Archive for change

Do the project first!

30/09/2011 active learning, cfe, change, science 2 comments

In June of this year I was lucky enough to attend the Cramlington Learning Festival, something I’ve already mentioned on here.

One of the sessions I attended was led by the inspiring Darren Mead, who shared his Project Based Learning mantra with us: “Do the project first”. In other words, if you’re going to set a project for students to complete then we as teachers should be trying it first and showing this to the students at the outset. Darren showed us one he’d done. Whilst it was impressive that he’d gone and spent all that time making his project, one of the things that really surprised me at the time was that it wasn’t perfect – at one point his young son was doing the camera work! On reflection, I think this is fantastic. It would be potentially devasting to show the students unobtainable perfection and then ask them to try to do their own projects…

As we’re redesigning our S2 courses currently, we’ve been trying to diversify the opportunities for learning and assessment – and using these to help engage the students in the topic. For example, in our new Genetics & Reproduction topic we’re planning to ask our students to produce a documentary aimed at couples who are planning to try for a baby at the end of the topic. We’re going to share this task with them at the start of the topic, but use this to structure the actual lessons:

The six questions in the list slide provide the titles of each of the lessons in the topic. But, since Darren’s session I’d been thinking…should we be trying this first? Should we have a go at producing the documentary and ask the pupils to assess it before we start the topic…so a colleague and I went for it – remember, it’s a long way from perfection – but deliberately so…

We’ll let you know how it goes…

Educational Values

22/08/2011 cfe, change, MEd, reflection No comments

I wrote recently about the strange feelings I went through when changing practice in a way that shouldn’t have been strange at all, and I’m still mulling this one over. I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that it is all to do with our educational values as teachers and the status quo bias.

I’ve just started reading a book that has been sat on my bookshelf for ages – Nudge. In it the authors introduced me to the concept of ‘status quo bias‘:

The status quo bias is a cognitive bias for the status quo; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling.

That is certainly something I recognise in my own practice, and I’m sure I’m not alone. So, what gives us this compelling incentive to change? This can obviously be many things…to save us time?…financial?…better results…?…better behaviour? But even then, sometimes these rewards simply aren’t enough to change our deeply ingrained practice as teachers. Which is where our educational values and beliefs step in. We will only make these perceived big leaps if we have a clear understanding of our educational values and a desire to bring our practice in line with these. You’ll see therefore why I like the following quote so much from James & McCormick (2009):

The tensions and dilemmas that teachers face and their struggles to bring their practice in line with their educational values, whilst coping with pressures from outside, were a strong feature of their learning in the classroom. Some appeared content with ‘going through the motions’ of trying out new practices but a small proportion (about 20%) ‘took them to heart’ and, with a strong sense of their own agency, tested and developed these ideas in their own classrooms in creative ways. The challenge for us was to find out what kinds of support within and beyond schools would allow the twenty per cent to grow to nearer one hundred per cent.

This, in many ways, is what my first module of the Chartered Teacher programme was all about way back in the first half of 2008…and I’m only really getting it properly now. This is why we need to stop rushing around looking for new ideas which we’ll never really embed properly, but take the time to examine our educational values and then develop our practice accordingly. Although it can feel like a waste of time in our ever busier lives, it’s crucial.

It’s the only thing that actually really works.

A short history of Curriculum for Excellence

13/08/2011 assessment, cfe, change 3 comments

With Curriculum for Excellence moving into its second year of “full implementation” and the new National Qualifications looming ever closer, I thought it might be useful to look back and reflect at how we got here.

Curriculum for Excellence, of course, has its roots in the Scottish National Debate on Education in 2002. This was lauded at the time for managing to tackle the many challenging issues outstanding in the Scottish Education system by bringing on board a large number and wide range of stakeholder groups. But what instigated such a debate? Ultimately, this had been brewing for some time. The teaching profession had been growing increasingly restless with the pace of change in education in the late 1990s. Large numbers of teachers were increasingly engaging with educational literature and trying out new practices in their classrooms. Too often they were finding that they came up against the barriers imposed by an outdated curriculum and model of assessment. This growing realisation that the system was no longer best meeting the needs of the young people in their classes and their unpredictable futures, was being increasingly expressed by teachers in public.

This growing disquiet coincided with devolution and the teachers’ professional body, the GTCS, took advantage of this timing to press the newly devolved administration to look at this issue. There soon followed the debate which provided a clear mandate for change. The GTCS proceeded by commissioning a Curriculum Review Group to make recommendations for change. This group again represented a large number of stakeholders, but of course had strong representation from practicing teachers. The review group consulted extensively on the precise nature of the changes required to ensure a curriculum and assessment structure which would allow teachers to work with young people in their classes to develop the capacities they’ll need in the 21st Century.

