‐ 6.63) 2.539 155 .012

Critical Curiosity 2 70.80 (17.99)

Meaning Making 1 72.89 (19.22) 2.93 (-‐.26 -‐ 6.12) 1.814 155 .072

Meaning Making 2 75.82 (18.18)

Creativity 1 65.66 (18.55) 3.68 (.31 -‐ 7.04) 2.157 155 .033

Creativity 2 69.34 (19.10)

Learning Relationships 1 66.17 (15.87) -‐.52 (-‐2.82 -‐ 1.78) -‐.444 155 .658

Learning Relationships 2 65.65 (15.09)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.27 (15.73) 3.50 (.85 -‐ 6.15) 2.610 155 .010

Strategic Awareness 2 68.77 (17.43)

Resilience 1 52.40 (17.54) -‐.41 (-‐2.95 -‐ 2.12) -‐.324 155 .747

Resilience 2 51.99 (19.25)

Table 4: Result of paired t-test for the pre and post change of learning power across all three cohorts (N=156)

3.6.6 Changes over time (whole set): finding The pattern of these cohorts’ learning power profiles did not change dramatically However, the mean scores have increased in five of the seven learning power dimensions. The two exceptions are resilience which is almost the same (pre and post) and learning relationships, where the mean score has dropped slightly. It appears that excluding those students completing only pre or post profile does not greatly change the distribution. According to the t-test results, positive changes in the dimensions of changing and learning, critical curiosity, creativity and strategic awareness are considered to be statistically significant at the level of p=0.05; also, positive change in meaning making is approaching statistical significance. Regarding the two dimensions in which the mean scores decrease over the intervention periods, the changes are considered non-significant.

3.6.7 Change of Learning Power Over Time (cohorts compared)

Table 6 below summarises the distribution of scores for each of the cohorts across the seven learning power dimensions. These show differences in pupils’ pre- and post- learning power profile across the seven dimensions and further reveals some variation of how each cohort changed during the intervention period. These differences between pre and post profiles are different in magnitude and were therefore assessed by a series of paired sample t-test involving only students who completed both pre and post profiles. The results are summarised in Tables 7a, b and c, further below.


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*changes considered to be statistically significant based on the paired sample t-test reported below which only includes students who completed both pre and post test.

Table 5: Pre and post-test means/SDs compared on each of the seven dimensions by cohorts


(pre=1/post=2) Mean (SD) Mean difference

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference t df

Sig. (2-‐tailed)

2012

y6 (n

=46)

Changing and Learning 1 75.36 (19.00) 4.89 (-‐.64 ~ 10.43) 1.780 45 .082 2 80.25 (19.83)

Critical Curiosity 1 65.62 (17.99) 5.07 (-‐.33 ~ 10.48) 1.890 45 .065 2 70.69 (18.80)

Meaning Making 1 70.50 (20.14) 7.25 (1.65 ~ 12.85) 2.607 45 .012 2 77.74 (20.77)

Creativity 1 62.46 (20.48) 6.59 (.18 ~ 13.01) 2.071 45 .044 2 69.06 (20.44)

Learning Relationships 1 65.22 (17.94) -‐.24 (-‐4.63 ~ 4.14) -‐.111 45 .912 2 64.98 (19.26)

Strategic Awareness 1 61.15 (18.35) 7.25 (2.86 ~ 11.63) 3.330 45 .002 2 68.39 (19.53)

Resilience 1 51.71 (18.75) -‐.81 (-‐5.55 ~ 3.93) -‐.344 45 .733 2 50.90 (21.27)

2013

y6 (n

=59)

Changing and Learning 1 77.68 (16.41) 2.82 (-‐2.24 ~ 7.89) 1.117 58 .269 2 80.51 (17.69)

Critical Curiosity 1 66.60 (17.21) 3.14 (-‐2.48 ~ 8.76) 1.118 58 .268 2 69.74 (17.54)

Meaning Making 1 74.58 (19.02) .81 (-‐5.40 ~ 7.02) .260 58 .796 2 75.38 (16.99)

Creativity 1 69.04 (17.42) 1.47 (-‐4.43 ~ 7.37) .499 58 .620 2 70.51 (19.06)


Strategic Awareness 1 68.75 (14.69) .65 (-‐4.54 ~ 5.85) .251 58 .803 2 69.40 (17.69)

Resilience 1 52.48 (17.03) -‐2.06 (-‐6.70 ~ 2.57) -‐.890 58 .377 2 50.42 (19.20)

Table 6a + b: Paired Sample T-Test to assess the changes between pre and post profiles for two cohorts


(pre=1/post=2)

2012y6 (pre-‐test N=58) (post-‐test N=57)



Mean (SD) Direction of change†



Changing and Learning

1 73.85 (19.40) ↑

79.00 (16.08) ↑

76.48 (18.53) ↑

2 79.09 (21.08) 79.37 (18.75) 80.80 (16.81) Critical Curiosity

1 65.33 (17.48) ↑

67.99 (16.86) ↑

67.65 (17.75) ↑

2 69.46 (18.40) 68.31 (18.78) 71.89 (17.61) Meaning Making

1 70.44 (18.83) ↑*

75.86 (18.03) ↓

72.75 (18.95) ↑

2 77.03 (19.84) 73.62 (18.66) 74.49 (17.73) Creativity 1 63.16 (19.35)

↑* 69.27 (16.61)

↓ 62.91 (18.66)

↑ 2 68.65 (19.77) 69.21 (19.91) 68.81 (18.59)

Learning Relationships

1 64.94 (17.16) ↓

66.89 (14.12) ↓

66.74 (14.83) ↓

2 63.65 (18.78) 66.14 (12.73) 65.18 (13.05) Strategic Awareness

1 60.21 (17.97) ↑*

68.35 (14.42) ↓

65.01 (15.98) ↑

2 67.97 (19.79) 68.29 (18.21) 67.72 (15.29) Resilience 1 51.99 (17.63)

↑ 51.81 (17.20)

↓ 54.70 (18.38)

↓ 2 52.87 (21.56) 50.54 (18.83) 53.75 (17.62)


41

20

13y6 (n

=59)



Meaning Making 1 74.58 (19.02) .81 (-‐5.40 ~ 7.02) .260 58 .796 2 75.38 (16.99)

Creativity 1 69.04 (17.42) 1.47 (-‐4.43 ~ 7.37) .499 58 .620 2 70.51 (19.06)


Strategic Awareness 1 68.75 (14.69) .65 (-‐4.54 ~ 5.85) .251 58 .803 2 69.40 (17.69)

Resilience 1 52.48 (17.03) -‐2.06 (-‐6.70 ~ 2.57) -‐.890 58 .377 2 50.42 (19.20)

Table 7c: Paired Sample T-Test to assess the changes between pre and post profiles for the third cohort

3.6.8 Changes Over Time (cohorts compared): findings

It appears that 2012 Year 6 cohort made the greatest improvements, reporting higher scores on six of the seven learning power dimensions in their post-test profiles. The only dimension that dropped was learning relationships, but the difference is negligible. It is worth noting that this cohort had generally lower mean scores at outset, particularly compared with the 2013 Year 6 cohort. Changes made by the 2013 Year 5 cohort generally follow a similar pattern to the changes across the whole set, reported above in 3.6.6. They reported higher scores on five learning power dimensions and lower scores on the other two dimensions. The 2013 Year 6 cohort seems to have changed very little during the intervention period in terms of the learning power they reported about themselves. The changes, whether increase or decrease, are generally considered to be minor. The only two more noticeable changes are the decrease in meaning making and resilience. The Paired T-tests show that in the first cohort, 2012Y6, there were statistically significant differences between pre and post test mean scores in meaning making, creativity and strategic awareness. Critical curiosity almost reaches significance. No other dimensions showed significant change. Neither the second cohort 2013Y6, nor the 2013Y5 cohort yielded significant difference in any of the dimensions. In interpreting the above comparison it is important to note that the 2013Y5 cohort completed their post profile just 4-6 weeks after the first whereas the 2012Y6 and 2013Y6 completed them after 8 weeks.

3.6.9 Baseline differences (cohorts compared) These comparisons of learning power change between the different cohorts suggest the possibility that the difference of patterns may be associated with different baseline characteristics of the cohorts in terms of their learning power. In order to further inspect this issue an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on pre-test scores between the three cohorts was conducted. The result is summarised in Table 8 below and shown graphically in Figure 3.


42

Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. cl.1: changing and learning Between Groups 814.733 2 407.366 1.266 .284

Within Groups 66938.032 208 321.817 Total 67752.765 210

cc.1: critical curiosity Between Groups 263.744 2 131.872 .437 .647


mm.1: meaning making Between Groups 974.612 2 487.306 1.408 .247


cr.1: creativity Between Groups 1863.801 2 931.901 2.821 .062


lr.1: learning relationships Between Groups 92.100 2 46.050 .196 .822


sa.1: strategic awareness Between Groups 2145.193 2 1072.597 4.168 .017


rs.1: resilience Between Groups 382.120 2 191.060 .608 .545


Table 8: ANOVA results for pre-test scores across the 3 cohorts Continuing the above investigation, a repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to assess the difference between the 3 cohorts in the degree of change from pre to post test scores. The resultindicates that none of these changes is considered to be statistically significant (F (2, 153) = 0.358, p= 0.70).

Figure 3: between cohort differences on mean scores compared with respective variance within each cohort


43

3.6.10 Cohorts and pre- post- differences: findings There are hardly any statistically significant differences between the three cohorts in terms of their learning power self-reports, either at the outset or post intervention, though it is interesting to note that the mean scores of the 2012 Y6 cohort at the outset were exceeded in almost all of the seven dimensions (excepting only creativity) by both of the cohorts the following year and that the difference between the two Y6 cohorts (2012 and 2013) in strategic awareness was statistically significant. This suggests that the learning experiences provided by the School during 2012 may have impacted on the learning power of the pupils, explaining the higher pre-test scores of the two later cohorts. However, more significant differences are found between pre and post test mean scores across all three of the cohorts in four learning power dimensions, suggesting that significant gains in learning power may have been influenced directly by the intervention strategies. Despite the smaller sample size, positive change also reached statistical significance within the 2012 Y6 cohort, in three learning power dimensions, whilst significance was not achieved within either of the 2013 cohorts. Differences between cohorts in the degree of change after interventions were not significant. In statistical terms, this means that, although learning power gains in one cohort are more significant than gains in the other cohorts, the differences between how each cohort may have benefited from the interventions are not statistically significant. In short, whilst positive change was reported across the board, no cohort changed more or less significantly in their learning power than the others during the respective intervention periods.


44

3.7 (RQ7) Were there any observable patterns in pupils’ learning power and how it changed, such as in comparisons between identified sub-samples? (Quantitative)

In addition to exploring any differences between the cohorts, the school also wanted to explore how some other identified groups responded to the interventions. For example:

• How children with different levels of basic skills in reading, writing or maths responded • Whether higher-attainers appeared to benefit more or less than their peers from the interventions.

3.7.1 Basic Skills: distribution of strengths across cohorts

Students’ levels of basic skills were made available in various forms, including aspects of reading and writing assessed by teachers or by National Tests at different times. The first step for this analysis was to categorise students according to these levels. Firstly, results were averaged for each skill, i.e., reading or writing or maths, and for each cohort. The pupils were then put into three categories: high (graded 5c to 6a), medium (graded 4c to 4a) and low (graded 1c to 3a). Table 9 below summarises the frequency of pupils in each category for reading, writing and maths, by cohort.

2012y6 2013y6 2013y5 Total

reading ability low 3 7 27 37

middle 26 31 41 98

high 38 36 15 89

writing ability low 11 7 43 61

middle 40 46 36 122

high 20 24 3 47

maths ability low 12 8 42 62

middle 37 34 34 105

high 22 33 7 62

Total 209 226 248 Table 9: Attainment groups for reading, writing and maths by cohort

The following histograms summarise the distribution of grades across the cohorts for reading, writing and maths based on the combined grades.

Figure 4: Histograms showing grade distributions across the

cohorts in maths


45

3.7.2 Reading Levels and Learning Power

The relationship between learning power change and reading levels for the sample is summarised in Table 10 below, showing mean scores in each of the seven dimensions by reading level category.


(pre=1/post=2)

Low reading level (pre n=34 / post n=22)

Medium (pre n=92 / post n=76)

High (pre n=76 / post n=72)

Mean (SD) change† Mean (SD) change† Mean (SD) change† Changing and Learning

1 68.87 (21.45) ↑

77.17 (16.80) ↑*

80.15 (16.27) ↑

2 71.97 (20.18) 80.70 (17.06) 82.18 (19.45)

Critical Curiosity

1 65.80 (18.69) ↓

69.20 (17.58) ↑*

66.67 (15.91) ↑* 2 64.81 (22.07) 71.78 (17.89) 69.34 (17.31)

Meaning Making

1 69.75 (19.01) —

75.88 (19.52) —

73.68 (15.74) ↑* 2 69.70 (18.74) 75.94 (17.37) 76.79 (18.83)

Creativity 1 65.49 (16.16) ↓

66.05 (20.54) ↑

65.04 (16.12) ↑* 2 63.64 (22.23) 69.34 (18.99) 70.74 (18.59)


1 66.67 (14.94) ↓

68.96 (12.83) ↓

64.66 (16.91) ↑ 2 60.23 (15.53) 66.26 (13.21) 65.01 (16.09)

Strategic Awareness

1 61.61 (19.72) ↓

66.42 (16.22) ↑*

65.52 (14.60) ↑ 2 60.84 (20.38) 70.48 (16.71) 68.63 (17.37)

Resilience 1 43.83 (18.46) ↓

52.28 (17.61) ↓

58.44 (16.60) ↓ 2 39.04 (15.84) 51.78 (20.11) 57.41 (18.26)

Table 10: Changes between pre and post profile compared by reading levels


cohorts in writing


cohorts in reading


46

These differences between pre and post profiles were assessed using paired sample t-tests involving only students who completed both profiles. The results are reported in Table 11 below.

Learning Power Dimension (pre=1/post=2)




Low (n

=19)

Changing and Learning 1 68.32 (20.71) 3.39 (-‐10.38 ~ 19.26) .620 18 .543 2 72.81 (20.38)

Critical Curiosity 1 69.01 (16.76) -‐4.68 (-‐15.02 ~ 5.66) -‐.951 18 .354 2 64.33 (22.97)

Meaning Making 1 71.18 (18.41) -‐4.01 (-‐14.59 ~ 6.57) -‐.796 18 .436 2 67.17 (17.09)

Creativity 1 68.25 (16.00) -‐7.54 (-‐16.37 ~ 1.29) -‐1.795 18 .089 2 60.70 (21.27)

Learning Relationships 1 66.96 (12.66) -‐5.70 (-‐11.58 ~ .18) -‐2.038 18 .057 2 61.26 (16.29)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.18 (19.42) -‐4.18 (-‐15.04 ~ 6.67) -‐.810 18 .429 2 61.00 (21.03)

Resilience 1 40.56 (14.35) -‐.41 (-‐6.42 ~ 5.59) -‐.144 18 .887 2 40.14 (16.09)

Med

ium (n

=70)

Changing and Learning 1 76.19 (17.33) 6.07 (2.04 ~ 10.10) 3.005 69 .004 2 82.26 (15.60)

Critical Curiosity 1 68.41 (17.88) 5.08 (.15 ~ 10.01) 2.055 69 .044 2 73.49 (16.10)

Meaning Making 1 74.63 (20.59) 2.79 (-‐2.76 ~ 8.34) 1.003 69 .319 2 77.41 (15.88)

Creativity 1 66.52 (20.46) 4.05 (-‐2.02 ~ 10.12) 1.331 69 .188 2 70.57 (17.96)



Resilience 1 51.57 (17.29) -‐.28 (-‐4.84 ~ 4.28) -‐.123 69 .903 2 51.29 (20.34)

High (n=6

1)



Meaning Making 1 73.61 (16.28) 4.53 (.67 ~ 8.39) 2.347 60 .022 2 78.14 (18.84)

Creativity 1 65.52 (16.39) 5.96 (1.83 ~ 10.09) 2.885 60 .005 2 71.48 (19.00)


Strategic Awareness 1 66.37 (14.25) 2.52 (-‐.93 ~ 5.97) 1.462 60 .149 2 68.89 (17.56)

Resilience 1 57.41 (17.75) -‐.42 (-‐3.94 ~ 3.11) -‐.237 60 .813 2 56.99 (18.09)

Table 11: Paired sample t-test to assess the significance of relationships between learning power changes and reading levels

3.7.3 Reading Levels and Learning Power Change: findings

The mean scores in the table suggest that reading ability does appear to have an influence on a pupil’s learning power and its development. Students with different strengths of reading ability not only differed in how they reported their learning power at outset but also differed in both the direction and degree of learning power changes during the intervention periods.


47

Looking at the outset, students with low reading ability generally reported lowest learning power amongst the three ability groups. However, high reading ability does not predict high self-reported learning power at outset. The high reading ability group only reported higher scores than the medium group in two dimensions, changing and learning and resilience, and actually reported lower scores than the medium group in other five dimensions. Regarding learning power changes between pre and post test, having a lower mean score at outset did not appear to lead to a greater increase through the interventions. In contrast, the ‘low’ reading group’s learning power only increased in changing and learning, remained similar in meaning making, and dropped in other five dimensions. Students with medium reading levels appeared to report more gains in terms of learning power. Their learning power increased in changing and learning, critical curiosity, creativity and strategic awareness and only dropped in two dimensions: learning relationships and resilience, which was in line with the general pattern revealed across all the cohorts. Students in the ‘high’ reading level category demonstrated positive changes in six of the seven learning power dimensions and only dropped in resilience. This represents considerable difference in how much students with different levels of reading ability changed in their learning power during the intervention periods. It may be that lower ability readers need more tailored interventions, or longer periods of time for changes to be apparent. Following the paired T-tests, neither the increases nor decreases reported by students with low reading ability are considered significant (though the decrease in learning relationships is approaching significance). The following learning power changes, however, were found to be statistically significant:

• the increase in changing and learning, critical curiosity and strategic awareness reported by students with medium reading ability

• the increase in critical curiosity, meaning making and creativity reported by students with high reading ability.

3.7.4 Writing Levels and Learning Power

The School was also interested to explore the possible impact that pupils’ writing ability may have on learning power, before and after the intervention. The distribution of scores of the seven learning power dimensions for students with different writing ability are summarised below in Table 12 below. An ANOVA was then conducted to assess the differences between these three ability groups on their pre-test scores. Degrees of significance of the changes between pre and post profile were assessed using a paired sample t-test for each ability group. These tests only include students who completed both profiles. The result is reported in Table 13. Lastly, these three ability groups were further assessed on the differences between their pre and post test scores using ANOVA.


48


Low writing ability (pre n=56 / post n=41)




1 73.51 (20.85) ↓

76.52 (16.90) ↑*

80.62 (16.34) ↑ 2 73.17 (20.11) 80.50 (18.43) 84.37 (17.32)

Critical Curiosity 1 65.94 (18.69) ↑

67.51 (16.85) ↑*

68.22 (16.84) ↑ 2 68.11 (18.42) 70.53 (18.55) 69.26 (17.40)


74.11 (17.54) ↑

76.08 (16.93) ↑ 2 71.08 (21.23) 75.23 (17.98) 78.10 (17.51)

Creativity 1 63.69 (18.85) ↑

65.64 (18.84) ↑

66.43 (16.50) ↑ 2 65.77 (20.59) 69.43 (19.34) 71.00 (18.32)


1 64.63 (15.93) ↓

66.54 (13.69) ↓

68.22 (17.92) ↓ 2 61.72 (14.91) 66.22 (14.17) 65.21 (16.76)

Strategic Awareness 1 62.00 (17.99) ↑

65.24 (15.72) ↑*

67.86 (15.14) ↑ 2 63.10 (16.75) 69.83 (18.52) 68.65 (16.71)

Resilience 1 47.48 (16.30) ↓

53.28 (17.71) ↓

59.19 (17.98) ↑

2 45.24 (17.23) 52.07 (19.86) 60.44 (17.55)

Table 12: Distribution of pre- and post- learning power mean scores across students in different writing categories

3.7.5 Writing Levels and Learning Power, including pre- to

post-intervention change: findings

From Table 12, we can see that higher writing ability is generally associated with high learning power. But the relationship between writing ability and reported change in learning power between pre and post test is not so clear: in other words, even students with different abilities in writing demonstrate quite similar patterns of change in learning power, and these patterns are in line with the general pattern revealed across the whole sample. The Anova results indicated that the pre-intervention differences between these ability groups (i.e. at outset) were not statistically significant in six of the seven dimensions. The exception is in resilience, in which the low writing ability group’s pre-intervention mean score was 47.48 whilst the high writing ability’s mean score was 59.19) [F, (2,206) = 6.790, p=0.001]. Post hoc analyses using a Bonferroni test (M=12.84, p=0.001) indicated a significant difference between the high and low ability groups in this Resilience dimension, pre and post intervention, and could be an area worthy of greater exploration for teachers. The paired T-test results reported in Table 13, demonstrated slightly different patterns of learning power changes from the Reading Level category groups considered above. This may reflect the fact that some changes are minor and likely to be due to normal fluctuation rather than significant causes. However, the group in the medium writing level category reported statistically significant increases in changing and learning, critical curiosity and strategic awareness. The second set of Anova results indicated that the pre- to post-intervention differences between these ability groups (i.e. learning power changes) revealed the same significant differences between the groups (as in the pre-test scores) for resilience [F, (2,173) = 6.762, p=0.001]: the high writing level group again had a significantly mean score in Resilience. Analysis on post test scores


49

also showed there was a significant difference between high and low level writing groups in their gains in Changing and Learning [F, (2,173) =4.029, p=0.019]. Comparing just the post-test scores, although high ability pupils had more Resilience post-intervention than low writing ability pupils, it is worth noting that the mean score for low ability writers increased in post-test whereas it decreased slightly for the high ability readers. However, this decrease is not considered to be statistically significant [F, (1,146) = 0.85 p=0.771]. The mean scores suggest that even though there are different starting points for high and low ability writers, the interventions themselves seem to have a similar (though not statistically significant different) impact.

3.7.6 Basic Skills and Learning Power: summary findings

Levels of reading and writing ability do appear to have an effect on the mean scores for both pre- and post- tests in many of the dimensions. For writing, the differences for resilience and changing & learning reached statistical significance. Other differences reflect a complex relationship between these two abilities and different learning power dimensions and warrant further exploration. It was not possible in the timescale to conduct the same analysis in respect of maths abilities, other than for the sub-sample of Asian girls, reported below.

3.7.7 Ethnicity and Gender

A sub-group of particular interest to the School was that of Asian girls, who had been reported anecdotally to lack confidence in the classroom and who are known to perform relatively poorly in maths. Table 13 below compares the means and standard deviation (SD) between the genders and between Asian students and other ethnicities in the seven Learning Power Dimensions.


(pre=1/post=2)

Gender Ethnicity Asian Girls (pre n=23/ post n =14)

Girl (pre n=114/ post n =90)

Boy (pre n=96/ post n =86)

Non Asian (pre n=153/ post n =131)

Asian (pre n=55/ post n =43)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)


1 77.63 (17.33) 75.43 (18.79) 75.82 (18.21) 78.33 (17.47) 83.33 (15.08)

2 82.22 (15.36) 77.13 (21.74) 79.39 (18.73) 81.01 (19.10) 81.55 (20.46)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.25 (16.09) 66.98 (18.77) 65.00 (16.22) 72.93 (18.99) 72.95 (17.06)

2 68.48 (16.28) 71.23 (20.10) 69.27 (17.23) 71.58 (20.90) 72.22 (15.83)

Meaning Making 1 73.77 (16.32) 72.52 (21.14) 72.24 (18.22) 75.93 (19.47) 77.85 (15.96)

2 74.02 (17.25) 76.02 (20.18) 73.86 (18.43) 78.52 (18.94) 81.29 (15.90)

Creativity 1 66.14 (17.03) 64.06 (19.80) 63.03 (17.59) 70.67 (19.33) 71.01 (17.01)

2 69.48 (18.73) 68.29 (20.06) 68.93 (18.06) 68.37 (23.01) 69.52 (22.22)


1 67.62 (15.08) 64.73 (15.33) 65.09 (15.98) 69.60 (12.76) 71.62 (12.19)

2 65.96 (15.36) 64.05 (14.63) 65.03 (15.71) 64.73 (13.09) 63.89 (12.28)

Strategic Awareness

1 66.62 (16.18) 62.74 (16.24) 62.81 (15.54) 70.12 (17.30) 72.35 (15.54)

2 70.09 (15.28) 65.83 (19.94) 67.18 (17.43) 70.24 (18.68) 74.54 (16.99)

Resilience 1 53.59 (17.96) 52.19 (17.52) 52.08 (18.12) 55.08 (16.75) 57.97 (16.87)

2 52.66 (18.02) 51.96 (20.72) 52.30 (19.80) 51.85 (18.28) 56.44 (18.02)

Table 13: Distribution of pre- and post- mean scores in the Seven Learning Power Dimensions across genders and Asian/non-Asian ethnicities


50

3.7.8 Gender and Learning Power: finding

The above table shows that the girls generally had higher learning power across all dimensions than boys at outset, but the boys reported themselves as more critically curious and stronger at meaning making than the girls post-intervention.

3.7.9 Ethnicity and Learning Power: findings

Asian students were generally higher in all learning power dimensions at outset, but reported themselves to have become less critically curious, less creative and less resilient than other students after the interventions. These differences need to be further assessed to know whether they reach statistical significance, which the current analysis was not able to accomplish in the given timescale. These comparisons are, however, helpful in interpreting the learning power characteristics of Asian girls. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the mean scores for Asian girls are actually the highest, at outset (i.e. pre-intervention), in all seven learning power dimensions out of the sub-groups just discussed. They are also highest post-intervention in all seven dimensions except for Learning Relationships, in which their mean score was reduced. This is worth exploring further to form a synthetical understanding of such a finding and how it might relate to teachers’ observations of Asian girls’ learning needs and behaviour in the classroom. These differences at outset between Asian girls and the whole sample were assessed using a series of one-way ANOVA, summarised in Table 14 below.

Sum of Squares

df Mean Square

F Sig.

Changing and Learning 1

Between Groups 1161.657 1 1161.657 3.631 .058


Critical Curiosity 1

Between Groups 875.379 1 875.379 2.944 .088


Meaning Making 1

Between Groups 558.368 1 558.368 1.611 .206


Creativity 1 Between Groups 876.094 1 876.094 2.627 .107


Learning Relationships 1

Between Groups 731.586 1 731.586 3.188 .076


Strategic Awareness 1

Between Groups 1454.778 1 1454.778 5.607 .019 Within Groups 53964.561 208 259.445 Total 55419.339 209

Resilience 1 Between Groups 651.028 1 651.028 2.080 .151 Within Groups 65096.741 208 312.965 Total 65747.769 209

Table 14: ANOVA results assessing differences between Asian girls and other students pre-intervention

These results show that Asian girls reported themselves as stronger at outset in Strategic Awareness, to a statistically significant degree, and stronger in Changing and Learning and Learning Relationships to a degree approaching statistical significance.


51

It was not possible to assess differences between degrees of reported change in learning power between Asian girls and the rest of sample, because only 10 Asian girls completed both pre and post test profiles: with such a small sample, the result is very likely to be distorted by a few extreme cases. However, the differences in post test profiles between Asian girls and the rest of students were assessed using One-way ANOVA, whose results are summarised in Table 15.

Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Changing and Learning 2 Between Groups 49.982 1 49.982 .140 .709

Within Groups 62254.312 174 357.783

Total 62304.293 175

Critical Curiosity 2 Between Groups 87.535 1 87.535 .262 .610

Within Groups 58186.252 174 334.404

Total 58273.787 175

Meaning Making 2 Between Groups 602.247 1 602.247 1.727 .191

Within Groups 60690.272 174 348.795

Total 61292.519 175

Creativity 2 Between Groups 5.890 1 5.890 .016 .901

Within Groups 65470.625 174 376.268

Total 65476.515 175

Learning Relationships 2 Between Groups 19.641 1 19.641 .087 .768

Within Groups 39320.988 174 225.983

Total 39340.629 175

Strategic Awareness 2 Between Groups 649.583 1 649.583 2.066 .152

Within Groups 54708.142 174 314.415

Total 55357.724 175

Resilience 2 Between Groups 258.842 1 258.842 .691 .407

Within Groups 65155.159 174 374.455

Total 65414.001 175

Table 15: ANOVA results assessing differences between Asian girls and other students post-intervention

The result suggests that, after the interventions, the differences between Asian girls’ learning power and that of other students were no longer statistically significant. However, these results should be interpreted with caution for the reason that both analyses involved a relatively small sample of Asian girls, 23 in pre-test related analysis and 14 in post-test related analysis.

3.7.10 Ethnicity and Maths: Finding

Having investigated the difference in self-reported learning power between Asian girls and other students, it is also interesting to see how different these Asian girls were in terms of Mathematics grades they received. The distributions of Maths grades are visually represented in a bar chart in Figure 7 below. It appears that their maths scores are slightly below the average of other students. This observation is assessed using Independent-Samples Mann-Whitney U Test and yields a result that is approaching statistical significance (p=.053).


