Study

last updated:June 2005

Why did the researchers consult pupils and what did they consult them about?

The researchers argued that consumers are often asked what they think about a service or a product – partly because it makes consumers feel that they matter, but also because it helps companies and service providers to tailor their services and products better.  They pointed out that until recently, the ‘consumers’ in schools – the pupils – were rarely asked for their views.  Now however, many schools are starting to consult their pupils and involve them as active participants in classroom-based research investigations to help them identify ways of improving teaching and learning.

The researchers investigated the insights gained through consulting pupils, and explored whether paying attention to pupils’ perspectives really did have the potential to improve teaching and learning in schools. They explored pupils’ perspectives on what they felt made a difference to their learning and achievement, and their views of the kinds of teaching strategies they felt would help them to succeed.  For example, the pupils’ perspectives reported by Flutter and Rudduck (2004) included:

• factors they felt sustained their engagement with learning
• factors they felt affected their confidence in their ability to learn
• the impact of friendships on their learning
• their understanding of the criteria for ‘good’ work
• how the way time is managed in school affected their learning.

We explore these themes in the following pages.

What sustained pupils’ engagement with learning?

From their discussions with pupils, the researchers identified a number of factors which pupils felt positively affected their engagement with learning and those which they felt switched them off learning. The factors which pupils said helped to engage them with learning included:

• being involved in a variety of activities. In particular pupils felt that practical work not only helped them to understand difficult concepts, but also engendered a sense of achievement, especially when there was a tangible ‘end product’
• receiving positive feedback and encouragement from their teachers. Even the more confident learners seemed to need reassurance that they were making good progress on a regular basis
• having opportunities to make choices in the classroom
• feeling that the work they were doing was interesting and pitched at a level they felt comfortable with, yet also challenged by.

Practitioners may find it helpful to read a case study we featured in our RfT summary about ability grouping which describes how teachers enabled their students to choose to work at a level they felt comfortable with, yet also felt challenged by  (either ‘basic’, ‘standard’, ‘extended’ or ‘advanced’).

For many secondary aged pupils, engagement with learning was also linked to their perception of the kinds of knowledge that are required for life in the world outside school. Students felt that topics which were relevant to ‘real life’ situations helped make them seem more interesting. Factors that pupils felt switched them off from learning included:

• too much emphasis on written work.  Many pupils across all key stages, but particularly boys, said they found writing problematic
• disruptive behaviour. Sometimes pupils were disruptive because they were bored and their attention was not focused on learning and there was a danger that disengaged pupils’ behaviour led others to switch off learning because of the risk of disruption
• needing help, but not getting it.  Waiting for help or resources caused some pupils to engage in disruptive behaviour because they felt bored or frustrated
• repetitious, ‘easy’ and mundane activities, such as completing worksheets and working from textbooks and activities that involved little physical movement.
  

What affected pupils’ confidence in their ability to learn?

The researchers identified a range of factors that appeared to shape pupils’ confidence as learners, including:

• pupils’ understanding of assessment
• feedback and praise
• having someone to talk to about their learning
• parental influence and support
• friendships.

Pupils’ perceptions of assessment

How assessment was explained to pupils seemed to make a difference to their confidence in their ability to learn.  Pupils felt more confident about their ability to learn when they understood that assessment could help them make progress with their learning. Where the purposes of assessment were not made clear, ‘tests’ seemed to make pupils very ‘conscious of what they could not do rather than what they could do’.

Feedback and praise

Receiving positive feedback and praise from teachers and parents clearly played a central part in pupils’ learning.  It affected both their engagement and their assessment of their own ability. How praise and rewards were given was also important to pupils.  Whilst younger pupils were generally quite pleased to receive tokens such as merit badges and reward stickers during assemblies etc, secondary students felt such public rewards were demeaning and embarrassing.  But pupils of all ages wanted their families to hear about their achievements through, for example, letters of congratulations sent home for parents to read, positive comments written on their work and words of praise and encouragement given in yearly reports.  

