Effective Papers For learning

I loved this TeachMeet. Like a funny and inspiring version of Ronnie Corbett, it was short, funny and inspiring; the emphasis on failure-first was refreshing, lending a sense of honesty and openness to proceedings as we happily nodded along in recognition of the mistakes and disasters that were explored.  We kicked off with a quote from the standard bearer of failure leading to success, Andy Murray, who spoke in his post-Wimbledon press conference of how his coach Ivan Lendl had made such a difference. Murray expressed the view that ' He's made me learn more from my losses than maybe I did in the past' . This set the theme for the event - learning from our losses, squeezing all the value and learning we can from dwelling on what goes wrong in our classrooms, even though that can be hard to do. Then, after a quick plug for  Tim Harford's highly-recommended  Adapt: why Success always starts with Failure, the   book which inspired the event, we let the failing comm...

Lots of recent blogs have expressed a general sense of dissatisfaction with the impact of CPD / INSET in schools - Joe Kirby brings the main themes together in his characteristically incisive and clear post here so I won't add to the stupendous recent edu-blog word count by discussing it here. Instead, here's a summary of an attempt we made recently to run an INSET session on using the principles of deliberate practice in order to develop questioning skills. To give some context, we have been focused for a while on developing questioning as one of the 'things that make the most difference' in the classroom, and had previously undertaken some conventional training on this, through presenting to the whole staff. This was then followed up by doing smaller group work on structuring questioning for engagement, in which teachers had a go at experiencing some of the structures. Questioning for engagement from Cherwelllearning However, after reading Practice Perfect  (th...

Schools are complex organisations, and the job of a teacher is far from simple. There is, frankly, a lot to do, and significant good judgement and skill is required to perform the constant decision-making, management of interactions and relationships, time management, lesson organisation and so on which make up the daily life of teacher. The systems and processes in which we work don't always seem to help; often, those responsible for devising said systems seem to me to get it the wrong way round. There are measures in place to simplify things which are in fact highly complex and should be recognised as such - accountability measures and judgements for individual schools for example. At the same time, there is a trend to over-complicate those things which could be made simple, or at least considerably simpler: the twenty strands which the APP materials suggest are a pre-requisite in order to understand a child's capacity in English, the complexity and abstractions of the variou...

Interesting stuff on creativity in lessons knocking around twitter this morning, following an incisive post from Alex Quigley on trying to make practical use of the thinking of Sir Ken Robinson. Before I start going on, I would point out that all of the below is only how it seems to me, as an English teacher, and, well, as me... In the early years of my own teaching, I tended to feel troubled with a sense that my lessons were a little bit lacking when it came to creativity, that my planning missed the creative spark with which I could ignite the fires of learning in the kindling minds bobbing expectantly in front of me (ahem). I suffered from a sort of 'creativity-envy'; an abiding belief that I just wasn't creative enough myself to devise the sort of imaginative and engaging activities which would (in that mildly-alarming edu-phrase) 'grab them' and, through sheer fun and adventure, ensure that they loved to learn. This nagging anxiety prodded me to action at times...

Of course it is a truth universally acknowledged that an Assistant Head who has had a 'good idea' is usually to be avoided at all costs, or at least pointed in a direction where the pursuit of said idea doesn't cause too much disruption to everybody else in school who is trying to get on with their job. With this in mind, I'm slightly dismayed to announce that I think I've had one. Or at least stolen one. I've been reading a couple of books on how professionals and organisations learn and improve, notably Adapt by 'Undercover Economist' Tim Harford and Practice Perfect by Doug Lemov. Harford argues that the most effective model of prompting positive change in organisations lies in a sort of replication of natural selection. He describes a constant cycle of trying out lots and lots of new ideas, getting good feedback and then selecting and going with the few among them that work. Google is a good example, with their policy of giving staff twenty percent...

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...