“Learning happens when you think hard”
Professor Rob Coe
- What are the implications of this statement for your curriculum planning?
- How do you ensure that all staff have this mind-set when implementing your new curriculum?
Learning happens when you think hard. Seems a simple statement but it has huge implications for curriculum design and implementation. In order to maximise student learning we need to make thinking hard; simple. Not so.
Teachers intuitively make things as easy as possible for students, it is what we do. We break difficult concepts and content down into constituent parts. Think about your schemes of learning; there is a good chance that you have broken down the “content” into bitesize parts. Learning objectives drive (or at least should) your lessons, have another look at them, how easy have you made it for students?
It is common sense that if students can “get it” then as teachers we have succeeded. After all we have been schooled into thinking that lessons should be characterised by progress. At the end of a unit of work the teachers whose class achieves will be praised. It is common sense.
The problem is that this common sense approach to Curriculum design and teaching, as intuitive as it is, can be in conflict with what we know about learning.
If your Curriculum design has been approached with the mind-set of “how do we make this (strengthened/ amplified content) accessible”, it could be that you have set a curriculum that encourages “performance” at the expense of “thinking hard” and this could mean that learning is reduced. The opposite to what we want. Student performance and indeed our own performance on a given task gives the impression of learning, it makes us feel comfortable. But it turns out that current performance is a poor indicator of learning (and importantly retention of learning). This is counter-intuitive but cognitive psychology points strongly to the notion that if you do well on something quickly you haven’t actually learnt it very well.
Massed (sometimes referred to as blocked) practice (learning topic skill again and again, close together) gives the illusion of understanding. Psychologists refer to this as “fluency” and it is a dangerous thing to have in your curriculum design. What makes it worse is that massed practice followed by a test, can result in the illusion of learning, because students can do very well on a test at the end of what is effectively cramming. The problem retention of this is very poor indeed.
- Have you structured your curriculum in a massed way? Could this be creating students to have fluency but not understanding?
- What implications does this have for you monitoring teaching, learning and assessment?
When considering or reconsidering curriculum design we have to consider how we make learning more not less difficult. But of course we can’t make it too difficult, we are looking for that sweet spot between struggle and failure.
A possible way to approach this is to look at the work of Professor Robert Bjork who suggests introducing “Desirable Difficulties” These difficulties are grounded in research both in laboratory and classroom room settings. The Sutton Trust in their “What makes Great teaching”, along with Professor Hattie’s work, support the view that making learning difficult improves achievement.
Desirable difficulties
The topic is wide and complex and intriguing. In summary the idea of desirable difficulties is based upon the notions that:
- Performance is a poor indicator of learning.
- Cognitive ease instead of cognitive strain is created by massed learning/ practice and this is bad for learning.
- Forgetting is good for learning as long as we then attempt to recall (not relearn) – this strengthens retrieval memory.
- Space out learning of topics with intervals for forgetting
- Interleave or mix topics together instead of presenting them together
- Test students’ abilities to retrieve instead of re-teaching or showing them information again (huge implications for revision lessons)
1) The spacing effect
This is a “desirable difficulty” which is reasonably intuitive. Instead of block or mass practice, space learning out. This is obvious; if you teach a unit of work say over six weeks then test it straight away there is a good chance that students will do well (especially if they have crammed for the test). Retention of skills and knowledge will be high. However, leave it two years and get the students to do the test again, chances are they will do much worse. They will forget. This is why we do revision.
But when and how should we space learning? How can we set up the curriculum to take account of this to maximise learning and achievement? It certainly is not by blocking teaching and then spending March – May of Year 11 doing “revision”
The research and evidence is extensive on spaced vs massed (blocked) learning. John Hattie gives an effect size of 0.71 in favour of spaced against massed learning (0.71 is huge!)
Research on this is a century old. What is clear is that if we let some forgetting to happen before we review the learnt material the curve of forgetting starts to flat line:
The problem of course for teachers is to work out the optimal intervals of this “spacing”. The real problem is that it could be different for individual students. The upside is that in an imperfect world it is likely that regularly going over learned material will greatly improve long term retention and improve subsequent learning and achievement.
