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Effective learning

See also: acu-rtt

Third module in the ACU Return to Teaching course.

What are the challenges for learners in contemporary classrooms?

Effective learning#

What is learning?#

Focuses on product definitions involving change

  • permanent change in behaviour caused by experiences other than maturation, fatigue, hunger, or any other physiological process such as simply growing older.
  • permanent change in behaviour or a permanent change in mental associations or cognitive processes.

Avoids the learning as process definitions e.g.

Learning refers to the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge, skills, and attitudes and as such, learning is inherent to all human life. (iMerrrienboer, 2016)

Links to this video on the "Learning Brain"

Learning styles#

Is skeptical of learning styles, but mentions some benefits in students being aware. A form of metacognition. Does mention that the matching hypothesis is disproved by research.

No mention of (see Pearson, 2020)

  • How an identified learning style encourages a fixed mindset.
  • The idea that some content is best introduced in a specific way.
  • Or the universal design approach

Responding to diversity#

Establishes the growing need. Focuses on two key ideas

Inclusive education - all students are supported to learn, contribute and participate. Changes are made to help students participate on the same basis as others. The changes are differentiation

Points to

Tomlinson's 6 general principles#

  1. Respectful tasks - challenging, interesting and worth doing.
  2. Quality curriculum - clear outomces - plan with the end in mind
  3. Teaching up - raise the ceiling for all students.
  4. Flexible grouping - variable based on readiness, interest, profile etc.
  5. Continual assessment - used to guide differentiation and learning
  6. Building community - students feel safe, accepted, and supported.

Challenge (Allison & Tharby)#

...challeng ein education is the provision of difficulty work that causes students to think deeply and engage in healthy struggle

Links to the pygmalion-effect - teachers interact differently with the "good" students. Aim for the struggle zone

Zone Description
Comfort zone Low challenge. Low stress. Limited thinking. Limited learning
Struggle zone High challenge. Low stress. Thinking required. Effective learning.
Panic zone Very high challenge. High stress. Cognitive overload. Limited learning.

Strategies to challenge students#

  1. Make them single and challenging - How can I prepare lessons that challenge every student?

    Don't differentiate learning outcomes (e.g. all, most, some) setting up a low level to quite. Provide a single LO and then scaffold.

  2. Scale up - How do I gauge whether lesson content is challenging or not?

    Aim to teach just beyond the curriculum goal (Year 8 to Year 9). Mentions the anchor effect as a design principle for aiming LOs higher and then scaling down. But also make sure the students are aware of it being more difficult - set the anchor.

  3. Know thy subject - how can I improve my subject knowledge and ensure that students are thinking deeply about it?

    Teacher subject knowledge can be a barrier. Keep up to date.

  4. Share excellence - How can I ensure that my classroom and school environment promote excellence and challenge?

    Decorate with exemplars of student/assessment work.

  5. Unstick them - How do I support students when they are struggling with challenging tasks?

    Not particularly helpful - let them struggle, after awhile give them the answer

  6. Layer their writing - What simple, practical strategies can be put in place to challenge students to produce better writing?

    Redrafting and a specific process labelled layering.

  7. Benchmark brilliance - how do I ensure that challenge becomes the status quo in my lessons?

    Demonstrate to students what is expected and ideas of how to get it. i.e. scaffold/structure.

  8. The long haul - How do I embed challenge in the long term?

    Have students focus from the start on going beyond. Examples in the class. Refer forward to it. Encourage self-assessment. Have students state their goal.

  9. Plan for progression - how do we ensure that we systematically build up student knowledge and skill?

    e.g. SOLO taxonomy

  10. Direct challenge - How do I account for the fact that students will need to be challenged at an individual level?

    Differentiation during student work, encouraging going beyond.

  11. Read for breadth - How do we challenge students to pursue subjects beyond the classroom?

    Encourage students to engage in discipline specific external resources. Encourage extended reading

  12. Frame the challenge - How do I embed a challenging classroom ethos through the language I use with students?

    Lists some example phrases

    • "yet" i.e. "not yet"
    • "If it's not excellent, it's not finished"
    • "Working harder makes you smarter"
    • "Keep thinking about it. Back in 5 to check" (when student stuck)
    • "There is no such thing as clever"
    • "What would you do if you weren't stuck?" - if you think students with more time could progress
    • "I know you can do it because I remember..."
    • "If you're not struggling, you're not learning"
    • "In this classroom we talk like..."

