Kate Wall

• BSc, PGCE, PhD
• Professor at University of Strathclyde

This article presents the results of a systematic review of methods that have been used to measure or assess metacognition in children aged 4–16 years over a 20‐year period (1992–2012). It includes an overview of the types of tool and methods used linked with the ages of the participants targeted and how metacognition and associated concepts are de...

This chapter seeks to problematise some of our assumptions about visual methods and their role in relation to participatory design and ethics in educational research. We make use of abductive reasoning (Peirce 1878, 1903) to explore the ways in which other researchers, but most specifically the ways we, have attributed causality and connection in t...

In research textbooks, and much of the research practice, they describe, qualitative processes and interpretivist epistemologies tend to dominate visual methodology. This article challenges the assumptions behind this dominance. Using exemplification from three existing visual data sets produced through one large education research project, this ar...

The Campaign for Learning’s Learning to Learn Phase 4 was a research project in which teachers undertook practitioner enquiry to explore innovative pedago- gies under the umbrella term of learning to learn. In 2008, to gain greater under- standing of what this process meant to the participating teachers the research team at Newcastle University und...

Mind the Gap is a family learning project aiming to facilitate intergenerational engagement with learning in schools through the vehicle of a stop-motion animation project.1 Implicit in the animation process is reflective and strategic thinking that helps to make the process of learning explicit (Learning to Learn: Wall et al.). The animation proje...

Introduction This chapter focuses on the application of word clouds as a method of creative data analysis. Word clouds are a method of visualising textual data, where the frequency of words in the analysed text is related to their size within the visualisation or word cloud (McNaught and Lam, 2010). It is important to note that this is a collaborat...

To foster children and young people’s skills, dispositions and understanding that underpin a voice agenda, practices need to be developed that support this from the earliest age. This article explores issues relating to this complex, challenging and under-researched area from the perspective of practitioners working with children aged from birth to...

This entry uses eight inter-related factors of voice for children from birth to 7 years (definition, power, inclusion, listening, time and space, approaches, processes and purposes) as a scaffold for thinking about practitioner voice. It argues that for children to have a voice, adults around them also need to have one, and without parallel conside...

In an era when children’s rights are paramount, there are still few practical examples to guide us when seeking informed consent from children. This article therefore makes a significant contribution to the field by examining three practical approaches to negotiating informed consent with young children under 6 years old. We draw on researcher fiel...

Grounded in children’s rights, this article advances understanding of the affordances and constraints in implementing Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in educational settings with young children – those under 7. It starts from the premise that if we are to foster democratic skills and understanding in children...

To foster in children and young people the skills, dispositions and understanding that underpin a voice agenda, practices need to be developed that support this from the earliest age. This paper explores issues relating to this complex, challenging and under-researched area from the perspective of practitioners working with children aged from birth...

Practitioners are experts in their field and this book introduces research methods that help to make that expertise explicit. There is worldwide recognition of the importance of high quality, reflective practice that both engages with existing research evidence and engages in the production of new evidence. Research Methods for Understanding Prof...

This paper will question the notion of research, evidence and tools within a practitioner enquiry orientated practice. Basing the discussion within the current education research and policy context in the UK and the wider Global Education Reform Movement, I will ask questions about how a practitioner enquiry frame as located within Scottish educati...

Young children are often ignored or marginalised in the drive to address children’s participation and their wider set of rights. This is the case generally in social research, as well as within the field of Arts-Based Education Research. This paper contributes to the growing literature on young children’s involvement in arts-based research, by prov...

This talk starts by thinking about the theory and practice of metacognitive dialogue, what are the roles and dispositions taken by both students and teachers. We will then explore a range of tools that can be used in the classroom to support this type of innovative dialogue asking questions about how they facilitate and change the relationships bet...

If we are to foster children and young people's democratic skills and understanding, we need to develop practices that support this from the earliest age. This paper considers the factors applicable to working democratically with very young children-those under seven-in facilitating their voices. Grounded in the work around children's rights, these...

This keynote will question the notion of evidence and tools for enquiry into what works in teaching and learning. Within a practitioner enquiry frame I will ask questions about how we might judge the quality of tools we use, and how methodological and pedagogical thinking might provide helpful insight. Examples of visual research tools for working...

A merging of 3 papers sharing outcomes from the Look Who’s Talking International Seminar Series (Strathclyde 2017) and including the first tentative sharing of our principles for voice with young children.

Practitioner enquiry has been demonstrated as a positive framework for teacher learning. The process of engaging in and with research enhances teachers’ perspectives of their practice, but what is the relationship with student learning? This paper will explore how cycles of practitioner enquiry focused explicitly on developing students’ metacogniti...

Understanding and working with ethical issues when including young children in educational research is critical to ensuring their involvement is meaningful. Increasingly, different methodological approaches have been used to address some of these issues, and the use of visual methods is showing particular potential for its age appropriateness. This...

