The following article is extracted from About PEEL,a booklet intended to provide an overview of the project.  The booklet begins with 15 anecdotes that were selected to illustrate what PEEL teachers have done in different subjects, year levels and when tackling different problems of learning.  The booklet, in other words, gives the reader examples of practice, before drawing these together with the more general comments that follow.  This CD, of course allows readers to sample far more practice, but the original set of anecdotes are all on this CD and can be read as a group by calling up "All Articles", selecting by "Location" and then scrolling down to the location "About PEEL".

WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF PEEL?

(1) To generate more active, purposeful and independent learning by giving students training in how to learn. This process involves changing students’ attitudes to and conceptions of learning as well as their actual learning behaviours.

(2) To assist teachers in developing new understandings, expertise, attitudes and behaviours which will promote such learning.

(3) To continue to develop and refine the strategies and procedures used to achieve aims 1 and 2. This involves an on-going study of change as well as of learning and teaching.

How do you achieve these goals?  

This question cannot be adequately answered in a brief document such as this one. Learning is a complex and multi-faceted and changing learning requires a range of activities and actions; in no sense is there a single ‘five step pathway to good learning’, however we will offer a few general comments. Learning from the PEEL Experience, describes in more detail how the goals are being achieved.

How do teachers select procedures?

 PEEL involves training students in a range of different sorts of learning. Several of these involve questioning: questions where the student calls for specific assistance, questions which probe for weaknesses in a particular explanation, questions linking current work to earlier work or to the outside world, questions seeking meaning. We believe students need to be taught how to ask each of these sorts of questions about their work. Different procedures tend to promote different aspects of good learning (including different question asking). Teachers select procedures suitable to their current classroom situation and, over time, aim to focus on a range of aspects of learning.

Aren’t many of these procedures keeping students dependent on the teacher?

 As Rosemary Sullivan's (Deduce the Practical Design From Limited Information) and Judie Mitchell’s (History Link Ups and Work Out What You Need to Find Out - History) anecdotes illustrate, many of our formal classroom procedures are only means to an end; they are not an end in themselves. A procedure becomes less necessary as students start to spontaneously display the aspects of good learning which this procedure was designed to promote.

How do students react to attempts to change their learning?

PEEL involves change in students’ attitudes to and conceptions of learning as well as to their learning behaviours. Our early failures have shown us that many behavioural changes are impossible without changes in other areas. Attitudes change slowly; several of the anecdotes reported how teachers raised students’ awareness of the benefits of better learning. Sometimes this is planned, sometimes (as in Alison Philpot’s Maths anecdote Interpretive Discussions in Mathematics) it is not. Teachers need to be able to recognize and react to unexpected and useful events.

How do teachers acquire this expertise?

We should stress that teacher change, like student change, ought to be slow and to flow from experience and reflection on that experience. Teachers, like students, need to start by simply trying a few new procedures.

Is PEEL applicable to all subjects?

The procedures which are most useful do vary from subject to subject. We are not sure if PEEL is equally applicable to all subjects, certainly all teachers who have joined so far have been able to apply the ideas to their classrooms, but sometimes in different ways. History and Woodwork have often required a focus on students’ monitoring and planning their progress on extended tasks; English teachers want students to identify areas of personal weakness in a range of skills; Science often focuses on the retrieval of students’ existing ideas for the world around them and the contrasting of these with scientists’ explanations for the same phenomena. Nevertheless we would not wish to exaggerate these subject specific differences; most of our list of poor learning tendencies can be regularly found in any classroom.

Do you have different goals and approaches at different year levels? Is PEEL applicable in Year 12 subjects?

There are clear year level differences and in some ways it would be convenient to be able to specify what is achievable, and how, at each year level. For several reasons this is not possible. The desired student changes are substantial; one year is not enough to achieve all of them. There is no question that an experienced teacher can generally make significant progress in a year, but how far s/he will get depends on the students prior experience. In addition, the progress of a class in any one year will also depend on how many other PEEL teachers that class has in that year. This is why it is so important that a number of teachers in a school are involved. Moreover, factors such as the times of the classes and the personalities and group dynamics of a class can be very influential (both positively and negatively).

However, we can say that with younger classes we rarely attempt to convey a general, and hence more abstract, overview of good and poor learning. Discussions about aspects of learning are closely linked to recent incidents. Older students, as expected, do have a much greater capacity for discussion about general issues of learning. Some senior classes have achieved quite sophisticated understandings of the ideas behind PEEL.

