The Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL), part 3: Active learning

Active learning is all about motivation – the will to learn. It is the reason we commit to being involved in an activity, persist in carrying it out and try again to succeed if our first attempts fail. Active learners, whether nine months or 90 years old, may not be physically active and moving their bodies (although in the case of young children, this is highly likely), but they will be participating with will and determination. In other words, they are active agents in their own learning.

As Nancy Stewart (2022) explains, ‘Learning theories have moved beyond the transmission model of teaching and learning which assumes knowledge and understanding can be directly transferred from the more knowledgeable person. Instead, social constructivist theory explains that while a more expert partner opens doors to new possibilities and supports use of these new approaches, the learner must actually do the work of mentally interpreting and linking the new input to existing understandings. This may involve building new concepts or restructuring existing understanding as required to make the learning usable for the individual. The learner, then, is not a passive recipient of their learning but is the active agent in the process.’

Birth to 5 Matters (2021) helpfully considers Active Learning under the three headings of:

• Being involved and concentrating.
• Keeping on trying.
• Enjoying achieving what they set out to do.

BEING INVOLVED AND CONCENTRATING

It is very difficult to be a motivated, active learner without feeling good about oneself. Involvement is built on children’s sense of wellbeing. This combination of wellbeing and involvement as an important indicator of children’s learning has been extensively researched and developed by Ferre Laevers at Leuven University in Belgium. The Leuven scales for assessing learning have been widely used in the UK.

Laevers (2000) explains the way in which these two aspects of learning combine for both children and practitioners:

‘…we first have to explore the degree in which children do feel at ease, act spontaneously, show vitality and self-confidence. All this indicates that their emotional wellbeing is OK and that their physical needs, the need for tenderness and affection, the need for safety and clarity, the need for social recognition, the need to feel competent and the need for meaning in life and moral value are satisfied.

‘The second criterion – involvement – is linked to the developmental process and urges the adult to set up a challenging environment favouring concentrated, intrinsically motivated activity…settings and schools have to succeed on both tasks: only paying attention to emotional wellbeing and a positive climate is not enough, while efforts to enhance involvement will only have an impact if children and students feel at home and are free from emotional constraints.’

Here is an abridged version of the Leuven involvement scale (see below).

ABRIDGED VERSION OF THE LEUVEN INVOLVEMENT SCALE LEUVEN INVOLVEMENT SCALE

Level 1 No activity. The child is mentally absent.
Level 2 Actions with many interruptions for approximately half the time of the observation.
Level 3 More or less continuous activity. The child is doing something but we miss concentration, motivation and pleasure in the activity. In many cases the child is functioning at a routine level.
Level 4 Activity with intense moments. The activity matters to the child and involvement is expressed for as much as half the observation time.
Level 5 Sustained intense activity. Child’s eyes are more or less uninterruptedly focused on the activity. Surrounding stimuli barely reach the child and actions require mental effort.

All these levels of involvement may be seen at various times in any setting. However, in a good-quality setting, children will most often be observed in Level 4 and 5 activity. Level 5 involvement illustrates the state of ‘flow’ described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1979) where the experience becomes its own reward. Deep concentration leads to deep-level learning and causes feelings of control with no fear of failure and little sense of time. We can see it in action early in life.

Ruby

Ruby is five months old and not yet crawling. She is on the floor lying on a quilt on her front. She notices a toy that is a few centimetres out of her reach. She focuses her eyes on it with her head raised and stretches her whole body, working her legs, arms and hands as she tries to move nearer. She rests now and again but remains focused. Twice she just touches the toy and bats it sightly further out of reach, but her gaze remains on it and the process of stretching, reaching and wriggling continues. Finally, she grasps the toy securely and brings it straight to her mouth to explore. Her mum is there watching, but Ruby does not look to her for approval or praise. She just quietly enjoys what she has achieved.

The whole process takes over three minutes. Ruby is not putting in all that concentration, energy and persistence because an adult has directed her to. She has chosen to focus on her own goal and she clearly believes that, when things go wrong, more effort or a different approach will pay off. She has a ‘can do’ attitude and illustrates the importance of intrinsic motivation – her motivation comes from within. Babies can concentrate on, and become deeply involved in, the experiences that they feel drawn to long before they can shift their attention to somebody else’s choice, so it is important to recognise that children choosing their own focus is an important element of their learning.

Ruby’s mother contributes to this intrinsic motivation by being on hand if Ruby gets distressed or turns to her. She does not do what many adults might have done – see a baby struggling and step in to ‘help’. She respects the fact that Ruby is deeply involved and is putting in the learning work required both physically and mentally to reach her goal. When we step in early (often because struggle and effort make us feel uncomfortable and we can see a short cut to a goal), we give babies and young children the message, ‘You can’t do it. I will do it for you.’ If that happens enough times, those negative messages become internalised and the child ends up with a ‘can’t do’ attitude.

