A study of pupil participation in learning : factors which promote or undermine inclusion

This small-scale piece of practitioner research centres on the participation and learning experience of one group of year 7/8 pupils. My aim was to increase pupil participation in learning. I considered the pupil experience of inclusion and factors which promoted or undermined participation in learning. The investigation is in two phases. The first stage is a case study in which I investigate the school's organisational culture and how the features of school impinge on pupils' participation and inclusion. The second phase is classroom-based research, which is divided into four action cycles, each progressively focusing on an improvement in pupil participation in learning,which emerged from the previous cycle.Findings showed that the biggest barriers to pupils' learning were the school's organisational culture (which led to pupils' low self-esteem), over reliance on teacher support and lack of autonomy. Pupils' participation improved, together with their self-esteem by being given a choice and a voice, by being supported in identifying their learning styles and by teachers having high expectations of them in completing tasks which made sense and had purpose