Personalising Learning in the Primary Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers and School Leaders

CHAPTER 1

What is Personalising Learning?

Perhaps it would be best to start by saying what personalised learning is not. It is not about abdicating, as teacher, the responsibility of planning and delivering learning activities and the assessment of your pupils. It is not about allowing pupils to do exactly what they want, when they want, how they want, if they want. It is not about a return to the ‘laissez-faire’ attitudes of the 1960s.

It is about focusing attention on what makes effective learning for every individual learner within your institution, at child (and adult) level and making provision accordingly. It is a shift in emphasis from examining the quality of teaching to looking at how we can provide quality learning. It is a shift in emphasis from curriculum content at the centre to the child’s development as a confident and competent learner at the centre of the learning process (this will entail looking at the development of the whole child and not just their cognitive development).

Traditional education in this country is built around a one-size-fits-all model. The curriculum is fixed and delivered in a particular style and the pupils are tested at the end of the system in order to grade their ability (or inability) at regurgitating facts and formulae. My model of PL shifts the starting block from the curriculum to the child and what they can do, and then builds upon their skills at learning and abilities to learn, supporting them in tailoring a curriculum to fit their developing needs.

Figure 1.1

Because what is learning for, anyway? Are we in the business of merely schooling our pupils so that they can ensure that we do well in the league tables? Or are we in the business of preparing them for their lives in a future that is shifting faster than we can keep up with? We need to be moving away from a curriculum based on subject knowledge to a skills-based curriculum, so that our children are prepared for all possible futures.

We should be making the learning fit the learner and not what seems to have been the shift in focus in the education system in the last fifteen years with the advent of the National Curriculum – making the learner fit the learning. As much as we want all our pupils to succeed as learners, we are in a situation in our current system whereby we are still producing too many who are seen as ‘failures’ because they are unable to access the curriculum for a myriad of reasons. Pupils are opting out because they see the current curriculum and ways of learning as irrelevant to them and their world.

We need our children to be successful as learners but we can’t do the learning for them. They must construct their own meaning through their interactions with their environment and other learners around them. We can guide and coach, mentor and support and provide a rich, stimulating environment in which learners can learn and provide an abundance of opportunities for learning, but we can’t learn for them. Therefore, we need to examine more closely how we can make learning more accessible to all of our learners.

For me personalising learning is about:

teachers, or other learning facilitators, knowing each of their learners as an individual;

knowing each learner’s strengths and areas that need further development;

sharing that knowledge with the learners, through constructive feedback so that they begin to understand themselves as learners and develop the language to describe their learning needs;

working alongside the child, devolving some of the responsibility for their learning, increasing their independence, over the period of time that the child is in formal schooling;

supporting children and encouraging them to develop the skills of lifelong learning;

the teacher (or learning facilitator) really knowing her pupils, as individual people as well as individual learners because learning is about the whole child, not just their cognitive abilities;

not being a ‘slave’ to a curriculum, of whomever’s design, but working with pupils to create a flexible learning path that will meet their changing needs as they develop;

looking at systems within our schools to ensure that they provide the flexibility to ensure that we can meet individual needs;

extending learning beyond the five-plus hours a day for 190 days per year spent in a school – it’s about 24/7 learning; and

trying to do our best for every single child and supporting them in being the best they can be; but

most of all it is about not tolerating failure for our children.

Our ultimate aim should be for learners to become responsible for managing their own learning and assessment; they should be able to describe themselves in terms of their learning attributes and should be forever seeking new opportunities to develop themselves as learners – learning from their mistakes and from working closely with others.

Knowing how to learn, understanding how to understand and learning how to learn are at the heart of the key skills for lifelong learning. It is not just about mastering a few study skills: it is more about developing a set of positive attitudes to learning.

Where has the notion of personalising learning come from?

The notion of personalising learning first appeared in the public arena in a party conference speech made by Prime Minister Tony Blair in autumn 2003. It was then developed in a speech by David Milliband, then a minister of state, at the National College for School Leadership in October 2003:

The goal is clear. It is what the prime minister described in his party conference speech as ‘personalised learning’: an education system where assessment, curriculum, teaching style, and out of hours provision are all designed to discover and nurture the unique talents of every single pupil … the most effective teaching depends on really knowing the needs, strengths and weaknesses of individual pupils.

Personalised learning is seen by the prime minister as part of the wider political context of the personalisation of all public services. It is supported by the advent of ‘Every Child Matters’ (DfES, 2003a) and ‘Excellence and Enjoyment’ (DfES, 2003b), where a focus on individual children is pushed to the fore in both documents. Personalisation is also at the heart of the new ‘Five-Year Strategy’ from the DfES (2004a) and in the White Paper (DfES, 2005).

The ‘New Relationship with Schools’ (DfES, 2004c) also supports and underpins these initiatives. The government is proposing a cluster of interlocking changes that will affect school inspection, schools’ relations with local and central government, schools’ self-evaluation and planning, data collection from schools and communication with schools.

