Classroom conditions to secure enjoyment and achievement: the pupils' voice. Listening to the voice of Every child matters

Abstract

This paper argues that pupil voice and the active engagement of pupils in shaping their own educational experience are integral to the success of the ‘Enjoy and Achieve’ strand of the Every child matters: Change for children programme. Through accessing the voice of Key Stage 2 pupils, insight was gained into what pupils believe to be the ideal ‘classroom conditions’ which enable them to enjoy and achieve at school. Pupil voice was accessed using an innovative form of group interview incorporating an Ishikawa or fishbone tool. The data was collected from 180 pupils, from Years 3–6 (aged 7–11) in a UK Junior school. The findings identify eight ‘classroom conditions’ which pupils see as being critical for them to be able to enjoy and achieve at school. Two of these ‘classroom conditions’ do not appear to be supported by previous research.

Keywords:

• pupil voice
• Every Child Matters
• Key Stage 2 curriculum
• group interview
• classroom conditions

Introduction

The engagement of pupil voice is becoming increasingly significant in understanding effective pedagogy and in securing more personalised approaches to learning. McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) describe the two complementary premises upon which their ESRC funded work ‘Consulting pupils about teaching and learning’ was based. The first was that, ‘All school pupils have a right to be consulted and their voices listened to’. The second that, ‘Consulting pupils offers schools a very important means towards their own improvement’. The Government's Education and Inspection Act (2007) indicates a heightened role for pupil feedback in the running of schools and the new Ofsted framework seeks the views of a school's pupils as part of the inspection process. The increasing drive to involve pupils in all aspects of school life is also supported by teaching unions,

the basis of our philosophy is that a school can only be the best it can be when pupils are actively engaged in contributing to school improvement through working with the staff. Teachers have their own experience, as do students, and schools need to create a structure where both perspectives can be equally heard and valued. (Keates and Gold 2007)

McCallum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) cite a range of studies which indicate that children across junior and secondary schools have views and opinions about teachers and teaching. Their own research with pupils in Years 2 and 6 (7–11 year olds), using a card sort methodology, generated insights into children's views on the best conditions for learning. The children described ‘learner conditions’ (such as the learner's physical state, frame of mind, age, ability) and ‘classroom conditions’ (such as teaching strategies and learning climate). McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) interviewed individual secondary pupils about three lessons and derived a number of themes from pupils' ideas about what helped their learning. Whilst the construct ‘classroom conditions’ was not used to conceptualise what the pupils communicated, some of their findings can be usefully re-framed in these terms. As part of their research for the DfES in to what makes an effective teacher, the Hay Group (Hobby 2002) outlined a model of classroom climate (incorporating nine dimensions) which describes key aspects of the classroom experience that affect children's learning.

The Every child matters: Change for children programme (HM Government 2004) is a shared national programme of system-wide reform designed to ensure that children's services (including schools) work better together and with parents and carers to help give children more opportunities and better support. It focuses on five outcomes that children and young people themselves identified as essential for wellbeing in childhood and in later life. ‘Enjoy and Achieve’ is one of the five outcomes and arguably the one for which schools have the greatest responsibility.

‘Helping children to develop as confident, enthusiastic and effective learners is a central purpose of primary education’ (Department for Children, Schools and Families 2004). Excellence and enjoyment: A strategy for primary schools (HM Government 2003) affirms a vision for primary education that provides opportunities for all children to fulfil their potential through the delivery of an engaging, broad, rich curriculum and high academic standards and excellence. The concept of hearing children's voices is gaining momentum as a way of improving teaching and learning. In the fast changing world of educational reform, however, we may not be giving enough attention to listening to what children believe to be the ideal classroom conditions which enable them to ‘enjoy and achieve’ at school.

The study reported here takes forward the concept of the ‘classroom condition’ frame by McCallum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) and focuses on pupils' views of the ‘classroom conditions’ that lead them to enjoy their learning and achieve well as a result. The research was undertaken using an innovative ‘fishbone’ methodology as an alternative to the individual interview and card sort methodologies used in previous studies.

