Building upon the professional learning undertaken by a number of educators at Blackwood High School in our 2020 Teaching How to Learn program, a cohort of teachers there continues to work with our research team and is investigating the effects of some targeted classroom interventions on students’ motivation and performance. These interventions have been developed with our team to gauge the effectiveness of specific teacher practices to implement aspects of our theoretical frameworks. They range from tracking the impact of more Constructive/Interactive lesson plans in an Electronic Systems (Design & Technology) course, to the effects of more explicit teaching of learning strategies in English and Humanities classes, to the results of teaching Mathematics students how to critique each other’s explanations of their processes to use explicit strategies and deepen their ability to communicate their learning. This group of teachers met with our team at Flinders University’s Tonsley campus on 1 April and 13 May to develop their ideas, and continue to collaborate with us as they analyse the results of their action research. Furthermore, those BHS teachers who participated in our ICAP and SRL programs in 2020 and 2021 have shared their learning with colleagues including on Professional Learning days, supported by members of our research team and Lachlan McFarlane (BHS Leader, Innovative Pedagogy), on 5 March and 19 July. The impact of this program has resulted in ICAP/SRL already being embedded in the pedagogical direction at the school, and we look forward to supporting its further development.
The school has also established a student leadership group, ‘Learning Cultures’, to promote research-backed teaching and learning strategies. Some of these students became so interested in ICAP after being presented with it that they ran their own Workshop 19 July to a group of teachers. The pictures below are from the student ICAP Workshop.
