WHAT IS LOOPING?
Looping is the idea that through familiarity, a teacher can build a relationship with a student to improve their academic achievement. It suggests that students who have the same teacher for an extended period, e.g., a second year of study, can academically benefit from an existing, well-established student-teacher relationship.
WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY?
Although the study highlights an improvement of only 2.4% in student grades, these findings should not be overlooked.
In the UK, a 1% increase in grades could be the difference between a whole grade boundary, let alone nearly 3%.
Students looking to enter university or even pass important subjects like Maths and English could benefit massively from looping.
Research also suggests that providing younger children (years 4-6) with specialised subject teachers could in fact reduce their academic achievement. It suggests that at the early stages of education, the consequences of an existing student-teacher relationship could have far more positive implications for their learning than specialisation.
OTHER BENEFITS OF LOOPING
Additional benefits of looping are thought to include:
Improves lower quality/ less experienced teaching
Improves academic achievement and inclusion for minority students
Not all children in the class need to have the existing student-teacher relationship to benefit from looping (positive classroom environment).
It’s a low-cost intervention for settings
DEVELOPING THE STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP
If a student’s familiarity with their teacher improves academic, but research indicates that developing relationships with teachers is one of the major challenges and causes of stress for adolescents, how do teachers start to build that all important relationship?
Here are some tips:
Get to know the student - ask questions and identify their strengths and weaknesses to help them improve.
Develop trust - evidence suggests that how much a student trusts the person giving them the instruction has big implications for their ability to self-regulate and motivate themselves
Find the balance between high-levels of challenge and high-levels of support - high challenge can be thought about in terms of having high standards and expectations, and if this is accompanied with high-levels of support, it can help students flourish and develop resilience.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Looping is a low-cost intervention that settings can employ without detrimental effect to timetabling and resources. Research suggests that can have a noticeable effect on overall academic achievement, especially in students that may normally struggle. This practice, although not too common in many settings, may provide a potential solution to better help students’ academic achievement.
To find other helpful tips for teachers, have a look at our series of blogs on the 'Science of Learning' on our AP website.
Adapted from a blog that originally appeared on innerdrive.com
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