Methodology

Engaging with pupil voice and the collection of data

To hear the pupil voice is not simply a matter of listening to pupils as they articulate their thoughts aloud. Getting inside the minds of pupils as they express their views remains a central challenge to researchers attempting to engage with pupil voice. Getting into the minds of pupils in the context of the research reported here meant probing pupils' initial responses to questions posed and the clarification of the ideas and emotions generated through the resulting pupil/researcher dialogue.

The article in Curriculum Management Update (2006) involved young people in identifying ways of gathering their views on the curriculum and reported that pupils believed ‘small mixed gender group interviews or focus groups are the easiest to take part in’. Building on this, group interviews (with five to six children per group) were used to access pupils' thinking about their perceptions of what contributed to their enjoyment in lessons. Data was collected from 180 pupils in Key Stage 2 (7–11 year olds) from one junior school in an East Midlands city, during the summer term of 2007. The pupils in each interview group were from the same year group (that is, Years 3, 4, 5 and 6).

Traditionally, group interviews are recorded by verbatim transcripts. Whilst the resulting data is rich and authentic it can present issues in terms of data reduction into analytic categories. The Ishikawa or fishbone tool (Turner 2002) was chosen as a mechanism to support the group interview process and the analysis of the resultant data into categories. The fishbone technique seemed to have the potential to provide a solution about how to adopt a ‘tabulation and tidiness’ (Pope and Denicolo 1986) approach without losing the full complexity of pupils' responses. It offered a structure to facilitate the analysis of cause and effect relationships as perceived by the pupils, and the development of a holistic representation of the theme being explored broken down into a pictorial format. The fishbone tool, usually used in the world of business, was also chosen as it had the potential to engage pupil interest as being novel and probably unfamiliar. Fundamentally, however, it offered a means of carrying out data reduction within the data collection phase using the input of the pupils to provide the validation of the derived analytic categories.

The materials needed to construct the fishbones within the context of group interviews were space and a generous area which could be written on that was visible to all participants. Flip chart paper marked out with a fishbone (Figure 1) and a focus question to be explored written on the right-hand side of the diagram at the ‘head’ of the fish was prepared prior to the interviews. Marker pens were provided for pupils to use. During the course of the group interviews important ‘aspects’ which pupils considered as significant in relation to the focus question were placed (sometimes by the researcher and sometimes by the pupils themselves) at the end of each line (bone); along each line other factors which contributed to the ‘aspect’ were recorded. In some cases pupils recorded directly onto the fishbones, at other times the researcher paraphrased the dialogue with the pupils and, with their consent, recorded the agreed words onto the ‘bones’. To secure authenticity and to aid the articulation of ‘voice’, pupils were encouraged to record ideas colloquially and the researcher strived to do the same, the focus being on pupil perceptions of the reality of their experiences in the classroom.

Figure 1. The fishbone.

To begin the group interviews using the fishbones it was necessary to frame a number of focus questions. The questions needed to meet two requirements:

	be meaningful to the pupils and prompt their sustained engagement with the task;
	provide data that could provide potentially valuable insights into the classroom conditions that pupils feel best support their enjoyment and achievement.

A pilot stage of the research was concerned with arriving at an appropriate wording and a number of questions. Three questions were framed and therefore three data collection ‘fishbones’ were used in each of the year group interviews.

Focus Questions:What makes lessons enjoyable?How do you know when you are doing well?What can a teacher do to make learning fun?

Field notes were also compiled during, and immediately after, all group interviews. These captured verbatim, significant statements from pupils regarding their experience of lessons.

