Sections Archive

3. What does it take to shift classroom cultures? COMPLETE

Powerful learners are developed in learning-friendly classroom cultures.

Find out about a framework for building learning friendly classrooms:

frameworks for building powerful learning
the four cultural shifts that create a learning-friendly classroom culture
the outcomes of these shifts for learners and for teachers.

and gain an overview of where practice is now in your classrooms.

A word or two about culture

‘Culture’ concerns the details of the micro-climate that teachers create in their classrooms.

What they do and say
What they notice and commend and what they don’t
What kind of role model of a learner they offer: all these are of the essence.

And what really matters is how they design and present activities so that, over the course of a term or a year, their students are cumulatively getting a really good all-round mental work-out. All the learning bits of their brains are being stretched and strengthened, one by one and all together.

The framework for developing learning friendly classrooms is known as the Teachers’ Palette. This combines the types of teacher actions that create the conditions necessary for students’ learning behaviours to become shaped and habituated. Schools that successfully build learning behaviours have found that there are four key cultural shifts that combine to create the seedbed for building better learners – the relationships in the classroom; the ways in which learning is talked about; how learning itself becomes the object of learning; how learning is noticed and celebrated.

Creating the seedbed for building powerful learners

The four key cultural shifts

Moving to more learning-friendly cultures is a big shift in thinking and action. Establishing learning-friendliness comes from four shifts in teacher practice:

a shift in relationships
a shift in the language
a shift in how learning is constructed
a shift in what is celebrated, what is seen to matter.

1. Relating for learning: changing the roles and responsibilities of teachers and learners, so that learning becomes a shared responsibility. Students are given more responsibility for their own learning, the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’; the role of the student moves from ‘passenger’ to ‘crew’ and ultimately to becoming ‘pilots of their own learning’.

2. Talking for learning: developing the sort of language content and style to enhance learning, making learning itself the object of conversation. The way we express ourselves in the classroom creates a powerful linguistic environment that teaches young people the best of what we know about the how of learning. The language of learning helps students to discuss, understand, and become conscious of using their learning behaviours.

3. Constructing for learning: developing activities and classroom routines that feed learning habits, where learning becomes the object of learning. Learning activities are designed to stretch and challenge by having a dual focus – to explore content and stretch students’ use of their learning behaviours. There is a strong underpinning of not just ‘doing’ learning but reviewing and reflecting on the process in order to make meaning and apply it elsewhere.

4. Celebrating learning: clarifying the outward signs of the values that underpin the culture, making learning the object of attention. In this shift failure has been redefined; being stuck is seen as interesting and mistakes valuable. Effort, questions and taking risks and the growth of learning habits are recognised, attended to, acknowledged and praised. These serve to make visible the underlying values of the learning environment.

This uncovering of learning ensures students discover, use, understand and grow their learning habits.

The shifts lead teachers to ask how can I:

build a classroom culture that ensures that responsibility for learning is shared with and to some degree devolved to learners?
create opportunities to discuss the learning process using the language of learning?
construct activities that develop positive learning behaviours and help learners to acquire the necessary content?
build learners’ commitment to becoming better learners through what is valued and recognised?

How roles change

The changing role of learners and teachers

For learners...
For teachers...

For learners a learning friendly culture is a place where their role changes from receptivity to activity:

they collaborate and talk about how they understand things
they accept responsibility for learning
they do more of the thinking
they develop curiosity, perseverance, attentiveness, and open-mindedness
they monitor and assess what they do
they talk fluently about their learning behaviours
they value mistakes, challenge, feedback
they develop their learning behaviours consciously
they regard themselves as improving learners

For teachers a learning friendly culture is a place where their role changes from ‘delivering’ learning to students, to the creation of situations in which students consciously use their learning behaviours to learn:

the learning process is brought to the surface, given a language, discussed, looked for, celebrated
learning processes are modelled
teachers act as learning coaches
few lessons are simply ‘talk-and chalk’
lessons contain challenges and activities that get students thinking and learning for themselves
teachers encourage students to explore a challenging question, problem or assertion
teachers enable students to become observers and regulators of their own learning
teachers keep thinking ‘What’s the least I can do to get productive learning happening (again)?’

[Use the tabs in the orange bar at the top to shift between learners and teachers]

But do remember – the way learners behave is a function of how teachers teach. It follows that learners will not change their learning behaviours until teachers first change their teaching behaviours.

