Education Business

Lots of children from my school say: “I can’t wait to leave school and get a job with my dad or uncle”. They don’t all aspire to great things as far as their education is concerned. Most of them come from backgrounds where there are high levels of employment, although not in highly skilled jobs. They come from very close-knit families who all live within a few streets of each other, with comfortable lives, and therefore many of them don’t aspire to any more than what their families have already got. Certainly one of the issues we’ve had is trying to get parents on board to motivate and encourage kids to consider doing something different with their lives than their immediate families have done.

Successful initiatives
Having said that, Ashton Park has been a successful school over the last few years and been involved in a number of new initiatives, so you would certainly say it was an ‘improving school’. My main role and responsibility is raising achievement at Key Stage 4, which we’ve managed to do successfully over the last few years (47 per cent of pupils achieved 5+ A*-C last summer)  – but we’re now at a point where we’re not making the leaps that we could be. From research we’ve done with the pupils this seems to be down to their levels of aspiration and motivation.
    
This is one of the reasons why we became involved - as a pioneering school – in Futurelab’s Enquiring Minds project (www.enquiringminds.org.uk), a new approach to teaching and learning where children work in partnership with their teachers to decide their own curriculum and how they will be taught. Our main aim was to get pupils engaged through their own interests and education, and for them to want to learn and find things out for themselves.

Early days on Enquiring Minds
I wasn’t sure what to think of the project at the start. I’ve got to say, while the sound of it was very interesting, when I came along for some of the early sessions it was clear that we had a blank canvas to work on. As such, it was a little bit daunting and I have to confess I was a little bit concerned that I wasn’t being given clear objectives and a clear outline of what we were doing. I was quite apprehensive after the first meeting, a feeling shared by the colleagues I was working with.
    
Looking back, it was important to have that space to really think about what we were doing. In the early days of working with pupils we made some mistakes. For instance, we gave children who were used to the structured ‘3-part’ lesson lots of freedom and the results were predictable – many found it difficult to cope with that freedom. However, over time we’ve developed a structure that allows pupils gradually to take more control over the enquiry process, and that’s reflected in the resultant Enquiring Minds guide, which is available free from the Enquiring Minds website.

The challenges
As teachers the Enquiring Minds project is certainly challenging. We’ve had to learn to work together as a team. There’s also a very different set of challenges in the classroom because we have to find ways to allow pupils to be the originators or initiators of ideas and questions, and then allow them just the right amount of support and freedom to make progress.
    
This is quite tricky. Reality has shown that there is no substitute for good quality teaching and I think if ever the overused term ‘facilitator’ was appropriate, then it is with Enquiring Minds. In Enquiring Minds classrooms I see my role as someone who can, when pupils stumble or trip up, be there to pick them up and help them on to the next stage of enquiry.

The students
The strength of Enquiring Minds for me, and what has driven me on, is that I feel we’re finally getting back to what I would call good old-fashioned teaching. We’re focusing on what pupils are interested in by freeing up time and allowing them to explore and develop using ICT skills that are way beyond the comprehension of some teachers.
    
I think that this project has the potential to unlock the true potential of kids who hitherto have not been motivated. But that’s not to say that this approach replaces current teaching methods, but it complements them in a way that helps to motivate pupils who don’t easily ‘buy into’ traditional subjects.
    
After running an Enquiring Minds ‘curriculum’ with two groups of year 8 pupils last year, we’ve now extended the project so that all year 8 students experience the approach. Of course, it is still early days, but I think we’re seeing pupils who are far more resilient and inquisitive now. They appear genuinely interested in issues perhaps they wouldn’t have given a second thought to eight months ago.
    
This is reflected in their willingness to question the information that they uncover and not just accept it at face value. The whole process of enquiry - where pupils are researching and finding things out that are relevant to them, assessing the validity of the information, and learning to question hitherto accepted norms - is improving their understanding that knowledge is not fixed and needs to be seen in a wider context.
    
The hope is that these ‘attitudes to learning’ will be reflected in their approach to all subjects in the curriculum. Indeed, we recently carried out an evaluation with pupils as to how they felt the project was going, and a number of them were quite sure that they had actually carried skills from Enquiring Minds into other subject areas.
    
The Enquiring Minds approach to learning is tiring and often you’re working on your wits but it is extremely exciting and exhilarating.

Teacher ownership
The Enquiring Minds researchers at Futurelab have adopted a ‘supportive approach’. They strongly believe that significant and meaningful change in schools only happens when teachers take ownership of the project. One of the advantages of this project is that they’ve been able to observe the process in action, talk to pupils and begin to assess the successes and challenges of the approach.
    
Projects like Enquiring Minds, which is supported by Futurelab, are often quite precarious. Schools are busy places and if things aren’t working, staff can lose interest. So it’s a testimony to Enquiring Minds as a concept that it is still a force in my school. We’re still working with a concept that we’re a little unsure about but my professional judgement, based on my dealings with the young people that we’re working with, is that it is a success.

New free online resource help support pupil-led research projects
Exploratree, a new free web resource from Futurelab, is set to provide Key Stage 2-4 pupils with ready-made interactive ‘thinking guides’ or ‘frameworks’ to support their own enquiry projects and research. Exploratree thinking guides help students to work through an issue, topic or question. These guides prompt them to shape, expand on and focus their ideas and also help to identify the planning required to investigate student ideas further.
   
Pupils and teachers can choose from over 20 ready-made customisable thinking guides, or start from scratch and design their own. Students can add or change text, shapes and images within the guides. Some of the ready-made guides available include: ‘Question Things’ for querying who, what, where, when, how and why?; ‘Compare and Contrast’ to make comparisons between two different topics; and ‘Thinking Boxes’ to analyse a topic from different perspectives – locally, globally and from its place in history.
   
A tool for class projects across the curriculum, Exploratree guides can be used as a basis for whole class discussion, or e-mailed to individuals or groups to complete.
   
Pupils can work on the same thinking guide together (at school or at home), complete a project online and submit for comment; they can choose whether or not they would like it edited or simply reviewed. Sharing findings and thinking with others at any time during the project is easy with Exploratree’s presentation tool – ‘Show It’. The guides can also be printed out as large as A0 format.
   
Exploratree is freely available to access at www.exploratree.org.uk

For more information
Web: www.enquiringminds.org.uk