Learning virtually or just virtually learning? How can a Virtual Learning Environment be used to differentiate for gifted pupils?

J. P. Mutton

Thesis submitted in part-fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education of the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education.

2010

Supervisor: Dr Nicola Walshe

Word Count: 19941

Abstract
Computers are coming down in price and are now commonplace in schools across the country. They are used in schools to word-process and to search the internet, but can they be used more effectively? We, as teachers, are also trying to ensure that our students are reaching their potential which is not always easy when there are different levels of ability in one class, with all the students vying for attention: Can the computers be used to help, specifically to differentiate for gifted students?

This project followed one class of twenty two students over a six week scheme of work on Risk who used a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and eLearning as the focus point of their classroom experience. Mind mapping elicitations, learning journals and in-depth interviews were used to collect data from students. The results showed a marked shift in the class thinking of the concept Risk; they went from a local, personal conception, firmly based in the present to a more global, abstract conception with some students showing temporal elements. Gifted students used thinking skills more prevalently than others in the first elicitation when completing a task with little instruction. Students were also introduced to new software, techniques and ways of using a computer to help them work independently and as a group.

The project was limited in time and scale, so it is difficult to draw concrete conclusions; however, all students made progress and all those interviewed felt that the work was appropriate for their level of ability, suggesting that the VLE was able to differentiate. It was not clear if gifted students benefited more than students of other abilities.

Declaration I hereby declare that the sources of which I have availed myself have been stated in the body of the thesis and in the bibliography and that the rest of the work is my own. This thesis does not exceed 20,000 words in length.
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Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the support and accommodating nature of the staff and students at Randolph High School. They supported this project both financially and with their time, and the students were integral in the data collection; special thanks must go to my form class, 7x2, and the six students who were happy to be interviewed.

Thanks go to my supervisor, Dr Nicola Walshe, who has been an excellent sounding board for ideas, provided detailed and useful feedback, and never ceased to amaze with the speed in which she was able to read and comment on countless drafts.

Finally, and most importantly, special thanks go to Emma for putting up with me taking over the kitchen table to work and for always being there to support me.

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Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements................................................................................................................................. 3 Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... 4 List of Figures and Tables ........................................................................................................................ 5 Chapter 1 - Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2 - Literature Review ................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 3 - Research Design ................................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 4 - Designing the Enquiry Sequence: Risky Worlds ................................................................. 40 Chapter 5 - Results and Analysis ........................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 6 - Discussion and Conclusions ............................................................................................... 74 References ............................................................................................................................................ 80 Appendices............................................................................................................................................ 87

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List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1.1 Research Questions.............................................................................................................8 Figure 2.1 Differentiation strategies................................................................................................. 14 Figure 3.1 The Blind Men and the Elephant...................................................................................... 30 Figure 4.1 Extracts from the 1999 and 2008 Geography Syllabi........................................................41 Table 4.1 Key Concepts used in scheme of work...............................................................................43 Table 4.2 Ways of differentiation......................................................................................................44 Table 4.3 Lesson Summaries..............................................................................................................45 Table 5.1 Table showing coding categories.......................................................................................49 Figure 5.1 Frequency of comments graph.........................................................................................50 Figure 5.2 Distribution of named places graph..................................................................................51 Figure 5.3 Bilal Elicitation 1................................................................................................................54 Figure 5.4 Bilal Elicitation2.................................................................................................................55 Figure 5.5 Mandeep Elicitation 1.......................................................................................................56 Figure 5.6 Mandeep Elicitation 2.......................................................................................................57 Figure 5.7 Sharonjeet Elicitation 1.....................................................................................................59 Figure 5.8 Sharonjeet Elicitation 2.....................................................................................................60 Figure 5.9 Ibrahim Elicitation 1..........................................................................................................61 Figure 5.10 Ibrahim Elicitation 2........................................................................................................62 Table 5.2 Gifted students responses.................................................................................................62 Figure 5.11 Ibrahims forum contribution.........................................................................................63 Figure 5.12 Sandeeps forum contribution........................................................................................64

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Chapter 1 - Introduction
As a teacher in a west London school, there is no way that I could have participated in the MEd programme at the University of Cambridge last year because it required a weekly attendance at a seminar session in the Faculty of Education, 80 miles and about 2.5 hours away. This year, however, I am on the course, thanks to the adoption of an online element of the course through a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) called Camtools. This allows teachers from all over the country to communicate in real time and to share documents and ideas in geographically dispersed locations; all I needed was a computer with an internet connection and to be online by 5pm on Thursdays. The adoption of the online part of the course has widened the availability of the course to teachers who do not live near Cambridge. This advancement in the way that education is being delivered has allowed many of me to participate in something that I would otherwise have been unable to do.

The school, Randolph High1 is located near Heathrow, in the London borough of Ealing. It has an excellent record for providing support for students with English as their second language. Support targeted such that in 2008-09, the school was in the top 1% for contextual value added in the country, despite the average ability of students in the school being lower than the national average (Bradford, 2010). However, the same level of support was not in place for those students who are at the higher end of the ability scale. As a result, and during the course of this project, the school appointed a Gifted and Talented Coordinator, whose job it is to raise the profile of these students in school and to help and encourage teachers to differentiate appropriately for the most able students.

The school also has outstanding ICT facilities; all staff members are provided with a tablet PC, all classrooms have interactive white boards (IWBs), all sixth form students are loaned a netbook and there are laptop cabinets in more than half of the classrooms for students to use. The school has
1

The school name has been change for anonymity

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won awards and is the holder of many accolades relating to the eLearning provided, including being a Capita SIMs Partnership School and holder of the ICT Mark (Randolph High School, 2010).

Whilst participating in one of the online MEd sessions I realised that, firstly, we had an excellent ICT infrastructure at school that was not being used to its full potential. Secondly, there were a group of students who were potentially not being provided for as much as they could be. Thirdly, I knew firsthand about the benefits that a VLE can bring to an education, by removing temporal and spatial barriers which prevent access to learning. All of these issues together led me to think that I could use the VLE as more than just a way of sharing documents by bringing it into the classroom and using it to support my students at different levels of abilities. It would be a very big project to do this with the complete ability range, so I decided to focus of the gifted students who were underprovided for.

The overarching question, and title, of my project is Learning virtually or just virtually learning? How can a VLE be used to differentiate for Gifted pupils? Obviously such a large question is impossible to answer at once, so to break it down and to help the reader through this project, I have devised a series of research questions. These are the parts that, when put together, will help in an attempt to answer the purpose of the research. In the first instance, it will be necessary to define and explore the key terms of the questions, namely Virtual Learning Environments and Gifted, in the context of gifted and talented. The research took place during a scheme of work on Risk, so next it is important to find out what students should be learning. Finally, an assessment of how much the students have learnt about risk and to what extent the VLE has helped them do this will help to complete the investigation. Figure 1.1 details the research questions.

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Research Questions 1. What is a VLE and how can VLEs be used to support learning? What is a VLE? What is the difference between e-learning and a VLE? What is differentiation? How can a VLE be used to help differentiation, particularly for gifted students? 2. Who are gifted students and how can they be supported? How do you define gifted? Are these definitions problematic? What do gifted students need to be best supported? How can this provision be made in school? How can this be done in Geography? 3. What should students learn about Risk? 4. How has the students' understanding of Risk developed over the Scheme of Work? 5. To what extent did the use of the VLE provide challenge for and support the learning of gifted students? Figure 1.1 Research Questions Overview To guide the reader through this project, I would like to provide an overview of this thesis. Chapter 2 will firstly discuss on the literature currently surrounding the field of VLEs and their use in Geography before moving on to Gifted and Talented education. The aim is to place this research project within the literature to show how and why it is a relevant and topical issue. Chapter 3 is concerned with the research design, beginning with a discussion of my epistemological standpoint and theoretical perspective before introducing the methodology and methods that have been used. Following that, Chapter 4 includes a report on the lessons taught during the scheme of work, providing a link in the form of a vignette between the research design and data analysis. Chapter 5 describes the data collected and analyses it in light of the literature review in Chapter 2 with links being drawn between the two. Chapter 6 discusses the results of the project in the wider context and considered the implications of the research for me as a classroom teacher, the school as a whole and the wider community.

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Chapter 2 - Literature Review

In this chapter I will attempt to place my research project within the body of literature surrounding virtual learning environments and gifted provision in Geography. I will begin by looking at what a VLE is and some of the ways in which it can be used. I will then discuss the concept of gifted students before examining some of the ways that gifted students can be differentiated for, with a specific focus on Geography education in secondary schools. In doing so, I will seek to find answers for my first two research questions: What is a VLE and how can VLEs be used to support learning?; and Who are gifted students and how can they be supported?

What is a Virtual Learning Environment and how can VLEs be used to support learning?

In order to guide the reader through the literature, the following section has been divided up using the sub-questions put forward in the introduction. It will investigate literature to define a VLE, look at ways that a VLE can be used in a school context, with specific reference to differentiation, before thinking about the difficulties of using a VLE and, finally, how a VLE can be used in a Geographyspecific manner.

What is a VLE? A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a tool whereby students and teachers can access resources and participate in communication in fixed or geographically discrete locations, the only requirement being a computer connected to the internet. Two leaders in the educational technology field are Robin Mason and Frank Rennie. Mason was Professor of Educational Technology at the Open

University and Rennie is Professor of Sustainable Rural Development at the University of the Page | 9

Highlands and Islands, focussing on new approaches to distance and open education, especially computer-based distributed learning systems. Together, they defined a VLE as the system that is used to create online learning opportunities (2006: P. 124). There are a number of commercial VLEs which schools and educational establishments can purchase and adapt to suit their particular needs. In the context of this research the VLE refers to the Fronter Virtual Learning Environment in place at the study school. Fronter is a platform which allows students and staff to share information but it also provides facilities for management of student work, including hand-in and comment features, and the opportunity for students and staff to communicate and participate in collaborative tasks (Fronter, 2010a).

What are the differences between e-learning and a VLE? E-learning is short for electronic learning in the same way that e-mail is the standard contraction for electronic mail. However, the definition of e-learning is much more problematic. Grinne Conole is Professor of e-learning at the Open University and Dr Martin Oliver is a reader in ICT in Education at the University of Londons Institute of Education. As the editors of Contemporary Perspectives in e-learning research (2007), they highlight in the introduction the complex nature of e-learning, acknowledge the existence of conflicting definitions and define it for the purposes of their book as representing the broader domain of development and research activities on the application of technologies to education (P. 4). In the same edition, Fred Lockwood, series editor of the Open and Flexible Learning Series equates e-learning to teaching online (P. xvi) showing that even people working in conjunction with each other may have different definitions.

Mason and Rennie (2006) suggest that different definitions of the term reflect peoples varying standpoints or emphasise particular features of the learning, be it online, digital or electronic. In this research paper, I will define e-learning using the definition provided by the Open and Distance Learning Quality Council (ODLQC): Page | 10

E-learning is the effective learning process created by combining digitally delivered content with (learning) support and services. (ODLQC, 2001)

This encompasses the use of interactive white boards, personal computers, digital cameras, the internet and virtual learning environments to name but a few of the possible resources. A VLE is therefore a type of e-learning but, as has been touched on, the terms are not entirely interchangeable without issue. However, I think that is would be impossible to use a VLE effectively without using other forms of e-learning because of their interrelated nature. Therefore, whilst this project is focused on the use of a VLE, it will inevitably use other aspects of e-learning.

How can a VLE be used in a school context? VLEs can provide opportunities which are not immediately available to learners in the classroom. Padmore, Hall, Hogg and Paley (2006) showed that a VLE can provide opportunities for training in otherwise dangerous environments, such as motorised wheelchair users practicing to use their chairs, or children learning road safety when cycling. In a geography context, a VLE can allow students to participate in pre- or post-fieldtrip briefings where they can find out information to maximise their time in the field (Stainfield, Fisher, Ford & Solem, 2000).

Young people today have much greater access to computers and technology in their home lives than their predecessors did, even just a decade ago. It is therefore no surprise that they want a similar interactive and technologically advanced experience in their school life. Students enjoy and value these kinds of lessons highly, compared to the more traditional styles of teaching and learning: Where VLEs provide innovative and novel learning experiences children are keen to interact and learn. Most children rate learning experiences with VLEs highly and have enjoyable and engaging experiences (Padmore et al., 2006: P. 210). Studies of programmes which put laptops into schools have shown that they not only improve the students technology skills, but that they also increase students engagement in school (Zucker and Light, 2009). Page | 11

One of the ways that a VLE can be used in schools is to allow synchronous and asynchronous discussions through chat- and forum-style features. This can provide a record of what has been said by whom, as well as allowing students to revisit, rethink and repost ideas on a topic. A study by Keith Turvey, a senior lecturer in Education at the University of Brighton (2008), used a group of student ICT teachers and one mixed ability and mixed gender Year 5 class of twenty eight pupils to look at this method of teacher-pupil communication.

The author used just one method of data collection, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with only six of his fourteen student teachers, to form the backdrop for his research project. He also provides no explanation of his rationale or why he chose those six individuals. This lack of rigour potentially impacts upon the conclusion of the report. Generalisations are made which suggest that some student teachers use a range of communication tools in their personal life and others do not, and that this can have an implication on the adoption of these tools in their professional contexts. This is a large generalisation to be justified on the basis of just six interviews. Despite this, it does serve to highlight some of the issues which may be encountered when integrating a VLE with a real classroom environment. It will be important to ensure that any asynchronous discussions are adequately set up in class beforehand and debriefed afterwards.

The VLE has already been used at Randolph High as a way to teach maths. An online gaming resource called Manga-High allows students to answer mathematical equations against the clock in order to complete a selection of games. In doing so, the students progress along the level, the aim of which is to beat the baddy or achieve a high score (Kane, 2009). This requires developers to make software which matches the syllabus; something not always available. Due to the success of the Manga-High trial, a similar resource will be used in the Geography scheme of work.

