Encouraging Persistence

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” - Calvin Coolidge

Growing up, I had a copy of this quote on my wall. It is one of those things that stuck with me over the years. For a long time, I might not have truly appreciated its wisdom. Now, as a teacher in times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, its significance seems to have grown. When we can instantaneously consume all of the world’s information, as we access anything and everything at the speed of light, how do we learn the value of persistence?

We are used to instant gratification. Multiple opportunities for engagement and distraction surround us. If the result we are after does not come immediately, it is easy to seek an alternate path. An economy built on fast food, same-day home delivery, open all hours service model feeds our desire for instant results. Buy now, pay later, why wait when you can have it now.?

At the same time, the problems or challenges we confront are increasingly complex and are more likely to require unique solutions. These problems demand creativity, critical thinking and collaboration. These dispositions are highly sought after because of their obvious utility in modern times, but the capacities of critical thinking and creative problem solving require time. If we are to find the novel solutions we require, we must seek multiple perspective and diverse understandings. Our over-reliance on quick fixes perpetuates a trend towards solutions which are found in time to have a short lifespan or carry unforeseen consequences. And being smarter does not remove the need for a more nuanced approach to problem-solving as Einstein cautions, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Perhaps this is the disposition we most need to build within our students; the willingness to “stay with problems longer”, to persist with determination.

There is a common belief that one of the obstacles to sustained persistence is a general decline in attention spans. Indeed it is felt that a combination of easy access to information, distractions caused by social media, pervasive technology platforms and our desire to multitask has led to a decline in our ability to remain focused on any task for more than a short timespan. Parts of this might be true. We are surrounded by many highly distracting alternatives. The tech companies that enable our connected lifestyles, design their platforms to both attract and maintain our attention. Multitasking is certainly the norm, even if we do it poorly, and both the tools and habits of our modern lives conspire to move us in this direction. But has this resulted in a broad decline in our ability to remain focused for an extended time and should we accordingly adjust our expectations?

Maybe not. While it is easy to assert that the attention span of our students has declined, the evidence for this is sketchy. One of the most commonly cited articles on the topic attests that the attention of the average person today is only a few seconds longer than that of a goldfish. The research this is based on, however, deserves to be questioned as it neither clarifies what attention is nor demonstrates how one might quantify the attention span of a goldfish. From a more scholarly perspective, we glean the following contradictory perspectives:

“It’s (attention) very much task-dependent. How much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is.” - Dr Gemma Briggs

Contrary to popular belief, students don’t have short attention spans. They can focus for hours on a single project. But it has to feel relevant and meaningful to them, and they need to have the time and the space to accomplish it. It’s not easy in a world of school bells and curriculum maps. However, it’s something we should strive for. We should draw students into the deeper, slower work of creativity — because when that happens, learning feels like magic. - “Myth and Mystery of Shrinking Attention Span” - Dr K. R. Subramanian

This reveals that we have the capacity for sustained attention, but persistence is best understood as a disposition, not a capacity. The triadic model of dispositions allows us to understand better what is going on here. A behaviour becomes a disposition when we combine the capabilities it demands with the desire to use them and an awareness of situations where the behaviour is appropriate.

This model has implications for us as teachers. Not only must we teach the skills, but we must also provide the required sensitivities of when a disposition should be activated and support the individual in understanding why they may want to. While the skills may be very concrete and easily mastered the translation of skills to dispositions requires a more nuanced approach. Our students will require extensive modelling of the disposition along with opportunities which demand its application. In learning the what, the when and the significance of dispositions, our students will undoubtedly make many missteps but only through repeated exposure to the ideas, and with opportunities to reflect on their efforts will the desired dispositions be acquired.

In the case of persistence, things are a little more complicated. Persistence might be viewed as both a general disposition and as a response to a particular context. I might hope that my students will grow to see the value of persistence as a general capability and that they might be well aware of the benefits it offers. I might achieve this goal by espousing the benefits of persistence, by modelling when persistence is required and of demonstrating my capacity to persist even in trying circumstances. A positive mindset towards persistence or a sense of grit and determination is a valuable disposition to have.

I might also want to help my students understand the value of persisting with specific aspects of their learning. I facilitate this form of task-specific persistence when I reveal the benefits of what is being learned and the utility of routinely applying that learning. In the same way, I facilitate persistence with learning when I design tasks that connect with what might matter in the lives of my learners. I further encourage persistence when the learning I design is linked to concepts and skills that my learners are passionate about. When the learning that my students engage with is designed with them, and when they have agency over their learning, the appearance of persistence is significantly enhanced.

The consequence of all this is that persistence is more complex than a mere attribute of the individual. It is dependent on both aspects of the individual and the context. It varies from one situation to the next and shaped by both internal and external factors. We might hope that our students have a general disposition towards persistence, and we can help them to develop this. We can also promote persistence in particular contexts through the way that we frame and design learning experiences. When all of these factors are considered, we leverage persistence as a powerful tool for learning and success.

By Nigel Coutts

Two resources you might like.

It is very natural for us to reflect on what the world of tomorrow might be like and with that to contemplate the skills that our students may most require in their futures. Educators are not alone in this endeavour. Economists certainly have their ideas on these questions and although their perspective might be heavily biased towards an education system that supplies a business-ready workforce, it can be enlightening to observe the trends they identify.

A key part of the work carried out by the World Economic Forum (WEF) is this sort of prognosticating. They have developed a tool that aims to bring a wealth of resources together and to publish them in an easily accessible format. They call this tool “Strategic Intelligence”. It is most interesting to investigate the Education and Skills section. Upon loading and creating a free login you gain access to a circular web of interconnected ideas entering on Education and Skills. The WEF identifies six significant parameters; Lifelong Learning Pathways, Quality Basic Education, 21st Century Curricula, Relevant Specialised Education, Digital Fluency and STEM Skills and Education Innovation. Each of these is then connected to a mix of twenty-four related ideas that occur across multiple “Insight Areas”.

The site contains a great depth of information and links to a wide range of academic articles. For the educator seeking to go deep on a topic, this can be a great place to explore even if the articles under each heading are sometimes quite tangential to the main idea.

For the typical educator, the beauty of the site is found through exploring the connections it makes visible. The site's interactive map of topics makes visible some of the complexity involved in educational systems. We might for example have an interest in Quality Basic Education. Click on this topic and you discover that it is related to topics such as sustainable development, civic participation, human rights and ageing. If Educational Innovation interests you then you might also want to explore topics such as the fourth industrial revolution, development finance and the future of computing. If nothing else it is a site that will prompt questions and encourage a broader perspective on issues central to education.

Exploring the WEF site reminded me of a film by Jeremy Rifkin about the Third Industrial Revolution. In this economist and social theorist encourages us to consider how a radical new sharing economy might transform our economy and our daily lives. It is a provocative and expansive vision for the world of work.

The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic system. A Third Industrial Revolution is unfolding with the convergence of three pivotal technologies: an ultra-fast 5G communication internet, a renewable energy internet, and a driverless mobility internet, all connected to the Internet of Things embedded across society and the environment.

Rifkin’s vision for the future might not be your cup of tea and the relevance of any prediction made pre-COVID-19 needs to be questioned. Despite this qualification, “The Third Industrial Revolution” remains a film that will get you thinking and wondering if the world we might be heading towards is the world we want.

By Nigel Coutts

Moving beyond doing inquiry towards embracing an inquiry stance.

Conduct a search using your favourite search engine, and you will find a plethora of sites offering their unique take on Inquiry-Based Learning. Each will describe their philosophical basis, the benefits of a constructivist approach and subsequent pedagogical moves. The unique element posed by each will be the labels attached to steps students are to take as they engage in the inquiry approach. You will find flowcharts, diagrams and a range of mnemonics to ensure that students apply the prescribed recipe as it should be. This richness of options can be overwhelming, and teachers and schools could spend a great deal of time debating the merits of each. But is this time well spent or might our efforts be best placed elsewhere?

Having a model of inquiry that makes sense to a school’s broader context makes sense. If staff own the process and believe in its merits, it is likely to have a more enduring impact. If the language used when discussing the inquiry process aligns with other language moves made across the learning environment, then students will benefit from the consistency of approach. What is more important than the model of inquiry deployed, however, is the mindset or stance taken by teachers towards inquiry.

When we first explore an inquiry approach, there will likely be times when our students are doing inquiry. We plan a project that employs an inquiry cycle. Our students are rigorously introduced to the steps and then march through the process in lockstep fashion. Once the inquiry is done, we assess the content that students have absorbed and then move on to the next unit. Doing inquiry in this way is a nice way to start a journey towards inquiry-based learning, but if we stick with this sort of inquiry by numbers approach, we will miss out on the true benefits.

But, when we adopt an inquiry stance towards learning, we start to see things differently. Taking an inquiry stance towards learning involves a shift in mindset and practice for both student and teacher. It allows us to move beyond doing inquiry towards being inquisitive.

In many ways for our students, adopting an inquiry mindset involves a reigniting the sense of curiosity and wonder that was the norm in their pre-school learning. The student who has embraced an inquisitive stance will want to know why things are the way they are. They will need to understand why that mathematical equation works, why those chemicals react as they do and how those historical moments connect. They will question knowledge with healthy scepticism. The inquisitive student will want to understand not only what they are learning, but how they learn. They will be reflective, self-navigating practitioners who are deliberately metacognitive.

The teacher who embraces an inquiry stance will do much more than teach through an inquiry method. Yes, they will create opportunities for their students to engage in inquiry, and they will teach and scaffold these inquiries as required. But, the inquiry stance will be evident in everything they do. Their inquisitive stance will be apparent in the way they observe their learners in the act of learning. They will create opportunities to be researchers of their students and will want to understand how their students’ skills knowledge and dispositions are developing. They will ask questions about the curriculum and seek opportunities to broaden their understanding of what they are teaching and why. They will seek to make visible the impact that their pedagogy is having, interrogate the language moves they make and analyse the learning opportunities they create. They will seek feedback from their students and peers, knowing that this will enable them to better understand how they might grow.

Adopting an inquiry-based approach can bring engaging opportunities to a lesson, but embracing an inquiry stance can enhance every learning moment.

