CHAPTER 1
The Global Need for ATL Skills Training
What can we learn from Covid-19?
You have all lived through the years of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns, what do you think were the biggest effects on education from that period?
The following are commonly reported:
• 1.6 billion children in 200 countries affected by Covid1
• Closure of schools has negatively impacted over 91% of the world’s student population2
• Stress, anxiety, loneliness and depression of students and teachers at record high levels3
• OECD Sept 2020 – Current students can expect 10% loss in education and 3% lower lifetime career earnings4
• Nations 1.5% loss in GDP until 2100 – in the USA $14.2 trillion loss effect on future economy5
Some facts and some speculation – but widely accepted. Definitely all negative.
What has not been so widely reported are the positives for education that came out of that time.
Contrary to most reports many gains were made, some of which were completely obvious and predictable, others that may not have been:
- school children and teachers all became more digitally literate
- the number of excellent, free, online education platforms increased dramatically both in quantity and quality
- many low-achieving students significantly improved their academic performance under lockdown6
- most children reported feeling less anxious, less depressed, and psychologically stronger following lockdown than in the months prior7
- for the first time since the development of the internet the skills required for school success perfectly matched the skills required for success in every branch of higher education, business, commerce and entrepreneurship.
(On my website find full references @ www.taolearn.com/resources-teachers/ and presentation on this topic see ref at8)
Just think back for a minute to the very beginning of Covid-19 lockdowns in your part of the world.
Two things were demonstrably clear on day one of the lockdown in the education community world-wide:
1. that most teachers were poorly prepared to facilitate students’ remote learning of their subject matter
2. and that most students were poorly prepared to fully manage their own learning.
The reason being, of course, that remote learning hadn’t been a necessity of school life before Covid 19, more of a luxury or an interesting alternative, but suddenly it moved to centre stage as the no. 1 most vital educational strategy for all schools and all students world-wide.
Luckily, teachers are very versatile and adaptable people, and it did not take them too long from when schools first closed to get up to speed and start working on turning their classroom lessons into fully independent learning experiences for students. In doing this they discovered:
1. that they were largely unfamiliar with the full variety of websites that teach their subject matter, and also
2. that designing engaging, good quality, remotely accessible, independent learning lessons for students to achieve the same educational objectives that would have happened in class is not an easy thing to do.
And then once they had got familiar with the on-line material, and designed some good lessons using those resources, they discovered the final hurdle:
3. many students did not really know how to manage their own learning – remotely. Without the formal environment of a class to support them, many students felt isolated and disconnected from their schooling, and found it very difficult to generate the motivation and drive necessary to put in the hours learning at home that they normally would at school. As one parent told me:
“Even in lockdown they still seem to have almost 24/7 connection with their friends on their devices, but the idea of using that connection to work together on schoolwork just doesn’t seem to occur to them. They don’t seem to have been taught how to form digital groups, how to collaborate and work together to find what they need to learn online, and then how to learn it together, independent of teachers.”
But around 20% of students did improve their academic performance using remote learning. Often these students had been underperforming in normal (pre-Covid) inperson school. The characteristics of these students were that they were all:
• great researchers
• technologically savvy
• active learners
• critical thinkers
• creative problem solvers
• with great self-motivation, perseverance, resilience
• who preferred to have control over their own learning
• and who thrived in an autonomous learning environment
The opportunity to have more control over their own learning – greater autonomy, greater self-direction and greater self-management – enabled these students to thrive. And when you look at that set of skills – to me they represent the exact set of skills that will be needed for every job, career or business that all those students will most likely end up in one day. The 20% who improved their academic grades under lockdown will have a lifetime advantage due to that opportunity. The rest of the students will need to catch up.
Post-Covid we need to make sure we do not lose any gains we made during that time. These are the skills we need to teach to all students and have them practice on a daily basis to enable them to take full advantage of the post-Covid digital world.