Because learning-centred teachers have a particularly rich conception of learning and the habits that underpin it, they are able to design nudges and activities that target quite specific aspects of learning behaviours. Teaching for learning becomes more detailed and forensic.

Where are you now?

How did you react to the learner’s list?
What about the teacher’s list?
How do-able does that feel?
Which aspects on either list feel very possible?
Which items feel more problematic?
What makes you say that?
What one thing might you insist upon developing to make classrooms more learning-friendly?

Analyse classroom practice more deeply

Deeper Learning Culture Tool

Download the deeper Learning Culture Tool.
Look carefully at the issues raised in relation to your school.
Ring the MEANS statements that describe aspects of the school’s classroom cultures that you think are secure.
Ring the ENDS statements that you think are secure.
Underline those statements that would most benefit your students now, the statements that you would most like to ring but can’t at the moment.

Ask the hard questions

How many of these MEANS are in use in classrooms?
How many ENDS are secure?
How much is learning externalised or surfaced?
What’s the balance between telling and coaching in classrooms?
Do students have a language with which to talk about their learning?
What proportion of tasks would you estimate to be rich and challenging?

Something to reflect on

Thinking more deeply about classroom cultures in your school. Asking the hard questions.

What is needed to make it all work?

A headteacher said, apropos the 2019 Ofsted Framework:

‘It tells us what to do, but does not tell us how to do it. While we may agree with the importance of developing independent learners and the importance of progressively building these skills, we need help on how to do it. The framework challenges us to create a range of complex outcomes for students, I still have little idea about how this might be achieved.

To what extent have you considered how classroom culture builds independence?
How confident are you that the classroom culture in your school is already achieving these desirable dispositional outcomes?
And if it is not, what changes might be necessary?

2. What sort of culture will develop powerful learners? COMPLETE

Powerful learners are developed in learning-friendly classroom cultures.

Find out about a the type of classroom culture that best supports powerful learners:

the meaning of classroom culture
teacher centred cultures
learner centred cultures
learning centred cultures

and gain an overview of the most dominant learning culture in your school at present.

Cultures for learning

Why talk about culture

The original research behind the idea of Learning Power made clear that learning dispositions aren’t fixed at birth, that learning is a learnable craft, and that the learning environment can have a constructive or destructive influence on a person’s energy for and approach to learning. Classroom cultures, therefore, come into play. Cultures have the power to grow or diminish students’ inclinations and abilities to learn.

Therefore…

developing learners for a successful future is about creating a culture in classrooms – and the school more widely – that will systematically cultivate habits and attitudes that will stand students in good stead for a complex world.

Culture: all those little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value around here’. Classrooms are the places where, hour by hour, students experience the values and practices that are embodied in the school, rather than just the ones that are espoused.

Culture is about the micro-climate: what teachers do and say; what they notice and commend, or don’t; what kind of role model of learning they offer; how they design and present activities to build learning behaviours. Some classroom cultures are just more learning friendly than others.

What do we mean by a learning culture?

Types of learning culture

Research by Chris Watkins back in 2004 suggested three types of classroom learning cultures, some more learning friendly than others.

Teacher centred; has an overriding emphasis on what the teacher is doing or saying.
- Learning = being taught.
- Students are passengers
- Students have an impoverished view of their learning ability
- The emphasis is on acquiring knowledge
Learner centred; students take a more active role in deciding what to do.
- The learning is making meaning.
- Students are crew
- Students collaborate and discuss learning
- The emphasis is on understanding
Learning centred; students learn about learning itself.
- Students use a language of learning.
- Become conscious of the learning process and the learning habits they command.
- Students are pilots of their learning
- The emphasis is on self-regulation, becoming meta-learners for a learning life

Hence there are often two strategic shifts to make in the journey from Teacher centred to Learning centred cultures. Teacher centred cultures may well achieve good results but only Learning centred cultures achieve good results PLUS resilient, independent, confident learners.

Learning shift

Types of classroom cultures

Where is your school’s learning culture now?

Download a copy of the Culture Review Tool

The Culture Tool describes in greater detail the features of teacher centred, learner centred and learning centred classrooms.

Take a look at it and think about the school’s learning culture against the indicators in each panel.

