Sustainable Thinking Classrooms: ACTS II
- Co-Director:
- Professor Carol McGuinness
Queen's University, Belfast - Co-Director:
- Professor Noel Sheehy
Queen's University, Belfast
What the project aims to do
- To create, develop and evaluate practical teaching strategies to improve classroom learning in primary schools, through enhancing pupils’ thinking skills across the curriculum. The work builds on the earlier achievements of ACTS (Activating Children’s Thinking Skills) in Northern Ireland.
- Three interrelated studies are being conducted. In the first study we aim to develop and evaluate a framework for analysing metacognitive features of teachers’ and pupils’ classroom dialogue. The second study will evaluate an intervention process involving the promotion of teaching strategies relating to thinking skills development – the effects on both teachers’ and pupils’ learning will be assessed. The third study will develop longer-term strategies for sustaining thinking classrooms with a focus on metacognitive activity.
- We are working with teachers, advisers and curriculum experts to develop research-informed teaching strategies, with a view to improving learning outcomes for both pupils and teachers. Outcomes will include teacher support models and training materials, which can be disseminated to the wider teaching community.
Significance:
Our project is part of a more general thrust (international and national) to create powerful and productive pedagogies for classroom learning and to relate these to learning outcomes. Our focus is on developing thinking skills and thinking classrooms. We are also working for sustainability so that the practices created in the project will continue beyond the life of the project.
