New Spaces for Dialogue? What Are Adults Learning About Student Involvement and Participation

New spaces for dialogue? What are adults learning about student involvement and participation in Networked Learning Communities?

Dr. Jane McGregor

Paper prepared for the Symposium

Researching Networks in Education

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005

New Spaces for Dialogue? What are adults learning about student involvement and participation in Networked Learning Communities?

Dr Jane McGregor, Networked Learning Group, National College for School Leadership, UK

Abstract

As an enquiry and development programme the Networked Learning Communities (NLC) project is committed to ‘real time research’ to inform the system and is developing collaborative methodologies for working with practitioners and students. Programme level enquiries are conducted with the networks of schools by a field team of facilitators in addition to annual reviews of progress and more formal research. In the first cohort of NLCs 33% identified pupil voice as a strong feature of their networked learning focus at the submission stage and there is evidence that different forms of student/ pupil involvement have gained significant purchase across the programme.

Emerging evidence from the NLC enquiries suggests that student involvement in networks has important potential for building capacity and ‘bottom up change’ in the system, for example, through different forms of collaborative enquiry, particularly when focused on the conditions of learning. In a recent review 55% of NLCs identified research and enquiry with pupils as a significant achievement in their first year of existence. This paper describes developments which indicate the power of dialogue with students as a dimension of networks which may provide new possibilities for discussion and dialogue.

1. Introduction

‘Keeping children in their place’ has been a major preoccupation of schooling for over 250 years, with institutions designed physically and organisationally to that end. Congruent with research that demonstrates the benefits and challenges of engaging with ‘student voice’, this paper describes activities arising from the Networked Learning Communities project which are perceived to have opened up new spaces for discussion and dialogue particularly around teaching, learning and classroom environments. Such spaces are both metaphorical and actual, although not unproblematic. Locating opportunities for exploring understandings and making meaning together between adults and young people in networks of schools suggests possibilities for changing existing power relations within and between schools and encouraging ’ bottom up’/’inside out change’ through recognising the possibilities of networked forms of association.

The project described here is the National College of School Leadership’s (NCSL) largest initiative – the Networked Learning Communities (NLC) Programme which is also one of the largest of its kind in the world. NLCs are clusters of six or more schools who have voluntarily joined together in a four year development and enquiry project to enhance the quality of pupil learning, professional development and school-to-school learning through collaborative enquiry-oriented approaches.

The programme is constructed around the principle of learning ‘from, with and on behalf of each other’ in order to improve schools and the lives of the young people who travel through them. The networks which are the central feature of the Programme work collaboratively, in clusters, on enquiries and activities that reflect this principle. There are now 135 networks across 90 local authorities in England. They cover 1533 schools with a teacher population of over 35,000 and a pupil population of over 165,000. 70% are primaries, 25% are secondaries, 4% are special schools and 1% are others – nurseries, middle schools or sixth forms and they are broadly representative of state schools in England. Networks range in size from the minimum of six schools up to 44 schools

Pupil learning is at the heart of the work and in relation to this, leadership, collaborative enquiry and pupil involvement have been identified as major themes emerging from the networks in relation to key processes and underpinning principles(NCSL.a, In press,). One of the major aims of the programme, is to establish and investigate what has been termed ‘networked learning’:

“Networked learning is at the heart of collaborative capacity building. It occurs where people from different schools in a network engage with one another to enquire into practice, to innovate, to exchange knowledge and to learn together. Unlike ‘networking’, perhaps, it doesn’t happen by accident and, in order to happen by design, alternative organisational patterns, new professional relationships and different forms of facilitation, intervention and brokerage are required”.

(Jackson, 2004b, p.7/8)

It is a form of learning which encompasses the notion of building capacity within schools and networks so that they promote not just school or network level learning but system wide learning (Hadfield et al., 2004).