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What is differentiation and how can it be done? It is necessary to define briefly what differentiation is in order to discuss it in terms of a VLE. In a discussion on geography-focused differentiation, Jeff Battersby suggests differentiation is concerned with providing appropriate educational opportunities for all pupils and to match learning opportunities with individual learning needs (2002: P. 114). There is a school of thought which, understandably, argues that differentiation is simply what teachers should be doing anyway. David Waters defined it as the planned process of opening out the curriculum to enable access to all pupils (1995: P. 82). Although both these men were writing with a specific geographic focus, their comments ring true for any subject.

Battersby goes on to suggest different ways that differentiation can happen; there is no one particular route, as different needs of students can be met in different ways. The diagram in Figure 2.1 illustrates how differentiation produces a variety of outcomes. This diagram was used in the planning of the scheme of work (See Chapter 3).

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Differentiation by outcome Common stimulus Common task A range of outcomes

Differentiation by resources and by outcome Varied resources Common task A range of outcomes

Differentiation by graded task and outcomes Common stimulus Series of tasks A range of outcomes

Differentiation by task and outcome Common Stimulus Choice of task A range of outcomes

Differentiation by stimulus and task Stimulus targeted to ability Task graded by ability Outcomes appropriate to predicted levels of ability

Figure 2.1 - Differentiation strategies. (Based on Davis, 1990, as found in Battersby, 2002)

Figure 2.1 shows how a variation in the combination of resources and tasks can lead to a variation in the outcome. Whilst these techniques are useful, they are by no means all the possible ways to differentiate. For example, Battersby has not included teacher intervention by questioning which Page | 14

can be done on a much smaller scale, simply when the teacher directs particular questions to specific pupils. He does, however, note that it is important to have a variety of different strategies in use to ensure that as many students as possible are being catered for. Therefore all Battersbys strategies will be used in the scheme of work presented to students, as show in Table 3.1.

How can a VLE be used to differentiate? With no legal limit on the number of students in a Key Stage 3 class, despite calls from the National Union of Teachers (2002) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (2009) to address this, it can be difficult for teachers to personalise the learning for all students in a class. A VLE can help provide the opportunity for students to learn where the teacher cannot provide for them personally in the classroom (Padmore et al., 2006). This can be done by providing a number of differentiated tasks on the VLE which students can work through or be directed to the appropriate level (Lennon and Maurer, 2003). Students can work at their own pace to complete tasks whilst the teacher is free to intervene where appropriate on a personalised level because they are not required to view their class as a homogenous ability group. It is not the content that is necessarily different when differentiating through a VLE, that could be the same as normal teaching, but it is the method of delivery that changes, allowing more time for the teacher to provide appropriate intervention.

What are the difficulties of using a VLE? As has been mentioned, VLEs can be used in both the same and discrete locations, meaning that students have the facility to log on to the VLE to access tasks and submit work they have completed away from the classroom, such as homework. However, it is necessary to have access to the internet away from the classroom in order to participate which is not always possible for pupils at home for a number of reasons, including prohibitive costs. The previous Labour government introduced Home Access, a scheme which aims to provide computers and / or internet access for low income families to allow children to go over schoolwork from home, do homework online, Page | 15

contact classmates and teachers, get information and work together on project through the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA, 2010a). One of several changes to education funding since the election of the Conservative Liberal coalition was the closure of BECTA (BECTA, 2010b) and the end of the Home Access scheme. Schools must therefore provide the opportunity for students to complete any online tasks using another medium or provide access to school computers outside of lesson time (Williams, 2002). Students participating in this research will be able to use computers in the schools library or in home work clubs and there will be offline alternatives for homework activities (see Chapter 3 and Appendix 1).

At the other end of the spectrum, teachers often forget how adept young people are at using technology and learning to use new software and equipment. In a study which looked at attempts of teachers across the curriculum to embed ICT into their subject areas, researchers from the University of Bristols Graduate School of Education and the Faculty of Education at the University of Plymouth found that the teachers involved underestimated the ICT provision in students homes (Sutherland et al., 2004). The students were, in fact, much more immersed in the technology that they were being introduced to in class than was first thought. This goes some way to explain the relative ease with which some students seemed to pick up new programmes. A report by BECTA (2002) found that students may develop skills in using networked ICT more quickly and easily than is often anticipated by schools and teachers (P. 1). As such, it may not be necessary to spend much time introducing new software during the scheme of work if students are likely to pick it up relatively quickly.

At present, students still sit almost all of their formal assessments in a traditional pen and paper setting and therefore there are some who question the merits of teaching them with technology, including VLEs, when they will not be assessed in that particular medium. Indeed, there are people who blame an increase in texting and emailing for teenagers loosing the ability to work with a pen Page | 16

and paper (MacDonald, 2008). However, by not only teaching students how to use a particular technology or e-learning resource, but also by getting them to think about why they are using that resource, students will learn which method suits a particular task best: In this sense young people could become aware, for example, of the relative affordances of paper and pencil, a word processor, PowerPoint, or discussion with a peer, when communicating ideas. (Sutherland et al., 2004: P. 424)

Another issue which is becoming more common is the inappropriate use of technology and software in the classroom simply because it is there, without thought of the reasons behind using it. David Rogers is a Geography teacher and member of the GAs Secondary Phase Committee who blogs extensively on his Geography teaching experience. He wrote a blog on the pitfalls of using

PowerPoint which included a presentation he had given entitled PowerPoint or PowerPointless aimed at providing teachers with ways of using the presentation software to enhance learning rather than boring students with too much text (Rogers, 2009). There is a danger of using gimmicks for the sake of using them which may outweigh students learning. All e-learning use in the scheme of work will need to be justified first and foremost on the basis of it being able to support students learning in order for it to be included in the unit.

From my experience of using the VLE in school, the students enjoy it and look for opportunities to use it. They often ask if we are using laptops in lessons and seem more motivated when they find out they can. It can be sold to students as a reward for completing the first part of the lesson, even if it is part of the planned tasks. What is most important is to make sure that the laptops and the VLE are being used in an appropriate way.

How can Geography benefit from using VLEs? Dave Martin, Professor of Geography, and Richard Treves, an Educational Developer, both at the University of Southampton, have looked at the relationship between traditional and online learning Page | 17

whilst researching how VLEs have been adopted and integrated into educational establishments. Whilst the authors note that the integration of the VLE was not necessarily a straightforward task, it had been successful and proved to be a useful tool in teaching geography: The discipline of geography may perhaps be considered relatively fertile ground for embedding e-learning, given its long history of diverse teaching methods, resource-based learning and information technology literacy (2007: P. 781-2). Students who participated in the research project tended to dislike the online session replacing the traditional face to face learning provided by their lecturers, but felt that it was a useful tool in providing deeper understanding and extension work on content they had covered in class because they could access it at their own pace. Due to the nature of this project, based in a school where the teacher is present in the classroom, the vast majority of the VLE usage will be in class and therefore will not replace face to face contact. Where it will be used without the teacher present will be when the students are at home or completing home-work tasks. This is when they will be able to develop that deeper understanding of work covered in class.

As well as providing the opportunity to revisit and revise work from the classroom, VLEs provide the opportunity for students to work together when there are not in the same geographical location. This can be done on a number of scales, from different rooms in a school, to different schools both nationally and internationally. Roulston and Clarke (2003) conducted an investigation into the use of a VLE to help forty A-level students in Northern Ireland with their Year 12 decision-making paper, as part of the A-level Geography specification for Northern Irelands Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment. Twenty students from an all boys Catholic school worked online with twenty girls from a single sex Protestant school 50 miles away. The study involved the students working with a partner from their school and a pair from the other school, creating ten groups of four students. Their aim was to produce a PowerPoint presentation arguing for or against the creation of aquaculture in the environmentally protected area of Lough Swilly in County Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland. Once the exercise was complete, the researchers carried out surveys with Page | 18

the students and teachers, collected usage data from the VLE and conducted some statistical analysis of the results.

Roulston and Clarke suggest that the online exercise may have been more useful for some students than others. Over 12000 hits on the VLE were recorded which makes 300 hits the average between the forty pupils. However, the authors highlight thirteen students who exceeded 300 hits, with one student making more that 750 during the exercise. This implies that the majority (27/40) were contributing less than the average; in some cases, students did not upload any work onto the VLE at all, perhaps because they did not have to physically hand in a piece of work to the teacher. Whilst the study has shown that using the VLE to complete a decision making paper is possible, it highlights that even digital natives, people who were born into a world full of abundant technology (Prensky, 2001), require training in the use of software and programmes. It also shows that face to face training and communication is still important to ensure that students are taking part to the required extent. Little is made of the possible variance in ICT provision in the schools and homes of students, which may have made a difference in their participation. This supports the findings of Martin and Treves (2007) that face to face is perceived as better than only-online communication. It also suggests that BECTAs claim that young people do not need much training is not necessarily the case which means that it will be important to ensure that students have the opportunity to practice using new software if needed during the scheme of work.

As well as further and secondary education, there are examples of VLEs being used in primary geography lessons; one in particular used a multi-method approach to investigate the potential of using computer games to help primary school pupils in Turkey to learn about Geography (Tzn, Yilmaz-Soylu, Karaku, Inal and Kizilkaya, 2009). The aim of the game was to find lost children in the 3D gaming environment and return them to their country of birth. Facts about the countries were hidden and students had to piece together information as they moved around the environment. The Page | 19

geographical content came in the form of specific place knowledge. The study showed that attainment and motivation increased as a result of using the game. The study was short, only an hour a week over three weeks. Some of the students were not present in all sessions, so the data analysed was confined to that collected from the thirteen students present throughout. They identified some problems with using ICT, including hardware and software failure and students forgetting usernames and passwords, something common to any use of ICT in the classroom. Despite these difficulties, the students had enjoyed the experience and were keen to continue their learning at home with anecdotal evidence of two students continuing the game after the project was completed. This suggests that ICT can be used to excite students about Geography and encourage them to continue to learn after the official learning time has finished.

Benefits of using a VLE have been identified in the literature review in primary, secondary and tertiary education, including an increase in motivation, the facility to review and recap work away from the classroom, as well as being able to work in collaboration with people who would otherwise be prohibited by distance. Whilst there were also difficulties identified, many similar to those mentioned previously in this review, in all three cases, these did not prevent the aims of the research being met. A VLE seems able to support students alongside traditional face to face teaching by providing them with facilities to go back to work covered previously on the course. Using new technology is something that young people tend not to find challenging and it may also increase motivation to participate in the subject. Finally, Geography has long been used to

embracing new technologies and is well adapted at integrating them into the classroom. These factors combined make using a VLE ideal to enhance learners experiences of Geography and it is with this focus that this research project is being conducted.

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Who are gifted students and how can they be supported?

Again, this following section has been divided up using the sub-questions put forward in the introduction. It will use literature to define gifted students before discussing how they are identified and the issues involved in doing so. Following on from this, the discussion will move to what the specific needs of gifted students are, how they can be best supported and any issues that arise in doing so.

What is Gifted and Talented? Gifted and talented is a term given to students who are particularly able in certain subjects. There are many different ways in which the term is used in a school setting, meaning that the term is often misused. The gifted part refers to a students ability in academic subjects, including English, maths and science, whereas the talented part refers to students who show promise in creative and active subjects like physical education, art or drama (National Literacy Trust, 2009; QCA, 2010).

The idea of identifying students as gifted and talented is to help them achieve a potential that they might not otherwise be able to do if there was no intervention to provide the opportunity for the students to maximise their potential by engaging in learning (Callahan, 2005: P. 103-104); it is suggested that higher-ability students often suffer from a lack of engagement because they are not stimulated in the classroom. Carolyn Callahan, Associate Director of the National Research Centre on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Virginia, explains that gifts and talents are not necessarily uniformly distributed amongst children and that it does not stand to reason that just because a child has a gift or talent in one area that they have to have other gifts and / or talents elsewhere.

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Giftedness is not a trait that demands that a child exhibit outstanding abilities in all areas. Children may be gifted or talented in just one area of performance. Some children may be quite talented in mathematics, but not in reading or writing for example (P. 100)

However, this quote from Callahan also serves to highlight the discrepancies in the definitions of gifted and talented education. In the quote, she refers to children who may be talented in mathematics. According to the definition from the National Literacy Trust above, gifted and talented are discrete, non-interchangeable terms, yet Callahan uses talented when referring to a subject where a student may have a gift. Care must be taken to ensure that these fine distinctions are not lost, that the terms are used consistently and that comparisons are drawn only once these differences have been identified. In this project, I shall be using the QCAs definition above which refers to gifted students as having a high academic ability. As Geography is more an academic than creative or active, I will not be using the term talented.

How are they identified and is this problematic? According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCFS), gifted and talented students make up the top 5% of the population in terms of ability (2008). A school should identify its gifted and talented learners in each year group and keep a record of them. The exact population of each school is determined in house, as long as the decision can be justified. These groupings are not fixed and must be reviewed on a regular basis as ability is a relative, not static, measure.

However, Callahan argues that one of the major problems in catering for gifted and talented students is the belief that there is a magic number of gifted and talented students and goes on to say that the number of gifted and talented students is not a given and is not fixed in any community (2005: P. 102). Sally Reis and Joseph Renzulli (2009) are two prominent educational researchers with a special interest in gifted and talented education. In a short discussion paper aimed at dispelling the myths of gifted and talented education, they counter the idea that gifted and

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talented students can be seen as one group and that there is no change within the group. The authors remind us that gifted and talented students display a range of diverse characteristics and it would be wrong for teachers and researchers not to acknowledge these when teaching lessons or conducting research. They suggest various reasons why the group is sometimes seen as

homogenous before arguing that giftedness is not fixed but can manifest itself in a number of ways at different points in a persons life.

Gifted students from ethnic minorities Randolph High has a much higher proportion of ethnic minority students than the national average; white British are the minority. I had not considered this an issue until reading Callahans article where she put forward ten solutions to the problem of under-representation of ethnic minorities in the gifted and talented programmes of schools in the United States. She argues that the current system provides *i+nadequate opportunities for talent development (P. 99) and shows that there are twice as many white students in gifted and talented programmes that black and Hispanic students. Coupled with her argument about there being no fixed number of gifted and talented students, she seems to be advocating that race and ethnicity should have some bearing on gifted and talented provision; that they are underrepresented, whether by opportunity or discrimination, through some sort of power dynamic as opposed to not being gifted or talented.

