Teachers Responsiveness to Pupils Ideas on Improving the Quality of Classroom Teaching

Author: Pedder, David

Title: Teachers' responsiveness to pupils' ideas on improving the quality of classroom teaching and learning

Abstract: From an early age young people are capable of insightful and constructive analysis of their experiences of learning in school and they have a contribution to make to the development of strategies for improving learning and raising achievement. This paper reports emergent findings from a research study into how teachers respond to and use the commentaries and perspectives of their pupils to improve the quality of classroom teaching and learning.

Document type: Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference, Cardiff University, 7-10 September 2000 Suggested key terms: Quality of teaching and learning Pupil perspectives Teachers’ responsiveness Background to the study

A growing number of studies are consistent in reporting that from an early age young people are capable of insightful and constructive analysis of their experiences of learning in school (ie, Rudduck et al., 1996; Nieto, 1994; Soo Hoo, 1993). However, attention is also drawn by Rudduck et al (1996:173), to the lack of scope provided by existing structures of secondary schooling for young people to exercise responsibility and take decisions over their school lives and learning. Here there is a clear imbalance with young peoples’ personal and social lives outside school where they routinely carry a far higher degree of responsibility and autonomy,

“… the structures of secondary schooling offer, on the whole, less responsibility and autonomy than many young people are accustomed to in their lives outside school, and less opportunity for learning-related tensions to be opened up and explored.”

With regard to the degree of autonomy and responsibility accorded to young people, schools are out of step with life beyond the school gate, and this represents a serious risk to pupils’ sense of self as learner, their status within the institution of school and their sense of purpose in learning. As Rudduck argues (1996:173)

“… the conditions of learning that prevail in the majority of secondary schools do not adequately take account of the maturity of young people, nor of the tensions and pressures that they experience as they struggle to reconcile the demands of their social and personal development with the development of their identities as learners.”

And yet there is growing support for the view that should schools attend more to pupils’ views about their learning experiences and preferences as part of school improvement strategies, this will lead to improvements in pupil achievement (ie Nieto,1994). This view finds strong support from recent school improvement studies (ie Gray et al, 1999; Sammons et al, 1997) that suggest that giving more attention to pupils and to their experiences of teaching, learning and schooling will contribute to improvements in their performance.

Even though teachers already take account of their pupils’ perspectives, interests and needs in deciding what to do as part of their routine practice during classroom lessons (Cooper and McIntyre, 1996), the argument is very clearly articulated that secondary school pupils are not sufficiently consulted by teachers as ‘co-conspirators in creating optimal learning situations’ (Phelan et. al., 1992:704). Nevertheless, as coherent as this argument is, there is a very real tension between the complexity and individual responsibility of the teacher’s classroom teaching task on the one hand and the need to treat pupils as partners in their own learning on the other. McIntyre sums up this tension as follows (1999:18),

“Arguments that secondary school students are not sufficiently treated as partners in their own learning are highly persuasive, both in terms of their rights to have their perspectives taken into account and also instrumentally in terms of their commitment to learning. The lack of control which students generally have over their own lives in institutions which would claim to be serving their interests can indeed be seen as quite remarkable. Within the context of classroom teaching, however, the task for the teacher of treating students as partners while continuing to take responsibility for classroom activities and outcomes cannot but be seen as adding to the complexity of the teacher’s task.”

The complexity of the teacher’s task in classroom lessons is relevant to the question of teacher responsiveness to pupils’ ideas. The relevance lies very much in the nature of the expertise developed by teachers to effectively promote pupils’ learning within the constraints of the environment of classrooms. Doyle (1986:394-395) has identified six features of the classroom environment that shape how teachers think and act in lessons. He talks of classrooms in terms of their:  multidimensionality;  simultaneity;  immediacy;  unpredictability;  publicness;  history.

Thus McIntyre (1999:3-4) argues that the implications of these features for classroom teachers include the following:  their choices are never simple  they must monitor and regulate several different activities at once  they have little time, in the main, to reflect before acting  detailed long-term planning is counter-productive and even short-term plans need to be very flexible  what they do on any occasion can have important future repercussions  planning and decision-making needs to take account of a class’s history

As McIntyre (1999:7) notes,

“… the expertise of experienced classroom teachers is well and sophisticatedly geared to the realities of classroom life”

Teachers have developed a sophisticated expertise well tuned to the classroom environment that involves inter alia:  highly intuitive judgements and decision-making  largely tacit, individual and quite private expert knowledge  prioritisation and simplification geared to teaching purposes, for example through short- term perspectives or by simplifying differences among pupils,

Given the nature of the expertise developed and used by teachers and adapted to the particular challenges of the classroom, what scope then remains for teachers to engage in critical collaborative reflection with pupils? What is clear is that authentic collaboration between teachers and pupils requires teachers to take account of additional information in their classroom teaching. In relation to this, we might ask whether it is realistic to expect teachers to take account of additional information while maintaining the kind of expertise which has, to date, served them well in the increasing challenges of the classroom environment (McIntyre, 1999).

