Devon Ladson, more formerly known as "Big D", hails from North Charleston, SC. He is known for his appearance in the Cack Chronicles TV Mini-Series. Ladson played college football at South Carolina State University from 2005-2008, not missing a single game in all his years. He became the first Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference player to win consecutive defensive player of the year honors, and assisted the Bulldogs to consecutive conference championships. In 2007, he was a first team selection on the AFCA College-Division All-America team and set school records with 117 tackles and 17 sacks. With Ladson as their captain, the Bulldogs defense recorded six shutouts in 2007, and held their opponents to just 29 points, an NCAA record for a ten game season. Ladson's Bulldog teammates included former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Anthony "Hot Body" Thomas and former Kansas City Royals first baseman Pachino Dino. In 2009, Ladson was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Bärbel Inhelder first applied the name critical exploration to Jean Piaget's clinical interviewing which included observing children as well as interviewing and interacting with a child who is experimenting and investigating a problem set by the researcher. Inhelder introduced this method to pedagogical contexts (Inhelder, Sinclair & Bovet, 1974, pp. 18-20). Eleanor Duckworth (2005a, pp. 258-259) describes critical exploration as having two facets: curriculum development and pedagogy. In the context of critical exploration, curriculum development means: the teacher is planning how to engage students' minds in exploring the subject matter. Pedagogy constitutes the practice by which teachers invite students to express their thoughts:
During critical exploration, exploring goes on in two modes: In one mode, the child explores the subject matter and in the other mode, the researcher-teacher explores the child's thinking. Hence, for the teacher, critical exploration finds itself at the nexus of research and teaching where teacher and learner support each other (Shorr, 2007, pp. 369-370):
Consequently, [http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/learning/LD2-2.html Duckworth (2009, para. 1)] suggests that a classroom teacher can take on the role of a researcher, "observing what students have learned, while guiding students' explorations towards a deeper understanding of the subject". The teacher explores too, by interacting with students' learning. It is the teacher's work to present engaging problems, and attend to students' ways of figuring them out helping them to notice what's interesting. For example, the teacher listens to students explain their ideas and asks them questions that seek to take students' thinking further (Duckworth, 2006, pp. 173-174).
The main ideas of the teaching/learning research
Outlining her approach, Duckworth (2006, p. 173) states: "As a student of Piaget, I was convinced that people must construct their own knowledge and must assimilate new experiences in ways that make sense to them. I knew that, more often than not, simply telling students what we want them to know leaves them cold". Considering learning and teaching, critical exploration stresses the following aspects:
* Students bring their prior expectations, interests and knowledge to the learning experience: The students' experience and insights are of high value as the development of their personal intelligence emerges through actions and the having of wonderful ideas. To reach deep understanding, students need to start from their own sets of ideas, be engaged in the subject matter and make a connection from the actual problem or subject matter to what they already understand. Consequently, the students do the talking as they explain the sense they are making, while the teacher listens. However, this requires a learning culture that accommodates students in feeling free and safe to say what their emerging ideas are, and that what they say is valued (Duckworth in Meek, 1991). "y opening up to children the many fascinating aspects of the ordinary world and by enabling them to feel that their ideas are worthwhile having and following through, their tendency to have wonderful ideas can be affected in significant ways" (Duckworth, 2006, p. 12).
* Students need something complex that challenges them to explore: Students need to engage with the phenomena of study, not schematic substitutes. It is in struggling with complex problems that every learner undergoes the process of constructing their own knowledge. As learners experience internal cognitive conflicts in what they believe about the subject matter, their minds become more deeply engaged with the problem at hand. Learners' efforts in figuring out questions and puzzles are more productive than knowing the right answer because higher order thinking processes are involved. Therefore, teachers of critical exploration value the diverse efforts that students make during their explorations even where these efforts do not arrive at expected answers. In facilitating this investigative work, the questions that are asked over and over again by students and teachers alike are, for example: "What do you notice?" What do you mean?" "How you are thinking about it?" "Why do you think that?" "Is that the same as what (someone else) thought they saw?" "How did you figure that?" "How did you do that?" "How does that fit with what she just said?" "Could you give an example?" The responses that teachers and students give to each other might have the form of: "I don't quite get it." "It doesn't make sense (to me)." "I don't really get that; could you explain it another way?" Hence, most important: It is the students who make sense and understand by trying out their ideas, explaining them to others, and seeing how this holds up in other people's and their own eyes and in the light of the phenomena itself (Duckworth, 2002).
* Teacher as facilitator with a researcher mind-set: The teacher creates situations and selects environmental resources that get students excited and engaged in learning that is meaningful to them. The teacher is sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of learners, puts students at ease, engages learners, invites them to talk about their ideas, waits for learners to think and listens and then, reacts to the substance of their answers without judging them. The teacher takes a neutral researcher's stance. Instead of lecturing, the teacher creates situations that put learners into confronting their thinking processes, where they are responsible for their own learning. The teachers' role then, is asking questions like “When you say x, what do you mean by it?" "How would that work if applied to this situation?" "Am I right in understanding your idea, if I say it this way?” to reveal students' thinking and take their own thoughts further. That way, the teacher refrains from signaling to the students what he might expect them to say. Instead, the teacher provides opportunities for learners to reveal their own understanding. The thoughts that learners have become visible through the responses they make including: actions, drawings, gestures, constructions, dialogues and sound, for example. Guiding questions for the teacher himself might be as follows (Duckworth, 2005b, p. 261): "What lies behind this response? How may the other children be responding to it? What question shall I ask next, or what experience to offer next, or where to direct their attention next?" The students' work is to make sense of the phenomena of study. The teachers' work is to ensure safe and supportive conditions in the classroom so that the students can take intellectual risks and do their work investigatively.
