With So Many Undergraduates, Why Is Social Mobility Still Declining?

The Editorial of School Leadership Today 9.1!

It is great to see so many young people gaining strong GCSE and A Level results, despite the exams being generally accepted as being harder this year. It confused those critics on the right who have constantly argued that simpler questions, course work and grade inflation has reduced their value as exams.

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      string(5336) "Leadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.THE 2017 STUDENT ACADEMIC EXPERIENCESURVEYKeywordsStudent,academicexperience,highereducation,ethnicity,accommodation,sexualorientation,policies,teaching qualitySummaryThis report, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the HigherEducation Academy (HEA) proves shows that the student experience differs depending onethnicity, the type of accommodation and sexual orientation.Such factors have a direct impact on how engaged students are with their studies as well as on theiroverall quality of life. It shows: ■ how hard students are working; ■ how satisfied they are with their lives; and ■ what they think of recent government policies.The report suggests that improving teaching quality is an important factor in whether students believethey are getting value for money.The study also shows a wide variation in the number of teaching hours – with subjects such as historyhaving an average of eight hours per week, while medicine had 19 hours plus many more workinghours outside of the classroom.Students on medicine and dentistry courses were the most likely to feel they were getting value formoney, while social studies and business students were the most likely to feel they were not gettinggood value.There was a strong sense that universities were not doing enough to explain how tuition fees werespent – with only 20% of students saying they had received enough information.The annual study also examines wellbeing and happiness – and this has fallen to only 14% ofstudents saying they were satisfied with their lives.There are also negative outcomes for students’ sense of happiness and anxiety – with students havinglower levels of wellbeing than young people outside of university.Young women and gay students at university are particularly likely to feel unhappy.Over 14,000 full-time undergraduates took part in the survey this year.Main Points:Week Commencing 12th July 2017http://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-Student-Academic-Experience-Survey-Final-Report.pdfhttp://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-Student-Academic-Experience-Survey-Final-Report.pdfLeadership BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents. ■ It reveals that only 19% of students believe they receive enough information on how their feesare spent. And this suggests that institutions need deeper engagement and personalisationof approach with students at every stage of their higher education experience to meet theirexpectations better. ■ Across the UK, nearly as many students (34%) think they are receiving poor value as think theyare receiving good value (35%). Declining perceptions of value are evident among students fromEngland, Scotland and Northern Ireland but the biggest decline is in Scotland. ■ There is inconsistency between the attributes students want their staff to display and the attributesthey do display. For example, almost all (94%) students want their staff to undertake continuousprofessional development in teaching but far fewer (57%) think this happens. ■ The Survey explains the relative underperformance of students from Black and Minority Ethnicbackgrounds. For example, White students tend to feel more positive about teaching staffcharacteristics than students of other ethnicities, and Asian students are less likely to feel theyare learning ‘a lot’ than White students (59% versus 66%). ■ This may be partly explained by accommodation choice: 60% of Asian respondents live at homewhile studying, compared to just 24% of all respondents. The authors call for higher educationinstitutions to explore the “sticky campus” concept to ensure all students are fully integrated. ■ The Survey additionally paints a more detailed picture of the experiences of students of differentsexual orientations than ever before. Students who identify as straight do better on each of thefour wellbeing measures than other students. This suggests higher education institutions havefurther to go in providing a fully supportive environment for people of all sexual orientations. ■ Only a small proportion of respondents are at alternative providers and they are generally in thebigger, better-known alternative providers which are atypical. However, it is still notable that thosealternative providers’ students who are covered by the Survey provide more positive responses inmany areas than respondents as a whole. For example, they are: ■ more likely to believe they have enough information on where their fees go (35% versus 20%for all respondents); ■ more likely to be having an experience that is exceeding their original expectations (35%versus 25%); and ■ more likely to think they are getting good value (54% versus 35%).WEB LINKThe 2017 Student Academic Experience Surveyhttp://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-Student-Academic-Experience-Survey-Final-Report.pdf"
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Leadership

The 2017 Student Academic Experience Survey

9 Jun 2017

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      string(5662) "Public Libraries sit at the very heart of their communities. They are the embodiment of inclusion, offering services from the cradle to the grave to every citizen in this country, regardless of any defining characteristic and, even better, they are free at the point of contact.No-one will ever ask why you have come through the doors or expect you to spend any money and you can spend as long as you like there during opening hours. You can dip in and out of them throughout your life, with no expectation that you are a regular user and the ethos of customer service is completely ingrained in library staff. Wherever you go within the UK, you can join the local library.The purpose of a library is to help you learn the skills to find the information you want or open the doors to books and resources, physical and digital, which will stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity. 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Special Needs