It can be seen then that the issues that form the backdrop to this research study on teachers’ responsiveness to pupils’ ideas about learning are highly complex and full of tensions. Aims and focus of the study

We have little evidence of how teachers respond to pupil comments on the usefulness of different aspects of their teaching, or how they use the data to modify practice in order to improve teaching and learning; nor do we know how teachers’ perception of pupils change as a result of hearing their views; nor how pupils’ progress and commitment to learning change as they see their teachers taking account of what they have to say. We do not know, furthermore, what is involved for teachers or for pupils in changing their classroom practices so as to make teacher responsiveness an integral part of them. So we were interested in the range of strategies for consulting pupils that teachers consider worthwhile and manageable within the routines of everyday teaching.

Research design

Teachers and pupils at three schools from six Year 8 classes (two each of English, Maths and Science) were involved. We managed to recruit teachers who were experienced and had expressed an interest in contributing to research on pupil voice and a willingness to participate in the project. The two English classes were mixed ability. We worked with a top and bottom set Science class and two middle set Maths classes.

The fieldwork so far completed was carried out between March and July 2000 and comprised two stages. During the first stage, which consisted of five visits to each teacher and their pupils between March and May, the focus was on eliciting from pupils their ideas about classroom teaching and learning in the focal subject, and from the teachers their respective responses to their pupils’ ideas. From each class six fairly articulate pupils, three boys and three girls were selected and invited to take part in individual interviews after observed lessons, three who were doing well and three who seem neither to enjoy the subject nor to be doing well in it. Interviews focused on what pupils judged to facilitate their learning in their teacher’s class, what they regarded as unhelpful to their learning, and what alternative strategies and approaches might their teacher have employed to the benefit of their learning. In addition, written responses to a questionnaire were elicited from the whole class so that non selected pupils might contribute their views.

Transcripts of each of the interviews with pupils, together with pupils’ written comments on the questionnaires were passed on to the respective teachers for their comments and reactions. Over the course of the first five interviews with teachers during the first stage of the fieldwork, teachers were encouraged to articulate their thinking and changes to their thinking in response to the comments of their pupils. They were increasingly asked to focus on planned changes to their practice in response to pupils’ ideas and comments that they had read and adjudged to be worthwhile and manageable innovations.

The second stage of the fieldwork took place over the course of the summer term. Interviews following observed lessons were held with the six target pupils in order to elicit their judgements of teachers’ modified classroom practice in the light of their ideas and the ways in which the changes, as they perceived them, influenced their learning. Questionnaires were also administered to the class as a whole towards the end of the fieldwork to elicit the spread of different pupils’ views in each of the six classes. Post-lesson teacher interviews focused on their evaluations of the implementation of planned changes in the context of the observed lesson and the extent to which they judged the changes to have provided enhanced learning opportunities for their pupils.

A third stage of fieldwork is planned for the Autumn term. All six teachers have agreed to be observed and interviewed with their new classes with a view to discovering the tranferability of what they have learned from the previous year’s experience. Do teachers seek to develop ways of learning about pupils’ reactions to their teaching as part of their normal teaching and to use what they learn in shaping their teaching, and are they able to do so?

Illustrative findings

I want briefly and with great caution to put forward the following tentative propositions on the basis of an initial inspection of the data from the consulting pupils initiative:

 Pupils are sometimes capable of identifying constructive alternatives to teaching strategies.  Pupils are sometimes able to take on the perspective of their teachers in identifying particular dilemmas they face in the course of their classroom decision-making.  Aspects of what pupils say has sufficient status with teachers to contribute to their continued professional learning and therefore to changing practice in order to influence pupils’ learning.

Consulting pupils was perceived by teachers to have an impact on the quality of pupils’ learning. The range of consultation strategies that the six teachers in this study identified as manageable were questionnaires at the mid-point or at the end of modules of study. They also considered one-to-one and small group interviews with pupils during the course of lessons on occasions where the rest of the class were engaged on task. The most radical plan considered by one teacher is looking at the feasibility of pupil-convened consultation forums as one possibility in her particular context.

Pupils are sometimes capable of identifying constructive alternatives to teaching strategies.

For example one student argues that in science lessons her learning would be helped by greater involvement and participation in experimentation work. Instead of passively observing her teacher demonstrate experiments and then copying the teachers’ conclusions from the board, this pupils suggests that her understanding would be enhanced by having pupils carry out their own experiments and write their own results and conclusions. This way the generation of different results and conclusions arising from the different experimental procedures followed by different pupils becomes an opportunity for enhancing understanding,

“And then we’d write down what we saw not just what he thinks that should have happened. And then we’d all have our own conclusions and we could discuss them in that class. I think that might be quite good. .. I think then it’s like you can see what other people had done with their experiments and then you could ask cos Mr. Jackson’s a scientist person, he would know what’s actually supposed to happen. ... And then erm we can work out whose like done it right. Whose done it correctly. .. And then … that person will be like setting examples … and I thought a good way of doing it was like everyone would be sitting in their seats and he would ask people if they had anything… I think he could say like what… like in all the labs and stuff, what would happen usually if they’d done it. And then he could ask people to put their hands up if they had any comments on that or questions or whether they had anything different to what he said. And then they’d like go into how that person did it and find out what went wrong or if something happened.” CVC:SG

Pupils are sometimes able to take on the perspective of their teachers in identifying particular dilemmas they face in the course of their classroom decision-making.