Some learning/teaching examples
The quote that follows is taken from a reporter's account of a session in Eleanor Duckworth's class T-440 for teaching teachers in the method of critical exploration. In the session described below, Duckworth involves two high school students in exploring how mirrors work while her own 50 students of teaching sit around the perimeter of the room and watch:
;(1) Learning science with mirrors (Chira, 1989, para. 6)
:Two shy teenagers, Dan and John, on loan from a local high school, stood facing 50 student observers as Professor Duckworth presented them with the mirror puzzle. Self-conscious at first, their embarrassment disappeared as they were drawn into the problem, with the professor egging them on at every turn. Soon they aligned themselves so they could see each other in the small mirror, and they glanced at her, thinking they have solved the puzzle. What were you thinking about when you decided that was where you would stand? she asked. It was a guess, replied John. I'll bet it was based on something, she pressed, and asked them to test every possible place they could stand and still see each other in the mirror. When they did so, she made the problem even more difficult. Do you think you could try to explain to somebody how it works? she asked.
:For the next two hours, the two boys walked back and forth, dropping to the ground to measure the angles at which they stood with lengths of string. Every time they came close to what they thought was the answer, she asked another question, trying to chart for her 50 student observers how the teenagers were moving toward understanding and deliberately throwing out wrong answers to test just how deep their understanding lay.
:Gradually, the boys grew more certain of their responses. The angles have to be equal, they told her. By the end of the class, they had discovered for themselves the physics formula that Professor Duckworth never stated: The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.
The following example is written by an instructor who participated in Duckworth's class T-440 as a learner. In this passage she discusses the central assignment of that course, which is to watch the moon and make personal sense of what you discover:
;(2) Moonwatching - the moon project (Pettigrew, 2007, p. 43-44)
:Our most dramatic assignment required that we watch the moon for an entire semester. Every day we recorded our sightings and shaped questions. It was astonishing to discover how pitifully little most of us knew about the moon. At first our questions were simple: When does the moon rise? Where does it rise? Wait, does it rise in a different place sometimes? Why was it still in the sky this morning at 8:45? How does that happen? We drew pictures in our journals; we reflected in writing on what we saw. And then we brought our jottings to class, sharing observations, sharing information, and sharing our confusions. We worked together. Eleanor listened. Her utterances were invariably inquisitive and open-ended and completely nonjudgmental; she was singularly focused on understanding the meaning we were making. Her focus seemed to be on how we were building our understanding rather than on what we understood. I wonder if you could say more about that, she might say. Or, I’m curious about what you see happening here. Over the course of our first semester, my classmates and I experienced a change: our observations of the moon became more subtle and our questions became very much more complicated, more sophisticated. One night, late into our second term, I came into class with a question about the rotations of the moon as it revolves around the Earth. Eleanor brought me - and my question - to the front of the room. She let me explain the problem. I drew pictures on the board, thinking out loud. She and the class listened hard; I could feel them listening. I can’t tell you how affirming such listening is. And then, when I seemed to hit a wall, a dead-end in my process, Eleanor asked, Would it help if you used this flashlight and this orange, and before long, I was the sun and a classmate was the Earth, and another classmate rotated the orange as he revolved around the “Earth.” I was directing the action out of my own body of understanding, and I could feel myself moving toward a solution. It took time. It felt like a few minutes to me, but it must have been much longer because Eleanor, sensing that I was on the brink and knowing that learning is a series of “flights and perchings,” put her hand on my shoulder and asked me if I’d like to let it rest a little. I went back to my desk in the far rear of the darkened room and pulled out a notebook in which I began to draw, still noodling the problem. I could feel that my solution was imminent; I could feel it. One of my classmates, sitting in the dark on the floor next to me, whispered urgently that he knew the answer to my question. He could tell me. And he began to explain. He wanted to be helpful, but resentment and self-protection rushed up inside me: here was a robber entering my house. He would steal from me an understanding that in a minute or two, by my own efforts, would be mine. I was desperate. I leaned down and hissed into his face: “Shut up!” And he did. I began then, for the first time in my life, to solve a problem by laying out an algebraic formula (I don’t know where that impulse came from), and as I constructed the formula, the pieces fell, breathtakingly, into place. It was an “aha” moment. I knew, perhaps, for the first time, the euphoria of discovery. I walked home that night with the knowledge that there would be a fundamental change in my teaching.
In the following passage a student teacher who had taken Duckworth's class T-440 talks about a exploratory lesson that she taught in a public school classroom where she was training to be a teacher:
;(3) Teaching commas (Stewart, 1995, p. 1-2 cited in Duckworth, 2005b, p. 146-147)
:On Friday, I taught the lesson on commas that I had been working on. It went superbly well. The students were engaged in the lesson throughout the period and really seemed to both enjoy and learn the material (and we’re talking about commas here). I also felt confident and knowledgeable about the purposes and pedagogy, especially after discussing my plans with .