Reflect on the culture of each classroom
Highlight all aspects of culture that are a regular feature in each classroom
What are the similarities and differences between phases, year groups, individual classes?
What is this telling you about your school’s learning culture?

Analyse the school’s current learning culture

Look more closely and think ahead

Which panels have most statements highlighted?
Does this alter from phase to phase? Teacher to teacher?
What does this imply?
Which statements in the middle panel would you most liked to have ticked but could not?
What might you need to do about that?
Are there any aspects from the third, learning centred, panel that you were able to tick?
How might you spread this practice more widely?
It’s worth remembering that the more teacher centred the existing culture, the longer the journey to creating a learning friendly culture.

1. What sort of learners are we trying to create? COMPLETE

Building learners’ character

We will give greater recognition to education providers’ work to support the personal development of learners. Respondents overwhelmingly supported the proposal to create 2 separate judgements for ‘personal development’ and ‘behaviour and attitudes’. The new ‘personal development’ judgement will consider what a provider does to help develop learners’ character, resilience and values and the provider’s advice and support to help learners succeed in life.

Education inspection framework 2019: a report on the responses to the consultation – Executive Summary.

Enriching students’ resilience, confidence and independence

Background:

The NFER and Arad Research A Rapid Evidence Assessment on the Impact of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements within High Performing Countries, notes that ‘Although expressed differently in the policy documents of each of the high performing countries, there is a common, general aim to develop in their learners the necessary attitudes, values, skills and knowledge they need in order to achieve success and fulfilment as engaged thinkers and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit’.

Donaldson’s extensive review of the Scottish Curriculum in 2004, A Curriculum for Excellence, was based on that premise – of moving from a knowledge-based to a skills/competencies-based curriculum.

In his more recent review of the curriculum in Wales, Successful Futures, Donaldson asserts that ‘There is a discernable shift from curriculum specifications based upon traditional subject disciplines towards the framing of purposes in terms of key competences, key skills, life skills, capabilities or capacities, for example in guidance from the European Union (EU), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and OECD.’

But he also laments later in the Successful Futures review that ‘England retains subjects as the main curriculum building blocks. The national curriculum remains structured around 12 subjects, split into core and foundation, with associated programmes of study. Recommendations from independent reviews to move to a structure based on capacities and areas of learning have been rejected by the government.’

So, as the regions undertake radical curriculum reviews, England remains by and large unaffected, bound by the DFE’s ongoing commitment to a knowledge based curriculum.

The 2019 Ofsted Inspection Framework:

Without undertaking a comparable curriculum review in England, Ofsted have, relatively quietly, slipped a few references to a competencies based curriculum into the 2019 Framework. No extensive curriculum review, minimal attempt to argue the case or provide training and support (something that were characteristics of the Scottish and Welsh reviews). In Personal Development (paragraph 28), the framework states that inspectors will:

‘make a judgement on the personal development of learners by evaluating the extent to which the curriculum and the provider’s wider work support learners to develop their character – including their resilience, confidence and independence – and help them know how to keep physically and mentally healthy’.

Guidance for inspectors (para 214) says that this judgement ‘focuses on the dimensions of the personal development of pupils that our education system has agreed, either by consensus or statute, are the most significant. These are:

developing responsible, respectful and active citizens who are able to play their part and become actively involved in public life as adults
developing and deepening pupils’ understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance
promoting equality of opportunity so that all pupils can thrive together, understanding that difference is a positive, not a negative, and that individual characteristics make people unique
promoting an inclusive environment that meets the needs of all pupils, irrespective of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation
developing pupils’ character, which we define as a set of positive personal traits, dispositions and virtues that informs their motivation and guides their conduct so that they reflect wisely, learn eagerly, behave with integrity and cooperate consistently well with others. This gives pupils the qualities they need to flourish in our society
developing pupils’ confidence, resilience and knowledge so that they can keep themselves mentally healthy’

The first 4 bullet points (Citizenship, British Values, Equal Opportunities & Inclusion) are familiar, but the last 2 are new and indicative of a shift of emphasis to a curriculum that builds both knowledge and competencies.

