Understanding Learners and Learning
– Claire Formby
MA Unit, 2007
As my understanding of the way children
learn continually develops, how does this influence my everyday teaching?
Why
do I teach?
At the
end of an exhausting or difficult day this is a question I sometimes ask
myself. I know that in my heart I still believe after nine years of teaching
that I want ....... to tap into the capacity of pupils to become excited by
learning, to help them raise their eyes beyond the immediate and to learn more
about themselves (Day,
C. 2004, p.57).
Yet,
how can I do that every day? Often I feel pressured by external factors. In my
role as a Year 2 teacher I am ever conscious of the formal assessments that
await the children at the end of the year. To that end my teaching becomes
somewhat "results driven" and I feel guilty that I am not living my gentler
values with the children. Equally I am aware of the HMI requirement to:
...compare,
categorize and group young people by ability in order to provide appropriate
and challenging teaching for all...(Hart, Dixon, Drummond & McIntyre, 2004, p.8)
Yet I
am mindful of the ability labelling of children, sharing the view of Hart,
Dixon, Drummond and McIntyre that .....ability labelling damages young
people's learning and prevents teachers from fulfilling their professional
commitment to making a positive difference to young people's lives. (p.16). During a recent OFSTED
inspection I was shocked to be asked by the inspector, in front of the
children, to point out my top and bottom ability numeracy groups, with no
regard for their feelings at all. As I believe that each child's self image and
self belief is crucial to their development as a learner, and that as Clarke
says ..... all children can learn... (2001, p.119), I tell them often to concentrate
on their own learning journey rather than on comparing themselves with others
in the class.
Referring
back once more to the reasons why I find it difficult at times to live up to my
aims as a teacher, I can also feel pressured by internal factors that inhibit
my relationships with the children. I believe that to help each child reach
their potential they need to know that I care about them, that I believe in
them and that I connect with them. There is of course a downside to this and I
wholeheartedly agree with Nias when he writes that:
........ It is very tiring, physically
and emotionally, to attempt to sustain individual and sometimes intense
relationships with many people throughout a working day. (1999, p.72).
At
times I do feel exhausted, both at school and at home and on one occasion about
eighteen months ago, with a particularly challenging class of children, I
became over-stressed and depressed about my perceived abilities as a teacher.
Fortunately, and with the support of my headteacher, this led to a realization
that I needed to rethink my understanding and use of ...tried and tested
teaching routines (Day, 2004, p.107) and become a learner
again myself. I realized that I had not been reflecting on my teaching or on my
understanding of theories of learning and that my values did not always guide
my actions (Day, 2004, p.107). I was lucky at that time to join an MA group at
which I listened to other teachers critically reflecting, then developing their
ideas about teaching and learning in a mutually supportive manner, allowing me
the space for the emotional vulnerability which I was experiencing. As a
result, becoming a teacher-inquirer and carrying out action research has helped
me to begin to enjoy a period of professional renewal, (Day), specifically in
terms of learning about Goleman and associated theories about the teaching of
emotional literacy and also of the SEAL programme, with its subsequent impact
on children's learning, and the development of the use of formative assessment,
(Clarke, 2001) in the classroom. On a wider level my desire to embrace and
reflect on as many teaching styles and potentially valuable theories of
learning for all children in my class has been rekindled. I now ask myself how
I could have continued in teaching without rediscovering being a learner
myself.
