Reading Fluency, Leadership, and Video PD: 3 Lessons from ResearchED Warrington 2024

Wow. What a day. Despite being exhausted from a week of work and nearly not finding the strength out of bed, I’m finally home from a Saturday’s conference and I’m blogging about it… so that was the impact. Huge thanks to all the speakers.  I’m only sad I couldn’t see them all.  However, here are 3 lessons that I took away from this year’s Warrington ResearchED.

Lesson 1: Reading Fluency

My first session was Steve Chigen who focused on how to move students from KS1 into KS2 and KS3 literacy. Assuming decoding and phonics are “in good shape”, his simple claim was this:

Complexity is both the goal and the path to the goal.

Chigen argued that the more complex texts you read, the more you are prepared to read complex texts.  However, getting students to do this is not just about relying on motivational posters.  

As we introduce complex texts into the curriculum, concrete strategies need to be implemented alongside these. So what solutions were given to assist early graders in literacy and reading fluency?

1. Use complex texts.

Steve drew on the works of Quigley here with the quote:

“The development of reading fluence shouldn’t be seen as the job of primary schools alone.  As the work of researching Tim Rasinski and others has shown, reading fluence may be more significant to older readers”.

• Coach Fluency.

This was a fascinating part of the session which backed up Haili’s ‘Using Rocket Fuel for Teacher Development’ later.  Steve showed a video of a teacher coaching a young student’s reading fluency.  Some of the dialogue as the following:

Example 1:

Teacher: We are going to do a fluency practise now. The goal that we are working on together is to stop at the period for just a second.

Student reads.

Teacher (after praise): Next goal is to pause as the comma. Today, I am going to give you one example, and then I want to you to keep reading inside your head and doing the same.

Teacher reads.  Student then continues to read quietly.

Example 2 (a stronger pupil):

Teacher: What is your goal?

Student: My goal is when a character is speaking that I’m going to try and think about how much they might be feeling”.

I’m not sure about many primary or secondary teachers, however, I have never in my career watched professional development videos on how to assist students in their reading fluency.  This 5 minute clip was hugely valuable (again, a foreshadowed plug to Haili Hughes on Session 5 which I write about later). 

In summary of coaching reading fluency, Steve Chiger argued:

• Pre-select the section of the extract
• Ask students to identify their goals
• Model where necessary
• Have students read with their goal in mind
• Celebrate strong reading

Here’s an example of one-page of his fluency coaching guide.

Solution 3: Activate Knowledge

As we know by now, knowledge activates knowledge.  I quite liked this simplified knowledge graphic put up by Michael Chiles in his talk on leadership as it shows the way that bringing in new knowledge – when attached to prior knowledge – can create a holistic understanding of a concept. 

Chigen gives 4 clear things that will assist this:

1. Integrate knowledge-building articles. i.e. Adding key vocabulary, or key information pieces to assist the contextualisation of a reading material.
2. Ladder up text complexity so students build knowledge before the hardest material.
3. Build units around themes or essential questions
4. Map your curriculum.

You can find more on knowledge building: https://stevechiger.com/blog/

Solution 4: Making Thinking Visible

Finally, Chigen claimed that making it clear that ‘Everything’s an Argument’ assists students’ reading quality.  If students can identify the text’s claims and then decide if they accept them, this assists a deep exploration of the text. He gives the following example scaffold to help find the argument – I imagine this is to be adapted depending on the appropriate year.

Lesson 2: Leadership and Strategy

This was the big one.

The Golden Circle

The first thing to note was that John Murphy (Great Schools Trust), Michael Chiles, and Wesley Davies, all began their leadership discussions noting the Golden Circle from Simon Sinek.  That the first three questions for any leader, are these:

Murphy went one step further, adding: Lead from who you are. With a great anecdote to remind us that we are all in education with a personal story about how we got here.

Healthy teams and culture.

I use we word ‘healthy’ here to mirror a term used by Wesley Davies, but to also note Sam Crome’s comment during his presentation that ‘high performing’ is not the right word when we talk about teams as it insinuates culture of failure.

Both Sam and Wesley discussed core things that teams have.  I’ve put down 9 things stated by Sam, with Wesley providing questions to help find it, as well as used examples from all presentations to flesh these out.

1. Vision and purpose
   1. Why do we exist?

This was the first, big factor.  It was clear good leaders needed a strong vision with a statement that summed up their purpose and intention.  Michael Chiles shared his purpose from Belle-Vue: a knowledge rich curriculum; preparing students for their next steps; ambitious learning experience; rewards system that built intrinsic motivation. Not to mention, clear values underlying it all:

Michael said that his students are “never 60 seconds away” from seeing a reminder of these values in the corridor – constant reminders are crucial to building a collective culture.

• Belonging and Trust
  • How do we behave?

For a healthy culture, this happens for both staff and students. Michael spoke a lot about this aspect for the students, drawing from Peps McCrae:

The behaviour and attitudes of others has a huge influence on our own. When a large number of people within a group adopt a similar behaviour this ‘social norm’ effect because so powerful that it can often override more formal policies and rules.

The key to doing this? Well, was to DO IT.

From Michael’s talk, DOING IT is about creating ‘our’ culture with the kids.  Culture changes because people start doing things differently.  For example, implementing their STEPS culture has meant that students now understand how to politely talk to strangers – even the likes of Tom Bennett (who recently visited Belle Vue).

For Sam, it was about ensuring that there wasn’t a lack of clarity or trust.  DOING IT allows you to link to the ways you work and enables staff to “forge together” and review their work processes.  All of which, hopefully creating a mechanism for constructive discussions.

• Clear and challenging goals for the team.
  • How will we succeed?

For Sam, this goes back to what I mentioned above.  The idea that things must be “forged together”.  Sam claimed, which I completely agree with, that there’s absolutely no point getting 3 to 10 brains in a room if you’re not going to listen to all of them.

Part of Sam’s approach is that, in order for this to work, there has to be a mechanism for constructive discussion.  He talked about team bonding methods to assist in developing clear and challenging goes.  For example, at the beginning of term, getting your team to answer:

• What is the best version of me?
• What goes wrong?
• How might I appear when things go wrong?

By allowing your team to be open and transparent about their strengths and weaknesses, and, more importantly, what triggers them and what it looks like, the hope is that you will have a team that shares more honestly.  As a result, there is knowledge development for clear and challenging goals.

Another method discussed was Andy Buck’s CABRIO which can be found in Sam’s book: The Power of Teams, p.137.

• Role clarity, mental models, and systems.
  • What do you do?

Wesley spoke really well on this using the phrase that staff must: “know their lane”.  He showed a table of the areas that each staff member was clearly overseeing. For example, one staff in charge of shoes.  So, if there was a query about shoes, the response is simply “you must go to Mr X as he is in charge of the shoe standards”.  This was the same with blouses. By doing so, his team worked incredibly effectively.

Sam also looked at the importance of role clarity with regards to purpose and quoted from another fantastic book on Building Culture with this:

Having absolute clarity of purpose enables everyone to move in the same direction – Lekha Sharma.

Michael also looked at staff roles, however, took this down to a pupil level as well.  He drew on Belle Vue’s behaviour policies claiming that, because “everything is scripted and predictable” for the students, “working memory is freed” and students know what to expect.  As a result, they learn better.

Therefore, role clarity in teams (staff or pupils) not only gives people purpose, but opens up the freedom to think.

• Communication, candour, conflict
  • What is important, right now?

My favourite part of this was Sam Crome stressing in his talk to beware of compliance.  He claimed that functioning teams must be comfortable with conflict, and must be able to communicate to each other grievances or concerns.

He talked about the “good vibe” team.  Where everyone is eating cake and happy, but then they secretly go into the next room and disagree with what was said or implemented not sharing this with their leader or line manager, the term used was ‘cordial hypocrisy’.  Rightly so, Sam warned us of these teams as he claimed that it’s:

Great to be part of a good vibe but there’s a massive dysfunction in teams not having good conversations to
make themselves better.

Cordial hypocrisy can exist out of both loyalty or fear (Solomon and Flores, 2001), but either way is a barrier from good and productive communication happening.

• Regularly debrief.

Michael Chiles argued in his talk “make a thing of the small things so the big things don’t happen” and discussed the value of intensity vs consistency with regards to the application of ideas. He put up this very applicable image:

Michael said to his audience that his organisation needed to be “consistent” as “intensity cannot be maintained”, claiming a good example are The Rules.  Often schools implement ‘The Rules’ at the beginning of the year and do not regularly, on a large scale, revisit these.  Michael’s talk reiterated the importance of reminding students every day what the rules were, and evaluating whether they are being met with staff.

