Transcriber: Yasmine Elhammamy Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
Andy Daly-Smith: If you could please close your eyes for me.
I'd like you to visualize a picture of a typical classroom.
This might be a classroom when you were younger
or a classroom in modern-day times.
What was the teacher doing in that classroom?
And where were the pupils?
As you open your eyes,
did your image look anything like this?
A teacher stood at the front of the classroom with a whiteboard,
a child sat at a desk or table, doing work.
Do we ever question, Why do we sit children down to learn
and when did this start?
Bryn Llewellyn: In Victorian times, children were sat in rows,
often learning by rote.
The windows were high
to stop the children from being distracted by the outside world.
Now, we've made huge strides with technology,
yet classrooms then and now are not fundamentally that different.
As Sir Ken Robinson points out,
the current education system is at fault
because it was conceived and devised and structured for a different age.
What he proposes is, we have a series of environments that stretch our bodies,
expand and stimulate our minds
and create opportunities to interact with others.
Sadly, the accountability framework means that many primary schools
cannot look beyond English and mathematics.
Meanwhile, we hear tales of secondary schools
having to close design technology suites.
Now, that's not the only reason
why children still predominantly learn while sitting down.
The perceptions of many are that when children are sat down,
they're easier to manage, to control and to keep on task.
Many of these perceptions arise from the fact
that many primary teachers do not receive sufficient training
in teaching physical education.
If primary teachers were more confident to lead learning beyond the classroom,
we'd be in a far, far better place.
So while sitting down is the dominant paradigm,
we need to ask ourselves, Does it create optimal opportunities to learn?
AD-S: In some of our research,
we asked children to draw pictures of themselves learning,
and this is a common response.
This young girl here, you can see,
is thinking about anything but the task in hand.
She's got her mind on what she's doing after school,
and she's hungry, and she's confused with the task in hand.
BL: Studies from the United States show that attention spans are decreasing,
yet still we have lessons running between 45 and 60 minutes.
As we've already said, the accountability framework means
that for many children English and mathematics is their staple diet.
Subjects, they continue to be taught in boxes.
Some of the boxes are bigger than others,
and sadly, with the narrowing of the curriculum,
we have certain subjects such as the arts and physical education
being shunted to one side.
So with education focused on exam and test performance,
we've created a drill-and-practice culture
whereby children are expected to sit and concentrate
for extended periods of time.
So studying to the test might work for some,
it doesn't work for all.
And I think the situation would be summed up by Michael Rosen in this poem:
"First, they said they needed data about the children
to find out what they're learning.
Then they said they needed data about the children
to make sure they are learning.
And then inevitably, the children learned only what could be turned into data.
And then the children became data."
AD-S: But it's not just about education, it's also about health.
We know that habits are formed in the early years of life,
and these become increasingly difficult to change as we age.
Across the globe, 50% of children are insufficiently active.
In countries like the US and UK, westernized high-income countries,
that is as high as 80%, four out of every five children.
From the age of seven, around the time that children are in key stage one,
physical activity declines year on year by four percent.
When we look inside the school day
and we understand physical activity patterns,
classroom time is the most inactive period of a child's day.
So I ask you the question,
Are we setting our children on a positive health trajectory?
Well, what's the outcome of all of this?
We're in the middle of an obesity and mental ill-health epidemic,
both of which are detrimental to academic performance.
So, what's the solution?
Could it be physically active learning, and what does that look like?
BL: Well, to us, physically active learning
is about seamlessly integrating movement and learning,
and physically active learning
can be blended into different learning environments,
whether or not it's doing active number relays out on the playground
or maybe developing times table understanding
through video and dance in the classroom
or maybe zooming across the hall on scooter boards,
gathering up numbers or letters with which to work and play
or maybe just like slowing things down a little bit
and wandering through the woods and exploring.
But do these approaches not look and sound familiar?
Do they not sound rather like the early years foundation stage?
