Learning - Research

What is Going on For Our Learners? How do we know?

• New learning  
  How and where will we learn more about what we do? Teacher learning must be connected to identified learner needs. External expertise is important here and the school must make clear to externals what makes a difference to learners. We all need to know why new ways of doing things are better than what we did before.

My new inquiry big question is: What is learner agency and how could I develop this at my school?

My leadership responsibilities (from Leading from the Middle - MOE - pg12) are:

• Improve outcomes for all students - with a particular focus on priority learners
• Create the conditions for effective teaching, learning and curriculum delivery
• Explore and promote the use of ICT and e-learning to open up new ways of connecting, sharing and learning
• Develop schools as learning communities
• Build networks within and beyond their schools to enhance learning and achievement
• Develop others as leaders

Learner Agency



Learner agency at Hobsonville Point Secondary School from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Questions:

• What different components of agency can you identify throughout the video? What is agency comprised of?
• What is the relationship between building ‘base’ knowledge and skills, and providing agency over leading?
• Student-led inquiries are one way to provide agency, but how else do schools and centres offer it?
• How does providing agency prepare students for the future?
• In what ways does the role of the teacher change in a ‘high agency’ environment? In what ways does it stay the same?

Ten Trends 2015: Learner agency

Most people are familiar with the ‘old’ way of doing things in schools: the teacher controlled what was learnt, how it was learnt, even where and when it was learnt. But, a key trend that has characterised education in recent times is a move towards learners owning more of the process: to give them ‘the power to act’ in their learning, or what is known as ‘agency’.

Agency can take many forms; from being empowered to make decisions about which activity to move onto next, through to learners being empowered to take positive social action in their communities. Providing choices in learning (whether to work individually or in a group; whether to provide evidence of learning using a piece of writing or a diagram) is an important factor in engagement, which is, in turn, a contributor to student learning and success.

Many schools now build student agency by doing things like fostering a greater sense of ownership and self-efficacy in learning, inviting students to have a voice in that learning, and even to take more control over the way things are learnt. Student-led inquiries are one way to build agency, as learners often control not only the challenge or question that is explored, but also the method of investigation, the tools that are used, the action taken as a result of the inquiry and the means of demonstrating evidence of learning.

An interesting challenge with this way of learning is scaffolding all learners towards success, particularly when all of them have very different levels of experience and expertise when it comes to the inquiry process. We know that without some core knowledge and skills- such as questioning, researching, investigating or analysing information- it’s going to be difficult for them to be at their best as learners. This is about getting that balance right between ‘just in case’ learning and ‘just in time’ learning.

A crucial outcome from these new approaches to student agency is the development of so-called ‘soft skills’ such as self-management, prioritising, time management and teamwork. It’s probably these skills and competencies that will serve our students best in the future because it’s the ‘soft’ skills that are often the hardest skills to develop.

Learner Agency is Personalised Learning??

PL1 

Katrina is a year-13 student. She knows what helps her learn and what can get in the way. Earlier this year I had the chance to interview her. Take a look at the video before you read on.

So now you’ve watched the video, here’s some questions for you:

1. If Katrina was a student in your class or a member of your school community, how could you make the learning environment more effective for her?
2. Which of those tweaks or changes might provide additional support or options for other students? Get really specific if you can.
3. How could you increase the usefulness or flexibility of these changes by innovatively using digital technologies?
4. Which of the tweaks or changes you identified could just become the “way you do things”? Could they become part of practice across year groups and learning areas? How could you support this to happen?

A universal approach

The approach I am advocating here is a “universal” one where we deliberately seek differing perspectives, and in response create opportunities and environments informed by this diversity. A strong characteristic of this approach is that we do our innovating and solution finding in partnership. In seeking to understand the diverse experiences of others, our thinking and the way we do things will get challenged. If we continue to work closely with those we have interviewed, we can often find workable and effective solutions together. In the video above Katrina talks about what gets in the way of her learning, but she is astute about what could help. Her fixes contribute towards what we could call “the least restrictive environment”, one where options and supports (no tech, low tech and high tech) are:

• selected based on the specific needs of students
• built into the environment or the ways of working at the outset
• made available to everyone.

Exploring a universal approach in your school

• Interview some of the students in your class, department or school to give you a heads up on how you can help them learn?
• Take a whole school approach and weave student’s recommendations into “how we do things round here”.
• Dedicate a staff meeting to exploring the Inclusive Education website and the Inclusion Principle on NZC Online. Find some jargon-free ways of talking about creating environments that are a better fit for your students.
• Find out more about Universal Design for Learning: a practical approach with that “universal” idea at its heart.

Universal Design For Learning - UDL

LA1

LA2

LA3 - Ken Robinson

LA4 - Claire Buist


Modern Learning Practice

Tim Lovelock - Myross Bush School


Modern-learning-practice from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Reflections and thoughts:

• The 2 main themes I got from this are:
• Opening up of the spaces
• Opening up of the learning
• Opening up of the spaces
• The removal of unnecessary furniture and introducing furniture that will help their learning - high spaces, low spaces, quiet spaces, filming spaces etc
• Flexible furniture and spaces that allow for multiple uses
• Workshop areas and 'enrichment/action stations' areas
•  Use of cloakrooms to create more space
• Opening up of the learning
• Team teaching - pairs
• Collaborative work between the teachers and the students
• Workshop space where the teacher can focus exclusively on a group
• Enrichment/action spaces where the children work on their own, together and in groups with the teacher acting as a facilitator - great chance for them to focus on children who are struggling
• Planning and reflecting together
• Teachers taking turns with running each theme
• More Inquiry focused work - children engaging in a lot more independent learning
• My thoughts and reflections: I think that Universal Design for Learning would fit very nicely within the model that Myross Bush use and the one that we are also using at our school. I feel that at the moment we are still very subject driven and 'siloed' in that respect - more cross curriculum work mixing inquiry, writing and reading together would benefit that children - but how?

Anne Kenneally - Learning Spaces (Part 1 - Reflection of years sabbatical)

 Anne Kenneally: Student designed learning spaces from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Reflections and thoughts:

• Involving the children in designing their learning environment: thinking about they would like to see in their classrooms, the spaces that would help their learning, the furniture that would fit this vision and also how to use the 'old' space to create a 'new' space
• The children running Blogging workshops for their parents to attend to learn how to comment on their blogs - this is a great idea and is something that I could do in my room, but around Google Docs. Next term the children could invite their parents a long to learn how to use Google Doc and then maybe in Term 4 look at blogging
• Spaces within spaces - how do they help learning? Do children need to know what their learning style or strengths are before they can do this?
• How do the children use the spaces?
• Differentiated learning, personalised learning and learning pathways are at the heart of the change - it is not about creating fancy classes and spaces, but using them to make learning 'better' and more tailored to the learner
• How do I see this happening in my classroom? I have created spaces, but maybe I could work with the children to 'design' a learning space that they would like to use or that would work best for them?

Anne Kenneally - Learning Spaces (Part 2 - Reflection of her class)


Anne Kenneally: Creating learning spaces from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Reflections and thoughts:

• Transformational learning, BYOD....
• Empowering learners to discuss the learning needs - the children need to learn about learning and when, where, how and why learning happens
• Discussion and reflection time to talk about which spaces work best for different activities and learning
• Role of the teacher - Enabling the learning to happen
• Thinking about the challenges of creating new learning spaces - money, space, resources, time, children, demands and expectations of the school, traditional vs non-traditional
• Where to for me: As I said in the reflection about, I need to work with the children to focus on learning styles and spaces to see what they want - BUT I still want to learn more about the learning that takes place in these spaces. There is a lot of talk about the spaces and the theories, but I still haven't seen a lot about the learning. Are the children learning in a traditional way, but just in a new space? What about the quiet children who slip through the cracks?

Hingaia Peninsula School - Modern Learning Practice and Spaces


Modern Learning Environments: Hingaia Peninsula School from EDtalks on Vimeo.

The jargon of learning environments — ‘Modern’, ‘Innovative’, ‘Flexible’?

While sat in front of my laptop at the beginning of May, slogging through a literature review, I was bemused to discover the Ministry’s MLE website renamed to ‘Innovative Learning Environments'.  Most interesting was the justification that indicated the change was ‘consistent with both international usage and growing discomfort in New Zealand with the term MLE’ (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2015).

As part of my Master’s thesis research, ‘Making the Shift — Perceptions and Challenges of Modern Learning Practice', I have been tracking the terminology associated with modern learning environments (MLE) and modern learning practice (MLP).  Specifically, I’ve been exploring community-wide perceptions of the definition and purpose of MLP at a school knee-deep in the paradigm shift that is transforming many schools in Christchurch and throughout New Zealand.

Although I have yet to discover any sweeping empirical evidence, I am keenly aware of theperception of ‘growing discomfort’ with the term MLE.  Multiple participants have indicated that ‘modern’ seems to them a misnomer and, in fact, the school in my study ditched ‘modern’ well before the Ministry — they now call their learning spaces Flexible and Responsive Environments for Deep Learning (FREDL). Admittedly a bit of a mouthful, but it certainly provides an element of precision that both ‘modern’ and ‘innovative’ are missing.

Learning research strongly suggests that an effective learning environment is one that:

• makes learning and engagement central
• ensures learning is social and often collaborative
• is attuned to learners’ motivations and emotions
• is acutely sensitive to individual differences
• is appropriately demanding for each learner
• uses assessments that are consistent with the aims, with a strong focus on formative feedback
• promotes connectedness across activities and subjects, in and out of school.
  (Dumont & Istance, 2010)

No mention there of ‘modern’ or ‘innovative!’ 

Don’t get me wrong: I am firmly entrenched, philosophically, in the studentverse — the realm where learners are the driving force for all decisions that are made in education. I’m patently aware of the need for change in public schooling across the developed world, with research indicating that there is a ‘critical gap’ between the world students experience outside the classroom and the world within (Shear, Gallagher & Patel, 2011), and where 65% of primary aged students could end up doing work that hasn't been invented yet (check out Cathy N. Davidson’sblog). Hattie’s most recent published duplex — The Politics of Distraction and The Politics of Collaborative Expertise — outline the need to shift away from ‘the confused jargon and narratives that distract us’ (Hattie, 2015a, p.1) to coherent and focused attention on student learning (Hattie, 2015b). This backs up Michael Fullan’s New Pedagogies for Deep Learning project, where the emphasis on deep learning eclipses all other languages of reform. Whatever we call it, there is certainly an enormous shift that needs to occur in education, making the focus more about thelearners and their life-long learning.

Considering that the definition of innovative is ‘featuring new methods; advanced and original’ (Innovative, 2015), I guess I’m a little worried about teachers on the ground — what sort of message is the jargon sending them about their reflective, highly-skilled practice?  Do we want teachers to feel that they constantly have to be ‘new', ‘original', ‘cutting edge', or, as the OECD (2013) puts it, fundamentally different in approach to the main body of practice? Thankfully, they also admit ‘what is seen in some contexts as innovative might appear to some readers as unexceptional’ (OECD, 2013, p.26). That’s comforting, as I have never considered my own practice to be ‘cutting edge'; I have always depended on prior experience and, most importantly, connections with respected colleagues, literature and resources to assist me in providing the most appropriate learning for each individual. 

According to Fullan & Langworthy (2014), innovative developments in education are alreadybeing driven and sustained primarily by teachers and students. If you want evidence of that in New Zealand, just log onto the VLN to follow the conversation of and between dedicated, thoughtful, reflexive practitioners.

So, how much of the amazing learning that is already happening in our schools is innovation and how much of it is learner-centred, flexible practice?

The insistence of the school in my study that the environment — physical, virtual, social — needs to be flexible and responsive to the needs of the learners remains in line with that of the Ministry’s expectations. Like the international literature, this speaks to us less about jargon and semantics and more about how students learn within the nexus of space, people, and technology.

Building Relationships - Champion
BR

Team Teaching

TT1

TT2




Modern Learning Environments


MLE1

MLE2

MLE3

MLE4


Collaborative Learners

Greg Carroll