The Enquiring Classroom (RLE Edu O)

An Introduction to Children's Learning

Stephen Rowland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136452635
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This book, by closely recording and reflecting upon the work and play of a group of 9 to 11 year-old children in a primary classroom, develops an approach to teaching and learning which is based upon the ways in which children are able to exercise a controlling influence over their own learning activity. It also suggests the sharing and analysis of classroom experience should be part of a teacher's day-to-day life. The material for the book was gathered during a year of classroom enquiry in which the author combined the roles of teacher and researcher, working alongside the normal class teacher in a primary school. Samples of the children's work are carefully described and analysed in an attempt to get behind the overt behaviour of the children and reveal the purposes, concerns and thinking that underlies their activity.

Chapter 1

Introduction: A Framework for Classroom Enquiry

This book offers an insight into the work of a group of children in a primary school classroom and is about how we, as classroom teachers must share and carefully analyze our experience of children if we are to develop our expertise with understanding, rather than passively respond to the ‘educational’ fads of the day. It is also an attempt to bring together the richness of the anecdote of classroom life and the intellectual scrutiny of the research project.

A theme that will recur in different forms throughout this book is the idea that at the heart of any good teaching and learning experience is a critical relationship, that is, a relationship in which teachers and learners alike seek to question each other’s ideas, to reinterpret them, to adapt them and even to reject them, but not to discount them. To be critical in this sense, we need to know something of the origins of those ideas, their roots, the frameworks in which they are embedded. Furthermore, if this book is itself to be part of such a critical process, I must provide some outline of the origins of the ideas upon which it is based. To put this another way, the pictures of classroom life that I shall portray need to be given a frame, if others are to make use of them.

In order to provide this frame, it is necessary not only to outline the school context in which the events and observations took place, but also to say a word about myself as observer, my concerns, values and ideas. It is quite obvious that any two observers — and especially any two teachers — presented with the same classroom event, will perceive different things. For example, a piece of writing that strikes one teacher as showing a poor grasp of grammatical conventions, for another may be evidence of ingenuity in self-expression.

This essentially subjective way in which we interpret the classroom and children’s activities within it has been considered by many educational researchers to be something to be avoided at all costs.¹ The ‘unreliable’ accounts of teachers have been dismissed in favour of such technical devices as observation schedules listing categories of behaviour to be noted and ticked off at regular intervals,² and questionnaires and tests whose results can be subjected to statistical analysis. But the claim to objectivity for any such devices must always be open to question, since the decision to ask this question rather than that, to view this behaviour as worthy of measurement rather than another must, in the final analysis, depend upon an act of judgement. Furthermore, there are great dangers in assuming that just because one measure of behaviour (representing, say, a certain style of teaching) correlates well with another (say, the child’s score in a reading test), that there is a particular causal relationship between the two.

But it is not these difficulties which present the biggest obstacle to any attempt to give an objective account of how children learn in the classroom. Any explanation of the learning process must concern itself with the children’s intentions, their interpretations and the thinking they bring to bear upon their activities. It is difficult to conceive of any device which could measure these things, correlate them with other factors and thereby provide the kind of objective results which so many educational researchers have sought.

No, in order to understand children’s understanding we must first gain access to it. This cannot be achieved by the researcher who is separated from the children both physically and psychologically by the research tools used to measure their behaviour. But as teachers, on the other hand, with our close involvement with children and our professional skills which are intended to enhance our understanding of them, we are in a privileged position. The inner thoughts and intentions of the children will never be quite open to us and must always be inferred. But we are nevertheless in a position to relate closely to the children, to prompt their thinking and thereby to begin to reveal it, and so it is up to us to make the most of this privilege in order to gain insight into how our children learn and how we can best influence their learning.

This role for the teacher in educational research was suggested by Professor Hawkins.

The transitions and transformations of intellectual development may be rapid indeed, but they are statistically rare and must be observed in context to be given significance. The most important area of control, for making the intellectual development of children more visible, happens to coincide with the major practical aim of educational reform: to provide both the material and social environment, and the adult guidance, under which the engagement of children with their world is most intrinsically satisfying and most conducive to the development we would study. Thus to be the best scientific observers we must be at once the best providers for and the best teachers of those whom we would study.³

But underlying Hawkins’ claim that we should somehow put together the roles of ‘scientific observer’ (or ‘classroom enquirer’ as I would prefer it in this context) and teaćher, there lies a certain view of the teaching and learning relationship. Since such a view, or some germinal idea of it, predates the understanding represented in this present study, was developed by it, and underlies the kind of interpretations and selections I made while working with the children in the classroom, it is important to attempt at least to sketch it out here.

