West Dunbartonshire: Articulate Evaluation Report - Executive Summary

Executive Summary

The Articulate Project was commissioned by West Dunbartonshire Council, with funding from the Scottish Executive’s Future Learning and Teaching (FLaT) programme, The Scottish Arts Council, West Dunbartonshire Council and West Dunbartonshire Partnership. Activities relating to the project took place between May and December 2004. The overall aim of the Articulate Project was to “explore how or if the arts, and specifically drama and theatre practice, might impact positively on English language skills in the classroom” (AELP, 2005, p5). The five specific aims of the Articulate Project were to:

• develop the creative and imaginative writing skills of participating pupils

• improve the ability of pupils to communicate effectively

• raise levels of pupils' self esteem and self worth

• increase pupils' motivation to participate in, and enjoy, learning

•  create a positive impact on thinking skills, problem solving and team working on individuals, schools and the community.

The Traverse Theatre devised a programme of pupil activities with the help of a teacher in one of the participating primary schools. In the initial stage, all participating pupils (in each class from each of five schools) were introduced to drama techniques by a Traverse Theatre actress and they attended two theatre performances. In the next stage the focus shifted to creative writing, and a group of ten pupils from each class worked directly in 10 workshops with a Traverse Theatre playwright, in order to develop their own drama sketches, which were performed by professional actors in Denny Civic Theatre. At the same time, the remainder of each class engaged in similar creative writing lessons with their teacher. Although this second Articulate group did not have their work performed, they supported the Denny Civic Theatre production by producing art work with the help of a professional artist. There were three main phases in the evaluation, which began five months after the project ended. A first phase (June and July 2005) was designed to build up a picture of the Project through extended interviews with its key architects and through document analysis. In a second phase (August – October 2005), impact on pupils was explored through their responses to Articulate-specific questionnaires and to two standardised instruments (the Marsh Self Description Questionnaire and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking - ‘Thinking Creatively with Words’), as well as through their focus group contributions. This second phase included evaluation of the project’s impact on staff through one-to-one interviews with school staff and analysis of an extended interview with the Traverse Theatre Literary Development Officer. A third phase (November 2005 – January 2006) was concerned mainly with data analysis, including pre- and post-project attainment level data for reading and writing, but also provided an opportunity for parents and a local community organisation to express views on the project. During this phase final discussions also took place with a primary Head Teacher and the Depute Head in the secondary school.

The evaluation was designed to explore impact on pupils through comparison of three groups of pupils: two groups of Articulate Project pupils (those whose creative writing was mediated through theatre specialists, and those whose teachers followed an instruction pack to deliver Articulate-style lessons) and a control group (pupils from the same schools who had no Articulate Project experience). There were 84 pupils in total in the Articulate Project groups and 65 pupils in the control group. During the project the pupils were in P7 and S2 and had progressed to S1 and S3 by the time the data was gathered. The main evaluation aims focused on the extent to which the five project aims had been realised and included an exploration of how the expressive arts can be used as a vehicle for carrying current school curriculum knowledge and broader education goals. The evaluation aims are listed on p3 of this report. The evidence supports the following main conclusions, with some qualifications that are discussed in the final chapter:

• the S1 pupils who had worked with the playwright showed themselves to be more creative thinkers than those in the other S1 groups

• more of the S1 playwright group pupils progressed to the next level in writing than pupils in the other groups 

• the S3 pupils with experience of Articulate showed themselves to be more creative thinkers than the no-Articulate pupils, regardless of whether they had worked with the playwright or teacher

• pupil enjoyment of the Articulate Project activities was generally high, but particularly amongst those chosen to work with the playwright

• both Articulate and no-Articulate pupils achieved very high self-concept scores, leaving little scope for the emergence of a project impact 

• project classes should not be split into playwright- and teacher-led groups

• project activities need to be better integrated into the 5-14 writing curriculum

• opportunities should be maximised for the teachers and theatre specialists to
  learn from each other

• consideration should be given to designing a future project in a way than enables class teachers and theatre specialists to plan and teach lessons together throughout the project