The Learning Pit

One of the frameworks I regularly share with teachers is that of the Learning Pit, a model that explains how and why challenge is necessary for learning. Having first heard Dr John Edwards in 2001 using a "pit" to explain how organisational growth more often than not involves getting worse before getting better, I thought that the metaphor was an ideal way to explain to my students why I was consistently making things more difficult for them. Since then I have developed the idea into the following four-stage lesson plan:

STAGE 1: IDENTIFY THE KEY CONCEPT

The learning pit always begins with an important concept, since it is through conceptual analysis that students gain an understanding of their world. Example concepts include: art, bullying, culture, democracy, existence, growth, indentity, justice, knowledge, language, music, number, originality, poetry, questions, reality tv, science, tourism, and so on.

STAGE 2: CHALLENGE

In July 2008, Professor John Hattie began an address on behalf of his Visible Learning Laboratory in Auckland with: "The major message from my work with 240m students, 800+ meta-analyses, 50,000+ studies is... Challenge Challenge Challenge Challenge Challenge". Stage two of the learning pit is concerned with just that: challenging students to think more deeply, purposefully, critically and creatively.

STAGE 3: CONSTRUCT

This is the point at which students co-construct an undersanding of the key concepts through continued dialogue and study with each other. According to many notable educational theorists such as Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget and John Dewey, there is no such thing as knowledge "out there" independent of the knower, but only knowledge we construct for ourselves as we learn. Stage three recognises this by creating the conditions necessary for meaningful dialogue.

STAGE 4: REFLECT

If you reflect on anything you have learned, you soon realise that it is the product of repeated exposure and thought. Thus, stage four is concerned with students revisiting and reflecting upon their learning journey.

Notes

• The Learning Pit will be published in my new book, Challenging Learning, this autumn. To reserve your copy, please click here
• For an article covering the background, lesson ideas and outcomes of the Learning Pit, click here
• The photo attached to this posting comes from Lacey McCarthy,whose Year 2 students at Douglas Park School in Masterton, New Zealand have been using the Learning Pit to deepen their learning.

Variation on the Hot Air Balloon

Following on from the 3 Apples experiment, here's another contribution from Ian McKenzie at Viscount School in Auckland. He's been working with a class of 12-year-olds on values, using a variation of the hot air balloon scenario (a balloon's going to crash unless a few people are ejected from the basket). As Ian explains:

We began with a discussion about where ideas of 'good' and 'bad' come from, and how these 12-year-olds had picked up values without ever thinking about them (this was their realisation rather than something I told them). We then decided to explore their values a bit more using the old hot air balloon debate. We seated ourselves in a pentagonal, with a chair in front of each bench. The students on chairs were nominated as the talkers, though anyone could give them a suggestion, and those on the benches were the listeners. Whenever someone was persuaded by an alternative view from someone else, then they were encouraged to move seats to show they had changed their mind, or at least were wondering whether this counter-argument might be worth considering more.

In this variation, the groups were asked to represent drug addicts, teenage mums, homeless people, ex-convicts, disabled people and so on. The students then challenged each other's assumptions about those people, as is the case with most debates, but the physical fluidity of students literally moving their positions helped to challenge stereotypes and lazy assumptions. And, as the dynamics of the groups changed, so too did the dynamics of the inquiry.

Mostly, I find this an excellent vehicle for students to have to use some ALTERNATIVE thinking. What always seems to happen though is that kids get stumped when someone has the courage to ask them WHY they have a certain value or assumption. The real thinking begins then!

Creating Questions

The Question Quadrant is a powerful tool developed by Phil Cam to elicit and generate questions that can be used to conduct a philosophy lesson. The purpose is to initiate and model the types of questions that can be used to produce in-depth discussion with communities just starting P4C. The Quadrant can be used to distinguish closed and open questions that relate specifically to the text; or closed and open questions that stimulate intellectual curiosity.

The Question Quadrant can be used in small groups or as a whole class. Trent Burns at Cambewarra Primary School in New South Wales, Australia has been using the approach to role model the types of questions that P4C seeks, placing the Question Quadrant in the middle of an inquiry circle.