Someone to talk to

Pupils found the experience of having someone to talk to about their learning helped raise their confidence in themselves as learners.  Mostly, they preferred to discuss their problems and progress in private on a one-to-one basis.  They suggested that having the chance to reflect on their work and achievements also helped restore their confidence.  Pupils viewed mentoring by adults as a helpful strategy, especially where it provided direct and specific guidance on particular areas of work. Peer mentoring by older pupils trained in mentoring skills often appeared to have a beneficial effect on pupils’ confidence in their ability to learn too.  The researchers found that both mentored and mentoring pupils valued and enjoyed the experience and that it helped to create a more positive climate for learning.  

Parental influence and support

Parental influence and support had a marked effect on pupils’ attitudes to learning and on the development of their identities as learners.  Some families played a positive role – for example some pupils described how their families’ interest in their schoolwork helped them feel more confident. Pupils’ comments also revealed how family influence sometimes undermined pupils’ confidence.  For example, pupils could feel less confident in their abilities to do well in a particular subject because their parents had little knowledge or skill in the subject and could not offer help with homework.  

Our earlier RfT about the impact of study support reported how homework clubs were an effective strategy for helping pupils who experience problems with homework.  The researchers found that many pupils appreciated after-school support and that this type of provision had a beneficial impact on pupil attainment.  

Friendships

Friendships exerted a strong influence on pupils’ confidence as learners.  We look at the ways friendships impacted on both pupils’ confidence and their learning in detail on the next page.

What did pupils say about the impact of friendships on their learning?

The researchers found that the role of friendships was a double-edged sword in the classroom – they could have either a positive or negative effect on pupils’ engagement with learning and they exerted a strong influence on their achievement.

Pupils reported that their friendships were an important means of support – particularly for pupils experiencing difficulties with their learning.  The influence varied from direct support with work to pastoral support.  Both primary and secondary pupils commented on the value of friends’ support with learning and motivation in the classroom:

‘I’m sitting next to Jane and she helps me if I’m stuck and I help her.  Sometimes she helps me know the answer but she doesn’t actually, like, say ‘Oh it’s 36’, she says ‘Well, how many tens has it got ….? Now count the units …’
(Y3 girl)

‘We’re working in pairs so if one of you is better at music and the other is better at IT, if you can work in pairs you can combine the two.  So it ends up that you both learn off each other because usually you end up with friends who’ll have different kinds of skills.
(Y8 pupil)

‘You think ‘I’ve got to catch up to them’ so you start working faster and better.  You want to beat them’.
(Y10 boy)

Consequently, friendships that went wrong or friendships that were split up often had a damaging impact on pupils’ learning and confidence.  A student explained how setting resulted in her losing confidence in her ability because she lost the practical help from her friend:

‘Well, my friend got dropped out of the top set so I have to sit on my own now and the work is really, really hard and I’ve like asked if I could go down to the second set … and I hope I can move down because then I’ll enjoy school a lot more because I dread Mondays and Thursdays because of [those lessons].
(Y10 girl)

Pupils were also aware of the problems associated with friendships.  Many were able to make a clear distinction between friends who helped them in some way with their learning and those they enjoyed being with, but who were likely to have a negative effect on their work:

‘I work best with Holly doing maths because she doesn’t mess about and if I sit with Tom he always jumps up and takes the book all over the place’.
(Y3 girl)

Pupils were well aware that friends could also draw them into being disruptive themselves.  Once they had acquired a ‘troublemaker’ image, they found it hard to change and re-engage with learning.

What did the researchers find out about pupils’ understanding of the criteria for ‘good work’?

Comments made by the pupils showed that often they did not understand the criteria for ‘good work’. Pupils tended to think that ‘working harder’ or ‘doing better’ meant they needed to stop talking, produce more work, complete work on time and present work neatly. Similarly, when pupils assessed their own work, the researchers found that their evaluations concentrated on the neatness of their work, the amount of effort they had made and the time they had spent on the task:

‘Well, if I look back at my book and I find my handwriting’s neat and my drawings are better and like it’s set out better then I’ll find I could praise myself because of that.
(Y8 girl)

‘I had a page and about a half to do in just a single lesson – that is forty minutes, and I thought I can never do this and then I didn’t talk to anybody, I didn’t stare at anybody, I just concentrated and I wrote it down in my neat book and I got it done’.
(Y5 girl)

To pupils, knowing how to improve their work was more important than vague instructions to ‘do better’ or ‘work harder’:

‘I’d find it helpful if someone were to just sit down and talk through say, like you could get a C by doing more revision … or just writing a bit more’.
(Y10 boy)

Pupils sometimes misinterpreted processes like target setting, intended to help them improve the quality of their work.  Rather than giving pupils an idea of how they were performing and what they needed to do to improve, targets could appear to be an obscure hurdle to them, as this pupil explained:

‘No one has ever talked to me about the targets … like, no one has ever told me how I can reach that target …’
(Y10 girl)

Practitioners may find it helpful to read about ways of providing pupils with feedback about how to improve their work, which we outlined in our earlier RfT about assessment for learning.

