Motivation | Centre for the Use of Research & Evidence in Education (CUREE)

Developing students as independent learners through research and presentation activities in A/S Chemistry

Aim: We believed that students were over-reliant on teachers in meeting the AS Chemistry syllabus requirements and that this restricted the range of learning styles and methodologies that students used.

Sustaining teacher researchers: what support really makes a difference?

Aim: The main aim of the project was to explore how to establish practitioner research as an effective and sustainable form of continuing professional development both for participating researchers and, through their research work, for colleagues within the schools and network.

Language Issues in the Teaching and Learning of School Algebra

Aim: To investigate the link between language and competence in algebra, highlight the problems experienced by pupils when learning algebra, and suggest some strategies for teachers.

Students As Researchers (STARs) - 'Enhancing classroom challenges'

Aim: The main aim of this project is to explore messages from student led research into classroom challenges and attitudes. This project on enhancing classroom challenge aims to understand our learners better and to develop our approach towards learning and teaching processes in relation to raising achievement.

Building a community of enquiry

Aim: The aim of this project was to create a community of enquiry across a network of schools which would engage with research to inform school improvement. The project also set out to establish ways of working with an external specialist to maximise the research capacity of the network.

Does using voting sticks technology enhance teaching and learning?

Aim: To assess the impact of voting sticks technology in terms of engaging hard to reach learners, creating interactive learning resources across the curricula and assessment.

Teacher motivation in an international online collaborative learning community

Aim: The study set out to create a long term online action research activity involving collaboration between European teachers. We created a European project to look at the issue of Global Warming. We decided to monitor butterflies as indicators of climate change. This required a long term commitment to gain maximum value from the data collected. Hence teacher motivation was important. It was hoped from this to create a motivational checklist for teachers to help them when setting up online action research communities in the future.

How can Teachers Motivate Less Motivated Boys?

Aim: To investigate factors that affect the motivation of less able boys in Science and, from this, to see how teachers may improve that motivation.

Improving teaching and learning with mentorship

Aim: To increase the record of achievement among Year 7 and Year 12 pupils in a girls comprehensive school through regular mentoring interviews between pupils and teachers.

What goes on inside my head when I'm writing? and how does this affect the teaching of writing in lower KS2?

Aim: To find out what 8-9 year old children understand about writing and the writing process in order to: Improve standards in the teaching and learning of writing; Inform assessment procedures in writing; and Engage all children as enthusiastic writers.