Appendix Six - Journal

May 16th:

So, when asked to consider an issue within my own teaching practice, my first thoughts were about the passivity of my learners. It's not that they aren't interested or engaged in Media Studies, but they certainly aren't willing to drive their own learning. They aren't motivated or passionate or enthusiastic. There is not get up and go. Their approach is very much to listen to what they are told, make notes, complete activities and then read that through repeatedly to secure it. They would never dream of going off independently and researching something they had found interesting, or asking for extension materials or, Lord forbid, going above (or even up to) a word count on an extended writing task. I really feel like they believe learning is something teachers do to them, it's not something that they do.

Their coursework blogs are good examples of this mentality. I mean, they're fine and they include all of the relevant pieces of work (in most cases!), but not one of the students has done anything above or beyond what they were told were the basic requirements.

So, how to solve this? Well, my first thoughts are about using flipped learning. Getting the students to learn new content at home and then use class time to embed and stretch this might mean that they have to do more on their own. I listened to a presentation on flipped learning at the OCR Annual Conference and was really interested. I'm hoping it might provide some solutions to my issue. We'll see...

May 25th:

The more I research flipped learning, the less convinced I am that it holds the answers. Yes, it would force my students to work independently outside of the classroom, but my main issue is about their lack of drive and their ability to control or steer their own learning; it comes down to their reliance on the teachers to give them the knowledge and skills. Can flipped learning fix this? Surely it's just a different model of the teacher leading the learning? To a certain extent I would still be controlling what they did, when they did it, how they did it and where they did it.

I'm wondering if Project Based Learning (PBL) might be a more appropriate solution. Setting a task with a time period, success criteria and learning outcomes means that I am still structuring their learnng (I am the teacher after all), but it gives them the freedom and control to take it where they want. Or not. Readdressing that balance of power would be difficult for both the students and me. Taking a step back and allowing them to fly or fall on their own, whilst still being there to scoop them back up again naturally, would be quite scary to begin with. But it would encourage them to drive their learning and would teach them learning skills and strategies that would be helpful for higher education or adult life. It's definitely something i'm going to look into.

Anyway, before I get too far down the path of designing an intervention, I need to see if the problem is experienced by others teachers in this school and get to the root cause. I'm designing a questionnaire for staff and will interview some in the coming weeks.

June 10th:

Today I completed my eighth and final interview with staff members. It's been really interesting to hear different opinions (from a range of different subjects) on how our sixth form students learn.

One thing that came up a lot was the word 'spoon-feeding'. Whilst this is good because it validates my project, it's also quite sad that it is an issue across the board. It definitely came up in every interview and to me, that suggests that the problem is one embedded across the culture and learning ethos of the sixth form. Teachers reported the fact that lessons are teacher-led as a result of the student's reliance on being given the information they need to learn in order to pass exams, and suggested that this was as a result of teaching styles lower down the school. A number of teachers commented on the pressure to achieve results and the correlation between this and a dependent teaching relationship. A few also mentioned that our key stage three students are much more independent as a result of a number of teaching and learning strategies that have recently been introduced to those age groups (including learning habits). This is something I will look into in more detail.

Another thing that came up is the idea that students are not motivated to drive their own learning. It's linked to the spoon-feeding issue but poses additional challenges. If students are pro-active learners, the cycle of spoon feeding is likely to continue. This issue is clearly one that requires a solution driven by teachers and students.

Later this week I will interview the students (once they return from study leave) and hopefully some parents too.

June 17th:

Ironically, for the first lesson back after study leave this week, four of the seven students did not attend. In some ways this speaks volumes about their dedication and application to learning. Regardless, for the three students who did attend, I interviewed them to gauge their perceptions about how students learn in the sixth form. It was really interesting. A lot of the comments about their drawings were notably negative, mainly commenting on stress and pressure as a cause for this. In addition, it was clear that the students feel that they are independent learners! To them, completing home work means that they are independent learners. However, they did not seem to feel positively about independence. They compared the expectations of A Level learners with what they felt was expected of them at GCSE and seemed to feel that the leap was too large or made too quickly. It's interesting because it seems to be that the teachers and students have very different perceptions of learning in the sixth form.

Yesterday I also interviewed a parent of one of the students. Her comments focused on her parenting style and I will reflect on these and how they might impact upon that student's approach to learning.