By combining and analysing the content of the data collection fishbones (an example of a completed data collection fishbones is given in Figure 2) and the associated field notes, a number of analytic categories describing classroom conditions for enjoyment and achievement were derived. Some of the evidence for a derived condition was expressed by pupils as a negative (that is, the absence of the condition) and some as a positive (that is, the presence of a condition). The analysis involved careful and repeated readings of the fishbones and the associated field notes, followed by the clustering of responses to produce a set of categories. An ongoing check was carried out to see if there were any differences in pupils' responses that represented age group differences.

Figure 2. A completed fishbone for one group of pupils in Year 4.

The findings and links to other research

The analysis seemed to indicate the following classroom conditions which for pupils contribute to their enjoyment and achievement in lessons.

	Activities which require participation.
	Appropriate amount of teacher talk.
	Appropriate social demands made by activities.
	Opportunities for challenge and struggle.
	A firm, fair, positive and psychologically safe regime.
	A focus on the learning and achieving of individuals.
	Plenty of variety of activities.
	Appropriate length of activities.

Six of the eight derived classroom conditions were supported by the findings of other research studies.

Activities which require active participation

Pupils from all four year groups viewed the chance to be active learners as being very important. Hands on experiences were both appreciated and enjoyed: ‘You learn loads when you do it yourself, like Science days when you do experiments and don't copy up work’. Performing, acting, being like a famous painter, singing, playing sport and ICT were all high on pupils list of enjoyable learning opportunities. Building a real shelter in history and going on school trips was expressed as enjoyable by pupils in Year 6. Comments like, ‘not enough action’ and ‘no hands on’. were expressed by every year group: ‘Science is about doing’.

The ‘active participation’ condition is strongly supported by previous research. ‘Participation – pupil involvement and influence in the running of the class’ is reported by Hobby (2002); and ‘genuinely interactive approaches to teaching and learning … engaging with what pupils brought to their own learning’ was identified by McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (20005). ‘Being active, leading to deeper meaning’ (McCullum, Hargreaves and Gipps 2000) and ‘Being producers of learning not consumers of teaching’ (McBeath, Myers and Demetriou 2001) provide resonances of the ‘active participation condition’.

Appropriate amount of teacher talk

There was a perception in all four years that most teachers, ‘talk too much’. Year 4 also felt that they had to be passive and listen to the teacher. Group reading, for example, was spoilt when the teacher was focusing on one group, the other groups found it difficult to concentrate because they could hear the teacher teaching the focus group: ‘We can't concentrate, it's distracting’, ‘We just want to get on with things’. Teachers appeared to over talk, ‘she tells us again and again, then we run out of time’. Whilst in this research teacher talk was considered a negative factor, pupils often describing the over talking and explanation by the teacher as being detrimental to their learning, McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) identified the importance of teachers using ‘appropriate language’. McCullum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) reported that being able to talk to the ‘teacher alone’ was more helpful than whole class explanations.

Appropriate social demands made by activities

This condition produced some variations in pupils' perceptions depending on their age. Younger pupils enjoyed pair work, small groups and whole class work, however, older pupils did not like ‘talking partners’ and did not want to share ideas, ‘I like to work on my own and not tell my talking partner my ideas’. Having to wait for every one else to finish was frustrating as well as not always being chosen to have a go. One Year 5 boy explained, ‘I don't always get a go – even tomorrow’. Several girls in Year 6 felt that ‘working together is unhelpful’. The younger pupils valued the support structures of collaborative work whilst older pupils preferred to work more independently.

The condition ‘social demands of activities’ from this research can be linked to the findings of McCullum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) and McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) regarding the importance of collaboration among peers as a valuable aid to learning. The research reported here found that whilst for younger pupils collaboration through, for example, small group work and talking partners was seen as important, older pupils preferred to work things out for themselves.

Opportunities for challenge and struggle

Pupils in all years expressed a desire to be challenged, ‘good not to have help’ and to struggle to find answers themselves. Pupils in Year 6 were particularly keen to be independent: ‘I like to struggle to find the answers’, ‘I like to be stretched’ and ‘research makes you think’. Being told the answers and not being ‘allowed to give the answer’ were seen as unhelpful. One boy in Year 5, expressing his frustration at the lack of challenge, mentioned getting his science work right; but then having to copy it out again ‘just to make it neat’.