In order to cement in the gains and the lessons of the Covid years:
1. teachers need to be very familiar with every website that teaches their subject material – both the free and the paid sites, and schools need to invest in subscriptions for teachers in all the best sites
2. teachers need comprehensive training in how to design engaging, independent learning lessons for their students that utilise the best on-line resources available remotely
Given a clear proficiency development framework students are very capable of selfassessing both their initial ATL skills, and progress that they make towards mastery. One such framework is as follows:
Learner Competence
Student copies skill and learns ‘how best’ to use the skill with simple content
Practitioner Practice Expert Mastery
Student then practices using the skill with subject content of increasing complexity and works towards being able to use the skill whenever needed
Student can use the skill independently of the teacher and the classroom
This self-assessment chart has been adapted from Dreyfus & Dreyfus29 and Berliner30 from skills assessments applied to the development of professional expertise among teachers, and contains three levels of expertise or proficiency in any skill identifiable through behaviours:
• the Learner – developing Competence in using the ATL skill through learning ‘how best’ to use the skill with simple content
• the Practitioner – using the ATL skill with subject content of increasing complexity, developing increasing proficiency in the use of the ATL skill through Practice and working towards being able to use the skill whenever necessary
• the Expert – reaching Mastery of the ATL skill and being capable of self-managed use, independent of the teacher and the classroom. The highest level of skill proficiency is seen within this model as self-management. This skills progression is in line with both Abraham Maslow’s levels of learning31 and John Stevenson’s development of capability.32 Once a person can use a skill unconsciously without deliberate awareness then they are at the completely un-scaffolded level of the self-managed learner, and are deemed sufficiently proficient to be able to teach that skill to others. Stephenson saw the development of the capabilities of the lifelong learner as being the movement from being able to use a learning skill with known content in known context (competence) to being able to use that skill with unknown content in unknown context (capability). This ties in very well with the overriding aim of all teaching and learning as the development of the self-managed, self-directed, selfregulated, autonomous, lifelong learner.32
Self-Assessment of ATL skills – rubrics
From a teacher’s point of view both the Competence and the Practice phases of ATL skill development can be broken down into sub-stages, which lend themselves to inclass teaching practices.
To facilitate the teaching process what I have done is to subdivide this three phase model into a very practical seven level ATL skill self-assessment rubric. This rubric can be used for the development of every ATL skill:
Given a Mastery statement for each ATL skill strand, and the following pro-forma to fill out, students can then easily assess their own developing ATL skills proficiency. Competence
I know what the use of the skill looks like when others are using it
I can break the skill down into steps
I can copy someone else using the skill
I am starting to use the skill by myself
I am using the skill by myself in familiar situations I am getting better at using the skill in unfamiliar situations I am able to use the learning skill whenever I need to I use the skill without needing to think it through first
I use the skill one step at a time
I am still conscious of using the skill one step at a time
I am starting to put all the steps of the skill together
When I try to use the skill myself I make lots of mistakes and ask lots of questions
I need lots of help to use the skill
I still make mistakes and ask for help but I am getting better at correcting my own mistakes I can correct my mistakes with some help I can correct my own mistakes
I can use the skill in familiar situations with some help
I still need help to use the skill sometimes
I can usually use the skill without referring to the way that I have done it in the past. I can confidently use the skill without referring to the way that I have done it before I am capable of teaching other students how to use the skill
Any mistakes I make I can quickly correct I can usually correct any mistakes automatically I correct any mistakes I make automatically
I don’t need help to use the skill in familiar situations anymore I still need help to use the skill in unfamiliar situations sometimes I hardly ever need help to use the skill anymore I can use the skill in unfamiliar situations without any help from anyone else
Student Self-Assessment of ATL Skill
CHAPTER
3
ATL Skills Frameworks –14 Categories of ATL Skills
In 2013 I was asked by Malcolm Nicolson, then Head of MYP Development, to design the MYP ATL framework. Which I did – 10 categories, 134 strands or sub-skills, published in MYP Principles into Practice 2014, which I then spent the next few years of my life helping MYP teachers to implement.
You can find and download this framework as an Excel spreadsheet from my website if you wish, go to www.taolearn.com then to my ATL Resources page and find the MYP ATL – Original 2014 full framework (available here1).
After the MYP ATL framework I was also asked to contribute to the committee working on the structure of the DP ATL framework. That project never eventuated in a framework, so in 2017 I created my own, which I think people have found useful.
You can find and download my DP ATL framework – available here2
By 2018 the PYP had also created their own ATL framework which I had nothing to do with – except for those sections which were a direct transfer from my MYP framework.