KEEPING ON TRYING

As well as being involved and concentrating, Ruby was persistent. She knew her goal (to get a particular toy) and despite setbacks she kept on trying to do that.

Einstein (who knew a thing or two about motivation and determination) seemed to decry his own achievements when he said, ‘I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.’ It was that curiosity that provided the motivation to keep working at the theory of relativity for years despite many setbacks. Most of us will not discover such groundbreaking concepts, but if we are encouraged to be curious, to concentrate and to be persistent, we are likely to be successful lifelong learners.

Research studies have linked babies’ persistence with parenting style. Banerjee and Tamis-LeMonda (2007), for example, compared babies’ persistence at six and 14 months and found that mothers who provide access to stimulating objects, are sensitive and responsive to children’s emotions, and support children’s behaviours just above their current level, may foster both persistent behaviour and advanced cognitive development in the future. They suggest that practitioners should work as early as possible with at-risk children and families to develop strategies that support persistence.

It seems that early persistence pays off later on in life. Megan McClelland and her colleagues followed 430 children from pre-school to adulthood. Parents were asked a series of questions about their child’s ability to concentrate and persist at the age of four and each child’s reading and maths ability was tested at age seven and again at 21.

Contrary to researchers’ expectations they found that reading and maths ability did not have a significant effect on whether or not students gained a university degree. However, those who could concentrate and persist at the age of four were almost 50 per cent more likely to have completed a degree course by age 25.

‘The important factor was being able to focus and persist. Someone can be brilliant but that doesn’t necessarily mean they can focus when they need to and finish a task or job. …Academic ability carries you a long way, but these other skills are also important…the ability to listen, pay attention and complete important tasks is crucial for success later in life.’ (McClelland 2012).

Children for whom things come easily early on often under-achieve later through never having had opportunities to develop strategies for dealing with difficulties. That may be something to think about if you work in a setting where there is a huge emphasis on the formal learning of literacy and maths. If only all managers and school leaders understood that literacy and maths are specific areas that only inspire children if they are built on the firm foundations of the prime areas and the CoEL!

Here is an example of an older child who is intrinsically motivated to concentrate on a task and to put in the physical and mental effort required to meet a goal.

Seth and Davide

Four-year-old friends Seth and Davide are playing on a trike with a trailer. Seth is pedalling the trike and Davide is sitting in the trailer. A scooter and another child are blocking the path so Seth steers round them onto rougher ground. However, Davide is heavy and Seth can’t keep going. He gets off the bike and pulls it and the trailer. At first it doesn’t move so he pulls from further down to get more leverage. Davide stands up, leaning forward with his hands holding the sidebars and one leg in the air. Seth gets the trike back on the path and Davide sits down. Once on the path, Seth is not deterred by a couple of children squeezing past him or by one who climbs over the join between the trike and the trailer while they are in motion. He waits and then carries on with the same concentration as before.

If you would like to see Seth and Davide in action, go to https://www.sirenfilms.co.uk/library/seth-gives-a-friend-a-ride.

Again, an adult could have stepped in to help (and undoubtedly would have done if Seth had been visibly distressed or asked for help). However, Seth’s life experiences so far have clearly given him the message that putting in the effort and persisting when things go wrong will help him achieve what he has set out to do. He doesn’t look around for an adult to solve it as soon as he encounters a problem.

Claxton (2006) cautions against giving too much help. ‘Effective support can easily create dependency, unless the teacher is continually looking for opportunities to dismantle the scaffolding, and build students’ disposition to do their own supporting.’

The Characteristics of Effective Learning are all about children becoming self-regulated learners. Adults need to be tuned into children and always be sensitively observing to gauge when the right times might be to move from co-regulating their feelings and behaviours to letting them self-regulate. This needs trust and respect for children as active agents in their own learning.

Otherwise it is easy to fall into the trap of what Malaguzzi called ‘prophetic pedagogy’ which ‘knows everything beforehand and has no uncertainty, it is absolutely imperturbable’ (Cagliari et al. 2016). Prophetic pedagogy requires children to be taught certain things in the ‘right’ order so they are ‘school ready’ and monitored in particular ways, for instance via central government requirements such as the two-year-old progress check, Reception baseline and the EYFS profile, and also via Ofsted judgements.

As Linklater et al. (2016) make clear, ‘the risk is that children are not listened to, trusted, given time, allowed. Under prophetic pedagogy, a child risks being regarded more as an array of successes and failures, an array of scores, and less as a whole person. Prophetic pedagogy is founded on fixed ability thinking, itself a long-standing feature of schooling. Such thinking holds that children come in kinds, that one child is, once and for all, “of low ability”, another “bright”.’

