Research at Berkhamsted - Issue 5

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ISSUE 5

RESEARCH AT BERKHAMSTED

Introduction

Welcome to issue 5 of Research at Berkhamsted – a ‘Learning and the Brain’ special.

We are very excited to feature contributions from world-renowned neuroscientist, Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (from the University of Cambridge) and leading expert on the psychology of learning and thinking, Bradley Busch. Alongside them, we are proud, once again, to showcase some of the outstanding research that the staff at Berkhamsted are undertaking.

Currently, we are amidst an exciting proliferation of research relating to cognitive psychology (and, increasingly, neuroscience) and learning which has transformed the educational landscape. The Education Endowment Foundation’s recent evidence review relating to ‘Cognitive Science Approaches in the Classroom’ concluded that ‘Cognitive science principles of learning can have a significant impact on rates of learning in the classroom’ and that ‘[t]here is value in teachers having working knowledge of cognitive science principles’ (2021, 7). Considering the impact of this science of learning – or ‘cognitive turn’ as it has been deemed –, it is hard to believe that the phenomenon is only a relatively recent one. Although J. Sweller’s seminal paper on cognitive load theory (‘Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design’) was published in 1994 and a few early works emerged in the ‘noughties’, the majority of works cited in the EEF’s mammoth 372-page meta-study followed Barak Rosenshine’s oft-cited ‘Principles of Instruction’, which importantly opened the cognitive science floodgates in 2010. Because, understandably, new research takes some time to trickle down to CPD courses, INSET sessions, and, ultimately, classrooms, we have only really started to enjoy the fruits in recent years.

Learning and Teaching at Berkhamsted have come to embrace many of these ideas (though with an appropriate level of criticality to ensure that we adopt what is right for our specific context): this special issue is testament to, and one manifestation of, our hard work to apply certain theories of the brain to practical classroom instruction. It opens with a transcript of Prof. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s conversation with some of our A-level Psychology students about the teenage brain and Brad Busch’s helpful insight into cognitive load theory. Laura Knight and former Head Boy, Orlando Alexander, then consider the ‘connections and conflicts’ between human learning and artificial intelligence. This technological thread is picked up by Kate Craigen in her research on the impact of laptop use on learning and outcomes and Chris Botschin who explores how technology has affected creativity in Design and Technology. Courtney Hooton, PhD student in the field of Psycholinguistics, then discusses language learning and orthography, Dr. Paul Hundal thinks about retrieval practice through quizzing, and Anna Dickson explains the evolution of our exciting new ‘Learning Pathways’ programme in years 10 and 11 and its close links to current research on cognitive science and metacognition.

Moving to a pastoral context, Dr. Emily Kenefick, our school psychologist, connects the brain with the heart in her contribution on anxiety and Becky Baker describes

her explicit teaching of metacognitive skills to her tutor group. The issue moves away from the theme to feature research by Natalie Revell on attainment in GCSE Food and Nutrition and Zoe Sayliss on how sport contributes to a child’s sense of place.

The issue concludes with current year 13 student Hannah Fairburn’s prize-winning essay on Aristotelian concepts of learning and a review of The Incredible Teenage Brain

by Alison Murray.

As always, my whole-hearted thanks extend to all writers for such lively, interesting, and valuable contributions, as well as to Hannah Butland for helping to plan and proofread this issue and Jennifer Hallesy for her creativity in designing such an impressivelooking publication.

Dr. James Cutler (Director of Teacher Development and Research, and Teacher of English)

Contents Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore on the teenage brain

by Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore 3-9

How can we teach metacognitive skills in a pastoral environment?

by Rebecca Baker 50 - 53

Avoiding cognitive overload with your students

by Bradley Busch 10 - 14

An exploration of the attainment of boys and girls in GCSE Food and Nutrition

by Natalie Wingrove 54 - 59

New intelligences: exploring AI and humanity in education

by Laura Knight 15 - 18 School/Learning and the Brain

by Orlando Alexander

19 - 21

The effect of laptop use on learning and outcomes in the Sixth Form at Berkhamsted

by Kate Craigen 22 - 29 How has creativity been affected by an increased reliance on technology in D&T?

by Chris Botschin 30 - 37 The role of written words in learning a foreign language

by Courtney Hooton 38 - 42 Retrieval Quizzes - a panacea for effective retrieval practice?

by Dr. Paul Hundal 43 - 44 Learning Pathways at Berkhamsted

by Anna Dickson

First aid for anxiety- take a deep breath

by Dr. Emily Kenefick

45 - 46 47 - 49

Exploring the interactions between children’s sense of self and their sense of place through sport

by Zoe Sayliss 60 - 65 Berkhamsted Prize for Argument: the concept of learning

by Hannah Fairburn 66 - 68 BOOK REVIEWS The Incredible Teenage Brain

by Alison Murray

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Works Cited

70 - 74

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore on the teenage brain In March 2023, a group of A-level Psychology students were fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, the world-renowned Cambridge neuroscientist.

What follows is a transcript of their fascinating conversation about the teenage brain. All of the questions were devised by the students – Zofeen, Matthew, Harry, Amelia, Niamh, Isabella, Lulu, and Sarah.

If the human brain takes so long to develop – even continuing to develop in the twenties and thirties – why are our formative experiences (very early – even before 6 months) so impactful?

Formative experiences aren't just limited to the first few months or years of life, but very early experiences do have a huge impact on development. This is partly because the brain is developing rapidly in the first few months and years of life. There are many skills and capacities a baby needs to acquire, such as hand-eye coordination, walking and language, as well as the basic components of social interaction like understanding other people's facial expressions, tone of voice, and so on. If a baby misses out on the opportunity to learn these skills, this will have an impact on how they develop. Research on Romanian orphans has shown that babies who have been completely neglected (with no interaction, stimulation, learning, etc.) develop differently. Their brain development is affected and this can have longer term effects on the way they interact with other people, their empathy, and executive functions as adolescents and adults. The general finding is that the longer a baby was neglected, the longer term and more pronounced the consequences of the neglect.

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That’s what we call a sensitive period of development. There's a window where you need to experience certain things in your environment. If you don’t, there’s some flexibility that allows some catch up, but any longer and it is harder to relearn functions that have not developed already. There are many elements of communication, perception and social interaction that need to be acquired in the first few years of life. That’s why those years are particularly critical.

However, the brain is very plastic and changeable throughout the first two or three decades, and even after that - even in adulthood, we all have plastic brains. Learning new information – for example, a new name, a new place, or a new route – is possible at any age and that's because the brain retains plasticity at all ages. It's never too late to learn.

We’re now going to ask some questions about the teenage brain. Considering that adolescence is such a crucial period of development, can teenagers manipulate, as you said, the neuroplasticity in their brains in order to optimize its use?

There's lots of evidence that the brain develops substantially throughout childhood, adolescence and into the twenties. Brain development is characterised by heightened neuroplasticity (that is, the way the brain adapts to its environment and the way it learns new information from its environment). This means that the adolescent brain is particularly malleable and moulded by environmental experiences. Those experiences can be negative or stressful, and this can negatively impact brain development. This is partly why adolescence is a period of vulnerability to mental health problems, for example, because adolescent brains are plastic, so if there’s any stress in the environment, that can affect an adolescent’s brains in a negative way. However, neuroplasticity also confers opportunity because it means that the brain is particularly ready to learn and absorb information. Knowing that is probably quite useful for adolescents. The brain is good at learning: capitalize on that!

What advice would you have for parents dealing with difficult adolescent behaviour? The prefrontal cortex is still developing, teenagers are more likely to be rebellious and make risky decisions. What would you tell parents to try and cope with that?

I'm not a parenting expert and I'd probably tell them to go and read books by parenting experts. There is a good book called The Incredible Teenage Brain, written by Bettina Hohnen, Jane Gilmour and Tara Murphy. It explains why some teenagers take risks or are impulsive, may seem lazy or rude (the kinds of negative stereotypes that are often associated with teenagers).

The book suggests that this is partly due to underlying development going on in their brains, which is adaptive and not their ‘fault’. It’s supposed to happen during adolescence. Risk taking – as you mention – is a good example of that. Risk taking can be dangerous and we worry about young people taking certain risks like smoking, for instance. We don't know what the outcomes of those things are going to be and it's a risk to do them. If the outcome is negative, that can be really serious, which is why there are lots of rules around risk-taking. On the other hand, the drive to take risks is quite natural. You see it not just in humans but also in other species of animals. Even adolescent mice and rats take more risks than they did before they were adolescent or than when they are adults. They explore their environment more and their social behaviour changes. One study showed that adolescent mice drink more alcohol when they’re with other mice, and that's not the case for adult mice!

There's a natural propensity in adolescence to go along with friends, to be influenced by peers. And that again is very natural, normal element of adolescent development and it's probably quite adaptive. It can be useful for parents to know about all these behaviours and why they might be happening. I think knowing about brain development can help people understand how they can support their adolescent child to make positive decisions.

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The vulnerability of the brain when it's developing often coincides with other mental health problems and can all that be damaging long term?

The brain developing is one thing that makes people vulnerable to mental health problems because brain development is influenced by the environment. There are environmental stressors that might affect the mood of young people – for example, exam stress, thinking about the future such as worrying about jobs, getting on the housing ladder, the climate crisis, friendships and fallings out, and family troubles.

Another stressor is social media. Mental health problems have increased in adolescence over the past 10 or 15 years, at the same time that phones have become prevalent and social media use has increased. Some people have argued that the increase in the prevalence of mental health problems is due to social media. There is probably some element of truth in that. Social media amplifies all those stressful things I just mentioned – friendship issues, for example, which roll over into social media. Worries about the future: social media amplifies them. You can never escape from social media. I don’t think social media is always harmful, but for some people, it isn’t helpful.

It's important to remember that most young people who experience mental health problems will get better and won't experience them again. This isn’t the case for everyone, though - some people have the challenge of recurrent depression throughout their lives. But having depression in your adolescence does not mean that it's going be there for the rest of your life.

Do you feel that schools and the education system as a whole expect too much from adolescents? There’s a lot of pressure on us to plan when it comes to exams, university, careers, and a lot of things to do with our future.Yet our prefrontal cortex is still developing. Do you think these things hold it back a bit?

The prefrontal cortex is still developing, as are many brain regions. The prefrontal cortex is involved in executive functions, including decision making, planning, self-control, self-awareness and other high level cognitive skills. I think schools do need to support young people around executive functions that are still developing in adolescence. On the other hand, the way to learn them is to do them, so it's not a bad thing to have to learn how to plan your own project, work and revision, manage your timetable and so on. This will help you develop your executive function strategies.

What is the impact of cannabis use on the adolescent brain? I was reading some statistics which suggest that up to a quarter of all adolescents have at least tried cannabis at least once.

There’s evidence that consuming cannabis regularly affects the developing brain and can have longer-term effects on cognitive abilities, and is a risk factor for the development of psychosis, which is a very debilitating psychiatric illness that normally develops in the late teens and early twenties. What this means is that, if you have a genetic predisposition to psychosis, then you might be more likely to develop it if you smoke cannabis regularly as a teenager. Based on the evidence, my advice is to avoid cannabis.

A great deal of educational research which underpins cognitive learning such as Rosenshine’s 'Principles of Instruction' has been carried out on college-age students who are 20 years old and older, and given the development changes, still actively taking place in vital areas of learning, such as the prefrontal cortex and the teenage brain, to what extent can such evidence from more developed brains be extrapolated to more school-age brains?

Good question! Most of human psychology and cognitive neuroscience research is based on undergraduates.

They are around 18 to 23 years old - late adolescents/emerging adults. So most of what we know about the human brain and psychology is actually what we know about the brain and psychology of late adolescents’ brains and minds. The reason why is that researchers tend to be based in universities, and it is easy to include undergraduates in studies. Students are often incentivised for taking part in studies by gaining course credits or being paid, and sometimes have to take part in experiments as part of their course. Having this source of 5

participants is excellent for the studies and the undergraduates, but it means we know a lot about the late adolescent mind, but less about the middle age mind.

Could you also reverse that and take all this research on the late-adolescent brain and apply it to the younger adolescent brain as well?

Not really, because a lot changes between early adolescence and late adolescence. Late adolescence/emerging adulthood is, I think, quite an interesting period of life in itself for lots of social and biological reasons. The brain is still developing, and there are also large social changes that take place in the late teens, when most people start to live independently for the first time.

I know you touched on it slightly, but how would you describe the importance of taking risks in adolescents’ intellectual development and how can schools encourage this?

We often talk about risk-taking as a negative, dangerous thing. But actually we all need to do a certain amount of risk taking. Even volunteering to interview me is a risky decision because you could ask me a question and I could be a horrible person, who says, “What a stupid question!” (I wouldn’t actually do that). And then you’d be embarrassed in front of your friends.

On the other hand, you might ask a great question and earn some kudos. The definition of risk taking is that the outcome is unknown, it could be bad or good. Taking risks in everyday life is an important aspect of trying new things, gaining new experiences, possibly ending up with something really positive, and learning by trial and error. It is important to take some risks, but of course it’s important to avoid taking risks that are too dangerous or potentially harmful.

There is much evidence that the circadian rhythm shifts during adolescence causing teenagers to want to wake up later and generally sleep for longer. And given the school day timings, what can schools and parents do to support and get the best out of young people during this critical development phase in order to maximise both learning and wellbeing – but without changing school hours?

Without changing school hours? That’s difficult. The circadian rhythm, which is our body clock, makes us feel awake during the day and sleepy at night. That is controlled, biologically, by a hormone called melatonin. When it gets dark in the evening, melatonin is produced in the brain, and when it gets light, it's suppressed. In humans, melatonin makes us feel sleepy. After children go through puberty, melatonin starts to be produced up to two hours later in the evening compared with before puberty. And that's one reason why young children are often awake very early in the morning. After puberty, in your teens, it’s quite hard to go to sleep early in the evening and to feel awake very early in the morning. That’s a biological reason for the shifted circadian rhythm. But that’s not the only thing: in your teenage years, life becomes fuller. As a result, your downtime eats later into the evening and so you might stay up later. That makes it even harder to get up the next morning.

There are several consequences of this. First, teenagers are not getting enough sleep and we know that lack of sleep affects cognition, learning and mood. And second, there’s what we call a social jetlag effect, where young people catch up with their sleep at the weekends by sleeping late. That’s like shifting time zones every week, which is quite a difficult state to be in – a bit like having jet lag the whole time.

Some people argue that this means that school start times for teenagers are too early because they are expected to go to school at the same time as adults start work. This means teenagers are being made to get up in the middle of their biological night and go to school.

This argument has mostly come from North America, because there, schools start much earlier than here, often at 7:30am or even earlier. And the distances in America are often much 6

bigger than here, and that can mean getting on a school bus at 5:30 or 6 in the morning, which for teenagers is hard. There is some evidence that shifting school start times to later in USA is beneficial for learning and mood.

However, it is difficult to convince policy makers, schools and society to shift school start times because that has knock-on effects for everyone: for parents, for teachers and so on. I can’t see it happening in the UK, unfortunately.

We’re going to move onto teenage stereotypes. How do you think that further scientific research focusing on the brain could help minimize this kind of negative perception of teenagers as almost rebellious and lazy? What do you think in terms of specific research that’s happened?

More research is now focusing on the positive aspects to teenage development. There are lots of examples of research showing that teenagers can be more prosocial (being generous and helpful) than adults, are more interested in the social world, and more interested in their peers.

We did a study involving a charity donation task where you’re given some money and told you’re going to see on a computer screen various different charities to which you can donate some of the money that we've just given you. You don't have to give any away. You can keep it all or you can give some away to charity. We found that adolescents tend to give away more of their money than adults do. In addition, after participants indicated how much they wanted to donate, we'd show them the average donation from other people, and ask the participants if they want to change the amount they donated. We found that adolescents are more likely to change their donation in a positive direction (giving more away) if they see that other people have given more than them, whereas adults showed the opposite pattern. Adults were more likely to take advantage if they saw that other people had given less and reduce their donation to charity.

It’s a good thing that research is starting to focus on the positive elements of typical adolescent behaviour as it’s important to move away from the negative stereotypes of teenagers.

Stereotypically, teenage boys are commonly considered to be bigger risk takers.

Maybe they get in trouble more often than teenage girls. Is this reflected somehow in the structural size of the limbic system which controls behaviour?

You might think so but actually, there's no good evidence for that. There are some gender differences in brain development, but the overlap between the genders is large, which means you don’t often spot gender differences in the data.

Let’s go back to the premise of the question: teenage boys take bigger risks that teenage girls.

Do they? They definitely take different risks. Teenage boys are more likely to take physical risks that end up in them harming themselves. But teenage girls (and, again, these are all averages - there are loads of individual differences) do take risks: they just take different types of risks.

Smoking, for example, is still more common in girls than in teenage boys. Therefore, the type of risk that the different genders take might be slightly different but perhaps the propensity to take risks similar. And peer influence on risk-taking is present in both genders.

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Now for some questions on life after school. So, considering the brain develops so late, how could individuals better prepare for further or higher education?