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5 Oct 2020

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      string(5632) "receptive, and on his own emailed the other students and invited them to sit down for a compassionate confrontation. My student used the script he had learned and was able to explain to his classmates why he was hurt without allowing heavy emotions to colour the conversation. The older students heard him and they were able to come to a shared agreement on times in which the older students would play their games, and other times in which the younger kids played so that all students were able to play in games at their own skill level. This student used compassionate confrontation perfectly. After deciding to confront his classmates, he used the script to write down everything he wanted to say in order to prevent an overly emotional response. We encourage students and adults alike to write their script in order to have a strong foundation for a conversation and prevent the ‘emotional freestyling’ that may happen without a plan. 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It’s not realistic to think we will never fail. Instead, we recognise that perseverance is what matters most. Teachers look at how a student arrived at an answer in maths, for example, and praise the process, the thinking, and the strategies demonstrated. Even if mistakes are made, allowing students to find their own errors and use their own intuition is part of the learning process We celebrate collaboration and resourcefulness, not just speed and accuracy. Young adults are trying to decide who they are, versus who their parents are, who their friends are, or who they ‘should’ be. We encourage students to challenge outdated assumptions rather than accepting tradition blindly. Students learn to actively listen to each other, to be sceptics, and to think, feel, reflect and react based on their own perceptions.Soon, students learn to think, ‘Hmm, I wonder why that didn’t work’ as opposed to thinking, ‘I’m a failure’. 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Special Needs

Strengthening the Role of Non-Academic Competencies

20 Nov 2019

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      string(5643) "more for the sake of understanding one another’s thinking than for the sake of ‘winning’.To double-check her colleagues’ interpretations, Joan brings a video clip of the teachers’ conversation back to her classroom and shows it to the students, asking them whether, in their opinion, the teachers’ interpretations of their learning are accurate. Students share their reflections on their learning as well as on the experience of watching the group of teachers interpret their learning.Owen: For an AP class, this went so far. This class taught me how to think … It was so much more than test prep.Liam: … Like someone [a teacher] said on the video, we really did come to care about greatness.Violet: What also happens is that teachers want you to come to a common definition or a consensus about something, and since that’s what the teacher wants, people’s thinking gets lost.Thalia: I felt like I could have my opinion. I had to think about other people’s opinions, but I could express my opinions and still keep them…Joan also shares her final reflection with the class: ‘… That’s what I had to learn from you guys. I started the term thinking we could come to some consensus about greatness. The real goal was to have everyone really know what they thought, and what everyone else thought and why—so everyone had to think about everyone else’s thinking before being sure about their own. So even though we have no consensus, I feel very happy about where we ended up, because all of you really understood what each other thought and why.’Example 2: Melissa Tonachel, Kindergarten TeacherKindergarten teacher Melissa Tonachel is leading her 5-year-old students in a study of ocean life. Her goals include helping students learn observation and observational drawing. As children in small groups draw sketches of an ocean perch donated by the local fishmonger, Melissa notices that only a few students actually look at the fish. Some children start to draw before even glancing at it.Another important learning goal Melissa holds for her students is helping them become thoughtful collaborators who learn with and from one another. She suspects that, with practice, the children could become more effective than she in supporting one another to create more satisfying visual representations. So she decides to take the opportunity to help children build a habit of collaborative, positive critique instead of competitive comparison. She gathers the children together to look at the drawings and asks three questions:What do you notice in a drawing that reminds you exactly of how the fish looked?What details did someone include that are very important?Is there something in someone else’s drawing that you wish you had included in your own?The conversation is respectful and generative. As children begin work on their second fish drawing, they start to use a new vocabulary of observation when comparing ideas. The next task of creating collages of ocean life proves challenging for some. Again, Melissa gathers the group to look at the collages, make observations and ask questions about how the artists worked. Afterwards, children who had previously considered their work finished return to their pictures to try new techniques. Melissa displays samples of the children’s work outside of her classroom, engaging the students in deciding what to post. She uses post-its to invite feedback from the community, in effect expanding who can learn from and contribute to the learning in the classroom. Later, Melissa comments, ‘We have explicit conversations about where ideas come from, how they change and how we get good ideas from each other. As Elisa [one of Melissa’s students] says, “Sometimes somebody looks at what somebody else is doing, and they like it so much that they want to do the same thing.” In this way, children still feel connected to ideas they sprout, but they release ownership of them, allowing their ideas to grow, to be transformed, reconsidered and ultimately to become part of the group understanding.’ Melissa nurtures a classroom culture in which children and teachers talk openly and productively about student work. This process of constructive critique helps children to become genuine collaborators in learning, contributing both to their own thinking and learning and to their ability to engage productively with others.Reimagining the Who, What, Where, When, How and Why of Assessment How do Joan’s and Melissa’s classrooms reflect the fundamental shifts in conceptualising and carrying out assessment? The Why Shift: Assessment driven by what can be easily quantified A Assessment driven by the most important goals for student learning, whether they can be quantified or not Rather than relying solely on the AP curriculum to dictate goals, Joan’s goals emerge from her observation of her students and her growing understanding of the ways in which they construe the world around them. While addressing the AP curriculum remains important, equally central is Joan’s desire to help students connect their learning to the broader culture in which they live. She designs her assessment practices to target this goal. Similarly, Melissa wants children to understand the social nature of learning and to develop the skills needed to participate effectively as members of a learning community. She also values observation and observational drawing as important skills for living in and understanding the world. While Melissa wants students to develop basic"
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Arts-Based Learning

Assessment Reimagined

8 Jan 2019