Guy Claxton - Conference 18th March

Make a difference - use the gems in you class tomorrow:
Celebrate incomplete work - the process
Comment on progress and strategies
Seek feedback from the students
Praise different things
Easy is boring - hard in interesting
Share struggles in the staff meeting
Use - yet to achieved

I came here to steal as many strategies as I can to change the learning for my kids.  It needs to change what I do in the classroom. A call to action.


We make assumptions:
Learning depends not just on the student 'Mind' but what we as teachers think or believe about their 'Minds'. This can very clearly limit the opportunities we give them and what we believe thay can achieve.

We needs to make a SHIFT in our assumptions and practice. 
We have a perception that is inherited from out culture.

Intelligence - central pot of resource:
1. Fixed - predetermined
2. Separate from other partts of our mind - social, practical, emotional
3. We can set a ceiling of what people can achieve base on their 'interlligence'.
4. The size of the 'pot' can be determined by tests or teacher perception
5. Potential - a weasle word - who has the greatest potential?  This word conveys a fixed mindset.
6. The most rational and abstract topics are valued more - maths, physics.
7. Practical subjects that involve the body are ranked as lower intelligent subjects.

What does science say?
Composite: made up of lots of parts
Attitudinal: bound up in attitudes and traits
Physical: Both physical and intellectual
Distributed: We are all intelligent and use tools to amplify intelligence
Social: Born out of convesation and interaction
Expandable: We can increase it by using tools and habits

Intelligence is the sum total of your attitudes of mind.

Link 

As teachers we need to focus on doing no harm with the language of Fixed Mindset.

Composite: 
Combo of developing intelligence:
attention
Investigation
Imitation
Imagination
Experimentation
Reasoning
Reviewing
These aspect are all part of the 'band'. Each part is impotant and plays a role.

Attitudinal:
Accelerators:
 - Growth Mindset
 - Tolerance for uncertainty
 - Fair-mindedness (Need to be fair and see the other point of view)
 - Empathy - perspectives (entertain multiple perspectives)
 - Craftmanship (enjoy the process of improving and tinkering - stick with it longer)
Brakes:
 - Fixed Mindset
 - Intolerance for uncertainty (Confusion is the beginning of the journey)
 - My-side-bias (Jump to a conclusion then spend all your time trying to justify it)
 - Egocentricity
 - Approval

Physical: Intelligence in the Flesh
 - IQ and breathing (relates to intelligence - flow of oxygen to brain)
 - Heart beat and decision making (sensivity to heart beat - predicts problem solving ability)
 - Skin and thinking (conductivity of the skin changes - distributed through entire body - immune, hormones...)
 - Gesturing (the ability to gesture helps thinking)
 - Tinkering /sketching


Distributed: 
We make the world smart so we don't have to be - Andy Clark

We are tool creators and tool collectors from the earliest time.
Our world is characterised by tools that increase our intelligence. Person + tools + +
Do we capatilize on these tools or keep them out of the classroom?
Why do we strip these tools away from people in exam times?

Social:
Inrelligence is a social triumph. - Phil Brown & Hugh Lauder

Two heads are better than one
Communities of practics
Social and digital learning - PLN (Different from school situation - we are all learners)
 - democratic
 - self organised
 - informal

Expandable:
This opens up opportunities for us as educators to build the habits of mind.
 - resilience
 - imaginary (Mental rehearsal - trainable)
 - empathy
 - resourcefulness
 - reasoning
 - craftmanship (Austin's Butterfly)
 - reflection (Visible Learning  - Hattie, P4C, Habits of Mind)
 - collaboration (Not key facts - what can we construct together?)

Colours of the rainbow - do you say "There are 7 colours which are..." or do you say, "Your challenge is to look carefully and see what colours you can see. You need to name them without using the words red, blue...."

Empathy Glasses: 
Getting kids to design their own glasses that allow them to see things from another person's point of view.

The seriousness of learning...
So we make learning boring to prove that the learning is serious?

Rich questions - 45 minutes:
Why do we have 5 fingers and toes?
Three kids and one device - fewer devices than children.

Building reflection: Coaching
Teach kids how to reflect and coach their own learning.
I don't think I asked the right qustions to intensify my learning. So what I need to improve on for the next lesson is..... A task set for the next session to expand her capacity to learn.

So what more can I do?
The best schools are looking for ways to improve.  They are also getting better test scores!

In school we could try: (based on the ideas from the movie showed)
Kids co-construct learning
Run buddy coaching programmes
Real life purposes - science collaborative projects, arts / design show
Run own learning conversations with parents
Part of community projects
2 hour sessions
Challenges across subject areas

Are we building diligent clerks or intelligent explorers!

Questions:
What sot of time fram did a school take to develop waht we saw in the movie:
Four years - developing on from the existing growth mindset.

How do the contributing schools feed into this school.
This journey is about teacher habit change and school culture change. This takes years. One of the strands is getting 'buy-in' from parents and primary schools. It is important to have some consistancy in allowing for these independence skills to be used in the secondary school. We run a training programme where we teach the kids what to do if they are confronted by teachers who don't allow them to use their skills. Don't lose it, just park it.

What can you suggest that will work to educate parents around the need for these changes:
Start with the learners and let the children educate them. Change reporting to communicate the shift in priorities. Communications home should introduce quotations and messages. "Talk to your child about what they are struggling with or that they have mastered."

Some people Rock Think - seeing only the obstacles. 
Water moves around the obstacles and works even though they remain.


What am I going to do a bit differently tomorrow?
Intentionally give opportunity to develop those habits of mind.
Celebrate the process - unpacking as a learning point.
Make the learning co-constructed and more open.
Use real-life challenges that make a difference to the community.