[MUSIC] So, if I was a parent thinking about my own child and wanting my own child. >> Yeah. >> To be a better learner, what could I do to, to help my child become one? >> I think I pick up two or three things, which again, a part of expert learning and, and the way I see this in the classroom, but I transfer it to parenting. the, probably the first thing is find out what your, your child actually knows and understands, rather than assuming that they know this, but check it out. Good, good questions, asking them questions that really would, would expose any misconceptions, any misunderstanding. So for example, with slightly older kids, if we're talking about the Earth going, the solar system, and the earth, they know about planets, and they've seen pictures, and they can probably tell you the order of the planets. But what causes an eclipse? Might be just found out did they really, did they appreciate that it's the, it's, it's, it's not the sun popping round the earth everyday, we're going round that way. Why is it winter in Australia when it's, summer here; what's, what is happening and you, you'll expose some very naive scientific things that you, you can build on. So just listening carefully to that, and I certainly know as a parent and a grand parent; that whole of a, if, if a kid comes up with a very wacky answer to a, to a question, we tend to just to tell them the right answer. Rather than say what, where did that answer come from? Can you explain that, because underneath that maybe a misunderstanding or an interesting understanding of something, that we won't get at, if we just constantly give them the right answer. No, it's this sort of, won't, won't help. So that's the idea kind of good diagnosis, the idea of, very much linked to the expert learner, can we give them a bigger picture. Can we give them a picture to understand what's going on here? So they can make sense of it. The idea kids making sense of things I think is critical, how can we develop that and probably the third area with the parents were involved in all the time is feedback. What kind of feedback you give and, and most of our feedback is I call it, empty feedback, its got no information in it, well done, disappointing, all that kind of stuff. Whereas good, again going back to sport, music, art, good feedback is very specific and very task-focused. If you're doing this, what's the one bit of information that I can give you that will help you do it better, more effectively? So really picking up those skills of feedback where you give specific information rather than praise or, criticism, of, of a kid. That doesn't help learning; it may motivate, and things like that, but it doesn't help moving learning forward. So I think those, those sorts of areas. Listening carefully and giving feedback. That gives specific things to help >> So, what you were saying about feedback just now, that made me think of sports coaches. >> Yeah. >> And, because that's the thing that they do really well. >> Yeah. >> Isn't it? They diagnose whatever the particular sports person is doing well or not doing well and then focuses in on the things they need to improve. Would that be a good metaphor? >> That it is, and it makes the additional point that good sports coaches, have a very clear picture themselves, of what progression is in their area. Now that may be a bit hard to ask a parent, but I would ask a teacher, if they are teaching geography. What is progression? In geography as a, moving from learning about geography to becoming a geographer. What, what's the progression there? And we know quite a lot about progression, science, and mass, but some of, I always think of geography, history, what is it to get better in these subjects. So we need that, that picture ourselves in order to be able to work out, what should this kid do next. If we don’t have that sort of progression or trajectory ourselves, we can’t tell him, or we can’t know where we are trying to get them to go next, and they won’t know why their trying to get here next. So that importance of the big picture, progression in a skill, I think is, is critical to that. >> So we seem to be moving now into sort of talking about the realm of teaching. >> Mm-hm. >> And so, what can teachers do to help children become better learners. Well yes, you reminded me, I went off topic there, because we were talking about parents. I think that whole thing, just going back to parents briefly. The whole business of language on how we encourage language and how we extend vocabularies. How we use hypothetical questions rather than just factual questions, is all something parents do fairly fairly naturally, but needs to be emphasized I think how we, how we encourage the development of richer language. And that so that's what parents doing all the time from, from baby babble sounds right up you know, to, asking questions and, and the like. So back to teaching you were saying what can teachers do? I think it's the same business. I think, picking up on the, the, the last point, the making clear, the big picture. The thing that teachers can do more than anything else is tune kids in to what are they doing, why are they doing it and how can you make sence of this. It's the chess board again. If you know the rules of the game, if you can spot the patterns, you've got a much more powerful memory than if all you're doing is trying to remember a few, a few odd pieces from a look at, a look at a board. You can make sense of it, and that's where that whole idea of learning intentions, learning goals, whatever you want to call them, and success criteria come in, come in model what it's like to be able to do this. And I think traditionally, what teachers have often done is to think they've got it clear in their head, but never passed it on to the kids why they're doing this and what they're doing. You just do it, your in school you, you, this is what you're going to do. I