Young children are naturally creative, naturally curious, but why stop there?
Why not extend play-based learning beyond DYFS
and into key stage one and key stage two?
(Applause)
AD-S: So Bryn, can you tell them an example when you've worked in a school
and what did that look like?
BL: An example from Durham, okay.
Watching these children get so absorbed into the physical challenge
and then transpose that energy into the thinking challenge,
I asked the boys, "What do you notice?"
A great question to ask,
and Lewis said, "There's a pattern, sir.
It's like a multiple of 8 plus 1
and then the next multiple of 8 plus 2, and so on."
And I was kind of blown away by this
because I've taught this lesson a few times,
and there's never been a chance
when a child or a teacher, for that matter, has seen this pattern.
So I got a little bit giddy about it
and went to the teacher and explained what I'd observed
and to which she replied, "Lewis? Really? Nah. He hates maths."
So with this observation and similar observations in mind,
we set ourselves asking some questions:
Does physically active learning work as well as play?
Does it impact on cognition,
or was it just a case of lots of smiles and a bit of sweat?
AD-S: Well, the short answer's yes.
We know from the international research
that those children who are more physically active
and have a higher level of physical fitness
do better academically,
specifically in maths and reading and overall academic scores.
But we can't treat physically active learning as one thing.
There's great variability.
So for example, we can't expect the same outcomes
from a low-level movement around the classroom
where children are walking around desks
and expect the same outcome
as when we're doing moderate to vigorous spelling relays
in the playground.
But what we can be really confident in telling you is
physically active learning does not have a detrimental impact
on academic performance.
In some of our own work,
we compared a 45-minute physically active learning lesson
to a control session where children learn in a traditional way in a classroom,
and what we found was
that the children in the physically active learning condition
gained 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity,
nine minutes more than those in the classroom setting.
So when schools are tasked with 30 minutes a day of physical activity,
you can tick one-third of that off in a 45-minute session.
When we looked at academic performance scores
assessed through maths fluency,
we found that those in the physically active learning condition
got scores seven percent higher than those in the classroom setting.
But what was really fascinating,
when we looked at the most active children,
those children who got 12 minutes
of health-enhancing physical activity or more,
those scores were 16% higher than those in the classroom setting.
So, teachers should not fear implementing physically active learning.
But one session's fine.
We need to know over an extended period of time.
Well, studies from the US and the Netherlands show
that physically active learning can lead to improved cognition,
time on task and academic performance.
Specifically, the study in the Netherlands found
that after two years of physically active learning,
students had four months additional learning gains
above the control condition,
specifically in maths and spelling.
BL: So, how do we make it happen?
How do we make moving and learning become acceptable?
How do we make it become a norm?
How do we make our big dream actually happen?
AD-S: Well, the great news is the movement has already happened.
We've got pioneering teachers in schools around the globe,
and I expect many are sat in the audience today.
But to dream big, we need to move beyond the few.
We shouldn't be limiting to schools or by age,
but we do know that a paradigm shift is required.
BL: We need to empower teachers so they feel confident and competent
at delivering physically active learning approaches away from the classroom
and across different learning environments,
and this has to start with initial teacher training.
AD-S: We need to support schools to develop and implement programs,
and we shouldn't be limiting these programs
to just primary and elementary schools.
We should be looking to secondary and high schools as well, and beyond.
As researchers, it's our responsibility
to help schools understand the outcomes of these programs
and also how to influence the design of future programs
to help improve pupil outcomes.
BL: We also need to influence the policymakers,
the decision makers, the ministers
to widen the curriculum.
We need them to allow teachers and school leaders
to look at physically active learning approaches
or better still, support and encourage them
to take physically active learning approaches across the whole curriculum.
AD-S: And you never know, one day we may solve the irony
that you have been sitting for 12 minutes, listening to our presentation.
(Laughter)
BL: Thank you.
(Applause)
AD-S: Well done, buddy.