Similarly, Wesley gave an example of SLT calling a whole-school assembly as a “reset” where necessary.  This can also free up period for staff to catch up on marking or planning.

• Team diversity and characteristics
  • Who must do what?

A small note here which I liked – Sam Crome recognising that good teams require a variety of personalities and thrive of each individual’s skills.  Don’t surround yourself with Teams who have the same traits as this may lead to stagnation. Instead, recognise the variety of ‘work personalities’.

• Learning culture

As educators, I think this speaks for itself.

• A supportive organisation

Finally, Sam Crome discussed how to a make sure that an organisation was truly matching with the policies through effective training to promote a learning culture by being a supportive organisation.

Wesley gave two good examples of this. First, the development of policies happened with relevant staff within the organisation, and staff were given time to ensure that this happened effectively.  This will be music to some of our ears as I quote Wesley here:

“To get the behaviour policy right, we brought all of our behaviour leads off timetable for 5 days”

Another example is that Wesley’s trust’s CPD platform always delivers Professional Development that is linked to the learning required by new policies.  There would be discussions about what sort of CPD is ‘right’ for the policy.  They would offer any or all of the following (compulsory or voluntary, depending on the new learning) to their staff.

• Masterclass
• On demand
• Courses
• Events
• Seminars

I close this area with Wesley Davies’ 4 Cs of Improvement at Scale:

My final big question to Sam at the end of his talk was this: if you’re making change within an organisation, are there always going to be staff casualties?

Sadly, it seems that this may be the case  If people cannot be aligned with the vision and purpose, your organisation may not be right for them.  However, what I’ve seemed to decipher as important in the process is this:

• Staff are given space to try to implement the new vision and purpose
• Staff are coached in their fears and concerns about the new vision and purpose
• Staff are mentored and given support to try
• Staff are still valued for their expertise as, whether they’re implementing a proscriptive set of rules or curricular, they’re still navigators of knowledge.

Lesson 3: Video Professional Development

Phew – we are getting there.

My final lesson of the day was from the wonderful Haili Hughes, who reminded us all on the value and power of video.  Her title for the session ‘Using Video as Rocket Fuel for Teachers’ came from Jim Knight; the father of instructional coaching.

Haili spoke passionately about the poor CPD opportunities that teachers get drawing on statistics from TeacherTapp (2024) that claimed only 4 out of 10 teachers found their last INSET day ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ useful.  Indeed, a CPD sessions a few years ago asked all staff to hold hands and walk in a circle pretending to be planets in the solar system to show we ‘needed each other’. (I’m not even joking). This is compared to what I mentioned in my Lesson 1 earlier when I was watching the video given by Steve Chigen on coaching reading fluency. I’m an English teacher with a huge SEN cohort, and I have never been taught or observed methods of promoting reading fluency.  For example,

Haili gets it right here – video is key.

Haili drew on 4 key areas where video boosted professional development, led by a capture from Dylan Wiliam:

“The only way to improve teacher quality across the system is to invest in the professional development of the teachers already working in schools – the love the one you’re with strategy.” – Dylan Wiliam

• A – Building Knowledge
  • Managing Cog load
  • Revisiting prior learning
• B – Motivating Teachers
  • Setting and revisiting goals
  • Presenting information from a credible source
  • Providing affirmation and reinforcement after progress
• C – Developing Teaching Technique
  • Instruction
  • Social support
  • Modelling
  • Monitoring and feedback
  • Rehearsal
• D – Embedded Practice
  • Providing prompts and clues
  • Prompting action planning
  • Encouraging monitoring
  • Prompting context-specific repetition.

As you can imagine, showing a 5 minute video (Haili argued this was a good amount of time) to discuss on a teaching technique, encourages teachers to ‘zoom in’ to teaching methodologies.  Such practice can help new teachers not only with mimicry but genuine self-reflection.  I.e. short-burst videos discourage superficial bias reflects such as “my voice is annoying” or “why was I wearing that” and allow teachers, as Haili rightly put it, to GET BETTER QUICKER.

It is so easy to see how video can match the 4 areas of professional development above.

It also made me reflect on learning about Wait Time years ago. I attended a conference with Doug Lamov on Wait Time and this video was shown – it is one I still think about.  Watch the girl in the top-right corner.  She is thinking and does not put her hand up, however, eventually she does.  Whilst she does not get picked, if we do not implement Wait Time, we do not always give students the chance to think:

Haili’s talk was excellent as it drew from many recent research findings, and had a range of video examples from her outstanding work with IRIS Connect. Also, ending with a large-scale research project involving 1000 teachers proved that video based teacher coaching improved outcomes by +2months.

An outstanding day and the length of this blog is testament to everything that I came away with. Shout out to Kate Jones and Miriam Hussain whose sessions I could not make. Not to mention, a quick run in with Nick Pointer (https://nickpointer.com/) at the end of it who will, undoubtedly, write up his own excellent review of the things I have missed. 

Thank you, ResearchED, for continuing to engage our professionals.

Improving Culture: Diversity (Blog 2/3 on 2021/2022 Reflections)

**I am going to start this with my story, as I think to understand the title (and my views here), stories are key.

I grew up in a struggling, working class family. My grandparents were first-wave European immigrants who came to Australia speaking no English, they worked tirelessly on a minimum wage to buy their family home in their new country, raising children with very little money or assets.  My mum then raised me and my brother as a single parent, working a receptionist job – she had no university education, and earned significantly below the average wage. As a result, I was claiming government benefits until I became a teacher, and worked three jobs throughout my university undergraduate degree to help with costs.  Me and my brother were the first of our family to go to university.

However, I was also fortunate enough to grow up in a town which had not yet eradicated its ties to its indigenous populations unlike most other gentrified places in Sydney and the east coast.  As a result, my DipEd (PGCE equivalent) included the compulsory study of the local indigenous tribes by an Aboriginal elder: he sternly reminded us about understanding and teaching indigenous histories to young Australians.  He taught us the importance of symbols, and story.  I was forever thankful to him – my first teaching job in Australia landed me in the school with the highest indigenous population of the area (roughly 25%) where I was able to use his expertise.   

Despite my subject speciality in English, I was hired to teach 4 subjects in that school (English, History, Geography, and Maths) due to the limited resources and funding.  These were some of my greatest learning curves: teaching white history, and white books, to a school with strong ties to its indigenous cultures. 

When teaching a Year 7 class in symbolism, I found a worksheet on symbolism.  It had the following images, and students had to name what these images symbolised:

But I also included these symbols, which are very common and popular in indigenous art.

Only the Aboriginal students in my class could finish the worksheet.  They had two knowledges of symbols: those they had been taught by Western culture, and those they knew from their families and stories. 

With the information above, it was refreshing to hear some of the conversations being pushed forward at this year’s Festival of Education.

My first blog about the day was entirely focused around CPD and improving teaching and learning, which can be read here.  However, the second thread that was pertinent throughout the day (and arguably, in many ways, much more important) was why the British education system still wasn’t ‘getting it right’ with regards to diversity, social mobility, and gender.

Cultural Diversity (identities, stories, histories…) and Symbolism

The power of David Olusoga’s speech on his book ‘Black and British’ at the Festival of Education reminded his audience of the power of stories. We have been, for so long, perpetuating the single story of the coloniser – and, more frighteningly, often without recognising it.  Olusoga noted how novice we really are about the various histories that exist in the country, even if we are aware of the violent, white history of Britain.  When asked, not many of us can recall the (as Olusoga rightly put) ‘history of the survivor’. 

During his speech, Olusoga asked his audience poignant questions: How many of us can name a slave ship (that wasn’t a westernised film)? How many of us can speak about buildings through the knowledge of their involvement with slavery? How many institutions truly engage with their dark, colonial histories? Why are we so unfamiliar with them? How did we get to this point of being so unaware of a history that is the history of so many now living in Britain? Olusoga claimed the problem is, partly, with our education system. 

Macpherson (2022) notes that the “GCSE History in 2020, for example, there were 59 options offered by the various exam boards. Only 12 of these cover black history, and even then only 5 are about black British history (the remainder are about slavery and civil rights in the USA).” Similarly, in English, we have seen a recent backlash towards the swapping of classic names (Owen, Keats, Larkin) from a predominantly white GCSE curriculum, and the inclusion of more culturally diverse poets.  Our own education minister (at the time) deemed the switching of these poets as “cultural vandalism”. I am among the many teachers sad to see Keats and Larkin go, but ‘vandalism’ is certainly incorrect here; ‘inclusion’ is perhaps the more appropriate term (note: I use ‘swapping’ or ‘switching’ of these poets instead of ‘removal’ as the latter seems to denote a cancel culture which I don’t think is true; Keats, Larkin and Owen are not being cancelled, the curriculum is just updating).

