Ideas

The Teacher as the First Learner: If Learning is invisible how do you make it visible to learners? An idea on modelling learning processes.

Idee

During my career as an English teacher, I have always tried to education research into my classroom practice, something which has unquestionably enriched my teaching in terms of how research provides a framework for continued reflection on the impact of lessons.

In terms of the research which impacted my practice early in my career, Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black’s seminal book ‘Inside the Black Box’ has been central to my use o feedback, ensuring that written and verbal feedback always focuses on ‘next steps’ in learning. As Dylan Wiliam states: feedback is ‘feed forward’. Wiliam and Black’s work also supported my understanding of the importance of learning intentions, regular questioning for understanding and explicitly modelling learning outcomes. Secondly, John Hattie’s research data highlighted the positive impact of metacognition on student’s learning, something supported by Kuhn and Deane’s 2004 study, ‘Metacognition: A Bridge Between Congnitive Psychology and Educational Practice’. Therefore, AfL and metacognition were at the forefront of my early teaching practice.

Herein my first learning hurdle arose: If metacognition (thinking about thinking) is invisible, how do you make it visible to yourself and then to your students…?

The gradual answer was to pay more attention to my own learning processes and, over time, model each process through a combination of text and image, linking to Paivio’s dual coding theory which argues that information presented as a combination of text and image is more effective than text or image in isolation, something I have found to be the case in my lessons. An early example of the clarification of my own thought processes is ‘The 5 Thinking Steps’: A system designed to support independent analysis in English lessons.

A working example of The 5 Thinking Steps in English: Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’

The 5 Thinking Steps in English - A Doll's House

The 5 Thinking Steps explained (link to free download)

‘The 5 Thinking Steps’ helped to clarify a number of things for me: (i) all processes need to be modelled in the early stages of acquiring a metacognitive skill (ii) models should be working models which present both the process/system and a working example (iii) processes/systems of learning have to be refined (iv) working, diagrammatic models of learning processes create clarity and independence in learners over time.

Other examples of modelling learning processes which make success criteria clearer and easier to assess are analytical writing. In the example below on ‘Jekyll & Hyde’, the process used was a ‘writing formula’: i.e. a colour-key of ingredients used in a specific order. Students start out by following the order then changing it and finally abandoning it: i.e. novice-mastery.

essay writing formulas Jekyll & Hyde

good and evil essay advanced version (link to free download)

Conclusions

There is no doubt that, from the beginning of my teaching career, having a knowledge of research helped me to to apply, practice and refine my teaching – in this case AfL and modelling invisible learning processes. This, of course, isn’t to say that teachers who do not use research in their practice are necessarily less effective: I have worked with excellent teachers who have done little, if any, research. For me, however, the body of research provides me with a framework to reflect within when things don’t go to plan which, in a craft you never master, is a valuable asset to have.

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