Can residentials have a greater impact than conventional, daytime only learning outside the classroom (and, if so, what is it about the ‘overnight stay’ that makes that difference)?
A key aim for Learning Away has been to try to identify what role the residential component plays in the success of a wider learning programme. To support this aim, external evaluator York Consulting has sought to identify key aspects of the residential experience that make a difference to participants and help to achieve positive outcomes.
Here we seek to illustrate the six common aspects identified by York, highlighting some of the related findings from the 2014 Interim Evaluation Report. You can find out more about the findings and York’s methodology, here.
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(1) Residentials are a Leveller
Residentials provide a new space and context where participants are equal and existing barriers and hierarchies can be broken down. The residential context allows students to see different qualities in each other, which impacts on their interpersonal relationships, both on the residential and back in school.
York Consulting conducted 5,456 pre-residential surveys, 4,329 post-residential surveys and 673 long-term follow-up surveys with students in 51 schools.
Post residential, more than 80% of secondary students felt that the residential had helped improve their relationships with their peers and teachers. Post residential, 70% of key stage 2 students felt they knew their teachers better and 71% felt they got on better with their peers as a result of their residential experiences.
Post residential 74% of staff said that the residential had already begun to achieve it aims in relation to improving students’ resilience, confidence and wellbeing and 57% stated that immediate outcomes had been achieved in relation to developing students’ confidence through taking risks and working with others; being more willing to try new things and face challenges; experiencing success and being proud of their achievements; developing greater confidence in their own abilities; increased independence back in school; and quieter students being more willing to speak up back in school.
(2) Time, Space and Intensity of the Residential Experience
Time, space and intensity of the residential experience is key to developing relationships and learning opportunities. Participants are away from home for an extended period of time, away from their usual routines and distractions and this provides opportunities for them to be immersed in learning and to develop relationships. Unstructured time provides opportunities for discussion and self-reflection and more informal learning.
Alongside the student surveys, York Consulting conducted focus groups with 320 students and 144 school staff. Residentials were felt to be particularly effective for students who had difficulty concentrating and engaging in the classroom context as it gave them a positive experience of themselves. The more relaxed learning environment, the availability of one to one support and small group work, practical and experiential learning opportunities, as well as the chance to experience success, were all felt to contribute to improved learner engagement.
“It was quite comfortable, not laid back but the teachers their style of teaching was quite different from school… I understood more than I would if I was in an actual lesson at school, I think it’s probably because the environment was different” Secondary Student Focus Group
“They were able to share their experiences and what they’d learned from each day … if they’d had a bad performance, the next day they got a chance to put it right and to reflect and think about it and improve it”
Secondary Staff Focus Group
(3) Developing a Learning Away Community
Residentials allow participants to create a new community away from their normal distractions and gives them time and space to address their goals (both personal and learning related) within a supportive environment. Residentials help to develop a sense of responsibility and maturity: participants are responsible for themselves and others, helping to promote self-reliance and teamwork.
Residentials provide the opportunity and experience of living with others. They provide opportunities for group reinforcement and support, as well as the chance for participants to learn more about themselves and others, and this can create a ‘virtuous circle’ of behaviour.
Prior to attending the residential, only 40% of secondary students felt they could be a role model to others. Post residential nearly two thirds (64%) of secondary students felt that the residential had made them realise they could be a role model to others and this view was maintained in their responses to long-term follow-up surveys.
The residential context was seen as an environment where success could be celebrated and where students were less judgemental and more collaborative. The sense of community was reinforced by participants facing common challenges and overcoming adversity together.
One primary teacher highlighted a memorable instance of spontaneous teamwork, where a group of six and seven year old pupils worked together to solve a problem which could only have happened on a residential experience. One of the students could not remove a boot and the other students were trying to help but were not able to take it off. Another student found a rope and tied it round the boot and then a number of students were tugging the boot off together: “it was such a brilliant moment and he was problem solving and they were all working together to solve this problem… if I’d not stayed over and they’d not got up at five in the morning and they weren’t doing that, you’d have missed that”. In this example, the residential provided the opportunity for teamwork, context, space and time.
(4) The Memorability of the Residential Experience
The memorability of the residential experience and the shared memories of participants helped to maintain the sense of community developed on the residential back in school and also to sustain the positive impacts seen on the residential.
