She considers the ‘illusion of mastery’ and how metacognition can help students avoid falling into this trap with our games players
In Make it Stick, P. Brown, H. Roediger III and M. McDaniel discuss the Science of Successful Learning. In general, it’s an incredibly interesting book peppered with examples of how we learn most effectively. Being aware of how we learn and think, can result in an improved ability to problem solve, decision make and over-come hurdles (apologies for the sport pun!). The content is enjoyable, supported by various examples and easy to consume – it’s almost as if they know how to convey information and make it memorable!
This book begins by addressing how learners can fall into the trap of the ‘illusion of mastery’. This is where pupils think they have grasped what they have been taught but once tested fall short. Frequently the revision strategy for this approach would involve making notes and then reading and re-reading them time and time again, simply creating the feeling and appearance of mastery.
With the return of competitive sport on the horizon, I turned my thoughts to how I was going to avoid this illusion with our Wimbledonian games players and make the most of this insight.
Practically in Sport, we must then be careful of striking the balance between enhancing the efficiency and fluency of skills, at the detriment of pupils being able respond flexibly and adapt to an unknown scenario during competition.
When teaching open skills, for example during invasion games eg Netball, adopting a games-sense approach is a desirable method. This allows pupils to become more self-aware, encouraging meta-cognition and evaluation of their own success criteria. It helps them to really judge when they have grasped a skill and perform it under pressure, rather than think that they have without success to prove it. This means that the pupils are improving their skills in a more realistic environment so that they are transferable to high-level competition against other schools. Furthermore, the ability to reflect on your performance and then have a flexible skill set when responding is useful when a taught ‘set play’ is challenged by the opposition. This means that pupils can’t fall into the illusion trap as they are constantly being challenged and having to apply their knowledge and skills appropriately.
Another important aspect of learning in sport is the ability to recognise when similar situations occur during this open environment. In a match context, quick recognition of when a ‘set play’ could be implemented is beneficial as it allows pupils to respond effectively whilst under pressure. It also encourages reflection on your own learning and performance.
Although this games-sense approach needs a good skill base to be effective, I think that it prepares pupils for competitions more effectively by helping them to become better critiques of their own learning than solely focusing on closed drills.
Vera (Year 13) looks at the issues surrounding ‘greenwashing’ – where false or misleading claims about the eco- friendly nature of a product are made to support sales.
Have you ever been enticed by rough brown packaging or images of green fields and butterflies while shopping? It’s only natural to be lured by the green statements on packaging such as ‘all natural’ or ‘eco-friendly’. But have you ever stopped to think about what these statements truly mean?
It is easy to paint a company as ‘eco-friendly’ with a skilled hand in marketing and an assumption that the consumer will not look into the claims plastered on their advertisements. This is terribly harmful for the environment and is summarised by a term known as ‘greenwashing’.
Greenwashing is the practice of a company making claims about its environmental impact that are either misleading or false; a commercial sleight of hand to distract its eco-conscious consumers from its true environmental impact. The term was coined by Jay Westerveld in 1983 while he was on a student research trip to Samoa. He had stopped by Fiji to surf and while sneaking into the Beachcomber resort to steal fresh towels, he saw a note to costumers telling them to refuse new towels to protect the local reefs. He found the claim ironic since the resort was currently expanding into local ecosystems but had painted itself as environmentally conscious. Westerveld and a fellow student later wrote an essay in a literary magazine and gave a name to the resort’s practice. The term was picked up in the Oxford English dictionary by the year 2000.
It would be best to explain greenwashing with an example. One early case is that of DuPont in 1989. DuPont is an American chemicals company – previously the world’s largest in terms of sales. A 1989 advertising campaign announced new double-hulled oil tankers. The ad sees clapping dolphins and other marine animals in a crystal blue sea with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy playing in the background as they claim to be ‘safeguarding the environment’. This was all while DuPont was the single largest corporate polluter in the United States.
To give a more recent example (and my personal favourite) we have H&M, a popular Swedish fast fashion brand. The company launched their ‘H&M Conscious’ campaign in 2010 and it has continued to develop ever since. Some of their products now sport a green tag to signal that they are sustainably sourced. To qualify for this special tag, the garment must contain at least 50% sustainable material, such as organic cotton or recycled polyester. They make an exception for recycled cotton, of which only 20% must be used for the green tag, due to quality restraints. H&M also has a textile collection programme in many of its stores. If you donate clothes to the collection bin you are eligible for a £5 voucher on your next purchase of £25 or more at H&M. All of this makes H&M look like the posterchild of fast fashion looking to make a positive environmental impact. But the company makes these claims whilst maintaining 52 micro-seasons per year, perpetuating the cycle of fast fashion. Most of the clothes it takes in for donation at not recycled but instead sent to developing countries without the infrastructure to deal with toxic waste. The £5 voucher incentive merely encourages more consumerism and more wastage of fabrics and other resources. Its green tag clothing has a fairly low baseline but since few consumers are going to look into detail at the material of their clothing it serves as a successful flag for do-good shoppers. I see H&M not as the posterchild for eco-conscious fast fashion, but as the posterchild of greenwashing.
