Full on Learning E-Book

Zoe Elder

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The start point is your end-point: the learner. What kind of learner do you want to develop? What are the characteristics of an effective learner and how can we teach to support the development of these characteristics? If future employers are looking for people who can solve problems, think creatively and be innovative, what can we do, as part of our current curriculum provision to enable students to 'deliberately' practise this skill? If being intelligent is not, in fact, measured by your IQ score, and has far more to do with the ability to apply higher order thinking to unfamiliar contexts and create new solutions to existing problems, then what learning challenges can we design for Year 9 on a sunny Wednesday afternoon that will allow them to develop the emotional and intellectual resilience required to be able to do this? Full On Learning offers a range of tried & tested practical suggestions and ideas to construct the ideal conditions for the characteristics of effective learners to flourish. Shortlisted for the Education Resources Awards 2013, Secondary Resource - non ICT category and Educational Book Award category.

Leseprobe

To Lucy, Mum, Dad and Nev

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is a (deep) breath in between the thousands of conversations about learning I have enjoyed during my career. Being aware of how much just one person can influence the thinking of another means that it is impossible for me to thank the many voices that resonate in this book. But rest assured, you’re all in here. All of you. Thank you.

For over fifteen years, I have been fortunate to learn alongside pupils, teachers, advisers and schools around the country. Every shard of insight, challenge and reflection they have gifted me has inspired and shaped my thoughts to this point in time. I know that more will follow tomorrow and I thank you for these.

Producing a book like this requires every one of the dispositions we seek to draw out in every one of our learners; collaboration and discernment, questioning, curiosity, reflection, passion, resilience and creativity, to name a few. I have experienced just such a collection of dispositions in the unfailing support and encouragement of both Ian Gilbert, the founder of Independent Thinking and Caroline Lenton at Crown House Publishing. They enabled me to find the courage to put down on paper what has been in my head for so long. Thanks also to Tom Fitton, who has skilfully brought the design ideas in this book to life. You’ve been brilliant, ‘Team Full On’.

It was suggested in the early stages of writing this book that I may have ‘used all the words up’, so a long time ago, early one very cold Sunday morning, I squirrelled a small handful of words safely away for one really important voice (who also, fittingly, gets the last word) …

Thank you, Lucy.

FOREWORD

‘Oooh look! A bandwagon. Come on everybody …!’

I’m paraphrasing (a bit) but this sums up a great deal of in-service teacher training that takes place not only in the UK but also around the world. On one hand, it proves that good teachers are, despite being very busy people, always on the lookout for ways of being better at what they do. Let’s not knock that. Teachers always seem to be on the receiving end of the blame for society’s ills yet most are hard working, committed people who are genuinely trying to do the right thing for the young people in their care. In the UK, if a child isn’t learning the teacher at least shoulders some of the responsibility and tries to do something about it. This may sound obvious in these days of accountability and progress but it has not always been the case and it certainly isn’t always so elsewhere in the world. ‘Get yourself a tutor’ seems to be the main response from teachers in my part of the world currently, ‘It’s not my fault they didn’t learn what I taught them.’

And with such a sense of accountability comes a preparedness to countenance new ideas if they think it will help.

The downside is that this drive to be better, when it is matched with the incessant busy-ness of school life, means teachers often tend to be on the lookout for a quick fix. A silver bullet. A magic pill they can pick up and hand out to all on the way into the lesson for instant results. All of which means we leap on the next snake oil-selling, pill-toting, bullet-vending fixer that comes our way marketing some new ‘system’ that will answer our floor target prayers.

But what happens when, after a lesson spent drinking water, doing Brain Gym, using Prezi and only learning if the teaching matches our ‘preferred learning modality’ (‘I’m a kinesthetic learner so can I mime the answers to this worksheet, Miss?’), you suddenly realise that the same old children who weren’t learning before aren’t learning now?

