The page below sketches the architecture of a learning friendly culture; one that is successful in developing Ambitious Capable Learners.
What cultural shifts turn traditional into learning friendly classrooms?
In general terms moving to establish learning-friendly cultures entails four shifts. A shift in relationships, a shift in the language, a shift in how learning is constructed, and a shift in what is celebrated – what is seen to matter:
How does the teacher’s role change?
The teacher’s role becomes one of surfacing learning; to make learning public; to train some of the tricky bits; to talk about it; to recognise and celebrate it as it happens; to nudge it along, assisting students to grow their learning behaviours; and to design activity to stretch a wide range of learning habits. This uncovering of learning ensures students discover, use, understand and translate their learning behaviours into learning habits. There is a shift in emphasis from performance to learning, from content to process, from teaching to coaching.
How does the relationship between teachers and learners change?
An important way of surfacing learning is to let pupils do more of it; to become more active in the learning process. Active learners are not only offered more opportunities to decide what to do, but are also actively learning through the explicit review of their own experience. They are enabled to make choices about what and how to learn, creating over time high levels of learner autonomy.
This shift to more learner involvement offers deep professional satisfaction and a new set of learning relationships.
How does the language of the classroom change?
Building Learning Power is all about being able to:
- name
- recognise
- talk about using
- select for use when appropriate
- become skilled in using
- evaluate the effect of . . . . Students’ learning habits
Using and extending the language adds breadth and depth to how teachers and learners talk about, understand and improve learning.
Use of the language becomes essential in what people notice about learning. When used abundantly it makes learning visible.
How is learning constructed?
In this dimension the organisation of learning is based firmly on a model of experiential learning, in other words 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. In the current language of mastery, in this model, the pursuit of mastery is built into the way learning is done.
Pupils are enabled to speculate, question, and solve problems more readily because knowledge is presented as provisional. Learning activities are designed to stretch and challenge by having a dual focus; to explore content and stretch pupils’ ability in using their learning behaviours. So, familiar content is coupled with a variety of learning behaviours, using Visible Thinking Routines (VTRs), for example, causing teachers to become more imaginative in their design of learning.
How is the growth of learning habits celebrated?
The whole point of everything described in the previous sections is to enable young people to become better learners, to grow a supple learning mind, to become a life-long learner. So the growth of learning habits is attended to closely. Successful growth or progression means that not only can pupils make use of reflection, or imagination, or managing their distraction, but that over time they spontaneously make more and better use of these learning skills and tools and secure them as habits. It is this type of growth, improvement that is acknowledged, recognised, celebrated or praised in some way.
What is being celebrated here is how young people are getting better at how, when and where they are using their learning behaviours. It’s the Building bit of Building Learning Power. There would be little point in introducing such learning habits if we didn’t attend to having them grow.
Questions you might want to ask.
Something to think about . . .
Let’s focus on the second cultural shift in terms of what is talked about in the classroom.
- Does your school have a common language with which to discuss the process of learning ?
- If yes, do teachers use it with fluency ? And, critically, do students use it likewise ?
- If no, do you think that developing such a language is a high priority ?
- Listen to yourself as you teach – what is the balance like between talk about what they are learning and talk about how they are learning. Might the balance need to be adjusted ?
- Look at your written feedback to students – what is the balance like between feedback on what they have achieved and feedback on how they have achieved it ?
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