Science of Learning was born from our vision that as teachers and students we should understand about how our brains work, how we build knowledge from day to day to week to year and how together we can make learning stick so that students can master their learning and appropriate concepts for themselves. The implication here is that we teach to enable students to build concepts and collections of concepts (schemata) so that, as we practice retrieval on an ongoing basis, we avoid inefficient last minute cramming for assessments and exams and can be confident that we carry what we know with us.
Our belief is that students should understand how learning happens, be able to choose learning methods that work well, to analyse how effective these are and to decide to switch to a different approach when this would be beneficial. Not only this, but that they should learn also about self-regulation, and be able to consciously implement it and grow in this ability.
We have been developing ideas, activities and teaching in the areas considered above over the past 5 years and it is exciting that the most recent developments in cognitive science enable us to understand more how learning, in its widest sense, happens. Our role as one of the 86 Teaching School Hubs nationally means that we are motivated to stay as close to the cutting edge as possible with new findings. Just last week we were able to have an hour with a Professor of Neuroscience who raised with us several new discoveries which we were able then to apply to our teaching and share with our students.
The sharing of what we know with students is a fundamental to the Sheriff way. Using a metacognitive approach, we are constructing, both in lessons and across them, opportunities to intentionally articulate relevant learning processes that the students in front of us are experiencing, whether those be cognitive or emotional or behavioural or a mix of all three!
To enhance classroom work we have accumulated all we know about the Science of Learning, under the leadership of Ms Parkin, and woven it together into a year by year curriculum, holding focussed sessions across all year groups where we share age appropriate, key concepts and methodology with pupils. We also implement these in lessons, encouraging students to use them both as general learning methods and as revision techniques as examinations approach.
So for Sheriff Learners, both students and teachers, the term ‘revision’ is taking on a new meaning. It’s not just a last minute cramming or reading over of material. Rather it is the ongoing process of appropriating knowledge and skills and incorporating these into the long term memory. This vision for our students is articulated well by Ross Morrison McGill in ‘The Revision Revolution’: ‘Imagine a world in which every student knows not just what to revise but how. Where every student can match appropriate strategies to content and understand why they are doing it. Where every student can see what’s in it for them and have ambitions far beyond leaving school with good grades.’ Our aim is not merely to ‘imagine’ but to see this become reality.
Read more: Science of Learning: Curriculum Overview
