Hi there,
I am now publishing blogs on a slightly different site.
If you would like to read the first in a new series of blogs please go to
https://lancegkingblog.wordpress.com/
Thanks,
Lance King
WHY TRANSPARENT?
5 JunFantastic article on my Madrid talk by Timothy Kelley, Director of the International School of Stuttgart
I INVITE YOU TO SHARE YOUR COMMENTS
Lance King, an inspirational educator tells a story about taking his children bungy jumping. But, believing as most parents do, that we need to challenge our children to make them stronger, he tells them to ignore the guides who talk people through the challenge of making the first jump. He tells his kids to stand at the edge, look down, listen to the voice screaming in their head to walk away, quiet it, and then jump. Michael Thompson, someone I refer to frequently, tells a story about being with a group of kids one cold morning, about to jump into a lake at a summer camp. They were all shivering and afraid, but, one by one, jumped into the lake and then ran back to the fire.
The point of commonality in both stories is that all of the kids in…
View original post 488 more words
The Teaching Revolution
3 JunI work with students in many high schools around the world and over the last two years I have asked every class I work with the same question – “How many of you have a web-capable phone?”
Two years ago the response was about 5%, today it is usually around 80% and just recently I had my first 100% response.
This is significant.
How long will it be before every child in every classroom has a web-capable phone…………that they’re not allowed to use?
Right now there are:
- 6 billion cell phones in the world (world total population is 7 billion)
- 85% of new phones web enabled
- 2 billion broadband subscriptions
- 255 million websites
- 150 million blogs
- 8 trillion text messages sent in 2011
- 107 trillion emails – 89% of which were spam
How long will it be before:
- every piece of subject matter is available to every student on the internet, and
- they all have access to internet linked tablets, and
- they all have access to high speed broadband all day?
What will teaching look like then?
What will be the key skills that students will need in order to cope with and take advantage of this environment?
This is not the future, this is today!
Imagine a school where:
1)the entire focus of teaching is on the processes of learning, where the aim of every lesson is the development and improvement of the skills of effective learning, using the subject matter of the lesson as the material for the student to practice their learning skills on
2) in every class students work in groups of 3-4 with one high-speed internet linked data tablet device per group
3) the objectives for each lesson are stated by the teacher as:
– the learning skills to be practiced
– the subject matter to practice those skills on and the best web-based sources to use
to find that subject matter
– the questions to be answered
4) where learning is by true exploration and enquiry.
I believe that right now we stand on the brink of a revolution in education, the DSRLPOSBGIL revolution, which is not a revolution in learning because everyone has always learned best this way, what it is, is a revolution in teaching! Maybe the most significant one in 200 years.
The revolution in education involves teachers abandoning ‘transmission’ teaching and adopting principles of skills based, guided inquiry learning (SBGIL). This means teachers teaching the skills of good learning using their particular subject matter as the ‘meat’ for students to practice the skills on. It involves students utilising net-capable devices, working in small groups, accessing subject-based websites, practising learning skills like searching, selecting, verifying, validating and corroborating information as well as social skills of collaboration, communication, team work and maybe even affective skills like perseverance and persistence. In this scenario, teaching becomes about making explicit all the processes of learning and guiding the students on a pathway of enquiry to achieve specific measurable content and process based outcomes (POSBGIL – Process Oriented, Skills Based Guided Inquiry Learning). Helping the students to ask the right questions but never providing the answers.
What this new type of teaching is not about is teachers using the internet as just one more textbook. When every student has access to all the information in the world 24/7 then the most marketable skills will be the skills of good learning. How to find the right information, process it well, extract what you need and move on having learnt something new. These are the skills of the self-regulated learner and in order to become competent in these skills children need to be put in the position of practicing the regulation of their own learning – hence DSRLPOSBGIL (Developing Self Regulated Learners through Process Oriented, Skills Based, Guided Inquiry Learning).
The most motivating learning has always been self-regulated learning (self-directed, self-managed, autonomous, independent) and yet up to now the infrastructure of education has not allowed for learning by exploration and discovery except at the elementary level. The proliferation of internet based school subject websites and the ubiquity of data delivery devices has changed all that.
Teachers no longer need to be the ‘font of all knowledge’ they just need to know where to send their students to find everything they need. This means that every teacher needs to be familiar with every website that deals with their particular area of expertise and to know those websites well enough to design every lesson around the content found there. The school must have the infrastructure in place to support one device and one high speed internet connection per four students. NOT one computer per student, that only increases isolation and decreases collaboration, communication and memory – this is very important (see Sugata Mitra’s paper http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet21/mitra.html or video http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html )
Then the focus of teaching can be moved to the inculcation of effective learning skills.
Intrinsically motivated learning is achieved through the application of a dynamic, internally controlled set of metacognitive, cognitive and affective processes that positively influence a student’s tendency to approach, engage with, expend effort on, and persist in tasks of learning in an ongoing, self-regulated manner. Exactly what everyone does when they are learning something new that they are intensely interested in.