Myself
As A Learner Sharing With Colleagues
During
a recent INSET day, I led a session about factors that can contribute to
successful learning. This was based on what I have learned from the SEAL
(Social & Emotional Aspects of Learning) resources "Going for Goals"
material, which I was helping staff to prepare to teach this term. I quote from
my presentation notes:
This
theme is all about motivation and self awareness as a learner. It provides
opportunities for children to reflect on themselves as individuals,
particularly on their strengths as learners and to think about how they learn
most effectively. It encourages them to take responsibility for their own goal
directed learning and especially at KS2 to make wise choices about behaviours
associated with learning. I think that this theme more than any of the other 6
can help children to meet their
curricular targets by focusing them very specifically on strategies to help
them become better learners. (03/01/07, SEAL presentation notes, p.3)
I gave
examples of why I believed this, specifically from work done with my class last
year when we co-created a "How to be a better learner" poster (see Appendix 1)
plus clear evidence of an improved attitude to learning associated with this,
noted by my headteacher in a literacy lesson observation and quoted by me in my
MA Research Methods Assignment (Sept.06) (see Appendix 2)
In the
course of the INSET day I asked the three groups of staff to list conditions
they believed aided successful learning. Their ideas and my reflections are in
Appendix 1a.
Later
in that same INSET training session, I asked staff to share specific examples
of a time when they had or had not learned successfully. Perhaps as expected,
motivation played a large role in the successful learning scenarios – for
example one teacher was very motivated to pay off her student loan in order to
afford the house of her dreams! I was struck more however, by the written
comments on a post it note from one colleague about her inability to learn
anything connected with music. This stemmed from an incident in her teens when
she was told in front of the whole class to mime when her group was singing.
She is near retirement now but has never forgotten this incident - she has even
avoided teaching singing as much as possible throughout her career! Although
she laughed when recounting the incident, I think it is important to remember
that:
Loss
of dignity combined with an internalized sense of inadequacy creates psychological
conditions that impair the capacity to learn. (Hart, Dixon, Drummond & McIntyre,
2004, p.25)
Finally
I asked staff to carry out an activity in which they considered how they used
intrinsic, external and internal motivation in the teaching and learning of
different activities and skills. This was a lively session, even though it was
straight after lunch (see Video clip in Appendix 3). During the activity (see
Activity 3, Types of Motivation – Appendix 4) we all learned that of
course different types of motivation motivate children to carry out and
complete different tasks. For example one child may be intrinsically motivated
by a maths problem because he or she loves numeracy, whilst another may be
internally motivated to complete it because he/she has a hard working attitude,
but without particular enjoyment. Following this, I showed two Powerpoint
slides about motivation (Appendix 5), which led to a useful discussion about
which type of motivation is most valued by teachers. I was able to share my learning and concern at the over- use
of external motivation – stickers etc. to encourage children's learning
based on making sure ....every child is task-focused, rather than ego-focused.
(Clarke, 2001,
p.121).
This
led to a further discussion about how to help children to see that they need to
break a long task or a long term aim or goal into smaller, achievable chunks.
As one colleague put it during this discussion:
....the
children can't always see the big picture. It's like the mountain is shrouded in
mist and all
they can see are little steps (INSET day 03/01/07). That same colleague told me afterwards
how useful the whole session had been to her understanding of SEAL and this
term's resources.
Vygotsky,
Piaget and Bruner
Although
I endorse the teaching and learning of emotional literacy in my class as an
important learning tool, I recognize the importance and validity of many "big"
learning theories. I recently read some words that Vygotsky wrote twenty years
ago which are as fresh and illuminating as the words of Christopher Day which I
quoted at the beginning of my writing. Vygotsky wrote that in:
...receiving
instructions in a system of knowledge, the child learns of things that are not
before his eyes, things that far exceed the limits of his actual and even
potential immediate experience, (1987, p.180)
This
resonates with me because Vygotsky did not see a contradiction between the
everyday and the scientific, between the social space and the development of
new concepts (pp. 163, 168, 169, 1987). His is a child centred approach based
in a social context. I recently went on a listening walk with my class as part
of a Science topic on Sound and Hearing. It was a windy day and many children
wrote that they could hear the wind and we continued to discuss whether this
was true when we returned to class. One girl, almost thinking out loud, mused:
You
can't hear the wind, it doesn't have a sound. It makes other things move and
you can hear them. You can't see the wind either and you can't see sound, but
it's there.
