Science of Learning Week 5

In the final week of the Science of Learning course with Future Learn we looked at a couple of new aspects of learning, then reviewed summaries of our learning, before finally looking at how we as teachers can get more involved in research.

We started the week looking at the plasticity of the brain, meaning that there is no set limit to our intelligence. Clearly there are links to the work of Dweck on growth mindset. In terms of the neurosciences, the size of the hippocampus can be increased through learning experiences. This leads to the idea that "learning begets learning".

This led on to a discussion about resilience, and in particular, that students' beliefs about learning can have an impact on how they respond to challenges. Believing that ability is plastic and can be improved through effort (as opposed to it being fixed) increases resilience, which helps students learn more. It is a virtuous cycle. By believing in a growth mindset, it is believed that students are able to engage their reward system through challenges.

For teachers, we need to understand the plasticity of the brain so that we do not place "restrictions" on what certain students are learning. But we also need to talk about it with our students, to help them understand the importance of hard work in developing ability.

Next we reviewed the EBC model, and were once again reminded that it is not a model for a three stage lesson plan, but rather all should be happening at various stages. We are encouraged to think about how engagement, building of knowledge and consolidation of knowledge fit in our teaching, and to think actively about these when planning lessons.

We were then given a very handy summary of all the key points, and asked to reflect on our own teaching by using the concepts to justify our teaching approach, and justify new things we will try in the classroom.

The last part of the course was aimed at further engaging in research. We were given links to Best Evidence In Brief (https://the-iee.org.uk/what-we-do/best-evidence-in-brief/), the Learning Scientists (http://www.learningscientists.org/), Tom Sherrington's blog (https://teacherhead.com/2018/03/19/evidence-informed-ideas-every-teacher-should-know-about/), ResearchED (https://researched.org.uk/du), Impact (https://impact.chartered.college/) and the EEF (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/school-themes/).

We were asked to think about the last time we changed our practice in light of evidence/research, and why we did it. We were then guided towards the EEF projects (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/) to think about which ones we might like to get involved in, either individually, as a school, or actually through the EEF.

Then we were given some guidance on doing an action research project, with the following steps:

1. Choose a question or focus
2. What research is already out there?
3. Plan how you will carry it out
4. Implement change
5. Collect the data
6. Analyse the data
7. Reflect on your findings
8. Decide who else will benefit from knowing about your results and share

We were then asked to design a research question we might like to explore, and using the template given, come up with an action plan.

Finally we reflected on our learning, thinking to how our definition of "What is learning" had changed over the course, and taking the post course audit to compare with the pre course audit.

My Reflections on Week 5
The idea of plasticity of the brain is clearly important, and helping students develop a growth mindset is something we should be doing in the classroom, and the wider school community.  However this does not mean just put up posters about Growth Mindset, but rather work with students to see that if they put in the effort then they will improve, and also to be very careful about the language we use when talking about ability/achievement/attainment.

Reflecting on the EBC model is a useful strategy, and I have identified the need to engage my classes a little more. By this I do not mean make the activities fun, but make sure their brains are engaged for learning. Yes, this includes creating some interest from them, but also teaching them about how they learn, and creating the right environment for that to happen. I am going to try to reflect on the EBC model as I plan lessons over the next few weeks, and we shall see how it goes.

In terms of action research, I am not sure now is the right time to jump into this right now, both for personal reasons (young baby at home doesn’t leave much time) and professional (there are changes happening at school that I need to work on). But the idea of measuring the impact is a part of our collaborative project system at school, and I am pushing staff to think about how they can do this. As I am in a project looking at CLT, we are also discussing ways we can measure how much impact the changes we are making are having. Not a full action research, but a step in the right direction.

I have really enjoyed this course, and feel that there was a healthy balance of ideas I knew about and those I didn't to make it of interest to me. I will be looking back over these notes over the next year or so to refresh my memory of what we looked at, and see how I can incorporate some of the bits into my teaching.