Primary Education & Post Plowden Legacy

Primary Education & Post Plowden Legacy

Subject: Primary Education & Post Plowden Legacy

INTRODUCTION

The task assigned was to read all six chapters provided, select one and produce

a critique on the subject matter. The chapter selected was number six which

analysed pupils' and 'work'. Firstly I wish to briefly summarise the entire

chapter, highlighting the areas which I considered to be the most important,

these areas will then be examined in depth and their merits or shortcomings

discussed.

Firstly a summary of the chapter is needed to put into context the areas that

will be discussed later. The whole chapter can be split into two main areas of

discourse:- relationships and 'work' and negotiation.

As there has been little research into pupils' approaches to schoolwork, the

author's chief concern is that of the pupils perceptions of , and approaches to,

schoolwork, and the first point s/he makes is that there are differences

between teachers' and pupils' ideas of what constitutes worthwhile work. The

author sets out to define 'the meaning of work' and in doing so draws our

attention to differences between 'pleasurable work' and 'labour'. Workmanship,

it is argued, has been replaced by unskilled labour and people now work as a

means to an end seeking enjoyment through other avenues such as hobbies and

recreation.

Teaching methods and school ethos' in general are seen as outmoded and alien to

the cultural and social influences on pupils. Therefore, there is greater

responsibility on the teacher to make work seem more utilitarian and attractive.

Research revealed that many pupils felt that work was pointless and invalid

unless it was undertaken in preparation for forthcoming exams. However, work

that may be deemed pointless or onerous by both sets of pupils (exam and non-

exam) could be given validity by the teaching strategy employed. Pupils seemed

to be more concerned with the status of the work and their personal relationship

with the teacher, therefore the pupil reaction to any given task depended

heavily on these two criteria. It is identified that pupil-teacher

relationships are extremely important and they contain many concealed aspects

which will be discussed in Part 1.

A prevalent feature of pupil-teacher relationships is the negotiation that takes

place and teachers will offer incentives to pupils in order to encourage the

process of work. It is interesting to look at the way in which teachers can

utilise their experience and maturity to manipulate or cajole pupils into

performing a given task, and this will be examined in Part 2.

PART 1 - RELATIONSHIPS & WORK

The first key issue in this chapter that I wish to examine is that of pupil