52

Figure 7: the distribution of Mathematic grades between Asian girls and other students

In summary, Asian girls had more learning power to start off with than their non-Asian peers (including boys) and their maths performance was slightly lower than the rest of the cohort. While these differences may be quite useful in developing a more nuanced understanding of this area of special interest, the interpretation has to remain cautious because very few of the differences were to a statistically significant degree.

3.7.11 Learning Power and socio-economic status (measured

by free school meal entitlement)

A paired T-test was used to assess the significance of comparisons between pre- and post-test mean scores across the cohorts by socio-economic status, as measured by eligibility for free school meals (FSM). Results are in Tables 16 and 17 below. The comparison only includes pupils completing both profiles.

Learning Power Dimension (pre=1/post=2) Mean (SD) Mean

difference


t df Sig. (2-‐

tailed)

Non

FSM

(n=1

24)

Changing and Learning 1 76.61 (17.96) 4.17 (.93 ~ 7.41) 2.544 123 .012

2 80.78 (17.79)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.00 (17.38) 4.54 (1.40 ~ 7.68) 2.866 123 .005

2 71.54 (17.08)

Meaning Making 1 72.58 (19.77) 3.73 (.25 ~ 7.20) 2.124 123 .036

2 76.31 (17.96)

Creativity 1 65.08 (19.29) 4.68 (.97 ~ 8.38) 2.500 123 .014

2 69.76 (18.14)

Learning Relationships 1 65.32 (16.99) -‐.92 (-‐3.46 ~ 1.62) -‐.717 123 .475

2 64.40 (15.33)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.03 (15.38) 3.68 (.90 ~ 6.46) 2.619 123 .010

2 68.71 (16.52)

Resilience 1 53.34 (16.17) -‐1.17 (-‐3.78 ~ 1.44) -‐.886 123 .377

2 52.17 (18.51)

Table 16: Distribution of pre and post dimensions scores for non-FSM students

Having described and assessed the learning power characteristics and learning power changes of FSM and non-FSM students, the characteristics of these two


53

FSM (n

=31)

Changing and Learning 1 77.42 (15.99) 2.42 (-‐5.48 ~ 10.32) .625 30 .536

2 79.84 (18.61)

Critical Curiosity 1 66.67 (16.37) .96 (-‐6.77 ~ 8.68) .253 30 .802

2 67.62 (21.47)

Meaning Making 1 73.27 (16.75) .31 (-‐8.06 ~ 8.67) .075 30 .941

2 73.58 (19.40)

Creativity 1 67.20 (15.08) .11 (-‐8.39 ~ 8.60) .026 30 .980

2 67.31 (22.96)

Learning Relationships 1 68.73 (9.30) 1.61 (-‐4.11 ~ 7.33) .576 30 .569

2 70.34 (13.46)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.26 (16.71) 2.73 (-‐5.01 ~ 10.47) .720 30 .477

2 67.99 (20.44)

Resilience 1 47.50 (21.13) 2.34 (-‐5.22 ~ 9.90) .632 30 .532

2 49.84 (20.98)

Table 17: Distribution of pre and post dimensions scores for FSM students

groups of students were also compared. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was computed to investigate whether the pre-test score differences identified between FSM and non-FSM reached statistical significance. The result is in Table 18 below

Learning Dimensions Sum of Squares

df Mean Square

F Sig.

cl.1: changing and learning

Between Groups 37.288 1 37.288 .115 .734

Within Groups 67168.070 208 322.923

Total 67205.357 209


Within Groups 62247.765 207 300.714

Total 62250.838 208

mm.1: meaning making

Between Groups 63.233 1 63.233 .182 .670

Within Groups 71845.978 207 347.082

Total 71909.212 208


Within Groups 69274.479 207 334.659

Total 69623.924 208

lr.1: learning relationships

Between Groups 2.255 1 2.255 .010 .922

Within Groups 48323.328 208 232.324

Total 48325.582 209

sa.1: strategic awareness

Between Groups .019 1 .019 .000 .993

Within Groups 54513.541 207 263.350

Total 54513.560 208

rs.1: resilience Between Groups 1720.462 1 1720.462 5.699 .018

Within Groups 62792.910 208 301.889

Total 64513.372 209

Table 18: Pre-intervention ANOVA results according to socio-economic status


difference


t df Sig. (2-‐

tailed)


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3.7.12 Learning Power and socio-economic status: findings The change in learning power demonstrated by non-FSM students broadly reflects the patterns identified across the whole sample, but FSM students demonstrated a slightly different pattern of learning power change in the following ways:

• FSM pupils’ learning power changes are generally with smaller magnitude compared to the non-FSM students.

• FSM pupils’ learning relationships increased slightly while non-FSM students show a decrease in this dimension.

• FSM pupils’ resilience increased noticeably while non-FSM students’ resilience dropped.

Amongst these learning power changes, the increases in learning power reported by non-FSM students in five of the seven dimensions are considered statistically significant. These five dimensions are: changing and learning, critical curiosity, meaning making, creativity and strategic awareness. Neither the non-FSM students’ drop in learning relationships and resilience, nor the FSM students’ increase in all seven dimensions reach statistical significance. The results shown in Table 18 above, suggest that the only statistically significant difference between the FSM and non-FSM pupils at the outset was in Resilience, in which the non-FSM pupils reported a significantly higher mean score F(1,208) =5.699 p=0.018. These two groups were also compared in their post test mean scores using one-way ANOVA. The result suggested that there are no significant post-intervention differences between non-FSM and FSM students in any of the seven learning power dimensions. Furthermore, a repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to assess differences in the degree of learning power change between non-FSM and FSM students during the intervention period. The result indicates that these differences did not reach statistical significance, F(1,153) = .024, p= 0.839. In summary, non-FSM and FSM students were significantly different in resilience at outset but the difference reduced during the intervention period. Though no significant differences were found in other dimensions, it is observed that non-FSM students seemed to demonstrate larger degrees of increase in learning power (than their FSM fellow students) in five dimensions: changing and learning, critical curiosity, meaning making, creativity and strategic awareness. It is interesting to note that mean scores in learning relationships and resilience increased for FSM pupils but not for non-FSM pupils. 3.7.13 Learning Power and length of time at the School

The school was also interested in whether there was any difference in the learning power – and any learning power changes - between those pupils who had been at Bushfield since Year 3 and Year 4 (i.e. longer term) and those who had arrived more recently, in Year 5 or 6. Two analyses were conducted: first, to compare the pre-intervention mean scores of these two sub-groups and to compare the pre- and post- intervention mean scores within each group.


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Figure 8 below illustrates the differences in the pre-intervention means scores for each dimension, according to the pupil’s length of time at the school. The bar in the middle of each coloured box represents the mean whilst the coloured section of the box represents the middle range (between 75% and 25%) of all the scores of each dimension.

Figure 8: Mean scores in all dimensions for long and short duration pupils

3.7.14 Learning Power and length of time at the School: findings

From this diagram it can be seen that students who joined the school for a shorter period reported slightly higher scores on critical curiosity, slightly lower scores on learning relationships and, more clearly, lower scores on resilience. These differences were not enough to be statistically significant. There were no significant differences, either, between pre and post test results in any of the cohorts with regards to pupil’s length of time at the school. It would be difficult in any case to draw conclusions from such data, as there are many factors which would contribute to a child moving school in Years 3-6 and some of them may be impacting positively or negatively on their learning power. 3.7.15 Quantitative data: summary of findings This data analysis has yielded some interesting findings. The ELLI survey and the results from the interventions demonstrate an increase in learning power across most of the seven dimensions with some of these reaching statistical significance. These include changing and learning, critical curiosity, creativity and strategic awareness.


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The analysis also suggests that the interventions were appropriate for both year groups 5 and 6 and that the 2013 cohorts for Y5 and Y6 seem to have benefitted from their learning experiences during 2012, as indicated by higher pre-test scores. Exploring further, the data shows that more economically disadvantaged (FSM) pupils are likely to benefit slightly more from the interventions, particularly in the dimension of resilience, than other students, since, in this dimension, the starting point (judging by the pre-test mean scores) is lower for pupils on FSM than other non-FSM pupils. However, non-FSM students did make larger gains in other learning power dimensions. Furthermore, results for one special group of interest, Asian girls, revealed that their learning power is actually higher in all dimensions than their non Asian peers, be they boys or girls. The reading and writing ability of pupils had some bearing on pre and post test scores suggesting that the level of ability is a factor to consider when designing interventions. Results relating to length of time at the school do not support the hypothesis that longer exposure to the general ‘Building Learning Power’ interventions leads to better development of learning power. However, this may be because of other meaningful factors associated with transition children that might merit further research. In conclusion, pupils exposed to ELLI and the Authentic Inquiry interventions have been shown to have increased their learning power during the intervention period. Differences between particular groups of students, in learning power and their reported change in it, are apparent, whether groups are categorised by ethnicity, ability or socioeconomic status, with some of these differences reaching statistical significance. Further investigation of these is warranted, to explore and interpret the patterns more meaningfully.


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3.8 (RQ8) What added value did these ideas and principles bring to a school already experienced with learning power?

For the leadership of this School with years of experience in the concepts and pedagogy of building learning power, it was important to try and identify what added value was achieved by the introduction of ELLI and Authentic Inquiry in the ways described above. The evidence from leaders and staff suggests that the project led to experiences for the children which significantly advanced the School’s values and purposes. This happened in ways which sometimes surprised those involved (as reported above in 3.5.5), engendering valuable professional learning and reflection. The Headteacher reflected that ‘we’ve learned that children are far more capable than we realise, most of the time, in terms of their ability to take responsibility’. The other strong theme in the evidence is the positive impact on community-building, particularly with the Year 5 Fashion Show project involving so many adult volunteers, who were able to model learning behaviour and create an environment highly supportive of the kind of interdependent learning that the School had been working to engender for some years. Staff reported on how the pupils became engaged, accepted responsibility, took decisions, solved problems, worked together, gained confidence, made progress and became aware of – and articulate about - all these gains. Staff and pupils also commented on how transferable the skills and dispositions are that were being fostered: truly preparing young people for adult life. The Project Leader summed it up as ‘challeng(ing) everyone’s practice... rewarding... humbling’. The Headteacher designate identified pride in the achievement, hopefully, as a ‘long-term pay-off for the School. The pupils’ feedback confirmed that these hopes were fulfilled to a large degree and many similar reasons for satisfaction were echoed by them. Between them, they identified collaboration and teamwork, thinking for yourself, non-dependence, confidence, perseverance and the acquisition of ‘life skills’ as the most important things they had gained from the experience. Evidence from staff includes:

...they’ve been joint-problem solving, joint-deciding, having to listen to each other, having to think things through; but making decisions and then seeing those decisions realised... and tackling staff on things, and I think they’ve enjoyed that

(Interview 1: 25.10) It really did bring the whole community together... Some of the harder-to-reach communities have played a part in this that they haven’t played in anything in the school so far; so it’s been ‘win-wins’ all the way round.

(Interview 1: 27.15) You do have to have a leadership team that’s wedded to it and hasn’t got that cynicism about it. They have to believe that it’s an important thing to be trying to do, to approach learning in this way; to value the learning skills as just as important as the outcomes in literacy or numeracy. It’s about setting them up for life.


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(Interview 1: 32.15) I think we’ve learned that children are far more capable than we realise, most of the time, in terms of their ability to take responsibility... If we do that (give them responsibility) they are far more engaged, far more proud of their learning, far more aware of the progress they’re making if we can make them reflect on it.

(Interview 1: 39.45ff) There is no conflict there (between this kind of learning experience and NC standards). What it does is, through the engagement, the confidence, the enrichment, the exposure to new language, new experiences... we’ve certainly seen our test results have continued to be steady and rising alongside our journey with BLP and inquiry and things like that. So we know you don’t do something like this and your standards go out the window.

(Interview 1: 46.00) We have the children for four years and I want to give them skills that will last, beyond the academic year, beyond the four years they’re at the school, that are robust enough and that they believe in enough to carry on. It is that ‘setting them up for life’. If you just think about curriculum content, I can’t remember a thing I did for history or geography in my junior school. I can’t remember anything like that. But I think they will remember these things, because we reference them in everything. They’re transferable. If we can get them to believe that they can learn or do anything, with a tool-bag of strategies... and they have some understanding of that... and they know themselves, they know where they struggle and they know what strategies there are around that... It’s about taking something on with them that will really last.

(Interview 1: 47.40) I know one child said to another member of staff 'I'm going to go to University and do an art degree. This is what I want to go and do with my life'. Sort of a realisation moment you know, at, like, (age) 10!

(Interview 3: 12.15) I think it’s challenged everybody’s practice throughout. It is a very rewarding process to go through... very humbling...


You almost see the children through a fresh set of eyes... because everyone is taken out of their comfort zone... You see different children in different lights

(Interview 2: 20.00) I would say, if you want to find out about your teaching staff and your community and your core beliefs... this will test them all. It will test them to the max but there’s been nothing like it in my experience to bring so many people together, pulling together, as one school, to show just the array of talent and creativity and depth of learning that goes on, for everyone, whether that’s pupils, your staff, your volunteers... it really does bring everyone together and it’s brought out the best in everyone and the best that the school can do.



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It’s given them skills for life actually...Because even things like where it says ‘If you want to speak to the telephone department, go through to 2, press 3…’ and they’re just like ‘I don’t understand – what do I want?’. And we’re like, ‘Well this is where you have to plan and be strategic and think, ‘Where do I want to go through to?’

(Interview 4: 20.58) I think, probably, the most important thing they take from it is… there’s so much information out there on all these different things, and actually them finding out specific answers to specific questions without us spoon-feeding that to them.

(Interview 4: 24.48) The authentic inquiry, I think there’s merit in that. I think the kids have got loads from it, absolutely loads.

(Interview 5: 3.08) we’re definitely going to go forward with it

(Interview 5: 8.58) (What are the feedback forms from parents like?)... positive – extremely positive... ... we’ve had parents coming up to us across the weeks saying “Oh they just keep talking about it, they want to come to school and they’re so enthused by it” … even some of the design and clothes that they made, children were buying back. And parents were going “No I need to do it now because if I don’t they’re going to be so cross with me”, because they want what they made back, they’re so proud of it. And you just think “Great” – you get that buy-in on their learning anywhere else, you’d be top of the pile wouldn’t you – superb! it’s the “But hang on, let’s feel proud at the end – look at what you have done”. That’s our long term pay-off, or hope, as a school.


Well, it’s like ‘cause it makes you realise you need to be independent in your life and you can’t rely on everybody else to do something for you.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 17.17) I think that it was really good how they... managed to change our way of learning so much...

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 18.00) (Have you got any advice for anyone starting this project?) Don’t be embarrassed and just keep going and smile. Don’t doubt yourself, like keep going no matter what happens and just enjoy yourself. As you won’t have the teachers as much in this project you need to make sure you all stick together and you work as a team. (What’s been the most important thing about this project for you?) Collaboration Working in a team Persevering Probably working together as well Again, working together.


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(Finally, what’s the most important thing about ELLI animals and Authentic Inquiry for you?) I think the independence of doing your own project. That’s basically what I was going to say. Just being able to think for yourself and not being told what to do by the teachers. And you think, “I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do what we usually do in class, I’m going to think of a way to make it more interesting”.

(Year 5 - Focus Group 2: 18.52ff) (Why is that important to you?) Just because it’s like life skills... Because you’re not going to have your teachers, you will have parents and that, but you won’t… when you’re at work or something you’re not going to have teachers to tell you “This is what you should do, this is what you’re going to do”. You have to think for yourself. (And this has helped give you an experience of that?) Yeah (How many of you agree?) [All nod and raise hand] I do yeah.



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4 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

As is normal in mixed methods research, it is the interlinking of quantitative, qualitative and narrative data that illuminates the field of investigation, not purporting to approach scientific levels of proof, but ideally combining to form a robust and persuasive argument, which is presented for consideration in the ‘Conclusions’ below. One of the most striking things about the qualitative and narrative findings is how, across the very different perspectives of these groups, leaders, teachers, pupils, the same emerging themes resonate and echo: learning for life, reliability of the survey, impact of the profiles, collaboration and community, independence and interdependence..., suggesting an openness of communication, shared language and common philosophy spread through the learning discourse of the School. Since the qualitative and narrative findings and evidence tend to speak for themselves, it is worth dwelling in a little more detail, here, on the extent to which the quantitative findings support them. Most clearly, the quantitative data, generated by the ELLI surveys, supports the hypothesis the levels of Learning Power would be relatively high at Bushfield at the outset of the project, since it is a school which has made ‘Building Learning Power’ one of its key themes. The data also indicate that these particular learning interventions (use of the ELLI surveys, interpretation of the profiles, individual reflection on these and, perhaps most obviously, contexts for learning offered by the Authentic Inquiry projects) made a significant positive impact on learning power of the students. This was to a statistically significant degree, (both across the whole sample of three cohorts and the sub-sample of non-Asian pupils), in five of the seven dimensions: Changing and Learning, Critical Curiosity, Meaning Making, Creativity and Strategic Awareness. Four out of these five dimensions have been found in earlier research to be critical to the task of reducing underachievement (in older pupils), Creativity being the exception, though it was thought to have been raised by the same interventions targeted on the other four (Ren & Deakin Crick 2013). This suggests that the kind of learning experienced through these interventions may help potentially underachieving pupils to understand better how to learn and achieve their potential in tests and exams. The patterns of learning power and its change within and between sub-sets of the sample are generally less conclusive, no doubt in part due to the smaller sample sizes. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the higher baseline mean scores of both Year Groups in the 2013 cohort, which might be at least partly attributable to the staff having become acquainted with these concepts during 2012. The lower baseline of the 2012 Year 6 group may also help to explain why this group made the most significant gains after their experiences of ELLI and Authentic Inquiry. The relationships between levels of Learning Power and skills in Reading, Writing and Maths form an interesting but incomplete picture, as do the analyses of other smaller sub-groups based on ethnicity, gender and length of time at the School. It is worth noting that girls across the whole sample had a higher baseline but the boys appeared to benefit more from the interventions, particularly in their Critical Curiosity and Meaning Making. Asian pupils also had a higher baseline, but the gap was narrowed between them and the non-Asian pupils after the interventions. As ever, the data raise more questions than they answer and the staff are best placed to consider whether the design of the interventions was particularly helpful to boys, and/or to non-Asian pupils, and/or to any particular dimensions, and/or if this was simply reflecting the girls’ and Asian pupils’ higher starting points. The FSM-entitled pupils’ post-intervention gains in Learning Relationships and Resilience are another finding worthy of investigation across a larger sample.


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5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The excellent practice in place before this project began created a highly conducive ‘back-drop’, suggesting that the project’s achievements should be attributed, as well as to the frameworks and learning methodologies new to the School, at least as much to the School’s capacity to adapt them so creatively to its unique context. The accounts of the school and project leaders illustrate how well-established the notion of Learning Power already was at Bushfield at the outset of this project. The eight Research Questions represent an in-depth investigation of whether and how the particular and distinctive ideas, principles and practical manifestations of ‘Learning Power Theory’ from the ELLI programme would harmonise with this environment and impact positively upon it. There was some natural apprehension about it in prospect. Would the ELLI language and constructs sit happily alongside the BLP ‘learning muscles’; or would working with two such similar frameworks be confusing? Was the cost and logistical burden of the ELLI online survey going to be worth it? How would the pupils respond to the spider diagrams? How would teachers used to planning and delivering lessons cope with the uncertainties, proliferations and demands of Authentic Inquiry, particularly when in the form of a project per pupil? This, in particular, was something of a launch into unknown territory. The evidence is clear enough that most of the questions were answered positively. The ELLI constructs seem to have found a natural home at Bushfield. The pupils ‘got’ the links between BLP and ELLI and loved the way the two sets of ideas worked together. If anything, they expressed a preference for the Seven Dimensions, finding them easier to remember and identifying with the animals in a way they couldn’t do with the BLP metaphors. The power and simplicity of the symbolism clearly played its part. The online survey caused some technical and practical ‘headaches’. The levels of literacy required to answer the questions meaningfully were judged too high for some Year 5 and 6 pupils without close support, which itself was not helped by the questionnaire sequence being randomised. Adults and pupils both thought it possible that the survey would not be answered accurately by all, raising the question of how valid the spider diagram (ELLI profile) would be. In fact, none of the interviewed pupils admitted to having any difficulty with the questions, though they thought others might have done and it is clear that the exercise becomes easier – and possibly more accurate - second time around. Despite all this, there is strong evidence that the ELLI profiles had a powerful, positive impact. They were significantly better trusted by the pupils than those produced by simple self-assessment. They were greeted with fascination and clearly contributed to the engagement of pupils with the seven dimensions: pupils valued the graphical representation of their strengths and areas for improvement which, in the words of the project leader, gave them ‘a more realistic sense of themselves as a learner’. Even surprises in the spider diagrams appear to have provoked critical curiosity and personal reflection, rather than rejection. The second profiles, showing the changes, had as much or more impact, giving some pupils confidence and pride in their capacity to change. The one remaining intervention which would maximise the gains in this area, so far unable to be fully implemented by the School, is the provision of regular opportunities, through learning conversations with trusted and trained adults or peer coaches, for pupils to reflect aloud on their interpretation of their ELLI profiles and accounts of the actions inspired by them.


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Possibly the greatest achievement of the staff and School through this project has been the adaptation of pedagogy to create optimal contexts for learning power. The way the Authentic Enquiries, in both Years, were conceived and led provided opportunities, challenges, feedback and rewards in large measure, which were responded to very positively by pupils, including some, to their teachers’ surprise, who had been thought likely to struggle with them. The individualised model in Year 6 was clearly more of a challenge for the class teachers than the ‘hood’ model in Year 5, but it gave rise to some sparkling moments and insights, such as when a pupil as ‘spoke’ to Evelyn Glennie through her signers, another who contacted the Mini factory in Milton Keynes and a third who thought that all the ‘finding out and making decisions’ was making ‘our brains bigger’ and said, ‘You’re sort of learning ...life’. It could also be argued that the amount of resource devoted to the Year 5 model, in terms of coordination, administration and community involvement, made it just as ‘costly’ in human terms. What the Fashion Show gave back, though, in pupil engagement, collaboration, real-world relevance, ‘learning curves’ encountered and problems solved and the brilliant showcase of the final performance, should not be under-estimated. The project certainly had a ‘Wow!’ factor, which engendered the deep learning and engagement of pupils, some of whom were not thought to be capable of benefiting as much as they did, and thereby included an element of positive surprise for the staff. The School Leaders’ vision and the Project Leader’s drive were about insisting on pupils being encouraged and enabled to take responsibility for their own learning. Not surprisingly, therefore, an echoing theme in much of the staff reflection and feedback was about the challenge of ‘standing back’, letting go of control and resisting the urge to take over. The pupils noticed the difference from ‘usual’ lessons, appreciated the opportunity and gratefully grasped it. One of them pretty well articulated the philosophy of lifelong learning in a sentence without affectation: ‘It makes you realise you need to be independent in your life and you can’t rely on everybody else to do something for you.’ The Headteacher concluded that ‘we’ve learned that children are far more capable than we realise, most of the time, in terms of their ability to take responsibility’. This is an important, collective expression of professional learning, with the potential to change a culture. That is what the Headteacher’s declared mission, since arriving at the School, was all about:

‘changing the culture... primarily around engagement and resilience and making the learning experience far more active and richer as a result... If we can get them to believe that they can learn or do anything... they know themselves... they know where they struggle and they know what strategies there are around... It’s about taking something on with them that will really last.

There is good evidence that this project, combining ELLI with Authentic Inquiry in Years 5 and 6, has built on the culture change that Bushfield School had already experienced and extended the horizons of what the School now knows is possible. This evidence permits it to claim, without any pretension whatsoever, to be the strong heart of a vibrant community of lifelong and life-wide learning.


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6 REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Deakin Crick R., Broadfoot P. & Claxton G. (2004) Developing an Effective Lifelong Learning

Inventory: The ELLI Project, Assessment in Education, 11, 3. Deakin Crick, R. & Small T. (2006) Personalising Learning: context based knowledge,

competencies and learning power, RSA. Deakin Crick, R., (2006) Learning Power in Practice: A Guide for Teachers, London, Paul

Chapman. Deakin Crick, R. (2007) Learning to learn: The dynamic assessment of learning power.

Curriculum Journal,18,2, 135-153. Deakin Crick, R., McCombs, B., Haddon, A., (2007) The Ecology Of Learning: Factors

Contributing To Learner Centred Classroom Cultures, Research Papers in Education, 22, 3.

Deakin Crick, R. & Yu, G. (2008) The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI): Is it valid and reliable as an assessment tool? Educational Research, 50,4, 387-402.

Deakin Crick, R. (2009) Pedagogical Challenges for Personalisation: Integrating the Personal with the Public through Context-Driven Inquiry Curriculum Journal, 20,3 Special Issue

Deakin Crick R. (2009b) Inquiry-based learning: reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archaeological pedagogy, Curriculum Journal, 20,1,73-92.

Ferguson R, Buckingham Shum S and Deakin Crick R. (2011) EnquiryBlogger – Using widgets to Support Awareness and Reflection in a PLE Setting. Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in PLEs, Personal Learning Environments Conference. Southampton. http://oro.open.ac.uk/30598

Jaros, M. & Deakin Crick, R. (2007). Personalised learning in the post mechanical age. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(4), 423-440.

Millner, N., Small, T. & Deakin Crick, R. (2006).Learning by accident. Bristol: ViTaL Partnerships. Ren, K. 2010 ‘Could do better – so why not? Empowering underachieving adolescents’

Doctoral Thesis, University of Bristol Ren, K. And Deakin Crick R. (2013) Empowering underachieving adolescents’: an

emancipatory learning perspective on underachievement, Pedagogies: an International Journal, 2013.795670

Ritchie, R. & Deakin Crick, R. (2008) Personalising Learning for Distributing Leadership, Continuum, London.

Small, T. (2006). Learning Outside the Box. Bristol: ViTaL Partnerships. Small, T. (2007). The Learning Agents. Bristol: ViTaL Partnerships. Small, T. (2008) Learning in the Outdoor Dimension. Bristol: ViTaL Partnerships. Small, T. & Deakin Crick, R. (2008). Learning and Self-awareness: an inquiry into Personal

Development in Higher Education. Bristol: ViTaL Partnerships. Small, T. (2009). Assessing inquiry-based learning: developing objective criteria from personal

knowledge. Curriculum Journal, Vol. 20, Issue 3, pp. 253-270 Small, T. (2010). Values in Motion: From Confident Learners to Responsible Citizens, in T.

Lovat et al. (eds.), International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8675-4, Chapter 52


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7 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: EFFECTIVE LIFELONG LEARNING INVENTORY This description is adapted from the research article:

Buckingham Shum S and Deakin Crick R. (2012) Learning Dispositions and Transferable Competencies: Pedagogy, Modelling and Learning Analytics. Proc. 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge. Vancouver, 29 Apr-2 May: ACM: New York, 92-101. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2330601.2330629 Open Access Eprint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/32823

7 DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING POWER

Learning Power is a multi-dimensional construct that has come to used widely in educational contexts in the last ten years. It is derived from literature analysis, and interviews with educational researchers and practitioners about the factors, which in their experience, make good learners. The seven dimensions which have been identified harness what is hypothesised to be “the power to learn” — a form of consciousness, or critical subjectivity [3], which leads to learning, change and growth.

An extensive literature review informed the development of a self-report questionnaire called ELLI (Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory) whose internal structure was factor analysed, and validated through loading against seven dimensions [3]. As detailed later, these dimensions have been since validated with diverse learner groups, ranging in age from primary school to adults, demographically from violent young offenders and disaffected teenagers, to high achieving pupils and professionals, and culturally from middle-class Western society to Indigenous communities in Australia. The term learning power has been used to describe the personal qualities associated with the seven dimensions, particularly by Claxton [1, 2], although here its meaning is specifically related to the ELLI inventory.

The inventory is a self-report web questionnaire comprising 72 items in the schools version and 75 in the adult version. It measures what learners say about themselves in a particular domain, at a particular point in time. A brief description of the seven dimensions is set out below, with three examples from the questionnaire shown for each dimension:

Changing & learning: Effective learners know that learning itself is learnable. They believe that, through effort, their minds can get bigger and stronger, just as their bodies can and they have energy to learn (cf. [4]). The opposite pole of changing and learning is ‘being stuck and static’.

I expect to go on learning for a long time. I like to be able to improve the way I do things. I’m continually improving as a learner.

Critical curiosity: Effective learners have energy and a desire to find things out. They like to get below the surface of things and try to find out what is going on. The opposite pole of critical curiosity is ‘passivity’.


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I don’t like to accept an answer till I have worked it out for myself. I like to question the things I am learning. Getting to the bottom of things is more important to me than getting a good mark.

Meaning Making: Effective learners are on the lookout for links between what they are learning and what they already know. They like to learn about what matters to them. The contrast pole of meaning making is ‘data accumulation’.

I like to learn about things that really matter to me. I like it when I can make connections between new things I am learning and things I already know. I like learning new things when I can see how they make sense for me in my life.