So by 2019 we ended up with three different frameworks of ATL skills containing 22 different categories and over 200 sub-categories or strands, all purportedly related to the original five overall ATL skill areas.
All a bit of a mess really.
ATL In PYP In MYP In DP
Communication Exchanging information
Literacy skills
ICT skills
Communication
Social Positive interpersonal relationships Collaboration
Collaboration skills
Social-emotional skills
Self-Management Organization skills
States of mind
Communication
Social
Organization Organization
Affective Skills Character
Reflection
Research Information literacy Information literacy Research
Media literacy
Ethical use of media/ information
Thinking
Critical thinking
Creative thinking
Media literacy
Critical thinking
Creative thinking
Transfer Transfer
Reflection/Metacognition
Critical thinking
Creative thinking
Computational thinking
In 2020 the Claremont Evaluation Centre released their Retrospective Executive Summary3 of their 2018 report on the success since implementation in 2014 of the MYP “Next Chapter” initiative4 across IB schools. While the overall conclusion was that most schools were moving positively along the route to full Next Chapter implementation, the area that came in for the most robust criticism was ATL skills. Claremont surveyed 467 IB schools in 125 countries, and interviewed 2672 teachers and 16,923 students, so I think we would be well advised to take notice of their analysis. With regards to (MYP) ATL skill implementation it turns out that schools can be put into four groups:
1. Schools where ATL skills are mentioned in unit planners, but not mentioned in lessons
2. Schools where ATL skills practice, development and reflection are detailed in unit planners and described in class, but not explicitly taught or practiced in class
3. Schools where ATL skills are in all unit plans, are explicitly taught and practiced in subject classes
4. As 3 but some schools are also engaging in planning out horizontal and vertical alignment and development of ATL skills across grades.
5. Developing Mental Quiet
This often gets lumped in with meditation and exercises for one will usually produce the other. Sometimes meditation involves directly inducing mental quiet by listening, and sometimes more indirectly by mentally chanting a phrase or mantra which as a consequence can produce mental calming and quiet.
The process is very simple, and children usually enjoy it at all ages if they can see a point to it.
A good guide to meditation can be found at learntomeditate.com including explanations of many different types of meditation, with examples for children and adults.11
There are great how-to videos on meditation on this Buddhist website howtomeditate. org12 On an interactive whiteboard these could be streamed into your class and the meditation is done for you.
Mantra meditation also achieves higher levels of mental quiet, but through an inward focus of the meditation on a sound with which your brain makes no connections. So you get to exercise a form of concentration on something which has no meaning to you, which causes your mind to de-stress effectively. Find some good exercises at Mindvalley.com13
6. Perseverance
I don’t really think you can teach perseverance, you can only point at it. After all, perseverance just means keeping on. Just not stopping. So there is not much to learn in terms of technique. Perseverance is more about how do you get yourself to not stop when you want to stop.
The idea of perseverance makes a great topic for discussion in class, with many examples available in every field. Any stories of great courage usually involve perseverance, so this topic gives teachers an opportunity to talk about great heroes, both real and mythical.
Get children to think about how they get themselves to keep on going, or how they keep from stopping when they really want to. Perseverance is a great thing for teachers to focus on noticing and rewarding. Make perseverance one of your highest goals for students to demonstrate and you will engender more perseverance in your classroom.
Achieving a state of mind that encourages perseverance can be done through a focus on mental attributions for success and failure – see Part 9: Attribution Retraining.
7. Practicing Delayed Gratification
Practice of this skill is as simple as setting up reward schedules. But first read Alfie Kohn’s views on ‘punishing by rewards’ in an interview after the ASCD Conference in 199514 - “What we are after is not for us to reward the children but for them to learn how to reward themselves.”
Then tell your students about the ‘marshmallow’ experiment:
At Stanford University in the 1960s a psychologist named Walter Mischel created an experiment that he ran with four year old children from the local crèche. He set up interviews between these children, one at a time, and an adult researcher. The researcher would ask each child a few questions that they could easily answer and when they were finished he would take a marshmallow out of his pocket and put it on the table in front of the child as a reward for them. He would then tell them that they could eat it straight away if they wanted to, but he was going to go out of the room for a few minutes and when he came back if they hadn’t eaten it then they would get another marshmallow as well. If the marshmallow had been eaten then the child would get no more.
