Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable learnings for teachers
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Pupil Voice
How was the study designed?
The study involved six volunteer teachers and their Year 8 classes from three secondary schools – two English, two mathematics and two science teachers. The research was carried out in three stages over one year.
During the first stage (which lasted three months), a researcher interviewed six pupils individually from each class about three lessons. The pupils were chosen by the class teacher and were broadly representative of the class. Transcripts of the interviews were fed back to the teachers and the teachers were interviewed a few days later about their reactions to the pupils’ ideas. The teachers were encouraged to think about the changes they would make to their practice in response to pupil ideas that they judged were worthwhile and manageable. The researchers also clustered the pupil comments into categories and investigated whether there were any noticeable differences between the responses of boys and girls or more successful and less successful learners.
The second phase of the research followed straight after the first and lasted six weeks. The researchers investigated the use that the teachers made of their pupils’ ideas and sought the teachers’ evaluations of what happened.
Finally, each teacher was visited six months later (in the following academic year) to explore whether the teachers were trying the pupils’ ideas with their new class and whether they were consulting pupils about teaching and learning.
