Project:

Evaluation of the Activating Children’s Thinking Skills (ACTS) Project

From July 2006 to December 2006
Project Leader(s): David Leat
Staff: Lucy Tiplady, Jill Clark & Kate Wall
Contact: David Leat
Sponsors: Scottish Executive Education Department

Aims and Objectives

The evaluation aims to:

• Assess the overall impact of the project, highlighting any factors which have contributed to the impact;
• Assess the impact on the teachers involved in the project: teaching approaches, attitudes to learning and learners, and changes to the learning environment;
• Identify what, if any, impact it has had on those pupils whose teachers have been involved in the project;
• Assess the impact of the project on transferable skills and ideas (i.e. those of pupils).

Research Paradigm

In broad terms this evaluation uses a case study methodology in order to understand the context in which the project took place, at national, local council and individual school levels.  Multi-methods, combining both qualitative and quantitative research tools, allow for a considerable degree of triangulation of the data, to help everyone, namely the Scottish Executive, the local authority, the schools, the teachers, the pupils and the wider educational community who have an interest in pupil learning, to learn as much as possible about and from the ACTS project. 

Research Methodology

The evaluation was planned to include:

1. Interview of the project co-ordinator and any other key informants and collection and analysis of project documentation to gain an overview of the project.
2. A questionnaire survey of the full sample of teachers involved in the project.
3. Case studies in 6 project primary schools where a qualitative methodology will be used to test emerging hypotheses and investigate the viewpoints of and impact on all parties – teachers, leaders and pupils in their contexts. Within the case study element it is proposed that the pupils’ perspective will be explored using Pupil Views Templates (Wall and Higgins 2006; Wall et al. 2005). This method aims to gather information on pupils’ attitudes and beliefs about teaching, curriculum content and school/classroom structures (the process of teaching), but also to go further into the realms of metacognition (the process of learning).  We also aim to get commentary from some teachers on their ACTS practice as captured on video.
4.  A focus group interview with some of the key figures in the project to validate the emergent findings.

References

Wall, K. and Higgins, S. (2006) Facilitating and supporting talk with pupils about metacognition: a research and learning tool, International Journal of Research and Methods in Education, Vol 29, pp. 39-53.

Wall, K., S. Higgins, and Smith, H. (2005). "The visual helps me understand the complicated things": Pupil views of teaching and learning with interactive whiteboards, British Journal of Education Technology, Vol. 36, pp. 861-867.

For further information contact:

David Leat, Principal Investigator.

Email: D.J.K.Leat@ncl.ac.uk

Telephone: 0191 222 6578