There are six fields in this menu: Introducing PEEL, Key ideas behind PEEL, What is Different about PEEL, PEEL and other Literature on Learning, PEEL History and PEEL outside Australia. These titles are relatively self explanatory, but we would see the first three as providing advice for users about what the project is and what we suggest needs to be part of any new group. PEEL and other Literature on Learning helps users see where PEEL is consistent with, or different to, other ideas, frames and initiatives. The last two frames allow a more detailed study of how the project has evolved and spread.
Teacher Concerns
PEEL was founded by a group of teachers who had concerns about passive, dependent,
unreflective learning (e.g., Students rarely contribute ideas of their own). PEEL continues to
attract teachers who share some or all of the 18 Teacher Concerns in this search category.
We hope that the titles of these concerns carry sufficient meaning for users and have not
included more detailed descriptions. 15 of the 18 teacher concerns refer to different aspects
of student learning (concerns 5,13 and 18 have a greater focus on teaching). These
concerns are sometimes explicitly referred to in the articles coded to them, but more often,
they are implicit in what the teacher did and/or the way they described the outcome of what
they tried. Coding articles against these concerns thus involves somewhat subjective
decisions about how strongly a concern is addressed in the article. To keep the category
useful, our criterion has been that the article must offer some clear advice to a user who
shares the concern. Many articles are coded against more than one concern.
Classroom Practices
This menu contains 26 fields such as Assessment, Discussion, Note-Taking, Practical Work
and Starting the Year with a Class. They provide a way in for teachers who have a general
desire to improve the learning or their teaching during any of these classroom practices
(e.g., during class discussion). To keep the category useful, it was not sufficient for an
article merely to refer to (for example) a discussion. It needed to offer advice or ideas for
improving that classroom practice.
While there is often overlap, no two fields in the database select the same group of articles.
We have given careful thought to our criteria for each field to achieve this - Classroom Discussion, for example, does not select the same set as Principle of Teaching 5 (Promoting student talk that is tentative, exploratory and hypothetical) - one can promote such talk in
ways that would not be called a class discussion. It is impossible to convey precisely what
we intend to include under each classroom practice in a short title: for example
Understanding Other Text Material means non-fiction printed text such as books or articles. It
does not include what English teachers (quite properly) call text: novels, plays, poems, etc. -
these are the focus of Reading Literature. Brief statements of what is and is not included in
each of these fields is given in the Descriptions of Classroom Practices.
Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning
These twelve principles emerged as recurring themes over many years in oral and written
accounts of what PEEL teachers have found important, effective and successful in building a
good classroom environment and changing how students learn in ways consistent with the
goals of the project. Each principle can and should be applied in more than one way.
However, while the actions of a Year 5 teacher teaching English, a Year 8 Art teacher and a
Year 11 Mathematics teacher will be different in many ways, all of them can (for example)
Provide opportunities for choice and decision-making (Principle 3). We believe that these
principles can be applied in all subjects and at all year levels. They are strategic in that any
one can provide a year-long focus for a teacher that helps bring coherence to practice.
Once again, we only have coded an article against a principle if we believe that it has
reasonably clear presence in the article - that the reader will gain some advice about how
that principle can be implemented. A brief discussion of each principle is given under
Descriptions of Principles of Teaching for Quality Learning.
Ten Journeys of Change
The sharing pedagogical purposes group contains primary and secondary teachers who
have been exploring how to take metacognition further than had previously been the case by
developing year-long strategic agendas for classroom change. As we unpacked what the
teachers have been reporting, we have identified 10 highly interconnected journeys of
change that collectively frame a year-long learning agenda. The table Using the ten journeys
to elaborate what metacognition can mean provides an overview of the journeys and what
they mean for two aspects of metacognition -knowledge about good learning and control of
learning. The article Using the journeys to scaffold what you do in the classroom briefly
discusses some relationships between the journeys and begins to address an issue that
PEEL has been confronted with for a number of years - how can our resources be used to
meet the needs of a wide range of teachers, not all of whom want to engage in extensive
research into their classroom practice.
Video Resources
This takes you to video footage of some PEEL classrooms at both primary and secondary
levels.
Subject Areas
This menu groups all the articles where the subject (e.g., English, Mathematics) is clear from the article. Biology, Chemistry and Physics are also coded as Science and all articles coded Commerce, History and Geography are also coded as Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE).
Year Levels
As with subject, an article is only given a year level coding if this is clear from the article or if
the article is a generic description of a teaching procedure - these articles are written in a
style that, as far as possible, makes the ideas useable at all year levels. PEEL in the Primary
Classroom selects all articles that are written, at least to some degree, in a Primary
classroom context; this means that adding this coding will remove the generic descriptions
just described.
In most of the classes described, Years P (Preparatory) to 6 are Primary (or Elementary)
classes where the students spend most of each day with one teacher. In most cases, the
high school years are from 7 to 12; here the students have a different teacher for each
subject. In Australian schools it is common for students in class from Years 7 to 10 to
remain together for their 'core' subjects (about two-thirds of their curriculum).
