In my role, I am responsible for the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in the Senior School. In a school as large as Tanglin, I see part of that responsibility as ensuring consistency of experience for all students. It came to light this year that we were not, as a Senior School, always managing consistency across and within subjects with regards to homework in the Middle School, and so it was clear this was something we needed to consider. At the same time, in Term 2, many of our older students in the Upper School and Sixth Form were completing mock examinations, and it was clear that some of these older students were still struggling with the necessary independent study skills for success in examinations.
Approaches to learning
Following a conversation with Joe Loader, our Head of IB, it also seemed clear that what we were really talking about were the IB Approaches to Learning. To me, all these things were linked, and I spied an opportunity. Middle School homework is a chance to explicitly teach students these independent study skills early on, and to embed them as part of their repertoire of learning strategies so that as students graduate from our Middle School into the Upper School, they are ready and equipped to tackle the challenge of formal examinations that these later school years bring.
After talking further with Joe, the idea of 'Learning to Learn' was born; a name which we feel conveys what the initiative is really about. Put simply, 'Learning to Learn' is about the explicit teaching of a variety of independent study skills through the curriculum, with opportunities to practise these skills embedded by homework tasks.
Instead of using a scattergun approach to teaching the necessary skills for learning though, we felt that a more coherent approach would work better so we will be launching the initiative in August 2023 with Knowledge Organisers and Retrieval Practice as the focus of homework across all subjects in the Middle School. We have started to consider how this might look in different subjects and how we can also incorporate the "Sticky Knowledge" of our 3-14 curriculum into these Knowledge Organisers. In time, we aim to move on to other key learning strategies, such as note-taking and summarising, but our first focus will be Knowledge Organisers and Retrieval.
Doing the research
There were two areas of research that we needed to investigate before arriving at a proposal that we thought would address our concerns as outlined above; one was homework, and the other was study skills. Two texts, in particular, were immensely helpful; they really helped to shape our thinking and also gave us the confidence that what we wanted to do would work!
The first was The Revision Revolution by Helen Howell and Ross Morrison McGill, which is essentially a step-by-step guide to building a culture of effective study in a school. Helen Howell writes about her own experience of leading this in her school, so she is able to outline the potential pitfalls, the steps to take to gradually build this culture, and the important role that homework has to play in effectively teaching study skills to students. This text draws on all sorts of research in the field, including Tom Needham's research into retrieval quizzes, Paul Kirshner's work on backwards fading, David Didau's work on curriculum, as well as Bjork and Bjork on desirable difficulties.
Next, we read Homework with Impact by Andrew B Jones, which makes a very convincing case for setting homework that allows students to practise the study skills we want to teach them. Jones cites a study by Cooper (1989) where it is found that practice and preparation tasks have a clear positive impact on immediate and delayed achievement measures.
In this study, pupils who included practice and preparation tasks alongside other tasks outperformed their peers by 54% (Hallam and Rogers, 2018). Jones also draws on research by Dunlosky et al (2013) which shows that practice testing is the most effective learning strategy of all. Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction (2012) also recommended that students practise short reviews of previous learning, checking understanding through questioning.
Putting into action
As this initiative is very much in its infancy, I would love to write a follow up article in a year's time to look at the impact so far. As with any change or intended improvement, we need to see this year as a pilot, and to periodically pause to reflect and monitor the impact. No doubt it will take time to embed, but we are excited about the possibilities!
As we move forward with this, our subject leaders will be the people who can really explain how 'Learning to Learn' works in their subjects. For now, Joe Loader or I will be more than happy to talk with colleagues from across all three schools if you have an interest in how it will work and the guiding principles behind it.
- Thought Leadership
