How Centred is Your Classrooms Learning?
One of the most curious things about life in classrooms and schools is how little focus there is on learning. Another puzzle about classrooms is how much they stay the same. Despite changes in rhetoric over decades and centuries, the dominant patterns return to reflect long-standing and dominant cultural beliefs. These include: ‘teaching is telling’, ‘learning is listening’, ‘knowledge is subject matter taught by teachers and found in books’. Perhaps we revert to reptilian brain function?
The persistence of such simple ways of running classrooms perhaps reflects the lack of widespread understanding that classrooms are one of the most complex situations on the planet. An individual child is incredibly complex, let alone the dynamic with many other classmates and adults.
One of the early enquiries in developing a focus on learning is to ask your pupils what they mean by the word ‘learning’. If a five year-old answers ‘learning is being good and not being naughty’, the initial reaction might be surprise. But, after reflection on our language and manner as teachers, we might understand why the child says this.
When we begin to articulate ambition for our setting, we might seek to change attitudes, language and ethos from thin conceptions of learning (eg: compliance, teacher-driven) to richer conceptions (such as active, collaborative, cognitive).
Learning can be viewed as an activity of construction. So, an effective learner is someone who knows (and acts accordingly) that:
- it is their actions (not other people’s) which are crucial for their learning. Only the child can do the learning. Active
- interaction with others can be a valuable resource for their learning. Collaborative
- they can plan, monitor and review their own learning. Learner-driven
- they can learn about and experiment with their learning. Learning-focused
Here at schoolweave, we encourage leaders to discuss such thinking. Subsequently, to reflect on the current provision in the setting.
Two key questions are:
- How well do we marry up to the ambition we have stated?
- What are we going to do to get there?
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