:I introduced the lesson by asking if any of the students felt comfortable using commas. None did. I then spoke about the wonderful ideas I had seen in many of their papers and how important it was to polish their papers by using commas correctly, for, if they don't, their brilliant ideas will be lost in the world's judgment of their mechanics. I handed out the materials: sheets of comma-less sentences from the students' writing, sheets of correct comma usage in the students' writing for them to refer to, and newspaper clippings. After I had arranged the students to work in pairs, one student called me over. She wanted to tell me that I was 'doing it wrong,' that I was supposed to give them all the rules regarding commas and then they were supposed to fill out the worksheets demonstrating what they had learned.
:After the pairs of students worked together on the passages that needed commas, the class as a whole worked on them with an overhead projection that allowed them to share a single conversation. When students disagreed on comma placement, much of the class would get involved in the debate. I would move the commas to different places on the transparency according to their thinking. During this time, the students were completely engaged in the class. Together we developed a few basic rules of comma usage...I...was impressed with how much more engaged the students were when they had a chance to 'figure things out.' ...One student came up after class and thanked me for the class, saying that she had always felt unsure of herself and her writing because of commas.
Implications for teacher education: Teaching teachers to understand understanding
The delight that Duckworth expresses in the above quote reflects how the teaching of teaching is core to her educational vision. If teachers are to teach their students exploratively, they must have experienced learning as explorers themselves (Duckworth, 2006). Teachers should have both, a chance to watch themselves learn and the possibility to spend a significant amount of time in a one-to-one teaching situation or in tutoring different individuals in the same topic. In the teacher education work that Duckworth does at Harvard University and elsewhere, she provides teachers with the opportunity to live through and think about the phenomena of teaching and learning. She involves teacher education students in the effort to understand somebody else's understanding. She considers it important for teachers to know what their students are understanding, that is: what sense the students are making of the subject matter (Duckworth in Meek, 1991, p. 32).
In her courses at Harvard University she applies her teaching approach by using critical exploration to teach critical exploration. Her famous T-440 course titled Teaching and Learning: "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" is usually conducted with two parallel groups, each having up to 50 teacher education students. Duckworth states on her course website: "The course starts from the premise that there are endless numbers of adequate pathways for people to come to understand subject matters. Curriculum and assessment must build on this diversity. A second premise is that every person can get involved with and enjoy and get good at every subject matter."
In her university teaching Duckworth (2006, p. 9 and 173-192) tries to engage teacher education students with three major kinds of teaching and learning phenomena:
# Films and/or (life) demonstrations with one or two children or adolescents. In this way teacher education students can observe children/adults learning while instructors are teaching by engaging those learners and by listening and understanding the explanations of those learners;
# Teacher education students carry out a similar inquiry outside of classtime, where they meet with one or two people who are their practice learners. In this way, each teacher education student creates, on his own, a trial critical exploration for learners and then reflects on it in writing;
# Teacher education students learn as a group about a particular subject other than teaching and learning. Through this exploratory study by the group, the teacher education students are learning in the same way that the children in their classes will be learning. This subject could be from any area of study such as: pendulums, mathematical permutations, history, arts and poems.
In the paragraph below Duckworth describes what teacher education students learn both about teaching and about learning from observing children who are exploring something:
During critical exploration, exploring goes on in two modes: In one mode, the child explores the subject matter and in the other mode, the researcher-teacher explores the child's thinking. Hence, for the teacher, critical exploration finds itself at the nexus of research and teaching where teacher and learner support each other (Shorr, 2007, pp. 369-370):
Consequently, [http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/learning/LD2-2.html Duckworth (2009, para. 1)] suggests that a classroom teacher can take on the role of a researcher, "observing what students have learned, while guiding students' explorations towards a deeper understanding of the subject". The teacher explores too, by interacting with students' learning. It is the teacher's work to present engaging problems, and attend to students' ways of figuring them out helping them to notice what's interesting. For example, the teacher listens to students explain their ideas and asks them questions that seek to take students' thinking further (Duckworth, 2006, pp. 173-174).
The main ideas of the teaching/learning research
Outlining her approach, Duckworth (2006, p. 173) states: "As a student of Piaget, I was convinced that people must construct their own knowledge and must assimilate new experiences in ways that make sense to them. I knew that, more often than not, simply telling students what we want them to know leaves them cold". Considering learning and teaching, critical exploration stresses the following aspects:
* Students bring their prior expectations, interests and knowledge to the learning experience: The students' experience and insights are of high value as the development of their personal intelligence emerges through actions and the having of wonderful ideas. To reach deep understanding, students need to start from their own sets of ideas, be engaged in the subject matter and make a connection from the actual problem or subject matter to what they already understand. Consequently, the students do the talking as they explain the sense they are making, while the teacher listens. However, this requires a learning culture that accommodates students in feeling free and safe to say what their emerging ideas are, and that what they say is valued (Duckworth in Meek, 1991). "y opening up to children the many fascinating aspects of the ordinary world and by enabling them to feel that their ideas are worthwhile having and following through, their tendency to have wonderful ideas can be affected in significant ways" (Duckworth, 2006, p. 12).
