Process

The project builds on the findings of an earlier EU funded project “Responding to diversity by engaging with students’ voices: a strategy for teacher development” https://eustudentsvoices.wordpress.com. Through the earlier project a model was developed,  ‘Inclusive Inquiry’, which is a model for the development of learning and teaching in schools. The model was developed in collaboration with secondary schools.    This new project aimed to trial the model’s use in primary schools and to monitor the impact that such an approach has on students’ engagement and on teachers’ thinking and practices.   At the same time, it involved training children as researchers to help develop inclusive practices in schools.

The project used collaborative action research as its methodology and involved three cycles.  The first cycle involved the pilot phase where children, teachers and researchers worked collaboratively to train children as researchers and to implement the “Inclusive Inquiry” model.    During the second cycle, five additional schools in each country were involved in using the model in their schools whilst the partner schools expanded its use across the whole school.  In the final cycle of the project all 30 schools used the model extensively in their schools and disseminated the project’s findings to other schools in each of the countries.