Of course, the flip side of easy-to-administer panaceas that never quite deliver all that they promise is the desiccated academic approach to teacher improvement that is held together by such opaque language as to make it effectively useless to the busy teacher who just wants to know how to be better. How many of us have sat through a presentation from a university-based academic that was as far from real classroom life as Stockhausen is from Justin Bieber?1 (Renowned physicist Richard Feynman tells the story of being fazed by a paper on sociology that contained such lines as, ‘The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels’ until he realised it meant, ‘People read’. Interestingly there is research from Princeton University that shows that while undergraduates tend to write in a convoluted manner to appear more intelligent to the reader, this actually has the opposite effect. You can read all about this in a paper entitled, ironically, Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity.)

Somewhere between these two positions you will also find the heated debate about the very nature of teaching itself and whether it is a) a trade; b) an art; c) a science; or d) all of the above. Any country facing a teacher shortage but not a children shortage will do its best to get adults in front of young people as quickly as possible, which paves the way for a more ‘on the job’ approach to teacher training. In other words, many teachers will be qualified just a couple of years after your child has left school2.

Is teaching, then, a set of skills you learn, like being a plumber or a spot welder? Is it an art, something you are born to be, like becoming a dancer or a very good plumber? Or is it a science, akin to being a doctor, something for which you need years of training combining hands-on practice with sound academic theory and not killing anyone.

The answer, if we are honest, is all three. Which is why Zoë Elder’s book has come along at just the right time in just the right way.

This is not a quick-fix book. At over 60,000 words it is very definitely not a handy pocket guide to improving your practice. There are enough of those out there as it is, getting ‘the buggers’ to read, write, think, behave or any number of active verbs we want children to do in class so we can teach them. Nor, though, is this book a heavy academic tome. Although it draws much of its wisdom from the research that is out there concerning the nature of high quality teaching and learning, it puts it across in a way that is clear, thorough and accessible (and, with Zoë’s eye for design, beautifully presented).

What’s more, it is a practical book full of ideas and tips drawn from Zoë’s not inconsiderable time spent in the classroom as a teacher and advisor working with all sorts of children in all sorts of ways. ‘Full on’ is the best way we’ve found to describe the manner in which learning takes place in Zoë’s lessons and, as books for teachers go, this a very full on book, as you would expect.

In a nutshell, what Zoë has done is to create a book that shows how teaching is a hands-on craft that can be enhanced through science and, when done well, is something of an art. What more can you want from a book that will help you become a seriously better teacher?

And how much more professionally gratifying than leaping on the next bandwagon that rolls up in your staffroom whilst the person in charge of CPD screams, ‘All aboard!’

Ian Gilbert Santiago May 2012

1 If you have to look up both of these musical greats then maybe you really are in the wrong job

2 One Tweet recently pointed out that training to teach in this way was like being in the ‘Five items or fewer’ queue at Tesco. You get there quicker but with less in your basket

TELL ME AND I’LL FORGET; SHOW ME AND I MAY REMEMBER;INVOLVE ME AND I’LL UNDERSTAND.

Chinese proverb

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

FULL ON INTRODUCTION

ONE FULL ON COLLABORATION

TWO FULL ON EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT LEARNERS

THREE FULL ON DEVELOPING EXPERTISE

FOUR FULL ON CREATIVE THINKING

FIVE FULL ON INVOLVEMENT

SIX FULL ON LEARNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

SEVEN FULL ON FEEDBACK

EIGHT FULL ON POWERFUL LEARNERS

NINE FULL ON QUESTIONING

TEN FULL ON MOTIVATION

ELEVEN FULL ON LEARNING ENTREPRENEURS

TWELVE FULL ON OVER TO YOU

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Praise

Copyright

History unfolded differently on different continents because of differences among continental environments,notbecause of biological differences among people.

Jared Diamond3

3 Diamond, J., Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years (London: Vintage, 1998).

FULL ON INTRODUCTION

Before you build a boat you have to need a boat

Humans didn’t have the idea of a boat until they came across a river that was too wide or a lake that was too vast to cross. They didn’t need a boat until their environmental conditions determined that they required one. Once the circumstances changed, they applied ingenuity and practical reasoning to the problem. They got together, discussed and identified the key issues, tried stuff out, reflected upon it, made improvements and solved the problem. Then, and only then, did they build a boat.