* Students need something complex that challenges them to explore: Students need to engage with the phenomena of study, not schematic substitutes. It is in struggling with complex problems that every learner undergoes the process of constructing their own knowledge. As learners experience internal cognitive conflicts in what they believe about the subject matter, their minds become more deeply engaged with the problem at hand. Learners' efforts in figuring out questions and puzzles are more productive than knowing the right answer because higher order thinking processes are involved. Therefore, teachers of critical exploration value the diverse efforts that students make during their explorations even where these efforts do not arrive at expected answers. In facilitating this investigative work, the questions that are asked over and over again by students and teachers alike are, for example: "What do you notice?" What do you mean?" "How you are thinking about it?" "Why do you think that?" "Is that the same as what (someone else) thought they saw?" "How did you figure that?" "How did you do that?" "How does that fit with what she just said?" "Could you give an example?" The responses that teachers and students give to each other might have the form of: "I don't quite get it." "It doesn't make sense (to me)." "I don't really get that; could you explain it another way?" Hence, most important: It is the students who make sense and understand by trying out their ideas, explaining them to others, and seeing how this holds up in other people's and their own eyes and in the light of the phenomena itself (Duckworth, 2002).
* Teacher as facilitator with a researcher mind-set: The teacher creates situations and selects environmental resources that get students excited and engaged in learning that is meaningful to them. The teacher is sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of learners, puts students at ease, engages learners, invites them to talk about their ideas, waits for learners to think and listens and then, reacts to the substance of their answers without judging them. The teacher takes a neutral researcher's stance. Instead of lecturing, the teacher creates situations that put learners into confronting their thinking processes, where they are responsible for their own learning. The teachers' role then, is asking questions like “When you say x, what do you mean by it?" "How would that work if applied to this situation?" "Am I right in understanding your idea, if I say it this way?” to reveal students' thinking and take their own thoughts further. That way, the teacher refrains from signaling to the students what he might expect them to say. Instead, the teacher provides opportunities for learners to reveal their own understanding. The thoughts that learners have become visible through the responses they make including: actions, drawings, gestures, constructions, dialogues and sound, for example. Guiding questions for the teacher himself might be as follows (Duckworth, 2005b, p. 261): "What lies behind this response? How may the other children be responding to it? What question shall I ask next, or what experience to offer next, or where to direct their attention next?" The students' work is to make sense of the phenomena of study. The teachers' work is to ensure safe and supportive conditions in the classroom so that the students can take intellectual risks and do their work investigatively.
Some learning/teaching examples
The quote that follows is taken from a reporter's account of a session in Eleanor Duckworth's class T-440 for teaching teachers in the method of critical exploration. In the session described below, Duckworth involves two high school students in exploring how mirrors work while her own 50 students of teaching sit around the perimeter of the room and watch:
;(1) Learning science with mirrors (Chira, 1989, para. 6)
:Two shy teenagers, Dan and John, on loan from a local high school, stood facing 50 student observers as Professor Duckworth presented them with the mirror puzzle. Self-conscious at first, their embarrassment disappeared as they were drawn into the problem, with the professor egging them on at every turn. Soon they aligned themselves so they could see each other in the small mirror, and they glanced at her, thinking they have solved the puzzle. What were you thinking about when you decided that was where you would stand? she asked. It was a guess, replied John. I'll bet it was based on something, she pressed, and asked them to test every possible place they could stand and still see each other in the mirror. When they did so, she made the problem even more difficult. Do you think you could try to explain to somebody how it works? she asked.
:For the next two hours, the two boys walked back and forth, dropping to the ground to measure the angles at which they stood with lengths of string. Every time they came close to what they thought was the answer, she asked another question, trying to chart for her 50 student observers how the teenagers were moving toward understanding and deliberately throwing out wrong answers to test just how deep their understanding lay.
:Gradually, the boys grew more certain of their responses. The angles have to be equal, they told her. By the end of the class, they had discovered for themselves the physics formula that Professor Duckworth never stated: The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.
The following example is written by an instructor who participated in Duckworth's class T-440 as a learner. In this passage she discusses the central assignment of that course, which is to watch the moon and make personal sense of what you discover:
;(2) Moonwatching - the moon project (Pettigrew, 2007, p. 43-44)
:Our most dramatic assignment required that we watch the moon for an entire semester. Every day we recorded our sightings and shaped questions. It was astonishing to discover how pitifully little most of us knew about the moon. At first our questions were simple: When does the moon rise? Where does it rise? Wait, does it rise in a different place sometimes? Why was it still in the sky this morning at 8:45? How does that happen? We drew pictures in our journals; we reflected in writing on what we saw. And then we brought our jottings to class, sharing observations, sharing information, and sharing our confusions. We worked together. Eleanor listened. Her utterances were invariably inquisitive and open-ended and completely nonjudgmental; she was singularly focused on understanding the meaning we were making. Her focus seemed to be on how we were building our understanding rather than on what we understood. I wonder if you could say more about that, she might say. Or, I’m curious about what you see happening here. Over the course of our first semester, my classmates and I experienced a change: our observations of the moon became more subtle and our questions became very much more complicated, more sophisticated. One night, late into our second term, I came into class with a question about the rotations of the moon as it revolves around the Earth. Eleanor brought me - and my question - to the front of the room. She let me explain the problem. I drew pictures on the board, thinking out loud. She and the class listened hard; I could feel them listening. I can’t tell you how affirming such listening is. And then, when I seemed to hit a wall, a dead-end in my process, Eleanor asked, Would it help if you used this flashlight and this orange, and before long, I was the sun and a classmate was the Earth, and another classmate rotated the orange as he revolved around the “Earth.” I was directing the action out of my own body of understanding, and I could feel myself moving toward a solution. It took time. It felt like a few minutes to me, but it must have been much longer because Eleanor, sensing that I was on the brink and knowing that learning is a series of “flights and perchings,” put her hand on my shoulder and asked me if I’d like to let it rest a little. I went back to my desk in the far rear of the darkened room and pulled out a notebook in which I began to draw, still noodling the problem. I could feel that my solution was imminent; I could feel it. One of my classmates, sitting in the dark on the floor next to me, whispered urgently that he knew the answer to my question. He could tell me. And he began to explain. He wanted to be helpful, but resentment and self-protection rushed up inside me: here was a robber entering my house. He would steal from me an understanding that in a minute or two, by my own efforts, would be mine. I was desperate. I leaned down and hissed into his face: “Shut up!” And he did. I began then, for the first time in my life, to solve a problem by laying out an algebraic formula (I don’t know where that impulse came from), and as I constructed the formula, the pieces fell, breathtakingly, into place. It was an “aha” moment. I knew, perhaps, for the first time, the euphoria of discovery. I walked home that night with the knowledge that there would be a fundamental change in my teaching.
