Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable learnings for teachers

This digest found in

What did pupils suggest helped them to learn?

The researchers clustered the pupils’ ideas for what helped then to learn into four main categories.

Interactive teaching for understanding
Pupils wanted to be actively involved in their learning, which meant teachers engaging with what pupils brought to their own learning:
‘If he asked more questions then we’d become more alert instead of just sitting there like, just listening to him all the time’.
‘I thought that we could have done it ourselves if he’d just given us a little bit of help’.

Contextualising the learning
Pupils felt that learning tasks that connected new ideas with something they were already familiar with, especially in unusual ways, helped them to understand and remember the ideas:

‘We’d been learning more about co-ordinates and graphs … and before Easter we learned about ‘squeggs’ … it was an Easter egg – a square Easter egg … So we learned about sides of a squegg and how many squeggs you can get’.

Fostering a stronger sense of ownership
Pupils wanted greater independence in their classroom learning than they were used to. They wanted to be trusted to learn and to have their growing maturity recognised:

‘We just like enjoying writing stuff that we found out ourselves … It’s like really sort of grown-up writing because you have to find information, take notes, then copy it all up’.

Collaborative learning
Pupils valued opportunities to collaborate with their peers – they felt collaboration helped them to express themselves and develop understandings:

‘Like if someone’s had an idea, you can say, “I don’t really think that’ll go”, or “That’ll be really good to what we’re doing”, and when people tell people that, they can say what they think and it just helps you’.

Your path: Standards Site Home > Welcome to The Research Informed Practice Site (TRIPS) > Themes > Pupil Voice > Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable learnings for teachers > What did pupils suggest helped them to learn?
Research Home Themes \| Find digests \| About the digests resources glossary researchers contact TRIPS Introduction What did pupils suggest helped them to learn? How did the teachers select which ideas to use? What happened when teachers tried using their pupils’ ideas? What can be learned about pupil consultation from the teachers’ experiences? How was the study designed? What are the implications for practitioners? Where can I find out more? Send us your feedback Collated digests To find out more about collated digests click here Get Word Reader Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable learnings for teachers This digest found in Pupil Voice Send to a friend Word doc 60KB Printer friendly Collate for later What did pupils suggest helped them to learn? The researchers clustered the pupils’ ideas for what helped then to learn into four main categories. Interactive teaching for understanding Pupils wanted to be actively involved in their learning, which meant teachers engaging with what pupils brought to their own learning: ‘If he asked more questions then we’d become more alert instead of just sitting there like, just listening to him all the time’. ‘I thought that we could have done it ourselves if he’d just given us a little bit of help’. Contextualising the learning Pupils felt that learning tasks that connected new ideas with something they were already familiar with, especially in unusual ways, helped them to understand and remember the ideas: ‘We’d been learning more about co-ordinates and graphs … and before Easter we learned about ‘squeggs’ … it was an Easter egg – a square Easter egg … So we learned about sides of a squegg and how many squeggs you can get’. Fostering a stronger sense of ownership Pupils wanted greater independence in their classroom learning than they were used to. They wanted to be trusted to learn and to have their growing maturity recognised: ‘We just like enjoying writing stuff that we found out ourselves … It’s like really sort of grown-up writing because you have to find information, take notes, then copy it all up’. Collaborative learning Pupils valued opportunities to collaborate with their peers – they felt collaboration helped them to express themselves and develop understandings: ‘Like if someone’s had an idea, you can say, “I don’t really think that’ll go”, or “That’ll be really good to what we’re doing”, and when people tell people that, they can say what they think and it just helps you’.