Draft Copy
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002.
Paper presented to
Network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments
Young, Gifted and Excluded
Dr Tony Cotton
Nottingham Trent University
Faculty of Education
Introduction
From September2001, the ‘gifted and talented programme’ was implemented in 1000 secondary schools across some 70 local education authorities in England. TheDepartment for Education and Skills (DfES) spent £60 million on this provision inthe financial year 2001 to 2002 and has required all secondary schools to identifya gifted and talented pupil cohort comprising 5 to 10 percent of pupils in each year group. At least two thirds of this cohort comprises pupils with academic ability, defined as ability in one or more subjects in the statutory curriculum other than art, music and PE. Up to one third are talented pupils, defined as those with ability in art, music, PE, or any sport or creative art. (DfES 2002). A key teacher in each school is required to have developed and a distinct teaching and learning programme to address the identified individual learning needs of pupils in the gifted and talented pupil cohort, focusing on their strengths and areas for further development. In urban areas of social deprivation these programmes have been seen by schools as a way of increasing the number of students achieving examination passes in order to increase the academic profile of the school. For these students, often grappling with competing social and academic demands, academic success comes at a price. This paper is the first of two papers exploring the impact of such a programme on young people and their families in a deprived area of a Midlands English city. This paper focuses on the methodology of voice and the way in which research can be conducted in a way which ensures the co participants in the research are ‘heard’.
Elliot Eisner suggests that the question "what is it like to be here?" (Eisner, 1991: p72) is nontrivial and that such a question can only be answered by researchers taking a careful and rigorous approach to qualitative research. Such an approach to qualitative studies takes the issue of ‘voice’ as primary. Schratz and Walker (Schratz and Walker 1995: p14)ask the question,
If we are to find ways to make research democratic then we have to find ways to break the mould that confines research to a highly selected group of specialists.
For Schratz and Walker the social specificity of research make any claims to truth problematic. Indeed such claims to truth may be oppressive in themselves and reflexivity may become the main focus of concern for the researcher engaged in democratic research. The purpose of such work is not to tell truths about the world but to open up spaces that allow us all to think about how our worlds may be changed. This paper explores both the methodology of ‘voice’ and exemplifies its power through the study of a group of young people within an English school today. The questions ‘what is it like to be here’ offers a view both of the experience of young people in school in England and the effects of a particular piece of government policy on the lives and experiences of these young people and their families.
Even in a methodological, paper such as this care must be taken to challenge traditional modes of presentation. Theoretical dimensions of ‘voice’ still require stories to be heard. For this reason two extended vignettes are included in the paper. The theoretical tools which I use to assess the validity of these vignettes are outlined to allow readers to move between theory and narrative. So in this case reading requires work.
Voice and ‘Crucial Descriptions’.
The kids were very, very shocked, just a few were spiteful and said ‘traitor’, and meant it because I’m moving to the school just down the road. One group I will never forget because they just threw their chairs back and said, “oh well, that’s it then.” Then they just got up and walked away and they actually left me. It was a 10th year group, mainly lads, and they left me sitting on my own in the circle. They wouldn’t speak to me and then they came back and wanted to ask lots of questions, ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘it’s us isn’t it’, ‘if we are really good will you stay’, ‘what do you want to go there for its crap’, ‘you think this is bad its worse down there’. It wasn’t just one conversation, it was a barrage of comments. Then I said “will you help me move out of the drama studio because your next teacher is having it done up and it will be really nice for you”, and they said “yeah, alright then because we’re not doing any drama ever again and you don’t care so we will just do it.” They did it but they did it angrily and there were boxes being thrown and tables being knocked and it wasn’t the best thing that should have been done but then in another way at least they could take their anger out on things that were already broken. So there was an element of me that thought better to throw boxes around than each other, or get at another teacher when they left me, so they all just disappeared, they did the job and then said they were going to do something else and they disappeared. I think they went for a fag[1] and I didn’t follow it up because they were so upset. In my next lesson with them they were really gentle and sweet and said ‘we really don’t want you to go. Is there anything to stop you? Can’t you just ring up and say you don’t want to go?” That was hard, that was really hard, I’m still worried about them. (Cotton, 2001)
‘Voice’ has been defined as privileging experience over theory as a basis for understanding (Hadfield and Haw , 2000). The main concerns of those researching with ‘voice’ at the heart of their research being work with marginalized or ‘silenced’ groups; inclusive and democratic research; the challenge and critique of processes which silence; and participation and empowerment within and through the research process. The vignette offered above is one outcome of a year of intensive research with nine teachers in schools deemed to be failing. The ‘little story’ offers a powerful articulation of ‘what it is like to be here’ and both critiques the policy which positions the actors in schools and stirs us into action. This action will vary dependant on our positions within our educational systems but the action aims to support those teachers who strive to engage with the complex educational problems involved in working and teaching young people at risk of exclusion from education. Secondly such a ‘story’ challenges commonly held beliefs about the efficacy and effectiveness of ‘one cure fits all’ policy developments. In this case the inspection framework currently in use in English schools.
