Learning School 1999
School Ethos
The first Learning School project set out to conduct a broad evaluation of learning in five of the Global Classroom partner schools: Anderson High School, Bobergsskolan, Gymnasium Zlin, Harold Cressy High School and Nara Women's University Secondary School. The research focused on four themes: Classroom Observation, Shadowing Lifelong Learning, and Insight. The project generated interesting and valuable results, which covered various issues in student learning in and out of school.
Methods used
Classroom Observation
The aim of this theme was to focus on the learning that was occurring inside the classroom and to find out the ways of making the classroom learning more effective. So the group focused on how the students were responding and reacting to the teaching styles. For example, if the teaching style was 'explaining a task to the students', the learning styles could be 'listening the teacher'. In this section, the group used 'How are you sheet'. This is a small questionnaire about their feelings during the period, which consisted of three parts: Pre-questions, Spot-check, and Post- questions filled in at the beginning or before beginning of the period, in the middle of the period and after the period, respectively. The group especially obtained interesting results from the Spot-check when they compared the answers of students, the teacher and the observer themselves.
Shadowing
In this section the researchers tried to observe the school day of a single student. The researcher followed a student for a day or two and got an in-depth picture of the student. Again they focused on teaching and learning styles and used 'How are you sheet', that was filled in by the shadowed student and the researcher, and the results were compared each other.
Life Long Learning
This section consisted of two aspects: life long learning inside school and life long learning provided by the community. The group interviewed the officers in charge of the local social service related to Life Long Learning. For example, they visited the unemployment office, universities, the adult learner agency and so forth. The information about life long learning inside school was collected from headteachers, principles and/or teachers in charge of career guidance.
Insight
The group asked a year group, around 17 years old, to take part in the questionnaire research. The answers were statistically analysed by using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). The questionnaire covered the wide range of questions; motivation, feeling towards high school life in general, the balance between social life and school work and so on. |
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