Informed choice: the essential ingredient of learner-centred education Dylan Wiliam www.dylanwiliam.net

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Informed choice the essential ingredient of
learner-centred educationDylan
Wiliamwww.dylanwiliam.net
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Raising achievement matters

• For individuals
• Increased lifetime salary
• Improved health
• Longer life
• Greater control
• For society
• Lower criminal justice costs
• Lower health-care costs
• Increased economic growth
• Increased pro-social behaviour

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Raising achievement matters

• Which of the following categories of skill is
  disappearing from the work-place most rapidly?
• Routine manual
• Non-routine manual
• Routine cognitive
• Complex communication
• Expert thinking/problem-solving

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but what is learnt also matters
Autor, Levy Murnane, 2003
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now more than ever
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The only 21st century skill

• So the model that says learn while youre at
  school, while youre young, the skills that you
  will apply during your lifetime is no longer
  tenable. The skills that you can learn when
  youre at school will not be applicable. They
  will be obsolete by the time you get into the
  workplace and need them, except for one skill.
  The one really competitive skill is the skill of
  being able to learn. It is the skill of being
  able not to give the right answer to questions
  about what you were taught in school, but to make
  the right response to situations that are outside
  the scope of what you were taught in school. We
  need to produce people who know how to act when
  theyre faced with situations for which they were
  not specifically prepared.
• (Papert, 1998)

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Wheres the solution?

• Structure
• Small secondary schools
• Larger secondary schools
• Alignment
• Curriculum reform
• Textbook replacement
• Governance
• Vouchers and charter schools (US)
• Specialist schools, trusts and academies (UK)
• Technology
• Computers
• Interactive white-boards

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School effectiveness

• Three generations of school effectiveness
  research
• Raw results approaches
• Different schools get different results
• Conclusion Schools make a difference
• Demographic-based approaches
• Demographic factors account for most of the
  variation
• Conclusion Schools dont make a difference
• Value-added approaches
• School-level differences in value-added are
  relatively small
• Classroom-level differences in value-added are
  large
• Conclusion An effective school is a school full
  of effective classrooms

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Informed choice

• About what to learn (Curriculum)
• About how to learn (Pedagogy)
• Degree of choice should be influenced by
• Consequences (for the individual and for society)
• Maturity
• Consequences of choices (and especially poor
  choices) about what is to be learned are
  generally greater than choices about how learning
  should be achieved, so
• For younger learners, many if not most learning
  outcomes need to be non-negotiable. As they get
  older their wishes should become predominate
  their interests (progressive lowering of the
  safety net)
• From the earliest age, however, learners should
  be involved in decisions about how they learn
  best.

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Principles of curriculum design

• Curriculum a selection from culture
• Balanced
• Rigorous
• Vertically integrated
• Internally consistent
• Focused

The test of successful education is not the
amount of knowledge that a pupil takes away from
school, but his appetite to know and his capacity
to learn. If the school sends out children with
the desire for knowledge and some idea how to
acquire it, it will have done its work. Too many
leave school with the appetite killed and the
mind loaded with undigested lumps of information.
The good schoolmaster is known by the number of
valuable subjects which he declines to
teach. (Sir Richard Livingstone, President of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1941)
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Informed choice about curriculum

• Intrinsic factors
• What is the subject really like?
• Authenticity of experience
• Habits of mind
• Developing identity (e.g., mathematics, plumbing)
• Extrinsic factors
• Critical filters for particular careers
• Financial rewards
• Consequences
• Closing down of options (leaky pipes)
• Sensitive periods

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Informed choice in mathematics
Eulers relation F  V  E  2
Goldbachs conjecture
The alternating harmonic series
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Informed choice about pedagogy

• Two extremes
• Teachers doing the learning for the learners
• Teachers facilitating learning
• Key concept
• Teachers do not create learning
• Learners create learning
• But all teachers can do is teach (learning vs.
  teaching)
• Teaching is the engineering of effective learning
  environments
• Key features of effective learning environments
• Create student engagement (pedagogies of
  engagement)
• Well-regulated (pedagogies of contingency)
• Develop habits of mind (pedagogies of formation)

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Why pedagogies of engagement?

• Intelligence is partly inherited
• So what?
• Intelligence is partly environmental
• Environment creates intelligence
• Intelligence creates environment
• Learning environments
• High cognitive demand
• Inclusive
• Obligatory

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Motivation cause or effect?
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
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Why pedagogies of contingency?
Intervention Extra months of learning per year Cost/yr
Class-size reduction (by 30) 4 20k
Increase teacher content knowledge from weak to strong 2 ?
Formative assessment/ Assessment for learning 8 2k
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Unpacking formative assessment

• Key processes
• Establishing where the learners are in their
  learning
• Establishing where they are going
• Working out how to get there
• Participants
• Teachers
• Peers
• Learners

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Aspects of formative assessment
Where the learner is going Where the learner is How to get there
Teacher Clarify and share learning intentions Engineering effective discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning Providing feedback that moves learners forward
Peer Understand and share learning intentions Activating students as learning resources for one another Activating students as learning resources for one another
Learner Understand learning intentions Activating students as ownersof their own learning Activating students as ownersof their own learning
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and one big idea

• Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and
  learning to meet student needs

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Keeping Learning on Track (KLT)

• A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its
  destination by taking constant readings and
  making careful adjustments in response to wind,
  currents, weather, etc.
• A KLT teacher does the same
• Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in
  essence building the track)
• Takes readings along the way
• Changes course as conditions dictate

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Summary

• Learning power is developed more by howthan by
  whatwe teach
• Teaching is the engineering of effective learning
  environments
• Effective learning environments involve
• Pedagogies of engagement
• Pedagogies of contingency
• Personalisation
• Mass customization (rather than mass production
  or individualisation)
• Diversity
• A valuable teaching resource (rather than a
  challenge to be minimized)
• Assessment is the bridge between teaching and
  learning, and thus the central process of
  teaching (as opposed to lecturing).