5.3 Engagement with Panwapa
Children were more engaged when working with the virtual world than with the other
components and more engaged with the video than with the magazine. Children clearly
enjoyed working with the virtual world and they were very focussed during each session.
No negative indicators of engagement were observed during the observation. This is
consistent with a study by Karimi and Lim (2010) which also examined children’s
enjoyment and engagement when using a virtual world.
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The high level of engagement with video has been reported previously. According to
Browne (1999, p.10), “watching television is a far from passive process and children are
actively engaged in the search for meaning.” Each Panwapa video deals with the life of a
child in some area in the world, something the children participating in the study could
relate to, and this enabled them to be focussed while watching the videos. Their liveliness,
frequent excitable bounces and zealous attempts to answer questions about the videos was
consistent with the evidence of Watts (2007) who found that “engagement with film
involves visible excitement and enthusiasm.” The non-participant observer’s comments
also highlight that children often want to be involved in classroom interactions but with
only one teacher there is a queue to get attention.
5.4 Learning Gains with Panwapa
Children undertook a teacher-designed global citizenship test comprising 25 equally-
weighted questions prior to commencing the Panwapa programme and retook the same test
at the end of the programme. There was a mean increase of 7.37, from 12.52 to 19.89, over
the programme which equates to an increase of 58.87%. Statistical analysis confirmed this
to be significant and a very large effect. This is consistent with the findings of (Fisch et al.
2010) who carried out a study using Panwapa with nearly 1300 children in four countries
and found increases in their general understanding of global citizenship.
All but one of the children correctly answered at least three extra questions in the post-test
than in the pre-test. The other child answered two fewer questions correctly in the post-test
which probably reflects the chance outcome of the multiple-choice test format particularly
when responders makes a guess on questions they are unfamiliar with.
Due to the nature of the intervention, the results presented refer to the entire Panwapa
programme. It was not possible to break down the learning gains by media component as
many of the learning objectives were addressed by multiple components. The increase in
test scores reflects the effectiveness of the whole programme and affirms that Panwapa can
“move the needle in terms of building greater global understanding” (Cole 2008, p.302).
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