In the following passage a student teacher who had taken Duckworth's class T-440 talks about a exploratory lesson that she taught in a public school classroom where she was training to be a teacher:
;(3) Teaching commas (Stewart, 1995, p. 1-2 cited in Duckworth, 2005b, p. 146-147)
:On Friday, I taught the lesson on commas that I had been working on. It went superbly well. The students were engaged in the lesson throughout the period and really seemed to both enjoy and learn the material (and we’re talking about commas here). I also felt confident and knowledgeable about the purposes and pedagogy, especially after discussing my plans with .
:I introduced the lesson by asking if any of the students felt comfortable using commas. None did. I then spoke about the wonderful ideas I had seen in many of their papers and how important it was to polish their papers by using commas correctly, for, if they don't, their brilliant ideas will be lost in the world's judgment of their mechanics. I handed out the materials: sheets of comma-less sentences from the students' writing, sheets of correct comma usage in the students' writing for them to refer to, and newspaper clippings. After I had arranged the students to work in pairs, one student called me over. She wanted to tell me that I was 'doing it wrong,' that I was supposed to give them all the rules regarding commas and then they were supposed to fill out the worksheets demonstrating what they had learned.
:After the pairs of students worked together on the passages that needed commas, the class as a whole worked on them with an overhead projection that allowed them to share a single conversation. When students disagreed on comma placement, much of the class would get involved in the debate. I would move the commas to different places on the transparency according to their thinking. During this time, the students were completely engaged in the class. Together we developed a few basic rules of comma usage...I...was impressed with how much more engaged the students were when they had a chance to 'figure things out.' ...One student came up after class and thanked me for the class, saying that she had always felt unsure of herself and her writing because of commas.
Implications for teacher education: Teaching teachers to understand understanding
The delight that Duckworth expresses in the above quote reflects how the teaching of teaching is core to her educational vision. If teachers are to teach their students exploratively, they must have experienced learning as explorers themselves (Duckworth, 2006). Teachers should have both, a chance to watch themselves learn and the possibility to spend a significant amount of time in a one-to-one teaching situation or in tutoring different individuals in the same topic. In the teacher education work that Duckworth does at Harvard University and elsewhere, she provides teachers with the opportunity to live through and think about the phenomena of teaching and learning. She involves teacher education students in the effort to understand somebody else's understanding. She considers it important for teachers to know what their students are understanding, that is: what sense the students are making of the subject matter (Duckworth in Meek, 1991, p. 32).
In her courses at Harvard University she applies her teaching approach by using critical exploration to teach critical exploration. Her famous T-440 course titled Teaching and Learning: "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" is usually conducted with two parallel groups, each having up to 50 teacher education students. Duckworth states on her course website: "The course starts from the premise that there are endless numbers of adequate pathways for people to come to understand subject matters. Curriculum and assessment must build on this diversity. A second premise is that every person can get involved with and enjoy and get good at every subject matter."
In her university teaching Duckworth (2006, p. 9 and 173-192) tries to engage teacher education students with three major kinds of teaching and learning phenomena:
# Films and/or (life) demonstrations with one or two children or adolescents. In this way teacher education students can observe children/adults learning while instructors are teaching by engaging those learners and by listening and understanding the explanations of those learners;
# Teacher education students carry out a similar inquiry outside of classtime, where they meet with one or two people who are their practice learners. In this way, each teacher education student creates, on his own, a trial critical exploration for learners and then reflects on it in writing;
# Teacher education students learn as a group about a particular subject other than teaching and learning. Through this exploratory study by the group, the teacher education students are learning in the same way that the children in their classes will be learning. This subject could be from any area of study such as: pendulums, mathematical permutations, history, arts and poems.
In the paragraph below Duckworth describes what teacher education students learn both about teaching and about learning from observing children who are exploring something:
Kim Benson is an English actress best known for her work on television.
Her imdb page credits her first role as Mary Johnson in childrens drama Grange Hill between 1978 - 1980.
She is best remembered for her role as the sarcastic Christine in many episodes of BBC sitcom 2 Point 4 Children from the shows first series in 1991, as a one of appearance to its final series in 1999. She played a regular role from series 2.
Imdb list several one off roles in shows such as Green Wing & My Hero both in 2006, The New Statesman in 1989 and A Taste for Death in 1988.
She is married to Andrew Ian Dodge and now uses the name Kim Dodge and posts a regular blog.
Her imdb page credits her first role as Mary Johnson in childrens drama Grange Hill between 1978 - 1980.
She is best remembered for her role as the sarcastic Christine in many episodes of BBC sitcom 2 Point 4 Children from the shows first series in 1991, as a one of appearance to its final series in 1999. She played a regular role from series 2.