The GTCS commended the review group’s report to the Education Minister of the time who accepted it’s recommendations in full and enjoyed considerable cross-party support. In addition to outlining the changes required, the review group had also made recommendations as to how these might be achieved. An evidence based approach to the reforms was suggested and accepted and the GTCS applied and received funding from research councils as well as the Scottish Executive to take this forward. The GTCS commissioned hundreds of teachers to work in partnership with a specially formed group of Scottish Educational researchers from four Universities. These teacher/researcher groups developed and evaluated practice which was documented and shared with the wider profession. Each project culminated with a research paper, an executive summary and ten minute video. This collaboration not only helped to develop the approaches to teaching and learning in conjunction with the new curriculum, but also provided a deep professional learning resource which was widely received by the profession – and is still developing today.

As a result of all these changes, and the buy-in received from the profession throughout, secondary schools then began to demand changes to the qualifications also. It quickly became apparent that if the SQA didn’t make substantial changes to the entire portfolio of qualifications available to schools, that they would begin to look elsewhere. The thought of Scottish pupils being entered for non-SQA qualifications was too much to bear and the SQA of course followed suit and has now commenced a large program of reform to meet the developing needs of the secondary school market.

And here we are today with a teaching profession which is leading the way in improving learning and teaching, a curriculum which is fit for the 21st Century and a qualification model which will be soon ready to meet the needs of Scotland’s young people.

This post is almost entirely fictional.

A Healthy Heart

10/08/2011 active learning, cfe, change, Featured, learning cycle, MEd, science No comments

Following from my previous post, I’ve been preparing the lessons for the class I’m going to using the learning cycle with – one of my S3 Intermediate 1 Biology classes.

We’ll be learning about the heart when we return after the summer break, and so I’ve been trying to use the learning cycle to plan the lessons, and then producing a powerpoint to accompany this. It’s been surprisingly tough going – mainly due to the amount of time it takes. I am also finding it fun though. It’s liberating to plan without such a focus on the textbook and I’m looking forward to seeing how the lessons go next week…

Firstly the planning…
http://fkelly.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Healthy-Heart-Lesson-Plans.pdf

And here’s the powerpoint…
http://fkelly.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HealthyHeart.pdf

And some other associated files…

How can planning learning experiences using an accelerated learning cycle lead to more engaged learners?

01/08/2011 cfe, change, Featured, learning communities, learning cycle, MEd No comments

The latest installment of my MEd involved me writing up the group preparation for a collaborative professional enquiry which will be carried out next term. As I moved school however at Easter, I also changed my enquiry from the proposal stage to bring it in line with developments already taking place at my new school. As I’d previously posted the rationale from my proposal, I thought I should post my new rationale. This is a slightly edited version from my assignment [which has not yet been marked - fingers crossed!]

How can planning learning experiences using an accelerated learning cycle lead to more engaged learners?
• How can planning learning experiences using an accelerated learning cycle change the learners’ understanding of the role of the teacher in learning?
• How can planning learning experiences using an accelerated learning cycle change the learners’ understanding of the role of themselves in learning?
• How can planning learning experiences using an accelerated learning cycle lead to learners becoming more engaged in their learning?

What is an ‘Accelerated Learning Cycle’?
There are many iterations of both learning cycles and accelerated learning programs (Kolb 1984, Meier 2000, McCarthy & McCarthy 2006, Heron 2009). The accelerated learning cycle we refer to has its roots in Smith (1996) where he outlines seven stages to effective learning plus a further pre-stage as follows:


Accelerated Learning Cycle from Smith (1996, p.11)

We are using a modified version of this cycle and have incorporated these stages into our lesson planning. We have used the term ‘Discuss Learning Outcomes’ instead of ‘Describe the outcomes’ to encourage a higher level of involvement of learners in the process than is implied by the Smith’s wording. In addition, we have found in practice that the ‘Big Picture’ stage can be incorporated into ‘Connect the Learning’ or ‘Discuss Learning Outcomes’. Teachers planning lessons using these stages is what we mean by ‘planning learning experiences using an accelerated learning cycle’ in this enquiry.

What do we mean by ‘Learner Engagement’?
A lack of pupil engagement is an issue which I have identified in my own practice, but is also an issue which has been highlighted nationally (HMIe 2009, p.48) and by others in my school. Harris (2010) classifies two types of student engagement: engagement in schooling and engagement in learning. She argues that much of the literature on student engagement, such as the 2003 OECD report (Willms 2003), focuses on behavioural engagement. She goes on to point out that if we are interested in improvements in student learning we should be focusing instead on cognitive engagement. As a result of her work with secondary teachers Harris (2010) has a developed a continuum of engagement which I have summarised in the table below:


Continuum of Learner Engagement adapted from Harris (2010)

This continuum demonstrates the potential relationship between learners becoming more autonomous and their engagement in learning. We discussed this continuum and agreed that this articulated what we mean by “Learner Engagement” for the purposes of this enquiry. Our aim is to change our practice to support learners to move up this continuum towards “owning learning”.

