Leadership

Elective Home Education Survey 2018

This report by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services shows that the number of home educated pupils rose by 27 per cent this year, with many more likely to be hidden from sight.

The survey of local authorities shows about 57,800 pupils were home-schooled in 2018, up from 45,500 last year and 37,500 in 2016. In comparison, between 2017 and 2018, pupil numbers rose by around 66,000, or 0.8 per cent.

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      string(5670) "who was unable to read but astounded nursery staffwhen he found a website that showed a live link to an owl’s nest and watched owlbabies being fed and cared for by parent owls for the wholemorning. As part of the curriculum, professional developmentfor introducing technology seems to be successful whenused about 3 times a week if not for more than a periodof about 5 – 10 weeks. It can be particularly useful fordisadvantaged learners, low attainers and children withspecial educational needs, when used for remedial purposesand catch-up programmes (in Higgins et al, 2012, p.4).4. 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      string(5174) "particularly useful for disadvantaged learners, low attainers and children with special educational needs, when used for remedial purposes and catch-up programmes (in Higgins et al, 2012, p.4). The child should be in control – Use applications which allow for a child to make decisions and problem solve trying a number of different solutions until they reach the ‘correct’ one. Applications need to be transparent – Siraj-Blatchford and Siraj-Blatchford suggest that ‘transparency’ refers to the application being capable to complete clearly defined tasks in a single operation. For example, the ‘drag and drop’ facility on the computer, which requires users to pick an item from the screen and drop it in another area of the screen is a perfect example of how one would move something in real life. Teachers need support to integrate technology into their teaching – Higgins et al (p.4) suggest that at least a full day’s training or on-going professional inquiry-based approaches are necessary to support the introduction of new technology. Support is needed to help teachers make the most successful and effective use of technology in the classroom. Importantly, such support should go beyond the teaching of skills in technology and focus on the successful pedagogical use of technology to support teaching and learning aims. If technology is to gain a place in the Early Years classroom, hearts and minds are involved as well as the provision of the resources.  We have to embrace the concerns of administrators and practitioners and support them in a journey of discovery to what technology can achieve and how it can be used effectively. Elpida Ahtaridou is Director of Impact Evalution at Pearson Plc. Elpida Ahtaridou wrote this article jointly with Dr. Sue Bodman Of: International Literacy Centre UCL Institute of Education University College London.References1. Breazeal, C., Morris, R., Gottwald, S., Gayean, T. and Maryanne,W.(2016) Mobile Devices for Early Literacy Intervention and Research with Global Reach [https://dam-prod.media.mit.edu/x/2016/10/17/paper.pdf Accessed 24th March 2017]2. Flewitt, R, Messer, D & Kucirkova, N (2014) New Directions for Early Literacy in the Digital Age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 0 (0) [http://oro.open.ac.uk/42488/1/Flewitt,%20Messer,%20Kucirkova,%202014,%20new%20directionshttps://msds.open.ac.uk/%20for%20early%20literacy,%20the%20iPad%20DOI%201468798414533560.full.pdf Accessed 12th April 2017]3. Formby, S. (2014a) Children’s early literacy practices at home and in early years settings: Second annual survey of parents and practitioners [http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0002/4081/EY_Key_Findings_2014.pdf Accessed 23rd March 2017]4.	Formby, D (2014b) Practitioner perspectives: Children’s use of technology in the Early Years  [http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0002/1135/Early_years_practitioner_report.pdf Accessed 23rd March 2017]5. Higgins, S., Xiao, Z. and Katsipataki, M. (2012) The Impact of Digital Technology on Learning: A Summary for the Education Endowment Foundation, [https://v1.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/The_Impact_of_Digital_Technology_on_Learning_-_Executive_Summaryhttps://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/_(2012).pdf Accessed 24th March 2017]6. Kilman, F (2013) Child’s Play. Venture Magazine, issue #19 [http://www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine/18/319/child—s-play/ Accessed 23rd March 2017]7. Learner, S. (2017) Nurseries question benefits of ICT for young children [https://www.daynurseries.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1560957/nurseries-question-whether-ict-in-the-early-years-is-a-good-thing Accessed 25th Marc 2017]8. Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J.C., Lahmar, J., Scott, F., Davenport, A., Davis, S., French, K., Piras, M., Thornhill, S., Robinson, P. and Winter, P. (2015) Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-Schoolers’ Use of Apps: Final Project Report. [www.techandplay.org Accessed 25th March 2017]9.	Nuemann, M, M (2014) An examination of touch screen tablets and emergent literacy in Australian preschool children. Australian Journal of Education, 58:2 109-12210. OFCOM (2015) Children and Parents: Media use and attitudes report. [http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/children-parents-nov- 15/childrens_parents_nov2015.pdf Accessed 20th March 2017]11.	Plowman, L., Stevenson, O., Stephen, C. and McPake, J. (2012) ‘Preschool Children’s Learning with Technology at Home’, Computers and Education, 59, 1: 30–7.12. Siraj-Blatchford, I. and Siraj-Blatchford, J. (2000) More than Computers: Information and Communications Technology in the Early Years, London, Early Education (The British Association for Early Childhood Education) [http://www.327matters.org/docs/datec7.pdf Accessed 23rd March 2017]Notes1. https://www.daynurseries.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1560957/nurseries-question-whether-ict-in-the-early-years-is-a-good-thing"
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Assistive Technology