By Nigel Coutts

Questions to ask when planning for deep learning

“How does this particular lesson fit within the larger enterprise of understanding I am striving for? Teachers can then begin to focus on the goals of a particular lesson: With which ideas do I want students to begin to grapple? Where are the complexities and nuances that we need to explore? How can I push students’ understanding and move it forward? With these questions answered, teachers are ready to identify the source material and the kinds of thinking that might best serve the exploration of that material. Only then are teachers in a good position to select a thinking routine as a tool or structure for that exploration.” – “The Power of Making Thinking Visible” Ron Ritchhart & Mark Church - Page 7 p4

The process for planning for learning is undoubtedly challenging. It is a process that requires us as educators to balance and respond to multiple and frequently divergent pressures. It is a juggling act. On the one hand we have the demands of the curriculum. In this air between our hands, we have the needs and interests of our students, the demands of standardised assessments, community expectations, school and system pedagogical models, and cross-curriculum priorities to name just a few of the balls we are juggling. Our aim is to bring all of these into a cohesive whole. But where do we begin and how do we judge what matters most?

When we approach this task with key questions in mind, we focus our thinking on how we might plan learning experiences and opportunities that will have the impact we desire. These are the sorts of questions Ron Ritchhart encourages us to ponder as we plan the lessons we will teach. The questions shared in the paragraph above invite us to consider how the lesson we are planning for will fit within “the larger enterprise of understanding”. Thinking about this matter of the larger enterprise of understanding is a crucial step if we are to plan for an arc of learning that has real bite but thinking at this scale is not always the norm. 

In a teaching for understanding framework, teachers are encouraged to develop understanding goals in multiple flavours. At the largest scale, there are course through lines. These are understanding goals at the scale of the significant understandings at the heart of a discipline. In Science, students should develop across their years of learning an understanding of the scientific method. In History, the concept of change is an inescapable, recurring theme. A level down from these are the unit long understanding goals which communicate the essential concepts to be unpacked throughout a unit of learning, and these are developed through more compact understanding goals that might be achieved through a lesson or short sequence of performances that the students engage in and with. The key is to be clear on what these understanding goals are, what they look like, how they fit together and how they might be achieved. 

The questions that Ron and Mark invite us to engage with are rich with possibility. They invite us to consider the three key pieces of the puzzle of how understanding goals are best approached. There is a question for identifying how the learning intention in front of us for this lesson fits into the longer-term goals we have for our learners. There is thinking about how we begin and an important focus on the ideas that our students will begin to grapple with. After all, learning is a consequence of thinking, and as Dylan Wiliam:

“The crucial thing is that teachers are involved in a creative act of engineering environments within which learning takes place. Teachers are responsible for creating those learning environments but you cannot do the learning for the learner.” - Dylan Wiliam

There is consideration of the complexity involved and the levels of nuance that comes with all learning. Surely if we hope that our students will achieve deep learning, we must engage our students with learning that offers depth and thus we must have developed in our minds a conception of where the deep learning lies. Finally, there is consideration for how we will push for understanding. 

What is crucial is that we consider these questions before we approach other aspects of the planning process. Yes, we will consider pedagogical moves. We will plan for the thinking that our students will require. We will plan a rich range of learning activities and use a variety of stimulating resources. We will utilise a variety of learning scaffolds, and these may include routines for thinking. We will consider learning intentions, and we may publish these for our learners to digest as they learn. We will do all of these things, but we will do them with our eye always on the larger enterprise of understanding that we are striving for. 

by Nigel Coutts

What might it take to bring real change to education?

I had the pleasure recently of listening to Michael Fullan thanks to ACEL (Australian Council for Educational Leaders). Like many thought leaders who are looking closely at the current state of education, Michael builds a strong case for radical change in education. Like others, Michael believes that the circumstances we find ourselves in now as a result of COVID19 might be the catalyst for change that education has long needed. There is a perceived opportunity to shift the dial, to reimagine what education might be like rather than retuning to what was normal in pre-COVID times. “The education goal is not just to survive COVID-19, but to end up with something significantly “better” than was the case in 2019.” (Fullan 2020)

The case for change is well known and well documented. The current model of education has its roots in a distant past. It reflects the need for a workforce that was able to carry out well-known procedures with high levels of repeatability. The world of work would require a great deal of routine cognitive labour, and the education would supply the highly standardised workforce that was needed. The result today is a system, that despite reforms around the edges and despite two decades of talk about embedding 21st Century skills, has stalled and is failing to motivate the young people who depend upon it for their futures. 

According to Fullan, the system has not progressed for five key reasons:

  • The failure to connect students with purpose

  • The failure to challenge students with high expectations

  • Inadequate learning goals

  • The continued use of old pedagogy

  • Failure to build relationships and belongingness

What is needed is a focus on Deep Learning. Fullan details a multi-part process to achieve this through a focus on the 6Cs (character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity & critical thinking) with practical pedagogies, learning partnerships, learning environments and leveraging digital affordances. If these factors are considered within the frames of broader changes to schools, district and systems along with addressing aspects of equity and with a desire to engage the world, change becomes possible. A more detailed understanding of Fullan’s conception of a new model for education is detailed in his book with Joanne Quinn and Joanne McEachen, “Deep Learning: Engage the World Change the World” and details on how it might become a reality through nuanced leadership and systems change can be found in the following books which are highly recommended.  

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  • Nuance: Why some leaders succeed, and others fail. By Michael Fullan

  • The Devil is in the Details: System solutions for equity, excellence, and student well-being. By Michael Fullan & Mary Jean Gallagher

Early in his presentation, Fullan makes an important point about change, and it connects strongly with why now might be the time to see real change take place. “It’s not going to happen by drift.” The model so far for change in education has been one of slow change, gradual reform around the edges with the core barely touched. This is reflected in the research conducted by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine who went “In Search of Deeper Learning” and found that it was more likely to occur on the edges of education in co-curricular activities. We might all want change, but we want it to occur very slowly so we never feel the pain and we would prefer if it doesn’t happen in the educational heartland of traditional classes. 

The slow pace of change is why we are still talking about introducing 21st Century Skills as we enter the third decade of the 21st Century. It is this pace that means students in classrooms across the globe are losing interest. It is why we continue to confront issues of equity. Combine a slow pace of meaningful change towards a new more enlightened vision for education with a rapid drive towards heightened levels of standardised testing (an unceasing desire to measure attributes of learning that increasingly matter less), and we have a system that is in need of radical change. The question is, will COVID be the catalyst for this change?

Other industries have confronted change on this sort of scale. Famously many leading players in these industries missed the boat. Kodak was one of the leading players in photography. Big Yellow was the much-loved film used by many and its place in pop culture was cemented when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel sang its praises in “Kodachrome”. But despite playing a leading role in developing digital imaging technology, Kodak failed to transition into the new world of digital photography. They persisted with a product that was no longer fit for purpose. As the world demonstrated an increasing desire to share images instantly and through the emerging internet and social media worlds, Kodak stuck with film. Instead of embracing radical change that played on the edges by making film easier to load and by promising faster turn around times for development. While Kodak played on the edges and took a slowly, slowly approach to change, others leapt in and embraced the possibilities for a new industry centred on digital photography. 

Is now the time for a new player in the field of education to emerge? What are the possibilities for an organisation with the mindset of a tech start-up to disrupt education? What if instead of playing on the edges, someone approached education as though it was a fresh field. How might we imagine an education system fit for the purposes of today if we started from nothing instead of trying to repurpose a system past its use-by date? 

Maybe this is the challenge that we confront as we consider what comes next. Instead of thinking about evolution, we need to go back to the beginning. What if there was no education system to be evolved but instead a realisation that we need one to meet the needs of our young people. How would we come to understand those needs, and what might our response look like? Almost certainly it would not look like the education system we have today, but just as certainly it is unlikely to be like anything that our current system is likely to slowly ‘drift’ towards. 

By Nigel Coutts

Filling a Gap in our Professional Learning Caused by Social Distancing

As schools and organisations move to remote education, there are potential gaps in our professional learning of which we should be aware. While many of us are discovering fresh opportunities for online and remote professional learning through podcasts, webinars and online courses, one of the most significant aspects of our professional learning has been curtailed thanks to social distancing.

Despite the best efforts to make professional development sessions contextually relevant and meaningful, we know that much of our best professional learning does not occur in this way. Instead, the most powerful professional learning occurs through the informal and often incidental conversations that we have with members of our learning community. Indeed, research by Daniel Wilson and others at Harvard’s Project Zero indicates that 80% of our professional learning comes from our informal conversations. These are the conversations that occur on the periphery of team meetings when colleagues share puzzles they are struggling with. They are the observations shared while waiting at the photocopier or the quick questions asked when colleagues pass in the corridor. 

These informal conversations are also evident in more traditional professional learning experiences. Often the best learning we takeaway from a conference occurred not in the Keynote session but as a result of the opportunities for conversations with other attendees. Maybe it’s a chat over lunch as you reflect on the ideas presented and the questions that occurred to you while your mind wandered during a formal session. Perhaps it's the moment of inspiration that you share with a shoulder buddy while the keynote presenter moves between slides. Informal moments like these are difficult to replicate in an online setting where we bounce from meeting to meeting, session to session without the opportunity to incidentally interact in between. 

Daniel Wilson et al. explored the nature of the informal conversations that result in professional learning and found particular types of conversations. Each of these conversation types played an essential role in building professional knowledge and competence. The conversation types are:

  • Stories – descriptions of something that happened in the past, an observation from a lesson just taught, a reflection on an interaction with a student, a tale that illustrates the culture of the place or changes which have occurred over time. 

  • Provocative perspectives – a challenging statement of strong belief, a statement that is likely to elicit a response, stir emotions or create space for debate. A perspective that can shift a colleagues understanding or that enables the person sharing their perspective to gain fresh insights.

  • Puzzles – an explanation of a dilemma or problem that becomes a catalyst for empathetic sharing and collaborative problem solving

  • Eliciting questions – an expression of interest to learn about another person’s experience or perspective.

  • Probing questions – an expression to learn more about another person’s experience or perspective.

The second part of this research project linked the types of conversations with the forms of learning they are connected with. 

  • Informational and operational learning was supported by stories and asking probing questions

  • Conceptual learning was supported by provocative perspectives, sharing puzzles, asking eliciting and probing questions

  • Reflective learning was supported mostly by sharing puzzles.

How might this knowledge help us fill the gap in our professional learning caused by social distancing?

The first suggestion is that we need to be deliberate in creating opportunities for informal conversations. One of the recommendations from Wilson’s research was that organisations consider the design of their physical spaces to encourage dialogue. Bottlenecks, doorways and places that cause people to congregate were found to enhance the occurrence of conversations that resulted in professional learning. One suggestion was to reconsider the design of doorways so that they might become a place where colleagues can comfortably engage in informal conversations. Social distancing means that we are encouraged to avoid such settings, to move quickly from space to space while minimising interactions with others. The challenge is to create opportunities for these informal conversations in our remote spaces. This might be as simple as opening a Zoom meeting ten minutes early to allow for conversation or avoiding scheduling back to back meetings so attendees can linger afterwards. Perhaps organisations can create virtual spaces that are open throughout the workday. A virtual staffroom where colleagues can come and go as they please and interact with colleagues as they might have pre-COVID19. 

