At Bukit Batok Secondary School (BBSS), the school mission is to nurture self-directed learners with abundance mentality. To accomplish this, Assessment for Learning (AfL) and Habits of Mind (HoM) are used as twin engines. Three BBSS teachers share how this is implemented at BBSS at the recent Teachers’ Conference and Excel Fest.

(From left) Goh Thye Heng is Head of Department (Mathematics), Dianah Bte Abdullah is Year Head (Upper Secondary), and Low Yizong is School Staff Developer (Internal) at Bukit Batok Secondary School. This article is based on their concurrent session at the Teachers’ Conference and Excel Fest 2021 titled “Empowering Self-Directed Learners through Habits of Mind and Assessment for Learning”.

What are the Characteristics of Self-Directed Learners?

Starting off the session, Upper Secondary Year Head at BBSS Mdm Dianah Bte Abdullah asks the audience to submit their responses to the question “What do you hope your students become?” on Mentimeter.

Agreeing with the top four answers in the word cloud generated, Dianah notes that the answers – resilient, independent, hardworking and confident – are traits of self-directed learners, adding that she believes “our aim as educators is to future-proof our students to face the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world.”

To do so, it is necessary to nurture students who are resourceful, motivated to learn and able to apply learning to future tasks, or, in summary, a self-directed learner. “According to Costa and Kallick,” Dianah shares, “the three capabilities of a self-directed learner are the three ‘selfs’: self-manage, self-monitor and self-modify.”

There are observable dispositions when students practice these three “selfs”. For instance:

1. 1. When a student is clear on their outcomes and has a plan of action, they are self-managing.
   2. When a student makes good decisions and acts to change plans that have proven to not work, they are self-monitoring.
   3. When we see a student apply their learning to future tasks, we know that they are self-modifying.

 
“Thus, to develop these observable dispositions in our students, we identified HoM and AfL as the twin engines to drive our student’s growth into self-directed learners,” Dianah concludes.

Developing Habits of Mind

The 16 HoM were developed by Prof Arthur L. Costa and Dr Bena Kallick after studying the behaviours of efficient and effective problem solvers. Some examples of HoM are managing impulsivity, finding humour, and responding with wonderment and awe.

“We believe that HoM develops future-ready individuals,” Head of Mathematics Department Mr Goh Thye Heng explains, “and provides a common language for our school to nurture dispositions of self-directed learners and builds the environment for students to be inculcated with the habits we would like them to have. By teaching students the HoM dispositions, we are helping them build the capabilities of self-directed learners.”

Some methods BBSS has adopted to create a HoM culture in the school include timetabling of explicit HoM lessons for lower secondary students and providing HoM training for new staff.

“We understood that building a HoM culture and habit formation would take time. Our school programmes, academic or co-curricular activities are guided by the process of teach, apply, experience and reflect, and we ensure that we give our students ample opportunities to apply HoM dispositions,” Thye Heng shares.

Citing an example, he adds that in his Mathematics department, the curriculum is taught in a spiral manner in which students go through the three strands (algebra, geometry and statistics) every year. “So, we emphasize the HoM of applying past knowledge to new situations verbally or even through visual reminders on worksheets.”

For schools that want to begin implementing HoM, Thye Heng recommends picking one or two HoM to infuse into lessons for starters.

“BBSS has implemented HoM school-wide and it is now managed by a HoM committee but in the beginning, it was the school management committee and senior teachers who crafted lesson plans for explicit HoM lessons and drove the school-wide implementation of HoM. The BBSS website has a page on our HoM journey that we hope will inspire you on your own HoM journey.”

Practising Assessment for Learning

Where HoM helps build the capabilities of self-directed learners, the challenge for teachers then becomes making self-directed learning an explicit outcome for students. This is where AfL is used by BBSS teachers to promote self-directed learning within and beyond the classroom.

The enactment of these AfL strategies and HoM dispositions facilitates the development of selfassessment and reflection in learning, and provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance.

The focus of AfL is improving student learning. This is achieved through these five AfL strategies: student-friendly learning target, effective questioning, effective feedback, peer and self assessment, and formative use of summative assessment. AfL prompts students to ask: Where am I going? Where am I now? How can I close the gap?

School Staff Developer (Int) Mr Low Yizong shares, “For example, take the AfL strategy of effective questioning, which is related to the HoM disposition on questioning and posing problems. Teachers start the process by asking effective questions, giving students who have adopted the HoM disposition of questioning and posing problems a stepping stone to form their own questions.”

Yizong believes that effective questioning is a process that starts before the lesson, where teachers plan questions to deepen the learning of their students. To him, it is a deliberate process to engage students, monitor their progress and understanding, and close any learning gaps.

The questions asked have to be student-friendly (i.e. catered to their level of understanding) yet provide effective scaffolding and remain focused on the students’ learning objective. Effective questioning not only helps students discover their learning gaps, but also develops higher order thinking skills as they answer the questions, organize their thoughts and ideas, and find questions of their own.

“In implementing AfL, it is important to set the stage for our students. We need to make sure students understand not just what they need to learn, but the depth of learning they should demonstrate,” Yizong emphasizes.

Twin Engines in Action

For the three of them, learning is a lifelong task and not just a singular event meant to satisfy a teacher. It is their hope to see their students develop a love of learning and not feel dependent on the judgement of others to determine the value of what they are learning.

As Yizong concludes: “Through nurturing HoM dispositions and the implementation of AfL, we empower our students to learn for life, and to take ownership of their own learning.”