Examples of LED Projects | University of Cumbria

Mastery Approaches to Maths

A collaborative research and development project involving the Deep Learning Teaching Schools Alliance on Merseyside and the LED Research Centre. Developing mastery approaches to maths is partly about raising children’s attainment in maths, but it is about much more than that. Mastery whole class approaches also appear to have the potential to change teacher expectations, to modify views of what ‘school maths’ should be, to address social justice by avoiding the labelling of children, and to build the confidence of teachers and children so that they feel they are becoming mathematicians.

Mastery Approaches to Maths

Fundamental British Values in Schools

A collaborative project considering the role and responsibilities of schools in promoting ‘Fundamental British Values’. In the wake of terror attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, concerns have been raised about the extent to which governmental strategies to combat terrorism are successful in preventing extremism. The requirement “not to undermine fundamental British values” (FBV) has become part of the Teachers’ Standards (DfE 2012) slipping silently, seamlessly and seemingly unchallenged from the government’s counter terrorism strategy Prevent (2011).

Fundamental British Values in Schools

Learning Conversations

An LED research and development project with teacher researchers in early years settings focused on classroom dialogue. How adults interact with children is important for speech and language development but also to develop children as problem-solvers. This collaborative project used video analysis by teacher researchers in two early years settings in Everton, Liverpool. The outputs include an open access research paper and a professional development pack including video clips of practice for critical analysis of teacher strategies.

Learning Conversations

Evaluation of School Leadership and Teaching Practice

An international project focused on leadership. The quality of teaching and effectiveness of school leadership and is crucial for improving students’ learning. This project aimed to create tools and strategies for evaluation of school leaders and of teachers, with the final objective of improving school results and students’ learning. The European funded project brought together school Inspectors from Basque Country, Lithuania, Romania, Portugal, Italy, with teacher educators from the Open University, Cyprus and the University of Cumbria.

Evaluation of School Leadership and Teaching Practice

Pursuing respect, relatedness and powerful learning through dialogic teaching

This close to practice collaborative action research project investigates teacher and student perspectives on the development, through a whole school intervention, of dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2017; Mercer, 2000; 2013).

Boyd, Pete (2019) Pursuing respect, relatedness and powerful learning through material-dialogic teaching. In: European Educational Research Association (EERA) Annual Conference (ECER 2019), 2-6 September 2019, Hamburg, Germany. (Unpublished)