Generating Teachers’ Research Knowledge About White British Pupils’ Progress

• In Event: Mobilizing Teachers’ Research Knowledge: School Improvement in Leeds, United Kingdom

Abstract

1. Objectives of the session
This paper aims to review teachers’ research knowledge of white British pupils’ underachievement and its potential for improving teaching and learning (Lieberman and Miller, 2008) through school-focused interventions informed by knowledge-of-practice (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2001, 2009). The objectives are to (a) sound out the school’s values for commitment to teachers’ professional knowledge; (b) probe the teacher research priorities focused on attainment data and the schooling experiences of pupils from low income backgrounds; and (c) cross-question the teachers’ research activities tied to the needs of practitioners, the school, its sponsor and local authority, in relation to the needs of white British pupils.

2. Overview of the presentation
This paper offers a unique point of view from the former school Head with tabs on the real-life efforts to create a professional learning community of teacher researchers and academic partners. This paper elucidates what was done to set up the school and classrooms as sites for intentional investigation and to develop an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2001, 2009).

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
An inquiry stance, acknowledged as a worldview and habit of mind, a way of knowing and being in the world of school practice (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1998, 2009), was encouraged in the teacher researchers because it enabled them and linked them to academic partners and others concerned about poverty effects on schooling.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Video clips of teacher researchers, sample vignettes of white British pupils, selected school data, transcriptions of pupils’ focus group interviews, and records of informal discussions with parents, matched by records of a lesson study (Groundwater-Smith, n.d), lesson observations, joint reflections, formulations & reformulations about the class work (Lieberman, 1992) together with teachers’ logs, field-notes, a group learning portfolio, and transcriptions of digitally recorded CPD sessions.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
The teacher research contributes to locally sensitive and contextually specific school improvement (Thrupp, 1999, 2005), deemed crucial to address the needs of white British pupils who comprise approximately 30 percent of the school population, with half registered for free school meals (FSM), a marker of poverty and deprivation (Lupton, 2004, 2006; Sveinsson, 2009). As almost the largest single cohort in the secondary school, their achievement is a key determinant in the school achieving its centrally mandated floor targets (Hagon and Beckett, 2010).

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
This CPD project is significant locally and nationally, especially since it happened during a period of turbulence at school-level as the school Head and staff had to deal with the challenges of meeting floor targets. A centrally determined ‘structural solution’ to close the school and re-open as an Academy witnessed considerable reorganization and planning for the new school structure, which now includes a designated place for teacher research. The growing team of eight teacher researchers also attracts positive policy attention from the local authority, the DfE and local MPs.

Authors

• Tonia Bowden, Private consultant

• Lori Beckett, Leeds Metropolitan University