T&L Blog: How metacognition skills in monitoring progress improve student outcomes

Dear WA Colleagues, I would like to share with you research based evidence of how the process of monitoring progress can improve student outcomes:

The Impact of Metacognition on Monitoring Progress and Student Outcomes

Research has consistently shown that metacognition (the awareness and regulation of one's own thinking processes) plays a crucial role in enhancing student outcomes. One key aspect of metacognition is monitoring progress, where students actively track their understanding, performance, and progress toward learning goals. When students engage in self-monitoring, they are more likely to identify gaps in knowledge, adjust their learning strategies, and ultimately achieve better academic results. This process of self-regulation fosters independence, critical thinking, and adaptability, all of which contribute to improved learning outcomes across various subjects and educational levels.

Key Findings:

• Improved Academic Performance: Students who are taught to monitor their progress demonstrate higher academic achievement. This is because they are better able to evaluate their own understanding, set realistic goals, and make necessary adjustments in their learning strategies (Pintrich, 2002).
• Increased Motivation and Engagement: Self-monitoring increases intrinsic motivation as students gain a sense of ownership over their learning. They are more likely to persist through challenging tasks, which leads to deeper engagement and mastery of content (Zimmerman, 2008).
• Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills: Students who regularly monitor their progress are better at identifying when they need help or when they have misunderstood a concept. This self-awareness improves their ability to problem-solve independently or seek assistance when needed (Efklides, 2011).
• Feedback Loop: Metacognitive monitoring provides a continuous feedback loop, where students assess their performance, make corrections, and re-evaluate their understanding. This iterative process supports long-term retention of information and skills (Schraw, 1998).
• Application Across Disciplines: The benefits of metacognitive monitoring are not limited to a single subject area. Research shows that students improve their learning outcomes across disciplines—whether in mathematics, reading comprehension, or science—when they actively track their progress (Veenman, 2012)

Classroom Strategies to Encourage Metacognition:

• Self-Assessment Checklists: Providing students with checklists to self-assess their progress can help them become more aware of their strengths and areas for improvement.
• Reflective Journals: Encouraging students to keep reflective journals where they document their learning process can deepen their metacognitive skills.
• Goal-Setting Sessions: Teachers can guide students to set specific, measurable, and time-bound goals, and regularly check in on their progress.
• Think-Aloud Protocols: Asking students to verbalise their thought processes while solving a problem allows them to reflect on their strategies and improve upon them.
• Some examples are shown in the teaching and learning blog this week.

Bibliography:

• Efklides, A. (2011). Interactions of metacognition with motivation and affect in self-regulated learning: The MASRL model. Educational Psychologist, 46(1), 6-25.
• Pintrich, P. R. (2002). The role of metacognitive knowledge in learning, teaching, and assessing. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 219-225.
• Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26(1-2), 113-125.
• Veenman, M. V. J. (2012). Metacognition in science education: Definitions, constituents, and their intricate relation with cognition. In A. Zohar & Y. J. Dori (Eds.), Metacognition in Science Education (pp. 21-36). Springer.
• Zimmerman, B. J. (2008). Investigating self-regulation and motivation: Historical background, methodological developments, and future prospects. American Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 166-183.

CPD Reflections: Collaboration with School 21

By Sophia Evans

Part of WA’s strategic focus is to develop the curriculum collaboratively, with a whole-school perspective. This term, the maths department was fortunate enough to engage in this process through collaboration with another school! Working with people from another school is something that most neglect once we qualify as teachers. We complete contrasting school placements as part of teacher training but rarely get the opportunity to go and visit other schools after this point. Working with others in different schools not only gives us the chance to think about new approaches to teaching and pedagogy, but also allows us to be validated in what we are currently doing.

Last week Michael and myself hosted 4 teachers from School 21, an all-through school in Stratford (East London). As part of their staff development, School 21 sends all teaching staff to visit other schools on their INSET days. Thanks to Ruhina (and our alumni Tom Holmes - their head of department) we were able to host their KS3 Maths Lead and three of their colleagues. During their time with us, they visited our lessons and fed back to our department our strengths and areas for improvement. 

It was useful to hear feedback and ideas on how we can add more stretch to our KS3 curriculum, something which is incredibly useful based on our feedback from previous departmental reviews. They shared suggestions of “mastery style” activities we can add as depth tasks during lessons, such as “how many representations of a fraction can you give?”. They told us that the behaviour in our lessons was great for learning (thanks to our school’s behaviour policy!) and that our use of language in lessons (e.g. emphasising the difference between a variable and constant in algebra) was something they were going to feed back to their department and wanted to implement in their lessons.

