Table Of ContentLearning without limits 4/5/06 10:38 am Page 1
LEARNING WITHOUT LIMITS
• Why do some teachers insist on teaching without recourse
to judgements about ability?
• What are the key principles on which they draw as they
organize and provide for learning?
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• What is the significance of their alternative approach for e
classrooms in the 21st century? a
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This book explores ways of teaching that are free from n
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determinist beliefs about ability. In a detailed critique of the
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practices of ability labelling and ability-focused teaching,
Learning without Limitsexamines the damage these practices it Learning without Limits
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can do to young people, teachers and the curriculum. Drawing o
on a research project at the University of Cambridge, the book u
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features nine vivid case studies (from Year 1 to Year 11) that
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describe how teachers have developed alternative practices i
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despite considerable pressure on them and on their schools
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and classrooms. ts
The authors analyze these case studies and identify the key
concept of transformability as a distinguishing feature of these
teachers’approach. They construct a model of pedagogy based
on transformability: the mind-set that children’s futures as H
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learners are not pre-determined, and that teachers can help to r
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strengthen and ultimately transform young people’s capacity to , D
learn through the choices they make. The book shows how ix
transformability-based teaching can play a central role in o
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constructing an alternative improvement agenda. , D
This book will inspire teachers, student teachers, lecturers and ru
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policy makers, as well as everyone who has a stake in how
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contemporary education and practice affect children’s future o
lives and life chances. n
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Susan Harthas worked as a teacher and researcher in d
schools and universities for over 30 years. Her specific area of M
interest has always been the dynamics of classroom life. She is cI
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currently teaching in a college of further education. t
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Annabelle Dixonwas trained as an infant teacher, psychologist e
and educational researcher, and has had a long and varied
teaching career in primary schools. She has maintained a life-
long stance against streaming, both in theory and in practice.
Mary Jane Drummondwas an infant teacher for many years
before she joined the Faculty of Education at the University of
Cambridge. She has taught on a variety of professional
development courses, specializing in the early years of
childhood.
Donald McIntyrehas been engaged in research into teaching
and teacher education for 40 years. His previous publications
include Effective Teaching and Learning: Teachers' and Pupils'
Perspectives(Open University Press, 1996).
Susan Hart, Annabelle Dixon, Mary Jane Drummond
Cover design: Barker/Hilsdon
and Donald McIntyre
with Narinder Brach, Claire Conway, Nicola Madigan,
(cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:11)(cid:12)(cid:13)(cid:4)(cid:14)(cid:5)(cid:5)(cid:6)(cid:14)(cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:7)(cid:6)(cid:1)(cid:14)(cid:15)
Julie Marshall, Alison Peacock, Anne Reay, Yahi Tahibet, Non Worrall, Patrick Yarker
www.openup.co.uk (cid:1) (cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:5)(cid:5)(cid:6) (cid:7)(cid:8)(cid:7)(cid:6)(cid:1)(cid:4)
11985 Prelims 15/2/04 4:38 pm Page i
Learning without limits
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Learning without
limits
Susan Hart, Annabelle Dixon
Mary Jane Drummond, Donald McIntyre
with Narinder Brach, Claire Conway, Nicola Madigan,
Julie Marshall, Alison Peacock, Anne Reay,
Yahi Tahibet, Non Worrall, Patrick Yarker
Open University Press
11985 Prelims 15/2/04 4:38 pm Page iv
Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
ShoppenhangersRoad
Maidenhead, Berkshire
England SL6 2QL
email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk
and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 1012–2289
USA
First Published 2004
Copyright © Susan Hart, Annabelle Dixon, Mary Jane Drummond and
Donald McIntyre 2004
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licenses (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained
from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London,
W1T 4LP.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 335 21259 X (pb) 0 335 21260 3 (hb)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
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This book is dedicated to
Brian Simon 1915–2002
His work has been deeply influential
in our thinking and we acknowledge
our debt to him.
