Road to Joy
Highly-structured knowledge-rich teaching is sometimes accused of being joyless, and schools attempting to move in this direction ought to take this concern seriously. A hastily-introduced, top-down, Ofsted-inspired move to KR could easily result in sceptical teachers, unaligned with the approach and untrained in its nuance, delivering a poorly-designed, cobbled together mishmash of knowledge organisers, quizzes and tests. This would be bad for students and teachers, and could do lasting damage.
So how should schools pursuing a knowledge-rich approach avoid this, and find joy? The following might be worth bearing in mind.
Fun and joy are not the same thing.
I'm fortunate to go to a lot of lessons, in a wide variety of schools. In lessons where there is an expectation of highly-structured teaching, the students are often either listening to the teacher, having focused pair-discussions, or working independently, usually in silence. There's not a whole lot of what might be described as 'fun' - students are typically less likely to be smiling or laughing, for instance. In classrooms where the teacher prefers a looser structure - for example, students might be working in groups, or completing independent work but allowed to talk at the same time - the atmosphere can be very different. There is often a great deal of laughter, banter and general jollity in the room - many (although by no means all) students are enjoying the experience of being there.
The problem with the second example, of course, is that fun is often taking the place of actual learning. The sort of social atmosphere that is generated through looser approaches may be 'funner' in the moment, but the potential disadvantages are considerable. Given the hyper-social nature of adolescence, it's naive to expect teenagers to navigate their social world, with all of its undercurrents and interplay, at the same time as paying sustained attention to the work. We have a responsibility to manage this for them, and looseness does them no favours at all in the long term. It's also pretty exhausting for teachers due to the constant cajoling that's required to encourage students to stay on task; patience often frays, whilst long term behaviour and relationships suffer.
This isn't an argument against fun in schools of course - I am, on the whole, a fun-fan, and think that we should have more of it. Having a laugh, telling bad jokes, chucking in a random story, sharing enthusiasms are all 'good things' (I always find talking about dogs a good one to bond over - shortly before writing this, for example, mine fell into a canal and had to be rescued - exactly the sort of anecdotal tit-bit which can liven things up when the day is dragging). Furthermore, spending time making up outrageous fabrications about one's own life or history is another underrated component of teaching in my view. I was hugely impressed a few years ago by the commitment of a colleague from Ireland, who, at the peak of success for erstwhile chart-toppers Boyzone, insisted that he was brother-in-law to hunky lead singer, Ronan Keating. Following a sceptical response from his Year 9 RE class, he went so far as to bring in a video cassette, labelled 'Ronan's Wedding', claiming it to be a home video recording of that very event. With triumphant aplomb, he confidently inserted it into the VCR, a hushed and expectant audience awaiting, and pressed play. When the Eastenders opening titles began, he ended the charade with a strangled cry of fury, forcefully stating his intention to admonish his wife on returning home as 'she's obviously gone and recorded over it'.
So fun is good, and, in the right dose, should be encouraged. But it's not joy. Joy in teaching is rarer, and is more likely to be available, I would argue, through a disciplined, structured and formal approach to teaching. This is because it is accessible in two main ways:
1 - Joy through accomplishment.
Some of the most joyful moments in teaching are when children show that they can do new things that are impressive. Often, these are small and fleeting, but the sense of mutual pride from teacher and student is just wonderful. I saw a Year 8 girl use the word 'pessimistic' in a contribution to a discussion about Of Mice and Men; they'd been taught the word directly of course, and to see its accurate and spontaneous use, from a student who may not have had access to it otherwise, was magical. It was a moment of joy evident in the delight of the teacher and the pleasure of the student, arising unexpectedly and subsiding in a second.
Where did it come from? From hard work - through diligent planning and resourcing, through clear and rich teaching over time, through modelling and explanation, through good discipline in the school and through high expectations. These are within our control, in service of giving young people experience of success, growth and accomplishment again and again and again, so that their and our lives are punctuated with small moments of shared joy.
2 - Joy through the substance of learning.
Alongside collective or individual successes, another source of joy in school can come from a fundamental belief in the value of what is taught. This is rooted in the notion that educating our young people about the things we teach - literature, art, maths, the natural world, events in the past, music, design and the rest - is really a wonderful thing to set out to do. I had a conversation with a languages teacher recently who explained how, in the past, an emphasis on dressing-up and disguising the learning with 'engagement strategies - the games and the gimmicks - had left her feeling like a 'club-Med entertainer'. However, when we truly value subjects - when we consider, accept and value the fact that learning to speak an entirely different language to our own is
an extraordinary and and wonderful goal - then the joy of spending our professional lives doing a job that is worth doing becomes available to us as well.
The conditions we need then, are to know our subjects and our curricula really well - to know their substance, their purpose, their value. This has to go far beyond the acquisition of qualifications, and schools should find ways to celebrate and recognise the value of subjects publicly and often.
I'm not suggesting here that joy is a requirement for good teaching - I do not yearn for the day when learning walk proformas include a box for 'Evidence of Joy' (on a 1 - 4 scale), that 'Joy For Learning' becomes a thing, or 'Joyfulness' is represented in the Teacher Standards. Sometimes, we just have to get on with it and get to the end of the day, and sometimes workload, our state of mind or events in our lives mean that work is just work. Sometimes, teachers simply don't think about the job in this way, and we should be comfortable with that. Even so - it seems to me that the potential for joy is there in teaching, in unique and special ways. I find that a comforting and warming thought.