think the all the evidence at the moment is, we're going to do it better if we understand why we're doing it, if we're clear about why we're learning this and what good learning looks like. What will it be like if I'm successful? Which again is sport? You know you'd model it, you'd show it and then you'd expect the the athlete to have a kind of visual image of what it would be like to be doing this well and and a musician does the same. You know can hear the tune if they were playing it well. We don't do that very much in classrooms. So kids are sitting there not really knowing why are they doing things. That's one. And picking up on the diagnostics, the way we ask questions in classrooms. Think it's critical and the research evidence isn't good on this, as, as you know, that the term, it's, it's, it's estimated that teachers ask two to three hundred questions a day. So by the time you've talked for 14 years, you've asked a million questions, as a, as a teacher. But at least 60% of these are recall questions. So you just want a quick answer. You wait less than a second before you sort of move in on somebody or answer it yourself. So the, the whole thing of really getting better at diagnostic question, asking open-ended questions that give us evidence about what does this kid understand or not understand. So I'd say, better questioning is part, is part of that. And our questioning practices in classrooms have been the same for a hundred years. There's there was studies in 1920 that came up with the same proportion. And they've done them about every 20 years and they all come up with about 60% or more of questions are recall, and another 20% are procedural. You know have you got your book, where is your pencil, that sort of thing. So it leaves very few small percent that's actually about this asking a question that allows the student to show what they understand and not understand in the answer. And one more statistics to throw at you is this thing that typically from John Heritage research, kids use take less than 5 seconds to give an answer to a question, and on average just use 3 words. So how we can claim that we are trying to get a deeper understanding, if it’s a three word answer and I don’t know has three words in it as well. So we have a long way to go in terms of that kind of classroom interactions and broader questions and group work is part of this, which we don’t do a lot of this. We know it’s good, but we don't do it, it's >> So, my last question for you Dennis is kind of looking towards the future. >> Mm-hm. >> And if you could change one thing about how we view learners, what do you think it would be? >> I think for, for starters, I'd change the language we use. And I'd try and get rid of ability as a word. If I could, if I'm in charge, I'll banish the word ability. I’d far rather work with kind of apprenticeship model, where you talk about somebody being naive, novice, apprentice, expert, master. If we did it on that continue, it is a learning process, it is about the work itself, so we are focusing on the work, not on the kid. Ability is all about reputations, labels, and that really interferes with how teachers I think, and schools treat, treat kids, and I think, connected to that would be that, that, John had the finding that the biggest difference between an expert teacher and an experienced teacher is the level of the cognitive demand of the work they set their kids. The expect teachers expect more of, of theirs. All, all pupils, not just the bright ones, if we're using that language, they, they expect more of students and they expect them to do deep, deep learning work which is understanding themselves, making sense of it for themselves really put in their own views into it. So I think that would be my push, get rid of ability and let's let's demand more of our children. >> I know you've said that was my last question >> Yeah. >> But I'm going to have another one [LAUGH] >> Oh, no [LAUGH]. >> That, that idea of doing away with ability seems to me that would be quite liberating for teachers and for students. >> Yeah. >> Because if you’re told that you are, you’re at a particularly, high ability. >> Hm. >> Or you’re told you’re particularly at a low ability. It doesn’t give you far to go. If you are told that you can do something well. >> Yeah. >> Or you can do something better, it gives you a lot of possibilities and opportunities. So it seems to me it's quite a liberating idea. >> I think, and again, Susan Hart and colleagues at Cambridge, Learning without Limits, did a whole study in various primary schools where they dropped that kind of talk. And, and, and, you know, posting scores and that kind of thing. And just, just worked with, without those assumptions and it's right. They found kids were er, blossoming in ways they hadn't. And when you think that increasingly kids are being put in ability groupings from the age of five onward, six onward, and we're, you know, they're tendering the tests for four year olds at the moment. So, and as soon as you start putting kids into ability bands you get, it becomes self-fulfilling. The kids at the top get the more imaginative, better, more creative thing. There's a multiplier going for you. The kids at the bottom are treated as they're not going to get this so we'll, you know, color it in and they move slowly and the gap just widens and widens. And it's Joe Bowler in mathematics pointed out that from that kind of ability grouping at age five, 88% of the kids are still in the bottom group age 16. Because we write a script for them at that point about what they can and can't do without really testing it out without really giving them opportunities. So I take your point and I think it's been shown, you know, if we could, if we could get rid of those kinds of expectations, we'd have a much richer mix on our hands than we have at the moment. >> Yeah, that's great, thank you very much. Thank you