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Contents
Foreword vii
Clyde Chitty
Acknowledgements viii
Part 1 Beyond ability-based teaching and learning 1
1 Ability, educability and the current improvement agenda 3
2 What’s wrong with ability labelling? 16
3 The Learning without Limitsproject: methods and approaches 44
Part 2 Accounts of the teachers’ practice 55
Introduction 57
4 Anne’s approach: they all have their different ways to go 59
5 Claire’s approach: a thinking classroom 68
6 Alison’s approach: an open invitation 78
7 Narinder’s approach: the promise of tomorrow 89
8 Patrick’s approach: only connect 105
9 Nicky’s approach: step back and look at the children 117
10 Yahi’s approach: raising the level of trust 128
11 Julie’s approach: access, security and success 137
12 Non’s approach: the bridge between values and practice 148
Part 3 The core idea of transformability 163
13 Transforming the capacity to learn 165
14 Purposes and principles in practice 194
15 Young people’s perspectives on learning without limits 210
16 Framing learning without limits teaching: contexts and
retrospectives 224
17 Towards an alternative improvement agenda 244
Bibliography 275
Index 281
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Foreword
It is highly appropriate that this ground-breaking book should be dedicated
to the late Brian Simon, surely one of the greatest educationalists of the
twentieth century. He rejected totally the concept of fixed ability or poten-
tial, and this led him to spend most of his working life campaigning for
both the abandonment of streaming practices in the primary school and
the adoption of genuine comprehensive education at the secondary level.
I know that Brian would have been heartened by the essential message
and optimistic tone of this book, summed up in its apt title, taken from the
research project that forms the basis for its analysis.
The Learning without Limits project was, we are told, set up at the
University of Cambridge School of Education in 1999. The key idea was to
bring together a group of classroom teachers who had rejected ideas of fixed
ability and to study their practice in order to try to identify the chief con-
cepts and methods that are distinctive of teaching free from determinist
assumptions about ability. Of those teachers who applied to participate in
the project, nine were chosen to comprise the final team – representing
infant, primary and secondary (comprehensive) schools in a range of social
contexts. It is the exciting individual accounts of these nine teachers’ think-
ing and practice that constitute the core of the book.
As a classroom teacher myself, I was always profoundly influenced by
Brian’s guiding principle that the key to human development is not heredity
but education. Only by starting out with an unshakeable belief in every-
body’s capacity to learn can schools successfully educate all young people.
What binds these nine accounts together, as the authors show, is not just a
determination to reject the template of ‘fixed ability’ at the level of think-
ing and practice. The teachers have developed a pedagogy based on a dif-
ferent mind-set entirely, one that emphasizes the power of education to
transform learning capacity, one that accepts that everybody’s learning is
important and that everybody can contribute to the learning environment.
Clyde Chitty
Goldsmiths College
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Wallenberg Research Centre for the
Improvement of Education for the generous grant that funded the first 18
months of the project, as part of a broader programme of research under the
umbrella title Beyond Conventional Classrooms.
Continuing funding was received from the Faculty of Education
Research and Development Fund, for which we are very grateful. This grant
enabled us to continue working with the teachers to develop the model of
pedagogy that we present in this book.
We would like to thank the staff and students at the nine schools where
we carried out the research. They made us feel very welcome and we were
privileged to be included in their staff group over the period of the project.
We would also like to thank the many colleagues who contributed to
our thinking at conferences, seminars and in informal discussion.
The project has been expertly managed by members of the administra-
tive staff at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education: Christine
Zwierzanski, Suzanne Fletcher and, most recently, Alison Craig. All made
valuable contributions. We are particularly grateful to Alison Craig for her
meticulous work in preparing the manuscript for publication.
Note: The teacher members of the project team are referred to by their
real names, but all the young people who contributed to the study have
been given pseudonyms.
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PART 1
Beyond ability-based teaching
and learning
