1. The document discusses teachers taking on the role of researchers to improve their practice. It describes how teachers can develop focused research questions, collect classroom data, and make changes based on the findings. 2. Examples are provided of teacher-led research projects that examined classroom interactions and participation levels. The projects helped teachers refine their questioning techniques and increase student involvement. 3. Taking a research approach allows teachers to gain a deeper understanding of their classroom context and make evidence-based changes.

1. Teachers as researchers
Dr Sue Jones: Exeter University

2. • Personal ownership of the focus
• A step beyond reflective practice
• Seeing what often goes unobserved
• Making changes
• Change might be the focus of the investigation
• Change might be the consequence of the investigation
The teacher as researcher

3. Reflection and evidence

4. • Partnership
• YST – expertise in promoting the value of PE in the education
of the whole child
• Exeter University – expertise in designing and conducting
research projects
• Teachers – expertise in the needs and the strengths of a
particular contexts
Innovation Schools Project

5. • Innovation
• teachers have designed and evaluated innovations that target
known issues in school
• Long term support
• A twelve month window in which to undertake and evaluate a
small scale innovation engaging with face to face and on-line
support in research design and data collection methods
Innovation Schools Project

6. • Time!!!
• Finding a worthwhile focus
• Being precise about the focus
• Being informed about the focus
• Designing a well targeted innovation
• Collecting data that explores how and not simply if an
innovation is effective
Challenges for the teacher researcher

7. Finding a focus

8. • Extra curricula activities
• PE and Health/Wellbeing
• Gender issues
• PE and life skills (leadership, self esteem, team building)
• Cross curricula issues
• Behaviour management
• Classroom interaction
• The needs of target groups
The focus: common areas

9. • How does PE influence identity?
• Why do boys underachieve?
• How can we design a curriculum to meet the needs of all
learners?
• Can engagement in extra curricula PE raise achievement
levels ?
Inappropriate scope and scale

10. Appropriate scope and scale
• Can changing feedback strategies increase student take up of
teacher written feedback in PE assignments?
• What are the critical moments in the stories of those who dislike
PE that they perceive as informing their dislike?
• Can engagement in extra curricula PE impact on the perceptions
of disaffected students to the value of school attendance?
• Choosing to be active: What are the factors influencing the take
up (or lack of take up) of physical activity outside of school?
What is the data that will address the question?

11. • What are the issues in your own school you would like to
explore further?
• Can you narrow the focus?
• What data will help you understand this issue better?
Finding a focus

12. Understanding the focus
Employability: an example

13. ‘Whilst those involved in sport …..believe that engagement in sport
has a positive impact on a student’s employability, for example the
development of team working and leadership skills, the evidence is
largely anecdotal’. (Allen et al 2013 BUCS report)
Employability

14. The value of extra-curricula activity
• DeMoulin, (2002) EC can be positively linked to high achievement and
productivity and an explanation would be the development of good time
management skills.
The value of team sports
• Eide and Ronan (2001) participation in team sports had a positive impact
upon future earnings
Social skills
• Bailey (2005) social benefits of PE may be more important than physical
benefits
Employability: Research

15. Based on data from the BUCS (2013) report (survey data)
• Many employers look for mention of engagement in sport on job
applications
• Employers believe that sport facilitates team working,
communication skills, motivation, competitiveness and resilience
• Within the workplace , sport is seen to provide networking
opportunities, develop team working skills, as well as promote good
health and wellbeing.
Employability: A Real World View

16. 1. Consider what is done already in your own school
2. Generate ideas that might be an innovation in your own practice that
might link to what is already known about employability
• Be focused, don’t try to change the world!
• Improve leadership skills through PE (Too broad)
• Identify contrasting leadership styles in known sports captains and
invite reflection on the kind of leader the student might respond to
and the kind of leader they might be.
3. Identify the data that will reveal the impact of the innovation
Innovation possibilities

17. Designing a study

18. • How do a group of year 8 pupil premium students respond to
an innovation that integrates health awareness across the
curriculum
Likely methods:
• Pre and post questionnaire to assess response,
• observation of practice in different disciplines,
• student evaluation of the different approaches taken in each
discipline
From focus to methods (1)

19. • I could explore changing understanding
• The data will focus on what a student knows
• I could explore changing attitudes
• The data will focus on what a student believes and values
• I could explore changing behaviour
• The data will focus on what a student does
• I could contrast how the focus is integrated into different disciplines
• The data will focus on classroom practices
• I could try to understand how students respond in different contexts
• The data will focus on student evaluations of classroom practice
Research Problem:
Understanding response

20. • Can changing patterns of questioning in whole class
discussion in PE raise participation levels?
• Likely methods: Classroom observation to record the
interaction patterns evident and to record changing levels of
participation over time
From focus to method (2)

21. I could count
• The number of students who contribute in a lesson
• The number of students who never contribute
• The length of the contribution
• The ratio of teacher- student contributions
This will generate numerical data I can compare
Do I need to evaluate what is said?
• Am I more interested in the number of contributions or the nature and
quality of the contributions?
• This will generate qualitative data that is more difficult to compare but may
be more representative of classroom interaction patterns
Research problem:
Measuring participation

22. Challenging perceptions of sport as exclusive
Exploring student responses to the stories of Paralympians
• How do students engage in the lessons?
• How do students describe their own engagement?
• How do students respond to the stories?
• How do students understand the teachers’ rationale for introducing
the stories?
• How much variability is there in the nature of their response?
What data might you collect – why?
From focus to methods – Your turn

23. Acting on the findings

24. The TALK project: A project involving a partnership between Exeter
University and three primary schools in West Sussex. The teachers:
• designed an observation schedule to capture participation levels of
different groups of children
• videoed themselves teaching
• completed a self reflection sheet
• analysed the questions they asked
• analysed the responses children gave
• discussed the findings in staff meetings
Exploring classroom interaction

25. In light of their findings the schools made the following changes
• Plan key questions in advance
• Plan higher level questioning (analysis, synthesis, evaluation)
• Place question more strategically
• Use more process questions which invite explanation of thinking
• Try to generate interaction patterns which avoid repeated T-C-T-C
patterns
• Avoid giving feedback or commentary on every response
• Create space for pupil-generated questions
Changing practice

26. • Find a focus that makes sense in your context
• Explore what is known already
• Tighten the focus: the more precise the focus the more you will
be able to infer from the data
• Collect data that allows you to see what is happening in the
classroom
• Act on what you find out (you will need data that reveals what
might change)
Conclusion

27. A common public discourse around the role of the teacher would be that
teaching is undervalued and teachers positioned as the deliverers of a
curriculum designed by others and taught through strategies developed
and disseminated via a top down model. At the same time, however,
there is a movement amongst the teaching profession to engage in
reflective practice, to claim the role of the ‘expert’ in their own
classrooms and to develop a bottom up approach to strategic initiatives
which strongly resists the one size fits all approach to teaching. The role
of teacher-researcher is just one of the ways in which teachers can look
for evidence to inform these initiatives (Fisher, Myhill, Jones and Larkin (2010)
Using Talk to Support Writing)
A post script