The CLC endeavours to underpin its practice with rigorous research and evaluation. Current projects include:
Educational blogs and their effects on students’ writing.
There is plenty of evidence to show that blogging arouses students’ interest and enthusiasm for writing, but very little attention has been paid to its effects on the quality of writing in general, or about its potential for developing students’ writing in new directions, or about the ways in which teachers frame tasks for blogging, and respond to children’s writing on class blogs.
Our research project set out to study practice in blogging, with a particular emphasis on children’s writing, in four classes (in three different primary schools) over a period of six months and to compare children’s writing on the blog with their other writing. We were interested to know what made for effective practice in blogging and how approaches to blogging differ. The four classes presented an interesting range of slightly different assumptions and practices in blogging. We set out some of our own assumptions about educational blogging which were:
- school blogging is different from personal blogging at home
- blogging is a new way of developing writing
- blogging offers a new approach to teaching & learning
The research project was commissioned by CfBT Education Trust and can be found on the CfBT Research site http://www.cfbt.com/en-GB/
A longer version of the report including full case studies can be found here.
‘Digital literacy gives writing a whole new dimension which primary children must be exposed to, it is, after all, their future.’ Maryam Ben Rabha, blogging research project teacher
ReflectED
ReflectED is an approach that develops pupil’s metacognition as a tool for learning. It supports attainment, especially among lower-achieving pupils. Rosendale Primary School in Lambeth has been developing the ReflectED approach to teaching these skills using digital portfolios: children record learning through photographs, written records and audio recordings, which are then tagged by subject or responses to the topic. Pupils are then encouraged to review and reflect on these records over time with teachers and peers. Teachers can also look across these tags to get an overview of the areas that pupils are enjoying or struggling with, and identify specific pupil needs. This helps pupils, and their teachers, understand and develop strategies for learning. London CLC is working in partnership with Rosendale School and the National Educational Trust to develop the ReflectED approach.
In the pipeline – Other projects currently being developed include research into the impact of social media on relationships between cultural organisations and schools and a study on how Scratch can be used to support KS2 pupils in understanding key Computer Science concepts and practices.