Wednesday 24 April 2013

Visible Learning, thoughts based on John Hattie

I came across John Hattie's book only last year, slightly late, but being hailed as the Holy Grail of teaching I thought it was definitely worth my time to read and attempt to digest.

On reading one of the introductory chapters, this section resonated with what I am hoping to achieve with the school.

"The remarkable feature of the evidence is that the biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers. When students become their own teachers they exhibit the self-regulatory attributes that seem most desirable for learners (self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-assessment, self-teaching).

With the approach of the school being so fluid and responsive to the children I believe that the teachers who work there will definitely need to be "learners of their own teaching".Working with the students to  create the best possible experiences to support their development. With this being an ever changing task the teacher will not have the opportunity to become complacent and know that they can just churn out the same lessons year on year, they will be kept on their toes. From my own experience of working this way in the Early Years, it is initially scary, but is also so much more interesting and exciting for both teacher and student, and ultimately led to much more enriching opportunities for both.

Also the students will be trusted to be "their own teachers", by this of course I don't mean they will be left on their own to get on with it, but they will encouraged to build on the independence skills, supported in the EYFS, throughout their schooling. They will be afforded the time to fully explore their ideas, to look critically at their discoveries and decide how to move forward.

I have decided that it would be a useful exercise for me to work through the findings of this book and think about how these ideas are incorporated into our proposed school, and if they are not think carefully about why not,

The book is structured around six factors:

  1. the child;
  2. the home;
  3. the school;
  4. the curricula
  5. the teacher
  6. the approaches to teaching
So I will follow this structure in my posts. I would love any thoughts and feedback on these musings as hopefully this will be an important learning experience for me and strengthen the school proposal.

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