The second is that we now need to be monitoring our conversational patterns for the types identified above. Giving deliberate attention to this can help us identify the conversation types which might have been most impacted by social distancing. By being intentional in noticing the types of conversations which have become predominant in our socially distanced interactions, we can identify areas that might require some deliberate attention. Maybe we notice that there are fewer opportunities for colleagues to share puzzles. If this is the case, we might be concerned that there are fewer opportunities for reflective practices or that conceptual learning might be slipping. Alternatively, we might notice that there are fewer opportunities for staff to share stories and that as a result, operational learning is inhibited. Armed with this information we can make plans to either increase the learning type that is in deficit or look to create more opportunities for the types of conversation that support it. 

In these times of uncertainty and change resulting from the COVID19 pandemic, our connectedness and the professional learning that this supports is more critical than ever. We can’t afford to miss out on the professional learning and support that occurs through incidental conversations but ensuring this does not occur, will take planning, creativity and desire to create opportunities for us to come together, even while apart. 

By Nigel Coutts

Maximising the Power of Documentation

What place does documentation play in our learning environments? What roles might it play? 

We probably should begin by considering what we mean by documentation. When we talk documentation, we are describing the process of capturing evidence both of the learning progress of our students and the impact of our teaching. As such, documentation plays an important role in assessment for learning as an ongoing process of formative assessment and as a part of our professional reflection. Or at least it should. 

Often documentation is associated with measures of accountability. When documentation of learning is reduced to a process of gathering work samples for filing away to satisfy the requirements of school registration, it has little value. The same is true when we spend time documenting evidence of learning on our teaching programmes but then do not use this to guide future planning. Whenever we consider documentation as the material produced and archived from our teaching, rather than a process that we as teachers and our students are actively engaged with, we eliminate its potential role in teaching and learning. 

“Although what and how one documents is key, even more critical is understanding that documentation is not an end in itself. In order for documentation to be useful, teachers and learners must actually do something with it. Teachers use documentation practices to deepen learning—their own, their students’, their colleagues’, parents’, and even the larger public’s.” (Krechevsky, Mardell, Rivard, & Wilson, 2013 p74)

In the Reggio Emilia approach, documentation plays a central role, and it is considered one of the more significant contributions made to education by the small Italian region (Schroeder-Yu, 2008). According to Krechevsky et al. it is “The practice of observing, recording, interpreting, and sharing through different media the processes and products of learning in order to deepen or extend learning” (Krechevsky, Mardell, Rivard, & Wilson, 2013 p74). In a Reggio Emilia approach:

“Documentation typically includes samples of a child’s work at several different stages of completion; photographs showing work in progress; comments written by the teacher or other adults working with the child; transcriptions of the child’s discussions, comments, and explanations of intentions about the activity; and comments made by parents.” (Schroeder-Yu, 2008 p127)

 As Krechevsky et al. note, it can be tempting to view the beautiful examples of Reggio Emilia inspired documentation available online and conclude that it is all about creating magnificent displays of students work. While there is a definite value in celebrating student learning in this way, documentation should also include the messy, incomplete and unfinished samples which are much more the norm and include space for capturing the richness of dialogue that occurs along the way. If taken to extremes, however, this approach can also be flawed. If we attempt to capture every moment, every brushstroke, every work sample, we end up with clutter and a collection that will fail to tell a story of learning. The sweet spot is a curated collection of learning artefacts that reveal a story of learning and are then used wisely to inform next steps in learning by the teacher, the student and their learning community. 

DocumentationsPurposes.png

The diagram above is derived from a number of sources and aims to capture some of the purposes that documentation might play in teaching and learning, some of which require some explanation. One of the key purposes it serves is in activating Teachers as Researchers or as students of their children as learners. Documentation allows us to make visible where our children are with their learning, their thinking processes and informs our understanding of the impact that our teaching is having. Documentation as such allows us to make informed decisions both in the moment and for the long terms as to how we will proceed as we continue to engage our students with learning. 

Closely connected its part in our role as Teacher Researchers are the roles that documentation plays in our professional development and as a catalyst for collaborative partnerships. When documentation becomes a process that we engage with, it opens our eyes to the impact that we are having. When we better understand this impact, we create opportunities for professional growth as we consider how we might do more of what is working and seek answers to the dilemmas that emerge. When we share documentation with colleagues, we expand these opportunities through the inclusion of professional dialogue that allows all participants to develop a more enlightened perspective. 

Suppose our goal is to develop learning environments that are responsive to the passions, wonderings and unique interests of our students; In that case, we begin to explore the possibilities of an emergent curriculum. The concept of an emergent curriculum is familiar to anyone with a knowledge of Reggio Emilia approaches and is common in early childhood settings. An Emergent Curriculum is one that is allowed to emerge from the interaction of the learner with the environment. Rather than a heavily prescribed curriculum, as is the norm in many settings, an emergent curriculum evolves out of the dialogue between students and teachers. A teacher adept in the application of an emergent curriculum builds upon the possibilities embedded in the environment they design for and with their learners. It is not a free for all but simultaneously a carefully orchestrated and highly dynamic experience. 

Documentation plays a vital role in the implementation of an Emergent Curriculum. As the teacher observes the student engaging with their learning, as they capture evidence of this, as they reflect upon this evidence and engage in dialogue (with students and colleagues) about the learning made evident by this documentation, they are also planning for the next steps they will take. The documentation allows them to see both where the learner has been and where they might go next. Additionally, when the curriculum is emergent, documentation effectively becomes a significant part of the curriculum replacing the formal written curriculum that is used to map learning in other contexts. 

Documentation also plays an essential role as “The Third Teacher”. The idea of the third teacher is derived from an understanding that our students learn from their teacher (and other adults), from their peers and from their environment. When we display documentation in the learning environment, we enable its use as a tool for learning. When children interact with artefacts from their learning journey and the learning journeys of their peers, the utility of documentation is enhanced. When the use of such items is incorporated into learning that elevates the place of metacognitive skills, the power of documentation as the third teacher is unlocked. This also creates opportunities for the students learning to be celebrated and shown to be valued. 

Documentation, when done right, when seen as a process rather than a beautiful end product, can be a vital tool for learning. If you are keen to better understand its potential, begin by reading “Visible Learners”. 

By Nigel Coutts

 Krechevsky, M., Mardell, B., Rivard, M., & Wilson, D. G. (2013). Visible learners: Promoting Reggio-inspired approaches in all schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Gigi Schroeder-Yu (2008) Documentation: Ideas and Applications from the Reggio Emilia Approach, TEACHING ARTIST JOURNAL, 6:2, 126-134

 

Reimagining Education for Uncertain Times with David Perkins

What’s worth understanding? What best builds understanding?

These two powerful questions framed a recent webinar presented by Professor David Perkins of Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero. Answering these questions and helping teachers find meaningful and contextually relevant answers to these questions has been a focus of Perkins’ work, especially in recent times. His book “Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World” introduced us to the notion of lifeworthy learning or that which is “likely to matter in the lives our learners are likely to live”. This is a powerful notion and one that has the potential to change not only what we teach but also how we go about teaching what we do.

In uncertain times, there is a greater need to reflect upon these questions. “What’s worth understanding?” in a world where uncertainty is the norm. What learning might be of the greatest utility to our students as they confront a rapidly changing and ambiguous future? How might we know today, what learning will be lifeworthy in the lives our learners are likely to live when uncertainty is the norm? It was with this in mind that Perkins engaged his audience. This is a topic I have touched upon previously:

These are times of chaos, complexity and contradiction (Sardar, 2010) where education is challenged to reimagine how it prepares young people of today for their worlds of tomorrow. Confronted by rapid change from a conflation of transformative forces society appears to be in a state of flux. The grand unifying socio-political stories and underlying structures that we have relied upon in the past seem to have dissolved under our feet leaving us bewildered (Harari, 2018). The beliefs, values and philosophies which we once relied upon for guidance, trust in reason and science, the valuing of human intellect and our understanding of fundamental political systems have been replaced by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (USAWC, 2019). The exponential acceleration of the capabilities of our digital systems carries with it a transformative potential with far-reaching consequences and opportunities (Friedman, 2016). Similarly, our reliance on technological innovations that emerged during the first industrial revolution is today driving climate change and represents what David Attenborough describes as our greatest threat (Attenborough, 2019) “All that was ‘normal’ has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet emerged, and nothing really makes sense.” (Sardar, 2010 p. 435)

The challenge then is to identify that which is “lifeworty”, and to this, Perkins invites his audience to engage thoughtfully with the process of evaluating what’s worth understanding. This mode of operation is typical Project Zero. The easy approach would be to offer teachers a curriculum of what might be considered lifeworthy. Such an approach, however, robs the teacher of agency, inhibits genuine engagement with both process and product and overlooks the diversity of contexts in which the question “what is worth understanding” is likely to be asked. Further, an organisation that values thinking so highly is behoved to bring opportunities for thinking to all that they do. By engaging his audience in a process of contemplating what is lifeworthy he models the thinking and learning processes that are at the heart of Project Zero’s philosophy of conducting high-quality research that enables a fresh perspective on what might be achieved in the classroom. Not a Seven Steps for success methodology but revelations that inspire conversation and empower teachers to do what they do better. 

What learning mattered to you? What did you learn at school that you continue to rely on routinely? What did you learn at school that you have not used since leaving?

Perkins here asks his audience to consider the opportunity stories attached to the themes or topics that they are currently teaching. He uses the French Revolution as an example of a topic which can be taught in limited and restrictive ways, or that can be transformed by a teacher who looks for the opportunity story of the topic. A teacher could easily teach students all of the facts relevant to the French Revolution. Students would exit the unit with a vast repository of knowledge. They could answer questions such as when did it begin? When did it end? What were its causes? Who were the key people? What part did each play? But teaching the French Revolution in this way is unlikely to be of significant value in the lives that learners are likely to live beyond maybe giving them an edge at a French-themed trivia night. 

