Food For Thought: Shaping our world

This is a two-section Food for Thought. The first is about forming habits that can drive self-regulated learning and relates to our first Principle of Learning. The second part is not educational but again focuses on social media, the press and the world our students will inherit.  I found it very interesting because it linked with the pain I am suffering from the victory of Boris Johnson in the UK  general election.

Section A:

Let's start with teaching and learning. Our first Principle of Learning is:  All learners are capable of achieving their goals in a guided environment where there is an appropriate balance of standards, challenge, and support. As so many of you have joined us in the past six years the history behind our Principles of Learning is that they were crafted by teachers in a series of meetings that defined what learning meant at ISHCMC and what were its key characteristics that they believed were non-negotiables. This provided a focus on learning that was to underpin the creation of the mission and vision. Of course, a lot of things have changed and I'm sure more will change in the next few years so it might be time to review what learning means, etc as ISHCMC moves into a new era. 

We are not quite there, half a year to go, hence this section of Food for Thought as this principle has technically been at the center of our discussions over the concept of gradually releasing learning and developing self-regulated learners leading to the point at which these learners are equipped enough to be seen as self-directed. Some of the big questions emerging are when is this most appropriate, what systems and structures need to be in place to ensure it is robust, can it be achieved within and across the IB programs, are our community and owners ready for a major disruption of education, and of course what short term assessments can be used to prove the validity of this transformation from easily assessed knowledge and content to the development and application of learning skills? 

So how do we create our self-regulated learners across the school? I believe the answer has to lie in the habits that we embed in our students through their learning toolkits. James Clear has popularized his thinking through his book Atom Habits. Here is a short 8-minute video that provides some good suggestions on how we can develop good habits in our students. Although talking about habit-forming in general I think that his ideas are useful in how we encourage our students to set learning goals. He starts by explaining it is the small steps towards your goal that matter. His advice for success in achieving goals is based around four strands that need to exist, noticing, wanting, doing and liking. He talks about strategies that will put in place these strands

I especially liked this slide from his talk because I think it is something that we often get wrong when we ask students to set goals.

I found more about the thinking of James Clear on the A.J.Juliani site where he talks about learning happening when you stretch but do not overextend the learner

AJJuliani illustrated this ide through his own classroom experience: 

"When students came into the room, they were quick to open up their device, check the do now activity, and get started with an entrance activity.

Although the activities changed, it was almost always in the Zone of Automation for my students.

Then there were times when I would put together a ridiculously hard/challenging test and almost every single one of my students would be in the Zone of Aggravation. There wasn't much learning happening here either, just a lot of cramming for something they would often forget weeks and months later.

The sweet spot happened during design sprints and project-based learning experiences where students had a manageable level of difficulty but also an end in sight. Whether they were creating a PSA for a UN Global Goal or crafting a video with a student half-way around the world, these activities were in the Zone of Adaptation.

It also happened during the smaller moments of teaching. A mini-lesson on the dangers of a single story, a class discussion about the author's purpose, an appeal's day.

The Zone of Adaptation is not about huge exponential learning gains, it is about small 1% experiences that over time add up to powerful learning and growth."

In his post, AJ Juliani points out that, "When we look at what research says about becoming better at something, two pieces of evidence stand out.

First, we must have clarity on what our goals are, and where we want to go or what we want to become.

Second, it is deliberate practice (combined with feedback loops) that increase the myelin in our brain and in turn help improve performance and growth.

Today I want to talk about a process that we often miss when we look at learner success. We tend to talk about growth, goals, and instructional practice…yet, we miss a key element of going from “defining a goal” to “achieving a goal” without students."

Part Two: War on Truth

The final section of my last post for 2019 comes on the Boris Johnson's victory in the UK election and my search for the answer to how could this have happened? I'm sure that US citizens will be asking the same question when Donald Trump is re-elected shortly. As I have shared before, there is definitely a sinister side to social media and the role it is playing in creating lies and misconceptions across societies. This is an interesting Al Jazeerah documentary about a journalist in the Philippines and her struggle to counter the lies.

What I found as interesting as the documentary were the comments on the Youtube site. Reading through them it made me wonder where they had come from, and what was their agenda, as it was clear they weren't related to what was being said in the documentary, and if read before watching might dissuade viewers, especially given the negative likes. If you'd like to read the comments and see what I mean here is the Youtube link.
( you will need to be patient with the regular ads but you can skip in 4 seconds)

Food For Thought: 10 Biggest Breakthroughs in the Science of Learning

One of the great steps forward in education has been the increasing link between neuroscience and education. We are lucky to be working in this era as scientists are learning more and more about how our brain works and how we learn best. Of course, not all of education is listening to this research or changing as a result of it. I thought to share this older article as this week's Food for Thought because it is an easy yet useful read that provides arguments to explain why school should be changing and why how we teach today is different from how our student's parents were taught.

A greater understanding of our brain’s functioning, abilities, and limitations allows us to constantly improve our teaching skills and the productivity of our Brainscape study sessions and working hours (and after-work hours, for that matter). We’ve already given you tips on how to keep your brain in shape and how to boost your brain’s abilities through exercise.
This article, originally published by OnlinePHDPrograms.com, shares the 10 most significant breakthroughs that recent research has made on the science of learning, providing valuable insights on how to make the best use of your brain without wasting energy.