By calling ethnic minorities underrepresented, Callahan is implying that there is an imbalance which requires change. There seem to be complex socio-political reasons at work behind her position which need to be explicitly stated by Callahan, but are not. Gifted and talented students in the UK are the top 5% of ability of the student population, rather than the top 5% of each ethnic group.

The gifted and talented programme at Randolph High is based on the top students in the ability range regardless of race. The allocation of gifted and talented status needs to be done on a school Page | 23

by school basis using the ability of their roll as the determining factor rather than using national statistics. It stands to reason that if a school has a high ability intake, the teachers will teach to a higher ability level that at a school with a low ability average intake. They can then differentiate up and differentiate down to include all students. The gifted and talented cohort of each school will be of very different ability, but proportional to the whole school. If, as Callahan seems to suggest, other factors, like race and ethnicity, are taken into account then the allocation of places in a schools gifted and talented scheme is more than just an ability grouping, it is a politically motivated grouping. Callahans work is very US-centric so to what extent it applies to the UK is unclear. In any extent, it has served to heighten my awareness that giftedness should be based solely on ability and take no notice of ethnic divisions. As such, the ethnic backgrounds of the students will not be revealed when reporting the results as I do not think it is necessary.

What are the needs of gifted students and how can these be provided for? The needs of gifted and talented students are as varied as the children themselves, so it is important to identify from the outset that there is no one, single way in which to cater for their needs and different subjects and disciplines will have different methods. For example, McLachlan (2002) relies heavily on case study examples from her own experience as a language teacher in her book, aimed at providing readers with examples of various scenarios they may come across in their own practice. It is one in a series published by the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research, with a specific focus on addressing the needs of gifted students in languages. Many of the ideas given were of little relevance to the geography classroom, because of their language content focus.

There are, however, a range of strategies which can be deployed, both in and out of the classroom, which can be used in conjunction with each other to provide for these various needs. The National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth was a government-funded scheme to provide support for more able students in a summer-camp context, but funding cut-backs have seen the disbandment of Page | 24

the scheme in favour of helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds in reaching university (Murray, 2010). The United Kingdom Mathematics Trust (UKMT) runs the annual Maths Challenge, a competition for secondary school students which gives them the chance to compete against students from across the country, attracting over 600,000 entries (UKMT, 2010). This element of competition can motivate students in subjects that could be considered boring. The Geographical Association (GA) also run a competition called the Worldwise Quiz (GA, 2009a) but as it is run by local branches it does not have the same national coverage.

Gifted geographers There is relatively little written specifically about gifted students in geography. Neil Enright, Anne Flook and Catherine Habgood give a useful geography-centred overview to gifted education in their chapter Gifted young geographers in the Secondary Geography Handbook (2006). In this they remind the reader about the definition of gifted and how a gifted geographer might be identified, before giving some possible ideas for activities which could be used in class. What is most important, I think, is that they remind teachers that gifted students need intervention as much as other students, and that this can be delivered without adversely affecting others. In that vein, this project aims to provide the required intervention in as efficient a way as possible.

Are there any difficulties in providing for gifted geographers? One of the difficulties in any kind of differentiation is that it is a constant juggling act for a teacher to personalise learning for each individual student in class. One way to provide support for gifted and talented students is to gather them together to provide focussed education, rather than it being seen as an add on to the normal curriculum. Anne Morgan (2007) shares the results of a study conducted in 2005/6 in a metropolitan borough in the north of England. Eighteen 5-7 year olds were selected from a number of primary schools to attend a weekly afternoon session aimed at providing

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enrichment for gifted and talented students. This number grew to twenty four over the course of the year, although it is not clear how students were selected to attend the cluster.

Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were conducted with parents, pupils and class teachers to find out about their experiences of the cluster. Quantitative analysis and coding of the interviews helped identify a clear trend that everyone saw a benefit in the cluster. However, there are a number of reasons why the cluster may have been preferable to normal school. Classes were probably smaller; infant classes in England and Wales can have up to a maximum of thirty students (The Education (Infant Class Sizes) (England) Regulations 1998), whereas the cluster was twenty four maximum. There was also a much higher staff: student ratio 5:24 in the cluster, compared to the 1:30 possible in mainstream. Finally, with the specific provision for gifted and talented students, the activities were bound to be more focused and more engaging, as well as a greater provision of ICT and resources. Therefore a direct comparison between the cluster and the mainstream is not possible. However, this suggests that using a VLE would enable some of the interactions found in the cluster without the need for transporting children around the region. The enjoyment of using ICT, coupled with the specific targeting of the students needs accessible from diverse geographic locations mean that the cost of providing the cluster is reduced.

Implications for the research project In light of the literature this project will seek to link VLEs as a way to differentiate for gifted geographers when learning about risk. There is a firm foundation of literature around gifted education, what their needs are and how they can be provided for as well as a rapidly increasing body of work surrounding VLEs and eLearning. These will provide the base on which the project will be built. From this, it will be important to ensure that there is sufficient time and training available to students when using new software, that the VLE does not replace their face to face contact time and that the work they are doing is appropriate for laptops and that the computers are not just Page | 26

being used for the sake of it. In addition, the gifted students will need to have work set for them at an appropriate level whilst the rest of the class are also being catered for; they will have to be set work that is fun and enjoyable, as well as being academically rigorous.

Conclusions The literature reviewed here has placed this project firmly within both the VLE and gifted subject areas. It has defined and developed the concept of VLEs, with reference to how they have been used in an education and, specifically, geography education setting. It has shown that VLEs can be of benefit to teachers and students of geography. In addition, the literature has supported a discussion on identifying gifted students, with particular attention paid to the ethnic background of students, something prevalent in the case school. The review has highlighted that there is little in the way of specific literature on gifted students in geography. This project is, therefore, well-placed to add to existing literature and to provide an account of where a VLE can be used to support gifted geographers.

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Chapter 3 - Research Design

In this chapter I will seek to explain and justify the research design. In any form of research, it is important that appropriate methods have been deployed to ensure the research can achieve its objectives. To do this, I will use Michael Crottys (1998) four stage framework to scaffold my project. There are, of course, other structures available, but I felt that Crottys afforded me the most support in this particular project. I will begin by highlighting my own epistemological and theoretical perspectives, as these will influence the wider project, then justify the methodology and the methods used in the data collection before briefly discussing how the data was analysed. This will be expanded on in the Chapter 5. I will end this chapter with a short discussion on the ethics of the project and how these have been at the forefront of the project to ensure the safety and well-being of all involved.

Epistemology Jean Piaget put forward the idea of constructivism whereby children absorbed information and, by relating it to a framework they already held, were able to integrate this new information and develop their worldview. Barry Wadsworth summarises this as a form of adaptation to the environment (1978: P. 6). This theory was developed and adapted by Seymour Papert, an American academic who worked with Piaget in Geneva in the 1950s and 1960s, into a theory called constructionism. This built on Piagets work, but extended it to suggest that the process of learning was most effective when the learner was constructing something tangible like a book, and not abstract like a body of knowledge (Papert, 1991).

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Another famous constructivist was Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, who developed the notion of the Zone of Proximal Development which suggested a childs learning could be enhanced by working alongside an adult or more able student. ...the zone of proximal development ... is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygotsky, 1978: P. 86)

The target student would therefore be stretched and enabled to achieve at a higher level. In addition, if a more able student was assisting, this would allow them to consolidate their learning because they would have the opportunity to teach others which, according to the Learning Pyramid, from the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioural Science, gives an average retention of 90% (Polovina, 2009).

The constructivist idea of building on knowledge to progress understanding and scaffolding students to work in be able to achieve at a higher level fits well with my research project, looking at using a VLE to support and challenge gifted students. In addition, the tangible outcomes that the students have produced, rather than just being able to know something, means that this project is firmly placed in a constructionist epistemology. Objectivism and subjectivism were considered as possible epistemologies but later rejected because they are too heavily involved with notions of meaning, whether it is put on to an object by the subject (subjectivism), or whether it exists independently of the subject (objectivism). Constructionism allows this meaning to be built with influence from both subject and object.

Theoretical Perspective There are many different theoretical perspectives from which a single research project can be viewed, in the same way that an elephant could be pictured very differently by a group of blind people, as the cartoon in Figure 3.1 shows. These differing perspectives will inform both the Page | 29

researcher and the reader so it is important to draw attention to my own perspectives which inform this project.

Figure 3.1 The Blind Men and the Elephant (Middle School Advisory, 2009)

One such perspective could be interpretivism, where a researcher seeks to understand a phenomenon and derive meaning from it. Crotty (1998) suggests three ways of doing this; through symbolic interactionism, phenomenology or hermeneutics. However, this project is not looking to interpret meaning created by, or through, the participants. The aim is to seek to explore the effectiveness of provision for gifted students, not to interpret the results of the provision. This might suggest a more positivist approach, but it is small scale and cannot seek to prove or disprove the methods have had an effect on students attainment.

Therefore a post-positivist perspective has been adopted which acknowledges the research in its own right, but frames it as part of a wider research programme. This project will add to a body of knowledge investigating different ways to provide for gifted learners which, when viewed as a whole, may be able to be used to direct future research. The school, which is providing a small

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amount of funding for the research, will look at the results which may be used to help plan future gifted provision.

The Case Randolph High School The school at the centre of this project is an 11-18 mixed comprehensive in inner London. It has about 250 pupils in each Year 7 11 cohort with another 350 in the newly opened Sixth Form. From a satisfactory rating from the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) in 1992, the school has shown considerable and sustained improvement, proven during the most recent Ofsted inspection when the school was classed as outstanding (Ofsted, 2007). It has a high proportion of students from ethnic minorities, predominately Indian, Somali and Pakistani. More than 90% of students speak English as another language, and polyglots are common.

The schools system for grouping involved a complex arrangement of setting and banding. There were eleven classes in each year, made up of twenty two students. Students with special

educational needs (SEN) or who need extra support in English were put into one of the mixed-ability Y-band classes which have a full-time Teaching Assistant. Those students who do not require extra support in this way are set in one of seven X-band classes, with X1 being the most able students according to their Key Stage 2 Maths and Science grades in the first instance, although other data such as Cognitive Ability Tests from the National Foundation for Educational Research are taken into account. In the past, X1 has been treated as the gifted and talented class so there has been little in the way of provision for those students not in the top set who are gifted or talented in one or more subjects.

The research for this project will be conducted using students from 7X2, the second highest ability group, based on the data mentioned previously. This group has been chosen for its range of abilities in the class, as well as the good working relationship I have with the group. Within this class of Page | 31

twenty two students, there are two identified as gifted geographers and there is another two for whom it is often necessary to differentiate downwards for, based on data available from SIMS (School Information Management System). I am also this groups form tutor which entails a fifteen minute morning registration. This means I have met with each students parents or carers in my role of form tutor and have been able to build up a relationship with them. This is mutually beneficial because it allows me to work with a group who I know well and allows both students and parents to feel confident that they know who is conducting the research and for what purpose. Obviously, using a group for which it may be considered I am a gatekeeper presents some ethical considerations, but these are addressed later on.

This school is one of many in the borough and the 7X2 is only one of eleven classes in the year group, so the research carried out has been conducted using a case study methodology. I am interested in finding out if a VLE can be used to support the learning of gifted students in my class, in an attempt to improve my practice and potentially help implement change in the way in which the VLE is used in the school. Whilst ideas may be taken from this research and used to help shape projects

elsewhere, the small scale and tight focus means that it is not easy to generalise outside the bounds of the project.

Methodology The project is bounded within time and space, a characteristic of case study methodology (Yin, 2003). The constraints of the MEd mean that the research needs to be completed before the end of the school year. The position of teacher-researcher also bounds the project, as it must be conducted within the school context.

Action research is a very reflexive methodology which uses results to inform the planning of the next stage of the research (Denscombe, 2007). In the case of the classroom, data collected from one Page | 32

lesson can be used to plan subsequent lessons. This methodology is not suitable for this research project as I am not looking at ways to tailor my gifted provision to the students in my class using the VLE. I would like to investigate their experiences of different ways of using the VLE and be able to reflect on the data without the requirement to adjust it in a short period of time, as would be required by the boundedness of the study and the cyclical nature of action research. This iterative process still goes on, however, as lessons are evaluated and improved for the next class, but in this case it is not the focus of the investigation.

Denscombe defines a case study as an approach which focuses on one (or just a few) instances of a particular phenomenon with a view to providing an in-depth account of events, relationships, experiences or processes occurring on that particular instance (P. 35). In this case, it is focused on one class of students in one school, as outlined above. There are many different types of case study which can influence the methods used and the direction in which the project goes. Stake (1995) categorised cases into intrinsic and instrumental, where an intrinsic case is studied because of its standalone interest, whereas an instrumental case is used to explore another issue. My case study would fall into Stakes instrumental category as I am using the case (my class) to find out about how the VLE can be used. Different authors on case study as a methodology also approach the subject from very different theoretical perspectives. Bassey, himself an author specialising in educational case studies, writes that whereas Yins writing tends towards the positivist (or scientific) perspective, Stakes is firmly within the interpretive paradigm (1999: P. 27).

Cast studies are not perfect, hence the use of other methodologies such as action research. Case studies have often been criticised because they are so focused on one case that they are unable to make any credible generalisations from the research. From his positivist perspective, Yin (2003) suggests that, like a scientific experiment, a case study can be generalised from to theoretical propositions and not to populations or universes (P. 10). At the more interpretive end of the Page | 33

spectrum, Stake and, to a lesser extent, Bassey tend towards a softer approach to generalisations; Bassey calls these fuzzy generalisations and Stake refers to them as petite generalisations. Denscombe also suggests that another disadvantage of case studies is their perceived lack of rigour because of the soft data they produce. However, Yin (2003) points out that one of the benefits of case study is the opportunity to use many different sources of evidence (P. 97), a point Denscombe echoes when advocating the use of a multiple method approach. Due to the small, case-study scale of this research project, I will not be looking to produce generalisations along the lines of Bassey and Stake; rather it will be used as a way to improve my practise as a geography teacher and, perhaps, in the wider school context.

