At last: A definition of learning

Our temporary fixed position

IN PREVIOUS POSTS

This is the 34th post since Looking for Learning began. For most of these posts we have been thinking about what learning is, how it happens and what it looks like if we see it in front of us. Now, we have arrived at that point where all that reflecting enables us to come up with a defensible definition of learning.

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I want to stress that this is a definition of learning and not the definition. There are others. Some of them are good and some of them less so. You don’t have to use this one but if you are looking for somewhere to start as you look for agreement amongst your stakeholders, this is as good a place as any.

It’s important that any shared definition of learning is defensible. There’s no merit in simply coming up with something off the top of our heads. Like everything else, we have to put the work in beforehand. That’s why I resisted the temptation to begin these posts with the definition and then try to explain it. It just seems better to me to do the thinking and reflecting first so that, when the definition finally arrives, it’s possible for most people to say ‘Oh, I see why it is defined in the way it is.’

I like this one partly because it is defensible and partly because we know it has helped so many leaders, teachers, parents, children, students and others who want to focus on and improve learning. It has been amended over time as we have looked at learning happening in real classrooms and considered the evidence about learning that is useful for teachers. These amendments have changed the working definition sometimes but haven’t changed the essence of anything.

Why ‘our temporary fixed position’? Some time ago, one of my colleagues, Pam Harper, coined the phrase for us and it proved to be enduringly useful. We were conscious that a) everything changes over time but that b) we also need to simultaneously think of things as having a fixed quality. Like many things, it’s a paradox. ‘Our temporary fixed position’ is a very good description of the status of this definition. It is secure enough to be fixed for now. I am secure enough to know that as time passes, as new information comes our way and as we reflect more, it might get amended again. I hope that is the case, but it probably won’t be on an annual basis.

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OUR DEFINITION OF LEARNING

If you have been with us from the start, you’ll have seen a few draft definitions of learning as we have looked at and reflected on the evidence and the issues. Here’s the, for now, final version.

Learning, getting better, happens successfully when our brains, through repeated experiences, engage in a good struggle to a) create or extend an existing neuronal chain b) make a neuronal constellation more complex or c) hardwire an existing chain so that it fires automatically and becomes sticky. When this happens we acquire knowledge, develop our skills and deepen our understandings in different ways and over different periods of time.

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CAN WE DEFEND IT?

Yes. Although it’s as tight a definition as we can have right now, each component part of it comes directly from the evidence we have been looking at so far. If you test it against the previous post, the 15 things teachers for learning need to know, you’ll see that pretty much everything is clearly reflected in this definition.

HOW CAN THIS DEFINITION HELP?

There is a number of ways in which this definition can be helpful.

First, because it is defensible against the evidence, it is possible for groups of people to reach agreement around it. That agreement about what learning might be is a foundational necessity if we are going to put learning at the heart of everything we do.

(A brief aside here about ‘agreement’. Another colleague of ours, Geoff Southworth, whose main area of interest was leadership and management, showed us the difference between ‘consensus’ and ‘consent.’ Consensus is a general agreement that things are as they are; Consent is the willingness, for now, to go along with what has been decided.

Geoff pointed out that in a school with a large number of stakeholders, all with views about the complex nature of what happens on a daily basis, consensus is almost impossible and that many school leaders are mistaken in wanting to achieve it. Consent though is a real, mature possibility. Consent allows us to say ‘Despite the fact that I’m not in agreement with everything here, I am willing to go along with it as part of the team.’

I’m reminded of this each time I write about the importance of a shared agreement about learning. The ‘agreement’ is not an agreement around which no one has any disagreement; it is an acknowledgement that things are good enough to give consent to going ahead collectively without continually nit-picking over our individual concerns.

This definition of learning will never be something around which there is always consensus. However, we have learned in the hundreds of schools with which we have worked that it is a definition for which most people will willingly give their consent to and move forward together.

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Second, consent to this definition is possible because it is recognisable by teachers and others as a description of what happens in their classrooms and other learning places. We and they can see repeated experiences happening (or not) and good struggles being engaged in (or not). We and they can see the new and consolidating learning that happens (or not) when we enable the creation, extension or complexity of neuronal chains. We and they can see the ‘good’ treading water when those neuronal chains become sticky. We can see drowning happen, too. We and they can see how the chains related to knowledge, skills and understanding are developing (or not) in different ways and over time periods. All of these things are observable to us and make sense.