Lastly, we have the ethical greenwashers. Fiji Water sells expensive bottled water in Instagram-friendly packaging. One particular ad campaign used the voice of a young girl saying “Fiji water is gift from nature to us, to repay our gift of leaving it completely alone. Bottled at the source, untouched by man. It’s Earth’s finest water”. Beautiful choral music plays in the background as images of grand green mountains and lush forests pan across the screen. These claims are made despite plastics taking many hundreds of years to degrade and ignoring the carbon emissions impact of shipping water from Fiji across the world. Adding to this, the WHO states that 47% of Fijians don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. The brand’s story appeals to their customer’s moral conscious that allows – nay encourages – them to buy bottled water. Yet Fiji does not show the consumer the devastating lack of access to drinking water across the Fiji islands.
And why would they? It would hardly be an effective business model to say to your customers: ‘buy this clothing – even though you are effectively burning through the Amazon by doing so’ or ‘buy our water – even though most of Fiji can’t drink it’. Greenwashing works. By the early 1990s, polling showed that companies’ environmental records influenced the majority of consumer purchases. A 2015 Nielsen poll showed that 66% of global consumers were willing to pay more for environmentally sustainable products. Amongst millennials, the percentage rose to 72%.
Making changes to reduce the environmental impact of consumer products is always a good thing – even if they are small changes. I support H&M’s campaign to use more recycled fabrics. I believe that if DuPont’s double-hulled oil tankers truly reduced the environmental damage they made on a continued basis, then they should absolutely go ahead with the idea.
What becomes dangerous, however, is when these companies take to social media feeds and billboards to boast their incredible environmental achievements. It is dangerous because it only encourages the consumer to purchase more of the damaging product, offsetting any improvements they may have made. It is also misleading to the busy customer who does not have the time or resources to look into every environmental claim a company makes. Innumerable people have willingly spent more on what they assume to be eco-friendly products, when their claims could be entirely baseless.
Greenwashing often comes with noble intents. But the consequences may not always be noble. It is important to remain wary as a consumer of the potential motives of a company when you hear eco-jargon. It is even more important for the companies themselves to hold themselves accountable for the claims they make about their environmental impact. Greenwashing is a dangerous habit, but can easily be defeated with transparency and a little research.
Hannah Johnston (Teacher of Geography and Coordinator of Charities & Partnerships) asks whether the coronavirus pandemic has shone a light on philanthropy and highlighted its importance in a way not experienced in recent times.
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..”
(John Donne, 1624)
There is something so compelling at the beginning of John Donne’s famous poem, as a Geographer the idea of interconnectedness and our sense of place resonates strongly, and I cannot help but also link this to Wimbledon High School. Taking on the role of Charities and Partnerships coordinator, especially at the beginning of Lockdown 3.0, has enabled me to develop and expand upon this sense of belonging.
We are not just a site of education; we are a community. From the very youngest, to the oldest students, parents and staff, we draw together. This goes far beyond the bricks and mortar of the school site, as demonstrated so strongly with our Guided Home Learning Program and ‘Together Apart’. The wonderful aspect of our community, however, is that it does not stop there.
Local Community Partnerships
We have long established links with local charities, including Wimbledon Guild, Merton & Morden Guild, Christian Care and Faith in Action, who are our House charities. During pre-pandemic times, our Yr11-13 students were able to meet with members of both these charities, those living in care homes and their peers from other local schools on a Thursday afternoon as part of our successful partnerships programme.
The introduction of the first national lockdown on 23rd of March 2020 put a halt to this. Across the country many people began periods of isolation and separation from loved ones.
“One of the feelings millions of us are experiencing during the current coronavirus pandemic is loneliness” (Mental Health Foundation, 2021).
Our students rose to the challenge and, demonstrating those core characteristics of empathy and kindness, recognised the importance of remaining part of their wider Wimbledon community. They nurtured links they had already made, and in some cases, made new ones. Pupils began by writing letters to those in care homes whom they had visited and to those identified by our partnership charities as being lonely. The responses they received were wonderful and enabled all to gain a new perspective.
