Cut Out and Keep. The Big Learning Summary, so far.

Bringing everything up to date in just one post.

We have (almost) reached a break point in Looking for Learning. We have come to the the end of the mostly informative posts and, after a break in June and July, we’ll come back in a slightly changed format.

To mark that breakpoint, this week’s post is a ‘cut out and keep’ summary of everything we have covered so far.

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The first 30 or so posts of Looking for Learning focused on what learning is, how it happens and what it looks like. At the end of all that, I wrote a summary post of the 15 things about learning that school leaders, teachers, parents and others really need to know. I also referenced back to which of the posts each of these things was dealt with in more detail.

Checking out that earlier summary post over the past week, I was amazed that since it was published, the subscribers to Looking for Learning have almost doubled. A huge thanks to everyone who has joined since the summary was published as well as to everyone who has stayed with Looking for Learning for the duration.

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On behalf of both those new and long-stay subscribers, I thought that it would be a good idea to have that first summary about learning combined with a second summary about the factors that affect learning in one single post.

That’s why we start this post with a slightly re-edited summary of the 15 things about learning that teachers, school leaders, parents and others need to know. Around a half of you will have seen this before. Following that is our working definition of learning, and then a summary of all of the posts about the factors that affect learning, along with references to the posts where the extended discussions can be found. Please feel free to share.

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With apologies, I couldn’t resist the ‘Cut out and Keep’ headline. Until quite recently it was a favourite device that newspapers used to use for special supplements about important events such as a coronation, the TV listings for Christmas, the football FA cup final or for coupons offering discounts from stores. I used to cut out and keep all the time.

As a nod to my lifelong fascination with print of all types, here’s the Looking for Learning cut out and keep post, a one-stop reminder about everything we have covered so far.

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SUMMARY 1

THE 15 THINGS THAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT LEARNING

1

Learning is about getting better.

Without getting better at something, there is no learning. The warning is that we can get better in different ways at different things, not all of them good. (We can get better at stealing stuff as well as at writing good essays.) We need to give all our attention to making sure our students are getting better at good stuff.

2

Learning should be the Hedgehog Concept of schools.

Something has to be the front and centre of school life. That something is learning.

You can read more about this (what and why it should be the Hedgehog concept) in the posts of 19 January 2024 and 5 February 2024.

3

For learning to be an organisation’s Hedgehog Concept there has to be a shared agreement about what learning is.

Learning is not a leadership thing, it’s an everybody thing. In my experience, most schools don’t have a shared agreement about learning, which makes conversations about learning and an ability to focus on it very difficult.

4

There’s a difference between learning and the factors that affect learning.

This is really important. Curriculum, Teaching, Display, Assessment and so on aren’t learning; they are factors that affect learning. You can read more about this in the 12th February 2024 post.

5

Learning is a brain thing. Learning doesn’t happen in classrooms. It happens, everywhere, in brains. We need to know what is happening in brains.

6

Our brains are hardwired to do a number of things to make learning happen. First, to build and extend increasingly complex neuronal chains. Second, to save energy in a number of ways such as patterning and pruning. Most importantly, our brains save energy by making sticky - hardwiring - those things it repeatedly experiences, for good or bad. We have to work with the way the brain works, not against it.

7

The quality and quantity of repeated experiences is a crucial factor that affects learning. This is unbelievably important. We need to be super conscious of the quality and appropriateness of the repeated experiences we are offering our students.

8

Becoming hardwired or sticky is core to learning. Experiences don’t equal learning. For something to be really learned, it must be hardwired and sticky over time.

You can read more about points 4 - 8 in the posts of 12 February 2024, 19th February 2024, 24th February 2024 and the 4th March 2024.

9

Our brains are always learning. This is super important, too. There’s no such thing as ‘not learning’. The brain isn’t judgemental. Our brains are never ‘off’. They learn whatever they repeatedly experience, whenever and wherever that happens, for better and for worse.

You can read more about this in the 11 March 2024 post.

