How often do your primary school pupils have the opportunity to engage in open-ended, sustained pieces of work that offer them choice and control? Do you find that the curriculum restricts openings to provide your pupils with real challenge? Is your school grappling with finding effective ways in which to elicit authentic pupil voice? Children as Researchers in Primary Schools is an innovative and unique resource for practitioners supporting children to become ‘real world’ researchers in the primary classroom. It will supply you with the skills and ideas you need to implement a ‘children as researchers’ framework in your school that can be adapted for different ages and abilities. Children in primary schools are accustomed to being set short-term goals and are often unaware of long-term aims or of the connections between the concepts and skills they are learning. In contrast, this book demonstrates that children engaging in the research process have authentic opportunities to apply invaluable personal, learning and thinking skills while managing their own projects, making their ‘voices’ heard and experiencing increased levels of engagement and self-esteem. Based on the author’s 4-year research study exploring the experiences of young researchers and teachers in primary schools, and on her considerable experience of training young researchers, this book also contains: the history and theory behind ‘children as researchers’ initiatives; a model for good practice based on successful real life case studies; questions for reflective practice; practical examples of research in the classroom; photocopiable resources; opportunities for self-evaluation. This comprehensive resource will be appeal to primary teachers, educational practitioners and students on CPD and ITT courses. It will also be of interest to teacher trainers, to academics involved in teaching and research and to all those interested in promoting children’s voices.

How often do your primary school pupils have the opportunity to engage in open-ended, sustained pieces of work that offer them choice and control? Do you find that the curriculum restricts openings to provide your pupils with real challenge? Is your school grappling with finding effective ways in which to elicit authentic pupil voice? Children as Researchers in Primary Schools is an innovative and unique resource for practitioners supporting children to become ‘real world’ researchers in the primary classroom. It will supply you with the skills and ideas you need to implement a ‘children as researchers’ framework in your school that can be adapted for different ages and abilities. Children in primary schools are accustomed to being set short-term goals and are often unaware of long-term aims or of the connections between the concepts and skills they are learning. In contrast, this book demonstrates that children engaging in the research process have authentic opportunities to apply invaluable personal, learning and thinking skills while managing their own projects, making their ‘voices’ heard and experiencing increased levels of engagement and self-esteem. Based on the author’s 4-year research study exploring the experiences of young researchers and teachers in primary schools, and on her considerable experience of training young researchers, this book also contains: the history and theory behind ‘children as researchers’ initiatives; a model for good practice based on successful real life case studies; questions for reflective practice; practical examples of research in the classroom; photocopiable resources; opportunities for self-evaluation. This comprehensive resource will be appeal to primary teachers, educational practitioners and students on CPD and ITT courses. It will also be of interest to teacher trainers, to academics involved in teaching and research and to all those interested in promoting children’s voices.

How do we know what works in primary schools? How do we make sure that we are always learning from fellow teachers, always learning from the children we teach and always moving forward? The answer lies in research. In understanding, conducting, disseminating and learning from research. But what do we mean by research, and how do we ′do′ it? This book is your guide to research in primary education. It takes you through both important established theory and recent developments in research and explores what these mean right now for primary education and classroom settings. It helps you to conceive, conduct, write up and share your research with others. It looks at how you can access research findings to improve your classroom practice and deepen your understanding. It examines how you can use research in your classroom everyday to continually enhance teaching, and how you can shape and frame the questions you ask to help you get to the answers you need. If you are a trainee teacher doing a research project as part of your course, or a qualified teacher doing further study, this text includes all the guidance you need. If you are a teacher wanting to find out what works best for your class, in your school, right now, this text will show you how to harness the power of small or large scale research to help you find the answer.

With an increasing emphasis on the role of evidence in education, primary school teachers need to find meaningful ways to engage in research. Teachers and Young Researchers in Action supports teachers and children in carrying out meaningful classroom research that can transform practice. An accessible guide, it shows the different ways in which children and teachers can go about their research, the problems they may meet on the way and the tried and tested methods to meet those challenges. Illustrated with rich real-life examples of research projects – exploring rewards and sanctions, values education, school structures and reading for pleasure – it shows how we can celebrate the importance of the voice of the child in school life, benefitting individual children, teachers and schools alike. This accessible book outlines the benefits of children’s research for individual children, teachers and schools as well as providing case studies that demonstrate how young children’s research projects can be successful. Written for teachers by teachers, this go-to resource will be of interest to anyone working with children as researchers looking to improve their practice and in need of guidance and support.

