Re-engaging disaffected pupils in learning: insights for policy and practice®

Abstract

This article summarizes findings from an ongoing research and development project, ‘Re-engaging disaffected pupils in learning’, which involves troubled and troublesome students in five London schools, all in challenging urban contexts. It outlines the project’s approach, key features of which include: involving the students themselves as change agents; enabling them to experience learning in an active outdoor education environment; creating time and opportunities for staff to work with their students in new ways; and developing strategies which will remove some of the barriers to learning for disaffected students. The article reviews the impact of the project to date, particularly the ways in which involving pupils in a new learning environment - an outdoor education experience - can transform their views about themselves as learners. It also offers a broader analysis of the implications of developing a change strategy designed to re-engage marginalized pupils from urban schools in learning.