Leadership

Learner-driven learning in classrooms

Everyone accepts that the goal of ‘independent learners’ is what education should be about. Yet teaching for independent learning is incredibly rare and goes right against teachers’ current implicit values and practice. Chris Watkins outlines a pathway to a new pedagogy.

Try this activity with a class you know. Ask them all to point an index finger at the ceiling. Tell them that you are going to ask them a question, and when they have come up with their answer to the question they should then point their finger at the answer. The question is “Who is responsible for your learning?”.

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Creative Teaching & Learning

Learner-driven learning in classrooms

18 Jun 2009

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      string(4578) "investment in the assignment. Shutting down student voiceresulted in the pupil’s poem becoming a summary of the textbook, rather thana potentially epic success.4. Allow student imagination to lead the wayThe ultimate goal is students deeply engaged in their work, translating researchand analysis into solutions or proposals for an authentic audience. Following thehttp://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-eliminating-assessment-fog-john-mccarthy71Volume5.3nCreativeTeaching&LearningProject-BasedLearningthree aforementioned guidelines will result in empowering students to designtheir own demonstration of learning. This leads us to our final guideline: Makesure students know their product must fulfil the provided academic criteria, butlet their imaginations run wild when it comes to what they produce. Their ideaswill not disappoint – video presentations, prototyping using Lego, recordings ofgame worlds, vlogging, podcasting, social media formatting, photo essays andeven traditional written essays.Teachers do not need to understand the source of student inspiration. They onlyneed to know how each student’s approach can lead to the expected outcome.Ask students to craft an action plan for executing the product and its delivery tothe teacher. Coach them through any potential problems in their plan. Once thestudent plan is approved, use planned checkpoints to monitor and assess progressof the product choice, addressing the learning targets as intended. When in doubt,ask students questions that coach them to analyse gaps in learning. This reflectionalone will be a great formative assessment for students to think through theirplanning, and foster their voice in the PBL experience.When the significant content is unpacked and clearly understood by students,the final product can be undefined. The most important academic concern is thatstudents master the curriculum taught in the PBL unit. How students choose todemonstrate that understanding is of lesser import so long as they are on target.Putting pupils in the driving seat‘It’s amazing what students can do when they put their minds to it.’ I hear someversion of this comment often, especially when caring teachers struggle to findthe means to engage students with the work – of getting them to ‘put theirminds to it’. I’ve had this thought on occasions during my own career.The first step to addressing this need is to involve students in conversationabout the PBL unit. Get their feedback on meaningful products for the targetaudience, as we would do with our colleagues. Or start small: focus on animportant checkpoint that leads to the final product. Allow students to designtheir own way of showing what they know. It’s inspirational to see them becomeinnovative. Even if the product they design fails, they will have learned much ofthe content – and isn’t that what we’re after?Sometimes it’s difficult to include students in the process as partners becauseit means giving up control. Control can be illusionary as students choose whetheror not to participate at a high level. Student voice is powerful. Embrace it as partof your planning of PBL and other units. Students will put up fewer barriers. Asthey realise that their voice matters, you will have stronger collaboration withthem than ever before.John McCarthy is an experienced teacher and consultant, and anadvocate for student voice in learning. He blogs at www.openingpaths.org and for Edutopia. Follow John on Twitter @jmccarthyeds.Knowledge trails1. Boosting the pupil voice – Allowing your students to create the lesson plan sounds like volunteering foranarchy! But when primary teacher Luisa Dolton tried it, she boosted her students’ motivation and willingness totake on challenging tasks.library.teachingtimes.com/articles/boosting-pupil-voice2. Learner-driven learning in classrooms – Everyone accepts that the goal of ‘independent learning’ is whateducation should be about, but relinquishing control of your classroom – at least occasionally – can be harder thanit seems. Chris Watkins outlines a way forward.library.teachingtimes.com/articles/learner-driver-learning-in-classroomhttp://www.openingpaths.orghttp://www.openingpaths.orghttps://www.edutopia.org/users/john-mccarthyhttps://twitter.com/jmccarthyedshttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/boosting-pupil-voicehttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/learner-driver-learning-in-classroom"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Activating student voice empowers learning

