Transformation into happy students
As a learning adviser at SML college I have been amazed by some of the personal transformations that have taken place in students since joining. One particular student anxious, low in confidence and motivation has in the space of 8 eight weeks, started their own project, developed a group of friends and had a complete shift in social interactions and body language. Another student, high in energy who struggled to fit into school, has developed tremendously in their confidence to communicate with others and has benefitted from being allowed the freedom to explore their own curiosity.
Because the College has such an emphasis on the individual wellbeing of each student, we have happy students who enjoy attending, and a happy student has a greater capacity to learn.
Joe Allen, Learning Adviser
Students following their own interests
At SML College because we don't have a forced curriculum, students are allowed to follow their own interests, which results in wonderful examples of creativity. These have included a range of projects on a variety of subjects such as hedgehogs, wild cats, technological impact in medicine and bughouse making, to name a few. Students have also recently started their own podcast and host a regular debate and discussion club where they bring up topics that are relevant to them. This element of freedom and ownership within the college has a positive impact on student wellbeing.
Students have said that:
"At the college, you get the chance to be the captain of your own learning"
"If I want to be pushed at SML I can be pushed, if I want to work independently, I can work independently, the environment suits where I am at"
"I learn to balance learning with play"
"I enjoy not having to wear a uniform, it allows me to express myself"
"I can actually be myself here"
by Joe Allen, Learning Adviser
Making a computer game
SMLG’ (Self Managed League Gaming) is a game creation project that has been supported by learning advisor Louis since March. Its goal is to create a small 2d platform game, made entirely by students on the team. There is a real range of skills between them, and it’s been brilliant to see them working together and filling in one another’s weaknesses.
It has been a slow process, but we now have a variety of gameplay experiments and prototypes, as well as a mass of excellent pixel art, sound effects (two things that none of the children had previously done) storyboarding/writing and music. It has been amazing to witness their enthusiasm over the game, and to collaborate effectively both inside college without any supervision or prompting and through an online program called ‘Discord’. The students each have one or more roles within the team, and have settled into their specialisations but have not been shy to try new things and help one another out.
Recently we had a rare opportunity to visit a professional games studio (Studio Gobo), which everyone found inspiring and fun. The students had a chance to hear from representatives from seven different departments, who gave great explanations of what their jobs were, the ins and outs of their roles and how they got into the industry. The group was extremely well-behaved and mature, and Studio Gobo said they would be happy for us to return.
The game is far from finished, we hope by the end of next term to have a fully functioning demo. One of the older students who is leaving SML College to go to FE College has stated that she would like to continue working on it over the summer, via Discord, which we all found very impressive and encouraging.
“Machine learning and human intelligence. The future of education for the 21st-century.”
The title of this review is the title of Rose Luckin’s latest book and Rose delivered our Presidential Lecture on July 8 at SML College on this topic. Her chair at UCL Institute of Education is in Learner Centred Design. It’s in that capacity that we have worked together in the past and in her latest book she does make reference to research that she did with our students in SML College. So I can’t suggest that this review is a totally independent and unbiased piece.
We have both been totally committed to the notion of learner centred design in terms of the use of AI and computers. Too often shiny new technology has been introduced with little understanding of the context in which is being used and its value (or otherwise) to learners. Our approach in SML College is the same as Rose’s in that the first need is to find out what learners need to learn and then think about how to use the technology (if at all). We need to start with the problem and then go to the appropriate solution (which may be AI or may not), whereas, too often, the techie experts have started with the solution, namely a piece of hardware or software that they then want to attach to a problem or in some cases distort the problem to fit what they have available.
In her new book, she is especially careful to locate AI in its full educational and social context. For instance, she emphasises how as humans what we offer is an ability to work together and to bring a social intelligence to decisions about the application of AI (something AI alone cannot do). She shows how the limited view of learning that has dominated education is unhelpful. If education is just about drilling students in facts and data, then the role of the teacher can be replaced by AI . However for proper human learning the collaboration of learners is central and it’s where AI cannot contribute.
She takes a broader view of intelligence than the stance of IQ-driven educators. Social intelligence is central to human development and how we can best utilise AI in the future. The title of her book is apt, because a great deal of it is actually discussing the way we think about intelligence and the importance of, for instance, metacognition. It is like the process we use in SML College right at the start of the student’s life with us, namely having to think about the way that you think. If we are just thinking within boundaries that are imposed on us, as is the case typical schooling, then that’s an impoverished education. We have to be able to step back and understand, for instance, what we know and what we don’t know and how we can develop our knowledge and skills in a broader context. One of the many areas that she points out, is the notion of achieving mastery in a subject. It requires us to develop a way of thinking about what mastery means and to pursue that to the full, not through competing with others, but from having a real sense of what we mean by the learning we want to undertake. This includes the ability to self-assess – again a process mostly omitted in formal education but which is an important part of Self Managed Learning.
