Parents and learners

Decades ago, play was something that happened in the school playground during break time. The classroom was emphatically not a place where pupils expected to play games or have fun. Teaching techniques were firmly teacher-centred, focusing on direct instruction. Teachers were the all-knowing source of information and gave lectures or presented information to a class of passive students. Drilling, where students repeat what the teacher says verbatim, and rote learning (memorisation) were key teaching techniques.

In my previous blog post, I explored the challenge of starting students on a journey that leads to deeper, more independent learning by means of open-ended questions. The point is a simple one: if we are going to equip students to be confident, independent thinkers, we are going to have to acclimatise them to the realm of open, challenging, controversial and ambiguous questions – the very questions that tend not to be asked in written examinations, which, as a rule, tend to favour responses that can be learned and matched to a mark scheme.