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7.0 CONCLUSIONS AND ISSUES ARISING FROM THE OBSERVATIONS
7.1 Summary of Key Findings
The majority of lessons observed were delivered by class teachers in primary schools and year group tutors in the secondary schools. Only one in ten of the observed lessons were delivered by PSHE specialists and only 20 of the lessons were delivered by visitors, encompassing Drug Enforcement Agency and community police officers, community health workers, voluntary agencies and theatre companies.
Most of the classroom environments were conducive to PSHE in general and drugs education in particular. All but a small minority (4 per cent) had sufficient space to enable teachers to work with small groups and move around from group to group easily.
Just over one third of observed lessons used published packages. The most commonly used were What's the Score? and Drugwise, which were used in both primary and secondary schools. Glasgow's Health and The Police Box in were commonly used in the primary sector.
Worksheets were the dominant resource in most drug education lessons that were observed. Only a few schools used information leaflets and cards, usually from Know the Score and Scotland Against Drugs. Teachers not using published packages tended to use a wider range of types of learning resource.
In the primary schools the most commonly taught topics in the observed lessons related to personal safety and keeping healthy. Lessons on specific drugs, types of drugs and their effects on people's behaviour, feelings, attitudes and lives in general were the areas most frequently addressed in P6-7 lessons and in the secondary school years.
Some teachers of early-years and middle-years classes were mainly preparing the ground for later more explicit drugs education. However, we saw some excellent examples of this where teachers were consciously establishing links to which their colleagues could return later.
Most of the observed drugs education lessons from P6 through to S4/5 concentrated on factual information about drugs and their effects. A relatively small minority of the observed lessons focused on the social and personal pressures which influence young people to try various drugs, and even fewer lessons aimed to develop pupils' decision making, assertiveness and resistance skills.
An examination of the topics covered with each year group and age range suggests that there is some broad degree of progression there and that curriculum planning is informed to some degree by the notion of a spiral curriculum building on prior learning and returning to key themes and issues in greater depth and in a way that reflects the new knowledge and experiences of the children and young people. However, there are also some causes for concern which are returned to below.
Evidence of progression is even clearer in the kinds of drugs being covered in the observed lessons. The pattern moved from coverage of dangerous substances in the home and environment to over-the-counter medicines, then prescription medicines, then nicotine, followed by alcohol and finally moving on to Class A, B and C drugs. However, whilst this linear progression was clear in most of the schools we visited, the age at which these various categories of drugs varied widely.
A wide range of teaching and learning methods was employed in the schools. The most commonly used method was discussion, both structured and relatively unstructured, followed by methods concerned with helping students to assess their knowledge and what they have learned about drugs during this and previous lessons.
Around a third of the lessons observed could be said to be mostly interactive in approach and only eleven percent were described as mostly didactic. The majority combined some didactic elements with interactive activities which provided opportunities for pupils to share their knowledge, brainstorm strategies for drugs-related situations and practice those strategies through role play and script writing.
In terms of learning approaches the most commonly observed was information acquisition and also the main approach across the range of approaches that might underpin any given lesson. This was identified as the main approach in 57 per cent of the lessons observed. Most other learning approaches, such as harm reduction, the social influences approach, affective approaches, and so forth were employed in around one-in-ten observed lessons or less.
Observers reported that all but a small minority of lessons had clear messages for the pupils about drugs. Also the majority of lessons were deemed to have enhanced pupils' understanding of drugs and drug use.
Pupil engagement in drug education was generally high, although mostly higher in primary school lessons. Pupil engagement was reported as being at a high level in over two-thirds of the primary lessons and about half of the secondary lessons.
7.2 Issues for Consideration
Introductions and Reviews. Introductions beyond simply announcing what the topic was were in place for just over half of the lessons. A third of lessons mentioned how the topics were going to be approached or highlighted the main message of the coming lesson. Explanations of the intended learning objectives and outcomes occurred in very few lessons - only seven out of the hundred observed.
Just over half of the lessons finished with some kind of review but in only 15 of these did the review offer an opportunity for pupils to reflect on what they had learned. Mostly the reviews re-capped what had been done and how, rather than what had been learned or the key messages to take away from the lesson. Usually the reviews were hastily done and seldom seen as a potential opportunity for ensuring that connections were made or for assessing if the main messages had been understood.
Use of resources. Age appropriateness was a key factor in how teachers used the resources at their disposal. However, some of the leaflets in use seemed to be inappropriate for the age and experience of the pupils using them, e.g. some pupils in P7 or S1 researching information on drugs were seen to be using leaflets linking unprotected sex to the use of nitrites or poppers.
