Personal Learning
Introduction
Learners are most successful when they are mindful of themselves as learners and thinkers within a learning community. The Personal Learning domain focuses on providing students with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to be successful, positive learners both at school and throughout their lives. They are supported to develop the confidence and ability to be adaptive and take an active role in shaping their own futures in a world of constant change.
Students can learn many things by will and effort, particularly if they see that the learning is relevant; however, the learning of students is enhanced when they are supported to develop intentional strategies that promote learning. They need to understand what it means to learn, who they are as learners and how emotions affect learning. They also need to develop skills in planning, monitoring and revising their work, and reflecting on and modifying their learning practices.
Consequently, as students progress through school they need to be encouraged and supported to take greater responsibility for their own learning, their participation in learning activities and the quality of their learning outcomes. They need to develop a sense of themselves as learners and develop the knowledge and skills to manage their own learning and emotions. As they do this, they move from being supported learners to autonomous learners.
Students learn to seek and use feedback from their teachers to develop their content knowledge and understanding. They also learn to seek and use feedback from their peers and draw on other members of the community who may provide feedback, knowledge and advice about skills that support their learning. They need to develop the capacity to reflect on their learning in systematic ways.
This domain supports the development of autonomous learners, with a positive sense of themselves as learners, by providing all learners with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to:
- develop an understanding of their strengths and potential
- seek and respond appropriately to feedback from their teachers, peers and other members of the community
- develop skills of goal setting and time and resource management
- increasingly manage their own learning and growth by monitoring their learning, and setting and reflecting on their learning goals
- learn to understand and to manage their own emotions
- develop resilience and dispositions which support learning
- recognise and enact learning principles within and beyond the school
- prepare for lifelong learning.
The achievement of these outcomes requires the creation of a school and classroom culture, where all students are respected and valued as individuals with the capacity to learn and think, and where self-regulated effort in learning is promoted.
Structure of the domain
The Personal Learning domain is organised into six sections, one for each level of achievement from Level 1 to Level 6. Each level includes a learning focus statement and, from Level 3, a set of standards organised by dimension.
Learning focus
Learning focus statements are written for each level. These outline the learning that students need to focus on if they are to progress in the domain and achieve the standards at the levels where they apply. They suggest appropriate learning experiences from which teachers can draw to develop relevant teaching and learning activities.
Standards
Standards define what students should know and be able to do at different levels and are written for each dimension. In Personal Learning, standards for assessing and reporting on student achievement apply from Level 3.
Dimensions
Standards in the Personal Learning domain are organised in two dimensions:
- The individual learner
- Managing personal learning.
The individual learner
The individual learner dimension focuses on students developing knowledge about their personal characteristics and capabilities, and those they need to develop to support their approaches to and reflections about learning. Students explore and practise skills and behaviours which support learning. They develop the capacity to monitor their own learning, identifying learning strengths and areas requiring improvement. They seek and use teacher feedback to develop their content knowledge and understanding. They explore the ways in which personal values affect learning and recognise the need to develop ethical frameworks for operating fairly within the classroom and recognising and respecting individual differences of class members. Students recognise their learning preferences and needs and respect that these may differ from those of others. They develop confidence in making informed decisions about their learning.
Managing personal learning
The Managing personal learning dimension focuses on the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to enable successful management of personal learning. Students develop skills in goal setting and time and resource management and focus on task achievement. They increasingly develop the skills to work independently, becoming autonomous learners. Students develop strategies to manage their emotions and develop positive attitudes towards learning.
Stages of learning
The VELS take account of the developmental stages of learning young people experience at school. While student learning is a continuum and different students develop at different rates, they broadly progress through three stages of learning. General statements about characteristics of learners in these three stages are available at Stages of learning.
The following statements describe ways in which these characteristics relate to learning experiences and standards in each of the three stages of learning in the Personal Learning domain.
Personal Learning incorporates skills and behaviours that allow students to take control of their own learning at school. As students progress through school they develop as individual learners – understanding who they are as learners, seeking and responding appropriately to feedback from peers and teachers, setting goals and managing resources, and enacting learning values in and beyond school.
Years Prep to 4 – Laying the foundations
At this stage of learning students are given opportunities to explore and practise skills and behaviours that support learning:
- learning to cope with an educational environment; becoming resilient in the face of day-to-day challenges
- developing self-efficacy skills that give them the attitude and confidence to persist in the learning process
- developing the motivation and attitudes to continue seeking support.