Dependence and Fragility: Dependent and fragile learners more easily go to pieces when they get stuck or make mistakes. They are risk averse. Their ability to persevere is less, and they are likely to seek and prefer less challenging situations. The opposite pole of dependence and fragility is ‘resilience’.

When I have trouble learning something, I tend to get upset. When I have to struggle to learn something, I think it’s probably because I’m not very bright. When I’m stuck I don’t usually know what to do about it.

Creativity: Effective learners are able to look at things in different ways and to imagine new possibilities. They are more receptive to hunches and inklings that bubble up into their minds, and make more use of imagination, visual imagery and pictures and diagrams in their learning. The opposite pole of creativity is ‘being rule bound’.

I get my best ideas when I just let my mind float free. If I wait quietly, good ideas sometimes just come to me. I like to try out new learning in different ways.

Learning Relationships: Effective learners are good at managing the balance between being sociable and being private in their learning. They are not completely independent, nor are they dependent; rather they work interdependently. The opposite pole of learning relationships is ‘isolation and dependence’.

I like working on problems with other people. I prefer to solve problems on my own. There is at least one person in my community who is an important guide for me in my learning.

Strategic Awareness: More effective learners know more about their own learning. They are interested in becoming more knowledgeable and more aware of themselves as learners. They like trying out different approaches to learning to see what happens. They are more reflective and better at self-evaluation. The opposite pole of strategic awareness is ‘being robotic’.

If I get stuck with a learning task I can usually think of something to do to get round the problem. If I do get upset when I’m learning, I’m quite good at making myself


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feel better. I often change the way I do things as a result of what I have learned.

ELLI WEB PLATFORM

Without a web platform, it is impossible to gather ELLI data globally, with quality and access controls in place, and generate analytics fast enough to impact practice in a timely manner. ELLI is hosted within an analytics infrastructure which needs not only to gather and analyse data, but orchestrate the tools offered to different stakeholders, and manage data access permissions in an ethical manner. Learners, trainers/educators, researchers, and organisational administrators and leaders are provided with customised organisational portals which offer them different tools and levels of permission to datasets as follows: learners sign in to complete the right version of the ELLI questionnaire (e.g. Child or Adult) and receive their personal ELLI visual analytic (detailed in next section); administrators can upload additional learner metadata or datasets; educators/organisational leaders access individual and cohort analytics, scaling to the organisation as a whole if required, in the form of visualised descriptive statistics. Authorised researchers can see all of the above, together with other datasets depending on the bases on which they were gathered.

The learner sees a web questionnaire inviting them to respond to questions, such as those above, as shown below:

Figure 1: The ELLI survey web interface

ELLI VISUAL ANALYTICS

“Visual analytics” are helpful when it comes to comprehending and discussing a 7-dimensional construct such as learning power. On completion of an ELLI web survey, the tool generates a spider diagram (Figure 2), providing a visualization for the learner to reflect on (their own perception of) their learning power. The scores produced are a percentage of the total possible score for that dimension. The spider diagram graphically depicts the pattern and relative strength of individual scores. Note that unlike most spider diagrams, the axes are not numbered, but labelled A little like me, Quite like me, and Very much like me. As discussed shortly, a visual analytic such as this has a number of important properties, which can be both empowering, but also potentially demoralizing, and


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it is a principle behind the approach that learners are not left to ponder its meaning alone. It is crucial that the learner validates and thus ‘owns’ the profile, a matter for the coaching conversation that follows with a trained mentor.

Figure 2: An ELLI spider diagram. The shaded blue region shows the initial profile, while the outer red profile indicates ‘stretch’ on certain

dimensions later in the learning project.

Data can be aggregated across groups of learners in order to provide a mentor or teacher with a view of the collective profile on all or specific learning power dimensions (Figure 3).


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Figure 3: Aggregate ELLI data, for all learning power dimensions,

and a specific dimension.

SOURCES: 1. Claxton, G., Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases when

You Think Less,. Fourth Estate, London, 1997 2. Claxton, G., Wise Up: The Challenge of Lifelong Learning,. Bloomsbury,

London, 1999 3. Deakin Crick, R., Broadfoot, P. and Claxton, G., Developing an Effective

Lifelong Learning Inventory: The ELLI Project. Assessment in Education, 11, 3, (2004), 248-272

4. Dweck, C., Self Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development. Philadelphia, PA., Psychology Press,, 1999


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APPENDIX 2: AUTHENTIC INQUIRY METHODOLOGY The Authentic Inquiry methodology is an approach to scaffolding an inquiry project into a topic of particular interest to the learner. It can be summarised as shown below:

Deakin Crick, R. (2009) Inquiry-based learning: reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archaeological pedagogy. Curriculum Journal 20: 73 - 92.


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APPENDIX 3: ENQUIRYBLOGGER SOFTWARE EnquiryBlogger (EB) turns a blog into an online learning journal, accessible only to school staff and pupils to read and comment on each other’s blogs. EB is built on one of the world’s best blogging tools (Wordpress), adding 3 ‘plugins’ to help learners reflect on their learning power and AIP. EB is developed by the Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University UK, based on educational research into Learning Power at University of Bristol UK. The Wordpress Plugins are freely available, open source, but you will probably require an ICT administrator to install them correctly on top of Wordpress Multisite. The following summary is taken from the User Guide. This and the software are available at: http://learningemergence.net/tools/enquiryblogger

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE TO A LEARNER?

The screen below shows a blog post in EnquiryBlogger. On the right is the ELLI plugin. This and others are described next.


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THE 3 LEARNER PLUGINS

The three learner plugins in the right margin give visual feedback on how many times blog posts have been categorized by a learner using ELLI’s 7 dimensions of Learning Power, or the activities of Authentic Inquiry. They’re also used to navigate quickly to those posts, by clicking on the coloured blobs.

ELLI Spider How often have reflected on your Learning Power? Recall the ELLI Spider:

The ELLI Spider plugin uses the same layout, with customizable icons on each spider leg:

Blobs start off red, turn to orange when two blog posts have been categorized (example below), going green after three, and then growing larger with subsequent use.


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Clicking on a blob takes you direct to the corresponding blog entry (or entries) — i.e. all blog posts that were given the category of Choosing.

Enquiry Spiral How often have you reflected on your inquiry?

This seashell shows coloured blobs corresponding to the key intellectual processes that learners engage in when doing an authentic inquiry. They’re not meant to be strictly linear, but do depend on the first step, namely Choosing.


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1.1 Mood View How often have you reflected on how your feelings?


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Creating a blog post The screen below shows the standard Wordpress blog editor, plus the special category checkboxes that the learner chooses from, which in turn activate the coloured blobs in their visual plugins:


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The teacher dashboard Teachers get a dashboard to see all the pupils’ progress at a glance, eg. here is the dashboard for three pretend pupils that a teacher would see:

Zooming in on the ELLI dashboard, this shows all pupils’ ELLI Spiders. Clicking on a blob takes you direct to the corresponding blog entry, or entries (e.g. there might be several tagged Resilience).

Underneath, bar charts show how many blog posts they have posted per ELLI dimension: click on a colour bar to go direct to that blog post, or posts. Bar charts are only shown for pupils who have categorized at least one post — those who haven’t are listed at the bottom.


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APPENDIX 4: TRANSCRIPTS OF QUALITATIVE DATA 4.1: Bushfield School Interviews 1 and 2: Headteacher and Assistant Head

Interview 1

(audio only)

Key themes:

1: philosophy and purpose of using BLP, ELLI, Authentic Enquiry

2. school context

3. how the projects emerged from this

4. leadership challenges and learning

Timing Content – Interviewer questions in bold / Interviewee verbatim quotes in italics

2.00 The context of the school’s agreed values: Be a skilful learner; be a team player; be proud of who you are. Overall: be the best you can be!

3.30 The language, particularly around Resilience, in the BLP programme

4.10 We’ve got lots of advice about content, objectives, curriculum... but it’s the mechanics of how you get children...really wanting to learn... make them part of the process... so it’s not a ‘done to’ thing where they’re just receiving what you’re giving

5.10 Not changing everything we did but changing the culture... primarily around ... engagement and resilience and making the learning experience far more active and richer as a result

6.00 Some deprivation in the backgrounds – children who haven’t grown up with books... time and talking... e.g. a child who had never been to the town centre before... so it was about knowing that we needed to enrich, get language going more... start from where they are more.

6.50 Making how you learn more explicit

8.05 – 8.53

... a few staff ... had real success and it had been transformational in the way that they felt... teachers who had previously held on so tight that they felt they couldn’t do this with a group... suddenly, by letting go realised that... more responsibility with the pupils wasn’t a complete disaster zone... they’d had a really rich session and they were surprised by it. The behaviour had been better from it and it’s that...’Wow! That can happen!’ So that started to spread, that notion of... just by tweaking things, given the lesson plans we already had, making things far more swung towards ...children asking the questions, or starting with the problem, not the solution... all those basic principles for getting them to think and talk more in their learning

9.10 How ‘group work’ so often means just children sitting at the same table and not collaborating at all – we worked on what real collaboration was

10.00 What that’s meant – and it’s been commented on so many times since... e.g. DFE visit to look at guided learning... astonished by how independent groups weren’t on independent work, they could collaborate on a higher level task really successfully without using the teacher

11.00 (What led to the introduction of ELLI into the programme?)


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After embedding (these principles...BLP) you get to a point where the challenge is ‘stretching these things’ and bringing more challenge ... and how do you know if you’ve done that better than you did before?

11.20 We hadn’t got a way of evaluating the progress they might be making in their learning areas

11.50 (After trying to come up with ‘grade descriptions’ for these things like Resilience’) we realised we weren’t including them (the students) in this either... that their self-‐assessment was really important

12.30 To understand their own profile as a learner...

13.00 We had no robust way of doing that, which was why ELLI appealed... the idea of a child having a personal profile

13.15 We liked the idea of coaching alongside it – though there’s a lot more we could do on that – there’s a capacity issue around that

14.00 When the staff saw what the children’s profiles were like, which was their perception of themselves, there were some where we thought ‘that’s absolutely like that child... we knew that that was how the child did think about themselves and did approach tasks, so there was a resonance between the staff’s understanding of the children and what the children were saying about themselves – it tallied, which gave it credibility with the staff involved in it

15.00 finding time for the skilled, non-‐leading conversations is where we’ve fallen short

14.45 To get the value out of it, it would need someone who had had the training and had the time ... 20-‐30 minutes for a proper conversation – and then you start doing all the maths...!

16.10 We quite like that there are ‘seven dimensions’, not ‘seventeen capacities’, although the BLP language is quite solid with us and works quite well

16.30 We reflected on our own profiles and how different contexts would lead you to answer quite differently, so children might have very different learning profiles in different subjects, like sport, or art.

17.15 We might think of having different profiles for different areas, perhaps, sport, art and academic work

17.30 We’ve also had issues around 72 questions with this age group, because after 20 some of them were losing the will to live!

18.00 (There’s a tension between the research validity and what matters most to us) I’d be happy to have a seven-‐pronged web and get them to spend more time unpacking and developing their understanding of what the dimensions were, so they had more robustness in being able to reflect and talk about those things... and then ... allow them to ‘splat’ how they felt – just self-‐assess... and do that for each subject, because it’s the basis of the conversation that’s most important

19.15 Rather than having it as this separated thing that works in a project, which really does push it and highlight it... the follow-‐up to it, to have some kind of ‘splat-‐web’ in their day-‐to-‐day school life that kept it alive, not just centralised in a project.... is where I’d be taking it next

20.15 We reflected a lot on (the Year 6 Authentic Enquiry project first time round) proved to be very taxing, because they had 90 independent projects and we hadn’t given ourselves enough notice (to prepare for that)


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20.50 (we reflected on that and, this time round), we gave it more run-‐in time... prep time on the skills, the build-‐up, the planning... quite substantial...from April... and then had a block (in June) which was the activity part of it, but they’d written letters out and things ahead of that – a good lead-‐in

21.40 In year 5 we’ve put it all under a hood topic, but still stayed true to the principles of giving them choice and having all the stages of the enquiry there... and it’s been more seamless and more embedded... because the enquiry stages have been cyclical in every day and parts of days

22.15 ...and they’ve been given choice – (of roles and tasks -‐ based on all the parts of a fashion show that the group reported from visiting the NEC)... based on what they were interested in and what their skills were

22.45 (and they weren’t allocated roles by quota) Trisha (name changed) wanted to do ticketing and marketing – and she was the only one who wanted to do that – so that’s what she did. So we’ve accommodated whatever their choice was

23.10 Year 6 found having the choice of an independent topic really hard – starting from nowhere. Then they naturally want to gravitate towards what someone else is doing – that Resilience thing!

23.45 It might be an age thing. More creativity has emerged through collaboration (in the Year 5 project) than is possible working individually.

25.10 In the Year 5 project, they’ve been joint-‐problem solving, joint-‐deciding, having to listen to each other, having to think things through; but making decisions and then seeing those decisions realised... and tackling staff on things, and I think they’ve enjoyed that (e.g. the shop) They thought of the café, we didn’t.

26.00 Where they’ve planned, we’ve thrown logistics back at them but if they’ve solved the problems we’ve gone with it, which means the whole school has had to be involved in accommodating

26.15 They were far more driven, far more resilient, far more excited by working together than they perhaps were in Year 6 ... as a school, far easier to keep tabs on

26.50 What happened was that staff piled in with creative ideas because... we’re all learners under this hood... we’ve all been coming up, not with decisions, because that’s the children’s, but ideas of opportunities or experiences we could give them that could enrich it further

27.15 It really did bring the whole community together... (including) some of the harder-‐to-‐reach communities have played a part in this that they haven’t played in anything in the school so far; so it’s been ‘win-‐wins’ all the way round.

28.15 So we prefer the ‘hood’ model – and another advantage of it is that you can see things that are transferable to other topics all year round

28.40 (What enriches all the rest of our work is...) the principles of it. The teaching role isn’t just stand back – you have to impart knowledge (too), but if we skill them up with other things, like the photo-‐editing, a lot around ICT, and other ways they can show their learning, there’s no reason why those things can’t be done in different topics.

29.20 The principles of giving choice and giving options certainly can come to play in (other topics)

29.30 It’s taught us a lot about the value of getting outsiders in to be part of the teamwork...Trying our luck, and who’d have thought we’d have got the people we got involved in this. The outreach side: that’s been very valuable to the children.


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Very respectful relationships on both sides. Fantastic feedback: the lady from John Lewis came last night and, just, was amazed. I like the fact that the school isn’t separated off from the community and citizenship and the world that it’s going to play a part in.

30.55 You think that children know how to research on the internet and they really don’t... so that’s changed our curriculum about how to search the web... we’ve put an element in lower down the school. How to blog with quality. So there are a lot of implications that we’ve taken already and (adjusted our) curriculum plans around it.

31.30 The quality control aspect is easier to manage when you’ve got groups working to shared goals, because you’ve got a common framework of reference, even though there’s such a lot of diversity of experience going on...

32.00 like Barclays Bank coming in – all groups could gain something from that. There’s been a real set of life skills.

32.15 You do have to have a leadership team that’s wedded to it and hasn’t got that cynicism about it. They have to believe that it’s an important thing to be trying to do, to approach learning in this way; to value the learning skills as just as important as the outcomes in literacy or numeracy. It’s about setting them up for life.

33.00 You have to have a leadership that’s prepared to see things not work out and for that to be OK, but for us to unpick that and decide whether to keep it or bin it and if it’s a ‘keeper’, what we need to do differently.

33.40 Asked whether the children were aware of how much the staff were learning –story of the moment when the HT test herself on this ‘standing back’ bit and throw a problem back to the children rather than offering to sort it for them, is the default position for a teacher (they had taped themselves into their bin-‐bag outfits so they were going to be impossible to re-‐use – and looked fantastic!)

34.20 There was a side of me that really wanted to say ‘Don’t worry, I can... blah, blah, blah... for you. Instead: How are you going to solve that problem? Throw it back to them. To keep yourself doing that is not the default position of a teacher because you’ve never been trained to do that. You’ve been trained to help them to get it right and often that means stepping in and showing them how to do it.

35.00 The Assistant HT, Project Leader was in the role of monitoring the principles, not whether we’d produced a great fashion show. He was the Praetorian Guard of ‘Is this staying true to this being an (authentic) enquiry project as much as we can?

35.40 When pressure was mounting as the deadline approached, he got the lead group of kids together and said, ‘Look, right, you need to organise this or the adults will start stepping in. This is your show!’ And he had this mentor chat with them, and said ‘If you don’t want that to happen, you’ve got to say!’

36.00 He’d been feeding back to me and when I said to him ‘How’s it going?’ It wasn’t ‘Are we going to be ready for the night?’, it was ‘Are we sticking to this?’ (the principles)?’

36.10 He was a bit concerned and cited a couple of examples in different groups. In the shop group, the children had decided they needed clothes rails and we’d found some budget and ordered some clothes rails that arrived and needed to be assembled in five boxes and the children were opening the boxes and the teacher ...(was thinking) ‘There are going to be bits everywhere. This is going to be chaotic’... So he’d stopped them all and he said, ’Right! This is what you’ll have to do. You take this bit first... and tried to model how to put it all together, rather than saying ‘Have a go!’ Let them try. There was an instruction sheet. I’ve no


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doubt there would have been a mess, but it’s what do you learn from that?

37.20 There was another group at the Radcliffe (secondary school) that ... had all their patterns cut, pinned, and they had to pass a sewing proficiency examination before they could touch the sewing machines, which I thought was fantastic, so they had proved that they could use it safely. One lad sewed two bits together that shouldn’t have been sewn together. One of the Radcliffe staff who wasn’t part of the project said ‘We’ll have to unpick that now’ and was about to take it and unpick it for the student and one of our staff said ‘Well, that’s a really good lesson to learn, so this is how to unpick. You do it.’

38.20 On the Friday before the week, we got the core team of teachers together and said, ‘This is where we’ve really got to be strict with ourselves’ . Haydyn gave them a big thank you about all the time and commitment and effort and then I said ‘But there are a few signs of us starting to slide to take over, like the choreography...’ and I cited some examples we’d noticed. This is theirs. Whatever it’s like, it’s theirs.

39.45 I think we’ve learned that children are far more capable than we realise, most of the time, in terms of their ability to take responsibility

40.05 If we do that (give them responsibility) they are far more engaged, far more proud of their learning, far more aware of the progress they’re making if we can make them reflect on it. The blogging has got better as the project has gone along, and they’re starting to value that.

40.30 (The blogging is a really important ingredient because...) it is the reflection... trying to reflect on what it’s teaching them about the learning, not the doing. The blogging’s a definite thing we’ll hold on to.

41.15 We’re trying to get that shift in culture in the school and things like this that are so focussed in projects really keep teaching us those lessons and some of those lessons around the learning to learn skills you need to learn over and over and over again, because, as a teacher, you have all of the other pressure all of the time, and all of the other guidance all of the time and having to meet different requirements all of the time. But they’re not in conflict with that. It’s about keeping those conversations alive and all of the time as a leader you have to do that and you have to value it and you have to acknowledge it. So even in my leadership monitoring of lessons I look for those elements and comment on those elements as part of good teaching and learning practice, because it’s all around engagement of course.

42.25 (Advice to another school thinking of this) It has to have leadership attention and leadership time and a firm hold on the principles. Schools have grabbed a lot of learning to learn materials but it can become very ‘tick-‐box’ and it can become very ‘reference only’ and that’s been our challenge. The language is something. We’ve got that. The language is embedded. The principles are harder work, because you can put the principles in every lesson you teach, but you’ve got to be mindful of it. It’s got to be present. It’s got to be displayed. It’s got to be explicit.

43.15 The big challenge... is the turnover of staff. We’ve had five NQTs this year. So when you get that, suddenly you’ve got teachers who are new in, who have everything to absorb without BLP or ELLI that they’ve never heard of and principles that they’ve never done before.

43.55 It’s not part of the normal diet (in ITT)

44.40 (It’s a myth that schools need to become academies to get the freedom to work in this way.) We’re a maintained school that has to teach the National Curriculum and there is no reason why a National Curriculum school can’t embed these


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principles at all.

45.00 (Given a magic want what would you change?) Things around assessment. Things around SATs.

45.20 I have no problems with levelled English and Maths work. That’s a life skill as much as anything is a life skill. The way that it’s tested doesn’t support the learning all the time. I would certainly change the examination system.

46.00 There is no conflict there (between this kind of learning experience and NC standards). What it does is, through the engagement, the confidence, the enrichment, the exposure to new language, new experiences... we’ve certainly seen our test results have continued to be steady and rising alongside our journey with BLP and enquiry and things like that. So we know you don’t do something like this and your standards go out the window.

46.50 Even in prep for (Year 6) exams, we’ve used ... all the words around...resilience, planning, noticing... as the way to unlock how they’re going to be tested... so they have this armoury of skills to approach an unknown task that they’re going to be set. We’ve referenced that heavily in the run-‐up to the exams

47.40 We have the children for four years and I want to give them skills that will last, beyond the academic year, beyond the four years they’re at the school, that are robust enough and that they believe in enough to carry on. It is that ‘setting them up for life’. If you just think about curriculum content, I can’t remember a thing I did for history or geography in my junior school. I can’t remember anything like that. But I think they will remember these things, because we reference them in everything. They’re transferable. If we can get them to believe that they can learn or do anything, with a tool-‐bag of strategies... and they have some understanding of that... and they know themselves, they know where they struggle and they know what strategies there are around that... It’s about taking something on with them that will really last.

Interview 2

Key themes:

1. stories of the projects and how they developed in context

2. rationale -‐ linking decisions to the philosophy and purpose

3. keeping the ownership with the children

4.05 In the spirit of enquiry, we wanted the children to lead... as much as possible, so we had a lead group of 12 children and the school organised for them to go to the clothes show live in Birmingham...

4.45 ...and they came back with all the ideas that you saw in the show last night. So it was a really powerful imitation of that event

5.05 We called them (the 12) ‘The Fashion Council’ – they were like a ‘working party’ and we could work with them to help them realise their ideas

5.45 They gave it the rigour and robustness that we would be willing to show what we were doing to an inspection team, because they gave us and the children the language to know what we were trying to achieve.


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6.15 We’re not playing at this –it needs to be a deep learning experience

The school was brave enough to suspend the normal curriculum for two weeks

6.45 We needed to really make sure this was a rigorous, robust process with justification behind it

7.00 Schools are very conscious of scrutiny and monitoring

7.10 The challenge was to create something robust enough that it was something we would be happy to be inspected

7.35 It could be very fun and very creative but the question we always come back to is ‘What are the children learning?’

7.50 ELLI added that crucial rigour – because we had a framework where the children could talk about what they were learning and we had a framework that they could pin that on.

8.25 There were lots of really powerful examples – I’ll give you one...

9.10 There was only one student who chose the advertising and marketing role

... she was in charge of everything... advertising, she sorted the tickets out... contributed to the school blog... phoned up the newspaper

9.45

12.10

She tasked the film groups to make a short film about the project to show in assembly ... she set up a ‘Dragon’s Den’ pitch thing, gave them parameters and they had to present their videos to her... the boys were so nervous. It’s a daunting thing to do as an adult. Then there was the challenge of how to give feedback without crushing people who’ve worked hard... They have talked about all these processes and reflected on their performance... and it was a very professional, powerful process for them to go through

12.25 All the way through, blogging has been an important part of the reflection process (checking how the processes were impacting on learning). We’ve used Enquiry Blogger ... they’ve been encouraged to blog all the way through the project and as they do that they reflect on their ELLI profile, because they can click boxes that are relevant to the Seven Dimensions... and they can watch how their profile changes over the fortnight

13.05 We also did paper versions and used them as a tool for reflection

13.30 A core task for any teacher is assessment for learning, whether you are doing it as part of an enquiry project or not, we are responsible for monitoring the learning and looking at where these children are and moving them forward

14.00 It was more rigorously done throughout the project because we had a framework... and children could do the monitoring themselves.... because they had the tools and the language

14.35 Learning can be quite a messy business, particularly here -‐ we’re not putting it into boxes an hour long. We needed a flexible timetable... children were making the decision ‘Can we go through break?’ And that’s a massive challenge... because schools are timetable boxes

15.10 School-‐wide, as an effort, it goes through everyone... people have been very flexible and it’s been a massive undertaking by the whole school... because it


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doesn’t fit into hour-‐long boxes or 45 minute slots

16.00 Rather than getting instant results, (the children) have now seen that over a period of two weeks, with planning, outcomes are significantly improved

16.30 They’ve picked that up (the ELLI Dimension language) really quickly. The animals are really powerful symbols for them to be able to do that. They really do identify with them

16.46 It sounds quite abstract when they talk about My Tortoise, or My Chameleon or My Unicorn... I had to explain to volunteers and parents that they hadn’t gone mad... but it is really powerful for them to be able to ‘frame’ their talk about learning

17.45 I think it’s challenged everybody’s practice throughout. It is a very rewarding process to go through... very humbling...

18.05 You can get into a rhythm in school of literacy, numeracy, topic... isolated activities. Pulling that all together as a cross curricular theme is massively challenging, because it is no doubt easier to teach in boxes.

18.30 The amount of planning that goes into it cannot be underestimated. It’s not something you can just pick up and do. You can’t just pick up a lesson plan

18.50 It is a complex process, a complex activity, but I firmly believe that there is that deep learning that comes from that

19.15 (The biggest challenge?) Rigour!

19.25 (The biggest reward?) Children! ... The engagement, the self-‐motivation, the drive, from the children themselves, to make the project work

20.00 You almost see the children through a fresh set of eyes... because everyone is taken out of their comfort zone

20.15 You see different children in different lights

20.55 All children should have the opportunity to do it. I don’t think schools always bring the best out of all children

21.15 It’s in every child, but we don’t always motivate or reach those children. What the project has proved to be is very motivational

21.35 The really powerful moments for me were seeing some of the children (who are thought less capable)... because when you first pitch a project like this, lots of people focus on ‘What about the children that...? What about the children who can’t...? What about the children who won’t...? And that can be a real concern for those people that are then charged with this learning. And some of those children, from experience, don’t cope well without structure, or it’s felt that they don’t work well without structure, and clear boundaries and guidelines... and we definitely have children that we would have said are like that... and (the freedom) can cause anxiety for children like that

22.35 Because we were able to motivate so many people to come into the project and help – we have a list of volunteers that is unbelievable... from the community... outside... it’s enabled us to work with much smaller groups of children... and they are able to build up a relationship with that person... a trusting, learning relationship... so there were very powerful examples of, almost, like, grandfather-‐child relationships

23.20 There was one boy who was helping set up props on the stage and beach huts and (the volunteer) was getting him to measure and to work it out... and there


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was background noise and all the things that you wouldn’t think he coped well with... and it was this patient, grandfatherly voice and that was incredibly powerful... quite moving to be honest

23.50 ... you could see his concentration and he was listening and it was really intense... and he was able to sustain that throughout, whereas in the normal classroom, we sometimes have a timer for concentration... and ‘Well done... five minutes...!’ (is enough) and I know it was one-‐to-‐one, but it was a really powerful thing to see.

24.50 We talked about ‘big dreams’ because once you start thinking about a project like this it can just ‘mushroom’. We talked about what was realistic and how we could realistically manage that and give the children as much choice as possible

25.10 From the ideas that the children had, we took those ideas and we tried to add a structure to that and then, within that structure, give them back as much choice as possible

25.50 Our driving question was ‘How do you make a successful fashion show?’ We determined that there was going to be three key elements, one was the models and the make-‐up and the hair; two was the background, the music and the lighting and the third one was the retail. That fitted into our three-‐class structure at school.

26.15 through the questionnaire, we were able to put children into three main groups, a catwalk group, a production group and a shop group and that fitted with our three teacher structure, so we had each teacher heading up a particular element

26.50 We were lucky enough to have a GTP student as well... (who joined the model group)

27.05 Within that structure it was possible to break the groups down and give the children choices – such as making clothes, modelling, make-‐up etc.

29.00 It was a fantastic project to do in terms of what we could tap into in the community – Mums, professionals from hair salons, John Lewis, Barclays Bank, Aston Martin – the resources came within the pupil and teacher network. The breadth and depth surprised me

30.20 You can’t just go into this cold, you need the background, context, understanding (used a PPT to explain to volunteers so they didn’t take the ownership away from t he children.

30.55 What we were trying to do was get everyone on board with the sense that this is about the children doing it as much as possible for themselves

31.10 There were times when it was more successful; there were times when it was less successful. The times when it was tough was when there were time constraints

31.35 What we didn’t want them to do was focus on the outcomes. We wanted to constantly reinforce ‘This is about learning – processes of learning!’ With something like fashion they obviously wanted the end product to look fabulous, so you’re re-‐focussing all the time on ‘This is about the process!’

32.00 It’s very easy to lose sight of that

32.30 Even with the final show, as polished and professional as it was, we were very clear that, if there are mistakes, the children will then be – and the show will then be, better for it. We don’t want everyone to step in and say ‘Well done teachers!’

