Learning how to learn through AfL strategies

The learning how to learn (LHTL) project built on earlier assessment for learning (AfL) research and development studies, most notably those of Black and Wiliam. Unlike the researchers in those studies, the LHTL researchers did not intervene directly in classrooms, but sought to explore how teachers and leaders went about taking responsibility for developing AfL practices.

The research aimed to investigate the links between pupils’ performance outcomes, teachers’ and pupils’ beliefs about learning and teachers’ experience of professional development. It also explored school culture, management practices and networking opportunities within and across schools. The researchers stimulated AfL activities in a range of school settings and then observed how staff implemented them. For example, the researchers analysed the ways some teachers embodied the ‘spirit’ of AfL compared with others who conformed only to the ‘letter’. 

The project was implemented in four phases between January 2001 and July 2005.  These included recruitment and piloting, main phase of development work, further development work in schools and data analysis, and writing up and dissemination. It involved a sample of 43 schools (26 primary and 17 secondary) representing a range of contexts across five LAs. All the schools had been given an Ofsted PANDA ‘C’ benchmark grade, based on their results in 2000, indicating they had room for improvement. Altogether the project involved approximately 1500 teachers and 20 000 students.

A range of data were collected including: data from interviews with head teachers, teachers and school project coordinators, data from questionnaires to all staff including managers, teachers, teaching assistants and pupils, lesson observations using video, and pupil performance data. As well as analysing each set of data separately, the researchers used correlation analysis to investigate associations between variables listed above which they then interpreted using qualitative evidence. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses was a major feature of the research. For example, whole sample analysis of staff questionnaire data enabled the researchers to explore relationships among key variables and use them to create a model of the organisational conditions that promoted learning how to learn in classrooms.

The study’s findings are relevant for school leaders and CPD coordinators who are engaged in scaling up and transferring innovations such as AfL practices. The project’s finding - that the beliefs teachers held about learning impacted on the way they applied AfL strategies in the classroom - has important implications for the scaling up and transfer of practice beyond the point at which the innovation was initially developed.

There are a number of messages for teachers seeking to implement AfL strategies effectively in their classrooms. The study found that whilst most teachers in the study adopted AfL procedures or techniques, such as sharing quality criteria with learners, only around 20% did so in ways that helped their pupils to become more independent learners. The researchers identified two key elements that influenced the effectiveness of AfL practices: 

• whether the tasks asked for closed or open student responses, and
• the opportunities the tasks afforded for current and future pupil independence.

Other important factors in teachers’ use of AfL strategies identified in the research included the value teachers placed on pupil autonomy, the extent to which teachers believed all pupils had the capacity to learn and the degree to which teachers viewed lessons as learning opportunities for themselves as well as their pupils. The study concluded that becoming familiar with the principles and processes of AfL through inquiry into their own practices helped the teachers to help pupils do the same with respect to their learning.

There are also messages for those with responsibility for planning CPD in schools concerning strategies that help bring about changes in teachers’ beliefs and understandings across a school, and embed changes in approach. The study identified the following:

• professional collaborative activity
• embedding AfL practice through cultural leadership
• adopting management mechanisms to create a AfL culture, such as learning and teaching newsletters, staff bulletins with a weekly LHTL item, and having LHTL as a regular item on meeting agendas, and
• external influences, including ideas, perspectives and resources coming from beyond the school that were influential in supporting the embedding of practice.

The study is reported in a range of documents covering different features of the project at different times.  For example, there is a technical paper and papers describing the processes and impact in the classroom.  The various components of the study are clearly signposted, although some of the sections are rather long and over-detailed for a teacher audience.