Full On Learning is a way to tap into humanity’s natural ability to build boats; to learn new things as a way of actively overcoming problems. It’s something we’ve been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, something we are well-practised at doing. Full On Learning brings out that innate learning ability that all children have, regardless of their academic ability, and it does so in a way that is effective, motivating, enjoyable and intensely engaging.

The first stage in learning to build a boat is understanding the river. So, for learning to take place we first need a problem to solve or an issue to overcome. Fortunately, this is where the mess we are making of the planet comes in handy. Our world poses many challenges and undoubtedly there are many more just around the corner. What happens when coal runs out? Or oil? Or water? Or the sun? We may not know what the problems of the future will be, but we do know what skills and dispositions we, or rather the children we are teaching, will need in order to undertake the vast array of problem-solving that the future will require.

This is what Full On Learning seeks to produce: capable and confident learners who are developing the skills, knowledge and dispositions to become capable and confident problem-solvers and leaders for a lifetime beyond school.

The Full On Learner: a client brief

If we are to educate young people for the newly emerging global landscape there are only two things we can predict: the unpredictable and the unexpected. We could fill them with facts and test how well they have learned them, but in the meantime those self-same facts are becoming obsolete. Full On Learning isn’t about children not acquiring knowledge; far from it. Knowledge is power and in order to build new things you need a foundation of old things, just as in Newton’s famous quote about ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. But when it comes to the unpredictable and unexpected, the facts, if there are any, can be wrong. What young people really require is to be aware of how they need to know and understand, what they need to be able to do and how they need to be. This is my list which I think covers most bases:

Determined

Resourceful

Creative

Insightful

Rational

Self-aware

Collaborative

Considered

Resilient

Adaptable

Reflexive

Curious

If we send out into the world young people who have developed, practised and refined these characteristics as children then, although they may not be able to save the world, they will certainly be able to put up a pretty good fight.

Quality education needs to develop these characteristics in every individual learner, regardless of their academic ability. The only way to do this is to give them a rich diet of opportunities in which they get to deepen their levels of resilience, creativity, resourcefulness and so on. However, there is one further trait that all learners need to develop that does not appear on my list – the quality of discernment. This is the ability to make informed and appropriate decisions in a world that relentlessly presents choices and demands immediate responses. Just when we are starting to feel comfortable with the Information Age it is evolving into the Ideas Age. Information has been democratised. Anybody in the world with a computer and an internet connection has access to a wealth of knowledge – more than was imagined less than 50 years ago. They can download what is available and upload what they have, adding their own contribution to the global pool of information. They can do this wherever and whenever they want and as often as they like. It isn’t knowledge that sets us apart these days; it’s what we do with it. For today’s young people, the world is their oyster – but only for those who position themselves ready to stand up, be counted and make a distinctive, discerning contribution.

Full On Learning provides a blueprint for teachers to methodically and artfully create opportunities for learners to flourish. In doing so, we, as educators, will develop a repertoire of techniques to support learner progress in all areas – explicitly to value, assess and celebrate newly acquired skills, dispositions and, yes, knowledge. And remember, in the same way as when early humans first stumbled across a new river and then discovered that trees float, there is space for surprises too. The joy of new challenges, of insightful observations, of unexpected outcomes and of that one student who rarely contributes in a discussion slowly lifting their hand for the first time.

[A]ll behaviour is an interaction between nature and nurture, whose contributors are as inseparable as the length and width of a rectangle in determining its area.

Steven Pinker4

I passionately believe that the ability to learn is not solely determined at birth (although the basic tools for learning do have a genetic element). Rather, it is the circumstances in which we find ourselves that have the greatest influence on the capacities we go on to develop and that enable us to reveal our talents.

What Full On Learning seeks to do is tap into all young people’s innate ability to learn and give them a chance to show us (and themselves) what they can do with it.

