By Martin Griffin and Steve Oakes
Much of what we do as learners is the result of ingrained habit. Many of us will be able to recall a time in our own education when results at a new level of study suggested our approaches to learning were no longer effective. How did we respond? Usually by doubling-down; doing more of the same, pedalling harder and hoping.
In many cases students eventually give up, concluding they’re not intellectually capable of study at a new key stage or more challenging level. But they’re often wrong. We’ve worked with thousands of students who are well capable of handling new ideas and of exploring and interrogating new concepts and material. It’s the non-cognitive elements of study that defeat them – the fresh habits, routines and approaches they’ll need. What worked for pupils in Year 7 might not work in Year 9; new levels of study demand new tactics and strategies.
This is the work we’ve been doing for the last ten years now: defining which non-cognitive factors seem to have an impact on performance, and then developing a series of tools that support pupils changing the way they work. Our strategies are designed to encourage, as art director George Lois put it, ‘the defeat of habit by originality’.
Some of our strategies are all about vision and motivation. We’ve all seen the impact a magnetic goal can have on learners… but goal setting needs to adjust as students grow. It isn’t just a case of plucking potential grades from the air, writing them down and hoping for the best. High vision students are increasingly aware of who they are and what they stand for, and this growing self-awareness allows them to create a compelling vision of what success looks like and what the future holds for them. They don’t just focus on a ‘what’ (‘I want to be a doctor.’); they know their ‘why’ (‘Fairness is important. Equal access to healthcare is crucial. I want to help solve the inequality problem.’)
Another group of strategies we’ve developed are all around effort. As students begin working at a higher level, the successful ones snack on learning rather than binge: they read a chapter of a textbook per week, summarise their notes in four half-hour sittings, write an essay in stages, review their understanding by testing themselves on a topic. In short, they actively set themselves work. This switch from the passive completion of directed tasks, to the active sequencing of independent study sessions is a crucial part of unlocking higher levels of effort.
Some fresh habits we need to teach are all about organisation. There comes a tipping point in your education where you can no longer carry all your notes around with you. At key stage 1 and 2, a single plastic wallet with your homework in will suffice. Now there are textbooks, files, folders, jotters and handouts. Middle-level students need to use a range of tactics to arrange their resources thematically – i.e. by topic – rather than chronologically, and they also begin to project manage. For more distant deadlines and tasks that require multiple sittings, successful students adjust their approach to study so they can effectively sequence their work. We need to teach them how to make strategic assessments of what needs doing next and why.
A fourth group we’ve developed are all about revision and preparation. Many students hit crisis-point when their beloved practice strategies, used successfully in the past to memorise information, seem suddenly useless. Middle-level students begin to wake up to the realisation that knowing the information isn’t enough; the information needs to be fully absorbed … and then used to analyse unfamiliar data, solve a problem, construct an argument in the form of an essay, evaluate an approach, or critique a case study. For students loyal to memorising information, this can be a shock. High practice students learn to adjust the way they revise, mastering the content as the course goes on so that the bulk of their preparation involves high stakes exam-style problem solving. They are calmer and better prepared as a result.
And finally, we’ve put together a whole range of fresh strategies to help students with the attitudinal component of study. All pupils face ‘the dip’, that moment when progress halts and backslides. It might have happened before, but what works at one level – reconnecting with our successes, reminding ourselves of our positive qualities, comfort eating and watching a bit of TV – might need adjustment as challenges arise more frequently. High attitude students have a broader and more robust range of tactics when times are tough. They might be adept at benefit-finding. They might have a strong support network they regularly rely on, because they don’t equate asking for help with intellectual inferiority. And they have techniques for handling stress; they know exams are not a test of their self-worth.
There has been much debate around the extent to which academic performance is predicated on inherited intelligence. Are we genetically fated to achieve certain outcomes, or are we architects of our own results? Each new generation of scientists and researchers places us somewhere else on the nature/nurture continuum.
But as you might expect, our take is different. It doesn’t matter whether the latest research points us to the inherited cognitive ability end of the spectrum or not. It is the non-cognitive element of study – our habits, systems and behaviours – that we can most easily change as we grow. So rather than debating precisely what proportion of our success is due to genetic predisposition or emphasising a past-equals-future paradigm, we should instead be supporting students in changing the ways they work as the programme of study demands change.
That way, we prepare them more effectively for an uncertain future.
Posted with permission from Martin Griffin and Steve Oakes who will be some of our keynote speakers at ELMLEConnect in Malta, January 27-29. Want more information on how to register for our conference? Go here.