The partnerships programme adapted and moved online. Spanish conversations were able to take place via Flipgrid and teachers were able to share technological innovation across schools. Students ran academic masterclasses live for students in younger cohorts and created WimFlix videos for those who benefited from pre-recorded materials. The moving of clubs to after school slots allowed for those from partnership schools to join us.
It was not only students who were able to support the local community, the Science and Design & Technology departments were able to support Northwick Park hospital with the donation of goggles and the use of the 3D printer to help produce PPE. As Mr Keith Cawsey discussed in his recent WimTeach (link here), we realised that although we may come from different perspectives initially and live very different lives, we are all united by our desire to be part of, and keep safe, our communities.
“Two million children have gone hungry since the start of the coronavirus lockdown, including one in five in London” (Alim, 2020)
Christmas Hampers
Coronavirus has brought huge challenges for our wider community. Wimbledon High School, in conjunction with the GDST and The Thomas Franks Foundation, signed up to support ‘Feeding Communities’. Across the months of lockdown, staff volunteers have helped to prepare thousands of meals in our kitchens, distributed to support the most vulnerable children and adults in our community.
In the run up to the festive period, WHS staff raised £1000 to buy food for local state primaries and, for our Christmas Tree assembly, students and staff brought donations of food, non-perishables and toys for five local charities. Furthermore, as a community, cash donations enabled us to purchase laptops and other devices for our partner primary schools.
As we approach Easter, we are once again rallying as a school to support our House charities. While donations peak at Christmas and will pick up again in May, at present, charities are facing dwindling donations. With so many in need of their support, this is leading to a desperate situation.
To help maintain social distancing and Covid-19 guidelines, this Easter we are asking students and their families to donate to their house charities. Each charity has provided us with a list of items that are needed by those they support in our local communities and the donations will be used to buy these for our chosen causes. To find out more about each charity, and to donate, please follow this link.
Year Group Charities
“When we focus energy on helping those who are most vulnerable in times of crisis, the positive effects spread and strengthen our collective well-being” (Lee, 2020)
Year 9 fundraising by walking a marathon
It has been inspiring to see how each of our students have responded to the Covid pandemic and the understanding they have on its impacts for both the local, national and international community. This was abundantly clear as they discussed in their year groups, which charities to support this year.
As Ava, our Year 8 charities rep summarised; “The impact of charity is particularly evident during the pandemic as funding for many charities has been reduced significantly. Many people have been furloughed and jobs have been lost, so charities have lost a lot of their funding which is why it is important for us to donate and fundraise as much as we can.”
These were sentiments echoed by her peers, as Jemima (Year 10 rep) stated; “Charity has never been so important as during the Covid-19 pandemic. Year 10 is raising money for World Vision, which is supporting children who are living in extreme poverty all over the world. It is communities like the ones World Vision helps that are hit the hardest by the pandemic, and so this year, giving to charity can go such a long way in helping those less fortunate than ourselves”. Over the past few weeks, as the fundraising has continued at pace, I have received several emails from World Vision expressing their delight at the work our girls are doing and reiterating how difficult they have found fundraising this year.
Throughout the pandemic, our students have had to adapt and discover new ways to fundraise and continue supporting the charities that mean so much to them. Their creativity has truly been boundless, with GHL mufti days, baking competitions, walking marathons, charity auctions and film screenings to name just a few. The challenges faced this year have helped us to discover strengths and resources we may not have been expected to call upon before.
To go back to John Donne, indeed ‘everyman is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’, so we are intrinsically linked to our local, national and international communities. Georgia (Year 11) so poignantly said: “Charities help to bind us as a society. By supporting the more vulnerable members of our communities, we grow closer”.
Covid has challenged us in ways we could never have expected. It has also brought out our resilience, pulled together communities and taught us to look outwards. As we move towards more ‘normal’ times, that desire to maintain and develop our philanthropic links remains.
Teaching and learning Gem #32 – a OneNote method for students to ‘think out loud’ and make their thought processes transparent
After so many brilliant Friday Gems from colleagues, this Friday Gem comes from me! It is an idea I tried for the first time with my Year 12s last half term. I wanted each student to ‘talk’ me through their thought processes at different points of their essay. The idea was for students to make clear to themselves (and me) the decisions they had made before I took it in for marking. In engaging with this sort of metacognitive activity, students were having to evaluate their methods and purposely think about their thinking.
At the top of a OneNote page, I put a series of metacognition prompts about the essay writing process. I asked students to copy and paste them to the top of their essays:
2. Students chose three of these prompts and drag and dropped them to relevant parts of their essay. They wrote a response about their thought processes at that point. Here is a brilliant example from one of my Year 12s. As you can see, she is really mature and considered in her reflections:
3. When I marked the work, their comments formed the basis for my own feedback, allowing me to have a ‘dialogue’ with the student
This is effective because:
Students are being self-reflective and critical of their own thought processes, promoting self-awareness, self-questioning and self-monitoring.