But, the French Revolution should not be abandoned as a topic. Instead, the teacher needs to seek the opportunity story that it offers. When we go beyond knowing, beyond facts and beyond the specific, we see that the French Revolution can have a vibrant and expansive opportunity story. What might the French Revolution tell us about other revolutions? What might it reveal about change or of warfare and the human drive to conquer? How might the French Revolution be used as a metaphor for the study of modern revolutions such as the digital revolution of the 21st century? What might it reveal to us about conflict resolution, or politics, or business management? When we go beyond the minutia of the topic, we begin to unravel an opportunity story that reveals a topic’s great potential as a tool within a lifeworthy curriculum. 

Through the French Revolution, I was able to understand the generalities of world conflict...for instance, how the lack of freedom, poverty, over-taxation, weak economies, the struggle between the Church and state, or social inequity has always been a reason to engage in war.- Perkins 2020

Understanding Of VS Understanding With

The content-heavy, knowledge-focused approach to the French Revolution described above is indicative of a drive for ‘Understanding Of’ a topic. We might finish the unit with a detailed understanding of the topic, but we have learned little else. The more expansive model where the French Revolution is used as a catalyst for an investigation of significant historical, political and sociological themes is an example of a drive towards ‘Understanding With’. We finish the topic with an understanding of the essential information about the French Revolution, and we also exit with a broader perspective on the world and a new way of understanding many interrelated topics. We have developed understandings with our study of the French Revolution rather than merely developing an understanding of the French Revolution. 

The French Revolution is a beautiful example of a topic ready for transformation via an analysis of its opportunity story. Not all topics, however, offer so many possibilities. Some are perhaps just not going to meet our needs if the goal is a life worthiness. Perkins uses the quadratic equation as such an example. He invites the audience to consider a series of questions:

  • How many people have used the quadratic equation vs How many people have learned the quadratic equation?

  • How many people have used the quadratic equation outside of an educational setting?

  • Very few people use the quadratic equation outside of a mathematics lesson

  • What lives on from this learning in the lives of most learners?

When judged against this set of questions, we are left wondering if the time spent on teaching students the quadratic equation might be better used elsewhere. Perkins makes it clear that this is not an attack on mathematics. The same set of questions, when applied to statistics and probability, reveal a very different response and show a topic with a broad and meaningful opportunity story. Indeed knowledge of statistics is almost essential in navigating the modern world where numbers are routinely manipulated to manipulate us. 

What’s most worth understanding? - The importance of Wonder

Perkins reminded his audience that learning should be about more than practicality, more than just business, the needs of the economic engines of industry or of our duties as citizens. - Learning should also be about questions and wonderings that stir our heart. Learning that matters includes room for what inspires us, what intrigues us and makes us wonder how can that be? More than just a foundation for the practicalities of life but a grounding for the capacity to transform wondering into action. In this sense, we are learning how to wonder and what to do with our wonderings. We are developing a disposition towards wonderment where we have the capacity to wonder about our world, a sensitivity for the possibility for wondering and the motivation to not only wonder but to act towards the satisfaction of our curiosity. It might well be noted that a disposition for wonderment is perhaps one that we need to have reinstated if it is something we left behind in childhood. 

To help us bring more lifeworthy learning into our curriculum, Perkins offers the thinking routine Mattermatics. It is a routine that invites us to consider what we want to add to our curriculum that is not already there, what we would like to do more of and what we would like to do less of. The name deliberately sounds like mathematics to reference the use of the mnemonic:

  • + 1 What’s one theme or topic you would add to move you towards lifeworthy learning?

  • x 2 What’s one theme or topic you might expand to move towards lifeworthy learning?

  • ÷ 3 What’s one theme or topic you might shrink to make room for more lifeworthy learning?

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What best builds understanding? - Understanding in Action

How do we understand Understanding or what do we mean by understanding is a topic central to the opera of Project Zero and the core idea behind Teaching For Understanding. Many young students have a limited and limiting perspective of understanding. They hold in their minds an image of understanding as having possession of knowledge. This extends to common perceptions of what it means to be smart or wise or educated. Project Zero encourages a broader perspective - an action perspective or a performative perspective. By this definition, understanding requires a set of skills and knowledges that you can do meaningful things with - the ability to do meaningful things with what you know.  

With this conception of understanding in mind, how do we begin to transform the nature of the learning that our students engage with to better focus on developing lifeworthy understandings? Perkins suggests that we look for the’ toolkit’ of useful things that our topics offer. If we look back at the topics exemplified above, we may consider the quadratic equation to be equivalent to a bread knife. It serves one purpose, and even if we try to adapt it to others, its utility remains limited. The French Revolution, by contrast, might be seen as a Swiss Army knife. It brings many options and has a broad set of affordances. Having identified a topic that has such breadth, we begin to consider how we might engage our learners with this. Perkins offers a set of guiding principles that allow us to transition from presenting topics to toolkits. 

Symptoms of Topic - Toolkit Transition

  • Learners explore how to use a topic as a toolkit

  • Learners use thinking skills towards both understanding of and with a topic

  • Learners in conversation imagine possible applications within and beyond school

  • Learners apply the toolkit in the context of project-based learning

  • Learners hunt for and find their own applications beyond school - family, newspaper, sports, etc

SymptomsOfTopicToToolkit.png

There was most certainly a great deal to think about in this webinar, and putting all of this into practice will take time. One of the great skills that Perkins possess, is the ability to weave complex and complicated ideas into a simple narrative. The challenge now is to breathe life into these ideas, to make lifeworthy learning the norm and to overcome the obstacles to this goal. 

The ideas in this webinar can be explored further by reading:

  • Future Wise: Educating our children for a changing world - David Perkins (2014)

  • Making Learning Whole: How seven principles of teaching can transform education - David Perkins (2010)

By Nigel Coutts



Attenborough, D. “Sir David Attenborough: Climate change our greatest threat” accessed 5.5.19 - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46398057

Friedman, T. “Thank you for being late”, Great Britain: Picador, 2016, 461 p.

Harari, Y. “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”, London, Random House, 2018, 416 p.

Sardar, Z. “Welcome to postnormal times”, Futures, 42(5), 2010, p. 435-444.

USAWC. “Origins of VUCA” Accessed online 5.5.19 - http://usawc.libanswers.com/faq/84869

Telling a new story of learning and school

One of the key ways by which we make sense of our world is by analysing the stories that we and others use to describe it. These stories are a construct of our experiences, our beliefs, our cultural perspectives and the interactions between these things. Even when the context in which the story is set is the same, the details and nature of the story that particular individuals or collective share can differ vastly. Only by listening to each story with empathy and genuine desire to understand each individual's telling of this story do we develop true insights. 

Making sense of the stories of education should be a key process for all educators.

When we take the time to ask individuals about their story of education or school a great deal is revealed. Too often the story is not what we might hope to hear. We have all heard quotes such as this from author Mark Twain “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”. Or from Albert Einstein who reportedly stated that "Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” And, we hear stories of a similar vein when we speak to friends and colleagues about their experience of school. 

Part A of the first assignments that participants in Project Zero’s “Creating Cultures of Thinking” course engage with, is to share their reflections on the story of learning they were told when they were in school. "What were the messages you received about learning, schooling, and what it means to be smart?” The overwhelming trend in responses is that school was about knowing the correct answers and smart was the capacity to provide these answers on cue and at speed. We might hope that school would be described as a time through which one accumulates knowledge and capabilities and dispositions that empower one to become thriving self-navigating lifelong learners. Instead school is described as being all about achieving grades and passing tests, a time where our spark of curiosity and creativity is extinguished. And, this is the story told by people who have gone on to become educators with the opportunity to study at Harvard Graduate School of Education. What story might be told those who are failed by the system?

Asking an adult the question, “What is your story of school?” has certain value, asking the same question of a current student has another. This is what Erika Lusky and Julie Rains did when they sought to understand the impact that their interventions as educators of students with additional learning needs was having. Asking this question allowed them to understand the feeling of disenfranchisement that their students felt and the sense that education was done to them rather than with them. 

Asking this question led them to ask “How might we tell a new story of learning?”, and specifically, how might they move their students and themselves from “learned dependence to empowered independence”. This process echoes Part B of the assignment that commences the “Creating Cultures of Thinking” course in which participants are asked "How do they (the messages you received about learning . . .) differ from the messages you hope to be sending your students about learning?” At this point we are moving beyond telling stories from experience and imaging what stories we might tell in a tomorrow we shape by our individual and collective actions. This is transforming story telling from reflective practice into agentic action. 

For Erika & Julie this process led to them unpacking their core beliefs as shared in a recent webinar with Cameron Paterson of PZ Sydney Network. These beliefs are:

  • We believe that no matter what skills and abilities children bring to the classroom they can demonstrate growth. 

  • We believe that along with weaknesses, all students have strengths and that its our to find those in them and let them shine. 

  • We believe that participatory collective learning and a mutual respect of ideas should be a part of everything we do and say.

  • We believe that all students can learn to think deeply and for themselves and we encourage them to prove it.

  • We believe students can meaningfully participate and contribute their voices to their class, to their community and maybe to the world.

  • And, we believe we can do all of these things in some of our new virtual spaces.

With a clear focus on the essential beliefs that they hold as educators, Erika and Julie engaged in the process of imagining a new story of learning for the students that they serve. Where some saw laziness, they saw learners communicating their feelings of disenfranchisement. Amidst a system focused on deficit and a need to “fix problems” they saw strengths and the potential for growth. They realised the need to change the culture they and their learners experienced. To shift the dial from dependence to independence. With this in mind, Erika and Julie took action to bring their new story to life. You can learn more about this new story and the actions Erika and Julie have taken HERE. 

When we take the time to empathetically listen to the stories that are told about things that matter, we create opportunities for change. When we begin to imagine new stories we begin to see a brighter future. When we take actions to move ourselves and those who share these stories with us, we move towards bringing new stories into reality.

By Nigel Coutts 

Multiple perspectives on an understanding of inquiry

Recently I have been contemplating how we might define inquiry. Like many terms in education, it is often used in multiple contexts and has a range of meanings attached to it. Coming to agreement on what inquiry is, requires negotiating seemingly divergent understandings. If we are to avoid oversimplifications and dichotomous thinking, we need to explore these multiple perspectives and find a balance point. 

