managing the advanced learner by dr. linda rush

More than I am

…A life without risks is just as good as

death,

But in my lifetime I want to take risks, I need

to,

Is it too much to ask to want to become

more,

More than I am, more than they tell me I

can be…

Presentation Title Goes Here (See Header & Footer To Edit This Text) 2

Managing the Advanced

Learner

Dr Linda Rush, Director of Teacher Training

7 May, 2015


Objectives: 1. To share definitions of advanced learner / high

ability/giftedness

2. To discuss definitions in terms of the characteristics associated with being a successful lifelong learner

3. To consider the role of the teacher in ordinary classroom settings

4. To focus on the use and management of teaching time

5. To offer a framework - an orientational device which allows teachers to recognize the boundaries and borderlines of their interactions with (advanced) learners, and a prospective device to help develop the qualities of interactions in the future.


Positionality: • ‘Plasticity’ of the human brain

• Ability & environment are deeply intertwined

• Interested in the basis for intellectual

superiority

• Belief that everyone can be an ‘advanced learner’

• Conscious of ‘potential ability’

• Prospective view of ability and the role of assessment in respect of this


Key Question/Task • What’s your view of high ability or giftedness

(Maybe helpful to consider an actual student or

group of students).

• Do you bother to identify or make yourself aware

of students with advanced learner

characteristics?

• How do you go about identifying your advanced

learners?

• How do we get to know our students?


PhD findings: More Able child profiles – identification

• All teachers used tests of intelligence to identify

the cognitive ability of children in their class &

Assessment Tasks

• Teachers also made specific reference to the

quality of the children’s work being a useful indicator of ability

• Recognized ability through teacher observation

• Areas of ability highlighted: cognitive; technical;

practical


PhD findings: More Able child profiles –

‘demonstrated achievement’ &

‘potential ability’ • Some teachers stated that the high performers

were not necessarily the more able…

• Teachers also recognized individuals as having

the potential to be more able: ‘needs to be

pushed’, ‘doesn’t always do his best’, ‘doesn’t always give the extension’, ‘will do as little as

possible’.


PhD findings: More Able child profiles – personalities & learning characteristics

• ‘amazing humour’

• ‘very serious . . . an absolute perfectionist’

• ‘laid back . . . very good at seeing patterns and things . . . he will tease you and kind of

challenge you’

• ‘deep thinking’

• ‘Can be quite difficult, obstructive at times . . .

eccentric in some of his behaviours’

• ‘stolid plodder’



• most able liked to get their work right and that they didn’t like failing

• ‘Perfectionism’ was used more than once to describe these individuals

• tend to give up if he didn’t get what he was doing right first time

• some enjoyed working with others…

• always challenging things – not to undermine the teacher but

‘purely out of curiosity’



• ‘had his own agenda…he will come back at me with a counter idea’

• enjoyed bringing in his ‘own ideas not directly related to [in

class] projects’

• ability to ‘think of where a problem is going’

• motivated by challenging work

• some were confident to be challenged and questioned, and to question themselves

• others were quite shy or particularly

• All teachers also recognized that a straightforward correlation between ability and achievement does not exist


Formal definitions of giftedness:

• literature on the more able indicates that they think differently

from others…

• they are Gestaltist in their thinking.

• 'in contrast to the less gifted who use either atomistic or

serialistic strategies of perceiving information, the more gifted

have an analytic strategy’. (Merenheimo, 1991, cited in Freeman1998,

p. 23)


Giftedness:

• Metacognitive – knowing how you know things & the

processes by which you think

• Self-regulating – autonomous learning, being able to prepare

& supervise one’s own learning

• Underpinning this thinking is the notion of 'individualisation’


• possible’.


Renzulli’s model of giftedness

• Information processing psychologists see

intelligence as steps or processes people go

through in solving problems. One person may be

more intelligent that another because he or she

moves through the same steps more quickly or

efficiently, or is more familiar with the required

problem solving steps.


