PEEL In Practice, page 0

January 2004

Ian Mitchell, Monash University

Background

The first version of this article was written for a high school that had created space in their meeting cycle for a regular meeting of teaching and learning groups and placed all teachers in a group. Each group was (within the realities of grouping all staff) based around either a Year 7 or a Year 9 class. This approach had several advantages: it involved all staff in the school, it clustered teachers of one form together and it gave teaching and learning a high priority with very visible support from the administration. It also had some tricky aspects, one being that, unlike PEEL, the groups would not be composed of volunteers with some commitment to risk-taking, sharing failures and thinking about practice in terms of ideas of learning and change. This meant that multiple entry points were needed; offering a menu of foci designed to include foci of interest to as wide a group of teachers as possible. Each of these needed to be link to ideas that could get groups off to a productive start. The database provided the resource base to do this and I wrote a version of this article to help the teachers get started. The positive reaction of the staff and subsequently elsewhere suggests that what follows is a helpful guide to using the database, especially for those users not familiar with PEEL.

Overview

Teaching and Learning groups are far more likely to be productive if they operate from some agreed and shared focus, concern or interest. All of the following are foci that I have seen work well over a period of months with groups feeling a sense of real (albeit always uneven) progress in their own teaching and in their classrooms. A weakness of this document is that it implies that the different alternatives in levels II and III are independent and separate. This is not true – they overlap and interconnect – but they are sufficiently distinct to keep the focus of a group manageable.

As the structure of the document indicates, the foci are arranged in an order that becomes more ambitious, commonly involves more reflection, a greater interest in thinking about learning and an increasing willingness to move away from some traditional classroom practices. This is not intended to denigrate the first focus: building a more varied teaching repertoire. This is a very professional and worthy goal. It can lead to real classroom change and can also be the best entry point to the foci in the latter part of this list. It is important that any group choose a focus that is both interesting and not too uncomfortable (though all extension of practice involves some anxiety and discomfort).

Two final points:

1. The list is, of course, not the last word – many foci are possible.

2. The references to the PEEL database are not intended to imply that this has all, or even most, of the answers, nor that it is the only source of answers. It is a useful and rich starting point, but, over time, group meetings become most rewarding when many of the ideas are originating in the group.

Using the database: Selecting and combining search fields

AThe brief description of each focus is followed by ways of assessing relevant ideas from the database. This advice always begins with selections from 26 Classroom Practices, 18 Teacher Concerns and 12 Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning. Used alone, most of these select too many articles to be read in a convenient time. Combining pairs of them usually results in a manageable number of articles with a very tight focus (e.g. Practical Work and Students dive into tasks without planning).
All of the foci (after the first one) also include advice on teaching procedures that are relevant to that focus. The much larger number of possible procedures (229) means that most procedures select fewer articles than (say) a Teacher Concern and may not need combining with other fields.
While it can sometimes be useful to include your subject area (e.g. Science) as a field to help reduce a large selection. You will miss most of the value of the database if you always start with your subject area. A feature of PEEL that has been crucial to its success has been the extent to which good ideas can cross subject boundaries. A list of types of searches useful to new users is given in Types of Searches

Level I: Focus on extending your teaching repertoire

1. Building more variety into your classrooms by trying new teaching procedures.

Variety in classroom practice can be an important source of interest and stimulation for both students and teachers. From our experiences, a teacher who, over the course of a school year, incorporates one new procedure into their repertoire every two weeks, is maintaining a very substantial rate of professional growth. Remember that both you and your students will use a procedure more effectively and efficiently with practice.

An advantage of having several teachers of the same class meeting regularly and often using the same new procedures is that your students become familiar with what to do more quickly (do not overdo this).

Using the database:

Go in via Procedures (use the eight groupings to help selection) or select a Classroom Practice (e.g. Note-Taking, Using Videos) where you would like more variety in your practice. Each of the 12 Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning provides a focus on a different aspect of teaching; Principle 8 (Use a wide variety of intellectually challenging procedures) selects articles where teachers report a range of procedures in that article. Principle 2 (Ask students to work out part of the content) will also appeal to teachers looking to move away from always presenting content.

Try using Search by Word or Phrase and enter words or phrases associated with a topic that you intend to teach (eg. graphs, nouns, particles, “world war”). Please do not expect anything like all topics to be covered -that is not a goal of the database. You can increase your coverage by entering several related terms linked by or eg. entering landforms or coastlines or river will call up articles containing any of these words.

2. Increase your use of procedures that allow a wider range of students to experience success:

This focus includes:

• providing different types of success (oral, pictorial, etc., as well as written);

• catering better for different learning styles (there are resources available on learning styles);

• providing flexible levels of challenge where more able students can do the same task in a more sophisticated way.

Using the database:

Combinations of:

Concern 13 (Coping with mixed ability classrooms): this selects articles that include explicit reports of success with a range of students, and 15 (Students are reluctant to take risks in creative tasks).

Principles: 4 (Provide a diverse range of ways of experiencing success) and 7 (Build a classroom environment that supports risk-taking);

with:

Your Subject or a Classroom Practice that you are about to use.