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Third, this definition, amended slightly, can be at the heart of a description of what we want teachers to do in classrooms; a part of their job description. We want teachers to provide appropriate repeated experiences, to enable and positively support good struggling, to minimise no struggling and to eliminate bad struggling. We want teachers to be able, at appropriate times, to tell students factual information, to coach students to become better at their skills and to create opportunities for reflection that enable personal meanings to develop. We want them to be at ease with the different periods of time needed to develop different kinds of learning. When I think of the good teachers I have seen, this is pretty close to what they are all able to help happen.

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Fourth, this definition makes sense for parents, students and children. Because learning happens all the time, everyone needs to share what it means. This definition can help parents who are struggling to help their own children learn; it can help parents make sense of what their child’s school is trying to do. It can also help schools explain to parents why what is happening in their classrooms is worthwhile and for parents to discuss what is happening in classrooms with teachers and school leaders.

For students including, in my experience, quite young children too, this definition can help them make sense of the learning process we are asking them to take part in. Often, when I sit next to students and young children and ask them ‘What’s happening here?’, many of them tell me about the activity they are doing. As in, ‘I’m doing section 7 of the math book.’ or ‘The teacher has asked us to draw this map.’

In some schools, though, where the students and children share their school’s definition about learning, they give me a different answer. They say, ‘I’m doing this math work to consolidate the learning I have been doing over the past two weeks before we move onto something new’ or ‘Annotating maps is a new skill for us and I am at Beginning level right now. I’m struggling a little.’

When you see this, it is really, really powerful and really exciting. It’s powerful because students, teachers and their parents are all sharing the same language. There is a consistency around the place. It’s powerful because the language of the definition is giving children and students the repeated experiences that will help them develop their own ability to reflect on their learning. Or, for those of us who like a little jargon now and then, to engage in meta-cognition.

HOW CAN I USE THIS DEFINITION OF LEARNING NOW?

I can’t second-guess you or your school in any way and so I can’t be definitive about how you should use this definition. In many ways, your school is similar to thousands of others but it is also at a specific point in its own development where there are certain things running in your favour and certain things running against you. An important part of leadership is the ability to read your organisation and know when it is right to introduce something or wait a little while. In all my different leadership roles I have been both very successful at this and spectacularly unsuccessful. (I might write about one of the more unsuccessful episodes in the July posts.)

All I can say is that, at some point, shared consent about a) what learning means and the willingness to take that meaning and b) use it as the very simple concept that you can use as a frame of reference for all their decisions, does coincide with breakthrough results. It is something that better schools and organisations have in place and less successful schools and organisations ignore or struggle to get in place.

For schools in the northern hemisphere, about to begin their summer break either now or before to long, it could be that this definition can be the centre piece of the professional development time that will form part of the beginning of the next new school year. I simply can’t make that decision. I just ask that you reflect on the levels of your own knowledge and confidence, on the consent that you and your colleagues have around learning, on the winds that are currently blowing in your favour and those that are blowing against you. Then, make your best professional call about when this definition is most helpful to you.

Having said all of that, this definition has been introduced into schools in many different ways and for many different reasons. Here’s a few of them:

• A school leadership team wanted to develop its own shared thinking and used it among themselves

• A single member of a leadership team or staff/faculty wanted something to start their own thinking.

• A school had some members of the staff/faculty who were ready to look at their own classrooms and practices from a learning perspective. The leadership team worked with them as a small group.

• Some schools wanted to test the definition out before thinking about using it formally. They used it whilst making their usual run of classroom visits to see if it really did help them make more sense of what they were looking at. (It usually did.)

• A school wanted to formally introduce professional development that was specifically learning-focused. They used the content of all of our previous posts (it wasn’t available in the same format then) and worked their way to this definition of learning.

• And so on. If you have your own ideas about how our definition can be used, please share them. It’s all very helpful.

The most important thing is this. Unless the arrival of these Substack posts was the godsend you needed to get you over the learning-focused line you had already been moving towards for a long time, please take small steps at first. If your school hasn’t been learning-focused up to now, another six months isn’t going to be crucial unless you are all about to crash and burn and you have to take emergency action. Remember, the path to absolutely right is made up of a whole series of approximately rights.

WHAT IS COMING NEXT?

Because it’s holiday time coming up, from now until some time in August I will be posting some shorter weekly posts that comment on learning-related issues that pop up each week. From mid-August, we are going to start looking closely at the key factors that affect learning. Using our definition, we’ll be seeing how the same factors done well can positively affect how good learning happens and how done less well can get completely in the way of enabling learning to happen.

If you are getting close to the longer break, have the best time you can. I hope you are able to rest, recover and reflect. If any thoughts come to mind please just send them in. In the meantime, I’ll see you next Monday for the first of the shorter comments on learning related issues that pop up in front of us.

Martin