It is in Olusoga’s book that he discusses how Britain maintains this ‘romanticisation’ and ‘purification’ in a post-colonial era.  In particular, he notes figures like Enoch Powell in the 1960s and 1970s – reading the extract below…

… Olusoga draws on the power and importance that ‘tradition’ had in maintaining and upholding racial prejudice, violence, and divide.  With, of course, the irony that Powell was choosing the history of Britain to purity: “he understood just how far backwards our collective gaze had to be directed in order to fall upon the sort of England he was looking for.”

These words ‘uniquely Britain’ and ‘tradition’ are sadly still closely tied with rhetoric of imperial power.  Olusoga did an excellent job to open our eyes to it again by also discussing the removal of statues and Black History Month.  These things are not tokenistic, nor are they ‘destroying traditions’ – they are symbolic, and they are powerful for moving the country towards a better history and future. 

Such attempts have been made by history teachers before – however, not always accurately.  In an effort to show British students the histories of other countries, a ‘Meanwhile, elsewhere’ resource circulated a few years ago. Great in theory, but the importance of executing these resources properly is so much more important.

For example, in order to alleviate, for a moment, the stress of learning about the Wall Street Crash and the Depression in the British curriculum, this resource lightens the mood with a homework or task allowing students to look at what was happening in Australia at the time: The Great Emu War.  However, what was really happening in Australia was the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, particularly if they ‘looked white’ so that they could be ‘bred out’ and assimilated into a ‘bigger, better, white colonial Australia’.  This history, our history, is the Stolen Generations – and shockingly continued on until the 1970s.

Whilst I am not against such tasks, an better way may be to then also include a worksheet on the Stolen Generations.  Focusing solely on the Great Emu War, keeps our gaze on a colonial, British perspective of Australia’s history.

In 2008, my high school opened up the theatre to watch the live stream of Kevin Rudd apologising to the Indigenous peoples for the Stolen Generations.  At the time, there was a great debate on what the apology meant with, of course, many deniers arguing that “this was not our apology to make / we did not steal the children”. Later, when working with many Indigenous families, I discovered that most of them had their apology letter framed and hanging on the wall in a proud and obvious place in their homes.  For these families, this was not about ‘who or what should apologise’, this was not about ‘whether or not the Australian people are responsible’, the letter and the apology was a symbol; a symbol of repentance for identities lost, histories destroyed, racial violence, and cultural divide. 

Symbols matter.  Systemic acts of repentance matter.  So yes, Olusoga reminded us that it’s still important to put black writers at the front of tables for Black History Month, and it’s still important to consider whether names of places or statues or traditions are representative of who we want to be.  Some places are doing this already…

… but some are still not.

As Olusoga closed, I couldn’t help but see the sad irony in him speaking at a place that has, to preserve tradition, declined to alter any of its problematic colonial associations.

Coming soon: Improving Culture: Social Mobility, and Gender.

Improving Teaching and Learning (Blog 1/3 on 2021/2022 Reflections)

The 7^th of July 2022 was a good day.  It was the day Boris Johnson resigned, and the Festival of Education resumed.  It has been two years since the Festival of Education ran (in person) at Wellington College, and, for those of us interested in what has happened in the world of CPD since COVID-times, it did not disappoint. 

Unsurprisingly, there were many threads regarding wellbeing, mindfulness, and sustainability (both self and community), which resonated nicely with the anxieties of our post-Brexit, post-COP26, post-COVID era. However, many poignant discussions about Education took place alongside these anxieties, and common threads were apparent; things pressing and important for our current educational worlds.  I’ve written, as best as possible, about the things you can take away from such a CPD event – ready for conversations in the Academic Year 2022/2023.

Thread 1: Improving Teaching and Learning

The first common theme seemed to be the question of: how do I improve CPD within my school and/or how do I personally identify myself in the educational world, and how to get better.  As a result, I’ve broken this thread into two categories: 1) Evidence-informed CPD, and 2) Personal or Leadership Coaching

Building evidence informed CPD

Robin Macpherson packed out Venue 7 (despite it being Thursday’s ‘graveyard shift’) with his talk on The Teaching Life. 

The Teaching Life (2021)

The book is appropriately introduced by Professor Dame Alison Peacock who writes: To teach is to learn, and explores the ‘why’ and ‘how to’ develop CPD culture within individuals and school communities.  Robin noted the substantial hours that have been considered to be ‘effective’ per year to enhance teachers in their profession, an intimidating “35 quality CPD hours” (Cunningham, 2020) were needed to be effective and that this, in turn, led to  “a greater effect on pupil attainment than other interventions schools may consider, such as implementing performance-related pay for teachers or lengthening the school day” (Zuccollo, 2020; Cunningham, 2020).  Unfortunately, there seems to be many schools that are unable to get this ratio to feel like ‘quality’ CPD.  Many schools struggle with the logistics of implementation and “operational difficulties” of so many hours (Cunningham, 2020).

One of Robin’s solutions, as the Head of Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen, is to encourage personal efficacy with this target: give staff a compulsory amount of CPD hours, and then allow them the opportunity to create their own CPD opportunities to complete the hours.  This encourages staff to have their own control and direction in their CPD journey, alongside fulfilling whole-school missions and aims.  However, Robin noted that this type of quality CPD can also come at a low price. Robin stressed the importance of Education communities and Research communities both locally and globally to move a staff culture forward.

Robin noted numerous examples of communities: ResearchED, The Festival of Education, and the Chartered College of Teaching.  However, he also gave more local, ‘in-house’ examples of where one can find excellent CPD, such as:

• Lesson observations
• Lesson study
• Twitter
• Blogging
• YouTube
• TeachMeets
• LinkedIN
• Education books
• School visits (local/international)
• Journal clubs

In short, Robin reminded us all of a Twitter comment made by Carl Hendrick (2020) …

… but argued that we are not quite there in implementing all the wonderful resources available to us as professionals. The question then becomes, how can we make our schools better in instilling this ‘golden age’ into our everyday practice?

If you’re familiar with the Teacher Development Trust, David Weston also shared his wisdom at The Festival of Education.  I’ve seen David speak numerous times and was inspired by his idea of the fireside approach to CPD – or Camp-Fire Leadership (link here). Echoing Robin’s practical and informative approach: David Weston argues in this talk that staff need two things to care about CPD: they need fuel, which is sufficient authority, time, and resource, along with access to support and expertise, and they need a spark – a problem they care about – and it can’t just be something that only leaders think is important. 

The Chartered College of Teaching was also speaking on the matter of instilling ‘Evidence-informed Practice’ into schools and institutions.  Unfortunately, this talk received less of a positive review.  Whilst Alison Peacock fronted the talk with the overall question: How do we create an energy around teaching and learning that is the opposite of a “staff meeting” and gave a few strategies for Leadership such as:

• Research centres in MATs
• Performance management though research reviews
• Research digests
• Journal clubs
• Masters routes via apprenticeship levy
• Chartered accreditation

The talk titled ‘Evidence-Informed Practice’ spiralled mostly a pitch to completing the Chartered College’s Professional Learning Courses.  Despite acknowledging the value of such courses, the audience was full of disheartened faces looking for answers on the sold title. 

What was alluded to incredibly well by Alison was the venn diagram put together by Cat Scutt and the Chartered College of Evidence-informed Practice.  This diagram (pictured below) cross-cuts the skills and reflection required to be a truly researched practitioner: 1) you are engaging with the best evidence from research, 2) you have experience in reflecting on such ideas, and 3) you aim to apply or test this research in your context if you believe it will suit.  Keeping these in mind will help with reflecting on your own self in this ‘golden age’. 

And it was this venn diagram that Robin also discussed.  Robin concluded his talk with ‘Challenge Questions’ – questions proposed to help steer individuals and their colleagues to their best Teaching Life.  Robin asked his audience to take these away either to reflect on personally, or with colleagues.  They were:

• What do you want to achieve in your teaching life?
• What professional networks do you have that support you in what you do?
• Have you planned the next 5-10 years of your career?
• Do you have control over your own professional learning?
• What are the main drivers of your career decisions?
• How do you define wellbeing for yourself?
• How do you reflect on your own practice, and when?
• What has been in the greatest achievement of your own career so far and why?

Coaching

It seems fitting to move from the questions above, to the other thing that seemed popular in the field of CPD: coaching teachers to identify their strengths and weaknesses so that they can become better professions and/or leaders.