Expert pedagogues

The roles and responsibilities of the 21st century teacher have attracted much discussion. In a world in which my 3-year-old goddaughter can confidently select and use applications on her dad’s iPhone and, at the same time, perform confidently as party photographer with her mum’s digital camera, the role of teacher as expertimparter- of-knowledge is under pressure. But it is no less important; it’s just that what teachers do must change and should continue to be able to change. It must.

Full On Learning asserts that the ‘act’ of teaching needs to be as expert an activity as it ever was. As teachers, just as with elite performers in sport, politics, science or the arts, we must unpick what it is that makes us ‘expert’ so that we can practise it carefully, mindfully and deliberately. After all, teaching is one of the most deliberately intrusive acts that we can carry out. When learners enter our classrooms or learning spaces, we are required to interrupt their conversations, thoughts and actions so that we can redirect their attention to what we need them to learn.

Every lesson is just such an intervention. It is a request for learners to plug in, switch on and actively respond to learning opportunities. Our teaching repertoire, therefore, needs to encompass a wealth of well-considered and thoughtful interruptions. We must ensure that these intrusions really count – to be the Saatchi & Saatchi of learning in every conversation and activity we design. We need to perfect the channels through which great ideas emerge, spread and grow – from us to them and from them to us.

Learning is far too important to be left to chance

Looked at in this way, teaching can be viewed as a punctuation mark in the steady flow of semi-conscious and unconscious thoughts that run through a learner’s mind. As such, we are in a fantastically powerful and influential position. And a very exciting one.

We need to be mindful about why, when and how we deliver our interruptions. Each and every one of them can make a ‘learning difference’ – learning that really sticks and has a life beyond the lesson. This is at the heart of Full On Learning: making sure that the actions we take, the lessons we plan, the activities we design and the language we use are consciously considered and deployed to the greatest effect. In this way we can pass on our own expert learning methodology to learners, so they can implement the same level of conscious thought in their own lives. As a result, they will have genuine control, real choice and purposeful direction when it comes to what they do, where they do it, who they do it with and, most importantly, the kind of people they become. They will be the discerning learners, leaders and citizens that the world needs.

The very best teaching practice always appears to be subtle, relaxed and inescapably ‘natural’. As such, it would be easy to offer feedback about how marvellous the lesson was and how much progress the learners made, and then walk away, putting it all down to being in the presence of a gifted teacher. Full On Learning came about, however, from my conviction that teaching, like intelligence, is not fixed in a ‘gifted’ or ‘not-so-gifted’ system of talent-identification. It is not a question of random, unpredictable luck that contributes to making a great teacher. I believe that all teachers can sit proudly on the ‘quality of outcome’ line somewhere between ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’. What’s more, the position we find ourselves in on that line is not fixed. If we are honest we know that on some days we are great, on others, not so great. What is vital is that we continue to aspire to the levels of consistency displayed by the greatest performers – to become the McEnroe, Tendulkar or DuPre of teaching and learning. It is this consistency that sets the highest performers apart from the crowd.

To achieve this consistency of excellence, we have to unpick exactly what it is that characterises outstanding teaching; to spot it, analyse it and then replicate it. Just as I believe that all learners can develop, make progress and find new strengths and talents within themselves, we can do the same in our teaching practice and methodology. Time and time again, I have worked with teachers who, once given the opportunity to reflect on their own expertise and think of themselves as learners, immediately become far better placed to help others explore and develop the characteristics of excellent teaching for themselves.

Whenever I undertake an analysis of effective teaching practice, I am rewarded by the revelation of a highly complex and sophisticated web of deeply thoughtful, deliberate and mindfully designed interventions by the teacher. Full On Learning places that complex web under the microscope and analyses everything that underpins the most effective pedagogy. To examine each thread in turn is to enable all practitioners to sharpen, develop and reflect on their own practice. This makes the best learning accessible for everybody.

So, just take a look at any well-designed observation form to find the evidence of the direct, causal link between what the teacher does and says and how well learners learn. If learning is well designed, the observer will be able to make explicit links between everything the teacher does and how this directly impacts on the quality of learning. Everything a teacher does and says in the classroom counts. Full On Learning is about making sure it counts for the right reasons.

