Powerful Learning

I am reminded, sorting through my papers, of a paper at BERA in Warwick in 2006 by Peggy Lee (peggy@power-ed.co.nz) from New Zealand. Based on interviews with primary and secondary children, she proposes ten principles of powerful learning:
1. Make learning fun
2. Trust us to choose who we work with some of the time.
3. We need to make some choices about what we learn so we can work on things that interest us.
4. Let us walk around when we are learning. Silent static kids are not necessarily learning best.
5. Learning needs to be hands-on, doing things, even teaching things to others.
6. Using technology helps me - we done use computers enough or properly
7. Let us know how we are doing and how to make better progress.
8. We like to set some learning goals for ourselves.
9. Give us time to do things properly, and don't waste it by repeating over complicated instructions.
10. Make learning more real, going out more, meeting people and linking with children around the world. Learning needs to be communal.

A powerful conclusion is to involve children and young people in their own learning and schooling, and make sure they have a proper voice.
Peggy adds: I have continued to work with these ideas and am currently leading a NZ Ministry of Education project working in 10 rural schools looking at student decision-making: teachers and student views and practices. Our revised curriculum here has allowed this kind of investigation with a focus on ‘key competencies for learning’. I am also working in four other primary/middle schools helping with strategic planning, curriculum & assessment practices and implementing the new key competencies for learning.

Gifted and Talented.

Is it easy to spot a gifted and talented pupil?

Despite mountains of books and papers on the difference between these two words, I tend to view them as meaning the same thing. To be gifted is to have a gift, which might be in a narrow area or across a broader spectrum. To have a talent also can be narrow or broad, and we speak generally of talented individuals. The current educational interest is to try to ensure that any such gifts or talents are nurtured to be able to contribute powerfully to the wider community – of course within a general context of nurturing the abilities of all pupils.

Pupils with high cognitive abilities, measures by IQ, are often singled out as an exceptionally able group. Personal experience can increase or decrease IQ scores to some extent, and lack of stimulus in childhood can be recouped later. Feuerstein’s ‘instrumental enrichment’ for example attempts to promote such cognitive growth.

Tests, SATs and other such things obviously stratify the pupil body to some extent and give a starter list of convergent G&T pupils, that is those who obey the rules. Most are not fit for purpose, especially if the purpose is to identify the exceptionally able. A pupil who is gifted, creative, or awkward might do unexpected things and maybe do badly in formal tests. They might find set curricula and syllabuses far too constraining.

So in identifying gifted/talented pupils, informal indicators are important, the unexpected connections, sudden insights and wisdoms, mental agility and acuity. If we have a mental picture of giftedness that is too narrow, constrained and tame, we could perhaps be blind to the evidence before our eyes.

Disenchantment

Many people are disenchanted with life, and many children disenchanted with school. This reveals itself in demotivation, with a lack of meaning or purpose to life, work and study. A disenchanted person is cynical, and without joy, aspiration or vision of what is possible. It is a kind of personal disintegration. Depression may be a consequence.

So what is the enchantment they have lost? Pooh Bear’s Enchanted Forest is a place where the imagination can run riot, in a place filled with possibilities and potential. In today’s stories of witches and spells, enchantment is caricatured and made ridiculous. Enchantment as a deep and transforming inner experience should not be jettisoned as similar nonsense. We either view our world as enchanted or boringly ordinary. We either see the beauty of the butterfly or flower, or we do not. We either see an animal, a creature, or a pet or pest. We may see our ordinary relationships and friendships as magical and beautiful, or only as useful to our own needs, the same but more so with our special relationships. The magic in the air on any ordinary day has nothing to do with spirits, angels or fairies, but with our responses to beauty, deep meaning and human hope. We have moments of enlightenment, insight and inspiration - thoughts, mental pictures, unexpected connections and links, music, art.

The world in an enchanted place if we are open to joy, curiosity and wonder. It is full of possibility if we aspire to act positively. It is a good place only if we learn to see the good in it. Our relationships will be good and positive if we are respectful and sincere, and receive respect and sincerity in return. The world does not make this an easy path. When respect and sincerity are rebuffed, we may with persistence win respect over time, or we may despite effort fail. This may be our fault, but if we have done our best it probably will not be. We all make positive and negative choices when confronting illness, bereavement, ill will, injury and misfortune. The quality of our lives will depend upon those choices. Even the forgiveness of those who harm or kill those we love are examples of these often difficult choices. We can criticise without hating and work to change the perpetrators.

Disenchantment is the negative choice, a negation of life and of relationship, a refusal to be positive, cooperative or supportive. It is a rut from which it is hard to escape, a habit of disagreeableness and neurosis. To fail to get out of this rut condemns us to unhappy and unfulfilled relationships and experiences.

Natural mysticism.

The trouble with mysticism is that it has been hijacked by supernaturalists – people who believe in non-natural entities such as deities and angels. My question is whether mysticism is necessarily defined by its supernatural content, or whether a natural mysticism is possible.

The mystic sees deep meaning that is personally inspiring and transformational. They see the hidden, that which was previously a mystery. And they wonder why they did not understand it before. The language of mysticism is that of enlightenment – the light dawns, new insights are clearly visualised. When people believed in saints and angels, these might have been viewed as the messengers who sent the new knowledge.

