The Duchess’s Community High School is very pleased and excited to be part of this valuable Learning to Learn research. It is a great privilege to be offered a place within the Campaign for Learning as part of this three year project.
Our first year has been extremely rewarding the published repost is available on our web site.
For the Second year we are extending our team to include two members of the English Department as well as the existing members of the Design and Technology department. The focus of this year’s 08/09 research is ‘Can structured Assessment for Learning and Cooperative Learning produce more resilient, independent and resourceful post 16 students'. We want to improve the Classroom Experience for all students.
Further Information
Further information about the project can be found at:
Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 4 is a research project funded through the independent UK charity, the Campaign for Learning (CfL), and facilitated by a team of researchers from the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching at Newcastle University, and Durham University. This project involves 41 primary and secondary schools in four Local Authorities (LAs), representing a wide range of socio-economic contexts across England.
Phases in the project
This project builds on research completed in Phases 1 to 3 (Rodd, 2001; 2003; Higgins et al. 2007) and throughout it has been characterised by a commitment to case study based research with a priority placed on the interpretations and definitions of Learning to Learn (L2L) which are practicable in school.
Phase 4 sees an emphasis on sustainability (the project continues to work with regions and schools involved in Phase 3) and replicability (a new local authority, Northumberland, has been included in the project and new schools have also joined in existing regions).
In Phases 3 and 4, however, there has been a move which has seen the case studies completed by the teachers using an approach based on Stenhouse’s (1981) model of “systematic enquiry made public”. Within these Phases the teachers have been encouraged to initiate changes they feel are appropriate and that fit with what they believe is the ethos of Learning to Learn; and they have completed the first level of evaluation with an emphasis on evidence that is meaningful to them and colleagues.
Thus the locus of control in these latter two phases has been with the teachers rather than the researchers (Baumfield et al. 2008). The university team and the Campaign for Learning complements the teachers’ focused research by exploring themes that cross school and regional boundaries and drawing conclusions that can influence practice, theory and policy more generally (Wall and Hall 2005). In this way there is a partnership which develops and incorporates evidence from and dissemination to practice, research and theory and policy communities.
Phase 4 of the Learning to Learn in Schools Project
Phase 4 of the Learning to Learn in Schools project started in May 2007. It uses the same methodology as Phase 3, but within the University’s agenda are themes of sustainability and replicability. As such, within the 41 schools involved there is full range of experience and involvement: from teachers and schools that have participated since Phase 1 through to schools and teachers who have only gotten involved in the last six months. Regardless of experience at the current time teachers are in the middle of their first year of professional enquiry and the university team are involved in collecting baseline data.
In our analysis of Phase 4, we will continue to use and develop our conceptual framework of the impact of Learning to Learn (Table i). The framework is arranged in a way which implicitly privileges language and this will be validated by the evidence from the case studies and the cross-project data collection reported later.
It also encompasses knowledge, skills, understanding, dispositions and affect over four levels: learner, teacher, school and community.
This model has emerged from our analysis of Phase 3 and allows us to identify areas of evidence and to constantly revise our understanding of L2L in the light of new developments from the schools.
Latest Report
Download the PDF here.