Metacognitive processes are those that focus on the self management of learning – planning, implementing and monitoring learning efforts – as well as gaining the knowledge of when, where, why and how to use specific learning strategies in their appropriate contexts. Cognitive processes are those which focus on developing the particular skills necessary to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge or skill, and affective processes are those that focus on such non-cognitive aspects of learning as motivation, self concept and the skill of selective attribution.
The best students in the world, those whose study is most effective in helping them to pass their examinations, all have one characteristic in common, the deliberate use of a variety of learning strategies. In other words they treat learning as a process requiring many different techniques and strategies depending on the subject and the context . They actively seek out options for every stage of the learning process, they try out different things and they notice what works and what doesn’t. To do this the best students are continuously engaged with both the subject matter they are learning and the processes they are using to learn that subject matter. They view any learning failure as a failure of process rather than that of the individual, they find better processes and apply them, they reflect on the results and they continually improve the success of their learning efforts.
Unfortunately the direct teaching of learning skills is still uncommon in most school programmes. Studies show that only 20% of teachers believe that teaching students ‘study skills’ is a priority and only 17% of students report that teachers actively help them to learn or improve their study skills.
It has often been said that most of the jobs children in school today will take have not been invented yet and that most of today’s children will have at least 5 different careers in their lifetime and will need to be able to re-invent themselves for each career change. Also it is said that 95% of jobs in the future will involve information processing through an electronic interface of some kind.
A 2007 survey of 400 hiring executives of major USA corporations asked what knowledge and skills they were looking for in potential future employees. The results were, in priority order:
1) Oral and written communication skills
2) Critical thinking and problem solving skills
3) Professionalism and work ethic
4) Teamwork and collaboration skills
5) Ability to work in diverse teams
6) Fluency with information technology
7) Leadership and project management skills
Knowledge of mathematics came 14th on the list just ahead of science knowledge and foreign language comprehension.
In the UK in 2007 the Department for Education’s own research in Learning Skills and the Development of Learning Capability concluded that “the results suggest that the development of learning skills and capabilities should be embedded in the curriculum, as well as being taught explicitly to pupils.” By 2008 the QCA had created their own “framework of personal, learning and thinking skills essential to success in learning, life and work” which required students to become:
- Independent enquirers
- Creative thinkers
- Reflective learners
- Team workers
- Self-managers
- Effective participators
Unfortunately due to a change in government or a change in focus by 2011 the QCA had been disbanded and its functions absorbed by DfE and all trace of this programme lost.
In New Zealand we have a new curriculum which focuses, at least in part, on the development of what are called the 5 Key Competencies:
- Thinking
- Using language, symbols and text
- Managing self
- Relating to others
- Participating and contributing.
Poland has the following set of skills and competencies that have to be acquired by the end of lower secondary education:
- Reading
- Mathematical thinking
- Scientific thinking
- Communicative skills
- Technological skills
- Information usage
- Self-orientation
- Team working
Other OECD countries that have similar overarching sets of key or basic skills or competencies include Belgium, Italy, Korea, Mexico the Slovak Republic, Spain, and Turkey.
In the USA, 46 states have now agreed on a common core curriculum of 21st Century skills to be taught at the elementary level. Called the Elementary Integrated Curriculum (EIC) it includes:
Academic Success Skills:
- Collaboration
- Effort/Motivation/Persistence
- Intellectual Risk Taking
- Metacognition
Creative Thinking Skills:
- Elaboration
- Flexibility
- Fluency
- Originality
Critical Thinking Skills:
- Analysis
- Evaluation
- Synthesis
All around the world educational organisations are coming to grips with the need for schools to engage students with learning what are often called 21st Century Skills, however only within the International Baccalaureate (IB) is that support explicitly differentiated into a specific subject of its own, Approaches To Learning (ATL) within the Middle Years Programme (MYP).
ATL skills have been broken down into five clusters:
| Organizers | Skill clusters |
| Thinking | Critical thinking, creativity and innovation, reflection and transfer |
| Social | Collaboration |
| Communication | Interaction and literacy |
| Self-management | Organization and affective skills |
| Research | Information and media literacy, and critical literacy |
Within those clusters more than 165 individual skills have been identified.
The first task for students is to self-assess their present levels of skills in each of these areas and from then on to monitor their own progress from Novice – Expert in each skills cluster by gaining proficiency with the individual skills within each cluster most suited to their age and abilities.
|
Level 1 The Novice – observation |
Level 2 The Learner – emulation |
Level 3 The Practitioner – demonstration |
Level 4 The Expert – self-regulation |
|
| Observes others performing tasks and using the skillGathers procedural information about the performance of the skill, asks questions to clarify procedure
High levels of scaffolding from teacher needed – explanations, training, structural support
|
Copies others performance of the skillIs very conscious of performing the skill and correcting errors with deliberation
Performs skill only with known content in known context Medium level of scaffolding needed – correcting poor performance, answering questions
|
Can demonstrate the skill on demandCan perform skill either with different content or in different context
Minimal teacher scaffolding required – setting directions, goals, assessable outcomes |
Can perform the skill without thinking through the process firstCan teach others the skill
Can use skill with unfamiliar content in unfamiliar context High levels of performance occur No teacher scaffolding needed
|
|
Such ‘process skills’ analysis raises the student’s awareness of any skill deficiencies which can then be addressed in the learning skills programme. It also exposes the student to the possibility of a range of skills they could learn and strategies that they could try which might have a positive influence on their learning success. This is the first awakening for some students when they realise that children who seem to learn much easier than them are probably using skills and strategies that they too could learn.