At the risk of oversimplifying a highly complex and philosophical matter, there appear to be two broadly different approaches to teaching which I shall call the transmission mode and the interpretative mode. According to the transmission mode of teaching, the teacher is seen as having, or having access to, certain knowledge and skills and as having the responsibility of transmitting these to the learner. Teaching proceeds according to objectives which, in principle at least, are predetermined by the teacher for any particular teaching period. The effectiveness of the teaching and learning can then be judged by the extent to which these objectives are met, that is, the desired knowledge and skills have been successfully transmitted. Characteristically, this mode of teaching concerns itself not so much with the processes by which children learn, but with the products of that learning, and indeed only those products which relate directly to the predetermined teaching objectives. With its emphasis upon the predetermined products of teaching, this form of learning is, on the face of it, testable. It is an approach to teaching and learning which fits well with an educational system which is concerned to sort and grade children through various levels of public examination.

But, to return to Hawkins’ suggestion that an investigation of the learning processes can be incorporated into the role of the teacher, the transmission mode of teaching offers the classroom enquirer little access into how that process takes place. If our prime concern, in evaluating our teaching, is to examine the extent to which our predetermined objectives have been met, then there is a severe danger that we shall fail to see how the children understand, especially where their understanding is not in line with those objectives. On so many occasions during this present study, I was taken aback by the way in which a child had understood a situation totally differently from how I would have expected (see, for example, Dean’s attempts to classify caterpillars, p. 26). In such instances the child’s understanding, and my own insight into it, could only be developed given a relative freedom from too tight a set of teaching objectives.

The approach to teaching which played an increasing, though not exclusive, part in my own classroom practice prior to this study, and is, I would argue, an important element in any teacher’s classroom enquiry into the nature and processes of children’s learning, is an interpretative mode. While objectives play an important part in how the teacher provides resources and offers experience, skills and knowledge to the children, the act of teaching is not seen as being determined or evaluated only in terms of those objectives. According to this mode, the process of teaching and learning is two-way. It involves not only the child’s attempt to interpret and assimilate the knowledge and skills offered by the teacher, but also the teacher’s attempt to understand the child’s growing understandings of the world. This concern to understand the children is not merely an attempt to evaluate whether or not a teaching objective has been successful (as in the ‘examination’), but is a fundamental aspect of the interaction that takes place between teacher and learner as they learn together. The meaning of the knowledge, skills and experience involved in any teaching/learning act is not defined by the teacher alone, but is open to a process of reinterpretation as the children attempt to relate the experience afforded them to their existing knowledge. It is through such processes of reinterpretation, as teachers and learners strive to understand each other, that we gain some access and insight into the children’s understanding. It is in this way also that we can evaluate the effects of our teaching.⁴

This interpretative mode of teaching places considerable emphasis upon the autonomy of the children. The choices they make and the ways they interpret the resources of the classroom are significant indicators to us of their understanding To allow insufficient exercise of choice, or to inhibit the idiosyncracy of their interpretation, may not only close off possible avenues of their learning, but will also close our access to that learning. For this reason it was important, in this present enquiry, that I should be able to work with the children in a way which respected their autonomy.

From my experience of working on my own in a classroom, I had begun to realize that whenever I looked really closely at what the children were doing, the choices they were making and the forms of expression they were using, then a picture began to build up of a child who was, in some sense, more ‘rational’ than I had previously recognized. It seemed that, the closer I looked, not only the more I saw, but the more intelligent was what I saw. I had read so much educational writing that stressed the limitations of children’s skill, knowledge and experience. What increasingly impressed me was that given these limitations, an interpretative mode of teaching reveals children to be making appropriate sense of their world.

Of course, with a class of thirty or so children one cannot always be relating to individuals or groups of children in a sufficiently close manner to gain this kind of optimistic insight. Nevertheless, it was those occasions when I was able to reflect sufficiently to provide some understanding of why the children worked in the way they did, that motivated me as a teacher. A few such insights into their learning were worth more than a battery of objective measures of their performance.

It was with this sense of optimism, combined with a desire to find out more about the children I taught, that I welcomed the opportunity offered when Michael Armstrong, another teacher, came to join me in my classroom for a year. His purpose in joining me was to combine the roles of teacher and researcher and thereby to investigate the quality of children’s intellectual understanding and its growth. This enquiry, in which I became increasingly involved, is reported in his book, Closely Observed Children (1980). Subtitled ‘The Diary of a Primary Classroom’, the book follows and analyzes the painting, writings and explorations of a number of the children in my class. The year we spent together in 1976–77 turned out to be the first phase of a continuing programme of classroom enquiries of which this present study represents the second.