33.30 You could see that, when they’d done the first show, they’d gone away and then reflected and then came back and they’d changed what they’d done. Obviously we didn’t want it to crash and burn and there were times when we’d give advice,


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but at the same time, we didn’t want to take the ownership off the children

33.50 There were a few times when I had to talk to the children and say... if you don’t sort this out, what’s going to happen? My mantra was ‘If you don’t take charge, then the adults will take over.’ So you need to get this sorted out.

34.10 They wanted to keep ownership of it

34.20 They’re a bit like the fraud police, children, aren’t they! They know when they’re being given a false sense of choice

34.40 They did pull me up a couple of times saying ‘This is supposed to be our show!’

34.50 Once they’d grabbed that ownership and they knew we weren’t just saying that it was their choice, and we were saying ‘You’re going to have to sort that out and we’re not doing it for you’ and walk away... once they realised that that was authentic... then they started challenging us when we did

35.25 An example of that was the end music... I was going ‘No really?’

35.50 One of the challenges for the music was finding something that was not profane or overtly sexual or anything like that

36.45 There are boundaries and parameters otherwise it can’t work

37.15 It can be a worry, because when you see things go wrong, obviously your instinct is to go in and rescue... and part of the culture of teaching is ‘Where are the children at the start of this lesson and where are they at the end?’ and having some sort of sense of measure of that

37.15 So it was trusting in that... we have 45 minutes when you don’t appear to achieved very much at all, but when you unpick it and there’s reflection on that, then you can see that they have that understanding

38.00 It’s having people trust in you, in the leadership team

38.20 An example was when the children were creating mood boards for their designs – they’d gone away, they’d found images on computers... and they were designing bags to relate to their theme (Summer, Urban etc) an the teachers would go round saying ‘How does your design relate to your mood board?’ ...Some children had completely missed that... ‘How do you explain how your mood board relates?’ ... and some of the children couldn’t... So in the next session, once that had been picked up and they were designing t-‐shirts, they’d transferred what they had learned (from failing the first time).

40.15 And then (when other children were going through the same process) they were telling them what the pitfalls were and how to avoid them

How useful was the actual ELLI profiling?

41.05 We started off introducing the ELLI animals to the children we did the (Learning Journey) story... we had a presentation about who the animals were – and we asked them how they would link them to the BLP muscles

41.55 We got an ELLI spider and, having heard the story, we asked them how they related to each of those animals – how strong you were (pointing to the profile shape on screen). They did those profiles on paper themselves and then we got them to do the ELLI online. Then we asked them ‘Were there any surprises when they got their initial one

42.35 We learned that some children were really reflective and worked hard to make sure it was realistic; some children had no self-‐awareness of themselves as


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learners at all

42.55 Teacher perception would be, some of the most fragile learners came out with some of the strongest profiles

43.10 If you’d been shown that profile and been asked to match it with a picture of that child, you wouldn’t have matched it! But that’s incredibly useful as a framework to then talk about... ‘Why do you think you’re like that?’ And when you unpick it then they start to get a more realistic sense of themselves as a learner and where they need to go

43.40 At the end of the day it is their profile and their perceptions that it is about, but it’s unpicking that so that they have a deeper understanding (of what it means) rather than a surface thing

44.30 (The second profiling is just happening) so we’ll now start to reflect more deeply on that.

What’s the single most important thing about the whole project, if you were speaking to another school considering whether to embark on such a thing?

44.50 I would say, if you want to find out about your teaching staff and your community and your core beliefs... this will test them all. It will test them to the max but there’s been nothing like it in my experience to bring so many people together, pulling together, as one school, to show just the array of talent and creativity and depth of learning that goes on, for everyone, whether that’s pupils, your staff, your volunteers... it really does bring everyone together and it’s brought out the best in everyone and the best that the school can do.


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4.2: Bushfield School Interview 3: Year 5 Teachers Yr 5 Teachers

Interview 3

1.17 Man Woman

I think when you go back to the beginning, I think they really grasped the ELLI concept pretty quickly. Yeah I think the story was a really good way of engaging them and actually just showing how each muscle was relevant, rather than just saying ‘Oh it’s this animal’. Within the story it was contextualised for them.

1.50 Man Woman

I think they found it easy to distinguish between the BLP muscles that they’d learned before, and now the seven animals. They very quickly realised the difference between the two really, although they are all really linked together. And I think actually they very quickly realised that all those 17 muscles linked... map on. Yeah and they could kind of say ‘Oh that one’s like that one and that one’s like that one’.

2.12 Man

Yeah and they all linked and interlinked and that worked really well and I think really quickly they grasped that. And I think having the animals they could cling on to what each one meant and represented. I think that was key, that early on they could think ‘Right, the owl, what does that one represent?’. I think that even for all ranges of children they could all grasp that at different levels. That was great. So if you had your lower age children they could pick up the tortoise, ‘Oh that one’s going slow, that’s resilient’. They could pick up on that and each different ability range of children could pick up on different things I think that was really good.

2.50 Woman

Is there something about the personification and the symbols? Yeah as well, with the tortoise: a tortoise can move slowly and perseveres at getting somewhere because he does it slowly so it was easy for them to remember what it was. And like the bee, I’d say when we were trying to collaborate, it was obvious because bees work together to create their hive. The animals were picked really nicely to link in with the muscles so they didn’t really have to think about it that much because they were just normal characteristics of that animal.

3.24 Man Woman Man

I think the starting point was good. Having the BLP background was really useful already, so they were kind of aware of these learning muscles. So having these animals... [And learning about learning was already in the system]. Yeah so I think it made things much easier. I think if you just brought it straight in out of nowhere it might have been a bit trickier. But we wouldn’t know that necessarily because it’s quite embedded in our... [but you might have had to take longer over it] Yes I think so, because it didn’t take more than a day or so for them all to be pretty much... Yeah and for them to be talking about it as well. Yeah to be talking about it pretty quickly. So that was great, we didn’t spend long having to unpick it. I think it was a very quick process.

4.00 Woman

And once we tried – ‘cause we were obviously still in core lessons at that point – if we’d used BLP muscles in our lessons we’d try and map them on to the ELLI muscles so we’d say ‘Oh we’re going to use collaboration – what animal is that like?’. So they had it kind of reinforced throughout the few weeks before, so they were very comfortable where they sat with them before we started the project for the two weeks.

4.27 Man

What about the AIP project as a vehicle for this? I think with the whole idea first of all with that monkey kind of... the AIP the ‘ape’ thing, sort of drew in most children anyway and they could tell you... you had to tell them what it stood for [Authentic Inquiry]. Yeah you had to tell them and remind them two or three times I found just so they remembered but I think after a while they were pretty clear.

4.53 Man Woman 5.07 Man Woman Man Woman

Does the word ‘authentic’ mean anything to you, and to them, in relation to this? I wonder actually, I’m not sure. Yeah I’m not sure that it does. I’m not sure they would know specifically what that meant. What does it mean to you then? Authentic means something almost new and real. Real, and real from them, not from us. [Like last night in the show] It was them, not us. And I think if you asked them, they would know it was them that had instigated it and it was new to them, but if you asked them what authentic meant, I think they would struggle. But that’s just the vocabulary. They could tell you what the concept was.

5.48 So there are some highlights – any lowlights? What were the challenges?


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Man 6.26 Man Woman Man

I think the challenges actually from my point of view were, as teachers almost, stepping back in a way and letting them run what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to steer a little bit, of course you are, but they’re trying to run it. And I knew what the end thing I wanted was, or what they needed to do, but I wasn’t really sure how I was going to get there. So I thought I was using the ELLI muscles myself, a lot. Adapting, particularly! Adapting constantly to what was happening. Did you actually think about your own profile? I did yeah. I didn’t think about the actual making of my own profile, but I was thinking ‘I’m definitely adapting more than I would normally in teaching’. Yeah So I think I’ve adapted and changed a lot more than I would do normally. And my creativity – that’s my weak area – and so for me I found it really challenging to be creative in being part of setting up a shop and being that creative mind. You’ve got the children who are very creative too, so I found that very stretching, those parts. I could feel, you’re out of your comfort zone aren’t you, and you’re feeling almost out of control sometimes and you’re never really quite sure where you are.

7.09 Woman Man Woman Man

[Of course the opposite of creativity is being rule bound and presumably the normal core learning that you’re doing is much more routine?] Yes I mean every teacher’s different aren’t they? I’m more sort of organised, planned, know exactly where I’m going, what I’m doing where I’m going to be... And how you’re going to get there. And all the rest of it.

7.34 Man Man Woman

So strategically aware – that’s not a problem for you normally No. But this was different so... What about strategic awareness for this? And Owl? I think for the children, that would be their weaker area. Possibly. Yeah, I think they struggled as well – because we had so many separate groups – they sometimes struggled to see the bigger picture. So my group was making clothes and within that we were all models and things, but they kind of couldn’t really see how that was going to end up where it did. And the shopkeeper – I don’t think they could really see how that was going to fit in. The production people, because they were painting outside and things like that, individual pieces, they never saw it. Then when it suddenly all came together they were sort of like: ’Oh, oh ok, so you’re doing that and you’ve done that’. I don’t really think they saw until yesterday maybe how it all came together, when the stage went in... and they sort of said ‘Oh you’ve been doing that, ok, we’ve been doing this’. They sort of found out what other groups had been doing because they’d been quite separated up until then.

8.35 Man Man cont. Woman

I think on the planning side, in some ways looking back on it, we probably could have done more if you’re being self-‐critical. Getting more of the year group together to reflect on what we’d all been doing as part of the bigger picture a bit more. I think you get so self-‐contained in your own little bits... everyone knew that there were different groups and what they were doing, but no-‐one really knew what the others were doing. But there was that element of awe with the shop because with it boarded off, nobody knew what was going on apart from the shop people. So even the year fives when they saw the shop were like [both] ‘Wow!’. So that was great, you had that factor even for people in the (rest of the) year group. Yeah and the same, my group were making clothes, but it wasn’t until we went up to the high-‐school and machined them – which as an aside, I never in my life thought I’d let them do, I was absolutely petrified. But at one point there were 4 adults in the room, we were all busy doing something else and all I could hear in the background was this whirr of sewing machines and I looked round, and every single child was on them by themselves just getting on with it.

9.44 Woman

[So that’s more examples of the letting go] Exactly, and at one point the head came in and said ‘Can I talk to them?’ and I said ‘Yeah, go ahead’, and one of them said ‘Sorry, can you just wait I’m just doing this’. [One of the children said that?] Yes, he said 'Oh I'll leave her alone because it looks like she's concentrating. But even then, they couldn't really see... nobody else really knew what we were doing. And until they machined them together, they didn't really look like anything resembling clothes. And then


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suddenly it all came together when they machined them and all the other groups were like 'Oh'.

10.07 Man

It's the awe and wonder at the end though, because the shop group all watched the first performance and they were just amazed by the backdrops, the costumes, the everything, because they hadn't really seen it. They'd heard glimp.. bits and pieces, but then to see it all they were wowed. But I think every other group were wowed by some other things that were done by other groups. I think there was... You want to keep that element of 'wow' for the whole year-‐group as well as the whole school, so that was great I think.

10.35 Man Woman

They must have been practising strategic awareness more than in normal lessons mustn't they? I think there was a lot more planning going on. Yeah there was, and like you say with the letting go -‐ especially with things like choreography. It was very difficult not to go 'step to the left, and then step to the right', because it was them. And it almost became... well towards the end it became easier because it was almost like you were giving them a platform. Everybody... right you would get the silence, because that's what you do, and then they have the platform: they say, 'this is...' you know, 'we've had this idea, this is what we're going to do -‐ suggestions?'; and it turns into something, they stand up, they teach it, and all you're really doing is facilitating that to the smallest degree really.

11.24 Man

I'd say there's a lot more planning than they would do in any normal lessons yeah. [well normally, who does the planning?] well exactly, we do yeah. So in terms of, every group were planning lots of different things. So in the shop we had a layout of a design of how you are going to set this shop up, where are things going to go, what are you going to do? And they had to make the decisions. So they had two drafts: an early draft, and then having gone to the city centre and shops and local shops and all the rest of it, they saw the layout of all these shops and took all the ideas, took pictures, came back and redesigned it as a group -‐ did it individually and then as a group -‐ and kept with the whole group concept. And that was really great to see, to have that final decision was all their decision. It wasn't all their... everyone had different views, but they eventually all agreed on one thing and that's quite hard. They owned it. So eventually that was their ownership of what it looked like, so it was great.

12.15 Woman Man Woman

How would you sum up the impact it's had on them, as learners, but as people too? I think... quite a few of them have said how much it's opened their eyes and quite a few have said 'I would never have got this opportunity'. So I think that was really nice, to know that you'd given them something that they might not get anywhere else. [They valued it]. Yeah and quite a few have said 'I've really found this is something... like I know one child said to another member of staff 'I'm going to go to University and do an art degree. This is what I want to go and do with my life'. Sort of a realisation moment you know, at, like, (age) 10! Yeah I think in those two and a half weeks you really get to see children in a different light as well, and they get to see you in a different light. And that's really good isn't it? Because you get to see some children who you don't... who haven't done much in the year or you don't perceive them to have done a great deal, but actually they've really shone and stood out in a different way, and that's been brilliant. And certain children who never really volunteer themselves for anything -‐ for any clubs or anything -‐ are actually... one in the shop actually wanted to stay behind today to work in the shop again the next night who never volunteers for anything normally. And it’s that kind of thing you think 'that's made an impact' and they want to be... they feel like they own that shop now and they’re part of it and it's theirs, and they want to stay and do more. That's really interesting because before, this person had never wanted to do anything. So you can get some really individual... That was the same with us, the models had to have...

13.40 Man Woman 13.49 Woman

[that's changing and learning] It's changing and learning, yeah. It's growing isn't it, and you can see it, in two weeks some of the children... Yeah, definitely [That dimension is not just about adapting in the moment, it's changing and learning over time. It sounds like you've got some fantastic examples of that] Yeah and there's the enthusiasm, like you say, from children that you would perceive perhaps not to be enthusiastic about this kind of project who are actually really enthusiastic about it, or their


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14.32 Woman

confidence really grew and they became enthusiastic. At one point, I said 'What we're going to do is we're going to go through break and we're going to go to a bit later and we're going to have break later on'. And I expected 'Ohh' -‐ moan. But instead they say 'Ok, let's do it again', and they were doing it. And I said 'Oh alright' -‐ they were just doing it. We were just surplus by that point. [How does that feel as a teacher?] Over the two weeks it's got easier. At first, I was like 'Oh' it was really hard to step back, because that's your sort of thing and I felt almost like I wasn't doing anything. And that I should be -‐ I should be doing something because I'm a teacher, not just standing there. Otherwise... I need to, yeah -‐ justify it. But towards the end it got easier and easier. As I could see them, it was almost like you handed it over. At the start you were sort of more helping them, they needed quite a lot of facilitation. But over the two weeks their confidence sort of grew and grew and grew and they became more, like you say empowered. So actually, you did less and less and less and it was that thing to do with eight: you do, they watch; then you do and they help; and then they do and you help; and then they do and you watch. And that's... we really did do that.

15.27 Man 15.59 Man Woman

I'm very interested in how and to what extent you feel you have been learning. Yeah we were saying earlier, there's definitely... I think the way you intervene is really key, because that's a big thing, because... before I think I would have intervened a lot quicker in lots and lots of different things. But I think actually throughout the two weeks, I've intervened less and less and less and stood back more and more. And that's the difference. And you can take that into all your teaching. [So is it going to affect the way you teach generally?] I think so, it's... I mean I've always tried to stand back anyway, but it's knowing when to... when to let them go... [is there a confidence thing about it?] I think so. It's practice isn't it as well, so we've had an opportunity now to let them lead a lot more than you would have done normally, and you can see actually the results are fantastic. So you know that there is like a... at the end of the day, they've done brilliantly from it. So you don’t have to be controlled, at the front, intervening every five seconds and planning everything for them. You can give them that way to... And you know that they'll come up…

16.49 Man Woman Woman Man Woman Woman Man Woman 17.58 Man Woman Man

…What have you given them? Freedom Power And you can trust them to use it? Definitely Yeah, which I wouldn't have said before doing it -‐ I wouldn't necessarily have said with some of them that you could have done. So maybe that's a lack of trust isn't it? Or a lack of belief perhaps Yeah it's a lack of belief in what they can achieve because... [And ultimately confidence, both in your ability to let go and their ability to make constructive use of it] Yeah and your ability to pull it back as opposed to... I'm a newer teacher so I'd be probably quicker to intervene because I feel like I need to pull it back. But actually, it's having the confidence to know that if you let it go a little bit further, you can still pull it back because there's that sort of mutual respect. That actually, I've let you have this, so in return you guys... and last night especially I found that -‐ backstage while we were waiting they were really respectful when I needed to talk to them, they were quiet straight away because they knew that we'd let them go and it was a bit more... But also it was their show wasn't it so it wasn't as if they were being forced to do the things they wanted to do. [So they're more respectful when they own what they do] And more compliant Yeah definitely, because it's something that they... [Would you use the word compliant?] Not compliant, but they want to do it don’t they, so therefore they are ready to listen, they’re ready to... Because they know that what they want to do is... ...Is helping them yeah. So it's their show, they've put all the work in, they don’t want it to ruin their own efforts and work so they are... they're willing to do it. They care about it more.


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Woman Man Woman

Are they using you as a resource in a way? I think so yeah Yeah

18.35 Man Woman

Sum up how the relationship has changed It's been interesting. Because you've been working with a certain group, there's been some... you haven't seen some children for a long period of time have you? So you've been working with a small... a different group, with some children who I haven't worked with much at all. So you build relationships with children you didn't really know much about. Some children you did know already, so actually you've found out a lot about children you thought you knew who you didn't know quite so well, who've shown you things you didn't really know they had. But also children you didn't really know, you've got to know pretty well through that. So you've built up this different relationship -‐ you know, you've got your shop group and they are your group and you're all one team and you’ve all worked together, and therefore you've built up this relationship. So it's a different dynamic that you've created and it's really interesting. Yeah it is, yeah I’d say the same.

19.32 Man Woman Man Woman

What, if anything did the ELLI profiles -‐ the spider diagrams -‐ add? Yeah the questionnaire itself was quite long I think on a separate point... Yeah and also it's quite... For certain children it was quite... not inaccessible, but difficult to access. We've got quite a lot of low readers who need every question read, which was... Yeah it was quite time consuming to do. And some children... so I sort of did the first six with them -‐ I read them all out and we answered them together to get them into the gist of it and then I let them go. So it was quite long and towards the end I wasn't sure whether... towards the end you were getting the kind of responses you were looking for, or if they were just clicking to get to the end.

20.44 Man Woman Man

I think they did find that. But what they got from getting their printout – they were all fascinated by the printout. Because we did one originally, which was just on paper… Like a colour in one Yes they did that originally of what they thought they were, on a real basic level. So then to see their own profiles, they found that really interesting and to see where they were. And then having done the second one, they loved seeing the colours overlapping, like on the ones you’ve got there. They thought those were great. But when you printed them on PDF you didn’t get that, which is a shame and they didn’t find that so good. So when we did the screen shots, you could see the different colours and they were able to see what they’d really improved in. And they felt really proud of themselves.

21.25 Man Woman Woman 21.55 Woman Man Woman Man

Have you had the chance to let them tell you the story behind their profile? No, we’ve only really… The opening ones we did, didn’t we? The first time we did them at the beginning, we talked about it. I think some of them were a little bit… some of them could see quite clearly where their areas that they needed to improve were. Others were a bit more puzzled about… ‘Oh that’s…’ you know… [Maybe there was a connection between those who found it difficult to answer all the questions] Maybe, yeah very possibly. [Maybe the second time is easier and more accurate] Yeah, because they’ve done it before. Yeah I think that’s true. Because I’ve sat through a lot of people doing it the second time round – a lot of different groups – and they would fly through it much quicker. Because they’d been read the questions the first time and they were used to the type of questions, and I think they understood it a bit more…. [It had a context] It had a context related to… and I think they… Whereas before it was just, ‘we’re just taking you up to take this questionnaire’. Yeah but they definitely found it… and they were really keen to see the differences. So they’ve all got now the two different ones and they were comparing them, so they have been looking at them.

22.38 When we were doing the blogging, they… you know you had to scroll right down to tick the…


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Man Both Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman

strategic awareness or all the different boxes, at that point a few of them were quite… they couldn’t remember, because it wasn’t animal related… Yeah which ones were which. [I thought the icons were in there] They were if… They are on the spider aren’t they? Yeah on the spider, but not on the… you know when… On the drop down There’s ticky boxes, and it says the words – ‘learning relationships’ or whatever it is – and you’ve got to click… So they were confused, even though they knew, and they had their bloggers and if they looked and it said learning relationships is the bee, they were like ‘Oh right’. They… for whatever reason they had this strange disassociation with those words and what the animals were. So they were struggling with that every time – some children every single time on their blog they forgot. Yeah I had that too So we had to constantly you know… get the books out and… Get out the diary, yeah… So that was just a little thing of… The other thing I found was that they’d write the blog and they’d sort of put everything into it and then I’d say ‘Right, have you ticked your things on the side? Have you done your spider? Have you done this?...’ and it was sort of like a… there’s quite a few bits to it if you know what I mean. And it took them a while before they remembered to do all of the bits, because I think… because we call it blogging, they think ‘well that’s it, I’ve blogged, so I’m done’. Yeah that’s right yeah. So it’s about getting them to do all of the different bits… yeah and the sort of, the mood…

24.09 Woman Man Man Woman Man Woman Man

Do you think it’s something worth pursuing, so they get used to that routine? Yeah I think once they’ve used it a few times… [And go on using it in other lessons?] I think you could… yeah I think periodically you could do, now they’re used to it. Yeah definitely I don’t think that would be a problem going back to it. I think it just took a little while to navigate the bits they had to do, but… It’s quite interesting to read what they’d written, sort of in response to something that had happened. And the way that they’d thought about it. So for example, when I took them all to sew their stuff at the high-‐school, their perceptions of how difficult it was and how much progress they’d made in those two mornings, it was really interesting to read. And hear it from them really, because you kind of… it was really nice. Yeah I think you’re trying to get them reflective and I think they were generally very… or they tried to be very reflective of their learning.

25.10 25.32 Woman 25.53 Woman Man

They seem to value the chance to both do the project and reflect on how they are learning at the same time At the start, I think they found it a bit more difficult, to say how they were like an animal. So I’d say ‘Right, what animals have we been like today? [examples] Yeah, and so they’d say ‘I’ve been like the bee’, and I’d say ‘Why?’ – ‘Because I collaborated’. Okay, but how did you collaborate? How were you like the… it was that how – tell the story rather than just ‘I’ve been like the bee because I’ve had to work with somebody else’. [Did that change?] Um… yes, but probably not as much as I’d like. I’d like for them to have been more about the ‘how?’. I think in the second week that was slightly easier. [Yes, today was good]. Oh good! It’s probably got there then, brilliant! I think one of the big things with the bee thing is they had the general misconception that it’s all about collaboration, and actually it’s about being… sometimes it’s about being inde… it’s about knowing when the best time to learn is – when’s the best time to be independent and when’s the best time to collaborate. And I think they get fixated on ‘there’s a bee, therefore we must be a pack working’, a swarm collaborating. But actually you know trying to say to them sometimes, ‘you need to go and…’.


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Woman Man

You need to go off and… Go and… you need to find the right time to do all these different things. I think they were getting better at that, at deciding themselves. I think in lessons, going back to doing normal lessons, I think you would be… I think that would help them to know the times when to work independently or to go off and collaborate. I think they would be choosing better options in that. I think that would really, from all the stuff that we’ve done, I think they would probably go back and do that.

27.06 Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Woman Man

What’s the most important aspect of the whole thing? I think it’s… the children really The children and their experience of… The learning they’ve done and just the joy… The way they’ve changed as chi… as people. [Really?] Yeah and how much more confident the ones that – like we were saying earlier – the ones that you really felt didn’t have that confidence, and how much more confident they’ve become. And how much more individual they’ve become. I think it’s the enjoyment they had from it last night, just to watch it, and see how much they all enjoyed… and the pride in everything that they’d done... you could tell there was pride there. Yeah there was. The people in the shop were proud of what they’d done, and they were happy showing people round. The people on the catwalk, you could tell were… they loved it. Definitely, and behind the scenes they have to be really quiet, and they would get quite cross with the people if they weren’t quiet you know. And usually that’s what I do, but they would get cross – ‘Be quiet!’ – and you know, get really cross with them because they knew that it was their show and they knew they had to be quiet because people could hear them so… [Ownership again… Do you think that will carry on?] I hope so I hope so, yeah. I think it will help them for next year, because it’s the end of the year for us almost with them. But I think you’re sending them up to the next year with some more skills I think. They’ve been skilled, and I think actually that will help them in Year 6. I think it’s really been a vital part of the year for them. I think it’s really… I mean we’re not really going to get the benefits so much with our year group, because it’s the end of the year, but next year they should get the benefits of this project that they’ve done here.


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4.3: Bushfield School Interview 4: Year 6 Teachers

Year 6 Teachers

0.52 Woman 1 Man 1 Woman 1 1.11 Woman 1

Is there anything you’d like to tell me about how it went? Ours was quite structured – the first part of the inquiry was quite structured wasn’t it? It was sort of lesson plans, so with the spiral, we followed those as lesson plans almost – mini lessons. So there was… they brought in an object as their starting point, so something personal to them… So ours wasn’t like Year 5 where it was all about fashion. Ours was… They could do anything they wanted. [You used the 8 steps of the authentic inquiry process, and you gave them a lesson each to start with?] Yes and then after we’d done… gone round the spiral they then had a week, effectively, of their own… ‘Now you need to go off and do what it is you want to do to answer your questions and to learn something new’. So every child was doing a personal, independent project about their…

1.35 Woman 2 Woman 1

[So your lessons were about teaching them how each step worked?] Yes each stage so when it came to the week where they were left to be independent they had that and then they used that. And they went back round didn’t they – we said you can then go back round the spiral, so one day they might go back to be-‐ to observing or to questioning and things like that.

2.11 Man 1 Woman 2 Woman 1 Man 1 Woman 2 (3.04) 3.27 Woman 2

[Do you want to tell me how it was to put it in place?] Well we did a similar project last year, only this time round we spaced it out more – we’ve given more time to it. I think that worked well for us, because it gave us more… because last time when they started communicating with other people, there wasn’t enough time for them to be sending out their emails and then to get the responses back before they then had to… because everyone out there in the working world doesn’t necessarily respond that day to what those children want and there wasn’t… Yeah they made contact, they made telephone calls, they… [they were investigating through emailing?] Yeah and – no they went out and met people, people came in… So similar to year 5 in terms of the experts coming in, but our children kind of reached out to them, depending on who they thought would be the most useful. They found their own contacts. For example, I’m just thinking of Ellie, her starting object from her homework was she picked an object that was interesting to her and it was a little model of a mini cooper. So she ended up, through all the different stages, ended up making – researching – contacts within mini, around England. Got hold of one specific contact, made email contact with them, they put her through to people in the one in Milton Keynes, the Milton Keynes people arranged an appointment with Ellie and her Dad. [Mini Manufacturers?] The… What’s it called? The sales centre in Milton Keynes. So she ended up going there and visiting and learning about how they work, and then she used that information to make a leaflet about minis and how they’re produced. So just to give you an idea of how they’ve…[gestures progression]. But all of the contact was done herself throughout the whole thing, so they were making the phone calls, sending emails, through the steps.

3.55 Woman 1 Man 1

[How was it for you compared to what you might have done before?] I think this year ran more smoothly than last, because it was our second year of doing it so we were aware of the hurdles that we might face. It is difficult in terms of… because you’ve got 27 children all doing 27 different projects, trying to keep on top of what each child’s doing. But that’s where blogger we found was quite useful because at the end of the day you could then go and read their blog and if you hadn’t, you know, managed to touch base with someone you could then go ‘Oh ok, so this is what you’ve been learning today’. And we put extra stuff in it this year didn’t we? So there were people here full time just with year 6 who could then help us by taking them down to the office so they could make a phone call and doing… because otherwise you know they’re… Or taking them out to visit yeah.