Teachers need to structure tasks into manageable parts, ensure instructions are clearly understood and provide appropriate resources. Teachers can identify talent and develop a sense of competence in all learners by providing opportunities for students to use their strengths and experience, and showing that differences between individuals are valued.
Students begin to identify and discuss patterns, for example, sequences, rules and exceptions to rules, cause and effect. They start to discriminate between the qualities of information. Teachers need to provide assistance with learning, for example, by directing students’ attention, structuring their experiences, supporting their efforts, and regulating the complexity and difficulty of levels of information. Students need time to learn complex subject matter, and to know how and when to apply knowledge. They need opportunities to elaborate and organise information, and to transform it into meaningful knowledge that can be used for different purposes and contexts.
Students take advantage of their strengths and abilities to develop an aspect of a lesson, or actively participate in group work, such as student-led projects, that provide opportunities to experiment and discuss solutions.
Students develop skills and behaviours for learning effectively with peers, including interpersonal and reflective skills that encourage them to collaborate with their peers in the learning process. They learn to direct appropriate questions to their peers, listen, observe and practise with peers, and give and receive feedback. Through participation in groups, students recognise the benefits of collaborative learning.
Students begin to monitor their own learning and become aware that learning is a continuous process and that, for learning to have depth, the processes are appropriate to the task. Some tasks will require expedience, while other require a variety of strategies and questions. In the latter case, teachers should encourage students to experiment and explore, rather than race to complete.
Students become aware of how they feel about learning; they learn how to express and explain their feelings about learning, manage their feelings in pursuit of goals, and develop attitudes and skills that encourage them to enjoy learning. Learning should be approached as a partnership between home, teacher and student, providing consistent messages about the value of learning, and modelling positive strategies for learning.
Students begin to develop an awareness of their learning strengths and weaknesses, the styles and strategies that they find most helpful, and those that require improvement. They plan and complete manageable tasks. They explore how different styles may be applied in different learning situations, determine when these are appropriate, and apply them.
Students develop habits that ensure they will ask questions, reflect, organise, and set goals. Being reflective improves the quality of learning, since learning with understanding is more likely to promote transfer than memory.
Years 5 to 8 – Building breadth and depth
While motivation remains essentially intrinsic at the beginning of this stage of learning, developing the habits of positive self-talk and seeking support will help students to persist and develop. At the onset of adolescence, emotions become increasingly difficult to manage; learning to recognise and manage emotions helps students maintain resilient attitudes to learning. As motivation becomes more extrinsic, students begin to consider their learning. They begin to ask questions about why tasks are relevant to their future life goals.
The development of the prefrontal cortex – critical for the development of planning, memory, organisation, anticipation of consequences, and the controlling of impulse and mood modulation – is most active during this stage of development. Organisation is a key skill in this stage of learning. As students specialise, they need an in-depth grasp of the organising structures or thinking patterns of a discipline, as well as factual knowledge. They need strategies that help them to understand a problem or task; for example, by making connections between it and previous tasks or problems they have solved successfully. Knowledge delivered in a variety of contexts is more likely to be applied more broadly. Students develop a more thoughtful, flexible approach to knowledge by extracting themes or concepts – not only facts – from it.
Students recognise differences among peers and make judgments about diverse learning styles. They develop an attitude of questioning, and are able to provide and receive peer insights and assistance. They compare their personal styles with those of others. In a collaborative learning environment, comparisons will be a catalyst for improvement and change, while in a competitive learning environment, comparisons will stultify some students.
Students enter a period of uncertainty and experimentation with identity, and need opportunities and support to explore different views and emerging ideas, and be supportive of their peers. They recognise peer emotions, and develop skills for managing groups in the pursuit of meaningful learning.
During this stage of learning, the brain is destroying its weakest connections and preserving those that experience determines to be the most useful – students are hard-wiring their preferred learning styles and will begin to express preferences for particular learning styles and contexts.
Years 9 to 10 – Developing pathways
Students remain capable of rapid improvements in learning styles and competencies. Myelination – very important for development at this stage – continues in the brain. Myelin is the fatty material around the axins, or connectors, of the brain cells which turns impulses into thoughts. It enables students to comprehend with greater speed, make comparisons and connections more quickly and efficiently, and become more proficient in fine motor skills such as those required for drawing and playing musical instruments.
Students increasingly focus on peers, giving and receiving support. They form partnerships and collaborate with groups in order to focus on, comprehend and complete tasks. As they begin to make choices about work and future schooling, they are faced with new responsibilities and challenges that cause stress. They require increasingly sophisticated coping skills in order to remain resilient learners in pursuit of goals.
