Dr Warren Kidd and Pip Buckingham

Each January we run on our social science/humanities secondary teacher education programme a '6 lesson challenge' whereby we take some time with our cohort to take stock, reflect upon what student teachers have learnt (and attempted in their own classrooms), and re-set aspirations about 'things that are important' and 'things that work'. In the academic year 2021-22, given the pandemic context for our own University but also for the schools the students train in, we felt the need to make the challenge as aspirational as possible, including not only our students' teaching of children, but our own teaching of our students. We ended up modelling back to our students ideas and practices around gamification, classroom talk, creativity, questioning and the use of sources by building and running an 'escape room' (of sorts) in the EDUCOM building.

 

In this presentation we will share a narrative of this event - covering the conception, planning, building the tasks and environment and outcomes of the event. In doing this we will explore the role of 'big events' and unusual routines to help motivate students, as well as explore the issue facing all Practice Based Learning which is the (perhaps over-stated?) challenge of the theory-practice divide.