10

Learning is not the same as Development. It is helpful to think of development and learning as different. Development is learning, in the sense that something gets better and sticky, but it is helpful to see it as the learning which is already hard-wired into us at birth and is very similar for most of us. Learning is the getting better that happens as a result of planned or unplanned repeated experiences and will differ from person to person depending on what those repeated experiences are.

11

We need to be able to ‘see’ learning and know if it is happening.

Because learning is a brain thing, literally seeing it happen inside the brain is impossible for anyone other than researchers operating under very specific conditions. It is possible, though, to have a simple framework that corresponds to what is happening in the brain and which can be seen in classrooms and other learning places. A core teacher-for-learning skill is to be able to make good judgements about whether our students are ‘busy’ or ‘busy learning.’

12

The learning framework has four possible states and three stages.

Two of these four states - new learning and consolidating learning are good. One, treading water, is occasionally good but often not so. The fourth, drowning, is definitely not good. Learning also has three stages: Beginning, Developing and Mastering. These three stages are particularly important in Skills learning.

13

Learning is dependent upon good struggling.

In the right contexts, New and Consolidating learning both demonstrate good struggling; Treading Water is a time of very little or no struggling; Drowning is a time of bad struggling that impacts in powerfully different ways on the learner. So, good teaching for learning sets out to enable more good struggling, to minimise no struggling and to eliminate bad struggling.

14

Learning has fuzzy boundaries.

The beginnings and ends of learning are clear enough. It begins with ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I can’t do’ and ends with something observably sticky. But in between those two places it’s not as clear cut. This is why we need to be able to make sophisticated professional judgements, often in real time.

You can read more about points 12, 13, 14 and 15 and 16 in the posts of 18th and 25th March 2024 and 1st and 8th April 2024.

15

Knowledge, Skills and Understanding are learned, taught and assessed differently.

This is super important, too. Getting this saves so much time and so much confusion. These three kinds of learning all have the basic learning processes in common but they are also significantly different from each other. Dependent on what we want our students to learn, they require us to be different kinds of teachers, to provide different kinds of repeated experiences and to use different kinds of assessment.

You can read more about the characteristics of Knowledge in the posts of the 22nd and 29th April. You can read more about the characteristics of Skills in the posts of 6th and 13th May. You can read more about the characteristics of Understanding in the posts of 20th and 27th of May and the 3rd of June. The post of the 10th June has three charts that sum up the differences between knowledge, skills and understanding as simply as possible.

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OUR DEFINITION OF LEARNING, DERIVED FROM THE 15 NEED-TO-KNOW THINGS ABOVE.

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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SUMMARY 2

THE 12 FACTORS THAT MOST HELP LEARNING HAPPEN OR GET IN THE WAY OF LEARNING HAPPENING.

1. Evidence

   The extended discussion can be found in the posts of 16th/23rd/30th September 2024

Evidence helps learning to happen when:

• It is accepted as an important and necessary part of learning. Evidence makes clear and allows analysis of the learning between ‘then’ and ‘now’;

• It helps identify why children and students are not learning;

• It provides feedback to children, students and teachers;

• It focuses on what it is most important to learn;

• It provides a mix of end of term/end of year learning and whether learning is happening daily in classrooms;

• It mirrors the different qualities of knowledge (tell), skills (show) and understanding (talk about);

Evidence gets in the way of learning when:

• It only focuses on what is easily testable (usually knowledge);

• It only focuses on evidence that is quickly and easily analysable (usually knowledge);

• It occurs so often that it takes away the excitement of learning;

• There is poor moderation of evidence produced by teacher judgement.

