Learning… but not as you know it!

The ‘INspired’ resource does NOT aim to recreate a classroom experience at home. Instead, it aims to prompt and support an alternative learning experience: An experience which is shaped by learner agency, aimed at achieving and recognising personal growth and development, through self-directed goals and related actions. The ‘INspired’ resource provides the context to motivate pupils to initiate actions of their own volition that drive their learning.

 If there is no teaching, how is my child learning?

Key, transferable learning occurs within the process pupils are guided through and the skills this generates and refines.

This process includes, but is not limited to:

• Analysing challenges set
• Using areas of interest to select a challenge to begin
• Creatively and widely exploring solutions and responses
• Accessing resources and experts to develop knowledge and understanding
• Accessing resources and experts to develop skills
• Encountering difficulties and responding to difficulties
• Utilising time and freedom effectively to develop and improve solutions or responses
• Responding to challenging questions, feedback and advice
• Posing challenging questions, feedback and advice
• Presenting a ‘product’ in response to the initial challenge
• Recognising learning
• Reflecting on learning 
• Identifying important future learning

The creation of a product or response to the challenge set is intended to facilitate an initial direction for exploration. It is not intended to be used as an assessment artefact. The ‘INspired’ resource promotes trusting pupils to own their learning.

What do you mean “trusting pupils to own their learning”?

Within the ‘INspired’ learning experience, the responsibility for identifying learning, reflecting on learning, and assessing learning lies with THE LEARNER. Developing the skills and ability to do this is integral to becoming an INspired (life-long) learner and opportunities to do this will be regularly facilitated throughout the process.

There are no stated learning intentions because this would limit the scope and recognition of the diverse range of learning that has occurred: Specific, desired learning is not pre-determined. This is intended to allow pupils to dive deeply into the areas of interest which engage them and generate innovative solutions. Ultimately pupils are accountable for evaluating the relevance, helpfulness, and outcomes of the self-directed actions they choose. The INspired process should end with a detailed learning conversation (lead by a teacher) which will enable them to do so.

It is possible that  pupils will fall into the never-ending vortex of distractions available, lose direction, or mismanage time – eventually resulting in having to ‘present’ an incomplete or inferior ‘product’  … THIS IS AN IMPORTANT LEARNING EXPERIENCE! Should pupils become victims of this trap, future cycles should allow them to react better!

 

What do I do? How will I know my child is learning?

Firstly, ask.

Although the teacher will hold a learning conversation at the end of the week there is no reason that you can’t conduct your own regularly:

• What things do you know now that you didn’t know before?
• What skills have you gained or improved?
• What worked well? + what helped you to be successful?
• What didn’t work well? + what barriers prevented you being successful?
• What experts did you work with?
• What experts might help improve your ideas?
• What could you do differently tomorrow?
• How well did you manage your time?

You can also look out for some of the signs of learner agency (or “agentic learning”) and engagement:

• • On-task attention and concentration
  • High effort
  • High task persistence
  • Presence of positive ‘task emotions’ (e.g. interest, enthusiasm, curiosity)
  • Absence of negative ‘task emotions’ (e.g. distress, anger, anxiety, fear)
  • Seeking deep understanding rather than surface knowledge
  • Proactive contribution to the flow of the learning activity
  • Enriching the learning activity rather than passively receiving it as a given

Most importantly, support your child to engage with the CLOG section of the INspired resource and what their teacher is doing!

So what is the teacher doing?

The teacher will play a vital role in facilitating the INspired process in order to maximise learning. This will include, but my not be limited to: 

• Facilitating opportunities for young people to brainstorm initial thoughts and ideas
• Providing regular forums for young people to share what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it
• Constantly modelling effective questioning (why…? what if…? how might you better…?), constructive feedback, and direction to useful resources/experts
• Encouraging young people to connect in order to effectively question each other (why…? what if…? how might you better…?), give constructive feedback, and provide direction to useful resources/experts
• Challenging thinking and throwing the occasional curve ball (this is what builds resilience!) 
• Holding supportive learning conversations at the end of each cycle which will support the reflection of NEW learning and inform future skills for development (record these for further reflection during future learning conversations)
• MINIMISING telling pupils what to do, what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or what THEY think they have learned!