The language of mysticism is that of vision, witnessing something meaningful in the mind. Today we emphasise imagination, that such mental scenarios are created in your imagination and not beamed in from outside. The same with dreams. The singer Christie Moore found an inner ‘meeting’ with his dead father, playing with him on the beach as a child, very helpful therapeutically, enabling him to talk out and think out some issues about how he had not coped with his father’s death. No one suggests that this was a real spirit meeting, that his father had, like the Biblical prophet Samuel, been summonded from death by a modern Witch of Endor. It was imagined, but not therefore ‘pretend’ and not unreal and unmeaningful.

Philip Wexler the Marxist, in Mystical Society (2000) talked about ‘reselfing’, and ‘revitalization’: “the reintegration of active, self-enhancing practices of transformation” (p75). There has been an emphasis in mysticism in seeing beyond ourselves to infinity, and it is important to transcend our own narrow boundaries. That process should not however produce empty individuals seeking for peak experiences like a drug, but people who have re-visioned, and reformulated their sense of who and what they are. In James Fowler’s scheme, the ultimate re-visioned self is the compassionate ‘world soul’, the highest level of spiritual development.

In supporting the learning and development of children, the question ‘Who and what am I, and can I become?’ is top of the agenda. They have many pressures to defend themselves from, and this could well be their most important strategy.

Wisdom

I still treasure a conversation I had twenty years ago with an 8 year old class, on the question, What do we mean by a wise person? I have asked that question many times since of adult audiences, and rarely received sensible answers. If we focus education and schooling on becoming wise, this will last for the whole life of the child; if we focus our curriculum on "stuff" - information and knowledge - much of it will be out of date by the time they leave school, and some of it already out of date when it is taught. Yet the National Curriculum is stuffed with "stuff".

The instant answer of a bright 8 year old to my question was: 'a wise person is someone who knows a lot about most things, but who is humble and not proud and uses what they know to help other people'. This is the spirit of a learning community, a community of contributors, a willingness both to be coaches and mentors, and to be coached and mentored.

We might add other things, that they understand the limitations of knowledge, and its transience; that they understand principles and processes and not just information. An education in wisdom produces worthwhile contributors able to see what needs changing in our world, and willing to have a go.

Wisdom is about the quality of choices, based on respect for others and respect for ourselves. It is a balancing act, weighing up evidence and alternatives before deciding. It is about not assuming too much, or too little. So wisdom is a process, dynamic, a state of mind, and not a possession. Those who think themselves wise are unlikely to be so - wisdom is best recognised in others. It is of course unassessable, because every case is unique and fluid; but it is teachable, by wise teachers.

Te Whaariki , Empowerment Education

Te Whaariki is an educational philosophy in New Zealand based on the empowerment of children. It aims that children are able

To grow up as competent and confident learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society.

(New Zealand Ministry of Education 1996)

This way of thinking is woven into everything done in schools, homes and care situations – the phrase means in Maori “a woven mat for all to stand on”. Its core principles are:

• empowerment to develop
• focusing on all aspects of children’s needs and requirement
• involving the family and community
• learning through positive relationships with adults and peers

Adults should therefore not be authoritarian. The backgrounds and cultures of all children are respected, and the sense of belonging that go with these. Children should be involved actively in their own learning and development, active learners rather than passive recipients of information. Teachers become fellow learners with the children and with their families and they are free to develop their curriculum and strategies within this framework of empowerment and positivity.

Research

We are asked how research, teaching and learning inter-relate. What is research? It appears in business as 'research and development' (R&D) - that is discovering evidence about products and new products. In University it has a range of meanings, normally distinguished by status. If it attracts money, it has status, but not otherwise.
My view starts with young children.
The five year old who does experiments in floating and sinking, weight, volume and area is doing research. A class I know researched a local map. Each was given a task, one to mark the water metres and hydrants, another to record electricity cables, another to track drains. They put this together into an area map. This is research.
A class of 6 year olds I once met in Oxford were told that the teacher would tell them nothing, but they had to find it out for themselves and check it. They organised their classroom, managed their workload, and were responsible for their own learning. They were involved in a range of research, and we hope that they met similar open minds later in their schooling. Research is the systematic discovery of processes and the construction of knowledge, in ways which makes clear that knowledge is not final and definitive, but has to be revisited constantly. If primary school pupils were enabled to become researchers, rather than recipients of information (some correct and much not) their learning skills would be greatly enhanced.
Later in school they are delivered packages to get to know, remembering without thinking. The purpose of this is exams, and the function of exams is to make the school accountable. This has the side effect of ranking children in order of achievement, that is how well they did in the exams. This follows them for life.
At each stage, the package is learned, and leads to the next stage where that package is unlearnt as too simplistic. The learning of the previous years is thus null, void and wasted. At each stage they start again. The reason for this is "the syllabus", increasingly controlled by GCSE and A level.
If young people instead were on the cutting edge of finding out for themselves, they are more likely to be motivated and life-long learners. Therefore, curricula, syllabuses and exams simply serve to destroy learning in a vain attempt to measure and rank.
If the explorations described with 5 and 6 year olds were continued and deepened, children will grow up as researchers aiming to improve their world. As it is they end up as failures determined only to destroy themselves.
So why can't we see the problem?
© Stephen Bigger.