Creativity, Confidence and Challenge: The Write Team Research Report

 

‘I’ve learnt to be more confident with my ideas, because sometimes you have an idea that you just sort of hide away, because you think no one will like it, but this has taught me that even if no one likes it, you won’t know till you’ve asked.’ 

Write Team pupil

Write Team Project Manager Emma Metcalfe Writes:

 

The Write Team was a creative writing project designed to develop pupil confidence and engagement in their learning. The project, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation brought together an arts organisation, local authority and schools to share experience and skills, in the support of those pupils who ‘play truant in the mind’.

(Collins. J (1998) Playing Truant in the Mind: the social exclusion of quiet pupils. BERA).The project aimed to engage pupils ‘who keep a low profile; invisible pupils who are quiet and undemanding’ (‘Keeping Up’, DfES, 2007). The project provided a weekly programme of creative writing workshops led by the Project Coordinator and developed by writers to engage pupils, develop their confidence, and readiness to write. The Write Team lead teachers attended these weekly workshops, and used reflective diaries to record both their own creative writing and thoughts on writing and impact of the teaching of writing. 

Eleven schools took part, eager to use the project to address the ‘guilt that the majority of teachers have about those pupils whose name they still do not know in the fourth week of term’ (Write Team lead teacher) and five of these schools took part in the project for more than one year.  In a local authority with high achieving schools, this project focused on a key area for the Local Authority School Improvement Team, namely how to support pupils who were not achieving their potential.

The programme of weekly workshops were developed into schemes of work by professional writers: poets, novelists, sports writers and dramatists. The aim of the scheme of work was to provide creative activities for the pupils to enjoy and activities that the teachers could incorporate into their teaching practice and share with colleagues. A writer also visited each school every term to work with the Write Team pupils and lead teachers who, by the time the writers arrived, were already accustomed to creative writing.

 

 

‘I have been more confident with my work. (Now) I say my ideas even if they might not be right’.

Write Team pupil

 

Key Findings

• In Year 1 - 86% of pupils made a link between a change in their perception

of themselves (e.g. ‘improving’, ‘getting better’, ‘more enjoyment’, ‘better at

learning’, using ‘before and after’ statements) and participation in Write

Team activities .

• In Year 2 - 70% of comments made by pupils made a link between a change

in their perception of themselves (e.g. ‘improving’, ‘getting better’, ‘more

enjoyment’, ‘better at learning’, using ‘before and after’ statements) and

participation in Write Team activities.

• In Year 2 - 87% of comments by teachers about their pupils made a

link between increase in confidence and engagement with learning to

participation in Write Team activities.

 

You can download the Write Team research report on the Write Team link at at the top of this page, or by visiting the Write Team website here.

Recent Research on Poetry in Education

Below is a summary of some recent research on progress in pupils' poetry writing and teachers' metaphors of poetry writing instruction.

Recent_Poetry_Research.ppt Download this file

 

Poetry and 9/11

 

I am a little late in writing these reflections prompted by the tenth anniversary of 9/11. What I want to say concerns not so much the events of that day, which have been endlessly analysed and described elsewehere, rather than a personal memory of what I was thinking and writing about at the time and how these have changed in the intervening decade.

Like everyone else I can remember the day very clearly. It was a beautiful day here in Exeter as well, with a crisp blue sky and warm sunshine. I had begun writing up my doctoral research study of teaching poetry writing to primary-age children for only a few weeks, and had reached something of an impasse in my literature review.

I was trying to argue that poetry was an important human need, not a frippery, as important as narrative perhaps, and that its place in the reading, writing and speaking and listening curriculum of children should be a reflection of that.

But I had come up against Geroge Steiner's argument which proposed that an intellectual life saturated with poetry is in fact no guarantee of civilised behaviour. He based this argument on an analysis of the compartmentalised lives of Nazi guards and officers who would exterminate Jews in the daytime and return home in the evening to listen to Wagner and read Goethe. 

The famous line of W.H. Auden that 'poetry makes nothing happen' also appeared to weigh in favour of condemning poetry to the margins. This troubled me greatly. 

