Project for Enhancing Effective Learning (PEEL)

Origins

In 1985 a chemistry/science teacher at Laverton Secondary College, Ian Mitchell, had concerns about his students’ learning: they were

• passive, • unreflective and • dependent,

even in apparently successful lessons.

When he discussed this with other teachers they had similar concerns.

Typical teacher research, starting with an observation about their practice, and linking with some existing research.

Existing teacher concerns

• Students rarely contribute ideas

• Students don't think about the meaning of what they read or hear

• Students don't link different lessons

• Students don't think about why or how they are doing a task

• Teachers find negotiations difficult

• Students keep making the same mistakes

• Students don't read instructions carefully

• Students don't learn from mistakes in assessment tasks

• Students won't take responsibility for their learning

Existing teacher concerns

• Students dive into tasks without planning

• Students have no strategies when stuck

• Students don't link school work with outside life

• Dealing with mixed ability classes

• Students don't believe that their own beliefs are relevant

• Students are reluctant to take risks in creative tasks

• Students are reluctant to edit or check their work

• Students' existing beliefs are not easy to change

• Classroom management

Literature link

As part of a Masters degree Mitchell had been reading work by John Baird on “Poor Learning Tendencies”, and was working with Dick White and Dick Gunstone at Monash University in the area of science education – particularly relating to developing ideas around Metacognition:

• Knowledge about learning,• Awareness of current learning, and• Control over learning

The goal was to engage the students in a process of understanding their own learning and to take greater control over it to achieve “good learning”.

Poor Learning Tendencies

Superficial attention to content• Skimming over a communication, with no attempt to actively process

the information in order to generate personal meaning.  No attempt to search for or distinguish between key ideas and examples.

Impulsive attention• Some parts of a communication attended to, others overlooked, e.g.

the learner may focus on an interesting example and ignore a major point or attend to only the first of three criteria - spotty processing.

Premature closure• Ceasing work on a task in the genuine belief that it is finished, when

in fact some things have not been done.  No attempt to systematically check the answers against the instructions.

Poor Learning Tendencies

Inappropriate application• Jumping straight into using a memorised procedure or algorithm for

a task where it is not applicable.  No evaluation of the appropriateness of the procedure or of whether the task is the same type as earlier ones.

Superficial attention to instructions• Rote following of instructions, one step at a time, no big picture of

the purpose of the task, why it is being done in this way or what would be sensible/typical outcomes.

Staying stuck• Takes no responsibility and has no strategy for coping with getting

stuck except to call for help.  No attempt to return to the instructions, reflect on what they have done so far or to identify what it is that they can and cannot do.

Poor Learning Tendencies

Non - retrieval• The learner makes no attempt to identify ideas, views and

understandings that he or she already has and which are relevant to the 'school knowledge' being presented by the teacher or text.  The learner is unaware of any conflicts between this school knowledge and their personal views.

Ineffective restructuring• Persistent reappearance of apparently changed alternative

explanations, misunderstandings or incorrectly learnt rules.

Lack of External Reflective thinking• No attempt to link the current activity or content with ideas and

experiences from the outside world or from other subjects. No divergent or lateral thinking.

Poor Learning Tendencies

Lack of Reflective Thinking - within the subject boundaries• Tendency to limit processing solely to that dictated by the task. The learner

constructs a very limited understanding because of inadequate linking to other ideas. it's most extreme form is labelled:       Discrete learningthe learner focuses only on the current activity without attempting to look for connection between it and what has come previously. Each lesson, activity or even instruction is seen as isolated from the others.

A less extreme form we call -

Linear learningHere attempts are made to link successive ideas and events, but only in the order they are presented. No attempt is made to link successive ideas on pages 2 and 82, or ideas and procedures learnt in different topics

• The poor learning tendencies provided a good target for the teachers to apply theoretical principles of good learning.

• These poor learning tendencies were to be addressed by encouraging the students to use Good Learning Behaviours (BLBs) through changes to teaching approaches.

