Think, Reflect, Succeed: Analysis of the University of Derby's approach to effective attainment raising outreach with secondary-age learners

The University of Derby’s (UoD) Think, Reflect, Succeed (TRS) programme has been developed in response to drivers to support young learners to raise attainment. The programme offers a new approach for UoD’s Widening Access (WA) team in the provision of raising attainment outreach and is a move away from its traditional offer of revision technique activities. The teams’ own reflections, research into best practice, and ‘what works’ evidence informs TRS, which is delivered to up to 200 local learners from underrepresented groups per year. TRS takes metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies as the basis for sessions on reflection, critical thinking, and researching skills. Evaluation is mapped using a Theory of Change (ToC), and evaluated through a mixed methods approach, giving both quantitative and qualitative data against which outcomes and impact measures are tracked. This chapter reviews the development of TRS and the emerging findings within the context of institutional, local, and political drivers, with a further analysis of socio-economic, demographic and geographic factors. It puts forward the view that metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies have a positive impact on raising attainment, and that the use of theories of change and mixed evaluation methods are highly beneficial for measuring success, outcomes and impact.