As with
Piaget's Schema theory, when this little girl was faced with a new challenge,
she had to restructure her existing understanding of this concept to
accommodate some new knowledge. Her learning was also based firmly in a social
context. As a new teacher nine years ago I was very influenced by the
constructivist ideas of Vygotsky as I planned my lessons with lots of
instruction, yet building on what the children knew already, "scaffolding"
their learning as necessary.
As I
developed as a teacher I was also drawn to the theories of Bruner, in
particular his three forms of representation. These can best be explained as:
....understanding
by activity ....... understanding by pictures, maps and diagrams ......... understanding
through the use of symbol systems such as spoken and written language,
mathematical symbols or musical notation (Turner-Bisset, R. 2001, p.126)
There
seems to be a pleasing progressive nature to this theory – I have used it
often in Literacy, History and RE lessons, with drama followed by planning
followed by writing.
Myself
as a Learner with the Children
I wrote
at the beginning of this assignment about the pressures that hinder me at times
from teaching my pupils in a way that makes them excited about their learning.
However even in the midst of these pressures the children can still find
excitement and inspire me. For example, it was in the middle of an NFER
numeracy test to be used to track pupil progression through the school that a
moment of real insight into a child's learning occurred, as described below.
The writing is taken from my reflective diary so is in the present tense.
In
using video and digital camera in the classroom and including it in this
assignment I have followed BERA guidelines and written to parents about my research.
I have their full permission and cooperation.
Learning
about dice
We
are working under test conditions, children spread out between tables, hard
back books forming screens between them. A small group of special needs
children is working through the test with an LSA outside the classroom. It is
very quiet as I read out each question to the children and they then think
about it and write their answers in the test booklet. It is not exactly fun but
we are making the best of it!
Then
out of the blue comes an unexpected moment of creativity. The question in the
test asks,
"The
opposite sides on a dice add up to seven. The first picture shows one side of a
dice (picture of one side of dice with 3 spots). The second picture shows the
opposite side of a dice. Draw the missing dots on the second picture."
O's
hand shoots up and I can see he is desperate for my attention. "Yes O?" I say.
"All opposite sides on a dice add up to 7 Mrs Formby," he informs me
confidently.
All
sorts of thoughts flash through my mind, such as "I didn't know that and I'm
48, but then I never really bothered to look." And "I'm beginning to glimpse
what makes you tick, O, and why you are so good at maths." Later, when O has
shown the whole class that opposite sides on a dice do indeed add up to 7, I
ask O how he discovered this. "Well" he said solemnly, "Sometimes I make dice
out of blu tac with my brother (who is 10) and we put the spots on with the end
of a pencil. Then we play with them."
I
know I have hit on something really crucial here, something that is missing
from much of my numeracy teaching – the fun and pleasure to be enjoyed
when playing with numbers. The Year 2 curriculum is extensive, the pressure is
great to push children to reach the next SATS level but the sacrifice is
perhaps even greater. Isn't it better to know that opposite sides on a dice add
up to 7? (reflective diary 19/11/06)
As I
reflected on this wonderful moment I knew that I had a responsibility to the
children to make learning a more creative experience for them. I realized the
truth of the following words:
When
we learn something new (at whatever age) we are making new connections between
ideas and making sense of them for ourselves. We are constructing knowledge and
in this sense we could perhaps describe what we are doing as being creative. (Craft A. 2005, p.52)
I
decided to teach two creative, skills based numeracy lessons the following
week. As I planned them I felt a pressure lift from me that I had not really
been aware of with regard to my teaching of numeracy. Thinking about it since,
this pressure is the Year 2 curriculum, set out week by week in my medium term
planning. I tick it off in red pen as I teach each bit and I highlight those
areas I have not yet covered. Pressure, pressure, pressure! So it was strangely
liberating to ponder what difference that sudden excitement I felt could bring
to the way I teach the children the skills they need in the different areas of
numeracy.
Howard
Gardner said to Daniel Goleman "....
