Learning Theories and Buses

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I have vivid memories of an INSET training day, early in my teaching career, where an outside expert had been invited in to give us a talk on the latest learning theory that we should all be implementing in our classrooms.

A seasoned and somewhat weary colleague leaned over to me and whispered, “Don’t pay it too much attention, learning theories are a bit like buses: there’ll be another one along in a few minutes”.

More than 20 years of teaching later, I must admit I’ve thought about that statement and found myself nodding in agreement. But this is actually unfair.

In reality, learning theories have evolved over time, with each new study looking at and improving on the models that came before.

From the early ideas of Vygotsky, with two levels of learning, through Bruner’s three modes of representation and even Bloom’s taxonomy, our understanding of how young people learn has advanced with each new iteration.

Admittedly, there have been some bumps along the road to understanding.

Who else can remember starting every lesson with children standing on one leg whilst patting their head with their opposite hand in order to “connect the two parts of the brain together”? Interesting times, to be sure!

Ignoring the odd blip, a common theme throughout these developing theories is one of recall and memory, and the recent Rosenshine’s Principles have a significant focus on this. Many of these 10 principles recommend regularly reviewing prior learning in small, focused “chunks” through the use of spacing and retrieval methods.

This is something we instinctively know as teachers, but the processes used to do this can be many and varied.

In science, we’ve been using Educake for quick, low-stakes quizzes that students access at the start of a lesson.

These work really well, because pupils don’t need to wait for instructions – they can just get on with it. The self-marking function and immediate feedback ensure students can start learning independently the moment they walk in the door.

We use content from previously studied topics that links to or underpins the current lesson. This helps students form links between older knowledge and new information. This has become a powerful way to guide revision work throughout the year, rather than waiting until spring.

For younger students, we select different levels of challenge to guide progress throughout a topic, with simpler questions being replaced by increasingly challenging ones with each subsequent quiz.

As we continue to use Educake, we plan to start adding our own custom questions and linking quizzes to additional content (e.g. short clips or reference materials) in order to help our students get even more benefit out of their regular retrieval practice.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bus to catch.

Blog post wrriten by Colin Aspley, Head of Science at Nottingham Girls’ High School.