Imdb list several one off roles in shows such as Green Wing & My Hero both in 2006, The New Statesman in 1989 and A Taste for Death in 1988.
She is married to Andrew Ian Dodge and now uses the name Kim Dodge and posts a regular blog.
Child Injuries Accident Compensation.
When a child suffers from an accident causing injury it can be extremely traumatic to the child and parents. Every year thousands of children are injured through no fault of their own and have to suffer from injury, disfigurement and/or disability. For statistics on accident numbers see - Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents web site
A Child Must Act Through a Parent or Guardian
The first thing to realise is that the law in England and Wales is that individual is classed as a child if they are under 18 years of age. As the parent or guardian, known as a “Litigation Friend” of an injured child, the litigation friend can make a claim for compensation on behalf of the child's injuries. A person under the age of 18 years is classed as a child, minor or person who lacks capacity to act in their own right so a claim for compensation must be pursued through an adult providing there is no conflict of interest. Therefore child injuries sustained whilst as a passenger in a car driven by the child’s mother who was to blame for the accident could not be the “litigation friend” due to a conflict of interest. In these circumstances the Father or another responsible adult such as the grandmother or close relative must act on behalf of the child in respect of the child’s injuries.
The child's personal injury solicitor must take instructions from the litigation friend. The solicitor cannot take instructions from the child. However the solicitor will be able to take a statement from the child if the solicitor is of the opinion that the child is able to provide worthwhile evidence about the accident.
If court proceedings are commenced the Litigation Friend and the child's name will be written on the formal court documents call the Claim Form and the Particulars of Claim The parties names will look something like this:
In The Liverpool County Court
Between
Child's Name (who proceeds by his mother and litigation friend - mother's name) CLAIMANT
-AND-
ABC Council DEFENDANT
PARTICULARS OF CLAIM
Details of the claim here....
As can be seen from the above whilst the court claim will be in the child's name the solicitor is required to name a suitable adult and the adult's relationship with the child. There is a further form that the litigation friend must complete a form to state that there is no conflict of interest between the child and the adult in taking legal action for accident and injury compensation. See which provides a downloadable form from the Court Service web site - title name FORM FP9.
For further information on the Court's Powers concerning Litigation Friend's and Court Approval of compensation for a child's injury claim see the Civil Procedural Rules under Part 21 [http://www.justice.gov.uk/civil/procrules_fin/contents/parts/part21.htm#IDAFUF5B]
Compensation for a Child Must Be Approved By the Court
Once the case is settled and the case in won for the child’s injuries, the compensation will be payable only when the child reaches the age of 18 years which is the age when the law determines that a child can act for himself/herself without the need for a parent or guardian. If the child needs money for education, welfare or benefit before reaching 18 years, the child's solicitors will request from the court a payment out of the compensation fund on account. The best time to ask for an immediate payment is that the court approval hearing for the compensation. The Litigation Friend should bring copy estimates for the purchase such as a computer for school work etc.
The compensation payment for the child injuries following an accident claim will be invested on the child’s behalf at the Court Funds Office special court bank account which gains interest and is invested on behalf of the child until the child reaches the age of 18 years of age. The address of the Court Funds Office, 22 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6LE - web site
It is important once the claim for the child injuries following the accident has been finalised that the parents and the child keep a note of the court case number and the address of the court. If the family move address they should also remember to let the court know of the new address so that the court will be able to keep track of the family and remind the child about the compensation claim when he or she reaches the age of 18 years. The compensation is invested until the child reaches majority and the interest will be paid when the child reaches 18 years of age.
Note that once the child reaches the age of 18 years, the child becomes an adult and no longer needs to act through the litigation friend, usually the parent of guardian of the child. The child will be classed as an adult and be able to instruct his/her accident solicitors directly. Any compensation payable for injuries following the accident when the child is 18 years or over can be payable directly and does not have to be invested at court. If compensation is payable on behalf of a child, then the court must approve the compensation amount and then the money is invested by the court funds office until the child reaches 18 years of age. For more information regarding investment of the child's injury compensation.
Parents Should Claim for Child Injuries Without Delay
In an accident claim involving an injury to an adult (a person 18 years and over) the normal rule is that the injured person must issue court proceedings within 3 years from the date of the accident. This rule is in accordance with the Limitation Act which lays down periods of time to make an accident injury compensation claim. However, where a child has been injured following an accident, the child does not, in law, have the capacity to have the relevant knowledge to take court action before the child is 18 years of age. Therefore, the normal 3 year time period only begins to run when the child reaches its 18th Birthday. To bring an accident injury claim in time, the claim must be issued at court before the child’s 21st birthday. If court action is not taken by the solicitors before the child’s 21st birthday the court may strike out the claim. It is therefore very important to instruct a child injury specialist solicitor as soon after the accident so that all the necessary preparation and investigations can be undertaken by the solicitor.
Why Instruct a Child Injury Solicitor Quickly?
Whist parents may consider that there is plenty of time instruct a solicitor before the child’s 21st birthday what they must consider carefully is that it is important to obtain evidence quickly following the child's accident because witnesses may move and over a period of time their memories may fade and be unreliable. Furthermore if there is a defect in the playground, trampoline, and school equipment, for example, it is important to obtain contemporaneous photographs, sketch plans or attend a site inspection so that important evidence is not lost. If the Litigation Friend delays talking to a solicitor then proving a claim for child injuries compensation may be very difficult or impossible. For the above reasons and many more, it is important to instruct child injuries solicitors as soon after the accident as possible . The fact that you can leave it until the child is 21 years to issue court proceedings is very dangerous. The injury solicitors may not have enough time to prepare the case properly which could result in the accident claim being prejudiced.