The use of ‘voice’ within research texts is not unproblematic. The development of powerful stories takes work. The story ‘above’ offers both a critical voice and a representative voice (See Hadfield and Haw, 2000). A critical voice which seeks to challenge existing structures and assumptions about working practices. Authentication of the ‘story’ comes both from an awareness of the teller of the story as to the purpose of asserting her voice and the particularity of her experience. The theme of representation aims to raise arguments and issues that are often marginalised in policy making.
The notion of ‘crucial descriptions’ has been further developed by Renuka Vithal (Vithal, 2002). For her a crucial description; that is a vignette which attempts to integrate a critical perspective must satisfy four conditions. These are conditions of; transparency – this enables the reader to see through the language of description into the particular context which enables critique; transformacy – this offers the potential for such a description to effect transformative change in the reader, both in thought and action; generativity – this is the potential the description has for generating theory and informing new practices; and finally exemplarity, this is the extent to which the description connects the complexity of content with the complexity of theory. I would argue that the ‘crucial description I offer above meets these requirements, My evidence for this is the response to the story by audiences to which I have told the story. I would also argue that the description meets the requirements of ‘voice’ offered by Mark Hadfield and Kaye Haw outlined above. Again the only evidence I can draw on is reader and listener response. This suggests that those researchers working in the field of voice must find ways of disseminating and reporting their work which takes the idea of audience very seriously. I finish this section with another ‘crucial description’, again taken from previous work. I offer this for you to assess against the criteria suggested above. This is available as a piece of video and presented publicly using the video.
I arrive at the school this week realising that today may be different from other days. I have been working with a group of 15 and 16 year old pupils at the school every week during their GCSE[2] Drama sessions. The question we are working on is ‘what is it like to be here?’, and we have been trying very hard to come to an articulation of this for the last two terms.
But today is the day after the OFSTED[3] report on the school was released to the press. The headline in the local paper screamed ‘Another City school slammed’ and went on to describe in detail the school’s perceived failings. I had already been in conversation with the journalist who wrote the piece, one of those ‘do you know who I am conversations’ when we attach some importance to our doctorate and imagine it may give us power to do something on behalf on someone else. As with most of these conversations I was left feeling as though I had no power at all.
I met the class teacher and we decided we would have to ditch the plan for today altogether to allow the young people we were working with to express how they felt. We had no option as we wished to remain faithful to the projects aims. The whole project so far had taken ‘voice’ as a starting point, but taking a view that finding and articulating a ‘voice’ is immensely problematic. We don’t just know how we feel about our situation – we must work very hard to find ways of describing what it is which sums up for us ‘what it is like to be here’? The aim of such a project is to work together with young people within schools so that they become analytical of the system of schooling they are embroiled in rather than judgemental. That they develop a sense of how schooling positions us as well as how we position ourselves. After several weeks engaged in telling, evaluating, analysing and researching individual stories about school the group had concluded that the key issue for them was respect. How is respect played out in school, in all the relationships which exist and develop; student – teacher, student – student, student – family, and all the human interactions that impact on the everyday stuff of schooling.
