Informed choice: the essential
ingredient of learner-centred
education
Dylan Wiliam
www.dylanwiliam.net
Raising achievement matters
For individuals
Increased lifetime salary
Improved health
Longer life
Greater control
For society
Lower criminal justice costs
Lower health-care costs
Increased economic growth
Increased pro-social behaviour
Raising achievement matters…
Which of the following categories of skill is disappearing from the workplace most rapidly?
1. Routine manual
2. Non-routine manual
3. Routine cognitive
4. Complex communication
5. Expert thinking/problem-solving
…but what is learnt also matters…
Autor, Levy & Murnane, 2003
…now more than ever
$35.00
$30.00
$25.00
Dropout
$20.00
HS Diploma
Some College
BA/BSc
$15.00
Prof Degree
$10.00
$5.00
05
20
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20
01
20
99
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97
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95
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93
19
91
19
89
19
87
19
85
19
83
19
81
19
79
19
77
19
75
19
19
73
$0.00
The only 21st century skill
So the model that says learn while you’re at school, while you’re young, the
skills that you will apply during your lifetime is no longer tenable. The skills
that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be
obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for
one skill. The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is
the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you
were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are
outside the scope of what you were taught in school. We need to produce
people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they
were not specifically prepared.
(Papert, 1998)
Where’s the solution?
Structure
 Small secondary schools
 Larger secondary schools
Alignment
 Curriculum reform
 Textbook replacement
Governance
 Vouchers and charter schools (US)
 Specialist schools, trusts and academies (UK)
Technology
 Computers
 Interactive white-boards
School effectiveness
Three generations of school effectiveness research
Raw results approaches
Different schools get different results
Conclusion: Schools make a difference
Demographic-based approaches
Demographic factors account for most of the variation
Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference
Value-added approaches
School-level differences in value-added are relatively small
Classroom-level differences in value-added are large
Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms
Informed choice
About what to learn (Curriculum)
About how to learn (Pedagogy)
Degree of choice should be influenced by
Consequences (for the individual and for society)
Maturity
Consequences of choices (and especially poor choices) about what is to
be learned are generally greater than choices about how learning should
be achieved, so
For younger learners, many if not most learning outcomes need to be nonnegotiable. As they get older their wishes should become predominate their
interests (progressive lowering of the “safety net”)
From the earliest age, however, learners should be involved in decisions
about how they learn best.
Principles of curriculum design
Curriculum: a selection from culture
 Balanced
 Rigorous
 Vertically integrated
 Internally consistent
 Focused
The test of successful education is not the amount of knowledge that a pupil takes
away from school, but his appetite to know and his capacity to learn. If the school
sends out children with the desire for knowledge and some idea how to acquire it, it
will have done its work. Too many leave school with the appetite killed and the mind
loaded with undigested lumps of information. The good schoolmaster is known by
the number of valuable subjects which he declines to teach.
(Sir Richard Livingstone, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1941)
Informed choice about curriculum
Intrinsic factors
What is the subject really like?
Authenticity of experience
Habits of mind
Developing identity (e.g., mathematics, plumbing)
Extrinsic factors
“Critical filters” for particular careers
Financial rewards
Consequences
Closing down of options (“leaky pipes”)
Sensitive periods
Informed choice in mathematics
i
e 1 0
Euler’s relation
F+V=E+2
Goldbach’s conjecture
The alternating harmonic series
Torricelli’s
trumpet
Informed choice about pedagogy
Two extremes
Teachers doing the learning for the learners
Teachers “facilitating learning”
Key concept
Teachers do not create learning
Learners create learning
But all teachers can do is teach (learning vs. teaching)
Teaching is the engineering of effective learning environments
Key features of effective learning environments:
Create student engagement (pedagogies of engagement)
Well-regulated (pedagogies of contingency)
Develop habits of mind (pedagogies of formation)
Why pedagogies of engagement?
Intelligence is partly inherited
So what?
Intelligence is partly environmental
Environment creates intelligence
Intelligence creates environment
Learning environments
High cognitive demand
Inclusive
Obligatory
Motivation: cause or effect?
high
arousal
Flow
anxiety
challenge
control
worry
relaxation
apathy
boredom
low
low
competence
high
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
Why pedagogies of contingency?
Intervention
Extra months of
learning per year
Cost/yr
Class-size reduction (by 30%)
4
£20k
Increase teacher content
knowledge from weak to strong
2
?
Formative assessment/
Assessment for learning
8
£2k
Unpacking formative assessment
Key processes
Establishing where the learners are in their learning
Establishing where they are going
Working out how to get there
Participants
Teachers
Peers
Learners
Aspects of formative assessment
Where the learner
is going
Teacher
Peer
Learner
Where the learner is
Engineering effective
Clarify and share discussions, tasks and
activities that elicit
learning intentions
evidence of learning
How to get there
Providing feedback
that moves learners
forward
Understand and
share learning
intentions
Activating students as learning
resources for one another
Understand
learning intentions
Activating students as owners
of their own learning
…and one big idea
Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet
student needs
Keeping Learning on Track (KLT)
A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination by taking constant
readings and making careful adjustments in response to wind, currents,
weather, etc.
A KLT teacher does the same:
Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in essence building the track)
Takes readings along the way
Changes course as conditions dictate
Summary
Learning power is developed more by how—than by what—we teach
Teaching is the engineering of effective learning environments
Effective learning environments involve
Pedagogies of engagement
Pedagogies of contingency
Personalisation
Mass customization (rather than mass production or individualisation)
Diversity
A valuable teaching resource (rather than a challenge to be minimized)
Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning, and thus the
central process of teaching (as opposed to lecturing).