We firmly believe, as Carol Jones’ (Year 12 English - Students maintaining Their Own Report) and Ian Mitchell’s (Processing Written Notes In Year 12 Chemistry) anecdotes illustrate, that PEEL is perfectly applicable in Year 12 subjects. It offers ways of coping with some of the constraints and pressures of the VCE curriculum and assessment.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT PEEL?

Many of the goals of PEEL and the behaviours we are aiming to promote are not new, many (if not most) innovations in education have aimed to have students learning more actively than is commonly the case at present. Damien’s Geography anecdote (Rubbish Notes in Geography) illustrates just how phoney much of the apparent learning in classrooms is. However, most past innovations have not succeeded. There are a number of reasons for this. We believe one is that it is not enough just to get students doing different things in classrooms. They need to understand the nature of good and poor learning and they need to genuinely support learning which is purposeful, informed and intellectually active. They must value such things as thinking new ideas through, spending time on ‘wrong’ answers, trying to identify what they don’t understand and so on. They must be generally aware of what they are doing, whey they are doing it and what they will do next. They need strategies for controlling their own learning – for linking current work with earlier work, existing ideas with the outside world, for monitoring their progress and so on.

This is one important difference about PEEL – all of the anecdotes reflect how the teachers use theoretical ideas to break learning up in to a set of component parts and select and design procedures to achieve these different aspects of learning. PEEL is certainly not an answer to all problems, but it does synthesize theory and practice in a way which offers very useful advice to practising teachers.

One important component of this theory is a set of what we call Poor Learning Tendencies. These were an important outcome of John Baird’s earlier research. John found persistent poor habits or deficiencies in the learning displayed by students. These offer PEEL teachers very specific guidance. For instance Anthea Wilson tackled a lack of monitoring and planning by her woodwork students (Weekly Progress Sheets In Woodwork), Judie tackled the failure of her history class to link the school content with their own world (History Link Ups), Rosemary tackled the failure of her Science students to give any attention to the purpose (and hence design) of practical activities (Deduce the Practical Design From Limited Information), and Ian intended to promote the retrieval and restructuring of students’ existing views on forces (Restructuring Students' Ideas About Force and Motion). Sandra di Mieri tackled the problem of students linking one class with another and retaining content from one year to the next in her LOTE linking activities (LOTE - Vocabulary Recall) and Bronwyn Knight (Drama - Where I Lost Marks) and Carol tackled the problem of students not learning from their mistakes (Year 12 English - Students Maintaining Their Own Report).

PEEL gives teachers and students detailed and concrete descriptions of what good learning looks like. Mick Dunne (General Learning Checklists) was using a procedure to give his students an overview of several components of good learning. This illustrates another important feature of PEEL – it is about teaching students how to learn. Mick and Damien Hynes (Questioning The Video) were teaching students how to ask different sorts of questions. Ian (Processing Notes in Year 12 Chemistry) and Carol (Year 12 English - Students Maintaining Their Own Report) were teaching students how to read text material, Judie (Work Out What You Need to Find Out - History) found a way of generating a need to know.

The students’ comments (What students say about PEEL) indicate that they had changed both their conceptions of and their attitudes to learning.

The above comments focus on student change, but one reason so many educational innovations have failed is that they have neither appreciated the amount of teacher change involved nor provided structures to support it. A second difference of PEEL from many (but certainly not all) other innovations is that it is structured to allow continual identification of and provide support for the necessary teacher change. Central to this process is reflection on practice; the comments by the teachers indicate how crucial this has been and how much they value it. It is very stimulating to participate in cross-faculty meetings which focus on professional practice.

The original ‘theory’ behind PEEL came from academic and a third major difference about the project would be the way it has involved teachers and academics in a collaborative research effort.

OUTCOMES

What does PEEL teaching look like?

The 12 Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning that are a search category on the CD and described in the article Descriptions of search categories (see Using the CD-ROM on the initial splash screen) emerged after 12 years of PEEL.  They summarise the features of teaching that PEEL teachers have reported as consistently stimulating the first goal listed in this article.  In no sense do we claim these are all new; most teachers will be able to map some of these principles onto their existing practice.  Nevertheless virtually all teachers who have been involved in PEEL  do report that their practice does change in important ways.

What would be different in the classroom?