I particularly enjoyed talking about maths curriculum with their KS3 Maths Lead as both of us shared similar philosophies of teaching. We discussed approaches to teaching algebra with manipulatives, how retrieval can be embedded into lessons and assessment without being tokenistic, and how project-based assessments can allow students to explore a topic through a student-led approach. 

This process of working collaboratively with teachers from a different school with a similar context to ours was incredibly insightful for not only myself but other colleagues in our department. Hearing strengths and weaknesses from an outside source, as well as new suggestions on how to improve, left us engaged and focused on how we can improve both departments. I would love the opportunity to return the favour and go visit their maths department with some of our colleagues to help strengthen this relationship between our two departments and give us the opportunity to work together and share our passion for mathematics.

CPD Reflections: Importance Of Professional Learning

By Sayef Khan

As educators, are we still students?

“In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn”  Phil Collins

 

Westminster Academy gave me the opportunity to attend a three-day CPD organised by IBSCA (IB Schools & Colleges Association) to complete the Category 2 training for the new IBDP Business specification delivered by Paul Hoang (Author of IBDP Business Management). 

 

I had the privilege to meet DP Business teachers from across the globe and be able to have access to how the new course is delivered in different cultures and learn a range of classroom practices. My intention in attending the CPD was to learn more about my subject however I left with more enriched knowledge. 

 

The training required me to return to the ‘student chair’ and learn from other Business specialists which reminded me that there are always more aspects of the subject to learn that could be applied to my teaching and learning - you just need to seek it!

 

It’s essential to be aware of the changes occurring within the external environment and the changes within teaching practices as factors such as technology have required us to make necessary adjustments to our teaching to continue enhancing student learning. However, continuing to learn can sometimes become hindered, if we forget the importance of teaching students the ‘hidden’ curriculum - it’s even more important to have access to the resources to do this. 

 

So why is it important to continue learning as educators? 

1. As mentioned, it enables teachers to become confident in going beyond the curriculum 

2. Increases your passion for teaching your subject

3. Improve student outcomes

4. Most importantly, encourages each other to become better educators.

 

Questions to reflect upon:

1. Are there opportunities to teach beyond the curriculum during our lessons? If not, what are the barriers?

2. How do I get access to effective resources to incorporate within my teaching and learning? E.g online resources/colleagues

3. Within our schedule, where can we find the time to continue learning about our subject?

 

If you have any insightful suggestions/thoughts please do share them! I would welcome any feedback.

 

Further reading: 

Beames, S., Higgins, P.J. and Nicol, R. (2012) Learning outside the classroom: Theory and guidelines for practice. New York, NY: Routledge.

CPD Reflections: MA In Educational Leadership

By Divisha Patel

In 2020, I decided to embark on a Master’s in Educational Leadership at UCL-IOE. Initially, I was worried about how I might manage the workload of both my role here in WA as a Director of Learning, and the various readings and assignments I would be required to engage with in order to be successful in my MA. However, along the two years, I have found this learning to have had a hugely positive impact on my work here at WA and how I lead the Humanities team. 

Module 1: Leading Change and Improvement

This module involved learning about policy change through education in line with the changes in political leadership; different styles of leadership that exist in education and their various interpretations, strengths and weaknesses; and approaches of change management. The learning around leadership styles were particularly pertinent for me as I embarked on the new role of DOL for both Humanities and Enterprise. I really wanted to create a new identity and vision for this new amalgamated team, so that each subject and teacher felt a sense of belonging to the new ‘Humanities’ whilst also remaining true to their passion and pedagogy for their subject areas. I’ve always felt that a team operates best when it is truly collaborative and a sum of its well-functioning parts. Therefore, it was important for me to create and maintain the most effective form of dialogue between myself and the subject coordinators, rooted in professional trust and critical reflection. This approach is often referred to as ‘participative leadership’/’democratic leadership’/’distributed leadership’, where inclusive discussions are at the core. Completing the coaching course provided by the school for middle leaders was a great way to put this into practice and is still an ongoing area for development. Whilst not every decision can be approached in this way, it is what I fundamentally value and where possible, I’ve tried to put it into action. This, then, feeds into effective change management. This was imperative when we were tasked with writing a new KS3 curriculum for Y9 and/or adapting the KS4 curriculum for a 2-year delivery. 