This capability is part of what is technically labelled as self-efficacy. To quote from Rose’s book. “An accurate perceived self-efficacy, based on accurate judgements about what we know, is a key ability for learning and will be so to an increased extent. It will be the most important ability for our future lifelong learning. It is also something that is unavailable to AI.” (Page 131). You can see from this view that she does not approach AI in a gung-ho mode as the answer to all our educational problems. Her balanced and sophisticated analysis is a breath of fresh air in the simplistic debates about AI. Paradoxically this is both a strength and a weakness of the book. Its strength is in the thoroughness of a world leader in her field. Its weakness is that it demands an open minded and in-depth take on a complex subject – and too many people are looking for the simple and easy answers they won’t get from the book.
Ian Cunningham July 2019
The book is “Machine Learning and Human Intelligence. The future of education for the 21st century’ published by UCL Institute of Education Press, 2018.
A Spanish reaction to SML College
My name is Esther Russo and I work as a Vocational and Education Training teacher in the CIFP (El Centro Integrado de Formación Profesional) of Lorca in Murcia, Spain. In recent years my interest on new approaches to learning has grown, especially seeing the results that we have in our classrooms: lack of motivation, problems with managing time and goals, stress, abandonment of the courses, lack of social skills. I can see those even among my students, who are over 16 years old and many times over 18 or 20, are supposed to be really engaged, as they have chosen the courses in our centre.
That is the reason why, when I met Dr. Ian Cunningham in 2018 and I first heard about Self Managed Learning and the SML College, I thought of visiting them in Brighton. Thanks to an Erasmus + Programme I has been able to spend 5 days at the SML College to see how they worked.
In the College, they work with students from 9 to 17 years old, and help them to choose their own goals and challenges, using what are called the Learning Groups and the Learning Agreement. The Group is a meeting in which the students review their learning goals weekly and can have help and advice from their peers about it. They can choose to work on any project that suits their interests, individually or with mates.
The most interesting thing is that is that they choose the fields and the way in which they want to learn about them. And they are not afraid to choose, as there is no wrong choice. Every choice is going to serve learning. The only thing they are requested to do is join a Learning Group and attend the Learning Group meetings, as that is the space where one can help others and be helped and comforted, if needed.
During the week I observed students immersed in many different activities: programming with SCRATCH, making art for selling at the Open Day, drawing, preparing for GCSE exams in one-to-one tutoring, debating about vaccination, researching about ancient civilizations and their culture on death, discussing about the inconvenience of smoking, exposing conclusions about a research on luminescence, making a boat, calculating and discussing a payment plan, and many others.
What I could appreciate from observing the Learning groups was that the students felt totally comfortable to say whatever they want, were it a new idea for a research project or a personal problem. That is a constant in the work at the College, since personal life of the students is not separated from the learning process. Each person is seen as a complete individual, and can express themselves as a whole. Students are seen as individuals. Everyone matters, everybody can express their opinion, and everyone is respected (and is asked to be respectful).
That happens with the Learning Advisers, too. There is a chart in which you can see which skills every Adviser has and can offer help with. Not only subjects, but any knowledge or experience is offered to the students. Every Adviser is not just “teacher of a subject”, but a whole person who can inspire children and youngsters.
This was an extremely inspiring experience for me, and I hope to be able to use some of the ideas in my daily work as a teacher. I can only thank all the SML College’s staff and students for their warm welcome and patience with all my questions. It was very nice to be there and meet you all!
Esther Russo
A discussion about education with comedian Mark Watson
I went to see the comedian Mark Watson doing a stand-up gig at a local club. One thing he likes is interacting with his audience. This time he left cards on tables for us to write on it any opinions we had individually that were seen as odd. I wrote that schooling should be abolished – this was a comedy gig and did need something controversial, even though I don’t hold to this in it’s extreme.
Mark comes on stage and picks out cards to read and one of these was mine. He asked who had written this and why did the person (me) think this. I asked him had he learned anything at school since he was 11 that he found useful on a daily basis. He couldn’t think of anything and, remember, he is an experienced performer who is excellent at responding quickly to his audience.
