Centre stage paper – Days 1 & 2: The challenge

Supporting the learner: how do we provide support for the deep learner?

 

Our working definition of deep support is this:

‘Deep support demands that schools and teachers should collaborate with other institutions, agencies and people to secure deep learning for students’.

In terms of our specification of the learner in a school where personalisation is embedded (see ‘A new shape for schooling?’), deep support refers to the section in bold:

An articulate, autonomous but collaborative learner, with high meta-cognitive control and the generic skills of learning, gained through engaging educational experiences with enriched opportunities and challenges, ‘and supported by various people, materials and ICT linked to general wellbeing but crucially focused on learning’, in schools whose culture and structures sustain the continuous co-construction of education through shared leadership.

An important note here is that, while support concerns the broader wellbeing of students, including their health, their general security and their freedom from poverty and disadvantage, deep support should focus strongly on learning itself.

The move for schools from the 19th century model of schooling towards one more appropriate to the 21st century is bringing the challenge of personalisation into sharp relief. The legacy of the factory model of schooling, with its producer-led focus on teaching, content-driven curriculum and sharply defined roles of teachers and learners, still pervades our system. The divide that still exists between the pastoral and academic aspects of school life can still be seen in many schools. However, many schools are breaking down this structure as they see it as a barrier to achieving deep support for learning.

Deep support and deep learning

At the same time, schools have been making the shift towards a focus on learning, rather than teaching, and beyond that to deep learning. This shift throws up a number of issues about the relationship and interaction between deep learning and deep support:

• What forms of deep support lead to personalisation of learning?
• What are the conditions for deep support for learning?

In Deep learning – 1, Emma Sims argues that there are three main conditions for deep learning: learning conversations, meta-cognitive control and growing learner autonomy. If deep support is to be focused on bringing about deep learning, then the forms of deep support need to be framed around these three conditions.

Deep support conversations also need to be learning conversations, involving students as active participants in shaping the support for their learning. Schools that are making progress in this area are reshaping their use of student voice, time, tutor groupings and the workforce to ensure that the organisation of schooling creates more effective opportunities for learning conversations to provide deep support.

There is also a clear link between deep support and meta-cognitive control. As students acquire the ability to think about their own thinking, they are in a better position to engage in conversations about their needs and the type of support they require. Subsequently, they become more skilled at monitoring and evaluating their own progress and articulating the types of support needed for them to meet their learning targets. However, as Emma Sims points out, ‘their meta-cognitive control must be developed to such a degree that they know when they need help from others and when they can go it alone’.

The final condition cited for deep learning is ‘growing learner autonomy’. One might think that deep support becomes unnecessary when this condition is achieved. However, learner autonomy does not negate the teacher’s involvement. Rather, here is a shift in role to the teacher acting as a skilled guide, as the learner takes greater control over his or her learning and makes choices about the type of support that is needed, and when it is needed. It may be that, under these conditions, the skills of a mentor or coach are better able to provide the deep support for learning. As the Hanover Foundation, a lead organisation in coaching reports, ‘Coaching encourages [learners] to take full responsibility for whatever actions they take, helping them develop increasing confidence in their ability to conduct their own lives’.

Towards deep support

The SSAT’s working definition of personalising learning is that it ‘means meeting more needs of more students to a fuller extent than ever before’. Over the last two years, schools have been defining what they see as being wrong with student support for learning. Some of the responses are outlined below:

• support is not focused closely enough on learning
• there has been a division of responsibility in terms of academic and pastoral roles
• traditional pastoral systems and structures have been too rigid and inflexible – one size does not fit all
• there has been poor continuity at transitions
• support has not always kept pace with the increased personalisation of curriculum pathways
• the people who are best equipped to provide support are not always available
• staff are not always trained or skilled in mentoring and coaching techniques
• new technologies have tended to support the management of information, rather than the management of learning
• the organisation of the school day and groupings of students restricts opportunities for mentoring.

The move towards deep learning changes the relationship between learners and those who support their learning. Traditionally, pastoral relationships and conversations have tended to focus on providing support for the care and wellbeing of the learner as something separate to their learning. Some might also argue that because the ‘standard pack’ of pastoral support, that has existed until recently, operates in this way, the response to students’ needs has tended to be reactive. Furthermore, because those in these traditional pastoral roles have a heavy teaching commitment, the support for the learner in this situation is often delayed, or inappropriate, or dealt with by someone who simply happens to be there and has the time.

