Legacy and evidence-based outcomesDon PasseySenior Research Fellow Department of Educational ResearchDirectorCentre for Technology Enhanced LearningLancaster University

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Legacy – my background

I undertake research, in the area of education and learning, particularly concerned with uses of digital technologies in schools, and by young peopleI’ve been involved in research in this field for over 20 yearsIn the last 10 years, I’ve undertaken more than 50 research studiesMost of those have been commissioned, by government departments, agencies, local and regional authorities, charities and companiesI am asked to find out what works, how, and why

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Legacy – in this sessionLegacy – allows us to learn from our (and others’) past, to use and to develop from those experiences, and it offers a platform from which to build forwardsWhat has historically worked? And what are we doing now that will last and have impact – Learning from Legacy, Leading Legacy? The term and its practices are encompassed by the notion of ‘Innovation in Learning’; doing things differently in order to do them betterLegacy is relevant to current and future educational concerns; pertinent to stakeholders; important for those considering key current and future issues including innovative developments and uses of resources including ICT and digital technologies

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Key elementsCo-construction – how we develop models of teaching that are centred on teachers and students co-constructing learningCollaboration – identifying and using the building blocks to ensure schools work better together in a ‘by schools, for schools’ network, so that students and teachers can work to co-construct learning, and teachers can collaborate to learn from each otherCreativity – using evidence-based examples, perhaps of innovative practices, to develop and foster creativity within and across the school, for students and teachersCulture – how leadership can bring about lasting change and a lasting legacy

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Examples and evidenceIn this session, I want to offer examples of current practices and evidence-based outcomesTo demonstrate ways that schools, teachers and students have developed activities and approaches that focus on each of these four key elements

Co-constructionCollaborationCreativityCulture

Tomorrow, I want to provide frameworks through which to consider legacy – past evidence, current practice, and future concerns

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Co-construction

There are good examples of activities and approaches that schools, teachers and students have taken that demonstrate co-constructionThere are fewer examples of studies evidencing values and benefits arising from co-construction practicesSome studies do show that co-construction practices lead to longer-term as well as shorter-term benefits and outcomesOutcomes arising from the BBC News School Report is an examplehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolreport/16223788

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Co-construction – key pointsIn 2008-2009, 514 schools were involved

135 teachers reported unanimously that students enjoyed taking part; 93% of the 705 students reported that they had enjoyed the project Student perceptions of their own gains were concerned not only with specific subject skills, but also with team working, creativity, attitude towards work, and social interactionsStudents said they had learned more about news production and jobsTeachers reported a significant improvement in students’ abilities to speak to an audience, write for an audience, produce images using a range of technologies, think of creative ideas for stories, listen to others, negotiate a point they feel strongly about, work hard to complete a project, meet deadlines, create a news story that reaches an audience beyond the school, contribute their views to a story, and consider safety when using digital media

Collaboration

Schools have widely sought to ‘improve’Approaches to improvement have focused not just on attainment, but also on behaviour, effort and well-beingSome schools have linked their focus, using appropriate data to support their ideas, and have gained improvement (particularly in levels of attainment for students from disadvantaged backgrounds) over the past 3 or 4 yearsWhere collaboration and co-construction have been key drivers, schools have also developed stronger community relationshipsSacred Heart Catholic School is an examplehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14678240

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Collaboration – key points

75% of pupils achieved at least five GCSEs at grades A*-C, including English and mathematics in 2012

44% of pupils achieved the ‘English Baccalaureate' - up 6% on 2011

In 2010 Ofsted judged the school to be outstanding

They constantly seek collaboration with parents, and have an open-door policy

Parents can approach the school on school and non-school issues

Ethos and a focus on reaching out to the community are seen as vitally important

Parents like the ‘rank order’ system, in all subjects, twice a year

Discipline is there to support effective learning

Size of the school and classes, and relationships are important

Treating children as children

Providing an ‘educational home’9

Creativity

We can draw on a rich history of research that looks at improvement and success These are reported across a range of observers who have published their monitoring findings (including Ofsted)We can draw on experiences of a continuity of improvement, through a commitment to improving practice in the classroom, across the school and in the communityCreativity, of management, of teaching, and of learning, has often been at the heart of improvement practices and outcomesVideo-game creation is an exampleYoung Games Designers.mp4Interactive Opportunities - SchoolTV.m4v