Methods A multi-method approach was used in this investigation to allow a range of data to be collected in a relatively short space of time. The multi method approach also allows for a triangulation of results, where the same object it looked at from a variety of angles in an attempt to understand the bigger picture. The methods used were a combination of word-elicitation before and after the scheme of work, as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews and learning journals. The multi-method approach should not be confused with the mixed-method approach, discussed by the likes of Johnson, Onwuegbuzie and Turner (2007) and Creswell (2009). Using the framework set out by

Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003), I will be using more than one qualitative method within a qualitative paradigm, and therefore will be using a multi-method design as opposed to the mixed-method, combining qualitative and quantitative methods.

The topic around which this research has been designed is called Risky Worlds. It is based on a Scheme of Work created by the Royal Geographic Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG) (2009) which has been adapted to suit the needs and resources of the school. The topic, discussed further in Chapter 4, is about how risky the environment around us is and neatly straddles Page | 34

the traditional human / physical divide in the discipline, allowing connections to be made between them.

Word Elicitation and Mind Mapping Photo-elicitation is a method which has been used successfully by the likes of Hazel (1995) and Hurworth (2003) where an image is shown to the interviewee and then discussed. Marcus Banks (1995) contrasts these visual records produced by the investigator with visual documents produced by those under study (P. 1). With the reduction in price of photographic equipment and the increasing availability of digital cameras, researchers are beginning to ask the interviewees themselves to take the photos which are later discussed in the interview. Hurworth (2003) calls this autodriving; Jorgensen and Sullivan (2010) call it participatory photo-elicitation. As students were restricted to the school site on the basis of child safety, autodriving was not possible. Harper (2002), to who many writers about photo-elicitation refer, argues that while most research surrounding elicitation techniques have used photographs, there is no reason why something else cannot be used as an alternative.

Concept maps were developed by Joseph Novak in 1972 and have been shown to be as effective as more time-consuming clinical interviews for identifying the relevant knowledge a learner possesses before or after instruction (Novak & Caas, 2008: P. 5). The texts, sentences and descriptions are taken as depictions of an externally given world, or as realisations of underlying cognitive descriptions of the world (Soini, 2001: P. 231) giving a researcher the opportunity to see how a learner connects their knowledge in a shorter time-frame.

Mind mapping, where students create a spider diagram can be seen as a type of simple concept mapping. They are techniques akin to photo-elicitation insofar as participants are given a stimulus and asked to respond. Where a photo may be used to prompt interviewees to talk in photoPage | 35

elicitation, a word, diagram or picture may be given on a piece of paper and the participants are asked to write down any links that they can think of and the connections between them. Word elicitations, or elicitations for short, is the term that will be used in this project to refer to the outcome where students were asked to provide a response to a given word.

In order to be able to make tentative suggestions about the effectiveness of a VLE, it is important to be able to compare and contrast the students work from before and after the interventions. To do this, the word elicitation was used to stimulate the students to show what they know about risk. Students were given a sheet of paper with the word risk written in the middle and asked to annotate it with as much information as they can (Appendix 2). They were encouraged to note down anything they thought relevant and it was reiterated that there was no right or wrong answer. The task was repeated at the end of the scheme of work to provide a post-intervention comparison. The aim of this method was to show progression over time. This kind of method is particularly suited to young students as it gives them the opportunity to put down on paper what they know when it comes to them; they do not have to think about ordering it in their heads. It also helps them to produce longer, more detailed answers compared to a traditional oral-only interview (Hurworth, 2003). It is possible using this method to conduct an interview with the student whilst they are completing the elicitation and ask students to expand or elaborate on points made as they happen. However, this will not be done in this case as that would require the elicitation to take place one by one. By administering this method simultaneously, it allows a whole class to participate and provide data. In order not to lose the depth that using this method on an individual basis, the elicitations were used to form the start point of the paired interviews.

Interviews with students Interviews with selected students took place in the Geography classroom during the final weeks of the school year when they had completed the scheme of work and were onto their new, year 8 Page | 36

timetable. John Rich (1968) points out that people are most at ease in a situation that is familiar and expected (P. 59) and by putting students at ease, they will be more able to express themselves confidently.

The position of research in ones own classroom provides a certain blurring of the roles expected by students. To them, I am their Geography teacher, but I asked them to participate in something that is not usual for our lessons. Andrew Pollard (1987) dwells on this point that the teacher-asresearcher is not fully a teacher and not fully a researcher which may create uncertainty on the part of the students. As Rich suggests above, this could lead to students being removed from their comfort zones. Pollard puts forward the notion of trust as a way to bridge the gap and provide a platform from which to operate. If the teacher-as-research is able to gain the trust of the students, they will be able to clarify the roles they play and I believe I have built up this trust with the students in my roles as Form Tutor and Geography teacher.

Three paired interviews were conducted with a pair made up of a male and female student of similar ability such that a higher, middle and lower ability cross-section was chosen, informed by data. The interviews were semi-structured and followed a similar pattern. Students were asked about their favourite parts of the lessons, what went well and what they would change, as well as how they assessed the level of difficulty and challenge. They students were also asked to talk through their pre- and post-intervention elicitations, expanding on points and adding more detail where they felt it was necessary.

Learning journals Learning journals provide a way for students to write down what they are thinking and feeling at any given point. They have been used in research settings to show how a students understanding of a topic may develop over time, such as Nicola Walshes work on a group of Year 10s understanding of Page | 37

sustainability (Personal communication). It has also been shown that students who used a journal to support their learning gained more knowledge that those students who did not (Hbner, Nckles & Renkl, 2010). In this project, the journals provided another source of information from the students which could be analysed as well as used to stimulate conversations in interviews. The learning journals were completed just after the students interaction with the VLE so that the thoughts were fresh in their minds.

Methods of Data Analysis Once the data was collected, it was analysed in a number of ways, the results of which can be found in Chapter 5. Data from the elicitations were coded using a process of open coding. The elicitations were first read to get an idea of the kind of answers given, before being read a second time and highlighted in different colours depending on what category answers fell into. This method is similar to the one Michael Patton (2002) describes when he says that developing some manageable classification or coding scheme is the first step of analysis (P. 463). I decided not to use a priori coding system as I did not know what kind of responses the students would give. By reading through the elicitations, I discovered four general themes: Place; Event; People; and Concept. I also found that there were a lot of other remarks which did not fall into any of the above categories. An attempt was made to further code these answers but the groups became too small to be meaningful so they were simply classified as Other. The frequency of these codes produced graphs showing the difference between the first and second elicitations which were analysed to demonstrate the progress made in the students understanding of risk. Learning journals and interviews were used to provide a thick, rich qualitative description of students thoughts and feelings, which cannot be done through a coding process.

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Ethics In all areas of research, it is important to consider the ethics of a project to try to ensure that no harm of any kind will befall the participants. In this case it is particularly important because the participants are minors and therefore more vulnerable than adults. In an effort to meet the highest ethical standards, the Revised Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research (2004) from the British Educational Research Association (BERA) have been used, in addition to the University of Cambridges Faculty of Educations Ethics Review Checklist.

Consent of all parties involved was sought, including the school, the parents as well as the students themselves. Parents and carers were sent a letter detailing the research (Appendix 3) and the participants were told that the research was not compulsory and that they could withdraw at any time. The school and the participants were assured anonymity, and as such the names of the school and students have been changed. As the research was carried out in school time, alterative provision would have been made for those students in class not taking part, although this was not necessary as all students in the class were happy to participate.

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Chapter 4 - Designing the Enquiry Sequence: Risky Worlds

In this chapter I will begin by defining the concept of Risk and what students should be learning about it, which will include a short discussion on the changes in the geography curriculum over the last thirteen years. Using the Key Concepts from the 2008 Curriculum (QCA, 2008) I will show how the unit was planned before providing a lesson by lesson account of the scheme of work and the problems that I faced when delivering it, which will help to provide a context for the results and analysis.

What is risk? One of the first tasks that the students were asked to do in Lesson 1 was to define risk. They were given three scrambled sentences and asked to unjumble them to make definitions of risk. The following definitions used in class were taken from the Oxford English Dictionary: 1. a situation involving exposure to danger 2. the possibility that something unpleasant will happen 3. a person or thing causing a risk or regarded in relation to risk

It is these three definitions that underpinned the students understanding of risk and so I will use these same definitions when referring to risk in this project.

What should students learn about Risk? In an attempt to promote school geography, the RGS-IBG and the GA set up the Action Plan for Geography in 2006. The project was initially funded for two years and was subsequently extended in 2008 for a further three years. The aim was: To provide everyone - opinion formers, policy makers, parents and pupils - with a clear vision of geography as a relevant, powerful 21st century subject; and to equip teachers with the professional skills and support they need so that pupils enjoy and succeed in geography. (GA, 2006)

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As part of this project, the RGS-IBG created a wide range of resources specifically aimed at the Key Stage 3 curriculum. There are currently twenty four different schemes of work available which have been specifically designed to show the relevance of the subject in everyday life. There has been a shift away from content-based organisation of curriculum, where students would learn about Hazards and Settlement, to one arranged using a conceptual framework where the content is delivered within a more open scheme of work. In this way, students can still learn about population demographics, but do so by investigating Who wants to live forever? and can still study urban redevelopment, but this can be made relevant by looking at it through the London 2012 Olympics.

The number of available schemes of work for the three year Key Stage 3 means that there will inevitably be some that are not taught in all schools. Indeed, most are only going to be able to teach one topic per half term, meaning that over the course of the Key Stage, eighteen out of twenty four units could be used. This choice links in with the changes made to the National Curriculum in 2008.

Since the new curriculum was introduced in 2008, schools have had a much bigger choice in what they teach and when they teach it. The previous curriculum, introduced in 1999, was much more prescriptive. The two quotes in Figure 4.1 show the part of the curriculum which I think would be covered by teaching students about the risks of living near a volcano.
1999 Tectonic processes and their effects on landscapes and people, including: i) the global distribution of tectonic activity and its relationship with the boundaries of plates ii) the nature, causes and effects of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions iii) human responses to the hazards associated with them (QCA, 1999: P. 24) Interactions between people and their environments, including causes and consequences of these interactions, and how to plan for and manage their future impact. (QCA, 2008: P. 106)

2008

Figure 4.1 Extracts from the 1999 and 2008 Geography Syllabi As is clear to see, the new curriculum is much more open to interpretation and is flexible enough to be able to be used in a way which suits a school on an individual level. Therefore, account can be taken of where students start in their understanding of a topic in order to ensure that adequate

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opportunity for progression is provided during a scheme of work. This flexibility allows teachers to tailor their planning towards their group of students, enhancing the provision for all abilities, including the gifted.

However, this flexibility and freedom does mean that students do not necessarily have to learn about risk and there is concern that some schools treat this flexibility as an opportunity to do what they like. Melanie Norman, Principle Lecturer at the University of Brightons School of Education suggested that: the new KS3 curriculum will be a means by which schools interpret the new flexible curriculum as a freedom to do what they like and ignore the statutory status of the Foundation Subjects and the contribution they should make to the KS3 curriculum. (2009: P. 27)

This means that teachers and schools could choose to teach a variety of topics in Key Stage 3 which do not mention or contain aspects of risk. There is not a specific part of the new specification which directs teachers explicitly towards teaching about risk. In reality, though, I think that it would be very hard to teach geography without coming across risk as it is a concept we face every day in a number of ways without really acknowledging it. As a result, Risky Worlds was one of the topics selected for the Year 7 curriculum at Randolph High. The scheme of work on Risk was based on the RGS-IBGs Risky World and then adapted to fit in with the time and resources available as well as the other schemes of work taught at the school (Appendix 1).

One of the big changes to the new curriculum was the introduction of 7 explicit Key Concepts which can be used to frame the content. All of these concepts were used in the planning of the scheme of work to ensure that the students were taught about the various facets of risk, as shown in the table below (Table 4.1).

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Key Concept Place

Space

Scale

Interdependence

Physical and Human processes Environmental interaction and sustainable development Cultural understanding and diversity

What did the students do with the key concept? Students were asked to think about particular places they felt were risky and compared their maps with others. They were able to compare their imagined geographies with other students to discover that people have different perceptions of place. Through identifying how human and physical features can vary the perceived risk, students were able to develop a spatial understanding and go to explain these patterns when looking at the distribution of places around the world at risk from things like malaria, HIV and gun crime. They did this by looking at the local scale, in and around school, in Lesson 1 before moving onto the regional and national scale in the second lesson. In the fifth lesson, students had the opportunity to think about risk on a global scale when looking at the risks created by the tsunami. By understanding how an early warning system in the Pacific can save lives by warning people of an impending disaster, students had the opportunity to appreciate how inter-linked seemingly disparate places and peoples can be. They were also able to understand that risk is not necessarily a fixed concept but that it depends on a number of factors. Through looking at the tsunami which affected south east Asia in 2006, the students were able to learn how a natural disaster occurred and then how it impacted on people in the area and around the world. In an attempt to consolidate learning and assess progress, as well as provide feedback and self-evaluation, students were asked to complete a computer game simulation which promoted ideas of sustainable development when planning communities in locations at risk of natural disasters. Students were given the opportunity to discover the differences between a wide number of places and how they reacted to different natural disasters.

Table 4.1 Key Concepts used in scheme of work

Whilst some of the key concepts are more evident in some topics than others, making the effort to cover them all at some point in the scheme of work was important to show the students that risk was a multi-dimensional concept and not as simple as the students had initially suggested.