This session will focus on the feedback loop, the communication of progression and objectives from teacher to students, and importantly, the communication by students of their self-assessment and metacognitive processes towards achieving those ends back to the teacher. I will ask, how we as teachers, can support students’ voice in such a way as to...

Understanding and working with ethical issues when including young children in educational research is critical to ensuring their involvement is meaningful. Increasingly, different methodological approaches have been used to address some of these issues, and the use of visual methods is showing particular potential for its age appropriateness. This...

This chapter will dis l three underlying principles of teacher prac oner research: autonomy; disturbance; and dialogue. These principles have emerged from a range of projects we have undertaken in partnership with teachers at all levels of educa on. This dis lla on is not so much about the details of the ‘how’ of teachers’ research into learning an...

Mind the Gap is a family learning project aiming to facilitate intergenerational engagement with learning in schools through the vehicle of a stop-motion animation project. 1 Implicit in the animation process is reflective and strategic thinking that helps to make the process of learning explicit (Learning to Learn: Wall et al.). The animation proj...

In this Seminar I will draw on data collected during a longitudinal collaborative project with teachers in England from schools and further education colleges to explore the practices associated with developing metacognitive awareness. It is an attempt to make clear the theoretical underpinnings of our belief that the project teachers were enacting...

Understanding and working with ethical issues when including young children in educational research is critical to ensuring their involvement is meaningful. Increasingly, different methodological approaches have been used to address some of these issues, and the use of visual methods is showing particular potential for its age appropriateness. This...

This paper draws on data collected during a longitudinal collaborative project with teachers in England from schools and further education colleges. The project investigated ‘Learning to Learn’ in partnership with teacher–researchers with a focus on how metacognitive awareness can be improved by enquiring into creative combinations of pedagogy, env...

This session aims to facilitate dialogue about visual methodology in educational research and to explore how researchers in the field are conceptualizing quality in visual methods. There has been rapid expansion in the field and it is necessary to reflect critically on the ways in which visual methods are used: the collection of data, approaches to...

What are the characteristics of an environment that facilitates metacognitive awareness? What are the roles learners (and teachers) inhabit in a metacognitive community? This keynote will explore the practices associated with developing metacognitive awareness. Using exemplification from real classrooms, we will explore the environment, the communi...

This guide accompanies the following article: Gascoine, L., Higgins, S. & Wall, K. The assessment of metacognition in children aged 4–16 years: a systematic review, Review of Education, DOI:10.1002/rev3.3077

Rozhovor s profesorkou Kate Wall proběhl 13. října 2014 na Ústavu pedagogických věd Filozofické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity, při příležitosti její účasti na sympoziu věnovaném dialogickému vyučování. Rozhovor vedli Roman Švaříček a Klára Šeďová.

In this paper I am going to argue that teachers who want to encourage metacognition in their students need to be metacognitive role models for their students. By being more explicit about their own learning experiences they will not only model the ups and downs of lifelong learning but also in openly recognizing the learning process that is in inhe...

Mind the Gap sought to improve the metacognition and academic attainment of pupils in Year 4. There were two aspects to the intervention. The first involved training teachers in how to embed metacognitive approaches in their work, and how to continue to effectively and strategically involve parents. This training took place over a day and was provi...

In this presentation I am going to argue that teachers who want to encourage metacognition in their students need to be metacognitive role models for their students. By being more explicit about their own learning experiences they will not only model the ups and downs of lifelong learning but also in openly recognizing the learning process that is...

This paper presents the results of a systematic review of methods that have been used to measure or assess metacognition in school-aged children (4-16 years) over the last 20 years. Research focussing on different methods of assessing metacognition is increasingly important in policy and practice, particularly given the positive links demonstrated...

This paper presents a methodology developed by members of the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching (RCfLAT) to collaborate with university teaching colleagues to produce theoretically- and pedagogically-based case studies of innovations in teaching and learning. The Equal Acclaim for Teaching Excellence (EquATE) project investigates whether ca...

Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) are models of learning in which students self-organise in groups and learn using a computer connected to the internet with minimal teacher support. The original ‘hole in the wall’ experiments in India are now applied to classrooms around the world. The idea of SOLEs is a social innovation that is inspiri...

A key challenge of visual methodology is how to combine large-scale qualitative data sets with epistemologically acceptable and rigorous analysis techniques. The authors argue that a pragmatic approach drawing on ideas from mixed methods is helpful to open up the full potential of visual data. However, before one starts to “mix” the stages of analy...

This article explores the process of Learning to Learn from the pupils’ perspective. The Learning to Learn in Schools Project started in 2003 and includes teachers and pupils from primary and secondary age phases in four local authorities. Key to the project has been a focus on the collaborative exploration of metacognition in practice. With the in...

School premises make a difference to learning, but it is important to understand the relationship between setting and educational activities. Physical space has been found to entrench practice, making it harder to reflect and make changes. Yet changes made to the physical environment may not lead to changes in teaching or learning. This may be unde...