But it is not only policy and the legislative framework that are being developed to support personalisation. We are also beginning to see that it is impacting in other areas that affect schools. For example, the National College for School Leadership is starting to develop resources to support personalised learning; the Schools for the Future initiative is looking at building design to accommodate these new ways of working; the National Remodelling Team are supporting schools in developing greater flexibility within the schools’ workforce, which will support personalised learning. The infrastructure is developing to support one of the biggest changes to our education system since the 1870s.

What do other people say about personalising learning?

The DfES (2004b) leaflet, ‘A National Conversation about Personalised Learning’, defines PL in terms of five principles:

for children and young people, clear learning pathways through the education system and the motivation to become independent, e-literate, fulfilled, lifelong learners;

for schools, a professional ethos that accepts that every child comes to the classroom with a different knowledge base and skills set and that there should be the determination for every young person’s needs to be assessed and their talents developed through diverse teaching strategies;

for school governors, promoting high standards of educational achievement and wellbeing for every pupil, ensuring that all aspects of organising and running the school work together to get the best for all pupils;

for the DfES and local authorities, a responsibility to create the conditions in which teachers and schools have the flexibility and capability to personalise the learning experience of all their pupils; combined with a system of intelligent accountability so that central intervention is in inverse proportion to success; and

for the system as a whole, the shared goals of high quality and high equity.

The DfES leaflet then sets out the components of personalised learning as follows:

assessment for learning, and the use of evidence and dialogue to identify every pupil’s learning needs;

effective teaching and learning strategies that develop the competence and confidence of every learner by actively engaging and stretching them;

curriculum entitlement and choice that delivers breadth of study, personal relevance and flexible learning pathways through the system;

school organisation, with school leaders and teachers thinking creatively about how to support high-quality teaching and learning; and

strong partnership beyond the school to drive forward progress in the classroom, to remove barriers to learning and to support pupil wellbeing.

Charles Leadbeater, a senior research associate with the independent think tank Demos and adviser to the Downing Street Policy Unit, has been engaged in work with the DfES Innovations Unit, the National College for School Leadership and Demos on personalisation. He wrote a pamphlet for this group entitled ‘Learning about Personalisation: how can we put the learner at the heart of the education system?’. In it he talks about young people as having:

choice in what they learn;

choice in how they learn; and

choice in how they are assessed.

He states that personalisation isn’t about doing anything radically different: it’s about doing what you’re supposed to be doing better. He encourages teachers and schools to think radically about what educational institutions could be like and to spread the capability to take action, by gathering evidence about what works.

David Hopkins, then the head of the DfES Standards and Effectiveness Unit, said we have the potential to bring about a major and dramatic shift in the education system.

It’s building schooling around the needs and aptitudes of individual pupils, shaping teaching around the way different youngsters learn. It’s also making sure that the talent of each pupil is supported and encouraged and about personalising the school experience to enable pupils to focus on their learning.

He reminds us that personalisation is not about shying away from the standards agenda. Indeed, he says it should have a standards focus. He defined personalised learning as:

defining teaching, curriculum and school organisation to address the needs of the individual pupil;

a learning offer to all children that extends beyond the school context into the local community and beyond;

an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on an individual’s potential and learning skills;

a system that recognises and supports the needs of the whole child;

a system that removes barriers to learning early on; and

a system that is more accessible and open to customisation.

He says that the agenda is around action and experimentation.

David Hargreaves has been at the forefront of discussions and research about learning and how it can be made more efficient and effective for our learners in schools. His work has contributed much to our growing understanding of what personalised learning should look like. He says that personalising learning will:

reinforce some current practices in schools and classrooms;

demand modifications to some current practices; and

entail creating some new practices.

He considers PL in terms of nine interconnected gateways:

1 curriculum

2 advice and guidance

3 assessment for learning

4 learning how to learn

5 the new technologies

6 workforce development

7 mentoring

8 school design and organisation

9 student voice

He challenges schools to create networks of innovation, starting from the different gateways according to the needs and preferences of individual networks, but then to bring the outcomes of the different networks together to produce an overall, coherent version of personalisation as a well of resources from which everyone can draw.

Much of the current literature, particularly that from the DfES, talks about personalised learning as if it were something that can be done, finished and ticked off as completed, but I have deliberately used the phrase personalising learning, because I see the process as a never-ending journey of discovery about what works for each individual. There should never be an end to this journey, because we should always be learning for ourselves about how to improve, and there will always be the challenge of new learners at our school gates.

So what’s the solution to providing PL?

The bad news is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to PL. The very essence of it is that learning should be different for every learner. Learning shouldn’t be about squeezing children through the ‘sausage-factory’ curriculum so that they all come out the other end with a set level. It should reflect their needs, their wants, their dreams, their developing abilities and skills, and develop their talents and excite them with new interests.