10 Key Learning Sciences Discoveries
When it comes to human organs, none is quite so mysterious as the brain. For centuries, humans have had numerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about how the organ works, grows and shapes our ability to learn.
While we still have a long way to go before we truly unravel all the mysteries the brain has to offer, scientists have been making some major breakthroughs that have gone a long way in explaining how the brain functions and how we use it to organize, recall and acquire new information. Here are a few of the biggest and most important of these breakthroughs in the science of learning.

1. More information doesn’t mean more learning.
The brain is equipped to tackle a pretty hefty load of information and sensory input, but there is a point at which the brain becomes overwhelmed, an effect scientists call cognitive overload. While our brains do appreciate new and novel information (as we’ll discuss later), when there is too much of it we become overwhelmed. Our minds simply can’t divide our attention between all the different elements.
This term has become a major talking point in criticisms of multi-tasking, especially given the modern information-saturated world we live in. But the discovery of this cognitive phenomenon also has major implications for education. In order to reduce mental noise, teachers have had to take new approaches to present material. These methods include chunking, focusing on past experiences, and eliminating non-essential elements to help students remember a large body of information.

2. The brain is a highly dynamic organ.
Until the past few decades, people believed that the connections between the neurons in your brain were fixed by the time you were a teenager, and perhaps even earlier. One of the biggest breakthroughs in understanding the science of learning happened when scientists began to realize that this just wasn’t the case. In fact, the brain’s wiring can change at any age and it can grow new neurons and adapt to new situations — though the rate at which this happens does slow with age. This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity, and it has had major ramifications in our understanding of how the brain works and how we can use that understanding to improve learning outcomes.

3. Emotion influences the ability to learn.
The ability to learn, retain, and use information isn’t just based on our raw IQ. Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly clear that how we feel — our overall emotional state — can have a major impact on how well we can learn new things. Educational situations where students feel stressed, shamed, or just uncomfortable can actually make it more difficult for them to learn, increasing negative emotions and sparking a vicious cycle that may leave some children reluctant to attend class.
Research is revealing why, as the emotional part of the brain, the limbic system has the ability to open up or shut off access to learning and memory. When under stress or anxiety, the brain blocks access to higher processing and stops forming new connections, making it difficult or impossible to learn. It may seem like common sense that classrooms should be welcoming, non-stressful environments, but different students have different triggers for negative emotional states, making it key for educators to watch for signs that indicate this problem is afflicting their students.

4. Mistakes are an essential part of learning.
Failure is a dirty word in most aspects of modern American society, but when it comes to the science of learning, research shows that failure is essential. A recent study found that students performed better in school and felt more confident when they were told that failure was a normal part of learning, bolstering a growing body of research that suggests the same conclusion.
Much like it takes multiple tries to get the hang of riding a bike or to complete an acrobatic feat, it can also take multiple tries to master an academic task. Neuroscience research suggests that the best way to learn something new isn’t to focus on mistakes, but instead to concentrate on how to do a task correctly. Focusing on the error only reinforces the existing incorrect neural pathway, and will increase the chance that the mistake will be made again. A new pathway has to be built, which means abandoning the old one and letting go of that mistake.This idea has formed the basis for a growing debate about education in American schools, which many believe doesn’t allow children to embrace creativity and problem solving as they are too focused on memorization and test scores.

5. The brain needs novelty.
Turns out boredom really can kill you, or at least your willpower to pay attention and learn. Repetition is critical in learning, but what the brain really craves is novelty.
Researchers have found that novelty causes the dopamine system in the brain to become activated, sending the chemical throughout the brain. While we often regard dopamine as the “feel good” chemical, scientists have shown that it actually plays a much bigger role, encouraging feelings of motivation and prompting the brain to learn about these new and novel stimuli. This breakthrough has led to some major changes in how we think about learning and has motivated many schools to embrace learning methods that cater to our brains’ need for new and different experiences.

6. There are no learning styles.
What kind of learner are you? Chances are good that at some point during your educational career someone labeled you like a particular type of learner, either visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. This idea that there are distinct types of learners who learn best with a certain assortment of stimuli has been showing up in education and brain science for decades, but recent studies have shown that this idea really doesn’t hold much water.
Students may have preferences for how they learn, but when put to the test, students were found to have equivalent levels of learning regardless of how information is presented. Attention to the individual talents, preferences, and abilities of students, which helps to cater to the emotional and social needs of students and improves their ability to learn, is more important than styles (of which there have been 71 different models over the past few decades).

7. Brains operate on the “use it or lose it” principle.
There’s a reason that you forget how to speak a language or work out a trigonometry problem if you don’t use those skills on a regular basis. Information in the brain that isn’t used is often lost, as neural pathways weaken over time.
Research has found that the brain generates more cells than it needs, with those that receive chemical and electrical stimuli surviving and the rest dying off. The brain has to receive regular stimulation to a given pathway in the brain to sustain those cells, which is why lifelong learning is so important to brain health. These findings also have implications for vacations in K-12 education as well, as students who don’t get intellectual stimulation over the summer are much more likely to forget important skills in reading and math when they return to class.

