Session Information
05 SES 06 A, Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Context. For children who make less than expected progress within our education systems, the tightly focused nature of teaching, which seeks to construct pupils learning in pre-constructed ways, is often not successful. The growing significance of international comparative data derived from international assessments such as PISA, TiMMS and PIRLS and global education governance through organisations such as OECD, increasingly determine what counts as success in education (Sellar and Lingard,2014; Ball, 2012). This highlights performance gaps between groups of children within societies and also highlights learning gaps when individual pupils’ knowledge is assessed. (Learning gap: - gap between what children know and can do and what is planned for them to know and to do next).
At all levels of education in the UK the most deprived children achieve below their counterparts in education (Ofsted 2013). In 2012, 24% of all seven year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds did not reach the expected level of reading and 30% did not achieve adequately in writing compared to 10% demonstrating below expected outcomes (reading) and 14% in writing for their better off peers (DfE 2012).
This paper recognises that some children are not “intentional learners” (Black, et.al. 2006). Their priorities for learning may not be well aligned with the teachers and they struggle to benefit fully from the feedback they receive from the teacher. The focus of this article is to explore possible ways in which feedback to pupils can be used more effectively with children who struggle to succeed through the application of Jürgen Habermas’ s theory of Communicative Action.
The theoretical position adopted is framed within the concept of assessment for learning AFL (Black and Wiliam, 1998), and is particularly related to the notion of assessment as learning (Dann, 2002 and 2014) within AfL. Furthermore, the paper is located within a social constructivist perspective. Jürgen Habermas’ s theory of Communicative Action (1984 and 1987) enables us to recognise that feedback, and more importantly the interpretation of feedback , cannot be a one way process. Without recognition of pupil interpretation, its very purpose (to alter the learning gap) is compromised. Communicative action recognises that the views of all participants should be included and that the communicative process should recognise not only the knowledge content of learning, but social and personal aspects. Negotiated meanings should be sought through reasoned justification and argument, thus promoting learning with social justice.
This paper offers new ways of exploring teaching and learning, which recognises the complexity and the importance of interpretation and relationships in shared negotiated communicative contexts. As learning contexts become ever more structured and driven by externally constructed accountability agendas (Ball, 2012), the learners’ position can become constructed in ways that are divorced from their priorities.
The key objectives of the research are:
- To focus on pupils who demonstrate below the expected levels of achievement in the primary school ( but who do not have a special educational need) in order to understand their priorities for learning.
- to use Habermas’s notion of communicative action as a theoretical underpinning for engaging in understanding and moving their learning forwards.
- to develop a specific intervention through the process of pupil feedback that can enhance learning through developing pupil agency, promote social justice through the negotiation of learning progress.
The research question is: To what extent can the process of Communicative Action, applied through a processes of giving feedback to pupils who demonstrate less than expected achievements in urban primary schools, help pupils regulate their learning gap in ways which promote pupil agency and voice?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ball, S. (2012) Global Education Inc: New Policy Networks and the Neoliberal Imaginary. London: Routledge. Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998) Assessment and Classroom Learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 5, 7-74. Black, P., McCormick, R., James, M., and Peddar, D. (2006) Learning how to learn and assessment for learning: A theoretical inquiry. Research Papers in Education, 21, 119-132. Dann, R. (2002), Promoting assessment as learning: Improving the learning process. London Routledge/Falmer. Dann, R. (2014) Assessment as learning: blurring the boundaries of assessment and learning for theory policy and practice. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice 21:2, 129-166. Department for Education (2012) Statistical first release: phonics screening and National Curriculum assessment at key stage 1 in England. London. Englund, T. (2006) Deliberative Communication: a pragmatist proposal, Journal of Curriculum Studies 38:5, 503-520. Guttman, A., and Thompson, D. (2004) Why Deliberative Democracy? Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press. Habermas, J. (1984) The theory of communicative action: reason and the rationalization of society (Vol.1). Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, J. (1987) The theory of communicative action. Lifeworld and system: The critique of functionalist reasoning (Vol.2). Cambridge: Polity. Office for Standards in Education OFSTED (2013) Unseen Children: : access and achievement 20 years on: Evidence report. Sellar, S and Lingard, B. (2014) The OECD and the expansion of PISA: new global modes of governance in education. British Education Research Journal 40: 6, pp.917-936 Acronyms PIRLS Progress in International Reading Literacy Strategy TIMSS Trends in International maths and science PISA Programme for International Student Assessment
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