Session Information
05 SES 09 A, Poverty, Class and Schooling: Connecting Pedagogy with Learners’ Lives
Symposium
Contribution
Educators committed to overturning the nexus between poverty and school attainment are concerned to develop alternatives to the subject-based, whole-class, direct-instruction model now popular with policy-makers. Critics characterise these alternatives as empty-headed progressivism - promoting activity rather than the production of the knowledge, dispositions and competencies that count towards school credentials. The Get Wet action research project (www.getwet.org.uk) was conducted over a two-year period and involved four class teachers (two primary and two secondary) in four separate inner city English schools, five artists, a heritage water museum and four academics and a postgraduate intern. This paper focuses on the work of the two primary school teachers and their classes. The project began with an ‘installation’ which encouraged children to generate questions about water, its conservation and distribution. In one school children’s questions were largely science-based while in the other the questions were humanities-based. The two projects began differently, but each included: a visit to the water heritage museum; literacy activities; film-making and drama; and the exploration of archival materials. Over the two year period, each class covered roughly the same disciplinary areas, but through a distinctive curriculum narrative grounded in children’s curiosities. I will show, using films made by the teachers, children and artists, the ways in which these knowledges came together as an inter-disciplinary curriculum. These films also demonstrate the depth of disciplinary knowledge the children gained, particularly in science and literacy. I argue that the project suggests that particular combinations of expertise are required to develop alternative pedagogies. These are not simply oriented to process or content, but are a rich mix of disciplinary and pedagogical knowledges, children’s vernacular knowledges, a significant real-world problem and a tangible community asset. The results are far from empty-headed progressivism and support the view that other ways are possible and do-able.
References
Thomson, P, Hall, C, and Jones, K (2012) Creativity and cross-curriculum strategies in England: Tales of doing, forgetting and not knowing. International Journal of Educational Research. www.signaturepedagogies.org.uk
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