Teaching and learning Gem #46 – Action Research: Chain of Reasoning as a Cross-Curricular approach to Analysis

This is a special Friday Gem reporting on Holly W’s brilliant Action Research over the last two terms.

Holly wanted to explore how to improve students’ understanding of analysis across subjects. After undertaking some initial wider reading and surveying staff about the issue, she worked with teachers from different departments to establish a shared way of speaking about and teaching the skills of analysis. This is the ‘Chain of Reasoning’ approach using common steps in any discipline:  ‘identify, infer, justify, connect, review’. Teachers used this verbally to work through the process of analysis in class discussion, and used it as a prompt for students to reflect on their work. Crucially, this is a tool for fundamental understandingcutting above subject-specific models of analysis, such as PEE.

To read more about her findings, please find Holly’s brilliant write-up of her Action Research below: