SSAT: What kind of teaching for what kind of learning?

SSAT: What kind of teaching for what kind of learning?.

Guest post: Learning @ Honywood – Creating a climate for collaborative dispositions

Our latest guest post is by Simon Mason, headteacher at eedNET member school, Honywood in Essex.

In my view, for people to be happy and successful in their lives they need to understand themselves. What makes people tick? Why do we act or behave in the way we do? Are we self-aware and able to analyse ourselves? Are we reflective and self-critical? Are we honest with ourselves, open to others’ views and able to react constructively and thus able to grow and develop emotionally? These questions can be used with young people and adults alike and they are key to the learning and development of all youngsters who attend our school and the staff who work alongside them. At Honywood we expect everyone to be learning; we are creating a culture predicated on proactive and independent self-discovery leading to an environment in which everyone at Honywood never stops learning and we foster this belief with the youngsters who attend the school, with our staff and with our wider community.

Guest Blog: Put the ‘self’ back into your practice – Dr. Dave Walters, Clyst Vale Community College

This month we feature a guest blog by Dr. Dave Walters, Deputy Principal at one of our newest eedNET member schools Clyst Vale Community College

‘People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.’

Podcast: discussing CRL’s expansive approach to vocational pedagogy with the TES

Join the TES’ very own Sarah Simons as she talks vocational pedagogy with Professor Bill Lucas, Jayne Stigger and Dr Jean Kelly in yet another wonderful episode of the TES further education podcast.

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/The-TES-Further-Education-Podcast-Episode-10-6396052

What’s the point of it all this education?

As we head into the new school year, two organisations, ASCL and SSAT are inviting us all to debate the purpose of education. What, as my colleague Guy Claxton has put it, is the point of school?

At the same time the Cambridge Primary Review Trust is more actively applying the excellent thinking of Robin Alexander and its team to ensure that the experiences of children are broader and deeper.

And, of course, we have launched our contribution to the debates with the publication of Expansive Education: teaching learners for the real world. Here we chart the history of thinking which has led to the expansive education movement, explore case studies of promising practices from across the world and offer some practical suggestions as to how to put expansive thinking into practice.

Signs of Spring?

It’s been a long cold few months in England and the Summer term has started without Spring having really arrived. And, for many of the teachers I have been working with, that goes for the educational temperature too.

For the air is predictably full of arguments over what should or should not be in the National Curriculum, what will happen to EBacc, whether TechBacc will happen, and even some mischievous suggestions that teachers should work longer hours and have shorter holidays. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no reason why we should not take a good look at the amount of time that students spend learning. It’s just that most of the research shows that it is what learners do that matters and much less so how much time they spend doing it.

Which brings me to expansive learning and some signs that we are beginning to achieve critical mass in England and, increasingly, across the world.

eedNET’s expansion
In the last few months a number of significant organisations have joined the Expansive Education Network including Fieldwork Education, Teaching Leaders and SSAT. With the last of these, SSAT, Guy and I have teamed up with a number of other academics to help orchestrate a sector-led debate about how we can redesign schooling to make it more expansive. Already we are hearing from headteachers that this is the kind of direction they would like to go in. We have some emerging principles:

1. Schools have a broad in preparing learners for a lifetime of learning

2. There are a set of wider life and learning skills which need to be deliberately cultivated in the context of the curriculum and beyond

3. What learners believe about themselves matters and a ‘growth mindset’ is both a powerful motivator and a predictor of success

4. Parents and the wider community have a significant role to play in pupil’s learning alongside schools

5. When teachers actively continue their own learning and model this in their classrooms learners achieve more

6. Learning works well when it builds on pupils’ prior experiences, is authentic, has clear and stretching goals and is undertaken in an environment full of formative feedback with many opportunities for reflection

7. Learning requires opportunities to develop emotionally, socially and practically as well as intellectually, individually and with appropriate theoretical grounding and understanding

8. Learning is learnable and improves when learners have a set of metacognitive strategies which they are able to use confidently in a range of contexts.

What do you think?

Greater precision of definition
Last year the Australian Council for Educational Research, in conjunction with the Open University Press, commissioned us to write a book which we are calling Expansive Education: teaching learners for the real world. They asked us to scan the world for examples and we have just finished doing so. In the process we had the opportunity to stand back and reflect on how expansive education is different from a range of ‘progressive’ approaches and I offer a taste of what we have written here:

Expansive education is expansive in four senses.

First, it seeks to expand the goals of education. Traditionally, a school framed its success in terms of its exam results, the quantity and quality of its students’ university places, its ratings by independent assessors (such as Ofsted), and by its students’ achievements on the sports field and in the concert hall. How students fared after leaving—whether they had genuinely been prepared for the rigours of further study, vocational training and the informal challenges and demands of life—was little monitored and hence little valued. Expansive educators are happy to include these traditional ‘success criteria’, but insist on adding some more: the extent to which young people’s horizons have been broadened so that they have really been prepared to face the tests of life.

Secondly, ‘expansive’ means expanding young people’s capacity to deal with these tests. Whereas traditional educators tend to see young people’s capacity to think and learn as relatively fixed—they talk about students as if they were simply ‘bright’, average’ or ‘less able’—expansive educators focus on the extent to which our psychological capacities are themselves capable of being stretched and strengthened. What David Perkins calls ‘the emerging science of learnable intelligence’ has made it clear that a good part of people’s so-called intelligence is actually made up of mental habits that can be developed in positive ways. We know that willpower, for example, behaves exactly like a mental muscle that can be strengthened by exercise, and depleted through use. Likewise resilience, concentration, imagination and collaboration are all qualities of mind that can be coached and cultivated. This science gives licence to teachers to think of themselves as coaches of the capacities to think and learn.

Thirdly, we are expanding our compass beyond the school gates. Expansive education assumes that rich learning opportunities abound in young people’s other lives of music, sport and community and family activity. In 1987, Lauren Resnick drew attention to the growing evidence that knowledge acquired outside school can contribute to the development of young people in school—and vice versa. Schooling, Resnick reminds us, is very different from learning outside school.

Briefly, schooling focuses on the individual’s performance, whereas out-of-school mental work is often socially shared. Schooling aims to foster unaided thought, whereas mental work outside school usually involves cognitive tools. School cultivates symbolic thinking, whereas mental activity outside school engages directly with objects and situations. Finally, schooling aims to teach general skills and knowledge, whereas situation-specific competencies dominate outside.

To thrive in the real world young people need to experience an expanded palette of learning opportunities or it is unlikely that they will acquire the kinds of habits of mind they need to thrive. Expansive educators ensure that their pedagogical and instructional processes reflect such an expanded conception of learning.

And fourthly, expansive education has profound implications for the role of teachers. Just as a central clutch of desirable dispositions in young people involve experimenting, noticing, critical thinking, questioning, reflecting and adapting, so the same is true for teachers. Teachers who exhibit these capabilities produce better educational outcomes. John Hattie puts his finger on it most deftly in Visible learning: a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement:

The remarkable feature of the evidence is that the biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers.

In the first half of the sentence, Hattie encapsulates precisely what expansive educators tend to do. They move beyond reflective practice to adopt a more scientific and rigorous mindset with respect to all of their teaching They become better observers of their own effects on students, and more interested in undertaking, publishing and sharing systematic action research with other colleagues. Thus, expansive education requires expansive and enquiring teachers.

Does this help? Do let us know.

Expansive thoughts from an old to a new year

Who said that we should develop:

‘a clear, widely-owned and stable statement of the outcome that all schools are asked to deliver. This should go beyond the merely academic, into the behaviours and attitudes schools should foster in everything they do. It should be the basis on which we judge all new policy ideas, schools and the structures we set up to monitor them’?

Someone from the outdoor education sector? An academic with a grudge against the current Secretary of State for Education in England? A lobbyist for the self-esteem movement?

I’ll give you a clue. It was published in November 2012. It was from a surprising source. And it was not much reported on in the education press.

Are you getting warmer? Or do you give in? Let me put you out of your misery.

A powerful new educational voice

It was the UK’s Confederation for British Industry, better known as the CBI, in a report unremarkably called: First steps: A new approach for our schools. I say unremarkably for two reasons. Everyone assumes theirs is a ‘new’ way. And the claim that it is merely ‘first steps’ is modestly tentative and developmental rather than the kind of assertive approach one expects.

First Steps is not saying that it has all the answers. The report also has a sub-title and perhaps it is this which gives a clue into its authors’ interestingly persuasive tone. The subtitle is ‘ambition [noun] a desire and determination to achieve success’.

This is a brilliant and insightful report and you can get it here. Its arguments are compelling and deeply in tune with the aims of the Expansive Education Network. It suggests that we need to be clear about the dispositions and wider capabilities which all schools should be cultivating and then be riogorus about assessing these. It expands the sphere of influence of school explicitly to include other stakeholders and deliberately to suggest that we need to engage parents better to improve students’ learning. It is a clarion call for an end to short-termism and curriculum tinkering and it is a bold and evidence-based argument for a broader conception of school.

The real lesson from Singapore

Singapore is currently cited by the many in the DfE as the place we should aspire to educationally because of its results in core subjects. But the CBI is too clever to fall for this kind of simple educational system ‘tourism’. It goes deeper preferring to cite in detail the aims of the Singaporean system:

‘The person who is schooled in the Singapore education system embodies the desired outcomes of education. He has a good sense of self-awareness, a sound moral compass, and the necessary skills and knowledge to take on challenges of the future. He is responsible to his family, community and nation. He appreciates the beauty of the world around him, possesses a healthy mind and body, and has a zest for life. In sum, he is:

• A confident person who has a strong sense of right and wrong, is adaptable and resilient, knows himself, is discerning in judgment, thinks independently and critically, and communicates effectively
• A self-directed learner who takes responsibility for his own learning, who questions, reflects and perseveres in the pursuit of learning
• An active contributor who is able to work effectively in teams, exercises initiative, takes calculated risks, is innovative and strives for excellence
• A concerned citizen who is rooted to Singapore, has a strong civic consciousness, is informed, and takes an active role in bettering the lives of others around him.

In recent years the balance of teaching has shifted to reduce the amount of subject matter taught and to increase the learning of life-long skills, the building of character and competencies such as critical thinking and creativity.’

For two compelling reasons Singapore’s description of its education system’s desirable outcomes is a wonderful piece of writing, especially for an Education Ministry.

First it understands that in the 21^st century it is certain dispositions (or competencies – the language does not matter) which will determine success and happiness in life.

Secondly it recognises that the balance of focus needs to change in schools, reducing subject content and increasing our focus on the cultivation of certain important wider skills.

For expansive educators the debate is not whether a shift towards dispositions for learning should happen but how best to do it now.

And we believe that, by engaging teachers as learners and enquirers we are most likely to produce better outcomes and embed change at the classroom level.

As the World Bank’s 2020 education strategy, also quoted by the CBI, puts it:

‘education enhances people’s ability to make informed decisions, be better parents, sustain a livelihood, adopt new technologies, cope with shocks, and be responsible citizens and effective stewards of the natural environment.’

We agree!

 

 

eedNET goes Down Under

Travel, they say, expands the mind.  And never more so if the object of your journey is to work with other expansive educators.

So I am happy to report that rumours of the demise of expansive curriculum thinking in Australia and New Zealand are premature. That’s not to say that times are not challenging in both countries as I will touch on later. But innovative teachers were very much in evidence wherever I went.

Educating sick children

My first day was spent at the newly designed Children’s Hospital in Melbourne where it was my privilege to work with hospital educators. Not content with doing a remarkable job of creating flexible learning opportunities around very sick young people, the teachers are trying to expand their charge’s horizons, building their resilience and optimism in the light of the difficult situations they find themselves in.