So how should schools pursuing a knowledge-rich approach avoid this, and find joy? The following might be worth bearing in mind.
Fun and joy are not the same thing.
I'm fortunate to go to a lot of lessons, in a wide variety of schools. In lessons where there is an expectation of highly-structured teaching, the students are often either listening to the teacher, having focused pair-discussions, or working independently, usually in silence. There's not a whole lot of what might be described as 'fun' - students are typically less likely to be smiling or laughing, for instance. In classrooms where the teacher prefers a looser structure - for example, students might be working in groups, or completing independent work but allowed to talk at the same time - the atmosphere can be very different. There is often a great deal of laughter, banter and general jollity in the room - many (although by no means all) students are enjoying the experience of being there.
The problem with the second example, of course, is that fun is often taking the place of actual learning. The sort of social atmosphere that is generated through looser approaches may be 'funner' in the moment, but the potential disadvantages are considerable. Given the hyper-social nature of adolescence, it's naive to expect teenagers to navigate their social world, with all of its undercurrents and interplay, at the same time as paying sustained attention to the work. We have a responsibility to manage this for them, and looseness does them no favours at all in the long term. It's also pretty exhausting for teachers due to the constant cajoling that's required to encourage students to stay on task; patience often frays, whilst long term behaviour and relationships suffer.
This isn't an argument against fun in schools of course - I am, on the whole, a fun-fan, and think that we should have more of it. Having a laugh, telling bad jokes, chucking in a random story, sharing enthusiasms are all 'good things' (I always find talking about dogs a good one to bond over - shortly before writing this, for example, mine fell into a canal and had to be rescued - exactly the sort of anecdotal tit-bit which can liven things up when the day is dragging). Furthermore, spending time making up outrageous fabrications about one's own life or history is another underrated component of teaching in my view. I was hugely impressed a few years ago by the commitment of a colleague from Ireland, who, at the peak of success for erstwhile chart-toppers Boyzone, insisted that he was brother-in-law to hunky lead singer, Ronan Keating. Following a sceptical response from his Year 9 RE class, he went so far as to bring in a video cassette, labelled 'Ronan's Wedding', claiming it to be a home video recording of that very event. With triumphant aplomb, he confidently inserted it into the VCR, a hushed and expectant audience awaiting, and pressed play. When the Eastenders opening titles began, he ended the charade with a strangled cry of fury, forcefully stating his intention to admonish his wife on returning home as 'she's obviously gone and recorded over it'.
So fun is good, and, in the right dose, should be encouraged. But it's not joy. Joy in teaching is rarer, and is more likely to be available, I would argue, through a disciplined, structured and formal approach to teaching. This is because it is accessible in two main ways:
1 - Joy through accomplishment.
Some of the most joyful moments in teaching are when children show that they can do new things that are impressive. Often, these are small and fleeting, but the sense of mutual pride from teacher and student is just wonderful. I saw a Year 8 girl use the word 'pessimistic' in a contribution to a discussion about Of Mice and Men; they'd been taught the word directly of course, and to see its accurate and spontaneous use, from a student who may not have had access to it otherwise, was magical. It was a moment of joy evident in the delight of the teacher and the pleasure of the student, arising unexpectedly and subsiding in a second.
Where did it come from? From hard work - through diligent planning and resourcing, through clear and rich teaching over time, through modelling and explanation, through good discipline in the school and through high expectations. These are within our control, in service of giving young people experience of success, growth and accomplishment again and again and again, so that their and our lives are punctuated with small moments of shared joy.
2 - Joy through the substance of learning.
Alongside collective or individual successes, another source of joy in school can come from a fundamental belief in the value of what is taught. This is rooted in the notion that educating our young people about the things we teach - literature, art, maths, the natural world, events in the past, music, design and the rest - is really a wonderful thing to set out to do. I had a conversation with a languages teacher recently who explained how, in the past, an emphasis on dressing-up and disguising the learning with 'engagement strategies - the games and the gimmicks - had left her feeling like a 'club-Med entertainer'. However, when we truly value subjects - when we consider, accept and value the fact that learning to speak an entirely different language to our own is
an extraordinary and and wonderful goal - then the joy of spending our professional lives doing a job that is worth doing becomes available to us as well.
The conditions we need then, are to know our subjects and our curricula really well - to know their substance, their purpose, their value. This has to go far beyond the acquisition of qualifications, and schools should find ways to celebrate and recognise the value of subjects publicly and often.
I'm not suggesting here that joy is a requirement for good teaching - I do not yearn for the day when learning walk proformas include a box for 'Evidence of Joy' (on a 1 - 4 scale), that 'Joy For Learning' becomes a thing, or 'Joyfulness' is represented in the Teacher Standards. Sometimes, we just have to get on with it and get to the end of the day, and sometimes workload, our state of mind or events in our lives mean that work is just work. Sometimes, teachers simply don't think about the job in this way, and we should be comfortable with that. Even so - it seems to me that the potential for joy is there in teaching, in unique and special ways. I find that a comforting and warming thought.
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