A School for the 21st Century: Researching the impact of changing teacher practice on student learning

Year 1:  Student and teacher perceptions of 100 minute lessons

Our survey work with students and teachers, and the conversations with teachers that followed the presentation of the results, pointed to longer traditional learning periods as operating within an improvement paradigm of school change. In such a paradigm present structures and ways of working are made better, but underpinning assumptions may not be examined closely. This timetable model may indeed lead to considerable improvements in relatively traditional teaching and learning activities and responsibilities—without necessarily questioning either the nature of learning or the nature of the outcomes sought. Such improvement per se will not necessarily help students to meet the ongoing learning challenges they will doubtless face in the 21st century.

By contrast within a transformative paradigm all practices and assumptions need to be revisited as the school embarks on a journey to think differently about learning and the ways we organise it. The first year findings gave indications that transformative change could be more likely to happen if teachers’ were supported to rethink and reflect on their experiences when planning and leading three-day learning episodes. However the survey results and associated conversations also suggested that some staff at Alfriston College, notwithstanding the clear benefits they could identify for three-day episodes, harboured suspicions that these are really a pleasant diversion from the main learning agenda, which remained firmly traditional. Accordingly other types of evidence of learning, and indeed the legitimacy of more informal or distributed learning as valued school learning, became the focus for in the second year of the project.

Year 2: The learning that is occurring in 3 day episodes

Our efforts in the second year of the project were directed towards refocusing what was noticed, when and why. We wanted to know if teachers could be assisted to notice, and then value, the different types of outcomes that can be achieved in three days but not so easily in traditional lessons. Early in the second year a core group of about 15 teachers voluntarily participated in a one day workshop to construct a set of design and we tracked subsequent introduction and use of these across two full rounds of learning episodes. The teachers involved in the research saw their modeling of learning as making an important contribution to the outcomes students can achieve. Working with the design principles, they took on themselves the responsibilities to:

• develop a convincing rationale for the planned learning – one they could “sell” to students to heighten anticipation well in advance of the actual learning
• design episodes with a carefully structured framework that enabled students to take as much ownership of their learning as possible
• display the courage to take risks and learn with the students, and from peers with whom they might not usually work
• visibly reflect on their own learning 
• support and encourage ongoing demonstrations of learning beyond the three-day time-frame.

• specific demonstrations of knowledge and skills in use, often in contexts related to life beyond school
• strengthening of specific Independent Learner Qualities, accompanied by reflective awareness of these changes
• willingness to take ownership of learning and to adopt the teaching role when appropriate
• the desire to continue to demonstrate the new learning beyond the needs dictated by the time-in-school setting,
• improved relationships with both teachers and peers, often attributed to improvements in self esteem.

These teachers emphasised relationships. The impact of these on learning was threaded right through the focus group conversations that concluded the research activities, as were references to scaffolding and modelling learning, and the powerful impact of ownership and authenticity of learning tasks. Our research suggests that it takes a willingness to take risks, and the space and time needed to do so, as well as carefully structured supports for reflection on what has been achieved, for teachers to be able to rethink their beliefs about the why, how and what of teaching and learning. While some teachers were ready to shift to a more transformative thinking frame, and were in the process of doing so at least some of the time, by the end of the project some still saw assessment through a more traditionally acquisitive frame of reference.