I went to watch BTS Spark’s session on Leadership and Mindtraps.  The session was run by BTS Spark’s co-founder Lee Sears who has worked with numerous schools across the UK and the world.  Understandably, there was also a pitch to ‘signing up’ to the services that BTS spark offered and, like many of the coaching sessions, were linked with a way to make further contact with organisations for future CPD.  However, a useful activity that definitely engaged his entire audience was identifying the types of mindtraps that you are susceptible to in a ‘Mindtraps Questionnaire’.  The reflective task asked you to score yourself against questions:

1 – for regularly e.g. 1/3 times a month

½ – for very occasionally

0 – for rarely

The questions then followed, grouped into 6 categories.  For category 1, they were:

When you are not at your best, do you find yourself…

1. Over-planning – or being reluctant to delegate – because you have been overly focused on the downsides?
2. Creating unnecessary stress by imagining the worst-case scenarios and potential downsides
3. Making a mistake and dwelling on its implications?
4. Take a long time to make decisions in case you have missed something?

If your answers added to 2 or higher to the questions above, then you are considered to be susceptible to the ‘Worrier’ mindtrap.  All mindtraps identified by Lee were Worrier, Prover, Martyr, Avoider/Victim, Critic/Doubter, Pleaser, and all affect the way we communicate with leaders and our teams.  Lee stressed the importance of ‘catching ourselves’ falling into these mindtraps so that we can assess our situations more calmly and rationally.

Some colleagues and friends also visited the GROWTH coaching discussions, and were similarly pleased and inspired by it. Again, the conversations that arose were about how we can be better at building relationships for success in education institutions. 

According to Christian Nieuweburgh (director of Growth Coaching international), there was not one ‘answer’ or particular framework that needed to be employed by organisations for successful coaching.  Instead, he argued that research suggests organisations who had any coaching framework worked better at growing their staff than those who didn’t.  So what framework is GROWTH?  They use the following, derived from Campbell (2016):

G – Goals: What do you need to achieve?

R – Reality: What is happening now?

O – Options: What could you do?

W – Will: What will you do?

T – Tactics: How and when will you do it?

H – Habits: How will you sustain your success?

GROWTH coaching also make coaching resources available  for free on their website which can be found on their website.

It was incredibly evident throughout the Festival of Education that many teaching professionals wanted the opportunity to understand their own pitfalls as educational leaders – I wondered if this came from seeing so many bad teachers rise up into educational leadership roles before. Either way, the drive to develop a strong coaching system in school communities, along with coaching frameworks, was strong; many educators looking towards coaching as CPD to improve leadership and practices.

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Summary

In summary, I have finished the academic year 2021/2022 very excited about how I can help to grow my department, but also reflecting on the ways that coaching culture and CPD is implemented for best results.  Tom Sherrington has previously linked the two areas of Teaching & Learning and Coaching together before in his useful blog here, where he argues that educational institutions must take these five steps to improve:

1. Ditch the judgement culture

2. Establish a shared framework for thinking about teaching and learning

3. Map and embed CPD cycles and structures

4. Grow and develop a coaching team

5. Transfer ownership to teachers

I also found this table below from the TDT incredibly useful on what makes CPD effective (found here):

I hope that the above information enables you to see ways of moving your institute forward and towards these five steps from Tom.  I will also leave with six final questions for you or your team members to reflect on as you complete this academic year (Growth Coaching International, 2022) ready for next:

1. What are you most pleased about from last year or the year so far? And what else? And what else?
2. When you reflect on these things, what general principles or practices might have underpinned these successes?
3. What must you get right to ensure that the year or term ahead goes well?
4. What would be the highest leverage focus area for you to give attention to this year or this term?
5. What would success in this area look like? Who else would notice, and what would they be saying?
6. Who can support you in seeing this through?

Coming soon…

Refections: (Blog 2/3): Cultural Shifts: Black Lives Matter, Social Mobility, Gender.

Reflections: (Blog 3/3): Ofsted and Assessment

5 Reflections on becoming Head of Department

Since COVID hit, I became quieter on twitter.  This was for three reasons: 1) I suffered a significant arm injury which led to hours of challenging physiotherapy and rehabilitation, and 2) I was finishing my MSc in T&L with this injury, and 3) because I really wanted to know where I wanted to be in my educational career.

I was fortunate enough to teach at an excellent school in the UK, but that school was extremely privileged; the educational research I was doing was exciting, and I could apply it these to my own context easily. However, having worked in a range of education contexts throughout my career, I knew I really wanted to make more of a difference – so I moved 3.5 hours north, and became a Head of English. 

Bright-eyed, and ready to make change, I have put together a few things that I would say I have experienced which may help someone in their transition to Head of Department.

• Get to know your department

One of the worst experiences in my teaching career was when I had come back from my injury.  I was never asked how I was or how the pain/physio would affect my day-to-day practice.  The answer was: immensely.  The slightest move of my arm would exhaust my mental capacity.  I never realised prior to that moment how important it is to have a HoD who knows what is going on, and genuinely offers constructive support.

It is so vital to get to know your department; not just with physical injury, but anything that may require you to support them.  If your department feel they can talk to you, and feel supported by you, it will undoubtedly help the comradery of your team.  Don’t ever underestimate how important taking 5-10 minutes out of your workload to have those conversations can be.

Similarly, get to know where your department want to be so that you can help steer them towards any CPD on grow their own career. 

In short, get to know your department so that you can effectively support, steer, and grow.

• Understand your department’s story

Every department has been on a journey to get to where it is now.  This may be catapulting positively towards research-informed practices, sharing resources, and working collaboratively to reflect on the academic strength of curriculum choice and results.  Or, it may not. 

Understanding where your department is on its journey is hugely important to recognising what could be done quickly, what might be challenging to achieve, and what conversations to open up with the department.

Ask yourself: What is the department’s…

• Results history?
• Curriculum history?
• Relationships history?
• Leadership history?
• Current strengths and weaknesses?
• Future aims – collectively and individually?

Strategies collect information:

• Questionnaire
• 1-2-1 conversations
• Department meeting discussions
• Conversations with Deputy Head Academic/Director of Studies

• Reconsider your biases

It is also hugely important to note that you will come into the position with your own biases and history; some will be strengths, and others will be weaknesses.

Having worked in a leafy and academically competitive environment for six years, I was fortunate to have a good understanding of what was required for A* or Grade 9 responses. However, I had no experience of teaching a partially blind student.  My past experience had become a strength in one sense, but I have also had to entirely reconsider my practice in another.  I needed to rely on my department to help teach me their experiences; I did not have all the answers, and I certainly did not have all of the strategies. 

Therefore, I had to remind myself that, whilst the department was doing things ‘differently’ to ‘what worked’ in my experience before, it was also because it needed to. 

Coming in as HoD does not mean that you will have all the answers to solving teaching and learning in your department. It means you are leading a group of teachers – whom will all have a range of expertise and experiences – on how to utilise and steer their strengths for the strongest outcome for students.

• Change using research

But what if there is something you want to change?  It is important to remember that very few (if any) departments will be implementing strategies they genuinely believe are doing harm to a students’ learning. In fact, teachers are more likely to do harm to themselves through hours of pointless marking, or hours of planning a correctly scaffolded independent learning project, before recognising that such strategies may not be the most effective approach to teaching and learning.  If you take over a team as Head of Department who has instilled these approaches over time, you are not simply changing a way of teaching, you are changing the belief that this was an effective approach. 

The best way to do this is to change things slowly – but by using up-to-date and credible academic research.  Look closely at the results, investigate various approaches, and (most importantly), find a teacher in the department who would be willing to give it a go.  I am fortunate enough to have a department who are incredibly accepting of what we could implement to make things better, but I know that is not always the case with others. 

However, there may be approaches that need changing immediately.  In which case, providing staff with research-informed information, case studies, and the opportunity to see it ‘doing well’ throughout the implementation process is vital.  If strategies are enforced without any follow up, reflection, or discussion, it is not only unclear whether people are using these effectively, but they are bound to fizzle out of people’s minds.

To change using research, ask yourself the following question:

• Is there evidence in the department that shows this needs to change?
• Are there more resistant staff in the department than others? Why? How can I work with them?
• What evidence in the research community will help me show that we should try this?
• What will it look like at the end of the year to say it is successful?
• What could we do better at the end of the year?
• Is this something that we need to do, or could we slowly implement this by using a selected class/year group?

Strategies to collect information:

• Research groups with students (discussions etc)
• Results data
• 1-2-1 conversations with department
• Twitter/Research community
• Journals
• Conferences/CPD

• Be the voice of your department

One of the best things that educational leaders can do is: get things done. It can be easy to listen to complains and frustrations from your department without any follow up; indeed, there are many times when we mention something as a moan.  However, when doing so, do think if this is something we can change.