Good Learning Behaviours (GLBs)

1. Checks personal comprehension for instruction and material.  Requests further information if needed.  Tells the teacher what they don't understand

2. Seeks reasons for aspects of the work at hand.

3. Plans a general strategy before starting.

4. Anticipates and predicts possible outcomes.

5. Checks teacher's work for errors; offers corrections.

6. Offers or seeks links between: different activities and ideas different topics or subjects schoolwork and personal life

Good Learning Behaviours (GLBs)

7. Searches for weaknesses in their own understandings; checks the consistency of their explanations across different situations.

8. Suggests new activities and alternative procedures.

9. Challenges the text or an answer the teacher sanctions as correct.

10. Offers ideas, new insights and alternative explanations.

11. Justifies opinions.

12. Reacts and refers to comments of other students.

The goal:

• To research classroom approaches that would stimulate and support student learning that was more informed, purposeful, intellectually active, independent and metacognitive.

This was intended to be a two year Masters project for Ian.

The methodology was to be Collaborative Action Research, involving a group of teachers at Laverton Secondary College.

PEEL Groups

• The teachers met regularly in “PEEL groups” to discuss the student’s learning, and to share ideas about how they could challenge students to use more GLBs and reduce the poor learning tendencies.

• Academics such as Baird and White, came to the meetings, and framed what was being discussed in the latest theoretical understandings of good learning and metacognition.

• They developed a range of innovative teaching methods that (according to all the theory) should stimulate the learning required in the students.

Initial results

• “Our initial classroom strategy failed badly; most classroom experiences were negative and PEEL would have collapsed without the mutual support we gave and gained from the group meetings” (p.14 Baird and Northfield, 1995)

• Students were unsettled by the change in teaching and assessment, and resisted the new methods – demanding to be “taught properly”.

• Teachers, however, found the PEEL meetings inspiring and intensely rewarding, and were certain that they were on the right track in changing their classrooms.

• As a professional development activity for teachers it was a huge success.

Over time...

• Student began to adjust to the new teaching, as the teachers explained what they were doing and why. This was a slow process.

• Some students previously disengaged and discouraged made remarkable improvements. The “better” students had the most trouble adjusting, as the previously successful strategies were no longer effective.

• Teachers developed a vast range of teaching methods and strategies to address the identified poor learning tendencies, sharing them at PEEL meetings so others could modify and develop them further.

• The overall quality of learning of the students dramatically improved, as the classrooms became more dynamic and student focussed.

PEEL takes off

• A large proportion of the staff of the school participate in PEEL, creating new problems around integrating new staff into the culture, while continuing to challenge the existing staff.

• PEEL groups spread to other schools, held together by a growing body of academics at Monash University Education Faculty.

• Teachers captured their procedures through short cases, published in PEEL Seeds. These were then compiled into a database that could be searched. There are now over 1,500 procedures in the database.

• PEEL goes international, having a particularly strong impact in Scandinavia.

Learning from PEEL

• With the assistance of the academics from Monash (and other places), but principally Ian Mitchell and his wife Judi, the teachers began to analyse their own experience, and draw out principles that could be used to guide future practice.

• A series of books and other resources were compiled to capture and share the knowledge gained through PEEL, using the principles as an organising structure.

Principles of quality teaching

Share intellectual control with students.• Building a sense of shared ownership is an effective way of achieving high

levels of student interest and engagement. It can be achieved in many ways; many of these involve some form of formal or informal negotiation about parts or all of the content, tasks or assessment. Another complementary approach is to ensure that students' questions, comments and suggestions regularly influence, initiate (or terminate) what is done.

Look for occasions when students can work out part (or all) of the content or instructions.

• Learning is almost always better if students work something out for themselves, rather than reading it or hearing it. This is not always feasible of course, but often it is. It can involve short, closed tasks: e.g. 'if the units of density are grams per cm work out the formula by which we calculate the density of a substance from the volume and mass of an object made of that substance'. It can also involve much longer open-ended tasks: e.g. 'Here is a photo of the ruins of Machu Pichu, work out as much as you can, from this photo, about the Incas and their fate'.

Principles of quality teaching

Provide opportunities for choice and independent decision-making.• Students respond very positively to the freedom to make some decisions

about what or how they will work. To be effective, the choices need to be genuine, not situations where there is really only one possibility. These may include choices about which area of content to explore, the level of demand (do more routine tasks or fewer more demanding ones), the form of presentation (poster, powerpoint presentation, role play, model etc.),and how to manage their time during a day or lesson.