8. Learning is social.
While some select individuals may learn well cloistered in a library with a stack of books, the majority of people need a social environment to maximize their learning. Research has found that from infancy on, people learn better through social cues such as recalling and emulating the actions or words of another person.
Aside from social cues, socialization has been shown to have other learning benefits. Peer collaboration offers students access to a diverse array of experiences and requires the use of nearly all the body’s senses, which in turn creates greater activation throughout the brain and enhances long-term memory. Group work, especially when it capitalizes on the strengths of its members, may be more beneficial than many realize.

9. Learning is best when innate abilities are capitalized on.
All of us, from the time we are born, possess innate abilities to see and hear patterns, something that psychologists doubted was true for decades but that we now know to be the case. Research suggests that reinforcing those innate capabilities by teaching patterns early on may actually help kids learn more and sharpen their brains.
Aside from being able to see and hear patterns, the human mind has a number of innate abilities (the ability to learn a language, for instance) that when capitalized on in the right way, can help make learning any concept, even one that is abstract, much easier. Combining these innate abilities with structured practice, repetition, and training can help make new ideas and concepts “stick” and make more sense.

10. Learning can change brain structure.
Brain structure and function are intertwined, and you can’t improve one without taking the other into consideration. Yet, in years past, most ideas about learning ignored ways that the brain’s structure itself could be modified, instead of focusing on brain function or the brain’s output.
The reality is that brain function can only be changed through changing brain structure, which is actually less complicated than it sounds. For example, brain cells fired up during both perception and action overlap in people, and lessons that engage both allow students to more easily identify with their teachers and to learn concepts more quickly, as their brain cells are getting twice the attention and workout. In fact, any new information, if used enough, can modify the structure of the brain, something educators and neuroscientists are just starting to fully explore.

https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2012/10/breakthroughs-science-of-learning-2/

Food For Thought: Some obvious questions about some of our classroom behaviors as teachers.

I do like this image that appeared with the article/ keynote that I am sharing as this week's Food for Thought. The article, How Can Students Self-Assess When Teachers Do All the Grading and Work? touches on some of the challenges that we talk about at ISHCMC like student agency, self-assessment, metacognition, goal setting feedback, workflow, and teacher wellbeing. Although useful for all of us at ISHCMC, the video below can be seen as directed at raising questions about our secondary school pedagogy. We are looking at producing self-regulated learners that are prepared to become self-directed, which means developing learning skills tool kits as they grow as learners. But as the article points out if we do all the work regarding things like metacognition and self-assessment how do our students learn these skills? 

"Among the many things students are expected to do, self-assessing their learning is part of the suite of metacognitive tools that are valued in today’s society. This skill enables the student to think about their thinking, identify what they're doing well and what needs improvement. Self-assessment takes practice, and when it comes to schoolwork, students are not given enough opportunities.

“I would argue in most classrooms, it’s the teacher doing the lion's share of the work,” said Catlin Tucker, a high school English teacher, and consultant at the Fall CUE conference of educators. “And the person doing the work in the classroom is the person doing the learning. So why would we rob our students of the opportunity to learn?” "

For many years at ISHCMC we have used the phrase 'gradual release of learning' but how many of us have thought about this as a deliberate strategy?

"“It wasn’t really moving the needle in terms of their skill set,” said Tucker. “And I recognized that instead of putting 90 percent of my energy into assessing and giving feedback on a finished product, I need to put that 90 percent of my energy into giving them feedback as they work.”

She found that when students get feedback as part of the process of completing an assignment, it gives kids the opportunity to revise their work. The feedback process means that students must be in constant communication with Tucker about their work. This is in addition to keeping track of what they think they’ve learned through post-lesson reflection tools like learning logs and sketchnotes."

Catlin Tucker's keynote is humorous whilst raising important questions about traditional classroom pedagogy, as related to teachers' ability to sustain their workload effectively and efficiently hence contributing to their overall well-being. She makes 4 suggestions and goes through each one whilst asking important why do we do these questions? :

• teach students to monitor and track their own progress

• provide timely accurate feedback to students in class

• make time to grade finished products with the student sat next to the teacher

• teachers partnering with students to prioritize their agency.

Food for Thought: Beyond AlphaGo, The Age of AI

This week's Food for Thought is about AI. I have no idea what the truth is, or, what the future holds, but believe strongly that we all need to be aware of what people are saying and the questions they are asking about AI. The link that I am sharing is to a PBS Frontline news report called, In The Age of AI.  The documentary is balanced and is certainly not anti-AI. It interviews and collects views from many reporters, researchers, academics as well as ordinary workers.

"FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, from fears about work and privacy to the rivalry between the U.S. and China. The documentary traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs, and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society."

It is a long documentary, but please do not be put off, the information is what all citizens need to be aware of as we enter the future.

There are so many interesting pieces of information that will make you think about our lives in the future and suggestions about how society could respond.