Then the researcher went away leaving the four year old in the room by his or her self. Just one child and one marshmallow and the thing was, the researcher didn’t stay away for just a minute or two he stayed away for a long time (up to 20 minutes). Also the children did not realise it but they were being observed through all this time by psychologists behind mirrored glass.
Now of course some of the kids ate the marshmallow straight away but some of them didn’t. Some of them went to great lengths to keep from eating the marshmallow - talking strictly to themselves, covering their eyes with their hands, hiding under the table or in the corner of the room. Doing whatever they could to keep themselves from eating the first marshmallow. Finally the researcher did come back and if the marshmallow was gone the child was allowed to leave, if the marshmallow was still there, untouched, the child got another marshmallow and then was allowed to leave.
So they ended up with two groups, those that grabbed and those that held out. These two groups were then followed up for many years afterwards and they were tested every way possible and the results were compared between the two groups.
Now the results that they got were very significant because every way it was possible for them to test these kids as they grew up - the group that had held out did better. They were more academically competent - 30% higher test results, better able to concentrate and learn, better at setting goals and achieving them and more socially competent - they handled challenges better, they were more self reliant, confident, trustworthy and dependable, they took the initiative and were less likely to stress, regress or give up in the face of difficulties.
CHAPTER 7
PD – Designing your own ATL Skills Program to suit your context, your students and your school
All the work in this chapter is taken from my PD program for teachers that I have delivered many times to many thousands of teachers. Because I am only one person, and there is a limit to how many schools I can personally deliver my program in, and because I do not enjoy delivering this material via online learning, I thought I would make it available for anyone who wants to deliver my program to use the exercises to engage all their teachers in the process of designing your own ATL program at your school.
In this chapter are the full course delivery instructions for my long-form in-person PD workshop for teachers, known as Teaching with ATL Skills in Mind. I have written this chapter from the point of view of a facilitator working with a big group of teachers in any school. You could use this chapter to put a PD program in place at your school, in the design and implementation of your own ATL skills program.
The exercises in this chapter could be used by any capable facilitator for individual short PD sessions, or up to four full days of PD for a whole school, by the end of which you will have created a complete plan for the implementation of your own ATL skills program in your school.
Purpose
In designing your own ATL skills program, the first thing you are going to need to get very clear on is ‘why?’ What is your purpose in building ATL skills into your students’ curriculum? Because there can be many different purposes, and the design will change depending on which are chosen by yourself, and your school, as the most important purposes.
Any well-constructed and well-implemented ATL skills program can achieve all the following:
- improvements in your students’ success rates in learning all their normal subjects
- improvements in their performance in formative and summative assessments and all high-stakes exams
- improvements in their ability to manage their own learning
- a measurable advantage for your students in all forms of higher education postschool
- a measurable advantage for your students in all job markets post-school
- a competitive advantage for marketing your school to forward-thinking parents
- meeting the requirements of international qualification-granting bodies.
Given all these things are possible, how would you rank them?
This is the first exercise for your teachers, discuss this list, add to it any others you can think of, and then put them all into a priority order so the highest purpose can be ascertained. This will also be a good ATL exercise in reaching consensus.
The decision that you make will influence the design of your ATL skills program.
As I have outlined previously, to me the highest purpose in helping students become proficient in all the ATL skills is to make sure that by the time they finish Grade 12 they are all highly capable, self-managed learners.
I think if we focus on developing self-managed learners as our highest purpose, all the other purposes will be achieved as well. This is the point of view I am going to use to lead the rest of the PD design section of this book.
Task 1: Mapping out Core-Generic ATL skills to meet learning challenges
ATL skills can be divided into two groups:
• Core-Generic skills – the essential social, emotional, organizational and selfmanagement skills needed by every student in every Grade level for effective learning of every subject
• Subject Specific skills – the skills that give students significant advantages for academic success in learning specific subjects
The Core-Generic ATL skills are the ones that need to be mapped and implemented across every grade level from Grade 1-12. These are the skills that every student needs,