You learn at your best when you have something you care about and you
can get pleasure from being engaged in." (Goleman, 1996, p.94)
So on
Wednesday I continued to teach the children addition/problem solving but I took
a new approach. I reminded them about O's comment about the opposite sides of a
six sided dice adding up to 7 and we decided that 7 was a special number for
six sided dice. So I asked the question "How many times do you think you would
score 7 if you rolled two dice twenty times? The children were instantly engaged,
we wrote down a few predictions and I paired them in higher/lower ability pairs
wanting to see how the children worked out of their usual ability groupings
too.
I stood
back and watched the children as they excitedly wrote the question in their books
and numbers 1 – 20 down the side of the page ready to record each score.
The more able children who had a less able partner encouraged and helped with
the initial writing, anxious to begin dice rolling! I was redundant so took
some photos which clearly show the children on task and working well in their
unfamiliar pairs.
R and O absorbed in the task of dice
rolling!
G asking her partner to check her adding!
When
the children had listed their scores they brought the results back to the
carpet and we used them to make a block graph on the interactive whiteboard to
find out how many times each pair (given a letter name) had scored 7.
What I
noticed was that the children wanted to find this out as much as I did and
therefore stayed on task, eagerly answering questions about the graph when we
had finished.
The
next day I continued to draw on the children's enthusiasm, this time asking
them, still in the same pairings, to find out how many different totals they
could score with 3 dice. Once again they were keen to start and the bonus for
me was that I could remind them about strategies to use to enable quick adding
of three numbers, thus meeting my curriculum requirements too.
I also
asked O if he would find out a bit more about dice for me, then gave him a ten
sided dice and a tens and hundreds dice too. I asked him to find out what the
totals of the opposite sides were. He couldn't wait and asked me to get him in
early from lunchtime play to finish this. The next day he brought in an eight
sided dice from home to total the opposite sides from that and has subsequently
brought in a spherical die too.
As I
reflected on the learning that had so clearly taken place during the above
lessons, I realized I had witnessed many positive developments.
Firstly,
children in my class (such as R.), who were prone to Dweck's helpless-oriented
pattern of response
(2000p.5-7) in a situation where a difficulty arose, had not responded in that
way during the task (see photo above of R.) Normally, during a numeracy lesson
or activity R will cry and become frustrated several times but this did not
happen at all. As I observed the mixed ability pairs at work I noticed that
even if the less able child became stuck when adding dice totals, she did not
...take
the view that once failure occurs, the situation is out of their control and
nothing can be done (p.6)
Instead
the less able child seemed able to listen to their partner who invariable made
comments such as "hang on, slow down, let's do that again".
I heard
laughter and obvious enjoyment from all the children.
Secondly,
all children were motivated to complete the task, intrinsically (because the
task was enjoyable) and internally (because it was worth doing). No external
motivation was needed at all. They had ownership of what they were doing and
they wanted to find out what happened as much as I did.
Thirdly,
the task involved social activity, followed by talking in pairs and whole
group, before individually making sense of the scores. I need to do this type
of learning activity more often.
I know
that mixed ability pairs may not be the universal answer for making the
teaching and learning of numeracy more effective in all areas, but this
experience has given me the confidence to be more creative in my approach to
the teaching of this subject.
The
role of personalized learning and formative assessment
I
believe that:
.... schools have a central
role in helping pupils to
develop the skills and
attitudes for learning, on which they can
draw throughout their lives.(2006, 2020 Vision, p.20)
I also believe that these skills
are as important as subject related knowledge, because my experience tells me
that children who learn well feel good about themselves, have an understanding
of how they learn best and what style of learning is appropriate to task. To realize
the vision for personalized learning (p.16), the 2020 Vision report proposes
that:
a combination of assessment
for learning, learning how to learn and pupil voice has the potential to contribute
to developing all aspects of learning, (p.20)
I share this vision and in my
class this year I have used formative assessment in Literacy and Numeracy,
based on the theories explained by Shirley Clarke (2001), with the aim of
personalizing children's learning. I make learning intentions clear for each
lesson, discuss success criteria with the children to help them assess if they
have achieved the learning intention and then I mark specifically against that
learning intention & success criteria. As I mark a piece of work, firstly I
praise success as appropriate, then I follow with one or two suggestions as to
how to improve. I give the class a few minutes to read my comments at the
beginning of the next lesson and I also refer to targets or improvement
suggestions during the next lesson. The results so far have been encouraging
and the children are more aware of their individual strengths as learners and
of areas and strategies for development. I continue to work at making sure my
comments show the children how to close the gap (2001, Clarke, p.57). My headteacher's
comments following an exercise book review show that I am trying hard!
