Classrooms as Learning Communities

What's In It For Schools?

Chris Watkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134336807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

In classrooms that operate as learning communities, the social and learning purposes advance together through all participants being involved and engaged in building knowledge. This book demonstrates a new way of seeing and managing classrooms through:

• an integration of what's best in learning and what's best in the social life of classrooms
• a vision of the role of the teacher that is more creative and more related to the commitments of teachers
• a more connected view of schools in contrast to the mechanistic view that currently dominates
• an answer to the short-term performance pressures of politicians - better performance.

The practice and vision of classrooms that operate as learning communities is presented clearly and encourages teachers to take steps towards building a more effective classroom with the aspects of learning communities they choose.

1
Introduction

Why this book?

This book is intended to support the hopes, visions and practices of classroom teachers, and through that to contribute to creating the classrooms and schools our pupils deserve. In it I aim to communicate three things:

• a vision,
• some of the practices, and
• the evidence

for seeing and promoting classrooms and schools as learning communities. I make that plain at the outset, because it’s not particularly common nowadays to be clear and ‘up front’ about the first element, vision. In much of the literature which finds its way into schools, classrooms are talked about in a way where the vision is not stated. Indeed, there seems to be no need to be clear about vision. This is because such writing rests on a set of unstated assumptions which are prevalent in society and which have become taken for granted in many places. They are a set of mechanical assumptions, and recently they have become commonplace in the official voice and its pronouncements on schools. As Terry Wrigley put it:

A public discourse has been established which accounts for successful teaching in mechanistic and superficial terms as a set of external behaviours which are not linked to an understanding of learning. It is based on teacher performance, not interaction between teachers and learners.¹

This discourse and the prevalent assumptions deserve questioning for two important reasons. First, they may incorporate a limited and limiting set of concerns. For example, many politicians and a minority of anxious parents press their teacher-centred, ‘delivery’- centred view of classrooms in response to their short-term performance concerns. The longer-term developmental concerns of individuals and of society are sidelined, and the risks are many. One is that creative and committed teachers become disaffected. As the Times Educational Supplement headline put it: ‘Young staff flee factory schools’. Second, the prevalent assumptions may actually be counterproductive for achieving the goals which many stakeholders and the vast majority of educators would hold dear – including the goal of high-level performance! The idea that better performance, even on the many narrow tests which beset pupils nowadays, is achieved through improving the mechanical efficiency of teaching, of routinising our approach to teaching, is challenged by much evidence. By contrast, the evidence is that classrooms which operate as learning communities also get better results.

So I’m writing this book from a stance which includes the belief that current trends towards routinising classrooms are wrong: wrong for pupils, wrong for teachers and wrong for achievement.

The quick-fix instrumental strategies which have been promulgated may be ‘more of the same’ in terms of the history of classrooms, and as such will not contribute to the transformation which is needed for the times we are in. We need to move from the mechanical and backward-looking ‘what works?’ to the more human and future-oriented ‘what’s worth working on?’

This book stands for the idea that it is worth working on the practices which help classrooms to operate as a collective of learners and a learning collective.

Why now?

Recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development² (OECD) addressed the theme of ‘What Schools for the Future?’. Expert papers were invited from people who had given much time to these considerations. They came from the USA, Australia and five European countries (but not the UK). After working on the collected ideas, the report painted a picture of six possible scenarios, two each under three major themes:What strikes me about these scenarios is that even in their most limited, single-line descriptions they are recognisable, both to me and to teachers who are introduced to them. The implications which are spelled out at more length in the report are also recognisable:

The status qup extrapolated

1 Robust bureaucratic school systems;

2 Extending the market model; The re-schooling scenarios

3 Schools as core social centres;

4 Schools as focused learning organisations; The de-schooling scenarios

5 Learner networks and the network society;

6 Teacher exodus – the ‘meltdown’ scenario.

1. Strong bureaucratic elements and pressures towards uniformity; new tasks and responsibilities continually added to the remit of schools, in the face of the problems in family and community; financial and human resources continually stretched. Despite repeated policy initiatives, the educational inequalities that reflect unequal social and residential home backgrounds/environments prove extremely resilient, as educated parents ‘play the system’.
2. Greater privatisation and more mixed public/private partnerships; seriously enhanced risks of inequality and exclusion and of the public school system being relegated to ‘residual’ status; market approaches cover a bewildering variety of policies.
3. School seen as the most effective bulwark against social fragmentation and a crisis of values; strong sense of schooling as a ‘public good’; the individualisation of learning is tempered by a clear collective emphasis; greater priority is accorded to the social/community role of schools; high levels of public trust.
4. Schools are revitalised around a strong ‘knowledge’ agenda; academic/artistic/competence development goals are paramount; experimentation and innovation are the norm; innovative forms of assessment and skills recognition flourish; a strong emphasis is placed on educational research and development; ICT is used extensively; the very large majority of schools merit the label ‘learning organisations’, informed by a strong equity ethos.
5. Quickening abandonment of school institutions through diverse alternatives, stimulated by extensive possibilities via the Internet and powerful and inexpensive ICT; radical de-institutionalisation, even dismantling, of school systems; learning for the young not primarily conferred in particular places called ‘school’ nor through professionals called ‘teachers’ nor distinct residential community bases; while promoted as supporting diversity and democracy, also substantial risks of exclusion especially for those students who have traditionally relied on the school as the mechanism for social mobility and inclusion.
6. Teacher recruitment crisis and relative political impotence to address it; education political climate increasingly conflictual; inequalities widen sharply between residential areas, social and cultural groups, etc.; affluent parents in worst-affected areas desert public education in favour of private alternatives; intensive use of ICT as an alternative to teachers; wide disparities possible between highly innovative and traditional uses; solidarity declines and protectionist responses increase, especially if competing for limited pools of qualified staff.

