Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Risky business - Should we create risky situations in our classrooms?



Recent articles and academic presentations have suggested that schools might be robbing children of the chance to be creative. We, their teachers are at risk of imprisoning them with rules, routine and exam protocol. Some are suggesting that we are so focused on helping them to be right and to master the skills necessary to pass exams, that we neglect to provide them with opportunities to simply find things out for themselves.
In a more creative curriculum we would be encouraged to create tasks which allow our learners to solve problems and to make their own decisions and choices. If our lessons were crafted in this way then, in theory, our students would soon develop the self confidence and resilience necessary to tackle any problem that comes their way. The current reality of teaching is that we ourselves feel creatively stifled by the institutional fear of doing things differently. We ask ourselves "what if it fails? Isn't it a waste of valuable lesson time? What would the inspectors say?"
I for one value those times when I have the confidence to throw out the rule book and allow the pupils to lead the learning, but I very quickly feel the need to return to the scheme of work and do some 'proper teaching.' I often find that it is these 'unusual' lessons that the pupils remember most and when asked, they are confidently able to connect the experience to the learning objective and outcomes.
In her recent talk at the Hay festival Professor Susan Gathercole talked about our mental notepad and explained how we store information. According to her research there are six kinds of memory. Many of our pupils store facts in their working memory and need to make a conscious effort to move this knowledge into their more permanent semantic memory. Some of our learners have very low working memory abilities which is a risk for academic progress. Professor Gathercole believes that we probably can't train our working memory to improve but we can support pupils through the use of memory aids and visual strategies such as mind maps, pictorial flow charts and audio recordings of instructions. These strategies seem to help the learner to bypass the working memory and to make the learning memorable. If we expect our learners to do this independently then surely this would provide a useful creative opportunity in our lessons.
Professor Gathercole also believes that anxiety reduces almost all working memory ability. With this in mind why would we want to generate an atmosphere of risk-taking in our classrooms? Surely leaving our comfort zones would increase anxiety and, therefore, reduce our brain's ability to retain information in the usual way?
In primary school pupils regularly have access to equipment designed to encourage risk taking such as climbing frames. In secondary school we do not have such provision and yet risky behaviours are more tempting to the teen brain than at any other time of life. This is why our pupils indulge in risky pursuits such as sexting, smoking or driving too fast. At the same time, teenagers develop social awkwardness and a sudden awareness of self. The judgement of their peers is their most significant preoccupation and, therefore, public failure is the biggest risk of all.
The anxiety of being singled out and humiliated in front of their peers can cause pupils to leave our lessons having learnt nothing at all. We risk this every time that we try to take our adolescent learners out of their comfort zones.
As teachers, however, we can use the teen tendency towards peer motivated behaviour to our advantage. The more often we set the pupils up to fail and the more that we model this ourselves, the more resilient they will become and the more socially acceptable it will be.
In our current examination motivated system our learners are trained to aim for perfection and it is undeniable that success will always be important for self esteem. Knowledge mastery is exciting and stimulating and the bedrock of creativity, however, we also have a duty to equip our learners with the confidence to go their own way when they are ready. We should allow them to make as many decisions as possible during lessons. How will they present their outcomes? Is uniformity always essential? Does the level of challenge provide them with the opportunity to fail and, therefore, feels 'risky?' Do we allow them to collaborate, but are there also times when we insist that they go it alone? Does our questioning generate a simple, knowledge based response or does it accommodate new analytical and creative directions? Do we always play to their strengths instead of encouraging them to try something new?
Risk taking is essential to growth and we should not try to protect our pupils from failure. Schools should perhaps ensure that pupils are provided with a robust knowledge base, but they should also support teachers to provide a space for risk and creativity in their lessons.
Thanks for reading,
Becky
@BexK06