Cut out and keep 2: The checklists about the factors that affect learning.
Looking for Learning: The 'Factors that Affect Learning' Checklists
Last week’s post contained the summaries of the Looking for Learning content we have covered so far. These summaries contained the key points about learning and the factors that affect learning and a guide to where you could read about each in more detail. I was very happy with it and it seems to have gone down well.
This week’s post contains the - slightly re-edited - checklists that ended the posts about 10 of the 12 factors we identified that most affect learning. (The missing two are the ones on children and the big lever governmental decisions. They are missing because they didn’t - and still don’t - seem right for a checklist in the same way that the others do, partly because these factors are much more out of our control.
Please keep in mind that these checklists are focused on the factors that affect learning and not about everything that goes on in school. Please see them as being in beta form for now. I think they work well, although I’ll be forever tweaking them to make them better. I’ve posted them together this week for two reasons. First, it is good to have them in one place. Second, they have proved helpful to people as we have looked in turn at each of the factors that affect learning over the past few months.
They are still missing a few things that would make them easier to analyse. Should we be replying ‘Yes’, ‘Maybe’ or ‘No’? Or, should we replying ‘Pre-Beginning’, ‘Beginning’ ‘Developing’ or Mastering.’ They don’t yet have rubrics to enable shared judgements to be made more easily. They aren’t yet using technology to make the decision making and subsequent analysis easier, quicker and more visible.
That doesn’t make them useless, though, providing we use them carefully. You might find them helpful for your own reflection as a teacher, manager or leader. You might want to share one or more of them with a few of your colleagues or the whole of your staff or faculty. If they do nothing more than give you confidence you are on the right track to becoming a truly-learning-focused school that will be a good outcome. If they spark a thought about how you could be even better next year then that would be good, too. If they help you see that you and your colleagues have either very similar views about where you are or very different ones, then that will be equally useful.
So, here they are, in their currently imperfect, occasionally uncertain but definitely useful learning-focused form.
1 HOW IS OUR EVIDENCE AFFECTING LEARNING?
The good news questions about evidence.
Whatever kinds of assessments and evaluations you use, do they:
Compare then and now in some way?
Provide help in identifying where learning breakdown is happening and why?
Enable you to provide specific feedback to your students, parents and others?
Focus on and signify what really matters or are they trying to produce evidence of learning about everything?
Allow you to compare the learning in different subjects, in different classrooms, in different year-groups and between different schools?
The not-good news questions about evidence.
Whatever kinds of assessments and evaluations you use, do they:
Focus only on that which is easily testable?
Risk devaluing other important aspects of learning?
Focus only that which is easily analysed and reported?
Risk you only having evidence on a limited number of things you think are worth learning?
Take up too much time to the detriment of learning time?
Risk giving students inappropriate repeated experiences of what matters?
When about skills and understanding, fail to be based on good descriptors and moderation?
The classroom-focused questions about evidence
How often do you collect real-time evidence about the quantity and quality of learning in classrooms?
Are the questions you are using to look for evidence of learning consistent and consistently agreed across the school amongst students, teachers, school leaders and others?
Are you able to focus first on the evidence about learning before you focus on evidence about the quality of teaching?
Are you able to analyse that evidence so that it provides you with important information about learning in your classroom or across your school?
Are you able to act on that analysis to implement learning-focused changes in your classroom strategies or, as school leaders, in the coaching, professional development and school improvement programmes in your school?
2 HOW IS OUR CURRICULUM AFFECTING LEARNING?
The good news questions about curriculum
To what extent does your curriculum:
Make the learning outcomes explicit and lacking confusion?
Use the language of acquiring knowledge - will know - , developing skills - will be able to - or deepening understandings - can talk well about - to begin each outcome?
Set out the ages and stages most relevant to different outcomes and kinds of learning?
Enable teachers and others to support each other and students by working together to create a learning pathway for groups, children and students or individual children and students as they move through your school?
Provide tried and tested activities that are closely linked to the intended learning outcomes?
Provide multiple activities that enable children and students to have the repeated experiences that will help their learning to become sticky?
Provide activities that are likely to engage children and students, helping them learn that learning is inherently interesting?
Provide guidance on what it is most important to assess and evaluate?
Provide rubrics that help teachers make more reliable and valid assessments and evaluations of children’s and students’ progress through Beginning, Developing and Mastering phases of skills learning?
Provide, through appropriately and differently written outcomes, opportunities for children and students to become involved in and aware of what their own learning will look like as they progress and in the assessment and evaluation of their own learning?