Food For Thought: (Part 2) Our way forward, Self Regulated learners

We have been working on Studio 5 now for approximately 3 years and had many impressed guests and visitors. The origins of the concept for Studio 5 were presented by Kurtis and Sam at Learning 2.0 conference, as an innovation for future education. Much of the thinking was based around Daniel Pink's book Drive, its 3 keywords for motivation; Purpose, Autonomy, and Mastery and their link to ISHCMC's key mission words, Energize, Engage and Empower. And so the journey began, to explore the idea of releasing learning to our students. The aim was to increase student agency and efficacy inline with giving students time to follow their passions (Google hour) and the direction that the PYP was moving as the IB discussed its new guide. Other schools have also been investigating similar concepts to Studio but have found themselves bogged down in their discussions regarding exact modeling and predicted outcomes. We decided to move forward with a 60/40 model; 60% of the time led by teachers and 40% managed by students following individual goals and interests. With the careful guidance of the Studio 5 teachers, the model has over the past few years become more self-directed, focusing on personalized learning both academically, socially and emotionally.

As two cohorts of Studio 5 students have now moved from the PYP to the Secondary school we have been observing and reflecting upon their progress and their transition. Although Grade 6 and 7 teachers have initiated both academic and pedagogical changes, it is clear that the transition is not a smooth one for our students. As with all the work that is being undertaken with curriculum and AtL's it has become obvious that there needs to be a clear definition of what students need to know, through concepts, knowledge, and skills as well as an understanding of the pedagogy that will achieve this objective and the assessment that will align it all. The recent visit by Simon Camby and Andy Hancock raised many questions about our model and how it fits with the PYP, student learning, our curriculum, and external academic standards. We asked them to think about what we are doing and whether our students as learners would best be served with a Self-Regulated or Self -Directed model of education. Although they were only present for a day, their conclusion was unanimously in favor of a structured self-regulated model based on the creation of student learning toolkits that can be used to acquire knowledge, apply concepts and develop critical problem-solving abilities. They saw the great benefits of having the gradual release of the learning model in action, student agency, and efficacy and this being scoped and sequenced throughout the skills. From all the recent readings that I have been doing on this topic, I would conclude that Self-Regulated learners are what we want to be producing through our PYP and having them develop further towards being Self Directed through more personalized pathways as they pass through the Secondary School.

Hence, this week's Food for Thought. Building on what I shared before the October break, the EEF document about Metacognition and Self Regulated learning, I want to further our thinking in this direction so that we maintain our vision of preparing students for the future. Recently, this excellent post by Julie Stern was shared with me, Imagine What School Could Be… (You can read below) I believe this is an attainable future and one that would prepare our students for their future but to get there we need to have a well planned and articulated curriculum of learning skills, knowledge, concepts, and assessments.

"We need a particular type of innovation, the kind that makes the world a better place. This generation of young people needs to solve problems with a level of complexity and magnitude rarely seen over the course of human history. 
Pollution and contamination of the environment, lack of access to resources for a growing number of people, changing weather patterns and ecosystems, the rise and spread of international terrorism, a polarized populace, global poverty, rapid urbanization and large-scale migration—the question for our generation of teachers is, “How do we prepare young people to tackle problems we currently don’t know how to solve?” 
Consider these facts from The Necessary Revolution (Senge, 2010): 

• More than a third of the world’s forests have disappeared in the past 50 years. 

• Many diseases are far more prevalent due to toxins in products like food and children’s toys. 

• Five hundred million chronically underemployed people live in slums, a figure that is increasing by 50 million each year. 

• Senior business executives say “the greatest innovations of the 21st century will be those that help to address human needs more than those that create the most profit” (p. 6). 

• Young people are deeply worried about the future of the planet and want to make a difference more than they want to make money. 

• Thirty percent of U.S. students drop out of high school. 

• Fifty-four percent of students who start college do not complete it. 

• The most popular word students selected to describe how they usually feel in school was “bored” (Lyons, 2004). 

