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L2 Users' Conference 2007 Review

 

Ricoh Stadium, Coventry

Friday 23rd March 07

 

Over 150 delegates congregated at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry to share their experiences of the L2 Approach at the recent Alite L2 Users' Conference.

 

A beautiful clear day awaits us as we begin our second national L2 Users' Conference at the Ricoh Stadium Coventry. The purpose of the conference is to bring together those of us who share an interest in developing independent young learners. We hope we can prepare them for the challenges of an age where school suppliers are putting kevlar in school uniforms, 18% of 16 year olds have a mental illness and 10% say they would gladly give up school tomorrow for a chance at television fame: over taught and over wrought.

 

We start by exploring the rationale for a learning to learn approach in a school, acknowledging that there are differing approaches best summarised in a continuum between ‘taught' and ‘caught'. Taught is when a programme is delivered in a discrete experience - typically by a number of enthusiasts. Caught is when we spread the thinking across the school and attempt - through student passports, coaching sessions, peer evaluation and whole school audit – to capture evidence of progress.

 

Schools vary in their receptivity and preparedness for a learning to learn approach so to insist that there is only one worthy starting point on the continuum from which to build ‘learning power' is absurd. Some schools are ‘steady' and need an injection of fresh thinking and some are ‘ready' and can immerse themselves in it. Again, it's a continuum with all points in between.

 

 

A ‘steady' school may be characterised by a greater degree of internal variability: mixed ability and mixed motivation staff, less internal stability, lower morale, weaker leadership and a focus on day to day problems. Attempting an immersion or ‘deep' learning to learn approach here is an invitation to disaster. It may be that a ‘taught' programme will prove to be the catalyst.

 

A ‘ready' school may show more of a development culture, there may be more readiness to engage with whole school approaches, greater optimism, higher energy levels and a coherence which characterises leadership. This is safer ground for growing a more ‘immersive' or ‘caught' learning to learn approach.

 

A school which is looking at learning to learn needs to start by identifying its ultimate and desired outcome – we do this in the Alite L2 approach by defining our desired student knowledge, attributes, skills and experiences – and then considering its internal capacity for transformation. Derek Wise pointed out the need to be thinking big whilst starting small. Emma Sims described the SSAT Deep Learning approach as an ‘ambition' realised through nine gateways. In all of our practitioner sessions the prevailing metaphors were those associated with journeys. When eight very courageous 14 year olds from Stamford High School stood up for forty minutes and transfixed their audience they did so by talking about transformation. Their outcomes were highly personal and movingly so. Their teachers had used learning to learn as a tool for levering significant change - but they had done so by starting from where they were at and with what best helped them.

 

There is no single correct approach to learning to learn. We are proud of the fact that at our conference we recognise alternatives and display as many of the materials as we are able. Occasionally this backfires: can whoever mistakenly took all my display copies of the SSAT ‘Deep Learning' publications please return them in a plain brown envelope!

 

Alistair Smith

Chair, Alite Ltd