Learners Should Never Be Passive Receivers Of Teaching
If we want pupils to grow in confidence and achieve more, it’s vital that we personalise their learning, argues Sylvia Edwards…
Learning is deeply personal. So is failure. However schools try to disguise underachievement, children will always know.
Many learners with special educational needs and disabilities feel failure from the heart. Tom feels upset, having scored only 11 out of 30 in a spelling test. Imani has done badly in maths. Their self-esteem had taken a severe beating.
Could improved personalised approaches to learning reduce these feelings of failure and boost pupils’ self-esteem? Results for learners with SEND might have improved in recent years, but many children could still do better. Could personalisation help to shorten the long tail of underachievement in our schools?
Always something worth celebrating
First, what do we mean by personalisation? In my view, it is about:
• Removing all barriers that prevent success • Seeing learners with SEND as individuals with unique differences, rather than a collection of people whose difficulties are categorised into boxes (such as ‘SLD’ or ‘autism’) • Recognising the individual characteristics of learners as valuable tools for success • Being flexible with school rules and routines • Having high aspirations for every learner.
Personalisation starts at whole class level, as quality first teaching (QFT). Children whose QFT encompasses a strong sense of belonging are more likely to succeed, regardless of additional SEND provision. Not all children need personalised approaches – which is good, since teachers can’t teach in 30 different ways – so what personalised strategies can boost learning for those children who do?
The process of learning to spell, for instance, involves a long-term, developmental journey, along which a child’s spellings gradually achieve absolute correctness. So why do we mark spellings either completely right or wrong, when each attempt lies somewhere along a learner’s personal road towards ‘rightness’?
Praising for ‘five out of seven’ correct letters, or for representing each syllable in a long word, is a more sensitive way of motivating children. From the perspective of the aforementioned Tom, the few incorrect letters that rendered his word spellings totally wrong negated his otherwise extensive and successfully applied knowledge of word patterns.
Writing is also personal, and often dreaded. Is this because there is much to think about – vocabulary, sentence structure, spelling, handwriting? A personalised approach might be able to motivate reluctant writers, as can marking sensitively and praising positives before focusing on negatives. There will always something worth celebrating in a child’s writing.
Negotiating ‘wriggle room’
How might personalisation apply to maths? Reducing numerical challenge when introducing mathematical ideas is will allow concepts to be assimilated more easily, helping less able children to graft newness onto familiarity. Finding three fifths of 20 using visual aids will be easier than finding three fifths of 145. Once new ideas are secured, practising them using higher numbers is more likely to result in success. Such strategies will enable some children to better focus on, absorb and eventually master mathematical ideas, without numerical barriers being allowed to stifle understanding.
You could consider personalisation from a broader perspective – as a form of flexibility for pupils who find it difficult to conform. Children with a chaotic home life, or who perhaps care for a disabled parent, will need a flexible response to their problems, whilst truants need to build on part-time success.
Personalisation can also influence behaviour. Would your classroom discipline improve if some disruptive pupils – especially with autism – could negotiate some ‘wriggle room’ within accepted rules and routines? Beneath much observed aggression will lie deeply personal needs that control a pupil’s learning and behaviour, lurking unseen. Successful schools will go the extra mile to seek out hidden potential, uncover missed talent, calm negative emotions or identify specific learning styles.
Solution-focused problem-solvers
Personalisation invites schools to question their methods of assessment. Is ‘success’ always about achieving at least average, or should success represent ‘excellent progress’ or ‘personal best’ – especially for children with significant difficulties, for whom ‘average’ may be unattainable? Personalisation should also invite officials and schools to view assessment more sensitively, and consider using strategies that measure children against themselves, rather than their peers.
So how should personalisation be achieved? It relies in large part on pedagogical excellence – flexible teaching, informed by acute and powerful observation. Instead of asking, ‘How is the teaching being received?’ ask ‘Whose learning is it?’
Learners should never be passive receivers of teaching. Make it so that all children can negotiate their personal learning goals and have these recorded in Individual Education Plans. They can then help to organise termly or annual reviews and be more involved in making their personal plans work. Help children become ‘solutionfocused’ problem-solvers who can overcome difficulties through talk, and encourage them to write their own reports for parents, alongside those produced by adults.
Is the last point idealistic? I don’t think so. Some children may need a template to work from, but imagine the deepseated thinking! Feel the positive energy! Bask in the success! Pupils will take pride in demonstrating their personal progress parents as active, rather than passive learners. This way, the learning is done with, not to learners, while also encouraging a rich exchange of information between home and school.
Where pupils have a sense of self-responsibility, teachers are better able to manage inclusion, since all learners will possess the tools they need to play personally active roles. This engagement will in turn help to maintain order and discipline, and in the relaxed environment that results, might the teaching itself even become less stressful? With so many teachers leaving the profession, it needs to be.
Mastery for all
The 2016 PISA scores overseen by the OECD highlighted the UK’s stagnant performance in comparison with other countries, notably Singapore. Could improved joint planning within and between UK schools help develop more creative, personalised strategies for harder to teach pupils? The OECD attributed Canada’s high scores to what The Times summarised as “Personalised learning, strong results for poor children and effective assimilation of immigrants” – something the UK could learn from.
The rote learning associated with ‘mastery’ frequently features as a strategy pursued by countries that score highly in education performance. Stronger collegiate planning might lead to better understanding amongst UK teachers of how to enable all learners to achieve mastery. That said, we must be mindful that whilst accumulated facts are necessary tools for problem-solving, particularly in maths, rote learning must never replace the understanding from which it follows.
The latest PISA scores should prompt UK policy makers and schools to consider pursuing personalisation in the drive towards mastery for all – but it can only work if learners are at the wheel. The fundamental question that should serve as the starting point for any discussion on how to transform failure into success is, ‘whose learning is it?’
Personalisation hasthe power to
• Bring out the best in all learners • Create stronger links between teaching and learning • Improve school results.
About the author
Sylvia Edwards has taught in primary, secondary and special schools and is a trainer in SEND policy and practice; her book, The SENCO Survival Guide 2nd Edition, is available now, published by Routledge