What would schools look like if we were developing students as collaborative innovators ready to tackle the world’s most complex challenges?  
And these from Creating Innovators (Wagner, 2012): 
Now, put those facts next to these (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016a, 2016b): 
Meanwhile, 
Businesses want creativity and ideas that address human needs. Today’s young people want to do something meaningful, now. Meanwhile, students are bored and opting out of school in droves. 
More than ever, students need to transfer their learning to real-world, highly dissimilar situations. What we know about dissimilar transfer is that it requires an abstraction to the conceptual level, deeply grounded in a knowledge base. We can and should start with low-road, academic transfer of learning but quickly move across the spectrum toward high-road, real-world transfer of learning. 
Picture a school organized around real-world problems that require the flexible application of each subject’s concepts with an eye toward identifying and developing students’ passions. Students would engage in a variety of experiences that ask them to contribute to building a healthy, sustainable, and just world. 
The students in this world-changing school are probably not sitting in desks in rows learning in 50-minute blocks of time, are they? Imagine students choosing an environmental or health situation to solve while they explore concepts of science and mathematics—for example, discovering renewable energy solutions for a major company or reducing infant mortality in a developing nation. 
Picture a senior who has identified politics and conflict resolution as his passion. He has chosen to analyze a nation with civil strife, the Central African Republic, and make recommendations for improving the situation. Monday morning starts off with a Skype conference call with a nongovernmental organization from Mozambique that will share lessons learned from the end of that country’s civil war in 1992. 
After he finishes the call, the student and his team note down action steps and divide the tasks based on each member’s interests and expertise. They have two weeks until the next call and before then have two scheduled team meetings and a full-day lab session to work on this project with an expert and the teacher who is mentoring the group. This project is called the Grand Challenge. 
At the end of year, the student’s team will present its work to a group of experts who will evaluate the students’ technical skills, application of conceptual understanding, ability to think critically, and collaboration skills. If the work measures up to the standards for a particular area, they’ll receive a badge denoting their skills. 
This student has been deepening his understanding of concepts such as authority, rule of law, justice, conflict, and freedom since elementary school. He became a peer counselor in the second grade and has always had a passion for building empathy between disagreeing people or groups. He has read The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria, two books on America’s democracy by Akhil Amar, and many books on Africa and developing nations. He spent last summer as a peer counselor with youth in a special juvenile detention center where he deepened his skills and understanding of conflict resolution. He has already transferred his understanding of civil strife to several situations, as he analyzed Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War in eighth grade and Europe after World War II in tenth grade. He feels prepared for the Grand Challenge, as all of his learning experiences have led him to this level of thinking and application. 
In addition to the Grand Challenge project and individualized course, he also participates in five courses that all seniors take: Thinking Like a Mathematician, Thinking Like a Historian, Thinking Like an Engineer, Thinking Like a Journalist, and Collaboration & Problem Solving. For each of these courses, teachers design learning experiences that help him hone his disciplinary thinking, deepen his conceptual understanding of the discipline, and learn key factual information. Each week he applies what he is learning in one of these courses to real-world problems that his peers have chosen as their Grand Challenge. During these disciplinary thinking labs, a team presents a problem they are facing as part of their Grand Challenge to the students in the class. The students are charged with using the conceptual understanding and thinking of the discipline to help the team better understand the issues, test a possible idea, or develop a solution. Teachers act as coaches who help structure the learning and provide feedback during these labs. 
The last element of this student’s weekly schedule is coaching a disciplinary thinking lab for sixth graders. This helps him strengthen his thinking in an area of his choice, create a community in the school, and give the adult teachers more time to plan rich learning experiences for students and provide effective feedback. 
As he thinks about what lies ahead for the week after his Monday morning call, he is excited. He knows the work he is doing is tapping into his passions and purpose. It is also intellectually challenging—he is always uncovering and applying conceptual understanding, evaluating his own thinking using intellectual standards, and applying that thinking to the real world. He believes that his efforts in school will truly change the world—and the great thing is that they will. 
It starts with conceptual understanding. As you try out the strategies and become an expert conceptual teacher, know that you are taking a giant step toward preparing students to tackle problems that we don’t yet know how to solve. Your impact can be tremendous—and it’s just what the world needs now."




My reading has revealed that there are lots of different definitions regarding self-regulated learning and what it really means. Obviously, we could get caught up in semantics and join schools that are scared to commit and progress student learning. However, for the sake of moving things forward and having a common understanding of self-regulated learning that is very close to what we are doing in Studios I recommend this academic piece by Barry Zimmerman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology and Head of Learning, Development, and Instruction at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Achievement: An Overview,  Below I have extracted the section on defining Self Regulated Learning. However, the article also covers student strategies, motivation, and self monitoring of progress. Zimmerman has written several other academic articles about different aspects of Self Regulated Learners. His website, Learning and the Adolescent Mind has some resources but overall is a bit underwhelming when compared to his academic articles.

"DEFINITIONS OF SELF-REGULATED LEARNING 

At one time or another, we have all observed self-regulated learners. They approach educational tasks with confidence, diligence, and resourcefulness. Perhaps most importantly, self-regulated learners are aware when they know a fact or possess a skill and when they do not. Unlike their passive classmates, self-regulated students proactively seek out information when needed and take the necessary steps to master it. When they encounter obstacles such as poor study conditions, confusing teachers, or abstruse text books, they find a way to succeed. Self-regulated learners view acquisition as a systematic and controIlable process, and they accept greater responsibility for their achievement outcomes (see Borkowski, Carr, Rellinger, & Pressley, in press; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986, 1990). 

As familiar as this description may be, it is not helpful pedagogically unless it leads eventually to operational definitions of the component processes by which students self-regulate their learning. Although definitions of self-regulated learning involving specific processes often differ on the basis of researchers' theoretical orientations, a common conceptualization of these students has emerged as metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning (Zimmerman, 1986). In terms of metacognitive processes, self-regulated learners plan, set goals, organize, self-monitor, and self-evaluate at various points during the  process of acquisition (Corno, 1986, 1989; Ghatala, 1986; Pressley, Borkowski, OE Schneider, 1987). These processes enable them to be self-aware, knowledgeable, and decisive in their approach to learning. In terms of motivational processes, these learners report high self-efficacy, self attributions, and intrinsic task interest (Borkowski et al., in press; Schunk, 1986; Zimmerman, 1985). To observers, they are self-starters who display extraordinary effort and persistence during learning. In their behavioral processes, self-regulated learners select, structure, and create environments that optimize learning (Henderson, 1986; Wang & Peverly, 1986; Zimmerman 8 Martinez-Pons, 1986). They seek out advice, information, and places where they are most likely to learn; they self-instruct during acquisition and self-reinforced during performance enactments (Diaz & Neal, in press; Rohrkemper, 1989). 

