L&T Blog W4- Technology in education

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to look more closely at the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report for 2023, which this year was focussed on technology in education. This resulted in lots of headlines about mobile phones in schools during the summer holidays.

Objectives: To understand the impact of technology in education. 

Summary: 

• The study states that there is a lack of good, impartial evidence about the impact of technology in education, insofar as much of the evidence is commissioned by educational technology companies.

• It states that educational technology has opened up lots of opportunities - particularly for students with SEND and during the pandemic, but that these are unequal across the world.

• There is some evidence of the impact of technology on outcomes for specific types of learning - including, for example, practice and fluency for primary mathematics. The authors argue that future studies of educational technology need to be focussed on the learning outcomes primarily. 

• There is some good evidence that even proximity to a mobile phone has a negative impact on learning insofar as it is highly distracting for students.

• The authors argue that the following should act as a way of determining the appropriateness of educational technology for government policymakers as well as educators themselves:

• 1) Is it appropriate for our local context? This includes looking at teaching the basic skills to use technology well and using evidence-informed approaches to educational technology.

• 2) Is it leaving anyone behind? This includes looking at whether all students can have equitable access to the benefits provided by educational technology, including disadvantaged students and students with SEND

• 3) Does it support sustainable futures? This includes establishing a broad set of digital competencies which enable students to benefit from technology’s potential in terms of citizenship and employment. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using technology? What evidence do I have of its effectiveness?

• What would I like to see WA students doing with technology in the future? How can I change my practice to support this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

T&L Blog W3- Student wellbeing

 Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to see some research findings about different aspects of wellbeing in school students from the University of Cambridge. 

Objectives: To look at broader notions of student wellbeing in schools, rather than just wellbeing equating to happiness. 

Summary: 

The author of this research looks at a broader conception of wellbeing, which includes ideas about students feeling capable and purposeful - sometimes called ‘eudaimonia’. 
The author argues that this broader conception of wellbeing improves student grades as well as their mental health. For example, students achieving top grades in Maths at GCSE had 1.5 times more eudaimonia than their peers. 
The author argues that this positive correlation is not apparent for ‘happiness’ (which is part of the RSHE national curriculum).
The author argues that wellbeing education should be broadened to ensure eudaimonia is included, and that this would unlock better academic performance in many students.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I currently support my students to feel capable and purposeful?
• How do I promote growth in students’ eudaimonia?
• What strategies could I try to support this?
• What support might I need to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

T&L Blog W2- How to support with teenage reading!

 

Dear WA,

Hope everyone had a great first week back. This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to

see some research findings from Aston university as reported by TES about teenage reading. Reading is something that we’ve discussed a lot already at WA, and will of course continue to do so, particularly under the leadership of our Literacy Coordinator, Ellie Winter.

Objectives: To understand what the issues are with teenage reading, and to consider

strategies to support this.

Summary: 

• The authors of the research started from the premise that many secondary teachers are explaining that teenage students are struggling with reading (particularly with respect to transitioning into secondary school, and when students have a limited vocabulary), and that they don’t know how to better support it.
• As such, the authors created two longitudinal studies to look at the issues and suggest possible solutions to support students.
• The authors discovered that there is no discernable ‘transition slump’ between YR6 and YR7, and rather there is a rise in expectations going from a primary to a secondary curriculum.
• Moreover, disadvantaged students appeared to have a difference specifically in vocabulary and reading comprehension when compared to their more advantaged peers. This was not the case for word recognition.
• The data suggests that many students entering secondary school have vocabulary and reading needs, and that also how good students are at reading helps students to learn directly about vocabulary.
• The authors suggest the following strategies to support teenage readers including:

• 1) Secondary schools should prioritise reading

• 2) Embedding a reading for pleasure culture should be prioritised at secondary level

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might

be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I teach vocabulary and reading in my lessons currently? What could I try to do differently?
• How specifically might I support disadvantaged students with their reading and vocabulary?
• How should we at WA encourage reading for pleasure? How do teachers and support staff play a role in this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

T&L Blog W1- Bitesize Research: Building connections at the start of the year

By Jaya Carrier

Dear WA,

Welcome back everyone! For anyone new to the WA community, Bitesize Research is a weekly WA blog article which looks to take some emerging education research and summarise the findings in an easy and digestible way. So, to get us started, I was interested to see an Edutopia article about research-backed methods that support building connections with students at the start of a school year.

Objectives: To consider evidence-informed strategies for building connections with students at the start of a school year.

Summary: 

• The article suggests 6 tips to support building connections with students at the start of the year:

• 1) Begin with a clean slate - allow students to start afresh, particularly if in previous years they may have demonstrated challenging behaviours. 

• 2) Tackle start of the year nerves directly - sharing common fears that students might face at the beginning of the school year, and how students before them have tackled these, can support students to put their fears into perspective. Allowing students to undertake some oral or written reflection using questions such as ‘What plans do you have for making friends?’ or ‘How do you plan to handle a busy timetable?’ might be helpful for this.

• 3) Check your classroom environment and resources - ensuring that displays or resources are as diverse and inclusive as possible can help students feel a sense of belonging.

• 4) Spend active time building relationships - there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that students will go the extra mile academically if they have an excellent relationship with their teacher. As such, considering how to actively build relationships at the start of the academic year is likely to be helpful in the long term for student progress.

• 5) Create Partnership Agreements - these are co-constructed, coaching-style agreements of how to ‘be’ together, and ensure that you can hold everyone accountable as the year progresses. At WA, we create these with all tutor groups - consider making one with your classes too.

• 6) Remain calm - using trauma-informed approaches to remain calm is likely to be the best strategy when students may try to test the waters. It can be helpful to actively prepare for times like this and consider different challenging scenarios and how you would respond to these.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What is important to me about working with students at the start of an academic year?

• What strategies might I try to support forging good relationships in academic year 2023-24?

• Which strategies appear to be clear to me? Which might I need more support to implement?

• When I create the Partnership Agreement with my tutor group, what do I want in there and how will we hold each other accountable to the agreement?