The second task for students is to become aware that they can take positive self control in learning situations and plan deliberate strategy use and in doing so increase both their sense of personal competency and their learning achievement. This is the metacognitive function that drives the whole learning improvement process and through which the greatest improvements in academic performance can be achieved.
Once perceptions of competency and positive self control in learning are developed, students are much more inclined to try out new cognitive and affective strategies in new learning situations and ultimately develop full control over their own learning and become a fully self-regulated (self-managed, self-directed, autonomous, independent, lifelong) learner.
The challenge for teachers is in moving from transmission teaching where the teacher is the font of all knowledge to a more facilitative style where the teacher is helping the students to discover the information for themselves.
The most effective method is through ongoing, process focused teaching by subject teachers within standard subjects. The process focused teacher is the one whose highest value is the teaching of learning skills and who uses their particular content as the vehicle through which to teach effective learning processes. This is not to deny the importance of any taught content but is an approach which brings about a dual focus in the classroom – on both content and process. Many studies have shown that the most uniformly positive results in terms of academic engagement, understanding, transfer of skills and high performance in assessments come about through a focus in the classroom on learning strategy training in a metacognitive, self-regulated context in connection with specific content.
The ‘learning skills’ focus of international and national curricula aiming at developing 21st Century Skills within students has made the development of process focused teaching possible within many educational structures. The proliferation of high speed internet services and the ubiquity of data processing devices has made guided inquiry learning possible in many classrooms. The real challenge is putting the two together.
Luckily we have the experience of others to draw on. In 1999 a national innovation programme was introduced into Dutch secondary education, aimed at encouraging teachers to foster what they called ASRL – Active Self Regulated Learning. Twelve years later the entire project was reviewed – It tells its own story very clearly:
“The innovation focused on the higher grades (15 – 18 years of age) of upper level secondary education, the grades preparing for higher education. It was based on three general ideas:
(a) Self-regulation of learning – students have to learn to regulate their own learning process, considering the importance of life-long learning. This means that students should gradually become the owners of their own learning process. It also implies more attention to the affective aspects of learning.
(b) Learning as active construction of knowledge. Students learn better when they actively construct their own knowledge; and
(c) Collaborative learning. Students should learn in interaction with fellow students. Collaborative learning is seen as a powerful learning environment and collaborative skills are believed to be necessary for future work.”
“The reform implied a fundamental change in teachers’ educational and pedagogical role. The general aim of the renewal was to prepare students more effectively for higher education and lifelong learning. A more specific aim was for students to learn how to regulate their own learning processes. Teachers were therefore expected to focus more on facilitating, supporting and monitoring student learning processes and less on transmitting subject-matter knowledge to students, and to foster students’ ASRL in their daily work practice.”
“However, in the period of early implementation of the reform, hardly any practical examples of instructional methods for this new teaching approach were available. Schools were expected
to develop suitable pedagogy themselves, with the help of educational advice centres. Evaluation studies reported implementation processes that often lacked a clear vision and policy. Teachers’ daily classroom practice did not show much self-regulated learning and activating pedagogy. Many teachers still focused particularly on the subject-matter and learning outcomes and far less on students’ learning processes.”
The biggest stumbling block to achieving the goals of self-regulated learning was that teachers found it hard not to teach.
This is the challenge.
This is why I am pointing to a revolution in teaching not in learning.
It is the teachers who must learn how to stop teaching and allow learning to take place. Only by being allowed to practice the skills of self-regulated learning will students ever become self-regulated learners.
In 2009, the OECD working group summed up their overall findings in ’21st Century Skills and Competences for New Millennium Learners in OECD Countries’ as:
1) Most countries subscribed to the importance and policy relevance of 21st century skills and competences
2) Most countries were attempting to integrate these skills in a cross-curricular way, across subject areas
3) Clear policies for formative or summative assessment of these skills were lacking in all countries surveyed
5) There were few teacher training programmes available in any country that targeted the teaching or development of 21st century skills.
The key to the creation and development of today’s students as tomorrow’s self-regulated learners will be effective professional development (PD) of teachers.
This can be achieved, with well structured PD which focuses on the three strands of developing self-regulated learners (SRL). By teaching teachers:
1) how to teach cognitive, affective and metacognitive skills (ATL skills)within the context of their subject based lessons
2) how to make the classroom experience for the students one of skills based, process oriented, guided inquiry learning
3) how to help students to self assess their content, skills and strategy use through reflection
Of course, recognising that the most motivating, exciting, involving learning is always through exploration and discovery means that all PD for teachers in this field must also be delivered through the mechanisms of POSBGIL (Process Oriented, Skills Based, Guided Inquiry Learning).
