Workshop on Active Learning during the Healthy School conference

Three years ago, Zwinkels started Bewegend leren Westland as a physical education teacher. Children like to move, but there did not always seem to be room for this during lessons at school. She put together a group including the GGD, an education expert, fellow physical education teachers and a parent in order to bring their knowledge together. Their joint aim was to get pupils moving more in and around the school, while still paying attention to and connecting with the current learning objectives.

The project group organised a meeting for all primary education school boards in the municipality of Westland, during which various interventions were presented. Ultimately, they chose the Bewegen Werkt method, with practical modules that focused both on the theory – why is active learning beneficial? – and on its practical application.

Experiences

In the first year (2019/2020), Bewegen Werkt trained seven schools for this purpose; in the current year (2020/2021), another seven schools took part, and online training sessions have now also been held. The current group of schools is being trained by Zwinkels, who has since set up her own company for this purpose: Beweeginspiratie.

In the first year, the schools were extensively consulted about their experiences. Zwinkels: “It emerged that every school looks at what from the programme fits its own context. You can see that there are now schools that have come a long way and where active learning has become a normal daily routine, but also schools that indicate that they find it quite difficult to incorporate active learning regularly. That is why we continue to monitor and support the schools from the first year and ask them how we can help. It works, because five of the seven schools from the first year are now working with active learning structurally.”

Pace and phasing

Weltens adds: “The fact that things progress more slowly at some schools has to do with factors at play within the school. For example, members of the working group may have struggled to inspire the team, whereas at other schools the entire team was already supportive from the outset. Or there may temporarily have been other priorities due to circumstances. However, we are really talking about pace and phasing; the approach itself has caught on at every school. For me, another strength of this programme is that it looks at how it can be made workable for each school and that there is no rigid methodology.”

Weltens explains that one thing that worked well was that, in the first year, it was stipulated that three team members from each school had to attend the training: a teacher from the lower grades, a teacher from the upper grades and a specialist teacher: “That combination made it very strong. The specialist teacher could come up with movement suggestions off the top of their head, whereas this can sometimes be difficult for a regular teacher.”

Zwinkels explains that the training uses a train-the-trainer method: “We train people, who then train new people at their own school. In this way, it continues to spread like an oil slick. The key to success is to give the movement ambassadors at the school accessible tools. The combination of the specialist teacher and the class teacher makes it applicable across the entire school. It is wonderful to hear how enthusiastically professionals in the field respond and see what it does for pupils in the classroom, at school and in the playground.”

Basic skills lessons

An important principle of active learning is that it is mainly applied in ‘basic skills lessons’. Zwinkels: “When the material being taught becomes too difficult, it cannot be combined with movement, because pupils literally stop moving in order to think.” Nevertheless, a great deal is possible, Weltens emphasises: “In the first year, the schools worked towards an Active Learning Week, during which everything they had learned could be put into practice. At the time, that week coincided with National Maths Day and Outdoor Classroom Day. On the latter day, you saw that other subjects were also used, such as biology or geography.”

“When the material being taught becomes too difficult, it cannot be combined with movement, because pupils literally stop moving in order to think.” - Miriam Zwinkels-Broch

According to Weltens, another important principle is therefore that all kinds of materials are not made available. “It is much more about learning as a teacher to structure your lesson differently. The approach can therefore in principle be applied without expensive materials.”

Effects

At one of the seven schools, a physical education intern studied the effect of active learning on children in Year 6 during the first year. “The study looked at educational objectives, but also at the social-emotional effect. One of the findings was that children now ask for it themselves and miss active learning when it is not used for a while. Teachers, for their part, notice that classes are calmer. They now sometimes add an active lesson to regain pupils’ attention, whereas previously they thought that active lessons would actually make the group more restless.”

"Teachers now sometimes add an active lesson to regain pupils’ attention, whereas previously they thought that active lessons would actually make the group more restless.” - Muriel Weltens

In the second year, Westland joined a study being conducted by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. “The BIOS research group (Movement in and around the school) has launched a national study into the current state of active learning.”

Zwinkels points out that the effects are partly measurable. “You cannot say that a pupil achieves higher grades because of active learning. However, teachers tell us that pupils are better able to focus through active learning and that this leads to higher grades. Enjoyment of learning is also a visible effect. Pupils see it as games while retaining the learning objective, and it results in cheerful pupils and a cheerful teacher. So there is an indirect connection – if you look at factors such as motivation, concentration and engagement.”

Want to know more? Then attend the Active Learning event (online) on 19 May from 13:00 to 16:15. Visit www.bewegendleren-event.nl and join us!