The three heart beats of Full On Learning

oneEvery teacher action can have a direct causal effect on the quality of the learning experience. This brings with it a unique and exciting opportunity.

two As a result of the link between teacher action and learning outcomes, we know that everything we plan, do and say needs to be mindfully designed. Just as an architect considers the meticulous detail on a blueprint for a new building, so must we consider even the most subtle of our interventions. Every interruption we make has the power to change the course of our learners’ personal learning journeys, for better or worse. It is probably this power of influence that keeps many of us in the profession.

three Finally, because everything we plan, do and say in the classroom has the potential to have at least one single positive effect on the quality of the learning experience and progression of every learner, we can do everything in our power to deliberately and positively influence and involve learners in every aspect of the learning that we design.

I’m not so naive as to believe everything will go according to plan. Once the lesson is designed and underway we also need to be able to adapt and respond to what is happening. If we can design learning so that it allows us to stand back and observe, we are very well placed to be able to act on the feedback we receive, address misconceptions and check out the knowledge and understanding presented by our learners.

Clearly, some things in a lesson will always remain beyond our control; there’s no accounting for the windy Friday lunchtime that blows the students into your room in a perfect storm. All of which brings us back to the building of boats (sort of). It’s worth remembering that the capacity for ‘building boats’ already exists within every learner before we even get started. The word ‘educate’ comes from the Latin educere meaning ‘to draw out’. Full On Learning aims to do just that – to draw out the capacity for creativity, innovative thought, argument, discernment and curiosity that already exists by fostering an eagerness to learn and improve in our learners. This is what is meant by truly involving the learner in their learning.

The world into which we are sending our young people demands individuals who can collaborate and innovate, so we need to design explicit opportunities for students to practise team-working, rehearse idea-generation and test-out alternative approaches. To help them see the relevance of this, we must explain why we are doing so. We need to be clear about why we are asking them to construct their own problems to solve, and not simply answer a list of questions. If we want them to practise divergent thinking, we need to explain why reflecting and articulating their thinking to others is relevant. When we encounter the inevitable challenge, ‘… but what’s this got to do with the exam?’ we need to be ready with our rationale. Until, that is, this approach is so embedded in the learning culture that the students understand the relevance for themselves.

Digital learning capacities

The rapid integration of social networking and mobile technology provides a fantastic opportunity to both draw out and shape the innate capacities for learning in our learners. Digital technology presents infinite opportunities (of varying quality) to make sustainable learning connections and cross many boundaries. If we are really committed to nurturing discerning, enterprising, resilient and all-round savvy citizens, then there’s a huge river of learning opportunities flooding into our schools. It is carried into our classrooms in the pockets of almost every student. Actively embracing the innovative use of technology to support learning is a brilliant way to involve, motivate and inspire our learners to engage with the world beyond their immediate horizons.

4 Pinker, S., The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Meaning (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2000).

Never doubt that asmallgroup of thoughtful, committed people canchangethe world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever hasMargaret Mead

ONEFULL ON COLLABORATION

LEARNERS WHO …TEACHING THAT …Analyse, critique and question their own and peers’ learning, always informed by their own expertiseEncourages learners to teach peers, older students and other groups and provides regular opportunities to work with a diverse group of learners and interested people beyond their peer groupFocus: CollaborationGrow their knowledge and understandings when they listen to different views and perspectives that challenge their own thinkingPromotes active listening skills when prompted to listen to attentive views from peers. Asks learners to feedback what they have heard during paired and small group conversations rather than simply repeat what they have saidFocus: Presentations of understandingsAre self-aware, reflective and actively seek to develop their skills and expertiseRequires learning to be subjected to peer scrutiny so as to develop intellectual resilienceFocus: Peer-assessment

Why collaborative learning is important for us all

Humans are social beings and we like to interact – to share ideas and receive positive feedback and affirmation for our achievements. Many of us actively seek out such opportunities for interaction with others. The explosion of social networking is evidence enough for that.