Learning Away has shown that ‘new’ does not have to be exotic, e.g. it could involve camping in the school grounds (see Walney’s transition residential) or even the school hall (every KS1 student in Bulwell partnership camps overnight at the local secondary academy).
Memorable experiences are not always planned and are often linked to overcoming adversity e.g. camping in bad weather or serendipitous events such as the ‘the owl in the toilet’. However, a ‘brilliant residential’ can help facilitate memorable experiences by developing a sense of belonging and community.
“We created bonds with the teachers we’d never had before and that means that if we have a problem now we know who to go to, we know the teachers better, we know how to ask people to help us”
Secondary Student Focus Group
After the residential, students noted that they were managing to stay in the classroom and had been placed in higher groups because their behaviour had improved. Students also identified improvements in their attendance and time keeping.
Residentials can be integrated with the curriculum in many ways. Schools can design residentials to build on and extend themes, projects and subjects initially introduced in school, and they can develop life, work and study skills for use back in the classroom. The Learning Away community of schools has written a series of practical teacher resource packs – read why they think curriculum integration is so important, and see their top tips, here.
(5) Providing an Opportunity to Experience Success
Residential experiences can provide students with opportunities to experience success in a range of practical and physical challenges impacting on confidence, self-belief and attitude to learning, both on the residential and back in the classroom. Success in activities was linked to success in the subject and these memories were interlinked when students returned to school.
Staff noted that the maintenance of improved staff / student relationships post-residential had a particular impact on lower ability students. Staff noted that these learners showed greater motivation back in school and had developed a new found enthusiasm for learning because of their levels of achievement on the residential. This improved motivation was linked to the practical activities engaged in on the residential and improved relationships developed with teachers. Staff also noted that students were more motivated to use the resources the school had put in place to help them learn in their own time and had a clearer sense of what they needed to achieve and how they were going to go about it.
Interestingly, 72% of secondary students overall felt that as a result of the residential their teachers had a better understanding of how they liked to learn best. Given that only 56% of students felt that this was the case prior to the residential this can be seen as an important finding.
“It shows if we continue pushing on we can reach the top, even past our limits… if you link that to the subject and continue pushing on even if we feel we can’t do any more we can still achieve our goal”
Secondary Student Focus Group
(6) New Ways of Learning
Residential learning provides a context and model for students and teachers to explore new ways of teaching and learning and provides experiential and context-based learning which helps to develop students’ understanding and knowledge facilitating their engagement with, and progress in, learning. Residentials provide important opportunities for students to revisit and build on their learning experiences from one day to the next.
Residential learning is focused on real life activities and experiences. Experiential and context based learning was seen as key to developing students’ understanding of the subject and facilitating their engagement with, and progress in, learning.
“It was a lot easier to understand stuff there, so I think my understanding back in school is going to be better… You can reflect back to stuff you’ve seen [on the residential]… It just gives you a lot more understanding, so I think I can use it again and again”
Secondary Student Focus Group
Residentials provided staff with opportunities to be more experimental but also time to focus on their teaching. Staff said the residentials gave them time to reflect on their practice and think more about how they delivered their teaching. One secondary teacher noted that the way she taught her classes and how she presented information to students had changed as a result of her residential experiences because the residential had provided her with an opportunity to reflect on her teaching.
“[My teaching] it’s much more kinaesthetic, more practical, more moving around, it’s trusting the kids a little bit more to be able to behave… Before the residential I was probably a little bit afraid about doing that sort of thing, whereas now I know I can handle it, it’s fine and I’m getting much more positive results from it, which is really great”
Secondary Staff Focus Group
Having used the residential to successfully test out these approaches staff (both primary and secondary) felt that they were more confident to incorporate them into their practice back in school.
York Consulting is continuing to gather and analyse long-term follow up surveys and quantitative attainment, attendance, and behaviour data. More detail of its latest findings and recommendations can be found the summary report (read or download here).
York Consulting will present its full, final findings and recommendations in late Spring 2015.
Over the course of the next year, Learning Away will be publishing practical resource packs – written by teachers in our action research cohort. The first two resource packs are available now and focus on practical ways of integrating your residential into the school curriculum, and using lower-cost residential models in order to offer more students more residential learning experiences, more often. Read more here.