2) Interleaving
Linked to the spacing effect but totally counter intuitive is the practice of interleaving.
Interleaving is simply teaching “out of sequence” or at least sequence that we find “natural” to teach. When approaching a curriculum we tend to “BLOCK” or Mass” topics together. Eg; The Tudors, Shape and Space, Forces, etc. This can lead to cognitive ease, and thus creates the illusion of learning as students become “fluent”.
An alternative is interleaving. If you have to teach topics ABC blocked practice would look like this:
AAA – BBB – CCC
But with interleaving it might look like this:
ACB BCA CAB or ABC –ABC – ABC (it doesn’t matter how this is interleaved, just that you avoid teaching the same topic consecutively)
This may seem totally flawed and for many topics it would be too difficult: For example you wouldn’t want to interrupt the study of King Lear with A Street Car Named Desire, that would ruin the plot. But for many combinations of topics it could yield great results.
Interleaving makes learning hard, it creates thinking and as a result can greatly improve achievement. However, at first it will feel unnatural for both teacher and students.
Wide raging evidence across a wide variety of subjects shows the positive benefits of interleaving. As one example: In a recent study into Maths teaching in 2007 by Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor interleaving versus blocked teaching of calculating the volume of four geometric solids: Wedge, Spheriod, Spherical cone and half cone showed some incredible results. The blocked group did better on the test at the end of the teaching by 29% but in a subsequent test the interleaved group performed 49% better than the blocked group. The take-away message; for medium to long term retention interleaving is better than blocked practice.
Why does this work? No one really knows but cognitive psychologists suggest that our brains are “Practicing Retrieval”. In blocked teaching and learning the information is readily available but in interleaving we have to search for the information; this strengthens our ability to find this information on the long term.
3) The Testing effect
Which is the best way to administer and use testing in a curriculum?
Teach a unit then test? Or test then teach? Seems obvious that you have to teach then test. However, there is much evidence that giving students a test to look through and attempt before they attempt any learning primes them for the learning. It is worth incorporating this into your curriculum.
Another well researched and evidenced way to use testing is to use the test itself to build students abilities to retrieve information.
Instead of Teach, Teach, Teach, Test
Teach, Test, Test, Test
This does not mean one lesson then three lessons of testing, that would be daft. It means teach but then test three times with three different tests that are low stakes (no threat) and each test is slightly different either in format, wording or content. The key is that feedback should not occur between the tests; it interferes with retrieval and makes learning easier.
Testing like this improves students’ meta-cognition. They have to constantly think about their thinking. The benefits of this are that students are made to think hard.
These desirable difficulties have a huge bearing on curriculum design – They should be taken into consideration when designing a set of lessons over a year, key stage or over multiple key stages.
“ So it shall be written..
and so it shall be done”
“Presumption is the mother of all cock ups”
“The real curriculum is the achieved curriculum, the lived daily experience of young people in classrooms and that is always created by teachers, it is only teachers who create the real curriculum…”
Dylan Wiliam
- What are the implications for you as a leader of the curriculum?
What is the point of a Scheme of work? Learning?
How do we bridge the gap between the Intended, the Implemented and the Achieved curriculum?
We are looking at unprecedented change in terms of the curriculum. If not entirely going back to the drawing board we are certainly substantially redrafting our lessons. This is a daunting task, and we turn to the trusted scheme of work.
We study our specifications; carefully look at the AO’s, work out the rough timeline. We then fill in a Scheme of Work pro-forma, a grid, a set of predetermined columns. I have seen dozens of different SOW grids. In general they have these columns :
- Time
- Key question
- Learning objectives
- Suggested activities
- Outcomes
- A column every 6 weeks entitled “assessment”
Schemes of work give us (the teacher) a nice framework, they also give us the illusion of order and work. In many respects they are the first steps in distilling what is to be taught and how we might teach it. But that is it. Why? Because they are for us and not the students, and it is the students that will do the learning.
At best, schemes of learning need constant tweaking, at worst they gather dust (or the computer equivalent) and stay on the shelf or the “shared area” only guiding when we really are stuck. I’d take an educated guess that the “suggested” activities column is out of date the moment teaching starts.