Issues of progression. As noted in the summary above the range of topics being covered in drugs education lessons appeared to be rather narrow and 'safe', in so far as the emphasis was mostly on knowledge acquisition rather than developing skills for coping, exploring their personal beliefs and attitudes, challenging some of the preconceptions in their local communities or amongst their peer group about the drugs scene and the prevalence of drug use in their environment.
In spite of some overall evidence suggesting a degree of progression in the topics covered with different age groups there was also some cause for concern. A number of topics covered in lessons for P6 and P7 were also being covered in S1 and S2 lessons and even S3 and S4 lessons. Some secondary teachers reported that they would like a clearer idea of just what was being covered in the primary schools. There was also some evidence of poor progression within some primary and secondary schools there was evidence of poor progression. In a few cases it appeared that pupils would be doing virtually the same lesson two or three times during their school careers.
Progression may be a particular cause of concern in the delivery of drugs education to composite classes where pupils in classes which included pupils from several year groups were studying the same topic in exactly the same way, and may well be returning to that topic again when they move up into the next composite class.
Some of the young people in the lessons we observed were clearly aware of local drug cultures and of the experimentation going on amongst their peers or the generation slightly older than them. And yet the drugs of choice amongst those groups were not necessarily being covered in drug education lessons, although teachers were aware of the importance of scheduling lessons on alcohol and tobacco to coincide with a time when they anticipated that their pupils would be experimenting with both or either.
Differentiation. There may be a cause for concern about the relative lack of differentiation in drug education lessons being delivered to composite classes. This applies at two levels. A lack of differentiation in the content of lessons and a lack of differentiation in the teaching and learning activities being deployed.
Managing discussions. Three issues emerged from looking at how discussions were managed:
- Ethical questions arose in some instances relating to how disclosures were handled. There is often a tension between wanting to encourage open and honest contributions to discussion whilst ensuring that a classroom ethos of confidentiality and security is established, either by intention or default.
- Structuring discussion in order to maximise whole-group learning requires good preparation and a clear understanding of the teacher's role in moderating and monitoring the process. While some very good examples of this were observed other teachers were observed to slip quite quickly from moderating to a more didactic role.
- Pupil engagement was an essential element in good discussion-based activities but not the only factor to be considered. In some instances, however, observers noted that pupil engagement was being seen primarily as an end in itself rather than the means to another end: constructive and appropriate drug education.
Specialist inputs. The PSHE specialist teachers whom we observed tended to be more comfortable with interactive approaches to drug education than their colleagues who were class teachers or year group tutors. This would seem to be an area for further development in CPD and in-service training, and also in general initial training for primary and secondary teachers.
Some of the lessons delivered by expert visitors were amongst the most didactic ones observed, although they would probably not describe themselves in these terms. This may have something to do with their need to quickly establish rapport with a group they do not know and also to establish their street credibility. It may also have something to do with the need to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short time (usually either a one-off visit or a series of three). Perhaps in these circumstances time-consuming open discussions and brainstorming activities may be seen as an optional extra to enhancing the young people's information base and getting the key messages over to them. This may be less of a problem where teachers and visitors are clearly working together in a planned programme.
Approaches to drug education. The heavy reliance on information acquisition as the main learning approach gives some cause for concern, given that research tends to suggest that it is not particularly effective as a means of helping young people to make healthy choices or help them to understand and effectively resist the various pressures to experiment that they are likely to encounter. This is a 'safe' approach for teachers who may lack the confidence to approach drugs education in other ways because they feel that they do not have the appropriate knowledge or experience or may feel uncomfortable with open-ended, participatory and activity based learning.
It is possible that in planning a programme of drug education lessons in either a primary or secondary school more thought needs to be given to getting the balance right in terms of content, resources, methods and approaches. Essentially the issue seems to be how best to juggle complementary aims and objectives that may be best achieved in different ways. For example, many teachers are implicitly wedded to the rational information acquisition model of learning, where the children and young people just need to be given 'the right information' in order to make 'the right decisions'. Even where there was an emphasis on open discussion and interactive approaches we often noted a tendency for teachers to still be promoting specific messages and making clear value judgements about the use of drugs, including those which may be legal but where social acceptability is contested within society.
Similarly, while active and interactive learning approaches certainly engage the pupils more than didactic frontal talk - unless the talk is delivered by someone who has a high level of credibility or novelty value with their audience and seems to "know what they are talking about". However, the fact that the pupils are enjoying their lessons, are on-task and actively participating in discussions does not necessarily mean that they are learning what the lesson planners intended. Steps also need to be consciously taken to ensure that the pupils are making connections between what they are discussing and finding out about and the underlying objectives of changing behaviour, harm reduction or making informed choices. However, an area of the curriculum where, traditionally learning is not assessed or even monitored, and which is often perceived by teachers, pupils and parents, as of low status, may well experience problems here.
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