It demystifies the essay writing process, making it clear to students how they are thinking at different stages in the process.
It encourages students to take ownership of their own feedback, having to comment on their own work before I mark it.
It makes my feedback more focussed and purposeful.
Mrs Alexandra Treseder, French teacher at WHS, examines the value of reading Proust’s famously long novel.
Reacquainting myself with some of my favourite books during lockdown provided me with a sense of perspective and stability. One work that particularly resonated with me was Alain de Botton’s ‘How Proust can change your life’. It’s a book that I first came across whilst studying the first part of Proust’s À la recherche du Temps Perdu at university, and I have returned to it several times since to recapture some of the philosophical wisdom it encapsulates. As Oliver Munday stated in a recent article for The Atlantic: ‘Proust’s work has many qualities that might recommend it for pandemic reading: the author’s concern with the protean nature of time, the transportive exploration of memory and the past, or simply the pleasure of immersing oneself in the richly detailed life of another’.[1]
De Botton points out that readers can be put off by the sheer length of Proust’s massive text. His sentences are long enough to wrap around a wine bottle 17 times, and his description of getting to sleep is a seemingly never-ending 30 pages. However, my argument is that it is worth the effort, due to Proust’s rich and beautiful insights into universal themes such as the power of involuntary memory, how to fully appreciate one’s life and how to acquire wisdom.
Proust is most famous for his olfactory experience of dipping a madeleine into some lime-flower tea. This conjures up a whole world from his childhood, bringing back to him precious memories which he thought had been lost: ‘dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre à bien plus tard de découvrir pourquoi ce souvenir me rendait si heureux), aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre…’(no sooner had the warm lime-flower tea, mixed with the crumbs, touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped…At once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me…).
Like much of his life, the narrator’s childhood had become vague in his mind – he did not remember it with any particular interest. However, through the sensation of the madeleine, a cake which he had not tasted since childhood and which remained unaltered by later associations, he was involuntarily reintroduced to a stream of rich and charming memories of his holidays in the town of Combray with his aunt Léonie. This incident cheers the narrator, as it helps him understand that it is not his life that has been mundane, only the vague perception of it that he possessed in memory. From this event he learns to be grateful for what he has and look for beauty in everyday situations. He makes the point that living mindfully leads to more meaningful, lasting and enriching experiences. In short, it helps us to begin truly appreciating our lives.
Proust’s belief is that we only become inquisitive when distressed, thereby highlighting that making mistakes is a crucial part of our route to acquiring knowledge (something that we have long recognised at Wimbledon High). He makes this point through his fictional painter Elstir: ‘On ne reçoit pas la sagesse, il faut la découvrir soi-même, après un trajet que personne ne peut faire pour nous’ (we cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves, by a journey which no one can undertake for us). De Botton adds that it is normal if we stay ignorant when things are going well, since it is only when we are confronted with difficulties that we have the incentive to tackle difficult truths and learn from them. As Proust expressed: ‘le bonheur est salutaire pour le corps, mais c’est le chagrin qui développe les forces de l’esprit’(happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind). We should not regret our errors or try to completely expunge them from our memory. Instead, we should embrace them as a necessary part of our lives, helping us to develop character and wisdom.
Bearing all this in mind, I believe that reading Proust can absolutely change your life for the better. I have to confess that I haven’t yet finished the novel that is double the length of War and Peace, but I am enjoying it every step of the way and taking my time over it, as Proust himself would recommend. With his philosophies dealing with every part of the human experience, I believe that Proust’s reflections on how to live throughout his chef d’œuvre remain as thought-provoking and valuable as ever.
References:
De Botton, How Proust can change your life, 1998
De Botton, Status Anxiety, 2004
De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy, 2000
Munday, Oliver, ‘How I came to love my epic quarantine project’, The Atlantic, 2020 https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/11/reading-proust-in-search-of-lost-time-during-pandemic/616850/
Annabel (Year 13) looks at the impact of the British imperial history on the evolving relationship between the UK and the EU.
The Leave Campaign’s bus – From TheTimes.co.uk
There is an argument to suggest that Euroscepticism, which has been a major part of our political narrative since the 1960s, has an imperialist undertone to it; as decolonisation came to a close, Euroscepticism rose up in its place. There is certainly room for this argument in today’s political climate as similarities can be drawn between the two ideas from an ideological point of view. Nevertheless, the ‘Leave’ campaign has a greater level of complexity to it than merely an overwhelming desire to return to days of imperialist superiority in the 19th century.