When defining self-regulated learning, it is important to distinguish between self-regulation processes, such as perceptions of self-efficacy, and strategies designed to optimize these processes, such as intermediate goalsetting (Zimmerman, in press). Self-regulated learning strategies refer to actions and processes directed at the acquisition of information or skills that involve agency, purpose, and instrumentality perceptions by learners. Undoubtedly, all learners use regulatory processes to some degree, but self-regulated learners are distinguished by (a) their awareness of strategic relations between regulatory processes or responses and learning outcomes and (b) their use of these strategies to achieve their academic goals. The systematic use of metacognitive, motivational, and/or behavioral strategies is a key feature of most definitions of self-regulated learners (Zimmerman, 1989a). 

The second feature of most definitions of self-regulated learning is a "self-oriented feedback" loop (Carver & Scheier, 1981; Zimmerman, 1989b). This loop entails a cyclic process in which students monitor the effectiveness of their learning methods or strategies and react to this feedback in a variety of ways, ranging from covert changes in self-perception to overt changes in behavior such as altering the use of a learning strategy. Phenomenological theories of self-regulated learning (e.g., McCombs, 1986, 1989) depicts this feedback loop in terms of covert perceptual processes such as self-esteem and self-concepts, whereas operant theories (e.g., Mace, Belfiore, & Shea, 1989) favor overt descriptions in terms of self-, recording, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement responses. Social cognitive theorists (e.g., Bandura, 1989) caution against viewing this control loop in terms of only negative feedback (Le., seeking to reduce differences between one's goals and observed outcomes); they report a positive feedback effect as well (i.e., seeking to raise one's goals based on observed outcomes). Regardless of theoretical differences in what is monitored and how outcomes are interpreted, virtually all researchers assume Downloaded by [Vancouver Island University] at 19:54 02 May 2016 that self-regulation depends on continuing feedback on learning effectiveness. 

The third feature of definitions of self-regulated learning is an indication of how and why students choose to use a particular strategy or response. Because self-regulated learning involves temporally delimited strategies or responses, students' efforts to initiate and regulate them proactively require preparation time, vigilance, and effort. Unless the outcomes of these efforts are sufficiently attractive, students will not be motivated to self-regulate. They may choose not to self-regulate their learning when the opportunity arises, an outcome that requires a comprehensive accounting of their academic motivational processes. Operant theorists (e.g., Mace et al., 1989) claim that all self-regulated learning responses are ultimately determined by contingent external rewards or punishment such as social approval, enhanced status, or material gain, whereas phenomenological theorists (e.g., McCombs, 1989) view students as motivated by a global sense of self-esteem or self-actualization. Between these two ends of the continuum, other theorists favor motives such as self-efficacy, achievement success, and cognitive equilibrium. 

An important aspect of theories of self-regulated learning is that student learning and motivation are treated as interdependent processes that cannot be fully understood apart from each other. For example, student perceptions of self-efficacy are both a motive to learn and a subsequent outcome of attempts to learn (Schunk, 1984, 1989). Self-regulated learners are not merely reactive to their learning outcomes; rather, they proactively seek out opportunities to learn (Zimmerman, 1989a). They self-initiate activities designed to promote self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-improvement such as practice sessions, specialized training, and competitive events (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986). Their heightened motivation is evident in their continuing tendency to set higher learning goals for themselves when they achieve earlier goals, a quality that Bandura (1989) called self-motivation. Thus, self-regulated learning involves more than a capability to execute a learning response by oneself (i.e., self-control) and more than a capability to adjust learning responses to new or changing conditions from negative feedback. It involves proactive efforts to seek out and profit from learning activities. At this level, learners are not only self-directed in a metacognitive sense but are self-motivated as well. Their skill and will are integrated components of self-regulation (see McCombs and Marzano, this issue)."

To conclude, I don't think that any of the above is radical or goes beyond what we have been aiming at for the past few years. What I hope is that it provokes conversation and discussion about the strategies and toolkits that we are explicitly teaching our students to make them effective and successful self-regulated learners.  This does mean, as we are undertaking our curriculum meetings, that we all develop a better whole school perspective on what students know regarding knowledge, concepts, and skills. I know that we all share the same goal of creating inquisitive, motivated learners who, as the Julie Stern post emphasizes, are able to plan, monitor and manage their own learning. There are lots of examples across the school that involve peer tutoring, collaborative learning, good teacher feedback, and metacognition. As the evidence, from many sources, points out, for these strategies to be effective they do need to be accompanied by explicit teaching of content and skills by teachers. What we need to do is ensure that this is consistent and built upon throughout an ISHCMC education.

Food For Thought: AI from different perspectives

Sorry but having watched a few videos and read a couple of articles recently I couldn't resist returning to one of my favourite topics A1. Both of these TED talks are definitely positive AI talks. The first By Janelle Shane puts AI's capabilities into perspective and does indirectly touch on a few of the challenges that AI has for us as we move forward. Beyond the reassuring tone of this talk, I felt there was also a good message for us as teachers. Although our students do not have the brains of worms, their brains are all still developing and moving from being driven by flight or fight response to thoughtful processing. With such a diverse group of students bringing different English levels and interpretations of the meaning of individual words, I wonder how close our student's thinking is to that of AI today.  How good are we at giving instructions or assessments that allow them to achieve the objectives that we anticipate in our planning? How much time do we spend thinking about how we construct instructions and assessments to ensure they are aligned with the learning objectives?