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Inquiry is both pedagogy and curriculum. In simple terms, pedagogy is how we teach and curriculum is what we teach, or what we hope our students will learn. Inquiry is a method by which we can engage our students in the process of learning. In this sense, it is a pedagogical method. We can take an inquiry stance and utilise associated methods to teach our students the desired content. Such an approach fits nicely with a constructivist perspective on learning where the act of learning requires the individual to make meaning from their context. Inquiry is also curriculum. It is a set of skills and capacities that we might hope our students will acquire. Just as with skills for reading, writing, painting, playing, etc, there are particular skills associated with inquiry and as teachers, part of our job is to teach these skills. Agreeing that there are skills for inquiry and that they are worth learning does not bring with it consensus on the nature of the pedagogy most appropriate for this. Regardless of the pedagogical framework attached to the teaching of these skills, it is generally agreed that at some point in the learning process students need to engage in practising their newly acquired skills. If we are teaching a child to throw a ball, at some point we will allocate time to them to practise these skills. The same applies to learning to inquire.

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Inquiry is something teachers do. When we ask where are my students with their learning, we are inquiring. When we create opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding we are continuing this inquiry process. When we investigate the curriculum, when we experiment with new pedagogies, when we collaborate with colleagues, we are conducting inquiries. This sort of inquiry is a very human expression of our curiosity. In modern times with the internet providing us with access to a wealth of resources, our capacity to manage an inquiry process empowers us as teachers. And, inquiry is something our students do when they consider where they are with their learning. Inquiry is a cognitive process that learners do when they are learning. The process of inquiry actively engages you in a learning process and without inquiry, without thinking, learning is not possible. This does not mean that all learning is to be delivered through an inquiry process, but that at all times we want our students to approach their learning with an inquisitive mind. If our learners are engaged in a kind of mental dialogue with the learning opportunities we present to them, and that they engage in, their is a much better chance the the learning will stick.

Inquiry is both behaviour and disposition. There are behaviours or actions associated with the inquiry process. We can learn these and we can teach them. Learning how to manage an inquiry process will make us more effective and might ensure that the results of our inquiries are productive and reliable. Further, there are certain actions and processes which support an inquiry-based learning model in our classrooms. As teachers, we can learn to manage these processes and by doing so make our inquiry-based classroom a more effective learning environment. But, inquiry is more than just the actions that we take, it is a disposition. This perspective requires us to have the capabilities required for effective inquiry (learning or teaching) combined with a sensitivity to opportunities to apply these skills and the motivation to subsequently do so. Knowing how to inquire is only part of the process, it is made powerful when combined with an inquisitive nature. 

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Inquiry can be both directed and emergent, sometimes simultaneously. In the classroom, students will often engage in an inquiry process that is initiated by their teacher. . The teacher is likely selecting inquiry topics derived from the formal curriculum. Students gain a great deal of learning from this sort of inquiry and it can be an excellent tool for also expanding their competence with the inquiry process. When students are young, and throughout their lives, inquiry emerges from their engagement with their environment. As we interact with the environment, as we engage with fellow humans, as we notice and wonder about the nature of things, questions emerge and these become rich fodder for inquiry. When we and those who inspire us value inquiry, we are more likely to look for opportunities for this sort of emergent inquiry and to engage actively with it. 

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Much as the topic for inquiry can be selected for us or emergent, the processes that we utilise for this inquiry might be guided or self-organised. We might be required to utilise a particular inquiry process. Maybe we are engaged in a scientific inquiry and it is expected that we apply a strict scientific method. Maybe we are participating in an inquiry that utilises a particular model of design thinking with a structure that ensures all participants know where they are in the process and what comes next. Sometimes though, inquiry is much more like play. Watch a child playing with a hose and a bucket of water and you will see self-organised inquiry in action. As the child experiments with various interactions, between the bucket and the hose, with the pressure of the water, with their finger over the spout or the end of the hose wriggling like a snake as the water sprouts skyward, this is self-guided inquiry at play. 

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And, inquiry can be something that we do in isolation or in collaboration, independent or participatory. It is natural to consider inquiry as something that the individual partakes in. We do this as our mind wanders to questions as we seek answers. Inquiry is also a participatory process. We participate in inquiry when we collaborate with others in the pursuit of new solutions, ideas and wisdom. Further, we participate in the great act of human inquiry when we add our understanding to the pool of human knowledge and when we build on from the ideas and inquiries of others. 

In short, inquiry is a complex process with multiple dimensions. It is a very human quality and it is inherently linked to the processes of learning. When we consider the diverse nature of inquiry and the impact that it has on learning, we are better able to understand its place within education. 

by Nigel Coutts

Thinking in & Between Boxes

The past few weeks I have been preparing for an interstate move. It is an exciting time with many fresh opportunities on the horizon. It has also involved lots of boxes which has gotten me thinking about the boxes of thought that shape our practice as educators. 

We all have lots of boxes and into these we sort our beliefs about teaching and learning.

We have a box for all our beliefs about how we might teach our students. We label this our pedagogy. It contains ideas about the teaching philosophies we agree with and those we aim to avoid. We go to this box as we consider how we might best design learning opportunities for our students.

We also have a box that contains all of our thinking about curriculum. In this are our ideas about the learning that matters to our students now and in their futures. It also contains our beliefs about how the curriculum should be structured: an overarching framework. Alongside this we have another box that is gifted to us. This box is also labelled curriculum but it contains the curriculum that is handed to us by the educational systems. The contents of these two boxes may or may not look similar. 

We also have a box that contains what we know about our learners. We develop this through experience and it expands over time to contain our ever changing understanding of what makes the individuals we teach function. The contents of this box should be shaped by the contents of the box that holds our knowledge about the attributes of learners in general as informed by a mix of psychology, sociology and educational research.

Amidst this collection of large boxes lie a myriad of other boxes. School policy has a box all of its own as does timetabling and daily structures all of which have a great impact on how we engage with the ideas in the other boxes. There are boxes of external and internal assessments and there are boxes who’s contents is shaped by the expectations, hopes, fears and beliefs of our parent body. 

The most interesting thing about all of these boxes is the manner in which they interact. If we pack each box in isolation from the others, we end up with a very fragmented view of our role and the impact we might have is diminished. Our goal needs to be to see the boxes holistically and to ensure that the contents of each aligns with the others. When it comes time to unpack all of these boxes into their new home, we might hope that all of the items will combine well and bring a unifying theme. 

Often though this is not the case. We might hold particular views about pedagogy which do not align with our views on curriculum or  with our understanding of how students best learn. Only by looking closely at the contents of each box and then also considering how the contents of all of the boxes interact can we maximise our impact. 

By Nigel Coutts

Are we there yet? Are we there?

Originally published in Connect Magazine

This much-maligned question seems so appropriate for education's recent history. All that was normal, everything that was routine, all of our structures, have been turned upside down and hurled into the wind of COVID19. From having spoken of a future dominated by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), we have found ourselves living in it. Innovation and creativity became the new normal as we "Apollo 13" schooling into a model that met the demands of emergency remote learning. The pressure, the workload, the demands on our time and the cognitive load have all been immense, and so it seems fitting to ask "Are we there yet?". 

And, just when we think we are getting our heads around this remote learning business, things are changing again. We are going back into face-to-face teaching, albeit under conditions dominated by social distancing, temperature checks and personal protective equipment. Another new normal is on the horizon. But, as Winston Churchill might have stated, this is not the end, this is not the beginning of the end, it might be the end of the beginning, we just don't know. VUCA continues to dominate, and these are indeed post-normal times. 

Amidst all our current scrambling, particular patterns have emerged. In the absence of face-to-face dialogue with students, aspects of teaching that might otherwise be minimised or hidden have bubbled to the fore. In the initial rush to emergency remote online learning, a plethora of worksheets and online learning tools became the norm. The focus was on giving the students something to do, something that allowed them to spend time each day on school like learning while they remained safe at home. And then came the videos - teachers recording lessons to be absorbed by learners. Teaching regressed to a time when the flow of learning was unidirectional (from teacher to student) and focused on low-order skills and knowledge recall. It was a little like watching HAL, the supercomputer of Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A space odyssey" sing Daisy. For many, this was a troubling time, and they knew that much of what was good about contemporary education was missing. 

As the time of remote learning continued fresh questions and wonderings began to emerge. The pattern shifted as teachers began to wonder how might we ensure that the remote learning we are tasking our children with is engaging, empowering and thought-provoking. There were efforts to bring dialogue into our online learning environments, and students and teachers once again shared ideas and built connections. Questions such as "How do we translate the dominant patterns of dialogue and deep thinking into remote learning?" and "How do I continue to teach for understanding, and make the thinking of my students visible in this new time?" were pondered. 

Now, as we move back into face-to-face teaching, we have the opportunity to reflect on this time and to consider what might have worked and what we might need to tweak. It is said that absence makes the heart grow fonder. If this is so, what have teachers and students missed most from the version of school that was the norm before COVID19 became a thing? And, how might we restart the education system in ways that better focus us on the things which matter most?

As we look back at the early days of remote learning, we notice two things were absent. When we examine what we tried to add back into the mix as the days stretched into weeks, these two things again stand out as missing. Given the close relationship and codependence between the two, it is not surprising that once one went missing, the other did too. What might these things be? - Student agency and deep and varied thinking. 

Student agency and thinking are natural bedfellows, but they are not always immediately linked. Student agency is often associated with opportunities for student voice or choice. In many ways, this makes sense and schools should foster opportunities for these things, but agency is more than just a nice way of making decisions about canteen menus. Once we look at how schools might promote agency as a disposition with lifelong value, then we begin to see agency in a different light; one that requires thinking. 

Bandura's definition of agency fits well with most contemporary understandings of the term. According to Bandura (2001) "The core features of agency enable people to play a part in their self-development, adaptation, and self-renewal with changing times." This points to agency having an impact beyond what is achieved when a school listens to student opinion. Indeed the power of agency is most needed when individuals confront challenging times as explained by Little, Snyder and Wehmeyer (2006).

"In facing these challenges, an agentic individual is the primary origin of his or her actions, has high aspirations, perseveres in the face of obstacles, sees more and varied options, learns from failures, has a strong sense of well-being, and so on. A non-agentic individual, on the other hand, is primarily the pawn of unknown extra-personal influences, has low aspirations, is hindered with problem-solving blinders, and often feels both helpless and hopeless."

What is clear here is that agency should be a vital measure of the success that our education systems have. Beyond allowing students to play a part in their education, developing student agency will prepare them for life beyond school as empowered citizens able to shape their world. 