Firstly, British imperialism is an incredibly complex area of interest and reasoning for empire building changed dramatically from initial stages of adventure and exploration to its largest point in 1919, where the empire added 1.8 million square miles and 13 million subjects to its existing territory under the Treaty of Versailles.[1] The notion that British imperialism can be associated with a single motivation throughout the entire existence of the Empire is just too simplistic. How then, can we link imperialism to the motivations behind the ‘Leave’ campaign?
There are some commonalities throughout the British Empire’s existence that can be found and therefore associated (or not as the case may be) with the Eurosceptic narrative. Without question there are consistent undertones of British superiority throughout the time as metropole in one of the largest empires in history. Colonialism was associated initially with a desire to explore, and then claim, foreign lands. Humanitarian justification, through Social Darwinism and then increasingly through a motivation to decolonise, was an important aspect of imperialism. Above all, the competition between European neighbours, also imperialist powers at the time, was a key aspect of the British Empire and this is where the possible connection to Euroscepticism can be found.
The British Empire in 1919 – From WashingtonPost.com
The British relationship with the EU has been complex from the outset and it was heavily debated whether membership should be granted to the UK throughout the 1960s. Britain’s desire to have a special relationship with the EEC due to the Commonwealth trade meant they were rejected by the EEC twice in the 1960s. French president at the time, Charles De Gaulle, determined that the British had a “deep-seated hostility” to any European project.[2] The hostility that De Gaulle mentions could be referencing the peripheral location of Britain and historical competitiveness with European nations that, as previously mentioned, were a key aspect of British, and indeed European, imperialism. There is arguably therefore a compatibility with a reluctance to be a part of the EU and the anti-European narrative of the British Empire.
The “deep-seated hostility” that De Gaulle mentioned could suggest that there is perhaps an unconscious bias of the British population against any collaborative effort amongst European countries. Bernard Porter argues in his work The Absent-Minded Imperialists that the British population was largely unaware of the impact of Empire on British society and held a more subconscious affiliation with its principles as opposed to a direct support of the motivations.[3] There are two possible consequences of his argument in relation to the EU, that the imperialist subconscious merely drifted away from the British cultural narrative, or that there remains a subconscious affiliation with the principles of British isolationism and European competition in the British population. It is undoubtedly difficult to pinpoint which one it is, but it is nonetheless interesting to consider how far the European relationship has been impacted by the British Empire.
From VoteWatch.EU
The British relationship with the EU has always been complex; Britain was not one of the 11 countries to join the Eurozone in 1999 and only voted to join the EEC in 1973, long after the ECSC was formed to prevent Franco-German conflict in 1951. The economic narrative of the EU was a key one in the ‘Leave’ campaign, as seen on the bus above, but arguably it was much more about cultural identity than the economic relationship between the UK and the EU. The tones of placing internal British priorities above those of regionalist policies in the EU could be seen to hold an aspect of British isolationism which was a key pillar of British imperialism in competition with other imperial European powers.
Ultimately, while there are certainly correlating elements between the narratives of imperialism and that of the ‘Leave’ campaign, it is incredibly difficult to pin down how far it is a conscious decision. There is, perhaps, an “absent-minded” aspect to the narrative that has retained some of the colonial narratives present in the days where the Empire placed Britain as a leading world power. Therefore, the desire to return to a powerful place, as was the case of Britain as an imperial power, might have provided a sub-conscious motivation for the desire to break away from historically rival European countries.
Bibliography:
Murphy, R. Jefferies, J. Gadsby, J. Global Politics for A Level Phillip Allen Publishing, 2017
Porter, B. The Absent-Minded Imperialists, Oxford University Press, 2006
Porter, B. The Lion’s Share: A History of British Imperialism 1850-2011, Routledge Publishing 2012
Jaime-Lee, Head of Netball and Head of Year 10 at WHS, explores the journal article ‘Metacognition and Action’ to consider how to use metacognition to become elite in sport.
MacIntyre, T., Igou, E., Campbell, M., Moran, A. and Matthews, J. (2014). Metacognition and action: a new pathway to understanding social and cognitive aspects of expertise in sport. Frontiers in Psychology
Success in sport has traditionally centred around executing motor skills under competitive conditions. Sport provides benchmarks to distinguish the elite from the amateur, through performance outcomes (e.g. placing in a race), player statistics (e.g. shooting percentage in Basketball) or level of competition (e.g. National vs. County). In addition to the data that is readily available to all performers, athletes are looking beyond the strictly measurable in order to advance in their sporting area.