Hawkins had suggested that the roles of teaching and classroom enquiry could be combined. Now with two teachers teaching and enquiring together, it was possible to find the time and the space to sustain both. Furthermore, it soon became clear to me that two teachers with certain shared values are able to engage in a deeper analysis of the children’s work than would be possible through solitary reflection.

The main theme that Michael Armstrong developed during that year was the concept of appropriation, the idea that ‘from their earliest acquaintance with the various traditions of human thought, with literature, art, mathematics, science and the like, [children] struggle to make use of these traditions, of the constraints which they impose as well as the opportunities which they present, to examine, extend and express in a fitting form their own experience and understanding.’⁵ Furthermore, his evidence suggested that ‘intellectual growth can properly be seen as a product or consequence, of children’s successive attempts at appropriation from task to task over the course of weeks, months and years.’⁶

These ideas, which were embodied in Michael Armstrong’s descriptions of the children’s work, tended to confirm my optimistic view of the child’s intellect. However, I was concerned to develop them in several ways. First, could the same claims be made of children working in a different classroom? Second, could this theme itself be developed by a further classroom enquiry? And perhaps of foremost importance to me was the role of the teacher in this kind of learning. If children can appropriate knowledge, what does this imply about the relationship between the learner and the teacher? An act of appropriation seems to suggest an attempt to control. In what sense can children take control of their own learning, and where does the teacher fit into this?

As I have suggested, a certain degree of autonomy, and hence the possibility and even desirability of children exercising some control over their activity, appeared to be an assumption upon which an interpretative mode of teaching and this kind of classroom enquiry were based. Some clearer understanding of what this autonomy amounted to, and how children could make use of it, would serve to develop my own approach to teaching. I also hoped that it might shed some light upon a recurrent and somewhat confused debate between so-called ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ approaches to teaching.

It was with this range of questions in mind that I embarked on the second phase of our programme of enquiry. For this, I gained the support of Leicestershire Education Department and Leicester University, to whom I was seconded for a research degree, to conduct fieldwork alongside another teacher in a different school. I was to spend a year in the classroom teaching and analyzing the children’s work, followed by a year to write up my report (in the form of a research thesis) and prepare further developments in the programme. But before fieldwork began I taught for a year in the ‘normal’ situation of one teacher to thirty children. This year of ‘normal’ teaching persuaded me that while much more could be achieved with two teachers than with one, nevertheless the ideas which Michael and I had developed together were equally applicable in the less favourable circumstances.

In looking for a classroom and a ‘host’ teacher with whom to conduct this second phase of the enquiry, it was important that certain conditions should be met. Obviously, it was vital that the host teacher should appreciate the general purpose of the enquiry and be prepared to join in the analysis of the children’s work. I would have to be relatively free from the day-to-day pressures of classroom organization so that time could be spent interacting closely with the children. Furthermore, it was important that the style of teaching in the classroom should be sufficiently open to encourage the children to make choices and to come to their own interpretations of the work. In other words, since the enquiry was intended to investigate the learning associated with an interpretative mode of teaching, such a way of working should be characteristic of the host teacher’s style. For, although I would not be attempting to subject the host teacher’s teaching to critical scrutiny — inasmuch as teaching was an object of the study, it was my own teaching rather than the hosťs — any great divergence in our approaches could have caused unfortunate confusion amongst the children.

After visits to several primary schools in Leicestershire, I settled on a class of thirty-three 9 to 11-year-olds at Merton Primary School, Syston. Chris Harris, the class teacher, was the Deputy Head. There were eleven other class teachers and about 300 children housed in the ‘open-plan’ school with two mobile classrooms adjacent to the main school building.

The catchment area of the school consisted almost exclusively of a modern housing estate on the edge of the village of Syston. It is about six miles from Leicester where many of the children’s parents worked. The houses on the estate were relatively inexpensive and appeared to be occupied largely by first-time buyers with young families and those who had moved from older terraced accommodation in Leicester. The socio-economic groupings represented in the intake of children therefore tended not to reflect the upper or lowest groups. The children were almost exclusively white and English speaking.

The headteacher, Stuart Ball, together with Chris Harris, encouraged an informal atmosphere and approach to teaching throughout the school. Chris worked with his class in an open area occupied by three other teachers and their classes which spanned the whole junior age range (from 7 to 11). Although the space was somewhat cramped, the teachers in this area made use of the open plan arrangement in the flexibility and cooperation it offered in the use of resources...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: A Framework for Classroom Enquiry
• 2. Relating to Children
• 3. The Material Environment
• 4. Abstract Thinking and Hypothesizing
• 5. Representation
• 6. Points of Growth
• 7. Dramatic Quality in David’s Writing: A Case Study
• 8. Epilogue: Sharing Our Understanding
• Bibliography