Practitioners may also like to read a case study of a school that used pupil consultation to improve the school’s system of target setting.

How did the structure of lessons and the school day affect pupils’ learning?

Pupils felt that some of the difficulties they experienced with their learning were due to the way time was used within lessons and through the school day – they felt constrained by the time structures that were imposed upon them during lessons and by the structure of the school day.  

Many pupils felt that teachers spent too long explaining activities and left them with too little time to carry out the learning tasks.  However, the amount of time pupils felt they needed varied according to curriculum subject and the individual needs of the pupils. Some pupils said they often felt ‘left behind’ because the pace of work was too fast, others commented that they felt ‘held back’ waiting for slower pupils.  

Pupils also said that they liked to work on projects where they were allowed several weeks to complete work, rather than a lesson or two. They felt that when teaching moved quickly from one topic to another, their learning was piecemeal and fragmentary. Some pupils suggested allowing the class more flexibility and self-direction in time management – a solution that may be helpful for both faster and slower learners.

As well as wanting more time to carry out activities, some pupils also wanted more time to respond to teachers’ questions.  We explored the positive effects of extending ‘wait-time’ (allowing a pause of between three and five seconds after asking a question) on pupils’ learning in our earlier RfT about assessment for learning.

Some secondary pupils felt that the rapid sequence of different lessons made it more difficult for them to sustain their concentration. They suggested that having fewer, but longer lessons in a day would enable them to cover more work and allow them to go into more detail.

What suggestions for improving classroom teaching did pupils make?

So far in this RfT summary, we have examined what pupils said about their experiences of learning – particularly their difficulties with learning. On this page we look at some strategies that Year 8 pupils suggested would help them with their learning and on the next page we examine what happened when their teachers tried incorporating some of these ideas into their teaching. This aspect of the network project was reported in Arnot et al (2003).

The pupils suggested a number of teaching approaches which they felt would help them engage more deeply, more actively, more sociably and with more responsibility in classroom learning activities.  Their suggestions echo the comments made by pupils about their experiences of learning which we summarised in the earlier pages of this RfT.

Engaging more deeply in learning

Many of the suggestions made by the pupils related to the depth of their engagement in classroom learning.  Pupils said they liked clear, concise explanations that included examples and concrete demonstrations.  For lessons that involved writing activities, pupils said they preferred graphic styles of writing, such as spider diagrams, posters or tasks that combined writing with some form of drawing.  The pupils suggested that writing activities such as these helped them make connections between concepts.  Pupils said they found it helpful to have the learning purposes of lessons made clear and they liked activities that were challenging, yet pitched at a level they felt comfortable with.

Contextualising learning

Pupils suggested that their learning experiences could be enhanced if tasks were more closely aligned with the social worlds in which they lived – both inside and outside the classroom.  They said they found it helpful when teachers used materials, objects and images that they were already familiar with.  Where tasks were contextualised in these ways, pupils reported that they led to memorable and meaningful learning experiences.  

Fostering a sense of agency and ownership

A strong message from the pupils was that they wanted to be trusted to learn.  They wanted to learn by doing more and by taking responsibility for themselves.  Acquiring greater responsibility in their learning was strongly connected by pupils to their sense of growing maturity.  However, pupils realised the importance of balancing independent learning opportunities with more controlled opportunities.

Arranging social contexts more amenable to learning

Pupils felt that effective social contexts for learning were those that allowed them to collaborate with their peers. How groups were organised in the classroom was important to pupils although they did not agree about which group formations (for example friendship or non-friendship groups) worked best. (We explored how pupils felt that working with friends was both beneficial and problematic in an earlier page of this summary).  Pupils reported that they felt frustrated when grouped with peers who did not share the same level of interest.

