PRACTITIONER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
OTLA
Fresh thinking The ETF’s Outstanding Teaching Learning and Assessment (OTLA) programme enables practitioners to undertake their own research projects. Dr Andy Convery outlines some of the benefits im Boyd teaches at The Sheffield College, and last year he joined the English project team, who were challenging the thinking and expectations of some GCSE resit students. He was experimenting with strategies – such as adding the word ‘yet’ to students’ ‘can’t do’ statements – when he realised that he needed to work on his own language. His classroom research showed him that when he used encouraging phrases to students such as ‘just try it’ when setting a task, he was “sending a message that they are going to find it difficult and might not be able to do it – which now seems to be the wrong message to send”. Tim explored how to avoid this well-meaning language that actually reinforced the potential for failure, and his changes seemed to change learners’ expectations. As a result, he detected a real lift in learners’ attitudes – and all the team, who had been working on similar confidence-boosting strategies, noticed a significant improvement in attendance at their compulsory English classes. Emma Ireland led this OTLA English project and is thrilled by its success. “It gave us all the opportunity to work more closely as a team, to recognise common challenges and to share our different solutions,” she says. “It has helped everyone – students and staff – by giving students more responsibility for their learning.” Last year’s project also gave staff the confidence to use action research, and this has certainly helped them to meet the new
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Covid-19 challenges – staff are now openly sharing their experimental strategies for motivating students in online groups. Emma says that the project dynamic gave valuable protected time for staff to work freely, and this has paid off – working on changing students’ mindsets has also raised the teachers’ expectations and boosted their pride in doing a difficult job. In this year’s followon project, English staff are pairing with colleagues in the maths department to explore whether their resit learners can be similarly inspired.
Effective feedback Helen Rankin is based at ELATT, an adult and community learning provider, and is new to OTLA. Working with tutors Evie Ackuaku and Imtiaz Shafique, their project aim is to develop learner capacity and skills to give feedback about their learning experiences. Much of ELATT’s work is with people who have English as an additional language, young people with SEND and other disadvantaged learners, so there are often additional barriers to getting meaningful feedback. This is more so
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