The link between thinking and agency should become apparent when we consider a definition of agency that values its place as a lifelong disposition. "As such, agency, like character, can be understood as a disposition—seeing oneself as an agent of change within the designed environs of one's world." (Clapp et al. 2017) As Ritchhart notes, ""agency," is the ability to make choices and direct activity based on one's own resourcefulness and enterprise. This entails thinking about the world not as something that unfolds separate and apart from us but as a field of action that we can potentially direct and influence". (Ritchhart. 2015) This requires us to think about the world in a particular manner; one that allows us to imagine the part we may play in shaping it. It also requires that students are engaging mindfully with the curriculum, that they are investigating ideas and concepts that matter and that as they do so, they are required to think. "Learning happens when students engage with ideas, when they ask questions, explore, and construct meaning with our guidance and support. . . . Exploring meaningful and important concepts that are connected to the world often means students want to take action. Providing opportunities and structures for them to do so encourages students' agency and power while making the learning relevant." (Ritchhart & Church, 2020) In this, we see the connection between deep-learning and engagement with learning that matters with learner agency. This is the type of learning that we and our students missed when we moved to emergency remote learning, and it is this that we want to ensure is emphasised as we return to face-to-face. 

What this type of learning requires is beautifully captured by Mike Medvinsky of Michigan. Mike is a coach in Project Zero's "Creating Cultures of Thinking" course and teacher of Music Production at University-Liggett School. He shares his approach to promoting student agency through a culture of thinking as follows:

I truly believe that the one's who are doing the thinking and the talking are the people who are doing the learning. And when I am the one who is talking the whole time and explaining things I'm the one doing the thinking and learning. It's truly important that I set the stage, lay the groundwork for the experience and the learners then take the initiative to do the thinking, do the learning, do the talking, share their ideas, reframe their thinking and continue this journey in our learning experience. So the more that I can take a supportive role, rather than a lead role, the learners become the active agents of their own learning. . . When a learner is truly owning their thinking, it becomes meaningful and relevant to them. When they're sitting in a class where they're just getting information and regurgitating it onto a test its not going to be anything that is an enduring understanding. (Mike Medvinsky. Secondary Music Production. University-Liggett School, Michigan)

The sort of thinking that Mike describes does not occur without the right context and culture. Unless thinking is noticed, named and valued, it won't thrive. Indeed, all of the dispositions we may aspire to develop in our children such as curiosity, imagination, creativity, empathy, critical thinking and indeed agency cannot be taught in isolation as skills to be mastered. We do not benefit from learning about dispositions. "Dispositions must be enculturated - that is, learned through immersion in a culture." (Ritchhart. 2015) A key component in getting the culture right is the act of making thinking visible. When we make thinking visible, we are able to create opportunities to notice and name the thinking that we and our students are engaging in and when we do this we encourage more of it such that thinking becomes routine. This process is well served through the use of thinking routines, and the use of such routines can unlock student agency as Erik Lindemann describes "The routines build learners' capacity to engage with complexity while inspiring exploration. As my students begin internalizing and applying these thinking tools, I become a consultant in their ongoing investigations. Curiosity and excitement fuel deeper learning as my students take the lead," (Cited in Ritchhart 2020)

So, Are we there yet?

What weeks of emergency remote learning revealed is that even where we claim to value agency and a culture of thinking, the reality might need some tweaking. Do we routinely begin the process of planning for learning with these things in front of mind? Are we asking questions that guide us towards enculturating thinking such as "What thinking might my students require here?" or "What type of thinking might my students most benefit from experiencing now?". Are we seeking to enculturate agency by seeking opportunities for student-led inquiry and subsequent action? Or, do we begin our planning process by asking "What will I have my students do today?" or "What must I explain to them in this lesson?". When we look back at the learning we planned as an emergency response to COVID19, which of these questions are revealed as our go-to response, and how might we change this narrative?

By Nigel Coutts

Clapp, E., Ross, J., Oxman Ryan, J. & Tishman, S. (2017) "Maker-centered learning: empowering young people to shape their worlds”, San Francisco, Josey Bass

Bandura, A. (2001) "Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective". Annual Review of Psychology 52:1-26

Little, Todd D., C. R. Snyder, and Michael Wehmeyer. (2006). “The Agentic Self: On the Nature and Origins of Personal Agency Across the Lifespan.” In D. K. Mroczek & T. D. Little (Eds) The Handbook of Personal Development, 61-79. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ritchhart, R. (2015) Creating cultures of thinking: The eight forces we must truly master to transform our schools. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.

Ritchhart, R. & Church, M (2020) . The Power of Making Thinking Visible.  Hoboken NJ: Josey-Bass.

Getting started with Deep-Learning - Part B

With our goal of deep-learning in mind where do we begin and what learning opportunities might result in this? Having clarified our key terms of understanding, learning and deep, we can turn to a set of questions which might be of use as we plan the learning our students will engage in along their way. 

What do my students need to understand here?

This is one of the most powerful questions we can ask when we are unpacking our curriculum. To be sure there is much that we might want our students to know and do, but there are also fundamental understandings that our students must understand. Take fractions in mathematics as an example. We might want our students to know about the parts of fractions, the numerator and denominator. We might want them to know how to find pairs of equivalent fractions, how to compare fractions, how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions. These are without a doubt important, but unless students understand what a fraction is nothing else we teach them will make any sense. Students must understand that a fraction is one number, not two and that it represents a relationship between the numerator and the denominator. 

In their recently published research, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine seek to explore the characteristics of teachers who encourage deep learning. From their search for Deeper Learning in American high schools, they found that there was a remarkably common set of beliefs amongst teachers who were successful in teaching for deep understanding. Such teachers had a high level of pedagogical knowledge and a preferred approach to teaching. They were deliberate and consistent in their approach and believed in the methods they used. They had a stance towards teaching as an act of igniting a spark, encouraging curiosity and interest more so than filling a bucket with knowledge. They could describe seminal experiences which had shaped their approach as teachers. Defining moments of understanding from which they came to see the role they might play if they adopted a particular stance. They had these characteristics, and they perceived the discipline they taught not as a body of knowledge to be learned but as a way of making sense of the world.

To a person, they saw their disciplines as open-ended rather than close-ended fields, meaning that they saw their fields as places where people had constructed provisional knowledge, rather than as places where there was a finished set of answers that needed to be passed on or “professed” to others. . . If teachers saw their fields as fixed or inherited bodies of knowledge, teaching as transmission seemed like a logical and efficient approach. . . . Conversely, if the fields were understood as places where different people would develop different interpretations, experiments, and approaches to problems, it seemed natural to invite students into this process of inquiry, connecting them to the generations of scholars and seekers of knowledge who had come before.

These teachers understood the true nature of their discipline. They saw themselves as members of a profession that was alive and to which they might contribute new knowledge. Their most valuable knowledge is an understanding of the epistemological foundation of the discipline. They may also possess sound discipline-specific knowledge, but they know that possessing this alone is not sufficient. A scientist is not defined by their recall of the periodic table but by the manner in which they approach puzzles and ambiguity. An author may require a sound knowledge of grammar, but they are defined by their approach to communication as a creative act between their language choices and their audience. Each discipline has its unique epistemological foundation, and deep learning is achieved when teachers invite their students to become participants in this.

Every discipline has fundamental understandings which must be mastered. Each key learning area within our curriculum, similarly, has fundamental understandings attached. Our first task as we plan for deep-learning is to identify and make sense of these fundamental understandings. The following extract from the rationale of the New South Wales History K-10 Syllabus reveals the presence of these understandings within the curriculum:

History is a disciplined process of inquiry into the past that helps to explain how people, events and forces from the past have shaped our world. It allows students to locate and understand themselves and others in the continuum of human experience up to the present. History provides opportunities for students to explore human actions and achievements in a range of historical contexts.

If this is what we hope our children will come to understand about History, how do we ensure this is what is achieved? How do we avoid a scenario in which History is viewed by students as a subject that requires them to memorise sequences of events for a past that is disconnected from their daily lives? Such thoughtfully crafted statements, combined with our beliefs about the value of what we teach deserve our close attention. Asking, "What do my students need to understand here?” should be the start of our planning journey. 

What does this understanding look like? 

It is all well and good to say that we want our students to understand something, but if we are not clear on what this looks like, we will have a hard time taking their learning in this direction. Going back to the example of an understanding of a fraction, how will I represent this understanding in ways that focus on the essential understanding that a fraction is one number, a relationship between numerator and denominator? If I show students fractions written on a whiteboard and explain to them that the top is called the numerator and the bottom is the denominator, it is unlikely that they will understand the fraction as a single number. If I teach them to recall that the Denominator is the bottom number because denominator and down start with the same letter, have I helped the situation at all? Instead, I need to invite my students to explore various physical representations of a fraction, to compare them, to see how one fraction can be represented in many ways with various materials and to associate the written representation with what they see in the physical world. 

Sometimes we need to Zoom In and Out as we examine the understandings we aim for and what they might look like. As a teacher of Geography, for example, I might agree with the curriculum that "Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.”. When I drill down into the content and the particular outcomes to be addressed, this understanding can become fragmented and lost. Students in Years 3 & 4 in NSW are required to engage with four Outcomes which contribute to a stage appropriate understanding of the contribution of Geography. They are as follows:

  • GE2-1 examines features and characteristics of places and environments
    GE2-2 describes the ways people, places and environments interact

  • GE2-3 examines differing perceptions about the management of places and environments

  • GE2-4 acquires and communicates geographical information using geographical tools for inquire

Zooming in to just the first outcome sees students looking closely at places and environments and describing in geographical language what they see. Digging deeper, students would need to have an understanding of what we mean by places and environments, and they would require a vocabulary for their description of features and characteristics. As teachers, we might imagine that we are teaching future geographers as we provide them with lists of words to paste diligently onto photos of remote locations with exciting geographical features. To the students, Geography has become another set of facts to be remembered for an upcoming exam. We have too quickly Zoomed into a level where the content hides the understanding. 

Zoom back and consider the outcomes together, and we see the need to clarify both what we want students to understand and what it might look like. I begin to see a set of questions that a geographer might ask emerge, and these can powerfully frame our approach to the discipline. What is special about this place or environment? How do people interact with it, and how do the features we observe shape these interactions? How is this place managed and who thinks this is a good plan? What resources will we use as we examine this place and how people interact with it? When we ask these questions and engage our learners with them, we are inviting them not to study geographical content but to think and act like Geographers. If in our minds, we have an informed imagining of what a Geographer does, then we can use this mental model as a guide while we plan learning experiences.

What experiences will build this understanding?

