I had the opportunity to work with a primary school leadership team in Sydney today. The team at St Christopher’s in Panania are a partner school of mine and I support in a critical friend type role.
We spent some time today exploring the concepts associated with “proxies for learning” using my recent blog post about it as a starting point.
In short the concept of a proxy is that we focus on a representation of learning – we are not looking at learning itself.
Again the discussion centred on the idea of creating better proxies and what the limits are. We had a range of questions that helped to explore this topic:
- How might we design better proxies for learning?
- Can we describe the proxies we have been using in our own practice?
- If we were observing learning taking place what would we actually be looking at?
- How might we design a proxy that is closest to the location of learning?
- What is the evidence of learning?
- Is this evidence of performance or learning?
- How might we recognise when learning is taking place?
An interesting challenge to me from the team was that an example I used to explain a proxy was in fact a proxy. I have heard myself say something like “We might only look at learning if we could scan the brain or have a mobile MRI or CT scanner.”
But of course the results of such scans are just proxies for the real thing. Peeling back the skull and directly observing the neuro-chemical process is the truth. Everything else is a proxy.
So when we consider that everything we do is a proxy for learning at a neuro-chemical level, we must shift our energy to the quality of the proxy.
You might also describe it in terms of the fidelity of the proxy – the quality , authenticity and standard of the representation of learning.
My friend Chris also suggested that self reflection and a learner’s self proclamation is the highest standard:
The proxy which is closest to source must be the reflective learner’s self proclamation “I’ve learned!” Maybe we should enable that voice more and listen to it. #proxy
— Chris Harte Unstuck (@charte) February 12, 2018
But I am not sure if greater proximity to a synapse is best? There seems to be lots of bias associated with the self-assessment of learning.
David Didau offers a reminder about the complexity of learning and a list of ideas for better proxies:
Obviously, we don’t really know how, when or why learning happens, but we do have some guides about what might make it more or less likely.
So, here I tentatively offer a list of other possible ‘good proxies’ for learning which may help teachers plan and look for opportunities to increase students’ mastery of curriculum content.
Learning may happen when students:
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concentrate on relevant examples and non-examples
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retrieve what they have been taught in previous lessons
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apply concepts to new examples
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engage in practice drills (which may involve repetition or formulas and procedures)
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answer questions without cues or prompts
What do you think about this list? What do you consider a high quality, high fidelity or just a good proxy?
This exploration has also led me to wonder more and more about retrieval over time. Sometimes learning might not occur in the timeframe we expect it to and only after a shift in time. More to ponder.
#28daysofwriting
Photo by Hannah Tasker on Unsplash
from The Curious Creative
http://edte.ch/blog/2018/02/15/closest-to-the-synapse-wins-more-thoughts-on-proxies-for-learning/
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