Metaphors Make the Journey Visible
The learning journey is a complex trail, where students will easily get lost without the tools to navigate it. Michael Absolum, author of Clarity in the Classroom, cleverly relays the importance of students articulating where they are in their learning, where they are going and why it is relevant. While many teachers are tempted to jump into the deep end of Trevor Mackenzie’s Student Inquiry model, where students have the free choice to guide their own learning journeys, we need to be asking if they really are equipped with the skills to float by themselves. Motivated to include student agency and personalisation, teachers across the globe have excitedly embraced the idea of passion projects or genius hours in their classrooms. We relish in student’s dedication to immersing themselves in their personal interests and encourage them to take control. Within this teaching paradigm though, the changing role of the teacher is paramount. An honest reflection of what and how we are teaching as well as what the students are learning is pertinent.
Motivated to include student agency and personalisation, teachers across the globe have excitedly embraced the idea of passion projects or genius hours in their classrooms. We relish in student’s dedication to immersing themselves in their personal interests and encourage them to take control. Within this teaching paradigm though, the changing role of the teacher is paramount. An honest reflection of what and how we are teaching as well as what the students are learning is pertinent.
Setting students up for success in managing their own learning journey should begin in the first years of school and be gradually built upon in the same manner we build on curriculum knowledge and skills. This means explicitly teaching what learning looks like in a range of contexts, involving the students in decisions as much as they are capable, as well as asking them to articulate their location and progress along the way. What this can look like in schools is wide and varied. I have personally seen immense value in creating a metaphor to make that learning journey simplistically visual and easily relatable.
Naturally, a learning journey or reaching deeper thinking is most closely related to analogies of growth, covering distance, getting deeper or higher, inflating, completing a cycle, maturing or metamorphosis. Often, schools incorporate their own personalised symbolism, relevant culture or significant environmental features into their learning metaphor. Stonefields School in Auckland, built on the site of an old quarry, illustrates their learning principles in stones representing the building of knowledge, collaboration, making meaning and breaking through. College Street Normal School in Palmerston North ignite, inquire, interpret and inspire as they journey across a bridge. Gems Wellington Academy in Dubai ride the ebbs and flows of waves as they wonder, discover and apply. At One School Global, we unite campuses globally with an analogy of a mountain journey where students and teachers orientate, navigate and explore to reach the summit. Of course, embracing the hard learning which occurs in a crevice, similar to James Nottingham’s Learning Pit, is an expected part of the mountain journey.
Regardless of the metaphor, the value of a visual concept helps to externalise the learning process: educating students to learn how to learn. In a school where we have been unpacking the stages of learning from building knowledge in the orientation phase, adding our own thinking in the navigation phase, through to synthesizing and creating with self-constructed knowledge in the exploration phase, I have not only seen students articulate how to logically attack a big question, but have heard teachers drawing parallels to mastering new goals in their own personal and professional lives. It has even naturally extended to the structuring of staff professional development in the same way we do for our students. It really becomes a key signature pedagogy for a learning framework that is relatable to life-long learning in the real world.
Back at the classroom level, the mountain metaphor allows us to map out the learning journey ahead. Students learn which questions help us to recall and locate information from primary and secondary sources in order to understand the key concepts in a big question or context. They distinguish these basic questions from those that require their own thinking, decision making or opinion. Furthermore, they associate the relevance of all smaller questions to the synthesis required in answering
the big question. These categorised questions are placed on the mountain in the three phases to illustrate a logical learning path. When students learn how to complete this process for themselves, they are not only engaging with the content and purpose of the learning but the process of how to do that successfully. It is easy to imagine how this skill will transform the student agency, self-direction and intentional thinking during genius hour or passion project approaches.
Although the prospect of students mapping their own learning is enticing and exciting, it would be naive to think they can just because the metaphor provides the framework. There is a lot of distance to be covered before the language of the metaphor becomes a meaningful part of your school fabric. This is what you are aiming for. You can begin with a shared understanding, bringing all stakeholders on board the same page. Include the parent body who we would expect to be having learning conversations with their children. Celebrate the visual component with impacting symbolism in every place that learning and sharing takes place.
Let the learning analogy be clear to even the postie who drops off the mail. Let it hit visitors square in the face as it shouts out,“This is the way we do things around here!”
When the shared understanding exists and the references are in abundance, you will find it easier to weave into the actual learning contexts. Just like anything, the more contexts we see it and connections we have to it, the more we will know it. Do just that. It can become the basis of your learning conversations.
“What part of the learning journey are you in?”
“How do you know?”
“What skills might help you achieve that?”
“Are there any thinking tools that have helped you with
that type of learning?”
“Why are you learning about that?”
“What previous learning will help you to make that
decision?”
Every new term and year, I marvel at the progress students have made in mapping and articulating their learning journeys. From year three students identifying basic questions and thinking questions, to year 5 students recognising questions that compare and connect, to year 7 students mapping their entire learning journey and high school students being able to adapt and edit questions along the way. Consistency has been key in this success. With each successive year, we have added a layer
of what it means to be learning in each stage of the learning journey. Imagine layering overhead transparencies upon the journey illustration to match up appropriate thinking tools, question types, verbs, digital tools or thinking frameworks such as Bloom’s Taxonomy. Depth of knowledge around how we can learn in a variety of ways is easily built up by drawing a new connection to the learning journey each year.
Our evidence shows, with the support of a learning metaphor, students gain ownership of the learning process that is consistent and progressive across a school. The natural progression of students utilising this framework becomes glaringly obvious when your feedback to students at each level becomes patterned with common tangible teaching points for the following inquiry.
These patterns create a rubric which allows students to see how capable they are at directing their own learning. Until students gain these self-directing skills and an awareness of the learning process, they should be supported in each stage. Map out what genius hours could look like within a personalised inquiry through small guided groups, one on one conferences or whole class wonderings. Begin with modelling and teaching the learning process before throwing them in the deep end.
