The Impact of Effective Teaching on Pupil's Writing Achievement - Research Proposal Example

Research for Enquiry Research Proposal Draft R4E Research Proposal Draft Topic: The impact of effective teaching on pupil’s writing achievement at Key Stage (KS) 1 and 2 in primary school. Rationale: There is a high level of public concern about standards of writing, especially in the light of poor writing in United Kingdom’s (UK) education nationally and regionally. This is established from suggestions through research data. While children’s and young people’s writing standards have had little or no change between 2006 and 2009, levels at KS 2 increased slightly in 2010 and have increased again in 2011 showing a trend of discrepancies.(Clark, 2012) The main purpose of the report is not, however, to focus on the numbers but to examine the underlying issues, to highlight the main strengths and weaknesses in the teaching and learning of writing and to suggest how they might be addressed. The general agreement in literature is that there is little evidence about writing (Myhill, 2010); consequently this has made it an appealing and worthy area to undertake research focussing on the impact of effective teaching on pupil’s writing achievement in primary school pupils from KS 1 through to 2. Aim: To explore the views of teachers on effective teaching of writing skills to pupils at KS 1 Objectives: 1) To define the key terms: - writing, achievement, effective teaching and Key Stage. 2) To critically review teaching of writing of KS 1 pupils. 3) To examine the views of teaching practitioners in relation to how pupils writing skills can be improved. 4) To analyse the research findings and make recommendations. Approach to acquiring secondary research How the literature search was carried out: This literature review was carried out using an inclusion and exclusion criteria to select the secondary data. There appeared to be quite limited literature produced in the topic area but the most up to date available literature was chosen for the review such as the UK Government commissioned data research projects, journals, books and internet websites to help give a broad view of the subject. The research evidence is based on studies from between 2005 and 2013. A document by the (Education, 2012) is included as it gives a strong focus on statistical and research evidence including a report from (Fisher, 2011), and (Clark, 2012) and how they relate in their writings the views of practitioners on effective teaching of writing in pupils at KS 1 and KS 2. However, still lacking in the UK data is content touching on effective teaching views about writing achievement in young scholars; this should be included as it helps build a continuous picture on the research subject (Clark, 2012). This information will be used to inform the questionnaire to be conducted with the research subjects and aid in the formulation of specific questions. Literature review matrix: Author Year Method Used Effective teaching Support and provide learning opportunities for pupils High quality professional development Visionary school leadership Ofsted 2013 X X Clark 2012 X X Ings 2008 2008 X X X X Fisher and Twist 2011 X X X Santangelo and Olinghouse 2009 X X DfE 2012 X X X X Literature review: The key themes which will be defined in the literature review are; writing, effective teaching, achievement and Key Stage (KS). Writing: is defined as a complex area of study and function whereby writers privately generate logical, consistent ideas of their thoughts and represent them to the public world of writing systems. This task requires the co-ordination of fine motor and cognitive skills including mirroring the ethical linguistic lifestyles of the writer (Myhill and Fisher, 2010; Fisher, 2012). Effective teaching is having the ability to increase student knowledge, provide instruction to pupils of different capabilities while incorporating instructional objectives and assessing the effective learning mode of the learners (Ings, 2008). Achievement is a pupil’s extent of progress in the course of learning in attainment of their educational goal. Key Stage (KS) is a block of years in the state education system in England which sets out the academic knowledge expected of students at various ages. It embodies all pupils of a specific age at the commencement for the respective school year (GOV.UK, 2012). The research proposal will mainly focus on KS 1 and KS 2 primary school pupils of ages 5 to11 or Year 1 to Year 6. Analysis The performance standards data in UK primary schools demonstrate writing as the subject with the worst achievement and there seems to be a fashion of this in all the Key Stages (KS) of learners (Education, 2012). One of the chief principals at the core of the school’s national curriculum is that all children are required to acquire writing skills. Primarily, writing is taken as a contemporary educational issue which takes into account people’s full participation in the society and economic contribution (Clark, 2012). Agencies like the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills inspection have a similar main concern of finding out whether young people are being well served by schools using evidence gathered from watching and evaluating effective teaching practice of pupil learning and enjoyment in the school (Ofsted, 2013). Teachers are encouraged to be more experimental, imaginative and questioning in their approaches to become effective teachers of writing. Research findings shows teachers develop a deeper understanding of the writing process through their own work practice; appreciate the benefits of a structured, collective and whole-school approach. Teachers should tailor their practices to meet their individual pupils writing needs