Provide well-designed repeated experiences that help your children and students become curious, resilient, socially connected, at ease, reflective and with a growth mindset?
Provide guidance to parents and other stakeholders about how learning is organised and the part they can play in it?
The not-so-good news questions about curriculum.
To what extent does your curriculum:
Contain more than can be achieved in the time available?
Cause teachers to focus on coverage and not learning?
Cause teachers to save time by focusing mostly on knowledge learning?
Provide repeated experiences to children and students that help them learn that ‘getting better’ is something that is rushed?
Create confusion about learning, teaching, assessment and evaluation by being poorly written and without clarity?
Create an imbalance of learning between knowledge, skills and understanding and between the range of subjects available to children and students?
Create poor pathways through the school that cause student learning to be an inconsistent and incoherent experience?
Waste teacher time that would be better spent on thinking and reflecting on how to maximise the learning of children and students they teach?
3 HOW IS ‘OUR SHARED AGREEMENT ABOUT THE KINDS OF PEOPLE WE ARE HELPING OUR CHILDREN AND STUDENTS DEVELOP INTO’ AFFECTING LEARNING?
The good news questions about a ‘shared agreement’
To what extent does your school:
Make explicit the kinds of children and students you are helping to develop?
Ensure that arriving at such a description has involved a range of your school’s stakeholders?
Use that set of attitudes and attributes to check your curriculum to ensure that its outcomes, repeated learning experiences, assessments and evaluations are closely aligned with and likely to deliver that statement?
Use the set to explain and justify why the school is doing what it does?
Use the set as the foundation block of other processes, documents snd behaviours so that the school builds consistency?
Know what evidence counts to check on whether your shared agreement about the kinds of children and students you are helping to develop is actually happening?
The not-so-good news questions about a ‘shared agreement’
To what extent:
Is the lack of granular clarity in your overt shared agreement creating confusion and uncertainty about what should be learned, how and why?
Has your shared agreement remained unvisited for the past few years, resulting in the possibility that it is now ossified and unlikely to be helpful in guiding learning or in holding onto community support?
Is your shared ‘agreement’ imposed on your community and developed by a narrow range of stakeholders?
Does your shared agreement lack congruence with everything that actually happens in your school and, therefore, is likely to build skepticism or cynicism amongst your stakeholders that has a negative impact on student learning?
4 HOW ARE OUR SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES AFFECTING LEARNING?
To what extent:
Have the systems and structures in your classroom or school been created with a view to their impact on learning?
Do you audit and review your classroom and school systems and structures regularly through the lens of their impact on learning?
Are your classroom or school systems and structures reviewed at all or simply taken for granted?
Are your learning-focused classroom and school systems and structures sufficiently embedded to ensure consistency of practice where it is helpful to learning?
Does repeated experience of your class and school systems and structures enable users to learn that learning is or is not that important?
Do your classroom or school systems and structures save time for learning or wastefully use up learning time?
Are your classroom or school systems and structures clear enough to also define or enable where individual flexibility is possible?
Is experience of your classroom and school structures and systems likely to build confidence or lack of confidence amongst your stakeholders?
5 HOW IS COGNITIVE OVERLOAD AFFECTING LEARNING?
To what extent:
Do you and your colleagues specifically think about the cognitive overload of your children and students and how it impacts learning?
Do you and your leadership team specifically think about the cognitive overload of teachers and how it impacts learning?
Do you and your colleagues think about the cognitive overload of parents and other stakeholders?
Do you focus on covering as much as possible in your lessons or on the cognitive load impact on your students, or both?
Do you manage to convey instructions, advice and guidance in ways that reduce cognitive overload?
Do you and your school create deliberate times for reflection and slow thinking so that children and students can begin to build schema that will be helpful to the deepening of their understanding?
6 HOW IS OUR TIME AFFECTING LEARNING?
To what extent:
To what extent is your school overtly committed to maximising good learning time in its different forms?
To what extent do teachers, children and students overtly share a commitment to maximising appropriate learning time in their classrooms?
To what extent is learning time a feature of your evidence base in answer to the fifth and sixth of our seven questions about classroom-based evidence about learning: What is the teacher doing that helps learning happen? What is the teacher doing that gets in the way of learning happening?
To what extent does your school leadership factor in time that maximises impact on learning as a criterion when designing school wide systems, structures and processes?
To what extent do you regularly and collectively review the school’s systems, structures and processes for the positive or negative impact of the time they take to maximise or minimise learning time?
How often has the creation of more good learning time featured as an explicit target in one of your last five school improvement plans?
How confident are you that your children and students have as much time as possible for good learning?