Metacognitive processes have become a pivotal part of an elite athlete’s repertoire to give them the competitive edge. In sport, metacognitive processes can be used in a variety of ways both in training and in competition. Below are some examples of how athletes can use metacognition to better their physical attributes.
The use of mental imagery and mental practice, in which athletes play out physical skills and/or scenarios in their mind. This could include, an athlete imagining themselves in the starting blocks, acknowledging all of their senses.
Pre-performance routines, in which an athlete engages systematically in a sequence of actions prior to their performance. This could include, stepping out an athlete’s run up in Long Jump or the position a ball is placed while taking a penalty kick.
The use of strategies and set plays, in which decision making is done prior to an athlete’s performance. This could include, anticipating your oppositions movements in Netball and planning counter moves.
The use of metacognitive process not only reduces the chances of error but maximises an athlete’s physical capabilities. Elite athletes need to be not just be experts in movement execution but also experts in controlling their own mental processes.
This Friday Gem comes from Richard Finch, who thinks about the academic and pastoral benefits to metacognition as part of the EPQ process. Metacognition gives students the flexibility to take control. This boosts confidence and reduces anxiety, vital in the time of a pandemic.
Metacognition is vital to the EPQ
The independent approach students must take to complete the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) is daunting for most. Students are guided by a supervisor who is there to act as a sounding board for ideas but the student must ultimately decide for themselves how to research, compile and produce a 5000 word report on an area of personal interest. Self-reflective thinking must be documented at these key milestones and forms an important part of the assessment. Developing new skills is also a key element of the qualification and again, girls are actively encouraged to reflect and document which are appropriate for their particular project.
Metacognitive Planning Tools are empowering and are a confidence boost
One student reflects here on a new tool she was encouraged to use to organise her time. “Another hurdle for me was planning out when to do my research, having heard that Gantt-chart was an indispensable tool and thinking therefore that I absolutely had to use it. I tried to use it for my initial title with limited success, and then thought I had improved and even mastered it for my second. However, I was eventually forced to admit that Gantt-chart was not for me, and that I was far better off sticking to a simple bullet point list of dates and deadlines. Therefore, I did not acquire the skill of using Gantt-chart, but I did learn that sometimes it is just much more effective to stick to what I know works and have confidence in my own methods, rather than thinking that because a resource worked for someone else it will work for me.” Effective self-reflection is empowering for EPQ students. Everyone learns differently and those, like the student quoted above, that can assess how effective a new method or skill will be for them better able to overcome challenges. The alternative is that students blindly follow a suggested method without questioning or adapting it to what works for them. Achieving more flexible thinking and skill in choosing how to apply the most appropriate method is a real confidence boost for many girls.
Metacognition to help face pandemic related challenges.
A student commented in their EPQ that “I have encountered numerous setbacks during my project which mostly related to the COVID-19 pandemic which severely curtailed my access to the hospital. I have learned not to lose heart when setbacks occur and to continually try to find ways around problems in order to complete tasks. I have appreciated that being flexible is critical to this.” She went on to document how she intends to adapt her research to complete the project. Documenting the change of approach reduced anxiety and motivated her to take practical steps to move towards completing her project.
Self-reflection is a skill that is overtly assessed on the EPQ. This motivates students to engage with the way they think about learning and assess their own meta-cognitive development. Documenting self-reflection and incorporating it into the assessment criteria is something that could be beneficial to learning practice at all levels.
Amy (Year 13) looks at the issues surrounding gentrification of an area and the impact this has on the value and cultural capital of an area.
Gentrification has often been seen as a contested and negatively connoted process; it is routinely blamed to be destroying the ‘souls’ and ‘hearts’ of many cities across the globe, with higher housing costs to increasingly globalised high streets acting as forces driving those less privileged out of historically culturally rich community areas. It can be seen as an oppressive mechanism which, in potentially adding fiscal value to an area, does so at the expense of cultural diversity.[1]
Gentrification is a term first created more than 50 years ago by the German-born British sociologist Ruth Glass to describe changes she observed in north London – but it is a phenomenon that has been at the heart of how cities evolve for centuries. Cambridge dictionary defines the term as ‘the process by which a place, especially part of a city, changes from being a poor area to a richer one, where people from a higher social class live.’[2] It is an important factor in the change and transformation of urban areas. However, whether it really eradicates poverty is subject to lively debate.
From NewDream.org
In London especially, gentrification characterises economic and demographic changes as the predominantly middle-class citizens settle in areas often occupied by high percentages of ethnic minority residents, who are often priced out of the new ‘improved’ areas. Not only does it have significant negative impact on smaller community areas, it also sends ripples throughout the rest of the country and down the class hierarchy.