Were teachers able to make use of their pupils’ suggestions?

The researchers found that the teachers were, on the whole, surprised by the richness, the positive nature, the insightfulness and the good sense of many of their pupils’ ideas.  They examined the ideas critically, especially in terms of their practicality and found that, in fact, many of the ideas reflected elements of their own current or past practice and also echoed their own educational thinking.  The teachers commented, for example:

 ‘Everybody liked the role-playing.  So I’ll try and include that.  I’ve always done that, so that’s something I’ll try and maintain’.
‘I like the idea of this fairy story suggestion which funnily enough I had done with another group … it would be completely new for them and it would be quite a nice focus’.

‘I think one thing that came out was they’d like to discuss wrong results more, which I think is a fair comment really … perhaps I’ll try to make an effort to at least do one piece of investigational work where we spend a lot of time evaluating’.

Most of the teachers made direct use of their pupils’ suggestions to plan their teaching in ways that were more motivating for the pupils and which they felt were likely to contribute usefully to their classroom learning.  How effective the teachers were at making use of their pupils’ suggestions appeared to depend on:

• a readiness on the part of individual teachers to believe that their pupils had the capacity to contribute usefully to thinking about the improvement of classroom teaching and learning
• careful planning and their ability to overcome the various contingencies which arose in school life, such as technical problems with ICT equipment
• a realistic assessment of how far pupils had developed the skills, attitudes and understandings necessary for them to play an active part in planning or managing aspects of classroom life.

The pupils appreciated their teachers making use of their ideas.  Making sustained use of their ideas appeared to enhance the pupils’ feelings of trust in, and being trusted by, their teachers and of belonging to the school.

Practitioners may find it helpful to reflect on two case studies drawn from the project – one describes how a teacher successfully implemented her pupils’ suggestions and another which highlights why another teacher was unsuccessful.

How else did pupils work with teachers to improve practice?

So far in this RfT summary, we have looked at feedback pupils gave about issues of concern to teachers and the researchers.  Over the next three pages we explore approaches in which students investigated their own choice of issues. The ‘Students as Researchers’ (SaRs) projects (reported in Fielding and Bragg, 2003) involved students designing and leading their own research studies. The projects enabled students to work with teachers in bringing about change, with teachers supporting and facilitating the process.  Rather than being a passive data source – answering interview questions or ticking boxes on a survey designed by adults – the students shaped the form and direction of the research.

In the SaRs projects, students researched a range of issues they viewed as important. The issues covered teaching and learning, curriculum and policy, and school organisation and environment.  For example:

• teaching and learning – what makes a good teacher and a good lesson, the relation between classroom layout and student behaviour and the drop-out rate in particular subjects
• school and curriculum policy – making GCSE choices, post-16 choices, the structure and loading of homework,  target setting, bullying policies and truanting
• school organisation and environment – playground layout and design, dining room arrangements such as queuing, and students’ recreational needs.

Practitioners may like to read a case study of a teacher who taught ten-year-old children the knowledge and skills they needed to design and carry out research projects, drawing upon knowledge she had gained from completing research at postgraduate level.

An example of a SaRs project

One SaRs project reported by the researchers involved students investigating student perspectives on the issue of transition from GCSE to post-16 study.  The project lasted from November to the summer.  The school had identified teaching and learning in the sixth form as one of its priority areas for school improvement. A member of staff was given a responsibility point to recruit and support a group of 12 students to investigate the issue.  The students met weekly at lunchtimes.  They carried out lesson observations, then designed a questionnaire for students, asking them about their preferred teaching approaches, areas where they felt they lacked skills, the characteristics of good teachers and good students, and students’ use of time.

The data they collected emphasised students’ responsibilities in contributing to successful learning and teaching.  For example, the student researchers observed that up to 60% of students were late for lessons and they asked students for their ideas on how teachers should respond to this situation.  The students communicated their need for help (such as with organising folders) and their preferences (such as having homework set in the middle rather than the end of lessons).

The student researchers used postcards to disseminate their findings to the teachers – they wrote a finding on one side of each postcard and drew a witty cartoon on the other.  The postcards provided a talking point amongst staff and students.  Students commented that they felt that teachers were listening to their concerns and that this had helped to improve staff-student relationships.

