February Session Reflections

SURFACE AND DEEP LEARNING
Marton and Saljo (1984) distinguished between two different approaches to learning, namely surface level and deep level learning.  Surface level learning shows a measurable increase in knowledge – memorising facts that can be reproduced, acquiring skills that can be retained and used as necessary. Deeper learning involves making sense or abstracting meaning through relating part of the subject matter to the real world. It involves interpreting knowledge and understanding reality in a different way.

Biggs and Tang (2007) highlighted that certain behaviours and attitudes amongst both students and teachers encourage students to adopt one of the two approaches.

The intention to merely achieve a basic level pass instead of a determination to do well amongst students leads to a surface level approach to learning. I have seen this in my own classroom where students are content to achieve a C grade in aspects of the exam and the phrase ‘so long as I pass I don’t mind’.  Teachers having similarly low expectations can exacerbate the problem of students aiming for a minimal pass.  A teacher’s behaviour can also reinforce this approach, when students are assessed for independent facts, on a personal level I could be doing this by setting vocabulary tests to test understanding and knowledge of individual lexical items. Additionally, when students are given insufficient time to engage in a task or activity a surface learning approach is adopted to enable them to produce answers, therefore the pace and timing of individual activities within a lesson may determine how effectively students learn.

Teachers who foster deeper learning amongst students have high expectations of their pupils. Their teaching builds upon prior knowledge and aims to elicit an active response from the students. Misconceptions are confronted and addressed within lessons, so that students are able to make sense of and re-interpret their knowledge and comprehend the world around them. A classroom where deeper learning is to take place must also have a positive working environment, to allow pupils to discuss their understanding, and challenge their perceptions of reality.

Considering my own practice I do believe that my teaching involves many of the aspects that encourage deeper learning, and aspects that foster deeper learning have been noted by other staff observing lessons. However there is still some way I have to go to improve my practice particularly with pupils in the lower school, so that I move away from activities and tasks that encourage a surface level response. That said this could prove to be a challenge due to the set-up of the GCSE examination, which promotes a rote memory approach to controlled assessment tasks and also a single lexical item test on foundation tier reading and listening papers. The use of higher level thinking skills from Bloom’s taxonomy could definitely enable me to move towards a classroom where deeper level learning consistently takes place, by moving away from re-call and identification activities and moving towards Bloom’s words such as analyse, synthesise and evaluate in all learning objectives.

 

 

 

Multiple Intelligences

Gardner put forward his theory of multiple intelligences in his work Frames of Minds (1983). He explains that traditionally intelligence was considered a single entity that could be trained to learn anything, his theory explained that this was not the case and that there exists a multitude of different intelligences, which are independent of one another. Gardner created a provisional list of seven intelligences. Gardner’s theory was widely accepted by educators, though questions were raised regarding the difficulty of teaching separate intelligences.  Gardner responded by explaining that the multiple intelligences theory allowed for seven different ways of teaching that introduce concepts in ways which students are most capable of learning it rather than distortion taking place.

Having undertaken a personal assessment of multiple intelligences, the results that I achieved I could have predicted. I scored highly on Linguistic and Logical-Mathematical intelligences, areas of intelligence that have been traditionally valued by schools and the education system. My Inter- and Intrapersonal intelligences also scored far more highly than my Bodily-Kinaesthetic and Musical intelligence.  Considering the types of intelligences I leant towards and how this impacts my preferences when learning I looked at and reflected upon the way I present information in my lessons. It is evident that my lessons are influenced by a linguistic and logical-mathematical approach, not just in the way I present information but also the type of activities I set both in the classroom and for homework. Considering this I set my year 9 students a menu of different homework tasks linking into our current topic to suit a number of the different intelligences.

Topic: school rules and modal verbs

People Smart- Creating a guide for other students explaining the topic

Logic Smart- Creating a poster explaining the formation of sentences using modal verbs

Image Smart- Create a poster of the school rules in your school

Word Smart – Create an article about school rules

Many of my top set students selected to create a poster, when asked why they had selected this option they bemoaned the fact that they never get to make posters anymore. Some students selected other options that I have included in class before (guides for others, grammar explanations). When the same task was given to students in other sets absolutely all students selected the poster option. Whilst again this could be for the reason that many students wanted to do a poster as it was something different, upon asking one student his response was it is easier than the other tasks.  This statement in terms of the linguistic concepts that students needed to apply to complete the task successfully is not true. To complete all of the tasks students needed knowledge of the topic vocabulary and an understanding of sentence structure in a modal construction. What was different was the way I was asking the students to present and explain this knowledge.

 This made me whether the education system’s preference for certain types of intelligence has lead students to reach the top sets as they learn in a style that is perhaps most commonly catered for in schools, and were information and tasks presented in a way that suits every style of learner would attainment increase across the school.

On reflection my intelligences impact significantly on the way I present material to my students and the type of tasks that I set them.

 

 

Emotional Aspect of Learning

Memories of learning languages evoke quite an extreme response. Whilst leading an EPS session for associate teachers I saw first-hand the negative attitudes towards MFL due to experiences they had had as students in schools. When asked which adjectives and emotions they linked to their language learning experience the vast majority were negative, with words such as ‘terrified’, ‘embarrassing’ and ‘confusing’ being recorded multiple times. Sylwester (1994) underlined the impact that emotions can have on learning, stating that ‘emotionally stressful school environments are counterproductive because they can reduce a student’s ability to learn’. Considering this statement and my classroom practice, it is vital that I create a classroom environment where students do not feel threatened or judged in anyway. Looking back at my own experience as a student in school and learning MFL, the moments that I have the most clear memory of is occasions when I felt stupid or embarrassed- despite these experiences making up only a fraction of my overwhelmingly positive experience of learning French and German.

 

This leads me onto consider the type of learner I was at school. Despite having negative experience of MFL and other subjects, my teachers had created a resilience and determination in me to succeed. Claxton’s theory of the 4 Rs underpins in his view what a successful learner is. Resilience is what I believe helped me whilst at school most, and is in my view having had many discussions with other staff something which we are failing to foster. Far too often students simply give up if they don’t get something correct on their first attempt- the education system today is one where failure is rarely experienced and so students are not taught from a young age to deal with the emotions of learning, and are ill-equipped to cope when they do come across concepts they struggle to initially grasp or searching questions that require deeper learning as thus far surface learning has been sufficient to pass exams and tests.

Claxton also highlights reflectiveness as an element of a successful learner. I believe that my practice and that of the schools has developed in the last two years with the use of purple pens and Gadsby techniques to encourage students to reflect on their learning. However, one element of Claxton’s ‘reflectiveness’ which I believe I do not explicitly include in my practice is ‘meta-learning’ that is understanding learning and yourself as a learner. This idea is perhaps discussed with sixth-form students more than in the lower school, especially in reference to vocabulary learning and preparation for controlled assessment, but I don’t think that many, if any, of my students would be able to explain their understanding of learning and themselves as learners.

Claxton also states that we need pupils with resourcefulness, who are ready and willing to learn in different ways and an element of reciprocity, so that students can learn alone and with others, developing collaborative skills, empathy and interdependence.