The script converges

It's been a bit busy with filming, so there hasn't been much time to post this week.  We've made a lot of progress though, and finished with a longer workshop yesterday where we checked through all the material that has been shot with the group and checked back against the script ideas from last week.

It was really encouraging to see the wealth of stories coming through and that the interviews and the cutaways would really reinforce one another.  For me personally some of the most interesting moments were where the boundaries between ideas in the practice of the teachers we were working with didn't match our own.

A good example of this is the notion of 'active learning'.  At one stage I counted what seemed like three different things to us which were all being linked to active learning: (i) the pedagogical practice of involving children in investigation and group work to make learning more effective, (ii) building in physical activity to the school days to increase concentration during class-room time, and (iii) running a full extracurricular programme (such as sports and community days), which draw students in by offering them fun and excitement. This could be re-wrapped up academically by talking about child-centred learning and affect, but the challenge is drawing out the deeper working theories that our teacher participants work by in ways that come across to our international audience.

On to the edit....