Documenting both the students' and the teachers' learning

 

I'm reading through Chapter 4 of A Guide to Documenting Learning and getting ready to join in with the PYPC Bookclub discussion next week.  The focus here is on documentation of learning for both students and teachers.  

• Students can document their own learning and be engaged in metacognitive processes when looking for and capturing evidence of learning.
• Teachers can also document the students' learning and share the artefacts with them so that they can reflect on their own learning.
• Teachers can also document their own professional learning.
• When students share their own documentation with the teacher this can also help the teacher learn, through seeing the perspective of the student.  The teacher gains insight in how the students' understanding is progressing and can help the teacher decide where students need further support.

Students can collect, curate and make their learning visible using a variety of platforms and tools.  Teachers can document their learning in a way that makes their classrooms "action labs" - this reinforces the idea of teachers also being lifelong learners.  Such artefacts can also be used as part of a teacher observation cycle.  

A school can also share the learning that is taking place there.  I remember being part of ASB's R&D team where we published our findings and shared them on our blog.  In this way we were able to show our school community and the wider educational community what we believed and valued as a school.

Photo Credit:  Gerd Altmann on Pixabay