He then reversed the questioning and asked me if I did anything about this. I explained that we had a programme in the locality that was for young people aged 9-17 and it’s not a school and it has no curriculum, no imposed timetable and no classrooms. He challenged the legality of this saying that it’s the law that children go to school. He commented that getting his nine year-old to school was a problem but that he had to do it. I replied that it isn’t the law and that what we are doing is legal. He said that he would check this in the interval and come back after – and if he was right he’d report me to the authorities (I assumed that this was in jest).
He came back after the interval admitting that he had found out that I was correct and recognised that home education is legal. What’s interesting is;
1. He couldn’t answer my challenge.
2. That he – as a smart 40 year-old with two children - didn’t know the law. And possibly many of his audience were in the same position.
by Ian Cunningham
Education, work and learning
It was common in my school, and I believe still is, for teachers to chide pupils who were not working. Working meant working at a prescribed task from the teacher. Also in modern parlance, there is reference to having pupils ‘on task’. If you are not working at a prescribed problem or task, then it is assumed that you were not learning.
Recently a parent asked me what we would do if a student is not working. I indicated that we may do nothing since it’s not apparent that it’s a problem. Often when I was criticised in school for not working I would be thinking about something not to do with what the teacher was prescribing – but it was productive thinking as far as I was concerned. The notion that work and learning go together is strange to me. For instance, I worked on a production line once. After the first day I wasn’t learning anything. In school, I might be given 10 maths questions to answer. But if I had understood what the learning point was, and had answered the first couple of questions correctly, I could not see the point in another eight that may be increasing in complexity, but did not enhance my learning. ‘Working’ in school is not necessarily equal to learning and on the other side learning does not necessarily equal working.
One of our students has commented on the fact that she spent time doodling in school and was criticised for this but actually it was her way of learning since she had dyslexia and she found that drawing was a more suitable way to record what she was thinking. When she came to us she spent a whole year doodling and drawing cartoons, making figures out of plasticine and seemingly nothing else. It may not have appeared that she was learning but she was. This subsequently produced, two years later, her first graphic novel at the age of 15 and it’s a novel that has received much praise. The publishers were quite shocked that a girl as young as 15 was able to produce such mature material. The book sold out quickly on Amazon.
I repeat that there are lots of times I’ve worked at things and have not been learning and lots of times when I’ve been learning but not working at things. Many writers have indicated the importance of play in learning. Gray (2013) provides a comprehensive analysis of the importance of play, especially for children, but also for adults. Many educationalists head to Finland to find out about the education system because it is seen as successful. One thing they seem to miss is that children in Finland do not go to school until they are seven. The importance of the kindergarten experience and play seems to get missed because people go with blinkers.
Another use of the notion of work is in the imposition of homework on young people. Note that it is not about home learning. The assumption is that person will work on school-directed tasks while they are away from the school. What we do know is that young people learn a huge amount within the home and from people they interact with outside school. One example from our research on both young people and adults. is the value of travel. Unfortunately schools in England fine parents who take children out of school to travel in term time. The Government has demanded that headteachers of schools take a draconian attitude towards this and fine parents. The norm is for parents to be fined £60 for a day out of school for a child that is taken without permission. This rises to £120 if not paid within 21 days and after 28 days parents can be prosecuted. In England overall in 2017/18, there were 260,877 penalty notices issued for unauthorised absence from school. There were 19,580 prosecutions for non-payment of fines. This has gone up from the previous year of 13,324. There have also been ten parents (usually mothers) sent to prison for lack of attendance from their children.
In our College we encourage parents to travel, if they can afford it, because we see the value in it. A good example was a 14-year-old student, whose parents were working for a few months in India. She was able to go with them and carry on with her learning. A lot of the learning was of course about being in India and learning about the culture, language and norms of another society. She remained for the two months she was away in contact with her learning group via a weekly Skyping session. Her group was able to engage for most of the morning with her while she was sitting on a beach in India with her laptop.
This negative attitude towards travel seems to be linked to the whole notion that young people should be working - either working in school or working at home on prescribed school tasks. The notion that there could be important learning by being in another culture seems to have escaped authorities. We do know, of course, that many parents want to take their children on holiday because of the increased prices of holidays out of term time. The assumption is that there can’t be useful learning on holiday. This notion that you don’t learn anything on a holiday is directly contradicted by our research on young people. There’s the experience of different food, different language, different culture - all valuable learning experiences. Our research with senior leaders in organisations has indicated that they have gained a great deal from travelling, not just abroad but also within UK. Hence we encourage parents to utilise the opportunities to travel with their children and for students when they come back from travelling to reflect on what they have gained from any new experiences.