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Woman 1 4.43 Man 1

[So they’re not too locked into the classroom] No, exactly yeah. To give them a bit more freedom to go and do what they need to do, because otherwise if you’ve just got you and a T.A. and you’re saying ‘right that one TA can take you to make phone call, and now you’ve all got to sit here and wait for the next…’ you know they soon lose interest in what they’re doing. So I think having extra bodies around has really helped us manage it, and that’s been through parent helpers and other…

5.07 Woman 2 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 1

A lot of it was reliant on technology though, in order for the children to be able to get on and do… independently whilst adults were getting on and doing… because every adult in our year 6 team was being used to either support making a contact or… take children on visits really, so the staffing was important. [So it turned into a community learning project did it?] …Hmmm, yeah Yeah, not quite on the scale of the year 5 one, but yeah… And not necessarily specific to the Milton Keynes community because they were sort of getting contacts some of them with the company that organised that… Jade from my class got an email from the main guy in charge of marketing at VW England, so I mean they were broad contacts that they were speaking to, and we were pleased with the ones they got weren’t we… And they had to narrow that down to, ‘Ok that’s fantastic you’ve got that contact, but how are you going to use that now within the community so you can actually use it?’, but…

6.06 Woman 2 Woman 1 6.56 Woman 2

Did the choices of object lead to family involvement? Some of them… we had one in my class that did a family tree, so tracking back throughout history, did a [pressie?] presentation in the end. So he’d got in touch with all the different people in his family – uncles and aunts – but tried to begin making this family tree, and he actually was the one that managed to complete it. So his was a very family oriented project, and his started from the object of a picture of him with his grandfather – that was the object he chose from home – and that stemmed into that… I had Hannah who did a lot of sewing with her grandma and she brought in a pillow that she’d made with her, and then went on to produce a patchwork quilt, and I think her grandma helped because she could go home and speak to her about what material do I need and things. Other than that they were quite… they were personal to them rather than… family… [None brought in family jewels and rings and things like that?] Some of them did, but that then… they took their inquiry in a different way, so it might have been a family object that’s started off their inquiry but then we got them to create lists of questions from that of things they could find out about that object and that would then send them in a different direction, which is what we were trying to teach them the whole time, is that that’s fine, and you can change… and adapt…

7.20 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 2

How did they respond to having that degree of choice and decision making? They find it really hard. Very, very difficult. Yeah, especially at the beginning. You know, we said to them that they could pick something like four objects to bring in and then we’d narrow it down to the one that they were going to… and some of them had got about ten, some of them had got no idea of what they were going to pick, because to find just one… because in their heads they were thinking about just the one thing and they don’t know… If it’s meaningful to them – they’ve got so many things, they don’t know.


Did you have to stress that this has to be something that matters to you? Yeah Yeah well we get a lot of playstation games, because actually in their world that is the most important thing that interests them, so we had so many boys just had FIFA. And some of them we managed to steer down different roads – I think <pupil> brought in Black Ops, which is an 18 anyway so he shouldn’t probably be playing it, but that’s what he brought in because he thought it was meaningful. But then he went down the road of 3D images, because he had in his head ‘I want to know how to make a playstation’. I said, ‘Does that really interest you? Is that actually what you want to find out?’. I said ‘What do you actually like about the game?’. So we got out that it was actually playing in the realism of it, so then we looked into how animations are created – we tried to steer him down a different route. But a lot of them


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were boys with FIFA. James brought FIFA in and he was going… he went down the route of finding out how the players have involvement in what their characters are in that game, and that was quite interesting. He sent off emails to various people and got some good responses from that. But that ended up going down that route, although he started with just the game. And we had ones looking at the functions of the controllers, or the headsets – how does it work? – because some of them didn’t even know what some of the buttons meant, even though they play it all the time. So they did like a documentary on how it works. But a lot of them, they’d got their own idea of, ‘well I want to do this at the end, so I’m going to purposefully bring in this object’. And that’s what we were trying to steer away from. But because they’re children, they… there were some children that could only focus that way.

9.50 Woman 2

It might be useful to narrow it down to things that the children find interesting as an object – if it’s not interesting to you if it’s not switched on, don’t choose it. Yeah, which I think some of them found from that – because they couldn’t use it in school. I think when they first brought it in they were thinking ‘Oh well I’ll be able to…’ I don’t know, but if they did have to look at it as an object…

11.00 Woman 1 Man 1 Woman 2

How useful were the ELLI profiles? I think some of the children used them really well, because once we’d completed the questionnaire and they’d been printed off, we had a lesson where we analysed what this showed – how we perceived ourselves as a learner. And they were quite good at recognising ‘Oh well I obviously think I’m not very resilient’. And then throughout the week, you could say ‘What was the area you were focusing on?’ and then they’d put in strategies in place – not all of them but some of them. From that lesson, where they were analysing what they thought of themselves, they were coming up with their own targets on how they were going to improve their areas… [One or more of the dimensions?] Yeah we taught them about Smart Targets and they created a Smart Target to help them with their weakest area. And a lot of them used and reflected upon that throughout their whole process. So the actual ELLI web was a really useful tool. Not the ELLI web, the profile. Getting them to the point of having a spiral was a really difficult process. Once they had it, it was fine – they really did use it. And we had children at the end reflecting on ‘Oh this area hasn’t changed’, or ‘this area has changed’, and they’d be surprised and they were reflecting on it.

12.10 Man 1 Woman 1 Woman 2

Yeah there were some surprises in that… I was speaking to Laura, and she was saying that her creativity on the profile she did after her project had actually gone down. But she said ‘I don’t feel it has, in fact if anything I feel I’ve been more creative since doing that’. And I said, ‘Well you know, it depends on how you answer those questions as to what comes out’. Same as Ben, because his focus was resilience, and he really did try over the two weeks to be resilient, and yet when redid his profile, he said ‘Well where is it? It’s become less’. And it’s just how you perceive yourself, it doesn’t mean that it has. But… because he had – he really tried. But it definitely made them think about those areas and be really aware of them, which I thought was useful. But it was just, then when it was a surprise result, that’s difficult to explain to a child who’s saying ‘I tried really hard I was resilient, da da da da… and now I’m less resilient’.

12.58 Woman 1

It was easier when it was resilience and creativity. When it came to things like critical curiosity, strategic awareness, they found those more difficult because I don’t think they fully understand what that means, despite us telling them the story and trying to break it down for them. I think they still find that language of strategic awareness and… what does that actually mean.

13.35 Woman 1

We’ve noticed a recalibration effect – where someone goes down in a dimension it might be because they are more aware of how possible it is to be strong in that area. They might be more… Self-‐critical, because they know what they can do -‐ yeah… a better understanding of what it should be like.

14.18 Has it changed the way you teach?


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I still caught myself talking about dimensions, even though... As the children have as well. ...and being like the animals, so that... but that links in very well with our BLP – so we're quite used to talking about [Woman 1 + 2] how we learn. And it's something we've always done as teachers, so it's reinforced us doing that.

14.55 Woman 1 Woman 2 15.41 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 2 Woman 1 All 16.14 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1

[And the inquiry method – does that filter into the way you teach outside of that project?] I suppose things like questioning or connecting – those ones you'd make reference to and it would inform... But a lot of it, it's difficult to facilitate it in an everyday classroom situation I think. To be able to make them more independent – how we do in the project – I just don't know that in your usually structured lessons, without the amount of support available, and without all those tools that we can put in place in a week designated to it, or in the days leading up to it... I just don't think you can, really. But we've all definitely taken it on board, and like we say we're using the language and the children are more aware, and I'm sure there's children now, if you said to them 'How's your resilience going now with this project?', they'd definitely be reflecting on it, that side of things. [Even though they might be doing maths or something?] Yeah definitely, because like we said, because of our BLP, we use it throughout the school anyway, so they're just using it as a tool to help them understand -‐ they're very reflective learners. And we do a lot of questioning anyway, because of BLP. So a lot of our lessons are set up with a question that they then try and find out the answer to, so its... It's just feeding into it really. I think there might be things like connecting, which isn't part of... well it comes under BLP in terms of collaboration I suppose, but say they were stuck you could say 'Well who could you connect with who could help you find the answer?' And that's learning relationships Yeah And then there's the connecting and meaning making, which is about joining up ideas. Yeah, because it overlaps with BLP quite... quite a lot... It sort of feeds in quite well. Yeah, I think there's quite a lot already in our teaching.

16.29 Man 1 Woman 2 Woman 2

The hardest thing to manage is the fact that they're all going off in different directions. So, whereas in a normal lesson we all have the same, 'Right, by the end of this lesson we all really need to have achieved this', which is what they were trying to do in that project. 'Right, at the end, I want to have achieved this'. But it's about saying, well it's not about having that necessarily, it's about the process of getting there. And... And the spiral steps helped us to draw them away from that, because in a lesson – 'Oh well you haven't achieved that', and we can model to them 'But you have achieved...' and think of it that way. But there's still at the end of the day, at the end of the lesson there is a point that they have to achieve, so I think that's... So there is a kind of curriculum, but it's a curriculum within which they're all free... Yeah, how they get there doesn't necessarily matter, which is probably something that we're... that does come from the project more, but then when we can facilitate that we would have been anyway so...


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17.17 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 2 Woman 1

And year 6 is not an easy year to have too much freedom in I suppose? Not in the run up to SATs. No, and with their transition to secondary school – they find it difficult, that lack of structure. Because they're so used to how it normally runs, then if you turn that upside down then there's... The majority are fine, but then you have core groups of children, and we have them in every class, that can't cope with that. They need real structure and support from an adult, but then when you're trying to help all the other children as well it's really difficult. But a lot of children do respond to it really well, but then there's always going to be at their age children that can't respond to the language, they can't respond to the instruction. Some of them can't... they can't access... say you give them a netbook and they're doing a bit of research, they can't read it and understand it to... So you have children whose ability might be hindered, but then you have children who are perfectly able, but their lack of resilience, their lack of being able to do it on their own not being told what to do then they can't quite cope with it. So there's different reasons.

18.20 Man 1 18.40 Man 1 Woman 2 Woman 1 Woman 1

And then you've got the children who's behaviour – they cope well in an ordinary lesson because they know how it's going to work, and then when that structure's gone their behaviour goes downhill, even if it's something that they're really interested in. Because there's no structure there, there's no definite 'Right at this point this is going to happen, at that point that's...', they struggle to cope with that. Do you think that's just the way they are or is it because they've become dependent on structure? I think it's probably because that's how they've... they've become dependent in that this is how they cope with getting through each day. But then in the same way, that structure's probably been put in to help them cope. So it's a circle, because they're dependent on it because they've had it, but then the children with those sort of behavioural problems, or the lower ability children, or the higher ability children who aren't resilient, we structure for them to help them to cope, so... We had to be mindful as well that they were only 10 and 11 years old because there's some things we were saying, we kind of got them to try a learning intention for their week – so what they wanted to learn – and then almost like a success criteria of what would the outcome be? How is that learning going to look? And we think we find that hard sometimes to do, and we expect to get that from 10 and 11 year olds. So I think age is playing a part, because they are younger, they are less mature so they're going to find those things more difficult and that's what we need to keep reminding ourselves. They are 10 and so they are likely to find it hard. And celebrate what they do do instead of concentrating on what they can't Yes absolutely.

19.53 Woman 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 1

So what main impact did it have on them? It made them be more reflective of themselves as a learner. Yeah it made them very aware of where they need to be and improve, and how that will help them. Because they’re reflecting on it in their blogs from their web. And the smart targets thing that was introduced because of their weaker area, they found that useful as well. They’re reflecting on it. I think it built some of their confidence as well. Especially with the emailing and the telephoning and stuff like that. Yeah hugely [Agreement from all]

20.26 Man 1 Woman 2

There’s one girl in my class and she’s exceptionally quiet and she really didn’t want to make the phone call. She’d found the person that she wanted to call and she’d written up her questions, and she was like ‘Will you do it?’. So I said ‘Well you have a go and we’ll see’, and actually by the end of it she was going through the questions, she was making notes on what they were answering, you know… she really came out of herself. I was more nervous… Ellie who contacted mini, she was like ‘I really can’t make the phone call, will you?’. And I said no to give her a go, and I actually found myself getting really


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nervous waiting for her to make this phone call. She was fine. She did it and she was really proud of herself. But actually it is quite nerve-‐wracking.

20.58 Woman 1 Woman 2 21.30 Woman 1 Woman 2

I think there’s a real sense of achievement actually. Two boys, when they went to phone someone from Arsenal, when they came back in the room after they’d done it they were just… the fact that they’d got through, it was only the Arsenal shop but they were all so happy that they’d spoken to someone. It’s given them skills for life actually, that they might not have had the opportunity to speak to people. Because even things like where it says ‘If you want to speak to the telephone department, go through to 2, press 3…’ and they’re just like ‘I don’t understand – what do I want?’. And we’re like, ‘Well this is where you have to plan and be strategic and think, ‘Where do I want to go through to?’. And peoples’ names – they’d phone someone and say ‘Thank you very much’ [gestures putting phone down], and then they’d need to phone them back and they hadn’t asked what their name was so they didn’t know who they’d spoken to. So then we had to…. And these are things that you know, you have people working in offices that learn on their training so…

21.55 Man 1 Woman 2

Did you ever ask them to sum up what their advice would be to next year’s students? No we haven’t. No we haven’t. It’s definitely something we’re trying to do at the moment in regards to their whole school year, ready for their transition, but not specific to this project. Just purely because of time – I think we just ran out of time. If you’re doing it with regards to the whole year then you could have a question about what they’d do differently if they did this project again.

22.25 Woman 1 23.00 Woman 1

I think some of them probably would change the object they started with, if we said that to them… I know one child that, in the end we kind of were… for the first third of the project, just everything, he said ‘I know it. But I know it.’ And all these questions, ‘Well what about this?’ – ‘I know the answer, I know the answer’. Well is there any point in you looking at this object, if you think you know everything already? So then we actually did change what his object would be and we started again, because it kind of just got to a dead end where he couldn’t see beyond what he already knew. And then that worked and he… And that question set should be questions you don’t know the answer to He just couldn’t think of any questions that he didn’t know the answer to. He found it really hard to think outside the box and think of new questions. He just thought ‘I know the answer, I know the answer’. Does that relate to his creativity in ELLI? Was that weak? I can’t… there was one, either critical curiosity or changing and learning – one of them was a weaker one and yeah… But I think some of them would perhaps change their starting point I think.


What would you say is the most important thing about that whole approach? I think it’s trusting the children. Because we’re so apprehensive of, you know they’re going to email all these people and telephone these people, and how is that going to reflect on the school? But actually I think they did us quite proud and… actually you know, put your trust in them, they are young but they can… yeah. I probably have to agree with that one because I found that was something I found extremely difficult. Because I’m very strategic and I wanted them to, ‘well you need to plan who you’re going to speak to’, and I really wanted them to know – I wanted them to rehearse it with me. And there wasn’t the time so they kind of forced me to not be able to know the conversations. And we ended up not having the adults to go and support – supervise them – down by the phones, and they did just go and make those telephone calls. Obviously we had office staff in there who would have flagged up to us… But actually, they did represent really well, and some children that you wouldn’t have expected to do, took a really mature approach to handling things. So I guess, just the same thing really, to trust that they have taken it on board and that they can do that independently. [And let go] Yeah, definitely!

24.48 Man 1

I think, probably, the most important thing they take from it is… there’s so much information out there on all these different things, and actually them finding out specific answers to specific questions without us spoon-‐feeding that to them, going on to a web-‐page and finding… I mean I teach bottom set literacy so maybe I’m a bit, I don’t know, blinkered in how well children can do this, but giving them a whole page – a whole website – of


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information and them actually looking for the one bit, potentially, that they want, and pulling that out so that they can actually answer their question is something that… [Scanning and finding key words] Yeah and then making sense of that and realising actually, nothing on that page is of any use to me, so I don’t need that, and moving on. It takes a while for them to learn though. But the fact that they’ve looked at that is still important, because they needed to look at that to know that there was nothing in there of any use, and now they’re going on to this next one. And I think that for them… because as teachers, I’d have a question for them, and then I’d have a web-‐page, which I knew the answer to that question was in that web-‐page. They can go there, they can find that themselves, but knowing that the looking at stuff and it not being useful is actually still useful, I think is something…

26.00 Woman 2

Actually thinking about it I did ask my class what they would have learned from that, and they, most of the hands were not to give up straight away when you’re searching on the internet, because they were, they’d just be like, ‘Well I’ve typed in my question and this answer doesn’t fit’. One of them was asking ‘How do I design the Liverpool football kit?’ – Well the answer wasn’t there, this is just a website about football kits. But over the week she did learn how to do that, and I’d forgotten all about that until you said that. [Getting below the surface]. Yeah, and that’s children across all the abilities, I found were being really blinkered into thinking, ‘I’ll type it in, if there’s not an answer I’ll change my object, I’ll change my question and I’ll…’

26.40 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1 All

And the same with talking to people, that not necessarily the first person they talk to will have the answer for them, but then there’s… But that person might put them in contact with someone else… …With somebody else and it creates a path that they can follow. And actually they might learn something else from that person on the way that might change things and I think that’s where sometimes, as teachers we can over-‐structure for children. So they feel like they’ve failed if they haven’t got to that end point, whereas actually it’s important for them to realise that the whole process is important. [Feeling they’ve failed may be an important step in their learning] Yeah

27.15 Woman 1 Woman 2 Woman 2

That’s one thing we said they found hard, because we know that actually feeling challenged can be a good thing because it makes you think harder, whereas for them, being challenged was the end of the world. It meant ‘I can’t do it anymore’. The only problem with that is just that, again, you have to go back to that realisation that they are 10. Because… some of them really saw the success of that – ‘Oh yeah you know what, but I didn’t give up’. But then a lot of them didn’t. They were just ‘Well, I didn’t achieve what I wanted to by the end of it’. So I guess that’s something that they’ll build on as they move up into secondary school. The opportunity to reflect on what they could have done differently can turn that into a positive Yeah definitely

27.55 Woman 1 Woman 2 Woman 1 Woman 2

The theme seems to be life skills that are bigger than the curriculum, and also literacy and numeracy being involved. ICT especially because a lot of our… some created a website, someone was coding things on his website [Really?] Yeah he’d taught himself at home and his dad had helped him, because he wanted to produce the website. And some were producing movies and pressies and… the ICT was really enhanced by it. Yeah, definitely because what you can achieve in a one-‐hour ICT slot once a week is very different to them having a week to pull together those skills. But they wanted to do power-‐points didn’t they? We said, ‘You know how to use power-‐point’. So we put a ban on, so they actually had to learn an ICT skill. And if they were using one it had to be that you’d use a skill that you’d never used before on power-‐point.


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28.50 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 2

Another theme seems to be that dependency on teachers is quite limiting, and this was an opportunity to break out of that dependency. Did they surprise you? I was surprised by the confidence of some of them with… With the telephone calls – it was mainly the connecting side of it, because that’s not something that we’d come across with them on a daily basis. No because we don’t teach that. It’s not… I mean it’s something we try and embed when we can, but realistically it doesn’t occur. You know, we’ll be on trips and we’ll be on… And we teach emailing as a unit so, ICT year 3, they’ll teach emails. They all email each other in their class, and they all send a little something and something back, but then that’s very different to… It was all structured still.

29.45 Woman 1 Man 1 Woman 1 Woman 2 Woman 1 Woman 2 Woman 1

What was surprising was how many would just go – put the email address in and just go, ‘Can you answer these questions, da, da, da’. Well you need to introduce yourself – who are you? Why have you chosen to contact this person? So those again, life skills that you had to teach because they just thought you could just… They do it like it’s going to somebody that they know, rather than… Someone wrote on mine, ‘Our project ends on Friday, so if you can’t answer by then, don’t bother’ [laughs]. I don’t think that’s the right way to get their attention, let’s edit that bit. Or ‘Make sure you answer these questions quickly please, thanks’. And we’re like, ‘Well no, you need to say, “I look forward to hearing your response, many thanks in advance”’, you know, not… And it’s the literacy skills that are coming in again isn’t it. [Empathy as well] Yeah. Yeah they’re very… they expect, I think a lot of the time in their lives they get quick… quick reactions, video games and all of that and it’s like, actually no you have to wait. Some of them were like ‘Well I’ve not had a response, so I’ll do nothing today’. No, you have to now… you might not get a response, you’re going to have to choose another contact. I had one who found it really, really hard that he hadn’t had a response and what was he going to do and you have to find another way to find the answers to your questions.

30.50 Woman 1 Man 1 Woman 2 31.37 Woman 2 Woman 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 1 Man 1

If you had a magic wand, how much of the curriculum would you like to see turned over to this way of learning? I think you could have the freedom in the afternoons more. We have the mornings quite heavily structured with our literacy and maths and I think they need it… And I think they need that, because they do need those basic skills to be taught. They do need that. Those skills need to be taught in that way, but they can then be re… You need the structure of those skills being taught almost standalone, but then it can be fed into other things. Obviously there’s literacy skills in anything you’re doing, and maths skills, but I think you need to teach it standalone and teach it drip-‐fed in. So are you saying that there’s a learning of the skills, and then there’s an applying of the skills Yeah applying it in all sorts of scenarios. Yeah definitely. Yeah but the independence we gave ours I think you couldn’t do it unless you put in from further down the school that structure and… And support. And they still need to know, even at the none core stuff they still need to know stuff like in geography and history, so I wouldn’t… No you couldn’t write off every afternoon. No you couldn’t. I’d say that you’d still need, probably primary to stay similarly… so that you’ve got all of the basics in place so that they could go in secondary probably, when they’re a bit maturer, so that they can cope better, would be where this would then really take off. If they’ve got all the firm blocks in place to start off with… [you mean basic skills?] Yeah.

32.30 Woman 1

What would stop you, if you were teaching volcanoes, getting them to do an inquiry about volcanoes? This is what we’re thinking of doing next year aren’t we? Under a hood of the Tudors. Yeah we definitely would do that, and I don’t think anything would stop us, except for a lack of support. Because even if they’re working… even if they’re independent… I suppose in your magical school scenario, yeah you could do that because you’d have all the


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time in the world to spend on… so two weeks to spend on volcanoes, you know… You could have an adult in each room to supervise them and… You could, but in… yeah, it’s hard to step away from the reality of where we’re at.

33.07 Woman 1 Man 1 Woman 2 Man 1 Woman 2 34.13 Woman 1

Anecdotally, the evidence is that a school that turned the whole of their key stage 3 curriculum over to it covered the curriculum in two years instead of three. The lack of coverage was overcome by the greediness of the children to learn. Yeah the fear for us as teachers is covering it isn’t it? And they’d already had the blocks again from primary by the time they got to Key Stage 3, so they’d got some ideas and some previous knowledge that they could then build on through that. I think that’s important. [Yes, starting from what you already know]. You need somewhere to start from, don’t you. I think you just need a slight level of maturity before they could handle that amount of freedom all the time. But definitely, it’s something that… I mean we already… we do projects… And they need to be quite self-‐motivated as well, and I think that comes… …With a bit of age. [It’s interesting though, because the other paradox is that if you look at early years of foundation it’s much more like this. So they can.] And we take it away from them. I think as teachers it’s just that we know we need to teach them these skills in this context and it’s then hard to step away isn’t it.


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4.4: Bushfield School Interview 5: Deputy Headteacher/Headteacher Designate

You’ve been aware of it with a slight degree of detachment

Yeah absolutely. What’s your first impression of the whole thing now, what’s its value? The authentic inquiry aspect of it? Yes the whole thing – what do you see as its main value Well, I think there’s… I mean I’ve always been with the idea of showing children how to learn, not what to learn as well and that was behind the process of going to BLP in the first place, and we were there at the start when the school first took that on. That’s been successful for us in terms of embedding practice and getting children to develop their awareness around the idea of… actually “how am I at this as a learner, how could I improve myself at this skill?” And I think that’s been useful.

0.18 1.05 1.20

We’ve also stepped back from it a bit as well – this is BLP at this point – in that at the point when we first went down that road there were other schools also doing it and some went so far down that road that they lost the edge on learning. Whereas it has to be this balance between “here’s what we’re learning” and actually every now and then “here’s how we’re learning about it, let’s remind ourselves of that” and get to this sort of equilibrium where we can drip-‐feed it into the conversation of their understanding on it without having to be too explicit about it. And that takes time. And thankfully we’re at that point now, and I would say actually as a school, there’s been a slight dip because we’ve had five, six new members of staff, and that kind of turnover with their inexperience drops it off, and we’re going to obviously re-‐engage.

1.50 2.22

ELLI for me sits within the same process, you know, in that it’s the same concept/idea housed slightly differently. So the children don’t have, perhaps because of the groundwork in BLP, difficulty with the concept of “actually, right this is about how I’m learning and these animals represent these dimensions”. That’s not been an issue. Yeah there’s a slight having to unpack it for them because it’s housed differently to BLP, but because it’s been the older children it’s not really been too much of an issue.

2.34 So, from that scale, that’s fine, you know, that’s gone ok. The authentic inquiry, I think there’s merit in that. I think the kids have got loads from it, absolutely loads. From an experience alone… there is that remit of the teachers always having to pull them back to evaluate the ‘how you’re learning’ side of it. Because once they get the bit in their teeth, with the project, or in year 6 with their “this is what my outcome’s going to be” (“well yeah, outcome, whether we get there or not, not too worried, let’s pull it back”). But children, rightly or wrongly are very outcome driven, and I think it’s couched in the way education runs anyway, you know – what will it look like at the end? It’s got to be finished, you know – and it’s fine, it’s not their fault, but that’s what they… Sometimes it causes a short cut. It does, and this sudden ethos of “Actually it doesn’t matter if you don’t finish” – “Actually that’s all I want to do is finish, what are you talking about?” You know, “just tell us how you felt about it”, they struggle with that a bit. And some children, the more fragile children, don’t cope with that. You know, “But no, this isn’t what I want to do, I just want to make this, I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to make this and that’s what I’m going to do and that’s what this whole project means for me”. And there are a number of them where it will intrinsically fail, because they’re nowhere near ready themselves to approach this idea – can’t help that it’s just the way it is. It’s not a reason for not giving them the experience. No, not at all. But some of those children were placed, like in the year 5 project, more towards the practical set design and stuff, where there was a lot of outcome lead endings. Obviously the choice in the direction, they were involved in that, and that was there, but actually the emphasis on the outcome was a bit stronger so there was a lot more practical kind of ‘doing’ for them, rather than perhaps designing and ethereal stuff.


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3.08 3.54 4.36

And that works, you know, and that’s the point isn’t it – how does this work in a primary school? Let alone any school, but primary school. And there are implications. The year 6… I think the year 5 one has worked better than the year 6 one. Now, it’s the second year round for year 6, they did it last year. And I’m not belittling the outcomes – they’ve been amazing – some of the stuff the children achieved last year, and the direction and the way they ran with it, was incredible. And again this year, similar success in terms of the children that really kind of go “No this is great and I want to pursue it”, that’s worked really well. However, I think putting it under an umbrella like “Fashion” and then allowing the children to look at the boundaries within that and go “actually, it’s not just clothes design, it’s lighting and music and make-‐up…” and letting them go in that universe, has been more manageable, and easier to build towards an outcome that they get a payback from. Because a lot of the individual stuff in 6, the children – those without the stamina, those without the perception that they’ve got to have an outcome – they’ve run out. And they’re very much on their own, because it’s literally run as an individual inquiry. Putting them in teams that they choose, under areas that they’ve come up with through discussion, has allowed them to go on a journey together. And they can see an outcome, because there’s something at the end that they can work towards and build their ideas into it. And I’ve already spoken with the year 6 teams to say that next year we need to run it under a banner. What that banner is, I don’t know.

5.06 6.00 6.38

They could still choose Yeah It’s like the bees still have the individual as well as the collective. That’s it, it’s that kind of idea, and I think that works better as a primary school, for us. For example, the first thing we kicked around, I think we’ve parked it now, but they have a topic on the Tudors, as a history topic – year 6 study it. And I said, “well why can’t this be the banner?” So let’s stop giving them the prescribed curriculum diet of, look at the wives of Henry VIII, and we look at the diet of Tudor times and stuff like that… Why don’t we say “Tudors”: off you go, and let’s signpost a few things you might be interested in, like the Spanish Armada and fighting. And they start by choosing? Unpacking and looking at what… it could be costume, it could be the diet, it could be the town… it could be anything in that period of time. Off you go, come back, and then come back to some kind of, maybe a presentation evening, or a slightly different kind of, “here’s the area I chose to research, here’s what I thought about it, here’s what I found out”.

6.40 7.05 7.23

Almost like an assessed event? Yes, I think so, and I think that’s the thing that needs to drive it, they need to work towards it. On the individual scale, some of them really wanted to finish it, because that’s what they are. Others who have less sort of… if something goes wrong they give up, kind of thing – would give up – and need a kind of cajoling and “come on, we can get it finished, we can get it finished”. But obviously the resources and the man-‐power for that individual aspect is huge. And it was very difficult for year 6, even with the support put round it, to deliver that. Whereas if there’s this kind of event… and I likened it when I discussed this as a team to like an American science fair, where the children stand by their exhibits, what they’ve worked on, and the parents come round and they say “This is what…” you know, that kind of thing. So there is an event, and they have to get ready for it. Having seen the razzmatazz from the fashion show, I’ve had feedback from the year 6 team saying, “Maybe not the Tudors, maybe


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something else!”. Something that’s a little more, for the children, more showy for them maybe. I said we could discuss it.

7.52 8.28

But we’re definitely going to go forward with it. We’re not going to not pursue it, if you see what I mean. It’s definitely going to be maintained as something… because for me it fits in with the BLP ethos anyway, so if we’re constantly coaching alongside that “how do we learn, how do we learn?”, it’s just another thing in our cannon, of: well at this point in the curriculum year – we talked about it all year round – here’s an event for it, in which we really go for it. So it’s not going to be completely new to them, because it will come in along with BLP in terms of this is how we learn, and then right, now then, here’s your chance to really stretch that. Here’s our topic, here we go and let’s present back and then move on. I’m hopeful that building on year 5, we can say “well you already know about this idea”. And actually, ok it looks different, but the principles are the same, you know, the autonomy is the same.

