BUILDING LEARNING POWER

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BUILDING LEARNING POWER

• Prof Guy Claxton
• Centre for Real-World Learning
• University of Winchester

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What is BLP?

• A large, loose family of teachers, schools and
  LAs who share
• Vision AchievementIndependenceConfidence
• The long haul (not this weeks fad)
• Practical, incremental, sustained habit change
• Exploration, not implementation
• Built on firm scientific foundations
• Resources garnered and developed by TLO
• Booklets, networking, DIY materials, DVDs, advice
  and support

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Results The Right Way

• The test of successful education is not the
  amount of knowledge that pupils take away from
  school, but their appetite to know and their
  capacity to learn. Sir Richard Livingstone,
  Oxford,1941
• Pedagogy should at its best be about what
  teachers do that not only helps students to learn
  but actively strengthens their capacity to
  learn. Prof David Hargreaves, SSAT, 2004
• Not Either / Or, but AND

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BLPs guiding questions

• What qualities of mind (learning muscles) are
  we continually inviting, exercising, stretching
  and strengthening by the way we do things round
  here?
• Are they the ones we think will stand everyone in
  good stead for a lifetime of learning?
• Does our school offer a rich and progressive
  mental fitness programme that expands the
  learning confidence, capacity and appetite of all
  its students?

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Top qualities for the 21st centurypick three and
add some
compliant inquisitive pedantic
resilient resourceful tidy
creative punctual thoughtful
self-aware collaborative polite
retentive studious open-minded
. . .
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What doesnt really do it

• Sprinkles and labels
• Teaching learning and thinking
• Training learning and thinking skills
• The importance of dispositions
• e.g. reading

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So if we are really serious about getting results
the right way

• BLP must permeate the culture of the school
• what we act and talk as if we believed and
  valued round here
• the daily messages of the medium, as experienced
  by students
• and especially the classroom

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What the research says

• An effective school is essentially a school
  full of effective classrooms.It matters much less
  which school a child attends than which
  classrooms they are in at that school. In England
  there is a four-fold different between the most
  effective and least effective classrooms.
• - Prof Dylan Wiliam

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800 meta-analyses cant be wrong

• Many of the most hotly debated issues e.g.
  class sizes, streaming, school choice and school
  uniforms are the ones with the least effects.
• The biggest effects on student attainment occur
  when teachers become learners of their own
  teaching, and when students become their own
  teachers.
• The aim is to make students active in the
  learning process, until they can seek out optimal
  ways to learn new material and ideas, seek
  resources to help them, and set appropriate and
  more challenging goals for themselves.
• John Hattie, Visible Thinking, 2009

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7 aspects of a BLP culture

• The teacher
• language talking about learners and learning
• example the power of modelling and imitation
• The classroom
• activities split-screen lessons
• environment displays and resources
• engagement / responsibility student ownership
• The school
• a community of explorers everyone a learner
• the vital signs indicators of progress

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The 3 baskets -obviousridiculousandmayb
e
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Learnish spoken hereclassroom chat that
surfaces the learning

• How did you do that?
• How else could you have done that?
• Who did that a different way?
• Which are the tricky bits? Whats tricky about
  them?
• What could you do when you are stuck on that?
• What would have made that easier for you?
• What else do you know that might help?
• How could you help someone else learn that?
• How could I have taught that better?
• Where else could you use that?
• How could you make that harder for yourself?
• ..?

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The lingo of learners (the 4 Rs)

• Emotional Resilience
• curious, risk-taking, persistent, concentrated,
  perceptive
• Cognitive Resourcefulness
• questioning, flexible, imaginative, connecting,
  critical
• Social Relationships
• collaborative, non-defensive, empathic,
  supportive
• Strategic Reflection
• self-evaluative, self-coaching, generalising,
  self-aware

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So how do you write reports? What do you act
as if its worth capturing about your students?

• Darren is getting better at
• careful observation, brining his own questions
  into class, asking when he doesnt understand,
  working with a range of others, thinking things
  through, seeing how he can improve what hes
  done
• Megan is becoming more
• resilient in the face of difficulty, imaginative
  in her writing, thoughtful about her own work,
  sceptical about knowledge claims, careful in her
  checking, willing to push herself

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Is your Mind a Bucket or a Muscle? Carol Dwecks
two mindsets

• BUCKET
• Fixed ability
• Born smart
• Proving
• Conservative learning
• Failure/mistakes bad
• Effort aversive
• Ignores information
• Fragile - depressive
• Shirk/blame/cheat
• Comparative/competitive

• MUSCLE
• Expandable ability
• Get smarter
• Improving
• Adventurous learning
• Failure/mistakes useful
• Effort pleasurable
• Focuses on information
• Resilient - determined
• Try/commit/be open
• Collaborative/generous

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Visual tools the riskometer
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Resourcefulness
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• Hattie the BLP hamster (and Kyle)

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Lemar learns to concentrate
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And enjoys it
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Share the contents of your baskets
WhatsObvious thoroughly embedded in
current practice?Sparked some practical thoughts
and possibilities?Out of the question at the
moment?
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How good a learning community are
we?4always/very like us 1never/very unlike us

• We love learning new things - were adventurous
  and risk-taking
• If somethings hard, we keep at it till weve got
  it - were resilient and persistent
• We enjoy exploring things with other people -
  were collaborative and supportive
• We stand back and think about how were doing -
  were self-critical in a good way!
• We like to work on improving what weve done
  were practical and positive
• We like to question things and explore
  possibilities - were inquisitive and imaginative
• We think things through carefully - we think
  carefully and rigorously
• We can concentrate hard when were learning we
  keep our eye on the ball!
• .
• .

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Pause for thoughtsetting our targets

• How would you convince a skeptic that, in three
  years time, your school was creating
  significantly more powerful learners?
• Identify 5 key indicators
• they must be observable and precise
• (not The children seem more confident)
• at least 2 of them must be measurable or
  countable

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Indicators of successin the last three years,

• Frequency of students curiosity-driven questions
  has risen ten-fold
• Frequency of teachers behaving like learners in
  class has doubled
• Attendance at parents evenings has risen by 50
• Self-reported resilience and resourcefulness up
  by 30
• Oh, and by the way,
• The exam results have gone up by 20

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Is BLP working?
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Solihull evaluation

• Students confidence, attitudes and KS test
  results improve
• Impact on students language development
• Teachers talk and planning shifts to learning
• Teacher engagement and enthusiasm increases
• Collaborative / coaching CPD increases
• Greater parental involvement
• Uptake in governor induction
• SIP focus on What kinds of learners do we want
  our children to be?

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Why BLP matters hugely
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Learning power is the lifeblood of a happy life

• Happiness arises not from good fortune or anger
  management, but from
• Engaging with a worthwhile challenge
• Where there is hope of success
• Progress is made
• Full absorption is possible
• Feedback is clear and impersonal
• Self-consciousness (anxiety, self-doubt) drops
  away
• Csikszentmihalyi 2002
• Things won are done joys soul lies in the
  doing
• Shakespeare

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Support is available

• Its easy to start, and harder to sustain, embed,
  deepen and develop
• Where can we get more ideas to get us going?
• How do I do a learning review?
• How do I get colleagues on board?
• What about special needs kids?
• What to say to parents?
• How do we stop it fizzling out?
• Can we get some PD?
• www.buildinglearningpower.co.uk
• guy.claxton_at_winchester.ac.uk

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