RTLA - visible_learning_23_24

Recognise concepts and strategies appropriate for visible learning.Explore strategies for metacognitive learning (learning about learning).

Objectives of the Session

Learning about learning

Examine the given ‘formative assessment strategies’Choose two and think of an example within teaching and learning in which they could be used. What are the potential benefits of these approaches for formatively assessing learning?Thoughts added to the ‘Directed Task 1’ Padlet Wall.

Directed Task Review

Watkins argues that much pedagogy is teacher-driven, routinised and shallow. Researchers realised there was “a problem of [learners’] understanding: they had little insight into their own ability to learn intentionally: they lacked reflection. Children did not use a whole variety of learning strategies because they do not know much about the art of learning [...] Furthermore, they know little about monitoring their own activities; that is, they do not think to plan, orchestrate, oversee, or revise their own learning efforts.

Learning about learning

Part of the problem in developing learning-centred classrooms is that many of the embedded norms of schooling lead us to approach it in a teacher-centred way: “Let’s teach them more about their learning”, “Let’s tell them how to be better learners”. There is also the danger of teachers allocating students to restrictive 'preferred' learning styles and learning dispositions.

Learning about learning

Watkins suggests that: • Learning is the human process of creating meaning from experience. • Simply having an experience is not enough for someone to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten or its learning potential lost. • Human beings relate their experiences to each other through the medium of stories. As we tell the story of an experience we can “rise above” it and create meaning.

Learning about learning

Watkin proposes: • making learning an object of attention - Noticing learning • making learning an object of conversation – Talking about learning • making learning an object of reflection – Reviewing experiences of learning • making learning an object of learning – Experimenting with learning

Learning about learning

What do children want? Do they want to be taught? Or Do they want to learn?

Making learning visible...

‘When children are interviewed as to what they want from teachers, the same theme of understanding their learning comes through.’ (Hattie, J. 2009)Learning is often ‘in the head’ and an aim of the teacher is to help to make this learning visible. The operative requirement to enhance student learning is for teachers to see learning through the eyes of the students.

Hattie, J. (2012) chapter 6 ‘The flow of the lesson: Learning’ in Visible Learning for Teachers Oxon: Routledge - available as an e-book via Library Search

Hattie argues that pupil self-regulation (learning how to learn: metacognition) should be the ultimate aim within the learning process. Your can read a pertinent chapter from his book here.

Shayer and Adey (1981) research generated the notion of ‘cognitive acceleration’ - it proposes: 1. that the mind develops in response to challenge or to disequilibrium, meaning that the intervention must provide some cognitive conflict; 2. that the mind has a growing ability to become conscious of, and so take control of, its own processes,meaning that the intervention must encourage students to be metacognitive; 3. that cognitive development is a social process promoted by high-quality discussion amongst peers and mediated by a teacher or other more mature person, meaning that the intervention must encourage social construction.

Capabilities in thinking

Hattie suggests learning might start with ‘backward design: ’[…] Learning starts with the teacher (and preferably also the student) knowing the desired results (expressed as success criteria related to learning intentions) and then working backwards to where the student starts the lesson(s) – both in terms of his or her prior knowledge and where he or she is in the learning process. (p. 93)

Backwards design

For adaptive learning to be effective, teachers need to know, for each student, where that student begins and where he or she is in his or her journey towards meeting the success criteria of the lesson. Is the student a novice, somewhat capable, or proficient? What are his or her strengths and gaps in knowledge and understanding? What learning strategies does he or she have and how can we help him or her to develop other learning strategies that he or she needs?Adaptive learning relates primarily to structuring classes so that all students are working ‘at or +1’ from where they start, such that all can have maximal opportunities to attain the success criteria of the lessons.

Differential instruction

Tomlinson (1995) identified four characteristics of effective adaptive learning: 1. The first is that all students need to have the opportunity to explore and apply the key concepts of the subject being studied and then to achieve success. 2. Frequent formative interpretation is needed to monitor the students’ path to success in the learning intention. This, more than most other activities, will help to generate the highest probability of successful teaching and learning. 3. Flexibly grouping students so that they can work alone, together, or as a whole class, makes it possible to make the most of the opportunities created by difference and commonality. 4. As much as possible, we should engage students in an active manner to explore and reach the success targets.

Differential instruction

Teachers have high levels of empathy, and know how ‘to see learning through the eyes of the students’ and show students that they understand how they are thinking and how then their thinking can be enhanced. This requires that teachers pay special attention to the way in which students define, describe, and interpret learning and problem solving situations, so that they can begin to understand these experiences from the unique perspectives of students.Adaptive experts listen for when the learning is occurring so that they can work out the point at which to intervene (or not) to advance the learning. Sometimes, they need to disrupt the equilibrium, to break the habit, or to see error as an opportunity for intervention (p. 100)

Adaptive experts

Multiple ways of knowing■ Ideas that need to be associated should be presented near to each other in space and time.■ Materials presented in verbal, visual, and multimodal form provide richer representations than can a single medium. ■ Cognitive flexibility improves with multiple viewpoints that link facts, skills, procedures, and deep conceptual principles.■ Materials should explicitly link related ideas and minimize distracting irrelevant material.■ The information presented to the learner should not overload working memory.