8.58

9.25

And they are extraordinarily articulate about the principles. They are, they’re good. They’re a good bunch! They are, and I think that’s nice, and I think that is a bit of a payback for them, the way we’ve been constantly drip-‐feeding them this idea of “how do we learn, how do we learn?” We have assemblies on it, we have… we’ve had days in the past when we’ve had parents in to see the learning and stuff. So for year 5 who’ve been here a couple of years it’s not such an alien concept, so we’ve got payback there.

9.50 An open question for us at the beginning of the day was whether the benefit of doing the ELLI profiling online commensurate with the difficulties involved, and did it make enough difference to have this spider diagram generated for each individual, compared with just doing one for yourself. Your views? Well, because I’m not intrinsically involved with the class, my viewpoint is going to be quite removed, to be fair. But my understanding of it is that the logistics of it, the stuff I’ve heard around the edges about the amount of questions, for our age group, probably make it quite cumbersome if I’m really honest. A lot of our children won’t follow too many detailed questions one after the other. You’ll start getting errant or just random answers just to get through it. It’s quite typical of this age range to be fair. There’ll be one or two really sensible children who really will plough through it and consider each and every single one, but the majority response from my viewpoint – from what I’ve seen around the edges – is probably OK for a bit and then “Ah you know what, I’m over this”.

10.25 11.00

The idea of measuring on a scale, they’re quite happy with. So the outcome of the profiling and then an outcome a while later – no problem at all, because we already do similar things, like “how would you rate your collaboration before and how would you rate it now?”. And we do that in various ways. So the children will be quite keyed in to seeing the result [Self-‐assessing] Yeah and looking at the two things and they’ll be quiet happy to go “Oh yeah I’ve improved”. The concept of… “It’s fluid”, that it might contract again and expand again, is probably something that they won’t be so happy with, because… I mean we could couch it to them in terms of “Well yeah, but if we did this in sport your thing would look different than if you did it in cooking or sewing” – for them, they might go “Oh ok I get that a bit”.

11.49 12.20

That could be quite interesting for them actually. Well you know, the concept that you’re not good at everything, they’ll understand. But when you’re measuring something like this, seeing it go from “Ok, it’s got better” and then if we did it again “Oh, it’s got worse – why’s that?”, that would have to be unpacked and supported. We’ve done a bit of that today I wouldn’t be surprised, yeah. But we’ve had that before with other stuff, not just ELLI. We do, we say “Not everyone’s good at sport, not everyone’s good at maths, so in maths it will


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be like this and in sport it will be like that” – and they go “Ok”, they kind of understand that a bit.

12.39 12.56

So whether it’s the results you want to hear or not: probably not, in my experience, filing them through the laptops and the netbooks, at the start of a large operational thing and then doing it again at the end, it’s tricky. The only difference being, obviously your questions are generating against the criteria so you can understand that their response is not arbitrary, you know – it’s a kind of “Oh you are graded here because of the way you’ve answered these questions”. Whereas if you asked them to just draw it out, you’re going to have all the same parameters of “well I’m brilliant at everything, me”. You know, you will and that needs managing, so I’m not sure there’s a right answer to that – I’m not sure drawing it on a scale yourself is going to create an accurate enough viewpoint, or whether ploughing through the questions really works – I don’t know.

13.14

Do you want to hear what they’ve said? Yeah by all means. And my view would be both, but no problem reducing the amount of online stuff to maybe twice a year or something. But to have it as a starting point. It surprised me, but they really rated that as against the self-‐generated ones. They used words like “this is more precise”, “accurate”, “honest”. Some of them said the questions were very straightforward and there was no problem with them. [And I think the second time especially – the first time was a bit of a shock, but then the second time, we know what it is, we know what the outcome is that we’re working towards..] And they had experience to relate questions to, and even some of the teachers said “Oh yes, we’ve…”, and one of them was only doing it yesterday or something, and they were sailing through it the second time, whereas the first time it was much more cumbersome. So that’s just the feedback.

14.02 15.04 Person 2

But I mean that would probably tally, because as I say I’m not leading a class through it. I’m picking up on conversations around it. And people only talk about stuff when it’s not, you know, brilliant. So that would make sense to me. The kids are getting quite a nice deal out of this, but the staff are having to wrestle with it. The management of going online is a staff headache – the children might get a bit bored, but on the whole they don’t suffer from it. The kids’ feedback was very positive, saying they trusted this more and people could come up with anything on their own. They even pointed out that there are only 3 points on the scale of the self-‐generated one and this was more fine-‐grained. Yeah, great. And then them saying (and this sounds like ELLI propaganda – I could have given them a fiver to say it) “we think we should do this every… twice a year for life, and by the time I’m fifteen…”

15.38 15.55 16.45

Yeah, well you see that’s the central tenant of why we support things like BLP and that, because we understand that year on year you need to be rehearsing it.

17.09 We’ve been overjoyed with what we’ve heard today Good. It’s good for us because, as I say, intellectually we completely believe in this. And as a school we’re struggling with the constraints of delivering the curriculum and the standards, which rightly or wrongly house a certain teaching approach – possibly overcome-‐able if you did a certain other style and took the brave… but probably not unfortunately. In the climate now, you take your foot off the gas in a certain direction and you probably won’t be around to reapply it later. Take what you will from that; it’s a difficult juggling act, but you know…

17.35 Compared with some schools, this has been a hugely risk-‐taking culture, and it’s come off, I’d say. Yeah, we’ve made things work for us, the things we believe in.


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And the letting go of control that the teachers have to do. And you know that’s probably…[laughs] I don’t know if the staff filled one of them out, but they probably should do based around the letting go – it’s very difficult. And when you put the event at the end, it becomes even more difficult for the staff. Even I did it and I wasn’t really involved, but right on the last day got asked to help out with the compares. I did, and I took their ideas down and I pointed out things like grammar mistakes – so I said “You can’t read that because you’ve forgotten the comma for the pause” and things like that. And then I immediately started weighing in with “Well hang on, what about this? What about that?”… […] No it’s straight back in, because it’s got to be tonight and I’ve got an hour and I’ve only got two minutes to work with them now.

18.17 18.27

That is probably the biggest learning curve, because I think both children and staff want something at the end that works. Whereas technically, the pure principle is “Well why didn’t this work everyone?”, and then you go back through that. The people involved were very clear about… they weren’t going to let it crash and burn, but it had blemishes in it. That was learning. And I thought the difference between the first show and the second show was extraordinary. [Having the two shows, I think, is the icing on the cake for that journey, because they don’t just get to do it once and say “Ok, why didn’t it work?” – they get to correct it] It illustrated how they were being allowed to learn.

19.19 Person 2 19.51

Already – we’ve only just watched it – but it would be good if we had some voiceovers, or a pause for a voiceover written by the children to explain why they were styled and stuff like that, which would be useful and it breaks the evening up. And then coming off the back of that, having a longer gap between the two events to actually group the children and hold a session: “Right, what do we want to change?”, and get that feedback, because that’s useful.

20.02 The whole thing’s been amazing – really very powerful evidence of what they’ve learned, and the joy they’ve had. Oh that’s immense isn’t it, it’s tangible. [That does just come across] And we’ve purposely put out feedback forms last night… And what are they like? Well, positive – extremely positive. But more focused on the event and the outcome for the child, but we’ve put it because we’ve had parents coming up to us across the weeks saying “Oh they just keep talking about it, they want to come to school and they’re so enthused by it”, you know… even some of the design and clothes that they made, children were buying back. And parents were going “No I need to do it now because if I don’t they’re going to be so cross with me”, because they want what they made back, they’re so proud of it. And you just think “Great” – you get that buy-‐in on their learning anywhere else, you’d be top of the pile wouldn’t you – superb!

20.30 Person 2 20.50

But the viewpoint for us is that it becomes transferrable and so then in maths we use the same language, and ok it’s not as razzmatazz, it’s the “But hang on, let’s feel proud at the end – look at what you have done”. That’s our long term pay-‐off, or hope, as a school.

21.30 And then also, long term, how does this look lower down? We’re using 6 and 5… I think there’s good scope for using the principles – it might be in a more limited way, but I think that year 6 project is difficult to manage in year 6. But in year 4 it’s possible that they could just mainly use the internet and people they know, and it would have more limited reach, but would therefore be more manageable. But it would build in the capacity to start learning for yourself. The thing with 6 is that they had that ambition and vision, but because of their diet beforehand, they didn’t necessarily have the skills or the resilience to do it, although they wanted to.


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You need to grow. The tragedy is that in early years and foundation it’s happening all the time. Yeah, but it gets phased out, like Ken Robinson says – creativity is superb and then it just gets educated out of them as they have to learn “do this, do that”. So it’s not as if they can’t at any age. No, no. I think a list of criteria might help generate that, like signposts. As in, “well you need to tell me what you’ve decided to research – how you do that is up to you”. But everyone needs to tell me, or produce something that does that. And then “you need to show me what you’ve done – how you show me is up to you”. You know, just a few things, and then let them go. Sharing the criteria with them is AFL really. “This is how you’re going to be judged…”

21.48 22.38 22.59 23.38

I think you should be deeply proud of… Oh, immensely so. It’s just you don’t want to drop the ball on it, it’s so manic from one thing to the next. We’re off for the music and dance evening tonight. The end of year is a really difficult time. But I’ve, again, spoken to 5 about moving it to a different point in the year. One of the things that’s come out of the conversation was how much they regret not getting the benefit out of the enhanced learning capacity of the year group as a result of this project. So if they did do it earlier in the year they could get the benefit. It can’t be arbitrary either. We’ve talked around Spring 2 – second half term in the Spring term – because we want them to have long enough with the children to know them. You can’t do it too early, because they’ll just go “whrrr” and explode. But long enough to be bedded in and trust the relationship with the teachers, so we’ve got that security there before we let them go, but long enough to capitalise like you say afterwards – we’d have the summer term in which... And remove it from the manic end of year stuff, so that it’s the only thing going on for them at the time – I think that might be helpful. Yeah, so it’s definitely being considered.

23.45 24.08


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4.5: Bushfield School Focus Groups: Year 5 – Groups 1 and 2 Focus Group 1

Year 5 Part 1

1.50

Boy 1

I think I learned a lot of changing and adapting during the AIP (Authentic Enquiry) project because when I started out it was definitely something I could build on, because I wasn’t ... a person who quite liked change, I like to do everything the same. But when I’ve been on this enquiry project, trying to get all the music together, every time I played it, it changed. So I had to use my Chameleon (Changing and Learning) and that kind of helped... because the more I changed, the better the show was.

2.40

Boy 1

(Using Creativity too) we had to make music from scratch (Creativity), we had to put music together, so that’s using my Spider, making links; we had to make links with what CDs would go well with what theme, like ‘East Meets West’, so that was challenging..because we had a professional DJ in and he helped us – having him there was a bonus, because I don’t think we could have done it as easily if we hadn’t worked with him, so that’s also using my Bumblebee (Learning Relationships)

3.35

Boy 1

(How aware were you that you were drawing on these ‘animals’?)

In the first week it was (about) understanding what was going on ... but in the second week I definitely felt that I was building on my skills... I was getting more creative... (finding) different ways to do things... My Unicorn and Chameleon were the two that I used the most and they kind of linked into each other – so I had to find creative ways to change and adapt, because when I did change and adapt, to make it sound good, it had to be a bit more creative than it would have been before

4.50

Boy 2

I had to use my Chameleon a lot as well because I was in the film crew. We were constantly going to different places every single day, so I had to adapt for different people, whether they liked talking camera... different positions... sometimes I didn’t have a tripod, sometimes I did.

5.20

Boy 2

I think I had to use my Unicorn and Chameleon

5.40

Boy 2

(How much would you say you’d changed in the last few weeks, as a learner?)

A lot! Yeah! (all round agreement and smiles). Because we know we’ve only got two weeks, we’re under quite a lot of pressure and you’ve got to change quite quickly as well

5.55

Boy 2

I think I’ve... because I’m in the film crew, I’ve got a lot more creative with my shots... how I do things. At first, when I was doing just a little bit of text at the bottom I just used the automatic thing, then I discovered you could take a picture of the screen with the text up and I could insert that by the last week

6.25

Boy 1

I think I got better at my Resilience in the past two-‐and-‐a-‐half weeks because ...Maths is a subject that I struggle with a lot... I like to have someone there to help me and I can give up quite easily, but after the last two weeks I had a feeling that I almost couldn’t give up, that giving up wasn’t an option, because we had to get it done... and it wasn’t an option, so I felt it had to get done

7.10

Boy 1

Boy 2

(Is that something you think you can take into other situations?)

Definitely! Maths!

I’ll be checking! I sit next to you!

(Because that’s something that could change your life, couldn’t it?)


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Boy 1 Definitely!

7.25

Girl 1

I think I’ve got better at Critical Curiosity because, before, I didn’t really ask any questions, but now, I kind of had to, if I wanted to get to the bottom of things.

7.45 (An example?) With the tickets, they wouldn’t have been as informative or sold as good, because I had to ask people what they thought would be the best way to sell them

8.05 I asked Miss Gates to send out a parent mail and that wasn’t completely my idea so I asked someone, ‘Would that be a good idea?’ and they said ‘Yeah!’ and I thought, that was what really sold them, because the next day I got loads

8.20

Boy 2

You’ve asked the film for a bit as well haven’t you?

8.25

Girl 1

Did you have to ask loads of people questions in order to do your job?

Not loads, but quite a lot. Some days I’d go round for about an hour asking everyone in year 5 I met their opinion on something... With the logo at the beginning, I stuck on a piece of card and asked people to put their opinions on boards to tell me how they liked it. And so I managed to improve it with what they said.

9.03

Boy 2

Girl 1

To be a publicity agent like you were you have to be able to get in people’s heads don’t you, because you have to know what they like?

Yeah

Has that made you more curious generally?

Yeah I think so because I learnt that it’s better to be curious -‐ you get better answers.

9.30

Boy 3

Boy 3

Boy 4

Has anybody else changed?

I changed because before we started I was really shy about posing in front of people. When we started choreographing it we were told to walk down the catwalk by ourselves and pose, so I felt really embarrassed. After that she asked us to do it in pairs so I felt more confident.

But you got over the bit of doing it yourself first?

Yeah

And last night did you do it on your own?

Yeah

We done it in ones, twos and threes.

10.21

Boy 3

How did you feel, having overcome your shyness?

It was really... I felt really happy because I overcame my shyness.

And which ELLI animal do you think that’s got most to do with?

Resilience? A little

11.09 Since I’m in the film crew I’ve seen other people getting better at stuff. I remember in the


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Boy 2 first couple of days I was filming your group [points at boy 3] and you were doing some catwalk stuff and I remember seeing you being shy and then on the night when I was filming I noticed people improving at stuff.

11.30 [Looking at ELLI profiles]

12.00

Boy 2

How useful was it to you to get these profiles? You haven’t had much time to look at them have you?

I did mine yesterday but I hadn’t really had a look at it.

12.45

Boy 1

Boy 2

Boy 1

Boy 1 cont.

I’m interested in how useful it was to you.

I feel that it was quite good because when you were answering these questions it made you think ‘Yeah I did that.’ And the first time you did it, it was a bit ‘yeah I did that, yeah’, but then the second time you did it you feel a lot more confident.

You really think about it.

And you can say ‘Yeah I can do that, yeah I can do that’. You don’t have to go over it in your head. You just say ‘Yeah I can do that, yeah I can do that’. And I think that’s amazing, because in two weeks... do you want to have a look?

Yes show me it.

13.25

Boy 1

But you were saying that it’s amazing that in two weeks you can answer the questions on the survey really easily... and why? What’s changed?

I think maybe the fact that when we were doing an IP it made you think about what you were doing a bit more.

And how you were learning?

Yeah because we had to learn ourselves. It wasn’t other people telling us ‘Do this, do this, do this’, we had to learn ourselves. I think that was quite good because it definitely made you think about more... ways to learn. You know BLP? Meta-‐learning was definitely something that came in – learning about learning.

14.40

Boy 2

Boy 2

Boy 2

Boy 2

And you had BLP already and the learning muscles?

Yeah we’ve had BLP since we joined Bushfield.

Yes, so how much extra did these seven animals give you? Was that useful?

I think instead of just a thing, like the name of the thing, the animals actually help you think of it. They do help you because people know animals and what their behaviour is like.

So they’re like symbols of what it’s about.

Yeah I thought this was really helpful. The only thing I would say might make it a bit better would be another category where you can choose – because it has ‘Quite like this’...

Oh you mean you want 5 possible answers instead of 4?

Yeah like a bit in between one, like in the middle.

Yeah like half and half, that’s what I thought.

People always go for the middle one then because it’s a safe option.


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Girl 1

15.55

Boy 2

Boy 2

Boy 2

Apart from that suggestion, you said you did think it was useful. Can you tell me what was useful?

When you do it for the second time, it makes you think of what you’ve done. Normally you don’t just think ‘I’m good at being curious’.

So doing the survey helps you reflect?

Yeah it actually makes you think about it.

And what about getting that thing [the profile], is that useful to you?

Yeah to see how I’ve improved, I’ve improved at it a lot.

16.39

Girl 1

Boy 2

Boy 3

Boy 4

Girl 1

Boy 2

Boy 2

Girl 1

Boy 2

Boy 2 cont.

17.40

Boy 2

How does that compare with doing your splat ones? Because you created your own didn’t you?

They were fairly similar, but this one was a bit more truthful when I looked at it.

This was more truthful?

Yeah

Yeah

Yeah

Yeah [more truthful] than when I decided on my own because on the questions I thought ‘Yeah, I’m a bit less resilient than I am that’.

When I did the drawing one I thought ‘I’m really creative’ and I’m not very creative at all on this one.

And which one do you believe?

I believe this one, because you actually have to think about the things separately with all of the 72 questions.

I didn’t really think it was exactly on it, but it’s kind of closer than the one we did ourselves because I don’t think...

Yeah ‘cause on my drawing... my own one, I’ve put myself as full creative because I think I’m quite creative and arty, but then on here it’s not...

Yes, part of the reason for that is that in this, creativity is not about art. It’s about getting out of the box and doing things differently... A lot of people say ‘He’s a musician he must be creative’. But actually musicians sometimes very much play to the rules.

Yeah because they have a piece of music and they play to that.

18.10 I think that this as a thing [points to his ELLI profile] is an ELLI animal itself, but for the future. Because this I think represents the owl.


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Boy 1 The whole thing?

No this [points to his ELLI profile] this survey represents the owl. I think this can help you for the future. If you kept this with you this could help you for the future because you can see... If I did this every year, I would be able to see how much I’m improving and what I need to work on. And by the time I turn, I don’t know, 15, I should be a really, really high level learner, because I started when I was 10 and I planned it out. I did this every year. And I think that really helped me. I think planning was a big issue with the AIP project itself because presenting was actually very difficult. I had to do so much of the music that I just couldn’t find time for it. I was there yesterday and I had a rough idea of the script and I had to turn it into the opening and closing of the show.

19.50

Boy 1

20.46

All

Boy 2

So how did planning and Owl – strategic awareness – help you? Or how much more of it did you need?

I think I needed a lot of planning, because we do it ourselves and that was... I think if we had let the teachers help us as much as they do in usual circumstances, I don’t think we would have learned a lot. I think if they are doing it for us, I think they are learning and we are not in usual lessons. It’s more about us actually learning, because they know the answer. It’s basically them telling us what the answer is, but showing us where actually I think it’s better to work it out for yourself.

How many of you agree with that?

Yeah

Yeah and like Theo said earlier, I think it would be helpful if we took this once a term or something, or once every half term and we all had a separate book where we just stick it in. We have these progress books at school – we could just stick it in there and at the end of each, say, term we could just look through it and see how we’ve improved.

21.06

Girl 1, Boys 1,2 and 3

Boy 2

You’d like to keep monitoring your progress as a learner?

Yeah

Yeah like once every term or something. I think that would be helpful.

21.13

All

21.50

Boy 2

How many of you agree with Theo that this could go on throughout your life?

Yeah

There are people up to the age of 70 who have used it...

I think I’d like to carry on taking this survey.

22.00

Boy 1

Can I ask you one last thing: What is the most important thing about ELLI for you?

Learning. I think ELLI could help you for the rest of your life. If you think about each animal as a symbol, I think that could carry on for the rest of your life. It’s not just a year 5 and year 6 thing -‐ it can be a sixth form thing. You can carry it on, and if you just think of that in your head, and I think I’m going to try in normal lessons like maths and literacy... I think I might stick a tortoise to my head just to remember to be resilient. And I think that’s going to help me for the rest of my life.


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23.00 Boy 2

Girl 1, Boy 1 and 3

Girl 1

23.20

Girl 1

Boy 2

Boy 1

Boy 2

I think it’s also a really fun way with all the images of animals and stuff. I think kids would really enjoy using it and stuff. I think it could even work for years younger than us.

Yeah

Yeah because it’s easier to understand than BLP and everything because you don’t notice the symbols...

It’s easier to understand than BLP?

Yeah because the symbols don’t really stick in your head as much as the ELLI animals.

Yeah ‘cause BLP’s just... some of them are quite random.

There’s so many

Yeah and there’s so many of them [muscles] in BLP, and they’re just a boring name like ‘Resilience’ or something and meta-‐learning things. But then with ELLI animals it’s the cat which is critical curiosity and stuff. I think it could be used for ages much younger than us.

23.49 Boy 1

Boy 3

Boy 1

Boy 1

24.44

Boy 2

Girl 1

The ELLI animals help you to group together learning muscles, which I think was actually quite clever. You actually get... I was looking on my blog website today and I had a look at my homepage before you log on, and it had all the ELLI animals and then all the learning muscles that go into them.

It’s really clever

Yeah and that was really clever to group them together.

Because they work together

Yeah they do work together. And it’s also, when I had a look at it, there’s so many learning muscles that can be used for so many different things. Before this I wouldn’t have thought that managing distractions would have been in resilience, but now I understand why.

I see, you understand how they relate.

And because with BLP there’s just so many of them, it just sorts them into the main category. I think that ELLI one day could be the main source of those muscles for schools.

Yeah especially for younger ones

24.56

Boy 2

I can imagine myself a few years on in a school which doesn’t use it maybe and someone says ‘You need to stick at it’ and I can imagine I’ll say ‘What like the tortoise?’.

We must stop there, thanks...

Focus Group 2

Year 5

1.36 At school we’ve got lots on our Building Learning Power muscles – so BLP – and ELLI really helped because it was kind of associating animals to different abilities and I think that


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Girl 1 helped us think about our muscles in more detail. We knew what they all were and what they meant, but we had never really thought about them in lots and lots of detail. So I think ELLI kind of helped us with that because it was all about associating animals to different abilities that they had that helped them with the bear and ELLI...

2.19

Girl 2

So the ELLI animals helped you to understand your learning more deeply?

Well at first I was sort of like ‘What’s animals got to do with learning and fashion shows and stuff’. But then when we started the fashion show I was much more aware and ELLI helped me to become more aware of how we use these things to help us, and how we can’t really get through anything without using them.

2.56

All

Do you all agree with that?

Yeah

3.14

Girl 3

So the fashion show helped you become more aware of these seven dimensions. Would anybody like to tell me which of those have been important to you?

[All raise their hand]

I think the tortoise with resilience, because when things get hard when you’re in the shop like there might be no hangers and there’s lots and lots of stuff to fold, and you’ve got to keep on going.

3.43

Girl 2

I was a model and I was helping with the dancing and we had to do lots of changing and learning and adapting. There wasn’t much room on the stage so we had to adapt the positions and adapt the choreography so that everyone felt comfortable with it.

4.10

Boy 1

I think I used the unicorn most because since I was in the photography... and a lot of other groups used the unicorn as well... I think the unicorn was most because you have to be creative in everything you do pretty much.

4.33

Boy 1

Did you have to come up with new ways of doing things?

Yeah so in shop you need to be creative about how you set it up. In photography you need to be creative about the angles of it. When you’re a model the dance needs to be creative. So I think you use it quite a lot.

Do you agree with that? That you all used your unicorns?

[Girl 1 nods] Girl 2 and 3: ‘yes’

5.00

Girl 1

I think personally for me the cat. [curiosity]. Yeah because the school took us to a fashion show so we could get an idea about what a fashion show had to be about, but I still had lots of questions about it, even before I knew about ELLI. It was quite difficult trying to put it all together because the people who actually went to the fashion show had to help other students – ‘flow coaching’ we call it – so not doing it for them but giving them feedback and advice. So there was a lot of things you had to think about – the lighting, the music, the models, how the stage was going to be set up and stuff. So I think the cat was really important because when you dug deeper you found it a lot easier, whereas if you didn’t ask any questions then you’d have to figure it out for yourself which can sometimes be quite challenging.

6.00 So asking lots of questions is helping to figure it out really isn’t it? And like you said, getting deeper into it.

6.11 I had to use my tortoise because there were these times when we had to make up a script that me and Theo had to learn because we were presenters. I found it really frustrating


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Girl 4 because whenever I did something wrong we’d always have to go back to it instead of trying to practise it. It was a bit annoying but I still got to be able to do it.

So it was try, try again a lot, and that’s very much tortoise isn’t it?

6.46

Girl 2

I’ve got another example. I wasn’t that keen on planning before the fashion show – I always liked to dive straight in. But because I was in the customising clothes group I couldn’t really just draw on the t-‐shirt without knowing what I was meant to do and that made me more aware of the real importance of planning...

So you started to think ahead more?

Yeah definitely

And is that strategic awareness or what would you call it?

Planning.

And which animal is that?

That’s the owl

7.34

Girl 1

Also, we had to be quite careful because I was making new clothes as well as being a model. I had to make sure that... because if you cut out the patterns, but then start sewing straight away then you can’t really get it out and start again. But if you did then it would take a long time so you had to be quite aware and make links with your thoughts almost like a spider’s web with your thoughts.

So a lot of meaning making

Yeah like the spider because it was quite hard to thread the sewing machine, so if you’ve seen someone do it and they gave you a demonstration, it was like ‘What did they do first?’. You had to connect it to what you were doing at that moment and see if it was correct or not.

8.25

Girl 3

I also think creativity and imagination, because we had to imagine what it would be like in the shop and we had to get all the rails in the right place when we didn’t have the rails.

You had to imagine the rails being there even when they weren’t there.

8.45

Boy 1

I think the bees were quite important to working in a group and doing well on your own as well, because most of the time we were working in a group. For the filmers we were practising time lapse together. The models may have been practising the dancing together and in the shop they had to work together to set up the actual shop. Everyone needed to work well on their own as well.

[Because everyone had their own job?]

Yeah.

9.39 And presumably the people in the shop had to plan together as well, and so that’s using the owl and the bees at the same time.

10.30

Girl 1

What’s the difference between your experiences of looking at your learning power through ELLI and Splat?

I think the first one [Splat] was quite good but we didn’t realise we had this [ELLI]. The first one gave us a rough idea about what we thought and then this one where you did the survey I thought it was much more precise. On the first one you only had three options, which were either you thought you were really strong at it, could improve or really not that strong. On this one it’s much more accurate and the questions were kind of like... none of them were that difficult to answer. I think they were all good because it kind of related to things that we would know about. So in the end it came with a really precise and accurate


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Girl 1

All

spider diagram.

So you think it’s worth all the effort of doing those 72 questions?

Yeah

Do you all agree with that?

Yeah

11.29

Girl 2

I thought that... I agree with Imogen that the first one gave you a rough idea but this one... I thought that... because sometimes you want to compete with your friends on who’s the strongest at... what animal and stuff like that. On this you don’t know what the questions are applying to so you come out with an accurate result that’s honest and it’s different to all your friends’.

So you trust it better do you?

12.11

Girl 3

I trust this one better because on the one you draw yourself, you could be just looking at your friends and seeing what they do if you want to be the same as them. On this you don’t know what your friends are doing so you can just do your own one and think about what you’re doing.

So you’re not affected by anyone else

12.35

Boy 1

I think the first one was quite good as well because it gives a self opinion of you so that’s what you think of yourself and this is what it actually is.

You’ve got to remember that this one is still only organising what you’ve said about yourself, but it hasn’t just asked you how strong you are in this or that.

13.12

Girl 1

As an example from Jess’, in our class a few people ended up... as there were three dots, they had the best in everything. But on this one you can’t really work out what they’re asking you. For example, if you clicked ‘Yes that’s very much like me’ on all of them... but some of them would [It would come up with a very odd shape]. Yeah and it would... it’s more... they don’t read the question properly. So it might actually be ‘No, not at all like me’, whereas if they click ‘Yes’ on all of them they don’t know if they’ll get a really good one or one that’s quite small or anything.

14.06

Girl 2

Girl 3

How have you changed as a learner?

I really stretched my making links because we really had to make links to our mood boards and our theme that we’d been given. And we had to link our bottoms and our bags and our t-‐shirts to each other ‘cause otherwise it would look a bit odd.

I think I’ve really changed with all this fashion stuff [as a person or as a learner?]

As a person, because I think I might want to go on to university being a fashion thing when actually I just wanted to be a journalist.