Here a student discusses a common dilemma faced by teachers when some pupils complete a task while others are still busily engaged. Talking of a pairwork interactive task in English, this pupil and her partner would have preferred to have been given more time to complete their task. Nonetheless, taking on the perspective of her teacher, she shows some degree of insight into why her teacher took the decision to stop everyone instead,

I Were there any things do you think that Miss Foster could have done more of in that lesson? So stuff that she was already doing but you’d have liked more of, more time on something or for her to have done more of something, just thinking about this morning.

P I would have liked more time to discuss the partner work, you know, the partner. ...‘Cos we only got three of the five questions done and we needed a little bit more time so....

I Oh right. Have you any idea why the time wasn’t given for those final two questions of the pair work?

P Because she had to explain the homework and we had to start on our questionnaire so that’s why.

I Can you sympathise with that decision to cut the pair work short or do you think on balance it would still have been better to continue on the pair work?

P No, I think it would have been better if she’d have carried on like she did because other people were finished and they would have got bored so.... Yes. SI:MC

Aspects of what pupils say has sufficient status with teachers to contribute to their continued professional learning and therefore to changing practice in order to influence pupils’ learning.

Participating teachers reported that the opportunity provided by the project for gaining access to their pupils’ insights and ideas, which they evaluated as constructive, represented a positive step in their continuing professional learning.

“Really useful. Surprisingly useful. Surprisingly much more useful than I expected it to be! Erm I always feel anything like this, where people have got time to actually talk to children, are bound to help and improve on people’s professionalism if they’ve got time to talk and listen to children.” AMVC:LW

Consulting pupils was perceived by teachers to have an impact on the quality of pupils’ learning.

Teachers reported changes in levels of motivation and interest as pupils recognised innovations in their teacher’s classroom practice linked to the ideas they had been articulating in interview. Common themes in pupils’ accounts across the three subject areas of the study had been the desire for greater independence and prominence for pupil talk in relation to their classroom learning experiences.

“Erm certainly I think it’s had an impact on their motivation, their interests, their own engagement within the lesson. I think it’s helped there. … Erm and I think they also come on in terms of their ability to work more independently and require at times less kind of teacher input, direction and guidance.” CVC:MC

The range of strategies that the six teachers in this study identified as manageable were questionnaires at the mid-point or at the end of modules of study. They also considered one- to-one and small group interviews with pupils during the course of lessons on occasions where the rest of the class were engaged on task. The most radical plan considered by one teacher is looking at the feasibility of pupil-convened consultation forums as one possibility in her particular context.

Concluding note

Preliminary analysis of the pupil interview data clearly demonstrates that pupils, when consulted, have sophisticated and serious things to say about classroom teaching and learning and how their classroom experiences might be enhanced. Moreover some pupils, in identifying decision dilemmas faced by their teacher, revealed the capacity to take on the perspectives of their teacher in discussing the events of a recently completed lesson. It also appears that aspects of what pupils say have sufficient status with teachers to contribute to their continued professional learning and therefore to changing practice in order to influence pupils’ learning. Nevertheless, constraints inherent in the classroom teaching system as currently constituted, together with the increasing demands being made on teachers in their classrooms, not least in the form of external prescriptions for the curriculum or for examination and testing requirements, make it unlikely that they will have the scope to respond to the ideas of their pupils in ways that represent radical departures from their current, skilful and highly adapted professional classroom practice.

References:

Cooper, P. and McIntyre, D. (1996) Effective Teaching and Learning. Buckingham: Open University Press. Doyle, W. (1986) 'Classroom Organisation and Management' in M.C. Wittrock (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching, Third Edition. New York: Macmillan. Gray, J., Hopkins, D., Reynolds, D., Farrell, S. and Jesson, D. (1999) Improving Schools: Performance and Potential. Buckingham: Open University Press. McIntyre, D. (1999) Has Classroom Teaching Served Its Day? Paper presented at Cambridge University School of Education Research Seminar Series. Nieto, S. (1994) 'Lessons from Students on Creating a Chance to Dream'. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 64, No. 4. Phelan, P., Davidson, A.L. and Cao, H. (1992) 'Speaking Up: Students' Perspectives on School'. Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 73, No. 9. Rudduck, J., Chaplain, R. and Wallace, G. (1996) 'Reviewing the Conditions of Learning in School' in Rudduck, J., Chaplain, R. and Wallace, G. (eds.) School Improvement: What Can Pupils Tell Us? London: David Fulton Press. Sammons, P., Thomas, S. and Mortimore, P. (1997) Key Characteristics of Effective Schools. London: Paul Chapman. Soo Hoo, S. (1993) 'Students as Partners in Research and Restructuring Schools'. The Educational Forum, Vol. 57.