So the students entered the drama space and sat in the circle. Silence at first. ‘Have you seen the newspaper?’ Some anger, ‘who does he think he is to write stuff like that?’, ‘How does he know what it’s like here – he’s never even visited the school?’ and so on. I ask the question, ‘What would you like to do about it?’ The clear reply, ‘We want to get him in here and make him feel as bad as he has made us feel.’ My colleague has an idea. She suggests that we role play this situation. I leave the room to re-enter as the journalist. When I come back into the space the room is dark except for a spotlight on the chair in which I am to sit. I sit down and introduce myself, ‘Hello, my name is Roy Warren, I’m a journalist on the Post. I heard that you wanted to ask me some questions.’ Then silence again, a tense, nervous silence. Then one of the girls turns to the teacher and says, ‘It’s no good Miss, we don’t know what to say.’ This group of very articulate, angry, perceptive young people had completely lost any ‘voice’ they had.
We moved on – we agreed that neutral territory may be the best place for a meeting. The young people worked at the exact questions they would want to ask and how they could link these questions to the theme of ‘respect.’ They selected those who would represent the group and some weeks later the journalist agreed to meet four of the students at the University in which I worked. He also agreed to be videoed. I’ll end this story with an extract from the interview – less of an interview perhaps and more of a chance for these young people to tell someone who had made them feel disempowered what it was like. This extract is ten minutes into the conversation.
Can we tell you how we felt when we read your article?
Yeah
It makes you feel ashamed. Because that is the school that you go to. You’re learning from teachers who have got bad reports and your learning with children who’ve got bad reports. You think; am I one of those children who aren’t doing very well? It doesn’t make you feel very good about yourself. Did you think about how we would fell when we read this stuff? You could have written it another way.
Yeah – but I had to be accurate. I just reported what OFSTED had said. If I had written a positive story and the top line had said that the school was failing it wouldn’t have made any sense.
But you could have gone about it any way you liked. You’re a reporter. You wouldn’t like it if your daughter read this stuff about her school. You wouldn’t like it if she was ashamed to go to school, if she hated going to school, if she felt bad about herself, not because of her school but because of what you had written.
No – I probably wouldn’t. But what is it you think we should have done differently, how should I have written it?
I don’t know. You can’t ask me that. I’m not a reporter.
The Gifted and Talented Programme: A research plan
In this section I outline the research plan. This plan has been developed following the theoretical and methodological tools described above. The research will take place over the next academic year.
The first stage of the work involves the teacher who has been given responsibility for the ‘gifted and talented programme in the school, which I am calling Peacock High School. Initial interviews and meetings with this teacher are working towards her developing her sense of place within the system, both within the school and within a post which is new to her. She chose to do this by writing a writing a history of her work to date. This piece of writing is both self critique and reflection on the process she has followed during the last year. This history contains those developments and ‘moments’ that she sees as key successes. The next stage of the work will be a collaborative analysis of this piece of writing. Questions to explore will include, how do her stories of success fit with the historical development of the post? How does her own developing philosophy, emerging through her writing fit or jars with the government and school version of this underpinning values of the ‘gifted and talented’ programme?
Another group of people who will be closely engaged in the research process are those pupils who have been identified as the ‘gifted and talented’ cohort within the school. A focus group of these pupils will take as a starting point their aims and aspirations of education. Discussions will also ask the group[ to identify their successes so far. Collaborative analysis will look at the fit between the students notion of success and other measures of success which will be imposed on them. The context for all of this work will be set by the whole cohort of pupils exploring ‘what is it like to be here’ through photo work and group analysis of individual stories. These stories will be analysed in three focus groups; the gifted and talented group; a group of students who are outside the gifted and talented group; and a parents group representing parents of students across both student focus groups..
What is in it for me?
The main outcome of the research process will be a set of ‘crucial descriptions’ or ‘vignettes’ or little stories which illustrate the impact of this particular piece of government policy on the lived experiences of a group of young people and their families. As I described above, the research process in itself is an outcome. The process will be successful if students, teachers and their families are better able to articulate the ways in which they are constructed by the process of education, and the ways in which they construct themselves through their responses to particular events. However the writing and the telling of the stories in itself is not sufficient. An audience for the stories is required. So outcomes must include sharing and responding to the telling of the stories. The dissemination of the work will include a presentation of the research to all staff in the school. This will form a part of a training session for teachers training session for the staff. In this way the teachers within the school can hear the lived experiences of their students. All of those involved in the research will take part ion a dissemination/celebration event for each other. In this way all participants can hear each others stories and respond to them. Finally the stories will be spread wider through papers to educational research conferences.