If the real goal of education is the creation and development of lifelong learners then I believe that with the innovations of new national and international curricula combined with the proliferation of school subject based resources available on the internet the key infrastructural factors are in place today within most countries to bring about a revolution in teaching and hence a revolution in school based learning.
References for DSRLPOSBGIL:
Vermunt, J. D. (1995). Process-oriented instruction in learning and thinking strategies. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 10, 325-349.
Vermunt, J. D. & Verloop, N. (1999). Congruence and friction between learning and teaching. Learning and Instruction, 9, 257-280
Vrieling, E. M., Bastiaens, T. J. & Stijnen, S. (2010). Process-oriented design principles for promoting self-regualted learning in primary teacher education. International Journal of Educational Research, 49, 141 – 150
Getting over the fear of doing it wrong
19 JanOne thing I have noticed, particularly in working with parents of primary children, is the fear. The fear that you might not be making the right choices for your children, the fear that they might be missing out on something, the fear that they will not have every possible advantage in life, the over-whelming fear that if you don’t micro-manage every aspect of your children’s lives they might not turn out alright!! For those parents I would like to give a message of reassurance and let them know that long term, it really doesn’t matter. Having helped bring up four children and having had the last one leave home just a month ago (hallelujah!!), I know that the important things in their lives were in their hearts not in their minds. The more you try to micro-manage, control and modify them as young children the more resistance you are going to reap when they are teenagers. KEEP THIS IN MIND!! One day these lovely, obedient, smart, thoughtful, young children are going to be big enough and stroppy enough to be able to look you in the eye and say “No, I don’t care what you want, I am going to, and there is nothing you can do about it”. And at that point we need to be able to celebrate that moment knowing that our child knows the difference between right and wrong, knows how to assess risk well, is confident and capable enough to handle any situation they find themselves in, and knows they can always call on us for help – no matter what! At that moment we have to have the courage to say “You go girl!!” (or boy as the case may be) and let them go and practice being a grownup.
Last November I had to say goodbye to my daughter (20 years old) as she left for India for 3 months, on a voluntary programme to work with prostitutes and children with aids in north-west India, near Lahore where people are blowing themselves up on a daily basis. She and her friends (2 other girls and one guy) have endured what to me would be unimaginable hardships of temperature, sanitation, food poisoning, they have been the object of almost constant harassment, have been at the mercy of entrenched and obdurate bureaucracy, and yet have had the most amazing time of their lives (if you are interested in their story go to http://gypsygitan.wordpress.com ). And it was not what they knew that helped them most it was their ability to connect with people, to care, to understand other people’s perspectives, to ask for help, to problem solve, to take immediate action when needed, to persist and to be absolutely determined.
These are some of the skills I think we need to focus on with our children, not whether they got the best marks or the highest score but how do they deal with it when they don’t. How do they feel, what can they do about it, how can they recover quickly, can they appreciate how others feel, how can they help others feel OK?
Be assured that as long as your children know that they are loved and know where their home is they will turn out fine. I think our most important job as parents is to help our children take care of their ‘heart-life’. What I mean by this is helping them to keep in touch with their own heart and not spend their whole life in their minds.
The Golden Rules for Growing Resilient Children
Children only do what works – eg. if little Johnny keeps forgetting his lunch, stop bringing it in for him, a little hunger is a great memory prompt – the same goes for gym gear, footwear, raincoats etc..
Give them your time – spend time with your children, just listening, helping, encouraging – it’s not the activity that counts it’s the time
Teach them caution not fear – encourage them to assess risks and take risks, if it’s not life threatening why shouldn’t they do it?
Help them take responsibility for their own actions – if they earn demerits have them reflect on what they could do differently next time, how they can learn from their mistakes, DO NOT make excuses for them
Help them learn to fight their own battles – if they have been hard done by they must learn to represent themselves, to seek justice for themselves, not have you do it for them – STOP fighting their battles for them
Encourage them to take on new challenges and use failure as feedback – that’s how we learn. Share your own personal stories of failure, consequences and recovery – teach them how to recover well from difficulties, setbacks and failure
Focus on who they are not what they do – children only need to know they are loved and to know where their home is to turn out OK
Highlight positive role models of success through learning and success through perseverance, determination, focus, passion, courage and persistence
Strive to be worthy of imitation
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Beginning a new school year, developing the resilient learner
30 NovGETTING INVOLVED
The biggest difficulty I have always had is simply getting involved. Like you I am sure, I find my own life to be very busy and there is not much time available to get involved in my children’s schooling and it is so much easier just to leave it all up to the school. Also my children do not want me to be involved, they do not want to be picked out as having an interfering parent and would much sooner I just kept out of it! And of course I have chosen the school they attend because I believe it will do a good job for them so my tendency is to just let them get on with it.
And I have found that schools often encourage that approach. They want parents involved if there are performances to attend, sports teams that need coaches or extra transport, fund raising for specific projects or discipline matters to attend to but involvement in the processes of learning? Generally not encouraged in my experience.
