Learning Conferences and Reporting

Learning Conferences and Reporting

I want to try and communicate clearly in regard to our Learning Conferences coming up again in Week 10 of this term. I want to plant the seed early so we can hopefully all be on the same page when it comes to this process. Holding collaborative learning coferences with the children involved is a major shift from the more traditional teacher led parent interviews. The reason for this shift is based on the impact of each approach on children's learning. While parent/teacher interviews were an effective way of reporting, 3-way conferences are effective for reporting for learning. This is not just semantics, in one instance we were telling you what was happening in the other we are trying to establish what is happening and how we can work together to improve your children's learning.

We still want to report assessment results and these will be considered at learning conferences but this is certainly not the purpose of the conferences. In an effort to shift away from this focus we are developing an online 'Parent Portal' that will have all your child's formal assessment results logged onto it each term. We hope by doing this you always have an idea of how your children are achieving at school and there will be even more focus on collaboratively planning next learning steps at learning conferences. If you have concerns do not leave them until conference time!

This collaborative approach is part of our goal to include students and parents actively in the learning process. This is not on a whim in fact there is strong research evidence to suggest that what we are doing will make a difference. John Hattie, formerly of Auckland University published a ground-breaking book, 'Visible Learning' in 2009. In this book he examined evidence from over 800 research studies from around the world and analysed the effect different aspects of education have on student learning outcomes. The scale used to measure the impact of different approaches is called effect sizes, an effect size of 0.40 is seen as a level where an approach or innovation enhances achievement in such a way that we can notice a real-world difference (0-0.39 is still making some difference).

To give you an idea of the sorts of things that you can do to make a difference parental participation in learning is identified as having an effect size of 0.56. However this support when connected with surveillance type participation has a very small effect size of 0.12. Homework supervision has an effect of 0.19. When parental participation is connected to have high aspirations and expectations (in a psoitive and supportive way) there is an effect size of 0.80! By holding 3-way learning conversations we are hoping to cultivate these positive expectations as a team.

Three other results from the research connected to our collaborative approach to conferences are related to setting goals, feedback and self-questioning. Conferences provide a perfect opportunity to set challenging goals and these are noted as having an effect size of 0.56. The conferences and books being sent home (with suggested question prompts) provide the forum for quality feedback to be given to students. Feedback is huge in terms of outcomes for students having an effect size of 0.73. Self-questioning is when students develop the ability to question their own learning (progress and achievement) and again our conferences provide a forum for this. This has an effect size of 0.64.

I hope this explains our approach to learning conferences. I know it is different to what you may have previously experienced but I am confident that if you are committed to being an active participant they will be far more valuable than a 'status report'. We are continuing to develop strategies within our classroom that support students in discussing their own learning and there are some fantastic, innovative ideas within our classrooms relating to student reflection. I hope you see the progress we are making and support us by making sure learning discussions with your children are a regular occurrence in your house.