Students take more responsibility for their learning and their learning environment. They create a learning space at home, and develop independent strategies and habits, including study plans and routines. Students use conceptual frameworks for learning. They apply logic, ethics and creativity. Conceptualisation is more likely to occur early in the learning process. These concepts may then be applied and tested, evaluated, and discarded or applied more broadly.
Students become aware of, and capable of reflecting on, the differences between mathematic, scientific, literary, historical and artistic learning methods. They become flexible learners, applying a number of approaches to understanding information.
By the end of this stage, students will have generic skills such as collecting relevant information, researching, questioning, using creativity and analysis, rehearsing, elaborating, organising, judging and applying. They will have developed the capacity to plan and apply these generic skills to enhance learning across a variety of domains. Teachers can enhance learning by providing opportunities for student participation in projects that occur over extended periods and are learner directed. Students will be able to construct a planned learning framework that allows a task to be successfully completed.
National Statements of Learning
The Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) incorporate the opportunities to learn covered in the national Statements of Learning (www.curriculum.edu.au/mceetya/the_statements_of_learning,11893.html). The Statements of Learning describe essential skills, knowledge, understandings and capacities that all young Australians should have the opportunity to learn by the end of Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in English, Mathematics, Science, Civics and Citizenship and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
The Statements of Learning were developed as a means of achieving greater national consistency in curriculum outcomes across the eight Australian states and territories. It was proposed that they be used by state and territory departments or curriculum authorities (their primary audience) to guide the future development of relevant curriculum documents. They were agreed to by all states and territories in August 2006.
During 2007, the VCAA prepared a detailed map to show how the Statements of Learning are addressed and incorporated in the VELS. In the majority of cases, the VELS learning focus statements incorporate the Statements of Learning. Some Statements of Learning are covered in more than one domain. In some cases, VELS learning focus statements have been elaborated to address elements of the Statements of Learning not previously specified. These elaborations are noted at the end of each learning focus statement.
Pathways to VCE, VCE VET and VCAL
As students approach the end of the compulsory years of schooling they begin to make choices about their preferred areas of and pathways for learning. Students choose studies from the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) or recognised vocational training through either a Vocational Education Training (VET) program or the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL).
By the completion of Year 10, it is expected that students will be able to exert some level of control over their own learning. This is based on their awareness and use of a range of learning strategies, and a capacity to plan, monitor and adapt their learning. As students develop autonomy in their personal learning, they will be on the journey to becoming lifelong learners in the post-compulsory years, and being effective and successful members of the broader community.
The range of pathways through Years 11 and 12 allows for a diverse range of students with varying types and levels of motivation. Although some pathways are more structured than others, students are expected to complete tasks, including examinations, independently. Students’ reflection on their learning – evaluating their progress and using strategies to build their resilience – is important given the stress and pressure associated with senior years of schooling.
Some specific strategies that could be used by students in Years 11 and 12 – many useful in vocational and lifelong learning – are summarised in the following table. They should be seen in the context of the Personal Learning phases and processes outlined in Approaches to Learning and Teaching. Senior students need to monitor and adapt strategies for particular subjects or situations.
|
Personal Learning strategy |
Personal Learning skill or behaviour |
|
Planning |
|
|
Reading and taking notes |
|
|
Doing what needs to be done |
|
|
Examination preparation |
|
|
Reflection (see Approaches to Learning and Teaching) |
|
More information about VCE (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce)
More information about VET (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vet)
More information about VCAL (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcal)
Downloads
-
Personal Learning booklet (
PDF - 227KB)
This booklet includes an introduction to this domain, a description of the structure of the domain, and the learning focus statements and standards at each level.
-
Personal Learning standards table (Doc - 40KB)
This document provides the standards in this domain in table format to enable quick teacher reference. It includes descriptions of the dimensions and the standards from Levels 1 to 6. It does not include learning focus statements.
-
Victorian Essential Learning Standards by Level
Level 1 ( PDF - 702KB)
Level 2 ( PDF - 591KB)
Level 3 ( PDF - 649KB)
Level 4 ( PDF - 751KB)
Level 5 ( PDF - 755KB)
Level 6 ( PDF - 788KB)
These booklets include the information for every domain at the relevant level. Each level publication includes:- the relevant stage of learning statement
- the relevant level statement
- introductions to each of the three strands
- introductions to every domain
- learning focus statements and standards for every domain.
