The Importance of Active Student Learning

Lead Teacher Dónal Gaynor prioritizes using student data to drive instructional practices. Along with his peers at his Swedish Kunskapsgymnasiet school, Dónal has “always looked at the results and the questions” of any student assessment in order to figure out “where was the problem, and then come back to it.” This approach reveals a commitment to students, and to making sure they receive the support they need.

The challenge that Dónal and Kunskapsgymnasiet face “is getting students to be active here and now in lessons and using lesson time productively for their learning and their development.” Even with good data, Dónal laments how time can get in the way of feedback and student learning. That productive connection with students sometimes can’t begin until “the next lesson because you ha[ve] to take [the results] home, mark [them],“ and discuss during class the following day. By that point, Dónal and his fellow educators worry about retention - has too much time passed?

However, Formative allows the Kunskapsgymnasiet to quickly engage students. Not only does the platform let educators “individualize more… to adapt more to the group of students who are in front” of them, but they can also “see a whole group and…see individuals easily.” In real time, Dónal can use that view to determine what areas still challenge students, “and we do it now while they need it." Formative doesn’t give learners “time to forget they need” targeted support, which helps to break the feedback loop.

Furthermore, Kunskapsgymnasiet educators can use Formative to enhance their innovative pedagogical approaches. According to Dónal, at Kunskapsgymnasiet, educators “work a lot with…language-focused education because a lot of our students are not primary Swedish speakers.” As a way of reinforcing these efforts, teachers “loo[k] at how text works and how to navigate within different types of documents, how to construct pieces of text.” Formative provides so many “different ways of working with different amounts and shapes and sizes and forms of text[s]” that speak directly to that specific curriculum. 

All of that occurs in a format that, as Dónal puts it, lets educators deliver everything “through one platform…[that provides] that responsive reaction with my students that I want.”