Bridging the gap between schools and grant-makers

Bringing schools and philanthropic organisations together for the benefit of learners is the ambitious aim of the project – Tender Bridge – Michelle Anderson has created under the aegis of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). I was speaking at an event for principals, grant-makers and others in Melbourne. The topic was ‘creating an engaged society’. As I spoke and listened it occurred to me that while we often stress our interest in the kinds of capabilities we are seeking to cultivate in young people, we must never forget that unless teachers and other adults can engage with young people, what we do in classrooms is of little value. You can take a learner to water but you cannot maker her drink.

The way that Michelle is actively involving grant-givers and schools in understanding better how engagement can be encouraged seems a very powerful and necessary first step on the road to expansive education. For she is helping schools to use an understanding of learnable intelligence to unlock teacher and learner attitudes to their own growth. It’s exciting to know that Guy, Ellen and I are writing a book for ACER about expansive education initiatives globally to be published next year and in which we hope to feature several Australian examples.

And when educators consciously seek authenticity and practical engagement they often champion expansive techniques. I was, for example, delighted to meet Russell Kerr who attended the event and whose organisation Hands-On Learning has made a dramatic impact on re-engaging teenagers who have dropped out from school. This kind of practical learning is surely what we should be offering all young people and so expanding their capabilities in this area to create more manipulate learners.

Expansive Learning Network

From Melbourne I headed out to Geelong with Shanti Wong from Deakin University who, with colleagues, has created a sister organisation in Australia. This Expansive Learning Network is expanding young people’s capabilities to learn by putting them firmly in the driving seat of their learning and by actively drawing on approaches from the learning sciences such as the development of growth mindsets from Carol Dweck’s work. Students from the school where we were holding the event interviewed delegates about their day and have uploaded a video here.

Bankstown Girls High School

From Melbourne to Sydney and a whole school training day on a Sunday! Yes I really mean a Sunday. So keen were teachers to develop their understanding of expansive education in general and BLP in particular that they opted to work on the weekend in return for an extra day’s Christmas holiday. Bankstown is an example of a school which has fully explored the opportunities of expansive education from two ends of the spectrum. It is embedding BLP into all of its pedagogic processes and it is encouraging its staff to become active researchers as part of its new professional learning community. At the same time its principal, Betty Harper, is adamant she will keep the best of the school’s curriculum heritage while adopting the new Australian National Curriculum from 2013.

Expansive Learning in New Zealand

From Sydney it is a short hop to Auckland and the opportunity to collaborate with a wonderful organisation, Learning Network NZ led by an extraordinary educator, Faye Huwaii. A whirlwind tour of the North Island gave me the chance to work with practising teachers and spend time with principals in Whangarei and Auckland.  

As in Australia, school leaders in New Zealand find themselves working in interesting times with central government. In NZ this involves a new focus on accountability and teacher standards that is constricting the wonderfully expansive, capability-based National Curriculum they have. My core message here was the same one we are finding helpful in England; that expansive approaches both develop more powerful learners and help teachers to ‘get better results’.

As expansive educators we have to hold on to the two decades of research, much of it so effectively synthesised by New Zealand’s own expert, John Hattie, as well as by, for example, the IoE in London. This evidence shows unequivocally how learners who have more advanced conceptions of how they learn and can use these in the real world of their learning do better on all counts.

EedNET goes outdoors

As the beech leaves in my part of Hampshire are beginning to turn brown and the mornings are chill with heavy dews it’s a wonderful time to be outdoors.

Two new pioneers

And we are delighted to announce that two new pioneering organisations are joining eedNET.

The first, Learning through Landscapes, has helped to transform the way school grounds are used – as outdoor classrooms. It has also played a significant role in rethinking the way we see the outside of school as a place for certain kinds of learning and play.

As its Director, Juno Hollyhock, puts it: ‘Expansive education may be one of the few remaining pathways towards ensuring that our children grow up as competent and confident life-long learners where-ever they are educated.’