Educational adjustment program (EAP/IEP)#

IEP required for students with disabilities. Not a plan for instruction.

EAP - a system for identifying/responding to specific diverse educational needs

Related resource

Indigenous learning#

Video for "8 way learning model"

Gifted students#

Cultural and linguistic diversity#

misc links

Visible learning and the learning pit#

The learning pit is positioned as "seing things differently to Hattie". A focus on independent thinking and a spirt of inquiry. Posed more as a model of learning capturing the nature of learning as difficult, esp. when learning something new.

Lots of online resources, e.g. guide. An image with stages that includes sets of questions to help during each stage. More detail

Higher order thinking skills#

Organised around Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain.

Digital natives#

Mentions Prensky and a bit of the critique, but leaves it up to the reader.

Reflection tasks#

What is learning?#

It is probably fair to say that you have spent a substantial proportion of your life learning - you have finished school and have a university degree under your belt. In other words you have been a professional learner. So how do you do it? How did you learn to learn? What strategies work best for you?

Use the following points to guide your reflections and comments:

  • Think of one thing you have learned to do well outside of school. It can be anything at all (e.g., a sport, a hobby, a craft, a people skill, something around the house, driving, perhaps something you did when you were younger but don’t do any more), as long as you believe that you do it well.
  • Think back to before you knew how to do this one thing. Write down why and how you started learning it and then all the things you did to get from not knowing how to do this one thing at all to becoming good at it.
  • Finally, what are two or three key words that summarise how you got from not knowing how to do your particular thing at all up to being good at it?

As recently as 2020 I was unhappy with my approach to personal knowledge management. i.e. how I go about gathering, organising, and using new information/knowledge for work and beyond. As a technologist and an educator I've a long history of using digital technology (e.g. social media, blogs etc) to support my PKM, but not well. An opinion reinforced by prior knowledge of better approaches and some earlier experimentation (2015/2016) with those methods.

Even with this need and existing knowledge it was still 2020 before I started actively working on a new approach. It started due to: having available time; learning about a new bit of software; and, how well that new software and its ethos/design connected with multiple disparate threads of my existing knowledge/practice. Subsequent experimentation was limited, but positive. Over time, slowly improvements were made. Most in response to new needs of mine, or new possibilities arising from the work of broader communities. As it stands, I'm pretty happy with the foundation that this new approach provides for my return to teaching in 2024.

The following table provides three words that summarise how that was achieved.

Key word Explanation
Distributive Rather than just being in my head the learning and knowledge is distributed across me, other people (social), and technologies. I could not have done it by myself. Echoes of situated cognition and cognitive assemblages moving beyond constructivism.
Integrative Learning/knowledge gets "better" the more effectively it is integrated into mental structures/networks (aka schema) that I use. The more structural, relational, and abstract that structure the better (e.g. SOLO taxonomy)
Purposeful The quality and quantity of the curation and use of the learning/knowledge increases the more it is linked to the activities I engage in, the outcomes I want to achieve, and the distributed network I use to achieve those outcomes.

How do we deal with perfectionists?#

For some students, anything less than an A is unacceptable, and if it isn't an A+, they will never quite happy with the result. These students will rewrite perfectly good assignments that they have already finished because they are never happy with their work. In extreme cases, they can go for days without sleep in preparation for an exam, because they feel that if they sleep they might get the answer to one question wrong, and they can't handle the thought of that.

Have you met students like this? How have you supported them?

  • I've not experienced these students, but how would I do it?

  • Some vague strategies

    • understand why they have this drive, what is their goal? What are their needs? Use a variety of mechanisms
    • have formative assessment/assessment for learning practices embedded that help them appreciate they work they have done, but also make that visible to me and the rest of the class
    • design activities (individual, class, family) that help these students reflect upon and process their practice - develop their self-regulation
    • have established a class norms (e.g. mathematical-mindsets#Encourage all students) that values struggling (e.g. the learning pit)

My limited experience within schools means I've yet to meet students who are perfectionists. Within a university context I've met some, but almost without exception those older students have developed at least some self-regulatory approaches. Hence my reflection is based more on planning than experience (a theme that will recur in my subsequent reflections).