Students dont have to learn about risk, but we have chosen to teach them about it. In doing so, it was important to show that it is not a fixed or simple idea, and adopting the framework provided by the key concepts enabled me to deliver a wide ranging scheme of work which allowed students to investigate the many facets of risk. They should be able to engage with it from both a human and physical geography perspective and to understand the links that can be formed between. The new curriculum allows for this and, perhaps more importantly, is flexible enough to allow schools to tailor

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their scheme of work to suit the needs of their students which, as has been shown, can vary greatly because of the different viewpoints the students will begin the topic with.

Designing the Enquiry Sequence The scheme of work was based on the RGS-IBGs Risky Worlds. I had six lessons in which to conduct an assessment and use the VLE, where appropriate, as much as possible. I also wanted to use as many different types of differentiation as possible. Table 4.2 is based on Battersbys (2002) five strategies for differentiation and shows examples of some of the differentiated set. An

overview of the scheme of work was produced (Appendix 1) to help ensure that a range of tasks, resources and methods were being used. This document allows for an effective scheme of work to be planned enabling students to progress by providing information at a glance.
Differentiation by... Outcome Resources and by outcome Graded tasks and outcomes Task and outcome Lesson 5 4 Example of Task Students produced a Glog (online poster) using Glogster.com showing what they had learned about the Asian Tsunami of 2004 Students were asked to write about Hurricane Katrina, answering the question To what extent are some hazard risks made greater by humans Students contributed to a forum where they gave their opinion. Higher ability students were are to respond to more posts from other students Students ranked places in order of riskiness and then repeated using their own criteria to show how risk varies depending on a number of factors Students were given different disasters, sizes of maps and levels of difficulty with which to complete the disaster relief game-based assessment

2 3

Stimulus and outcome

Table 4.2 Ways of differentiation Lesson Summaries In this section, I will briefly outline the lessons in the scheme of work that were taught and the reasons for including the activities in the lessons. I will also explain some of the problems along the way and how they were overcome, as this is an important part of the planning phase for the following lesson. One of the benefits of reviewing the scheme of work like this whilst it was being taught was that I was able to improve the lessons for the other classes I was teaching but that were not participating in the research in a manner not unlike the iterative nature of action research.

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Lesson 1 This lesson introduced the idea of risk to the students in the context that they would be studying it during the scheme of work. Beginning with some photos and videos of risky places chosen by me, students had to define the term by rearranging words on the IWB before identifying places in and around school that were risky. The plan was to plot these risky places using GoogleMaps and add an explanation as to why they considered the place to be risky. In doing so, the students could create an interactive map for new students to the school to familiarise themselves with the area. In planning for the lesson, I created a step by step guide sheet, available to students through the Fronter and the Student Shared Drive, an area of the network accessible to all, which took them through the sign-on process and how to plot place marks. In order to access all the functionalities of Googles MyMaps, a username is required. To save time for the students, maximising their chances to use the software, I created usernames and passwords they were able to use. This also allowed me to access their work at a later point. Once the students had logged on to the computers, it became apparent that they would not be able to access the MyMaps part of Google as it was filtered by the schools internet service provider, the London Grid for Learning. I had assumed that the site was not blocked because I had created the guide sheet at school and, in doing so, had accessed the site on the school network. However, I had not accounted for the different restrictions on staff and student accounts. The issue was immediately raised with the schools Network Manager but, as it was an external agencys issue, we were unable to proceed in class. As a backup, a word document with an aerial photograph of the school and its vicinity was provided on the Student Shared Drive. Students annotated the map using arrows and text boxes showing the risky places. Whilst this did not have the interactivity of GoogleMaps and could not be classed as using GIS, the students were still able to use the same thinking skills. In case the computers failed completely, or it was necessary to remove a computer from a child to manage behaviour, paper copies of the map were also available to annotate directly. Lesson 2 The second lesson in the sequence was designed as an enquiry to get students to ask questions and be able to take ownership of their research. First, a comparison of two places was made using the Environment Agencys website to assess their risk of flooding. Stimuli in the form of photos from the 2007 floods were used to get students to form the questions they were going to answer. Once the students had pooled and selected their questions, they were directed to four websites through the VLE. A summary to the lesson was provided in the form of Wallwisher, a website where students can log on and post a virtual post-it note. Once passed by the moderator, they appear for all to see. This is a great way to engage students in thinking about their opinion, and can provide an anonymous forum to discuss potentially embarrassing views, or to include shyer and less vocal students. An online homework was set to continue students engagement in the VLE. The task was to contribute an opinion to an online forum and then to comment on at least one other students post. This way, asynchronous discussion could take place between geographical dispersed people and allow students the time to formulate opinions and reply in an unpressured environment. Lesson 3 Lesson 3 began with a review of the students homework. As is often the case, there were some students who had not completed the homework. One of the major benefits for me (and the students) was that they cannot forgot to bring in an online homework, as sometimes happens with their books. Using Fronter, it was possible to see at a glance who had participated in the forum, and who had done so more than once. This seemed to be reinforcement of praise for those who had done well, but a reminder to those who had not participated that I was aware of their lack of effort and that it was therefore easy for me to put in place the appropriate

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sanctions. The lesson looked at how students perceptions of risk can change. The students were first shown a video from the University of Cambridge which showed how risk can be perceived in a variety of different ways, depending on the surrounding circumstances. They were then asked to complete an individual online card sort where places were ranked according to the students perception of risk. They repeated this exercise whilst focussing on a particular emphasis of the risk, such as environmental or economic factors. In this way, students were able to see how their idea of risk can change depending on what they rank as the most important. Finally, they were asked to use interactive maps, created by the GA, which highlight places at risk from a variety of problems such as malaria, HIV and gun crime. Having identified a pattern, students were asked to explain it. One of the benefits of using a networked system is the ease with which documents can be shared. All the resources for the lesson were provided with links from the Fronter page for the lesson. However, it is often the case that not all the computers are working perfectly at the same time. One of the biggest problems which can slow the pace of a lesson considerably is the speed of the internet connection, particularly when there is a high demand from the school or students are all trying to log onto the network at the same time. This was overcome by placing the documents in the Student Shared Drive, put in place before the school used Fronter. Another difficulty was discovered whilst using the interactive maps. These required Flash, a program which provides the animations. Four of the rooms laptops did not have the latest version installed and, because of the way the administrator privileges are set up, neither the students or I were able to install it. All I could do was report it to the network administrator and wait for it to be fixed. Lesson 4 Computers are normally used to produce work on an individual basis, and have been used to do so in this scheme of work. Lesson 4 was designed to provide the opportunity for real-time online collaboration with class-mates. Students were asked to create a multiple author document on Fronter, where groups of students were able to simultaneously add to a document. This was then used as the basis for their homework. In doing so, they were collectively able to gather a lot of information which they could then use as they wished during their homework. This allowed the students to reach a greater depth of engagement with the topic than if they had had to do all the research on their own. Students were given some basic information about hurricane Katrina. They were shown a video and photos of the build up and the aftermath, as well as a short video explaining how hurricanes form. They were then put into mixed-ability groups and each student in the group was asked to research a different part of the hurricane such as good effects, bad effects, facts and figures. The idea was to provide them with a wealth of knowledge that could be used in a piece of extended writing they were to produce for their homework explaining the impacts of the disaster. The students were given a week to submit a draft of their homework online which was then marked and returned online using the comment facility on Fronter. A tablet computer was used to mark, so handwritten comments were saved onto the Word documents as well as comments from the Review function of Word (Appendix 4). Lesson 5 Feedback was provided to the students on their draft homework, and a reminder was given to those who had not submitted a draft. Again, using a VLE made the process easier as students were able to see at a glance if they had or had not submitted the work. The first part of the lesson involved watching video taking during the 2004 tsunami in south east Asia. As there were some images in the video which might have been upsetting to some students, they were warned before and told to close their eyes and listen to the music if they did not want to watch; all did. This gave them the opportunity to see what it was really like to be in the middle of a disaster, rather than just seeing some pictures of the aftermath. Using atlases, computers and an interactive map on the IWB, students completed a map of the countries

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affected by the tsunami in their books. They then went on to learn about how the tsunami happened by watching a videos, doing an online card sort and using the interactive map to discover more information. A time limit was given for students to do some or all of the tasks, with all of them being asked to write a short paragraph to explain how the tsunami was caused. Finally, students were asked to use Glogster to produce an online poster. Glogster is a site which allows users to make interactive online posters which can include text, graphics, images and video. Some of the students had used it in another subject at school which allowed them to progress further with their work as those who were new to the software took a little time to navigate through and learn how to use it. Lesson 6 At the end of the unit, students were asked to complete an assessment in order to gauge their progression and to provide an opportunity to provide teacher feedback and self-evaluation. From speaking to my form group, I knew that many of them enjoyed playing computer games in their free time, so I decided on a lesson based around a free game available on the web. Students were asked to complete a game on the Stop Disasters website. They had a limited amount of time and money to complete a number of tasks and to decide on the best way to protect a community from a natural disaster, in this case a tsunami, to tie in with what they had learnt from the previous lesson. Once students had completed the game, they were asked to reflect on their scores, think about what they did well and what they could do to improve. They were also given verbal tips and prompts in an attempt to make them think about particular issues. Armed with their thoughts and feedback, students repeated the task, but had the opportunity to attempt a larger scale map, increasing the difficulty, or another type of disaster, where they had to transfer skills and apply them in a different way. If students achieved all the objectives of the game they were awarded a medal and if their high score was in the top 100 it could be posted on a list of all players globally. This gave students a real sense of achievement and provided them with some healthy competition in the room to see who could get the highest score or the most medals. After Lessons At the end of each lesson, students were asked to reply in writing to three or four questions about the lesson, with a particular emphasis on the VLE and eLearning which had taken place. These answers formed the basis of a learning journal-type resource which was used as part of the evidence collected for the research. It gave me the opportunity to think about what the important parts of the lesson were from a VLE / e-learning point of view and gave the students the opportunity to reflect on their interaction with technology in the lesson. Table 4.3 Lesson Summaries

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Chapter 5 - Results and Analysis

In this chapter I will explore the data collected from the research before, during and after the scheme of work was delivered. In doing so, I will address the fourth and fifth Research Questions namely How has the students' understanding of Risk developed over the Scheme of Work? and To what extent did the use of the VLE provide challenge for and support the learning of gifted students? This will draw heavily on the interviews, elicitations and learning journals that were completed by the students and that have been outlined in Chapter 3.

How has the students' understanding of Risk developed over the Scheme of Work?

One of the main aims of any scheme of work is to enhance a students understanding of a topic and to challenge them to achieve as much as they can. In addition, they can also be taught new skills and techniques which they can then apply to situations in other areas of the subject or indeed other parts of their lives. The aim of this scheme of work was to increase their understanding of, and engagement with, the concept of risk.

Elicitations Students perceive risk in very different ways; what is risky for one might not be risky for another. They will have different values instilled upon them through their differing family lives and, particularly at the research school, they will have very different world-views because of the variety of cultures, religions and countries of birth that the students come from. In order to find a base line of understanding of the concept, students were asked to write everything they connected with the

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word risk on a piece of paper (Appendix 2). This was repeated at the end of the scheme of work to show their progression over the series of lessons.

Coding Eighteen pairs of elicitations were collected from a class of twenty two students, as not all students were present for the first and last lessons. Those elicitations that did not have a corresponding pair were discounted. Each paired elicitation was then coded with a series of five categories emerging from the results. The students answers were categorised into Places, Events, Concepts, People and Other. The other category contained any answers which could not fit reasonably into the previous four. Table 5.1 below shows the categories and some of the examples that were coded using the headings.

Place The Rec [a recreation ground close to the school] Acton East London Southall Broadway South London

Event Going through a red light Drug overdose Jumping off a bridge Tsunami Flood

Concept Danger Death Red

People Gangsters Gangs Drunk people Drug dealers Parents

Other Acid Knife Ice Bombs Scary

Table 5.1 Table showing coding categories

Analysing the group Once all the elicitations were coded, a graph was drawn, showing the frequency of the comments made by students in the first and second elicitations.

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Figure 5.1 Frequency of comments graph Pre-scheme of work elicitations The graph in Figure 5.1 shows that before the students participated in the scheme of work, their understanding of risk was much less focused that it was afterwards. More than half (58.2%) of their comments were classified as Other before the taught sequence of lessons because they did not fit into the main four categories. Comments that would have been in this category included Acid (Harjinder), Jumping off a bridge (Ibrahim) and its a risk going somewhere your parent forbid you to go because the*y+ always thinking the best for you *sic+ (Bilal). These are all risky things in certain contexts, but do not fall under Place, Event, Concept or People. They are also much more personal, often relating to things that the students have themselves seen, experienced or been told. For example, Harjinder had that week been learning about acids in Science and learnt about how dangerous it can be and how it should be handled with care in the lab.

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The second biggest category of risk before the scheme of work was places that students considered risky. Most mentions in the place category were specific places in the Southall area. One student

said that Toplocks, a local housing estate, was risky because people have been mugged around there a lot and that he had seen a gang fighting on my road with pieces of wood (Leonard). Many students also named East London as risky because everybody dies there (Sarah) and there had recently been a stabbing death (Indur) in the news. All of the places that they felt were risky were in their local area with none outside the M25, let alone in another country.

Figure 5.2 Distribution of named places graph The graph in Figure 5.2 shows how all mention of place in the pre-scheme of work elicitation refer to places in the students local area2. Other specific local places included a variety of roads, estates and parks which the students felt were not safe to be alone or at night.

I have included East London in this definition of local area because even though many of the students have not been there, it is still within the same metropolis and within the M25 boundary.

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In the first instance, students seemed to have a two-fold notion of risk. The first common strand of their responses was a more generalised idea of risk which included ideas such as gun and knife crime, bad habits like smoking and drinking, and people who were not known to the students. These are the portrayals of risk that are often found on TV show, in films and are more abstract that the other common strand. The second strand showed a more localised response, typified by responses which included East London, and Acton being described as risky places or places which came to mind when thinking about risk. It was not necessarily the case that students linked the risky activities to the places they mentioned.

