What Perceptions Do Children Involved in an Active School Partnership with a School in India Have of the Country? Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning. Practitioner Research Fund Paper 1

The aim of this study was to research the perceptions children in my school, a small rural primary school in England, have of India, the country with which we have an established international school partnership. The intention was to provide an insight into the images our children have developed over the course of our link project which began following a visit to India funded by the British Council and UK aid five years ago. The findings provide an interesting insight into what the children think about their partner country and will inform the development of similar projects in the future and encourage teachers who are considering developing international links to carefully consider their own preconceptions along with the aims of their projects. This will allow them to make informed choices about how best to approach the inclusion of resultant learning into their curriculum in a way which promotes critical global citizenship and does not simply reinforce stereotypes that may already exist. The research was originally designed to use children's drawings as a basis for semi-structured interviews with pupils in school however, due to COVID-19 restrictions, interviews have not been possible and so the data collection was adapted to take account of school closures and the remote learning provision provided by our school. As many children were learning remotely, the data was collected through the analysis of annotated children's drawings which were completed following online video input on our home learning platform. The research method was designed to access the voices of children from the entire primary age range in a child-friendly and effective way.