Kathryn Riley

VOICES OF DISAFFECTED PUPILS: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE

ABSTRACT:  Although recent government initiatives have drawn attention to the importance of listening to young people, attempts to pay attention to their views about their education experience are rare. Drawing on two studies of disaffected and disadvantaged pupils, this article analyses what can be learned from taking their views into account.

Re-engaging disaffected pupils in learning: insights for policy and practice®:

This article summarizes findings from an ongoing research and development project, ‘Re-engaging disaffected pupils in learning’, which involves troubled and troublesome students in five London schools, all in challenging urban contexts. It outlines the project’s approach, key features of which include: involving the students themselves as change agents; enabling them to experience learning in an active outdoor education environment; creating time and opportunities for staff to work with their students in new ways; and developing strategies which will remove some of the barriers to learning for disaffected students. The article reviews the impact of the project to date, particularly the ways in which involving pupils in a new learning environment - an outdoor education experience - can transform their views about themselves as learners. It also offers a broader analysis of the implications of developing a change strategy designed to re-engage marginalized pupils from urban schools in learning.

Reconfiguring urban leadership: taking a perspective on community

This article maps the key features of the community contexts in which a range of challenging urban schools are located, highlighting the community-related issues facing school leaders. Whilst recognising the growing demands on school leaders and the need to reconfigure leadership, the author also identifies steps which they can take to strengthen connections with communities and build trust in ways that will benefit children and young people. The article concludes by offering some of the key features of a community-orientated approach to leadership.

It makes sense to me: Reforming classrooms from the bottom up, a case study in change

This article describes a change initiative which began in 2002: Woolwich Reach and Plumstead Pathfinder Action Zones (WRaPP). WRaPP has involved 17 primary, secondary and nursery schools in a deprived part of Greenwich, South London, and although nationally funded (through the UK Government’s Education Action Zones), it has been locally driven. The authors outline the local context and challenges and give details of WRaPP’s change and improvement strategy and capacity building framework. Drawing on a range of sources, including evaluation data, they provide evidence of the success of the initiative in generating trust, unleashing energy and creativity, and inspiring and engaging headteachers, teachers and pupils.

Book Review: Educational Leadership

pupil learning. The use of what the reader assumes to be teachers’ own words is valuable as a mirror for principals to observe their communication and the effect that it has, not on teaching and learning, but on teachers. As such, I can imagine trainers using sections of the book with current and aspirant heads to discuss leadership techniques. It may also be valuable to others in leadership teams and to heads of departments in secondary schools. I hope that no-one will accept the model of schooling that is implied, nor the idea that children learn just because we teach them. This may be a handbook of instructional leadership interpreted in a very narrow sense. It is not a handbook of how to be a successful principal.