Since starting as HoD, I have had to have some tough conversations with Senior leaders on things that my department need.  I am fortunately able to say that all of those conversations have been well-received and have led to positive change for the department. 

The fact is, as HoD, you are the voice of your department.  Whenever I have to bring something up to the senior leadership team, I make sure I have had a conversation with the whole department about it.  This way, I know I am voicing the concerns of every member of my department; their anecdotes are crucial in providing evidence to strengthen my argument for why change needs to occur for them.  Not only that, they each have difference experiences with problems, or may have different concerns depending on which year groups they teach, so their opinion is hugely important to pass forward. 

However, as well as communicating for the department, you are in charge of communicating the school’s visions and aims into the department.  If you are unsure about how to do this, go back and have a conversation with an SLT member and simply ask: How can I communicate this to my department? It is okay to ask questions, and it is okay to ask How and Why. 

Communication is vital.

In summary:

1. Get to know your department
   • Take time out to have conversations with them
   • Offer your support if/where necessary
2. Get to know your department’s story
3. Be aware of your biases
   • Your department will have incredibly expertise as well
4. Ensure your change is research informed
   • This is hugely important.
5. You are the voice of your department
   • Good communication is vital.

A Better Plan for Feedback

In one of my most recent MSc lectures, teachers and educators were asked to reflect on the most important part of their planning: task design. We were given a variety of models to assess, discuss, and apply to our own teaching to ensure that students would end up with the most effective final result.

However, what I felt was missing was a coherent design for feedback within a task model. Task design always seemed to end with a ‘final product’ but with little guidance on where or when feedback would be best given.

So, what if we planned our feedback the same way that we planned our tasks?

At the moment, the common school of thought regarding the training of new teachers or curriculum design is heavily weighted on lesson or Task Design (including scaffolding, small burst writing, knowledge tests) rather than Feedback.  Moreover, feedback is often misconstrued as ‘marking.’  The extent of marking can also sometimes be forced to coincide with a school data capture, meaning that the information that is being registered is not always accurately or effectively positioned within process of the task.

(Before I move on, I want to clarify that I am talking specifically about feedback activities and not marking. Marking is usually an approach to ‘showcase that feedback is given,’ however, often does very little for the student. I am not encouraging hours of marking, but rather, planning to ensure that classroom feedback is timely and effectual.)

A usual plan may look something like this:

Feedback is often represented as such a small part of the lesson planning, and is commonly at the end of a cycle: ‘Finally, give students feedback’. However, this could be toxic in two ways: 1) it reduces the students’ perspective that feedback is a vital part of their learning, and 2) it does not allow students time to effectively evaluate the mistakes they may have made.

 

The Value of a Feedback Design

Imagine you are climbing a mountain. At every gradient along the way, the weather may change, the strength of the rocks may be different, and you may require a slightly different range of equipment or knowledge. In a similar way, our students may require different advice or steers when they are completing a task; different moments of feedback. If we only plan this in at the end of our tasks only, or ‘tack it on’ to a task design, it is like sending them up a mountain expecting it to stay as sunny as it was in the morning.

That is why feedback should be just as important in the task design. The two should run cohesively and coherently together. Very simply, something like this:

Our own educational bias towards task design over feedback has actually come from the history of our educational theorists. The following graph table shows exactly what areas of the classroom that particular education theorists believed were the most important for a teacher to know; there is no column for feedback and very few even consider assessment knowledge an important part of a teacher’s role.

 

 

So, how does feedback fit in with a task design model? Let’s look at one task design model (Anne Edwards, 2014) as an example:

 

Like so many theorists, on the surface this looks like an excellent model. But where does feedback fit in? There is no mention to where or how feedback would best fit the student in this. Imagine we added onto the model a similar process for feedback:

8. Strengthened and consolidated demonstration of grasp of key concepts and ways of enquiring.	5. Introduce key about the learning positives and mistakes through exemplars and initial work.
7. More open tasks that encourage students to evaluate their work against the entirety of the key concepts addressed.	6. Tightly structured tasks where students write/re-write introductions or conclusions – or include key concepts that have been missed.

By changing the way we look at feedback in our planning, hopefully we can change the way the students see it. As has been quoted and re-quoted, the famous Dylan Wiliam assertion:

Feedback should be more work for the students.

 

If we continue to design our schemes of work with feedback as the final ‘thing.’ it undervalues the time that students could be truly grappling with, expanding on, and improving their work.

Does this mean another ‘triple marking’?

No. If the feedback design is properly implemented into the task design, teachers may not need to give written feedback at all. Indeed, many schools are moving to the approach of this, however, it is important (as I have discussed at ResearchED National Conference, Scotland and Durham) that whole-class feedback approaches are carefully considered and planned. Stuart Kime (Evidence in Education) has also conclusively echoed these thoughts in recent research on no-marking policies.

Let’s compare and contrast a (very brief English) plan. The aim of the following task is to get students to sit a mock poetry essay after learning the material required.

Example 1: Task Design

Stage	Task	Objective
1 (quadrant 1)	Planning Essays	Give a range of questions and get students to choose the two poems they might approach the essay with.
2 (quadrant 1)	Topic Sentences	Group or peer planning of Topic Sentences so that students can map out their comparative argument points.
3 (quadrant 2)	Evidence/Devices	To pick apart/dissect/mock good body paragraphs from Stage 1 knowledge.
4 (quadrant 2)	Paragraph Writing	To ensure knowledge of sustained coherence between stages 1- 3. This might be done in the process of teacher led, peer developed and then independent paragraph construction.
5** (quadrant 3)	Draft Essay	To be marked and show understanding in timed conditions of sustained coherence between stages 1 – 4.
6 (quadrant 4)	Mock Exam	— Formal Feedback given.

**teachers may choose to use formal written feedback.

Example 2: Task Design including Feedback Design

Stage	Task	Objective
1* (quadrants 1 and 5)	Exemplar Study	For students to see the ‘end goal’ or the ‘goal post’ of what a good example looks like.   This also used to encourage motivation.
2* (quadrants 2 and 6)	Introductions	To pick apart/dissect/mock good introductions.
3* (quadrants 2 and 6)	Body Paragraphs	To pick apart/dissect/mock good body paragraphs. Compare to Stage 1.
4** (quadrants 3 and 7)	Draft Essay	To ensure knowledge of sustained coherence between stages 1- 4.
5 (quadrants 4 and 8)	Mock Exam	To test understanding in timed conditions of sustained coherence between stages 1 – 4.

 *ongoing oral feedback

**teachers may choose to use formal written feedback.

 

In both cases, a teacher may choose to give written feedback, however, by compartmentalising the task design and embedding a design for the feedback in Example 2, the final written marking (if needed) would require fewer comments; the earlier verbal feedback should assist to foil any basic mistakes. This approach also places far more emphasis on feedback as a vital part of learning and the student as the true master of their own success.

Our own forgetfulness to incorporate effective feedback into our task planning has come from two things 1) the overuse of a school data capture to judge progress, and 2) previous educational theory.   However, as we move more into a world that values students with high meta-cognitive awareness, genuine reflective skills, and a more ‘independent approach,’ we must be having conversations not only about the tasks we are designing but how this task incorporates an effective feedback design as well.

 

5 Key Takeaway Questions for CPD and discussion:

1. Do you include feedback in the learning cycle, or is it for a data capture?
2. Does your department consider feedback in their task planning?
3. Is feedback given the time it requires to be effective?
4. Does your school interchange ‘marking’ with ‘feedback’? How can this be clarified?
5. What feedback methods would honestly be best for your students at that point in time?

We Still Need Slightly More than a Good Curriculum

Firstly, Happy 2019.

I have not posted for a while for a few reasons: I am currently delving down into both writing a book and my Masters which is exciting. But also because I have truly been trying to think about why it is I have been both successful and unsuccessful in the classroom over the years?   What is it that has really assisted me to build relationships with my most difficult classes?

An answer contacted me out of the blue last week: an ex-pupil of 6 years ago (from my more challenging state school) who wanted help transferring from Law into English. In her request she kindly said:

You were the best teacher I’ve ever had and made me believe in myself and so that’s why I’ve messaged you.

I thought about this in contrast with the stark and sometimes bleak educational debates about curriculum design and thought: hang on, maybe we are still missing something here.

 

The Power of the Curriculum

I have no doubt that curriculum design is a vital method in developing a student’s knowledge. Good curriculum designs (as showcased by Claire Hill and Rebecca Foster) may be best visually represented in the shape of a spiral: the curriculum’s difficulty moves upwards throughout the year yet key concepts and skills are continually visited so that they are more easily remembered and strengthened.