How did the students feel they benefited from participating in research projects?

The Students as Researchers (SaRs) projects appeared to have a positive impact on students – not just those involved as researchers, but the whole class and year group.  Students suggested the benefits included:

• developing a positive sense of self-worth
• developing inquiring minds and learning new skills
• developing social competences and new relationships
• reflecting on their own learning.

Developing a positive sense of self-worth

Student researchers described the pleasures of participating in purposeful, challenging activities, addressing issues that they felt were important, and having an impact on how things were done at school:

‘Finally I had found that extra niche that I needed in order to keep me interested in my studies and motivate me to come to school. From some work that I had done I had influenced the school’s feelings about profiling so much that they had changed it.  That gave me a great feeling of achievement’.
(Y10 researcher)

Developing inquiring minds and learning new skills

In the process of planning and doing the research, the student researchers acquired academic skills (such as devising questionnaires, analysing documents and interpreting data), became more confident communicators (because they were required to speak in public to different audiences) and developed civic skills (such as drawing up an agenda, taking minutes and chairing meetings).

‘I’m more confident.  My English has improved.  I type up everything and distribute it and give presentations … 30 teachers, six different schools, it doesn’t bother me now to stand in front of a class.’
(Y10 researcher)

Developing social competences and new relationships

The projects often involved getting to know students of different ages and abilities, understanding their perspectives, and valuing what they offered.  Students also often formed new bonds with their teachers, and by working with them in a different way, they came to perceive them differently:

‘It has been quite helpful for us to understand some of the problems students have, but also that we really need to help teachers because if we don’t put any input in and don’t behave there’s no chance that teachers are going to be able to get on with their job’.
(Y12 researcher)

Reflecting on their own learning

The students developed a greater sense of control over their own learning, and increased confidence in talking about it and how to improve it:

‘Approaching teachers about my work – I feel so much more comfortable and try to communicate as an equal’.
(Y10 researcher)
 
Practitioners may like to read a case study of a school that investigated the impact of participating in SaRs projects on student learning.

What did teachers feel were the benefits of the ‘Students as Researchers’ projects?

Teachers reported they found the Students as Researchers (SaRs) projects rewarding in a number of ways, including:

• experiencing a different way of working with students
• seeing changes in students
• creating new partnerships with students
• gaining insights that helped their own professional development.

Experiencing a different way of working with students

The teachers commented that they enjoyed working intensively with a smaller group of students than usual in their teaching.  It gave them the opportunity to get to know students in a different way and to work with students they didn’t normally teach, including different age groups:

‘It gives me a chance to actually get to know the kids, even if it’s only a few of them, and I don’t feel that I can do that in a classroom situation because I’m trying to keep control all the time’.
(Secondary teacher)

Seeing changes in students

The teachers noticed that students became more positive and active in their approach to teaching and learning – they attended more regularly, completed homework, helped other students and were ready to talk to teachers about problems or their progress:

‘They had a real sense of collective ownership, thinking ‘It’s up to us to make this work, it’s up to us to make this interesting.  Let’s suggest we go on a visit …’
(Y6 teacher)

Creating new partnerships with students

Teachers developed  greater trust, more positive attitudes and higher expectations of what students could do.  They also came to understand how students learned about learning from the students’ standpoint and became more confident about promoting collaboration among students:

‘I know from working with students that the more you talk with them and involve them, the more it changes the learning relationship’.
(Secondary teacher)

Gaining insights that helped their own professional development

Students often gave valuable feedback to teachers that helped them move forward in their practice or reminded them about what they already knew to be good practice.  Teachers commented on the powerful impact student feedback had, as this teacher explained:

‘One member of staff had been at the school for 25 years and was impervious to a lot of professional development activity.  Having had students observe his lessons, he shared with his staff that it had been the most profound piece of professional development activity he had ever been involved in … they said ‘You always question to the right.  And you walk up and down the aisles and the students have told us that they find that really intimidating’.  Both of these things he has now addressed.  Teacher appraisals had never picked up either of them’.
(Secondary deputy head)

How have schools used pupil consultation and participation?

