Learning to learn

Longniddry Primary School's Action Research initiative

Sometimes, just a single word will get your message across. At Longniddry Primary School in East Lothian, that word is 'learn'.

Nursery children are being encouraged to ask not 'What are we going to do today?' but 'What are we going to learn today?' It's only a word but, says headteacher Ann McLanachan, it marks a culture shift, both for the youngsters and for the teachers. Her school, she says, is not simply a place in which children engage in a daily sequence of more or less mind-broadening activities. It's a training ground where young people are apprenticed in the art of learning to learn - a goal that also applies to the teachers.

Quite simply, she says, everything that the school does should be designed to inspire the children's learning. 'It's all right for teachers to take forward interests of their own but the priority is the learning of the youngsters. Of course, the teachers also want job satisfaction. If we can get the two together, we've cracked it.'

Action Research

In order to enhance the children's learning experience, the teachers at Longniddry have signed up to a process that they call 'Action Research'. It's not as daunting as it sounds. In fact, Ann McLanachan is adamant that Action Research is merely an extension of what teachers do in the classroom every day. It allows teachers to ask questions about what takes place during the teaching process. When a child can't grasp a subject, why is that? What affects a group's behaviour in class? How can certain areas of creativity be strengthened?

The process takes the form of small studies undertaken by the teachers, which they then share with one another. Above all, Action Research is intended to look at learning from the child's point of view. 'What tends to happen,' Ann argues, 'is that teachers see themselves as having to solve all the problems that come up. They'll say, well, we've tried this and so we'll try the next thing – and they've got a repertoire they'll work through.'

The downside of that approach, she believes, is that what teachers think they are communicating and what children hear is not necessarily the same thing. Her conclusion: 'How we teach is more important than what we teach.'

In the scheme's first year of operation, each teacher was asked to choose a topic about which they had an existing interest or concern. They were to research around the issue and to try out a new teaching approach on the back of it. It didn't matter if it was only for two or three lessons; this was not designed to be full-scale research.

'At the end of the day, if people come up with a single sheet of paper that says this is what I did, this is why I did it and this is what I found out, then that's fine.'

Sharing projects

The range of projects that has emerged from Year One is a broad one, from a comparison of learning styles to an investigation of how to develop the left-hand side of the brain for drawing. One teacher experimented with using music to help settle a noisy class dominated by boys. By keeping a record of the different types of music she used, and in what situations, she was able to share very specific findings.

Another teacher, whose class included a pupil with Asperger syndrome, opened up the topic with the whole class. With the approval of the boy's parents, the class explored the fears and routines that can accompany the syndrome, as well as all the famous people who have lived with it. The process proved positive for the boy with Asperger syndrome as well as for his peers.

On paper, Action Research looks like a lot of extra work. Ann admits that the process had to be introduced with some care. Some were nervous that it would be too academic, especially if other colleagues produced highly detailed final reports. The trick has been to set expectations at a level where all the teachers can become engaged with them.

The emphasis is on sharing findings, which was done initially during a staff gathering held towards the end of the first year of the scheme. During the second year, teachers are being asked to work in pairs, encouraging further the cross-fertilisation of ideas and ensuring that a project will automatically involve two different age groups.

Ann McLanachan sees Action Research as a natural progression from the school's existing emphasis on helping children to develop their own learning skills. 'It's about establishing the purpose of a piece of teaching; giving the youngsters a clear idea of what they're going to learn and how they'll know if they've been successful.'

This may involve giving children more time to think together about questions so that everybody can be engaged in the answering. It means, perhaps, marking maths jotters in class together rather than taking them home. Ann believes that when teachers mark work outside class hours, the children lose a crucial learning opportunity. 'You're doing it for you. It's not helping the youngsters one whit because when you get home you're sitting there trying to work out how they managed to come up with a particular answer and you could guess all night.' Marking work with the children, she says, radically increases the chances of getting the penny to drop. It helps a child achieve a skill, not just a correct answer.

Experience to date suggests that far from distracting teachers from delivering the basic curricular building blocks, Action Research can help reinforce them. One research project investigated techniques for putting P2 children back on track if they have been slow to develop basic numeracy skills. These techniques were then applied to the teaching of P1 children, whose overall numeracy skills improved quantifiably.

Action Research helps enable Longniddry teachers to extend learning skills beyond the parameters of test results and required competencies. By taking the time to explore those areas of classroom life that are usually bypassed or simply taken for granted, children are strengthening their problem-solving skills and discovering new ways of learning.

'The children's perceptions may not be our perceptions,' says Ann, 'but they are equally valid.' She believes that through initiatives such as Action Research the children come to understand that there are different ways of learning and that they can absorb the knowledge about which styles work best for them. And as the children learn, so too do the teachers.