But this is the area that pays the biggest dividends.
From School
Beginning a new year the information you need to obtain from the school is:
1) Your child’s subjects details
– teachers names for each subject and contact phone numbers or email addresses if you can get them
– subject structure – % internal assessment, % exams
– assessment schedule for the year – especially timing of major exams
2) the overall expectations the school holds for your child for their major assessments – IGCSE, GCSE, Common Exams, YGS-LYS, IB, A Level exams
3) based on past records the subjects she is likely to excel in and the subjects he may struggle in
4) the names of other important people at school – the Head, the year Dean, any specialist teacher your child will be with, etc…
Obviously textbooks, pens, books and other resources will need to be taken care of.
At Home
What we are always seeking is to get our children into a rhythm, a habit of homework, review and study, which needs to start as soon as possible.
Key Points:
1) encourage your children to get their homework done as soon as possible after coming home from school
– this enables focused work to be completed while the brain is still functioning well and not fatigued by the lateness of the hour
– they will often need to get their blood-sugar levels up by eating first but homework should be next.
– of course this won’t suit everyone but if you make things like TV, video games, the internet etc contingent on completion of homework then this process can become self rewarding.
2) as a vital part of homework, each night all notes completed during the day need to be reviewed – read through again.
– this will enable the connections made in the brain during the day to be reinforced within 24 hours and facilitates the process of shifting information into long term memory.
3) as part of the review process, on a regular basis, maybe once a week, key-point summaries need to be made in each subject to consolidate the main ideas and act as the basis of study notes for the next exam.
If this was done on a regular basis throughout the year it would eliminate all the pressure and study problems (eg. procrastination) come exam time.
YES THAT’S ALL VERY WELL BUT HOW????
– when s/he’s got cricket practice, music lessons, tennis practice, dance classes, chess club, drama, etc etc…..
Well as I said it is all about habits and the only way we get our children into good habits is with clear rationale, good efficient systems and ongoing reinforcement – reason, process, rewards and (dare I say it??) punishment.
1) Reason: the most important thing we all need to get ourselves to tackle difficult tasks is a reason, a rationale, a purpose. This requires clear and consistent discussion in your household about the importance of education especially in a modern, technology driven, competitive world, and the connection between having good qualifications and having more choices in life.
Qualifications confer the advantages of more choices and hence more opportunities.
This may seem blindingly obvious to you but in my experience it is not always so for teenagers.
2) Process: this is our speciality – the proceeses of effective learning – if you are reading this then your children have most likely attended one of our seminars and will have these skills, they just need to practice them. If they haven’t yet done one of our courses, talk to the school and find out when we are coming back, or email me on taolearn@xtra.co.nz to find out when. A third option is to get a copy of my forthcoming book “”The Art of Learning – Companion Guide for Students” which contains all the information given to your children on our full 5 hour course plus lots more tips and strategies for effective learning. This book is due for release very soon and can be pre-ordered from the above email address.
3) Rewards and Punishment: there is a lot of literature available about the problems of rewards and the detrimental effects of punishment and certainly what works for me may not be appropriate in your household but you may be interested in my experiences:
I can remember having great problems in this area when my daughter was in Year 11 and I also had one son in Year 10.
My daughter always arrived home from school each day and immediately got stuck into her homework, completed virtually all tasks on time, was prepared to ask for help if she got stuck and studied well for exams. She was then (and still is) independent, organised, determined, persistent and strong willed. She has always strived for excellence in all her subjects and has been academically successful. Her mental strength is somewhat greater than her physical strength though and she has a tendency to engage in risky behaviour, to over-perform and to “burn out” physically.
My son on the other hand has traditionally left his homework to the last minute each day, has not always completed tasks assigned, has not really studied at all, has not been very interested in pushing himself and has not ever considered himself to be at all academic. He has a “laid-back” view of school and learning in general and is happy to take life as it comes. He is dependent, disorganised, lackadaisical, social, gentle, kind and not particularly focused on anything. He has yet to learn how to push himself to 100% in anything and always works well within his abilities.
So the challenge for me as a parent then, was how to keep my daughter out of trouble and within her own limits and how to get my son to take some responsibility for his own learning and his own academic success.
In other words, how to help them both become more “educationally resilient”.
Some of the key principles of resilience building are
1) a focus on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivators
2) improving process to improve outcome
3) being prepared to accept challenges and take risks
4) being prepared to fail
5) learning from every mistake
6) being focused on effort rather than ability
7) learning to push ourselves to do more than we think we can
8) developing an internal locus of control
9) developing a belief in the fluidity of intelligence
So how have I helped my children in this area?
1) Help them learn how to challenge their own boundaries
I provide opportunities for them to push themselves to do things that maybe are more than they think they can do, challenge them to extend their limits and take a risk (within safe boundaries of course).
This is easier than it may sound, certainly in New Zealand anyway. One thing I have done is to take all four of my children Bungy Jumping. Now a Bungy Jump is a unique opportunity to challenge yourself because when you are standing on the platform over a drop of over 100 metres (~350ft) with a rubber cord tied around your legs being encouraged to fall forwards the only thing that is going on inside you is that a part of your brain (the survival part) is saying NO! NO! NO! NO! – and you have to get past that block in order to take the jump.
