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: Facilitating Conversations About World Events

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good first week back! Lots of amazing work has taken place in PD lessons this year. One of things I know tutors, YCs and the pastoral team work really hard to do is manage and facilitate challenging conversations about difficult or disturbing world events. As such, I was interested to come upon this Edutopia article that gives some guidance about these kinds of conversations. 

Objectives: To suggest some ideas about facilitating and managing conversations about disturbing news stories or world events. 

Summary: 

• The author gives some recommendations about how to ensure these conversations can be supportive and well managed. She recommends that in the first instance, educators aim to:

• Developing self awareness: Understanding your own bias and lens on the event as an educator

• Know your students: Understanding the cultures, backgrounds and experiences of students before entering into a conversation

• Being present and available: Making it known to students that they can talk to you when they need to

• Invite students to share their thoughts, feelings and reactions: This can help build connection, which in the first instance can be more important than providing a detailed analysis of what has happened and why.

• Normalise student feelings: Let students know that worry, fear and anger are normal reactions to upsetting situations.

• Listen and paraphrase: Seek to listen and paraphrase, which can help with students feeling that they are not being judged

• The author also recommends after the initial shock that educators provide accurate information, enable students to ‘zoom out’ so that they don’t see events in isolation and to promote loving action including social justice campaigns. 

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

• What kinds of conversations have I had about difficult and upsetting events with students before? How did it go?

• How can I facilitate these kinds of conversations in future?

• What support do I need to have these kinds of conversations effectively?

If you’re interested in being coached through your biases or want to talk further about this more generally, please do get in touch - I’d love to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Impact Of Sexual Violence On Mental Health

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Following on from our keynote training on T2 INSET day, I was really interested to see some research as reported by the the Institute of Education about the links between sexual violence and mental health. 

Objectives: To consider the impact of sexual violence on serious mental health issues in young people

Summary: 

• Serious mental health problems amongst 17 year olds could fall by as much as 16.8% for girls and 8.4% for boys if they had not experienced sexual violence

• Out of near 10,000 students involved in this study nearly 1,000 girls and 260 boys had experienced a sexual assault or an unwanted sexual approach

• The report noted that several serious mental health problems were considerably higher in those reporting sexual assaults or an unwanted sexual approach

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

• What is the role of education in this equation?

• How confident do I feel in being able to support students disclosing their experiences of sexual violence?

• What support would I like further 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: Extremist Views Amongst School-Age Students

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone has had a great week so far. On our T2 INSET day, we’re having an external speaker join us to talk about PREVENT and how it fits within a wider culture of safeguarding. To this end, I was interested to see the reporting on a piece of research done by the UCL Institute of Education to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 around the theme of extremism and radicalisation in schools.

Objectives:

To understand the current state of play with respect to extremist views amongst school-age students.

Summary: 

• Extreme views such as racism, misogyny and homophobia are described as being ‘widespread’ and ‘rising’ across the UK
• Teachers are not regularly given time, training or resources to combat these views effectively
• Where anti-extremist work does take place, it is often done performatively rather than meaningfully 
• Teachers can be concerned about ‘getting it wrong', particularly with respect to conversations about race
• Community engagement is very important in order to tackle the rise of extremist views effectively

 

How does this impact me and my practice?:

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

• What am I hoping to gain from the PREVENT and facilitating conversations with students about race training in INSET T2?
• What do I need in order to support me to tackle extremist views?
• How have I effectively done this before? What does this look like in a classroom or pastoral setting?

 

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.

Thanks, Jaya

How To Get Students Talking

 By Ruhina Cockar

How do I get my students to talk?! This may sound like a strange question when so often we’re thinking about how to positively encourage students to stop talking and focus on their work! Talking and discussion offer invaluable learning opportunities for teaching the curriculum as well as for the development of the “global citizens” we aspire for our students to be. Let’s say, for example, you want to have a whole-class discussion on a topic like “Bullying or banter? What is and what isn’t acceptable” or you want students to discuss one-to-one with each other about domestic abuse and its effects on the family unit- can these topics be explored effectively if students don’t talk? In general, students are more likely to discuss and participate freely if they feel comfortable in their environment and trust that their contributions are valued- so how could you achieve this? Fail to prepare, prepare to fail holds true when facilitating a discussion: having an idea of what the journey of the discussion will be from start to finish, and the questions you might ask to ensure the discussion stays on track will maintain the flow and ensures there is an objective to it; free-flowing discussion with no purpose or direction leads to off-task behaviour and erodes trust. Establishing the ground rules before the discussion takes place will help build trust: it might be helpful to refer back to your Partnership Agreement (or to create one if you haven’t got one established in your classroom) and remind students of what everyone has agreed to in terms of how to speak to and how to treat one another. Clearly communicating the purpose of the discussion, whether you will do hands-down questioning or not, whether this is a pose, pause, pounce, bounce type of discussion will also work towards creating a comfortable environment for students to be open: they understand theirs and their peers’ boundaries. If you choose not to use hands down questioning, an alternative approach would be to use a token system: Distribute three tokens to each student at the beginning of the discussion. Each time a student speaks, a token is given to the teacher. The goal is for students to spend all their tokens by the end of the discussion. This system can be really useful in limiting students who dominate the discussion and encouraging quiet students to contribute. A technique for ensuring quality discussions take place is one built on thinking time. Posing the question for discussion and asking students to work in pairs or as a group to write down their initial thoughts, answers or ideas will help ensure the class discussion is meaningful and productive as students have had a chance to think about the issue beforehand. Learning things about your students, asking them about their interests, acknowledging their answers through writing the comments on the board and/or making connections between their comments and the discussion at large will start to help students feel comfortable and valued. Examples of comments that acknowledge a student:

• That’s an excellent point Lara.
• I like that you’ve given the other point of view Ahmed - it shows balance and many of us would not have considered that perspective.
• Aya it was brave of you to share such a personal experience - thank you.
• I think you may have misunderstood the question Borislav but I appreciate your contribution and willingness to speak.
• As Samiya said earlier…

A further question to consider about seating arrangements: could everyone sit in a circle? Around a table? Would you like the person speaking to stand and make their point? Seeing each other facilitates listening, and acknowledging each other.

With a nod to life skills and careers we know communication and working collaboratively is an essential skill, whether this is in a group work setting or in a discussion setting - it’s imperative students feel confident in their ability to articulate their thoughts and ideas so they are heard.

I hope this post goes some way to helping you teach our students this and please share any ideas, suggestions and experiences you may have in the comments below