One thing to remember is that the brain is developing late. So, when you're at university, your brain is still developing. There’s still lots to learn. If you feel like you’ve left school and you haven’t learned everything you need for your university course, don’t panic - your brain is still very amenable to learning.

In my personal experience, I found academic studies quite a struggle at school. It was only when I went to university, after a gap year, that I started to discover a real love of learning. I did Experimental Psychology at University, and hadn’t done Psychology A Level so didn't really know what to expect. But I loved the Psychology degree I did, and developed a real motivation for learning. You’re still developing in your late teens and beyond. You might find extra resources in your mind and motivation that you didn’t know you had.

As a follow up question, do you think there are any negative consequences of not pursuing further education and being able to take advantage of our increased ability to retain information and learn?

If you can and want to do a degree, it's worth doing. It's not just about the degree. It's also about the whole university experience: living independently, having to make a new circle of friends, having to live with people and work out group behaviour, and group dynamics. That is a good learning lesson for life.

Having a good time and discovering new hobbies, reinventing yourself because you’re in a new environment – these are all possible. Of course you’ll learn a lot of these things even if you don’t go to university. There’s nothing wrong with choosing other options. It doesn’t mean you’re going to stop learning.

Related to that, do you think that taking a gap year (between school and university) is more beneficial (i.e. allowing yourself to have a break) or could it deter or hinder your learning?

I think it depends on the individual. Some people are ready to go to university and are keen to make a start as soon as possible. On the other hand, I think a gap year is useful for lots of young people. It's one of the only times in life where you will have freedom and capacity to do what you want, whether it's going to work, volunteering in a different country or going traveling around the world by yourself, or with friends. That's sometimes harder to do later on.

18 is considered the legal age for becoming an adult and I know a lot of people around me who are turning 18 right now don’t feel ready for that responsibility. And I think you mentioned that adolescence was 10-24. Is there any kind of brain activity at that certain age (18) which makes it the start of adulthood in legal terms?

Laws have been made by groups of people at different stages in history who have come together to decide on an appropriate age of adulthood and other ages of consent. The people making these laws might be ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, politicians. These days, neuroscientists might be involved, but before we knew anything about brain development neuroscientists didn’t usually contributing to these decisions. Should neuroscientists be involved in these deliberations about different ages of consent now? Yes, I think so, because brain development is relevant. Can a neuroscientist tell you what age a young person should be to vote

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or to be considered legally adult or whatever? No, I don't think so. We can provide information about brain development, but it’s much harder to use neuroscience data to pinpoint a precise age when the brain becomes legally responsible, for example. This is because brain development is different for different people. There’s no one age at which the brain suddenly becomes adult.

An example of where neuroscience has played a role in legal decisions is in the USA, where, until 2005, it was permissible to sentence young people under the age of 18 to the death penalty. In 2005, there was a landmark case involving a 17-year-old who had killed someone. The US Supreme Court ran an inquiry into whether it should be permissible to impose the death penalty and called for evidence from the neuroscience community. The evidence showing that the brain develops throughout adolescence, as do many cognitive processes, was used by the Supreme Court to rule that it is unconstitutional to sentence a person under 18 to death. That was a momentous change, and a welcome one.

Do you have any advice for students who would like to pursue a career in Psychology?

If you really know you want a career in Psychology, then doing a Psychology degree is good idea, but you don't have to because there are quite a few Masters courses which allow you to convert to Psychology after your degree.

I would always suggest trying to get work experience in the area you’re interested in.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, and leader of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group. She has been awarded several national and international awards for her research.

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Avoiding cognitive overload with your students Cognitive Load Theory is arguably one of the most powerful and influential theories in education right now. It provides a conceptual framework for comprehending how the human mind processes and retains information. It has gained considerable momentum in the field of education as a means of designing effective learning experiences that maximize student engagement and retention. In this article, I will give you a comprehensive overview of Cognitive Load Theory, including its effects, and offer some guidance on how to apply its key principles in your classroom.

What is Cognitive Load Theory?

Cognitive Load Theory emphasises the limited capacity of working memory, as opposed to the near-unlimited capacity of long-term memory. It states that processing too much information at once can lead to a cognitive overload in working memory. This overload can slow down and hinder the learning process as it has a negative impact on the transfer of information from working memory to long-term memory.

A famous psychological experiment confirmed the working memory’s limited capacity, showing that when participants were presented with a series of numbers one at a time on a screen, they could only accurately recall a sequence of 7 +/- 2 items (Miller, 1956). More recent research suggests that this number may be even lower.

It is therefore imperative that we encourage learning activities that minimise processing and/or storage that is not directly relevant for learning in order to avoid taxing the working memory’s limited capacity.

How to manage cognitive load in the classroom?

In a one review (Chong, 2005) researchers highlighted 10 principles to help teachers combat the negative effects cognitive overload can have on learning. These principles focus on how we present information to learners and how to help tailor our instruction to them as efficiently and effectively as possible.

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Let’s examine each of these principles in detail so you can seamlessly incorporate them into your daily teaching practices...

1 2 3 4 5

Worked Examples

When students are new to a topic, worked examples can be an extremely useful tool. Typically, students put all their focus into solving a problem, which can leave little space in their working memory to recall the steps taken to solve it.

However, if students are provided with step-by-step demonstrations on how to solve the problem, and these steps are kept in their line of sight (e.g. by writing it on the board), they won’t have to hold the information in their limited working memory. This reduces their cognitive load, helps them transfer the information to their long-term memory, and equips them with the strategies necessary to solve similar problems in the future.

Completion tasks

When students are more acquainted with a subject, it’s beneficial to transition to completion tasks.

This technique is a level up from worked examples and provides students with partially completed examples that have gaps for them to fill in. Central to this task is that the competition tasks get progressively harder.

At this point, students are already familiar with the topic, and some information is already stored in their long-term memory. However, they may still require some guidance. Providing some structure helps students avoid cognitive overload while also allowing them to test their knowledge.

The Split Attention Effect

The Split Attention Effect occurs when students receive multiple streams of information simultaneously, meaning they have to switch between the different formats constantly. For example, information may be presented in written format on the left side of a slide and accompanied by a diagram on the right.

Having all these formats can create a cognitive overload, and research indicates that students who learn in this split-source format often attain lower learning outcomes than their peers (Chandler & Sweller, 1992).

A straightforward way to alleviate this effect is by using integrated diagrams that present both text and images in one place. This allows your students to focus all their attention on one thing, leading to better information intake.

The Modality Effect

Even with integrated text, diagrams can still cause cognitive overload since learners must process both types of information within the same visual store. To avoid this, the Modality Effect suggests that it is better to present information using two different formats (Castro-Alonso & Sweller, 2019).

For instance, when learners are presented with a diagram, the accompanying words could be read aloud instead. This allows them to process the visual and auditory information separately, reducing the risk of cognitive overload.

The Redundancy Effect

Cognitive Load Theory also encompasses the Redundancy Effect, whereby students are presented with irrelevant information that clutters their working memory and causes them to forget the important information they need to learn.

One way to prevent this is if you are asking students to read information from the screen, give them time to do it themselves (instead of reciting it to them). This ensures that you don’t provide the same information in a competing way which can make it redundant and overload the students’ cognitive capacity.

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The Imagination Effect

The Imagination Effect is a less conventional approach that is especially beneficial for more experienced learners. This is where students are given a set of instructions and then asked to imagine the process needed to solve the problem.

For example, when faced with a question that requires interpreting a graph, students using the Imagination Effect would first imagine how they would read the graph and what information they need to take away from it before proceeding to solve the problem. esearchers have found that students who incorporate the Imagination Effect into their learning tend to R answer more questions correctly than those who do not (Leahy & Sweller, 2004). This is likely due to the formation of mental schemas in the brain during knowledge acquisition. These schemas help us interpret the world around us, and imagining instructions enables students to automate these schemas, reducing the cognitive burden on working memory.

The Isolated Interacting Elements Effect

There are certain tasks that are inherently complex and cannot be simplified. These tasks require students to process multiple interacting element elements simultaneously before they can understand it. But if the number of elements exceed the capacity of their working memory, learning may not occur.

To overcome this challenge, one approach is to process certain elements separately and then integrate them. A study on expanding brackets showed that this method was effective (Ayres, 2013).One group of students received the full calculation, while the other group was presented with the same calculation broken down into four smaller problems. They found that the isolated interacting element strategy led to significantly better performance than the full-worked example group.

The Expertise Reversal Effect

Although support and instruction are useful for students who are starting to learn a new topic, it can have a negative consequence on students who are more experienced with the topic. This phenomenon is known as the Expertise Reversal Effect.

Essentially, novices approach learning differently from experts. As a result, they need different types of support and structure. This means it is important to consider students’ proficiency level when planning out lessons and make sure that the material is tailored to their current level of comprehension.

The Guidance Fading Effect

The Guidance Fading Effect involves gradually reducing the amount of guidance provided to students as they acquire more knowledge on the topic. This approach ensures a balance between support and challenge and prevents the Expertise Reversal Effect by adapting each lesson to the students’ current level of understanding.

An example of this effect is presenting students with worked examples when first introducing the lesson then moving onto completion tasks and eventually the full problem for them to solve independently.

The Goal Free Effect

When students are given a problem to solve, it might have a specific goal- for example, 'calculate the angle ABC'. On the other hand, having a goal-free problem would use more general wording such as 'calculate as many angles as you can'.

Goal-free problems require that students concentrate on the information available to them, requiring heightened problem-solving abilities. This type of wording also needs low levels of cognitive load and helps to facilitate learning. In a study, researchers discovered that students who tackled goal-free problems achieved better learning outcomes than their peers (Sweller et al., 2011).

Cognitive Load Theory and study strategies

In addition to the 10 strategies mentioned above, there are also some study techniques that can be really helpful in reducing your students’ cognitive load and maxmising their long-term memory. This is especially important because when it comes to revising, students tend to struggle a lot with managing their mental effort.

Let’s take a closer look at how Cognitive Load Theory is related to three key study strategies most used in classrooms:

Retrieval Practice

Retrieval Practice is any activity that forces students to recall previously learnt knowledge (i.e., generating an answer to a question). When students use this technique, it helps to solidify information in their long-term memory, which in turn frees up space in their working memory for new information to be processed (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). This helps to prevent cognitive overload and allows students to more effectively process and retain new information.

Furthermore, Retrieval Practice has been shown to improve metacognition, or the ability to monitor one’s own learning and understanding. By actively recalling information from memory, students become more aware of what they know and what they still need to review, which can help them better manage their learning and avoid cognitive overload.

Spacing

Spacing is where students spread out their learning, rather than cram it all in one go. Research has constantly shown the benefits of studying little and often, with one study finding that those who spaced out their learning scored higher on average (74%) compared to those who crammed their revision (49%) (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007) The effectiveness of the spacing technique is closely tied to Cognitive Load Theory, specifically through the rest period between learning sessions. When students are learning, the cognitive effort required for one task can deplete the working memory resources needed for the next task. This phenomenon is known as the 'Depletion Effect.' However, taking a break from learning can help replenish these resources (Chen et al., 2021). Therefore, students can process more information and prevent cognitive overload from simply spacing out their studies.

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Dual Coding

Dual Coding consists of using both words and pictures when learning. It is argued that this helps cement the information deeper into students’ long-term memory, as there are essentially two entry points to the brain for this information. But here are where things get tricky. As mentioned earlier, we can create cognitive overload by pairing identical on-screen text and narration (i.e. the Redundancy Effect). Therefore, wouldn’t we run the risk of doing this when we pair text with images?

It appears that the answer is yes, but you can prevent this issue by providing cues to students regarding what matters when using Dual Coding. Research suggests that an effective way to do this is by offering signals such as using note-taking organizers when presenting videos to students, which can assist learners in directing their focus and organizing information.

This ensures that the efficacy of the strategy is not compromised by cognitive overload experienced by students.

Cognitive Load Theory and other teaching tools

As the research on Cognitive Load Theory expands, recent studies have uncovered distinct relationships between the theory and common teaching tools used in classrooms. Notably, classroom displays and group work have been shown to profoundly affect students’ learning by manipulating their cognitive load. To gain a more nuanced understanding of this process, let’s explore this further.

Classroom displays

While classroom displays can be a great way to reinforce your classroom culture, they can also be a big distraction. This is because they compete for students’ attention with the lesson content you are teaching. We know from Cognitive Load Theory that we only have so much attentional resources available. So, when students devote some on classroom displays, they have very little to spare for learning materials. This means they can experience cognitive overload, hindering their ability to process and retain essential information (Godwin et al., 2022). However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use classroom displays altogether. Rather, it’s about positioning them in a more strategic manner, such as the back wall. This way, they can still serve their purpose without distracting students while they’re facing forward in class.

Group work

Recent research has discovered that group work can be used to aid the memory transfer between working memory and long-term memory due to the idea of Collective Working Memory Effect (Kirschner et al., 2010). This is when the cognitive load of a task is shared between the members of a group, and occurs through sharing perspectives, thought processes, and communicating with one another. As a result, students are less likely to experience cognitive overload because learning becomes a shared responsibility. It may therefore be a good idea for you to start incorporating more group work into your lessons to help manage students’ cognitive load.

Final thoughts Cognitive Load Theory is about using the science of learning to determine the most effective strategies to facilitate the transferal of information from the working memory, where capacity is limited, to the long-term memory, where storage is unlimited.

The evidence in favour of integrating Cognitive Load Theory in teaching is encouraging, and it seems like there are various strategies that can be used, be it worked examples or more traditional learning techniques like Retrieval Practice. Ultimately, implementing these will prevent your students from being cognitively overwhelmed, so their learning can be taken to new heights.

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Bradley Busch is a psychologist and director of InnerDrive.

He has worked with over 300 schools helping them use psychological research to improve learning and resilience, based on cognitive science studies. He is the co-author of The Science of Learning and Teaching & Learning Illuminated.

New intelligences: exploring AI and humanity in education Philosophy in the age of AI It is an interesting quirk of Wikipedia’s structure that if you click the first non-pronunciation link on any given page, and keep clicking in this way, you will, in all likelihood, eventually land on the Philosophy page. Whether you start with Harry Styles, crochet, or nuclear fission, and whether it takes six clicks or thirty-six, eventually you land up with Philosophy. This seems allegorical: if we dig deep enough, the love and study of wisdom, and the most fundamental questions about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind and language make as good a foundation for learning as any.

The moral panic we witnessed at Wikipedia’s launch in the early 2000s echoes down the decades, and serves to remind us that we have been here before: innovation ebbs and flows with predictable tides. On the latest wave: Artificial intelligence (AI). AI is not a new phenomenon, but its latest iterations, including Large Language Models, are very rapidly changing the world, and education is no exception. This paper aims to take an exploratory approach to understanding the ways in which human and artificial intelligence connect and conflict in the education space, with a view to helping us to engage proactively with the nuances and build intentionality into how we engage with it.

Calculation, Automation, Intelligence, Wisdom…?

AI is not a singular technology, but rather an umbrella term for a collection of technologies that enable machines to perform tasks that historically required human intelligence. IBM’s Deep Blue may now seem like a relic, but even narrow AI like Siri and Alexa, Netflix and Spotify’s recommendation engines, facial recognition, and spam email filtering have been part of our lives for the past ten years. Adam, the research robot developed by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Aberystwyth, became the first machine to independently discover scientific knowledge back in 2009 (Cambridge, 2015). Generative AI and Large Language Models such as GPT-3 and GPT-4 have exploded into public awareness in the past year.

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Since the industrial revolution, there has been a tension between the utility of machines to reduce physical labour and automate repetitive tasks, and the displacement of human work. Machines could free up human bandwidth for ‘higher’ purposes of creativity, leadership, relationships, community, and learning. So, as the capacity of machines increases, there is a destabilising uncertainty about whether machines can supersede computational processes, and direct attention towards accessing these higher-order aspects of experience. We should expect AI systems to greatly surpass human reasoning capabilities – possibly very rapidly (Hamilton, Wiliam, and Hattie, 2023).

What happens to learning outcomes and progress when we outsource intellectual effort? Will intelligent machines reduce cognitive engagement to such an extent that learning and growth are de-incentivised? What is the point of school, if it is only to teach children how to be outperformed by machines (Lord Jim Knight, 2023)?

‘The sort of ideas we attend to, and the sort of ideas which we push into the negligible background, govern our hopes, our fears, our control of behaviour. As we think, we live.’

(Whitehead, 1938) Enchantment, Excitement and Disappointment: the Hype Cycle Understanding that generative AI is approaching ‘the peak of inflated expectations’ helps us to anticipate what is coming next: a period of challenge, disillusionment, overwhelm, and even disappointment. This is known as ‘the dark valley’: a time when the new technology will have to demonstrate its value proposition, and prove itself to be safe, reliable, and scalable.