Previous research has indicated that there is value in collaborative and repeated professional learning (McCormick et al. 2010) and that there are long-term impacts on performance and retention for teachers who have positive experiences of this type of professional learning (Sammons 2007; Day et al. 2006). However, most networks are relatively homo...

The Learning to Learn in Further Education Research Project (L2L) is coordinated by the Campaign for Learning and run by researchers at Newcastle and Glasgow Universities. The project involves teachers at two further education (FE) colleges, Lewisham and Northumberland, using practitioner enquiry methodologies to explore and share what works in lea...

This paper reflects upon the complex interactions between the intent of the researchers, the development of a collaborative practitioner research network and the tools used to scaffold, measure and represent this process. Using a residential conference for the Learning to Learn network as a forum, we used visual methods in the form of posters as bo...

It has been argued by both educationalists and social researchers that visual methods are particularly appropriate for the investigation of people’s experiences of the school environment. The current and expected building work taking place in British schools provides an opportunity for exploration of methods, as well as a need to establish ways to...

This paper investigates how the use of Pupil Views Templates (PVTs), a tool designed to elicit, record and analyse the development of students' awareness of their own learning processes, supports teachers' professional learning. This paper reports on a three-year collaborative practitioner enquiry project involving more than 30 primary and secondar...

The Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 3 Evaluation was a four year project across England exploring the concept of Learning to Learn in 33 primary and secondary schools. The project was funded through the UK based Campaign for Learning. One of the key aims of the project was to ensure that the locus of control in terms of development remains with...

As part of the Learning to Learn Phase 3 Evaluation [for full detail see Higgins, S., Wall, K., Baumfield, V., Hall, E., Leat, D., Moseley, D., et al. (2007). Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 3 Evaluation: Final Report. London: Campaign for Learning. Available at: www.campaignforlearning.org.uk; Higgins, S., Wall, K., Falzon, C., Hall, E., Leat,...

his paper will be based around the methodological issues inherent in collecting and analysing visual data gathered as part of the base line information for the first year of the ‘Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 4’ research project. This project is funded through the Campaign for Learning and aims to explore how the development of lifelong learni...

This article first investigates historical trends in both the practice and the understanding of consultation, considering the often contrasting perspectives of architects and designers, compared to teachers and educationalists. Differing assumptions held by these two broad groups of professionals can lead to conflicting aims and objectives for scho...

This paper reports on a literature review conducted in the UK for the Design Council and CfBT (Higgins et al., 2005) which looked at the evidence of the impact of environments on learning in schools. We have reviewed the available evidence regarding different facets of the physical environment and provided an analysis based on different areas of ef...

Research clearly shows that children who understand what they are trying to achieve, and who feel that they have ownership (and understanding) of their own learning, tend to be more successful. "Talking about Learning" has been developed with classroom teachers and is a very practical resource. This book includes thirty photocopiable templates whic...

The Digital Portfolio Project at Newcastle University aimed over one year (2002/2003) to support teachers in producing, storing and accessing assessment portfolios of learner’s work using information and communications technology (ICT). This paper draws on evidence of pupil views collected as part of 14 teacher‐led case studies. The teachers all ap...

This article draws on an action research project in primary and secondary schools which was funded through the Campaign for Learning, and supported by Newcastle University with a focus on ‘Learning to Learn’. This is a potentially useful concept for teachers and academics as attempts are made to move beyond curriculum‐driven and assessment‐dominate...

This paper describes a research tool which aims to gather data about pupils' views of learning and teaching, with a particular focus on their thinking about their learning (metacognition). The approach has proved to be an adaptable and effective technique to examine different learning contexts from the pupils' perspective, while also acting as an a...

This paper reports on an investigation into the interactive and discourse styles of a nationally representative sample of primary teachers (n 5 70) as they work with pupils who experience difficulties in literacy development during whole class and group-based sections of the literacy hour. Using a computerized observation schedule and discourse ana...

This study is one element of a government-sponsored evaluation into the introduction of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) to Years 5 and 6 in English primary schools. This element of the research aimed to gather information regarding pupil views of IWBs and the impact these tools can have on teaching and learning. To extend current literature, the met...

The Learning to Learn Phase 3 Evaluation is a research project funded through the Campaign for Learning and facilitated by the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Newcastle University. This project involves 33 primary and secondary schools in three LEAs, representing a wide range of socioeconomic contexts across England. All of the schools have imp...

This article reports on two action research projects which are part of the Campaign for Learning’s Learning to Learn programme. The programme focuses on individual schools’ and teachers’ research priorities, within an overarching framework which seeks to under- stand the factors which promote successful learning. The programme has just finish...

This article reviews the literature concerning the introduction of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in educational settings. It identifies common themes to emerge from a burgeoning and diverse literature, which includes reports and summaries available on the Internet. Al- though the literature reviewed is overwhelmingly positive about the impact and...