Near the end of Janelle's talk, she identifies a challenge of AI using data created by humans to make decisions for and about us. Hence, I wanted to share this second talk about AI that looks at these biases and what we should be doing to prevent human prejudices emerging through AI. Our students are going to be the future, working with and designing AI, hence it is very important that they are aware of danger of bias and prejudice and how it exists in our school, just as it does in the world beyond ISHCMC. In our won world we also need to ensure that across the school we are encouraging girls to develop passions for engineering, coding, robotics etc as much as the boys.

To end this week's Food for Thought, it wouldn't be me posting if there wasn't a darker touch. Both of the TED talks indirectly touched on the ethical issues emerging from the development of AI. Where are the rules about algorithms that reduce prejudice? Who is monitoring the development of AI and robots? Are governments being honest with their people about AI data collection and its use for controlling society? Is it possible to have a common code of conduct? What is going to happen now that supercomputers are upon us, with the announcement of Google's quantum computing and is this about to change the shape of our world? 

The darker touch linked to the above is from this Newsweek article, Lab-grown mini-brains could outsmart us in the future if we're not careful which ends by raising moral and ethical questions about this research and whether we can actually stop it now. The same questions that perhaps should have been asked about AI. There are so many questions but I think it is very important that we are constantly challenging our students about morla and ethical challenges that we are going to face as a species and expecting them all to participate in these conversations.

"The cutting-edge method of growing clusters of cells that organize themselves into mini versions of human brains in the lab is gathering more and more attention. These "brain organoids," made from stem cells, offer unparalleled insights into the human brain, which is notoriously difficult to study.

But some researchers are worried that a form of consciousness might arise in such mini-brains, which are sometimes transplanted into animals. They could at least be sentient to the extent of experiencing pain and suffering from being trapped. If this is true—and before we consider how likely it is—it is absolutely clear in my mind that we must exert a supreme level of caution when considering this issue.

Brain organoids are currently very simple compared to human brains and can't be conscious in the same way. Due to a lack of blood supply, they do not reach sizes larger than around five or six millimeters. That said, they have been found to produce brain waves that are similar to those in premature babies. A study has showed they can also grow neural networks that respond to light.

There are also signs that such organoids can link up with other organs and receptors in animals. That means that they not only have a prospect of becoming sentient, they also have the potential to communicate with the external world, by collecting sensory information. Perhaps they can one day actually respond through sound devices or digital output.

As a cognitive neuroscientist, I am happy to conceive that an organoid maintained alive for a long time, with a constant supply of life-essential nutrients, could eventually become sentient and maybe even fully conscious.

This isn't the first time biological science has thrown up ethical questions. Gender reassignment shocked many in the past, but, whatever your beliefs and moral convictions, sex change narrowly concerns the individual undergoing the procedure, with limited or no biological impact on their entourage and descendants.

Genetic manipulation of embryos, in contrast, raised alert levels to hot red, given the very high likelihood of genetic modifications being heritable and potentially changing the genetic makeup of the population down the line. This is why successful operations of this kind conducted by Chinese scientist He Jianku raised very strong objections worldwide.


But creating mini brains inside animals, or even worse, within an artificial biological environment, should send us all frantically panicking. In my opinion, the ethical implications go well beyond determining whether we may be creating a suffering individual. If we are creating a brain—however small—we are creating a system with a capacity to process information and, down the line, given enough time and input, potentially the ability to think.

Some form of consciousness is ubiquitous in the animal world, and we, as humans, are obviously on top of the scale of complexity. While we don't know exactly what consciousness is, we still worry that human-designed AI may develop some form of it. But thought and emotions are likely to be emergent properties of our neurons organized into networks through development, and it is much more likely it could arise in an organoid than in a robot. This may be a primitive form of consciousness or even a full blown version of it, provided it receives input from the external world and finds ways to interact with it.

In theory, mini-brains could be grown forever in a laboratory—whether it is legal or not—increasing in complexity and power for as long as their life-support system can provide them with oxygen and vital nutrients. This is the case for the cancer cells of a woman called Henrietta Lacks, which are alive more than 60 years after her death and multiplying today in hundreds of thousands of labs throughout the world.

But if brains are cultivated in the laboratory in such conditions, without time limit, could they ever develop a form of consciousness that surpasses human capacity? As I see it, why not?

And if they did, would we be able to tell? What if such a new form of mind decided to keep us, humans, in the dark about their existence—be it only to secure enough time to take control of their life-support system and ensure that they are safe?

When I was an adolescent, I often had scary dreams of the world being taken over by a giant computer network. I still have that worry today, and it has partly become true. But the scare of a biological super-brain taking over is now much greater in my mind. Keep in mind that such new organism would not have to worry about their body becoming old and dying, because they would not have a body.



This may sound like the first lines of a bad science fiction plot, but I don't see reasons to dismiss these ideas as forever unrealistic.

The point is that we have to remain vigilant, especially given that this could all happen without us noticing. You just have to consider how difficult it is to assess whether someone is lying when testifying in court to realize that we will not have an easy task trying to work out the hidden thoughts of a lab grown mini-brain.