15.05

Girl 1

I think I have and also for the last question I think I’ve learnt more about flow-‐coaching, where you don’t give them the answer, but you don’t not help them at all. You kind of give them a point to work on. So our teacher calls it constructive criticism. Or he says two stars and a wish, where you say two things that you thought were really good, but the wish is the thing you wish they would have done better. It was really helpful because you didn’t want to say something that would hurt their feelings, but you didn’t want to not be honest. It was quite helpful learning about how other people might react to what you say. I think that really helped me there

16.00

You were given a lot of decisions to make. You were in charge. What’s the difference between learning like that and learning in lessons as you’d always done before in school? Is there any difference? Big difference?


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Girl 4

Girl 1

Girl 4

Girl 2

Girl 1

Girl 4 16.53

Nods and ‘yes’

Because at school we usually don’t get the advantage to... take over.

...Have input

Yeah or have an input.

You don’t even have input?

Yeah we get lots of input

Yeah we do but it’s like the lessons, we don’t really get to plan them like we did with this.

Yeah and I think it helped me a bit because I usually count on the teachers to do stuff so like... I just started doing it for myself.

17.17

Girl 2

Well, it’s like ‘cause it makes you realise you need to be independent in your life and you can’t rely on everybody else to do something for you. For example, someone said to the teacher ‘Where are the scissors?’ and they were like ‘Go and find them for yourself’.

And did you mind?

No.

17.46

Girl 2

Girl 4,2, 3

Have you been back in normal lessons yet?

No not yet it’s been rehearsals all day today.

Do you think your normal lessons will always be different from now on?

Yeah

18.00

Boy 1

I think that it was really good how they put a fashion show on and then... managed to change our way of learning so much just by putting on this one show.

It was an amazing show and it wasn’t the teachers that made it so slick, it was you wasn’t it?

Yeah (nods)

Two more quick questions

18.52

Girl 3

Girl 4

Girl 1

Girl 2

Have you got any advice for anyone starting this project?

Don’t be embarrassed and just keep going and smile.

Don’t doubt yourself, like keep going no matter what happens and just enjoy yourself.

As you won’t have the teachers as much in this project you need to make sure you all stick together and you work as a team. We did that an our fashion show worked out quite well, whereas if we wouldn’t have worked together then everyone would have been doing things differently and it wouldn’t have been as good. Make sure you always work together.

Try and be more independent, even if you’re not doing the fashion show, and believe in yourself.

Don’t think about what you’re doing, just think about what learning you’ve got, to do it.

And why you’re doing it!


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Boy 1

Girl 1

20.15

Girl 1

Girl 3

Girl 4

Girl 2

Boy 1

What’s been the most important thing about this project for you?

Collaboration

Working in a team

Persevering

Probably working together as well

Again, working together.

All Thank you for coming


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4.6: Bushfield School Focus Group: Year 6

Year 6 2.20 Girl 1 (fourth from left)

Tell me about that project – do you remember it? I remember when we were blogging to other people. [What were you blogging about?]. Well we were doing blogs about our work – what we’d done – and other people could blog the same thing or comment on what you said.

2.55 Girl 1 3.45

What kind of things did you say on your blog? I was saying stuff about my work, like I’ve improved on my resilience, because we were doing something like a project, and it was to improve our weakest spots. [And you chose to work on resilience?] Yeah… Well, it was my resilience and my critical curiosity. [How did it go?] It went good. [Did it change?] Yeah… Not really my resilience, but definitely my critical curiosity. What did you do to change it? We were working on our weakest spots and we were doing Smart Targets, so that helped me improve on my critical curiosity and my resilience.

4.06 Girl 1

What did you do to make yourself more critically curious? Did you ask questions? Yeah, ask questions about our thing we were doing. [And something changed for you there – you weren’t doing that before and now you were?] Yeah.

4.50 Girl 2 (Far right) 5.25 6.05 6.30

Maddie… what object did you choose? I was choosing some quite interesting crystals and rocks, looking at how they formed. I chose to look at how they’re created underground and what they can be used for. Some people believe they can be used for medicines, or mainly used for jewellery. And I think choosing an object that has quite a wide expanse of questions that you can ask does help making your ELLI dimensions… sort of stretching them. [Is that what happened with you?] Well when I did my ELLI spider diagram, it showed on my first one that I did quite well. But when I did my second one, I think <teacher> said I was a bit more harsh on myself, so it shows that I was more critical of what I was… where I had improved. So you were measuring yourself against a higher goal. Which dimensions were you particularly working on?. Resilience and my learning relationships. Because I sometimes think that I don’t really like working with other people that much, but then when I did my ELLI and I looked at what I’d done every day I noticed that this wasn’t really true. [And did that change the second time you did the survey?] I can’t really remember, because I haven’t got my spider diagram with me, but I think it did sort of make it a bit bigger, I’m not sure. It is a lifelong thing so you’ve got plenty of time to go on working on it. Yeah it will probably definitely be useful for when we go up into our secondary schools

6.45 Girl 1

Has anyone else got anything to say about what you chose? I chose FIFA. We were looking up on the internet and I found out that FIFA was first made in 1995. And it’s going to be going on for a long time. [And did that excite you?] Yeah, because I thought it was made in like 2005, but it was made in 1995.

7.30 Girl 3 (Far Left) 8.50

I chose music. [A particular piece?] No, just music in general. [And what did you learn?] Well, I spoke to Evelyn Glennie. Because she’s deaf I had to speak to her people and then they signed it to her and then she responded. [What did she say?] Well I asked her questions about my music because I wanted to create my own piece of music from a different country. It didn’t actually work, I didn’t have enough time to. [What did you learn most?] I don’t know, I think I’ve written it down…

8.57 Girl 1 Girl 2 Girl 1

How different is that kind of working from your normal learning? Well, it’s a bit more like… it’s learning, but not quite learning. Like you’re doing stuff and you’re still learning, but it’s not… it’s school related, but we’re doing stuff on the internet… And it’s helping make you better at learning in our regular lessons. Yeah

9.28

How does that work Maddie? How did it make you better at learning in your other lessons? Well the ELLI dimensions, they showed you all of the different things that you should be


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Girl 2 10.05

trying to get better at during your lessons and that will help you learn a lot more, rather than just your everyday lessons. [And have you experienced that?] Yeah, quite a bit, because you think… you look at like, I’ve still got some of my old pieces of paper that we got from school and it explains all of the different dimensions. And I look at that and I think “In my lessons I’m going to try and use this more, I’m going to try and stretch more…” [Which one – example?] Well in Tudors, I’m not really a history fan so, try and use your resilience and use your learning relationships to work with others to help you keep going. And has that made a difference for you? Yeah, I think it… like I said, it would be good to remember when we go to Radcliffe to write it down or something so we remember everything.

10.30 Girl 4 (Third from left) Girl 1 Girl 4 Girl 4 Girl 4 Girl 1

So how useful would you say this profile was for you? Well it was quite useful, although I found out with a few of my dimensions that, after looking at it, I didn’t think that. [You didn’t agree with your profile?] No, I didn’t agree with what I’d done. Yeah. So in that case it’s a bit… not un-‐useful , but sort of… [A bit confusing?] Yeah, a little bit. Did you get to talk to anybody about that – why it might have different from what you expected? A little bit when we were printing these off, but not much. And was it different the second time round? I’d say it was the second time round that really made me think, “Oh, that’s not what I expect”. Yeah.

11.30 Girl 4 Girl 1

How did you find the process of doing all the questions? It was quite simple, how it’s just a click and then you’ve answered it. But it felt like a few of the questions were quite similar. [Yes, that’s deliberate] Because… I don’t remember, but I think… or it should have said “Answer these questions carefully and be honest, don’t lie”. Because maybe some people probably click everything on “Quite a lot” and the spider will be all of them full when it’s not supposed to be. [And it wouldn’t really be valid] Yeah.

12.30 All 12.50 Girl 2 Girl 1 Girl 2 Girl 4 13.05 Girl 5 13.45 14.40

Did any of you answer the questions how you thought people might want you to answer, or were you honest? Honest [looking round the group and everyone responds that the y were honest.] It sounds as if all of you would say you answered it honestly. How well did you understand the questions, were they ok to understand? Yeah Yeah, I would say 89%. Yeah a couple of them were a bit tricky, but after a while you could sort of figure it out. By the second time it was alright. And not too long or boring? When you don’t have much time it is quite irritating, that it’s long. [You mean you feel you’ve got to rush through it?] Yeah. Did what came out the other end mean something to you? Yeah because my critical curiosity wasn’t so great the first time and I improved it the second time. [And do you feel that’s true?] Yeah. What’s led to that change? I’m not really sure… I think it was my Smart Target, which was to ask at least 30 questions a day. [And did you?] Yeah. [And did you record them?] I tried my best, but sometimes I just forgot to count. I think I was quite close at least. What sort of questions were you asking? Who were you asking them of? Teachers, my mum, my dad and a few of my friends. And are you now asking questions more naturally? Yeah. And are you finding out more? Yeah, I guess, because Mr Weston said like… something that was flying… I don’t know what it was, but then he was like, “You’d probably believe that” -‐ but no.


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So he said something that wasn’t true to see if you’d pick up on it. 15.50 Girl 1 16.40 17.10

Has anybody else changed the second time they did their ELLI profile? My meaning making – the first time it was really high and the second time it got really low, because I was really working on my resilience. I wasn’t really getting on to every other one. I was working mainly on my resilience. So you missed out on some of the other ones. Yeah, because our target was to improve on our lowest and… well my highest was meaning making and changing and learning, but mostly I’m trying to just… cut down on my meaning making because I needed to get more resilient. And what did you do to become more resilient? Well, mostly just persevering by myself. And just… because some of the questions I was asking, they got really hard and I had to search on the internet a long, long, really long time and I feel like giving up, but I have to say no because that’s my resilience. If I’m going to give up that’s going to make my resilience get worse. So you noticed all those times you felt like giving up – you started to notice them in a new way, because of your ELLI profile? Yeah And you even said to yourself, “No, I need to carry on”. Yeah And has that made you stronger? Yeah it has. Has it flowed into other things? Did you only get stronger in that project or have you kept it? I’ve kept it. I’ve got stronger, and I’ve kept it as well.

17.51 Girl 1 Girl 2 Girl 2

So you think it’s possible, by working on these things to build your strength in them for life? Yeah It’s good to sort of work on them at an early age rather than later on, because then you can work on them all through your life. Yes, and now you know about them you can take them with you wherever you go. Yes

18.40 Girl 4 Girl 1 19.07 Girl 4

How have you changed as a learner in year 6. I’d say we’ve been getting more mature about our decisions. Other than thinking “Oh that’s a really cool idea, we’ll go with that”, we’re thinking “Is it going to work?”. You reflect on your decisions before you make them? Yeah, think twice about what you’re going to do. What’s helped you to be more mature like that? I think it’s partly from getting older and doing this project. And sort of finding out more, and our brains getting bigger as you might say. And so you’ve got to make more decisions and you’re sort of learning…[inaudible] …life.

19.36 Girl 4 Girl 1

Did this give you more experience of decision making? Yeah Can you give me an example of some of the decisions you had to make? I suppose you had to choose an object to start with. And most of us, we were thinking “I’ll pick that one because it’s going to be easy”, or “I’ll pick that one because it’s going to be hard”. But I wanted to pick the one that was going to be easy, because I wanted to get more information from it.

20.20 Girl 4 21.00

What advice would you give a younger learner who was going to start that project? I’d say “Don’t rush. Plan and be strategically aware. Don’t just think “Oh I’m going to make that, let’s do it now”. You’ve got to probably decide what you’re going to do before you start. So strategic awareness has been a real plus for you. Yeah, that was my area of development. So I had to be strategically aware.

21.18 Girl 3

Anyone else with advice? I’d say choose something that you’re interested in.


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Girl 1 Girl 3 Girl 2

Yeah So if you’re half way through and you’re really bored of it because you can’t change it, you have to stick with it. That could sort of restrict your resilience couldn’t it. You could try and find a way to make it more interesting couldn’t you. [That would be creativity too then wouldn’t it] Yeah. But it’s a better idea to start with something that you enjoy and that you know you’re going to like.

22.28 Girl 4

That’s what it was always designed to be about – asking “Have you got a passion?”. You get to choose, so why not choose something that’s going to give you some real interest? But then again, you don’t want to pick something you know everything about already, because then there’s no learning involved. So it needs to be something that you like, but you want to find out more about. That’s very good advice.

23.00 Girl 4 Girl 2 23.38 Girl 2 Girl 2 24.00 All Girl 1

Finally, what’s the most important thing about ELLI animals and Authentic Inquiry for you? I think the independence of doing your own project. That’s basically what I was going to say. Just being able to think for yourself and not being told what to do by the teachers. And you think, “I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do what we usually do in class, I’m going to think of a way to make it more interesting”. Why is that important to you? Just because it’s like life skills... Because you’re not going to have your teachers, you will have parents and that, but you won’t… when you’re at work or something you’re not going to have teachers to tell you “This is what you should do, this is what you’re going to do”. You have to think for yourself. And this has helped give you an experience of that? Yeah That’s exactly what it’s for so thank you for saying that. How many of you agree? [All nod and raise hand] I do yeah.


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APPENDIX 5: QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYST’S REPORT

INTRODUCTION Bushfield is a community junior school based in Milton Keynes for children aged 7-‐11 years.

‘This is a larger-‐than-‐average sized school. The large majority of pupils are of White British heritage. A third of pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds, the largest group being Pakistani. Just over a quarter of pupils speak English as an additional language. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is above average. The school has National Healthy School status, the Activemark award and Investors in People’. (OFSTED Report 2010)

The sample included children from the following cohorts:

• 2011/2012 Year 6 (2012Y6) • 2012/2013 Year 6 (2013Y6) • 2012/2013 Year 5 (2013Y5)

All children in the cohorts above were involved in specific interventions including Authentic Enquiry (AI) and the self-‐report Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) survey was taken before (pre-‐test) and after (post test) the main intervention period.

Bushfield school wanted to explore differences in mean scores for the seven learning power dimensions between (i) these cohorts at outset, (ii) their pre-‐test and post-‐test results and (iii) different sub groups defined by:

• Gender, • Literacy Ability, and • Socioeconomic status (as assessed by eligibility of free school means -‐ FSM)

More specifically, the school wanted to test the following hypotheses generated based on teacher’s professional judgements and observations:

• Whether children with stronger reading or writing abilities benefit more from the interventions?

• Whether children who had been at Bushfield for longer were more likely to respond better to the interventions than more recent students

• Whether the learning power of Asian girls, who seem to perform less well in Maths and demonstrate lower confidence in the classroom, is reflected in their scores on the seven dimensions and the extent that this is related to maths ability.

SUMMARY OF DATA PREPARATION There were 441 effective observations from 243 users in the data obtained from the Fusion platform. Of these 441 observations 435 are complete profiles and six are incomplete. A further 103 users in the raw data never attempted the ELLI survey and their entries were, therefore, disposed of. Forty-‐nine profiles were found to have validity doubts where:

• Thirty-‐nine profiles were cast less than three days between pre and post tests (most of them were done on the same day)


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• one profile cast on 7 May 2013 by a year 6 student which though was cast 13 days after her previous profile (24 May) but fell into the period that her peer students were still doing their pre-‐test profiles. For this reason, it doesn’t seem right to consider this profile to be a valid post-‐test profile assuming that students in the same cohort received the intervention together.

• three profiles belong to three users who each cast three profiles, and these three are the second ones they cast.

• four profiles were cast by a test account • two profiles cannot be associated with any cohort due to lack of relevant information

Disposing of these cases left 386 cases of complete profiles from 230 students in the working data file. The process that identified these cases is described in Error! Reference source not found. and is followed by a list of those profiles disposed of.


2012y6 12 46 11 69

2013y6 14 59 4 77

2013y5 28 51 5 84

Total 54 156 20 230

Table 1 below shows the number of students in each cohort who have valid data in this data file, and the students are further categorised according to whether the student completed only pre-‐test, only post-‐test or both tests.

Table 19 Numbers of students completing pre-‐test, post-‐test or both tests by cohort


2012y6 12 46 11 69

2013y6 14 59 4 77

2013y5 28 51 5 84

Total 54 156 20 230

COMPARISON BETWEEN COHORTS The first part of the analysis involves exploring the data for a collective image across all three student cohorts in terms of their learning power profiles at outset, and then further differentiates the learning power characteristics between the three cohorts.

• OVERVIEW AT THE OUTSET

The following Table 2 summarises the overall mean and standard deviations of the seven learning power dimensions for the whole set (across all three cohorts) and for each cohorts separately. The histograms that follow visually present the distribution of pre-‐test scores of each learning power dimension. All scores are fairly normally distributed.

The pattern of their learning power profiles before the interventions appears to be similar between these three cohorts. Generally the cohorts reported themselves as fairly strong learning power


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across the seven dimensions with particular strengths in Changing and Learning and Meaning Making, and a relative weakness in Resilience.

Table 20 Mean scores and standard deviation (SD) of the seven dimensions by cohort before the interventions

2012y6 (N=58)

2013y6 (N=73)

2013y5 (N=79)

Whole set (N=210)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

Changing and Learning 1 76.64 (20.21) 79.17 (17.30) 78.27 (17.90) 78.09 (18.41)


Meaning Making 1 73.89 (19.55) 74.82 (18.29) 73.47 (18.41) 74.07 (18.68)

Creativity 1 65.65 (19.53) 69.24 (18.14) 65.36 (18.79) 66.80 (18.83)



Resilience 1 52.52 (19.44) 51.23 (17.91) 54.31 (18.01) 52.69 (18.42)


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• Overview After the Interventions

The pattern of these cohorts’ learning power profiles did not change dramatically after the interventions and the patterns of the three cohorts remained similar to each other. Particular strengths are found in the dimensions of Changing and Learning and Meaning Making while relative weakness is found in Resilience. Mean scores and standard deviation of the seven learning power dimensions after the interventions are reported in Table 21 below for each cohort and for the whole set. The histograms that follow visually present the distribution of these post-‐test scores.


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Table 21 Mean scores and standard deviation of the seven dimensions by cohort after the interventions

2012y6 (N=57)

2013y6 (N=63)

2013y5 (N=56)

Whole (N=176)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Changing and Learning 2 79.09 (21.08) 79.37 (18.75) 80.80 (16.81) 79.73 (18.87)


Meaning Making 2 77.03 (19.84) 73.62 (18.66) 74.49 (17.73) 75.00 (18.71)

Creativity 2 68.65 (19.77) 69.21 (19.91) 68.81 (18.59) 68.90 (19.34)



Resilience 2 52.87 (21.56) 50.54 (18.83) 53.75 (17.62) 52.32 (19.33)


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• Change of Learning Power Over Time (the whole set)

Across the cohorts, the mean scores and standard deviation of the seven dimensions in pre and post profile are compared below in Table 3. The mean scores have increased in five of the seven learning power dimensions. The two exceptions are resilience which is almost the same (pre and post) and learning relationships, where the mean score has dropped slightly.


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Table 22 Change of the whole set on learning power dimension between pre-‐test and post-‐test


Time Pre=1/Post=2

Whole set (pre-‐test N=210; post-‐test N=176)

Mean (SD) Increase(↑) or decrease(↓)

Changing and Learning 1 76.63 (18.00) ↑

2 79.73 (18.87) Critical Curiosity 1 67.13 (17.32)

↑ 2 69.82 (18.25)


2 75.00 (18.71) Creativity 1 65.19 (18.33)

↑ 2 68.90 (19.34) Learning Relationships 1 66.30 (15.23)

↓ 2 65.03 (14.99) Strategic Awareness 1 64.85 (16.28)

↑ 2 68.01 (17.79)

Resilience 1 52.95 (17.74) ↓ 2 52.32 (19.33)

It is useful to note that some students only completed a pre-‐profile and some only a post-‐profile hence the pre and post scores compared here are from two slightly different groups of students (see


2012y6 12 46 11 69

2013y6 14 59 4 77

2013y5 28 51 5 84

Total 54 156 20 230

Table 1). Also, some differences between pre and post mean scores are larger and some are relatively small. Therefore, a series of paired sample t-‐test were conducted on the matched sample (those students who had completed both pre and post tests – N=156) to assess the statistical significance of these differences. These analyses included only students who had completed both pre and post tests. The result is reported in Table 4 below.

Table 23 Result of paired t-‐test for the pre and post change of learning power across all three cohorts (N=156)




Changing and Learning 1 76.92 (17.58) 3.79 (.82 -‐ 6.77) 2.517 155 .013

Changing and Learning 2 80.72 (17.91)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.07 (17.17) 3.73 (.83 -‐ 6.63) 2.539 155 .012

Critical Curiosity 2 70.80 (17.99)

Meaning Making 1 72.89 (19.22) 2.93 (-‐.26 -‐ 6.12) 1.814 155 .072

Meaning Making 2 75.82 (18.18)

Creativity 1 65.66 (18.55) 3.68 (.31 -‐ 7.04) 2.157 155 .033

Creativity 2 69.34 (19.10)

Learning Relationships 1 66.17 (15.87) -‐.52 (-‐2.82 -‐ 1.78) -‐.444 155 .658

Learning Relationships 2 65.65 (15.09)


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Strategic Awareness 1 65.27 (15.73) 3.50 (.85 -‐ 6.15) 2.610 155 .010

Strategic Awareness 2 68.77 (17.43)

Resilience 1 52.40 (17.54) -‐.41 (-‐2.95 -‐ 2.12) -‐.324 155 .747

Resilience 2 51.99 (19.25)

It appears that excluding those students completing only pre or post profile does not greatly change the distribution. According to the t-‐test results, positive changes in the dimensions of changing and learning, critical curiosity, creativity and strategic awareness are considered to be statistically significant at the level of p=0.05; also, positive change in meaning making is approaching statistical significance. Regarding the two dimensions in which the mean scores decrease over the intervention periods, the changes are considered non-‐significant.

• Change of Learning Power Over Time (cohorts compared)

Table 5 below summarises the distribution of scores for each of the cohorts across the seven learning power dimensions. These show differences in pupils’ pre and post learning power profile across the seven dimensions and further reveals some variation of how each cohort changed during the intervention period. It appears that 2012 yr6 cohort made the greatest improvements, reporting higher scores on six of the seven learning power dimensions in their post-‐test profiles. The only dimension that dropped was learning relationships but the difference is negligible. Changes made by the 2013 yr5 cohort are generally in a similar pattern to the characteristics of the whole set reported earlier in page 38. They reported higher scores on five learning power dimensions and lower scores on the other two dimensions. The 2013 yr6 cohort seems to change very little during the intervention period in terms of the learning power they reported about themselves. The changes, either increase or decrease, they made are generally considered to be minor. The only two more noticeable changes are the decrease in meaning making and resilience. Despite these between cohort differences observed above, we also see that the 2012 yr6 cohort seemed to have generally lower mean scores at outset than the other two cohorts in most of the seven dimensions. It would be useful to take this into account when interpreting the result of the above comparison.


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Table 24 Pre and post-‐test means/SDs compared on each of the seven dimensions by cohorts


(pre=1/post=2)








1 73.85 (19.40) ↑

79.00 (16.08) ↑

76.48 (18.53) ↑ 2 79.09 (21.08) 79.37 (18.75) 80.80 (16.81)

Critical Curiosity

1 65.33 (17.48) ↑

67.99 (16.86) ↑

67.65 (17.75) ↑ 2 69.46 (18.40) 68.31 (18.78) 71.89 (17.61)

Meaning Making

1 70.44 (18.83) ↑*

75.86 (18.03) ↓

72.75 (18.95) ↑ 2 77.03 (19.84) 73.62 (18.66) 74.49 (17.73)

Creativity 1 63.16 (19.35) ↑*

69.27 (16.61) ↓

62.91 (18.66) ↑ 2 68.65 (19.77) 69.21 (19.91) 68.81 (18.59)


1 64.94 (17.16) ↓

66.89 (14.12) ↓

66.74 (14.83) ↓ 2 63.65 (18.78) 66.14 (12.73) 65.18 (13.05)

Strategic Awareness

1 60.21 (17.97) ↑*

68.35 (14.42) ↓

65.01 (15.98) ↑ 2 67.97 (19.79) 68.29 (18.21) 67.72 (15.29)

Resilience 1 51.99 (17.63) ↑

51.81 (17.20) ↓

54.70 (18.38) ↓ 2 52.87 (21.56) 50.54 (18.83) 53.75 (17.62)

*changes that are considered to be statistically significant based on the paired sample t-‐test reported below which only includes students who completed both pre and post test. These differences between pre and post profiles are different in magnitude and were therefore assessed by a series of paired sample t-‐test involving only students who completed both pre and post profiles. The results are summarised in Table 6 below.

Table 25 Paired Sample T-‐Test to assess the changes between pre and post profiles for each cohort


(pre=1/post=2) Mean (SD) Mean difference

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference t df

Sig. (2-‐tailed)

2012

y6 (n

=46)

Changing and Learning 1 75.36 (19.00) 4.89 (-‐.64 ~ 10.43) 1.780 45 .082 2 80.25 (19.83)


Meaning Making 1 70.50 (20.14) 7.25 (1.65 ~ 12.85) 2.607 45 .012 2 77.74 (20.77)

Creativity 1 62.46 (20.48) 6.59 (.18 ~ 13.01) 2.071 45 .044 2 69.06 (20.44)



Resilience 1 51.71 (18.75) -‐.81 (-‐5.55 ~ 3.93) -‐.344 45 .733 2 50.90 (21.27)

2013

y6 (n

=59)



Meaning Making 1 74.58 (19.02) .81 (-‐5.40 ~ 7.02) .260 58 .796 2 75.38 (16.99)

Creativity 1 69.04 (17.42) 1.47 (-‐4.43 ~ 7.37) .499 58 .620 2 70.51 (19.06)


Strategic Awareness 1 68.75 (14.69) .65 (-‐4.54 ~ 5.85) .251 58 .803


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2 69.40 (17.69) Resilience 1 52.48 (17.03) -‐2.06 (-‐6.70 ~ 2.57) -‐.890 58 .377

2 50.42 (19.20)

2013

y5 (n

=51)



Meaning Making 1 73.11 (18.76) 1.49 (-‐3.03 ~ 6.02) .663 50 .510 2 74.60 (17.21)

Creativity 1 64.64 (17.69) 3.59 (-‐1.86 ~ 9.05) 1.322 50 .192 2 68.24 (18.20)



Resilience 1 52.94 (17.33) 1.85 (-‐2.02 ~ 5.71) .958 50 .343 2 54.79 (17.37)

The above results show that in the first cohort, 2012Y6, there were statistically significant differences between pre and post test mean scores in meaning making, creativity and strategic awareness. Critical curiosity almost reaches significance. No other dimensions showed significant change. Neither the second cohort 2013Y6, nor the 2013Y5 cohort yielded significant difference in any of the dimensions. In interpreting the above comparison it is useful to note that the 2013Y5 cohort completed their post profile just 4-‐6 weeks after the first whereas the 2012Y6 and 2013Y6 completed them after 8 weeks.

• Between cohorts difference of pre-‐test profiles

Above comparisons of patterns of learning power change between different cohorts suggest the possibility that the difference of patterns may be associated with different initial conditions of each cohort in terms of their learning power. In order to further inspect this issue an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on pre-‐test scores between the three cohorts is conducted. The result, summarised in Table 8 below, shows many of the differences were not statistically significant, in other words, the variance in mean scores between any two cohorts is considered relatively small compared with the variance within each cohort. The only dimension in which a significant difference between the cohorts was found was strategic awareness, where the 2013 yr6 cohort had a significantly higher start than the 2012 yr6 cohort. The error bar chart in Figure below visually represents this comparison.

Table 26 ANOVA results for pre-‐test scores across the 3 cohorts Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

cl.1: changing and learning Between Groups 814.733 2 407.366 1.266 .284








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lr.1: learning relationships Between Groups 92.100 2 46.050 .196 .822


sa.1: strategic awareness Between Groups 2145.193 2 1072.597 4.168 .017




Figure 1 between cohort differences on mean scores compared with respective variance within each cohort

• Between cohorts difference of pre-‐post changes

Continuing the above investigation, a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to assess the difference between the 3 cohorts in the degree of change from pre to post test scores.The result indicates that none of these changes is considered to be statistically significant (F (2, 153) = 0.358, p= 0.70).

IN SUMMARY -‐ There are hardly any statistically significant differences between the three cohorts in terms of their learning power self-‐reports, either at the outset or post intervention, though it is interesting to note that the mean scores of the 2012 Y6 cohort at the outset were exceeded in almost all of the seven dimensions (excepting only creativity) by both of the cohorts the following year and that the difference between the two Y6 cohorts (2012 and 2013) in strategic awareness was statistically significant. This suggests that the learning experienced during 2012 by the two later cohorts may have benefited them, resulting in higher pre-‐test scores. However, more significant differences are found between pre and post test mean scores across all three of the cohorts in four learning power dimensions, suggesting that significant gains in learning power may have been influenced directly by the intervention strategies. Despite the smaller sample size, positive change


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also reached statistical significance within the 2012 Y6 cohort, in three learning power dimensions, whilst significance was not achieved within either of the 2013 cohorts. Differences between cohorts in the degree of change after interventions were not significant. In statistical terms, this means that, although learning power gains in one cohort are more significant than gains in the other cohorts, the differences between how each cohort may have benefited from the interventions are not statistically significant. In short, whilst positive change was reported across the board, no cohort changed more or less significantly in their learning power than the others during the respective intervention periods.