Summary of Child Injury Time Limits
As a responsible parent or guardian, you must instruct a child injuries accident solicitor as quickly as possible so that the solicitors can prepare the case quickly and gather relevant evidence to help support the claim. In complex child injury claims where the injuries are serious, it is important that the child injuries accident solicitors are given as much time as possible to prepare the case to take it to court if required. Do not leave it too late as there is the Law of Limitation which may prevent an accident and injury claim being pursued.
What Can Be Claimed?
A claim for accident compensation for child injuries to a child is made up of the following:
1. Child Injuries - compensation is assessed by the extent of the injuries and suffering by the child as a result of the accident. In general the greater the injury and suffering the more compensation will be awarded.
2. Expenses/losses Generally a child will not incur any losses as these will be sustained by the parent or guardian. Expenses/Losses can include the following:
a. Claim for replacement cost to the child’s clothing if damaged in the accident,
b. Travel expenses to hospital and GP
c. Loss of earnings as a result of taking time off work to look after the child
d. Any other expense or loss that is deemed to be reasonable.
When a solicitor calculates the compensation claim for the child’s injuries following an accident to a child causing injury, the solicitor will calculate the claim by reference to the two basic principles. This would be the calculation of the child's personal injury claim following the accident and the financial loss to the parent or the child. The financial loss and expenses will normally be incurred by the parent as the child usually has no independent financial income. The following is a typical examples of a claim for financial losses and expenses following a road traffic accident:-
* Claim repair damage to the motor vehicle
* Claim for any car hire
* Claim for any storage charges of the motor vehicle
* Claim any insurance excess
* Claim loss of earnings
* Claim loss of bonuses, loss of profits or overtime
* Claim any no claim bonus which may be lost pending the claim
* Claim for damaged clothing
* Claim for medical bills
* Claim for time caring for the injured child or children in the car crash
* Claim for travel expenses attending upon hospital, GP, physiotherapy, solicitors and doctors
* Claim for sundry expenses such as telephone calls and postage
The above is just an example of some typical child injuries claims for out of pocket expenses and losses that our routinely claimed following a road traffic accident. The child injuries and accident solicitors will, of course in addition to the financial claims, claim for the pain, suffering and loss of amenity, commonly known as personal injury, or in solicitor’s language “general damages”.
This article written by Mr Ronnie Hutcheon a specialist personal injury and civil litigation solicitor, in the Firm R James Hutcheon Solicitors and Regulated by the Solicitor Regulation Authority - . It is intended to provide a basic outline and helpful content to parents and guardians who are responsible for a child who has been involved in an accident causing injury. A specialist web site has been developed which provides further information and help to parents and guardians
When a child suffers from an accident causing injury it can be extremely traumatic to the child and parents. Every year thousands of children are injured through no fault of their own and have to suffer from injury, disfigurement and/or disability. For statistics on accident numbers see - Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents web site
A Child Must Act Through a Parent or Guardian
The first thing to realise is that the law in England and Wales is that individual is classed as a child if they are under 18 years of age. As the parent or guardian, known as a “Litigation Friend” of an injured child, the litigation friend can make a claim for compensation on behalf of the child's injuries. A person under the age of 18 years is classed as a child, minor or person who lacks capacity to act in their own right so a claim for compensation must be pursued through an adult providing there is no conflict of interest. Therefore child injuries sustained whilst as a passenger in a car driven by the child’s mother who was to blame for the accident could not be the “litigation friend” due to a conflict of interest. In these circumstances the Father or another responsible adult such as the grandmother or close relative must act on behalf of the child in respect of the child’s injuries.
The child's personal injury solicitor must take instructions from the litigation friend. The solicitor cannot take instructions from the child. However the solicitor will be able to take a statement from the child if the solicitor is of the opinion that the child is able to provide worthwhile evidence about the accident.
If court proceedings are commenced the Litigation Friend and the child's name will be written on the formal court documents call the Claim Form and the Particulars of Claim The parties names will look something like this:
In The Liverpool County Court
Between
Child's Name (who proceeds by his mother and litigation friend - mother's name) CLAIMANT
-AND-
ABC Council DEFENDANT
PARTICULARS OF CLAIM
Details of the claim here....
As can be seen from the above whilst the court claim will be in the child's name the solicitor is required to name a suitable adult and the adult's relationship with the child. There is a further form that the litigation friend must complete a form to state that there is no conflict of interest between the child and the adult in taking legal action for accident and injury compensation. See which provides a downloadable form from the Court Service web site - title name FORM FP9.
For further information on the Court's Powers concerning Litigation Friend's and Court Approval of compensation for a child's injury claim see the Civil Procedural Rules under Part 21 [http://www.justice.gov.uk/civil/procrules_fin/contents/parts/part21.htm#IDAFUF5B]
Compensation for a Child Must Be Approved By the Court
Once the case is settled and the case in won for the child’s injuries, the compensation will be payable only when the child reaches the age of 18 years which is the age when the law determines that a child can act for himself/herself without the need for a parent or guardian. If the child needs money for education, welfare or benefit before reaching 18 years, the child's solicitors will request from the court a payment out of the compensation fund on account. The best time to ask for an immediate payment is that the court approval hearing for the compensation. The Litigation Friend should bring copy estimates for the purchase such as a computer for school work etc.
