Read more or go directly to the survey:
The impacts of COVID-19 are transforming children’s and teachers’ experiences of school and learning. And perhaps we don’t want everything to go back to how it used to be.
Research can help us individually and collectively to know which ideas and innovations are effective and make a positive difference.
Please join a national co-creation and action research initiative – the Epistemic Insight Initiative. Taking part can be as simple as filling in a 15 minute survey or as much as designing your own action research with your class. You could be a university tutor, teacher or student teacher… our team will support with online data collection, sample surveys, permission forms and writing publications.
We will start the session with the findings of a survey – of teachers’ preferred problems to solve with research. Please help us by filling it in now. Go to
https://canterbury.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/covid-and-research
RExChange University of Birmingham 3 October 2020
Key questions addressed:
- What are the key questions I want research to address – in my school and nationally?
- What long term legacy and benefits can research produce – such as more agency for children and teachers, more problem-based learning and links to the news, more collaboration across silos, improved partnership with parents, more effective blended learning
- What short term curriculum planning can our research support – such as how to support children’s emotional needs, how to organise work at school and home, whether and where to make links to the coronavirus, designing problem based learning.
Action research projects could include:
What really matters this year for our children and their education?
What are the big questions that resonate for children in the current situation?
Can a positive outcome of this be more collaboration in secondary schools across subjects?
What do children need to know about the pandemic and where are the links with their subjects?
What is the role of science in determining how we respond to the pandemic and how can RE and/or history and or English help children to make sense of the changes?
What conversations can usefully bridge home and school – and how do we make it happen?
What substantive and disciplinary knowledge can we teach by examining some of the questions currently in the news?
Which subject can help students to consider ways that national attitudes to borders are changing?
How much teaching time is and should be refocused around supporting children’s emotional needs?
What’s really missing that matters if there’s more online learning?
Which activities need to be prioritised in school and what can be outside?
Can we use electronic tools in the classroom to close the 2m gap?
Can some children learn in school with a sibling or parent to create stronger bridges between home and school? Which children?
Are you/should you link some or all of the curriculum to COVID-19?
How much can a child carry to and fro between home and school and how can we creatively reduce their risk of transferring the virus home?
What are the pressures on children transferring into our school for the first time?