Interest

Hype

'Dark Valley'

Integration

Peak of inflated expectations

Maturity

Plateau of productivity

Technology trigger

Slope of enlightenment Trough of disillusionment

Time So why can this feel so unsettling? Do we as humans feel that for the first time, this technology has the potential to be truly out of our control? A lack of transparency about the models, how they work, and the data they are trained on certainly adds to the challenge. Further opacity comes from the speed of development: barely a day goes by without new tools, developments, and capabilities being announced. There is currently a power-hungry landgrab in play, with only two options for companies and individuals looking to benefit from the wave of hype: go fast, or lose out. As a result, governance and regulation is far behind where it needs to be, and schools will inevitably find ourselves picking up the pieces in our pastoral and safeguarding work. Publicly voiced fears from respected voices add to the malaise: 'My worst fears are that we the field, the technology, cause significant harm to the world', said ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman.

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Ideas, creativity, consciousness: what does it mean to think like a human?

‘AI will not necessarily come up with our best ideas for us. But it will greatly reduce the cost—in time, money, and effort—of generating new ideas by instantaneously revealing untold options.’

(Iyengar, 2023)

LLMs and image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney have already had a significant impact on creativity and have demonstrated their capacity to act as a freeing, democratising way of removing obstacles, improving performance, and facilitating collaboration. With creative work in particular, we are confronted with complex questions about intellectual property and ownership of ideas and outputs. Navigating these complexities ethically is a key aspect of ingenuity and creation in the AI era. 'Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to choose' (Ibid.).

However, behind the articulate language is not understanding, despite how tempting it may be to believe the contrary: 'We humans, however, are prone to anthropomorphism—projecting intelligence and understanding on systems that provide even a hint of linguistic competence' (Mitchell, 2023). Shallow heuristics may be all that bolster the appearance of high performance, and bringing good judgement to our use of AI is key to maintaining the integrity of communication and content.

Hybrid Intelligence

The AI era will spark the development of new literacies and skills.

However, there are three core aspects to human intelligence which will support thriving:

Critical Thinking Empathy Curiosity

Curiosity

The ability to ask questions, explore new possibilities, and seek novel solutions is essential for generating original and valuable ideas. Curiosity can also help humans learn from AI rather than offloading cognitive responsibility. This will improve their own skills and knowledge.

Empathy

The ability to understand and relate to the emotions, needs, and perspectives of others is crucial for creating products and services that can benefit society. Empathy can also help humans collaborate with AI and other humans, as well as avoid ethical issues and biases that may arise from AI.

Critical Thinking

The ability to analyse, evaluate, and synthesise information from various sources and perspectives is important for making informed decisions and solving complex problems. Critical thinking can also help humans assess and discern the reliability, validity, and limitations of AI, as well as identify potential risks and opportunities.

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We must remember: AI does not understand right and wrong, or the grey areas in between. It doesn’t understand truth, and in reality, it doesn’t know anything. It is a machine that cannot feel, or judge, or intuit. Our expectations of it to be somehow magical, mythical, or something out of a sci-fi film are misguided. Lazy metaphors do not help teachers or pupils understanding the complexities and nuance involved in working with and alongside AI, and its lack of physical form makes giving it a visual language difficult. However, we must see past disingenuous imagery depicting empty-eyed sci-fi cyborgs, suspiciously cute robot pets, glossy VR headsets with children looking skyward, or chains of Matrix-style binary scrolling in front of people's eyes.

Human Intelligence

+

Artificial Intelligence

Augumented Intelligence

Instead, let us consider examples of AI grounded in reality: intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive learning software, automated essay scoring, and revision chatbots are just a few ways AI is used for learning. As time goes on, AI should be an extension rather than a replacement of our human and educational culture, creativity, learning, and character development. In a space where fearmongering makes for much more interesting headlines, educators should push proactively for the positive use cases alongside robust regulation and appropriate safeguards. David De Cremer and Garry Kasparov, drawing on their experiences with AI in management and chess, illustrate how humans and machines can work together to produce better outcomes than either alone:

‘Leadership in the AI era is about creating the conditions in which humans can thrive in a symbiotic relationship with machines’ (De Cremer & Kasparov, 2021).

Conclusion This paper has explored the complex interplay between human and artificial intelligence in the realm of education. As AI capabilities rapidly advance, we must consider how to leverage these tools to augment human skills and knowledge rather than replace, devalue, or undermine them.

While AI brings risks like over-reliance and ethical issues, it also presents opportunities to free up human mental bandwidth for higher-order thinking.

Critical thinking, empathy, and curiosity will remain core aspects of human intelligence that support thriving in education. Ultimately, the AI era calls on educators to intentionally guide the development of new hybrid humanmachine intelligences. With proactive governance and a focus on human strengths like creativity and character, AI can become an empowering extension of our culture and learning rather than a detached or dystopian replacement. Moving forward, striking a purposeful and ethical balance between human and artificial intelligence will be key to realising the full potential of this technology to benefit schools and wider society.

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Laura Knight is Senior Consultant at Berkhamsted School and an expert in technology for teaching and learning. She is a disruptive thinker, international keynote speaker, and consultant who supports schools, universities and businesses with digital strategy and creative problem-solving.

She works with the Independent Schools Council Digital Advisory Group, the Bourne-Epsom Protocol on AI in education, and provides expert advice, policy advice and training to governments and leadership associations. She was on the #TechWomen100 shortlist for 2023.

School/Learning and the Brain In the spirit of transparency, I must admit that this essay has a quirky twist. You see, ChatGPT and I engaged in a rather unconventional brainstorming session. So buckle up, as we embark on a unique exploration of AI and how ChatGPT is shaking up the educational landscape.

There, I said it. I’m a fraud. In fact, I didn’t even write my own confession. It’s much easier to come clean when an AI language model to does it for you. Which begs the question: how intelligent really is AI? How well do we really understand this beast we are creating? And how worried should we be about an AI doomsday? Over the coming paragraphs filled with human emotion and ingenuity, we will navigate the murky waters of neural networks, before exploring ChatGPT’s impact on education.

What is AI?

Before everything gets artificial, let’s define intelligence; according to Merriam-Webster, intelligence is ‘the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations’. Traditionally, intelligence has been associated with living beings, particularly humans and other animals. However, the rise of AI and tools such as ChatGPT puts this definition into question. Alan Turing’s Turing Test is generally accepted as the standard to assess machine intelligence – as Turing put it, ‘a computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human’. So, in a nutshell, artificial intelligence is the attempt to simulate human intelligence with a computer. In one sense, we have succeeded in doing this: GPT-4 (the latest AI language model developed by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT) and Google’s LaMDA AI (Google’s AI model behind the Bard chatbot) have both passed the Turing Test – GPT-4 even successfully fooled an entire jury into thinking it was human. But there’s one big problem, we don’t seem to understand the exact thing we are trying to replicate with these AI models: the human brain. Neurobiologist Lu Chen, PhD, explained that ‘we know very little about the brain. We know about connections, but we don't know how information is processed’ (Lam, 2016). And, perhaps unsurprisingly, we have run into the exact same problem with AI language models. We call it ‘the black box problem’.

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The black box problem

Normally, when you think of a black box, one of two things come to mind: the black box recovered after a plane crash and the black box installed in learner’s cars.

When it comes to AI, the black box problem is equally mysterious. However, understanding it is crucial to make sense of tools such as ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a Large Language Model (LLM), a type of AI model trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate humanlike language. The model is based on neural networks, which themselves are inspired by the human brain – for example, both have neurons connected in immensely complex ways to process information and both are able to learn and adapt from experience. Unlike traditional programming, no one sits down and defines how each of these neurons behave. During a magical phase of training called backpropagation, the model will itself learn the optimal values for millions (or in the case of GPT-4, trillions (Bastian, 2023)) of parameters, which define how each neuron behaves, and in turn, how the model makes predictions. This is both the best and worst part of neural networks. Since the model’s sole purpose is to find the best way to make accurate predictions, it can discover patterns and extract features which would appear arbitrary to a human, literally giving it super-human intelligence. However, the model’s high degree of autonomy makes it incredibly difficult to understand exactly why a model produces a certain outcome – to use the brain analogy again, when you see a photo of your friend, how do you know it’s your friend and not the Pope? Neuroscientist Le Chang discovered that our brain doesn’t recognise a face as a single entity, instead it 20

combines the firings from many neurons, each checking for prominence of a single arbitrary feature of the face.

As UM-Dearborn Associate Professor Samir Rawashdeh noted, the inability to understand AI’s decision-making means we cannot easily diagnose why a model made a poor decision. Often, it comes down to the training data used (for example, in 2015 Amazon had to scrap an AI recruiting tool as it showed a bias against women due to being trained predominantly on resumes from men).

But, when an AI model encounters an unfamiliar situation, we cannot predict or retrospectively understand its decision. This phenomenon shrouds AI in mystery, both for the public and those who are at the forefront of its development. So it’s no surprise fears about an AI takeover are rife.

AI doomsday – the next big thing?

During my schooling, I often assumed that if I asked the right person, I would find the answer to any question.

This assumption that the ground truth always exists is often a fair one. However, when it comes to AI, the ground is undergoing an earthquake – as AI researcher, Brian Roemmele, explained during an interview with Jordan Peterson, ‘we are in an undiscovered continent.

Anybody saying that they fully understand the limitations and boundaries of what Large Language Models are going to look like in the future…is guessing' (Roemmele, 2023). So, as a disclaimer, most of what follows is purely speculation. Recently, over 300 tech leaders warned that the threat of AI should be grouped alongside ‘pandemics and nuclear war’ (Bove, 2023). But, as Jessica Newman,

director of University of California Berkeley’s Artificial Intelligence Security Initiative, explained, AI is unlikely to rise above humans any time soon. Rather, the concern is that we allow or even encourage AI to infiltrate society too quickly and too ferociously.

There seem to be two main reasons for this: a focus on the short-term novelty of AI and cutting labour costs. OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, recently explained that AI is ‘wildly overhyped in the short term’ (Prakash, 2023), as companies vie to be top-dog on the generative-AI front, even spreading mistruths to garner popularity; Google’s tech executive, James Manyika, recently falsely stated that Bard had taught itself Bengali on its own (Bordoloi, 2023). Such remarks risk damaging public trust in future AI technologies, whose impact on health and education have the potential to be revolutionary. When it comes to jobs, AI’s threat is very real – studies have found that AI may claim 85m jobs worldwide by 2025 (Thomas, 2019) and over 300m in the long term (Vallance, 2023).

And, unlike previous technological developments, such as the self-checkout, job loss is likely to infiltrate the ‘skilled’ workforce. One report found that, even before the rise of the holy grail that is ChatGPT, 40% of data science work became automated by AI in 2020 (Beatrice, 2021). The solution? Regulation that prevents humans from misusing AI to damage society. Because, as often is the case, it’s not AI that is the problem, it’s the people that are using it. The concern is that legislators and AI developers are playing out a game of cat and mouse, and the legislators are no cat.

How has ChatGPT impacted education?

Given that ChatGPT is the ‘fastest-growing consumer application in history’ (Gordon, 2023), it’s unsurprising that a study found 30% of students use ChatGPT to complete their schoolwork (Kyaw, 2023). And this new toy isn’t going to go away; Warren Buffet recently likened AI to the atom-bomb, remarking that ‘we won’t be able to uninvent it’. ChatGPT has infiltrated education, and is here to stay. Initially, the response by many schools was to ban the tool outright, which, given the challenges in accurately detecting AI-generated content, is difficult to implement and risks disadvantaging honest students. However, many, myself included, would agree with OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, who noted that following the invention of the calculator, it would have been inappropriate and futile to give students numeracy assignments. Instead, the approach to teaching maths shifted towards higher level skills, such as problem solving. It’s not yet clear how education will change to accommodate ChatGPT, but it’s vital that we don’t let AI become a get out of jail free card to bypass learning altogether. From a teacher’s perspective, using ChatGPT to generate project titles, restructure worksheets or create boilerplate lesson plans leaves more time to engage with and teach their students. However, this is coupled with concerns that investigating cases of students cheating may cause extra work for teachers, a sentiment shared by 43% of teachers surveyed by Study.com. And it’s not just the ethics that are concerning; a recent study found that overreliance on AI to perform tasks can cause memory retention to decline due to cognitive offloading (Ward et al, 2017).

Ultimately, AI is a tool developed by humans, for humans. I particularly like this quote from Ginni Rometty, previous CEO of IBM: ‘[artificial intelligence] will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we’ll augment our intelligence.’ But, to get this right, we must understand that AI is more than a marketing buzzword.

It is a tool capable of both incredible destruction and life-changing transformation, and our job is to make sure it is used for the latter. Currently, public opinion towards AI is an equal mix of excitement and concern (Kennedy, Tyson, and Saks, 2023), representative of the lack of general education about what AI is and how it works. So, while Rishi Sunak pushes for improved mathematical literacy amongst young people, I’d suggest AI literacy should be of equal importance.

Orlando Alexander was Head Boy at Berkhamsted and is now reading Electronic and Information Engineering at Imperial College London.

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The effect of laptop use on learning and outcomes in the Sixth Form at Berkhamsted Introduction

As a Psychology teacher with an interest in how information is encoded, maintained and recalled, I wanted to understand more about how the introduction of student devices has impacted learning and outcomes in the Sixth Form at Berkhamsted.

Literature review

Fried (2007) has noted a negative correlation between laptop use and self-reported understanding and performance.

Laptop users were more likely to multi-task and, hence, became distracted by things like pop-ups, instant messages and even the screens of others. Whilst Kay & Lauricella (2011) found similar results in terms of distractions, twice as many benefits were reported compared to challenges, including ease of note-taking, collaboration, improved organisation and the ability to address special educational needs. Long-hand note takers have been shown to be better at answering conceptual (higher order thinking) questions than laptop users (Mueller & Openheimer, 2014). It was suggested that typing results in a tendency to record verbatim rather than processing and reframing information, with the conclusion that slower, longhand note-taking (synthesising and summarising) allows more cognitive processing, despite laptop users recording more information.

However, research on student use of e-writers (which do not have any distracting apps) suggests that typing could be just as effective as long-hand note-taking (Morehead et al., 2019). Morehead et al. pointed out that previous research ignores the impact of a classroom teacher who is able to respond to questions and highlight critical points, potentially influencing the content of student notes. What could be most important is that students have paid attention, taken notes on the relevant points, and then take the time to review them.

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A final point for consideration is how the students’ normal way of working affects learning outcomes. Barrett et al.

(2014) show that when note taking and assessment formats (typed or handwritten) were congruent, students scored significantly higher on the assessment, compared to students whose note taking and assessment format were incongruent.

At Berkhamsted, this point is particularly relevant for Sixth Form Psychology students, who typically choose to type their notes, but are assessed via handwritten exams.

To investigate the effect of Surface devices on learning and outcomes at Berkhamsted, using Year 12 and 13 Psychology students, I decided to focus on two main lines of enquiry:

METHODOLOGY

1

2

yping vs handwriting – while handwriting T seems to result in deeper processing, does this equate to better scores on an assignment if it is handwritten compared to if it is typed?

Typing vs Handwriting (Experiment)

The impact on learning – how do students feel that they learn most effectively with regards to device use?

How can we best use devices in lessons going forwards?

Impact on Learning (Survey)

I used two Year 12 Psychology classes and gave each student two different 16-mark essays to write, one by hand and one typed. One essay was on the topic of Phobias, and the other on Memory. Both essays were written in the same week, under exam conditions. The conditions (typed/handwriting) were counterbalanced, to avoid any effects of familiarity with one topic over another. The essays were marked (out of 16) and the word count was recorded. There were 22 students who took part in both conditions, resulting in a sample of 44 essays.

To assess student views on using Microsoft Surface devices in the classroom, I asked all Year 12 and 13 Psychology classes to complete a survey using Microsoft Forms. There were 73 respondents.

Responses were anonymous to encourage honesty.

RESULTS

1

Typing vs Handwriting

On average, typed essays were graded one mark higher (out of 16) than handwritten essays. This equated to the same grade (B) and was not a statistically significant difference.

Table 1 Difference in Essay Scores Handwritten

Typed

Difference

Statistically Significant?

Mean

12

1

No

11

Sample = 44 essays

Typed essays were 42% longer than handwritten essays. This was found to be a statistically significant difference using the Sign Test (p<0.01).

Table 2 Difference in Essay Length (Words) Handwritten

Typed

Difference

Significant?

Mean

518

153

Yes (p<0.01)

364

Sample = 44 essays

Correlational analysis on the essay scores and word count revealed that, for handwritten essays, there was a very strong positive correlation between the length of the essay and the score. The longer the essay, the better the score (correlation co-efficient 0.9).

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Graph 1 Handwritten Essay score/word count relationship

Graph 2 Typed essay score/length relationship

There was also a positive correlation between essay scores and word count for typed essays, although it was not as strong as that associated with handwriting (Correlation co-efficient 0.7)

2

Impact on Learning

Questionnaire Results

• 7 5% prefer to use a digital device for classwork most of the time • C onvenience and organisation are the top reasons for wanting to use a device in class

Graph 3 Reasons for using devices

Remembering the content and quality of work were the top reasons for preferring to work on paper.

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Reasons for working on paper

The reasons for wanting to use paper or a device were very different: 89% of those who chose paper said it was because they could remember the content better, whereas those who chose a device focused on convenience/speed (85%) and organisation (78%).