This question is aimed at moving us beyond thinking about what our students will do. If I want my students to understand fractions, then I must give them opportunities to examine multiple representations of fractions. If I want them to be able to notice patterns in collections of objects or numbers, I need them to examine closely collections with obvious patterns so that when they confront less obvious examples, they are armed with a clear image of what a pattern is and what one is not. If I want them to think like Historians or Geographers or Scientists, I need to engage them the types of experiences which are common for such practitioners. I am unlikely to encourage students to think like scientists if their experience of the discipline revolves around following recipes. If the only experiments my students conduct involve following directions off the board, I should not be surprised if they do not understand the value of a well-written hypothesis. 

Looking back at the Geographical outcomes discussed above, what experiences might build the desired understanding? A worksheet or textbook probably won’t work. It might put a lot of Geographical information in front of their eyes, but little to no understanding is likely to result. A field study with the purpose of conducting a geographical study of a place or environment and its interactions with people that leads to a report to an agency on the patterns of land use evident has real meaning and requires students to think like geographers. Such an experience would require students to gather information using geographical tools and vocabulary, and in doing so, they would appreciate the utility of such tools. 

Asking these three questions as we begin the planning process can have a profound effect in moving us towards teaching for deep-learning. Routinely asking "What do my students need to understand here?, What does this understanding look like?, and What experiences will build this understanding? as we plan and then deliver, learning maintains our focus on the fundamental understandings. These questions move our thinking away from a laundry list of content to be covered. When we focus on these questions, our teaching targets the learning that matters most and in doing so, we find pathways towards a less bloated curriculum.

By Nigel Coutts 

Mehta, J. & Fine, S. (2019) In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School Harvard University Press.

Getting started with teaching for deep learning.

There is an understandable interest in deep-learning, after all, who wants their students to have a superficial understanding of the content. Read the marketing of almost any school and you are likely to find some statement about the deep-learning that is achieved as a result of their excellent teaching and learning platform. Likewise, ask any teacher about their philosophy of teaching and you will hear how they engage their students with learning that promotes a deep-understanding. 

The trouble is, when you look at what is happening, there are often degrees of inconsistency between the stated aims and the reality of what is achieved on a day to day basis. Teaching for this sort of deep-learning is challenging and doing so routinely can be exhausting. 

Research by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine in schools across the United States of America confirm that even in schools with a reputation for deep learning, the reality of the experience often falls short. This research led to the publication of “In Search of Deeper Learning” in which the authors note that few schools manage to achieve deep learning across all of their programmes. To be sure, there were pockets of excellence, and much to be celebrated, but very few schools came close to systematically embracing deep-learning. 

Most classrooms were spaces to sit passively and listen. Most academic work instructed students to recall, or minimally apply, what they had been told. When we asked students the purpose of what they were doing, the most common responses were “I dunno—it’s in the textbook,” and “maybe it’ll help me in college.” (Mehta & Fine. 2019)

With this in mind, what strategies might we routinely adopt so that deep-learning can be achieved and sustained? How do we get started and what pedagogies are likely to have the desired effect while avoiding fatigue for teachers and students?

We begin with the planning process. Deep-learning is not going to be achieved if we rely on the curriculum or packets of resources as a guide. Instead, we begin with a set of questions that allow us as teachers to clarify what it is that we want our students to understand as a results of their learning. 

There are some crucial concepts to be unpacked here and when we begin the process of teaching for deep-learning it is important that we clarify what these concepts mean to us. Perhaps the most important concept to be unpacked is understanding. Like most terms in common use, we feel we have a sense of what the word understanding means up to the point where we share our definition with a colleague and find that our’s does not align well with their’s. 

How we define understanding is a crucial point when our goal is deep-learning. Indeed, our goal is likely to be understanding. Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of thinking skills is commonly used to identify what are referenced as high-order-thinking skills. In Bloom’s taxonomy, understanding is a low order skill, one rung on the ladder above remembering. It requires the learner to comprehend what they have remembered and be able to explain it to another person. By contrast, in teaching for understanding or understanding by design terms, understanding requires a capacity to use what one knows and can do in unique context. In this definition, understanding would combine the ability to apply, analyse, synthesise and evaluate knowledge, concepts, ideas, skills and capabilities. 

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The critical distinction is that in a deep-learning model, understanding involves the capacity to do useful things with one’s knowledge and skills; a performative perspective of understanding. According to Blythe and associates,  (1998) “The performance perspective says, in brief, that understanding is a matter of being able to do a variety of thought-provoking things with a topic, such as explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalizing, applying, analogizing, and representing the topic in new ways.”

The idea of learning is similarly open to interpretation. In this instance we are describing an active process that the learner is heavily engaged in and ultimately responsible for. This goes far beyond what might be achieved through mere exposure to content regardless of how well it might be delivered.

“Meaningful learning cannot be delivered to high school students like pizza to be consumed or videos to be observed. Lasting learning develops largely through the labor of the student, who must be enticed to participate in a continuous cycle of studying, producing, correcting mistakes, and starting over again.“  (Newman. 1992 p.3)

The other key term to be unpacked here is “deep”. What might be special about deep learning?  According to Mehta & Fine (2019), “Research suggests that deep learners have schemas that enable them to see how discrete pieces of knowledge in a domain are connected; rather than seeing isolated facts, they see patterns and connections because they understand the underlying structures of the domain they are exploring.” Deep learning goes beyond perceiving the world as a collection of facts to be understood in isolation but requires the capacity and a disposition to bring ideas together in novel ways. Deep learning is the difference between seeing a painting of a hay bale and the capacity to extrapolate from that same image as a lucid commentary on the evolving relationship between artist, environment and society. 

The discussion of these terms offered above is intended only to offer a possible interpretation. The crucial part of defining terms of such importance as these is the process rather than the product. While it might be convenient to find and publish to stakeholders a definition of key terms, engaging teachers in the process of making meaning is likely to be more productive. A crucial process in any change effort is the building of ownership of it by those ultimately charged with implementing it. With this in mind, engaging stakeholders in the process of defining these terms can be a significant role in building support. The collective understanding of these key terms that is developed through the initial phase of moving towards teaching for “deep-learning” will allow them to fulfil their place as the ultimate goal of subsequent teaching and learning.

In the next article we will explore essential questions to be asked as we begin to strategise for deep-learning. 

By Nigel Coutts

Blythe, T. (1998) "The teaching for understanding guide”, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Mehta, J. & Fine, S. (2019) In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School Harvard University Press.

Newmann, F. (1992)  “Introduction,” in Fred Newmann, ed., Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools (New York: Teachers College Press.

Might now be the time rethink our curriculum?

Our approach to education can at times be baffling. As adults and as parents we reflect on our education and talk about how so little of it ‘stuck’ or is relevant to what we do as adults. We quote Einstein, 'Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.’ and Mark Twain ‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education’ and see in such statements profound wisdom and insights as to the nature of real-world learning. We do this and yet want our children to share the experience of schooling that we had. We marvel at advances in technology and science. Read, occasionally, about advances in brain science and cognition and then agree with politicians and journalists that education should take a 'back to basics' approach. (Bita, N. 2015)

Perhaps the disruption of a global pandemic will prompt a rethinking of how education might be framed to best serve the needs of those who rely on it most? Perhaps now is the time to rethink the curriculum?

As Norman McCulla (2015) writes ‘In opting for narrow definitions of literacy and numeracy and the safe territory of outmoded debates we align ourselves more with a time when the main purpose of schooling was to prepare young people for the burgeoning office work of the Industrial Revolution.’. We cling to dichotomies that present oversimplified images of the options available to educators and debate endlessly direct instruction against constructivist inquiry learning as though one excludes the other and with no recognition that effective teachers pick and choose from a vast toolkit. We ignore that the world is not as it once was and that the jobs we imagine we are preparing our children for will be there when they exit school. We ban students from using the tools they have available thanks to the evolution of technology while as adults relying on these same tools, we insist on basic skills that we never use.

And in this time of a global pandemic, these tools have been forced to the front. We have had little choice but to embrace online learning. With this have come other consequences, a rethinking of how we approach content and how we understand what we want students to learn. What had been a largely private profession built on interactions between teachers and students has been moved into the homes of our clients. This new transparency is forcing many to consider carefully what they teach and how they teach it. There are new levels of uncertainty as we question what we assumed was correct. We are being asked questions about the way concepts are taught and we all have had to accept that we have new teaching partners who had previously been referenced as parents. All of this is encouraging a close looking at the curriculum and how it is taught. What parts of the curriculum matter most, what are the concepts to be mastered and how do we allow the essential dispositions to be learned when they can not be addressed when they are not a natural part of the ‘new’ learning environment?

And then there is our continuing obsession with standardised testing. The importance of achieving positive scores on these tests relies upon the test device measuring aspects of learning that are significant. The reality is that they are both too narrow in focus, measure what is easily measured and are presented in ways foreign to the ways we believe students learn. The consequence is that these tests have an excessive influence on the delivered curriculum students experience as systems place pressures on teachers and schools to perform against these criteria. Should we allow what our children gain from their years of schooling and the manner by which they are taught be shaped by international assessments?

There are alternatives. One possibility is to identify the skills, dispositions and capabilities that our children are most likely to need in their futures. This is not suggested as an abandonment of content, but a reframing of what is viewed as most important. It requires us to rethink what comes first when we plan for and assess learning.

The General Capabilities of The Australian Curriculum

The General Capabilities of The Australian Curriculum

One advantage of a capabilities-driven curriculum is that we can generally agree on a broad set of capabilities, but it is much harder to agree on content, and we must always select what content is covered as there is always more than we have time for. If we move towards a capabilities-driven curriculum, we can allow the content of the curriculum to be adjusted to the needs of local contexts and can be inclusive of student voice. The capabilities, such as creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking are adaptable and have utility for engagement with almost all knowledge that might be reasonable to explore in schools. If we wish to move away from a content-driven curriculum where all students engage with the same content at the same time in their learning journey, allowing capabilities to take on the central role is perhaps the best way forward.

The capabilities developed by Partnerships for 21st Centruy Learning

The capabilities developed by Partnerships for 21st Centruy Learning

The possibility of a capabilities curriculum is evident within the Australian curriculum and in other frameworks around the world.  The idea that content might be the vehicle through which broadly relevant capabilities that are likely to play a significant role in the lives that students are likely to live would have a transformative effect on education. As Reid identified in 2005 'the (Australian) curriculum is framed both in terms of the capabilities needed to become autonomous, responsible and productive members of democratic societies, and the procedural principles that will inform the kinds of experiences that will help them to become so.

The challenge of the future is real but now is not the time for despair. Education surely has a central role to play and learning and the dispositions of the learner have greater value now than perhaps ever before. Now is the time for new Renaissance for education not as preparation for an unknown future but as the one constant which flows through our lives and allows us to flourish amidst unceasing change.