Advocates of this view (e.g. Sternberg,

1979) focus on:

• how information is internally represented

• the kinds of strategies people use in processing

that information

• the nature of the components (e.g. memory,

inference, comparison) used in carrying out

those strategies

• how decisions are made as to which strategies

to use


Urban’s model of giftedness


Cigman’s (2006, p. 200) four-fold distinction:

1. The child who is very bright, and benefits from

propitious environment

2. The child who is very bright, but lacks a

propitious environment

3. The trophy child, who achieves highly as a result

of a pressured environment, but who seems not

bright, and strained or alienated by the experience

4. The child seems 'not bright', and lacks a

propitious environment.


Key Points: • No general agreement about the nature of

intelligence and that of being more able or gifted

• An artificially constructed concept

• Identification of ability needs to be carried out in a

useful way – not just to classify individuals

• A concern about ability is a concern about student

developing as individuals so that their potential is

translated into achievement


Key Question/Task

• Do you recognize such students in your classrooms?

• In what ways do your highly able students (drawing on earlier

identification and definitions) fit within the above categories?


Giftedness:

• Metacognitive – knowing how you know things & the

processes by which you think

• Self-regulating – autonomous learning, being able to prepare

& supervise one’s own learning

• Underpinning this thinking is the notion of 'individualisation’


ELLI’s seven ‘learning dimensions’

1.Growth orientation v being stuck and static

2.Meaning making v data accumulation

3.Critical curiosity v passivity

4.Creativity v rule bound

5.Learning relationships v isolation

6.Strategic awareness v robotic

7.Resilience v dependence


Claxton’s Positive Learning Dispositions


Resilient Resourceful Reflective Reciprocal

Curious (proactive)

Questioning (“How come?”)

Clear-thinking (logical)

Collaborative (team member)

Adventurous (up for a challenge)

Open-minded (‘negative capability’)

Thoughtful (Where else could I use this?)

Independent (can work alone)

Determined (persistent)

Playful (“Let’s try ...”)

Self-knowing (own habits)

Open to feedback

Flexible (trying other ways)

Imaginative (could be ...)

Methodical (strategic)

Attentive (to others)

Observant (details / patterns)

Integrating (making links)

Opportunistic (serendipity)

Empathic (other people’s shoes)

Focused (distractions)

Intuitive (reverie)

Self-evaluative (“How’s it going?”)

Imitative (contagious)

Pedagogic implications of teaching

the more able • Students encouraged to take control of their own learning

• Teacher to involve the learner explicitly as a partner in the

learning process

• Notion of 'open discourse’

• Assessment is not something that is done to them but done

with and by them

• Collaborative and open-ended enquiry is promoted

• This type of pedagogy can be seen in terms of a particular

type of mediatory power in teaching/learning interactions


PhD findings: Involving the more able as partners in the learning process • Allowing the pupils to extend in-class learning

further than anticipated or planned for.

• Flexible time – frame for pupils to work within.

• Modification of planning or learning to take into

account the interests of pupils.

• Co-operative and collaborative learning

promoted.


PhD findings: Involving the more able as partners in the learning process

• Whole class, self and peer assessment.

• Questions asked or problems set allow for

personal interpretation.

• Method(s) and solution(s) of problems set are

unknown to both teacher and learner.

• Inclusive use of language.

• Interactive displays.


PhD findings: Involving the more able as partners in the learning process

• Availability of independent activities.

• Whole class discussion where pupils as well as

teacher have to explain their ideas, and where the

process of learning is analysed

• The promotion and support (in terms of time and

resources) of independent study, the focus of which

is decided by the student or group of pupils


To varying degrees the roles of

‘teacher’ & ‘learner’ were floating: • Expectations were made clear to the pupils that they were

dual partners in the learning process

• Pupils’ contributions were frequently volunteered rather than

elicited and were always valued

• Pupils were encouraged to co-construct one another’s

learning at whole class and group level

• Discussion was allowed to shift in an unpredictable manner

• Inclusive use of language was deployed ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’

• Manner and tone of teacher whilst demanding was warm and

friendly


Key Question/Task

• How do you manage to mediate and

promote the learning of your highly

able students during non-contact?

