Last month, the National Association of Head Teachers held a small but lively conference in Birmingham called “Capturing the Teenage Brain”. Laura Sigsworth, from our Secondary team, went along to get a different perspective on the “dreaded” teenage years.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this conference, aimed at Secondary school leaders in the UK. However, it turned out to be a fascinating insight into current trends and issues in the UK education system, as well as universally-relevant themes of teenagers, psychology and learning. Here are a few things I learned:
Adolescence is a time when the brain is going through immense changes
Dr Andrew Curren, a paediatric neurologist and author, spoke entertainingly about these changes. It turns out, the only other time that we see such huge changes in the brain is during the first few years of a baby’s life. Scientists used to think that the brain was fully developed by the time we reached puberty, but research now shows that the brain doesn’t fully mature until our mid-twenties! In particular, the pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for things like judgement, reason and empathy, is not fully developed. This can explain many negative behaviours we may see in teenagers, like taking risks, poor decision-making, peer pressure and more.
There’s no such thing as “I’m just not good at English”
One of the positives of having a still-developing brain is that it has plenty of “plasticity”. This means that it can change and form new connections through repeated action. In practical terms, this means practice really does make perfect!
Dr Juliet Starbuck, educational psychologist at UCL, advocates that teaching students explicitly about the ability for their brains to form new connections and learn new things can be very motivational. Students might think that because they’re not very good at English, they will never be good at English. Teaching that the brain can and does learn and develop through practice proves that no one is ever simply “bad at English”, they just need more practice.
Let’s talk about “warm pedagogy”
Hywel Roberts, author and educational consultant, ran a great workshop on how to get teenage students to be “bothered”, or in other words, how to get them to care about what they’re learning. This is what “warm” pedagogy is all about – giving students a reason to care.
In the context of English language learning, “cold” pedagogy would be teaching an entire class, for example on describing a city, without giving students a context or scenario for why they might need that language. A “warm” version of that would be telling students that the Olympic committee is coming to their home town, and they have to tell the members of the committee about all the great things they have in their town to persuade them to name it as the location for the next Olympic games.
Even as adults, we can appreciate how easy it is to stop paying attention when information appears uninteresting or unimportant. Let’s make it easier on our teenage students, by giving them a reason to be “bothered”!
Better relationships = better learning
In a dynamic workshop, Ollie Frith, educational consultant from Pivotal Education, talked about managing difficult behaviour in the Secondary classroom, and how school leaders can help support their teachers. Key to his workshop was the idea that better relationships mean better learning. Even the most well-behaved students are more likely to learn if they feel safe, appreciated and included in the classroom.
Ollie then posed a question to the teachers in the room: “What would happen if you stood at the door to your classroom at the beginning of class, every day for a month, and shook the hand of every student who walked in?”
Every student would feel welcome?
Every student would feel included?
A moment of eye contact helps the teacher gauge the mood of each student?
It would be difficult for quiet students to hide at the back?
Even if this might be challenging to implement for every class, it certainly helps readjust our thinking on what it means to create a safe and inclusive classroom environment. If you feel like trying it out, watch the master in action – teacher Barry Jones who set the internet on fire with his personalised handshakes.