Building Learning Power

'peace with myself'

Let’s take a look at public secondary schools in Argentina. What kind of environment do teenagers learn in? Chances are most schools you analyse will have plenty of dull rooms packed with students sitting still (they simply can’t move!). If you have a closer look, you’ll see some of them are listening to the teacher or copying down facts while others simply ignore whoever stands in front of the class. You may find places where group work is being fostered, but only if students are silent, calm and follow teacher’s instructions carefully. What will happen if you head to the teachers’ room? Well, you’ll probably listen to educators complaining because teenagers do not show respect or accept what they are told.

This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Even though many of us have been trying hard to make things change, it seems most public schools are they way they have always been: traditional institutions focused on obedience, content and test results. Do we want 19th century values and habits to dominate our school system? What kind of mindset are we cultivating? Are your students becoming 21st century explorers or 19th century clerks? These are some of the topics Guy Claxton focused on in his conference on Building Learning Power in Rosario last Tuesday.

It would take a particularly long post to share all of the knowledge I received (in fact, I am still processing most of the information!), but I’d like to share with you a summary of the things that struck me the most:

1- Your brain is like a muscle (or a group of muscles).

Guy Claxton says it clear and says it loud: it is possible to get smarter; the ability to learn is itself very learnable. Research has shown that intelligence is not a fixed-sized pot or bucket that you were born with and has to be filled in with valuable stuff. Instead, he compares the mind to a group of muscles. What are the main groups? Curiosity, resilience, imagination, reflectiveness and reciprocity (click here for a complete list). We all know what happens if you train muscles hard: they become stronger and SO DO YOU! Powerful mental muscles will make our students more intelligent!

2- Schools should be mind gyms.

In many of Sir Ken Robinson’s world famous talks he describes the factory/assembly line approach to schooling. Partially complete “products”, that is to say children, are sent to teachers and each educator works on an individual step of the process until students become “productive citizens”. If students fail, it's either their fault for not trying hard enough or the fault of the teachers, who obviously need more training (click here to listen to him explaining this in detail). Guy Claxton’s new metaphor is a change of paradigm. For him, teachers should stop being the experts who add knowledge to students in factory lines, and become “learning power coaches” who will construct “exercise regimes” that will help students get smarter. Subjects must be compared to exercise machines and students should be able to adjust the level of difficulty of each task in the same way we change the weight in these machines. The result of this new approach: smart teenagers won’t get bored and slower ones won’t be left behind.

3- Let’s exercise new habits of the mind!

Classes are not neutral; they are always exercising some habit of the mind. If concepts are presented as facts to memorize, students will be learning credulity, retention and regurgitation. It is by changing the way we deliver our classes that students will start cultivating new habits of the mind. Our schemes of work should be written taking into account the mind muscles. You can learn history AND empathy AND imagination, if you stop lecturing and let students walk in other people’s shoes. If you are teaching the 19th century Italian immigration to Argentina students could imagine they are immigrants who have just arrived in Buenos Aires and write letters to their relatives back in Rome or Sicily. Facts would also be necessary to write good letters, but they wouldn’t be the main focus and the activity would be much more fun! Other, maybe smaller changes, such as letting students decide how many people per group would be ideal for a given task, will also make a big difference in the long run.

What do you think about BLP? I’m planning to start using this approach with my students. Would you use it? Why/why not?

Are you (and your students) in the zone?

'Brain'

“You’re almost unconscious to what’s going on around you. It’s literally the most peculiar feeling. It’s like being in a tunnel but you don’t see anything else. You just see what you are doing. Time changes. Somebody could ask you how long you’ve been doing it and you could have said twenty minutes but it was actually nine hours.” That’s how Ewa Laurence, the most famous billiard player on the planet, describes being in the zone and I guess we all know what she’s talking about. You start doing something you love and are good at, and the rest of the world seems to disappear. Time flies and you feel energetic even after spending hours doing one single task.

The concept of being in the zone or in flow appeared in the 60s. Psychologists have studied how sportspeople and artists enter a state of complete absorption when doing what they love. The one task at hand absorbs them completely and, without making the conscious decision to do so, they lose awareness of all other things: time, people, distractions, and even basic bodily needs.

Is it possible to apply this concept to education? Well, Sir Ken Robinson, one of the most well-known experts in the field, talks about this state of mind in his book “The Element” (for a summary of the book, click here). According to him, we can all experience this frequently if we recognize our unique talents. He encourages us to discover what we are naturally good at and realise how one activity ignites our passion. This activity we enjoy so much is what he calls “the Element”. It’s not something you like doing; he explains this task should give you a sense of identity, purpose and well being. The book is full of testimonies of people who have discovered what their Element is. They are successful and happy with their lives but in the past a big group of them weren’t considered talented and some were utterly miserable because they didn’t do well at school. Sir Ken says, “Many of them did not discover what they could do-and who they really were- until they’d left school and recovered from their education.”

Can school become a window to another world? Could we help our students discover what their personal passion, their “Element”, is? Would it be possible for them to enter “the zone” while in class? Well, I believe we can (and we should) help students achieve their full potential. We want all children to see schools as places where they are inspired to experiment and discover what their true passions are. Will the system allow them to do so? Well, things need to be transformed but, for the time being, I’ll just do as much as I can. I am a big believer in the Gandhi quote “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” These are some of the things I have started doing:

• Remember all the time there are no “weak students”. Every child is born with different natural talents. Some skills are evident at school, but others are not. For more than 30 years Howard Gardner and many others have talked about multiple intelligences. Recently, I’ve been creating more and more activities where all kinds of students (those who are visual, hands-on, auditory, etc) can learn more efficiently. 

• Help students identify skills that the system (or themselves) have not noticed yet. I’m encouraging students to try out new things so that they can find what they really enjoy. Experimenting with new activities is fun and when they find something they feel passionate about I stimulate them to continue doing it. 

• Encourage students who already know what they love to follow their paths (even if it I truly believe they won’t make a living out of it). Why shouldn’t I take their dreams seriously? We live in an era of constant change. Nobody knows what the world will look like in 10 years so who says being a lawyer will be better than being a painter? 

• Help students overcome some of the obstacles in their way. Teenagers tend to imitate their peers and they usually adapt to what parents and society wants, but sometimes finding your Element means swimming against the tide. If a student is not confident enough, he will follow the crowd and forget about his passions. Let’s help them keep their visions in the face of resistance! 

What else could we do to foster student development? What do you think?