 By Nigel Coutts

 

Bita, N (2015) National primary curriculum shifts focus to core skills. The Australian; August 8 2015

McCulla, N. (2015). The Australian Curriculum: Who are we? Professional Educator 14(1). Melbourne. Australian College of Educators. 8-10

Reid, A. (2005) Rethinking National Curriculum Collaboration Towards an Australian Curriculum Commonwealth of Australia

Insights into the true power of Number Talks

Number Talks are a wonderful way to see where our students are with their mathematical thinking. As a part of a daily routine, a Number Talk promotes number sense and mathematical reasoning. In this post, I revisit what a Number Talk can reveal about our students’ understanding of mathematics, and how they might be used to promote a fresh perspective. In addition, I examine a success criteria for Number Talks that is more expansive and recognises their true power. 

"Number Talks" are an approach to the teaching and learning of Number Sense. Rather than relying on the rote-memorisation of isolated number facts achieved through drills of "table-facts", Number Talks aim to build confident, number fluency, where learners recognise patterns within and between numbers and understand the properties of numbers and operations. Number Talks are a "mind on" learning task that engages students in an active learning process as they search for patterns, decompose and recompose numbers and develop a flexible understanding. It is achieved through direct instruction methods and facilitative dialogue with the teacher or between groups of peers who have had experience with the number talks methodology.  Number talks are all about mathematical reasoning. In place of an emphasis on right answers, we have an emphasis on the rationale for the response. Number talks are most effective when they become one of the routines of a classroom focused on mathematical reasoning and are a great fit with visible thinking strategies. 

Number talks are a valuable classroom routine for developing efficient computational strategies, making sense of math, and communicating mathematical reasoning. A number talk is structured to help students conceptually understand math without memorizing a set of rules and procedures. (Nancy Hughes)

Number talks are:

a brief daily practice where students mentally solve computation problems and talk about their strategies, as a way to dramatically transform teaching and learning in the mathematics classroom. Something wonderful happens when students learn they can make sense of mathematics in their own ways, make mathematically convincing arguments, and critique and build on the ideas of their peers. (Humphreys & Parker)

In a number talk, I am inviting and requiring students to explain their thinking. Mathematical reasoning becomes more important than correct answers. Ask students to solve an addition like 68 + 95 in a number talk and you will know which students understand place value. While participating in the Number Talk students share numerous approaches to each question. They share and hear a range of strategies. Provide students with a whiteboard so they might make their thinking visible and you open new possibilities. Include the option of an extended Number Talk using concrete materials and you allow for diverse representations of mathematical thinking. In each instance, the students are revealing how they understand number and each response offers new insights to the teacher for future learning. Number Talks by design close the gap between student performance and teacher action to address and remediate misunderstandings.

Recently a colleague was engaging her class in a number talk. She had decided to use a “Which one doesn’t belong?” strategy with her class. In this, students are shown a collection of four related items and are asked to nominate one that they feel does not belong in this collection. Thinking is elicited through this strategy when students are asked to justify their choice. She had shared a collection of four numbers: 125, 135, 140, 145 and presented them as in the diagram below. The students were given thinking time and when ready, as indicated by a thumbs-up signal, the teacher invited suggestions. On this day, with this group of learners, suggestions were scarce. After some initial tentative offerings the class began to share with a little more confidence but they never truly picked up on the possibilities. Before the lesson, it had been discussed that the students might identify 140 as the one that did not belong. It was the only multiple of ten, the only odd number, the only number that did not end in a five. Maybe the students would notice that there would be a sequence of numbers increasing by ten from 125 and that the fourth number should be 145. With more mature and capable learners they might have noticed that only 135 is divisible by three. The teacher’s initial reaction was that the Number Talk had not gone well. 

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Looked at from the perspective of students demonstrating a high level of mathematical confidence, the session was not great. But this is not the key aim of a Number Talk. A dip into the world of Visible Thinking helps to better understand the value of a Number Talk. In “The Power of Making Thinking Visible”, Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church share the value that thinking routines have and offer the following advice:

Don't judge your success with how smoothly the lesson went. This improves with time. Judge your success by what is revealed about your students' thinking. The question we need to be asking ourselves as teachers after using a thinking routine is: “What have I learned about my students' thinking as a result of doing this routine?” (Ritchhart & Church)

In this instance, the Number Talk revealed much about where the students are with their number sense. Prime amongst the revelations was that they don’t yet have a full understanding of odds and evens and that they are yet to master either multiples of ten or five. The teacher came away with three pieces of useful information and can now develop a strategy to better address each concept. If success is measured by the quality of insights provided by the Number Talk then this was a clear success. 

The success of the Number Talk was further increased by how the teacher reacted, or in this case, chose not to react, as the session revealed gaps in the students’ understanding. The teacher could easily have decided to offer her own suggestions. She might have shared with the students that 140 doesn’t belong because it is an even number or that it is the only one that is a multiple of ten. She could have explained her reasoning to the class, shared some illustrations, referenced a hundreds chart and hoped that the students would have learned the new content. Instead, she allowed the Number Talk to serve its purpose of illuminating for her the current state of her students’ thinking and closed the session. She knew now was not the time to push ahead into direct instruction. She valued the place that thinking plays in Number Talks and refrained from sending a message to the students that in a Number Talk, success is about correct answers. Again, Visible Thinking shines a light on the correctness of the teacher’s choices in this moment. 

Here we must strive to identify when a student's challenge can lead to a productive struggle with the ideas and eventually yield new insights for that student versus when the challenge is overwhelming and likely to cause a student to shut down. (Ritchhart & Church)

In this case, the teacher recognised that the challenge here and the concepts involved were significant and she knows that there will be time in the future to redress these. Just as we create thinking time for our students, we must create thinking time for ourselves. When she does decide to address this content with her students, she will do so strategically. 

The key here is to understand that our teaching can become more powerful when we use the time we have with our learners as opportunities for us to learn more about them as learners. If our singular focus is on teaching content, skills and dispositions we miss the chance to become students of our students, to observe them closely in the acts of thinking and learning and use what we notice to better meet their needs. 

by Nigel Coutts with thanks to Stellina Sim 

Cathy Humphreys & Ruth Parker (2015) Making Number Talks Matter: Developing mathematical practices and deepening understanding. Stenhouse Publishers

Nancy Hughes (2018) Classroom-Ready Number Talks for Third, Fourth and Fifth Grade Teachers. Ulysses Press

Ron Ritchhart & Mark Church. (2020) The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Practices to engage and empower all learners.  Wiley. 

Essential Reading for Teachers Interested in Thinking

If you are interested in building a classroom culture where thinking is noticed, named and celebrated, there are three books which make essential reading. They provide clear evidence for why teachers should focus their efforts on encouraging and normalising thinking and offer research-backed strategies to support this. The books are the result of ongoing research by Harvard’s Project Zero and their lead author Ron Ritchhart. 

Ron has a long teaching history and understands the forces that shape classroom cultures exceptionally well. From his experience in the classroom, he noted that there are particular thinking moves which learners make that support them in developing a deep understanding. He also noted that teachers are able to deploy particular pedagogical moves to foster these thinking dispositions. Since joining Project Zero in 1994, Ron’s research with colleagues Mark Church and Karin Morrison have focused on providing teachers with a better understanding of how they might make thinking visible and build cultures of thinking in their classrooms. This work fits beautifully alongside other projects that sit under the Project Zero banner such as Teaching For Understanding and Agency By Design whose prime goals are well served by the enhancement of thinking dispositions. Indeed the prime belief of Project Zero is that “All Learning is a Consequence of Thinking”. 

Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners
by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison

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This is the ideal starting point for a journey towards a culture of thinking. Readers are introduced to the importance of thinking and the role that it plays in learning. You are introduced to the notion that there are many different flavours of thinking and that we are more likely to effectively navigate the challenges that life presents if we are aware of the thinking required in a given situation. Thinking is unpacked and demystified. With a greater appreciation for thinking as a complex endeavour the value of noticing and naming it is discussed. If we are to teach our students to do something we need to be able to observe how it is occurring and how our teaching strategies are influencing it. While it might be nice to have each classroom fitted with an FMRI machine so we might peer into the functioning minds of our students this is perhaps not practical. Readers of Making Thinking Visible will discover more practical solutions. The book goes on to provide a set of routines that are shown to enhance the quality of thinking that our students engage in during their learning. The thinking routines are easy to utilise teaching tools that have a dramatic effect on your students' quality of thinking. If you find that your students often fail to provide detailed, thoughtful responses to questions, then you will love the effect that a well-chosen thinking routine can have. 

Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools
by Ron Ritchhart

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Once you have read Making Thinking Visible you will most likely become hooked on teaching students to think. You will have explored a variety of thinking routines and have delighted in the new depth of conversation that is becoming the norm in your classroom. As you go along you might notice that some of the points made in the last chapter of Making Thinking Visible are playing a more vital role in your thinking about thinking as you wonder "how do make thinking routine?”. This is where “Creating Cultures of Thinking” steps in as the perfect next read. By this point, you will be ready to move beyond using thinking routines and will want to have thinking become a natural part of your classroom culture. In this book, you are introduced to the eight cultural forces that shape our classrooms. If you want to adjust the culture of your classroom, you will have to confront these forces but how will you do that if you are not aware of what they are. Once you become a master at noticing the eight culture forces at work and make adjustments to how they are experienced in your classroom you will notice that you can indeed shape the culture of your classroom. 

The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Using Routines to Engage and Empower Learners
by Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church

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In this third book, Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church return to the theme of making thinking visible. The authors expand on why making thinking visible is such a powerful strategy and introduce a fresh set of thinking routines. This very recent addition is bound to provide a wealth of new ideas and energise your use of thinking routines. When you are ready for some new approaches to making thinking visible or want to target thinking moves in new ways, this is the book to read. 

And, you might also find this helpful in building an appreciation of why any of this matters.

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Future Wise: Educating our Children for a Changing World by David Perkins
How do you answer the 'uppity question’ from a student who wants to know why they need to learn what you are teaching? Do you reply that they need it to do well in the test or are you confident that it is learning they will need to do well in life? In this book Perkins examines what we teaching in schools and makes recommendations for a shift in focus. A key idea introduced early and unpacked throughout the book is the idea of ‘Life Worthy’; learning that is 'likely to matter in the lives learners are likely to live’. Future Wise is jargon free and a great book to share with colleagues, it will help you rethink what you spend time on in class and clarify how you see the role and purpose of education. 


By Nigel Coutts