Module 2: Leading for the Learning Community

This module covered the issues and concepts related to effective learning for individuals and organisations. Sub-topics included learning about HR management issues; the role of coaching and mentoring and workload/wellbeing management. The biggest takeaway from this module was the importance of approaching professional learning with a ‘little and often’ approach, which is in line with Jaya and the Academic SLT's vision for WA’s CPD provision too. It was this learning that informed my leadership approach for how best to plant seeds of professional learning within the Humanities department. Something that I’ve implemented at WA that I’m most proud of is the peer-led T&L showcase segment of our Humanities department meetings. 

At the beginning of the term, I allocate slots to each staff member, ensuring that everyone delivers an equal number of sessions for the academic year. Each Humanities member is given the autonomy to do the showcase on anything they would like, such as: 

• A form of AfL/questioning

• A piece of work

• An online resource

• A teaching strategy

• Academic reading/research

  
  

During the T&L showcase, the teacher tells us a little bit about why they have chosen the topic; the reasoning behind the focus and how they implemented/plan to implement the focus in the classroom. As a team, we then discuss how we could be flexible with the focus and its use for specific key groups such as SEND, EAL or different attainer groups. I love watching all staff deliver their showcase, but particularly ECTs, because they always present with passion, genuine interest and an eagerness to be better practitioners. The discussions that follow act as windows into peoples’ teacher personas and whilst not the intention, learn more about who they are as people and their values, and in a profession as emotive as teaching, this is important for building a strong, successful team. Further information about how Humanities is trying to be a research-informed department can be found here.

Module 3: Research Methods in Educational Research

Admittedly my least enjoyable module, this was about learning how to use principles of research design to create and test research questions and select appropriate methods to conduct a robust project. Discussions of epistemology and ontology have never been my strength, but ultimately, I found this module incredibly useful in considering how best to understand a concept/problem, which could then be used as an enquiry for both my own teacher/leader development, and organisational development if scaled up. My assignment was to write a research proposal, which allowed me to prepare for my final report. As someone who is interested in the academic ‘side’ of teaching, I wanted to explore the concept of teacher agency (causing/generating action) within curriculum development and investigating to what extent curriculum leaders have/enact/exercise agency when writing unit plans, lessons and assessments. 

Final Report: The work that I had engaged with for two years culminated in writing up my final research project which was about the role of teacher agency in curriculum development. Teacher agency is about teachers having the ability to act and be change agents, and given that teachers are an increasingly important part of curriculum  design, if not the most important part, then understanding their perceptions of exercising teacher agency and the different influences that can possibly have an effect is imperative for school leaders. The findings showed that curriculum leaders felt like they did have agency in planning their curricula, however accountability measures and performativity stifled this, especially during pinch-points of the school year. For example, many participants said that they felt constrained by external pressures such as government policy, Ofsted, and school performance tables. Whilst these pressures cannot be controlled by a school, the study allowed for some insights into what schools can do to further enable agency, such as providing greater opportunities for collaboration and an increased sense of dialogue amongst staff, which WA has, and is taking steps to address. Opportunities like the PLC meetings, CPD Twilights and departmental QA process, allows curriculum leaders to develop their curricular in line with the school’s vision; latest subject pedagogy; and in an empowered way, by promoting collaborative conversations between teachers, middle and senior leaders. 

Whilst completing a MA has been great in allowing me to learn more about leadership in education, there are plenty of other opportunities to support peoples’ development as effective leaders, and the following websites/organisations/methods have been effective for me so far and I will continue to learn from:

1. TeacherTapp app: this is a free app which asks 3 questions about school life to build a picture of what’s happening in schools, followed by a recommended daily read which acts as a form of quick, ongoing, on-the-move CPD. 

2. ‘Edutwitter’

3. Membership to subject associations 

4. Local networking meetings, which are often passed on by the Academic SLT team for curriculum leaders and subject teachers to attend

   
   

There were various people who helped me along this journey that I am eternally grateful for, namely the participants who took part in my final study; Jaya, for her nurturing line management during this stressful time; Holly, for her sound advice about how best to approach agency within curriculum development; and Ruhina, Bec and Ellie, for their constant encouragement-the best hype women anyone could ask for! 

