In “What’s the Point of School”, Guy Claxton listed eight characteristics of a good learner. Caution though as there is a difference between a “good learner” and a “successful student”. I think it will be interesting to read what you think is the difference between  a “good learner” and a “successful student”? You can add your thoughts below in the comments:

A good learner is…. (please add)

A successful student is …(please add)

And a good learner shows the following characteristics:

They are… (please add)

Thanks all.

“…most classrooms are characterised by a dearth of students questions and a deluge of student of teacher questions. Over a whole school year the average-rate of student generated questions is one per student per month. One child, having learned too well by observing his teacher, thought that you had to know the answer before you could ask a question.”

~ quoted from “What’s the point of schools?” by Guy Claxton

One of the key skills required to be an effective learner is to learn how to ask questions. Claxton proposes that students become more effective learners when they “grow more ready, more willing, and more able to ask good questions.” To do so students should be taught how to ask questions and also be made aware of the kinds of questions that should be employed on a given subject of discussion.

According to Claxton, the first dimension, that is to “grow more ready” is concerned with getting students “to be alert to the whole range of occasions when asking certain kinds of questions might be a good idea.” So students who ask questions in one class but don’t in others, may be encouraged to see these opportunities to ask questions in these other classes.

The second dimension, “to grow more willing”, is to help students “to be independent of external support and encouragement” to ask questions. No more prodding is needed and more importantly perhaps, the teacher creates an environment that is safe for questions and the teacher also gives time for questions.

The third dimension is concerned with helping students questions to become richer, more flexible and more sophisticated. It is these questions that will stretch their minds and they should be given plenty of room to practise this.

Teachers can turn to Art da Costa’s levels of questioning (which is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to teach their students to reach that third dimension of questioning. After familiarizing themselves with the levels of questioning, teachers can model it at work in the classroom (see here for an example).

Bear in mind that the modeling also includes the teachers being ready to say, “I don’t know” without shame. That is a reflection of a teacher who is learning. As Claxton wrote:

“…of course teachers know more about some of those things than young people do…Of course I want my surgeon to be knowledgeable and competent. But I am safer in the hands of a doctor who is still an enthusiastic and unashamed learner than I am with one who closed her mind to new things thirty years ago. And my children are better off in the hands of a teacher who is continually open to wonder and puzzlement than they are being hectored by someone who lacks the honesty and courage to acknowledge a mistake or doubt”

At the Rulang Primary School, a 2,100-student public elementary school specializing in robotics teaching, teachers looked at me somewhat puzzled when I asked whether letting a 7-year-old child know that she is the worse of her class isn’t putting too much pressure on her too early in life.

“No,” school principal Cheryl Lim shrugged. “We rank them in a way to tell them that this is their ranking at this point in time, and that they can do better next year. It’s not to tell them that they are the worst in their class.’‘

~ Quoted from “Singapore’s obsession holds lessons for us all”, Miami Herald

No, the above example is not what I would like to see in Singapore schools. I would love to see instead teachers and principals doing something a little differently. In Guy Claxton’s book, “What’s the Point of School?”, he suggested that teachers should be seen by students to be engaged in their own learning in their subject areas. He provided some examples.

Learning the bagpipes

Claxton tells the story of a school principal, Peter Mountstephen, in Bath, England. At the start of the school year, Peter would stand in front of the school assembly and try to play a new musical instrument he has never played before. In a previous year, he tried to play the bagpipes, and after that he made an awful din trying to play the violin. Amidst titters from the students, he then publicly commits himself to learning the instrument in that one year. He then talks about the “learning muscles” that he would have to employ to to learn the new instrument. He talks about the need for perseverance, the commitment to practise, courage to ask for help and other learning muscles. After that, every once in a while he would show everyone the progress that he is making on his violin. He will also talk about the problems that he is encountering.

Peter doesn’t just stop there. He would make it a point to meet the students of the school. He would ask them what they think would be difficult for them in that particular school term and also discuss what they can do to try and overcome them together with the class teachers.

Claxton also suggested, for example, that an English language teacher puts up his drafts of his own poems for students to see his progress with them. A science teacher may for example, keep an experiment of his own going in one corner of the lab and keep his students informed maybe even involved in his experiments. A design teacher may wish to showcase his efforts to solve a problem. A PE teacher may want to show his students his attempt to learn a new skill.

Just imagine a school with staff with such an attitude. What do you think was Peter trying to do? How will children in such a school regard learning? What do you think the learning environment will be like in such a school?