Supporting Effective Learning

Eileen Carnell, Caroline Lodge

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780761970477, 9780761970460
• eBook ISBN: 9781446237298
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

`Teachers will find this book helpful because it locates convincing theoretical reasoning with the familiar practice of the learning environments of the secondary school. Many other learners, in formal education and beyond, might simply find the book an informative and challenging read.... The book provides more than a theoretical and ideological extension of a social constructivist of model learning. It identifies a realistic way forward. Perhaps it will have the impact it deserves? - British Journal Educational Psychology

`Eileen Carnell and Caroline Lodge have given us a book with many virtues…. It is thoughtful and thought-provoking, and the many examples and case studies bring the theoretical discussions alive? - Ron Best, Cambridge Journal of Education

`The overall style of the book is highly reader-friendly. The links between ideas are clear, the case studies are by and large helpful, and the bullet pointed practical strategies are substantial enough to give practitioners throughout the key stages new ideas to try. This is an intelligently written book which does much to further the effective learning debate? - Angela Scott, British Journal of Special Education

?This book is highly useful for teacher trainees (pre-service and in-service). School administrators will find it useful to develop a system that will help change focus from teaching to learning. Above all, anyone interested in student learning will find the volume extremely useful? - Sanjaya Mishra, British Journal of Educational Technology

This teacher-friendly book focuses on learning at all levels in secondary schools. The authors are mainly concerned with how young people learn and how those in different roles in schools can promote their learning. They combine research with challenging ideas to stimulate tutors, subject teachers, team leaders and school managers as well as mentors and governors to think about their role in young people?s learning. They examine these relationships within school and beyond its boundaries. The authors do this by drawing on different voices in secondary schools: young people, as well as parents, teachers and others who have a role in supporting young people?s learning.

This book will be essential reading for PGCE Secondary Students and practising teachers of the 11-16 age-range; local authority advisers and secondary school managers.

Eileen Carnell has been involved for 25 years in teaching, professional development and educational research and is at present Senior Lecturer in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Caroline Lodge is Senior Lecturer in Effectiveness and Improvement, Associate Director of International School Effectiveness and Improvement Centre at the Institute of Education.

1

The Learner and Learning

Schools exist to promote young people’s learning. This book explores how young people can become more effective learners and how schools can promote more effective learning. This chapter focuses on young people as learners and sets the scene for the book by exploring what is meant by learning and by examining some different models of learning. We draw on the fast-expanding field of theory and research into learning to consider how young people can become effective learners.

We introduce some themes that will be developed further throughout the book. We consider which of three models of learning is most likely to promote effective learning. We describe effective learners as active, responsible and collaborative in their learning, and able to reflect on and develop appropriate learning strategies. In order to become effective learners, we argue that learners need to become aware of their purposes, strategies and feelings and of the effects of learning and the contexts of their learning. The most important theme developed throughout this book is that both learners and teachers should be explicit about the ways in which young people are learning, that is, about their learning at a meta-level.

In pursuing these themes we find ourselves confronting the distortions in learning that are produced within schools because of the busyness and complexity of daily life, the tensions that can arise between the need for order and creativity and the current emphasis on performance as a measure of learning. We find ourselves challenging traditional views of learning: for example, that it is a private activity, undertaken individually.

The chapter examines the following aspects of learning:

• conceptions of learning;
• models of learning;
• effective learning and effective learners;
• learners’ beliefs;
• learning styles;
• learning relationships.

Conceptions of learning

We begin by noting that the word ‘learning’ covers a range of different meanings for people. Everyday conceptions about learning include the following:

• getting more knowledge;
• memorizing and reproducing;
• applying facts or procedures;
• understanding;
• seeing something in a different way;
• changing as a person (Marton et al., 1993; Saljo, 1979).

These different conceptions may be held by different people or by the same person in different circumstances and for different purposes. The list begins with a mechanical view of learning: taking in or consuming more information. Learning to recite your ‘times tables’ is clearly in the second meaning of memorizing and reproducing. Applying those tables to help solve mathematical problems involves the third meaning of applying facts or procedures. The list moves on to include seeing the learning as making meaning, interpreting events and constructing knowledge or understanding. Later in this section we will consider what constructing knowledge means.

We should not overstate the final conception of learning in this list: changing as a person. This refers to a process that is usually gradual. In this sense, changing as a person can refer to cognitive, social or emotional states. A young refugee becomes competent in English and this enables the young person to take an active part in the classroom and social activities alongside their peers. Receiving a small piece of feedback, such as a comment that in a conflict situation they always make a joke, enables the joker to consider whether this is always appropriate and to choose to change their reaction. Another young person considers with awe some aspect of the natural world and is enthused to explore the phenomenon further. Some aspects of their studies have changed the way each of these people look at the world and are changed by it.

These conceptions of learning all relate to what the learner is doing. We can also consider different purposes in learning. A recent United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report, Learning: The Treasure Within stresses the need for everyone to learn for four different purposes (International Commission on Education for the Twenty First Century [ICE], 1996):

• learning to know;
• learning to do;
• learning to live together;
• learning to be.

The report describes these as the four pillars of education. It argues that people need to learn how to know because in the twenty-first century the volume of evolving knowledge and know-how will continue growing. Watkins et al. (1996) describe the implications of this growth:

• The knowledge base in society is increasing rapidly, and now doubles every four years.
• In a society increasingly organized around the processing of information, more effective learners are required.
• In a learning society, employment prospects relate more to the ability to enhance and transfer learning than to the accumulation of qualifications.
• People need to learn in an increasing range of contexts, not just the compulsory ones (Watkins et al., 1996).

