The education sector is awash with new approaches to teaching, as well as ways to engage children with digital technologies and media.  One thing it doesn’t do very successfully however is map children’s education against the way brains develop and learn. As neuroscience gains more traction, it is becoming clear that our educational system may not be fit for purpose.
 
Sarah-Jane Blakemore, a professor in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, recently pointed out that it’s only in the last few years that we have learned much about adolescent brain development. This is leading a movement in which a new approach to education is being called for. Yet it’s not just adolescents who can benefit from a neuroscientific approach to education, it matters for younger children too.
 
One of the most important things to know from a neuroscientific perspective is that the brain is ‘plastic’ and so there is no such thing as normal or typical. While brain development is influenced by genetics and all brains have structural similarities, every single thought, emotion, behaviour and interaction changes the brain. As Jenni Newcombe, an experienced SENCo, teacher and curriculum designer with a masters in educational neuroscience, says, “Schools decide what’s typical, brains don’t.”
 
In discussion of the benefits and risks of separating children into ability streams, that’s worth remembering. Schools put limits and parameters around what needs to be learned at both extremes, and its usually too much or too little. Children learn at different speeds and in different ways. One of the great myths is that people have different learning styles and if they are taught the right way (such as aurally, visually, mechanically), they will learn better. The reality is that children may have learning preferences but, to a certain extent, it doesn’t really matter how content is delivered, it can be learned.
 
The real question then seems to be why are we teaching children content rather than teaching them how to learn. The Finnish education system, which is considered to be the best in the world, focuses on developing and applying skills across the curriculum rather than on learning content. In a world where much analytical work will soon be delivered by computers, isn’t it more important that we equip the next generation with the skills to learn new things in new ways?
 
Examinations are being introduced at ever earlier ages and while they are supposed to be ‘low stakes’ the amount of stress experienced by many children taking these tests is enormous. While the school may make clear that the tests will not affect the children’s future, that doesn’t prevent children’s concerns about competition, failure, letting down parents and all sorts of negative thinking. According to Newcombe, exams themselves fail because they measure the child’s value (they rate how ‘good’ they are) rather than assessing their skills and knowledge effectively. Instead, testing should only be used, at least until exiting school, to assess for further learning—to identify the gaps, ideally.
 
If the outcome of any test is expected to be a measure of the child, surely that’s a failure in our thinking. How can the factual recollection of content in an examination environment help any child in preparing for the new work and home paradigms of a digital society?
 
If they have the learning skills they can learn the content anywhere. In the brain activation is greater if children have done something they have learned from, not when they know something. As Newcombe says, “There is no benefit in the brain to knowing, the benefit comes from learning and the use of that learning in doing something new.”

There has been a resurgence of interest in ways of helping children deal with mental health issues at school, and rightly so. For many the stresses and strains, whether educational, social or physical, can be overwhelming.  In many ways, we expect children to deal with these stresses as a matter of course, and don’t always support them in healthy mental development.
 
In the wider world there is a new awareness of mindfulness as a means of focusing on the positive. The latest incarnation is a recognition of the importance of resilience as a route to happiness, a step beyond what some see as the ego-based annexation of spiritual mindfulness.
 
Mindfulness pioneer Rick Hanson, has written a new book, “Resilient", about the need to develop “12 fundamental inner strengths’ if we are to become more robust. These include compassion, mindfulness, learning, grit, gratitude, confidence, calm, motivation, intimacy, courage, aspiration and generosity. The list seems self-evidently helpful but how to develop such skills in a chaotic and ever-changing school environment?
 
What’s intriguing is this development in conjunction with the way the world is changing around us. We need to build a more resilient world to adapt to ecosystem change and we need to build a more resilient society to manage the changes coming forced by increasing automation and inequity, which are likely to challenge the business, working and living models we’re used to living within today.
 
A number of programmes have sprung up which focus on helping children develop their own resilience. What is usually meant by this is learning to work as a team and rely on others, and learning not to give up when something ‘doesn’t work’ or doesn’t go as planned. It’s about teaching problem -solving in a fun way to ensure that children learn that trial and error includes error.

That’s to be lauded, as are the practitioners who enable children to experience these approaches. What matters in the wider educational system, however, is the importance of embedding these values within the educational system every day. In many ways it is arguable that developing student’s skills and ability to respond positively to challenges and setbacks is a key goal of education.  That means it teaches that ‘error’ or being wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing, rather it’s a milestone on the road to learning something new. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” said Winston Churchill.

Building individual resilience, the belief that they can overcome, results in students being open to learning. Critique becomes no longer personal, but rather another part of the learning journey. The development of the idea that learning is a pursuit, it’s something to experience not be given, helps to develop motivation and reward effort. And when the self-help books are arguing that this is the way forward, it’s worth considering whether your school is encouraging children to learn in the most effective way, and whether scores and percentages of correct answers is giving the most helpful message.

This column first appeared in the April issue of Education Today.
 

As the information revolution continues there is increasing concern that the current approach to education is no longer fit for purpose. At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba warned that the knowledge-based (fact focused) approach to education was out of date, would “fail our kids’ who will never be able to compete with computers.

Ma recommends that children are taught skills such as independent thinking, values and team work. The challenge remains how such approaches can be deployed across the educational system without increasing the burden on teachers. Many teachers already feel underpaid and under-appreciated, so the addition of currently extra curricula approaches may seem onerous.

Perhaps what we need to see is a new approach to teaching today, less focused on drilling in the right answers and more on understanding the importance of questioning, flexibility of thought and collaboration. This moves the focus onto adapting and improving thinking and learning which is not just an important skill for pupils, but teachers as well. 

One of the things that Professor Alex Moore points out in his book The Good Teacher, is that it’s difficult to be specific about what makes a good teacher because that oversimplifies what are an incredibly complex mixture of issues and skills. And it’s this recognition of complexity as a good thing that we need to bring back to the forefront of education.

The issue of social media and digital literacy has dominated many recent discussions, with a focus on teaching children to manage their involvement in such environments. Isn’t it more important to teach children the more fundamental skill of assessing this information?  Giving pupils the ability to be comfortable with complexity, understand how to think about difficult questions and contextualise them, helps them deal better with the ‘real world’.

Such an approach also provides the framework on which children can build the ability to, if not control the environment around them, gain agency, resilience and social skills. This can build up children’s ability to work creatively and collaboratively, developing the intellectual humility to understand that no one needs to “be right”. Given the nature of the modern world, these are essential life skills.

Deborah Brentzman talks about teaching being a process of becoming and we need to see education as a sector where teachers and students are always in the process of becoming. And part of this is the recognition, for both teachers and students, that they are not working alone. Recognition of the negative impact of feeling isolated is growing for pupils but teachers need to build their networks as well.

Teachers are increasingly nervous about sharing concerns, with potential career opportunities and the possibly negative impact of sharing a problem with colleagues. Given the ‘messy complexity of the classroom’ perhaps it’s time that we looked at the ‘messy complexity’ of teaching and find ways to bring teachers together to explore and grow, away from the prescriptive nature of achieving standardised attainment tests for children.

Today’s educational culture is focused on outcomes rather than instilling a sense of wonder and opportunity, which can have a negative effect on pupils and teachers. We encourage teachers and pupils not to succumb to the apparent strictures of the current curriculum but to suffuse every lesson with discussion, teamwork, creativity and choice.
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It’s famously been said that if you get used to conformity, your ability to think autonomously and relate to others will be seriously limited. Perhaps if we can find a way to use what’s messy, we can put collaboration, critical thinking and creativity back at the heart of education.
 

Engaging children with their education is an important part of the learning process but for many the constant pressure and focus on grades can create a barrier to learning, instilling a fear of failure rather than a love of learning.
 
While experienced and engaged learners may well enjoy school, there are many who feel that education is something being done to them, and don’t always get why it matters or what their role in the process should or could be. A sense of agency is critical for adults to be happy in their work lives, so why should it be any different for children? Making them feel as if they are part of this process, ensuring ongoing dialogue, should be an integral part of the educational system. One way in which this can be achieved is through the effective use of feedback.
 
Ruth Dann’s latest book, ‘Developing Feedback for Pupil Learning: Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Schools’ is a research based examination of how to address a pupil’s learning gap – the gap between the knowledge and skills they have today and what they need to do now and next – within the context of feedback. It explores what works, what doesn’t work, for whom and why.
 
Dann says that feedback is a communicative tool which teachers use to convey what has been achieved and what needs to be done next for learning to progress. It seeks to close a gap between learning (now) and learning (next). Often it is handled in a fairly technical way by teachers, who assume that pupils will understand the feedback messages in the way that the teachers intended. In reality this is often not the case.
 
In the UK, targets are given (sometimes with pupil input), and there seems to be a prevailing assumption that teachers can exactly frame what pupils will learn by stating  desired outcomes more clearly and more often. However, it is evident from the government’s own statistics that the performance of pupils in England has not improved in relation to other countries and certain groups of children repeatedly underperform. Part of the answer embedded in the recent government White Paper (2016) is to strive to find out the answer to ‘what works’.
 
Ruth Dann says, “Feedback can be seen as a two way process in which the teacher and learner can better  understand each other’s priorities and begin to negotiate ways to progress. To some extent it is relational rather than technical. Any feedback designed to shape learning must be acted upon by the learners and made their own.  It becomes personal and internal at the point of learning.  Therefore feedback, even if focused on curriculum content must be seen by pupils as having relevance and meaning for them.”
 
She argues that greater attention needs to be given in schools to helping pupils understand why aspects of their future learning is important. Dann suggests they need to envisage themselves as learners with new and increasing knowledge. Encouraging pupils to share their new learning with pupils in lower year groups can potentially have a role here. It can act as revision and consolidation for older pupils but can also provide younger pupils insight into the kind of learners they might wish to be.

In school settings there must be some way in which feedback can be regarded not as a fixed coded message for pupils to act on, but part of a relationship between teachers and learners which has meaning for both. How this might be achieved, relies on teachers and pupil s having trust between each other and the possibility for dialogue about teaching and learning within the school. If you’re interested in developing that process within your school, then this book is a great place to start.
 
If you or your school are interested in working with the Learn2Think Foundation on developing its Questioning Curriculum – a national curriculum based programme to encourage independent thinking, collaborative action and creative engagement – drop us a line at learn2thinkfoundation@gmail.com or call 07958 923 182.

This article first appeared in Education Today Magazine.