Slowing the research down by controlling organoid size and life span, or widely agreeing a moratorium before we reach a point of no return, would make good sense. But unfortunately, the growing ubiquity of biological labs and equipment will make enforcement incredibly difficult—as we've seen with genetic embryo editing.

It would be an understatement to say that I share the worries of some of my colleagues working in the field of cellular medicine. The toughest question that we can ask regarding these mesmerising possibilities, and which also applies to genetic manipulations of embryos, is: can we even stop this?

Food for Thought: Self regulated learning and metacognition (Part 1)

Last week, in my email with the Food For Thought link, I attached a very useful document from the Education Endowment Foundation EEF. This site has lots of excellent resources across 14 different categories of toolkits that were mots requested by teachers. Here is the list of categories where resources have been created from educational research. If you click on the topic it should take you to the relevant page on EEF. There is lots of information here that is research-based and tested that could be used to inform our committee work that we are continuing on October 11th. Please take a look at areas that interest you.

B 

Behaviour: Improving pupil engagement and minimising disruptive behaviour.

C 

Character & essential life skills: Building attitudes, skills and behaviours that support children’s learning and personal development.

De

Developing effective learners: Supporting pupils to become effective and self-motivated learners.

Ey

Early Years: Supporting children’s early learning and development.

E

Enrichment: Extending learning beyond traditional academic priorities, including careers education, and participation in the arts and sports.

F

Feedback & monitoring pupil progress: Using assessment to understand pupils’ strengths, weaknesses and progress, and how to address these through feedback.

L

Language and literacy: Evidence on literacy from the Teaching and Learning Toolkit alongside the findings from recent EEF projects.

M

Mathematics: Improving the teaching and learning of mathematics.

O

Organising your school: Addressing school-level structural and organisational issues, such as timetabling, class size, the built environment, and digital technology.

P

Parental engagement: Helping parents to support their children’s learning.

Fe

Post-16: Supporting learners yet to secure a good pass in GCSE English and Maths.

S

Science: Improving the teaching and learning of science.

Sn

Special Educational Needs & Disabilities: Supporting pupils with a learning difficulty or disability which requires special educational provision.

St

Staff deployment & development: Improving the quality of teaching through staff deployment and Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

In conjunction with the EEF pdf that I shared last week on Metacognition and Self Regulated Learners, I thought that it might be useful this week to ensure that we all have a common understanding of Metacognition. Hence I am sharing two videos depending on your own confidence in this area. If you feel you understand metacognition and know how and why it is important jump to video 2.  The first video is from the Smithsonian Science Education Center that goes through metacognition and provides strategies for adaption in classrooms. Because it is the form of a cartoon it may appear too simplified, however, it does remove many misconceptions that many of us may have about what exactly is Metacognition and how can it be developed in a classroom.

The second video, produced by Dr. Tomas Armstrong although titled 6 Metacognitive Strategies for Middle and High Schoolers ( this is because of the presenter felt that Piaget's developmental model for students points to metacognition being practically useful around the age of 12) I feel is very applicable to teachers of all ages to understand this concept of learning. 

To finish this week's Food for Thought I am going to return to the EEF website and share their findings with you. Evidence suggests the use of ‘metacognitive strategies’ – which get pupils to think about their own learning - can be worth the equivalent of an additional +7 months’ progress when used well. 

"METACOGNITION AND SELF REGULATED LEARNERS

Metacognition and self-regulation approaches aim to help pupils think about their own learning more explicitly, often by teaching them specific strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning. Interventions are usually designed to give pupils a repertoire of strategies to choose from and the skills to select the most suitable strategy for a given learning task.

Self-regulated learning can be broken into three essential components:

• cognition - the mental process involved in knowing, understanding, and learning;

• metacognition - often defined as ‘learning to learn’; and

• motivation - willingness to engage our metacognitive and cognitive skills.

Metacognition and self-regulation approaches have consistently high levels of impact, with pupils making an average of seven months’ additional progress.

These strategies are usually more effective when taught in collaborative groups so that learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion.

The potential impact of these approaches is high, but can be difficult to achieve in practice as they require pupils to take greater responsibility for their learning and develop their understanding of what is required to succeed.

A number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses have consistently found strategies related to metacognition and self-regulation to have large positive impacts. Most studies have looked at the impact on English or mathematics, though there is some evidence from other subject areas like science, suggesting that the approach is likely to be widely applicable.

The approaches that have been tested tend to involve applying self-regulation strategies to specific tasks involving subject knowledge, rather than learning generic ‘thinking skills’.

The EEF has evaluated a number of programmes that seek to improve ‘learning to learn’ skills. The majority have found positive impacts, although smaller in size (around 2 months’ progress on average) than the average seen in the wider evidence base. For three of these programmes there were indications that they were particularly beneficial for pupils from low income families.

A 2014 study, Improving Writing Quality, used a structured programme of writing development based on a self-regulation strategy. The evaluation found gains, on average, of an additional nine months’ progress, suggesting that the high average impact of self-regulation strategies is achievable in English schools.

The EEF has published guidance on applying the evidence on metacognition and self-regulation in the classroom. The guidance report can be found here."