Graph 5 Reasons for paper use compared to devices

There was a clear preference for handwriting exam-style questions (68%).

Most preferred devices for group work, and there was a fairly even split for making notes.

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Graph 6 Method preferred by task

Distractions:

63% were at least sometimes distracted by other things on their device and 50% are distracted at least sometimes by others .

Email was by far the biggest distraction from lesson content.

Graph 7 Distractions

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The best and worst things about using surface devices in class:

A thematic analysis of students’ comments on what they most enjoyed about having Surface devices in class revealed that being able to organise their work and ease of use were the biggest draws. Many also commented that devices enabled them to produce more work, more quickly:

‘All your work stays in one place and you can never forget it’ ‘You get to share work easily, it’s more convenient and you are able to write more’ ‘It’s efficient, everyone can see the same thing and you can go back and add to your notes at any time’ In terms of the worst things about using surface devices, there were three standout reasons:

1 When they don’t work (battery, Wi-Fi, crashing etc.); 2 The lack of handwriting practice for exams; 3 The distractions.

Many students also commented that they felt they didn’t process information as well when they were typing. Several also commented on health issues such as eye strain and headaches:

‘Writing in exams is much harder now, I’m not used to writing with a pen’ ‘When they run out you can’t really participate in the lesson’ ‘Reduces interaction - people are too focussed on their laptops, even if they are doing relevant work’ 27

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Discussion Typing vs Handwriting Typed essays were significantly longer than handwritten essays; however, length did not necessarily equate to better quality. There was no significant difference in essay score and the closer correlation between word count and score for handwritten essays further suggests that the increased length of type-written essays did not necessarily add much to the quality of the answer.

Many students enjoyed being able to write more when typing. Many commented that they were able to get more done, more quickly in the lesson. Flexibility and organisation were the key drivers for choosing to type in class. Students seemed aware that typing did not necessarily improve the calibre of their work (see graph 5). Furthermore, the handwritten essays tended to be better thought-out, perhaps due to the lessened ability to edit afterwards.

Whilst previous research (Mueller & Openheimer, 2014) suggests that longhand note-taking allows deeper processing, in practice, students often have lots of information to process in lessons and can often complete work more quickly by typing. It seems likely that what they do with the information afterwards has a bigger impact on assessment outcomes.

For example, students are encouraged to engage in active revision techniques such as using flashcards, which they would typically handwrite after the lesson, when they had more time. (One student commented: ‘I can write faster when typing in lessons, but I write my notes out afterwards’.)

Further analysis of the essay data showed that students did perform significantly better on one topic (Phobias) than the other (Memory). This further indicates that it is students’ familiarity with the content that has more of an effect on their outcomes than whether their answer is typed or handwritten.

Essentially, although handwriting has clear benefits in terms of learning and revision, when writing under timed conditions, students were able to produce essays of equal quality, regardless of whether they were typed or handwritten.

2

Impact on Learning Typing was preferred by students for flexibility and organisation, whilst handwriting was preferred for depth of processing and perceived increase in quality.

One of the major benefits of using Surface devices in class appeared to be the ability for students to collaborate (78% preferred devices to paper for group work).

Another benefit was organisation. Students find it much easier to keep on track of their work and add to it at any time.

This is useful at A Level when there is a huge amount of content to learn, and we also make frequent synoptic links to past topics.

Finally, the flexibility of devices means that the whole class has access to the same information. It also allows another method of delivery if the projector is not working.

The three major limitations to the use of surface devices are: firstly, when they do not work! Survey responses frequently complained about limited battery life, lack of Wi-Fi connection, devices crashing and difficulty charging during the day.

Secondly, the increased use of devices meant that many students feel that they are losing the ability to write by hand.

68% of survey respondents said that they preferred to handwrite practice exam questions.

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Finally, as supported by previous research (Freid (2007); Kay & Lauricella (2011)) distractions are a big disadvantage of using digital devices in education. The biggest distraction was email. A final point of note is the huge increase in screen time that students have experienced since the introduction of devices. Several commented on eye strain and headaches that are exacerbated by increased use of devices.

Recommendations

1

Typing vs Handwriting Students should be encouraged to complete classwork in the way that suits them (typed or handwritten).

Remind students that they may use paper if they prefer (as long as they photograph and upload their work).

Maintain the focus on practising handwriting for assessed work and extended writing.

This is important to maintain students’ ability to write answers of equal or better quality than those which are typed.

Continue to encourage students to complete tasks that involve synthesising and summarising by hand (for example, mind-maps and revision materials).

When deeper processing rather than speed is required, handwriting appears to be beneficial.

2

Impact on Learning How can we best use Surface devices?

Continue to anticipate any technical issues that may arise and plan for these.

For example, have a few paper copies of worksheets.

Reinforce the message that any tabs that are not relevant to the lesson should be closed – especially email.

Notifications should also be turned off.

Continue to be mindful of reducing screen time.

From a health point of view, uploading photos of writing on paper is preferable to using a stylus on screen.

Plan ample face-to-face discussion and interaction.

Kate Craigen is a Psychology teacher at Berkhamsted. She is interested in how psychology, for example our understanding of learning and memory processes, can be used to improve the effectiveness of classroom teaching.

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How has creativity been affected by an increased reliance on technology in D&T? Introduction

The aim of this action research project was to question how creativity has been affected by the increased use of technology within D&T lessons. At Berkhamsted, we have embraced Surface Pro and Go devices, which has helped streamline many logistical issues presented to teachers and learners alike. I wanted to explore the impact this reliance on technology had on creativity in all key stages within D&T. The intention was to enable our learners to adopt a more risktaking attitude towards design-oriented tasks and ultimately strive to be more creative not only within this subject but also in others. I believed that exploring this issue in more detail would uncover good practice and routines transferable to other subjects.

The initial motive for exploring this project stemmed from the slight discrepancy that I have found exists within creativity in Year 9, KS4 and KS5 in comparison to other areas of our curriculum.

Probing further into this area uncovered concerns with the design work submitted. The vast majority submit their work electronically and use their surface devices along with their stylus to generate ideas. Whilst on the surface this practice is akin to using paper and pencil, there is a growing concern that students are losing their ability to approach a brief with creativity. This is supported by some of the work that has been submitted from students this year.

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Figure 1

As is evident from Figure 1, the work is presented well and supported by some annotation. However, the images themselves have essentially been traced from existing images on the internet, requiring no thought or skill from the student. This technique means students lack ownership over the idea itself. They find it harder to articulate each concept, which in turn reduces the supporting annotation.

The aim of this project, then, was not to dispute the value of technology which in many ways complements academic study at Berkhamsted. Rather, it was to question whether it is the right tool to help students generate creative ideas in response to the open-ended briefs posed. It was to see what technology could provide students with where traditional means failed to do so and, ultimately, to ensure we capitalise on the advantages we have at our disposal in using this new and emerging technology.

1

2

Figure 1

Defining creativity

The most subjective and potentially contentious element of this project was how to perceive creativity and define it. So often, the perception of creativity among students centres around the end product and thus overlooks the value of the process that has been taken.

In Human Motivation (1982), Robert Franken describes creativity as ‘the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others’ (396).

This definition feeds seamlessly into the expectations of the AQA specification for Design and Technology (GCSE). The exam board, however, does not offer its own definition of creativity in the specification yet references it frequently in the marking criteria. Consequently, there is a high level of subjectivity and debate surrounding it.

JP Guilford suggests that there are two types of creativity: ‘convergent (generating one idea) and divergent (generating multiple ideas)’ (1950). Divergent thinking, he argues, is at the heart of creativity because numerous ideas being generated lead to more avenues for potential development. What we have seen in Figure 1 is convergent creativity, or, as the exam boards define this version of creativity, Design Fixation. Design fixation as a term is used negatively by AQA. Divergent thinking, on the other hand, chimes with the exam board expectations at both GCSE and A Level, with the mark schemes echoing this with ideas expected from students as opposed to an idea.

I arrived at a definition of creativity as an approach that focuses more on the journey than the destination, in that more solutions would allow for greater development and give more potential for original concepts. This definition marries nicely with the exam board’s expectation and would be easily measurable using the marking criteria used by AQA for the communication of ideas.

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Use of Technology

Technology has been central to Design and Technology for a long time; however, in the paper ‘Fools Gold’ (Cocedes et. al. 2000), a critical eye is cast over the use of increased technology within educational institutions. Exploring the views of a number of professionals, the article discusses our increasing reliance on technology. The educational psychologist, Jane Healy, for instance, reveals how teachers ‘find that today’s video-immersed children can’t form original pictures in their mind or develop an imaginative representation.’ It goes on to highlight issues related to the readiness of information available to students being ‘entertained constantly and effortlessly by so many adult-generated images’ which means that ‘children seem to be finding it harder to generate their own images and ideas’. Along similar lines, in The Digital Detox, Damon Zahariades (2018) explores the signs and side effects of technology addiction, suggesting cultivating a more balanced approach to technology can result in the promotion of better creativity. He points to how the bombardment of information that comes from increased use of technology creates an issue with originality and the innovation process. The science of this information overload (as Zahariades explains it) is central to Garnett’s work (2020), which through a lens of cognitive load theory, refers to how ‘cognitive overload can result when too many stimuli demand attention at the same time'. A leading factor suggested is the idea of ‘distractions’ which deter us from completed our specified tasks, such as the amount of information on a computer screen at one time. These distractions could be perceived as affecting a student’s creativity, particularly whilst generating initial ideas.

Yet, in other respects, there is of course much literature celebrating the positive impact of technology. In the article, ‘10 Ways Technology Can Raise Your Creative Game’ (Acuity training 2020), it is suggested that technology can help creativity. The most compelling of these arguments is the notion that technology lowers the cost of failure; or, as stated in Robert Weisberg’s Creativity, ‘The ugly truth is that most creative acts are failures’ (2006). This essentially embeds the ethos of iterative design, one of the key design strategies that AQA encourages students to explore as part of their creative process.

Using technology in the right way could reduce the extent of the design fixation in students’ work. The speed at which a concept could be copied and pasted and then edited is much faster in comparison to redrawing a whole concept each time an iteration is to be made.

Method

My intention with this action research project was to help students at Berkhamsted become more creative, after having concerns with how technology is currently used by students. Initially, I focused on my Year 10 GCSE class because of their vested interest in D&T. With this being a GCSE choice for them, I was more likely to get reliable feedback because of their desire to succeed in a course they have chosen.

Exploring strategies

To try and approach this intervention fairly, I wanted to explore a number of strategies that embraced a ‘technological stance’ as well as more ‘traditional’ techniques to help instil creativity to our students.

The AQA specification for GCSE states that, in the context of the non-examined component, students should generate design ideas with flair and creativity using one or more of these strategies:

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• collaboration

• a systems approach

• user-centred design

• iterative design

• avoiding design fixation

In the table below (Table 1), I have identified the positive correlations between the strategies that AQA mention in their specification and four techniques I could use in lessons:

AQA STRATEGIES Collaboration

User Centred Design

Systems approach

Iterative Design

Avoiding Design Fixation

Circles Techniques to possiby use

Brainstorming SCAMPER 4X4 Development

Table 1 In the following lessons I used a number of techniques from the Design Thinking Toolbox and Playbook respectively (Lewrick et. al., 2020) which I thought would work well with exploring creativity.

Circles

This activity asked students to think of as many different objects, designs or things that were circular and record them on a sheet made up of circular templates (Figure 2). This encouraged students to doodle quick ideas and to be playful with the time allocated, with more of a focus on the quantity of ideas generated rather than quality.

Brainstorming

The much tried and tested task of ‘brainstorming’ worked effectively for ideating and was an approach that students often found themselves gravitating towards because of its familiarity across all subjects. However, the ‘brainstorming’ used for my study focused specifically on solving design problems using the prompt of a HMW question (How Might We?) and sometimes in collaboration with someone else.

Figure 2 - Circles 33

SCAMPER

SCAMPER, another ideation and development tool, forces the designer to consider other possible variations or directions a design may take. The letters which make up this acronym challenge the designer to change an idea in response to that particular word.

They could either:

Substitute

Combine Adapt Modify

Put to another use Eliminate Rearrange

The result is that more imaginative and innovative ideas become possible (Figure 3).

Figure 3 - SCAMPER

4X4

With this strategy, a page is separated into four sections and an idea is drawn into the top lefthand corner ‘sector’. Each student passes their paper to someone else, in turning receiving another student’s work. Each student then improves the idea in front of them without changing the actual function of the product (Figure 4).

Over a number of weeks, I used each activity as a ‘Do Now’ task which allowed students to generate initial ideas as part of their programme of study. Students were encouraged to contextualise the technique they had explored in each of these focused lessons.

Figure 4 – 4x4 Finally, I set a design brief for students to complete in one lesson, splitting the class into two groups with one group only using technology to generate their ideas and the other group not having any access to technology. The final task would be graded and compared to their MidYIS data, and would use a past NEA brief of ‘keeping children active’. I adopted simple letter grades for familiarity and also as a way to measure directly against their MidYIS (which is a letter grade).

Adapted marking criteria

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Mark band

Description

A

Imaginative, creative and innovative ideas have been generated, fully avoiding design fixation and with full consideration of functionality, aesthetics and innovation.

B

Imaginative and creative ideas have been generated which mainly avoid design fixation and have adequate consideration of functionality, aesthetics and innovation.

C

Imaginative ideas have been generated with a degree of design fixation and having some consideration of functionality, aesthetics and innovation.

D

Basic ideas have been generated with clear design fixation and limited consideration of functionality, aesthetics and innovation.

Key findings

After the lesson and once work was submitted, I was obviously keen to see how the results matched my initial expectations. My initial hypothesis was that students in the traditional group would score slightly better results overall, but I was intrigued to see if students would benefit from the lower cost of failure provided by using a computer. This lower cost of failure, I hypothesised, would allow students to learn from mistakes more quickly, and thus generate a greater range of ideas, knowing that work could be retrieved or rectified easily if mistakes were made.

In the table below (Table 2), the green rows denote students who completed the design task only using traditional techniques – the traditional group; the blue rows

denote students who attempted this task using their surface device – the technology group.

In addition to including their MidYis and the actual result, I wanted to also see how many techniques (if any) students would use in their work. This was prompted by my observations during the actual lesson where I did not see much in the way of these techniques being used aside from the brainstorming activity. Lastly, to help show divergent or convergent thinking, I tallied the number of ideas and pages (A3) they created during this time. The Value Added is a value to show how many grades above or below they are from their target.

Table 2

TECHNOLOGY GROUP – LIGHT BLUE (Figure 5) Students who were given access to technology underperformed when directly comparing the grade achieved with their predicted grade (MidYis). However, digging deeper into the specifics gives us some interesting findings: • Students created less work using technology; • Students came up with fewer ideas using technology; • S tudents were more likely to ‘fixate’ on a particular design idea;

• S tudents who used technology for their ideas found themselves more distracted during the task; • M ost students used the brainstorming task to help them with their creativity when using technology – but no other tasks;

Figure 5

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TRADITIONAL GROUP – LIGHT GREEN

Students who used no technology during the task achieved a better grade overall, on the whole, when comparing their MidYis target to the grade achieved (+0.75 of a grade). These are the other findings of the study:

• Students created more work when not using technology; • S tudents came up with a greater range of ideas when not using technology; • S tudents were less likely to fixate on ideas when not using technology; • They were less distracted on the task – but slower to start; • As with the other students, they mostly used the brainstorming method but no others.

Figure 6

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Conclusion

It is important to acknowledge that as with any small study, there are obvious limitations: only one class of students were investigated for my study which took place over four weeks. Whilst I am able to draw on conclusions from the group I used in this study, a wider picture could generate different results.

Overall, it emerged from this study that using technology to aid creativity was counter-productive and in fact reduced students’ creativity, in turn delivering a lower grade for students overall.

Whilst the final results from this class matched my initial hypothesis, I was surprised to see the difference in the grades first-hand.

My thoughts on technology potentially lowering the cost of failure, allowing students to quickly respond and react to issues as and when they encounter them, did not come to pass. There was clear evidence of design fixation (convergent thinking) with students using technology best seen by the lower number of ideas they were able to generate compared with students using the ‘traditional’ method.

In addition, something not really captured by this data was the difference in the energy within the room itself.

There certainly felt like more purpose and certainty in the work that was created by the ‘traditional’ group and it did take a while for some of the students in the ‘technology’ group to get their work recorded.

As a result of this project, I have encouraged students to use paper when generating initial ideas. I believe there is plenty of scope for further investigation in this area: for example, exploring annotation vs quality of drawings – which of these is most important now that the exam boards do not look at the quality of drawings in their respective mark schemes? Another would be how we can encourage students to take more risks in their creative work.

Overall, I have enjoyed the process of exploring a topic that is so relevant to my subject and have found that the findings have already become embedded into my day-today teaching.

As a teacher, it is crucial to manage the technology well, in order to avoid the potential cognitive overload that comes from having so much information at the fingertips. of students. Ensuring that lessons are scaffolded to both focus the students on a particular task and also give scope for differentiation and extension activities will continue to be a tightrope we all must walk.

