Chapters International

OVERVIEW:

Learnership is the skill of learning. Developing it helps learners get more out of every learning situation. It accelerates student achievement, energises classrooms, and helps reduce teacher stress as students become more active learners and take on increased responsibility for learning. (See https://youtu.be/GKQi3emH3sA for more)

Think of Learnership in the same way as you'd think about leadership or craftsmanship. It denotes a degree of skilfulness. Learnership is the skill of learning.

As an experienced teacher, you've honed your craft over many years. You know how to teach and you're good at it. But quality teaching isn't always enough.

Too many of our students are passive learners. They wait to be lead (or dragged) through the learning process. They are satisfied with the immediate gratification of completion, rather than the long-term benefit of challenge and growth. Many students lack an understanding of how they learn, much less what it means to be an effective, skilful learner.

Ultimately learning is the product of what the teachers does AND what the learner does. If our students aren't engaging effectively in the learning process, then even the best teachers face an uphill battle!

For example, how many times have you given students carefully crafted formative feedback, only to have it ignored by the students? And how many of your students wait for you to find their mistakes and then wait again for you to show them how to fix them instead of doing that work for themselves? How many students turn away from challenging tasks, choosing their "path of least resistance" through learning?

Why Learnership?

First and foremost, the most effective learners achieve more! When students engage more skilfully in the learning process by embracing challenges, cultivating their Habits of Mind, making the most of feedback and mistakes, and investing their time more effectively they get better results. Not surprisingly many of the strategies we'll discuss rank among the highest of Hatties effect sizes. (1)

And at least as important as student learning outcomes is teacher wellbeing! Ineffective learners need to be lead, and sometimes dragged, through the learning process. They need teachers to guide them through the learning process, set appropriate challenges, correct mistakes and more. All of which is exhausting!

By focusing on teaching students how to engage in the learning process more effectively we give teachers back their time and energy. Look at the Learnership Matrix and ask yourself how different your classroom would be if all you could move all your learners up the matrix just one level! How much more time and energy would you get back? How much more rewarding would your teaching be if your students were engaging in the learning process more effectively.

(1) Hattie Effect Sizes:Deliberate Practice 0.79, Effort 0.77, Help Seeking and Feedback 0.7, Learning Goals V's no goals 0.68, Teachers not labelling students 0.61, Metacognitive Strategies 0.6, Appropriately Challenging Goals 0.59, Explicit Teaching Strategies 0.57, more.)

The Learnership Matrix

Throughout the course we explore how to help students become more skilful learners, based on the Learnership Matrix. This Matrix draws on 5 key elements of skilful learning:Challenge, Habits of Mind, Mistakes, Feedback and Effort. Based on how students respond to each of these elements, it describes six different types of learners. In this series of workshops, use the Learnership Diagnostic Tool to identify the type of learners you have in your classroom, and then learn how to guide your students in becoming more skilful learners.

How does the course work?
This is not a program, and it's not extra work. This is about engaging in pedagogies that focus on students understanding themselves as learners and then engaging them in the learning process more effectively. It's about ensuring students are playing their role in the learning process to make the most of the good work you do.

Over 4 x 3-hour workshops, conducted virtually, you'll unpack the concept of learnership. All sessions will be recorded, plus you'll have access to the Learnership online course for 12 months to provide extra resources for extending your learning. These sessions are highly collaborative and interactive.

This is a very practical course. While you'll be given deep insights into the learning process, the focus is very much on what students do to become better learners. Each topic includes tools, strategies and techniques for you to apply immediately in your maths classroom.