The school is located in the west London borough of Ealing, in the community of Southall. From conversations with the students over the last year, I was amazed at how little they get out of their immediate surroundings, a fact which goes some way to explaining why they see other places as risky. It wasnt only places that they didnt go that were mentioned as risky; The Rec came up in several responses as a dangerous place where gangs congregate and drugs are sold. Of particular importance was that The Rec was most dangerous as night when these illicit activities were taking place. Whilst I have no evidence to show either way if these activities were taking place in the park or not, I would suggest that it is the implication that they are that makes the area seem risky. Likewise, it is the unknown aspect of East London and Acton that makes the students think of them as risky places.

Post-scheme of work elicitations Once they had completed the scheme of work, the elicitation was repeated and showed that students had developed in the complexity of their understanding of the concept of risk. Figure 5.1 shows there was less than half the number of comments classified as Other after the scheme of work (27.4%, down from 58.2%) which shows that they were thinking of risk more in terms of Places, Events, Concepts and People. Events showed the biggest increase, rising from just 2.4% of the Page | 52

comments in the first elicitation to 30.3% in the second. This is perhaps because students were not explicitly aware of different kinds of natural disasters before they studied the scheme of work. Many knew about volcanoes and earthquakes when questioned in class, but they learnt about new high-risk events such as tsunamis, hurricanes and floods in the scheme of work and were able to use their skills and knowledge to manage areas prone to risk from wild-fires, earthquakes and flooding in their assessment.

More comments were made about risk as a concept as well as about place. Figure 5.2 shows in detail how the students understanding of risky places changed. From having no mention of places outside of the M25 before, there were five mentions after, which included places like Mexico, the USA and Iran. There were also named places given by every student in the second elicitation, whereas two had not given a named place in the first elicitation.

I expected the number of mentions of place to be higher in the second elicitation as we had covered specific named examples of disasters such a flooding in Tewksbury, the tsunami in South East Asia and Hurricane Katrina in the United States. I was initially surprised to see the number of mentions of The Rec increase but I found that during the scheme of work it had been designated a Dispersal Zone by the Metropolitan Police (Randolph High School, 2010). This means that the police can ask people to leave the area. Notice of this was posted on the school website to inform students and parents. In giving this notification, the Police may have increased the perceived risk of the area.

These students understanding of risk has gone from a two-fold idea, dominated by local places and perceived risks to a more nuanced idea, aware of the different ways risk can manifest itself. They have shown a more precise understanding of risky places on a variety of scales from local to global in a number of places. There were more comments about risk in terms of place, events and concept, and fewer general comments in the Other category. Page | 53

Analysing individuals The work of four students, including gifted students Ibrahim and Sharonjeet3, has been coded and included below to exemplify the difference between the first and second elicitations. All of their comments were counted although, in order to draw attention to specific answers, not all have been highlighted on the elicitations. The highlighting colours refer to the category the comments were put in and this relates to the colours in the Table 5.1 (Place blue, Event green, Concept red, People purple, Other yellow).

Bilal

Figure 5.3 Bilal Elicitation 1

Names of all students have been changed for anonymity.

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In his first elicitation (Figure 5.3) Bilal had one named place (the park), one concept (danger) and nine comments considered other. Of his other comments, the ones highlighted in yellow show how they are very general and personal. nowadays you can get stabbed or shot and theres alot of street crime *sic+ both show that there he has an understanding of risk, but it is vague and without explanation. He goes on to say that its a risk going somewhere your parent forbid you to go because the*y+ always thinking the best for you *sic+ which is perhaps a as a result of something that happened to him or someone he knows. Again, it is quite vague.

Figure 5.4 Bilal Elicitation2 In the second elicitation (Figure 5.4), he still mentioned the park, but specifically Southall Park, showing more precise geographical knowledge. He identified red as being connected to risk, perhaps as the colour red is linked to danger. In the first elicitation there were no specific events or people. In the second, he mentioned tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods which were classified as events, highlighted in green, showing a more globalised conception of risk. There was Page | 55

also a cerial *serial+ killer, highlighted in purple which was put into the people category. As with the other section, Bilal still had some which were classified in this section, but they were less general and personal that in the first elicitation. He was also able to link them together showing the possible consequences of the actions: violence stabbing fights crime.

Mandeep

Figure 5.5 Mandeep Elicitation 1 Mandeeps first elicitation (Figure 5.5) follows the same pattern as Bilals. She does not list comments which could be put into the place or event categories. She elaborates on some of her comments in a way which is very personal to her; not listening to your parents is a risk because your mum tells you to comeback at 6, you come back at 8, you get hit. The majority of her comments (74% - 17/23) were in the other category.

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The second elicitation (Figure 5.8) shows that she has an understanding of events that are risky, which she demonstrated by including events such as wild fire, tsunami, earthquake and flood. Her proportion of other comments dropped from 74% to 35% (6/17). She included comments which were put into the people and place category. Whilst the boys wrote more the second time round, Mandeep wrote less. This, coupled with her lower number of other comments, suggests that her understanding has become more focused and has filtered things out which she might have considered risky beforehand and not put them onto the elicitation. This is a process which was echoed by Sharonjeet in her interview later on.

Figure 5.6 Mandeep Elicitation 2 Students were also more confident in answering the elicitation the second time round. In the first instance there was resistance from some who said that they did not know the answer and were reluctant to write anything down. This may have been partly because they were unused to the concept of an elicitation, and also that they are not often told in school that there is no right Page | 57

answer and that anything they thought might be relevant was relevant. At the final elicitation stage, students did not hesitate to write things down. Perhaps this was down to their confidence in their answers that what they were writing related to risk, as suggested by the reduction in comments categorised as other. Interestingly, Sharonjeet said she found the second elicitation

harder because after you study risks, you find out that some of them are not risks and you remove them from your list, suggesting that there was a lot of thought and analysis going into the production of the elicitations. As was mentioned earlier in Mandeeps elicitations, some students wrote less in the second elicitation, perhaps as their understanding of risk moved from an initially vague notion to a more focused and concrete concept.

Gifted students

Sharonjeet In her first attempt (Figure 5.7), Sharonjeet created an elicitation more akin to a concept map than a simple mind map. She created links between ideas on her paper, such as linking risk with falling and Mountains and then linking those two together. She also introduces a temporal element to her places, by qualifying that East London and Southall Broadway are risky at night.

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Figure 5.7 Sharonjeet Elicitation 1

In the second elicitation (Figure 5.8), Sharonjeet has written a lot less and, on the face of it, seems to have not done as well as in the first example. However, on closer inspection there are a couple of interesting responses. Firstly, she has picked up on the natural disasters that the scheme of work featured, although she did not specify examples. Secondly, she mentions Mexico as a risky place and adds that this is becuase of disease, a fact that was available to those students completing extension work in Lesson 3. Thirdly, she mentions Old Trafford and Emirates Stadium as risky places; as a Chelsea supporter, it is unsurprising that she may not like the home grounds of Manchester United and Arsenal.

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Figure 5.8 Sharonjeet Elicitation 2 One comment from students about the first elicitation was that they found it difficult as they were not sure what to do. Sharonjeet used higher order thinking skills to create links between ideas on her first elicitation. She has clearly done the work in class as she was able to give examples from the lessons. Her contribution to the forum as well as her Hurricane Katrina homework (Appendix 4) show that she is capable of working at the higher level expected of a gifted student. As was suggested, gifted students are easily bored if they are not being stimulated. Sharonjeet had already produced a detailed and well thought through elicitation so being asked to repeat the exercise was not providing her with a challenge, resulting in her loss of serious attention and the inclusion of football stadiums.

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Ibrahim

Figure 5.9 Ibrahim Elicitation 1 Ibrahim has also produced an elicitation that is more like a concept map than a mind map (Figure 5.9). He included information about local areas like Southall Park and East London were he explained the possible risks and he identified that going through red lights is a risky event that could lead to the driver being fined. Figure 5.10 shows that Ibrahim is following the trend of increasing his scale from a local focus in the first elicitation to a global focus in the second by including Mexico and the USA. However, it is worth noting that these are very big countries and, like the UK, there are large regional variations which are not shown in his work.

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Figure 5.10 Ibrahim Elicitation 2

Sharonjeet and Ibrahim both wrote less in the second elicitation than they did in the first, as is shown in the table below. Whilst this may have been due to the amount of time they had to complete the elicitations, I believe that Sharonjeets comments above about finding it harder to complete the second elicitation because she understood more about risk go some way to explain their fewer, less general comments. Indeed, Ibrahims other comments were down slightly from 38% (6/16) to 33% (4/12) and, more significantly, Sharonjeets down from 80% (16/20) to 29% (2/7) (Table 5.2).
Ibrahim Elicitation 1 3 4 0 3 6 16 Ibrahim Elicitation 2 4 4 0 0 4 12 Sharonjeet Elicitation 1 3 0 0 1 16 20 Sharonjeet Elicitation 2 4 1 0 0 2 7

Place Event Concept People Other Total

Table 5.2 Gifted students responses

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Do the elicitations support the supposition that students were learning? There was clear progression in the first two students understanding of risk from which can be inferred that learning is taking place, as the understanding has developed; they have learnt more about risk. This is not as evident in the gifted students results. I suggested that Ibrahim and Sharonjeet were simply bored at being asked to repeat the data collection task. By comparing some work done by Ibrahim and another student who is not a gifted geographer, I will demonstrate why I think that Ibrahim was just not trying as hard as he could in the second elicitation, as opposed to being unable to improve.

Figure 5.11 Ibrahims forum contribution Ibrahim has shown in his forum contribution (Figure 5.11) that he is capable of thinking on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. He mentions specific places and events, like a stabbing in east London. He is also aware that age can influence the level of risk and has found out specific facts to back up his argument. Lesson 2, which preceded this homework, got students thinking about the risk of flooding in Southall and other parts of the UK. Ibrahim has found specific information about flooding which may affect London in the future, which complements what he learnt in class. He has shown that he can link his conception of risk, shown in his first elicitation (Figure 5.9) and from his

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opening quote, we are all at risk of many things, robbery, getting mugged, knife & gun crime and gangs, with what his has found out in class about flooding.

Through e-learning, Ibrahim was able to direct his own learning to find out facts about knife crime and flood risk in London, something that he would have been unable to do with a textbook. It is also worthy of note that he completed his homework on the first Monday of the summer half term, showing that the VLE allows students to participate in learning outside the normal confines of the classroom.

Sandeeps response on the forum (Figure 5.12) shows that his focus is on the immediate local area and is based upon his personal perceptions. He gives a vague example of a risky event that happened outside one of the local Sikh temples, although I was unable to confirm the event. Reading through both forum posts, it is clear to see that the work the students produced supports the data analysis that puts Ibrahim in the gifted bracket and not Sandeep. The latters work is not bad, but it does not demonstrate the same depth of understanding, breadth of examples or amount of research.

Figure 5.12 Sandeeps forum contribution

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To what extent did the use of the VLE provide challenge for and support the learning of gifted students?

How was the VLE used during the scheme of work? The VLE is a tool which can be used in many different ways. In the next section I will briefly outline the ways in which it was used which can be divided into categories including acceleration, new software, student choice, collaboration, peer assessment and new technologies. To support this, I have included quotes from some students learning journals and paired interviews.

Acceleration One simple type of differentiation is acceleration where the more able students complete more work of increasing difficulty. Once they have finished one task, they can just move on to the next. The VLE can store these tasks and associated resources such that they are available as and when they are needed. One problem of this method is that able students are not immune from becoming bored and simply giving them similar, harder tasks is not going to keep their interest. This can then lead to poor behaviour, disruption in the lesson and a lowering of the achievements of all students in the room. Therefore, other methods must also be used to support them and sustain their interest and motivation and, as a result, their achievement.

New Software Throughout the scheme of work, students were introduced to several new software packages and related activities. They were shown Prezi and GoogleMaps, and used WallWisher and Glogster. They accessed functionalities on Fronter that had not previously been exploited in their Geography lessons such as the multiple author documents and the forums. They also used several web-based resources to find information from sites such as GeograpyTeachingToday.co.uk. Such variety meant

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that there was always something new and exciting happening in the class which meant that students interest was sustained.

I was surprised at how much influence something as basic as the presentation software I used could shape a classs attitude to their learning. Navdeep said that the Prezi was good to watch and better than PowerPoint *because+ its boring, a sentiment shared and developed by Sharonjeet who said that it catches your attention so is better to watch. The phrase Death by PowerPoint (Garber, 2001), was coined to describe the feeling of boredom which greets many a business person when they are faced with another same-old presentation, and it is not surprising the same is felt in schools when students see a PowerPoint in practically every lesson. The students thought that the new software was more interesting (Aaron). Eleanor said she thought the presentation was quite cool because it wasnt like the normal PowerPoint we use and it was more explanatory in a fun way cool being high praise indeed from a 12 year old pupil! The students enjoyed the change, saying that it was better than normal (Melissa) and that it was really good and I noticed that Mr Mutton didnt use PowerPoint which was very good (Indur). This breath of fresh air feeling was echoed throughout the scheme of work with the new programmes and software introduced. The challenge for me now it to try to keep up with demand for innovation from my class!

Student Choice As well as having new software and activities for students to use, I tried hard to make sure that there was the opportunity for students to choose what they wanted to do during parts of the lesson. This kind of differentiation, which Battersby calls differentiation by task and outcome (Figure 2.1), allows students to choose tasks based on what they think will suit them best. Whilst this is not fail safe, and students may initially be inclined to choose something easy rather than challenging, they can be taught how to select an appropriate task with preliminary teacher help. It encourages them to become independent learners by taking responsibility for their learning as well as reflective Page | 66

thinkers, where they can think about the way in which they learn. One way of providing this kind of student choice in a classroom without technology might be to have a selection of books or articles for students to read and to create different worksheets and associated tasks. This requires a lot of planning and preparation for the teacher beforehand and is expensive as more worksheets will have to be printed than are needed. Whilst effort will still be needed to create the resources in the first instance, using a VLE will enable all the resources to be stored online for students to access when they are ready to, both at home and at school, cutting down on the time and money spent producing physical copies.