If you want to develop PL within your primary school, this book will provide you with some checklists of questions to ask yourselves, some step-by-step guidance and frameworks that you can adapt to your needs. But it will not provide the answer to what PL will look like for your pupils in your school. That is for you to determine, in close collaboration with your staff, parents, governors and, most importantly, your pupils.

It is often said that there is nothing new in the world of education, and if you wait long enough trends will come round again. I believe that is the case for PL. Many of the ‘components’ considered in this book have been out there in the educational field and have been tried in many schools, by many teachers and are backed up by theory based on extensive research. There are no new magic techniques in this book: it is just a holistic approach that is based on years of trying to develop effective practice. The only secret about the successful implementation of personalising learning is to ensure that it is a whole-school approach to putting the learning needs of every individual child first, so that a solution can be found to empower learners to manage their own learning.

There are, of course, going to be implications for teachers, for how schools are led and managed, for how learning is organised and how assessment is conducted and so forth. There are lots of issues to be considered before you embark on PL in your school, but don’t let that put you off. You need to remember that there is probably much practice within your institution already that could be part of your solution to personalising learning.

So why bother?

There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.

– BLANCHARD, 1994

Although Blanchard was writing about leadership, what he says also rings true about our current education system. Children enter the system bringing with them their own unique set of abilities. They all come from very different backgrounds and pre-school learning experiences, and yet we expect them to operate in a system that does not recognise and celebrate their individuality.

PL is a way of not only recognising that individuality but a way of celebrating it and encouraging children to use their individual skills and talents to improve what they can be. In our school, we found the benefits of working towards personalising learning were that:

the children were motivated to learn;

incidents of bad behaviour were minimal because the children were operating in a system that they did not need to ‘kick’ against;

the staff were motivated and gave 110 per cent;

the parents were supportive of what was happening and became engaged in learning about learning themselves;

the school developed a good reputation for caring for the individual and being inclusive;

lots of other schools wanted to visit to look at what we did and how we managed it; and

standards were good (and improving).

So where do you begin?

Where you begin, of course, depends on where you are starting from! PL is going to be different in every institution that adopts it, because it needs to be tailor-made to fit the pupils and the community that you serve.

I hope that there are some ideas here that you will be able to trial, adapt as necessary to fit your needs and make your own practice. The key is to have a go and see what happens.

CHAPTER 2

What Do We Already Know About Learning?

The mind and brain

The mind or the brain is at the heart of all learning. When we talk to children about learning, we always remind them to switch their brains on, but actually we need them to engage their minds too. The mind is the bigger concept encompassing all of our personality. Psychology gives us many insights into its operation, as does educational research. From neuroscience we are finally beginning to see inside the brain and marvel at the electrical and chemical impulses that make it tick. But we are only just beginning to understand how mind and brain really work.

From psychology we are gaining new insights about the nature of intelligence, the importance of self-esteem and the ways in which different environments, and our emotional reaction to them, can affect us. A positive attitude and the power of the human will can make all the difference to learning (or not).

From neuroscience we are finding out more about the structure of the brain. Scientists have been able to see what is happening when we are undertaking various activities and have learned more about what occurs when we are under stress and begin to see what is going on when we remember (or forget) things. Whereas we once thought of the brain in terms of having two halves or three parts, we now realise that this is far too simplistic a view of this powerful learning organ, but it nevertheless provides us with some simple science to underpin our understanding of learning and what hinders and helps the process.

We know that the brain is divided into three parts: the reptilian brain, the limbic system and the neocortex. Each is responsible for different functions. The reptilian brain governs our most basic survival instincts; for example, our breathing, circulation and so on. The limbic system is responsible for processing emotions and dealing with the input from the senses and with our long-term memory (you can see why there is a strong connection between our emotions and long-term memory and why smell is such a powerful memory booster). The neocortex deals with our higher-order thinking and reasoning. All three parts of the brain work together to ensure prime function, but, if one or more of these parts is not satisfied by its stimulation through the environment, then learning opportunities and potential will be diminished.

It becomes obvious, then, why we need to consider our most basic needs in order to ensure that learning takes place. If we are, say, cold, tired, hungry or upset, then our brain is unable to engage its high-order functions of learning and thinking. We need to keep ourselves comfortable in terms of environment and emotional state to enable ourselves to be open to learning.

The brain can also be thought about in terms of its two hemispheres – left and right. We have known for a very long time that the left side controls the right-hand side of our bodies and vice versa. It is now thought that the left-hand side of the brain specialises in language, logic and number concepts, working in a very logical and sequential way. The right side specialises in nonverbal and intuitive thinking, dealing with imagination and intuition. The two hemispheres are joined together by the corpus callosum, which allows communication between the two sides. The most effective thinking and learning takes place when both sides of the brain are working together. This means that we need to consider activities to ensure that pupils stimulate both sides of the brain. For example, putting learning to music – singing times