Chris Botschin joined Berkhamsted in 2018 and has over 15 years experience in teaching Design and Technology in a number of different educational institutions. He is also Second in department for Design and Technology and is Deputy Head of House for Frys.

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The role of written words in learning a foreign language Why is this important?

The ability to speak more than one language is a crucial skill when it comes to business, travel, diplomacy and more.

However, only 35% of British adults can speak more than one language compared to 65% of European adults (Eurostat, 2019), meaning that the UK is at a disadvantage. The Department for Education also saw this as an issue and in 2014, they decided to reform the curriculum with regards to language teaching in English schools. Although it still was not compulsory for students to take a languages GCSE, meaning only 47% of students were leaving compulsory education with a language qualification (Ofsted, 2021), it was made compulsory for schools to teach either a Modern Foreign Language or ancient language to students in Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6).

Whilst this was absolutely a step in the right direction, it was not without its flaws. The Language Trends Survey 2020 (Collen, 2020), which is an annual survey funded by the British Council that is sent to teachers across the UK, found that a lack of implementation framework in the languages curriculum meant that there was significant variation across schools in how much time, money and resources were put into KS2 MFL lessons. This meant that some children were receiving a much higher or lower quality of languages education. When teachers were asked what they would like more guidance on, the most common responses were:

How much time to spend on language teaching What content to teach Subject specific professional development Research-informed resources Written by a researcher in the field of Psycholinguistics, this article will focus on what research currently says about learning a new language and how this research can hopefully aid in producing research-informed resources for languages teachers in English primary schools.

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Learning a new language- where to start?

There are so many facets to consider when learning a new language- grammar, syntax, context and more. However, whilst these are all important aspects, you can’t progress to these without knowing at least some individual words in the language you are trying to learn. It’s only once you build up a small vocabulary that you begin to think about how these words are used in a sentence, word ordering, etc. Therefore, it makes sense for research to first focus on how we can facilitate vocabulary acquisition in language lessons.

What does it mean to know a word in a foreign language?

Firstly, let’s think about what it means to know a word in your first language. There are three facets that you need to know when learning a new word: what the word sounds like (phonology), what the word looks like (orthography) and what the word means (semantics). This information then becomes integrated to form a representation of this word in your memory, meaning that receiving one piece of information about the word then brings to mind the other two aspects (e.g., hearing the word can bring to mind what the word looks like and what the word means (Perfetti & Hart, 2002)).

The role of written words in learning a foreign language

However, when learning a new word in a second language, you are learning a new label and new pronunciation. Then what was initially a relatively straightforward connection between three pieces of information becomes this complex entanglement of information with multiple labels and pronunciations.

So how can this process be made easier?

One body of research within the language-learning literature refers to the orthographic facilitation effect when learning first language orthography (Ricketts et al, 2009; Rosenthal & Ehri, 2008; Colenbrander et al., 2019). This is the idea that because these three facets of information (orthography, phonology and semantics) are well-integrated, placing emphasis on the written word form when teaching new words, can lead to reinforcement of the spoken form and meaning.

This can therefore lead to better learning of these new words. However, the majority of studies investigating the orthographic facilitation effect have tested it with either first language words or novel words- except one.

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What about in a second language?

Background

Alexander Krepel and colleagues (2020) carried out the first (and to our knowledge, the only) study to investigate the orthographic facilitation effect when learning words from a foreign language. As well as investigating whether orthography facilitates second language learning, they wanted to investigate whether the word’s spelling-sound consistency influenced the orthographic facilitation effect. Spelling-sound consistency refers to whether a word is pronounced as you would expect from the spelling. For example, bed would be a consistent word whereas yacht would be an inconsistent word.

They were also interested in whether the direction (forward or backward) that the translation was taught in made a difference. Forward translation refers to translating a second language word to the first language whereas backward translation refers to translating the first language word into the second language.

The research questions they were aiming to address are as follows: • Does the orthographic facilitation effect depend on the spelling-sound consistency of the word being taught?

• Is the orthographic facilitation effect found both when participants are tested using forward translation or backwards translation?

• Is performance of word learning influenced by whether they are tested in the same direction that they were taught the words (forward learning-forward translation or backward learning- backward translation) or in the opposite direction (forward learning- backward translation or backward learning- forward translation)?

What did they do?

Participants in this study consisted of 92 Dutch children aged 11-13 years.

They were taught 12 words (6 consistent words and 6 inconsistent words) in one of four conditions:

1 3

Orthography present Backward learning Orthography absent Backward learning

2 4

Orthography present Forward learning Orthography absent Forward learning

The experiment consisted of 3 sessions- a session for background measures, a session for the word learning task and immediate post-test and a session for the delayed post-test. The first session allowed the researcher to obtain measures of the participant’s Dutch and English word knowledge. These measures enable the researcher to characterize their sample.

In the second session, regardless of which condition the participants were randomly assigned to, the word learning task consisted of an exposure trial and four training trials for each of the twelve words. For each of the four conditions, the exposure trial went as follows:

BACKWARD LEARNING:

FORWARD LEARNING:

Pronunciation of English (L2) word presented with either the written word (orthography condition) or no written word (no orthography presented)

Shown the written Dutch word

Then shown the written Dutch (L1) word

Pronunciation of English (L2) word presented with either the written word (orthography condition) or no written word (no orthography presented) Participant then repeated word to researcher to ensure that they could pronounce it correctly

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The training trials then went as follows:

BACKWARD LEARNING:

FORWARD LEARNING:

Participants heard the target English word and this was either accompanied by the written word (orthography condition) or not (no orthography condition)

Participants presented with the written target Dutch word • They then had to say English translation to researcher • If correct, the word 'Correct' would be presented with the correct English pronunciation played and if incorrect, the word 'Incorrect' would be presented with the correct English pronunciation played • If in the orthography present condition, the correct English pronunciation would be accompanied by the written English word and if in the no orthography condition, they would just hear the pronunciation with no written word.

Participants were then asked to type the Dutch translation If correct, the correct answer was shown in green letters If incorrect, the incorrect answer was shown in red letters with the correct answer underneath in green letters

Once participants had completed an exposure trial and four training trials for each of the twelve words, the following post-tests were administered for all four conditions

BACKWARD TRANSLATION

participants heard the English pronunciation and had to type the Dutch translation

FORWARD TRANSLATION

participants saw the written Dutch word and had to pronounce the correct English translation

SPELLING

participants heard the Dutch word and had to type the correct English word The third session was completed a day later. All three of the previously mentioned post-tests were done again to see if word learning was maintained. There was also an additional reading task where the participants were presented with a written list of all 12 target English words and asked to read them out loud.

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What did they find?

SPELLING

Performance was better if words were learnt with orthography present and spelling was also better on day 2 than on day 1 (no such difference was seen if words were learnt without orthography). Consistent words were also spelt better than inconsistent words in both conditions but the difference was greater in the orthography condition, suggesting that orthography is more beneficial for consistent words.

READING

Performance was better if words were learnt with orthography present. Consistent words were read better than inconsistent words, but inconsistent words appeared to benefit more from the presence of orthography.

TRANSLATION

Translation accuracy was higher when words were learnt with orthography present; however, there was no difference in the effect of orthography for forward or backwards translation. In terms of word consistency, it was found that translation accuracy for consistent words was higher when the words were learnt with orthography present. No effect for orthography was found when translating inconsistent words. In terms of whether post-test direction matched learning direction, performance was better if words were learnt in forward learning and tested in forward translation but there was no difference in backwards learning conditions.

Conclusions and future directions

These findings suggest that the availability of orthography is beneficial for word learning in a foreign language, regardless of whether the word is taught in forward learning or backward learning conditions. This is an important finding in terms of language lessons as it shows that the use of orthography, whilst something that teachers tend to incorporate already by writing on the board or using flashcards, is beneficial for foreign word learning and should be used intentionally and consistently.

However, it should be noted that this study was conducted on a one-to-one basis- all sessions were completed individually with the researcher and the participant. Whilst this is great for ensuring that the study has high scientific rigor as it reduces any distractions, background noise etc., it means that we cannot be sure that the role of orthography will be as beneficial when used in a classroom setting.

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In an ideal world, students would have all of their teaching delivered one-to-one but realistically, languages lessons generally take place with one teacher delivering content to 25-30 children. Therefore, myself and my supervisors (Professors Jessie Ricketts and Saloni Krishnan) are currently working on a study that tests whether the availability of orthography facilitates foreign word learning when the words are taught to whole classes at a time, making it more representative of how teaching happens in English primary schools. We aim to start data collection in Spring 2024 so please keep an eye out for our findings shortly after.

Courtney Hooton is a PhD candidate and Teaching Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on reading and language acquisition in children, with a particular focus on Modern Foreign Languages in primary school.

Retrieval Quizzes - a panacea for effective retrieval practice?

Retrieval practice has been coined to describe the act of recalling learnt content from longterm memory, a practice whose benefits for long-term learning have been widely supported by evidence from educational psychology (Brown et al., 2014). Educators have argued teachers should ‘begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning’ as ‘daily review can strengthen previous learning and can lead to fluent recall’ (Rosenshine, 2012).

It is for this reason that the so-called ‘do now’ retrieval practice quiz has become the ‘go-to’ opener to a lesson, as regular low-stakes practice has become a useful way to build a ‘certain type of necessary factual knowledge (declarative knowledge)’ (Quigley, 2023).

However, are the recent proliferation of software tools such as Quizlet, Cahoots and now GCSE Pod in our teaching and learning the most effective way to enhance recall of learnt content form long-term memory? In essence, have these tools become a panacea for effective retrieval practice in the classroom?

In a recent TES article, Quigley argues that getting a quiz question right does not ‘guarantee understanding, nor does it lead to successful application of knowledge’ (2023). He even suggests that a good quiz score can ‘mislead us’. So why is this? Whilst the multiple-choice quiz is the most common type of retrieval quiz, because of its workload-friendly nature, the EBE publication ‘Retrieval Practice: Myths, Mutations and Mistakes’ puts forward the case that it lacks the challenge of ‘free recall’ and, moreover, ‘does not allow opportunities for extension and elaboration’ (2023).

Let’s examine these two concepts more closely. Free recall (the act of retrieving information from long-term memory without prompts) has been suggested to be one of the most beneficial types of retrieval practice due to the ‘effort required by an individual to dredge up a memory without external support, the stronger the memory will become’ (Jones, 2021). Whilst extension and elaboration complement nicely the need for students to do more than just recall information, we should not forget the requirement for students to apply also their knowledge; this requires an ability to transfer knowledge across different contexts. I would contend such skills achieve the so-called ‘desirable level of difficulty’ (Bjork and Bjork, 2011), which has been shown to be an essential key for embedding learning which less effortless retrieval tasks fail to achieve effectively.

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The more I think about it, the more I reflect on the evidence to go beyond retrieval quizzes as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and the more I embrace the revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy which describes the key cognitive processes by which students ‘need to encounter and work with knowledge’:

1

2

g isin ling n g co ecal R Re

4

Remember

Analyze

g g g ting plifyin fying arizin ng rin ining e a r i i p p r m la m er xem lass um nfer Int I E Co Exp C S

ing ing eck ritiqu h C C

5

Understand

Evaluate

ting

3

ng iati ising ting t n u e gan rib fer Dif Or Att

n ting leme u c p Exe Im

Apply

6

g ting ing a cin r u e n d n n Pro Ge Pla

Create

Such an approach for testing retrieval practice is more in keeping with our examination syllabi in which the skills of interpretation, application, analysis and evaluation make up a significant portion of our Assessment Objectives and, moreover, percentage weightings in public exams.

So, before we embrace more simplistic retrieval quizzes we need to ask the following questions:

1 Are we really starting a lesson with a quiz to aid learning or are we using it as a way of getting pupils to be quiet and settled?

2 Have we carefully considered the question design of our quiz to enhance understanding rather than simple recall?

3 Have we considered genuine alternatives to enhance retrieval practice from long-term memory which are more in keeping with the principles of desirable difficulties and a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy?

If we reflect on our practice a bit more, then, I believe we are more likely to have the purposeful learning outcomes for our students we desire.

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Dr. Paul Hundal is very interested in how evidence-based research can inform pedagogical practice

Learning Pathways at Berkhamsted

Rationale and aims of the Learning Pathways Programme

Over recent years, an important strategic priority for Berkhamsted in the realm of Teaching and Learning has been the promotion of metacognition and self-regulation. Evidence suggests that pupils who have strong metacognitive skills and knowledge can make the equivalent of +7 additional months of progress over the course of an academic year. Indeed, this strategy is recommended as the most impactful of all interventions compared in the Teaching and Learning Toolkit commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation.

Throughout the school journey, pupils are encouraged to use strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. To best support pupils in improving their efficacy as learners, teachers are working to implement the findings of research into metacognition principles and employ a repertoire of strategies in their practice. Furthermore, our parent community has also been engaging in this area by attending online talks and receiving regular communications focused on the importance of this approach to learning with suggestions of how best to support their child from home.

As evidence of Berkhamsted’s commitment to this explicit teaching of what it looks like to be an effective independent learner, an exciting new curriculum development was launched for Key Stage 4 in September 2021 in the form of the Learning Pathways Programme. The programme is made up of two distinct elements, Guided Discovery and Coached Study, each with different aims.

Guided Discovery

In Guided Discovery lessons in Year 10, pupils have an opportunity to work asynchronously and pursue an area of interest relevant to one of the four Learning Pathways: Applied Science; Digital and Creative Media; Global Perspectives; and Human, Social and Political Sciences.

An important aim of this element of the programme is to promote self-regulated learning and cultivate intrinsic motivation amongst our pupils. As advocated by motivation specialist Daniel Pink in his work, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, learners’ motivation is largely intrinsic (2009). He identifies three factors that lead to better performance: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Therefore, it is the individual’s desire to self-direct themselves to improve and make progress towards a meaningful goal that is essential to them being motivated.

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This intrinsic motivation is most definitely fostered in the Guided Discovery element of the Learning Pathways Programme.

After choosing one of the four Learning Pathways, pupils independently ‘self-steer’ through the bespoke curriculum that has been curated to scaffold the completion of: • An Online Course via the FutureLearn platform • A series of Research Reflections after engaging in a range of relevant source material • A TedEd Style Talk to peers, followed by Q&A on their area of study • A Showcase Piece (encouraged to enter submissions in external competitions or to Berkhamsted Blogs) Following the completion of these four units, pupils engage in a reflective Self-Review, evaluating their competencies in independent learning and levels of engagement. This willingness to engage in metacognitive and cognitive skills is an important component of self-regulated learning.

In Year 11, Guided Discovery lessons are similarly used to provide pupils with the opportunity to navigate through a range of resources relevant to their own unique next steps beyond Senior School. These include A-Level Taster Lessons designed

by Academic Departments and A-Level Exploration Questions posed by Heads of Departments, both of which facilitate preliminary engagement in the A-Level curriculum before entry into the Sixth Form. This has helped to ensure that pupils are making informed choices when selecting their subject options to pursue as part of their study at Key Stage 5.

Coached Study

In Coached Study lessons in Year 10, pupils have support from a teacher who actively coaches them in becoming effective independent learners, promoting metacognitive principles, and helping pupils to translate these into successful learning habits. Important foundations are laid here that can be drawn upon in pupils’ preparation for GCSE examinations. Sessions within the Year 10 Coached Study element of the Learning Pathways Programme include teaching on topics such as Robert Bjork’s Desirable Difficulties, James Clear’s Atomic Habits and Professor Steve Peters’ The Chimp Paradox.

Once in Year 11, pupils engage in the following cycle for each of their GCSE subject options:

REVIEW evaluate strengths and weaknesses in application of learning

PLAN identify areas of strengths and weaknesses using exam-specific knowledge checklists

RETRIEVE reconstruct memories and apply embedded knowledge to reconsolidate learning ELABORATE teach others to consolidate and stabilise knowledge

MONITOR revisit and update knowledge checklists

CHUNK encode information into retrieval forms

INTERLEAVE reorganise knowledge and make connections

As part of this revision cycle, pupils are recommended a broad range of tangible revision strategies including Cornell Notetaking, Dual Coding, Blank Page Retrieval and Knowledge Organisers. These strategies have been widely promoted by cognitive scientists and are frequently identified as having the highest efficacy in key works such as Make It Stick: The Science Behind Successful Learning (Brown, Roediger and McDaniel).

In conclusion, as outlined in Daniel T. Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?, we know that the teenage brain is lazy and will take the route of least resistance when it comes to learning. However, it is hoped that this innovative curriculum initiative in the form of the two-year Learning Pathways Programme equips Key Stage 4 pupils with accessible, evidence-based techniques and strategies to take away that can improve their overall learning outcomes and be applied to serve them well beyond their GCSE years.

Anna Dickson acted as Subject Leader of Learning Pathways when the curriculum initiative was first introduced in September 2021 until August 2023. She has always been interested in metacognition and has previously completed two Action Research Projects on this area. Anna is now Assistant Head of the Sixth with a focus on curriculum.