Collaboration Using a computer can be a solitary experience but they also have phenomenal potential for collaboration. For example, Facebook.com has 400 million active users who share 5 billion pieces of content (like web links, photos and notes) each week. There are 70 translations of the site available because 300,000 users have helped to translate it (Website Monitoring, 2010). This would not be possible without collaboration. Some of the articles included in the literature review had some sort of collaborative work involved; Roulston and Clarke (2003) wrote of two schools in Northern Ireland working together through a VLE, and Morgans (2007) study involved gifted students getting together to enhance their learning. The VLE was used collaboratively for two projects; firstly as a medium for students to collaborate by creating multiple author documents, where groups of students could work on separate computers and contribute to a document that all had access to and, secondly, when students were asked to read and contribute to a forum discussion.

Peer Assessment Mandeep said that her favourite part of the lesson in which the students used the multiple author documents was the group part, it was fun because we got to search together and discuss it. Rajinder found it very helpful and useful because I could see and help other peoples work while Page | 67

doing mine at the same time. Sharonjeet was in favour of the forum homework, where students were asked to write an opinion and then reply to someone elses work. She liked it because it gives you a chance to discuss stuff with your class. Ibrahim developed this idea when he said it is good because you can challenge other peoples opinions. These two gifted students found that the VLE was providing them another outlet to think about ideas and use higher order thinking skills to evaluate peoples opinions and justify their own; it was enabling them to work in their zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978).

The statistics from the homework forum show that in three weeks there were twenty one individuals who visited the forum a total of 121 times to make forty two contributions. On average, each student looked at the forum nearly six times and posted twice. This shows sustained

interaction with the task; if each student posted twice, they visited four times without posting. Whilst I cannot say what they were doing when on the forum or for how long they were there, it is likely that they were reading other peoples posts and comments on their own work. When students do a normal homework, they complete it and close their books without the opportunity or motivation to return to it and engage further with it.

New Technologies One way of maintaining interest of those students who might become disenfranchised is to do things that they enjoy. Students told me that they enjoy using computers and playing computer games which is why a computer game based assessment was chosen for their assessment. Young people today are generally good at using computers. The students who were interviewed said that they used computers and the internet outside of school on a very regular basis for communicating with friends and for entertainment. In the interview, Sharonjeet said she used the internet for about an hour a day at home for social networking. Ibrahim used his computer at home for games and social networking, and thats it. Page | 68

Did the VLE support the gifted students? One way of providing support for these two students would be to send them to a local authority run centre like Morgan (2007) studied in her article. This would certainly provide support for the gifted students, but with a staffing ratio of almost 5:1, it would no doubt prove to be too expensive to operate on a large scale, particularly in the current financial climate. Therefore, we cannot hope to provide such a level of personal face to face interaction with gifted students and must strive to find alternative options. This is where the virtual learning environment comes into its own. It allows students to be catered for simultaneously at different levels.

This project has been firmly based on a constructionist foundation, where students build upon what they already know in order to progress. To do this, the aim of the teacher is to pitch the lesson just beyond what the student is capable of achieving on their own so that, with the help of teachers, other students or the VLE, the student will be able to achieve more. This is the basis of Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development theory (1978). This is relatively straight forward to do in a set class where the teacher aims to provide progression for the average student. Where it becomes more difficult is when a teacher is trying to cater for all students in the class on an individual basis, which is arguably what teachers should be doing all the time. In circumstances such as these, I have found the VLE to be extremely useful. Throughout the project students were challenged according to their ability. As has been shown, they have all enhanced their understanding of the concept of risk and have been able complete the tasks given to them.

More importantly, all students interviewed said that they felt the lessons were pitched at a level that was not too easy and not too hard, meaning that they were constantly challenged and were not bored. Ibrahim and Sharonjeet both felt the level of challenge of the work was just about right and said that they were not bored whilst in their Geography lessons as a result of the work being too easy. Harjinder also felt that he was challenged appropriately whilst Navdeep felt it was quite hard; Page | 69

There were some lessons that I felt I couldnt do properly but then it was alright at the end when I got some help I could do it. Aaron wasnt bored and felt the difficulty level as alright not too hard, not too easy, and you have to think about the answers as well. One reason he felt that he wasnt bored was that there was always something available for him to do on the VLE. Mandeep found the lessons challenging in a fun way and said that the reason she was never bored was because we had the laptops, and I could search another fact, or move onto another task.

It is possible that students were giving what they felt was the right answer as opposed to what they actually felt when asked about the level of difficulty. However, as they were all on-task and engaged for the majority of the tasks, I am inclined to believe their assessment of the level of difficulty. From evidence of the students work, some of which has been included and much more that has not due to lack of space, it is clear that the students have been achieving at an appropriate level for their ability. Figures 5.13 and 5.14 serve to illustrate the difference in level between a gifted geographer and another member of the class whilst Appendix 4 shows the high quality of work delivered by a gifted student.

The success of the VLE is that it can cater for all ability ranges simultaneously in a number of ways, by using new software and technologies, by involving students in collaborative tasks and peer assessment as well as giving them a choice of their task. This means that there is more teacher-time available in the classroom to speak to students and support them further on an even more in-depth and personal level. There is no point providing support for the gifted students if the teacher then has to spend their time with the rest of the class; with the VLE this does not happen.

Were there any issues? One of the major issues in using a VLE, or indeed any kind of e-learning, in the classroom is the risk that something may not work properly. Whilst these incidents are becoming less frequent in my Page | 70

classroom due increased experience, they do still happen; table 4.3 describes how Lesson 1 did not go as planned because students could not access a webpage due to filtering restrictions.

Contingencies As we were unable to complete the task on computers, we had to make a communal map on the IWB with students writing their answers in their books. This lead to an interesting response from the students in the lesson: Many wrote in their learning journals about being disappointed (Leonard) and Navdeep said I felt really disappointed because I was looking forward to it *using the laptops+. However, this disappointment quickly turned to anger; I felt a bit angry when the computers didnt work (Aaron) and Harjinder said that when the computers didnt work I was very angry and bored because we didnt go on the laptops. Disappointment and anger lead to Gurvinder feeling a bit let down because I knew that the computers were going to be fun and Melissa and Sharonjeet were concerned that the rest of the lesson was going to be boring. As I have suggested, boredom and lack of challenge is one of the problems in supporting students, and in particular gifted ones.

Plagiarism One issue that did arise was that of plagiarism. A student submitted work that was not his; he had found it on the VLE as another student had not submitted it into the correct, secure folder. It was noticeable when I was marking the drafts that they were similar and, on further inspection, I found them to be identical. Using a search engine, I ascertained that they had not come from the internet, implying that one had copied from another. Using the records from the VLE, I was able to show the student that I knew that it was copied from a classmate and, in light of the evidence before him he dropped his denial and admitted that he had copied it. The VLE did make it easier for him to copy, but it also made it much easier for me to get to the bottom of the situation.

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Access The VLE can only support students if it is working properly. Unfortunately, some students seemed fed up with the unreliability of the system. Sarah was not surprised that we were unable to complete Lesson 1 as planned as the laptops normally dont work properly. Eleanor said she felt annoyed when the computers didnt work (again) because it always happens and Sandeep was kind of disappointed but not surprised. Difficulties with hardware and software can make

students less inclined to use the technology. This sort of problem is less common at home where it is unlikely that filtering systems are as stringent as they are in school. Only one student reported that he was unable to access Fronter from home, but the reason for this is unknown. In order for the VLE to be effective in supporting (gifted) students, it needs to be reliable both at home and at school for students to feel positively towards it and be willing to use it. It also needs to be supported with free-to-use software for maximum accessibility. Some students were unable to open

documents put onto the VLE because their home computer did not support the software. An example of where this was improved during the research period was the switch from PowerPoint to Prezi as the medium for delivering lessons. As well as the positive comments previously mentioned, one student noted that you can access it at home (Navdeep) because it runs on Web 2.0 technology, meaning that there is no software on the physical machine; it is hosted online. Therefore, it does not matter what software package a computer comes with, or even whether it is a Mac or PC, as long as it has internet access the students will be able to access the content to support their learning.

In this case study, it has been show that students have made progress in their understanding about the concept of risk, as demonstrated through their class work, homework and the elicitations. They have done so whilst completing a scheme of work heavily dependent on e-learning and a VLE. The specific aim of this project was to ascertain if the VLE can be used to support gifted students in their learning. As has been suggested, in order to give the teacher time to support gifted students, they Page | 72

also need to be able to effectively differentiate for other ability groups. The VLE has been used to differentiate the class work and homework for one class of students in one of the higher ability sets in the school. The scheme of work and the way in which it was delivered was well-received by the students which helped maintain their interest, their willingness to try new things and meant that behaviour management was not an issue. The students were able to work at a level appropriate to their ability where they were faced with opportunities for challenge and success. All students interviewed said they enjoyed the lessons and, although challenging, were not too difficult or boring. This shows that, for the students in the study class, effective differentiation was in place across the ability range, from the bottom to the gifted end of the spectrum and that the VLE was providing challenge and support.

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Chapter 6 - Discussion and Conclusions

In this chapter I will seek to explore some of the findings that emerged from the data collected during the research project linking the argument to findings and literature where appropriate. In doing so, I aim to show how the research has met its aims and what implications this provides.

How has students learning been supported? One of the primary aims of any scheme of work is to help students to learn, no matter what the subject matter is. This project focussed on supporting students to learn about risk, as shown by research question 4: How has the students' understanding of Risk developed over the Scheme of Work? . The evidence analysed in Chapter 5 highlights that the students initially focused on a very personal experience of risk, manifested spatially and temporally. They gave lots of evidence about the local area and about events that happen, could happen or have happened in an immediate timescale. As they progressed through the scheme of work, they widened their spatial outlook to include other parts of the UK and other countries. There was more evidence that the gifted students widened their spatial and temporal outlook, suggesting a higher level of thinking skills although there were some examples of other students doing this to a lesser extent

How was the VLE developed over the scheme of work? Throughout this project, the VLE has referred to Fronter, Randolph Highs VLE. As with any kind of software, there have been developments and updates. I have also become a more proficient user of Fronter, allowing me to use features and functionalities that I did not know were available to me previously. For example, in Lesson 4 (Appendices 1 and 4) I was able to mark the students drafts on screen using a table computer, so my handwriting appeared on the screen, which was then saved for the students to access later. I was also able to access statistics showing me how many students had Page | 74

completed their homework, accessed a document or participated in the forum. This has huge implications for my teaching practice as it makes it easier for me to keep track of their work and means that I can mark and manage their work remotely so I no longer have to carry their books home to mark!

Research question 5 asks To what extent did the use of the VLE provide challenge for and support the learning of gifted students? and I would argue that this project has provided huge benefits for the students. In the literature review in Chapter 2, it was noted that students did not like the VLE to replace face to face teaching, but did like it as a way to consolidate what they had learned in class. Of course, I am not suggesting that we do away with all classes and students learn from home all the time because there are issues, although there has been a successful small-scale trial at Gable Hall School where Monday and Tuesday morning lessons were replaced by Sunday night online sessions (Fronter, 2010b). One of the problems of accessing the work away from class was the possible incompatibility of software at home and school. The use of Prezi instead of PowerPoint resolved this problem. By embedding the presentations into the page on the VLE, students like Navdeep were able to access it at home without the need for specialist software because it was all hosted online. Again this also had benefits for me: Previously I would have used PowerPoint to present lessons in class and then upload them to Fronter. If I were to change something I would have to amend the presentation, remove the old one from the VLE and upload the corrected version; with Prezi it automatically updates when edited because it is embedded rather than saved to the VLE. Having the Prezi embedded also meant students could review videos and look at pictures and text on the screen in front of them rather than on the IWB which meant people could work at their own pace, flick back to review or even just see more clearly if their eyesight was not perfect.

Doing a lot of work on the VLE has also enhanced the quality and quantity of work produced by students. For the homework that was marked on screen, I received drafts of more than a page Page | 75

whereas I do not think the students would have written so much by hand. They also contributed to the forum which allowed for continued asynchronous discussion, something that they are used to doing on MSN and social networking sites but not necessarily in the classroom. Both of these home works required students to return to their work, assess feedback and incorporate it into their work, increasing the quality.

The VLE was used to differentiate in a number of ways, centred around the table based on Battersbys work in Chapter 2. It was used to accelerate the gifted students in the class, provide them with more choice of tasks and resources to use as well as afford them the opportunity to engage in self-evaluation and critical feedback more so that they would have done in their books. As suggested earlier, they were able to write more using a computer than they would have done in their books in the same amount of time.

One of the main benefits I found was that it was possible to provide extra work, harder work and more challenging work for gifted students without singling them out as different from the rest of the class. Being singled out is something that may be difficult for students, although Morgan (2007) found that there was little evidence of this from her study of children being withdrawn for dedicated Gifted and Talented coaching. I think that this is important because students on a gifted and talented register should not necessarily remain on it until they leave school. In Chapter 2, I pointed out that Callahan (2005) and Reis and Renzulli (2009) were keen to stress that there was fluidity in the spectrum of giftedness and that once a child is on the gifted register does not mean that they cannot be removed from it. It could therefore be very difficult to have been providing explicitly gifted work to a student one term and then exclude them from this provision the next because they have not done as well in their assessment. It also raises the issue of how often the register is updated and what data is used to inform that decision. The VLE allows for flexibility in the provision

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without necessarily drawing attention to it. It allows a teacher to easily give extra work to a student who is doing well or to let a gifted student work at a lower level if it is appropriate in that case.

I also found that the VLE was able to differentiate for other students who were not necessarily talented in the whole school context. As was explained in Chapter 3, the year group was set according to ability, with the research class being the second highest ability group, 7x2. All the lessons for the scheme of work were hosted on the VLE and the lessons were constantly evaluated and adapted as a result of issues that arose during teaching. In some cases where a student in a lower ability class had finished all their work of needed more challenging work, it was very simple to direct them to another part of the VLE where they could access the work for 7x2. This cut down on the need for having a pile of resources in the classroom just in case and meant that students were catered for more personally. They were also free to explore the VLE in their own time so those with an interest could continue working. It was also a great way to show exemplars from Glogster and demonstrate the forum home work to a class who had not seen it before.