What has been interesting is how ex-students refer to what they learned at the College. Many talk about gaining social skills. Now we don’t teach social skills. We create a learning community where students learn to interact freely with others. Some of the learning comes from structured experiences such as the fact that each and every student gets the chance to chair our morning community meeting. However much of this learning is from the seemingly non-working side of the College – i.e. learning through engaging with others and learning what works and what doesn’t. The weekly learning group also provides a space for each student to reflect on their experiences during the previous week and to consider what next to do.
Here are direct quotes from ex-students from independent research during 2018-9.
"I feel as if the SMLC developed my social skills greatly - perhaps due to the mixed age groups and alternative nature of the people who attended. I didn't do too much academic study, but I don't think I suffered in the long-term from that at all."
"Friendships, Social skills, the importance of motivating yourself."
"Although I don't think I got a lot out of SMLC academically, I think it really helped me to increase my confidence and connect back into society after having been very isolated. I think socializing was the biggest and most positive thing I got out of my experience."
The research also showed how much ex-students valued having a real level of freedom and what they gained from that.
"Allowed me to make decisions about what was best for me and I don't regret a single ."
"By allowing & thriving for independence. If I had not attended SMLC, if I had not been given the opportunity to try and test new things, especially the invaluable work experience with my dad, I would be very, very lost."
"Easing my way into education and social environments has helped me learn and change on my own terms, and be myself more comfortably. Being an accepted part of a community whilst being strange and ever changing helped me grow immensely."
"It allowed me to focus on what I wanted do with my life and provided support for that."
"I think it gave me some time as a teenager to figure out what it is that I actually enjoy doing I may have forgotten that for a while but have gotten back to it of late. I don't I'd be as sure of what it is I want without having attended. Not to mention I'm still close with one or two people from there."
"I made new friends; I got to learn what I want to learn."
Self-confidence was mentioned often as an outcome of the way the community works.
"Build my confidence by being respectful, no shouting or any fear-based learning. Before SMLC I was sick to my stomach sick at school always sad and in the toilet. After leaving I was full of confidence and caught up with all the school work that I had missed which was about a year out of school. I had the confidence to go any school and not let authoritative teachers get me down as much as they used to."
"It helped me to be confident in being myself and knowing that I was free to be interested in and love whatever I want. I would say it helped me a little in managing my own learning and reaching my goals but I also know that those things are quite natural for me as I've always had a really clear idea of where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing. SMLC definitely did a lot for my confidence. "
This latter quote in its mention of learning to manage one’s own learning – and life – is supported by other comments.
"I have made many different friends during my time at SMLC. I have also learnt how to better my time and organise myself. This has come in very useful when trying to juggle college, work and social life."
"It definitely helped me with art. I think it also made me more independent."
The last area I want to mention here is on the emotional learning that goes on. Students feeling valued and supported. And developing emotional maturity to with that.
"It made me feel like an actual individual rather than just another name on a sheet, I have so many good memories from SMLC"
"Well I probably would have killed myself (without SMLC), I wasn't enjoying being home-schooled, I had no friends, it also helped me achieve the necessary qualifications to move on to college which I also didn't really like."
"I find myself to be much more emotionally mature than my peers. I know myself - who I am, What I need, What I want - much better than anyone else I know. I know, appreciate and respect the value of education because has it has not forced upon me in a careless and rigid way. I have experienced freedom in my life and my education, which I don't think many people do or at least feel they do and this has reinforced my belief that 'doing life' in your own way and outside of the norm, in a way that benefits and suits you, isn't naive or stupid. I can say that everything I've done has been my own choice. And knowing that I have this freedom continues to inform my decisions and thus makes me very happy. I can't blame anyone else for these choices and I can't be 'sour' because things haven't worked out for me. Further, in terms of higher education - having studied for my GCSEs more or less of my accord and in my own way, I found the work at College to be relatively easy in terms of reading etc and especially in terms of University - I have the motivation to read etc and then apply and evaluate that."
"I made four good friends, two of which I am still very close with now. The staff were very supportive but not pushy. I felt comfortable and secure there. I felt valued and important. I was able to get GCSEs to progress to college (which I thought I wanted at the time)"
The learning and development that ex-students cite has not come from ‘working’ in the way that many parents and teachers would demand. The learning looks almost accidental and yet it is the core what is important. Young people are developing their identity in this period of their lives and they are learning to develop what has become labelled ‘emotional intelligence’. This emotional maturity has been shown to be more important than IQ or academic qualifications in adults satisfaction with life and success in their careers (see e.g. Clarke et al, 2018).
