Bitesize Research: Building Student Criticality

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week! With our forthcoming INSET day in July, we’ve got an external facilitator session planned to continue the work we’ve been doing on anti-racism and to honour our commitment to a keynote in this area annually.  As such, this week, I was interested in seeing an article published in Edutopia, about criticality, particularly when considering multiple and diverse perspectives.

Objectives: To consider how teachers can supporting building students’ criticality 

Summary: 

• The author delineates a difference between critical thinking and criticality. Critical thinking refers to deep, analytical thinking, whereas criticality is about power, equity and anti-oppression. 

• The author suggests engaging students with particular questions to support building criticality:

• 1) The author suggests starting by using ‘what’ questions to activate critical thinking. E.g. What is your summary? What is your key takeaway? What information supports your explanation?

• 2) The author then suggests introducing criticality questions, best summarised as ‘so what?’ and ‘what next?’ questions. For example: What voices are missing here? What assumptions does this make? Can or should we take action about this to promote social change? 

  
  

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

• How am I currently supporting critical thinking and criticality in my students?

• What elements of critical thinking and criticality would work well with my subject, and the topics I am planning?

• What elements of critical thinking and criticality would work well in parts of the RSHE curriculum I am teaching?

• What further support do I need on this?

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

Bitesize Research: Young Peoples' Views On RSE

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week! I know that the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum has been something as an Academy we’ve been working really hard on, and as such, for this next edition of bitesize research, I was interested to read about some research published by the Institute of Education about the role of young people’s voices in their relationships and sex education. 

Objectives: To understand what young people nationally are saying about RSE

Summary: 

• The research found that young people specifically would like to have more learning about relationships and sex education in their schools

• Many young people who took part in this research believed that currently, RSE in their schools was patchy, awkward and lacking in what students actually wanted to know.

• The research found that young people wanted more adults to educate themselves about young people’s lives and experiences, as well as for teachers to have resources and support to enable them to feel more confident in what they are teaching.

• The research concludes that student-voice should be an ongoing part of curriculum design in RSE.

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

• How confident do I feel in delivering RSE topics? What do I need support with? How does that look?

• How could we appropriately but meaningfully take some student voice about RSE?

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

Bitesize Research: Political Understanding Of Young People

By Jaya Carrier

Welcome back everyone - I hope you’re all having a good week so far and that you had a nice half term break! As a school aiming for global, well-informed citizens and leaders, this week, I was interested to look at the Institute of Education’s recent report on political engagement in young people. 

Objectives: To understand emerging key themes and differences in the political understanding of young people

Summary: 

• The report identifies that between the ages of 11 and 16, political interest declines, particularly for students from lower income backgrounds. The family income appeared not to make a difference to students’ political interest before the age of 11.

• Fewer students from lower income backgrounds said they would vote in a future election aged 15. 

• The report identifies a growing gender gap in political interest between the ages of 16 and 30 - girls are much less likely to be interested in politics at 16, and their political interest grows at a slower rate than boys between ages 16 and 30.

• Girls taking vocational qualifications also had significantly less political interest than their counterparts taking other qualifications, whereas boys had better political interest irrespective of the kinds of qualifications they were taking.

• The authors believe that early adolescence is really important in terms of ensuring strong political engagement. 

• The authors conclude that more civic learning opportunities (such as in the French educational system) need to take place, particularly at post-16 level. 

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

• Does this research matter to my work? How does it impact what I do in PD or in conversations with my tutees?

• How does this sit with our vision of creating informed, internationally-minded/global citizens?

• How do I support the understanding of important concepts like community, citizenship, advocacy?

• How can we better engage girls and PP students in politics?

• How can we encourage our students to engage with socio political initiatives (e.g. Youth Parliament) to foster an interest in social change and politics? 

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

Bitesize Research: Financial Literacy In Young People

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week so far and can start to see the light at the end of the T4 tunnel! There have been some really interesting discussions about the personal development and pastoral curricula looking ahead to next year. In light of this, I was really interested to see some recent research from the UCL Institute of Education about financial skills and literacy. Objectives: To examine the financial skills and understanding of students between ages 7-17. Summary:

• This study wanted to measure the understanding and abilities of students with respect to finance - including looking at tax, interest rates, inflation, spending and savings.
• This study worked with 3,745 children.
• The study found that the financial skills of 15-year old students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, were equivalent to 11-year old students from the most advantaged backgrounds
• 33% of 11-17-year-olds from low socio-economic status families could not work out the amount of money they would have in their savings account with an interest rate of 2 per cent. This is compared to just 14% of children from more affluent family backgrounds.
• There was also a difference in the number of students reporting about learning about financial literacy - students from more affluent backgrounds were much more likely to explain that they had learned about ‘working out change from shopping’, ‘saving money’ and the ‘difference between things you need and things you want to buy’.
• This study also spoke to parents. Parents from all backgrounds believed in the importance of speaking to their children about money, but more affluent parents had a greater degree of confidence in doing so.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What is the value of students having good financial literacy?
• How do I support this work in my lessons or in my tutor times?
• What do I want to do to support this further in the future?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.