The now defunct BECTAs (2002) supposition that students may develop their ICT skills quicker than their teachers might expect proved to be very dependent on the individual student. There were some who picked up new software and skills very quickly whilst others found it harder. This time needed for developing skills in new software was built into the lesson to a certain extent but I found that students pick-up time varied greatly. I think that it is important to recognise that students will need a bit of time to familiarise themselves with new software and processes on the VLE but how much time exactly is impossible to say from the research conducted here. An advantage of delivering a scheme of work through a VLE rather than using some elements of e-learning here and there is that those students who pick up software, like Glogster, can move on once they have finished their task, and those who have not finished are either able to log on at home, or anywhere

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with an internet connection, and continue (no need for them to remember their books) or review the lesson to consolidate their knowledge.

Implications for my practise As a keen user of ICT, I have enjoyed using the VLE as the centre-point of this project. I was pleased that the students found it enjoyable as well and that they felt there was the right mix of e-learning and traditional pen and paper work. I am always looking for new ways to enhance the classroom experience of my students and to make my organisation more efficient. I will continue to use the VLE as a way to collect, mark and feedback online home works and I will certainly used the forum feature of Fronter to encourage students to debate and argue their points of view. I will also be sitting on an e-learning panel at school which aims to find and trial new software and disseminate this knowledge across the staff and student body. As part of this I will be delivering an INSET training session on Prezi in the new academic year.

It is also my intention to purchase an iPhone when my current mobile contract come up for renewal. Whilst this is by no means necessary, I think that it will provide an extra dimension to the classroom experience. It will allow me to control the IWB from where ever I am to the classroom and will give the opportunity to search for information immediately. I think that it is only a matter of time before students are asked to bring their own mobile devices to school.

As for the wider implications of this research, there has not been a case study of using a VLE to differentiate for Gifted students in geography so it provides a new perspective of using a VLE in Geography to sit alongside the likes of Roulston and Clarke (2003). Whilst it does not necessarily conclude that there was specific benefit for gifted students in the class, there was progression from all students and there was a feeling of excitement and enjoyment in the class.

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I began this project with a little vignette about my personal experience of using a VLE to complete a Masters in Education of which this thesis is the final part. VLEs are not just for students in schools. Colleagues of mine who are undertaking the Masters in Teaching and Learning with the Institute of Education at the University of London, funded by the government, are communicating with coursemates all across London using Fronter. Schools should not overlook the possibilities that VLEs provide the staff as well as the students.

Finally, I want to finish with a thought about the current political situation we find ourselves in. My school has just lost a 15 million Building Schools for the Future grant when the Conservative Liberal coalition came into power (Building.co.uk, 2010). Michael Gove has also announced that the ICT budget for schools that was slashed by 50 million is going to be cut by a further 50 million (Maddern, 2010). There are many uses for a VLE, only a small section of which have been shown in this project: In light of funding cuts and smaller ICT budgets, we are going to have to make sure that the VLEs are used as much and as efficiently as possible, otherwise they could be in line for the virtual chop in the future.

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Appendices
Appendix 1 Scheme of Work overview..............................................................................................88 Appendix 2 Blank Elicitation sheet.....................................................................................................94 Appendix 3 Consent letter.................................................................................................................95 Appendix 4 Sharonjeetss Hurricane Katrina homework...................................................................96

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Appendix 1 Risky Worlds Scheme of Work

Year 7 Unit 5 Risky Worlds

Key Questions and ideas Objectives of lesson
All students will be able to identify risky places All students will be able to map places online using GoogleMaps Most students will be able to explain why some places are risky

Key concepts

Range and content

a variety of scales, from personal, local, regional, national, key aspects of the UK, including its changing human and physical Geography human geography, built and managed environments and human processes

Key processes

Assessment Opportunities
Google Map need to log on to account to access it. Paragraph about places of risk

PLTS

Resources

Home work

Is our local area a risky place?

Place geographical imaginations, physical and human characteristics of real places. Space spatial patterns and distributionsd Scale making links between scales to develop understanding of possible links between scales

Geographical Enquiry ask geographical questions, thinking critically, constructively and creatively b collect, record and display information Graphicacy and visual literacy Use a variety of maps and geographical data including published statistics

Effective participants Young people actively engage with issues that affect them and those around them. They play a full part in the life of their school, college, workplace or wider community by taking responsible action to bring improvements for others as well as themselves.

Lesson 1

Laptops Gmail log-in details

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Key Questions and ideas

Objectives of lesson
All students will develop their questioning skills All students will select and manage their own workload Most students will be able to justify answers to their questions.

Key concepts

Range and content

range of investigations, focusing on places, themes or issues key aspects of the UK, including its changing human and physical interactions between people and their environments, including causes and consequences of these interactions, and how to plan for and manage their future impact.

Key processes

Assessment Opportunities
Fronter Forum homework. Answering questions.

PLTS

Resources

Home work

Lesson 2 How risky is it to live in the UK?

Physical and human processes Environmental interaction and sustainable development the physical and human dimensions of the environment are interrelated and together influence environmental change. Interdependence Exploring environmental connections between places.

Geographical enquiry - plan geographical enquiries, suggesting appropriate sequences of investigation

Independent enquirers Young people process and evaluate information in their investigations, planning what to do and how to go about it. They take informed and well-reasoned decisions, recognising that others have different beliefs and attitudes.

Laptops

Fronter Forum. All students need to log onto Fronter and post an answer (50/100 words depending on ability) to answer the question How risky is it to live in the UK?. They also need to respond to a point made by another student. Extra credit can be gained by replying to more posts.

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Key Questions and ideas

Objectives of lesson

Key concepts

Range and content

Key processes

Assessment Opportunities

PLTS

Resources

Home work

Are some places riskier than others?

Lesson 3

All students will be able to define key terms All students will be able to make and justify decisions Most students will be able to identify (and some students explain) patters of risk.

Scale making links between scales to develop understanding of possible links between scales Space spatial patterns and distributions Environmental interaction and sustainable development - a Understanding that the physical and human dimensions of the environment are interrelated Physical and human processes These processes cause change and development in places and can be used to explain patterns and distributions.

a variety of scales, from personal, local, regional, national, international and continental, to global interactions between people and their environments, including causes and consequences of these interactions, and how to plan for and manage future impact. the location of places and environments

Geographical enquiry ask geographical questions, thinking critically, constructively and creatively

Explanation of risk patterns

Self managers Young people organise themselves, showing personal responsibility, initiative, creativity and enterprise with a commitment to learning and self-improvement. They actively embrace change, responding positively to new priorities, coping with challenges and looking for opportunities.

Laptops

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Key Questions and ideas

Objectives of lesson

Key concepts

Range and content

Key processes

Assessment Opportunities

PLTS

Resources

Home work

Lesson 4 To what extent are some hazard risks made greater by humans?

All students will be able to work effectively in a team All students will be able to use the internet to research in a logical way. Most students will be able to synthesise information to form a coherent summary of events

Interdependence Pupils should understand how human action in one place has consequences somewhere else,

a range of investigations, focusing on places, themes or issues interactions between people and their environments

Geographical enquiry - ask geographical questions, thinking critically, constructively and creatively identify bias, opinion and abuse of evidence in sources when investigating issues analyse and evaluate evidence, presenting findings to draw and justify conclusions

Group work creating a Fronter Multi Author Document giving an argument to answer

Cultural understanding & diversity Appreciating how peoples values and attitudes differ and may influence social, environmental, economic and political issues, and developing their own values and attitudes about such issues. Human & physical processes

Team workers Young people work confidently with others, adapting to different contexts and taking responsibility for their own part. They listen to and take account of different views. They form collaborative relationships, resolving issues to reach agreed outcomes.

Laptops

From the Fronter Multi Author Document the groups created, students should word process a response to the question To what extent are some hazard risks made greater by humans? It should contain a short paragraph on each hat section. It should be submitted on Fronter where it will be marked and returned for redrafting, to be submitted before the last lesson.

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Key Questions and ideas

Objectives of lesson

Key concepts

Range and content

Key processes

Assessment Opportunities

PLTS

Resources

Home work

Lesson 5 Can all hazard risk be managed? A cast study of the Asian Tsunami 2004

All students will develop an understanding about the 2004 tsunami All students will be able to evaluate information and order it into a timeline Most students will be able to display relevant information to explain why the tsunami caused so much damage.

Space - Knowing where places and landscapes are located Scale - from personal and local to national, and global. Making links between scales to develop geographical ideas. Physical and human processes Understanding how sequences of events and activities in the physical and human worlds lead to change Environmental interaction and sustainable development Understanding that the physical and human dimensions of the environment are interrelated

variety of scales, from personal, local, regional, national, international and continental, to global physical geography, physical processes interactions between people and their environments, a range of investigations, focusing on places, themes or issues Making links between people and their environments at different scales helps pupils understand interdependenc e

Geographical enquiry identify bias, opinion and abuse of evidence in sources investigating issues Graphicacy and visual literacy use atlases, globes, maps at a range of scales, photographs, satellite images and other geographical data

Glogster poster

Creative thinkers Young people think creatively by generating and exploring ideas and making original connections. They try different ways to tackle a problem, working with others to find imaginative solutions and outcomes that are of value.

Laptops

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Key Questions and ideas

Objectives of lesson

Key concepts

Range and content

Key processes

Assessment Opportunities

PLTS

Resources

Home work

How would you manage a major disaster?

All students will participate in a Decision Making Exercise responding to a flood situation. All students will be able to reflect on their decisions Most students will be able to incorporate their own feedback into their work.

Lesson 6

Space - Knowing where places are located why and the implications for people. Cultural understanding & diversity Appreciating how peoples values and attitudes differ and may influence environmental and political issues. Physical and human processes Understanding how sequences of events and activities in the physical and human worlds lead to change in places, landscapes and societies. Environmental interaction and sustainable development

interactions between people and their environments, including causes and consequences of these interactions, and how to plan for and manage their future impact. different parts of the world in their wider settings and contexts and regions or countries in different states of development

Geographical enquiry - solve problems and make decisions to develop analytical skills and creative thinking about geographical issues analyse and evaluate evidence, presenting findings to draw and justify conclusions

Simulation score. Personal feedback on what could be done better and repeated simulation score.

Reflective learners Young people evaluate their strengths and limitations, setting themselves realistic goals with criteria for success. They monitor their own performance and progress, inviting feedback from others and making changes to further their learning.

Laptops End of unit

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Appendix 2 Risk Elicitation sheet

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Appendix 3 Consent Letter

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Appendix 4 An example of Sharonjeets homework (draft and final versions)

To what extent are some hazard risks made greater by humans? Hurricane Katrina was the costliest of natural disasters as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of Unites States. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods. The total property damage was estimated at $81 billion. The hurricane formed over the Bahamas on August 23rd 2005. It ended on August 30th 2005 causing catastrophic damage. The areas affected by the hurricane were: The Bahamas, South Florida, Cuba Louisiana (especially Greater New Orleans), Mississippi Alabama, Florida Panhandle and most of Eastern North America. The positive effects that happened after the Hurricane Katrina were that; There was production of regeneration funds which meant that the areas affected could be given a modern generation. The area became more popular and there was international awareness of the areas affected which meant that tourists were coming to see the place and that meant that there was cover up of the amount of money that was lost because of the hurricane. There were a lot of negative effects because as you know after every natural disaster there is a downfall: Millions were dead after the Katrina including lots of nature wildlife and animals Loss of local economy Destruction of the beaches and coastline There was pollution and health risks from all the flooded areas There were destruction of historic landmarks and famous buildings Many people were left homeless Most of the food supply, oil and other things that you can make money from and run the country were washed away. More than 1800 lost there jobs social security. Many also lost other stuff : e.g. family members relatives and precious stuff The future of New Orleans is very bad. Scientists predict that the sea levels around New Orleans will rise and rise, that a disaster like Hurricane Katrina is inevitable. In some places, New Orleans is 17 feet below sea level. A scientist, Dr Chip Groat, Director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said "With the projected rate of subsidence (the natural sinking of land), wetland loss, and sea level rise, New Orleans will likely be on the verge of extinction by this time next century."

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To what extent are some hazard risks made greater by humans?

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest of natural disasters as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of Unites States. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods. The total property damage was estimated at $81 billion. The hurricane formed over the Bahamas on August 23rd 2005. It ended on August 30th 2005 causing catastrophic damage. The areas affected by the hurricane were: The Bahamas, South Florida, Cuba Louisiana (especially Greater New Orleans), Mississippi Alabama, Florida Panhandle and most of Eastern North America. The positive effects that happened after the Hurricane Katrina were that; There was production of regeneration funds which meant that the areas affected could be given a modern generation. The area became more popular and there was international awareness of the areas affected which meant that tourists were coming to see the place and that meant that there was cover up of the amount of money that was lost because of the hurricane. There were a lot of negative effects because as you know after every natural disaster there is a downfall: Millions were dead after the Katrina including lots of nature wildlife and animals. There was Loss of local economy and the destruction of the beaches and coastline. There was pollution and health risks from all the flooded areas. There was also the destruction of historic landmarks and famous buildings. Many people were left homeless. Most of the food supply, oil and other things that you can make money from and run the country were washed away. More than 1800 lost there jobs and social security. Many also lost other stuff: e.g. family members relatives and precious things. The future of New Orleans is very bad. Scientists predict that the sea levels around New Orleans will rise and rise, that a disaster like Hurricane Katrina is inevitable. In some places, New Orleans is 17 feet below sea level. A scientist, Dr Chip Groat, Director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said "With the projected rate of subsidence (the natural sinking of land), wetland loss, and sea level rise, New Orleans will likely be on the verge of extinction by this time next century." In my opinion, the government should take actions so that if the hurricane ever does happen again, there souldnt be as much devastation as there was. Such as: create stronger buildings, houses etc and create a/ safety place(s) to go if there is ever one and so on.

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