How to defeat the educational polycrisis, part deux: The weekly review

All schools should be doing this. Prove me wrong!

Three pertinent previous posts

• Learning to be

• Confronting the educational polycrisis

• An easy win that would immediately make school more enjoyable and meaningful

  
  

Scroll down for announcements:

• Get free early access to 72 learner effectiveness strategies (mainstream educators only, for now - but watch this space!)

• Join our low-cost October ‘unconference’ in Manchester

• Come say hello at Ed Fest!

  
  

OK, let’s do this…

How to alleviate the educational polycrisis, part deux: The weekly review

1. The magic wand

Over the last 15 years or so, I've asked the following question to many thousands of teachers and school leaders around the world:

If you could wave a magic wand, what's the one thing you would change about your students to make them more effective learners?

As you might imagine when you ask the same question to thousands of people, you get a range of responses. But almost without exception, the answer is a variation on a theme:

‘I wish they were more independent’‘

I wish they were more proactive’‘

I wish they were more resilient’

‘I wish they had more self-belief’

‘I wish they were more curious’

‘I wish they were more willing to meet me halfway’

‘I wish they were more willing to take risks’

‘I wish they weren't so afraid of failure’

It's understandable why so many teachers express such wishes. Teaching students who struggle to manage their own learning can be demanding and exhausting.

But this leads us to an intriguing question - one that has animated and driven much of my work for the last 15 years: What if we don't need a magic wand? What if we can teach this stuff?

Hold that thought…

2. The set-up

I recently wrote about what I describe as the educational polycrisis - a set of entangled, interlocking quandaries that we face in the education system currently. In the post, I named seven:

1. The attendance crisis

2. The mental health crisis

3. The behaviour crisis

4. Widespread misogyny and sexual abuse

5. The teacher recruitment crisis

6. The teacher retention crisis

7. The crisis of educational inequity

   
   

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but the point is made: several things, it would appear, are rotten in the state of Denmark. Actually, that’s not true, Denmark seems kinda groovy. It’s mainly the English education system I’m referring to here, although this picture will be familiar in many countries around the world.

3. The intriguing question

Let's return now to our intriguing question: What if we could teach children and young people how to become more effective learners?

Doing so would not eradicate the educational polycrisis from the face of the earth. But there is good reason to believe that each of the problems listed above would be significantly alleviated. If students learned more effectively, they would feel more confident and capable, enhancing their mental health and wellbeing. Increased engagement and wellbeing would naturally improve attendance. Teachers would experience greater satisfaction, reducing turnover. Academic standards would rise, particularly benefiting disadvantaged learners who have the most to gain.

Here we can see a strong rationale for investing in promoting learning learner effectiveness. If we can figure out how to help children and young people become more effective learners at scale, this would have a significant impact on their academic learning outcomes, their wellbeing and their ability to succeed in life beyond the school gates.

4. The Learner Effectiveness Programme

I’ve been ploughing the furrow of learner effectiveness for the last 15 years. I won’t chart the history of my work in this area here - if you’re interested, I wrote a book about it with Kate McAllister which you can read here. However, I would very much like to tell you about a super exciting project I’ve been working on recently.

Over the last 18 months or so, Kate and I have been working with Welsh government on a national initiative to boost learner effectiveness at age 14 to 16. Working with a steering group of 17 teachers and school leaders from a range of provisions, including mainstream schools, pupil referral units and special schools, we’ve created two sets of resources which we refer to collectively as The Learner Effectiveness Programme.

At the heart of this initiative is a model of learner effectiveness known as the ‘Life Wheel’, which has six domains:

I wrote about this in two posts earlier this year:

Learner effectiveness is multidimensional

How to get better at learning stuff

The two sets of resources we’ve developed are as follows:

As you can see, common to both sets of resources is a set of 72 strategies for boosting learner effectiveness - 12 in each of the six domains of the Life Wheel. There are 36 in year 1 and 36 in year 2 of the programme. Here are the 36 strategies for Year 1:

There are many ways in which these strategies might be used in schools - many ‘containers’, if you like:

• Tutor time

• Health and well-being lessons

• PSHE lessons

• Subject learning

• Standalone 'weekly review' lessons

• Small-group interventions

• Drop-down days

• Parents and carer cafes

• As a coaching framework

I recently shared these resources with secondary school leaders throughout Wales in a series of 12 leadership events, through a keynote and 2h workshop. I knew the steering group schools liked what we had created, but I expected to meet some resistance when sharing them with the country at large. But I needn’t have worried - the response has been overwhelmingly positive. For example, in the workshop evaluation, we asked delegates ‘How useful do you think the Life Wheel model might be for improving student learning and personal development?’ Their responses were as follows:

There is also emerging data of the impact the Learner Effectiveness Programme is already having in schools in Wales. Check out this short clip from a recent feedback session with steering group schools who have been trialling these resources throughout the last year:

In this clip, we can glimpse the potential impact this initiative could have on student learning outcomes. If they are no longer disrupting several lessons across a school week, this not only benefits the boys themselves - it also means that many of their peers are no longer having their learning disrupted. It means their teachers are no longer having to set detentions and chase them up after class, reducing workload and stress.