Learning to know

Learning that takes place in school has traditionally been mainly concerned with learning content, but the UNESCO report argues that ‘it is not enough to supply each child early in life with a store of knowledge to be drawn on from then on’ (ICE, 1996: 85). The volume of information available to everyone continues to grow and its nature is changing. Everyone will need to know how to deal with this unprecedented situation in the future. Acquiring information is not the same as learning how to know. ‘Learning to know presupposes learning to learn’ (ibid.: 87). Young people need to learn how to find, evaluate, sort, interpret and connect the information available to them.

Learning to do

Learning to do has often been given second-best status and considered more suitable for those thought of as less able, as the history of vocational education in this country demonstrates. It has become less easy to predict what young people will need to learn to do. Learners will find that it is not adequate to respond to changes that have already occurred but that they need to anticipate future needs. This means learning to manage change and diversity and to develop the skills for self-directed learning (Hayes et al., 1995). In vocational as well as other spheres it is no longer a matter of simply acquiring specific skills, rather it is the ability to be flexible and to learn and work with others that is increasingly being required. This has implications for how young people learn in schools, which we consider in Chapter 2.

Learning to live together

Some schools explicitly plan to help young people learn to live together and to equip them to live in an increasingly complex world. The UNESCO report suggests this is ‘probably one of the major issues in education today’ (ICE, 1996: 91).The impact of technological change upon our social world already means that people need to know how to relate to many more people, in many more roles and using many different media. It can be hard to promote this kind of learning when schools are dominated by the importance of demonstrating that knowledge has been acquired.

Learning to be

The UNESCO report suggests that learning to be, the fourth pillar, is a summation of the other three kinds and is to do with the development of the whole child, a holistic approach to learning. ‘In that connection, education must not disregard any aspect of a person’s potential: memory, reasoning, aesthetic sense, physical capabilities and communication skills’ (ICE, 1996: 97). It argues that these four pillars need attention from early childhood and throughout life so that people are equipped to meet the demands of a complex and changing future.

Many argue, as we do, that a shift is needed from focusing on teaching to focusing on learning and from teacher responsibility to learner responsibility. Arguments for different sorts of learning experiences in the future support this shift:

As we move away from the bureaucratized systems of industrialization to the more fluid insecurities of the twenty first century school learning should be about learning how to learn for self-development in a social world oriented to mutual respect and support rather than competitive individualism tied to individual self-interest and fragmented competencies. (Wallace, 1996: 68)

Others argue for a shift from fragmented competencies to a more holistic approach to learning. Claxton (1999) for example, suggests a new classification of the three Rs: Resilience, Resourcefulness and Reflectiveness. These are connected human qualities and represent a different conception of learners than the traditional 3Rs suggest. Resilience, Resourcefulness and Reflectiveness indicate learner empowerment gained through collaboration, problem-solving, interdependence and a sense of purpose, negotiation and meta-learning (see below). Both Wallace and Claxton argue for a sense of coherence in young people’s learning and for learning activities to be based around social interchange.

In this section we have been considering what learning means to young people now and in the future. The themes which will be developed through this book are that learners need to be prepared to become flexible, collaborative, resilient, resourceful, reflective and less dependent upon their teachers. In the future young people need to learn about how to learn, how to learn collaboratively and to pay attention to physical, emotional and social aspects of learning. We now consider some different models of learning and evaluate how likely they are to encourage this kind of learning.

Models of learning

The exploration of meanings of learning in the previous section helps us understand that the word ‘learning’ is used in many ways. But these perceptions do not help us think about how learning happens. There are different views about this. We now turn to three different models of learning that help us understand how learning occurs:

• reception model;
• constructivist model;
• co-constructivist model.

Reception model

In this model the learner is a passive recipient of knowledge which is transmitted by the teacher, as its name indicates. This model of learning can be linked to the first two of the everyday meanings of learning discussed above: it is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge, and with memorization and reproduction. In this model basic essential skills are emphasized while emotional and social aspects of learning are not addressed. Teaching in this model resembles transmission and stresses cognitive learning and logical, objective, abstract, sequential thinking.

Examples of this model are:

• the National Curriculum – this defines for schoolchildren what they have to take in, regardless of their context, experience, interests or needs;
• GCE O level examinations – the key skills required for success are memorization and reproduction of information. While the 16+ examination system has changed in the UK, many children in other countries still sit GCE O level examinations;
• times tables – when an education minister, Stephen Byers, speaking to the press about the Department for Education and Employment’s (DfEE’s) numeracy programme in 1998, replied ‘fifty four’ to the question ‘what are seven eights?’ it caused an uproar. Educated and responsible people are expected to have learnt their tables.

This model could be described as quantitative, as learners are concerned with how much they can learn. Paulo Freire describes it as the banking concept of education: ‘Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor . . . In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider know nothing, (Freire, 1970: 53).

The learner’s role is seen as quite distinct from the teacher’s. A problem with this model is that it encourages closed or fixed conceptions of the learner. These conceptions may be held by the student, the teacher and the parents. Often these conceptions refer to ability or intelligence, which we know teachers assess early in their contact with classes, and construe as stable (Cooper and McIntyre, 1996). Many learners also come to define themselves in terms of ability and this can lead to beliefs about inability when faced with difficult learning tasks. These beliefs...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1  The learner and learning
• 2  Learning in the classroom
• 3  Learning at risk
• 4  Tutors, tutor groups and learning
• 5  Learning conversations
• 6  Connecting learning
• 7  Pastoral teams and learning
• 8  Teachers learning about learning
• 9  Schools for learning
• Further information
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index