Section 5. Inside ‘The Professional Learning Power Game’

There is no recommended order.

Highly effective learners have a wide range of learning dispositions and skills, but this doesn’t mean all 12 learning behaviours are of equal importance. Perseverance, Questioning, Collaboration and Revising for example, formed the vital bedrock of Phase 1 on which other behaviours can now be successfully grafted. Some behaviours are exercised more frequently in some subjects than in others, so the blend of behaviours essential for being a scientist may differ from the blend for a linguist, or an artist etc. Secondary teachers in particular may well be attracted to the learning behaviours that figure most frequently in their own subject areas.

Equally, the existing learning strengths and weaknesses of your students should inform the decisions you make – if you are aware that Listening, for example, is a weakness that shows up in the majority of your students’ learning profiles, why would you not choose to start there?

The intention is that schools choose their own personalised route through these units in light of their unique circumstances.

Take a look at the chart…

Perseverance is about the way we stick at things even when they are difficult. It’s one of the most useful but neglected learning behaviours. What makes us able to persevere more and more usefully? We think several things come into play here. How you are willing and able to deal with being stuck, how you are able to manage distractions and manage the learning environment, how you relate to a challenge and whether you are influenced by goals whether they be your own or imposed by others. All these things contribute to being able to persevere. And of course there’s your own little voice of self-awareness: what you say to yourself and how this influences your beliefs and values.

Being perseverant grows and builds when it’s nurtured and supported. Furthermore, being perseverant involves gaining control of a range of linked skills and emotions.

The other 11 learning behaviours in phase 2 have their own, richer progression charts. These guide teachers to better understand and coach the complex states and stages of development.

Teacher growth is coupled to student growth

The teacher growth chart is progressive – each step builds on the preceding one, each step needs to be attended to before further ones are attempted. But in making this progression teachers need to consider carefully where their students are as learners – they really do need to;

• • start from where students are,
  • Rather Than
  • from where they themselves want to be.

This is because teachers’ practice will be constrained by their students’ dispositions, skills and understandings of their learning. In Phase 2 you will find broad learner growth charts (shown here in blue) linked to teacher growth charts (green).Teachers are advised to shape their practice one step ahead of their learners’ practice, then wait for their learners to ‘catch up’. Students need time to discern, understand and act on changes the teacher is causing them to make.

A classroom where the teacher is performing at or near the top of their growth trajectory while their learners are languishing near the bottom of their growth trajectories would be totally inappropriate and ineffective – there’s little point in changing teaching practice if it doesn’t impact on learners’ dispositions. Where learners sit on this ‘blue’ trajectory is a useful indicator of the presence and impact of the ‘green’ teacher interventions. Something’s amiss if there is not a fairly close match.

The unit offers a rich variety of tools to help you review your progress in developing a learning culture in your classrooms. This review will provide you with information to guide or adapt your approach. Sections 1–4 consider:

1. Reflecting on your changing practice. Looking at what you have done and how your classroom has changed. This section answers the question “How far have we come?”
2. Giving students a voice. Finding out how your students have benefited. This section answers the question “How well have our students taken to this way of learning?”
3. Learning with and from colleagues. Learning from learning walks and observations. This section answers the question “What are the variations on the theme and what can we learn from these variations?”
4. Team session: Learning together. Putting your heads together and thinking “What next?” This team session answers the questions “How are we doing, how are our students doing and where do we need to go next?”

Each unit is designed to guide teachers through a process of building the habit in their students. Sections 1–4 consider:

1. Imagining and how it develops. Includes an Imagining Progression Chart. Unpicks the meaning of Imagining, how it develops over time and how to use the Imagining chart to plot where students are now;
2. Taking Imagining into classroom culture. Includes effective classroom activities. This section offers numerous suggestions to develop a learning-friendly culture and build students’ learning skills. Here you will find ideas for lesson starters and quick wins; classroom activities; learning reflection tools; ideas for the appropriate learning language for each phase of progression in Imagining;
3. Blending learning habits with content. Example dual focused lesson. This section suggests a series of questions and steps teachers might use to design imagining into lessons. Here we look closely at how to blend improving students’ Imagination with the content you have to teach. The section covers: Six principles behind any learning powered lesson; Big questions to ask about lesson design; Lesson planning in action: an exemplar Imagining-focused task;
4. Team reflection and planning. Teachers share the impact of their experiments with colleagues and plan what they need to do next. It gives a skeleton plan for the Professional Learning Team session and includes downloadable enquiry questions and planning formats. In team sessions teachers are invited to share the impact of their experiments with colleagues, discuss the online materials, and plan how they might use these to change your practice.

It offers some hard questions, think pieces, development frameworks and monitoring and review tools to help leaders:

• feel reassured about the purpose, benefits and frameworks for Phase 2;
• explore important leadership roles when supporting the deepening of Learning Power throughout the school;
• maintain momentum into the future;
• understand significant shifts in ways of working as teachers’ skills develop in the latter stages.

These strategic issues are considered over 5 sections:

• Overview and an outline of the Phase 2 programme for staff;
• Key messages of learning power distilled;
• Leadership strategies to ensure success including;
  • Recognising the real life value of learning behaviours;
  • Expanding classroom learning cultures;
  • Reshaping curriculum delivery using a wide range of behaviours;
  • Expanding the range of learning behaviours used;
  • Evaluating the schools vision;
  • Learning from looking;
  • Carrying the messages to parents;
• Keeping an eye on progress;
• Where now? What next?

We’ve borrowed this cost benefit analysis from a school that has been working with learning power for some time. The depth of the learning behaviour charts in Phase 2 gave them far greater insight into learning and how it could be utilised by the curriculum itself. So the various professional learning teams across the school became research teams. Here they didn’t just research and perfect their own practice but took a wider angle look at the curriculum and lesson delivery and how learning behaviours could be built in at curriculum planning level alongside types of retrieval practice and the interleaving content.

Looking at learning behaviour progression influenced how both the curriculum and individual lessons changed. It led teachers to re-evaluate how their subject delivery might be made even more learning and learner focused. Classrooms have become very alive with learning.

Note that any benefit side of this type of analysis will take time to build. However, the different types of benefits provides a useful view of what the school wants to see happen as a result of the staff development efforts. It’s a valuable set of goals.