Then, coming home from a buying a loaf of bread, I watched the planes go in to the Twin Towers. Seamus Heaney's words from his essay 'The Government of the Tongue' seemed freighted with a kind of negative capability as to poetry's 'use' in the face of such horror: 'Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught, they are practically useless. Yet they verify our singularity, they strike and stake out the ore of self which lies at the base of every individuated life. In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil - no lyric has ever stopped a tank.' 

Sitting thousands of miles from the appalling events in New York my little study of children slowly learning to respond to and make poetry somehow more central in their lives suddenly seemed like a very lame exercise indeed. And here was Seamus Heaney, who had seen enough troubles of his own, appearing to confirm my suspicion.

I was relieved to read on, however. In a reference to the story in John's Gospel of a woman caught in adultery being brought before Jesus by the Pharisees, Heaney says this: 'In another sense, [the efficacy of poetry] is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed...It does not say to the accusing crowd or to the helpless accused, 'Now a solution will take place', it does not propose to be instrumental or effective.'

Heaney is right. Poems do not prevent planes being flown deliberately into buildings. Paradoxically this helped me greatly. I knew rationally that my research was not going to change the world or bring about peace. But I also felt emboldened as I sat down to write my study in those days after the towers fell.

New York was the home of Kenneth Koch, member of the eponymous school of poets of that city and pioneer of teaching poetry to pupils and teachers in landmark projects recorded in Wishes, Lies and Dreams and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? Whether they realise it or not, he influenced everyone who has encouraged a child to write imaginatively. I suddenly felt that I owed the liberal and liberating ideas that Koch stood for the respect and honour of finishing my work to the best of my ability. 

Like everything I have cared about writing, it was not easy. The project lurched around seemingly out of control at times, followed by periods of great flow and purpose. Sustaining me through it all, even when I was asked to rewrite it, was the knowledge that not having the answer to the question of poetry's 'usefulness' did not matter. It was too big a problem, and one I had not set out to appease. What did matter was paying due attention to the words of the children I had worked with, both spoken and written. In the end I went where the energy was. That is all I could do and all I have tried to do since.

Michael Gove needs to get his research right on teacher training -by John Wadsworth in The Guardian

You report that government plans "appear to favour in-school training over university-based courses" (£20,000 offer to first-class graduates who enter teaching, June 27). As a lecturer in education, this is of some concern to me, given that there does not appear to be any evidence to support this preference.

You quote the education secretary, Michael Gove, saying "our teachers are trained in some of the best institutions in the world" – a view endorsed by Ofsted, which rated university-based courses more highly than school-based ones. So why does Gove prefer school-based routes? In the past he's looked at other countries to support his case, but there is no suggestion in the article that he has done so this time. Could it be because the evidence doesn't fit his ideology?

In Finland's "world-class" system, teachers are educated to master's level before being allowed in the classroom. Their education includes a high proportion of pedagogy and they are expected to engage with current research in their specialism both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In France there are similar expectations. This depth of understanding – not "techniques" – makes for outstanding teachers. As one French student put it to me, "teaching is not like following a recipe" – an effective teacher needs to understand why they are taking a particular approach.

Gove's suggestion that "training does not focus sharply enough on the techniques teachers most need, such as behaviour management and the effective teaching of reading", suggests an alarming degree of ignorance.

Teaching is a complex task and can't be reduced to a simple list of strategies. What works for one child won't necessarily work for another, but theory gives teachers the tools to know what to do when they don't know what to do.

It is true that beginner teachers would welcome more input on the teaching of reading and behaviour management, but sadly there are no magic bullets. Research helps our students understand that learning to read is a highly complex process and that effective readers (even young ones) employ a range of strategies to make sense of texts. They also understand that this process isn't made simpler when working in a highly irregular language like English.

We need to empower teachers to think for themselves. To paraphrase Robin Alexander, director of the Cambridge Primary Review, we cannot expect "children to think for themselves if their teachers only do what they're told". It's unlikely that the quality of initial teacher education in England will improve if Gove decides to adopt his school-based model. What is needed instead is a climate where schools and university education departments work closely to help student teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice.

If world-class education systems rely on teachers who are able to use research evidence to support their teaching, the least we can expect from the education secretary is that he is rigorous in his use of research too.

via guardian.co.uk