Promoting pupil voice and personalised learning:

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• Promoting pupil voice and personalised learning
• insights and evidence from TLRP
• Professor Mary James,
• TLRP, Institute of Education London
• University of Cambridge Faculty of Education
• www.tlrp.org
• m.james_at_ioe.ac.uk
• mej1002_at_cam.ac.uk

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Personalisation in Government pronouncements

• David Miliband, January 2004
• high expectation of every child, given
  practical form by high quality teaching based on
  a sound knowledge and understanding of each
  childs needs.
• Ed Balls, September 2008
• We are looking currently at a way in which we
  can assess progress child by child with an
  individual level test where the test would be,
  would be chosen in a way which is right for the
  child rather than just everybody doing the same
  test on the same day.

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2004 TLRP Commentary

• TLRP welcomed the initiative
• but noted four challenges in
• relation to
• Conceptualisation
• Authenticity
• Realism
• Risks

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Four continung challenges

• Conceptualisation Is the concept of Personalised
  Learning clear, coherent and empirically
  supported and sufficient?
• Authenticity Is it really about learning? Or is
  it still primarily about teaching and curriculum
  delivery?
• Realism Are the ambition and rhetoric
  over-reaching themselves?
• Risks What are the major difficulties likely to
  be and how can they be managed?

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What insights might TLRP offer?

• TLRPS overarching aim
• to lead to significant improvements in outcomes
  for learners at all ages and stages in all
  sectors and contexts of education and training,
  including informal learning settings, throughout
  the United Kingdom.

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Key features of TLRP in 2008

• Large (c40m, c100 investments, 700 researchers
• projects up to 1.5m each, often with large
  teams)
• All sectors of education (pre-school to older
  learners)
• UK-wide (England, Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland)
• 2000 to 2008/9 (generic phase), and then to
  2011/12 (TEL)
• Directors Team of five (Andrew Pollard (FT),
  Mary James,
• Alan Brown, Miriam David, Richard Noss, PT)
• Capacity building (in partnership with BERA,
  SRHE, ESRC, UCET, etc)

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Schools projects projects and syntheses

• 22 projects, all now complete
• Across project thematic work
• Special issues of journals (e.g. teacher
  learning learning outcomes)
• Commentaries on current policies (e.g.
  personalised learning improving teaching and
  learning in schools science education
  neuroscience and education)
• Contributions to public debates (e.g. Primary
  Review, National Curriculum Inquiry)
• Teachers guide (i.e. principles into practice)

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Examples of projects with special relevance to PV
and PL

• Consulting pupils about teaching and learning
  (Rudduck)
• Consulting pupils on the assessment of their
  learning (Leitch)
• ACTS II Sustainable thinking classrooms
  (McGuinness)
• Learning how to learn in classrooms, schools and
  networks (James)
• Improving effectiveness of pupil groups in
  classrooms (Blatchford)
• Identity and learning (Pollard)

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Consulting pupils about teaching and learning
(Rudduck) key findings

• For pupils a stronger sense of engagement with
  learning, an enhanced sense of agency and of self
  as learner.
• For teachers deeper insights into childrens
  abilities and learning preferences, leading to
  more responsive teaching and giving greater
  responsibility to pupils individually and as a
  group.
• For schools strengthening school policy and
  priority development by including pupils in
  substantive rather than marginal or tokenistic
  ways.
• For national policy new insights and practical
  tools for school self- evaluation, strategic
  planning and improvement.

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Consulting pupils on the assessment of their
learning (Leitch) key findings

• Children can be consulted directly by policy-
  makers on matters of educational significance
  such as assessment policy and practice.
• Pupils derive educational benefits through
  developing increased understanding of their
  assessment in classrooms where there is
  congruence between a teachers beliefs and
  practices of Assessment for Learning (AfL).
• Teachers and parents are generally supportive of
  childrens rights and increasing participation in
  learning and assessment.

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ACTS II Sustainable thinking classrooms
(McGuinness) key findings

• Using the infusion method, teachers were able to
  design and to teach lessons where a curriculum
  topic and a specific pattern of thinking were
  taught together.
• Teachers involved in a CPD programme reported
  changes in their classroom practices, in their
  perceptions of childrens thinking, and in their
  images of themselves as teachers.
• ACTS resulted in positive changes in childrens
  learning, particularly in their use of
  metacognitive strategies, which were related to
  effort. These changes took time to build and were
  not even across all learners.