(Appendix 6).
In my developing understanding
of personalized learning, the use of formative assessment has linked well with
my teaching of emotional literacy through SEAL, in particular the discussion of
and explicit teaching about learning to learn, as described earlier in this
writing and evidenced through the How to be a Better Learner poster in Appendix 1.
Recently, the children shared the
following wonderful ideas about how they think they learn:
á
If
you don't know something you can learn it
á
Hard
work helps you learn
á
I
learn when I am brave and try something new
á
Asking
questions helps you learn
á
Adults
can teach you some things
á
Children
can teach you things – O. taught Mrs Formby about dice
As part
of the reflective learning process in which I am engaged, I have spoken to the
children about being a learner myself and going to University every week to
help me learn. I feel that my relationship with the children is closer as a
result of these interesting discussions.
I now hope to develop the use of pupil voice as the children delve deeper
into understanding themselves as learners and thinkers through the use of P4C.
Learning
to ask questions through Philosophy for Children
The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human
faculty, for in it is born our art, our science our religion.' (email from
Samways, J 16/01/07, quoting Sockman, R.)
I ask
many questions of the children in my class throughout the day. I use a range of
questions - open questions, closed questions, differentiated questions,
targeted questions and even silly questions, but I agree with Ted Wragg when he
wrote:
Children
may ask a lot of questions – but not usually in school. (1993, p.6)
Increasingly
I am concerned that the children do not know how to ask questions across the
curriculum. Recently when planning a Science topic on Sound and Hearing, during
an initial circle time to find out what they knew already, I asked the children
for questions they might like to find out the answer to or to investigate.
There was a deafening hush!
So when
I was given the opportunity to attend a Level 1 P4C course I felt excited to
read that:
...... the
crux of the programme is dialogue (Cleghorn P. 2004, p.1)
especially
when I knew that I would be teaching the children to develop philosophical
questions following a story or poem stimulus. I hoped that this might develop
question asking skills in some of the children! After day 1 on the course I
carried out my first enquiry with the children. I chose the story of The
Parable of The Workers in The Vineyard from the resource pack and was
pleasantly surprised with the response from my class. Not only did they respond
well to the process of "an enquiry" but also discussed the story and its themes
sensibly in pairs, coming up with a few good questions, as listed below:
á
Why
did the owner need so many workers?
á
How
do you think the owner made so much money?
á
Why
are people jealous?
á
Why
do people fight over money?
The
discussion that followed was disappointing and it petered out rather quickly,
but I know that I need to improve my skills as facilitator and the children
also need to practice developing their question asking and discussion skills.
Ultimately, my vision is that I can develop pupil voice to the stage where the children
can plan a whole curriculum topic as an enquiring community, drawing on their
learning skills and strategies and from knowing themselves as learners.
Conclusion
In his
inspirational writing about sustaining the passion for teaching, Day says it is
essential:
....that
teachers revisit core values and beliefs, regularly engage in reflection upon
the contexts that influence their work and lives, engage in collaborative
dialogue with colleagues about improvement ......... so that the isolation and
hopelessness that sometimes erodes passion may be broken. (p.177)
In
reflecting on my present understanding of learners and learning I find myself
focusing on what I wrote about the numeracy with dice activities:
Secondly,
all children were motivated to complete the task, intrinsically (because the
task was enjoyable) and internally (because it was worth doing).No external
motivation was needed at all. They had ownership of what they were doing and
they wanted to find out what happened as much as I did.
