The first step is recognising that Learning is a rare focus in classrooms and schools. After four decades of studying classroom learning issues using hidden microphones and video cameras, Nuthall’s final book was given the title “The Hidden Lives of Learners” (Nuthall, 2007). This reflects the dominant pattern in classrooms since they were invented 5,000 years ago: teacher initiates, students responds, teacher evaluates (Cazden, 2001). Does this accord with your experience? Or as professional educators are you spending your day in classrooms talking about learning, in staff-rooms talking about learning, in meetings talking about learning? This may seem like dreamland but has become a reality in some schools I know.
- Try an auditory survey of a classroom: Is the word “learning” heard?
- Try a visual survey: Is it seen?
- Do the same at school level.
- Ask children to draw a classroom and then examine any representation of learning in their offer. Discuss the results with colleagues.
My aim here is not to fall into the culture of blaming teachers, but to identify a key feature of the classroom culture. Jerome Bruner helped us regain our control of the notion of culture - humans create culture by the stories they tell. So we change the culture by changing the language and the stories. But this is most effective when it explicitly addresses the aspects of dominant culture that are getting in the way. So it helps to name what causes the problem - I identify the themes which take up the space in which we would wish to give to a focus on learning as “space invaders” since they hi-jack the space we would wish to give. What candidates come to mind? Here are three.
Teaching
Phrases such as “teaching and learning policies” or “teaching and learning strategies” have been used more and more. But close examination suggests that they might better read “teaching and teaching”, since the real attention given to learning is minimal.
And the phrase is also often said as “teaching’n’learning” rather like “fish’n’chips” — the “and” is almost missed, whereas it represents both the challenge and achievement of the profession. The links between teaching and learning are complex and multiple. High-level learning doesn’t come from us teaching our socks off.
Try this provocative conversation starter with colleagues: “which do you think happens more often - teaching without learning or learning without teaching?” This can stimulate rich dialogue and highlight dominant dynamics of classroom contexts together with contrasting dynamics in non-classroom contexts.
Survey pupils’ views of learning in school.