ABSTRACT
Research into children’s own voices regarding schooling is limited. Some adults believe that primary-aged children cannot give sensible answers to inform research. The range of responses was staggering, suggesting that school is a very different place for different children and recognising their social and emotional needs was a complex challenge. The place of excitement could be the child’s place in class or in a particular subject such as hockey, clay modelling or computers; and some children showed us the most remote area of the playground, where wild bushes and grasses grew, as the most exciting place in school. Fixed-mindset thinking also tends to express itself in competitiveness and face-saving behaviour as it draws its strength from a sense of innate superiority. For many of the teachers, their first real encounter with meta-learning was when they were asked to create a metaphor that expressed what they are like when they are learning effectively, an idea drawn from Sarah Nixon.