I've come up with the following three step process:

  1. Prepare/plan.

    Establish some initial classroom

    • norms; and

      e.g. Boaler's (2015) suggested norms. That place value on making mistakes, depth over speed, and learning rather than performing. The "learning pit" seems to usefully complement and explain these.

    • routines that can help.

      Beyond routines that teach, recognise, and reinforce the class norms a set of effective assessment for learning routines that encourage all students to understand where they are, what success looks like, and how to achieve it.

  2. Do/learn.

    As class gets underway make use of class routines to learn about students (e.g. perfectionists) who are "struggling" with less than productive behaviours. Use these and other routines to help both student and teacher understand why and what is happening.

  3. Design and iterate.

    Increasingly with the student(s) (re-)design activities that are likely to help them (and the class more broadly) develop more productive knowledge and behaviours.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I can see myself following these three abstract steps in much of what I do next year.

Supporting students - diverse and inclusive education#

Schools cater for students who have a diverse range of physical, religious, cultural, personal health or well-being, intellectual, psychological, socio-economic characteristics and life experiences. This diverse range of personal characteristics and experiences enriches the communal life of schools, but can present challenges for teachers working with classes that include students with diverse learning needs.

Share a success story from your own teaching where you have been able to respond to the challenges of working with students who have diverse learning needs

Echoing my last response, my limited experience in schools means I've yet to have any experience teaching students with diverse learning needs. Instead, I'll draw on my experience within the university context and some early plans for my return to teaching.

My first experiences teaching at universities was at a dual-mode university in the 1990s. A institution that had both on-campus and distance education students. As the name - dual-mode - suggests these students were placed into disparate boxes and taught in different ways. On-campus students via traditional face-to-face and synchronous lectures and tutorials. Distance education students via print-based materials and asynchronous phone communication. Over the last 15 years or so - mirroring changes in broader society - the diversity of students' learning needs has been increasing beyond the narrow on-campus/distance distinction.

In all the cases where we've been successful at catering for student diversity, the three key Universal Design for Learning guidelines have played a significant role. At times, that's been via teaching and other staff making changes to the designed learning environment. At other times, it's about ensuring that students have the agency to modify the designed learning environment to suit their needs.

Some examples:

  1. Engagement;

    Varying the context and details of examples and activities to be relevant to the students. Echoing Tomlinson's respectful tasks. Embedding the use of learner generated examples into the learning process.

  2. Representation;

    Enabling learner choice of the format of learning materials. For example, providing/enabling captions/transcripts on videos; providing audio version of text; and, providing downloadable versions of course sites.

  3. Action & expression.

    Designing learning activities with low floors (low barrier to entry), wide walls (multiple paths to success), and high ceilings (opportunities for extension). Providing multiple ways for students to demonstrate their learning. e.g. written, oral, video, etc. Echoing Tomlinson's teaching up, flexible grouping etc.

Assessment task#

Your task is to reflect on how some of the issues raised in this module on Effective Learning can be used to inform your teaching strategies.

Choose one or two of the issues raised in this module and discuss how they relate to your particular context e.g., Early Years, Primary, Secondary etc.

  • low floor, wide walls, and high ceiling - rich mathematical tasks and associated
  • applied to mathematics and digital technologies
  • often helpful to do these using digital technology but capability and access is limited - putting to question the idea of digital natives.
  • Prensky's argument is that a whole generation of had a common set of experiences with digital technologies which makes standard educational practices ill-suited for them. They speak a different language.
  • The problem is that this is not true. Research suggests that common activities are sparse. but also when they do engage any "fluency" they are develop is very specific - possibly even pre/uni-structural. They do not have deep conceptual knowledge about the digital tools they are using.

References#

Merriënboer, J. van. (2016). How People Learn. In The Wiley Handbook of Learning Technology (pp. 15--34). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118736494.ch2

Allison, S., & Tharby, A. (n.d.). Challenge. In Making every lesson count.

McRoberts, D. (2010). Embracing Diversity.