Transcript Slide 1

Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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
[email protected]
[email protected]
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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 child’s 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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
2004 TLRP Commentary
TLRP welcomed the initiative
but noted four challenges in
relation to:
1. Conceptualisation
2. Authenticity
3. Realism
4. Risks
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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?
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
What insights might TLRP offer?
TLRP’S 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’.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
Key features of TLRP in 2008
• Large (c£40m, 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)
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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)
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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)
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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 children’s 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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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
teacher’s beliefs and practices of Assessment for
Learning (AfL).
Teachers and parents are generally supportive of children’s
rights and increasing participation in learning and
assessment.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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
children’s thinking, and in their images of themselves as
teachers.
ACTS resulted in positive changes in children’s 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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
Pollard’s 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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
TLRP’s ten evidence-informed principles to
guide policy and practice
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
Why use the concept of ‘evidenceinformed 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.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
TLRP PRINCIPLES: educational values and purposes
Effective teaching and learning:
1. Equip learners for life in its broadest sense
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
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 child’s needs’.
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
Who’s talking? Who’s listening?