COMPARISONS BETWEEN ABILITIES In addition to cohort, the school also wanted to explore how different groupings respond to interventions. For example:

• Children with different strengths in reading, writing or maths • Whether higher attainers appear to benefit more from the interventions?

Students’ abilities were assessed and made available in the dataset in various forms, including aspects of reading and writing that were assessed by teachers or by National Tests at different times. The first step for this analysis was to categorise students according to these grades. Firstly, all results available were averaged for each aspect, i.e., reading or writing or maths, and for each cohort. The averaged grades are then categorised into three levels: high (graded 5c to 6a), medium (graded 4c to 4a) and low (graded 1c to 3a). Table 9 below summarises the frequency of pupils in different ability levels grouped as high, medium and low for reading, writing and maths by cohorts.

Table 27 Ability groups for reading, writing and maths by cohort

2012y6 2013y6 2013y5 Total

reading ability low 3 7 27 37

middle 26 31 41 98

high 38 36 15 89

writing ability low 11 7 43 61

middle 40 46 36 122

high 20 24 3 47

maths ability low 12 8 42 62

middle 37 34 34 105

high 22 33 7 62

Total 209 226 248

The following histograms summarise the distribution of grade across the cohorts for reading, writing and maths based on the combined grades.

Figure 2 Histograms showing grade distributions in maths


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Figure 3 Histograms showing grade distributions in reading


139

Figure 4 Histograms showing grade distributions in writing

• Reading Ability and Learning Power

The relationship between learning power and reading ability for the sample is summarised in Error! Reference source not found. below, showing mean scores in each of the seven dimensions for the different ability groups.


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Table 28 Changes between pre and post profile compared by reading ability


(pre=1/post=2)

Low reading ability (pre n=34 / post n=22)




1 68.87 (21.45) ↑

77.17 (16.80) ↑*

80.15 (16.27) ↑

2 71.97 (20.18) 80.70 (17.06) 82.18 (19.45)

Critical Curiosity

1 65.80 (18.69) ↓

69.20 (17.58) ↑*

66.67 (15.91) ↑*

2 64.81 (22.07) 71.78 (17.89) 69.34 (17.31)

Meaning Making

1 69.75 (19.01) —

75.88 (19.52) —

73.68 (15.74) ↑* 2 69.70 (18.74) 75.94 (17.37) 76.79 (18.83)

Creativity 1 65.49 (16.16) ↓

66.05 (20.54) ↑

65.04 (16.12) ↑*

2 63.64 (22.23) 69.34 (18.99) 70.74 (18.59)


1 66.67 (14.94) ↓

68.96 (12.83) ↓

64.66 (16.91) ↑

2 60.23 (15.53) 66.26 (13.21) 65.01 (16.09)

Strategic Awareness

1 61.61 (19.72) ↓

66.42 (16.22) ↑*

65.52 (14.60) ↑

2 60.84 (20.38) 70.48 (16.71) 68.63 (17.37)

Resilience 1 43.83 (18.46) ↓

52.28 (17.61) ↓

58.44 (16.60) ↓

2 39.04 (15.84) 51.78 (20.11) 57.41 (18.26)

*changes that are considered to be statistically significant based on the paired sample t-‐test reported below which only includes students who completed both pre and post test.

The mean scores in the table suggest that reading ability does appear to have an influence on a pupil’s learning power and its development. Students with different strengths of reading ability not only differed in how they reported their learning power at outset but also differed in both the direction and degree of learning power changes during the intervention periods.

Looking at the outset, students with low reading ability generally reported lowest learning power amongst the three ability groups. However, high reading ability does not predict high self-‐reported learning power at outset?. The high reading ability group only reported higher scores than the medium group in two dimensions, changing and learning and resilience, and actually reported lower scores than the medium group in other five dimensions.

Regarding learning power changes between pre and post test, having a lower mean score at outset did not appear to lead to a greater increase through the interventions. In contrast, the low reading ability group’s learning power only increased in changing and learning, remained similar in meaning making, and dropped in other five dimensions. Students with medium reading ability appeared to report more gains in terms of learning power. Their learning power increased in changing and learning, critical curiosity, creativity and strategic awareness and only dropped in two dimensions: learning relationships and resilience, which was in line with the general pattern revealed across all the cohorts. Students with high reading ability demonstrated positive changes in six of the seven learning power dimensions and only dropped in resilience. This represents considerable difference in how much students with different levels of reading ability changed in their learning power during the intervention periods. It may be that lower ability readers need more tailored interventions, or longer periods of time for changes to be apparent.


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These differences between pre and post profiles were assessed using paired sample t-‐tests involving only students who completed both profiles. The results are reported in Table 11 below. Neither the increases nor decreases reported by students with low reading ability are considered significant (though the decrease in learning relationships is approaching significance). Other changes were found to be statistically significant, including the increase in changing and learning, critical curiosity and strategic awareness reported by students with medium reading ability; and the increase in critical curiosity, meaning making and creativity reported by students with high reading ability.

Table 29 Paired sample t-‐test to assess the changes between pre and post test for students with different reading ability.





Low (n

=19)


Critical Curiosity 1 69.01 (16.76) -‐4.68 (-‐15.02 ~ 5.66) -‐.951 18 .354 2 64.33 (22.97)

Meaning Making 1 71.18 (18.41) -‐4.01 (-‐14.59 ~ 6.57) -‐.796 18 .436 2 67.17 (17.09)

Creativity 1 68.25 (16.00) -‐7.54 (-‐16.37 ~ 1.29) -‐1.795 18 .089 2 60.70 (21.27)

Learning Relationships 1 66.96 (12.66) -‐5.70 (-‐11.58 ~ .18) -‐2.038 18 .057 2 61.26 (16.29)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.18 (19.42) -‐4.18 (-‐15.04 ~ 6.67) -‐.810 18 .429 2 61.00 (21.03)

Resilience 1 40.56 (14.35) -‐.41 (-‐6.42 ~ 5.59) -‐.144 18 .887 2 40.14 (16.09)

Med

ium (n

=70)

Changing and Learning 1 76.19 (17.33) 6.07 (2.04 ~ 10.10) 3.005 69 .004 2 82.26 (15.60)


Meaning Making 1 74.63 (20.59) 2.79 (-‐2.76 ~ 8.34) 1.003 69 .319 2 77.41 (15.88)

Creativity 1 66.52 (20.46) 4.05 (-‐2.02 ~ 10.12) 1.331 69 .188 2 70.57 (17.96)



Resilience 1 51.57 (17.29) -‐.28 (-‐4.84 ~ 4.28) -‐.123 69 .903 2 51.29 (20.34)

High (n=6

1)



Meaning Making 1 73.61 (16.28) 4.53 (.67 ~ 8.39) 2.347 60 .022 2 78.14 (18.84)

Creativity 1 65.52 (16.39) 5.96 (1.83 ~ 10.09) 2.885 60 .005 2 71.48 (19.00)



Resilience 1 57.41 (17.75) -‐.42 (-‐3.94 ~ 3.11) -‐.237 60 .813 2 56.99 (18.09)


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• Writing Ability

Exploring the possible impact that the writing ability of pupils may have on learning power before and after the intervention was considered important. The distribution of scores of the seven learning power dimensions for students with different writing ability are summarised below in Table 12. From the table we can see that higher writing ability is generally associated with high learning power. But the relationship between writing ability and reported change in learning power between pre and post test is not so clear: in other words, even students with different abilities in writing demonstrate quite similar patterns of change in learning power, and these patterns are in line with the general pattern revealed across the whole sample.

An ANOVA was conducted to assess the differences between these three ability groups on their pre-‐test scores. The results indicate that the differences between these ability groups are not statistically significant in six of the seven dimensions. The exception is in resilience, in which the low writing ability group’s mean score was 47.48 and the high writing ability’s mean score was 59.19) [F, (2,206) = 6.790, p=0.001]. Post hoc analyses using a Bonferroni test (M=12.84, p=0.001) indicated a significant difference between the high and low ability groups in this dimension, pre and post intervention, and could be an area worthy of greater exploration for teachers.

Table 30 Distribution of scores in pre and post profile compared between students with different writing ability


Low writing ability (pre n=56 / post n=41)




1 73.51 (20.85) ↓

76.52 (16.90) ↑*

80.62 (16.34) ↑

2 73.17 (20.11) 80.50 (18.43) 84.37 (17.32)

Critical Curiosity 1 65.94 (18.69) ↑

67.51 (16.85) ↑*

68.22 (16.84) ↑

2 68.11 (18.42) 70.53 (18.55) 69.26 (17.40)


74.11 (17.54) ↑

76.08 (16.93) ↑

2 71.08 (21.23) 75.23 (17.98) 78.10 (17.51)

Creativity 1 63.69 (18.85) ↑

65.64 (18.84) ↑

66.43 (16.50) ↑ 2 65.77 (20.59) 69.43 (19.34) 71.00 (18.32)


1 64.63 (15.93) ↓

66.54 (13.69) ↓

68.22 (17.92) ↓

2 61.72 (14.91) 66.22 (14.17) 65.21 (16.76)

Strategic Awareness 1 62.00 (17.99) ↑

65.24 (15.72) ↑*

67.86 (15.14) ↑

2 63.10 (16.75) 69.83 (18.52) 68.65 (16.71)

Resilience 1 47.48 (16.30) ↓

53.28 (17.71) ↓

59.19 (17.98) ↑

2 45.24 (17.23) 52.07 (19.86) 60.44 (17.55)

*changes that are considered to be statistically significant based on the paired sample t-‐test reported in table 13 below which only includes students who completed both pre and post test. Changes between pre and post profile were assessed using a paired sample t-‐test for each ability group. These tests only include students who completed both profiles. The result is reported in Table 31 below. These further selected subgroups demonstrate slightly different patterns of learning power changes from the group considered above. This reflects the fact that some changes are minor and likely to be due to normal fluctuation rather than significant causes. There are, however, some significant increases reported by the group with medium writing ability in changing and learning, critical curiosity and strategic awareness.


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Table 31 Paired sample t-‐test assessing changes between pre and post profile for students with different writing ability





Low W

riting Ab

ility (n

=36)


1 73.61 (20.17) 1.85 (-‐5.03 ~ 8.73) .547 35 .588 2 75.46 (18.25)

Critical Curiosity 1 68.00 (18.36) .51 (-‐5.05 ~ 6.08) .188 35 .852 2 68.52 (18.98)

Meaning Making 1 71.43 (23.05) -‐.53 (-‐6.43 ~ 5.37) -‐.182 35 .857 2 70.90 (20.73)

Creativity 1 64.54 (21.22) .46 (-‐7.37 ~ 8.30) .120 35 .905 2 65.00 (20.60)


1 64.51 (16.71) -‐1.70 (-‐7.86 ~ 4.47) -‐.559 35 .580 2 62.81 (15.49)

Strategic Awareness 1 62.46 (16.68) 1.50 (-‐3.21 ~ 6.20) .646 35 .523 2 63.96 (17.04)

Resilience 1 44.34 (14.88) 1.91 (-‐3.39 ~ 7.20) .731 35 .470 2 46.24 (17.53)

Med

ium W

riting Ab

ility (n

=83)


1 75.80 (17.20) 5.72 (1.26 ~ 10.19) 2.549 82 .013 2 81.53 (17.56)

Critical Curiosity 1 66.71 (16.67) 5.49 (1.05 ~ 9.92) 2.462 82 .016 2 72.20 (17.52)

Meaning Making 1 72.98 (18.22) 3.50 (-‐1.50 ~ 8.50) 1.392 82 .168 2 76.48 (16.82)

Creativity 1 65.86 (18.22) 4.70 (-‐.05 ~ 9.45) 1.967 82 .053 2 70.56 (18.54)


1 66.63 (14.29) .47 (-‐2.60 ~ 3.54) .304 82 .762 2 67.10 (13.80)


Resilience 1 52.75 (17.45) -‐1.28 (-‐5.14 ~ 2.59) -‐.657 82 .513 2 51.48 (20.00)

High Writing Ab

ility (n

=36)


1 82.41 (14.74) 1.39 (-‐2.85 ~ 5.62) .666 35 .510 2 83.80 (17.92)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.59 (17.36) 1.54 (-‐2.77 ~ 5.86) .726 35 .473 2 69.14 (17.95)

Meaning Making 1 75.00 (17.16) 3.84 (-‐.94 ~ 8.61) 1.630 35 .112 2 78.84 (18.16)

Creativity 1 66.85 (16.81) 4.17 (-‐2.08 ~ 10.42) 1.353 35 .185 2 71.02 (18.97)


1 67.21 (18.60) -‐2.47 (-‐5.96 ~ 1.02) -‐1.438 35 .159 2 64.74 (17.36)

Strategic Awareness 1 69.09 (15.48) -‐.71 (-‐4.97 ~ 3.54) -‐.340 35 .736 2 68.38 (17.29)

Resilience 1 59.59 (17.53) -‐.38 (-‐4.44 ~ 3.67) -‐.191 35 .850 2 59.20 (17.47)

These three ability groups were further assessed on the differences between their pre and post test scores using ANOVA. The same significant difference (as in the pre-‐test scores) was found in the post test scores for resilience [F, (2,173) = 6.762, p=0.001] where high ability groups had significantly higher resilience. Analysis on post test scores also showed there was a significant difference in changing and learning between high and low ability writing ability groups [F, (2,173) =4.029, p=0.019]. Comparing just the post-‐test scores, high ability pupils had more resilience than low writing ability pupils. It is worth noting that the mean score for low ability writers increased in post-‐test whereas it decreased slightly for the high ability readers. But such difference is considered not to be statistically significant [F, (1,146) = 0.85 p=0.771]. The mean scores suggest that even though there


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are different starting points for high and low ability writers, the interventions themselves seem to have a similar (though not statistically significant different) impact.

IN SUMMARY -‐ Reading and writing ability appear to have an effect on the mean scores for both pre and post tests in many of the dimensions. For writing ability the differences for resilience and changing & learning reached statistical significance. Other differences reflect a complex relationship between these two abilities and different learning power dimensions and warrant further exploration. It was not possible in the timescale to conduct the same analysis in respect of maths abilities, other than for the sub-‐sample of Asian girls, repoted below.

COMPARISON BETWEEN ETHNICITIES AND GENDERS A special area of interest was that of Asian girls as it had been reported anecdotally that they lack confidence in the classroom and traditionally perform poorly in maths. Table 13 below compares the means and standard deviation (SD) between the genders and between Asian students and other ethnicities.

Table 32 Distribution of learning power dimension scores compared between genders and between ethnicities


(pre=1/post=2)

Gender Ethnicity Asian Girls (pre n=23/ post n =14)

Girl (pre n=114/ post n =90)

Boy (pre n=96/ post n =86)

Non Asian (pre n=153/ post n =131)

Asian (pre n=55/ post n =43)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)


1 77.63 (17.33) 75.43 (18.79) 75.82 (18.21) 78.33 (17.47) 83.33 (15.08)

2 82.22 (15.36) 77.13 (21.74) 79.39 (18.73) 81.01 (19.10) 81.55 (20.46)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.25 (16.09) 66.98 (18.77) 65.00 (16.22) 72.93 (18.99) 72.95 (17.06)

2 68.48 (16.28) 71.23 (20.10) 69.27 (17.23) 71.58 (20.90) 72.22 (15.83)

Meaning Making 1 73.77 (16.32) 72.52 (21.14) 72.24 (18.22) 75.93 (19.47) 77.85 (15.96)

2 74.02 (17.25) 76.02 (20.18) 73.86 (18.43) 78.52 (18.94) 81.29 (15.90)

Creativity 1 66.14 (17.03) 64.06 (19.80) 63.03 (17.59) 70.67 (19.33) 71.01 (17.01)

2 69.48 (18.73) 68.29 (20.06) 68.93 (18.06) 68.37 (23.01) 69.52 (22.22)


1 67.62 (15.08) 64.73 (15.33) 65.09 (15.98) 69.60 (12.76) 71.62 (12.19)

2 65.96 (15.36) 64.05 (14.63) 65.03 (15.71) 64.73 (13.09) 63.89 (12.28)

Strategic Awareness

1 66.62 (16.18) 62.74 (16.24) 62.81 (15.54) 70.12 (17.30) 72.35 (15.54)

2 70.09 (15.28) 65.83 (19.94) 67.18 (17.43) 70.24 (18.68) 74.54 (16.99)

Resilience 1 53.59 (17.96) 52.19 (17.52) 52.08 (18.12) 55.08 (16.75) 57.97 (16.87)

2 52.66 (18.02) 51.96 (20.72) 52.30 (19.80) 51.85 (18.28) 56.44 (18.02)

The above table shows that the girls generally had higher learning power across all dimensions than boys at outset, but the boys reported themselves as more critically curious and stronger at meaning making than the girls after the interventions.

Regarding students of different ethnicity, Asian students were generally higher in all learning power dimensions at outset, but reported themselves to have become less critically curious, less creative and less resilient than other students after the interventions. These differences need to be further assessed to know whether they reach statistical significance, which the current analysis was not able to accomplish in the given timescale. These comparisons are, however, very useful in interpreting the


145

learning power characteristics of Asian girls. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the mean scores for Asian girls are actually the highest compared to the other subgroupings just discussed. This is worth exploring further to form a synthetical understanding of this and how it might relate to teachers’ observations of their learning behaviour in the classroom.

These differences of learning power at outset between Asian girls and the others in the whole sample were assessed using a series of one-‐way ANOVA. The result suggests that the difference in strategic awareness is statistically significant and the differences in changing and learning and learning relationships are also approaching statistical significance (see Table 14).

Table 33 ANOVA results for assessing difference between Asian girls and other students on their PRE test profile


Changing and Learning 1 Between Groups 1161.657 1 1161.657 3.631 .058

Within Groups 66546.346 208 319.934

Total 67708.003 209

Critical Curiosity 1 Between Groups 875.379 1 875.379 2.944 .088

Within Groups 61851.382 208 297.362

Total 62726.761 209


Within Groups 72072.667 208 346.503

Total 72631.035 209

Creativity 1 Between Groups 876.094 1 876.094 2.627 .107

Within Groups 69366.288 208 333.492

Total 70242.382 209

Learning Relationships 1 Between Groups 731.586 1 731.586 3.188 .076

Within Groups 47727.264 208 229.458

Total 48458.850 209


Within Groups 53964.561 208 259.445

Total 55419.339 209

Resilience 1 Between Groups 651.028 1 651.028 2.080 .151

Within Groups 65096.741 208 312.965

Total 65747.769 209

It was not possible to assess differences between degrees of reported change in learning power between Asian girls and the rest of sample, because only 10 Asian girls completed both pre and post test profiles:with such a small sample, the result is very likely to be distorted by a few extreme cases. However, the differences in post test profiles between Asian girls and the rest of students were assessed using One-‐way ANOVA. The result suggests that after the interventions the differences between Asian girls and other students were no longer statistically significant (see Table 34 below). However, these results should be interpreted with caution for the reason that both analyses involved a relatively small sample of Asian girls, 23 in pre-‐test related analysis and 14 in post-‐test related analysis.


146

Table 34 ANOVA results for assessing difference between Asian girls and other students on their POST test profile


Changing and Learning 2 Between Groups 49.982 1 49.982 .140 .709

Within Groups 62254.312 174 357.783

Total 62304.293 175

Critical Curiosity 2 Between Groups 87.535 1 87.535 .262 .610

Within Groups 58186.252 174 334.404

Total 58273.787 175


Within Groups 60690.272 174 348.795

Total 61292.519 175

Creativity 2 Between Groups 5.890 1 5.890 .016 .901

Within Groups 65470.625 174 376.268

Total 65476.515 175

Learning Relationships 2 Between Groups 19.641 1 19.641 .087 .768

Within Groups 39320.988 174 225.983

Total 39340.629 175


Within Groups 54708.142 174 314.415

Total 55357.724 175

Resilience 2 Between Groups 258.842 1 258.842 .691 .407

Within Groups 65155.159 174 374.455

Total 65414.001 175

ASIAN GIRLS AND MATHS Having investigated the difference of learning power between Asian girls and other students, it is also interesting to see how different these Asian girls were in terms of Mathematics grades they received. The distributions of Math grades are visually represented in a bar chart in Figure below. It appears that their maths scores are slightly below the average of other students. This observation is assessed using Independent-‐Samples Mann-‐Whitney U Test and yield a result that is approaching statistical significant (p=.053).


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Figure 5 Assessment of the different distribution of Mathematic grades between Asian girls and other students

IN SUMMARY -‐ Asian girls had more learning power to start off with than their non-‐Asian peers (including boys) and their maths performance was slightly lower than the rest of the cohort. While these differences may be quite useful in developing a more nuanced understanding of this area of special interest, the interpretationhas to remain cautious because very few of these reached statistical significance.

COMPARISON IN SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS Mean comparisons between pre-‐test and post-‐test mean scores across the cohorts based on socioeconomic status as measured by eligibility for free school meals (FSM) are shown in the Table 16 below. This comparison only includes students who completed both profiles. The change in learning power demonstrated by non-‐FSM students broadly reflects the overall patterns identified across the whole sample, but FSM students demonstrated a slightly different pattern of learning power change, such as:

• FSM students’ learning power changes are generally with smaller magnitude compared to the non-‐FSM students.

• FSM students’ learning relationships increased slightly while non-‐FSM students show a decrease in this dimension.

• FSM students’ resilience increased noticeably while non-‐FSM students’ resilience dropped. Amongst these learning power changes, increases in learning power reported by non-‐FSM students in five of the seven dimensions are considered statistically significant. These five dimensions are: changing and learning, critical curiosity, meaning making, creativity and strategic awareness. Neither the non-‐FSM students’ drop in learning relationships and resilience nor the FSM students’ increase in all seven dimensions reach statistical significance.


148

Table 35 Distribution of pre and post dimensions scores assessed by paired t-‐test for FSM and non-‐FSM students


difference


t df Sig. (2-‐

tailed)

Non

FSM

(n=1

24)

Changing and Learning 1 76.61 (17.96) 4.17 (.93 ~ 7.41) 2.544 123 .012

2 80.78 (17.79)

Critical Curiosity 1 67.00 (17.38) 4.54 (1.40 ~ 7.68) 2.866 123 .005

2 71.54 (17.08)

Meaning Making 1 72.58 (19.77) 3.73 (.25 ~ 7.20) 2.124 123 .036

2 76.31 (17.96)

Creativity 1 65.08 (19.29) 4.68 (.97 ~ 8.38) 2.500 123 .014

2 69.76 (18.14)

Learning Relationships 1 65.32 (16.99) -‐.92 (-‐3.46 ~ 1.62) -‐.717 123 .475

2 64.40 (15.33)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.03 (15.38) 3.68 (.90 ~ 6.46) 2.619 123 .010

2 68.71 (16.52)

Resilience 1 53.34 (16.17) -‐1.17 (-‐3.78 ~ 1.44) -‐.886 123 .377

2 52.17 (18.51)

FSM (n

=31)

Changing and Learning 1 77.42 (15.99) 2.42 (-‐5.48 ~ 10.32) .625 30 .536

2 79.84 (18.61)

Critical Curiosity 1 66.67 (16.37) .96 (-‐6.77 ~ 8.68) .253 30 .802

2 67.62 (21.47)

Meaning Making 1 73.27 (16.75) .31 (-‐8.06 ~ 8.67) .075 30 .941

2 73.58 (19.40)

Creativity 1 67.20 (15.08) .11 (-‐8.39 ~ 8.60) .026 30 .980

2 67.31 (22.96)

Learning Relationships 1 68.73 (9.30) 1.61 (-‐4.11 ~ 7.33) .576 30 .569

2 70.34 (13.46)

Strategic Awareness 1 65.26 (16.71) 2.73 (-‐5.01 ~ 10.47) .720 30 .477

2 67.99 (20.44)

Resilience 1 47.50 (21.13) 2.34 (-‐5.22 ~ 9.90) .632 30 .532

2 49.84 (20.98)

Having described and assessed the learning power characteristics and learning power changes of FSM and non-‐FSM students, the characteristics of these two groups of students were also compared. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was computed to investigate whether the pre-‐test score differences identified between FSM and non-‐FSM reached statistical significance. The result is shown in Table 18 below, suggesting that the only significant difference between these two subgroups statistically at the outset is in resilience F(1,208)=5.699 p=0.018. These two groups were also compared in their post test mean scores using one-‐way ANOVA. The result suggests that there are no significant post-‐intervention differences between non-‐FSM and FSM students in any of the seven learning power dimensions. Furthermore, a repeated measures ANOVA is conducted to assess whether non-‐FSM and FSM students were any different in the degree of change to their learning power during the intervention period. The result indicates that the differences in learning power changes observed between FSM and non-‐FSM did not reach statistical significance, F(1,153) = .024, p= 0.839.


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Table 36 Pre test ANOVA results according to socioencomic status

Learning Dimensions Sum of Squares

df Mean Square

F Sig.


Between Groups 37.288 1 37.288 .115 .734

Within Groups 67168.070 208 322.923

Total 67205.357 209


Within Groups 62247.765 207 300.714

Total 62250.838 208

mm.1: meaning making

Between Groups 63.233 1 63.233 .182 .670

Within Groups 71845.978 207 347.082

Total 71909.212 208


Within Groups 69274.479 207 334.659

Total 69623.924 208


Between Groups 2.255 1 2.255 .010 .922

Within Groups 48323.328 208 232.324

Total 48325.582 209


Between Groups .019 1 .019 .000 .993

Within Groups 54513.541 207 263.350

Total 54513.560 208

rs.1: resilience Between Groups 1720.462 1 1720.462 5.699 .018

Within Groups 62792.910 208 301.889

Total 64513.372 209

IN SUMMARY – Non-‐FSM and FSM students are significantly different in resilience from outset but the difference reduced during the intervention period. Though no significant differences were found in other dimensions, it is observed that non-‐FSM students seemed to demonstrate larger degrees of increase in learning power (than their FSM fellow students) in five dimensions: changing and learning, critical curiosity, meaning making, creativity and strategic awareness. It is interesting to note that mean scores in learning relationships and resilience increased for FSM pupils but not for non-‐FSM pupils.

LENGTH OF TIME AT BUSHFIELD SCHOOL The school was also interested in whether those children who were at Bushfield from Y3 and Y4 (i.e. long term) were likely to have responded better to the interventions than children who had come to the school in Y5 or Y6 (i.e. shorter term).

Figure 4 below illustrates the differences in each dimension according to duration at the school. The bar in the middle of each coloured box represents the mean whilst the coloured section of the box represents the middle range (between 75% and 25%) of all the scores of each dimension. From this diagram it can be seen that students who joined the school for a shorter period reported slightly higher scores on critical curiosity, slightly lower scores on learning relationships and, more clearly, lower scores on resilience.

Figure 4 Mean scores in all dimensions for long and short duration pupils


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Whilst there were no significant differences between pre and post test results in any of the cohorts with regards to pupil’s length of time at the school, it is difficult to draw conclusions as there are many factors which would contribute to a child moving school in Years 3-‐6.

CONCLUSIONS This data analysis has yielded some interesting findings. The ELLI survey and the results from the interventions demonstrate an increase in learning power across most of the seven dimensions with some of these reaching statistical significance. These include changing and learning, critical curiosity, creativity and strategic awareness. The analysis also suggests that the interventions were appropriate for both year groups 5 and 6 and that the 2013 cohorts for Y5 and Y6 seem to have benefitted from their learning experiences during 2012, as indicated by higher pre-‐test scores.

Exploring further, the data shows that more economically disadvantaged (FSM) pupils are likely to benefit slightly more from the interventions, particularly in the dimension of resilience, than other students, since, in this dimension, the starting point (judging by thepre-‐test mean scores) is lower for pupils on FSM than other non-‐FSM pupils. However, non-‐FSM students did make larger gains in other learning power dimensions.

Furthermore, results for one special group of interest, Asian girls, revealed that their learning power is an actually higher in all dimensions than their non Asian peers, be they boys or girls.

The reading and writing ability of pupils had some bearing on pre and post test scores suggesting that the level of ability is a factor to consider when designing interventions.

Results relating to length of time at the school do not support the hypothesis that greater exposure to building learning power interventions leads to better development of learning power. There may


151

be other meaningful factors associated with transition children that would need to be considered if further research on this issue is desirable.

In conclusion, pupils exposed to ELLI and the interventions have been shown to have increased their learning power. Differences between particular groups of students, in learning power and their reported change in it, are apparent, whether groups are categorised by ethnicity, ability or socioeconomic status, with some of these differences reaching statistical significance. Further investigation of these is warranted to explore the patterns more deeply.


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Appendix

Table 37 ANOVA results for pre-‐test scores across the 3 cohorts

Sum of Squares df

Mean Square F Sig.


Between Groups 814.733 2 407.366 1.266 .284









Between Groups 92.100 2 46.050 .196 .822



Between Groups 2145.193 2 1072.597 4.168 .017




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