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Welcome this week to Kirsty, Dani and Euan

Let's stop the learning guessing game


Every week we meet with school and university students to talk about their learning experience. Recently, in a chat with some final year high school students, we asked them how they go about getting good grades. We expected certain responses: “Extra study,” “Asking for help,” and “Getting my work in on time.” Here’s what we didn’t expect:

“You have to work out what the teacher wants.”

What a powerful comment. Let’s unravel it.

You = Each student which means that it’s almost as if a teacher might want different things from different students.
Have To = If a student can’t work out what a teacher wants, they’re unlikely to get good grades.
Work Out = It’s not even obvious what a teacher expects for the student to go on to earn good grades. It appears that the student has to play trial and error games to uncover the requirement for good grades.
What The Teacher Wants = This seems like it’s all down to the teacher’s whims. If there is a higher authority at play, the students certainly don’t know about it.

You might feel that this kind of conversation is rare in your school, but it still happens in almost every school group conversation we have. There's an inconsistency in approach between teachers within any school - that's normal - but this means there's a good chance many students have this feeling at least some of the time.

This guessing game runs counter to what we see creating higher engagement and more equitable outcomes when whole schools make a decision on how they expect teachers to approach learning and teaching, and give teachers a chance to co-plan and see each other teach. It creates more consistency of approach, and helps eliminate this guessing game, one that we remember playing when we were at school in the 1980s.

Our recently released White Paper on Interdisciplinary Learning for the Scottish Government's education agency, as part of their submission to the OECD this year, frames concrete steps any school might take to create a consistent approach to putting student experience and shared outcomes at the heart of planning and execution in schools.

It calls for teachers to rethink curriculum so it includes not just knowledge, but skills and an opportunity for young people to encounter success early and often. It also recognises that the process of learning and sharing the negotiation of success criteria, rather than dictation of goals from the teacher or examination authority, leads to better outcomes for every student. 

Ewan and Chantelle

The Evidence

WHITE PAPER: Interdisciplinary Learning, by NoTosh for Education Scotland.
A guide to Learning Intentions and Shared Success Criteria.
Effectiveness of interventions adopting a whole school approach to enhancing social and emotional development.
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