The researchers found that schools used a variety of pupil consultation approaches, including:

• identifying pupils’ general concerns – a ‘wide-angle’ approach
• ‘spotlighting’ issues of concern for particular groups of pupils
• supporting individual learners who find learning difficult
• helping establish a more democratic school system
• monitoring and evaluating new practices at classroom and school levels.

The ‘wide-angle’ approach  

Pupil consultation was often used as a way of finding out what was happening in a school or classroom.  Sometimes teachers had general concerns that pupils were not performing as well as they could be and, to help them understand why, they explored their pupils’ responses to, and attitudes towards, particular aspects of teaching and learning.

Some schools have focused on particular concerns in detail, for example assessment, group work, science teaching, use of information technology and creative writing skills or year groups which were causing concern.  For example, some schools looked at Year 3 and Year 8 because they had noticed a dip in pupil performance.

Supporting individual learners

Consulting pupils about their learning on an individual basis, focusing on talk about learning as a process, has been used particularly in special needs education.

Teaching about citizenship

The recently introduced curriculum guidance on citizenship education required that schools teach pupils about the nature and purpose of democracy and introduce them to the idea of the rights and responsibilities of membership of a democratic society.  For pupils in Key Stage 3 and 4 this is a statutory component of the National Curriculum.  The school council is the most common approach used for introducing pupils to the ideas of democracy.

Trying out new ideas

Some schools have used pupil consultation and participation to look at existing aspects of practice with ‘fresh eyes’ or to ‘break new ground’.  For example, finding alternative ways of tackling pervasive problems, such as pupil disengagement with learning, boys’ underachievement and truancy.  In some cases, individual teachers consulted with their pupils to help them understand these problems or they used the insights they gained from pupil consultation to experiment with new approaches.

Practitioners wanting to try pupil consultation in their own classrooms may find it helpful to consider the various tools for consulting pupils developed by the researchers as part of the project.  We have included details about the toolkit for consulting pupils in the case study section.

The researchers stressed that consultation should be guided by the following principles:

• a genuine desire to hear what pupils have to say
• the topic is not trivial
• the purpose of the consultation is explained to the pupils involved
• pupils know what will happen to what they say
• pupils are confident that expressing their opinion or describing their experience will not disadvantage them
• feedback is given to everyone who is consulted
• when actions are taken and decisions made, pupils are able to understand the wider context in which their views are placed.

 
We also advise that practitioners consult the National Children’s Bureau Highlight 193  (see Further Reading) which explains the practical, methodological and ethical principles that should guide pupil consultation.

How was the research designed?

This RfT summary is based on data gathered from 48 primary and secondary schools located in different parts of the UK which took part in a three-year research project completed between 2001 and 2003.  

The project consisted of a network of six sub-projects that investigated:

• ways of consulting pupils about teaching and learning
• how teachers responded to pupils’ ideas about improving teaching and learning in different subjects
• the potential of pupils to act as (co)researchers into the process of teaching and learning
• how the conditions of learning in school and classroom affect the identity and participation of different groups of pupils
• ways of sustaining the process of pupil participation and gathering pupil perspectives
• innovative initiatives involving pupil consultation and participation.
• The aims of the project as a whole were to:
• identify strategies which would help teachers consult pupils about teaching and learning
• gather evidence of the power of pupils’ comments to improve teaching and learning
• gather evidence of the impact of consultation on pupils, teachers and schools
• develop ways of building consultation into the organisational structure of schools.

Two of the projects were researcher-led, with the agenda set by the project team.  In three of the projects, the team worked with schools which already had some experience of pupil consultation.  One project offered small grants to schools to support the development of new initiatives. Hence the project as a whole was designed to gather evidence to support the development of pupil voice-based strategies in schools, based on sound evidence of their capacity to enhance teaching and learning.

The main sources of data were recorded interviews and group discussions.  These were supplemented, where appropriate, by classroom observation (with some sequences captured on videotape), data from pupil questionnaires, and by school and classroom documents (including reports produced by students as researchers teams).  The analysis of the impact of consultation was checked out through an end of project survey, which gathered data from a sample of 96 teachers involved in the Network Project or in other pupil voice initiatives.