 It is certainly not true that every lesson will or ought to look radically different, however some will. What will be different in any classroom obviously varies from teacher to teacher, however the anecdotes illustrate a number of common changes.

• Judie’s use of Link Ups (History Link Ups) and Damien’s use of the convict video (Questioning The Video) illustrate how teachers work much more from students ideas, questions and comments.
• There is much more discussion, both planned and unplanned, this often places intense intellectual demands on the student (and the teacher), but it also leads to more motivated and involved students.
• There is less automatic acceptance of the teacher’s ‘right’ answer. · Rosemary’s anecdote (Deduce The Practical Design From Limited Information) illustrates the greater focus on the purposes of classroom activities.
• Issues of learning are routinely mentioned and both students and teachers have a far greater awareness of issues of learning.

All of this makes classrooms much more collaborative, vital, interactive, flexible and, consequently, less prescriptive. This is a higher risk option for teachers – the rewards of success and the worst case consequences of failure are both increased in a more collaborative classroom. PEEL requires effort and ‘stickability’ on the part of the teacher. We have found progress by the teacher is absolutely dependent on attendance at meetings. Without that support, motivation, encouragement and source of new ideas, little change occurs.

What is in it for students?

You cannot mandate intellectual activity, students have to believe in the benefits of more active learning. The students’ voices indicate how changes in their conceptions and attitudes to learning developed.

One benefit was stressed by some Year 9 students who said that the teacher was ‘more like a friend...like someone beside you, instead of above you...someone working with you instead of against you’. In other words they greatly appreciated a more collaborative and supportive atmosphere for learning. Students have also stressed that they understand the work better, have a greater awareness of what they do and don’t understand, a greater understanding of what they have to do, better personal organization and, as a consequence of all of this, more confidence in their own learning.

We should stress that different students react differently and some reject PEEL, most commonly because it requires more intense intellectual effort, however the project would certainly have folded if we had not had a generally positive response.

What’s in it for the teacher?

 As several anecdotes illustrate, the students are more motivated, more involved and less often negative to classroom activities. Classrooms tend to be much more exciting and interesting places to be in. As Anthea illustrated (Weekly Progress Sheets In Woodwork), having students who are more able to plan and monitor their work means the teacher is less pestered by ‘what do I do now?’ demands and hence able to discuss more important issues with students. Carol’s anecdote (Year 12 English - Students Maintaining Their Own Report) described how PEEL helps students gain more, and hence pay more attention to teachers’ comments on their work.

The quotes from teachers indicated how much they valued the cross-faculty interaction and the very considerable professional development which they gained from the project.

Teachers have become more sensitive to aspects of good and poor learning, more reflective, more expert in a range of procedures and, consequently, more innovative in devising ways of improving learning.

Teachers have also benefited from enhanced professional self-esteem – they find their work more stimulating and rewarding, and feel more effective.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM AND ASSESSMENT

PEEL can fit in with most curriculum and assessment structures. However these do need to allow teachers and students flexibility to change or alter direction. Schools which insist on rigid common coverage of content and common testing would find PEEL strategies difficult to implement.

None of the basic structures of curriculum or assessment at Laverton Secondary College have changed with PEEL. However within these structures, much has changed. Content is often covered in more depth, and this sometimes means less content is covered. This does not disadvantage students. Because of the depth which PEEL teachers reach students are able to master new related areas quickly and easily. The students, having truly mastered the concepts and ideas in a given topic, will easily cope with other aspects of the same topic.

Teachers are more flexible about what and how they teach within a set topic. Negotiation about methods and aspects often occurs and students are more motivated by their increased control over their curriculum. Teachers encourage and respond to students’ questions and suggestions which may lead to different approaches. However teachers find the class still reaches a very similar destination in the end but the route often changes to one which involves the students’ ideas, interests and questions.

Such changes in curriculum must mean changes in assessment. Assessment must reflect what has been going on in the classroom if the classroom strategies are to be taken seriously.

Teachers still assess students by all the usual means: assignments, projects, homework, tests, exams. Assessment has been and still is continuous and diagnostic. It is now however much more diagnostic, much more continuous, much more open and co-operative, and much more is asked of the students. There is less emphasis on recall, and more on higher order cognitive skills. They see assessment as integral to the learning process, not so much as an end product which sorts the students out. Teachers have become much more imaginative in the range of procedures used for assessment and generally tend to set much harder tasks. A number of assessment procedures are described on this CD and in chapter 10 of Learning From the PEEL Experience.