Abstract

The University of Sunderland and local schools already work in partnership to train and mentor new teachers. When a funded opportunity for a participatory action research project arose at the University, it made sense to reach out to teachers in existing partner schools and prioritise local insights into what works for children in this region. After all, Sharples et al (2019) remind us that no matter how great an idea is in principle, “what really matters is how it manifests itself in the day–to–day work of people in schools” (Sharples et al., 2019, p. 3).

Following on from the pandemic, we know that cognitive, social and emotional resources must now find their place alongside more traditional learning (Wear and Bethune, 2021). Having identified this as a school priority, our practitioner researchers were interested in trialling an
established positive psychology scheme of work providing 12 hours of learning for primary age pupils. As a group we were keen to tailor it to the needs of each school and embrace the potential to reflect on and learn from the experience.

Our research group of two university staff, nine teachers and the external facilitator met for an initial day of joint training and planning. Using a structured process, each individual school then devised their personal research question, identified success criteria and designed their research cycles.

This article shares our perspectives on the participatory action research project so far.