I’ve just finished the first phase of my GCTS teacher-researcher programme study on embedding ICT into secondary subjects and now the stats have been checked by the experts, I can report some interesting results from this study. The intention was to use GLOW as a delivery vehicle for the regular planned use of ICT and to measure any gains in attainment due to this use of ICT. The study will be a longitudinal one, tracking an entire cohort of pupils over their entire standard grade biology course. The first phase looked at the first five months of this and compared a class using GLOW for one third of the teaching time with the other classes who did not have this ICT input. The results show an attainment gain (compared to before the study) of just over 32% for the class using GLOW and a difference of over 14% (marks) when compared to the mean of the other classes. Statistical analysis of the attainment gains shows that the probability of this increase being due to the ICT input is high enough to be very significant ( p < 0.001).

Interestingly, the study also indicates that the use of ICT/GLOW in this way might, and I repeat, might be able to compensate for lack of teacher experience as when the classes are compared, the class using GLOW outperformed others taught by a much more highly experienced teacher. This becomes more significant when the whole issue of raising attainment is considered particularly in the light of the Dylan Wiliam’s findings on teacher experience and pupil attainment.

I’ve always felt strongly that using GLOW greatly enhances formative assessment through the collaborative and analytical nature of the learning tasks I plan into my lessons. As previous research supports the view that formative assessment is a much more cost-effective way of raising attainment than reducing class sizes or increasing teacher subect knowledge than I think it’s now really important to start talking up the use of ICT and GLOW as a vital strand of school improvement development planning, indeed, I cannot see how schools which are serious about raising attainment can continue to allow the use of GLOW to be a peripheral add-on used only by the ICT ‘evangelists’.

I’ve published the abstract and conclusions of my research on other pages on this blog.

http://mimanifesto.wordpress.com/ictglow-research-abstract/

http://mimanifesto.wordpress.com/ictglow-research-conclusions/

The full text will follow in a couple of months or so and I’m presenting it at the SERA conference in Perth this November. The second phase of the study will be a collaboration with a leading university researcher working in the field of ICT and education and will hopefully lead to academic journal publication. Lots of questions remain to be answered about cause and effect as well as techer experience but one thing is established; there would not have been the 28% improvement in attainment had it not been for the use of ICT/GLOW…

An interesting school year ahead I think…