Much resistance has been seen from those who see the process as an antagonised way of removing character and community from an area. In particular, estate agents and property developers are subject to this disapproval, with many campaigners vocal against their activities, given they seek to make money from attracting new, richer residents. Especially extreme campaigns such as the 200 anti-gentrification and housing campaigners that disrupted the beginning of the annual Property Awards in 2016 reveal the strong opinions many people have towards the process of gentrification.
When examining this change in London, it is important to inspect the history and background of the city itself. Gentrification is not a new process to the city, beginning in the 1960s when bits of the run-down, old post-war city attracted adventurous young architects who started doing up often cheaper, damaged, Georgian squares. The process is deeply ironic, as these forces of change accused of ruining London are products of its revitalisation.
Decades ago London was still recovering from detrimental damage done during World War 2. The population of inner London was still attempting to recover to its pre-war importance. At this point, it wasn’t the wealthy being the cause of change in the area but skilled manual workers seeking cheap and convenient land, headed for ‘the New Towns’ in the 1950s.
By the start of the 2000s however, London’s dynamic had completely changed. London had become an influential source of economic growth, catalysed by its ability to generate money from its ‘turbo-charged’ Square Mile. Increased profit immensely amplified the attractivity of London, in turn increasing the demand of space in the city. It is regularly said that ‘demand for space is the seed of gentrification’[3], and a failure to meet that demand is what stimulates the growth of it. London is a prime example of this. Hugely inflated property prices are a certain cost of gentrification, and this can be seen all throughout London. The average house price in Hackney, and area renowned for its influence of gentrification, has increased by 489% in the last two decades, up from £91,000 in 1998 to £536,000 in 2018. This directly drives out many ethnic minorities and those living on low income or relying on government benefits to afford housing costs.
Hackney wick’s ‘graffiti building’ – from Londonist.com
The standard picture of gentrification is that new arrivals benefit greatly from gentrification at the expense of lower-income residents. This picture is often true in many cases. New arrivals to a community often get stylish housing and all of the expensive accessories of life in a trendy urban neighbourhood (boutiques, bookstores, coffee shops, clubs and more) that they can afford. While long-time residents may benefit initially from cleaner, safer streets and better schools, they are eventually priced out of renting or buying. As the new arrivals impose their culture on the neighbourhood, lower-income residents become economically and socially marginalized. This can lead to resentment and community conflict that feeds racial and class tensions. Ultimately as lower-class members of the community move out this can induce loss of social and racial diversity. Rowland Atkinson, a member of the ERSC centre for research describes it as ‘a destructive and divisive process that has been aided by capital disinvestment to the detriment of poorer groups in cities.’[4]
However, should gentrification really be held accountable for the unacceptable level of poverty in London? Assertions that it is ‘pushing out’ the deprived of the city often look less persuasive when examining the figures of social housing which still exist in classic ‘gentrified’ areas of north London. In Camden, 35% of all housing is for social rent, in Islington it’s 42% and in Hackney, 44%. Although poverty rates have fallen in those boroughs, the absolute numbers of poor people (people living on the reliance of government benefits) remain high.
Although there are many deservingly negative outlooks on the consequences of gentrification, assumptions should not always be made to antagonise the process. For example, middle class pressure often leads to improvement in community features such as modernised and beautified public buildings and spaces. As the property tax base increases, so does funding to local public schools. Jobs arrive with the increased construction activity and new retail and service businesses, and crime rates habitually decline.
Edward Clarke of the UK urban policy research company Centre for Cities writes that the debate should not be reduced to ‘a simple battle between plucky communities and greedy gentrifies’, emphasising that this ‘fails to recognise that the roles and functions of urban neighbourhoods have always changed over time and within a city’ or to acknowledge that gentrifying ‘new work businesses can create new jobs and improve wages in many fields.[5]
Clarke concludes in general that the real roots of the problems that come with thriving urban economies are ultimately down to “poor city management”. He argues that to improve this it requires better skills training for local people, more planning and tax-raising powers to be devolved to local politicians and more land, including a small portion of green belt, being made available for building.
Ultimately gentrification, as a form of change and transformation in urban areas, is an issue that has been going on for decades. Although it potentially brings improvement to the appearance and functionality of urban environments, the problems created by this process must be addressed; failing to do so will result in places like London becoming so unaffordable they will begin to deteriorate – not only in potential economic value, but also in cultural capital. The process often exacerbates inequality on a local scale and drives out the cultural diversity that can so often be found at the heart of London’s communities.