And this is just one strategy being used with three boys. Over a period of 2 years, all students in Years 10 and 11 will learn 72 strategies. Not every strategy will work for every student. That’s the thing with self-regulation - the key is in the word ‘self’, and finding out what works for you. But some of them will work for every student. Over time, the cumulative impact of this initiative on student outcomes - academic and otherwise - could be absolutely massive.

5. The weekly review

I recently wrote a post suggesting an idea for a weekly Making Sense lesson, which I think would go a long way to alleviating the polycrisis by acting as a kind of release valve and helping children and young people find meaning in their education beyond ‘learning a bunch of stuff because it’s part of Assessment Objective 1.’

To conclude this post, I’ll briefly outline my second suggestion for how to knock the polycrisis on the head. In the list of potential ‘containers’ above, one stands out as the most promising I think: the standalone 'weekly review' lesson.

The idea is probably best illustrated by sharing an example lesson plan.

Lesson focus: Build better habits

Domain: Behavioural

Year group: Year 11

Time: 60 min

Resources:

• Plan for habit change slides

• Habit builder worksheet

• Whiteboards and pens

Objectives:

• Explore how habits form

• Use the 6 levers of habit change to improve one learning habit

Lesson outline:

1. Look back (15 min)

   1. Reflect on last week’s strategy (e.g. Manage distractions)

   2. Think–pair–share:

      1. When were you most distracted last week?

      2. Did you try any strategies to stay focused?

      3. What worked? What didn’t?

   3. Whole-class discussion: Gather ideas for reducing distractions

      
      

2. New strategy input (25 min)

   1. Use slides to introduce the Plan for habit change strategy

   2. Explore each habit change lever (make it Obvious, Easy, Attractive, Satisfying, Social, Timely)

   3. Teacher models a worked example (e.g. building a revision habit)

      
      

3. Plan for action (20 min)

   1. Learners complete the Build new habits worksheet

   2. Choose one habit and apply at least 3 levers of habit change

   3. Pair up with an accountability partner to share and refine plans

The following week, they’ll review their attempts to build a new habit and try out a new strategy. And so on throughout the year.

I’ve researched metacognition and self-regulation in great depth over the last 15 years, and as far as I can discern, it boils down to two things: monitoring and control. Checking in and taking action. Noticing patterns in your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and trying out new (or consolidating familiar) strategies to make your life marginally better. Over time, these marginal gains stack up and interact, and can have a huge overall impact on the quality of your life.

As I mentioned above, the Welsh project has initially focused on 14 to 16 year-olds. This is really to ensure that the first Curriculum for Wales cohorts benefit from all the innovative thinking that has gone into this national reform effort - so that we hit the ground running, so to speak (the first cohort enters Year 10 in September this year).

But clearly, these ideas have utility beyond the 14-16 age range. Kate and I are currently undertaking the next wave of this work, to adapt these ideas for other age ranges and school contexts - and ultimately for people beyond the school system also.

Which brings me neatly to the first of this week’s announcements...

Announcements

1. Get free access to 72 learner effectiveness strategies

Kate and I are currently seeking to assemble an international steering group of educators to help us adapt the Learner Effectiveness Programme for a range of contexts, including primary schools and international schools, and we’re looking for volunteers.

We would invite you to review the resources at three key points over the next few months, and to join three 1h Zoom calls to share your thoughts. If possible, it would also be great if you could trial these resources with learners and capture their thoughts also.

We’re looking to work with mainstream educators initially - teachers, school leaders and support staff working in schools (primary, secondary, state, independent, international, special schools, pupil referral units…) We plan to repeat this process down the line to adapt these resources for alternative educators, home educators, unschoolers, world schoolers and so on. But we're taking this one step at a time.

We can’t guarantee that everyone who expresses an interest will be invited to join the steering group - we have limited places, and we need to make sure we have a balance of different perspectives. But if this sounds like something you’d be interested in – or if anyone springs to mind whose perspective you feel would be valuable - drop me a line at drjamesmannion.com/contact.

2. Join our low-cost October ‘unconference’ in Manchester

Tickets are selling fast for our Manchester ‘unconference’ on Saturday October 11th. To ensure a balance of voices, there’s a quota of 25 spaces available in each of the following categories:

• School leaders

• Classroom teachers

• Alternative educators

• Educationalists (Teacher trainers, policymakers, consultants, authors, academics, activists...)

• Parents/carers

• Children and young people

Early bird tickets are £25 each, and this includes lunch and refreshments - which is an absolute bargain I’m sure you’ll agree!

Get your ticket here - and you can find out more about the thinking behind this event here.

3. Come say hello at Ed Fest!

I’m speaking at Ed Fest! Well, perhaps that’s overstating the case. I’m appearing on a panel about community-led school change at Ed Fest. There’s a stellar line-up - I’ll be appearing alongside Shane Leaning, Sam Crome, Sam Gibbs, and Dr Kathryn Taylor. Come and see what we have to say about this most fascinating of topics!

I’ll be around all day on the Friday so if you’re going to Ed Fest, come say hello! You can drop me a line here: drjamesmannion.com/contact.

Until the next time…