In A new shape for schooling: deep support 1, Sue Williamson states that although ‘schools have made considerable progress in providing a ‘standard pack’ of student support’, this is not enough; not only in meeting the aims of Every child matters but also in achieving deep learning. She points out that deep support needs to go beyond the gateways of advice and guidance and mentoring and coaching to a radical rethink of support systems in the following areas:

• the structure of systems to enable students to become deep learners
• the use of the school workforce
• the materials and tools provided for students and staff
• the use of new technologies
• schools working more closely with other schools to provide a more extensive, consistent and constant package of deep support.

The deep support cluster contains advice and guidance, and mentoring and coaching, although schools are finding that other gateways have an important role to play in shaping deep support. Although many schools have made considerable progress in these two gateways, without an overall restructuring of pastoral systems (involving the gateways of school design and organisation, workforce development and new technologies), mentoring and coaching, and advice and guidance, are still a bolt on extra for many students, consigned to a block of time within the personal, social and health education timetable.

The conditions for deep support

Critical to the gateways informing the development of deep support are the relationships between the parties involved; the nature of and potential for learning conversations; the organisation of time and groupings; and the quality of the data and information informing these conversations. The conditions of deep support have been outlined by Sue Williamson as:

• student learning information database
• resources: other students
• resources: adults and federations
• resources: materials and ICT.

Over the last two years we have found that schools have also used a variety of gateways to bring about such conditions for deep support.

The more established gateway of assessment for learning, combined with the gateways of student voice and new technologies, has led to a greater sharing and use of data and the opportunity for digital tutorials to take place through managed learning environments. In such instances, the traditional problem of time and the notion of support lacking a focus on learning are being overcome.

Through the deep learning gateways of student voice, assessment for learning and learning to learn, combined with the deep support gateways of mentoring and coaching, and advice and guidance, schools are developing peer tutoring and peer mentoring as a means of students supporting - not only each other’s learning - but also their own learning. In these situations, the training required for students to become effective mentors and tutors is also developing their ability to conduct learning conversations, extend their meta-cognitive skills and increase their learning autonomy. In some cases, cross-age tutoring and mentoring have been used, thus providing improved support at transitional phases of schooling.

More recently, with the focus on restructuring the workforce and with the shift towards federations and collaborative ways of working, an increasing number of schools have used this opportunity to redesign their staffing structures. In so doing, they are bringing about a more coherent and cohesive alignment between learning and support and also providing a more effective service for students, parents and all external agencies working with the school. In some cases, this has meant replacing traditional pastoral leaders with multi-disciplinary support teams led by ‘learning mentors’. Often, these staff come from non teaching backgrounds, such as social work, youth work, psychotherapy and the police force and they do not have a teaching commitment. 

Through the gateways of workforce development and school design and organisation, deep support is being shaped by an increasing number of adults other than teachers, who are working both within the classroom to support the delivery of the curriculum, and also beyond the classroom in mentoring and coaching scenarios. Differentiated mentoring by trained adults (other than teachers) for different groups of students (for example, looked-after children, minority ethnic students and refugee students) has also proved to be very successful in meeting both the welfare and the learning needs of these students.

The use of ICT as a means of providing deep support is much more in keeping with the 21st century learner’s experience of support in the world beyond the school gates. Through the use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), many more schools are able to provide a range of support materials and forums for supportive learning conversations (including e-mentoring) for students, teachers and parents to access at a time that suits these stakeholders.

Conclusion

Our definition of deep support has been built around a need ‘to secure deep learning for students’. In order for this to happen, deep support must be framed around the conditions for deep learning and extend through the conditions for deep support. While the gateways of advice and guidance, and mentoring and coaching, provided the starting point for deep support, it is clear that further progress involves some quite complex interactions between a number of the other gateways, and between the deep clusters themselves.

Above all, it is through the emerging notion of deep leadership, with its focus on ‘redesigning education’, that the greatest impact of deep support for learning will be achieved. Neither deep learning nor deep support can be brought about simply by changing one structure for another. As David Hargreaves points out in ‘Deep Leadership – 1’, a change of culture within schools is also needed in order to achieve personalisation: one of co-construction. In practical terms, the issue is not, perhaps, about rethinking pastoral systems and structures as ‘structures are easier to establish and change than cultures’. It is the fact that ‘structures have to be managed: cultures have to be led’ that is the biggest challenge to providing support for the deep learner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ms Corinne Franceschi is Innovation Coordinator, Leadership and Innovation Network at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, in London, UK.

 

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