ENJOYING ACHIEVING WHAT THEY SET OUT TO DO

Both Ruby and Seth enjoy reaching their goals. They show satisfaction but they are not looking for external praise or rewards because they met the challenges for their own sake – not to get a sticker or a star or hear an adult saying ‘good job’ or ‘well done’.

Carol Dweck’s research suggests that ‘can’t do’ attitudes (fixed mindsets) can be changed into ‘can do’ attitudes (growth mindsets) by paying attention to the ways in which we praise children. All early years practitioners believe that praise is important in motivating children and recognising achievement. But we need to be careful with it.

‘After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I’ve ever seen. Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.’ (Dweck 2006).

This may seem surprising, but reflect on these everyday examples and think about the message the child gets.

When practitioners establish warm, caring relationships with young children, those children want their approval and will be very interested in their reactions. With this sort of praise the child may get a special glow, but it will not last. As soon as they hit a difficulty, their confidence, which is based on other people’s approval (unlike Ruby’s and Seth’s) goes out the window and motivation decreases. If success means they are good, clever and please you, failure means they are bad, stupid and don’t please you – not a good basis on which to continue making the effort to learn.

It is a great pity that well-meaning adults can undermine children’s confidence by neglecting to praise for effort rather than intelligence or ability. When we praise effort, children feel different and motivation remains high.

All three alternatives (see box, left) praise effort and help the child feel in charge and autonomous. The message is clear that you value their effort and that they can evaluate their own process and product.

Case study

Nazreen (practitioner) (talking to Abi and Connor, three-year-olds): This is a very tall tower and I saw how well you worked together to make it so tall. Is it wobbly?

Abi (pointing at Leroy, four-year-old): No, he did help us.

Connor: It won’t never fallen down now.

Nazreen: Leroy, that was kind of you to help.

Nazreen (to Abi and Connor): I wonder if there is something you would like to say to Leroy?

(They both say thank you and Leroy beams.)

Nazreen: Now tell me more about what you learned about tower building. Moylett (2013)

Notice that:

• Nazreen does not say ‘good girl’ or ‘good boy’ or mention being clever.
• She focuses on the process of working together. She does not focus on correcting grammatical errors.
• She encourages the children to remember about saying thank you, but does not order them to do so.
• The children know why she is pleased and smiling at them.

I have talked a lot about children being able to follow their own interests. Abi, Connor and Leroy had access to many open-ended resources for building. However, they have also been taught via careful adult-led instruction on how to use tools they need, for example, woodwork materials and scissors. (If you are interested in this, have a look at the Siren film clips listed below.)

The adults young children encounter are their most important, valuable resources. If we want children to have a growth mindset and be motivated and involved in their learning, we have to model that mindset ourselves. We have to help children to see mistakes as stepping stones for learning and ensure they realise that there is often more than one answer to a problem and that adults do not always get everything right. ‘Oh no! I have forgotten to bring that box in from outside and now it’s all wet – what shall we do?’ Everyday interactions provide plentiful opportunities for this sort of modelling.

When young children are encouraged and supported to follow their curiosity, to feel the satisfaction of meeting their own challenges, to think for themselves, and to plan and monitor how they will go about their activities, they become self-regulated learners who later outstrip children who may have developed more early subject-based knowledge but are more passive in their learning. Motivation and mindset matter!

SIREN FILMS– WOODWORK AND SCISSORS

https://www.sirenfilms.co.uk/library/sam-does-woodwork

https://www.sirenfilms.co.uk/library/rose-hammers

https://www.sirenfilms.co.uk/library/learning-to-use-scissors

REFLECTION POINTS

• How often do you function like a satnav for the children? You know where they should be going, you know the way and you break it all down into easy steps. The children are dependent on you.
• How often do children get to choose a different destination or find their own paths?
• Do you work with any children who prefer to work on tasks they know they can do?

REFERENCES

Banerjee P.N. and Tamis-LeMonda C.S. (2007) ‘Infants’ persistence and mothers’ teaching as predictors of toddlers’ cognitive development’, Infant Behaviour and Development, 30 479-491

Claxton G. (2006) ‘Expanding the capacity to learn: A new end for education?’ BERA Annual Conference

Dweck C. (2006) Mindset, The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books

EY Coalition (2021) Birth to 5 Matters

Laevers F. (2000) ‘Forward to Basics! Deep-level Learning and the Experiential Approach’, Early Years, 20 (2), 20-29

Linklater H. et al. (2016) ‘What Might Be: Against Prophetic Pedagogy’, CPRT Conference

McClelland M. et al. (2012) ‘Relations between pre-school attention span persistence and age 25 educational outcomes’, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28

Moylett H. (2013) Practical Pre-School Books: Active Learning. MA Education

Stewart N. (2022) in Moylett H. (ed) Characteristics of Effective Early Learning: Helping young children become learners for life. Open University Press