Learning about Learning

I am trying to find out if anyone in East Lothian has experience of using Youth Achievement Awards.   These are awards run by Youth Scotland and offer  “an innovative approach to recognising and accrediting young people’s achievement within schools colleges and wider communities”.

If you are reading this and you have any experience of these or know of anyone, either in schools or youth work who is already delivering(or planning to) these in East Lothian I’d be keen to have a chat so please get in touch.

I was lucky enough to take part in something called CPD challenge run by Con Morris  at LTS on Thursday of last week.  It was an opportunity to try out software applications to help improve the way we work. 

Amongst others I had a go at using Prezi, a dynamic, non-linear presentation tool.  Fantastic!  My first attempt is here, don’t laugh…  I also had a go using CPD Reflect which is essentially a reflective CPD journal but has much more to it than I can possibly describe here.  Check it out on the link, it could prove to be very useful to schools, in making the PRD process more reflective. 

I also made a pledge to start writing my blog again, which is good timing as I am returning to school in August after a year at LTS working in the assessment and recognising achievement teams.  I can’t wait to get my teeth into school life again, although I have had a really interesting year and have learned a great deal during my time with LTS.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend Clackmannanshire Council’s Curriculum for Excellence conference in Stirling yesterday.   Guest speaker was Philip Cam from University of New South Wales.  He talked about philosophical inquiry as a basis for developing communities of inquiry in schools(from a very young age). 

One of the workshops I attended was from Jeremy Morris of Monifieth High School.  He was talking about how they, as a school, had begun to get to grips with CfE.  In short, they had organised their S1 programme around different ‘themes’ which ran for a few weeks at a time.  The ‘core’ was individual, local, national, and global Citizenship and each of the themes related to some aspect of the core(eg Africa, Languages fortnight, health promotion, “Eurofieth”-see website, etc).   Departments working together to deliver agreed outcomes over the course of the school session.

What struck me most was not the ‘what’, the content, but how they had gone about the process.  They had a very large ‘year planner’ prominently displayed in the staffroom (a focal point for much discussion by all accounts!), which could be modified and added to, to reflect changing or shifting priorities, as well as taking all principal teachers out of school for a planning session, to look at the experiences and outcomes and discuss how together they could create a coherent programme.

What came through above all else was that they had engaged staff across the school in professional discussion, dialogue and negotiation which had gone a long way to breaking the subject barriers that can be all too evident in secondary schools.  They had also taken a managable ‘chunk’ of the school timetable to innovate with and will learn from this for future years as CfE develops in the school.  I thought it a very interesting example of a school beginning to experiment with possible models of CfE within its own context, but also in such a manner as to make the ’risks’ managable. 

inspirED is a collection of news and stories to inspire anyone interested in innovative approaches to teaching and learning.  There are some great articles, links and ideas.  Well worth a look.

I was looking back at some of the old posts I had written and came across one I wrote not long after I had started blogging entitled Lies, damned lies, and statistics.  I was discussing the use of MidYis testing in our school and as I now am much more focused upon understanding the uses of assessment, it was interesting to read my thoughts and try an gauge my thinking process at that point.   

The main point that I have begun to explore further is that of the uses made of such testing at an individual level.  Standardised tests have (varying degrees of) predictive validity when used at a cohort level, ie when making predictions about achievement for year groups, but at the individual level there is too great a degree of variability to predict anything about a particular student’s future achievement. 

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter and is where schools who use tests such as MidYis and CAT face their greatest challenge.  How can we make best use of such instruments of assessment? How can we come to a fuller understanding of their limitations, as well as their uses, when using them to inform our practice and judgements about youngsters?  

Teacher and students expectations and beliefs about themselves as learners, as research has shown, are a significant factor in the achievement of youngsters, so using the information in an approriate way is absolutely vital.  What ways can schools use these summative assessments in a formative way to inform planning and practice? Are the assessments themselves key, or is it the use to which we put them? 

Generating assessment information using web 2.0 tools.  This will be old hat to some readers but it is interesting that the ideas are appearing on SQA website amongst others.  If you already use web 2.0 technologoies in working with young people it gives some ideas about using these tools as part of ongoing assessment.  Worth a look.  There is also a full paper, published in April of this year which also makes interesting reading.

I am interested in how the ‘bottom up’ process espoused in the CfE documents is becoming a reality.  I wonder what changes individuals have made to their own practice.  One aspect that CfE focuses on is the change in emphasis from content to methodologies based upon formative assessment to improve outcomes for young people.

Do you think the changes that are happening are at the methodology level, ie people’s thinking about learning and teaching(beyond the inevitable early adopters group), or at a more superficial level(by the wider teaching community) in terms of the way things are organised and the content that is ‘delivered’?

It is an interesting question, because I think that we are, potentially, at a point of such monumental change in Scottish Education that we might end up with a big shuffle in the way things are organised, but not impact upon the deeper levels of thinking about learning. 

This may also be compounded if the NQ consultation returns a framework for qualifications that basically reflects what we already have without any move towards a recognition of teacher judgement that is being promoted in BtC3 as a necessary condition of CfE. 

Any thoughts?

I have taken the opportunity to be a part of the East Lothian secondary learning team with the hope of improving my classroom practice and learning from others.

First up, improving my learning ’success criteria’ in PSE lessons.  How will youngsters know when they have successfully achieved the aims of each lesson?  The idea is to generate clear success criteria for the main points of the lesson and share these at the beginning and review.

Summary of my notes from the event on Jan 17th

Keynote : Sir Robert Smith(Scottish and Southern Energy) - Smith Group

Self appointed, business and entrepreneurs group.  Interested in supporting MCMC youngsters.

Only Turkey and Mexico have worse stats  for OECD countries for NEET 16-19 year olds (35000)

Key to have college/school/business triangle of provision.

Smith group offering work experience placements, being rolled out across Scotland this year.

Using federation of small businesses, providing vocational ed opportunities and work experience for youngsters.

Keynote: Graham Hollowell

NEET Strategy Coventry & Warwickshire

Government strategy

Careful tracking

Range of voc ed programmes

Personalised support & guidance for youngsters

September Guarantee is a guarantee that every youngster who applies for a learning opportunity will get one

Early identification / indicators

Workshop 2

Glasgow’s vocational education.

All under one central group including training for work, apprenticeships etc

Special Programme for looked aftger youngsters : EVIP

Programmes include recognised qualifications like lifeguarding and CITB

Referrer (school) will decide who goes on the course, not the college or central agency group

In S4 they have an employability day, with a mock interview from an employer

Co-ordinated support plan is in place for every young person taking part in vocational courses

Opportunities:

EVIP(enhanced vocational inclusion programme)

YOUTH START

SOCCER SUCCESS

WINTER LEAVERS

Development of alternative curricula

EVIP (full-time programme)

Vocational coach

CSP

Intensive employability input

Development and recognition of soft skills(Step it up) youthlink website : (it is an evaluation tool)

Transition planning and support

Funded (until end of financial year)by external funding from Scottish Government, european funding etc

Glasgow City Council have one round of ‘corporate’ recruitment for which every youngster who is on a vocational programme is guaranteed a first level  interview and prepare for this with their vocational coach

The loss of the Community Liaison Team Active Steps outdoor education provision from our ALPs programme due to funding not being renewed will be a major blow.  Sally Harris and her team have done a fantastic job working with our youngsters in the past year and it will mean a re-think of our programme at the school.  I know that the team have done similar, excellent work throughout East Lothian in the past few years with many different groups of young people and their provision will be sorely missed.  A great shame.