In England there has been over 20 years of heavily prescribed curriculum and assessment.  This has created a particular problem in England with pupil disengagement from school and decline in motivation from about the age of 9 (Sodha & Guglielmi, 2009).  Two of the factors which counteract this decline in motivation are choice (Patall et al., 2010) and a curriculum which relates more strongly to students’ interests, questions and experiences (Payton & Williamson, 2009).  This paper describes through case study the development of the use of websites and their content by 9 year old pupils given a high degree of autonomy and choice in their curriculum over a school year.

Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs, Mitra & Dangwal, 2010) is a co-operative learning format in which groups of 3-4 pupils work collaboratively to answer challenging questions.  The questions can be set by the teacher, especially in the early stages of using the method, or they can be decided upon by the class as they develop confidence with the approach.  The SOLE method was developed by Sugata Mitra in India for ‘remote’ areas, and has been adapted for schools in England, as an enquiry based teaching approach to combat declining motivation and engagement.

There is widespread concern about plagiarism and ‘cutting and pasting’ through use of ICT.  Going back only 10 years, there was a lack of clarity, perhaps reflecting context, about the level of student sophistication in using the web.  Lorenzon (2003) reviewing a number of studies by librarians found a diversity of (high school) student expertise reported from poor information-seeking skills, to clear criteria for distinguishing between bad and good sites and finally flexible behaviour and a competence to withdraw from bad searches quickly (Fidel, 1999).  By 2010 (Nielsen, 2010) there is a more consistent picture from observational studies in 4 countries. For college students the account refutes three ‘myths’, that students are technology wizards (they are reluctant to learn new user interface styles), that they crave multimedia and fancy designs (they like clear and simple without too much movement and flashiness) and that they are addicted to social networking (they keep that for social life).  The account also compares college student and teenagers and finds substantial differences.  Teenagers are reported as less goal orientated, with a preference for dynamic and engaging activities, they are poorer readers, so they like pictorial information and sites that are easy to scan.  A particularly interesting observation was that some students develop ‘scepticism’ and don’t trust the first website they read.  However a Swedish study (Samuelsson, 2010) finds that teenagers there vary considerably in their quantitative and qualitative use of ICT, but that there was a lack of seriousness about ICT as a tool for learning.

Question: 1. What websites do Y4 pupils use in particular enquiries?

2.  What factors do they consider in their selection of websites?

3.  What progression do they show in the processing of information retrieved and ‘critical literacy’.

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