Let’s talk learning…… Post1

Interrogating the old and the new

Educationally we are in challenging times. We are living in an age of rapid change, and education must change to reflect this or risk becoming irrelevant. We all understand this, and yet when confronted with what this change might look like in practice, it really does challenge our paradigms of what schooling should look like and it makes us very anxious. This concern is understandable. Traditional teaching is what we all know and what we have experienced ourselves in education and it is what we have generally been successful in. For us as teachers also, it is what we have experienced more than we have not. And it is tempting to continue to do the same old thing – not necessarily because it is the best option but because it’s actually easier to swim with the tide than against it.

For some reason, and this often catches me by surprise, what is traditional is privileged in our society. We interrogate the new, but the traditional is not required to account for itself in the same way. We often don’t interrogate what we know and are comfortable with. People involved in innovative initiatives are held to higher account for what they do than those involved in more traditional pursuits. We experience this frequently. Some people come in and look at our hubs and the furniture (specifically, the smaller number of desk and chairs), shake their heads, and without really thinking ask, “How do the children learn?” I respond by saying, “Well I learn in the shower, when I am out walking, when I lie awake in bed thinking, when I am watching a movie or reading a novel.” Or I might ask, “What evidence do you have that sitting behind a desk is best for children’s learning or the only way that children learn?” This question – how do children learn when the classroom is not full of desks and chairs - is an automatic response to something that looks different and it reveals a deeply embedded assumption that children can only learn in one particular way, and yet from every perspective, including a common sense perspective, the assumption and the question is neither robust nor defensible. Common sense tells us that learning does not begin the moment a child sits at a desk or finish when the child gets up to move to another piece of furniture. Our senior students will tell you very articulately that being able to move around the spaces and work in different ways, using different furniture, assists their learning. It certainly increases the joyfulness with which they learn.

Interestingly, others who were not so successful in the traditional school system and who have had cause to question its underlying assumptions, come into our school and say immediately, “This would have worked for me.” I think we all have to interrogate both the old and the new otherwise we risk basing discussions about what is best for children’s learning on assumptions that are not defensible. We should interrogate everything. That’s what life-long learners do. And I think we do that here at Amesbury School. Our daily conversations are taken up with asking the question - is what we are doing best for kids? And I can assure you that if, over time, evidence – and I want to put a stress on the word evidence, not assumptions, not prejudices, but evidence – If evidence showed that what we are doing is not working, or not working for some children, then we will review our programmes. In fact, we are always reviewing what we do here. Again, this is what life-long learners do. They take considered action and then they review and they adjust where evidence shows it is necessary to do so. Central to this approach is having quality data, frequently collected and reviewing it honestly and robustly.

The point is that we cannot be one dimensional in our approach to education but must be committed to being multi-dimensional. I believe 21st century learning is about having a broad toolkit from which we can pull out the right programmes and ways of working for each child, (or if what we need is not already in the toolkit – then we create the right tool) - and it is about having the organisational flexibility to be able to provide these differentiated, personalised programmes. Our team teaching approach and shared use of space – though it has caused some confusion for parents, at times - is essential to creating this organisational flexibility. It is not the team teaching approach that needs to change but rather our communication with you about who is teaching your child.