It is perfectly safe but it is a real challenge to get yourself to do it. I gave all four of my children complete autonomy over whether they took the jump or not but I asked them if they did do it to notice what went on inside of themselves – to notice the fear, notice the resistance and notice what they had to do to overcome that. I went first and then all four of my children followed, one at a time.
They all reported it was a great moment in their life, they discovered something important about themselves and it was well worth it.
And here we all are moments after the last jump – safe and sound (that’s me with the hat on):
Now I don’t know if you have any equivalents to Bungy Jumping where you live but if you have, in my opinion they are great learning opportunities, not to be missed.
The corollary to this in school life means encouraging your children to tackle the difficult subjects at school, to take on new challenges, to try things that they think they might not be very good at. Resilience it seems only develops by practise and to practise resilience you have to risk having failure and you can only do that if you get outside your comfort zone.
This of course raises one of the big issues in subject choice – should your children be encouraged to excel in subjects they obviously have a flair for, thus narrowing their range of choices and potentially their opportunities in later life, or should they be encouraged to try new subjects to develop new skills and gain new knowledge thus broadening their range of choices and possibilities in later life???
I have always taken a pragmatic, “a bit of both” approach. Making sure that each year my children have some subjects that they feel they are good at and can excel in and also some new subjects which will challenge them in new ways.
2) Help them learn to handle failure well:
Yes FAILURE!!
The point is simply that no-one succeeds without failure and learning how to handle failure is the essence of resilience. This word “failure” has become such a loaded term that it is often difficult to get past the emotional baggage that goes with it but get past it we must. Each time your children do not succeed as they want to then that is a failure – a failure to live up to their own expectations. Failure is something to be expected, to be noticed and to be learned from. Failures provide excellent opportunities to create success.
When my children get a result from school that they are not happy with the process is very simple:
i) are you happy with this result?
ii) how did you get this result – what process did you use to get this result?
iii) what part of that process could be improved upon?
iv) what will you do differently next time?
This strategy will also help them:
– to focus on the process as the best mechanism to create future success, and
– to learn from mistakes.
3) Help them build intrinsic motivators and focus on effort rather than ability as the main determinant of success:
Help your children to see the pleasures they take for granted in their lives – TV, computer games, internet time, even phone time, as rewards for getting their necessary work done. Help them to become self-monitoring and responsible with respect to all these everyday pleasures and make sure they are clear that you are prepared to take all those pleasures away if they are seen to be avoiding putting in the necessary effort.
If you are thinking of rewarding your children during the year for school related success, make sure you are rewarding effort rather than outcome. In other words if you have noticed your son studying hard for a test or exam give him a treat as soon as the test is over as a reward for effort rather than when the results come out as a reward for result. This strategy causes the focus to be on the work necessary to achieve good results rather than the result itself which produces a more resilient response in future situations of challenging learning.
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the author at taolearn@xtra.co.nz
Between mid-year exams (or mocks) and final exams – motivation and focus
8 SepYour children have all sat their ‘mock’ exams (I think that is a terrible name for an important set of exams because what does to mock mean? And we wonder why they don’t take them seriously?) and I set out in my last blog how to process those results. Now your children are moving inexorably closer to their greatest challenge of the year, their final exams. And of course they have got a mountain of coursework still to complete, they are tired and stressed after a hard year’s work, they are looking forward to getting away for their Summer holidays and yet we still want them to work harder than they every have – just for the next few months. A big ask.
How can we motivate them to want to work hard, to want to succeed? Well unfortunately we can’t. Only they can motivate themselves, we just have to arrange the conditions as much as we can to help facilitate the development of self-motivation. I see the steps to do this as follows:
1) purpose – if they don’t know why they are doing it they will find it much harder to complete. As I said in the ‘Back to School’ blog, help them focus on the intrinsic motivators – to find out what they are capable of, to gain the satisfaction of completion, of trying as hard as they can, of learning new things, becoming more competent, more capable, more intelligent, of having more choices in their lives
2) organisation – they must have a good clear study timetable which sets out exactly how much time they will spend in study each day right up to and through all the exams, and also what subjects they will study each day
3) resources – they must have good notes to work from, the right textbooks, the right study guides, people to ask questions of and extra tuition available if needed. Also what is very important is having access to old exam papers or individual exam questions in all subjects – these are sometimes available on-line or can be obtained from teachers or from the school library
4) environment – in the hours that they are studying in the weeks leading up to exams, all distractions must be eliminated, if this is a problem for your child you must intervene. Take away their TV, their internet connection, their i-pod and their phone. Just while they are studying, once they have finished their study for the night they can get all those things back. It’s OK. It’s not life threatening and they won’t hate you forever
5) study technique – that’s what we teach on our courses, so if your children have done our Exam Confidence course they will know how to study. It is mostly about treating learning as a discrete process requiring the right skills, lots of practice and the ability to learn from mistakes and constantly improve. Most studying involves reading notes, summarising main points in a way that help remembering and doing exam type exercises. As in point 3 access to old exam questions is critical, once a student has completed the information processing and summarising part for one topic, before they move onto the next topic, they need to try answering sample questions on that topic from old exam papers – but not under the same time constraints as they would find in an exam. This gives them important practice in writing exam answers – getting familiar with the format of questions, organising their material, building clear responses, writing quickly and accurately.