I
realize that I want to hear more about what the children think about learning
and their understanding of themselves as learners in situations where they
experience feelings of success. I also want to engage in a deeper action
research process in which I am able to validate my developing theories about
their ownership of their learning. Finally I wish to create conditions for
personalized learning, conditions that will inspire the children to form
questions, become more enquiring and ultimately to move on in their
learning.
I conclude with the following
words from the first page of the Vision 2020 report:
All children and young people
have the right to receive support and challenge, tailored to their needs,
interests and abilities. This demands active commitment from pupils,
responsiveness from teachers and engagement from parents. (2006, Gilbert, C. p.1)
Appendix
1 – "How to be a Better Learner Poster"
How To Be A Better Learner
Our Goals
á Settle quickly
to learning
á Keep
concentrating – don't be distracted
á Be independent.
If you get stuck
o
Talk it through with a friend
o
Use classroom displays
o
Remember what you did last time you were stuck
o
Remember! It's ok to get stuck sometimes!
Appendix
1a
- Enjoyment
- Humour and sympathetic
teaching
- Not feeling threatened
- No comparison with other
learners
- Group support
- Good motivation
- Passion
- Good pace of learning
Next I
asked them to list some conditions that hindered successful learning. These
included:
- Scared of failure
- Criticism
- Comparison with others
- Feeling isolated
- Worry about looking stupid
- Negative comments
- Time management
As I
reflect on their comments for my own learning, I am reminded of how careful I
must be as a teacher when working with the vulnerable emotions of learners in
my class if I want to create good conditions for learning. As Goleman says in
The New Leaders .... A leader can model behaviour............... a caring attitude
builds a sense of trust and belonging that underscores the shared mission. (p.231, 2002).
Appendix
2 – quoted from MA Research Methods Assignment, Sept.06
A
few weeks after I had introduced the "better learner" ideas to the children
(Appendix 1), I was formally observed by my headteacher, Bob. It was a literacy lesson in which the
children were working on writing character profiles using traditional tales. I
had been using the ideas from the "better learner" poster in all my lessons
– these were
á
listening
á
looking
á
concentrating
á
not distracting others or allowing yourself to be distracted
-
and I felt intuitively that the children were using and responding to them, but
this was the first time that someone had come in to observe me since their
introduction. Bob wrote in his observation (Appendix 2)
Claire,
you have developed greatly in your teaching which is allowing the children to
learn more freely in a safe environment. Behaviour is now far more
productive. Congratulations – you deserve credit for such
development. This is an example to us all. We need to share some of these
techniques to extend this good practice.
Appendix
3 – Video Clip of part of SEAL Presentation (Motivation)
Appendix
4
Activity 3
– Types of Motivation
You will
need a large sheet of paper divided into three parts labelled – Intrinsic
motivation, External motivation, Internal motivation, pens,
post-it notes
What to do
In your group,
think of a range of different activities that the children in your class do
every day. Write them on sticky notes and discuss which of the three types of
motivation were involved and how you encouraged them to complete the activity.
Next place them on the flipchart paper under the appropriate heading.
Finally, as a
whole group reflect on the following questions:
á
What type of motivation are we trying to encourage in the
children?
á
How can we encourage the children to become more
self-motivated?
Appendix
5
Appendix
6 – Exercise Book Review (ID) 30th November 2006
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London,
Routledge
Clarke,
S. (2001) Unlocking Formative Assessment
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Hodder Education
Craft,
A. (2005) Creativity in Schools
London,
Routledge
Cleghorn,
P. (2004) Thinking Through Philosophy
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Educational Printing Services Limited
Day,
C. (2004) a Passion for Teaching
London,
RoutledgeFalmer
Dweck,
Carol S. (1999) Self-Theories, Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and
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Hart,
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