What’s your evidence base for your confidence or lack of confidence about all of this?
7 HOW IS OUR TECHNOLOGY AFFECTING LEARNING?
To what extent:
Is your use of technology in schools helping children and students to benefit from rapidly repeating experiences to make their knowledge sticky?
Do programs you use in school provide children and students with feedback and support that helps them learn more effectively?
Does the technology you use engage children and students or does it seem dull compared to the technology they use out of school?
Does the technology you use in school help children and students to continue their learning out of school; especially, the learning they are struggling to consolidate?
Does the technology you use provide you with better data analysis that helps you identify where learning is and is not happening and why?
Does your technology enable better parental access to and involvement in their children’s learning?
Do you undertake a regular analysis of the positive and negative effects technology is having on different kinds of learning and make decisions based on that evidence?
Is the technology you use enabling children to learn more bad stuff than good stuff?
Does the technology available to children and students in school enable them (or not) to develop resilience and focus?
Does your curriculum contain effective plans for learning about technology that help children and students begin to develop an awareness about its strengths and weaknesses?
8 HOW ARE YOU AND YOUR COLLEAGUES HELPING (OR NOT) PARENTS POSITIVELY AFFECT THEIR CHILDREN’S LEARNING?
To what extent:
Do you, your colleagues or school provide discussion opportunities with parents about what learning is, how it happens, what it looks like and the kind of things that good enough parents do to help learning happen for their children?
Have you involved and taken notice of parents in the definition of the kinds of people your school is helping to develop and/or in thinking about their own family definition?
Do you provide parents with enough evidence about their children’s learning to help them set challenging but realistic expectations for their children or do you leave them unaware of their children’s learning strengths, weaknesses and potential?
Do you enable parents to come to an awareness of the ‘normal’ behaviours of children and students at different ages and stages of their school lives?
Do you and your colleagues enable parents to work with your school rather than against it?
Do you, your colleagues and your school exhibit a defensive attitude towards parents?
Do you, your colleagues and your school share an awareness of the difficulties in which parents find themselves?
Do you and your colleagues talk formally with each other about ways in which you can better work with parents and ways in which you can give parents confidence to work with your school?
9 HOW IS OUR TEACHING AFFECTING LEARNING?
To what extent:
Do you or your colleagues demonstrate that, in your classroom, you are now the roadie and not the star?
Do you or your colleagues share a school-wide definition of what learning is, how it happens and what it looks like?
Do you or your colleagues create the contexts for different kinds of learning to happen or are you creating one-size fits all approaches?
Do you or your colleagues ask learning-focused questions of your classes that help you develop a view of whether they are learning places or not?
Do you or colleagues have evidence that supports the answers to those seven learning-focused questions?
Do you know the characteristics of the children and students you teach, how they can affect learning and how you can maximise, support or ameliorate them?
Do you or your colleagues know how your personal characteristics can help or hinder learning and do you work on ameliorating the less helpful ones?
Do you or your colleagues work with parents in ways that help them help their children to learn better?
Do you or your colleagues model the kinds of people you say you are hoping your students will become so they can learn about these in and out of the classroom?
Do you or your colleagues continue to have a visceral and current experience of your own learning so that you can bring a better awareness of the learning experience of your own students?
10 HOW IS OUR LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT AFFECTING LEARNING?
To what extent:
When you are a leader, how much are you focused on doing the right thing, building consensus, over longer periods of time?
When you are a manager, how much are you focused on doing things right, obtaining consent, over shorter periods of time?
Does your organisation’s leadership and management activities work interdependently towards better learning or disconnectedly.?
Would you say you are driven by learning or ‘kind of’ interested in it?
Would you say your distributed leadership and management team is driven by learning?
Do you think people who see you at work - students, colleagues, parents - would agree with your judgements?
In how many classrooms have you - and your leadership team - spent at least 30 minutes during the past five weeks?
If you have been into classrooms for that length of time, a) were you looking for learning and b) what happens to the evidence you have collected?
Would you say that you and your team change your leadership styles so that they are appropriate for different contexts?
From the perspective of learning, would your teacher colleagues think of you as a servant leader, dedicated to making easier their job of helping learning happen?
Are the systems and structures in your school enabling consistency? Do you have evidence about whether they are helping learning happen or whether they get in the way?
How much classroom-based coaching of colleagues takes place in your school? Is that coaching designed specifically to help colleagues better enable learning to happen?
Do you encourage and practise simplicity or complexity in your already complex school?
Do you model - on a daily basis - the values around and the commitments to learning that your school claims to have and be about?