References
Clarke, A.E., Fleche, S., Layard, R. Powdthavee, N., and Ward, G (2018) ‘The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course’. Princeton University Press: Princeton
Gray, P. (2013) ‘Free to Learn’. Basic Books; New York
Ian Cunningham, 2019
SML College is exactly what "teaching" should be
As a trainee teacher in mainstream education, I found teaching the subject I love, very difficult. The essence of learning is curiosity, expressiveness and freedom and unfortunately, the Science curriculum is being taught at young people instead of being engaged with, in an exciting and critical way. At SML, young people have the freedom to explore and inquire into a world where a lot of mystery is still to be revealed. I have the opportunity to help tutor students who want to study GCSE Science, coupled with providing fun workshops that cover a broader range of knowledge than the national curriculum does not always include. I also enjoy supporting students with CREST award projects. CREST is a UK award scheme that recognises success and enables students to build their skills and demonstrate personal achievement in project work. This involves students creating a project that they are interested in and conducting research and experiments as they explore.
SML College is exactly what "teaching" should be. Not lecturing a class of students who do not want to be there, but naturally encouraging, sparking imaginations and developing meaningful relationships with intrinsically motivated human beings. It's the future of education.
Joe Allen, Learning Adviser
Empowerment - from a presentation at the International Democratic Education Conference in Bangalore India
At the end of November I attended the International Democratic Education Conference in Bangalore India. As part of the presentation that I made I explored the notion of empowerment. I used the model shown below which summarises the way in which we think about empowerment in Self Managed Learning College. It uses the idea of traffic lights to highlight the difference between non-negotiable, negotiable and empowered activity.
Like any organisation we have some non-negotiable elements. These include that we start the day with our community meeting. However what people say in the community meetings is up to the individual. They are empowered to say whatever they like about anything provided that they adhere to a few simple rules that the community has agreed. The rules were negotiated between students and learning advisors. At the beginning of each term we revisit these rules and then what is negotiated and agreed is posted on the wall and everybody signs up to the agreed rules. These become then temporarily non-negotiable until next time we want to negotiate changing the rules.
Students are empowered to undertake any learning they want. However if they need resources such as a room or the time of a learning advisor, they may have to negotiate this. Once they’ve negotiated a particular time to use a room, or to have time to work with a learning advisor, then they are empowered to get on with it and to engage in whatever learning they want to undertake. Unlike in school our students can go anywhere in the building provided they are not interfering with other people’s activities. It has been interesting when we talk to new students, who have been in school, that one of the things they comment on is the fact that they can go to the toilet when they want without having to put their hand up and that they can go into the kitchen any time they want to get themselves a drink or something to eat. They are empowered to do this.
One non-negotiable is that everyone is in a learning group of five or six students with one of the learning advisers there to assist the group. In the group, individuals are empowered to say what they like in any way they want provided they stick to the ground rules that the group agrees. Once the group has negotiated these ground-rules they become temporarily non-negotiable. Within those rules individuals can say what they like. One of the rules generally is that participants should respect other people in the room e.g. by not interrupting them when they’re speaking. However in terms of the content of what people talk about it’s entirely up to the individual – they are completely empowered in this respect.
Another thing that new students comment on is the fact that they can genuinely ask for anything and pursue any learning they want. However there is a distinction between what some writers call ‘freedom versus licence’. That is, students are free to learn whatever they want and to move around the building but not free to interrupt other people’s learning. This would be a distinction between freedom and licence.
This issue of empowerment is important because it occurs to me that many of the schools at the conference that would claim to be democratic, by virtue of having votes, for instance, about aspects of the of the running of the school, don’t really empower students to learn whatever they want. They may still have classrooms and a timetable; it’s just that students may have the freedom not to attend classes. For me the most important thing is the empowerment to learn anything in any way that the person wants, provided that they negotiate any resource or other constraints.
Self Managed Learning is about people managing their own learning but with support. It isn’t a complete free for all as there does need to be negotiation about how we do things. We also have the law of the land that has to apply. In this sense it is non-negotiable. For instance, stealing or acts of violence are against the law and therefore don’t need to be discussed because they are non-negotiable. Our community has to operate in a context which we must respect.
Conclusion
The distinctions I am making are important. New students coming to the College often find that it takes time to adjust. The notion that asking for anything is acceptable seems strange to individuals who have been used to a context where they are discouraged from asking – for anything. And then they might need to recognise that getting what you want might need a negotiation. Our aim is always to try to find a way to empower students to get on with whatever they like and minimise constraints. However having a few negotiated rules helps students to know the boundaries that they need to work within.
Ian Cunningham, Dec 2018