LEARNING PRINCIPLES BLOG

Our first Learning Principle is seemingly simple and clear but there is actually more to unpack here than meets the eye. To help us to do so I would like to use one of my all time favorite cartoon strips, Calvin and Hobbes. The cartoon follows the adventures of a six year old boy and his imaginary tiger. The strip below sees Calvin taking a history test at school:

No doubt this will resonate with many of your own experiences at school. Lots of factual testing. If we link this back to the Learning Principle we can see that Knowledge is clearly being tested. In this case the date the Pilgrims landed in North America. Knowledge is important, it is what sets foundations for higher order thinking. However, as Calvin brilliantly points out; if this is all we aim for then we achieve little in terms of meaningful education.

What’s also brilliant about Calvin’s statement is that it is in itself an excellent example of an “understanding”. He gets something that is beyond the limits of the original teaching. He is able to understand a big idea around life, learning and even the construction of social systems.

In the writing of his statement we see him executing a skill. That being to communicate effectively and succinctly through writing. If we return then to the Learning Principle we can think of it’s key elements like this:

I know facts and information that can be recalled.

I understand bigger issues and ideas that arise from that knowledge

I can do something with my knowledge and understandings.

The final part of our Learning Principle is that ALL learners should be progressing and developing across these three areas. Our role in the classrooms at ISM is to make sure that all young people can access learning, no matter their starting point and to ensure they make progress. With this in mind, if I was teaching Calvin I know that I would need to make sure that he was engaged in deeper level thinking and conversation around issues arising from History. If i just want him to remember facts I would be letting him down and Calvin would call me out for it.

Learners are highly engaged, genuinely curious and reflect in a meaningful way

This week I would like to take a closer look at the second of our Learning principles

Engagement is the cornerstone of any good learning experience. You know from your own experience that when you are engrossed, interested or inspired, you are more likely to have learning transfer from short term to long term memory making it much more meaningful. Sometimes engagement can get confused with simple fun and this is something to be wary of. Learning can of course be fun, but fun is not a necessary component of learning. To quote the psychologist Daniel Willingham, engagement is actually much more closely linked to us thinking about the right things at the right time. In other words for us to learn well we must be fully focused on the thing that we are trying to learn. It’s a great challenge for teachers to think about planning lessons this way.

Curiosity is very much linked to this. You can learn a set of facts to pass this week's science test but without curiosity, the facts are unlikely to stick. This demands us to consider what questions, problems, tasks or stories can promote curiosity in young people.

Reflection is our correction tool. We need to make time for it and we need to do it deliberately and honestly. This can be reflecting on why we were unable to grasp something or how we can use formative feedback to improve on a next attempt. Young people who can reflect effectively will become better learners. This might sometimes mean slowing down, revisiting ideas and knowledge again before moving on. This is ok. In fact, it should be encouraged.

I hope that you all have a lovely weekend. Find something you are curious about and take some time to reflect. It’s an engaging process.

Learners feel safe and valued as part of a learning focused environment

This principle represents the first job of any school. Creating the right environment for students to learn and to feel happy and comfortable in school. The safety refers to both the physical safety of students in the building and perhaps the more challenging area of mental health and safety. The COVID pandemic has tested our ability and agility across all of the principles but perhaps this one more than any other. Staying physically safe in schools has become a major focus of schools all over the world and the possible consequences of safety measures on the mental wellbeing of young people cannot be ignored.

Feeling valued is tremendously important to all of us and for students in school this means having the opportunity to be heard. That might be sharing a thought in class right through to leading a whole school change project. This principle asks teachers to seek opportunities for this to happen. Alongside this runs the importance we must place on the use of praise. Being recognised for doing something well or trying really hard can make a big difference in the day of a child. Our merit system aims to celebrate this.