But it is worth remembering that even the most confident individual can be eye-wateringly shy when it comes to unfamiliar social situations. Luckily, we learn how to behave in such situations and build up experiences that feed our confidence. We develop strategies, learning from the mistakes we have made, to understand what is expected of us in social settings. The point is that we learn the subtle rules of interaction over time.

It is easy to forget that, in comparison to adults, our learners have a very modest experience of social interactions. Yet they are required to interact in a plethora of unfamiliar and challenging contexts throughout the school day. From one lesson to the next, particularly in secondary schools, they are asked to get into groups of four or five, into pairs, or work with ‘… somebody they’ve never worked with before’ or simply look around the class and find a partner for themselves. Even the most socially hardened adult would find this challenging. If you’ve ever had the chance to shadow a student, you’ll know by about the second or third lesson just how exhausting this can be.

So this chapter is all about what great collaborative learning looks, sounds and feels like. It gives the key ingredients to build into learning design as well as some useful indicators to assess how well it’s going. Most importantly, this will provide you with a way to highlight, for the learners and yourself, the progress every learner makes in any collaborative learning situation.

This chapter looks at how we can help our learners when they find themselves in group situations of our design and give them the language and the opportunity to reflect on how they need to be when they are learning collaboratively. It suggests ways in which we can deliberately provide learners with opportunities to think explicitly about how an effective group member actually behaves. We only have to think about the stresses that surround the organisation of any social gathering to know that collaboration and productive interaction don’t happen by chance. Everybody involved has to work at it.

But the issue for us, as teachers, is where to begin.

Deliberately designing opportunities for learners to learn how to think and generate ideas together is particularly important in light of the way that technology is shaping our working lives. The information age has brought collaborative learning centre stage. We need to support young people in the development of interpersonal and intra-personal skills and dispositions. So we need to give learners regular opportunities to practise the skill of listening to – and being challenged by – others, of experiencing critical feedback and of accepting praise. The rapidly increasing connectivity that exists across the globe means that being able to communicate and work effectively with others will surely be a defining characteristic of the successful citizen of the 21st century and beyond. And with almost 7 billion people inhabiting the world, that’s a lot of collaboration.

What is the focus for this lesson?

If we consider group work as a powerful tool for learning, then the natural question as we start our planning is, ‘How will learning in groups ensure progression?’ or, put simply, ‘Why do it this way?’ We often get challenged by this very question by the learners themselves when we organise them into their groups. It is worth rehearsing what our rationale is for setting up the learning in this way. The table below gives a quick checklist to help structure groups according to the purpose of learning.

When we trust people, conversation, discussion and the sharing of ideas flows – and flows quickly. Without trust, we can be distracted by preconceived ideas, unfounded low expectations and most likely fear. As a result, learning and development can be inhibited. If we build trust into the communities and groups in which we learn and work then the learning will be deeper and more sustained.

The characteristics of effective collaboration

One of the most beneficial aspects of collaborative learning is the space it provides for the explicit development of learning competencies and dispositions. Using the principle of the ‘wisdom of crowds’, the group can provide all the subject-specific clarification required to complete the challenge. What requires deeper reflection and skill is the process by which the group completes the challenge. This is where you, as the expert pedagogue, step in. From the moment that the challenge is designed to the moment at which learners get to evaluate the why, the how and the what5 of their learning, your skill will allow the group to value the way in which they learned alongside what they learned. In doing so, you get to make these valuable learning skills and dispositions explicit.

If we design learning opportunities that deliberately and explicitly foster the character traits of an ‘effective learner’, then learners can mindfully practise them. For example, if we deliberately design opportunities for students to develop their ability to work in teams and share this intention with them and design ways in which we might specifically assess how well they progress against our stated intentions, then the chances are that our actions will have a direct and positive impact on how well they develop these collaborative skills.

Watch any episode of Big Brother, The Apprentice or Strictly Come Dancing and you will see that collaboration doesn’t ‘just happen’ – far from it. So although I began this chapter with the statement ‘Humans are social beings’, it doesn’t mean that we all get on when we are thrown into a group of strangers. We all need to practise our team-working skills and consider exactly what it is we need to do and be like in any group scenario before we get really good at team tasks. This is no different for the young people we teach. In fact, with all the growing up they are busy doing, they could be forgiven for being a little distracted when it comes to learning collaboratively with their peers.