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2. Curriculum

   The extended discussion can be be found in the posts of 7th/14th/ 21st October 2024

Curriculum helps learning happen when it:

• Is explicitly clear about what is to be learned ahead of what is to be done;

• Sets out the appropriate ages and stages for specific learning to happen;

• Helps different teachers create learning pathways for their children and students;

• Provides examples of activities that have been shown to help learning happen;

• Provides guidance on how to assess and/or evaluate;

• Helps children and students focus on their learning and not just teachers;

• Provides clarity and confidence to parents and other stakeholders;

Curriculum gets in the way of learning when it:

• Is too full and forces teachers to focus on coverage rather than learning;

• Fails to distinguish clearly between learning knowledge (Students will know), skills (Students will be able to) and understanding (Students will be talk about);

• Is poorly written and enables confusion for and between teachers and others;

• Fails to be appropriately balanced between knowledge, skills and understanding;

• Requires things of teachers that waste time that should be spent thinking about learning.

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3. Shared agreement about the kinds of people we are helping to develop

   The extended discussion can be found in the posts of 28th October and the 4th and 11th November 2024

A shared agreement about the kinds of people we are helping to develop helps learning happen when it:

• Influences outcomes, repeated experiences, assessments and evaluation;

• Provides justification to stakeholders for what is happening in school and why it is happening;

• Enables better parental choice;

• Brings communities together and reduces unhelpful noise;

• Builds consistency across the school.

A shared agreement about the kinds of people we are helping to develop gets in the way of learning happening when it:

• Is unclear and promotes uncertainty;

• Becomes ossified and out of date;

• Is imposed rather than co-created by the school community;

• Isn’t matched by actions in the school that support the shared agreement.

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4. Structures and Systems

The extended discussion can be found in the posts 18th/25th November 2024

The structures and systems of a school or classroom help learning happen when they:

• Focus on learning first;

• Form the basis for shared, consistent and inter-dependent learning-focused practice;

• Allow some space for individuality and independence;

• Save time for children, students, teachers, school leaders and parents that can be utilised for learning;

• Build confidence in the community;

• Demonstrate a commitment to learning to everyone.

The structures and systems of a school or classroom get in the way of learning happening when they:

• Don’t do the above!

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5. Cognitive Overload

   The extended discussion can be found in the posts of 9th/16/December 2025

Cognitive Overload helps learning happen when:

• Cognitive Overload never helps learning happen

Cognitive Overload gets in the way of learning happening when:

• It utilises too much brain space and energy and leaves too little for the different kinds of learning that are supposed to be happening.

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6. Time

   The extended discussion can be found in the posts of 6th/13th January 2025

Time helps learning happen when it:

• Is maximised for learning across schools and classrooms;

• Enables sufficient and different repeated experiences to enable knowledge, skills and understanding to be learned;

• Enables the learning processes of New and consolidating and Beginning, Developing and Mastering to happen appropriately;

• Enables teachers, children, students and others to have reflection time;

• Is used by teachers to work together on learning improvement;

• It allows school leaders to be involved in learning.

Time gets in the way of learning when:

• It stops the above from happening.

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7. Technology

   The extended discussion can be found in the posts of 20th/27th January and 3rd February 2025

Technology helps good learning happen when it:

• Delivers certain appropriate repeated experiences quickly and often;

• Provides children and students with rapid feedback and support about their learning;

• Involves and engages children and students in their work;

• When it can enable good learning to happen in and out of the classroom and at any time;

• Uses data analysis to provide better evidence about learning for children, students, teachers. school leaders, parents and other stakeholders;

• Supports appropriate parental engagement;

• Saves good learning time.

Technology gets in the way of learning happening when it:

• Is judged on it’s sexiness rather than it’s contribution to learning;

• Is used simply to look up-to-date or attractive;

• delivers learning that isn’t good learning;

• Isn’t engaging to its users;

• enables children and students to become less resilient;

• enables children, students and others to be harmed.

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8. Big lever government and authority decisions

The extended discussion can be found in the 10th/17th February 2025 posts

Big lever decisions by government and other authorities can help learning happen when they:

• Encourage schools to focus on learning rather than busyness;

• Provide funding necessary for learning to happen better;

• Provide large-scale data analysis that enables reflection about good practice;

• Support children and students from across the spectrum of families to be ready for learning;

• Are part of a shared agreement about what kinds of learning the local and larger communities believes to be important.