The final part of the principle asks us to keep student learning at the front and centre of our minds. To create a physical and emotional environment that fosters learning in all its forms. This can range from a thought provoking display in a corridor through to a teacher student conversation on an engaging topic. Lot’s of little interactions and experiences added together create an environment that places leaning in all its forms at the forefront of life at ISM

Learning is driven by high expectations of behaviour, individual effort and positive collaboration

I have chosen this principle as it partly fits with this week's Directors Chair blog regarding uniform. This is an example of high expectations. Dress Code or uniform is certainly not the most important thing in education but if we have it we must have high expectations around it. This is true in a classroom too. If we state that we want students to put their hands up to answer questions (not the only and not always the best tactic) then we need to hold true and reinforce these expectations. Many research studies and a good bit of common sense tell us that these high expectations raise achievement.

This works with effort too. We want students to enjoy learning and to embrace it. We therefore need them to know that we have high expectations. When we talk about this in a learning sense it should not be confused with simply doing lots of work and meeting all deadlines. Instead this principle asks us to think about having high expectations of the learning itself and the effort a young person puts into. Speaking to a colleague from Kings last night he summed this up quite nicely with the phrase “thinking should be hard”. If it’s hard it requires effort!

The final element of the principle refers to collaboration. This has always been a fascinating one for me. I have heard it argued that if you want people to learn to work together you just have to get them in groups. The learning will naturally come. I don’t think so! It’s entirely possible for a group of people to be forced to work together for many many years and to remain utterly dysfunctional. You may have even experienced this.

If this is true our high expectations around collaboration mean the explicit teaching of what good and effective collaboration looks like. I could (and probably will) write an entire piece just on this but I hope that for now you get the general idea.

Learning is deepened through effective and formative feedback on both the process and outcome

“Learning is deepened through effective and formative

feedback on both the process and outcome”

Feedback is perhaps the most powerful tool that we teachers have. When done well it allows students to correct or refine their knowledge, broaden or deepen their understanding and develop and hone their skills. In short, it moves learning forward. I’ve written about the difference between formative and summative feedback a number of times before and I hope it is now part of your lexicon. As a reminder, summative generally refers to feedback given at the end of something (a unit, course etc) whilst formative tends to refer to methods of feedback that are ongoing and can be actioned.

Note that our learning principle only uses one of these words, formative. This means that we want all feedback students receive to be formative and effective in helping students to move their learning forward.

This sounds simple but it is one of the most researched and discussed themes in education. What makes for great feedback has been the subject of many debates and there remain strong opinions and differing opinions about how it should be done.

It may surprise you to know that one of the biggest debates currently exists around whether students should be given marks or grades. Some schools and even national systems have decided that grading is counter productive and distracts from truly formative feedback. Of course, others believe that grades are essential for a student to understand where they are at and what they need to do to get to the next level. No doubt you will have had an initial reaction, and perhaps quite a strong one, to these ideas

At ISM we do have grades and levels but we are thinking very carefully about how we provide effective and formative feedback. We want it to be both intentional and meaningful. When students receive feedback they should have the time and space to do something with it. Reading a comment or looking at a grade is fairly useless unless you can take some actions to implement change and aim for improvement based on that feedback. In this spirit we should value the power of the redo! If my history student gets an essay back and I have provided specific areas for improvement it does seem a little mad not to give them some time and space to improve it. By doing so the feedback has become formative and allows the student to take action. It will therefore be more effective.

The final part of this principle talks about the importance of process. This comes from the work of Professor Carol Dweck who’s research has shown that providing feedback on how a student arrived at an outcome is just as important (if not more important) than the outcome itself.

Imagine my history student again. They submit an essay which I have marked and I am giving feedback on. Look at the difference between the two statements below:

A)Well done Anna. You have achieved a level 6 with a strong conclusion and some good factual information. You should try and outline your argument more concisely in your introduction...

B) Anna, over the last 4 weeks you have struggled to write a good conclusion but because you have stuck with it, drafted it and come to get advice this conclusion is excellent. Your effort has paid off. Very well done! Your introduction is the next bit we need to improve. Let's look at making it more focused and concise....

Hopefully you get the idea. The first is an example of standard feedback we would expect to see. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. The second gives the same information but praises and discusses the journey that the student has been on. This is what we mean by process and it has been shown to make a big difference to student progress.

Notice also that I did not provide the student with a grade in the second example. This was deliberate. Should I have done so?

I’ll let you debate that.

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