MANAGING ICT
Taking learning home
What children learn at home makes a real difference to
attainment. Lyndsay Grant from education research charity Futurelab discusses a new report into home-school relationships and digital technologies
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HILDREN DO not leave the rest of their lives behind when they go through the school gate: they bring with them all the values, skills, knowledge, passions and interests from their out-of-school lives. Similarly, children take their
learning from school home, and continue to learn in different ways and in different settings with family and friends. With this bigger picture of children’s “learning lives” in mind, schools need to consider ways to start the conversation between home and school, supporting children to draw on all the resources available to them to enable them to become resilient and resourceful learners. The increasing availability of digital technologies at
school and at home, as well as the new online reporting expectations, mean new opportunities to make these conversations happen. Parents’ involvement in children’s learning has seen
particular attention from policy-makers and practitioners as part of a wider drive to improve children’s achievement and narrow the gap between children from
disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. Schools are also being expected to make information and access to learning resources available online for children and their parents. But discussions about parental engagement and
home-school relationships tend to focus only on the relationship between parents and children’s schools, when in fact children themselves play an active role in mediating the relationship between home and school, making connections between the learning they do at school and home (or not), and actively facilitating or resisting their parents’ involvement in their learning. A new handbook from education research and
development charity Futurelab draws on in-depth interviews with teachers, parents and children to provide a practical reference guide to the issues to be considered
Learning to learn
Guy Bates
discusses the importance of ICT in education
ASKING EDUCATORS to prepare children for entering the workplace in 10 years’ time may sound like asking them to predict the winner of the Grand National. But let’s have a go at thinking about this, as let’s face it, this is the challenge that our education system faces. But first let us reflect on an often-quoted statement,
that looks daunting but which is actually quite helpful: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Eric Hoffer. If the key to adaptation to accelerating change is
learning to learn, we are effectively saying that we do not need to wholly predict what will be needed in 10 years but to develop a school system that creates lifelong learners. All well and good, but this will only get us so far.
We can assume that we are not the only set of islands that will be aware of the importance of learning to learn. To equip our children with learning skills, there are challenges we face in our education system and learning and teaching culture that must be overcome. A system that has evolved from testing memory
of facts has moved a long way, but while we find it difficult to assess what we now value, our examination system and therefore our key stage 4 curricula cling to the old certainties. We know very well that in a world where
information is abundant, personal, learning and thinking skills are going to be critical to success in the world, but this understanding has not yet been translated into the examination system that drives our key measures of a school’s success and in turn the
culture in the classroom. Innovative leaders apply their understanding to new and appropriate blends of thematic and subject-based learning until it comes to those years immediately before GCSEs and then have little choice but to prepare their students for the exam system they will be judged by outside the school. Progress in vocational learning in schools has
been made and the competencies that are required by today’s employers are arguably better reflected. For all their critics, Diploma lines appear to have some of the ingredients required. For the examination boards, it is a “big ask”.
How does a system encourage collaborative learning, while assessing the value added by an individual with enough integrity to inform a grade? Yes it can be done, but it is so much harder. But easy will not enable the UK to compete with the rising economies of China and India. Sometimes though, the pace of change can bring
its own answers. What if technology for assessment could help with this challenge? What if we did not just have to ask more of the teacher or the exam boards? The ICT industry could be challenged on its own performance with assessment. Could do better? If we can measure what is important, rather than
making important what we can measure, then our schools can perhaps deliver the creative, empowered and discerning workforce required in 10 years. But it is vital that the ICT industry works with
school leaders and practitioners to learn to measure progress in competencies and higher order thinking skills that we recognise as vital. ICT could not be more important. Not just
for providing tools for our young people, but for capturing their brilliance and creativity, measuring their progress and creating a stage for the world to see their progress. We probably don’t have 10 years to do this though. Let’s all work together now.
