Pilot Study Day 1 - Lots to say!

I met with the co-research team (four Y5 pupils - one being absent) in their school computer suite to talk research, questions about history and what it means to be a researcher. Perhaps not the best venue with the background whirring and bleeping of machines, nor the adjustable seats, which the group laughingly adjusted and re-adjusted on multiple occasions...but it was great to be together embarking on this learning experience and they had lots to say! It was also early in the day - we were in before school started, with the breakfast clubbers and the bleary-eyed staff - and we probably all could have done with a bagel and hot coffee (note to self for next time!) But we got into things, and the conversation flowed and the ideas poured out! From my many years of working with children, I have always felt that given appropriate opportunities to talk and engage, children will, and this enables them to think creatively, and be bold and thoughtful in their learning. I think this approach also builds trust and respect. It was also really interesting to feel what it is like to very intentionally avoid any sort of behaviour management - as a classroom teacher for many years, managing behaviour was part of the mandated toolkit (the bread and butter of practice), but this research is built upon a different premise, one of a flat/flatter hierarchy and shared power and ownership. There was a lot on the table to discuss with some of the questions and tasks I hoped to explore taking less or more time than anticipated. The children were clear that research is about finding things out...it's a familiar concpet to them, it seems, and (from my recollections not so long agao) it is a word we use a lot in teaching as we direct or encourage children to find things out related to various topics or projects. What took a little more teasing out were ideas and questions about learning. The focus of the pilot is finding out what children enjoy about learning history, but we made a start on this with questions about periods or topics of interest, what they enjoy in their lessons and what they think about Horrible Histories. It was good to get this conversation going, though, and I could feel that we were teetering on the age of some great meta-learning questions. More again on this soon... Last thing - I showed the children a print out of 'researcher' images from a Google search, which largely showed a range of adults, many in white lab coats staring earnestly at pie charts, etc. When I asked the team to note who looked like them (fully anticipating them to say no-one as they were all adults), this provoked intense engagement with the images as they tried to identify which adult they most closely resembled. I laughed inside: right idea, wrong question. Taking a slightly different tack, the group noted the absence of children from the images. Again, more to explore here in due course. So great to get going on this project, now more than one and a half years in planning. And if you're reading this, well done Team, and thanks!