The NLC project set out to encourage and facilitate different forms of association aimed at enhancing the conditions for such learning. Further aims were to investigate structures, processes and outcomes and learn from networks to inform the wider system This system-wide influence may be seen in the current creation of Primary Strategy Learning Networks throughout England. This draws on research of the Networked Learning Group (NLG), the core team facilitating the programme, and employs Fielding’s typology of student engagement (2002, 2004) to describe networked activities in the area of pupil voice. These suggest that network forms have particular potential in providing spaces for adults and students to engage in discussion and dialogue initially around teaching and learning. Dialogue is taken to differ from discussion in emphasising shared understandings which may be more open-ended than where discussion aims to help make a decision. Whilst optimistic in reflecting what has been achieved, there are caveats on the appropriation of pupil voice work solely for school improvement purposes or being co-opted by increased central government control and surveillance.

2. Background

The language that is used to describe pupil involvement in NLCs is of course critical. Student voice covers a range of activities that “encourage reflection, discussion, dialogue and action on matters that primarily concern students, but also, by implication, school staff and the communities they serve” (Fielding & McGregor, 2005) [i] As Holdsworth ( 2004) points out in one of a variety of typologies (relating to a ‘community participation ladder’) ideas of ‘consultation’ and ‘involvement’ are more limited than those of ‘participation’ and ‘action’[1]. However, in order to move forward the NLG decided to use ‘involvement’ as an umbrella term to include student voice, student leadership etc. for one of the five development and enquiry groups set up to support networks and to build capacity for such work within and between schools[2] which is described in section 3.

The original title of this paper ‘New Spaces for Dialogue? What are adults learning about consulting pupils in networks? was changed to reflect the variety of forms of pupil engagement and dialogue between adults and pupils that is evidenced in NLCs. Noyes draws a useful distinction between consultation where ‘the initiative and control is more clearly located with the teacher, and the intentions bear a shadowy relationship to governmental priorities’ and ‘the processes of active citizenship and democratic engagement…with improved pupil attainment a welcome by-product’ (Noyes, 2005). NLCs display the range of types of engagement. Bearing in mind the different uses of terms in primary and secondary schools and the attendant distinctions (Jones et al., 2003), this paper follows Rudduck & Flutter ( 2004) in using the terms pupil and student interchangeably.

The NLC programme overall has been committed since its inception to the potentially transformative power of the pupil voice in networked learning, school improvement and to the democratic possibilities this engenders.

‘Pupil voice work is about valuing people and valuing the learning that results when we engage the capacities and the multiple voices in our schools. It is essentially both optimistic and aspirational, representing a belief in the contribution that is made when we release the leadership of all those who share responsibility for learning in a school- both adults and pupils.’ (Jackson, 2004a, p.7).

Analysis of the first NLC programme-level enquiry suggested that;

‘NLCs show a rapidly growing organisational ability to listen to and respond collaboratively to the perspectives of pupils in evaluating and designing their learning. This may create a growing capacity for change through increased organisational knowledge and understanding of what pupils think works and what might work better for them’ (Dudley, Hadfield & Carter, 2003).

In the last two years networks have demonstrated significant achievements in the area, as discussed in section 3 supported by NLG development and enquiry work and other national initiatives.

2.1 The wider picture of student involvement

The identification of pupil voice and involvement as a significant dimension of NLC development mirrors the currently considerable and growing interest in policy circles nationally and internationally around the nature and needs of young people in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing society. This section outlines existing & developing spaces in the wider public realm[ii].

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) sets out 4 basic principles that include children’s right to be heard. This has stimulated increasing inter-agency work as reflected in ‘Every Child Matters’. ‘Learning to Listen: Core principles for the involvement of children & young people’ was published by the Children and Young People’s Unit, (DfES, 2004a) and the DfES completed consultation on ‘Working together; giving young people a say (DfES, 2004b). Even Ofsted now expects inspectors to report on how far a school seeks, values and acts on pupil’s views. Non-Government organisations such as the Citizenship Foundation, Carnegie Young People’s Initiative, Save the Children and Schools Council UK are all active in commissioning reports, providing for a and co-ordination, training and materials (see weblinks in reference section).