OBJECTIVES:

Participants in this course will

Understand how developing learnership accelerates learning, energises teachers, and reduces teacher stress
Develop practical strategies to improve student learnership, focusing on
- Helping students understand themselves as learners by nurturing a more growth-oriented mindset
- Improving student's relationship to challenge, but understanding the nature of challenge, and developing a more productive understanding of their Learning Zone
- Cultivating students Habits of Mind by developing more intelligent behaviours
- Improving student's relationship with mistakes and feedback, but utilising the 6 different types of mistakes and learning how to "design mistakes" and "tailor feedback" for learning.
- Changing student's understanding of effort, engaging in effective effort and improving motivation calibration.
Understand how Learnership and the development of a Growth Mindset improves student motivation, distinguishing between students who are un-motivated, and those that are de-motivated, and adopting appropriate strategies to engage each.

AGENDA:

The workshop series includes access to significant online resources to support, complement and extend learning.

Session 1 Learnership and Mindset
This session will explore Mindset as the foundation of Learnership. Participants will complete a Learnership Diagnostic to identify the types of learners in their school. We will then unpack James Anderson's Mindset Continuum © introducing powerful "nudges" to help nurture a more growth-oriented mindset in students.

Session 2:Challenges and Mistakes
This session helps students distinguish their Comfort Zone, Performance Zone, Learning Zone and Aspirational Zone and highlights the importance of being able to recognise these, and become comfortable with the discomfort and the Learning Zone. We explore Ericsson's Deliberate and Purposeful Practice (as distinct from Rehearsal and Unproductive Practice). Finally we reframe misguided notions of "celebrating mistakes" and explain how recognising 6 distinct types of mistakes refocuses our attention on the value of mistakes being about information and action.

Session 3:Habits of Mind and Effort
This session focuses on how we develop students Habits of Mind to "make hard things easy". We give new meaning to effort as we focus less on "how much" time and energy is being used, and more on how that time and energy is being invested. We unpack the Effective Effort Matrix, explore the critical role of effort in Motivation Calibration, and discuss effective methods for valuing effort

Session 4:Developing Learnership
In this final session we pull all the threads together and identify the strategies and approaches teachers need to adopt to help develop students as more effective learners. We consider how "safe and supportive learning environments" should and must contain struggle, effort and failure. Finally we identify our dominant teaching style and how that might be of service, and occasionally disservice, as we try to develop Agile Learners - students who embrace challenges, cultivate their Habits of Mind, design mistakes, tailor feedback, and invest their time and energy in growth.

POTENTIAL AUDIENCE:

All teachers K-12, including teaching support staff, Curriculum and Teaching and Learning Leaders, School Leadership

James Anderson

James Anderson is an Australian-based international speaker; author and educator who is passionate about helping fellow educators develop students as better learners. He is the creator of the concept of Learnership - the skill of learning, where he recognises that learning is the result of the activity of learners, and seeks to match the quality teaching practice that exists in classrooms, with equally skilful learning behaviours from students.

Originally a teacher and school leader, for the past 20 years, James has been working with schools to make classrooms more thoughtful places. He challenges teachers to think deeply about their own Mindsets and how their beliefs are communicated to students in often subtle and unintended ways.

James’s work combines Growth Mindset with Habits of Mind and Practice to create Learning Agility. He puts the growth back into Growth Mindset! And, through creating and describing the Mindset Continuum, he provides the cornerstone for effective Growth Mindset interventions.

James values the relationships he builds with the schools and teachers he works with, providing the “follow-through” that’s so often lacking in teacher professional development. His speaking, workshops and online resources provide not only the deep understandings required to do this work meaningfully, but also the tools and ongoing support needed to sustain it in your school and make a real difference to student learning outcomes.

James will show you how to create your school-based Growth Mindset Style Guide to ensure your school consistently “nudges” all students towards an increasingly growth-oriented Mindset.

James is a Certified Speaking Professional and a certified Virtual Presenter. He regularly speaks at conferences around the world both virtually and in person.

His previous publications include Succeeding with Habits of Mind, The Agile Learner and The Learning Landscape, as well as a host of e-books and other teacher resources. His online course, “Growth Mindset Masterclass,” supports thousands of educators in schools around the world. He is an international affiliate of Art Costa and Bena Kallick’s Institute for Habits of Mind and the creator of www.habitsofmind.org.