Some years ago the phase Scheme of Learning entered the lexicon. No idea where it came from but it was good, it focused teacher’s planning on the learner. But it was just a change of wording. The trusted grids came out – suggested activities, time slots, pre- arranged teaching by numbers planning sheets.
Should you give up on the SOL, far from it, but they need changing and could vastly improved, so that they focus on the learning. SOW often force us to “get through the curriculum”, they flip our mind-set to being unified between our classes and the classes of our colleagues. This reinforces to students that they are “working” not learning. Often teachers teaching off the same SOW are at exactly the same point with their classes as their colleagues; how can this be? Of course you would expect them to be at a similar point, but exactly the same point? The exact same lesson? This can be across four classes or more! I’d suggest that if this is the case “work” or “performance” is occurring at the expense of “learning”. It might be desirable from a workload and organisational point of view that our classes are at exactly the same “point” but it certainly indicates that we have put the cart before the horse.
The changes to the curriculum afford us the opportunity to rethink the SOW/ SOL planning.
Considering what we know about how students learn, and how teachers can influence this below are some suggestions for revamping SOL:
Suggestion 1 – THE BIG FOUR
Meta cognition, Peer to Peer tuition, Cooperative Learning & AFL
We know what has an impact on student learning and achievement – that should be in our planning! The BIG FOUR need to be explicit if teachers are going to fully embed them into practice. For example where are you expecting and encouraging meta-cognition? Rather than “suggested activities” change the language to “BIG FOUR FOCUS”
Suggestion 2 – RATIONALE
“Curriculum is designed backwards but delivered forwards”
Have a clear rationale for your curriculum; what is it that you want students to be able to do? Share this with staff and students.
Suggestion 3 – THE TESTING EFFECT
Have you considered the “Testing effect” in your curriculum design? It is counter-intuitive but has been proven to have a larger impact on achievement than traditional practices.
Suggestion 4 – THE SOVEREIGNTY OF QUESTIONING
The art of teaching is asking questions
It is all about the questions you ask. Make the questions create thinking! Creating highly effective questions take time, be aware of this when planning and evaluating your SOL. Show your completed SOL to people outside of your team, like proof reading you cannot check your own questions. If the question in your SOL are not clear, if there is any movement teachers will interpret what you want.
Suggestion 5 – CO- CONSTRUCTION
A SOL is for the students, not you. So co-construct it with them. Show them what they have to achieve and spend time debating and planning with them how they are going to achieve this: the questions they will ask the things they will have to do. It might take time out of the “Curriculum” content but the pay back will be more primed students.
Suggestion 6 – SHARE WITH STUDENTS
No SOW/SOL should be planned unless it is appropriate to show students and for them to use it. The amount of SOW that I have seen that use language which means almost nothing to a 14 year old. They are often badly thought out because they are biased towards teachers planning rather than students learning.
Suggestion 7 – THE THINKING MAP
Linked to “co-construction and “share with the students” is the idea of a “Thinking Map” :
This “Thinking Map” is there to be shared with students, and constantly referred to. The questions do not have time limits on them. Of course you as the teacher will know that over the course of a time period they all need to be answered. The reason there are no time limits is because with one class/ student it will differ; and that’s okay.
The key is there to remind the teacher what aspect of teaching and learning you are focusing on and to share this with students. They know in advance for example that when they are answering the question “Why did Parliament win?, they will do this in groups. They can see that there are varied opportunities to “THINK” in different ways.
The stop and slow signs are reminders to “THINK” slow down. Are you on course?By giving this “Thinking Map” you are developing students’ abilities to think “Meta-Cognitively”.
Curriculum design is Pedagogy – Consider the “REAL” Curriculum.
It is clear that we should approach curriculum design with the same focus and reflection as we do individual lessons. The real curriculum is the sum parts of the learning that happens in classroom day by day. Except that if you just write the curriculum and set tests there is a real likelihood that what you intended to happen will not translate into what really happens. We have a great opportunity here to design a truly Thinking Curriculum which will inspire and teach the students of the future