Added to this:

‘the provider’s curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment’ (in Curriculum Intent, para 26);
‘teachers present subject matter clearly, promoting appropriate discussion about the subject matter they are teaching.
over the course of study, teaching is designed to help learners to remember in the long term the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts’ (both in Curriculum Implementation, para 26);
‘learners’ attitudes to their education or training are positive. They are committed to their learning, know how to study effectively and do so, are resilient to setbacks and take pride in their achievements’ (in Behaviour and Attitudes, para 27).

For the first time, the intention to make judgements about how effectively schools are developing learner competencies is embedded in the inspection framework, even if it has yet to be embedded in the national curriculum.

A Quiet Revolution – preparing students for employability and the future

Bringing learning out of the shadows

Behind the headlines

So, as the curriculum prepares students ‘ not just for a life of tests but for the tests of life‘ the purpose of education moves beyond the accumulation of knowledge to also shaping a student’s learning character.

Phrases such as:

resilient;
independent;
self-confident;
collaborative;
reflective;
motivated;
integrity

begin to tell us what sort of learners your school will be creating. This means helping students build up the mental, emotional and social resources to enjoy challenge and cope well with uncertainty and complexity. Students have to learn how to be tenacious and resourceful, imaginative and logical, self-disciplined and self-aware, collaborative and inquisitive.

These are descriptors of what are known as learning dispositions, or powers or habits. Taken together they add up to a learning character. Your learning dispositions determine your inclination or tendency for change; they direct those behaviours that influence and underpin your performance throughout life. Building such a learning character will rely on paying attention to developing students’ learning dispositions; firing up their energy or appetite for changing, growing and learning . It’s about concentrating on the ‘how’ of learning – on bringing the learning process itself out of the shadows.

Learning dispositions/ habits/ powers = a learner’s character.

Can you learn how to learn?

Selling the idea that learning is learnable

It’s an erroneous idea that an individual’s ability is fixed at birth, we now know that the brain is like a muscle in that its intelligence grows with exercise. We also know that intelligence is ‘the sum total of ‘habits of mind’ and that habits can be changed. When learners and their teachers are convinced of these facts it causes a major shift in self belief and the possibilities of education

Helping all young people to understand that learning is learnable, to make them aware of the learning behaviours they command, gives them greater enthusiasm and power for engaging with the potential highs and lows of learning.

When learners become aware of their learning behaviours through structured opportunities to improve it, they become:

more reflective and aware of themselves as learners
more confident and motivated to learn
more willing and able to take responsibility by ‘owning’ their learning for themselves
more intentional in their learning
keener to carry on learning as they move beyond school
more likely to realise their potential and gain grades that were previously regarded as beyond them
more confident socially and able to learn with, and from, one another
more able to manage transitions and take change in their stride throughout their lives.

Learning is a learnable craft

A valuable set of learning habits

Big questions: some answers

It’s easy for schools to come across lists of learning habits — you might even make up your own! But is there a cluster of learning dispositions that are particularly appropriate for 21st century learners; helping them to deal with an increasingly complex world?
Similarly, teaching ideas to improve student performance abound, but do these teaching ideas develop the valuable, necessary learning habits?

What schools are in search of is a researched collection of learning habits coupled with sound classroom activities and advice about how to nurture and build lifelong learning habits.

Background to an approach that works

Research undertaken by Bristol University, as part of a project into lifelong learning, identified critical dimensions of what is now known as Learning Power; dimensions of learning that can create a step-change in individual, team, and indeed organisational performance.

Furthermore the research found that the power to learn changes over time in response to the qualities of learning environments. As environmental circumstances change, they can have either a constructive or a destructive influence on a person’s power to learn. Informed interventions can significantly enhance personal confidence and performance.

The Building Learning Power approach developed from this research. It’s an approach which is focused on developing learning habits through appropriate classroom cultures and which schools and teacher could use to support the development of students’ learning characters.

What to build

Building powerful learners is built around a constellation of learning behaviours based on the learning sciences. It puts at the heart of education the development of the psychological characteristics that are judged to be of the highest value in young people growing up in a turbulent and increasingly complex world.

The emergent powerful learners develop skills in monitoring and reviewing their learning, they pay attention to the diversity of practices that can be effective for learning more thoroughly, and become self-regulating, meta-cognitive learners.

How can we make this work?

A framework of valuable learning habits

The Supple Learning Mind; framework of high value learning behaviours.