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Creativity – key pointsThe project encouraged teachers to bring together teams of young people to use a well-known video game, Little Big Planet 2, to create new levels that would be published and used by other playersAfter 5 months, 25 teams in 7 schools had created a completed levelAt the end of the project 6 more students had become interested in the video games industries, 5 more in the games software industries, and 4 more in the visual effects industriesIf this could be replicated across all secondary schools in the UK, 5,000 more young people could well become interested in the video games and video effects industries each yearSome young people who were disengaged from learning and likely to become NEET became re-engaged through the focus of this projectIt highlighted areas of potential longer-term employment that were unknown or little known to the young people previouslyYoung people used and developed soft skills in parallel with the use of technical skills

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CultureCulture is the fourth element, but importantly it also pulls together the other three elements of co-construction, collaboration, and creativityExploring the inter-relationship of these elements, between cultural change and a culture of innovation, is a focus that leads us to a clear conclusionLeadership and vision are vital in determining outcomes to address our current and future curriculum needsAston Pride was a project that ran in an inner city area of Birmingham for more than 5 yearsThey focused on a cultural change rather than change concerned with project implementation

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Culture – key points

The project focused on long-term as well as short-term needsIntergenerational learning was a key approach embedded within the implementation of the initiative.

Pupils were trained in using ICT in schools, family members were able to attend training sessions in schools, and teachers provided learning activities where parents could be involved at home in working with or alongside their children

Using technologies for learning was a key focus of the initiative

It was known at early stages that many community members were supportive of enhancing education for their children rather than for themselves

The initiative enabled parents to see the benefits that computers could bring for their children and to their children’s learning and, as a consequence, they gained interest in using the facilities for their own (employment, training, and leisure) purposes 13

Summary remarks

In summary, I want to consider three important factors:New spacesPortfoliosCurriculum, assessment and certification

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New spaces

In all of these cases schools, managers and teachers see opportunities to explore and use ‘new spaces’Some of those ‘new spaces’ are community spacesSome of them are opening up ‘new spaces’ at new timesSome arise from uses of digital technologies that exploit ‘new spaces’ to co-construct, collaborate and createAll open up ‘new spaces’ to a wider audience or communityThese, as well as online communication spaces, virtual worlds, online learning resource environments, mobile applications and learning platforms all need to be managed as a part of blended models of education and learning in the future

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Portfolios and e-portfolios

Learning can now arise across a more distributed landscapeMobility is an increasing feature of societies and communitiesPortfolios of work and achievement are likely to become more importantE-portfolios already provide opportunities for some learners to gather together details of their achievements at regular intervals, and systematicallyThe development of e-portfolios to support different blended models of education and learning are likely to be a future as well as a current need

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Curriculum, assessment and certification

Developing and considering different blended models of education and learning will require a regular review and close consideration of current curriculum, assessment and certificationAlready, universities are regularly reviewing their curriculum, assessment and certification procedures especially in terms of alternative forms of online and blended courses

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Thank youThe workshop tomorrow will explore how your curriculum, your approaches and your local needs match key issues and exploit successful practice

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ReferencesINTEL: White Paper - Intel Education Transformation Research: Lessons Learned Across Five eLearning Programs. Intel, USA (2011)Yaşar, Ö., Karadeniz, Ş.: The power of social media in informal learning. In A. Méndez-Vilas (Ed.). Education in a Technological World: Communicating Current and Emerging Research and Technological Efforts. Formatex, Badajoz, Spain (2011)Leiringer, R., Cardellino, P.: Schools for the twenty-first century: school design and educational transformation. British Educational Research Journal. 37(6), 915-934 (2011)Passey, D.: Independent Evaluation of the Aston Pride Phase 3 Computers in the Home Project (2009 to 2011): Final Report - March 2011. Lancaster University, Lancaster (2011)Passey, D.: Independent evaluation of the Little Big Planet 2 project in Wolverhampton’s Local Education Partnership schools: Outcomes and impacts - Final Report. Lancaster University, Lancaster (2012). Accessible at: http://www.io.uk.comPassey, D., Gillen, J.: BBC News School Report 2008/2009: Independent Evaluation. BBC, London (2009)Prensky, D.: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon. 9(5), 1-6 (2001)Kane, T.J.: Extracting Evaluation Lessons From Four Recent Out of School Time Program Evaluations. The Evaluation Exchange, 10(1), 1-4 (2004)Shurnow, L.: Academic Effects of After School Programs. ERIC Digest ED458010 (2001)

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