About This Blog

My photo
I am an international school educator, currently working as a Primary Assistant Principal in China.This blog is a space to explore thoughts as a teacher, a parent and a learner. I'm interested in different ways of imagining and realising education and present this blog as a platform to explore and share ideas.

Saturday 10 November 2018

Changing Teacher and Student Roles



Two texts I’ve been reading recently have led me to reflect on a thorny issue within teaching and learning - the gap between what the teacher intends for students to learn and the learning that actually takes place. The studies I’ve been reading are The Hidden Lives of Learners by Graham Nuttall, published posthumously in 2007, and the fascinating study of reading, Inquiry into Meaning: An Investigation of Learning to Read (2001) revised ed. by Bussis, Chittenden & Sallinger.


Nuttall’s research tracked students in classrooms through hours of detailed data gathering involving audio/video recordings, anecdotal records, observation, and interviews. The findings showed that what was typically learnt from a lesson varied considerably from student to student and in most cases was indeed not at all what the teacher had planned for them to learn. Reasons given were various - insufficient knowledge of students’ prior knowledge, lack of student motivation and students retaining little from the planned engagement.

Reading this, I connected with the theories of Kelly (1955), used by Bussis et al. as a framework for their study of reading. Kelly proposed that an individual’s personal constructs dictate the way he/she perceives information. Here is an explanation from the first edition of the book by Bussis et al quoted in the revised edition:

...two people exposed to the same events may construe them in very different ways and come away from the same situation with two quite disparate sets of learning and experience. Likewise, individuals may construe different events in much the same way and thereby share similar meanings and exhibit similar behaviours. It is similarity in the construing of events that provides the basis for similar perceptions and actions, and not similarity or sameness in the events themselves. (Bussis et al., 1985, p. 15)


Popular Posts