There is also a growing research literature on pupil voice and participation in education in England, to augment that from Australia (Holdsworth, 2004; Johnson, 2000; Thomson & Holdsworth, 2003) - in school evaluation (Macbeath, Sugimene, Sutherland et al.,2003; Thomson & Gunter, 2005), school improvement (Mitra, 2001; Rudduck & Flutter, 2004; Pekrul & Levin, 2005) and, perhaps most important, as partners in their own learning and Students as Researchers (Fielding & McGregor, 2005; Raymond, 2001; Fielding, 2004)

The Education and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded a major networked Teaching and Learning Research Project (TLRP) ‘Consulting Pupils about Teaching and Learning’ which has produced a wealth of research grounded in schools and classrooms that has been used to create three important resources; ‘Consulting pupils; A Toolkit for Teachers (Macbeath et al., 2003) ‘Students as Researchers: Making a Difference’ (Fielding & Bragg, 2003) and ‘Consultation in the Classroom’ ). In the early days of the pupil involvement in NLCs development and enquiry group, and with the aim of engaging with best current knowledge and research, these resources effectively acted as a curriculum for the NLC programme from which networks have been able to develop their own locally-sensitive approaches.

Since the year 2000 schools have been required to address Citizenship Education as part of the National Curriculum for England and a recent systematic EPPI review on the impact of citizenship education on the provision of schooling powerfully highlighted the importance of pupils learning about citizenship ‘by experiencing it in action, through the ways in which they learn, ways in which they are taught and ways in which their (school) lives are organised. The main findings from this review in relation to teaching and learning are germane to discussion about pupil voice and leadership in NLCs in emphasising the criticality of dialogue and ‘a facilitative, conversational pedagogy’ which may challenge existing power/authority structures’ (Citizenship Education Research Group, 2004). Situated and practice-based learning theories which focus on participation and the effect of this on the construction of identities suggest that citizenship cannot be learnt in isolation but instead should be enacted as a community of practice (Thomson, 2001, Holdsworth,2004).

Pupil voice and participation thus resonates (albeit differently) with government and school improvement agendas as well as with programmes such as Assessment for Learning and Transforming Learning. Particularly relevant and pressing given the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ government-funded programme there are projects for involving young people in the design of their learning environments such as Schoolworks and Joinedupdesignforschools (Campion, 2004, Wright, 2004). Research into spaces for learning is arguably one of the critical areas for adults and students to explore together power relations that inhere in classrooms and schools yet are commonly ignored (McGregor, 2004; Fisher,2004).

Leadership and learning are increasingly explicitly linked in relation to young people through contemporary developments in pedagogy such as learning to learn, the popularity of thinking skills and also the strategies for lifelong learning. Explicit leadership pedogogies and opportunities for students are being developed in several NLCs. [iii] The Community Leadership programme of NCSL has created, with young people in London Challenge schools, a series of modules to develop student leadership. There are also significant links with progressive learning theories, in particular constructivist learning approaches, which form an important element in raising pupil achievement within the government’s standards agenda (McGregor & Tyrer, 2004).

2.2 Pupil Involvement in NLCs

One of the sites of tension between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ reform initiatives is the role of students in educational reform. Existing research suggest that student voice can serve as a catalyst for change in schools, in relationship to the improvement of teaching, curriculum, staff-student relationships and leading to changes in assessment and teacher training (Mitra,2005; Rudduck & Flutter,2004; Levin, 2000; Cook-Sather, in progress). To move beyond this, identifying and deliberately supporting sites of learning in networks of association may provide different opportunities for locating partnership relationships between adults and young people. It is suggested here that networks offer particular sites of opportunity for developing pupil involvement and dialogue with adults in addition to creating conditions favouring ‘going to scale’.