Not only this, but good curriculum design should also encourage lessons that are ‘off the exam’ and purely used to spark, test, challenge, or stretch our students. In my view, we can never challenge our students beyond the exam if we have not designed our curriculum with space to do this.

Then, the micro detail: ensuring that schemes of work effectively interleave knowledge, the use of daily (and weekly) memory testing, ensuring the new knowledge taught in lessons does not overuse a student’s cognitive load, and – amongst this – finding ways to further encourage success by integrating essential vocabularies (see: Alex Quigley’s book – Closing the Gap).

If departments can get this right, then they will undoubtedly set the students up for the best success.

 

The Power of Delivery

However, no matter how brilliantly the curriculum is designed, teachers are not there to simply communicate a planned lesson to the student or to be a curriculum correspondent. They need to love it, they need to believe that this curriculum is (to quote my colleague Carl) ‘the best that has been thought and said,’ that it is worth teaching to the students, and that the students are capable of learning to love it too.

It often comes up that the most uninspiring teachers are those that students say are “just doing their job.” Yet, success in education appears to be about giving the impression you are doing ‘much more’ than that. And whether that ‘much more’ embodies itself in humour, personality, sarcasm or sternness, it is about 2 things: authenticity (the real belief in your subject and the pupils), and delivery (the way ‘you are you’ teaching it).

If the factors above are absent, then no matter how many hours are invested into designing the curriculum, no matter how ‘knowledge-rich’ or exciting it seems, it becomes a chore and students become disinterested.

 

The fact is, we still need slightly more than a good curriculum to be teachers.

So, when planning your curriculum in accordance with the new Ofsted changes, don’t forget to give space for teachers to ‘do their thing’ with it. Many teachers truly are inspired by their subjects and we need to remind ourselves of this continually. More importantly, we have to not forget that students can (and do) always surprise us.

A good curriculum must:

• Be knowledge-rich
• Build from the best foundational knowledge
  
• Challenge pupils beyond the exam
  
• Give space to revisit key terms/topics
• Interleave topics
• Be considerate of cognitive load
• Provide regular low-stakes memory tests

 

But it’s not enough unless:

• Teachers love it
• Teachers believe the students will love it
• Teachers have space to deliver with their own authenticity

ResearchED Slides – Say it or Sign it?

ResearchED National Conference (2018) and Scotland (2018) have been the best yet.  Both events contained some of the most stimulating discussions in Education.  It was a triumph to see teachers of all experiences debating and challenging the ways we can better our practice – that these events occur on a Saturday and are attended by teachers across the country is a testament to our dedication to get this right.

I was fortunate enough to speak at both on methods of Feedback under the title: Say it or Sign it? Is Verbal Feedback really better than Marking.  Attached below are the slides.

I am also excited to announce that I am currently in the process of writing a book for Routledge.  As a result, I will be blogging about this information minimally after my final talk on it at ResearchED Durham; it will be officially published in detail later next year.

Many thanks in advanced for the outstanding support from my favourite people in education (too many to list but you know who you are).  And a huge thanks to the educators and colleagues who supported this talk.  I hope the slides are useful.

Exciting times ahead.

Sarah.

Slides can be downloaded in pdf form by clicking the link below:

ResearchEd – Say it or Sign it pdf

Can We Teach Curiosity?

After reading Ian Leslie’s Curious (kindly recommended to me by @drdavidajames), I had a burning question:

Can we teach our students to be more curious?

It seems baffling to me that our current pupils have the widest access to knowledge that has ever existed at their fingertips – quite literally! – and yet some of my pupils still do not have the desire to extend their knowledge beyond what they conceived as ‘the minimum requirement for the course’.  At my most recent parent/teacher conference with my U6th (Year 13s), I even raised this with parents who agreed. So why do our students not desire to know more?

Curiosity is broadly defined as a strong desire to further knowledge about something. Interestingly, and as we have seen in classic pieces of literature such as Shelley’s Frankenstein, it is inherently part of our human behaviour. Leslie also alludes to this in his book by looking at aspects child psychology, whereby he comments that:

 ‘children ask a total of 40,000 ‘explanatory’ questions… ‘It shows that questioning is an incredibly important engine for cognitive development.’

However, it does seem that somewhere along the way our curiosity plateaus. According to google, this is a fact of the modern world. The current statistics for the use of the word has plummeted since the mid 19^th century –

…the correlation of this with the ‘great progress of 19^th century science’ is also something that Leslie and others have delved into further. I will not be exploring curiosity’s correlation with technology in this blog but if you desire to know more you can further read here, here and here. I simply want to explore if there is anything we can do about it as educators. To which I think: yes. Or, at very least, we can assist in steering our students closer to it.

The Value of Our Knowledge:

Embedding curiosity as professionals is not necessarily about being simply ‘inspiring.’ It is about developing an intellectual eagerness within our pupils. Therefore, our own desire to know all and more about our subjects is the first vital step for us.   It has been explored on numerous occasions that knowledge gives our students access to more complex levels of thinking. In this way, providing them with this enables them to be curious; it opens a door to curious thinking. As Chrisman, in his article Arousing Curiosity, so eloquently puts: knowledge is like a snowball.

It is this alongside another vital condition which we must pass on: the importance of knowing (Dillon).   However, this importance must be instilled as ‘internal’ and ‘intellectual’ not simply of ‘examination importance.’ The truth is, as educators, we understand the inherent value of ‘knowing’ and the intellectual fulfilment that one can gain by having knowledge – and having the desire to acquire it. This is an intrinsically motivated trait that we have somehow obtained, but it is one our students need to learn.

If we consistently teach ‘the importance of knowing for examination purposes,’ we may only ever drive extrinsically valued curiosity; it will not link or train our students in its intrinsic worth.

Therefore, teachers should:

1. Know, and desire to know more.
2. Assist our students in seeing the value of (1) beyond the exam.

But, of course, that (2) is not simple. And for those of us working in more challenging sectors of education with high-pressured results goals, (2) becomes laughably utopian.

So what can we do?

1. Ask Good Questions

I actually find the wording of the A-Level and GCSE questions can limit curiosity. Despite being marked on an evaluative answer, the questions do not lend themselves to encouraging this approach – at least in English. For example, the A Level question is something like:

 Explore the presentation of power in Hamlet.

 Whilst this question is adequate enough for me, it certainly does not evoke curiosity, nor does it promote any evaluation. Before giving this curriculum question to my students, I have decided to ask good questions that will still guide them to answer this. I will reword it to the following:

 Who is the most powerful character in Hamlet and why?

What is the most powerful scene in the play and why?

What is the most powerful line in the play?

What theme is most powerful in driving the revenge tragedy?

What power does Religion have over Hamlet?

 These questions help make our students more active in their intellectual approach, whereas the initial question can encourage a passive exploration. Even still, I might pick a quotation about a character and force students to discuss it; again, promoting their ability to provide a discerning argument.

 ‘Claudius is the most powerful character in Hamlet. Even his eventual death is by choice’. Discuss.

 Or simply (as an amazing colleague of mine gave her class).

 What the hell is Hamlet’s problem?

 

2. Teach our Students the Value of Asking Good Questions

Leslie almost makes a key point about curiosity. He asserts:

‘According to Loewenstein, curiosity is a response to an information gap. We feel curious when there is a gap between what we know and what we want to know. … Information gaps come in the form of questions: What’s in the box? Why is that man crying?’

Or in the context of our classroom, having our students want to know: Why does Shakespeare choose to ‘Enter Gertrude’ here? Why do we still study this? What makes it timeless? A genuine (and frustrated) desire to discover more.

Moreover, Leslie also brings up a good point: there is social value in asking a good question. We can be at lectures or talks and observe another person asking an incredible question at the end. We actually become jealous or envious that they were able to ask that question as it provides us with the information from a gap we desired to be filled.

Therefore, it makes sense to get our students asking questions that they can immediately explore. Some strategies could include:

1. Having students write down a question after a lesson and rank them on their intellectual/controversial quality. Choose the best one.  It could become a homework or a revision task for the next lesson. It is important that this question focuses on the information and knowledge learned rather than discovery learning. It should be a task to deepen knowledge.
   1. For example: 1) What was the best line in this act and why? 2) The stage directions add no value to this scene. Discuss
2. Getting students to write quizzes. ‘Catching students out’ is something that other students like to do when it comes to quizzes. This also adds the social desire to know. If a student gets a question wrong, they are aware there is information that their peers know. It assists in closing the information gaps in your classroom.
3. Having students consistently ask: Why would someone disagree with me on this? To me, this latter question is the one sometimes lacking in our students. They are so fixated on finding ‘the right answer,’ they forget that there is always a debate that can be accessed. Have them explore the breadth of arguments available.  This is valuable in building their ability to actively and consistently evaluate.