Further reading: 

National College for Teaching and Leadership (2010) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-strong-claims-about-successful-school-leadership 

Mujis et al (2014), State of the art – teacher effectiveness and professional learning

Briggs et al (2015), Research Methods in Educational Leadership and Management

Fullan (2015), A New Meaning for Educational Change

CPD Reflections: Practitioner Inquiries From ECT2s

By Ben Law-Smith, Ayah Malik & Will Glydon

This term some of our Early Careers Teachers (ECT2s) have been busy working on their very first rounds of "practitioner inquiry" as part of the Early Career Framework. This process empowers teachers to identify areas of the teacher standards they would like to develop further and carry out a project to explore this area and trial a new approach in their classrooms. The process can be broken down into the 4-step practitioner inquiry cycle (as shown below) and is an excellent model to make meaningful improvements to our own practice.

I asked a few of our ECT2s to share what they had investigated for their first inquiries and what they had uncovered:

Can peer-led seating plans lead to more positivity in the classroom, improve discussion and maintain teaching and learning outcomes? by Ben Law-Smith

One of my targets this year is to facilitate better classroom discussion - a key part of Citizenship lessons which often have more speaking tasks than other subjects. I noticed last year that seating plans tended to stifle discussion because they were primarily used as behaviour management tools and placed students next to people they didn't necessarily want to talk to. This was especially pronounced in Y10-11.

I have twelve classes from all KS3-4 year groups and I told students to 'sit where they liked' when they came in for the first time. Predictably, they reacted very positively to this instruction. In each class I explained they had an opportunity to show me they could sit next to their friends but that I would move them all to a prepared seating plan if necessary. To date, four classes out of twelve have remained in peer-led seating plans - my two Y7 classes and my Y10 and Y11 classes. The paired discussion tasks are noticeably better in these classes as students are more at ease and willing to speak to the person next to them. The T1 assessments will clearly show whether on track grades have been maintained or improved upon but AfL in the classroom, peer assessments and book scrutinies have been very promising so far.

Whilst it may not be for every class, experimenting with peer-led seating plans could encourage student-talk during paired discussion work and create a more positive atmosphere in the classroom, especially for KS4.

To what extent does parental engagement lead to the engagement and subsequent attainment of pupils? by Ayah Malik

I focused on a group of Year 8 pupils. I planned to build a regular channel of communication with their parents, through frequent phone-calls home, to see whether this would impact their engagement in lessons and attainment. After each phone call, I made a note of the behaviour and engaanding of key concepts in lessons which was made apparent to me through targeted formative questioning of the students and progress made in assessments.

Moving forward I would like to increase my engagement with parents of all classes where appropriate to ensure I am using this to the children's advantage in order to better their learning and understanding.

What factors impact LPA attitudes towards history? by Will Glydon

I decided to focus on my Year 11 class as I had noticed that in last year’s results, the LPAs in my class did not perform as well as the MPAs and LPAs did. I therefore sought to address this. 

To understand which factors were impacting the LPA attitudes towards history, I decided to do a student survey which I made as a google form. The questions had a wide range as I attempted to target many angles to see what the LPAs were struggling most with. The questions were as follows:

• What do you do when faced with a problem in history?
• Which do you find the most challenging aspect of history?
• How clear is the chronology of what we study (which events happen when)?
• How clear are the writing structures (PEL/COPA)?
• What is something that other teachers do that helps you in other subjects that would also help you in history?
• Which topic do you find most challenging and why?
• What would benefit you more in history lessons?
• What is your target grade?
•  What is the best way that I could help you in history?

The responses were interesting and varied. The list below shows the most useful responses and techniques that I am going to use moving forward to address the issues that came up: 

1. Majority stated that they wanted more quizzes and they find them useful for remembering content

• Add in more Knowledge recap quizzes for retrieval- ensuring a knowledge quiz once a week for Do Now 
• Set more Seneca as homework (every other week) 
• Work with LSA and ensure that they quizzing LPAs whilst helping them during lessons

2. Students are self-sufficient and don't use many metacognitive strategies

• Add in slides about BBC (brain, book, Chromebook) before asking the teacher
• Print out writing structures so they have the information clearly in their books so don’t jump to ask me
• Metacognitive modelling when looking at exam questions and other tasks

3. Remembering the writing structures

• Print out writing stuctures sheet for each question
• Include writing structure questions in the weekly quizzes

My LPA students showed in their responses that they are still quite reliant on me as a teacher to lead from the front and they do not deploy metacognitive strategies to aid their work. This inquiry helped me realise that remembering writing structures is difficult and the students need more support with this. Students had also highlighted how important they found quizzes in other subjects and that this needed to be better implemented into our routines in history.