The first framework of Building Learning Power is The Supple Learning Mind. This captures the key psychological characteristics that are judged to be of the highest value in helping students to learn and thrive in a complex world. The framework embraces each of the domains of learning and these are shown in its four parts:

The Emotional domain of learning (sometimes described as Resilience)
The Cognitive domain of learning (sometimes described as Resourcefulness)
The Social domain of learning (sometimes described as Reciprocity)
The Strategic domain of learning (sometimes described as Reflectiveness)

This learning framework shows that learning isn’t just about having a good memory; it includes how we feel, how we think, how we learn with and from others and how we manage the process of learning. It shows that learning is a complex process. Moreover it provides a language that helps teachers to think about how they cultivate each of the learning behaviours and helps students to gain a better personalised understanding of how they learn content.

Each domain clusters together the high value learning behaviours that best make that domain work well. For example the emotional domain is made up of the learning behaviours of perseverance, managing distractions, absorption and noticing.

The cognitive domain is made up of behaviours like questioning, link making, imagination, reasoning and capitalising. The social domain is made up of behaviours like interdependence, collaboration, listening and empathy, and imitation. Finally the strategic domain encompasses planning, revising, distilling and meta-learning.

A researched framework of high value learning dispositions

Learning dispositions to underpin the curriculum

Independent, resilient, confident, reflective . . . . . .

Sometimes these learning behaviours sound too grand and vague to get a practical handle on, but the behaviours in the learning power framework can help to underpin and clarify. Being Independent, for example requires a range of skills, including the ability to:

Question – deliberately asking different kinds of questions to probe and develop understanding;
Plan – thinking about what problems need to be solved, how to set about solving them, what obstacles there might be;
Revise – knowing where they are going, but ready to reassess in the light of new knowledge and experience, changing and improving their ideas and approach as they go along;
Imagine – exploring alternatives and possibilities, asking ‘what might happen . . ?’ and ‘what if . . ?’;
Reason – exercising logical thinking skills as they explore, analyse and evaluate;
Making Links – seeing connections between diverse areas of their learning and experience;
Capitalise – making discriminating use of a wide range of external resources, techniques and tools
Persevere – being willing to try again, or try a new approach, or stick with it when it is difficult, coping with frustration;
Distil – pulling out the essential features of what they are engaged in, and using these to aid further learning
Meta-Learn – understanding how they learn best so that they can play to their strengths and improve on areas of weakness.

Each of these is treated in the Supple Learning Mind framework (see above) as a separate learning behaviour, each of which is capable of being stretched and strengthened. Thus learning dispositions make explicit and coachable the very foundations of those qualities of mind the curriculum is trying to secure. They form the elusive but essential ‘under-felt’ on which the carpet of the more familiar curriculum is laid.

Learning behaviours: the essential under-felt of the curriculum

Some important questions

A headteacher recently said to us that:

‘If we do not look at the changes suggested by the (Ofsted) framework through the lens of a well-researched framework of learning dispositions, we will fail. As a school, we are able to understand these changes only because we already understand learning through our engagement with Building Learning Power.’

Do you agree with the need for a well-researched framework of learning dispositions?
If yes, which well-researched framework do you plan to use to support the development of students’ learning characters?
If no, how do you plan to make sense of, and align, all of the demands that Ofsted is placing on schools, on leaders, on teachers, and on learners?

1. What sort of learners are we trying to create? Copy

Living the purposes

It is important that as children and young people move through the education system in Wales they are not viewed as aiming towards the four purposes, but rather seen as living the four purposes during their time at school.

Dylan Jones and Jane Waters. CfW Blog. IoE UWTSD

Enriching students’ sense of being a learner… throughout the curriculum

The four purposes referred to above are the now familiar pillars of the new curriculum for Wales… to develop children and young people as:

ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives; enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work; ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world; healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society.“

There’s a temptation to view these four life enhancing learning behaviours exclusively as outcomes; something to hope for as the end result of the new curriculum. While the new curriculum in Wales is designed to achieve such results, developing them will cause schools to infuse them all the way through the curriculum and across years of education.

In other words the whole curriculum, both in its content, design and delivery, will be dedicated to achieving these wider outcomes for young people. Through new programmes of study and experiences, (PoSE) a set of wider skills and a re-think of assessment, ‘what’ is taught and learned and ‘how’ it is taught and learned should constantly enrich students’ sense of being a learner.

An ambitious curriculum preparing students for the future