In preparing this Rom we have created a synthesis of the evidence from five of the project publications within a framework of questions designed to help teachers’ assess the potential of pupil voice for their own practice and contexts and to offer some practical examples of appropriate strategies.

What are the implications for practitioners?

Before embarking on pupil consultation projects, we suggest practitioners consider the guiding principles we outlined at the end of the page ‘How have schools used consultation and participation’.

School leaders may find the following implications helpful in acting on the messages in this RfT:

• do pupils have a voice in your school related to teaching and learning?
• are there issues of particular concern in your school that your pupils could help you with – such as the drop out rate for certain subjects, or ways of reducing disruptive behaviour etc?
• teachers involved in the research project commented on how the insights they gained from their pupils were a powerful form of professional learning.  In what ways might your colleagues find consulting pupils a useful professional development activity?
• could you do more to support colleagues wanting to try consulting their pupils or initiating Students as Researchers projects for the first time?  For example, through organising workshops and recruiting external help from colleagues with experience of such work from university education departments or other schools?
• the researchers gave examples of what happened when teachers tried implementing their pupils’ ideas for teaching strategies they felt would help their learning – some were more successful than others.  Would teachers in your school find it helpful to be given the opportunity to evaluate and share with each other their experiences of responding to their pupils’ suggestions?
• researching pupils’ perspectives on school life involving pupil voice has the potential to situate their learning about democracy.  Does your school make the connection between pupil voice, the school council and the citizenship curriculum regarding democracy?

Teachers may wish to consider the following implications of the findings of this research project:

• do your pupils feel that their views are respected or do you need to raise their expectations about what they can contribute?  If so, would consulting them about learning make a difference?  
• from their discussions with pupils, the researchers identified a number of factors which pupils felt positively affected their engagement with learning; have you considered using pupil consultation to find ways of improving the aspects of schooling that would make a difference to your pupils in this way?
• pupil consultation has also highlighted social, ethnic and gender differences. Could pupil consultation data help you to identify the kinds of difficulties encountered by different groups of pupils and enable you to develop strategies to support these groups?
• many of the pupils involved in the project said that difficulties with writing affected their ability to learn.  Could you do more to engage pupils in learning activities that support writing work with the use of usual cues (such as posters and spider diagrams etc) or provide support with the writing process (perhaps through paired work or using computers)?
• friendships clearly exerted a strong influence on pupils’ learning and achievement although the pupils did not agree about whether friendship or non-friendship groups worked best.  Would it be helpful to consult your pupils about the best mix for their particular situation?
• pupils involved in the study suggested that having someone to talk to (an older peer or an adult) about their learning helped raise their confidence in themselves as learners.  Are there pupils in your class who would find having a mentor or peer support helpful?  Could some of your pupils act as a mentor to others and benefit from the process?
• the pupils involved in the project did not have a clear understanding of how assessment could help them improve their work.  Do all your pupils understand how they could improve their work and what they are aiming for?  
• the researchers found that some pupils wanted to be allowed more time to complete tasks, whilst others wanted to work at a faster pace.   Do you find juggling the needs of slower and faster learners a problem with the classes you teach?  Would you find it helpful to give your pupils greater choice in deciding how to balance their time?
• how else could pupil consultation help you in your classroom?

Filling in the gaps

Gaps that are uncovered in a piece of research also have a useful role in making sure that future research builds cumulatively on what is known.   But research also needs to inform practice, so practitioners’ interpretation of the gaps and follow-up questions are crucial.  The researchers highlighted several areas of research which were not explored by the project:

• the impact of pupil consultation on pupils’ progress on particular courses of study or in particular subjects
• the extent to which consultation and participation could turn around schools where considerable numbers of pupils are disengaged and where pupils are performing below their potential
• gender differences in responses to consultation and the kinds of issues raised
• parents’ attitudes to consultation – the extent to which the practices and values that consultation embodies are in conflict with those of the home, and where they are, possible ways forward.

Do you think that research exploring these questions would help you inform your practice?  Which issues are of most interest to you?

What is your experience?

Do you have any evidence regarding the impact of pupil consultation on pupils’ performance or do you have action research or enquiry based development programmes running that explore, for example, disaffection or transfer post-11 and post-16?  We would be interested to hear about examples of pupil consultation and participation in schools, which we could perhaps feature in our case study.