westminster institute of education joint ga/ha primary conference who and where we are: the role of...

Westminster Institute of Education

Joint GA/HA Primary Conference

Who and Where We Are: The Role of Children’s Voices in Geography and History


HEARING CHILDREN’S VOICES

Professor Simon Catling


Are you hearingme?

Image of child has been removed for copyright reasons


Being situated: Every child matters

The five outcomes• Be healthy;

• Stay safe;

• Enjoy and achieve;

• Make a positive contribution;

• Achieve economic well-being.

Make a positive contribution• Be an active participant;

• Have and exercise your voice;

• Contribute to your own and others’ development and learning;

• Be a team player;

• Take and share responsibility.


Are children’s voices heard?

• Few schools actively engage children in discussions bout what and how they learn in school.

• While increasingly schools have School Councils or Eco-management groups, these are focused on out of classroom matters.

• Many teachers lack confidence about involving children in learning decisions.

• Some headteachers consider it counterproductive and a potential frustration for children where the core subjects and SATs dominate the need to demonstrate rigour and achievement.

• Some consider it problematic for children’s behaviour.• Where consultation or mutual planning occurs changes pupil voices

have enhanced the curriculum, eg avoiding underachievement, reducing boredom, being more focused and studying in depth.

• Indications are that children’s involvement may be moving ahead faster in the Early Years.

• Children make almost no reference to geography or history when asked about what they enjoy about the curriculum.


Hearing Children’s Voices

Four contexts:

• Listening purposefully to children and what they say about their world;

• Observing children’s engagement, responses, actions, body language in the world of learning;

• Hearing other children’s voices elsewhere in place and time from similar and diverse contexts;

• Hearing children’s voices literally in the classroom.


1. Children’s voices here and now

From Community Soundings (‘The Primary Review’, 2007):

• Children have a sense of insecurity in terms of safety in the environment, from such issues as sustainability, climate change and poverty, and from community decline and anti-social activity.

• Children feel they can contribute where they are actively involved in a project, such as a local improvement scheme.

Children develop understanding and knowledge of and affinity with places and the environment:

• A sense of place – their place;

• About (constrained) access to and the uses of places and spaces;

• Of their ‘place’ in ‘their’ school place, whose place it really is;

• About some aspects of the wider world through experience, family and the media.


The view from your Window (Jeannie Baker)

Scans from Window by Jeannie Baker (2002) published by Walker Books Ltd

These images have been removed for copyright reasons.


Making here a place of my own

This image has been removed for copyright reasons


Children’s connections

Love, Your Bear Pete by Dyan Sheldon, illustrated by Tania Hurt-Newton (1995)

Image from inside book has been removed for copyright reasons.


Children’s voices about their experience of time

My life as history:

• Remembrances of events and feelings;

• Ideas of time; recent and long ago;

Encounters with the more distant past, such as:

• The Egyptians through stories;

• The Romans and World War 2 through television media;

• Visits with family to sites of past time: museums and heritage sites;

• Living in the past – the streets around home, relics of previous occupancy.

Developing sense of sequence, chronology, period character….


Encounters with the ‘disconnected’ past

The copyright holder of this work allows anyone to use it for any purpose including unrestricted redistribution, commercial use, and modification. Source

http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk/html/cairo_museum_54.html


Encountering children in war through the media

Still from the film Children of Men (2006) removed for copyright reasons.


2. Listening to children’s voices about their learningThis concerns children’s evident or implicit voices:• Their engagement through stimulating and motivating activities:

• Working outside the classroom in the school grounds or in the local area;

• Making field visits to sites further afield, a river, a museum or a heritage site

• Observing what children’s involvement is, how they are engaged in their studies:“The pupils were naturally curious…They were enthusiastic to find out

and began to show some independence in their enquiry skills by asking more questions and examining other items in their everyday life…”

• Recognising children’s active engagement in creating and developing the studies.

• Through their evaluations of their geography and history topics, what they have learnt and enjoyed or liked less.


3. Other children’s voices from other places and other times

• We are interested in our children’s voices about their places and lives now.

• We recognise the diversity of their voices today.

• How do we seek the voices of children in other places and in the past?

• Why is it we listen to Ann Frank’s voice?

• Why do we use the voices in the locality packs produced by ActionAid, Oxfam and other NGOs?

• These are resources and materials available to us?

• How representative and balanced are they?

• What is this notion of ‘representative children’ that we often provide through the limited study time on a period of the past or in investigating life in an Indian or southern African state’s village community?