as well as the whole class, use them in conjunction and monitor or adjust them as necessary (DfE, 2012). For example, most of the whole-class approaches have been suggested to be useful for struggling writers and pupils with learning difficulties and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) (Santangelo, 2009). If teachers get the balance right they will be creating a positive accepting environment where children feel comfortable to express their thoughts and needs. Teaching and learning strategies need looking into to establish what changes could be made to develop pupils’ enthusiasm, skill and achievement in writing. (Santangelo, 2009) state that the teacher has to embody model writing which might be facilitating pupils with the right kind of clues and share real writing examples with them such as a letter or email and supply the right sort of support materials to keep it on track. Their pupils will then, presumably, have the necessary tools to develop their own writing skills, while the teacher is free to intervene, to help and advice, refining the application of those skills. There is another way of thinking about modelling that puts the teacher centre stage, not simply as a facilitator but as a writer, too. This kind of teacher models writing by doing it themselves. When that happens, good teaching seems to happen, as Ofsted inspectors have discovered teachers who were confident as writers themselves, and who could demonstrate how writing is composed, taught it effectively (Ofsted, 2013). (Zwicker, 2009) state that adopting multisensory teaching strategies as opposed to cognitive approaches to teaching writing may be more effective for pupils in their second year of school. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is aimed at improving an individual’s knowledge, understanding and skill through reflective activity. It can be provided within school, across a number of schools (or cluster) or from an external source of expertise. Effective CPD offers teachers opportunities to share ideas and gain hands-on experience and should be both relevant to their needs and well-structured and focused. CPD is vital in facilitating attitudinal change in teachers, build capacity and strengthen subject leadership in writing (Heck, 2009). Primary Research Instrument This research was conducted using the qualitative research method so as to be able to explore the impact of effective teaching on writing, factoring in achievement gaps as it is the only research methodology that enables a researcher to explore views, perception, attitudes and behaviours. Qualitative research methods are associated with the interpretivist and critical realist approaches; they look for a range of ideas and feelings about something through semi or unstructured interviews, questionnaires and observations. By means of this research, the interpretivist research approach was adopted for this research as it upholds the voice of the participants and interaction in the natural setting for example; through the employment of a questionnaire to the teaching practitioners (Lowe, 2006). The researcher selected a questionnaire as the tool appropriate to gather data and information needed to answer the research question amongst all the other qualitative research methods because questionnaires are more objective, potentially faster in collecting information from large groups of people, less expensive to design and faster to distribute, (Basit, 2010). Both types of questions will be employed firstly; open-ended is a question for which a researcher provides a suitable list of responses for example Yes or No and secondly; closed- ended is a question where the researcher does not provide the respondent with a set answer from which to choose. Rather, the respondent is asked to answer in their own words (Munn, 1999). A summary of how the primary research was be conducted A pilot study was conducted to test the appropriateness of the designed questionnaires as data collection instruments. Further, it was to ascertain whether the questions; were understood appropriately by the respondent, were appropriate to the research sample and also to find out any weaknesses. It is also important that the researcher should be cognisant of ethical issues by ensuring that the research questions are appropriate to the researched in terms of race, gender, age, social status cultural and religious belief. Ethical research involves getting informed consent of respondents taking part in the research process as gaining the participants’ informed consent is part of building trust between the researcher and research participants, (BERA, 2004). As a result the researcher obtained consent from the research participants prior to conducting the pilot study, (See Appendix 1). The pilot study was conducted to a purposeful sample comprising of a total of 10 practitioners. Two questionnaires were distributed, (See Appendix 2). The researcher did not encounter problems relating to access to the sample. There were no problems relating to the appropriateness of the research question however according to (McNamara, 2001) every data collection tool has some inherent weakness. Therefore the researcher did not with absolute certainty conclude that the data collection instrument was 100% effective in its appropriateness to collect relevant data. Conclusion and Recommendations On looking at the research findings, it leads one to the conclusion that the teacher is making huge strides, albeit slow ones, towards ensuring that the pupil can both read and write with ease. Students of both Key stage 1 and 2 need continued guidance and direction because it is at this level that one lays the groundwork for the pupil’s education. The teachers perform very crucial duties that help the pupils, and