And the second organisation needs no introduction, the Eden Project. Its charismatic creator Sir Tim Smit has long been a public supporter of expansive education as well as being an extraordinarily visionary thinker about the future of the planet. Here’s what he says about us: ‘The Expansive Education Network is to be applauded for bringing so many pioneering organisations together to help young people discover themselves and develop the appetites and interests that make for a rounded life. I wholeheartedly support it and am delighted that Eden can play a part.’

As someone who has long been associated with learning outdoors and sustainable development I am thrilled to welcome both of these organisations. I’ll be at Eden on 9 October to work with schools in the region.

A pedagogy for green teaching

But it’s not just because the values of these two organisations are so much ours that I am excited.

Expansive education is specifically concerned about the way in which we encourage certain capabilities in young people and the great thing about teaching outdoors is that there’s no desk and the walls are invisible!

The outdoors invites teachers to play a different kind of teaching role, more facilitative and more likely to let children explore and experiment. The learning is almost bound to be more hands-on and experiential. Frequently it engages and connects with learners and teacher’s passions that are bigger than school.

This is a wonderful opportunity for us to establish a special interest group of teachers who would like to understand more about the power of this kind of pedagogy and its impact on the development of young people’s capabilities.

I know that my own curiosity is piqued by being in and learning about the natural world. How about you?

 

Anything is possible. It’s just hard work and graft

‘Anything is possible. It’s just hard work and graft.’ This was how Mo Farah put it to the BBC after just having won his second gold medal in the 5000 metres in a wonderful statement of expansive capability! Indeed the last fortnight has been filled with powerful stories of success as athletes have discovered different ways in which they are physically and mentally smart.

I was lucky and managed to extract tickets for women’s football, canoeing and rowing. And for much of the rest of the fortnight I found myself glued to the television watching sports I’d never or rarely seen before and marvelling at the spectacle. Perhaps inevitably it has got me wondering about what the Expansive Education Network (eedNET) and schools in general might learn from London 2012. Here are just a couple of musings.

Apply rowing rules to school tests?

Did you marvel at the barefaced cheek of the rowers? Instead of one final for 6 boats they had many ‘finals’. Final A, Final B, and so on.  On the day my colleague Guy Claxton and I were there we witnessed six ‘finals’, with just three boats in the last race – Final F – tussling for places 31, 32 and 33. I am not sure what colour the ‘medals’ are for such lowly places, but certainly the rowers thought they were worth having. So, although you may have just watched the final in which gold was awarded to our men’s four or women’s double skulls, spectators at Dorney Wood were treated to many more finals!

33 boats. 33 children in many classes. Might this create real contests among small groups? Or would it default to the ancient notion of ranking children from the front of the class to the dunces at the back?

And another thing. Did you know what ‘reperchage’ meant before you watched rowing? (According to Wiktionary it’s a ‘heat in which the best competitors who have lost in a previous round compete for a place or places yet left in the next round’). Could this be a way of giving more children a second real chance? Is it the rowing equivalent of coursework? What could schools learn from the idea?

Get a bit of what Usain Bolt has

When Bolt retained his two sprint gold medals, we marvelled. (Personally I love the fact that he accomplished this feat after having spent the previous evening entertaining the Swedish women’s hand-ball team rather than earnestly scanning the times of his competitors. But I digress.)

The really interesting thing is how the tiny country of Jamaica consistently thrashes the rest of the world at sprinting. A few commentators reminded us that sprinting is almost akin to a national sport (along with cricket).

And that’s surely the clue. It’s all about the culture. All Jamaican kids aspire to be Usain Bolt and there are lots of little Bolts in every school. Sprinting really counts. Sprinters are really valued.

The British Bolt is, maybe, Jessica Ennis, a supreme role model for multiple sporting intelligence, deliberate practice and poetry in motion.

Jessica is an expansive role model she is for us all.

So how could we make the kinds of resilience and creativity Ennis showed to triumph in the heptathlon the must-have attribute in every classroom?

Meanwhile…

Watch this space for announcements of exciting new eedNET partnerships with Teaching Leaders and The Eden Project.

Happy holidays.