27 Mar 2015

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      string(6027) "learningthey can learn about and experiment with their learningSo the headings – here phrased as questions for the classroom – are:Active. Are learners invited and helped to: Plan their approach to any activity, review the activity, make meaning from the experience and think ahead to other situations?Collaborative. Are learners invited and helped to: Complete tasks which require higher-order thinking, necessitating something different from all, develop their collaborative skills through prompts and review, operate in a range of participant structures?Learner-driven. Are learners invited and helped to: View themselves as driving the learning, contribute their own questions, strategies and explanations, choose their challenges, develop their criteria, and assess their progress?Learning-focused. Are learners invited and helped to: View themselves as learners, notice their own learning, story and discuss their own experiences of learning, share their best approaches in order to improve learning, review their learning and its progress over time?The first three of these four headings seem to connect as a cluster. When classrooms are more active, collaborative and learner-driven, they have moved from the dominant teacher-centred model, and can be called learner-centred. But they are not yet learning-centred: that is where the fourth heading is crucial.The Language of LearningHow can we best talk about learning? Is it a matter of “learning styles” or “learning skills”? If at the most general level we view learning as the human process of making meaning from experience, then it is crucial to note that the only form of language humans have for relating experience is narrative. 13Learning is more than experiencing. . And a narrative approach is helpful in building the key element of reflection. As we relate experiences to each other through the medium of stories, we can “rise above” the immediate experience, notice, and create meaning. Activities such as having pupils tell each other the story of some good learning experiences lead to engaged and enriching exchanges – and no conflict.As the process of storying experiences develops, a richer understanding of learning develops with it. This also helps them to develop the metacognitive skill in their learning of noticing more about what they are doing while they are doing it. And in the process, a richer understanding of learning in classrooms can develop. This was illustrated in a review conversation with a class of eight year-olds when the teacher prompted “What’s the difference between learning and work?”. One student replied “I don’t think there is a difference, because when you’re working as a teacher you can learn from your students”.Teachers make the changeThe only school practice which helped teachers develop an explicit focus on learning in their classrooms was inquiry.11If we treat teachers as learners, then staff development activities for teachers should display the same characteristics as were listed above for effective learning in classrooms: active, collaborative, learner-driven, learning-focused. When these processes are in place teachers start to make changes in their classrooms which are against the grain of the dominant patterns.The learning-centred schoolThe learning-centred school is a rare place and quietly striking. The students are composed and engaged – with each other, with their teachers and with their products. The teachers are thoughtful learners too. So how is such an organisation created?Two key elements strike me: the focus on learning for all and a well-developed awareness of culture. In a learning-centred school it has become a kernel activity to talk about learning – one’s own learning, no matter what one’s role in the organisation may be. School leaders in such schools talk about their own learning journeys – in appropriate ways to their colleagues and to their students. They also initiate conversations and appreciative reviews of how everyone else’s learning is going. Leadership is seen as an aspect of many people’s roles in different contexts. In learning-centred schools, to lead means to support the learning culture. Learning-centred schools have moved away from the dominant stereotype, and the evidence is that schools do so by leading the culture of learning. And they get better results. 14In countries where politicians exert a controlling influence on schools, learning-centred schools have to be effective in driving their own agenda rather than being driven from the outside. In the current context of England, schools that are learning-centred will remain a minority because the current pattern of forces suits the interests of the powers that be. In countries such as Singapore, where the Ministry leads a project “Teach Less, LearnMore”, there might be improved conditions for learning-centred schools to develop. In Thailand, where the central government has mandated a more learner-centred approach12, the culture of leadership at school level is shown to be crucial in making this a success.8EffectsWhen classrooms become more learning-centred, a range of positive changes follow.A large meta-analysis, bringing together the findings of 119 research studies concluded “Overall, learner-centered teacher variables have above-average associations with positive student outcomes” and are “above average compared with other educational innovations for cognitive and especially affective and behavioral outcomes”.5A study of high school students who"
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Leadership