Your role in all this as I have said is to simply arrange conditions as best you can to enable self-motivation to occur. One key area is to engage your children in light discussions about how they are going, whether they are keeping up to schedule or not, asking for any ways that you can help, and watching for signs of pressure and stress. There is nothing wrong with pressure, we can all use pressure to our advantage to help overcome procrastination and when my children were studying for exams I certainly made sure I kept the pressure on. Not in a mean way but just by enquiring as to how much study they were planning on doing tonight, when they were planning on starting, what they were hoping to achieve, if I could bring them a hot drink and their mid-point etc.. It is when pressure turns into stress that I think we, as parents, need to intervene. I define the transition from pressure to stress as being characterised by negative self talk and the expectation of failure. So when your children are moaning about how much work they have to do and how hard it all is I think it is perfectly alright to fob them off with platitudes and aphorisms like “pressure makes diamonds” or “of course it is hard, if it was easy everyone would have one” but what we have to watch out for is when their language moves to expressions of how useless or dumb they feel, or how they expect to fail, or how bad the exams are going to be, or how their life is going to be ruined if they don’t pass etc. etc.. That is the time to intervene. Take them out for a coffee or a movie, get them a treat to eat, or just talk to them about the big picture. What happens, especially with teenagers but with all of us from time to time, is that we get stuck in the short term goals, the things we have to do right now in order to get over the next hurdle in order to meet the deadline, in order to satisfy some external pressure… and we sometimes forget the big picture. Take time to shift your children’s eyes up to the horizon from time to time. Help them to see that the next few weeks are not an eternity, they are merely an eye-blink in their whole life and it won’t be long until the exams are all over and they can have their summer holiday. Also I think it is important to help your children realise that the exams themselves are not significant, all they are, are opportunities to open up different choices. If they were to pass their exams they might have these choices open to them but if they were to fail it wouldn’t be the end of the world, they would just have a whole lot of different choices open to them.
I think we need to realistically talk to our children about the successes and the failures we have had, the choices we made and the consequences of those choices and about the real basis for success in our own lives. Which when I look back had nothing to do with exams as such it was mostly to do with good luck, being in the right place at the right time and having an attitude of being willing to take chances, willing to seize opportunities and take risks. But I am also a firm believer in the old saying that “the harder I work, the luckier I get”.
Lastly about rewards. Rewards are external motivators and as such don’t work too well, and the worst reward of all is money. But in saying that I can see no reason why we shouldn’t offer our children a reward for getting through their study successfully, but not a reward contingent on getting a certain pass or grade or mark. What we need to do is to make sure we are rewarding effort rather than outcome if we want our children to develop a resilient mindset –
a) programme the reward to occur the moment they finish their last exam – not when the results come out
b) don’t use money as the reward
c) make the reward a pleasurable shared opportunity like dinner out for herself and her friends, a holiday weekend, a concert etc
d) make the reward contingent on effort – no effort no reward, miserable effort miserly reward, huge effort great reward
e) effort can be measured simply as hours spent in focused concentrated study – see point 4 above
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After mid-year exams – using their results to help prepare for end-of-year exams
26 AugIn the last couple of months your children will most probably have sat their mid-year exams, by now they will have got all the results back and as they are now looking down the road a bit to their end of year exams it might be a good time to go over those mid-year exam results:
1) sit down with your child and discuss these results
2) find out which exam results they were least happy with and within those subjects which parts they are most unhappy with
3) find out whether the problem was a lack of understanding of the subject, a lack of the right information, a lack of good study processes, procrastination….or something else, look for evidence
4) now is the time to insert appropriate intervention – provide any resource based solutions – did they have all the right information to study from? If not buy suitable study guides for the subjects, use internet study guides, get more information from teaching staff
5) were their any sections in the exams that they just didn’t understand? If so make sure they go and see the respective teachers and get help from them, if that doesn’t work get focused remedial tutoring in that area, maybe from a student who had the same subjects last year or an external subject expert – be very specific
6) investigate their study techniques:
- did they have a study timetable?
- did they stick to their study timetable?
- how much time did they put into studying the areas they didn’t do as well in as they wanted to?
- do they know how to summarise information?
- do they know how to remember what they need?
- if any of these areas are a problem refer them to the course they did with us
7) make sure they finish the analysis of their mid-year exam performance by making a commitment to change any unsuccessful exam preparation strategy in some positive way
There is still plenty of time left for them to put in place good study strategies before their final exams but they will only do so by recognising what isn’t working and changing it.
This is how mid-year exams are most useful.