• Are our resources and materials too delicate and in part a cause of the development/reinforcement of stereotypes and bias?


A very ‘cool’ Gregory

Scan from Gregory Cool by Caroline Binch (1997) published by Frances Lincoln.

This image has been removed for copyright reasons.


In Bangladesh 2008

This Image has been removed for copyright reasons.


4. Hearing voices in the classroom

“In British classrooms, written work tends to be seen to be the only ‘real’ work and oral activity is viewed as a prelude to such work (now let’s write about it) rather than an end in itself.” (Robin Alexander, Towards Dialogic Teaching, 2008, 19)

• A calm, focused class robustly engaged with their tasks, in quiet discussion – analysis, evaluation or decision making – is healthy, but there need not be writing occurring, though writing may be used.

• The key to high quality work is engagement, active participation in the tasks and the learning, where children are absorbed in their activities.

• There are a variety of ways to stimulate this, which can be very active, even noisy at times, possibly argumentative, perhaps opinionated, including:• Fieldwork and visits• Drama• Role play and hot seating• Enquiry


Children’s voices in two contextsRubbish and waste – geography & science adding history• Year 4 children engaged in a cross-subject project on rubbish and

waste in school;• A request to bury some paper and plastic wrappers to find out about

decomposition;• Discovery of pieces of tile, flooring, guttering;• Researching the origin of this rubbish into local site history.

Playground changes – informal geography• Year 6 girls complaining to the deputy head about boys domination of

the playground they had to use and requesting access to the other younger children’s playground;

• Developed into an investigation of uses, attitudes and views;• Made proposals for changes in use and access;• Evaluation of impact of calmer children returning to class.


Children’s voices in dramatising Boudicca• Examining a picture of Celtic village buildings, and having access to

reproduction artefacts from such a village;• Role playing people in the village, children and adults, with teacher in role;• Village meeting interrupted by a Roman messenger who says that Boudicca

is an evil and dangerous influence;• Villagers discuss what this means and their views;• The community learning that Boudicca is to visit (teacher in role);• Boudicca enters says what is to happen to fight for freedom;• Villagers discuss what Boudicca has said and compare wit the Roam

messenger and decide what to do;• Out of role children consider the issues and what advice to give Boudicca;• Use of Conscience Alley to offer advice individually to her;• Children in role to await the Roam attack.

Focus on engagement with key aspects of history and citizenship; links to chronology, time period, historical imagination, decision making, conflict resolution

(Rainer & Hoodless, Primary History, January, 2008)


Our view locally, at 3 years old


Our Water Project


Ofsted illustrations

“In a Year 5 lesson, an excellent discussion took place, based on a painting, with a series of questions and answers (projected on a whiteboard), of a rich Victorian mother and child observed from a distance by a poor child.” (Ofsted, 2007, 15)

“…These activities provided them with sufficient detail and understanding of the issues [of possible large-scale housing development locally] to produce their own plan for the new village….The work culminated in pupils preparing for an interview with a local parish councillor to discuss the issues and articulate their views. Good preparation enabled them to put across reasoned arguments. They were very interested in a broad and balanced viewpoint and were able to question and, most importantly, listen to the views of the parish councillor, who was ken to know the views of all the groups in the community…” (Ofsted, 2008, 14-15)


Roxaboxen

Scans from Roxaboxen by Alice Mclerran (2004) published by Simon & Schuster

These images have been removed for copyright reasons.


5. Why hear children’s voices?

• Children have the right to be heard, as persons and citizens;• Children become increasingly aware of the world around and beyond

them in place and time and wish to and can articulate their perspectives;

• Children need contexts in which to develop their contributions and participatory understanding and skills;

• All societies, particularly democracies, need citizens able to argue, question, challenge, reason, distinguish reason and polemic, recognise diverse viewpoints, present and evaluate cases put to them;

• Children should be motivated, stimulated and have their attention focused, and the chance to become absorbed in what they do;

• Children should have their confidence and self-esteem built up;• Children learn in an environment of social engagement and interaction;• Children are able to participate and make a positive contribution and

commitment.Acknowledgement to R. Alexander, Towards Dialogic Teaching, 2008


I should be involved.It is my world too.

40% of the World’spopulation arechildren.



Because I ought to be heard. I am a person and should be shown respect. It is for my – and our – future.


westminster institute of education joint ga/ha primary conference who and where we are: the role of...

Documents

role of childrens voices

history slide

sourcesource slide

implicit voices

copyright reasons

school place

changes pupil voices

world of learning hearing