Developing Learning-Centred Classrooms and Schools

4 May 2020

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      string(5909) "One of the last large research project on classrooms in UK, Learning How To Learn, demonstrated two important elements for this theme of treating teachers as learners. Current classroom practice on promoting learning autonomy shows a large values-practice gap with teachers’ values (James & Pedder, 2006). Teachers who stay in the profession nowadays have a wider vision than simply a focus on current practice. Also, the only school practice which helped teachers develop an explicit focus on learning in their classrooms was inquiry (Pedder, 2006). So greater agency for pupils develops with greater agency for teachers.And this point also links the levels of learning among all those who are present in the school setting. As key workers in this field have put it: “We have come to see that it is not possible to either fully or sustainably promote the agency of the school or the teacher without the knowledge and skill to promote the agency of the pupil” (Reed & Lodge, 2006: 5).Personal Inquiry.Try to identify some occasions in your professional experience when you have felt like a rich professional learner.Identify some of the key elements which created those occasions.Discuss and compare with colleagues.An immediate parallel follows: if we treat teachers as learners, then staff development activities for teachers should display the same characteristics as were explored in the other HOW TO pieces for effective learning in classrooms: active, collaborative, learner-driven, learning-focussed. When these processes are in place teachers start to make changes in their classrooms which are against the grain of the dominant patterns. How are your professional development activities doing currently:Are you involved as an active learner, i.e. reviewing practice, making sense of the patterns, planning new practice?Are you involved as a collaborative learner, i.e. involved in dialogue with colleagues, creating more together than you would individually?Are you involved in a learner-driven way, i.e. influencing the agenda and the activities?Are your activities learning-centred, i.e. focused on pupil learning, teacher learning, school learning?Implications for leadership were summarized in Southworth’s (2005) “Essential tasks for leaders” as:Making learning central to their work.Consistently communicating the centrality of student learning.Articulating core values that support a focus on powerful, equitable learning.Paying public attention to efforts to support learning.Tensions with the external will arise. An inspiring account of a school regaining control of its agenda comes from an Oldham school where they noticed something important about the external agenda: “We suddenly spotted that they were all making it up. And we said ‘What if we made it up?’”. One of the many activities which followed involved pupils asking “What if we were wizards?” and creating an inspiring list of qualities of wizard learners (Arya et al, 2007).Notice those times when a voice says “I can’t focus on learning because XX” and share examples with your colleagues. These voices have less impact when they are brought into the open, and ways of moving forward can be devised.Schools from a learning-centred improvement network decided to write an account and call it “The Adventurous School” (Reed et al 2012). This does not mean taking risks for their own sake, but it does mean building a culture of inquiry. Again, this applies to all levels of the community. As one headteacher put it: “Central to our vision is staff learning with each other, the children and their parents.”The Newcastle Learning to Learn team has investigated which schools “take off” most with a learning to learn agenda, and highlighted the distributed nature of agency and leadership: “In some schools there is the convergence of leadership values and action and teacher agency in sympathy with the leadership values. Here one can see the strongest effects. In these schools research culture and processes emerge as a significant factor. It appears to give schools greater confidence in terms of their ability to identify factors affecting attainment and motivation and potential levers for change and makes teachers more reflective and critical” (Wall & Hall, 2009).How does your school fare on these dimensions?Compare your thoughts with the following summary points from teachers on a project: Aspects of the school’s language and culture and an open and honest ethos which supports reflection School leadership who view themselves as learners Staff meetings more learning focused and less managerial Peer-collaborative enquiry into teaching and learning, e.g. lesson study, professional learning communities An open and valuing approach to teacher’s practice being shared – show and tell during meetings, videoing lessons Being encouraged to innovate, review, take what are perceived to be risks A collaborative approach to the development agenda  Showing the children that you are a learnerAgain, the language used by school has an impact. Matt Chappel (a key member of the London Network of Learning-Centred Schools) had the sign outside his school refer to him as “lead learner” rather than “head teacher.” I happened to look at the KS2 results for the school, which serves disadvantaged students – the DfE website said “there is no statistically better performing school in this group that is within a 75 mile radius of the focus school”. Other schools in UK have had this description, but not in London, so even"
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        ["value"]=>
        string(24) "Professional Development"
        ["matchLevel"]=>
        string(4) "none"
        ["matchedWords"]=>
        array(0) {
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  }
}

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How to … treat teachers as learners

13 Mar 2017

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