The compensation payment for the child injuries following an accident claim will be invested on the child’s behalf at the Court Funds Office special court bank account which gains interest and is invested on behalf of the child until the child reaches the age of 18 years of age. The address of the Court Funds Office, 22 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6LE - web site
It is important once the claim for the child injuries following the accident has been finalised that the parents and the child keep a note of the court case number and the address of the court. If the family move address they should also remember to let the court know of the new address so that the court will be able to keep track of the family and remind the child about the compensation claim when he or she reaches the age of 18 years. The compensation is invested until the child reaches majority and the interest will be paid when the child reaches 18 years of age.
Note that once the child reaches the age of 18 years, the child becomes an adult and no longer needs to act through the litigation friend, usually the parent of guardian of the child. The child will be classed as an adult and be able to instruct his/her accident solicitors directly. Any compensation payable for injuries following the accident when the child is 18 years or over can be payable directly and does not have to be invested at court. If compensation is payable on behalf of a child, then the court must approve the compensation amount and then the money is invested by the court funds office until the child reaches 18 years of age. For more information regarding investment of the child's injury compensation.
Parents Should Claim for Child Injuries Without Delay
In an accident claim involving an injury to an adult (a person 18 years and over) the normal rule is that the injured person must issue court proceedings within 3 years from the date of the accident. This rule is in accordance with the Limitation Act which lays down periods of time to make an accident injury compensation claim. However, where a child has been injured following an accident, the child does not, in law, have the capacity to have the relevant knowledge to take court action before the child is 18 years of age. Therefore, the normal 3 year time period only begins to run when the child reaches its 18th Birthday. To bring an accident injury claim in time, the claim must be issued at court before the child’s 21st birthday. If court action is not taken by the solicitors before the child’s 21st birthday the court may strike out the claim. It is therefore very important to instruct a child injury specialist solicitor as soon after the accident so that all the necessary preparation and investigations can be undertaken by the solicitor.
Why Instruct a Child Injury Solicitor Quickly?
Whist parents may consider that there is plenty of time instruct a solicitor before the child’s 21st birthday what they must consider carefully is that it is important to obtain evidence quickly following the child's accident because witnesses may move and over a period of time their memories may fade and be unreliable. Furthermore if there is a defect in the playground, trampoline, and school equipment, for example, it is important to obtain contemporaneous photographs, sketch plans or attend a site inspection so that important evidence is not lost. If the Litigation Friend delays talking to a solicitor then proving a claim for child injuries compensation may be very difficult or impossible. For the above reasons and many more, it is important to instruct child injuries solicitors as soon after the accident as possible . The fact that you can leave it until the child is 21 years to issue court proceedings is very dangerous. The injury solicitors may not have enough time to prepare the case properly which could result in the accident claim being prejudiced.
Summary of Child Injury Time Limits
As a responsible parent or guardian, you must instruct a child injuries accident solicitor as quickly as possible so that the solicitors can prepare the case quickly and gather relevant evidence to help support the claim. In complex child injury claims where the injuries are serious, it is important that the child injuries accident solicitors are given as much time as possible to prepare the case to take it to court if required. Do not leave it too late as there is the Law of Limitation which may prevent an accident and injury claim being pursued.
What Can Be Claimed?
A claim for accident compensation for child injuries to a child is made up of the following:
1. Child Injuries - compensation is assessed by the extent of the injuries and suffering by the child as a result of the accident. In general the greater the injury and suffering the more compensation will be awarded.
2. Expenses/losses Generally a child will not incur any losses as these will be sustained by the parent or guardian. Expenses/Losses can include the following:
a. Claim for replacement cost to the child’s clothing if damaged in the accident,
b. Travel expenses to hospital and GP
c. Loss of earnings as a result of taking time off work to look after the child
d. Any other expense or loss that is deemed to be reasonable.
When a solicitor calculates the compensation claim for the child’s injuries following an accident to a child causing injury, the solicitor will calculate the claim by reference to the two basic principles. This would be the calculation of the child's personal injury claim following the accident and the financial loss to the parent or the child. The financial loss and expenses will normally be incurred by the parent as the child usually has no independent financial income. The following is a typical examples of a claim for financial losses and expenses following a road traffic accident:-
* Claim repair damage to the motor vehicle
* Claim for any car hire
* Claim for any storage charges of the motor vehicle
* Claim any insurance excess
* Claim loss of earnings
* Claim loss of bonuses, loss of profits or overtime
* Claim any no claim bonus which may be lost pending the claim
* Claim for damaged clothing
* Claim for medical bills
* Claim for time caring for the injured child or children in the car crash
* Claim for travel expenses attending upon hospital, GP, physiotherapy, solicitors and doctors
* Claim for sundry expenses such as telephone calls and postage
The above is just an example of some typical child injuries claims for out of pocket expenses and losses that our routinely claimed following a road traffic accident. The child injuries and accident solicitors will, of course in addition to the financial claims, claim for the pain, suffering and loss of amenity, commonly known as personal injury, or in solicitor’s language “general damages”.
This article written by Mr Ronnie Hutcheon a specialist personal injury and civil litigation solicitor, in the Firm R James Hutcheon Solicitors and Regulated by the Solicitor Regulation Authority - . It is intended to provide a basic outline and helpful content to parents and guardians who are responsible for a child who has been involved in an accident causing injury. A specialist web site has been developed which provides further information and help to parents and guardians