James Mannion on Learning to Learn and Teachers as Researchers – PP101

Our very special guest this week was Pivotal trainer, James Mannion. James qualified as a Teacher of Science in 2006. Since then he has developed expertise in a number of aspects of school life, including Learning to Learn, Evidence-Based Pedagogy; Teacher Research; Behaviour for Learning; Assessment for Learning; Gifted and Talented Education; Widening Participation; Personal, Social and Health and Citizenship Education (PSHE); and Work Related Learning. He has an MA in Person-Centred Education from Sussex University, and is currently completing a PhD around Learning to Learn at Cambridge. Learning to learn James’ research into Learning to Learn involves assessing the effectiveness of the programme his was involved with  implementing. The students who had been exposed to the programme were outperforming the year before by about 10% . The programme was effective for all students but particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The gap in Year 9 between more disadvantaged students and the rest of the cohort was narrowed from about 25% without Learning to Learn to 2% with access to the programme. James doesn’t see this is a surprise because the programme is based on a wide range of different evidence-based practices and each small gain from each individual practice is added together to create larger gains. At GCSE, the students involved achieved the best set of results the school had ever seen and with the smallest achievement gap in the city. How to implement Learning to learn Attempts to create reflective learners through teaching how to learn have been seen for several decades. Meta cognition and self-regulation are acknowledged to be some of the most important aspects of helping children to learn but James’ programme is the only one he knows about which has been applied to such a large group and with such consistency. You have to give the approaches serious time. Most people agree Learn to learn approaches have to be embedded in everything you do rather than taught discretely but not all teachers feel they have the time to give to teaching study skills – they don’t all buy into it. So, in fact, James believes that both are needed – a discrete, taught component which is delivered by teachers who are fully committed to it and the following 4 ingredients: * Oracy – paired talk, group talk, structured debate, public speaking * Self-regulation – project-based learning with high expectations and less support than you might think is necessary * Meta-cognition – daily input in learning the language of learning, focussing on the processes of learning, completing a learning journal * Transfer – explicitly promoting the transfer of skills learned in one subject to another and into life beyond the school gates What about Brain Gym and Learning Styles?… Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site NEW! Pivotal Education’s New App: The new app for Apple and Android devices contains everything you need to know about Pivotal as well as access to our podcasts, resources, videos and news: (Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.com/ http://www.freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/) What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected] * Subscribe to the podcast * Listen for free every week