Big lever decisions by government and other authorities can get in the way of learning happening when they:

• Don’t recognise the fundamental importance of what goes on in classrooms;

• Require action or responses that don’t take into account what is actually possible in the day-to-day life of most schools;

• Use financial constraints to cut or make difficult certain valued and required types of learning;

• Focus only on easily analysable and reportable data;

• Create scepticism and concern amongst stakeholders;

• Ignore evidence about best practice;

• Don’t focus continually on student learning.

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9. Children and Students

The extended discussion can be found in the 24th February/1st March 2025 posts

Children and students can help their own learning happening as a result of their:

• Curiosity;

• Resilience;

• Mind-set;

• Ability to learn with and from others;

• A sense of ease and a low level of shame;

• Reflection and meta-cognition;

Children and students can get in the way of their own learning happen as a result of:

• A lack of the above

BUT, an inability to learn well is not the fault of the child or student.

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10. Parents

    The extended discussion can be found in the 10th/17th/24th March 2025 posts

Parents can help their children learn when they:

• Have a shared idea about the kinds of people they are helping their children to become;

• Don’t confuse childhood and adulthood;

• Know something about what learning is, what it looks like and how it happens;

• Set their children challenging but realistic expectations;

• Model the behaviours they expect of their children across all fronts;

• Work with their children’s school and not against it (even if they want it to be better);

• Provide a foundational base of care and love for their children.

Parents can get in the way of their children’s learning when they:

• Find it difficult to deliver most, if not all, of the above

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11. Teachers

The extended discussion can be found in the 1st/7th/14th April 2025 posts

Teachers can help their children and students learn when they:

• Are aware that they are the ‘roadies’ in the classroom and not the ‘stars’;

• Create an atmosphere that enables the celebration of ‘approximately right’ learning that is on the way to ‘absolutely right’;

• Are focused first on the improvement of children and students before the activities they plan;

• Avoid creating cognitive overload;

• Are clear about what learning is, how it happens, what it looks like and the factors that affect learning and those that get in the way;

• Create contexts for different kinds of learning to happen;

• Ask the right seven questions of themselves and their lessons that enable them to focus on learning first;

• Are evidence-based rather than methodologically committed;

• Know their own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of their children and students;

• Work positively with parents to help improve student learning;

• Model the behaviours that they, their school and their community believe to be important;

• Are learners themselves.

Teachers can get in the way of their children’s and students' learning when they:

• Do little if any of the above and, especially, when they do the opposite

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12. Leadership and Management

The extended discussion can be found in the 21st/28th April and the 1st/5th and 12th May 2025 posts

School leaders and managers can help learning happen when they:

• Are driven to improve student learning and put it at the heart of their school;

• Know what learning is, what it looks like, how it happens and the factors that help learning happen and those that get in the way;

• ‘Walk their land’, spending more time gathering evidence in classrooms than in their offices;

• Behave as servant leaders of learning to their colleagues, children, students, parents and other stakeholders;

• Create and support structures and systems that support learning, minimise those that are learning-neutral and eliminate those that are neither;

• Put classroom based, learning-focused coaching at the heart of their professional development programme;

• Embrace simplicity and avoid creating cognitive overload;

• Model what they say matters in their school. Walk a good game, not talk a good game.

School leaders and managers can get in the way of learning happening when they:

• Do little if any of the above and, especially, when they do the opposite.

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There we have it. Two summaries and one definition in one post. I hope you find them helpful and reflective. If you want to refresh your memory around each of these, just go to the indicated posts where you will be able to revisit the longer discussions.

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That’s it for this week. Just one more post next week before we take a break, although I’m sure there will be a couple of short Thursday posts before we get back to our normal weekly schedule. To my left, is the microphone that arrived yesterday as part of the podcasting kit. It’s time for me to engage in some good struggling as I get used to everything podcast in preparation for the new season. Wish me luck.

See you next Monday.

Martin