The school you have recently joined is on an intriguing journey to develop their students’ learning power. What you are reading now is the first unit of an induction programme titled Coming on board that’s designed to help you understand and ease into the school’s learning power culture. The other eight modules of Coming on board are explained in brief after 7 glimpses of learning power below.

This unit aims to give you a quick overview of learning power by exploring seven questions that capture the essence of why, what and how.

What is learning power? Why do we need it?  What are the essential ideas, values and practicalities of building students’ learning power?

7 Big Questions…

to explore the purpose and meaning of learning power before making a start on putting it into practice.

‘Students throughout the world need now to reach higher levels of achievement, not only to find fulfilling work but also to empower themselves to thrive in an increasingly complex world’
– Dylan Wiliam

• Employment requires being able to enhance and transfer knowledge and to operate collaboratively
• The capacity to learn and adapt needs to be lifelong because change is a permanent state, and the pace of change is moving much more rapidly
• Learning habits have strong effects on educational attainment but have additional effects on important life outcomes beyond their effects on schooling.

We now think of learning…

… not as a performance but of being an interesting process going on in children’s brains. When we all believed that ‘intelligence’ was fixed at birth there seemed little point in trying to cultivate it. Now we know just how learnable learning is we are realising that there’s a place for developing how we learn. Research uncovered some dimensions or energies or powers that can be used to shape how we learn. They could shape, for example, the growth of our resilience in learning, our learning relationships, our thinking behaviours and how we manage our learning.

Underlying this approach is a recognition that learning how to learn involves more than skills, it involves students’ attitudes, values, interests and beliefs as well. It’s about helping students to help themselves to be disposed to persist, to question and be curious, to collaborate harmoniously and to be open to new ideas.

The Supple Learning Mind

The Supple Learning Mind framework was conceived and researched by Professor Guy Claxton. It 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 clusters these characteristics into four domains of learning:

• 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)

Small changes: big difference

Teachers are influential habit formers. The way they orchestrate and guide learning influences the ways in which students perform and behave. So they need to be mindful of how they help students to form, replace, re-form and strengthen their learning habits. The approach encourages teachers to think about:

• Things to give away: transferring responsibility for learning to students, offering them more control
• Things to say: using language that helps pupils understand and talk about learning as a process, enabling them to take more control of their own learning
• Things to do every day: the kind of classroom routines and activities that will nurture more independent learners
• Things to display: the look and feel of a classroom, its walls and reward systems, that can serve to strengthen students’ learning.

Understanding Visible Thinking Routines

VTRs are simple routines that apply across a wide range of subjects and contexts, and which require students to think in a variety of different ways. They are used so regularly by teachers that they become woven into the fabric of the classroom culture and progressively hard-wired into the thinking practices of students. They are ways in which different ways of thinking can become routine in classrooms. They become part of the learning culture.

To be effective such routines need to be;

• Direct, guide, support, encourage thinking
• Short, memorable with few steps
• Used over and over again
• Useful in a variety of contexts
• Facilitate connections, generating ideas, using knowledge

Discussing and nudging the learning process

The questions opposite illustrate the kinds of things that teachers can encourage students to pay attention to. Instead of skipping quickly on to ‘the right answer’, students are asked to slow down and notice and appraise the strategies and steps they are using along the way. This helps them to become more reflective and thoughtful about their own learning. They are being encouraged to explore and compare different strategies for making progress. This helps them become more flexible and resourceful in the face of difficulty, and to get into the habit of looking for alternative ways of proceeding if their first tack turns out not to work. They are being encouraged to develop the habit of thinking for themselves about what helpful knowledge or strategies they might already possess that could help them out in this situation, and thus to become more independent and resourceful.This is meta-cognition and self-regulation in action.

Building the powers to learn

The whole point of building learning power is to do just that, to build the learning behaviours, not just name them. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of this journey. It’s about building students’ emotional learning habits, their cognitive/thinking habits, their social learning habits and their ability to manage their learning process itself.

The reluctant learner on the left and the learning powered learner on the right. It’s a long but exciting journey.

There are three key facets to the progression of learning behaviours – firstly the frequency/how often the behaviour is being used; secondly the range/scope of contexts in which it is used; and thirdly the skilfulness with which it is employed.

Next steps . . . 

There are 8 further units in this Coming on board induction package.

You are free to give them a skim read if you wish, but your new school may well suggest that you take around a term to do them full justice – ie about a fortnight each to study, to reflect on, to discuss the contents, and to consider how you might introduce changes into your classroom.

There is no prescribed order of these units, but we would suggest that it might be best to begin with the culture units before moving on to the learning behaviour units.

For teachers:

• 1 online quick read unit titled ‘Coming on board, an introductory read’. This offers an overview of the key ideas about building better learners, supple learning minds and classroom cultures;
• 1 online unit called ‘Welcome to…Coming on board’, made up of 7 sections which provide a quick start on understanding the nature of learning power and the classroom culture that enables learning power to flourish.

For leaders responsible for induction (this unit):

• advice on how the 7 sections might best be tackled;
• training materials to help you to introduce ‘The Supple Learning Mind’ and ‘Learning-Friendly Classroom Cultures’ (should you wish to do so).

This introductory unit offers:

• an overview of the key ideas;
• background research on dispositional learning;
• the two interlinking frameworks that underpin building better learners;
• examples of how the two frameworks work in practice.

It’s wise to ensure this is the first unit that new teachers engage with because it sets the scene for the substantial online unit titled ‘Welcome to… Coming on board’.

This resource is freely available online at:

www.buildinglearningpower.com/units/7-glimpses-a-shortened-read/

However if senior leaders would rather introduce these ideas themselves, there are materials in section 5d (below) to support you in doing so.

Here’s a rundown of the sections

• • Section 1 What makes a difference in learning?…introduces and explores the meaning, purpose and attributes of learning power.
  • Section 2 Up close and personal with learning…invites teachers to look at themselves and a couple of students through the lens of learning behaviours.
  • Section 3 Finding learning characteristics…explains how a teacher, and the school, can gather evidence to profile students’ learning characters and use this as a basis for selecting appropriate activities. Material in this section should be completed in full after discussion with the school. See 4.3 below.
  • Section 4 Shift classroom culture…explores how teachers’ classroom practice can encourage the growth of learning behaviours.
  • Section 5 Start with the basics…explains the first ‘must do’ aspects of learning activities that strengthen learning behaviours.
  • Section 6 A catalogue of ideas…offers a range of practical classroom solutions that are directly linked to phases of learning behaviours to blend into their teaching.
  • Section 7 What is the impact?…suggests how to assess the impact of their interventions on their classroom culture, students learning and their attainment. This material should be considered during induction but acted on at the end of the educational year.

Section 1 – ‘What makes a difference in learning?’

Section 1 introduces the key ideas of learning power. It looks at The Supple Learning Mind, explores its origins and rationale.

The section takes a whistle stop tour through the what and why of learning power. It’s an approach to learning that looks at the building blocks of learning, what they are, the part they play and why they matter. The basic learning behaviour framework, known as the supple learning mind, itemises the high value learning behaviours most of which will be broken down in detail in section 2 to become learning journeys in their own right.

Section 2 – ‘Up close and personal with learning’.

Section 2 invites teachers to consider their own learning behaviours through the lens of learning power, and begins the process of thinking about the learning behaviours of students in their own class. Here for the first time the level of detail about learning behaviours is uncovered to enable teachers to:

• discover and understand the learning behaviour features of students;
• learn about the possible learning behaviour differences of students;
• become familiar with students’ growth in learning power behaviours;
• feel confident to introduce students to their own learning behaviours;
• adapt their teaching so as to strengthen growth in learning behaviours;
• monitor and evaluate their own practice and the subsequent growth in students’ learning behaviours.

Having got the idea by looking at themselves as a learner they are invited to look at just a couple of their students; a low and a high attaining student. This gives them a glimpse into what it is that makes the difference in how students approach and achieve in learning

Section 3 – ‘Finding learning characteristics’

Section 3 invites teachers to complete a learning profile for each member of their class and to reflect on what these profiles might be telling them about sub-groups of learners. This is one of the best ways for teachers to really understand learning power in their students.

Although this section, on the preparation of learning profiles for the class or group, logically fits here in the sequence of topics, the timing might not coincide with the school’s collection of this data. Senior leaders will need to inform new staff when the school intends to schedule the collection of students’ learning profiles. New staff might use this section to best advantage by looking at it carefully in the induction period, but complete all the student profiles when they are required to by the school.

Section 4 – ‘Shifting your classroom culture’

If we want students to become better learners we first need to offer them more opportunities to use and cultivate their learning powers. This obvious truth often involves shifting the culture of the classroom so that it systematically cultivates the positive learning habits and attitudes of young people. ‘Culture’ is about all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’; where, hour by hour, day by day, term by term students experience the values and practices that are embodied in the school.

Section 4 introduces the idea of classroom culture and how it can help, or hinder, learning power. It looks at the 4 aspects of classroom culture – Relating, Talking, Constructing and Celebrating – and introduces the ideas around teacher’s progression in making classroom culture happen.

Section 5 – ‘Starting with the basics’

Fostering students’ learning dispositions is a wide ranging and multifarious business. However, there are a few straightforward things teachers can do to start engaging their students in developing their learning dispositions.

Section 5 identifies 11 basic strategies or ‘quick wins’ that can underpin classrooms where learning power can flourish. It invites teachers to consider changing their practice to incorporate one or more of these quick-start basics. Its premise is that small changes in teaching practice can create big changes in learners.

While all the suggestions are fairly standard your school may already have particular ways of interpreting them. We have suggested it would be wise to check which of the 11 ideas are common features of classrooms and whether the school has some common formats that they should follow (e.g. Learning mats no 11). They will also need to know which learning behaviours students are already familiar with as they’ve already been introduced throughout the school.

Section 6 – A catalogue of ideas: Decide where to start.

Section 6 is a substantial section and is obviously worthy of several weeks of study. The catalogue offers teaching ideas in the 12 learning behaviours, organised by phase of learner development. It invites teachers to look at the learner profiles created in Section 3, to seek and implement teaching ideas relating to a chosen learning behaviour at an appropriate level for their learners.

While it is not expected that teachers will access ideas for all 12 learning behaviours, they should be encouraged to explore beyond one behaviour. Maybe it would be an idea to challenge them to look at one from each of the 4 domains of learning – Emotional, Cognitive, Social, Strategic.

Section 7 – ‘What is the impact?’

Section 7 is a nod to the future. There is no expectation that the small-scale changes made during the hurly burly of the first term in a new school will have resulted in measurable changes in such a short period of time. It illustrates the direction of travel and could be returned to at the end of teachers’ first year of engagement.

However, it would be good to end with a less formal opportunity to review the impact of the first 6 sections of the unit. Why not conclude the term using the visible thinking routine ‘Connect, Extend, Challenge’?

Invite your new teachers to discuss 3 questions:

1. How are the online materials connected to what they already knew?
2. How have the online materials extended their thinking?
3. What challenges do they now face, what questions are they asking themselves?

5a. Supporting the introductory programme

• Things to think about:

  • how and when might you find time to support new colleagues to work through these materials;
  • whether you need to have the occasional twilight meeting with new staff?
  • whether you need, say, an ‘induction afternoon’ to kick start the process?
  • whether it might be a good idea to support new colleagues to form their own new Professional Learning Community (if numbers allow);
  • and/or whether each new colleague should be assigned an experienced mentor / coach to guide them through translating these materials into practice.

Active support. Think about. . .

Establishing a cycle of read / act / reflect so that the 7 sections can be covered appropriately.

Build in meetings to share ideas and reflect on the key messages to:

• explore how teachers found the materials and
• critically, how they intend to alter their practice;
• explore teachers’ experiences of and thoughts about the changes they have made.

Decide who will lead these review meetings, when they will be held etc.

After they have made a solid start…

• you won’t want them to continue working at this overview level indefinitely
• offer them access to either
  • the full Phase 1 ‘Playing the Learning Power Game’ materials to help them expand their teaching repertoire or
  • to Phase 2 ‘The Professional Learning Power Game‘ if the school has got that far
• enable them to move from being ‘a new teacher’ to working with the appropriate Professional Learning Team.

Introducing classroom culture

Downloads to the right:

• A powerpoint presentation about classroom cultures – download it and edit it to create your own introductory session;
• Guidance notes will support your delivery;
• A resource book for teachers to accompany the ppt.

Introducing the Supple Learning Mind

Downloads to the right:

• A powerpoint presentation about The Supple Learning Mind – download it and edit it to create your introductory session;
• Guidance notes will support your delivery;
• Resources necessary for the Chase in the Crypt activity;
• A resource book for teachers to accompany the ppt;
• In case you need them, we also include detailed guidance notes about how you might talk about the 17 learning behaviours in the Supple Learning Mind.