from the research data, one can draw inferences to the effect that girls perform better in both reading and writing as compared to boys. The teacher should also focus on this in the classroom so as to ensure parity is restored and no pupil is left behind. Another issue that arises is that peer pressure has set into the classes, with pupils feeling that other pupils will judge them harshly if and when they spot them reading or writing. It is the teacher’s duty to ensure that the students develop a culture of learning that will help them grow in strength. The teacher should also give the pupils a chance to express themselves in choosing what to write because in such instances, the teacher gets to gauge the level the pupil has attained while at the same time ensuring that the pupil has fun while doing it. Reference List Basit, T. (2010). Conducting research in educational context. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Brooks, G. (2007). What works for pupils with literacy difficulties? The effectiveness of intervention schemes. Greg Brooks and NFER. Clark, C. (. (2012). Young People’s Writing in 2011. Findings from the National Literacy Trust’s annual literacy survey. London: National Literacy Trust. Education, D. f. (2012). What is the research evidence on writing? . Education Standards Research Team, Department for Education. Fisher, R. M. (2011). Evaluation of Every Child a Writer report 2: teaching and writing in ECaW classes. Exeter: University of Exeter and National Foundation for Educational Research. Heck, R. H. (2009). Teacher effectiveness and student achievement: Investigating a multilevel cross-classified model Vol. 47 No, 2. Journal of Educational Administration , 227 - 249. Lowe, M. (2006). Beginning Research. Great Britian: Routledge Limited. Mason, L. H. (2011). Self-regulated strategy development for students with writing difficulties. . In Theory into practice (pp. 50:20-27). McNamara, O. (2001). Becoming an Evidence based Practitioner: A Framework for Teacher-research. London: Routledge. Munn, P. &. (1999). Using Questionnaires in Small-Scale Research: A Teachers Guide. Edinburgh: Scottish Council for Research in Education. Myhill, D. a. (2010). Editorial: Writing development: cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic perspectives. . Journal of Research in Reading. , 33 (1). Ofsted. (2013). School inspection handbook. Santangelo, T. a. (2009). Effective writing instruction for students who have writing difficulties. Focus on exceptional children. Zwicker, J. G. (2009). Cognitive versus multisensory approaches to handwriting intervention: a randomised controlled trial. In The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research , 2 (1) 40-48. Appendix 1 The research questions that were asked in the pilot study are: What is the profile of pupils’ performance in writing? What do we know about pupils’ writing in schools? What does effective teaching of writing look like? What do we know about the gender gap in writing? What is the role of new technology in children’s writing habits? What are pupils’ attitudes toward writing, including enjoyment and confidence? In which types of writing activity do pupils engage out of school? Appendix 2 Key Stage 1 Key Stage 1- Writing Performance Pupils performed less well in writing in comparison to the other core subjects. Pupils’ performance in writing has remained more or less stable in the last three years. Girls outperform boys by 10 percentage points (88 per cent of girls compared to 78 per cent of boys). Only 70 per cent of children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) achieved the expected level compared to 86 per cent of all other pupils. Key Stage 1- Reading Performance Pupils achieving level A (absent), D (disapplied), IN (inapplicable) and W (working towards the test level) in writing tend to achieve the same in reading. There is a spread of results from level 1 and above in reading levels achieved compared to writing results. The same pattern occurs with pupils achieving level 2A and 3 in reading. Girls are more likely to perform better than boys, with over half of girls achieving level 3 or above in both reading and writing compared to only 38 per cent of boys. Key Stage 2 Key Stage 2-Writing & Reading Performance In 2012, 81 per cent of pupils achieved the expected level (level 4 or above) in writing based on teacher assessments, compared to 75 per cent of pupils achieving the expected level in 2011 based on national test results. Pupils perform less well in writing compared to other subjects (i.e. 84 per cent achieved the expected level in mathematics and 87 per cent in reading). The gender gap is still evident, with 76 per cent of boys achieving level 4 compared to 87 per cent of girls. Analysis comparing the 2011 Key Stage 2 reading and writing levels of pupils found a similar pattern to the one in Key Stage 1: there is a spread of results from pupils achieving level 3 and above in reading levels compared to writing results. For example, out of all pupils achieving a level 4 in reading, 68 per cent achieve the same level in writing. Percentage of teachers who think pupils agree with attitudinal statements Agree Neither Disagree Not sure Writing is cool 226 37 26 11 Compared with other students I am a good writer 31 33 18 18 Girls tend to enjoy writing more than boys 27 28 31 14 A pupil who writes well gets better marks than someone who doesn’t 58 23 11 9 I have trouble deciding what to write 42 28 23 8 Writing is more fun when you can choose the topic 74 14 7 6 It is easier to read than to write 50 26 16 8 I would be embarrassed if friends saw me write 14 18 59 9 If I am good at writing, I’ll get a better job 48 29 12 11 The more I write, the better my writing gets 75 13 6 6 Read More