 

3. Let Them Play (ask even Better Questions)

In early childhood psychology, there is always a direct correlation between ‘playing’ and ‘being curious.’ At the earliest stages, this manifests itself in seeing unknown item or object and attempting to discover its purpose or use.

Educators did pick up on this a while ago, but transferred it into secondary education as: using play dough to make characters, or creating facebook profiles for literary characters. This was certainly a way to engage students and demonstrate that they had (some) knowledge, but it certainly would not spark curiosity for there is nothing they can actively seek or gain by completing this task. Moreover, it is a perfect example of when curiosity is not sparked because ‘inspiring’ is not coupled with ‘intellectual eagerness.’

So when I say Let Them Play, it is with knowledge. It means: ask more abstract, contemporary, and provocative questions that propel the student entirely out of the classroom context – yet require knowledge from the classroom to achieve. As we know, ‘goal setting’ develops intrinsic motivation so perhaps it is important that we move our students’ goal posts slightly away from the curriculum every now and then.

Such questions might include:

1. Using your understanding of astrophysics, what are the inaccuracies of this Star Trek scene?
2. In what ways could one argue that Wham’s Last Christmas is written about Hamlet?
3. Was Huxley weird? (Use your understanding of Brave New World, and Huxley’s essays).
4. Do Eddie Vedder’s lyrics on his soundtrack to Into the Wild effectively highlight passages of Krakauer’s text?
5. Which Shakespearean character is closest to Donald Trump? (An ice-breaker used for Oxbridge interviews)
6. Of all the texts we have studied, what is the most overrated and why?
7. What is the most underrated myth?
8. Does power corrupt?
9. What role did chemists play in the war? Are they heroes or villains?
10. Where is the line between illegal and legal drugs?

I decided to also start a document where teachers can compile their favourite tasks in this area. These tasks may also work well as homework and/or to stretch and challenge. Please add any to the document below:

Link: here

In summary, it does seem entirely possible that we can, at least, strengthen our pupils’ access to being curious. Teachers require two main attributes: 1) to have knowledge, and want to know more, and 2) to instil the importance of knowledge into pupils. But there are also things that we can be doing in the classroom.  We need to consistently ensure that we are altering or changing the way we ask questions so that we can promote an intrinsic desire for knowledge, and encourage pupils to develop a discerning voice.

The Value of Spontaneous Testing

 

 

In a recorded lecture by Aldous Huxley on ‘Knowledge and Understanding,’ he makes a clear distinction between the two words.  He asserts:

Knowledge is when we explain the ‘unknown’ in terms of the known. When we succeed in fitting a new experience into our system of concepts and ideas

 And

 ‘Understanding is the direct and unmediated contact with reality as it experienced moment by moment.’

He continues that Knowledge is an awareness of the ‘old’ and it can almost always be communicated.  It is a set of notions and ideas which we have been fabricated to believe or conditioned to believe, as well as facts that have been previously confirmed to contain an agreed ‘truth.’  Therefore, knowledge also becomes something we can pass on when we use the correct words or symbols.  He furthers to assert that one can never interact with knowledge in the present. For example, even if I believe ‘right now I feel tired’ it is an assertion made through a retrospective and reflective awareness.

However, according to Huxley, Understanding is vastly different.  It relies largely on immediate and direct experience.  As a result, Huxley asserts that we ‘cannot pass on understanding.’  This is because understanding requires a certain level of improvisation; a moment to manipulate information and knowledge in a new, appropriate context.

Let’s give a simple example (one used about behaviour at last year’s Edfest).  When teaching a small child the word ‘thank you,’ you may expect them to use it every time you pass an item to them.  At this level, a small child may recognise that using the words ‘thank you’ will achieve their aim: to get an item from you.  However, the perplexity, generosity and meaning behind the word may not yet be communicated.  In a different context, they may be hesitant to repeat the word ‘thank you’ or understand why it is used – such as if a stranger was to hold the door open for them – or if used sarcastically when someone fails to do something.

Unfortunately, Knowledge and Understanding can sometimes be used synonymously. Indeed, Huxley recognises this and alerts us to the fact that:

The mistake of imagining that knowledge is understanding is terribly common.

Testing Knowledge then Understanding

To recognise Knowledge and Understanding as divergent (yet related) concepts is something I had admittedly never considered.   I am an unashamed advocate for teaching students knowledge, and the importance of the ‘knowledge pre-requisite’ (as Lemov labels it).  The knowledge required for me to teach is usually split into 3 forms: textual-knowledge, research-knowledge and curriculum-knowledge.

More than ever, there are articles about the importance of testing knowledge for retainment, and many teachers have been outstanding in their selfless distribution of resources that assist with this.   Some of these include the bank of Knowledge Organisers published here (with link to Theobold’s (@JamesTheo) outstanding original document), and numerous multiple choice quizzes circulating on the twittersphere.

Unfortunately, however, testing or ‘checking’ for Understanding seems to have been hijacked by the pedagogy tick-box committee some time ago and saw its way into education in the following ways:

 

In fact, when I searched for ways to ‘check for understanding,’ I realised that most – if not all – of the approaches given to achieve this purpose were actually methods of checking for knowledge – or, worst still, that it solely required a subjective assertion that the student ‘understood’ by a ‘thumbs up’

(Side note: “I still have a lot of questions” with a ‘thumbs down’ does not seem to be the right message when we are encouraging our students to be inquisitive thinkers…)

So how do you test Understanding?  If we take Huxley’s argument that understanding is something that requires a sense of immediacy and improvisation, the only way to ensure that students can transfer or appropriate their knowledge is through an unseen examination with developed questions.  The ability to recognise what information (and knowledge) is required to most effectively react to the new situation will signpost whether students have a tangible grasp of the concepts taught.

This idea was explored by Jensen et al. in their academic paper: Teaching to the Test… or Testing to Teach: Exams Requiring Higher Order Thinking Skills Encourage Greater Conceptual Understanding (2014), where they found that:

 Higher-order assessments may be a key factor in stimulating students to effectively acquire a deep understanding of the material, an understanding that supports, not only application, analysis and evaluation, but also better retention of the core facts.

 (Side Note 2: Whilst I am aware this article still considers the impact of Bloom’s, the reason that Bloom’s has been critiqued is due to its inability to stress knowledge.  Similar to this argument, I am putting forward that Understanding can only occur once a solid grasp and testing of knowledge has taken place)

However, most importantly, as put forward by Jensen et al., there seemed to be a direct correlation between a student’s ability to evaluate and manipulate information when students were (randomly) tested with higher-order questions.

This idea is similarly explored in the article ‘Testing Enhances the Transfer of Learning’ where the aim of the article is to explore testing beyond knowledge recollection; that is to say, testing on Understanding rather than simply Knowledge.  Carpe (2013) addresses that most research on the testing effect has been limited to, and measured by, information retention – this drives her aim to explore its impact further.

What she found was that a growing number of studies identified that robust testing assists with knowledge transfer (or, Understanding), and gives a brilliant example by Butler where the testing question was:

 There are about 5,500 species of mammals in the world. Approximately what percentage of all mammal species are species of bat?

 Now, the knowledge that students were taught was simply: there are 1000 species of bat.  As you can see, to adequately answer the question above, they would need to not only recall their knowledge of the fact, but transfer it into the unseen question, thus showing Understanding and assisting the process of knowledge transference.

More Testing, More Marking?

 It is vital to note that this does not have to generate more work for you.  I need only cite the information on tips and tricks in Carl Hendrick’s and Robin Macpherson’s outstanding publication: What Does it Look Like in the Classroom? to identify the importance of feedback over marking.  But you can also read from Carl’s Guardian publication Teachers: Your Guide to Strategies that Really Work.

So… What does This Look Like in the Classroom?

I have been exploring this over the past couple of months and using it, when effective, to inform my teaching.  I have made a few key changes to my classroom when I feel it is vital to evaluate my students’ Understanding (aka test their knowledge in an improvised and immediate environment).  Here are 3 quick strategies that might be useful:

·      1-2-1 Discussions about Texts

In an immediate conversation, students cannot hide behind stating knowledge that entices me into believing that they have understood. Asking immediate questions about a text challenges their recall and also forces them to apply information to different contexts.  I have even asked them in a festival jest: ‘How does Hamlet relate to Wham’s Last Christmas?’ Hint:

§   ‘I gave you my heart / you gave it away’

§  ‘A man undercover’

§  ‘Tell me baby, do you recognise me?’

