Pupil-Teacher Conceptions and the Challenge of Learning: Lessons from a Year 8 Music Classroom

Abstract

This article argues that school improvement requires the consultation of pupils to see learning from their perspective. It reports on a video-based research approach to the investigation of pupil–teacher reflections and identifies an apparent disjunction between teacher–pupil views on what constitutes learning. It describes how the use of video-stimulated reviews, immediately following lessons within a Year 8 music class, made learning visible. It is suggested that illumination of teacher and pupil views of what they implicitly know and think about learning are needed in order to recognize the role of multiple perspectives and to enhance the pupils’ roles as critical agents in their own learning. The findings of differentiated patterns of experience, learning and reflection are likely to resonate with the experiences of others in different educational settings, being representative of what we can learn from pupils about ways of improving teaching and learning in schools and they confirm the value of consulting pupils.