How can you help children to develop a love of reading and books? Which books are the best ones to use in primary teaching? How do you make the most of children′s literature in teaching across the curriculum? Trainee and experienced primary school teachers need an advanced knowledge of children′s literature. This is your guide to the range of and scope of children′s literature for the primary classroom. Through the exploration of different genres it covers a wide range of literature and helps you to consider what we mean by literature. Case studies that model good practice are included with suggestions for practical activities using literature to enhance teaching across the curriculum. Throughout, book recommendations show how specific texts can be used for teaching in exciting and innovative ways. What′s new to this edition? - updated in line with the new Primary National Curriculum - includes new content on supporting children for whom English is an Additional Language - an extensive list of book recommendations for primary teaching - how to get more out of classic texts - introduces new texts and new children′s authors

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.

Encouraging young children to create and carry out their own social research projects can have significant social and educational benefits. In addition, their research may help them to influence local and national policies and practices on issues that matter to them. To support this, Developing Children as Researchers acts as a practical guide to give teachers – and other adults who work with children – a set of structured, easy-to-follow session plans that will help children to become researchers in their own right. Comprising of ten session plans that have already been tried and tested in schools, this guide will assist you in supporting child researchers while helping you to develop the techniques for teaching research skills effectively. The session plans also ensure that children’s views are heard and reflected by encouraging their active curiosity and investigation of issues that they may be concerned about. Forming a step-by-step guide, the ten sessions cover themes such as: starting the research process and identifying a research topic; the three key principles of research: be sceptical, systematic and ethical; choosing research participants and drawing up a research plan; the range of data collection and analysis methods; reporting the results of, and reflecting upon, a research project. Children’s research has often depended upon the support of academic researchers to provide resources and training. By making the research training and facilitation process more widely accessible, this guide will help remove the psychological and practical hurdles that teachers and others who regularly work with children might feel about helping children’s research themselves.

This unique and ground-breaking book is the result of 15 years research and synthesises over 800 meta-analyses on the influences on achievement in school-aged students. It builds a story about the power of teachers, feedback, and a model of learning and understanding. The research involves many millions of students and represents the largest ever evidence based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning. Areas covered include the influence of the student, home, school, curricula, teacher, and teaching strategies. A model of teaching and learning is developed based on the notion of visible teaching and visible learning. A major message is that what works best for students is similar to what works best for teachers – an attention to setting challenging learning intentions, being clear about what success means, and an attention to learning strategies for developing conceptual understanding about what teachers and students know and understand. Although the current evidence based fad has turned into a debate about test scores, this book is about using evidence to build and defend a model of teaching and learning. A major contribution is a fascinating benchmark/dashboard for comparing many innovations in teaching and schools.

There is something quite magical about forming a connection to a book: the way in which the words on the page can conjure feelings of excitement, fun, joy, laughter or tears, channeling the part of our being that fundamentally makes us human. The journey that children take as they travel towards becoming a competent and confident reader can be a long, winding and complex road. This book helps teachers understand how to build a quality reading rich curriculum that supports the needs of all the children in their classroom. Starting with a section on choosing texts, the book goes on to explore a variety of essential teaching approaches from a read aloud programme, to drama and storytelling, art and illustration. This is a practical resource that provides teachers and schools ideas to support the embedding of text experience and deliver a reading rich curriculum that leads to higher student attainment and working at greater depth.

Rethinking Children and Research considers the way people approach research into childhood and children's lives and examines the debates concerning the forms and goals of such research. Theoretical and practice-based perspectives are discussed in the context of recent key developments in research theory and philosophy of children. Mary Kellett promotes the idea that researchers should listen to the voices and perspectives of children as experts on their own lives, and offers insights and guidance on approaches to research design, implementation and presentation. Recent debates and developments are considered, including ethics, approaching research with children from a child-rights framework, and rethinking the power dynamic within research relationships with children. Rethinking Children and Research is essential for studying childhood and undergraduate or postgraduate level, and will be of interest to all involved with research into childhood and children's lives in the areas of education, health and social services.