• How do you promote interactive

learning?


Key References

Baxter Magolda, M.B. 1992. Students’ epistemologies and academic experiences: Implications for pedagogy. Review of Higher Education 15, no. 3: 265–87.

Biggs, J. (2004), Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does. 2nd edn. Maidenhead: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press

Bransford, J., A. Brown, and R. Cocking, eds. 2000. How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and School Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning. Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Research Council National Academy Press.

Cigman, R. 2006. The Gifted Child: A Conceptual Enquiry. Oxford Review of Education, 32, no. 2: 197-212

Claxton, G. 2007. Expanding Young People’s Capacity to Learn. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53, no. 2: 115-134.

Daly, A., Penketh, C., and Rush, L. 2009 ‘Academic preparedness: Student and tutor perceptions of the ‘academic experience’’. Society for Research in Education (SRHE) Conference proceedings.

Fontana, D. 1995. Psychology for Teachers, 3rd Ed, Revised and updated, London: The British Psychological Society

Fredricksson, U., and B. Hoskins. 2007. The development of learning how to learn in a European context. The Curriculum Journal 18, no. 2: 127–34.


Key References: Lucas, L., and P.L. Tan. 2005. Developing reflective capacity: The role of personal epistemologies within undergraduate education. Research seminar discussion paper, Fourteenth Improving Student Learning Symposium, September 4–6, University of Bath.

Moon, J. 2005. We seek it here . . . a new perspective on the elusive activity of critical thinking: A theoretical and practical approach. ESCalate discussion paper. Available online at: http://escalate.ac.uk/index.cfm?action1⁄4resources.search&q1⁄4criticalþthinking&rtype1⁄4itehelp&rtype1⁄4project& rtype1⁄4publication&rtype1⁄4resource&rtype1⁄4review

Moseley, D., Elliot, J., Gregson, M., and Higgins, S,. 2003. Thinking skills frameworks for use in education and training. British Educational Research Journal 31, no. 3: 367-390

Northedge, A. (2003), ‘Rethinking Teaching in the Context of Diversity’, Teaching in Higher Education, 8.1, 17-32

Perry, W.G. 1970. Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Poerksen, B. 2005. Learning how to learn. Kybernetes 34, no. 2/3: 471–84.

Putnam, R.T., and H. Borko. 2000. What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher 29, no. 1: 4–15. Rawson, M. 2000. Learning to learn: More than a skill set. Studies in Higher Education 25, no. 2: 225–38.


Robinson, M. Nancy. 1997. The Role of Universities and Colleges in Educating Gifted Undergraduates. Peabody Journal of Education. 72, no. 3/4, Charting a New Course in Gifted Education: Parts 1 and 2 (1997), 217-236

Rush, L., and Fisher, A. 2009. Expanding the capacity to learn of student teachers in Initial Teacher Training. ESCalate, Academic online paper (http://escalate.ac.uk/5802).

Rush, L. 2009. Bridging the gap between theory and practice: one tutor’s endeavors to embed and enact a distinctive pedagogic approach to learning-to-learn (L2L). NEXUS Journal 1: 197-212. Edge Hill University, Centre for Teaching and Learning Research (CLTR)

Fisher, A and Rush, L. 2008. Conceptions of learning and pedagogy: developing trainee teachers’ epistemological understandings. The Curriculum Journal. 19, No. 3 pp 227-238. Routledge.

Rush, L. 2002. An Exploration into how Effective Upper key Stage Two Teachers Manage to Intervene with More Able Children in the Classroom Setting Ph.D.

Schommer-Aitkins, M.A. 2002. An evolving framework for an epistemological belief system. In Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing, ed. B.K. Hofer and P.R. Pintrich. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wingate, U. 2007. A Framework for Transition: Supporting ‘Learning to Learn in Higher Education, Higher Education Quarterly, 0951-522461. No. 3: 391-405


http://escalate.ac.uk/5802

managing the advanced learner by dr. linda rush

Education

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able teachers

view of high ability

achievement potential

cognitive ability of

phd findings

advanced learners

useful indicator of