Useful Procedures:

Level II: Focus on an aspect of class culture

Here you will focus on building the scripts and skills needed for the class to routinely work well in one (or more) of areas such as:

1. Whole Class Discussion

Using the database:

Combinations of:

Classroom Practices: Classroom Discussion, Debates

Concern 1 (Students rarely contribute ideas), 14 (Students do not believe that their own beliefs are important)

Principles: 5 (Promote exploratory, tentative and hypothetical talk), 6 (Encourage learning from other students’ comments) and 7 (Supporting risk-taking)

Useful procedures:

2. Group Work

Using the database:

Combinations of:

Classroom Practices: Group Work;

Principle 6 (Encourage learning from other students comments);

There are some procedures that require and stimulate good group behaviours:

There are also a number of procedures that can be used as a focus for group work – try combining Group Work with:

3. Library and internet research

Using the database:

Classroom Practices: Library Research Skills

Concern 2 ( Students don t think about the meaning of what they read or hear)

Subjects: Information Skills

There are several procedures that are useful in different aspects of the process of Library Research:

It is often fruitful to begin with procedures that promote questions that can form the basis of student research

4. Student-Teacher Collaboration

Using the database:

Combinations of:

Concerns: 5 (Teachers find negotiation difficult), 9 (Students don’t take responsibility for their learning) with:

Classroom Practices: Assessment, Group Work, Problem Solving Tasks, Library Research Skills, Units of Work

Principles: 1 (Share intellectual control), 3 (Provide opportunities for choice and decision- making)

Teaching Procedures

Almost all the Procedures in Group C (Procedures to enhance communication, participation and collaboration) and Group G (Procedures to make assessment more formative and collaborative) are relevant to this focus.

Other useful procedures:

Procedures that elicit students’ ideas such as B3 Interpretive Discussion, B8 Probe of Prior Views and B32 Brainstorm Bingo can be used as very successful starting points for subsequent collaboration.

Level III: Focus on one or more aspects of student learning

Here the focus is on improving the quality and nature of the thinking the students engage in and in changing the widespread perception that schooling is about completing tasks. PEEL Groups typically operate at this (and the next) level.

1. Thinking about what they are learning

Using the database:

Classroom Practices: Analysing Non Print Materials, Drill and Practice, Games and Puzzles, Getting Started/Introducing New Information, Note Taking, Reading Literature, Revision/Feedback on Understanding, Understanding Other Text Material and Using Videos.

Combinations of:

Concern 2 (Students don’t think about the meaning of what they read or hear) with

Principles: 2 (Students work out part of the content), 9 (Target specific aspects of quality learning); and 10 (Develop students’ awareness of the big picture).

All of the procedures in Group A (Procedures for building understanding of school knowledge) and Group D (Procedures for the processing of text material) are relevant.

Other useful procedures:

2. Seeking links to other ideas and experiences

Using the database:

Combinations of:

Classroom Practices: Field Trips/Excursions

Concerns: 3 (Students don’t link different lessons), 12 (Students don’t link school work with outside life) and 14 (Students do not believe that their own beliefs are important) with

Principles: 5 (Promote exploratory, tentative and hypothetical talk), 9 (Target specific aspects of quality learning), or 10 (Develop awareness of the big picture).

Many procedures in Group A (Procedures for building understanding of school knowledge) focus (or can focus) on linking ideas from different lessons:

Other procedures that promote this form of linking are:

Many procedures in Group B focus (Procedures for retrieving, restructuring and extending students ideas) focus (or can focus) on linking the lesson with personal experiences or beliefs:

3. Thinking about what they are doing

Using the database:

Classroom Practices: Field Trips/Excursions, Problem Solving Tasks, Practical Work and Writing Skills

Concerns: 4 (Students don’t think about why or how they are doing a task), 6 (Students keep making the same mistakes), 7 (Students don’t read instructions carefully), 10 (Students dive into tasks without planning), 11 (Students have no strategies when stuck), 15 (Students are reluctant to take risks in creative tasks) and 16 (Students are reluctant to edit or check their work).

Combinations of these with:

Principle 1 (Share intellectual control), 3 (Choice and decision-making) and 9 (Target specific aspects of quality learning).

All of the procedures in Groups E (Procedures to improve numerical problem solving) and H (Procedures for learning writing skills) promote this sort of monitoring as do many of the procedures in Group F (Procedures for monitoring and control of learning):

4. Moving assessment into the process of learning

Using the database:

Combinations of:

Classroom Practices: Assessment, Revision/Feedback on Understanding

Concerns: 6 (Students keep making the same mistakes), 8 (Students don’t learn from mistakes in assessment tasks) and 9 (Students won’t take responsibility for their learning) and 16 (Students are reluctant to edit or check their work).

Principles: 1 (Share intellectual control), 3 (Choice and decision- making) and 12 (Promote assessment as part of the learning process).

Useful procedures:

Level IV: Focus on promoting metacognitive learning

The same four aspects of learning in level C apply, but an additional goal is to build the students level of metacognition – the knowledge, awareness and control of their learning.

The students build an understanding of what good learning can be, are more aware of their own learning and purposefully seek to engage in appropriate types of thinking.

This does not produce a fourth level so much as the classroom talk shifts to more overtly include talking about learning.

Using the database:

Principle 11: Raise awareness of different aspects of quality learning

Most of the procedures provide opportunities to talk about aspects of student learning. Inserting Sub-Headings, for example, can easily lead to a discussion about searching for the main ideas in text; Link Ups requires discussion of seeking links between school work and personal life. Many of the procedures in Group F (Procedures for the monitoring and control of learning) are relevant here as you cannot monitor your learning without some level of metacognition. Procedures that have a pronounced emphasis on reflecting on learning include: