Leading Learner Centred Practice With Mary-Anne Murphy

I spent a day with Mary-Anne Murphy as she unpacked ways in which we as  leaders can support our learners and learning coaches as they begin to develop more personalised approaches to teaching and learning.

In recent years, there has been a shift from teacher led to student driven classroom practices, and one of Mary-Anne’s key messages was the importance of having all the essential elements (criteria) in place in order for effective teaching and learning to occur. She used the parts of a house as a metaphor for the different elements, reinforcing the notion that, all the elements need to be present as they all have an important role to play in supporting the structure as a whole.

Before unpacking the criteria, it was important to clarify our shared understanding of the difference between personalised, differentiated and individualised learning, with reference to the work of Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey. Essentially, individualised learning is designed by the learning coach in order to meet the specific needs of an individual learner. Differentiated learning, on the the other hand, is designed by the learning coach for a group of learners, with the learning adapted to meet the needs of the group - a guided reading group would be an example of this. Personalised learning differs in that the learner is an active participant in the design of the learning and has a voice and choice in what the learning designed for them will look like based on their passions, needs and interests.

Criteria One: Curriculum Design

When looking at personalised learning, curriculum design needs to be responsive, based on a constructivist approach, carefully scaffolded and start with the learner. Traditional models of curriculum design have started with ‘the what’, with ‘the who’, in other words the learner, the last to be considered. Personalised learning flips this, with learning coaches starting with who and the what becomes the last step in the process. Thus, when implementing responsive curriculum design, you consider the following questions in this order:

Who: How might we create learning that starts with their experiences, understandings, interests?

Why: Where would I apply this learning?

How: might I teach them this/will they learn this?

What: is it that they need to be learning?

One idea that we explored is the notion that Inquiry is an organic process, it is neither a circle model nor a linear one. Mary-Anne suggested that if anything it is more a figure of 8, particularly if you consider Inquiry in terms of the model below:

Wondering is central to everything, and a simple way to create an Inquiry is to  turn your learning intention into a question. Whatever you do, you need to ask yourself, “Is this learning context relevant to their world?”

Criteria Two: Learning to Learn

A key component of this is Learning Talk, and keeping in mind that the language learners use is a window into their world and how they feel about themselves as a learner. As educators, we need to be aware of each learners ‘inside voice’, this is what they are saying to themselves, about themselves as a learner. Mary-Anne reinforced that as teachers what we need to be doing is to pattern interrupt when we hear an inside voice coming out in a way that is not helpful to the learner e.g. the child who says “I’m no good at Maths.”

As educators, we are not simply  “teaching growth mindset,” we are shifting how learners perceive themselves as individuals and learners. One way of doing this is to ask these questions when you hear unhelpful self -talk.

• What did you say to yourself after we had that conversation?
• What led you to that decision to do it that way?

The idea is to be non- judgmental but try to pattern interrupt that voice. You are wanting to unpack why they made that decision at that time.

Another aspect to consider is what messages do they get about themselves as a learner from others? e.g. someone saying, "I was no good at Maths so that’s ok you probably won’t be either". This is important because the messages they receive from others can either reinforce or disrupt the story they are telling themselves.

This was an area that really captured my attention and provoked me to think deeply about what this could look like at Matua Ngaru. It is something I am going to continue to research and explore as we look at curriculum design and what teaching and learning might look like at our kura.

Criteria Three: Assessment as/for Learning

Mary-Anne described the difference between Assessment as Learning and Assessment for Learning in a way that I feel clearly illustrates the difference. Assessment for Learning is held in the teacher’s hands, whereas Assessment as Learning is held in the student’s hands.  It is Assessment as Learning that allows a learner to know exactly where they are in their learning and where they need to go next.

Criteria Four: Personalised Learning

We looked at some different approaches to personalising learning, which really goes hand in hand with assessment as learning and negotiated choice.

Criteria Five: Negotiated Choice

This is where learners are supported and empowered to plan parts of their day within a scaffold developed with teacher. This might occur within a block of time e.g. Literacy, or throughout the school day. Learners may have choice over when to complete a task, which task(s) they will choose, how they might share their learning, or which teacher led workshops they will attend. It is important to keep in mind that there needs to be careful scaffolding and structures underpinning this, and educators need to know the strengths and needs of their learners, as well as what they are doing.

Criteria Six: Technologies

Perhaps one of the most powerful uses of digital technology within the school setting is that it enables learners to connect with the outside world, to have the ability to speak with experts, or to collaborate on a project with a class in another part of the globe.

Mary-Anne also reminded us that there are new parts to the Technology curriculum in the form of the Digital Technologies, and that it  is compulsory to be including these in classroom programmes from 2020 onwards.

Criteria Seven: Environment

Learner agency can happen anywhere and doesn’t rely on the presence of a purpose built space or special furniture. What educators do need to consider is the way a space is set up in order to enable student agency. At Matua Ngaru, we are using the term Flexible Learning Space to describe our learning environment, and this is in keeping with the ideas Mary-Anne shared with our group. If a space is flexible it means it can change and adapt to suit different purposes at different times, and allow teaching and learning to happen in a multitude of ways. Learner agency is supported in this kind of environment as it has the flexibility to respond to their needs.

Overall, it was a really valuable day, with some interesting ideas to explore further as we work towards developing our curriculum and our teaching and learning approaches at Matua Ngaru School.