2011-12 Pedagogical Approaches

Teaching Boys at the Coal Face: Mining Key Pedagogical Approaches

The research undertaken by the 2011–12 IBSC Action Research Team is an extension of previous research undertaken on behalf of the IBSC by Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley. In their report to the IBSC, Teaching Boys: A Global Study of Effective Practices (2009), and subsequent publication, Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies that Work – and Why (2010), Reichert and Hawley debunk the myth that boys are resistant to schooling. Their large-scale, worldwide study of boys and their teachers emphatically reveals that boys want to succeed at school, and that a significant part of leading them to such success is the forging of positive student-teacher relationships. To complement their findings, Reichert and Hawley provide teachers with a comprehensive toolkit of strategies that work effectively with boys.

The literature and research are overwhelming in their support of pedagogy that is student-centered and which fosters positive relationships between students and their teachers. Also compelling in the literature is the implication that the attitudes and actions of teachers are amongst the strongest influences on their peers’ decision to change their practice. It follows, therefore, that an initiative such as the 2011–2012 IBSC Action Research Project, where these two notions are combined, has the power to significantly influence learning and teaching in boys’ schools.

It is a selection of these strategies that the 2011–2012 IBSC action researchers investigated, implemented and evaluated within their own classrooms, under the research theme, Teaching Boys at the Coal Face: Mining Key Pedagogical Approaches.

Team members reported at the 19th IBSC Annual Conference in Melbourne, July, 2012.

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2011-12 Pedagogical Approaches

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