• Guy Bates has worked in education for 13 years and is now business development director at XMA, a provider of managed services, solutions and products to schools, further and higher education. Visit www.xma4education.co.uk
when developing strategies for supporting home-school relationships using digital technologies, putting children at the centre of the home-school relationship. Supporting the home-school relationship should
not be seen as an “added extra” to the core business of schools. It is an essential factor in children’s learning and can inform the work of the school on many levels, including how the curriculum is taught, pastoral care, extra-curricular development and behaviour strategies. Given the importance of children’s families and
out-of-school lives for their success within school, embedding home-school relationships as part of a whole-school strategy with strong leadership from senior staff is likely to see positive results for children’s learning and achievement within school. Digital technologies are a familiar and integral
part of many home environments and are therefore an obvious way to enhance and facilitate communication with parents and provide access to school information. Some schools are beginning to explore new ways
of using digital technologies to communicate and build partnerships with parents, such as using learning platforms to consult with parents and sending text messages about children’s attendance and progress. This is not about requiring homes to take on the jobs of schools, or about “importing” all of children’s home experiences into school, but making meaningful links between children’s learning at school and their lives and learning at home can help children to connect and navigate more easily between these two spaces, making school learning experiences more meaningful and accessible. Saltash.net Community School in Cornwall, an 11
to 18 mixed comprehensive, is using private social network sites such as Ning and Edmodo to support links between young people’s learning in and out of school as well as MSN messenger for one-to-one mentoring. The network is used socially as well as for
communication around the topics being studied in the classroom and being set for homework. Students post their own discussions and questions either around the current topics being covered or on new ones. Ning groups now exist across most subjects in the
school and the feedback from both parents and students has been very positive, with parents reporting that their children seem much more engaged and that they feel they are much more able to get involved in their children’s learning. The platform is also used to showcase students’ best
work and to share practice between subjects in school as well as between home and school. MSN messenger has enabled teachers to mentor individual students outside of lessons (having individual conversations with up to 10 students simultaneously). Using messenger as a tool has allowed much more
one-to-one time that is not often possible in a classroom setting. As the conversation is often more relaxed and includes day-to-day as well as targeted conversations around learning points, it has enabled teachers to get to know students and understand their interests much better. In another example, Noadswood School, a specialist
sports college in Southampton for students between 11 and 16, is involved in the Learning Futures programme which is “rethinking and modelling what goes on in our schools”. The school’s innovation work focuses on engaging
parents in their children’s learning. As part of its strategy to develop greater links with parents, Noadswood has
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set up a Parents’ Focus Group (made up of a cross- section of 100 parents). These parents communicate with the school and with
each other via a purpose-built online portal that contains email, access to a forum where topics for discussion are set and feedback requested, and questionnaires. One area of development at Noadswood is in online
reporting. The aim is to involve parents more deeply in Assessment for Learning and to create a feedback system that fills the gaps between the traditional termly reports. Teachers record assessment results on an ongoing basis using Excel with this data converted into simple graphical displays of the student’s progress and emailed to parents on a regular basis. The feedback from parents has been positive with
many responding to the emails. The school is also using the School Information Management System to electronically record details of teacher-student mentoring conversations so the outcomes and targets can be accessed by parents. A texting system is in place that allows timely communication with parents via their mobiles. Noadswood focuses on developing resources that
are flexible and can be accessed anywhere online. The school’s Moodle virtual learning environment is used extensively for posting resources and homework tasks. The school also uses Films for Learning across subjects and students are encouraged to use film as a medium in which homework can be submitted, with many parents getting involved in creating videos with their children. The school is also considering further developments using e-portfolios, wikis, and weblogs to encourage parents to access their children’s learning. The business of supporting children’s learning
cannot stop at the school’s walls. Schools are just one, very significant, resource that children draw on to support their learning. The issue is how schools are able to help their pupils to make connections and tap into all the different ways they learn.
SecEd
• Lyndsay Grant is a learning researcher at Futurelab.
Further information
• The Futurelab handbook, Developing the home-
school relationship using digital technologies,
can be downloaded at www.futurelab.org.uk/ projects/home-school-relationships
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• Saltash.net Community School: www.saltash.net • Ning: www.ning.com • Edmodo: www.edmodo.com • Noadswood School: www.noadswood.hants.sch.uk • Moodle: http://moodle.org/ • Films for Learning: www.filmsforlearning.org
Embedding home-
school relationships as part of a whole-school strategy is likely to
see positive results for children’s learning
SecEd • April 22 2010
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