June 21st:

Today I began the pilot of the project based learning intervention. I have designed a booklet for the students and within this I have detailed the driving question (which they should answer over the next four weeks), a series of learning objectives and some success criteria. I explained that they would only participate in a handful of lessons that were led by me; in all other lessons (and outside of class time) they should work independently on activities that will help them to answer the driving question. They can do whatever they want and present it however they want, but it must answer the driving question. There is a list of example activities in the booklet for anyone struggling to get started and I will be on hand in every lesson if they have any questions or need any help.

There was quite a mixed response. Some of the students seemed genuinely excited and instantly started chatting about ideas and what bands/artists they wanted to look at. They started discussing ideas for activities and sharing ideas. However, as expected, there were lots of questions. After about 15 minutes, I think everyone understood what they had to do and most students went off with an idea of how to get started.

June 28th:

The students have been working on their projects for a week now. The amount of work produced varies wildly. One or two students have started or completed three tasks or more and seem genuinely excited and passionate about what they are doing. However, at the other end of the scale, there are two students who don't seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that I'm not standing at the front, expecting them to make notes. They have asked 'What are we doing today?' at the start of every lesson and there is no work on their blog. In response, I have been directing them back to the booklet and trying to help them to select an activity to get started.

June 29th:

Today one student had a bit of a melt down. I heard her shout 'This project is pathetic and pointless!' So, I took her into my classroom and asked her what was going on and how she felt. She said that she 'didn't get it' and just couldn't get started. So, I explained the project again and, knowing this student is a huge fan of the band 'Paramore', I suggested that she started with a simple task of picking her favourite video of theirs and explaining why it would appeal to a fan of the band. Immediately she had ideas and could verbally communicate these. She went off to get started.

This has made me wonder how many of the others are struggling but aren't saying anything...

Having checked the students' blogs, there are only two students who have no work posted. They assure me that they have things in the offing, so, in the spirit of project based learning and giving the students the responsibility, I'm going to trust them...

June 30th:

Whilst project based learning is about allowing the students to drive the learning, I still want to ensure that they are going in the right direction for the most part. One of the learning objectives for the project is for students to understand relevant media theories that relate to music videos. As many of these are brand new to the students, today I facilitated a lesson that focused on this element. The students were provided with a list of potential theories and theorists that they might like to study within the project booklet. I am aware that two students have already begun to research these. In order to encourage everyone to have a go at reading and applying the theories, I assigned one theory to each student, asked them to research it and then give a short presentation on how it applied to a music video of my choice.

This lesson went well and the students seem more confident to go off and use the work as a starting point from which they can continue. However, for students who are less motivated/engaged, they might not conduct further independent research so might only have an understanding of the one theory that they researched within the lesson.

This brings me to the key issue: with project based learning, should I just accept that some students (those who are less motivated/engaged) will just not make much progress? Is that ok? Part of me would like to say yes, because they should be taking responsibility for their learning and if it's a case of 'won't' rather than 'can't', that's their choice. But then reality kicks in and I remember that I will be held accountable if every student doesn't reach their target grade. So, what now? Do I step in and give those students a figurative kick up the bum to make sure they do well, or do I accept that they need to learn that results only come from effort and allow them to fail? Who would have thought that this little pilot would raise so many ethical questions!

July 5th:

Having given it some thought, I think for the purposes of this four week pilot, I need to let the project based learning play out: I won't intervene with the students who are choosing not to do much. I want to see if that will change when they notice how much the others have done. Besides, the big question about when to let students live and die by their own sword is a big one, and certainly not one that can be answered by one teacher within one classroom. If any decisions are to be made about how much support to give, how strongly we should reject spoon-feeding and whose responsibility exam grades are, it should be done through collaborative, college-wide discussion.

Today I reviewed the students' blogs with each of them independently, providing feedback on the work undertaken so far and discussing what they intend to do next. These feedback sessions were largely positive. Because the students decided what activities to do, they spent time explaining why they had made those choices and what they had learnt from each task. This meant that the feedback was more like coaching than a traditional teacher-student discussion. The power was more equal. Their opinions were heard and valued and they seemed more receptive to mine. It also gave me an opportunity to learn a little about each of them (their tastes and passions as well as their learning strengths and areas for development), and praise their approach to learning as much as the work produced.

Two students had still not completed much but had an opportunity to see what the other students had been up to. This seemed to spur one of them on.

Today felt like a turning point. By sitting with the students and discussing their work in this way, it felt like an equal relationship. It was really enjoyable.