Provide diverse range of ways of experiencing success.• Raising intellectual self-esteem is perhaps the most important aspect of

working with low and moderately achieving students. Success via interactive discussion, question-asking, role-plays and tasks allowing high levels of creativity often results in greater confidence and hence persistence in tackling other written tasks. Publicly recognising and praising good learning behaviours is useful here.

Principles of quality teaching

Promote talk which is exploratory, tentative and hypothetical.• This sort of talk fosters link-making and, as our research shows,

commonly reflects high levels of intellectual engagement. Teaching approaches such as delayed judgement, increased wait-time, promotion of 'What If' questions and use of P.O.Es are all helpful. The classroom becomes more fluid and interactive.

Encourage students to learn from other students' questions and comments.

• The (student) conception that they can learn from other students ideas, comments and questions develops more slowly than the conception that discussion is real and useful work. The classroom dynamics can reach new, very high levels when ideas and debate bounce around from student to student, rather than student to teacher.

Principles of quality teaching

Build a classroom environment that supports risk-taking.• We underestimated the very high levels of perceived risk that

accompanies many aspects of quality learning for most students, even in classes where such learning is widespread. It is much safer, for example, to wait for the teacher's answer to appear than to suggest one yourself. Building trusts in the teacher and other students and training students to disagree without personal put-downs are essential to widespread display of good learning behaviours.

Use a wide variety of intellectually challenging teaching procedures.• There are at least two reasons for this, one is that teaching procedures

that counter passive learning and promote quality learning require student energy and effort. Hence they need to be varied frequently to retain their freshness. The other is that variety is another source of student interest.

Principles of quality teaching

Use teaching procedures that are designed to promote specific aspects of quality learning.

• One of the origins of PEEL was the belief that students could be taught how to learn, in part by devising a range of teaching procedures to variously tackle each of a list of poor learning tendencies, for example failing to link school work to relevant out-of-school experiences. The variety in (8) is not random and one basis for selecting a particular teaching procedure is to promote a particular aspect of quality learning.

Develop students' awareness of the big picture: how the various activities fit together and link to the big ideas.

• Many, if not most students, do not perceive schooling to be related to learning key ideas and skills. Rather, they see their role as completing tasks and so they focus on what to do not why they are doing it. Much teacher talk, particularly in skills based areas such as Mathematics, Grammar and Technology reinforces this perception. For these reasons, students (including primary students) commonly do not link activities and do not make links to unifying, 'big ideas'. 

Principles of quality teaching

Regularly raise students' awareness of the nature of different aspects of quality learning.

• This is a key aspect of learning how to learn. Students typically have no vocabulary to discuss learning. it is very helpful to build a shared vocabulary and shared understandings by regular, short debriefing about some aspect of the learning that has just occurred. Having a rotating student monitor of a short list of good learning behaviours can be very helpful.

Promote assessment as part of the learning process.• Students (and sometimes teachers) typically see assessments as purely

summative: something that teachers do to students at the end of a topic.Building the perception that (most) assessment tasks are part of the learning process includes encouraging students learning from what they did and did not do well as well as having students taking some ownership of and responsibility for aspects of assessment. It also includes teachers ensuring that they are assessing for a range of aspects of quality learning (eg if you want students linking different lessons then reward that in your assessment) and for a wider range of skills than is often the case. 

Perspective And Voice Of the Teacher

• Funding from the Australian Research Council in 1995 allowed PEEL teachers to employ help to collect data, and to be bought out of their teaching. They worked with academics to more formally research their work, and write about it.

• The academics worked with the teachers who retained their lead role in their research.

• Attendance at local and international conferences brought the innovation of the PEEL teachers to the world, resulting in a number of international visitors to Australia to observe PEEL teachers in action. PEEL spreads further internationally.

• A number of books are published by PEEL teachers, who continue in their classrooms.

PEEL resources

•http://www.peelweb.org

• PEEL from a primary perspective  372.945 PEE  • About PEEL : the Project for Enhancing Effective Learning  373.945 MIT • Learning from the PEEL experience  373.945 LEA  • Teaching for effective learning:

the complete book of PEEL teaching procedures 371.3 TEA • Learning from Teacher Research [electronic resource].