Tapestry Survey 2022: Teaching and Learning in Early Years Settings and Primary Schools
by Anna Pedroza on June 30
4 min read:
The results of Tapestry’s 2022 survey provided some fascinating insights into teaching and learning in early years settings and primary schools. We asked questions about the use of technology and professional development, as well as monitoring children’s progress and how educators support children to think and talk about their learning.
We also teamed up with academics from University College London and Manchester Metropolitan University who are leading a project exploring children’s engagement with their online learning journals and their developing metacognition, and asked some questions in the survey to accompany their research.
More than 300 people completed the survey, which we really appreciate. Here are four highlights that we thought you might find interesting. Do get in touch with your comments and reflections. Or share on your social platforms using #TapestrySurvey22
Lots of CPD but hard to assess its impact
Encouragingly, 89% of respondents reported that their school or setting provided professional development for all staff, but the findings suggest that the impact of CPD experienced by educators is less clear cut. Although 41% of primary teachers and early years educators reported CPD had impacted their practice ‘a lot’, 49% reported that CPD accessed in the past year had only a ‘little impact’.
Dr Helen Edwards, co-founder of Tapestry and a former primary teacher and nursery owner, added: “It is worrying that schools and settings are paying for CPD, and using precious time, when our survey suggests that as much as half may have only limited impact on practice and provision. Whether training is in-house, or through an external provider, a key question has to be how we can take what we learn and apply it in our school, so we need to ensure trainers and leadership teams always challenge and support us on this.”
Both online and face to face CPD of value
The three most popular forms of CPD were in-person courses, trainer led online courses and self-guided online courses. It is hard to imagine before the pandemic that online CPD would have featured so strongly.
Least popular was listening to a podcast, even with the huge growth in popularity of podcasts in general. This may suggest that educators haven’t considered education podcasts as a bitesize form of CPD which contributes to their professional learning.
We also asked people about the new National Professional Qualification for Early Years which will start to be offered in the autumn. Although there is currently limited information available, three fifths (60%) felt it was a positive development and a third (35%) planned to register, as long as their place was funded.
Growing confidence in using technology
Three quarters (74%) of respondents reported that they now made better use of technology than before the pandemic. More than three fifths (63%) said their setting or school had a strategy to help guide their use of technology to support teaching and learning. Possibly linked to this, 85% also felt confident about using technology to support teaching and learning.
However, although very encouraging, half of respondents (52%) also told us that they felt less confident in understanding how to measure the impact of technology on teaching and learning. Andrew Simpson, Head Teacher at Arundel Church of England Primary School provided some useful reflection on the results and said: “It’s brilliant that schools have jumped forward in their use of technology, but we now need to understand much more about what, and how, technology really supports children’s learning. With this insight we can ensure we can invest resources effectively.”
Encouraging children to think and talk about their learning
Tapestry is currently working with UCL and Manchester Metropolitan University on a research project exploring children’s engagement with their online learning journals and their developing metacognition. To accompany this research, we asked respondents a number of questions about how they encourage children to think and talk about their learning.
We found that respondents used a lot of strategies to support children, and the most common were encouraging conversations between children, modelling thinking and problem-solving language, and providing opportunities for children to explain their ideas. Educators also used photographs of children’s learning experiences to prompt discussion, and a reasonable proportion (42%) used video.
Dr Kate Cowan, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, who is working on the research project said: “It is encouraging to see that early years educators are using a variety of pedagogical approaches to support children to think and talk about their learning. Using video to support reflective dialogues with children, and as a way of recording their verbal and non-verbal communication about their thinking, is still relatively new but it is encouraging to see the numbers using these approaches. Continuing research in digital documentation and children’s voice will help us to develop pedagogies to support the use of software.”
We also asked educators how regularly they would ask children to record their own learning. 29% asked children to contribute weekly, 21% monthly and, surprisingly, 15% asked children to contribute daily. A fifth didn’t ask children to contribute to recording their own learning.
Tell us what you think
We’d love to know what you think about the findings. Do you agree? Are there other things you think we should investigate? Please do get in touch!
About 2022 Tapestry survey
Responses were received between 29th April and 6th June 2022. There were 314 respondents from those working in early years and primary education. Breakdown of respondents was: early years – 49%, primary 28% and 23% who reported different early years roles.