Bibliography
Glass, R. (1964). London: Aspects of Change. London: MacGibbon & Kee
Hill, D. (2016). Let’s get our gentrification story straight. London: Guardian
Dr Atkinson, R. (2002). Does Gentrification help or harm urban neighbourhoods? An assessment of the evidence-base in the context of the new urban agenda. CNR Paper 5
Clarke, E. (2016). In defence of gentrification. London: Centre for Cities
Mr Patrick Vieira, Teacher of Maths at WHS, looks at how completing puzzles and games can impact student learning.
One day, while travelling to school as a 12-year-old, I saw somebody solving a Rubik’s cube. This person would scramble the cube and solve it very quickly. He would do this repeatedly, and maybe it was just in my head, but he seemed to get quicker with every solve. Seeing a demonstration of that kind was nothing short of captivating to me at the time. It stayed with me throughout the day and when I got home, I told my mother about it and asked her to buy one for me. Neither of us knew what it was called but we took the trip to Hamleys with the hope that they would know. We were in luck! My mother paid for the Original Rubik’s Cube and I took it home excited to begin trying to solve it.
As does everything after a while, excitement quickly faded. The puzzle was difficult and did not come with any instructions. I had managed to solve one face by what seemed like sheer luck (blue, my favourite colour), but when I tried solving another face, my hard work became undone. It was so frustrating that I left it on the mantelpiece where it collected dust for years. Reflecting now, that must be how some of my students feel now when they are given a problem that seems too hard to solve at first.
A Rubik’s Cube (Wikipedia)
Fast forward to 2019 when I first joined Wimbledon High School, where I had the opportunity to join the Rubik’s Cube club as a staff member. Of course, if I needed to help students solve the Rubik’s Cube, I needed to have a good understanding of it myself. This time, I was provided with a set of instructions and I got to work. Solve the white cross, then complete the white face. Finish off the second layer and then begin the top… I repeated the algorithms for each of these over and over again, and eventually I solved my first Rubik’s Cube.
But for me, that was not the part that excited me. As I repeated the moves for each step in isolation, I began to see why these algorithms worked. Every move had a purpose, setting the cube up so that on that final turn, everything comes together. It was as if I were almost tapping into The Matrix of the puzzle and I could feel my perception of 3D space improving with every turn. It was then that it hit me. This could be an amazing educational tool… but has it been researched?
Research related to the Rubik’s Cube is very limited but there are many pieces of anecdotal evidence to suggest that there are huge benefits to learning how to solve the cube. The two which stood out to me were grit and creativity.
Grit
Grit is one of the most mysterious personal traits discussed in education. It is widely regarded as the trait most indicative of whether someone will succeed at a task, no matter if it is in business, in the army, or in school.[1] However, it is difficult to nurture. When we complete a task which requires perseverance, the hormone dopamine gets released in our brain. This is the automatic response of the body which reinforces positive behaviours. The more tasks we complete using grit as our fuel, the more we are comfortable and happy being “grittier” – we create a habit of perseverance.[2]
Solving the Rubik’s cube is one way of helping us reinforce that positive trait of using grit. One Maths teacher writes in her blog that after giving her students an assignment to solve the Rubik’s Cube, they showed increased levels of grit.[3] However, just as Carol Dweck writes in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, as educators, we need to still be encouraging our students to persevere and reward their effort rather than their achievement.[4] These will bring about the best results in development of grit.
Creativity
“Creativity?!” I hear you wonder. “How can you be creative when all you are doing is repeating algorithms?”
I had an interesting experience as I was improving my knowledge on the Rubik’s Cube. After learning the algorithms for the beginner’s method of solving and was able to do it well, I turned to an intermediate stage called the ‘CFOP’ method. There were slightly more algorithms to memorise, but I found my creativity bloom in the process of learning them.
From a fully solved cube, I picked one algorithm and applied it to the cube. Of course, this would mess it up completely. However, just for the fun of it, I kept applying the same algorithm and eventually I got back to a fully solved cube. I wondered why and I tried to see if I could do the same with the other algorithms. It turns out that they do. It takes a different number of repetitions for each algorithm but eventually I end up at a fully solved cube. Just for the fun of it, I also tried to combine algorithms or even reverse them. These made me see different patterns and other ways of solving it. I wasn’t really doing much with the cube but still, I thought to myself, “this is pretty fun.”
Where next?
So pick up your cube. Don’t just leave it on the mantelpiece like I did for years. There is a great opportunity to be had whether you are a teacher or a student. Returning to my opening point, do puzzles really have a positive effect on learning? Nobody really knows yet. But if it helps you develop perseverance and foster your creativity, I think it’s worth a shot to find out for yourself.
References:
[1] See Angela Duckworth – Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
