Chris Watkins

Classrooms as Learning Communities: what's in it for schools?

1. Introduction 2. Classrooms, Change, Learning, Teaching, Community 3. Community 4. Classrooms as Learning Communities Practices in Classrooms 5. Goals in a Learning Community 6. Tasks in a Learning Community 7. Social Structure in a Learning Community 8. Resources in a Learning Community 9. Roles in a Learning Community Observing Classrooms as Learning Communities 10. Schools as Learning Communities

Classrooms as Learning Communities: A Review of Research.

This paper reviews published research on (i) classrooms as communities, (ii) classrooms as communities of learners, and (iii) classrooms as learning communities. It is based on a reading of about 100 texts. It aims to answer the question ‘What do we now know about the effects of operating classrooms as learning communities?’. Despite the fact that this mode of operating classrooms is not the dominant one, and is correspondingly under-researched, there is good evidence that it brings significant benefits.

School Violence, School Differences and School Discourses

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violence-resilient school. In six inner-city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of well-connected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. The authors suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept.

Mentoring Beginner Teachers--Issues for Schools to Anticipate and Manage.

The focus of this article is the school‐based mentoring process which supports the initial training of teachers in any of its present routes. We draw as much from practical application and experience of mentoring as from theoretical frameworks.

Depoliticisation, demoralisation and depersonalisation – and how to better them

In this article the author reflects on three key processes – depoliticisation, demoralisation and depersonalisation – which have been evident during recent decades in his experience of education. He argues that he does this from the standpoint of someone who had a working commitment to pastoral care and personal‐social education, but for whom such commitments now make up a very small part of his professional life. The context referred to is the UK, and England in the main, although the processes discussed are also evident in other countries. His purpose is not merely to catalogue these processes, but to consider how they have had their effects and how such effects may be worked against in current times for the good of pupils’ and teachers’ personal‐social development.

Embedded Voices: Building a Non-Learning Culture within a Learning Enrichment Programme.

The researchers examined transcripts of comments made and dialogues engaged in by children, teachers and student teaching assistants during a 10-week enrichment programme for gifted and talented children aged 7–9 years. Attempts were made to match these utterances with the programme’s aims and aspirations as expressed in a promotional document. Little evidence of match was revealed, but considerable evidence did emerge of the extent to which dominant technical-rational discourses and practices permeate even privileged and non-state-sponsored educational environments, at the expense of children’s learning. Suggestions are made for foregrounding the processes of high quality pupil learning rather than the products of pupil performances in enrichment and extension programmes, and thereby for achieving greater congruence between this programme’s avowed aims and practice.

Personalisation and the Classroom Context

Personalisation in the context of the classroom is an important ideal but one which also presents a serious challenge. This is because the dominant idea of a classroom is one where personalisation plays little part – reasons for this will be outlined. But the picture can be improved, since the practices for personalising learning in a rich way are available to us.