Nazareth Primary School

Context

• Large western suburbs primary school
• 30 teachers and over 650 students
• 24 classes
• Catholic

‘From Reception to Year 6, we cultivate children’s natural curiosity and develop their skills to become independent and resourceful enquirers’

How the site ran the professional learning

The first year of CRP action research was opt-in for year five and six teachers who chose to explore CRP as a professional learning (PL) focus:

Implementing:

• Sarah (TL) continued to refine and build her skills in culturally responsive classroom practice. She worked with Dr Sam Schulz and together they facilitated 4 workshops as an introduction to CRP philosophies with these six teachers.
• During workshops teachers took part in activities, connected with and explored their own lifeworlds and explored their pedagogical challenges.
• The Year 5 and 6 teachers worked towards their research questions and developing units of work to enact their own action research.

Action Research: Teachers participated in their action research, supported by Sarah (TL).

Present: Teachers presented to colleagues their findings – sparking questions and intrigue leading towards next year where the whole school will be involved in action research and reflection.

Examples of Workshops introducing CRP to Year 5 and 6 staff:

What did the teachers do?

Year 5 teachers worked as a group to explore an area of shared concern: student lack of engagement and learned helplessness.

They wanted to know how connecting to learner lifeworlds, power sharing and showcasing learning to more than the classroom teacher might affect ‘engagement’ and ‘helplessness’.

To do this, the teachers worked as a research team to develop an exploratory unit in which all year 5s would engage, that would culminate in a learning showcase. They titled the project, Dare to Dream. All year 5 students were tasked with developing a ‘Dare to Dream’ project in which they:

1. Focused on a potential dream career, goal, or social role.
2. Researched and strategised steps for bringing the dream to life.
3. Considered how their dream goal, when realised, would impact others.
4. Showcased their findings multimodally to a broad audience.

Along the way, students and teachers worked collaboratively to:

• Identify their individual and shared skills and knowledges
• Turn their classrooms into a culture of communal learning
• Where learning was shared and mapped (on walls, windows, surfaces; the entire space gradually infused with and characterised by shared knowledge production)
• And where both students and teachers engaged in ‘data’ generation (i.e., diary reflections) that became a basis for discussion and ‘next steps’:

What did teachers learn about their teaching, and value most about the action research process?

• CRP can be used to generate a community of proactive, engaged learners
• Student lifeworlds are powerful resources for learning and for building a sense of community
• Teachers do not ‘need’ to be in control; engagement and passion for learning comes from seeding power
• When we give students the gift of one another, they take charge of their learning in the most creative and exciting ways
• When we have high expectations (hard fun) and scaffold students’ collective engagement with learning by starting with the knowledge that they bring, they all rise to the challenge
• Student ‘resilience’ and ‘self-directed learning’ is nurtured in collaborative, relational learning environments. Creating classroom cultures is key.
• When ‘we’, as teachers, are valued as researchers of our own practice, we have the power to solve our classroom challenges.
• Give teachers time and resources to build strong classroom cultures from the ground up.

What Sarah (Teacher-leader: TL) learnt from trying action research out in the first year:

• When undertaking action research, every lesson feels purposeful and exciting.
• I felt more critical of my own approaches and the goals I was trying to achieve for my students.
• Making students aware of the project was a positive approach. The research remained authentic while the students displayed excitement that they were being ‘researched’
• More student choices with learning led to improved engagement.
• I was intrigued from an experimental point of view as an educator.
• Tracking lessons and reflecting on the success/ lack of success afterwards was beneficial.
• I am motivated to continue and go further.

Evidence of positive change to attitudes towards the English curriculum from Sarah’s action research:

Plans for the future

Term 1 Staff Meetings to share CRP learnings with everyone, introducing action research.

• Pupil free day – the first ever ECC specific – philosophy review particularly looking at the language re: culturally competent
• Whole centre Inquiry focus shift to Challenge of Practice focus
• Roll out CRP across all staff in term 1 through small action research groups

Establish small challenge of practice groups for educators to focus on their own challenges

• Have a CRP focus within staff meetings.
• Re-imagine PLCs to address small group challenge of practice.
• Support each staff to engage in their own action research, developing this to be a natural aspect of daily practice.
• Continue our journey in ensuring each child’s right to high-quality education and care is maintained and prioritised.

Conclusions

• Year 5 and 6 staff members engaged extremely positively with the action research and shared their reflections and positivity with the staff
• They each expressed that this was a pedagogy they want to continue to implement moving forward and that the key concepts were affective.