Robert McCormick

Learning How to Learn and Assessment for Learning: a theoretical inquiry

This paper stems from the ESRC TLRP Learning How to Learn—in Classrooms, Schools and Networks Project, and explores how Assessment for Learning (AfL) relates, conceptually, to learning how to learn (LHTL). The term LHTL was intended to draw attention to a primary focus on learning practices, and we have related the processes of AfL to LHTL. A third and more common term ‘learning to learn’ (L2L) has recently come to the fore in the teaching and learning practices of schools. This paper explores the relationships between all three, in three main sections. First, the meaning of the concept LHTL is explored. This is approached initially using the analysis of Dearden, followed by an exploration of the links with other research in the literature on learning. This exploration examines the construct L2L and argues against its implication that there is a distinct capacity with generality of application across all forms of learning. The second section considers the ways in which teachers and schools might give more priority to pupils’ capacity to LHTL, drawing on some research projects that demonstrate improved pupil outcomes, and hence support the rationale for the emphasis on learning practices. The third section examines the problem of assessing LHTL. An attempt to construct an instrument to assess LHTL did not succeed, but did serve to expose both the practical and the theoretical problems in characterizing pupils as having ‘learned how to learn’. The overall conclusion is that emphasis should be placed on practices that have potential to promote autonomy in learning, a common theme in the literature at all levels, and one reflected in our empirical work on teachers’ attitudes and practices.

Information and communications technology, knowledge and pedagogy

Traditional approaches to the use of computers in education have given insufficient attention to the impact of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) on the classroom. Any implementation of ICT in schools requires a level of change in practice. This article examines three such levels, namely where existing practice is made more efficient or effective, where it is extended in some new way, and where it is transformed. A model of pedagogy is outlined and the model is then used to examine the three levels and their implications. The analysis suggests that a more sophisticated idea of change is needed if ICT is to have a significant impact on classroom practices.

Learning How to Learn, in Classrooms, Schools and Networks: aims, design and analysis

This article provides an introduction to the TLRP Learning How to Learn Project and a context for the articles that follow in this special issue. The origins of the research, in a concern to investigate the organizational and network conditions that support innovation in teaching and learning, and in a perceived need to align research on pedagogy and assessment with research on school improvement, are described. Details of the overall development and research design are given as well as an explanation of the ways in which different forms of quantitative and qualitative data analysis are being integrated to interrogate a ‘logic model’, both at whole sample level and in case studies.

Teachers' networks in and out of school

A ‘mapping task’ was used to explore the networks available to head teachers, school coordinators and local authority staff. Beginning from an ego‐centred perspective on networks, we illustrate a number of key analytic categories, including brokerage, formality, and strength and weakness of links with reference to a single UK primary school. We describe how teachers differentiate between the strength of network links and their value, which is characteristically related to their potential impact on classroom practice.

The Evolution of Current Practice in Technology Education

This paper discusses how various reasons for teaching technology (economic, educational, citizenship, Marxisim) and traditions of teaching it (craft, design and art, science, STS, industry) account for currect practice in primary and secondary schools. The discussion looks back over the last hundred years at how the traditions have developed and interacted. A plea for a more sophisticated view of curriculum change is made.

An evaluation of European learning objects in use

Most studies on reusable digital learning materials, learning objects (LOs), relate to their use in universities. Few empirical studies exist to explore the impact of LOs on pedagogy, especially in schools. This paper provides evidence from an evaluation of the use of LOs in schools. The evidence is from a European Union‐funded project, Context eLearning with Broadband Technologies (CELEBRATE), involving 500 schools in six countries across Europe, in a pilot to examine the impact of LOs on pedagogy. It brought together producers and users to try out technically and pedagogically sound ways of producing, making available through a portal, and using LOs. This paper reports data from both quantitative and qualitative studies conducted during 2004, including: online surveys (of all the teachers involved), routine data from the portal and semi‐structured interviews in 40 schools in all six countries.

Reflections and new directions

(1) Studies in tertiary education should make more use of findings and theories about formative assessment which have emerged from studies of this topic in school education. (2) There is a preponderance of concern about formative feedback on written work: the potential contexts for development of formative approaches could well be expanded to consider also oral dialogue, both in lecture theatres and in seminars or tutorials. (3) Innovations should be discussed with a more explicit focus on how strategies for pedagogy can create the conditions for effective learning, in particular in the light of the aim of helping students to become independent in taking responsibility for their own learning. (4) In the context of these discussions of links between assessment and learning, summative assessment deserves more discussion and innovation, directed at securing harmony with the formative in promoting learning. This might call for radical re-thinking about teaching and learning at the tertiary level.

Learning how to learn: Tools for schools

Learning how to learn is an essential preparation for lifelong learning. This book offers a set of in-service resources to help teachers develop new classroom practices informed by sound research. It builds on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’. However, it adds an important new dimension by taking account of the conditions within schools that are conducive to the promotion, in classrooms, of learning how to learn as an extension of assessment for learning.

Curriculum Development and New Information Technology

ABSTRACT Many reports of achievements in developments in new information technology in schools lament the, as yet, unfulfilled hopes that they will radically change education. Those involved in new information technology sometimes seem to imagine that the problems of change that they face are somehow unique and have not been faced by others who have set out to change the curriculum.[l] I shall argue that the view of curriculum change employed by many policy makers and by some of those charged with implementing policy is inadequate.[2] While some acknowledge the need to change attitudes and practices in schools, national programmes have often failed even to include teacher training elements, and few have addressed the school as a focus of change, although the classroom has been addressed. My argument is that a better awareness of the common issues of curriculum change may make individual changes such as envisaged by the advocates of new information technology more effective, or at least less painful! Furth...

The Design and Use of a Mapping Tool as a Baseline Means of Identifying an Organization's Active Networks.

As part of the Learning How to Learn in Classrooms, Schools and Networks Project, a mapping tool and associated interviews were devised to capture practitioners’ views of the networks associated with their schools and local authorities (LAs). This article discusses the development and use of the mapping tool, including its trialing, and the first stages of analysis. The task was open‐ended asking respondents to represent with whom and how their organization communicates. LA advisers and officers offered an LA‐based perspective and both headteachers and school project coordinators offered a school‐based perspective. Forty‐eight maps have been collected from 18 schools and 5 LAs. Theoretically, the development of the mapping tool draws on three main areas of work—sociograms dating back to the 1930s, social network analysis, currently being used by Finnish researchers, and the work of Mavers et al. in mapping children’s representations of the virtual world of computers. Initial discussion of the range of map structures drawn by respondents is presented. In all cases it was possible to extract from the maps a list of people, groups, places and events, termed nodes, and information about how these nodes were connected, termed links. Most maps were organized around one or, in some cases, two central nodes. Descriptive analysis of both nodes and links has been used both to give respondents feedback on their maps, incorporating them in the validation of further analysis, and for comparative purposes. Respondents were largely positive about both the mapping task as a useful, reflective task to focus on their networking activities and the validity of the feedback given to them. Map representations are also explored from a spatial perspective with reference to ideas drawn from Sack and Castells. Reference is made to networked learning communities as supported and developed by the National College of School Leadership and also the Government’s Virtual Education Action Zone initiative, examples of which were represented in the project.