·      ‘Sticks’ Essay Approach

Remember the game sticks? You would have to take away a piece every time it was your turn? Imagine that in essay form.  I have been asking students to use information from one essay (let’s say ‘Conflict’ in Hamlet) and try to manipulate it into another theme (such as ‘Power in Hamlet’) mostly using the information from their first essay.

·      Trick Theme Essay

Finally, the most cruel.  Telling students that their essay on Friday will be 1 of 5 themes, and giving them an entirely unseen question.  Forcing them to make most of the knowledge they have planned in an unexpected situation.

I will end this blog on what Huxley calls the ‘paradox of our existence.’  He claims:

 We need ‘experience’ (knowledge) in order to do the practical affairs of life but in regard to what may be called ‘understanding’  – the immediate contact with reality – ‘experience’ is very often a handicap. We have to circumvent it.

In the same way that perpetually signposting to my students ‘what themes might come up’ in their practice papers might give me – and them – a false idea of their Understanding.

 

Questioning for Confirmation… and then Challenge

 

We often associate the practice of questioning as a tool to evoke higher-order thinking; it challenges our students to think in an evaluative and speculatively manner. However, the way we implement questioning should perhaps be considered more thoughtfully in our planning whereby we confirm our students’ knowledge before challenging.

Doug Lemov is notable in his remark that “simply asking higher cognitive questions does not necessarily lead students to produce higher cognitive responses” (2005). This presents us with a complex dilemma as we are aware that pushing our students to think more critically is the requirement for their future academic exam, and indeed their later work and academic successes.   We are good at building the scaffolds to ensure a greater success in complex questions – but do we do this enough? And do we approach this in the right way?

It was in a recent CPD event in London run by Lemov that clarified this. He gave a similar example to the one below:

1. Write down 10 questions you would ask students about the following painting:

(Assuming at this point that you have limited or no knowledge on the painting itself).

Some of your questions might have contained the following: What is the significance of colour? Why is the hand positioned this way? How does this differ from the painter’s original style? What is the significance of the painting? Etc etc…

Now, if you add the following knowledge about the painting Tu m’ – Duchamp:

Artist: Marcel Duchamp, American, born France, 1887–1968

Title: Tu m’

Year: 1918

Medium: Oil on canvas, with bottlebrush, safety pins, and bolt

69.8 x 303 cm (27 1/2 x 119 5/16 in.)

Gift of the Estate of Katherine S. Dreier

1953.6.4

Details: Tu m’ was commissioned by artist, collector, and educator Katherine Dreier to be hung over a bookcase in her library, hence the unusual length and frieze-like shape of the work. Executed in 1918, it is Marcel Duchamp’s last painting on canvas and sums up his previous artistic concerns. Ranging across the canvas from left to right are cast shadows that refer to three “ready-mades”: a bicycle wheel, a corkscrew, and a hat rack. Several objects are rendered illusionistically, such as a painted hand with a pointed finger in the lower center. Providing counterpoints to these trompe l’oeil elements are real objects: a bottle brush, a bolt, and safety pins. Duchamp summarises different ways in which a work of art can suggest reality: as shadow, imitation, or actual object. The title lends a sarcastic tone to the work, for the words, perhaps short for the French “tu m’emmerdes” (you annoy me) or “tu m’ennuies” (you bore me), seem to express his attitude toward painting as he was casting it aside.

 Culture: French, American

Period: 20th century

This, alongside the knowledge that the omitting on the verb in the title was also said to translate to ‘you [blank] me’ highlighting Duchamp’s apathy towards traditional art and a final farewell to painting. Coincidentally, this painting was also commissioned a year after Duchamp’s (R. Mutt’s) The Fountain – arguably the first piece of conceptual art.

Now. Go back to the task.

Write down 10 questions you would ask students about the following painting.

With the knowledge above, not only do my answers to the original questions (What is the significance of colour? Why is the hand positioned this way? How does this differ from the painter’s original style? What is the significance of the painting? Etc etc…) become more insightful, but I can now access more complex and challenging questions such as:

• To what extent does this painting differ from Duchamp’s original style?
• In what ways does this painting critique classical art?
• Art is “not what you see, but what you make others see.” Discuss this in relation to Tu m’ by Duchamp

Therefore, it seems pointless to ask complex questions if we have not yet tested our students’ understanding in the first place… and, quite frighteningly, it seems we can actually lock some students out of learning if we do not test their understanding first. It is knowledge that makes this challenge accessible.

And Motivation?

Answering the complex questions above actually feel far more exciting with the information that is now given about Duchamp’s final painting. This idea that knowledge motivates us is something that has been explored quite frequently. Burke (1995) asserts in his paper ‘Connecting Content and Motivation’ claims that

“Content when it is applied, or has meaning assigned to it, is important, and we also know that motivation facilitates content assimilation”

and further continues to assert:

There is little debate, however, that learner motivation, the incentive applied to activate or engage student learning, enhances achievement levels, promotes higher order thinking, stimulates reflective analysis, and induces improved student performance in routine content assimilation. Thus, when motivation coalesces with curricular components, learning is considerably more residual and consequential.”

It would also explain why the following conclusions have been made over again in studies that show the importance and impact of direct instruction.  Hancock’s  Influencing Postsecondary Students’ Motivation to Learn in the Classroom (2002) believed to find a direct correlation between motivation in Low Conceptual Learners and ‘Direct Instruction’ teaching.
And, of course, why Willingham, Lemov, Hendrick & Macpherson, Christodoulou (vid below) and others come back to the importance of testing knowledge – and smaller skills – before moving onto more challenging or conceptual ideas.

https://vimeo.com/209041563

The value of this in the learning process has also been implemented nicely in Fletcher-Wood’s new blog about The Evidence on Feedback: A Decision Tree whereby there is an active step to ‘reteach’ material where it seems students have missed key information.

As mentioned earlier, if you do not have the foundational knowledge to answer a question then you can become locked out of the learning – in the same way that my responses will be only so limited on Duchamp’s Tu m’ unless I can easily access the factual knowledge about the painter and the painting itself. Following that, the feedback tree seems an important message in addressing misconceptions and testing core knowledge before redrafting work

A Solution? Question to confirm… and then to challenge.

If I wanted to explore the significance of how Lady Macbeth in portrayed in the following extract, I would expect students to use their understanding of devices to see how Shakespeare has positioned Lady Macbeth to us here.

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.

Even though I may have taught this section of the play last lesson, explored the extended metaphor and considered the use of imperatives, as Dylan Wiliam has said: ‘learning requires forgetting.’   90% of my students may remember all of this knowledge but the value of questioning all of them on their basic knowledge means that all students can access the higher order question that I want them to answer (‘Explore the significance of how Lady Macbeth in portrayed in the following extract’).  Which, to some students, might  look just as chaotic as Duchamp’s painting unless reminded of the core facts.

Thus the questioning process could funnel (funnel to refine!) similar to the following:

Initial questions may focus on knowledge retrieval, and then move to closed questions to prompt all students to develop an argument (keeping the learning accessible despite a more subjective response), and then finally to more challenging questions.   In the Macbeth example given above, it would look like:

1. What is a metaphor?
2. What does ‘unsex me here’ metaphorically mean?
3. What is an imperative verb?
4. List the imperative verbs above.
5. In your opinion, do the imperative verbs and metaphor show Lady Macbeth to be a confident or controlling?
6. Does Shakespeare present Lady Macbeth confident or controlling here? Give evidence.
7. Explore the significance of Lady Macbeth in the following extract.

Note that Question 5 is where subjective opinion is required, however, I have also used key vocabulary to guide the students’ response. This is a good way to ensure unconfident students have the tools and vocabulary to access the more challenging question you want them to answer.

For Questions 6-7, it is important that if you were going to discuss or write this, that you give students Wait Time. They are not knowledge retrieval questions and Lemov is very assertive about giving space for students to formulate their best response rather than simply taking the first response. Again, alluded to by Wiliam because ‘the answers of the confident students are a bad guide to what the rest of the class is thinking.’

Whilst I have used 7 questions above, you could undoubtedly use 10-20 questions depending on the material being studied in that lesson.  This is, of course, just a example to demonstrate how knowledge retrieval can assist in enabling all our class to effectively access the material that they are required to know, understand and manipulate.  However, I think what is important here is ensuring that the material is accessible through simple knowledge retrieval questions that will further consolidate the memory pathways used by our students when presented (and re-presented) with the curriculum.