[p2p-research] Peel Principles of Learning and Teaching

[Ryan Lanham]

What follows is from the Project for Enhancing Effective Learning...I find
them useful guides... http://www.peelweb.org/   Peel Project Principles of
Teaching for Quality Learning

* *

*1. Share intellectual control with students.*

Building a sense of shared ownership is an effective way of achieving high
levels of student interest and engagement. It can be achieved in many ways;
many of these involve some form of formal or informal negotiation about
parts or all of the content, tasks or assessment. Another complementary
approach is to ensure that students' questions, comments and suggestions
regularly influence, initiate (or terminate) what is done.

* *

*2. Look for occasions when students can work out part (or all) of the
content or instructions.*

Learning is almost always better if students work something out for
themselves, rather than reading it or hearing it. This is not always
feasible of course, but often it is. It can involve short, closed tasks:
e.g. 'if the units of density are gcm-3 work out the formula by which we
calculate the density of a substance from the volume and mass of an object
made of that substance'. It can also involve much longer open-ended tasks:
e.g. 'Here is a photo of the ruins of Machu Pichu, work out as much as you
can, from this photo, about the Incas and their fate'.

* *

*3. Provide opportunities for choice and independent decision-making.*

Students respond very positively to the freedom to make some decisions about
what or how they will work. To be effective, the choices need to be genuine
–not situations where there is really only one possibility. These may
include choices about which area of content to explore, the level of demand
(do more routine tasks or fewer more demanding ones), the form of
presentation (poster, powerpoint presentation, role play, model etc.), and
how to manage their time during a day or lesson.

* *

*4. Provide diverse range of ways of experiencing success.*

Raising intellectual self-esteem is perhaps the most important aspect of
working with low and moderately achieving students. Success via interactive
discussion, question-asking, role-plays and tasks allowing high levels of
creativity often results in greater confidence and hence persistence in
tackling other written tasks. Publicly recognising and praising good
learning behaviours is useful here.

* *

*5. Promote talk which is exploratory, tentative and hypothetical.*

This sort of talk fosters link-making and, as our research shows, commonly
reflects high levels of intellectual engagement. Teaching approaches such as
delayed judgement, increased wait-time, promotion of 'What If' questions use
are all helpful. The classroom becomes more fluid and interactive.

* *

*6. Encourage students to learn from other students' questions and comments.
*

The (student) conception that they can learn from other students ideas,
comments and questions develops more slowly than the conception that
discussion is real and useful work. The classroom dynamics can reach new,
very high levels when ideas and debate bounce around from student to
student, rather than student to teacher.

* *

*7. Build a classroom environment that supports risk-taking.*

We underestimated the very high levels of perceived risk that accompanies
many aspects of quality learning for most students, even in classes where
such learning is widespread. It is much safer, for example, to wait for the
teacher's answer to appear than to suggest one yourself. Building trusts in
the teacher and other students and training students to disagree without
personal put-downs are essential to widespread display of good learning
behaviours.

* *

*8. Use a wide variety of intellectually challenging teaching procedures.*

There are at least two reasons for this, one is that teaching procedures
that counter passive learning and promote quality learning require student
energy and effort - hence they need to be varied frequently to retain their
freshness. The other is that variety is another source of student interest.



*9. Use teaching procedures that are designed to promote specific aspects of
quality learning.*

One of the origins of PEEL was the belief that students could be taught how
to learn, in part by devising a range of teaching procedures to variously
tackle each of a list of poor learning tendencies, for example failing to
link school work to relevant out-of-school experiences. The variety in (8)
is not random and one basis for selecting a particular teaching procedure is
to promote a particular aspect of quality learning.

* *

*10. Develop students' awareness of the big picture: how the various
activities fit together and link to the big ideas.*

Many, if not most students, do not perceive schooling to be related to
learning key ideas and skills. Rather, they see their role as completing
tasks and so they focus on what to do not why they are doing it. Much
teacher talk, particularly in skills based areas such as Mathematics,
Grammar and Technology reinforces this perception. For these reasons,
students (including primary students) commonly do not link activities and do
not make links to unifying, 'big ideas'.

* *

*11. Regularly raise students' awareness of the nature of different aspects
of quality learning.*

This is a key aspect of learning how to learn. Students typically have no
vocabulary to discuss learning. it is very helpful to build a shared
vocabulary and shared understandings by regular, short debriefing about some
aspect of the learning that has just occurred. Having a rotating student
monitor of a short list of good learning behaviours can be very helpful.

* *

*12. Promote assessment as part of the learning process.*

Students (and sometimes teachers) typically see assessments as purely
summative: something that teachers do to students at the end of a topic.
Building the perception that (most) assessment tasks are part of the
learning process includes encouraging students learning from what they did
and did not do well as well as having students taking some ownership of and
responsibility for aspects of assessment. It also includes teachers ensuring
that they are assessing for a range of aspects of quality learning (eg if
you want students linking different lessons then reward that in your
assessment) and for a wider range of skills than is often the case.



Ryan Lanham
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