Putting It Into Practice: Student-Centred Learning

By Holly Youlden

At the start of term, we spoke at length about the importance of learning being student-centred. In this blog post, we are going to explore some of the ways you can put pedagogy into practice by looking at staff reflections, reading, and top tips! 

Staff reflections: 

Having spent a year exploring the topic of “student-centred learning” with their Professional Learning Community (PLC), Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara summarised what this meant in their CPD session during INSET. They summarised what student centred learning means and does not mean in our context in this table: 

What ‘student centred’ does mean in our context

What ‘student centred’ doesn’t mean in our context

Students are given lots of opportunities to talk to each other through pair or group discussion When group work does take place it is well scaffolded and structured Students are given opportunities to reflect on how they might approach a task before doing it Students work on tasks that are appropriate for their ability levels and needs Students have some sense of autonomy over their learning. They feel empowered.

It doesn’t mean there is no teacher talk - direct instruction is extremely valuable when teaching new concepts or modelling It doesn’t mean there is no scaffolding or structure to lessons  It doesn’t mean group work every lesson It doesn’t mean that different groups of students should always be doing something different from each other. It doesn’t mean that students are completely in control of the classroom It doesn’t mean students need to ‘discover’ new learning for themselves. We still need to teach them things.

(From C. Dunn’s “Student-Centred Learning” CPD, 1st September 2022) 

Reflecting on the training, Jenny Scott said her biggest takeaway was “the idea of using choice (which makes a task more student-centred) as a form of differentiation. For example, in the past I have commonly included a gap fill task followed by a stretch question, but what if the more able students could choose to do the more advanced question instead of the gap fill, rather than as an additional task? A consideration that was discussed around this was students choosing an option that wasn't actually the best task for their level, so this is something that I am excited to trial in my lessons in future and see how I can best overcome this hurdle.”. 

Similarly, Jojo Laber from Maths said that this session helped her realise that, “facilitating a student-centred learning environment is more natural than you'd think! Although at first impression it may seem like there's more work involved, it actually becomes a much less energy-demanding lesson when you're sure that the students know what direction to take their learning in for that lesson. It provides the opportunity for students to take ownership of what they're learning and therefore feel more encouraged to engage well throughout the lesson.”

How can I learn more?

Try reading…

• Blog post from Andrew Moore about student-centred scaffolding

• Blog post from Flo Rayner about group work

• CPD slides from Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara about using choice to make lessons more student-centred

• Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn R. Jackson (Professional Learning Library)

• Teaching Walkthrus by Efrat Furst, Clare Sealy, Dylan Wiliam, and Kate Jones (Professional Learning Library)

• Student-centred page on the Professional Learning Platform

Try speaking to…

• Charlotte Dunn- English

• Maya Amara- Maths

• Georgina Abbott- Expressive Arts

• Dipesh Patel- Science

Please share any great examples of student-centred learning with me at h.youlden@westminsteracademy.org.uk!

Bitesize Research: Impact Of Coaching

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week so far. A few years ago at WA, we decided to offer opportunities for middle leaders to train in using coaching skills. Ahead of our next coaching course in November, I was interested to read this research about the use of coaching in schools. Objectives: To understand the existing research available about the impact of teacher coaching in schools and consider the effectiveness of specific coaching models in school improvement Summary:

• This article recognises that there are many different coaching models used in schools - including, but not limited to, instructional coaching.
• The authors examined specifically the impact of ‘contextual coaching’ whereby coaching practices are connected to specific school contexts and features.
• The research conducted by the authors suggests that there is a link between coaching and school improvement, and that this link is particularly strong where there was an alignment between coaching and other forms of collaborative professionalism (a term coined by Hargreaves and O’Connor, 2018). This idea is about how colleagues work together in solidarity by developing deeper relationships with each other.
• The article argues that, in particular, good leadership development was strongly linked to effective contextual coaching.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What do I already know about coaching? How might it help develop me as a teacher, or as a leader?
• How might I use coaching skills with students? What benefits might it have?
• What would I like to find about coaching?

If you are interested in coaching, or have any questions, please do get in touch! Remember, also, we have a MLT drop in every Friday in G06 from 8am - coffee and pastries provided!