The questions show in the diagram were taken from the picture book More Spaghetti I Say by Rita Golden-Gelman.

As Trent says, "The discussion generated is valuable as students give reasons as to why they have chosed a specific part of the quadrant to place their question. Having students fill out a blank question quadrant after listening to a story is also a valuable teaching tool and requires students to develop their own questions for discussion. After all it is the questions that make the inquiry come alive within the classroom."

For more information about this approach, both Trent and I highly recommend Phil Cam's new book, Twenty Thinking Tools as well as his excellent introduction to P4C, Thinking Together.

A Question of 3 Apples

Ian McKenzie has been helping his students at Viscount School in Auckland develop their questioning skills using a really interesting experiment. He gave them 3 apples to consider: one fresh, one plastic and one... not there. The students were asked to try to explain how and when they know for sure that something is real.

As Ian explains, "These 12/13yr olds have been working with me for about two terms now and have been learning to use a range of questioning techniques in order to facilitate deeper thinking skills. They know to use questions to gain clarification and to garner reasons / evidence from each other. They then ask each other to consider their own assumptions, before hopefully testing out some alternative ideas."

This group were also given some images to consider and to use their questioning techniques to think about whether what they were seeing was 'real' or 'not real'. It's a question which intrugued them because they all considered themselves to be deeper thinkers, but found it very difficult to question their own religious beliefs in the same manner (The Polynesian community being committed Christians). However, some brave souls found a way to make alternative suggestions and this lead to a deeper level conversation about some beliefs not having the same reasons and evidence behind them.

What I find particularly fascinating about this experiment is that the 3 apples idea is something I've often used with nursery/reception children to begin to explore whether something has to be seen to be real. And yet here is Ian using ostensibly the same task to push for a far greater depth of reasoning, questioning and understanding. Which just goes to show that Bananarama were right - it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it (and that's what get results).

2 Circles for P4C

Facilitating Philosophy for Children (P4C) can be a challenge with average class sizes in the UK of 30 but a possible solution is to have 2 circles of children - an inner and an outer circle.

Whilst half the children sit in the inner circle engaging in the community of inquiry, the other half sit in an outer circle mind-mapping or in some way recording what is being investigated by the other children. Every 10 minutes or so, the groups swap over. Children partner up, one from each group, so that they can compare notes and respond to each other's thoughts.

This idea was developed in Berwick by Mary-Rose Blythe, deputy head at Holy Trinity First School, and myself as a way to ensure that the deaf children at the school didn't miss out on the wonderful experience of P4C. However, we also found that ALL children enjoyed the opportunity for thinking/recording time whilst in the outer circle and the increased opportunity to talk whilst in the inner circle. Furthermore, research by the Universities of Newcastle and Sunderland noted that this combination of P4C and cognitive mapping helped children make more progress in their learning when compared with taking part in just one of these approaches. Try it out and let us know how it goes! JN

Dramatic Enquiry

Do students think differently when, whilst in a dramatic role, they take part in a Community of Inquiry?

This is the key question for a project that aims to enhance creativity and transferable thinking skills in learners of all ages. Developed by Gordon Poad and a group of wonderful drama practitioners and teachers from Stoke on Trent, with a little help from myself and a pot of cash and enthusiasm from Creative Partnerships, this idea has flourished into an outstanding approach to learning. The vision for the project explains more:

Dramatic Enquiry develops creativity, responsible independence and transferable thinking skills. It appeals to parents and teachers who want a broad and balanced curriculum for their children, and encourages us all to be motivated and questioning learners.

We believe that creative thinkers will influence all our futures and that “Educare”, an approach to education that draws on the talents of every learner rather than relies on the expertise of a single teacher, supports creativity and effective learning. To this end, we are developing a training model that is open to all learners, based in schools that are centres for excellence in the Dramatic Enquiry.

As a team, we capture the learning and impact of Dramatic Enquiry whilst drawing on, and seeking critiques from, the worlds of education, drama and philosophy. We realise that creating new ways of working is not easy but we are committed to challenging ourselves and to achieving this vision

Of all the projects I was involved in during 2008, this was by far the most fun and probably the one with most potential to inspire young and old. Read more about it at Cap-a-Pie JN