Aims of the Trust
Trust Members
Annual Research Award
The award is granted annually by the Graham Nuthall Classroom Research Trust. Applications are invited annually from teachers, researchers and postgraduate students who have experience in classroom based research, particularly the interactions between students, their teachers and the curriculum within the classroom. Proposed projects may either involve collecting new data or further analysis of the database collected through Professor Nuthall’s own research.
Access to the Classroom Research Data Base
Through the Project on Learning and the Understanding Learning and Teaching Project, Professor Nuthall has gathered an enormous database of classroom research. The Trust manages access to this database, and looks forward to requests from researchers for its use.
Potential use of the Project on Learning database
The comprehensive data covers all aspects of the reality of the classroom experience for individual students and teachers. The data lends itself to a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches including individual case studies, analysis of teacher and student behaviour in small groups and whole class contexts, and discourse analysis. While not a definitive list, the data would be particularly relevant to researchers who have an interest in the following:
Characteristics of individual learners:
- Factors relevant to individual students’ concept learning and understanding
- Student compliance with task instructions
- Task engagement
- The relationship between student interest and task engagement.
- Analyses of subjects’ written work
- Presentation of student work
- Task and activity preferences.
Classroom discourse:
- Teacher and student questioning (content and non-content related)
- Peer interactions in the context of the classroom
- Student and teacher interactions
- Student self-talk
- Teacher language related to management of student behaviour
- Teacher language – type and complexity
- Teacher assumptions about students’ existing knowledge and understanding.
Teacher and student relationships:
- Student hand raising behaviour
- Teacher accessibility to individual students
- Social and academic hierarchies
- Teacher and student perceptions of teaching and learning
- Opportunities for students to be agentive in the learning process.
Teaching and Learning of science and social studies in middle school classrooms:
- Task and activity design, implementation and management by both teachers and students
- The use of pre and post-tests to measure student understanding
- Teacher and student use of resources
- Individual, small group, and whole class tasks
- Instructional and activity phases of lessons (purpose and structure)
- Teacher monitoring of student behaviour
- Constructivist practice.
General:
- Socio-cultural factors operating in the classroom
- Influences and constraints on teachers’ practice
- Teacher and student co-construction of classroom culture.
(For details about the Annual Research Award or access to the Data Base please contact Associate Professor Alison Gilmore alison.gilmore@canterbury.ac.nz)
Other Trust Activities
- Raising and managing money from donations
- Providing support and resources to people undertaking classroom based research in the area of teaching and learning
- Working collaboratively with schools and other educational institutions to maximise the benefits of the work of the Trust for teachers and students
- Disseminating the results of Professor Nuthall's research, and of the recipients of the award. One way the Trust does this is through holding at least one seminar each year on observational studies of how children learn in classrooms and early childhood centres.
How You Can Support the Trust
Please complete and submit This Form to support the work of the trust.
If you would like to support future fundraising events please contact us at nuthall-trust@canterbury.ac.nz