Effective Papers For learning

Is it just me or is there a growing sense of purpose in the profession at the moment, a feeling of a few things coming together at once? Recent blog-reading and what-not seems to suggest a happy alignment of factors which are converging to create particular momentum, such as: - 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 k...

If ever a concept has had its meaning pounded pallid by overuse, it's 'passion'. In education, it's everywhere, being dragged out in any number of contexts as a magic ingredient in successful teaching. Witness John Hattie's lauding of 'passionate teachers' at the LFE a couple of weeks ago, and the liberal sprinkling of references to passion throughout Visible Learning . Daniel Willingham in Why Don't Students Like School? asserts that many teachers join the profession in order to enable their students to 'feel the excitement and passion for learning' that they felt in their own education. And at the recent Guardian Innovation in Education conference, we were given the following prompt for discussion: 'Think back to when you first started teaching: what made you excited and passionate? How can you rekindle the joy of teaching?'. Frankly, all this passion talk is beginning to get on my nerves, resonating as it does so feebly with my own ex...

It was interesting to witness John Hattie's blunt dismissal of the notion of time being a significant barrier to teacher improvement at the London Festival of Education. Faced with a question along the lines of 'how can we improve when we don't have any time to do so?' (it wasn't this exactly but something like it), his response was a combative 'high impact teachers have the same amount of time as the rest'. There was an equally interesting audience response to this – a combination of semi-outraged mini-gasping, along with some tentative applause, illustrating the divisions and depth of feeling that the issue of time creates amongst teachers. Personally, I think it would be bonkers not to recognise the fact that teaching is highly time-pressured and that it's a real challenge to get everything done. That's not to say, however, that we couldn't make significant gains in our teaching by focusing on how we use time: here are some thoughts on two bi...

Well – after not blogging for a while I've been inspired (or more accurately, depressed ) into writing by the release of the latest OFQUAL report on the English GCSE fiasco/debacle/super-storm/apocalypse or whatever we now call it. Reading the report in full gives a distinctly different impression to the semi-hysterical response it received in the media, particularly related to the issue of who, or what, is to blame. Repeatedly, the report places blame on a combination of two key factors: poor exam design, and a system of accountability which is narrow and excessively focused on grades at one borderline of one subject. This combination means that the system fails, mainly because it generates too much pressure on schools and teachers to achieve certain numbers with certain kids, leading to the sort of distortions and mayhem we've seen this summer. So is it really such a poor exam design? I'm with Ofqual on this. As they have rightly identified, these English courses are a b...

After a period of being AWOL from the #soloarmy, I returned to duty this week, introducing my classes to SOLO taxonomy for the first time this year. As detailed on a previous post, I dabbled with using SOLO to teach planning of ideas for writing in July, and felt things went pretty well; the writing the kids produced was impressive, I gained fluency in my understanding and explanation of the approach and I left the school year feeling satisfied that SOLO was a useful addition to my teaching. I also enjoyed the experience of learning from others via twitter / blogs; this was new to me, and I loved the fact that I was suddenly connected with so many colleagues who were actively helping me to improve. One thing that twitter will not provide, however, is cosy consensus. I was interested to witness in the summer what might be termed a 'solo-backlash', if that's not too impressive a term for what is essentially a few blokes fiddling around on their smartphones (and it seems to m...

An education-myth that has been thoroughly debunked over recent years is the view that IT is inherently engaging to young people. Many would argue that this has never been the case; I disagree, remembering the way that my pupils sat up with genuine interest when my first data projector was installed in 2001, and the tangible increase in concentration and attention engendered as I nonchalantly swept through some poorly-phrased lesson aims on my fledgling powerpoint. 'Well would you look at that,', they may have thought, 'Sir's board has got a scarf thing running down one side, and the letters are flying in from all directions! Look – there's another one!'. Exciting times indeed, although I recall with regret that approximately twelve minutes later, the novelty had worn off and we were back to normal, which is to say me hyper-actively prancing around at the front, trying to persuade groups of reluctant students to apply themselves to writing PEE paragraphs. Whilst...

One interesting change in my teaching recently has been, rather than a technical change in my practice, a change in the fundamental beliefs and attitudes I hold about learning, talent and achievement. I am inclined to the view that teaching is, largely, a learned skill, and feel that I've benefitted a great deal from experimenting with new techniques and strategies in the classroom. I'm not sure that any of them, however, has made a more positive difference than the change in the way I understand talent. My change in mindset has come about through reading a number of recent books which look closely at the nature of ability and high-performance. These include Outliers and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Carol Dweck's work on Mindset, The Genius in All of Us by David Schenk and, especially, Bounce by Matthew Syed. The central conclusions that these texts share is that society places far too much emphasis on the idea of achievement being led by natural, innate, genetically-guid...