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First aid for Anxiety Take a Deep Breath As you have undoubtedly heard, mental health issues are on the rise amongst children and young people (Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, 2022). We’re told that NHS Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are at breaking point. Resources are stretched, waiting lists get longer, and many high-need referrals do not even meet CAMHS entry criteria. Increasingly, young people and families desperately need support, but are denied. This is a terrible shame because we know that early intervention is key.

The theme of mental health is more prevalent in the media than ever before, and young people seem to have developed a broader vocabulary to describe their psychological state compared with their parents. In most ways, this is a good thing, and young people demonstrate an openness and compassion for mental health struggles that many older generations did not. The message is getting clearer- it’s ok to not be ok. As such, Anxiety, in all its forms, is very topical. You may have some lived experience of anxiety, or perhaps have observed it in others in your home life or school life.

I hear, read, or say the word anxiety dozens of times per day. I have done so since I started my first job in a London psychiatric hospital in 2012. These in-patients told me they were anxious - some of them were terrified. Some believed the BBC news presenter was reading their thoughts or that the mobile phone company was listening to their conversations. Psychosis or delusional beliefs were at play here (though in hindsight they may have been onto something about the phones…). Paranoia is the extreme end of a very broad spectrum of ‘anxiety’ or fear. The lower end of this spectrum is more common, with all of us experiencing anxiety and worry to some degree from time to time. Often, this is on the basis of reasonable everyday concerns (what if the bills go up again, what if the scan shows something nasty, what if I don’t get all this work done?…).

At Berkhamsted, many young people are seemingly familiar with anxiety and panic. Anxiety is a faceless character in school - looming around every corner and sitting in each classroom. Students speak of exam anxiety (what if I fail my exams?), social anxiety (what if I say something stupid and my friends reject me?), obsessive compulsive tendencies and contamination fears (what if I don’t wash the germs off my hands and spread disease?), health anxiety (what if I contract an illness?), body image distress (what if I am ugly and everybody thinks so?). What if, what if, what if…? For obvious reasons, the pandemic triggered an increase in OCD and health anxiety amongst children and adults alike (Hassoulas et al., 2021; Heinen et al., 2021).

The state of anxiety is described in psychology textbooks as The intolerance of uncertainty; the uncomfortable sense of not knowing (Dugas & Koerner, 2005; Dugas & Ladouceur, 2000; Kennerly, et al., 2016; Wells, 1999a; Wells, 1999b).

To manage this unpleasant feeling, we may try to control as much as possible and account for every eventuality. Some people live by the rule that worry is functional or ‘positive’ (not enjoyable, but beneficial), in that they believe worry is necessary to prevent adverse outcomes (see extensive literature around control and positive beliefs about worry; Dugas & Koerner, 2005). This is often a deeply-ingrained unconscious habit, that was learned in early life, either as a result of adverse experiences or modelling from primary caregivers. The first step in reducing anxiety in adults is often to disabuse the individual of the belief that worry is necessary or functional.

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For children, however, the visceral aspects of anxiety are often the most dominant and aversive features of the anxious experience. Anxious cognitions and emotions are accompanied by physiological symptoms, including increased heart rate, laboured breathing, sweaty palms, knot in the stomach, dry mouth, reduced appetite. Most people know this as the ‘fight or flight’ mode (Clark & Beck, 2011; Plaford, 2013). It can be therapeutic in itself to review the evolutionary explanation of this response. Our ancestors relied on the adrenal response as a warning system to alert them to threats in the environment. Their eyes/ears registered the risk/predator. Adrenaline was secreted - triggering fight or flight mode. Under stress, or in emergency situations, the sympathetic nervous system activates itself to help us escape danger. This causes functions like shallow breathing and rapid heartbeat. The increased heart rate is to pump oxygen-rich blood faster around the body to the limbs.

Take a deep breath

Panic attacks are conceptualised as a catastrophic misinterpretation of these physiological responses, whereby some individuals struggle to tolerate the visceral symptoms and misinterpret the raised heartbeat and changes in breathing rate as a catastrophic health event (e.g,. heart attack (Clark & Beck, 2011)).

What is the solution? The evidence suggests that the most effective intervention for anxiety in all its forms (social, OCD, health, etc) is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT; Otto & Deveney, 2005). CBT has good long-term outcomes following 6-12 sessions. However, teachers ask daily about how they can support an anxious student on the go or in short tutor meetingsthey need a quicker fix. As trite as it sounds, the recommended first aid for anxiety or panic is to take a deep breath. Let’s examine why. Shallow, upper chest breathing is part of the typical stress response. The stress response can be reduced by consciously breathing using the diaphragm. Deliberately copying a relaxed breathing pattern calms the nervous system that controls the body’s involuntary functions. Controlled breathing can lower blood pressure and heart rate and reduce levels of stress hormones in the blood. Practising slow, deep breathing informs the body that the emergency is over and it’s safe now.

Breathe in through the nose and exhale slowly but strongly out of the mouth, as though you are blowing out an imaginary candle. Do it now whilst you read this.

Yoga, mindfulness, and other meditative practices harness the relaxing power of deep breathing, and there is ample evidence that these practices help reduce and manage chronic anxiety and mood issues (Rodrigues et al., 2017; Sovik, 2000). The power of breathing exercises is widely acknowledged in managing pain in burns victims and surgery patients. It is also reported to reduce labour pain in childbirth (Miri et al., 2002; Yuksel et al., 2017). I would note here that there is no shame in taking the drugs too!

There are many psychoeducational resources on the market for understanding and managing anxiety. The Overcoming Series for common mental health problems is highly rated by professionals and service users alike (Overcoming Panic and Overcoming Anxiety being particularly relevant, though there are many other titles in the series), all of which are based on cognitive behavioural principles. These handbooks serve as useful self-help guides but would also help develop your inner budding therapist. However, if you prefer lighter reading, John Roedel’s poem ‘My Brain and Heart Divorced’ also captures the healing power of a deep breath. Roedel describes being stuck between his heart’s rumination on yesterday’s mistakes and his brain’s preparation to avoid the mistakes of tomorrow. He describes the paralysis that anxiety so often brings. His solution? Spend time in the present moment with the lungs.

So, next time you are stuck with your own ‘what if ’s’ and feel that your head and heart are consumed by uncertainty, imagine packing a little bag and going to your lungs for some respite. As you sit across from an anxious student, breathe with them.

Blow out the imaginary candles and let their heart rate come down. Bring them back to the present moment and remind them they are safe. The panic will subside and more practical problem solving can begin.

Dr. Emily Kenefick is a clinical psychologist. She joined Berkhamsted as the first ever school psychologist in September 2022 following 10 years in the NHS. Her role is to support the wellbeing of students, parents and staff across all of the schools in the Berkhamsted Group.

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‘my brain and heart divorced a decade ago over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become eventually, they couldn’t be in the same room with each other now my head and heart share custody of me’

‘this morning, while my brain was busy reading tea leaves and while my heart was staring at old photographs I packed a little bag and walked to the door of my lungs before I could even knock she opened the door with a smile and as a gust of air embraced me she said what took you so long?’

My Brain and Heart Divorced (by John Roedel)

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How can we teach metacognitive skills in a pastoral environment?

Rationale behind the research

‘If we don’t know how we learn, how on earth do we know how to teach?’

(Reif, 2017)

How do students learn? How has this even become a relatively recent phenomenon and question that schools are starting to explore? For years this has been missing from our education as teachers. Most of my time spent in teacher training was on learning how to teach and how to manage behaviour. Learning more about how the brain works and how students learn has emerged as a real need and opportunity in our schools to build not only academic rigour, but also the self-confidence of our students. With increased metacognitive understanding, teachers will know more about the conditions that maximise learning and memory. If students are more explicitly taught these skills, then they can face new challenges and what the future holds with better resilience and the responsibility to learn from their mistakes. Recent research by the Education Endowment Foundation (Sword, 2021) has found that metacognition is key to effective pupil learning: it can add up to seven months of additional learning.

If we accept the definition of metacognition as ‘thinking about thinking’ - something which students do themselves – it is easy to understand why this for many students is difficult to achieve. In a sense, they are being required to work truly independently – something all teachers would ideally want from their students. According to Jennifer Webb, a metacognitive learner is one who has knowledge and control over their metacognitive processes (2021).

We want our students to be metacognitive learners because when they are managing tasks independently, it makes them more confident, which obviously has a positive and lasting impact on their stress levels.

Clearly, this all leads to a real need to teach metacognitive skills more effectively in our classrooms. The learning community of Berkhamsted is making significant leaps with this: our Year 10s and Year 11s have a Learning Pathways course which teaches these skills, and teachers are gaining this expertise from focused INSET training days and are drawing collaboratively on the shared skills of members of staff. Strategies such as recall/retrieval practice (considered as now the best technique to enable students to learn effectively, beating re-reading, highlighting, 50

concept/mind mapping –Karpicke and Blunt, 2011) interleaving topics, live modelling (thereby ‘revealing the thought processes of an expert learner’ - Quigley et al., 2018) and regular low-stakes testing are all now common features of our teaching practice and support students with the pressures of assessments and examinations.

The purpose behind my action research project was to explore how students in fact might learn some of these skills more effectively from each other in a pastoral environment. The relationship between well-being and academic achievement has been well documented and positively associated (Clarke, 2020). Students need continual support and pastoral care to enable them to manage their time as they navigate a delicate tightrope of demands across their academic subjects, social lives and extra-curricular activities. Understanding the basic concepts of neuroscience can enable students to manage their time more effectively, as they know when, how and why to shift between active and diffuse mode to give their neurons an opportunity to consolidate learning and improve long-term memory (Oakley, 2018). The key target, as Oakley states, is to enable them to ‘succeed without spending all their time studying.’ (Oakley, 2018). Students inevitably model the behaviour of their peers, and this is where pastoral comes in. If students can learn by sharing techniques with their peers, then this is a real opportunity. Ultimately, research suggests, it can improve academic engagement (Sorrenti et al., 2020), and Oakley explores the ‘social buffering’ provided by support group members that can help reduce a student’s stress hormones when they encounter new and difficult tasks (Oakley, 2021). In addition, the pastoral environment removes them from some of the competitive nature of the classroom – it dissolves the differences which come with setting and offers the chance to share knowledge across different experiences.

Procedure In September 2020, my tutees began Year 9 and began to feel more pressure across subjects which had already started GCSE courses. There was some concern raised by several parents about their lack of understanding about how to revise effectively at home for an increasing number of low stakes tests in the classroom.

As a way of addressing this, students in my tutor group initially took the massive open online course (MOOC), Learning How to Learn, to build their understanding of basic neuroscience strategies. The course teaches the basic elements of how short-term and long-term memory works, how our brains make links and connections as well as how students can use different modes of attention – focus and diffuse mode – to get the most out of their study sessions.

Once the course was completed, students had tutor-led time to work on these skills as part of a series of ‘metacognitive takeaways’ and used 1:1 discussion to discuss these strategies and feedback on how effective these have been across different subjects. These ‘takeaway’ sessions continued into Year 10, when students began to feel increasing pressure about their performances in low-stakes tests and more serious assessments. The aim was to build links and firmly embed what students had discovered through the Learning how to Learn MOOC and what they were studying in their Learning Pathways course. The ‘takeaways’ focused on key elements to help boost learning, including: work on the memory (differences between working and long-term memory and using retrieval practice to strengthen links and recall); using the ‘pomodoro’ technique to focus our brain for short periods during study sessions; understanding the value of sleep and how it strengthens the brain's synapses, and how to manage time effectively to organise homework and revision into their busy schedules. Three students from the group shared their best ‘take-aways’ in a whole school assembly, and these strategies were also shared at a staff INSET in April 2022.

During tutor sessions, my tutees continued to review their learning with each week, sharing best-practice and tips through peer-mentoring (which I coordinated through ‘buddying’ up particular students according to their strengths and weaknesses in particular subjects). I also experimented with findings from research of my own in terms of brain science and how to strengthen the working memory, which led to some experimenting with brain training and memory games in 51

tutoring sessions (Small, 2017). Much discussion has been given to the benefits of peer mentoring, which the Education Endowment Foundation has identified as being most effective when used to review or consolidate learning, rather than introducing new material (EEF, 2021).

When I was confident of their ability to support one another in tutor time, I thought it would be useful for the tutor group to work with other Year 9 tutors ahead of their final exams so they had some ideas and strategies for revision and managing workload without adding to their stress levels. Initially, I asked Year 9 tutors to ask their tutees to complete a brief questionnaire to identify the learning strategies that they are using already and if they would find a learning mentor useful. Out of the sixty students

who responded to this, over 50% responded that they were open to learning new strategies and taking an online course, and 87% were keen to experiment with new learning strategies to discover how they learn best.

I then narrowed the study to focus on the Year 9 tutor group in Loxwood House, to allow for more opportunities for informal mentoring. The group began the Learning How to Learn MOOC and this became part of the focus of my tutees’ initial mentoring sessions. Following on from this, my tutees visited the same and another Year 9 tutor group ahead of Year 9 end of year exams to offer revision guidance and mentoring. I selected two students (not already chosen for Prefect roles) from my group to manage these sessions, and they used tutor time to prepare a brief presentation and collaborate with the rest of the group to help them organise 1:1 mentoring of the Year 9s following the presentation. The presentation took the Year 9s through some of the tutor groups’ ‘tried and tested’ strategies with beneficial hindsight, finishing the presentation with things they wished they had known going into their Year 9 exams last year and allowing for questions at the end. As a result of these sessions, students in each Year 9 tutor group had 52

an informal Year 10 mentor, as well as the knowledge of who to go to if they needed any further support with a particular subject.

Key findings

Metacognition – and its impact – is a difficult thing to measure. It is about being able to assess how students change their approaches towards tasks, ignoring distractions and evaluating their approach to something even while they are tackling it. As my focus was on the positive impact it has on well-being too, I wanted to speak to students following the course about their experience of it and how it has positively impacted on their study skills and time-management. Students summarised the benefits of ‘working with another student’, the ‘pomodoro technique’, ‘creating links between subjects and spacing out learning’ as well as building ‘brain-links through practice, repetition and recall’.

In Year 10, following their Year 10 examinations, I wanted to discover if students were still using the skills gained from the course– along with tutor time sessions and learning pathways – to prepare more effectively for their exams.

Students had been regularly using some of these throughout the year to aid their day-today homework management and preparation for low stakes testing in class, so I created a Microsoft Forms survey to identify which had been most effective over time. 82% of the tutor group found that using the ‘pomodoro technique’ to support their ‘focused’ mode and spacing and interleaving their revision extremely useful and recognized the value of doing ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ revision tasks.

In their supporting comments, students made it clear that a variety of approaches was most effective, and that the active tasks and blank page recall only worked effectively if the topic had been read and understood properly initiallywhich is where the value of some of the more passive tasks comes in. A key finding, however, is how more reflective the students have become as learners. They are more able to evaluate what works for them and are building resilience through trial and error of different strategies and approaches, which is what we want our students to have to enable them to cope better with future demands.

The tutor group approached the planning of the Year 9 mentoring sessions with enthusiasm and impressive collaborative skill – their delivery was deemed as ‘fantastic’ by the tutor of one of the Year 9 groups. For my Year 10 tutees, being able to offer their skills in a specialist subject

area was a real boost to their confidence and sense of maturity. It also meant that all my tutees were able to take on this responsibility in a pastoral environment and gain this sense of achievement, rather than these roles falling as they perhaps typically do to the Prefects.

The majority of Year 9s found the mentoring experience useful. In a Microsoft Forms survey, students were enthusiastic about the sessions, and when prompted about the 1:1 discussion with individual Year 10 students, the Year 9s were resoundingly positive, noting the students’ ‘engaging’ approach and previous ‘experience’ which enabled them to share the ‘most effective ways to revise’.

Overall, students found it more helpful than they thought when they were originally asked earlier in Year 9. 67% of the students surveyed rated the sessions between 4-5 (1 being not useful, 5 being very useful), which is a promising result and suggests that this would be something worth developing further.

Recommendations

RECOMMENDATIONS I would recommend that metacognitive sessions are built into tutor times where possible. If we view metacognition as a framework around everything that we do (Webb, 21) then it needs to be an integral part of our pastoral system. The links between academic achievement and pastoral care are clear – a student who feels secure in what they are doing, who is independently making choices about their learning and learning from these choices, is going to be more successful.

Following my INSET, one of the biggest tutor concerns is that their tutees often feel overwhelmed by all the different pressures they have on their time. Facilitating more metacognitive skills into tutor time may not remove all of these pressures, but certainly it can help them have strategies to manage their time better. Starting students in KS3 with the Learning How to Learn MOOC course as part of a weekly student session or holiday project will give students a useful introductory understanding of how the human brain functions in an accessible way. Students can then be given time to experiment and review with each other about how they implement some of these techniques across different subjects.

While my study focused a lot on the pressure points leading up to Year 9 and 10 end of year exams, for metacognition to be taught effectively in a pastoral environment, it should not just be about revision techniques and memory. If metacognition is a range of behaviours which are long term and sustained, it would be useful to make connections across the academic year, using our 1:1 discussions in tutor time as the basis for this wider framework. Building peer mentoring into the House system will allow for older students to have leadership opportunities to support the younger year groups in both House and tutor time.