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Learning how to learn in classrooms, schools and
networks (James) key findings

• AfL helps teachers promote learning how to learn
  (LHTL) and, thereby, learner autonomy in ways
  which are in line with their own values. But it
  is difficult to shift from reliance on specific
  techniques to practices based on deep principles.
  
• Classroom-focused inquiry by teachers is a key
  condition for promoting learner autonomy. Schools
  that embed LHTL make support for professional
  learning a priority.
• Educational networks are much talked about but
  little understood. They are subjective phenomena
  that need to be investigated and used by school
  leaders in order to spread good practice.

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Improving effectiveness of pupil groups in
Classrooms (Blatchford) key findings

• Teachers successfully implemented effective group
  work in primary and secondary classrooms and
  across the curriculum.
• Positive effects were recorded on pupils
  academic progress and higher conceptual learning.
  
• Involvement in the SPRinG project also had
  positive effects on pupil behaviour through
  increases in active on-task interactions, more
  equal participation in learning, sustained
  interactions and higher level discussions.
• Personal relationships between teachers and the
  class and between pupils within the class
  improve, provided teachers take time to train
  pupils in the skills of group working.

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Identity and learning (Pollard) key findings

• Relationships between teachers and pupils remain
  the basis of the moral order of the classroom
  and thus underpin discipline and behaviour.
• Children develop their identities as learners
  through successive experiences and contexts as
  they move through schooling.
• Pupils actively negotiate their way through
  schooling. When reviewed over several years, this
  can be seen as a pupil career.
• The match to school provision of learner
  identity, social relationships and cultural
  resources strongly influence the overall outcomes
  of education.

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Pollards conclusions

• The most fundamental form of education, the
  process of becoming a person, requires careful
  consideration as well as the acquisition of
  knowledge and skills.
• Understanding these strategic biographies is an
  important contribution to meaningful
  personalisation of provision.
• Personalised provision in schools should respond
  to the social, cultural and material experiences
  of different groups of learners and to the
  struggles for meaning and opportunity in their
  lives. Inequalities between schools make this
  extremely challenging.

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What all this implies

• Personalisation is not the same as
  individualisation.
• It is not just a matter of finding the strengths
  and weaknesses (by attainment testing) of
  individual students and then providing them with
  individualised targets and individualised
  programmes (delivered online?)
• It involves thinking about what becoming a
  person involves in groups, communities and
  institutions.
• TLRP projects provide evidence that pupils learn
  better if they are committed to their own
  learning and they know how to go about it. This
  has affective, cognitive, behavioural, social and
  moral dimensions.

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TLRPs ten evidence-informed principles to guide
policy and practice
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Why use the concept of evidence-informed
principles?

• engages with evidence whilst calling for the
  necessary application of contextualised judgement
  by practitioners, and policy-makers.
• enables the accumulation and organisation of
  knowledge in resilient, realistic and practically
  useful ways.
• has the potential to progressively generate
  understanding and language for use within public
  debates.

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TLRP PRINCIPLES educational values and purposes
Effective teaching and learning

• 1. Equip learners for life in its broadest sense

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TLRP PRINCIPLES curriculum, pedagogy
assessment Effective teaching and learning

• 2. Engage with valued forms of knowledge
• 3. Recognise the importance of prior experience
  and learning
• 4 Scaffold learning
• 5. Need assessment to be congruent with learning

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TLRP PRINCIPLES personal social processes
Effective teaching and learning

• 6. Promote the active engagement of the learner
• 7. Foster both individual and social processes
  and outcomes
• 8. Recognise the significance of informal
  learning

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TLRP PRINCIPLES teachers and policies Effective
teaching and learning

• 9. Place great emphasis on teachers own learning
• 10. Demand consistent policy frameworks with
  support for teaching and learning as their
  primary focus

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Back to Miliband

• David Miliband, January 2004
• high expectation of every child, given
  practical form by high quality teaching based on
  a sound knowledge and understanding of each
  childs needs.

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Whos talking? Whos listening?