Learning Strategies

Multiple ways of interacting■ Outlining, integrating, and synthesizing information produces better learning than rereading materials or other passive strategies. ■ Stories and example cases tend to be remembered better than facts and abstract principles. ■ Deep reasoning and learning is stimulated by problems that create cognitive disequilibrium,such as obstacles to goals, contradictions, conflict,and anomalies – and students need to be told that this is a normal part of learning. ■ Most students need training in how to self-regulate their learning and other cognitive processes.

Learning Strategies

Multiple opportunities for practising■ An understanding of an abstract concept improves with multiple and varied examples. ■ Spaced schedules of studying produce better long-term retention than a single session. ■ To maintain engaged and sustained learning, there is a need to see value and purpose in the practice, and a need to develop a growing sense of confidence when facing challenges in this learning.

Learning Strategies

Knowing that we are learning■ Feedback is most powerful when the nature of feedback is related to the student’s degree of proficiency (from novice to proficient). ■ Making errors is often a necessity for learning then to occur; students need safe environments in which they can go beyond their comfort levels, make and learn from errors, and know when they have erred.■ Learning wrong information can be reduced when feedback is immediate. ■ Challenges help to make learning easier and thereby have positive effects on long-term retention.

Learning Strategies

One method for structured differentiation is the ‘jigsaw’ method (Aronson, 2008).This involves groups of students working on a set of tasks, with each student being assigned a particular task (part of the ‘jigsaw’). The student from each group might then join with students from other groups who also have that particular task, and all will get specific teaching on the task. After their individual research and learning about the task, they go back to their own groups and present their findings. Task: How might you introduce this method within a classroom session? How might you make students' learning visible during the activity - consider the learning tasks discussed?Add your thoughts here.

Task: The Jigsaw Method

Students needs to know various strategies that are appropriate to the task at hand – that is, the ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘why’ of their use. Strategy training needs to be embedded in the teaching context itself. Bransford et al. (2000) argued that classrooms need to be: ■ learner-centered – because it is all about where the student is on the journey from novice, through competent, to proficient;■ knowledge-centred – there needs to be knowledge so that connections and relations can be built;■ assessment-rich – to better understand and articulate what we already know and can do, and to know when we are moving towards proficient and understand where to next.■ community-centered – because there is no one way from novice to proficient, so we need to share and learn from each other (particularly so that we can see and enjoy the trials and tribulations of how we each progress), and share the relevance in what we are aiming to learn.

Learning Strategies

We need to develop an awareness of what we are doing, where we are going, and how we are going there; we need to know what to do when we do not know what to do. Such self-regulation, or meta-cognitive, skills are one of the ultimate goals of all learning: they are what we often mean by ‘lifelong learning’ and it is why we want ‘students to become their own teachers’.

Think about thinking

Lavery (2008) compared the relative effects of many metacoginitive strategies. She found the highest effects from strategies that aimed at the ‘forethought’ phase of learning, such as goal-setting and planning, self-instruction, and self-evaluation. ■ Goal-setting and target-setting. ■ Self-instruction (that is, using self-talking and self-questioning) is an invaluable tool for the learner to focus attention and check the use of various strategies.■ Self-evaluation strategies allow the learner to self-reflect on performance in relation to the previously set goals – which is much more important than self-monitoring (such as ticking off completed tasks), because it requires the extra step such that the learner actually evaluates what he or she has monitored.

Metacognitive Strategies (Lavery 2008)

Metacognitive Strategies (Lavery 2008)

Metacognitive Strategies (Lavery 2008)

Generate a learning strategy to teach someone to say the alphabet backwards. What visible learning and metacognitive strategies would you use to make the learning strategy effective effective? Be prepared to justify your responses.Add your thoughts here.

Task

A major role of schools is to teach students the value of deliberate practice, such that students can see how practice leads to competence.Deliberate practice is different from mere practice. Deliberate practice requires concentration, and someone (either the student, or a teacher) monitoring and providing feedback during the practice. The task or activity should typically be outside the realm of current performance, invoke a challenge for the student, and it greatly helps if the student is both aware of the purpose for the practice and has a vision of what success looks like.

Deliberate Practice

Students thrive on formative feedback during the lesson; they do not want to be blocked by lack of feedback (this is boredom-inducing, or ‘turn off to the lesson’ time), and they do not want to wait until the end of the lesson to know that they are on the right track.It is important to choose tasks that invite students to engage in deliberate practice, being transparent about the end value of the practice, and providing much formative feedback to enhance the impact of the practice.It means ensuring that students know what the learning intentions are and what success looks like.

Deliberate Practice

The key for understanding the processes of learning (or self-regulation) is that it is taught, such that the student learns to monitor, control, or regulate their own learning. It involves learning when to apply a strategy, how to apply that strategy, and evaluating how effective the strategy has been for improving learning.It is not the amount of practice, but the amount of deliberate effort to improve performance that matters. The optimal combination of deliberate practice and concentration occurs when learners are given tasks that are initially outside their current realm of dependable performance, but which: can be mastered within hours of practice by concentrating on critical aspects and by gradually refining performance through repetitions after feedback. Hence, the requirement for concentration sets deliberate practice apart from both mindless, routine performance, and playful engagement. (Ericsson, 2006: 694)

Deliberate Practice

Recognised concepts and strategies appropriate for visible learning.Explored strategies for metacognitive learning (learning about learning).

During this session, we have:

Summary of session