Educational research in the class council

It is vital that pupils are provided with structured opportunities to explore actively aspects, issues and events through school and community involvement, case studies and critical discussions that are challenging and relevant to their lives. A curriculum which acknowledges the social responsibilities of education must present situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living together, and where observation and information are calculated to develop social insight and interest.

Educational research in the class council
People imagine, indeed, that experiments in education are unnecessary, and that we can judge from our reason whether anything is good or not. This is a great mistake, and experience teaches us that the results of an experiment are often entirely different from what we expected. Thus we see that, since we must be guided by experiments, no one generation can set forth a complete scheme of education. The curriculum "Educational research in the class council" is a small curriculum with guidelines and proposals for a possible development of educational research in a class council. The curriculum assumes that the class council debates at least bi-weekly and organizes working groups and projects or allows working groups and projects to present their results, if results are available. A research project can be carried out independently and voluntarily by interested students or can be assigned as additional work by the class teacher or the class council.

The class council appears especially suitable because the pupils can make educational research their own business in their very own committee and can learn to choose their learning methods themselves and to modify them consciously. The term "educational research" may appear exaggerated, but the pupils can, of course, also invent known methods anew or try out and research variations. The border between method training and testing and researching new methods may intentionally remain blurred. The pupils should be able to derive a common interest and a group identity as "young researchers" from their joint research.

How research goals, learning objectives and competence expectancies are achieved or ascertained can be considered to be the business of the class council. The subject-oriented lessons in some subjects will already provide a foundation for some of the learning objectives and competence expectancies of this curriculum. The communication of the class council with subject teachers and the appointment of working groups should be discussed in the class council. The class council is only in a few cases suitable to train skills and competencies in the class council itself, for instance in relation to civic education.

Grade seven
If it is said in objection, that pupils in school are not capable of any such originality, and hence must be confined to appropriating and reproducing things already known by the better informed, the reply is twofold. (i) We are concerned with originality of attitude which is equivalent to the unforced response of one's own individuality, not with originality as measured by product. No one expects the young to make original discoveries of just the same facts and principles as are embodied in the sciences of nature and man. But it is not unreasonable to expect that learning may take place under such conditions that from the standpoint of the learner there is genuine discovery. While immature students will not make discoveries from the standpoint of advanced students, they make them from their own standpoint, whenever there is genuine learning. <...>

Method training
Method training in grade seven should repeat learning strategies and learning methods that have been tought in the grades five and six (the "orientation grades" in Germany). The pupils can try out learning strategies and learning methods according to their abilities and test the effectiveness of strategies and methods.

Examples:
 * By what percentage more effective does listening to music make learning of vocabulary?
 * Does one learn better if one makes a break every 45 minutes for 15 minutes and plays a computer game?
 * How does the group size affect the duration and quality of homework?
 * At what time does the completion of the homework for the next day get how unlikely?

Working groups and projects
Working groups and projects can work on research and learning objectives or train expected skills and competencies.

Proposals for working groups and projects:
 * Survey in the class: What books do you read?
 * Survey in the Class: How, when and where do you make homework?
 * Survey in the class: How do you learn for school?
 * Survey in the class: Which subjects to you like?
 * Working groups for learning research in individual subjects.

Coeducation
Young girls appear to benefit from the chance to form gender-specific groups. Girls should therefore occasionally be allowed to form their own class council.

Research and learning goals
Pupils in grade seven should learn to see learning as their very own project and to understand the learning process and learning more closely. In the process both errors in learning and successful learning strategies can be researched and described. The research should have a minimum academic standard and show that the researchers have developed theories, verified them and have obtained a result through measurement. A discussion of research results in the class council can bring about understanding for the quality of research and for cooperation with others.

The research reports should follow a clear structure. The specification of the structure allows the pupils to produce a sensibly usable result.

Example:
 * What do we want to investigate?
 * What do we expect?
 * How and what have we measured?
 * What have we observed?
 * Is the result convincing?
 * What follows?

Competence expectancies

 * methodological expertise (German Wikipedia: method competence)
 * reading literacy (reading competence)
 * social skills
 * social literacy (the development of social skills, knowledge and positive human values that engender the desire and ability in human beings to act positively and responsibly)

Working groups and projects
Working groups and projects can work on research and learning objectives or train expected skills and competencies.

Proposals for working groups and projects:
 * What does one learn through which hobby?
 * Survey in the grade: What do you want to learn outside school?
 * Survey of the grade: How do you learn?
 * Survey of the grade: What are your personal learning and educational goals?
 * Working groups for learning research in individual subjects.
 * How can the tuition in individual subjects be improved?
 * Projects: games of mental skill, logic puzzles, chess

Coeducation
Young girls appear to benefit from the chance to form gender-specific groups. Girls should therefore occasionally be allowed to form their own class council.

Research and learning goals
Pupils in grade eight should learn to think their learning methods through and to improve them. This should include understanding for psychological effects of learning and training for metacognition. The students can also carry out projects to improve the quality of teaching.

The research reports should follow a clear structure. The specification of the structure allows the pupils to produce a sensibly usable result.

Example:
 * What do we want to investigate?
 * What do we expect?
 * How and what have we measured?
 * What have we observed?
 * Is the result convincing?
 * What follows?

Competence expectancies

 * methodological expertise (German Wikipedia: method competence)
 * German Wikipedia: learning competence (ability and preparedness to interpret and evaluate information about facts and correlations alone or with others and to develop models about them)
 * German Wikipedia: communicative competence (ability to communicate constructively, effectively and consciously)

Topics

 * Magazines, books and other publications
 * Motivation of the pupils
 * Interests of the pupils
 * Individual curricula and learning plans
 * Independent formation and verification of theories in the various subjects and in interdisciplinary topics. Implausible theories can also be tested scientifically.

Research and learning goals
The pupils of grade nine should learn to select publications independently and to evaluate sources of further information in order to gain knowledge or to verify theories. In addition pupils should learn to observe their own group of pupils in order to understand each other's learning motivation and interests and, where appropriate, to encourage each other and to prepare individual curricula and learning plans.

Competence expectancies

 * media literacy (media competence)
 * information literacy (information competence)
 * parenting skills (parenting competence)

Topics

 * Life planning
 * Parenting, upbringing
 * Psychology
 * Requirements of work, school and public life
 * Youth mentoring, peer tutoring

Research and learning goals
Students should explore and research psychology, pedagogy and parenting and use the knowledge gained to reconsider their own life planning. In addition students should learn to understand the requirements of work, school and public life in relation to their own education and training and develop theories about meaningful social behavior. As a result pupils should, for instance, offer tutoring and mentoring in their school. Planning for demand can be conducted in the class council or in smaller groups; mentors can be especially useful for mentees in younger grades.

Competence expectancies

 * life skills (German Wikipedia: human competence)
 * autodidacticism (German Wikipedia: self-learning competence)
 * parenting skills (parenting competence)

Personal educational goals
Students should define personal educational goals and plan appropriate action to achieve their educational goals.