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Helping your learners to take responsibility for their own learning

Classroom Culture

Culture is the curriculum of the classroom, frequently hidden from the external observer, but always all too evident to learners. It is the minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day way that learners come to understand their role as a learner. Culture is the enacted values of the teacher, not the espoused ones – it is the shadow that the teacher casts in the classroom in terms of what they do do and what they do not do, what they say and do not say, what they believe and do not believe, what they value and do not value.

There are four units dealing with shifting to a learning friendly classroom culture:

  • Helping your learners to . . . take responsibility for their own learning [This unit]

  • Helping your learners to . . . develop a language of learning

  • Helping your learners to . . . learn about learning

  • Helping your learners to . . . celebrate and value their learning behaviours

Find out what this unit is about and how to get the best from it

‘Helping your learners to . . . take responsibility for their own learning.

How to navigate this unit - an essential read

This module focuses on just one aspect of classroom culture – taking responsibility for their own learning.

The format of the module is the same as others in this suite:

  • Section 1 explores what we mean by ‘taking responsibility for their own learning’, details the three aspects of it, and offers some further background reading in the ‘Read More’ sections;
  • Section 2 offers some quick wins to practise;
  • Section 3 offers you a short cut to making your plan of action, with advice on things to stop doing, things that are worth starting quickly and things you could take your time over doing.

 

To navigate this unit:

Begin by reading Section 1 to gain an overview of the ways in which teachers can enable learners to take greater responsibility for their own learning.

Read Section 2, Ideas to Practise, and identify teaching ideas that you might fancy trying.

Read Section 3 to refine your ideas and to focus where you might make a start.

At this point, you may well have discovered a change that you wish to make, but your classroom culture will remain unchanged until you start to do things differently in your own classroom. 

So – Take your time, try things out, monitor the impact, talk to colleagues and share ideas. Classroom cultures are slow to change and you will have to be patient to realise the full impact of your interventions. Be prepared to work on this for at least half a term before you consider moving on to another unit.

 

Background information

This short section summarises the two key models of Building Better Learners, the supple learning mind and the teachers’ palette.

It outlines the basic values, ideas and research that inform all the practical ‘how to’ ideas for use in classrooms. It’s essential background reading before you get going with the rest of this unit.

Background reading

What do the 2 frameworks of Learning Power look like?

Building Learning Power puts at the heart of education the development of psychological characteristics that are judged to be of the highest value in young people growing up in a turbulent and increasingly complex world. There are two main parts to the approach:

A: a model of a learner and learning, in terms of a set of characteristics that work together to make a person a highly capable learner; we use ‘learning power’ to describe the effect. [the supple learning mind]

B: a view of the kind of pedagogy that will nurture and strengthen the learning characteristics in young people. [the teachers’ palette]

These are bound together by the fundamental idea that ‘learning is a learnable craft’, and by explicit, detailed discussion of how learning works, supported by a rich repertoire of words and action.

What constitutes a supple learning mind?
BLP_Brain_Generic_no-Rs-[Converted]

The Supple Learning Mind framework, originally conceived and researched by Professor Guy Claxton, reveals learning as a complex process that isn’t just about thinking and 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 gives the beginnings of a learning language that helps teachers think about how learning  behaviours enable students to grow as learners and tackle the curriculum more profitably.

Each domain of learning…social, cognitive, social and strategic… clusters together the high value learning behaviours that best make that domain work well. For example the social domain is made up of interdependence, collaboration, listening and empathy and imitation.

The Supple Learning Mind diagram_v2

 

What does the teachers’ palette consist of?

The Teachers’ Palette provides an overview of aspects of a learning friendly culture that combine to create the seedbed for building powerful learners. It includes the types of teacher action that create the conditions necessary for such learning to become habituated – how they relate to students,  the language they use, the types of tasks they design, and the things that they truly value.

The teachers’ palette distils the key teacher behaviours associated with a learning friendly-culture within which the 4 purposes of Successful Futures can flourish.

 

The central argument is that effective learning requires a unique blend of the learning behaviours identified in the Supple Learning Mind, learning behaviours that can flourish only in learning-friendly classrooms as outlined in the teachers’ palette.

Questions you might ask yourself

 Something to think about 

Does your curriculum and its expected delivery  . . . .

  • already go beyond the transmission of a centrally defined set of knowledge, skills and understandings and intentionally build the learning behaviours outlined in the supple learning mind?
  • enable students to take responsibility for their own learning?

 

 

Unit Content

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