Rebecca Baker taught at Tring School before joining Berkhamsted School in 2019 as a Teacher of English. She is a Tutor in Loxwood House, currently to Year 11 students, and has a keen interest in metacognition and how students learn and retain information, leading to this area of focus for her Action Research Project.

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An exploration of the attainment of boys and girls in GCSE Food and Nutrition PURPOSE The aim of this study was to explore the attainment of boys and girls in GCSE Food and Nutrition (F&N). Although there is no research on GCSE F&N and its links to attainment, it has become apparent that there are disparities across schools with boys’ and girls’ attainment in F&N. Quenzel and Hurrelmann (2013) and Legewie and DiPetre (2012) have both argued that the gender gap in school attainment is increasing year upon year with an increase in low attainment in boys compared to girls. Low attainment can be described as the achievement of a pupil that falls below most pupils in the year group or the level expected of average pupils (Gorard and Smith, 2004). In England, it can be measured by Attainment 8. In 2017/18, the average Attainment 8 score was higher for girls at 49.3 and lower for boys at 43.8 (Gov.uk, 2019).

The study

The overall study was a data analysis investigation which used two different questionnaires with a combination of open and closed questions to explore the views of students and teachers across the three different schools. These questionnaires addressed the following aims:

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1 2

To investigate the views of students in three schools about the GCSE Food and Nutrition course, methods of teaching, and their progress in GCSE Food and Nutrition (80 Year 11 boys and girls) To investigate the views of teachers in three schools about the GCSE Food and Nutrition course, attainment in food and nutrition for boys and girls, the teaching methods used that appeal to boys and girls, and expectations for learning for boys and girls.

RESEARCH FINDINGS What methods of teaching impact learning the most and how can teachers adapt their pedagogy?

In the literature review, Younger et al. (2005) identified that learning styles is a theory of the past and adherence to this approach can pigeonhole learners’ attainment. There needs to be a more inclusive approach to teaching to engage, focus and challenge the students. It is important to identify that boys and girls should not be treated in the same way. It must be recognised that all students are individuals and not all teaching methods will suit boys or suit girls. The data analysed has been generalised to make it easily accessible but, as the data has shown, from an individual perspective, the students answer the questionnaire in different ways indicating that there is not a one-size fits all approach to raising the attainment of boys (Younger et al., 2005).

Technology

Boys think the use of technology, videos and learning apps are currently supporting their learning which is strongly supported by research from Reichert and Hawley (2010) and Majzub and Rais (2010) where they identified that the curriculum should allow for technology-based activities. However, a recent study found, based on the use of blended learning which consists of face-to-face activities and online activities, that higher ability girls outperformed boys, but it was more beneficial for those students who are lower ability when using these activities (Smith, 2020).

The study found that technology provided students with a digital education that is relevant to the current world but for both boys and girls, the tasks needed to be fit for purpose and applicable to the lesson that they are undertaking which coincides with the research by Younger et al. (2005).

Furthermore, the EEF (2016) identifies that digital technology is associated with moderate learning gains: on average, an additional four months’ progress. However, there is considerable variation in impact; this is because digital learning should be used to enhance teaching methods rather than replace/replicate more traditional learning methods (EEF, 2016). It has been found that digital learning can motivate students to practise more but it is unlikely to bring changes in learning and achievement (EEF, 2016). Though the data shows that boys prefer digital learning, it must be recognised that a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be used; it is about knowing the students holistically and assessing formatively to understand the student, to enable to motivate, interest and inspire them (Younger et al., 2005).

Combining practical and theoretical methods

Interestingly, girls showed an increased preference for practicals linking to theory. Younger (2016) found that though girls like learning about theoretical concepts, they do prefer an opportunity which develops their skills, their passion and learning, which is found in practical lessons. This theoretical learning is then enhanced using practicals which develop their learning within F&N and, as identified by Younger (2016), girls like time to be able explore, have freedom, and show more risks within the classroom. However, when practical activities are used girls must be supported, encouraged, and challenged by the teacher; girls are then able to ‘bounce’ off their teacher’s enthusiasm allowing for them to be more comfortable and confident with their learning (Younger, 2016).

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Structure

Furthermore, girls liked the use of structured worksheets and boys would prefer to see more of this within the classroom. The structure to the worksheets allows them to follow the lesson easily and creates a logical pace to the lesson. Both boys and girls would like to see more quick and short activities within their lessons. It has been found that the loss of instructional time in the classroom is due to off-task behaviour which has become a recognised pattern within the classroom (Godwin, Almeda Seltman, Kai, Skerbetz, Baker and Fisher, 2016). It has been found to negatively impact academic achievement as students lose attention during activities that are long and require a longer period of cognitive function. Godwin et al. (2016) and Younger (2016) suggest that short and focused tasks that integrate breaks into longer lessons allow for students to become more focused and engaged with the lesson. Setting timers and restricting how long they spend on activity can improve productivity but can also cause an increased level of anxiety and stress (Younger, 2016).

Flipped learning

Girls also would like to see the use of more flipped learning. Flipped learning is a teaching approach that reverses the traditional format of a teacher teaching the content instead providing the students with the content and task before a lesson. Class time is then used for learning activities (van Alten, Phielix, Janssen and Kester, 2020). Research conducted by van Alten et al. (2020) and Aydin, Okman, Sahin and Kilic (2020) found flipped learning had a positive impact on students’ achievement in the classroom as students were engaged, focused, and challenged. However, the results were both limited due to smaller sample size and the lack of statistical analysis on students’ grades they clearly identified that flipped learning must be followed through (in terms of making sure the classwork is based on the flipped learning activity), and the activity set at home must be engaging (for example, the use of videos and news articles (van Alten et al., 2020 and Aydin et al., 2020)).

Teacher thoughts

Likewise, teachers’ responses highly correspond to the students’ responses. They identified that practicals and technology appeal the most to the boys and research projects and quick and short activities appeal to girls. They also identified that teamwork and collaboration appeal to both boys and girls. Collaboration involves pupils working together on learning tasks in a small group to work on a collective task; they may work on separate tasks but will contribute to a common outcome. The EFF (2018a) identify that collaborative approaches continuously have a positive impact on learning with five months additional progress. However, they suggest that group work needs to be planned and structured with well-designed tasks to get the greatest learning gains. For example, approaches with talk and interaction rather than competition results in the highest gains (EFF, 2018a). One area to recognise is that teachers understand that their teaching styles will change to meet the needs of boys and girls to ensure there is full engagement.

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Feedback

Students identified that regular feedback, one-to-one support and target setting is important to the progress they are making. Both Younger (2005) and the EEF (2018) found that the use of written feedback from teachers can increase progress by an additional eight months, but teachers need to be aware that this will only work if the students are motivated, and the type of feedback is correct. The feedback should be simple but effective and should not be negative or link to the students’ behaviour, but to how they can improve (EEF, 2018).

Students also identified that they liked one-to-one feedback which they receive from their teachers. There is limited research on this, but Knauder and Koschmieder (2019) have identified that the one-to-one approach to teaching and learning is becoming more popular in the classroom. If the teacher has time, it should be factored in the curriculum as it can offer differentiation, learning plans and help support students with different abilities (Knauder and Koschmieder, 2019). They identified that teachers believe individualised support is important and setting worthy goals can impact on the self-determination theory making a student intrinsically motivated, allowing them to seek out challenges and use their full capabilities (Knauder and Koschmieder, 2019). The use of one-to-one feedback may also help with effectively building relationships with boys and girls, leading to more open and effective teaching (Reichert and Hawley, 2010).

Expectations

Ten boys and ten girls highlighted that their teacher’s expectations are positively impacting their progress in their lessons. It is clear to see that this corresponds to the research identified in the literature review. Students identified that high expectations encourage them to work harder and make the teacher proud. This links to research by Friedrich et al. (2015) who identified that high expectations could impact student achievement by five to ten per cent (Gentrup et al., 2020). Teachers need to recognise that expectations can be a powerful tool that influences students’ achievement based upon the ‘Pygmalion effect’ where, in practice, students’ effort and thoughts will change when a teacher believes in them.

However, one key area identified by a student was about how they are compared to girls and how expectations may be too high.

It is important to recognise that boys should not be compared to girls. Teachers need to consider Students' the words that they are using and Actions not showing any bias towards in school and life the girls. As started by Hoff and Pandy (2006) teacher biases can generate stereotypes threats, impact students’ interest and effort for the subject. Though much research has identified how low expectation can impact boy’s attainment (Terrier, 2020 and Nolkemper et al., 2018), high expectations can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy where whatever they do is not enough and then disassociate from learning (Smith, 2020)

Teacher's Belief

about his or her student

Pygmalion Effect

Teacher's Actions

about his or her student

Students' beliefs

about their own capabilities

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Structure

The structure of lessons is only a small area that was covered in the literature review; however, eleven girls identified that structure as an important factor to the progress they are making. It is important to recognise that though the research has identified that there is a gender gap with boys being low attainers, it is important to remember, that girls cannot be ignored, as some under-attaining girls can become overlooked because they are quiet and compliant (Myhill and Jones, 2004). The girls highlighted that lessons are always well planned, the teacher goes over areas that may not be clear using revision lessons, and tasks and knowledge provided to them are relevant and concise.

This highly links to the research conducted by Younger (2016) who investigated effective pedagogies for girls’ learning. Younger (2016) highlights that as teachers we need to recognise that girls’ learning needs, styles and preferences will be different to those of boys as they experience the external environment differently. Younger states that the most effective lessons were those ‘…characterized as having a clearly visible and articulated structure’ (2016, 5).

The girls also highlighted that the teacher goes over areas that may not be clear using revision lessons this again links to Younger (2016) as he recognised that girls require flexibility, to cater for things that may arise and are not understood. Additionally, girls and boys need to have lessons where the teachers are high profile, driving learning at a fast pace, using a variety of activities; for example, this could be six to seven different activities across an hour’s lesson (Younger, 2016). Lessons always need to be well-ordered and organised with a clear structure that is articulated at the beginning of the lesson (Younger, 2016).

Retrieval

Students identified that retrieval practice positively impacts their progress within the classroom, and it requires further investigation to see the long-term impact on students and how it can help teacher practice. Retrieval practice refers to the ‘act of recalling learned information from memory (with no or little support) and every time the information is retrieved, it changes the original memory to make it stronger.’ (Jones 2019, 15). Karpicke and Blunt (2011) identified that retrieval practice can have some of the largest impact on academic achievement compared with using complex study skills. It found retrieval practice can aid students’ retention, identify key gaps in their knowledge, help students organise their knowledge and support teachers in providing feedback. Furthermore, Agarwal, D’Antonio, Roediger, McDermott and McDaniel (2014) found by surveying 1408 students from middle higher school that ninety-two per cent of students reported that retrieval practice helped them learn and seventy-two per cent reported that retrieval practice made them less nervous for exams. However, there can be limitations to retrieval practice. Jones (2019) identifies that the type of activity must be low stakes and not put students under pressure. The type of retrieval activity must also be changed so it does become unmotivating for students (Jones, 2019).

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RECOMMENDATIONS

The following recommendations are for practitioners who are thinking of ways in which they can improve their own pedagogy and improve the attainment of boys and girls. The recommendations are actionable with some being completed in the short-term whilst others may need to be developed over a longer period.

• U nderstand the ways in which boys and girls learn. Based on the results, boys like learning apps, structured worksheets, quick and short activities and some research projects, while girls like practicals linking to theory, structured worksheets, quick and short activities, revision activities and flipped learning. These can be gradually integrated into a scheme of work.

• Though the above point has identified key areas that boy and girls like to learn, it is important to understand the individual. Based on the findings/discussion, it is important to recognise that boys and girls do not respond in the same way and that a holistic assessment should be used to explore students’ feelings and motivations, as well as achievement.

• To improve progress: integrate one-to-one sessions into lesson time. This will allow you to understand the students’ knowledge, capabilities, and their needs and wants.

Use appropriate feedback methods that are simple and set them realistic targets to improve on. Provide a clear structure to your lessons which must be articulated at the beginning of the lesson. The lessons need to be highly paced, with quick and short activities and a review of the knowledge they have learnt. The use of retrieval activities has been shown to impact progress; these types of activities are low effort but provide high impact.

Natalie Wingrove is a Food and Nutrition teacher. She has completed her master’s at Exeter University in 2020 in Educational Leadership, taking a particular interest in increasing boys engagement and GCSE results.

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Exploring the interactions between children’s sense of self and their sense of place through sport

Introduction

Identity formation and the development of an individual’s ‘sense of self ’ occur as they make a series of decisions regarding their ‘association’ or ‘disassociation’ with (i.e., acceptance or rejection of) certain ‘identity markers’ (e.g., gender, race, culture, interests, hobbies, relationships (Raburu, 2015; Konstantoni, Kustatscher and Emejulu, 2017)). These decisions are made within the context of an individual’s personal geographies: their understandings of, relationships with, and experiences within, the places that they encounter.

The abstruse and changeable nature of identity means that few individuals ever achieve an ‘absolute’ identity. Throughout an individual’s life their associations and dissociations with identity markers will change. Moreover, there is broad consensus among identity theorists that identity is a performance: individuals will adapt the way that they present themselves and behave depending on their environment (Goffman, 1959; cited in Pearson, 2009). However, ‘identity exploration’ (activity with the purpose of assisting one’s identity formation) begins in late childhood (Schachter and Venutura, 2008), a time when children will be experiencing greater socioemotional- and physical- independence from their parents or guardians.

This article is situated within two geographic subdisciplines: Children’s geographies (see, for example: Horton and Kraftl, 2005; Horton and Kraftl, 2006) and geographies of sport (see, for example: Bale, 2000; Bale, 2003; Bale and Dejonghe, 2008). Children’s geography emerged as an independent subdiscipline during the 1980s in response to Human Geography’s lack of attention to childhood experiences. It recognises that children are capable social actors who merit specific research and have a right to represent themselves within both academic and political debates (Holloway and Valentine, 2000; Evans, 2008). Children’s geography pays particular attention to children’s everyday ‘spatialities’ (encounters with space and place) and considers children’s role in shaping space’s meaning.

Children’s geography’s research has been critiqued for placing children in a marginal position since their accounts are channelled through adult understandings (Christensen, Mygind and Bentsen, 2015). In consideration of this critique, research was conducted with an appreciation of the importance of reflecting on how my own desire to encourage children’s participation in research during data collection, power relations between myself and participants, and my own existing knowledge may have impacted data collection and subsequent analysis.

Geographies of sport focus on the spatial and landscape characteristics of sports and the meanings and values society ascribes to sports locations (e.g., stadia, which over time absorb, and come to reflect, contemporary attitudes, e.g., towards race, gender and class (DeChano and Shelley, 2004)). This provides an introduction to the likely experiences of individuals within, and their relationships with, sporting locations. Contrary to children’s geographers, geographers of sport have been critiqued for their attention to the identification and analysis of ‘macro’ processes (e.g., temporal and spatial variations in sports club’s location, international sporting events and the role of sports in shaping cultural landscapes). This often comes at the expense of considerations of the individual’s relationship with sport and the way in which sport influences, as well as is influenced by, individual’s daily lives (Allender, Cowbum and Foster, 2006).

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Nevertheless, geographies of sport do acknowledge the role of place in impacting individuals’ daily experiences which in turn shape their identity. As yet, there have been limited studies which incorporate the work of academics specialising in both children’s geography and geographies of sport.

The Study

My research considered the role of sports participation in the geographies of children’s identity formation. To recruit participants I contacted the committees of 12 sports clubs based in Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield (Hertfordshire) requesting that a communication was forwarded to all members offering the opportunity for voluntary, individual participation. Four clubs responded positively, two declined and six did not respond. This approach empowered gatekeepers (i.e., committee members) to control access to potential participants which can either facilitate or hinder recruitment (Bedford and Burges, 2001; Conradson, 2005). Recruiting sports clubs’ members was a purposive sampling method; it ensured all data collected would be applicable to the research issue (Tong, Sainsbury and Craig, 2007). However, this does mean that data is not representative of all children.

Between June 2016 and July 2017 I conducted research at Welwyn Garden Swimming Club, Herts Phoenix Athletic Club, Welwyn Pegasus Football Club and Welwyn Rugby Football Club. Seven small groups of children aged 7 – 14 years participated in a one-off, informal, discussion-based session. This lasted approximately one hour and took place either before or after training.

Prior to research’s commencement, ethical approval was sought from, and granted by The University of Birmingham Ethics Committee. All clubs were provided with details of my ehanced DBS certificate, and I ensured full compliance with Child Protection Legislation. Participants and their parents / guardians were provided an information sheet outlining the nature and purpose of research and were required to sign a consent form. The information sheet assured anonymity and confidentiality and detailed participants’ right to withdraw without prejudice or reason at any time (pleasingly, no participants withdrew). I ascribed pseudonyms to each of the participants and stored all data in password protected folders.

