heart of heartlands lessons

Flat whites, beards and avocados, there is so much about life that is faddy and cool. Teaching is no different and there is always a new chic strategy or theory that is in vogue. Visual, Auditory or Kinaestheitc (VAK) learning will improve student engagement; lessons should start faster than a Ferrari and maintain this pace throughout; traffic lights should be used every few minutes to assess progress; green pens allow pupils to know all the answers; red pens will make pupils feel sad. There is always something that we are told we should or in the worst cases must do because it makes us a better teacher and makes students better learners but often feel more like the script for an 'Ofsted show'. So I am approaching my entry into this blog with care and caution and ask you do the same when reading. But one thought, one that I believe does have real impact is metacognition. Sometimes known as ‘learning to learn’ strategies, these are teaching approaches which make learners think about learning more explicitly. These strategies are often poorly misinterpreted as any that allow students to check their learning and in essence, be independent.

But on closer look, this creates the impression of meta-cognition. It would be a task by task process. The student would only be able to achieve this when given the criteria to do so. Truly the aim would be to produce a student that is autonomous and self-reflective, know the methods they use to work, why they work and when to apply them. In other words it is not purely about what a student knows but how they approach it.

David Didau on his blog 'The Learning Spy' offers one way to think of it with the idea of novices and experts, and the two entering a wood. I’ve decided to adapt this and use the Great British Bake Off as an analogy. Armed with a bare list of ingredients and next to no instructions, the novices of the group race of to start Paul's tricky Pastel de Nata's , they take a cursory look at the instructions or their checklist and begin to throw their ingredients in the bowl. We have flour, eggs and sugar, what can go wrong. But things soon get tough. The mixtures gone lumpy so we have to start again...and again. The novice goes down many paths, retraces their steps and often goes back down the same paths, unaware of how or what it is they are doing wrong.

The experts have spent a little more time reading the ingredients. Where have we seen these before? What do I already know about these things that might be useful? Maybe I could translate the name and see if that helps, maybe I'll have a cup of tea whilst thinking about it. The expert looks for features and patterns they recognise. They see that the ingredients closely match a custard recipe and begin to prepare an egg custard tart. Maybe they produce their own checklist, amend the recipe they were given and set about their own path. Armed with a vision of what they want the journey becomes less scary, often more predictable and ultimately more enjoyable. The expert has deliberately employed metacognitive strategies.

The key thing is that an expert has not always known how to do this, it is not a skill that just came to them through practice. Additional for one strategy to be the killer solution is wrong. Implementing these ideas needs a broader approach, it needs to permeate all that we do. Two strategies that David Didau suggests would be greatly useful are scaffolding and modelling. Make clear; explicitly clear the strategies and frameworks we expect students to use in their approach to learning and then model this extensively ourselves. Combined with effective feedback, marking and conversations about how we arrived at our conclusions we can make all the difference to how a student perceives their learning.

We must remember that the things we teach our students today may very well not even be considered problems tomorrow, so giving our students the chance to think about how they approach a situation and transfer their knowledge might give them the best chance to be successful.

For more information;

The failure of learning styles

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidence-to-back-idea-of-learning-styles

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x

The colour of a pen (http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/does-marking-in-red-pen-damage-students-self-esteem/).

For a rather indept view of learning, with a look at slower sustained learning over pace https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/#itemII)

For some excellent ideas about metacognition and thinking skills, particlar the role of scaffolding and modelling look at David Didaus blog http://www.learningspy.co.uk/research/thinking-skills-can-teach/ , http://www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/what-is-meta-cognition-and-can-we-teach-it/ from teach thought and https://www.teachthought.com/learning/5-strategies-teaching-students-use-metacognition/