Children's lived experiences of 'ability' in the Key Stage One classroom

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Gripton, C.J., 2018. Children's lived experiences of 'ability' in the Key Stage One classroom. EdD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Catherine Gripton N0244296 Professional Doc Document 5 Thesis Submission April 2018.pdf - Published version
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Abstract

This empirical research examined evidence of children's lived experience of 'ability' from two case study classes of 5-7 year olds in primary schools in England. ‘Thick description’ (Geertz 1973) of the children's lived experiences was created using children's classroom tours, classroom representations and interviews alongside non-participant observation of everyday classroom life and interviews with the class teachers. For these children, findings are that their lived experience of 'ability' is highly individual and shaped by the scope of their awareness and their attention to an individual combination of features of classroom life, particularly structural, social and pedagogic. The class teachers partially shaped the children's experiences through their teaching choices, underlying beliefs about 'ability' and own experiences (as a child and as a teacher) but this varied significantly for each child depending upon how their individual lived experience was shaped. The findings from these two classes suggest that policy and research into 'ability' in early schooling should be considered with a recognition that there could be significant variation in how this is experienced by individual children. Therefore, in making teaching choices at classroom level we might consider a wide range of aspects as potentially influential in shaping children's experiences of 'ability' and therefore pay close attention to the individual children in the class and what they attend to most in their classroom, as well as well as our own beliefs and experiences.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Gripton, C.J.
Date:	January 2018
Rights:	This work is the intellectual property of the author (Note: if there are other owners of the IP, as a consequence of any statement issued under paragraph 12 of Section 14A, they must also be named here). You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Education
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	13 Jun 2019 11:01
Last Modified:	13 Jun 2019 11:01
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/36758