Strategic advice on sustaining student change
For most teachers, the journey of PEEL begins with trying some new ideas in a relatively
fragmented manner. This is a necessary stage that should be planned for one needs to
dabble and explore before setting out to make a more systematic attempt at change. The
articles selected by the nine fields in this menu stand back one pace from the more specific
ideas that are the way into PEEL for most teachers. They distil out general advice on how
teachers might plan a coherent and sustained strategy for achieving student change.
Moving to this is an equally important stage in making a difference in the classroom. The
first field Achieving student change selects two sorts of articles; some are articles that range
across much of classroom practice, the others have a major focus, with generalisable advice
on achieving permanent change in an important aspect of student learning. The next eight
are all more specific. The list of Good Learning Behaviours details observable actions that
are signs of quality thinking; Promoting Good Learning Behaviours, selects articles that offer
long term, strategic advice on generating some of these. Building metacognition, Promoting
student reflection and Promoting student independence are entirely feasible, but not simple;
they need year-long approaches that are consistent, coherent and persistent; articles coded
to these fields offer advice on how this might be done. The articles in Using information and
communication technologies are all coded to the Classroom Practice with the same label,
but, once again, they offer much more general advice than the more specific ideas in other
articles coded to this Classroom Practice. The same sorts of comments apply to articles
coded to Can you use PEEL in year 12. Transition: Kinder/School and Primary/Secondary, and
Working with students of other cultures are relatively self-explanatory.
VNew Teaching Behaviours
In addition to a range of new teaching procedures, PEEL has involved a range of changes in
teacher behaviours such as the ways they respond to students' questions and ideas,
increasing wait time and delaying judgement. This menu focuses on this aspect of teaching.
Changes in teacher behaviours selects articles that discuss or emphasize some of these
changes, Teachers challenge existing practice selects articles that critique common practice
most of these articles could make an excellent focus for discussion in a PEEL meeting.
Dilemmas and problems of a PEEL approach selects articles that raise difficulties in making
some of these changes.
Teacher Education Resources
Articles in Teacher education resources are designed for teacher educators using a PEEL focus. There are three broad categories - Type of resource, Aspects of Learning and Aspects
of Teaching
Teaching Procedures
The original PEEL group comprised ten secondary teachers of six different subjects sharing
ideas and experiences from their classrooms. The only way an idea such as Work out
everything you need to find out (Procedure F1) could move from year 8 History (see Judie
Mitchell) to Year 11 Photography (see Khal Lawton) to Year 7 Science (see Odile Oliver) was
for Khal and Odile to ignore the content (and year level) specific details of Judie's original
activity and identify its generic features. Developing a range of generic teaching procedures
and applying these in new subject areas has been central to PEEL. It enables teachers to use
ideas from other subject areas, and it empowers teachers to develop their own applications
of someone else's ideas. It is important to stress that the procedures are not ends in
themselves and equally important to PEEL has been the process of selecting procedures to
promote specific aspects of quality learning such as linking to personal life (eg B16, B18,
B20), or planning a general strategy before starting a task (eg F2, F6, H8).
There are 229 procedures, clustered in 8 groups (A-H). These groups are merely to help
teachers search and select useful ideas. The groups overlap and many procedures could
arguably be placed in more than one group. Descriptions of each group are given in
Descriptions of Groups of Teaching Procedures. There is a generic descriptions of every procedure; these have titles that include the group and number such as C9 Question Dice.
Achieving teacher change and development
TThis menu is aimed at users who have responsibilities or intentions for bringing about
teacher change, running in-service sessions, setting up and sustaining (voluntary) PEEL
groups or professional learning teams that involve all staff, The search fields: Introducing
PEEL to other Teachers, Starting a PEEL Group, Sustaining a PEEL Group, Using the PEEL
Database, Ideas for Professional Development Sessions, Sustaining Professional Learning
Teams and Stimulating and using teacher writing are self explanatory.
Some Outcomes of PEEL
Most articles on the database report, at least implicitly, positive outcomes from PEEL, and
the collective weight of these hundreds of accounts is the largest single body of evidence for
the claim that PEEL has made a significant difference in classrooms. In other words, the
articles selected in this menu are in no way seen as the results section of PEEL. However
they do have a greater focus on this issue. Does PEEL work with students? and Does PEEL
work with teachers? select articles where the writer has included some comments on
student or teacher change. PEEL teachers are involved in a form of research as we define it,
but the issue of when reflective practice becomes research is quite blurred. Over the years,
there have been a range of projects that have had a higher profile the generation of
knowledge for wider audiences. More formal research in/on PEEL selects articles that report
on these and Project level achievements selects articles that take a long term look at what has been achieved. PEEL and pre-service/first year teachers is likely to be of main interest to staff and students involved in teacher education in that it reports on what has proved feasible and valuable for new teachers to take on.