Explicit opportunities to practise collaboration

The discrete opportunities we can give to learners will allow them to deliberately practise the characteristics of being an effective learner, such as creative thinking, evaluation, strategic planning and collaboration. It is this purposeful practice that is critical to developing expertise and echoes the work of Anders Ericsson who famously identified the 10,000 hours rule that can be applied to how we approach the development of Full On Learners in the 21st century.6

If the learners of today are the voters, decision-makers and leaders of tomorrow, they need to practise their ability to be discerning in the company of friends, colleagues and online communities. We all have varying levels of discomfort when we are asked to work in groups; just mention ‘role play’ and many of us will run a mile.

Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the adult who says, ‘I don’t like working in groups’ is the child who never got the opportunity to practise and learn how to. Or maybe they were the adult for whom working in groups has never suited their preferred learning style. In both cases, that’s okay; so long as we are aware of this and can honestly respond to the following question: How do you ensure that your own preferred learning style (of working independently) doesn’t prevent you designing regular opportunities for all your students to practise working in groups?

In terms of thinking collaboratively or solving problems in groups, quite often the opportunities to practise what this entails can be few and far between. Effective Full On Learners happily embrace collaborative challenges.

Sam’s YouTube collaboration

Consider our fictional student, Sam, who is 8 years old. For as long as he can remember, he has danced to whatever music he has heard on the TV, radio or MP3 player. His parents have encouraged him to show off his talents at Christmas and birthday parties. Sam is very used to performing for others, and not just those within his immediate world. For the past year, he has used his mobile phone to film himself, upload this onto the family computer and onto his own YouTube channel. Not only that, but Sam has learned from other dancers of all ages and backgrounds by seeking out other people’s dancing videos. Sam is now an active member of a global community of self-taught and self-improving dancers. It is this community that serves as the life-blood of Sam’s emerging talent. And Sam, at age 8, is pretty good. And he knows it. He knows it because he can see it when he compares his abilities with others, and when he shows off his latest dance moves at school, he finds himself having to teach them how to do it. But most of all, he knows just how good he is because his YouTube dance community tell him so through the instantaneous feedback he receives from them every time he uploads a new video.7

Collaborative peer learning

For young people, YouTube presents an opportunity to amplify their interests and showcase their abilities to a global audience. In the early years of today’s primary schools there are children who can be classed as Generation AYT (After YouTube) who were born in or after 2005 – the year that YouTube first went live. This means that for their entire lives the digital world has given them a public platform to showcase their talents, receive immediate global comment and the facility to respond to this feedback.

We know that powerful learning happens when we receive effective feedback – which tells us where we are, what we have done well and what we need to do next to build on our achievements. Collaborative learning provides the ideal forum for the feedback to flow backwards and forwards, from learner to learner, from learner to teacher, from teacher to learner. Sam’s experience captures a rich online learning experience but, in truth, the qualities of his learning experience can be replicated in any collaborative learning opportunity that you design.

What can we learn about great collaboration from the YouTube experience?

From the example of Sam’s YouTube experience, his community of YouTube dancers has become his principal ‘teacher’. This illustrates the key components of some of the most powerful collaborative learning and how it can be designed to motivate and engage our learners:

1Safe learning. As with all the best learning – and one of the central messages of Full On Learning – this doesn’t ‘just happen’. In the same way we would instruct Sam how to play safely with friends in the local park, he has to learn how to be safe online. He needs to be taught how to be discerning, to make informed decisions, to identify those things that are unfamiliar, to know what to do if he feels uncomfortable and to have access to e-safety tools. His parents/carers need to ensure that all of this is in place for his first supervised outings online. Collaborative learning behaviours, whether in the classroom, on a field trip or online, need to be learnt, practised and developed. Only then will Sam be able to get the most out of the learning opportunities that the class of YouTube now offer him.