Moreover, I reflected on, and sought to limit the extent to which, my own experiences and biases impacted research. I have spent, and continue to spend, innumerable hours participating and competing in sporting activities and many of my formative experiences took place in a sporting environment. Moreover, I was a member of Welwyn Garden Swimming Club for 16 years. Although differences in age meant that I was unfamiliar with the individuals from Welwyn Garden Swimming Club who participated in research. Sessions had three parts and aimed to address the following key issues

1

The importance of a sporting association in children’s identity formation.

2

The importance of place in children’s identity formation.

3

The interaction between children’s sporting association and place that impacts children’s identity formation.

First, children marked places of significance to them on a map of the local area (Figure 1). This activity enabled a facilitated discussion, about why children chose specific places, where they felt best able to express their identity, and whether – and why – children acted differently according to where they were. The term ‘identity’ proved difficult to conceptualise for many children, therefore I used ‘what you think makes you as a person’ as a simplification.

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Figure 1

Madison’s map with places of significance in the local area identified.

Second, we explored how identity is constructed of many different aspects, how children perform their identity and how this can be constrained, for example, by time. Children divided two circles into ‘pie-charts’: one circle represented children’s identity where the size of section for each ‘identity marker’ – a term I used to signify the myriad of aspects that constitute an individual’s identity (e.g., gender, race, culture, interests, hobbies, relationships) – was proportionate to its importance.

Children had autonomy over the number of, and names of, the identity markers that they included. The second circle was divided according to how children spend their time during a typical week (Figure 2).

Finally, we focussed on the importance of sport. Children discussed why they participated in sport, if and how they felt they benefitted from participating in sport, and how their sporting identity impacted the way that they perceived places in their local area

Figure 2

Mia’s time and identity ‘pie charts’

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Findings

My research found that: · Children’s identity formation is impacted by their sporting association, and, · Sports locations (e.g., training sites) play a role in facilitating children’s exploration or performance of their identity.

Children’s positive identity- and place- attachment to sports locations were linked to two factors: time and enjoyment.

Time

Time (i.e., ongoing membership of sports clubs), provided children with consistent relationships with adult volunteers who watched them grow-up and friendships which were unchanged and supportive in times of uncertainty (e.g., when moving school).

‘I’ve been here for quite a while and just kind of like grown up mostly so it just feels nice when people know you for a long time’ (Chloe, 14 years).

This continuity and familiarity empowered children to drop any pretences that they embodied in other locations (e.g., school, and freely express their true identity).

‘School is a lot smaller on my identity (than time pie chart) because I think going to school doesn’t really make me because I have to go to school anyway’ (Emma, 12 years).

‘And all the coaches when they’ve seen you when you were younger and they know you now it’s nice because then they know how you’ve changed and can see who you really are’ (Avery, 14).

‘I think my friends from sport see a different side of me like in sport I’m a bit not caring too much what I look like because I know I’m just going to This finding supports the work of Horton and Kraftl (2014) which argues that the longer children spend, and come out red and sweaty anyway but ‘perform’ within a given place, the greater the likelihood that they will develop a positive attachment to that in school or to the other girls at school place. The one notable exception was school. Children it’s not really an excuse to not be commented that the amount of time that they spent in school was ‘half my time and life’ (Isaac, 9 years) and 100% perfect all the time’ (Mia, 13 years). ‘most of my life’ (Kaylee, 11 years) but they did not feel a positive place attachment to school, nor did they feel that school impacted their identity significantly.

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Enjoyment

Children particularly enjoyed spending time in sporting locations due to a perceived freedom and lack of judgement which they often contrasted with their experience at school. This is perhaps surprising given the highly structured nature of training sessions, and competitiveness and judgement (e.g., team selection) inherent in sports’ participation.

Children recognised that they expressed their identity differently depending on where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. For instance, Dylan (13 years) noted, ‘If I was at school in a classroom I’m gonna show a much more behaved version of myself than on a tennis court playing tennis or a football pitch with one of my friends’. Many children felt it was a positive that they could employ different identity markers according to their context: ‘I like that I’m different [in different places] because I show people different sides of me, and I can express my feelings in different ways’ (Jacob, 10 years). Nevertheless, many children identified one place where they felt best able to express their identity. For most children – including Layla, Jacob and Alfie – this was either their home or where they participated in sports.

‘I would say the rugby club because I can just express my feelings and like not get judged for it '(Layla, 12 year).

‘Football ‘cos you can be serious, you can laugh, you can be cross, you can be happy’ (Jacob, 10 year.)

‘HERE!!’

[Welwyn Pegasus’ Football Club’s training ground] (Alfie, 7 years).

Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996) explored how positive place attachment enabled identity development by affording individuals the opportunity to test different identity markers in that place. Discussions highlighted the way in which sports clubs enabled a coming together of children’s multiple identity associations including friends, enjoyment, confidence, fitness and individuality, as well as sport.

It is essential that children recognise that our understandings of place are subjective and personal constructs. During discussion children did demonstrate an implicit understanding of the idea that our behaviour within different places is conditioned by exogenous factors (i.e., taught behaviours and societal expectations).

‘I’m normally at different places for different reasons. If I’m at London we’ll probably watch West End shows which I really enjoy and I’ll probably like act differently because I know it’s more special … with sport practices I’m a bit more friendly but like if it’s a competition I’ll be really like competitive’ (Sophia, 11 years) 64

‘If I was at school in a classroom I’m gonna show a much more behaved version of myself than on a tennis court playing tennis or a football pitch with one of my friends’ (Dylan, 13 years) Places are never ‘neutral locations’, all encounters within them are partial, subjective and impacted by wider processes of social structure and control. These dynamics influence our daily lives on a range of scales, from our personal geographies to the geographies of globalisation. Exploring children’s own constructions of place – how and why they identify with certain locations – was an effective way to introduce children to these complex ideas. The activities and subsequent discussion provided even the youngest of participants an opportunity for personal reflection on their own relationship with place and identity.

Conclusion There is no suggestion that a sporting association is either the sole or most important association in children’s identity formation. This research’s findings align with, and add to, the existing body of knowledge which recognises identity to be a highly personal and complex interaction between individuals’ associations and disassociations in order to establish a unique ‘sense of self ’ which is adapted and performed according to an individual’s environment. Furthermore, research brings a geographic understanding to the role of children’s sporting association in their identity formation by synthesis of two, previously distinct, geographic subdisciplines. Findings are beneficial to identity theorists working within an intersectional framework as they provide a detailed account of the role of one identity association (sport) in children’s identity formation.

Additionally, the activities provided children with an opportunity to begin to explore how exogenous factors (i.e., their co-curricular activities and their sense of place) shape their sense of self, and how and why they may perceive themselves and the world, different to others. Future work could consider the interactions between children’s sense of self and their sense of place through other activities, for example creative and expressive arts such as art, dance, music, and drama.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Prof Peter Kraftl (University of Birmingham) who supervised the research that informs this piece and to Dr Elizabeth Rushton (King’s College London) and Dr Cyrus Nayeri (Dulwich College) for their encouragement and support in developing this article.

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Zoe Sayliss is a Geography Teacher and Deputy Head of Adders House. Her research, originally published in Routes Journal, explored the interactions between children's sense of self and their sense of place through sport. Alongside teaching Zoe is currently reading for an MSc in Learning and Teaching at the University of Oxford.

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Berkhamsted Prize for Argument: the concept of learning The Berkhamsted Prize for Argument was a brilliant opportunity to be challenged, think critically, and explore fascinating topics. The first part of the competition was an exam paper designed by Mr Tanweer to foster curiosity, promote thinking critically and develop convincing arguments. It was unlike any exam I’ve sat before – there was no content to revise or anything we could do to prepare beforehand, and the only thing we were told to bring was an open mind!

The paper consisted of sections of different styles of questions – ranging from solving difficult riddles and engaging with a series of mottos, to an essay question at the end of paper where you could pick from a selection of challenging questions or choose to explore a topic that interests you personally. I chose to write about the concept of learning, leaning on my wider reading to discuss this fascinating topic. I was then invited to partake in the next stage of the competition with seven other finalists: a viva with Mr Tanweer, our Oxbridge advisor, to discuss our papers and explore other related and unrelated questions. I particularly loved debating the philosophy of learning and forming thoughtful arguments while being faced with challenging questions.

In my essay and later in the viva, I explored the innate human desire for knowledge and the perspectives of Aristotle on the concept of learning. I am personally fascinated by the concept of learning – something, I believe, that is an integral part of being human. I sought to explore the ideas of knowledge and understanding, and the importance of having a strong desire to find out more about the world in my essay which is as follows.

‘All human beings by nature desire knowledge’ 66

‘All human beings by nature desire knowledge’ - the opening sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics states a fundamental premise of Aristotle’s understanding of what it is to be human. It is part of our nature to want to learn and understand the world – hence the term ‘philosophy’, the love of knowledge. Aristotle thought that understanding why something is the way it is, is more important than just knowing what or how it is. Humans are unique in their capacity to derive universal judgements from their experiences. Animals can act by acquired habit or instinct, but humans are capable of acting from understanding: they know (as a dog might know) that this is the thing to do in a certain situation, but they may also understand (as a dog cannot) why it is the thing to do. This is what Aristotle calls tekhne in Greek. The word is conventionally translated as ‘craft’, ‘skill’ or ‘art’, but Aristotle defines tekhne as a productive capacity informed by an understanding of its intrinsic rationale – essentially not just knowing that something is the case but understanding why. Therefore, I believe that curiosity and striving to understand the justified reasoning behind something is so important. To move forward productively with the knowledge we have gained, we have to question why that is the case. We learn by questioning and challenging what we know.

For Aristotle, the evolution of human culture is in large part the evolution of tekhne. The first arts which humans developed were those concerned with producing the necessities of their existence. Then came recreational arts – those which, while not necessary, enhance the quality of human life. In due course, there came to be activities which simply satisfy the desire to know.

Ultimately, philosophy emerged, which is rooted in the basic human instinct to seek knowledge: the world puzzles us, arouses our sense of wonder and prompts us to look for explanations.

Philosophy is therefore the sophisticated descendant of humans making primitive myths to attempt to answer the questions of an astonishing world.

Aristotle also suggests that understanding the tekhne of a great artist, author or creator, makes us appreciate their works more. For example, we can enhance the pleasure we derive from a well-constructed play by understanding why it is so good. He says the same about nature: while the inner part of an animal may not be so beautiful or good to look at, if we understand the works behind them (tekhne) they appear so much more incredible to us. Aristotle denotes that ‘nature’s craftmanship provides innumerable pleasures for those who can discern the causes and have an aptitude for philosophy’ (Parts of Animals, Aristotle). Thus, understanding ‘why’ something is great, helps us to appreciate it all the more.

Although the production of poems can also be a tekhne, this does not mean that the poets themselves necessarily understand what they are doing. In fact, Aristotle suggests that the ability to do something well does not depend on understanding, nor does understanding necessarily imply an ability to do it well. In the Poetics, whether a given poet has a reflective understanding of his craft does not seem to be important to Aristotle. The concept of tekhne may not actually be so distinct from instinct. Aristotle suggests that early playwrights may have discovered the best stories to use in tragedy by chance rather than tekhne; trial and error succeeded in creating excellent tragic stories, but the dramatists may not have been able to explain why those were the best (as Aristotle thinks he can). Unreflective experience may produce the same result as tekhne. The opposite also seems to be true: it is unlikely that Aristotle would have thought that reading his Poetics would have made anyone a great writer, but understanding the tekhne behind it nonetheless allows us to have a much more meaningful appreciation of the art.

By examining Aristotle and virtue theory, we can also better understand what it means to learn and develop as human beings. Virtue theory is the ethical theory that emphasises an individual’s character rather than following a set of rules. According to Aristotle, we should all strive to be virtuous people, have good judgement and making the right decisions. For him, virtue was a skill, a way of living and that is something that can only really be learned through experience. This seems to me to be a form of tekhne, only the ‘art’ is that of perfecting the skill of living a good life. Virtue allows us to achieve eudaimonia, roughly translated as human flourishing and living a fulfilled life. Aristotle believed that a life of eudaimonia is a life of striving, where we challenge ourselves and push ourselves to our limits. A eudemonistic life will be full of the contentment that comes from achieving something really difficult, rather than having it handed to you. In that sense, the intrinsic worth of the learning journey, and the personal development that comes with it, is more important than the result. The point is that you are never done improving as there is always more to learn. We recognise moral exemplars and desire to emulate them; we constantly set new goals and work towards them; we hone our strengths while working on our weaknesses. This constant desire to be the very best person you could be epitomises the joy of learning. We naturally want to be better than we were yesterday, and this idea of eudaimonia and striving to improve is something that we, I believe, unconsciously follow in our day-to-day learning. Being more conscious of this, however, and putting a greater emphasis on improvement rather than achievement, and development rather than outcome can only be a positive thing.

Learning is an active verb – it is not just about unquestioningly accepting knowledge but it is the continual process of understanding and challenging what we know and how we can use our experience to improve our own skills.

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I believe that we can learn a lot from Aristotle’s views on knowledge and learning. Humans are creatures that feed on knowledge and we naturally strive to gain understanding and skills. Curiosity is fundamental, and we should try to encourage questioning what we know and what we think we know. Not only does understanding why things are how they are allow us to better appreciate them, but learning in itself is integral to developing as human beings. Aristotle’s philosophy encapsulates the insatiable desire to understand, develop and improve – both in the areas of knowledge (of art and science), and in becoming the people we want to be. Indeed, there is no limit to what we can learn.

‘The cure for boredom is curiosity.

There is no cure for curiosity’.

This experience of exploring these topics for the Berkhamsted Prize for Argument is something I learned a lot from. I definitely enjoyed the process of the competition as it was so different to what we normally do in school and exams. The Prize for Argument challenged me in a way I hadn’t really been challenged before, and I will certainly hold on to that sense of exploring the hard questions, the grey areas in life, and pursuing my passions and interests. A genuine curiosity for the complex world in which we are growing up is something that will stand us in excellent stead for our adult years. Mr Tanweer reminded us of a brilliant Dorothy Parker quote that encapsulates what the competition, and indeed what learning itself, is all about: ‘The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity’.

Hannah Fairburn is currently in the Upper Sixth studying French, Latin and History. She hopes to pursue her studies of French and Latin at University, and has an interest in pedagogy and education.

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BOOK REVIEW

The Incredible Teenage Brain.

Bettina Hohnen, Jane Gilmour and Tara Murphy. (2019).

London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

The Incredible Teenage Brain is described as ‘a must read for anyone parenting, teaching or supporting teens, who wants to empower them to reach their potential’. As someone who is currently experiencing the joys and trials of teenagers both at work and at home, I was keen to read this book and arm myself with the knowledge and skills to be a more effective teacher and parent. The book is written by three clinical psychologists who have worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCL and have many years of experience of working with young people and families.

Increasingly, the teenage phase is described as the new 0-3 years because adolescents explore and learn at the same extraordinary rate that babies and toddlers do. There has been an explosion of scientific research investigating the teenage brain over the past 10 years. The authors have taken the knowledge acquired from this research and interpreted the science in terms of what it means for parents and teachers. It is a manual for anyone supporting adolescents, but it is more than that, with each issue being rigorously supported by neuroscientific research. The authors are careful not to oversell the data and are cautious where the science isn’t there yet. The book is organised into 5 parts: part 1 describes the workings of teenagers’ unique and developing brains, part 2 tackles mental health and neurodiversity, part 3 examines teens’ developmental priorities, part 4 self-care, and part 5 pulls the whole lot together with a 7-step plan to support teenagers ‘in the moment’.

Each chapter follows the same helpful structure. Information is presented using down to earth language and visual icons identify things like ‘the science bit’, ‘action points’, ‘what does that mean day to day’, etc. There are also case studies to show alternative ways of dealing with typical teen issues to get a better result. Although it’s quite a chunky book, the different sections and chapters mean you can dip in and out as you please, prioritising the subjects which are of most interest to you (and maybe relevant to your own struggles).

The Incredible Teenage Brain didn’t disappoint and explained how those supporting teenagers can help them to build up self-belief, happiness and ambition. It is relentlessly positive about teenage brains, whilst acknowledging that teen behaviour may not always translate so positively. Although there was much I already knew, there was plenty I didn’t. I would recommend it as an excellent guide for all parents of adolescents as it will help them to understand, communicate with, and parent their children with greater confidence. The most relevant parts of each chapter for classroom teachers is the ‘what does that mean for learning’ section which provided a useful refresher on topics such as motivation, fixed mindsets, risk taking and social learning and includes practical suggestions to maximise learning. These short sections could be condensed into a handy primer for teachers at all stages of their careers, or an individual topic could form the basis for an action research project or CPD focus for the year. Tutors and Heads of Houses will also find the ‘what does that mean day to day’ sections helpful in coaching students and parents who are struggling with family dynamics, morning schedules, homework routines and friendship issues.

Alison Murray has been teaching Geography for 20 years. She has taught in independent schools in London, Tokyo and Hertfordshire in a variety of roles including Head of Geography and Head of House. She is currently Second in Geography at Berkhamsted where she has taught for the past 10 years.

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