The condition of challenge and struggle identified in this research supports one of the nine individual measures or dimensions that help pupils to learn and want to learn, ‘Interest – stimulation and fascination in class’, identified by Hobby (2002). McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) identified ‘greater independence and autonomy … to be trusted to learn and to have their growing maturity recognised’ and McCullum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) cited ‘challenge to make connections’.

A firm, fair, positive and psychologically safe regime

Evidence for this condition was strong in all four year groups. A teacher who was strict and fair was perceived as good by all groups. Being made to feel that, ‘every one is special’ was expressed by a girl in Year 4. A teacher with good organisation, enthusiasm, commitment and excitement for the work in hand was highly regarded. ‘There should be no favourites’ and ‘a teacher who shouts at everyone when only a few people are being naughty is horrible and spoils the atmosphere’. Moody teachers who did not like the work, in general were not liked, ‘you can tell by their face’ as well as ‘messy teachers’ and staff who were absent from school on courses ‘or ill’ spoilt pupils' enjoyment of school. Pupils in Year 6 felt that ‘being moved down a set was embarrassing’.

The condition ‘a firm, fair and psychologically safe regime’, echoes the findings of the Hobby (2002) measure of ‘Fairness – justice and equality within the classroom’ and with McCullum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) who noted the importance of classroom ethos with ‘quiet time for thinking’ and the importance of routines.

A focus on the learning and achievement of individuals

Teachers who were experts, who provided stretching work and who rewarded pupils with praise rewards and prizes (Year 6) enabled pupils to know that they were achieving. Setting targets and offering strategies about how to improve were also seen as helpful methods for pupils to be successful.

The condition of ‘individual learning and achieving’ supports the ‘Standards – expectations of achievement and encouragement to improve’ dimension identified by Hobby (2002). McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) identification of pupils' awareness of ‘teachers taking into account recognition of individual differences’ and the importance of teachers ‘pitching work for different abilities’ identified by McCullum, Hargreaves and Gipps (2000) also provide support for the condition. McBeath, Myers and Demetriou (2001) reported the importance of ‘targets which are truly about learning to learn more effectively’ and the critical significance of formative assessment.

The two conditions derived from this research which are not supported by other research were: ‘the variety of activities’ and ‘the appropriate length of activities’. Pupils across all four years identified both positive and negative aspects of ‘the variety of activities’ they experienced during lessons. Important positive factors were being ‘able to break away from routines’, ‘having different teachers’ and ‘lots of variety in teaching’ (styles). Negative factors included, ‘too much writing’, ‘repeating work’, ‘every day being the same’, ‘copying’ and ‘working from books’. The concept of ‘doing what we always do’ was expressed as a negative factor by most groups interviewed.

The condition of ‘the appropriate length of activities’ produced only negative responses. Not having time to finish pieces, ‘because we have to get on with the next thing’, ‘not having enough time to work out answers ourselves’ were expressed by younger pupils while older pupils complained about ‘having to do the same things every day’. The ‘best bits are in the afternoon, the morning is all SATs’. ‘Long lessons’ which were perceived as ‘boring’ were identified by all four year groups. It appears that the structure of lessons fitting neatly into a time frame may not always be conducive for pupil learning.

For pupils, the emphasis on covering the content of the Key Stage 2 core curriculum subjects seemed to dominate the week at the expense of ‘the good subjects’. History, art, drama and music were valued by pupils and seen as ‘subjects that teach you a lot’ but subjects not done often enough. The core subjects were timetabled in the same order every morning with the rest of the curriculum vying for space in the afternoon. It appears from this research that one of the ways pupils say that enjoying and achieving in lessons could be enhanced is through developing lessons which break away from rigid timetabling and hour-long lesson slots. Pupils said that they were bored by the predictable routines and rhythms of the school week. Special science days and ‘teachers who stop routines’ provided valued relief from the monotony of numeracy and literacy hours.

Discussion

The nature of the conditions identified through the analysis of the fishbone data posed several questions. Do they simply reflect the psychological needs of all young learners? The idea of pupils feeling valued, ‘special’ and encouraged to enjoy the ‘struggle’ to find out, for example. Or are one or more of the conditions related, to some extent, to the particular current context of the National Curriculum with its externally driven targets, levels and testing? The condition ‘appropriate length of activities’, for example, may have arisen as a result of the pressure on teachers to cover content.

What of the particular impact of the ethos of the school in which the research was undertaken? For example, is the fact that pupils in several of the interview groups identified the amount of teacher talk as a negative a reaction to a particular school effect? The particular ethos of the school within which the research was conducted, may have had a significant impact on the findings. The school is situated within a challenging council estate with high unemployment and many children coming from single parent or fragmented families. The research school may have used a relatively strict curriculum regime as a behaviour management mechanism; hour-long curriculum slots being repeated throughout the week to provide routine, superficial order and calm. The assumption being that if pupils know what to expect they may be able to feel safe and calm. The pupils' responses during the group interviews however, may indicate that the routine offered by the school to provide stability and security for children may not provide sufficient challenge for them to be able to fully enjoy and achieve.

As recipients of teaching, children's perceptions can be invaluable. In the drive to improve teaching and learning through the encouragement of a mutually supportive dialogue, pupils can be helped to consider, in some depth, how they learn best.

The fishbone technique used in this research to record the voices of pupils and to facilitate the articulation of their views proved to be an effective technique. There was immediacy and authenticity about the process which appeared to tease out the various complex factors relating to the Every child matters strand of ‘enjoy and achieve’ and provided a means of being able to establish key conditions which could allow enjoying and achieving to be secured. The process enabled the pupils to shape their thinking, keep control of the pace of the interview and form a visual pattern of the emerging expression of what they were communicating. It allowed pupils to ‘speak responsibly, intelligently and usefully’ (Bragg 2001).

Ofsted is concerned that schools show how they gather the views of learners, what learners' views tell them and how this data is used for school improvement (Ofsted 2005). McIntyre, Pedder and Ruddock (2005) in their work with secondary school children and their teachers found that teachers accepted suggestions from pupils if the suggestion fitted ideas that were ‘already in teachers’ repertoires'. Sixth months after the study teachers had not altered their teaching in the light of pupils' suggestions, blaming the pressures of ‘official requirements’. The research indicates that for pupil voice to have an impact on improving the process of teaching and learning, as Ofsted requires and as accepted good practice suggests, teachers appear to need a basic confidence that pupils have the potential to offer significant insight into improving their own educational experience.

Whilst recognising the value of the voice of the pupil in school improvement, the teacher unions are clear that there should be checks and balances. They warn against ‘… surveying pupils and strategies which privilege pupils in a way that undermines, disempowers and deprofessionalises teachers’ (Keates and Gold 2007). Their final position is that ‘… teachers and students should have a voice; but the last word remains with the teacher’ (Keates and Gold 2007).

An alternative position would be to see teachers as researchers working with pupils as co-researchers to develop the quality of educational provision. The inclusion of pupils as co-researchers would not only help to ensure that they had a ‘voice’ but would, also, enable them to become agents and instruments of their own learning and secure a teacher–pupil partnership to build effective pedagogies. For this to become a reality the development of relationships, significant trust and respect as well as a continuing conversation about teaching and learning must be established.

The research reported here provides a classroom tool and associated methodology that can support teacher–pupil partnerships in building effective pedagogies. Furthermore, the ‘classroom conditions’ categories generated by the research may provide a useful starting point for conversations between teachers and pupils about ‘enjoying and achieving’ and the ways in which teaching and learning might be enhanced and personalised.