Valuing Pupils’ Views in Scottish Schools

Abstract

Pupil attitude data have frequently been utilised in school effectiveness and improvement research to examine aspects of a school's educational processes, culture and ethos. However, a related approach is based on the belief that the views and attitudes of pupils are important outcomes of schooling in their own right, in addition to academic or vocational achievement. The rationale for this approach is that schools and teachers can have a positive influence on pupils' attitudes in a range of important areas that are central to the overall aims of schooling. These aims encompass enhancing pupils' capacity for lifelong and independent learning and positive attitudes to education, behaviour and self-concept as well as promoting vocational aspirations and civic values. This article addresses a subset of these aims, specifically in terms of pupils' attitudes to school, the learning context, self-concept and behaviour. This article also highlights the various issues and implications raised by measuring and using pupil attitudes in Scottish schools for the purpose of school self-evaluation and illustrations are drawn from the findings of the Improving School Effectiveness project funded by SOEID. Briefly, the results showed that generally both primary and secondary pupils' reported attitudes were more positive than negative. However, differences between schools in terms of the extent of positive (or negative) attitude outcomes were identified and these differences appear to be greater at the primary level than at the secondary level. The findings are discussed in relation to the development of approaches to school self-evaluation in the UK.

School Effectiveness Research: From a review of the criticism to recommendations for further development

“…Because differences between students within schools are nearly always considerably larger than are differences between schools, the school effects reported in SER studies hardly ever exceed 15% for studies based on achievement scores. For non-cognitive outcomes, the school effects are even smaller (Thomas, Smees, MacBeath, Robertson, & Boyd, 2000;Van der Wal & Rijken, 2002). This does not mean, however, that education makes only a minor contribution to the development of students.…”

A matter of attitude? Developing a profile of boys’ and girls’ responses to primary schooling

“…In a related study he concludes that a group of disaffected boys can be identified by the end of the primary stages (Tymms, 2001). Thomas et al (2000) report that pupils in Scottish primary schools were also pretty positive in their attitudes and responses to school. They used a 26-item pupil questionnaire which was then reduced through factor analysis to four main areas.…”

“…Our questionnaire was adapted from previous work undertaken for the Improving School Effectiveness Project (ISEP) based in Scottish primary schools during the midto-late 1990s (see MacBeath & Mortimore, 2001;Thomas et al, 2000). The primary version contained 30 items.…”

Learning in large learning spaces: the academic engagement of a diverse group of students

“…It became clear that some questions were framed wrongly and others were inappropriate, in terms of the construct being measured. Questions that were framed wrongly were reworded, and those questions that appeared to be inappropriate, in terms of that being measured, were reviewed against the types of questioning used in other research projects that also investigated academic engagement, namely those of Lea et al (2003) and Thomas, et al (2000). The final edited version of the questionnaire consisted of twenty one items and was sent via email to respondents during the first week of their long summer vacation requesting that they respond within three weeks.…”