Exciting times for Teaching?
- teacher engagement with convincing, relevant research into the workings of the brain - (if you haven't read Daniel Willingham yet, probably best that you stop here, get on your bike, get to Waterstones, spend an afternoon with Why Students Don't Like School?, then come back to us)
- Wilshaw's (admittedly debated and yet to be enacted) statements that teachers should be allowed autonomy of approach as professionals, and the restriction of top-down centralised directive-driven leadership at national level
- the increasing use of twitter and social media to get professionals talking to one another, as seen through the increasing numbers of startlingly useful blogs, debates, TeachMeets, Pedagoos etc
I know that in some quarters it's de rigeur to insist that most teachers are, en masse, descending deeper and deeper into a dark hole of low morale, like a pissed-off army of gloomy Han Solos slipping into the Great Pit of Carkoon in Return of the Jedi, in incessant danger of being horribly chomped-up by the Sarlacc's mouth of Ofsted, overly-harsh accountability, bad behaviour and all that... but honestly, I don't see it. As an L and T-focused Assistant Head, I'm trying to be pretty confirmation-bias-aware here, but when considering the quality of debate and dialogue accessible via twitter etc, the atmosphere at PedagooLondon and the recent TLAB event in Berkhamsted, the energy and quality of my colleagues... for me, these seem like exciting times.
But what difference does any of this make in the classroom? OK - here's two ways that recent thinking and learning has changed my practice, I think, for the better.
1) Focus on the thinking
Willingham is fascinating on this, claiming that at root, learning is dependent on the quality and regularity of thought that students give to whatever knowledge or skills they are attempting to learn. In some ways this may seem pretty obvious, but the implications for classroom practice and teacher language / behaviour is significant. I've found myself thinking through each activity that the kids do from this starting point: what is the likelihood of this activity reliably generating deep thought about the learning? It's also changed the way I talk to them - Willingham discusses the need for giving 'attention' to environmental features (e.g. lessons, reading, videos etc), and this has helped me to talk with greater conviction and authority about why it's important for them to listen and think - it's given me better evidence to insist that they pay attention to whatever task is asked of them.
Last week, a student clearly wasn't listening to my instruction (shocking, I know, the feckless, feral youth of today etc etc) - previously, I think my response would have been dominated or at least guided by a sense of irritation at the rudeness and ignorance; I would have approached the interaction with a sort of faux-moral dimension at the forefront of my mind - I wouldn't have been able to articulate so precisely WHY it was a problem he wasn't listening, beyond the obvious fact that it's a bit rude and annoying not to. Now, I was able to respond more calmly, rationally and helpfully, to explain why he needed to listen, in a way which, basically, made me sound like I knew what I was on about and was not just a grumpy old sod. And credibility is so important in a teacher, way up in the effect sizes according to HRH Hattie. So, learning about the brain has changed the way I interact with the kids. It feels different and feels better - just like learning about Mindset helped me talk to students more convincingly about the fact that they really can do great work if they try hard and I teach them properly, this stuff has helped me to talk to kids about basic stuff - listening, concentrating, working hard - with better evidence and more conviction.
2) Managing the 'off-you-go' moments (OYGs)
Really interesting this one: having watched a lot of lessons this year, one of the most common phrases you will hear, and often the most crucial moment of the lesson in terms of its likely success, is '...OK...are we all clear...right then...off you go...', the moment at which the teacher has set-up the task, done all the modelling, instruction, powerpoint wizardry or whatever, and now needs the kids to actually do some 'proper work'. As with Shakespeare, there are lots of ways in which this classic line can be delivered, from the confident, commanding bark to the slightly hesitant, slightly pleading, cross-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best suggestion that maybe they ought to get on with it now. My all time favourite response to this, by the way, came from an likeably precocious year ten boy being taught in an upper floor room who, upon hearing a somewhat hopeful 'off you go', turned to his 'talk-partner' and remarked simply 'Damn these suicide-proof windows'. So, anyway, how do we make our 'off-you-go' moments successful? How can we be most confident that they will indeed 'go off', and think carefully and deeply about whatever it is we want them to learn? I would suggest two key things.
- Set up the tasks as clearly as you can using models and success criteria. This isn't always as easy as it sounds, and often models and SC are present in lessons without being actually used by the teacher or the students; they can feel like a bit of an add-on and are therefore something of a waste of space. The tricky bit is making sure that your models 'talk to' your success criteria (and the other way round) - that the teacher is able to successfully convey the links between the two, so that the students understand where in the model success or quality is being reached. It's useful to have two models I think - one which doesn't quite hit the criteria, and one that does, and real time and attention needs to be given to this part of the lesson - flashing up a SC and a model before jumping straight to the 'OYG' doesn't do much good. (I try to do this in videos like this one if you are interested).
- Secondly, if they aren't concentrating on it - if they are chatting, messing around, distracted, acting in a way that, let's face it, 95% of human children, human adults (and probably, I would wager, their equivalents in whatever mind-boggling alien species we may or may not come into contact with millions of years hence) are likely to act if they aren't strongly and effectively encouraged to do otherwise - then MAKE THEM DO IT ON THEIR OWN IN SILENCE. As long as they are clear about what they are doing and how to do it, that should do the trick, and I wish someone had told me that on my PGCE.
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