Your children now have 2-4 months until their end of year exams. They will be aware of this but often do not have a clear time frame in mind and it always seems to be ‘simply ages’ away. One way I always used to help build timelines without pressure with my children was simply to install one of those large year planners in a prominent place in the kitchen and to mark on it the dates for all significant school, social and sporting events for all to see. And then to cross off the days one by one.
All schools these days have websites with good calendars which give you all the data you need which you can then transfer to your home calendar.
All your children will have different aims, goals and purpose when it comes to their end of year assessments but it is important for them to have thought those things through. “If you don’t know where you are going it is very hard to get there.” They need to be clear as to why they are doing their exams and you as their parent need to realise that a focus on external drivers does not produce the best motivation or the best performance.
I see many parents who try to help their children generate motivation to study by talking to them about the importance of getting the best marks in order to get to the best university in order to get the best job in order to make the most money in order one day to be happy…… And yet in their own lives they notice that their own greatest motivation comes out of learning new things, finding new capacities within themselves, overcoming new challenges, gaining personal satisfaction, producing something worthwhile, helping someone else.
We all need extrinsic motivators to help us to create dreams, develop plans and set goals but to get through hard times – study, learning all your subjects, exam prep – the most powerful motivators are always intrinsic. As parents I think that one of our jobs is to help our children learn how to enjoy learning for its own sake – to help make learning an autotelic experience. To see all subjects as interesting for the new knowledge that is in them not just for the result at the end of the year. Help focus your children on gaining satisfaction from their study, the satisfaction of taking on new knowledge or more simply the satisfaction of achieving something that they thought would be difficult. And be reassured, because the more satisfaction your children get from their studies the more likely they are to persist with them and achieve the results that we all like to see, anyway.
My Experience
I can remember this time of year some years ago with my own children when my daughter had just finished her internal exams for Year 11, she was waiting to get the results back and then there was going to be a six week gap until she was to sit her final, end-of-year external exams.
In my consideration of rewards for her exam performance I had two choices, waiting until she got the results back from her exams and see about rewards then – rewarding outcome – or waiting until she finished her last exam and reward her then – rewarding effort. All the research shows that rewarding effort creates resilience so my strategy was always to tell her how impressed I was with the amount of effort she put in for her exams and promise to give her a treat (money, dinner out, a present) as soon as she finishes her last exam. To me the results are not that important it is the application of effort that counts.
My son on the other hand, at the same time of year had had all year, a constant battle with application – the need to use a good process and to put in effort, and had been “slack and lazy” – typical year 10 boy behaviour but not something I was prepared to put up with. After receiving several letters home from teachers referring to his lack of effort in class, his distractibility, his lack of completion of set tasks and his general lazy attitude I decided to take action.
i) first I had the discussion with him about purpose – that was OK, he understands very well the purpose of education and gaining good qualifications
ii) second, I had the discussion with him about effort – that we only wanted to see a good effort from him, we weren’t concerned about his getting top grades we just wanted to see him try and apply himself
iii) third, I made sure he was clear about what a good successful process would be – getting onto his homework as soon as he came home from school, every night reading over the notes he took that day and making key point summaries of information every weekend
iv) fourth I talked to him about rewards and punishments – how I would much sooner give him rewards for putting in effort than punishments for not doing so but that I was prepared to do either and I focused in on his 3 key pleasures – TV, MSN and his cell phone.
The result was an immediate improvement. Being required to do his homework immediately he came home from school made a big difference, the reviews kept him up to date and in class he understood more so he was more focused and concentrated better. We heard from most of his teachers that he had improved his performance in most areas.
At this time his worst subject was one of his options – French – and when a letter came home informing us that no progress had been made in French, in fact things had got worse, we had another talk. Our solution at this point was to move him out of the French class (which we didn’t consider to be too important for a Kiwi kid) into a different option – Drama – which turned out brilliantly as he discovered a love for this subject and showed he has a real talent for it.
Then we got another letter home! This time from his Maths teacher!! Obviously the strategies were not working thoroughly so I determined it was time to put in place corrective strategies – punishment. At this point I took away all his television watching, all his MSN time and I took away his cellphone! I figured that only a massive shock would do the trick so I went for the maximum. I also went out and bought revision guides for English, Maths and Science for him so he had a body of good notes to now work from and I organised some extra tuition for him from a student friend of the family who had recently finished school and who needed some extra cash.
And it worked!
He knuckled down and worked better than he ever had before. He started getting all his work done, he began reviewing his material and he worked through his revision guides. Also he took up reading again and began spending all his spare time reading fiction. I also noticed that began to spend more time outdoors and appeared to be enjoying his life and having much more success than ever before.
He learned from his mistakes, he put in place an effective process and he was focused on putting in effort. He won back his cellphone but we held him on a complete TV and MSN ban until the end of his final exams.
Now I know that those same strategies would not have worked at all for my daughter but they worked brilliantly for my son. I have always been reluctant in the past to put in place serious punishments for my children but it would seem that in some instances they can be both appropriate and effective.
My challenge was then to help him to apply himself this well, independently of me, to become a truly autonomous learner – but one step at a time.
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