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20 Jun 2017

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      string(5767) "Geoff Whitty heritage I have written this article subsequent to the death of Geoff Whitty in July 2018.  It covers a topic that we had written on together extensively – first in 2005 in preparation for his British Educational Research Association (BERA) Presidential Address (Whitty, 2006), and then in relation to our publications since 2015 (Whitty and Wisby, 2016; Whitty and Wisby, 2018 in press). In particular the article draws from our chapter in the edited collection by Godfrey and Brown, An Eco-system for Research Engaged Schools (Wisby and Whitty, forthcoming).  I hope that Geoff would have been pleased with this adaptation of that chapter.  Both he and his voice in the debates covered here will be sorely missed.The importance of breadth and spaceOur first objective in this article is to provide an overview of how the relationship between educational research and practice has developed over recent decades in relation to the schools system in England and to challenge the ‘what works’ agenda that is currently to the fore in national policy.  This agenda sets a premium on large trials with a view to providing ‘the’ evidence base for educational practice.  By contrast, we take an inclusive and pragmatic approach to research-informed practice in education.  Our second objective is to draw out the implications of that position for understandings of teacher professionalism and for teacher professional development.  We begin by noting the many different traditions that comprise the field of education studies, but also how the ‘what works’ agenda has come to dominate ‘official’ understandings and rhetoric – certainly in England and the US, but also increasingly so in other countries around the world.  We then problematize the ‘what works’ approach in terms of its implications for educational research, research-informed practice and notions of teacher professionalism.  We go on to argue for a richer conception of teacher professionalism than the ‘technician’ status the ‘what works’ model implies.  We conclude that the focus in relation to research-informed practice should be the weaving together of evidence from different epistemological traditions – which requires a broad appreciation of educational research, and the grounding and space to develop that.An international anatomy of educational research In 2013 John Furlong published Education: An anatomy of a discipline, which audited the range and institutional settings of education studies in the UK, providing a ‘state of the discipline’ report (Furlong, 2013).  That work would lead to a further study, conducted by John and Geoff, to examine the nature of education studies internationally (Whitty and Furlong, 2017).  This survey of education studies in seven countries identified 12 approaches in the study of education, which could be grouped into three main clusters:academic knowledge traditions (e.g. the history of education, or comparative education), which start from academic rather than practitioner concerns, albeit they may offer valuable insights for practitioners, certainly pertaining to their professionalism if not their classroom practice; practical knowledge traditions (e.g. the competency movement or what Whitty and Furlong call ‘Networked Professional Knowledge Production’), which derive their research questions from issues faced by practitioners in the classroom, albeit they sometimes draw on elements of academic knowledge;integrated knowledge traditions (including established approaches such as action research and newer models like ‘Learning Sciences’), which attempt to combine both academic and practical knowledge and seek to contribute to both theory and practice.When examining the variety within each of these three broad clusters, we see that education studies comprises a range of intellectual traditions, each with its own epistemological assumptions and each with its own relationship to research and to educational practice (see also Furlong, 2019).  What Whitty and Furlong also found, however, was that a particular strand – trial-based research seeking to identify ‘what works’, a strand they termed the ‘New Science of Education’ – was becoming increasingly dominant in each of the countries they surveyed.  It has featured particularly strongly in England in recent years.The limitations of ‘what works’ as a research baseOver the past 30 years, but particularly since the Coalition government, England has pursued a relatively extreme model of school autonomy and accountability compared with other countries.  This has, in turn, generated a relatively extreme version of the ‘what works’ agenda and the rational-linear model of research-informed practice on which it is based.  In the face of devolved budgets and ostensibly greater school autonomy, the thinking goes, schools need to be equipped to make the most effective decisions in relation to the indicators against which their performance is measured.  Trials are seen as by far the most superior form of research evidence to this end.The step change in these respects came in 2011 with the government’s establishment of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), a ‘What Works Centre’ for education.  This move was reinforced by a 2013 report for the government by the popular science writer and campaigner Ben Goldacre, Building Evidence into Education (Goldacre, 2013).  The report argued 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Leading Professional Development

Weaving together the evidence – what really works in research, practice and professional development?

13 Feb 2019