I consider that analysis worth quoting at length because it so clearly describes a range of scenarios, each of which is distinctly possible, and indeed the seeds of many of those scenarios are evident in our schools today.

For me, for the teachers I work with, and for the education professionals canvassed by the OECD, scenarios 3 and 4 are the ones I value and the ones I work to create. The vision of social and learning functions coming together and being served by schools is one which is not only essential for our futures but is also immensely realisable.

What’s in it for schools?

Above I have been so bold as to suggest that the very future for schools is in becoming learning communities, and similarly for classrooms within them. Why should schools and teachers be interested in this? Put briefly, because:

1. in learning communities the teachers’ role is more focused on learning rather than management, and is more professionally rewarding;
2. in learning communities, pupils develop more competences which are transferable to non-school contexts;
3. learning communities provide a good preparation and a good model for many aspects of a better future life for all.

As a bonus, effective learning communities are associated with better performance, better behaviour, and better social/moral development. More detail on this evidence is to be found in the chapters that follow.

I also feel confirmed that teachers will find much in it for them, for two reasons. The first is that over a number of years, in schools and on courses, I have asked teachers ‘what’s most important about life in your classroom?’. The replies are many and varied but some patterns also emerge. The teachers I have asked regularly mention:

• the creation of an overall climate in the classroom;
• the social relations between groups of pupils, and how to help them get on;
• the managing of the multiple dimensions of classroom activity.

All these are key considerations in this book. The second reason is that in recent years I have heard from teachers who have experimented with and adapted the sorts of practices this book is about, and hear them talk about inspiring experiences, reclaiming their professional vision, and even relinquishing leadership roles in order to spend more time in the classroom.

Who is the author and whose are the voices?

I have been an educator for over thirty years, and am currently a teacher at the University of London Institute of Education. I come from one of those South Wales families that over-produced teachers all through the last century. Why? To escape the limits of the valleys. So I keep alive a very real vision of expanding learners’ horizons. And I honour the sense of community which was found in those valleys, even in times and conditions of adversity. My mother was a primary school teacher for most of her working life.

I have been a maths teacher in a large comprehensive school, a form tutor and a teacher of social education. In all of those contexts I have been especially interested in the personal–social dimensions of learning, classrooms and schools. I have worked with pupils whose effect on schools was sometimes disruptive, have studied on courses in a particularly active approach to school counselling, and have run courses in pastoral care, school behaviour, tutoring, mentoring and so on.

Currently I am course leader to the MA in Effective Learning and have been course leader to an MA in School Development.

As a teacher I currently use most of the classroom practices explored in this book. Indeed, through many of the courses and projects I am currently involved in, the vision and practice has been developed collaboratively with many of the other teachers I am privileged to work and learn with. In my job I intersect with the world of research so am also privileged to examine accounts and evidence from across the world. In both senses of evidence – the lived experience and the research of others – this book is founded in evidence. I value the contribution of research to the practice of teaching, not least on occasions such as when the TES said, reviewing my Managing Classroom Behaviour: ‘Chris Woodhead’s comment about never encountering a useful piece of educational research is effectively debunked by this publication’.³

The voices of teachers I work and learn with appear in these pages, as do the voices of pupils they work and learn with. They are mentioned in the acknowledgements. But equally important, these pages examine the voices which serve to limit teachers and pupils in their classroom practice and achievement. My understanding of what helps people to achieve their best is that their best goals are often inspiring and moving, yet they can be undermined and disempowered by other voices. Sometimes these are imagined voices which all of us know – doubt, inertia and, occasionally, fear. But all too often these voices are real – as when the official voice speaks from a view of learning and teaching which is far from inspiring. In order to achieve our best we need to identify those voices, be able to analyse them for what they are, and thereby reduce their life-negating impact.

An outline map of the book

• Chapter 2 considers classrooms and learning, the dominant patterns and the need for change.
• Chapter 3examines the concept of community as something practical rather than sentimental.
• Chapter 4 reviews research evidence on the outcomes of classrooms as learning communities.
• Then a brief interlude considers how best to consider classroom practices.
• Chapters 5,6,7,8 and9 look at classroom matters in detail: the goals, tasks, social structure, resources and roles needed.
• Another interlude offers pointers for observing classrooms from this perspective.
• Chapter 10 examines the school context as a wider learning community.

Prompts for reflection Before you start your journey with that map, try to have in mind your own view o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Introduction
• 2: Classrooms, change, learning, teaching, community
• 3: Community – more than a warm glow
• 4: Classrooms as learning communities
• Interlude Practices in classrooms
• 5: Goals in a learning community
• 6: Tasks in a learning community
• 7: Social structure in a learning community
• 8: Resources in a learning community
• 9: Roles in a learning community
• Interlude Observing classrooms as learning communities
• 10: Schools as learning communities
• Notes
• References