What will be different?
Changing a planning proforma does not necessarily lead to changes in the learning experiences; we therefore discussed the changes we expect to see in lessons which are planned in this way. The primary change to most lessons will involve the provision of explicit opportunities to consolidate, demonstrate and review learning. Through discussions as a collaborative group it is clear that we currently tend to focus too heavily on inputting new information and too often halt the learning process at this point. Whilst we may occasionally provide an activity to practice what has just been covered, we tend not to do so consistently nor to a sufficiently challenging degree to allow us to really gauge progression. We seem to be particularly guilty at failing to protect the time to review learning and encourage learners to reflect on how, as well as what, they have learnt. This has a tendency to result in learners becoming passive participants in the learning process, detached from the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the learning which is taking place (Black et. al. 2006, p.124). Taking an accelerated learning cycle approach to lessons changes this as teachers take a learning, as opposed to a content, view of planning lessons and therefore ensure that time is taken to demonstrate and review learning.

How does our intervention relate to literature and policy?
Smith (1996) uses a collection of disparate educational theories to support his accelerated learning cycle, some of which have since fallen out of favour. Despite this, the approaches he outlines have relevance today and are supported by contemporary literature. There are two areas of literature which are particularly relevant to Smith’s learning cycle; Assessment for Learning and Learning How To Learn.

The accelerated learning cycle has Assessment for Learning (AfL) at its core. AfL has recently been revisited by Black & Wiliam (2009) in an attempt to develop a framework to help define the practices which this term encompasses. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the literature through which they determine the following five key strategies:


Black & Wiliam (2009)

These strategies overlap significantly with the stages of the accelerated learning cycle by placing an emphasis on the importance of discussing learning outcomes, including activities which allow learners to demonstrate their understanding and by ensuring opportunities for learners to reflect on learning. The potential impact of strategies which provide learning feedback loops are highlighted by Petty (2009) in his review of the meta-analyses of John Hattie and Robert Marzano. Although such meta-analyses need to be treated with a degree of caution, it is significant that both found feedback to have one of the largest effect sizes in terms of learning outcomes (p.87). Once again, Petty’s representation of the most effective learning process, based on evidence, bears a similarity to the stages identified in the accelerated learning cycle (p.86) and helps clarify the crucial role which feedback plays in the process.

A related, and increasingly overlapping, aspect of literature which is also relevant to the accelerated learning cycle is sometimes known as Learning How To Learn (LHTL) but can also be referred to as Learn to Learn (L2L). Although our school is implementing a parallel specific L2L programme in S1 and S2 from next session, we will use the term LHTL as defined by Black et. al. (2006). This term is more appropriate for this enquiry as we are not evaluating the impact of implementing a L2L programme, but determining whether increasing the opportunities for demonstrating understanding and reflecting on learning in lessons can have an impact on pupils’ perceptions and understanding of themselves as learners, and ultimately on engagement. James & McCormick (2009) outline a relationship between AfL and LHTL in a way which has particular relevance to this enquiry:


Relationship between AfL, LHTL and Learning Autonomy
from James & McCormick (2009)

Throughout our meetings my colleagues have repeatedly shared their concern that their pupils’ perceptions of themselves as learners, and their perceptions of the teacher’s role in the learning process, has, to a certain degree, led them to become disengaged as learners. The diagram above demonstrates the relationship between Assessment for Learning as an integral component of Learning How To Learn, and ultimately learner autonomy. We feel that by changing the pupils’ perceptions, we will increase their engagement on Harris’ (2010) scale by allowing them to see the purpose and, in the long-term, become owners of their learning.

Recent Scottish Government policies have focused significantly on changing pedagogy, assessment and curriculum in order to raise achievement through increased learner involvement and engagement in learning (Scottish Government 2008, p.27; Learning & Teaching Scotland 2009, p.13; Scottish Government 2010, p.19; Learning & Teaching Scotland 2010, p.4). These policy changes have been subsequently transferred into local policy, for example the intended impact of aspects of our Local Authority’s Curriculum for Excellence implementation plan include “pupils will be more actively involved in their learning and will make links between their learning” and “learners will be actively involved in assessing their progress” (East Lothian Council, 2011).

What is Collaborative Professional Enquiry?
The concept of teachers co-constructing knowledge of practice is developing prominence in both policy and literature. A recent report on teacher education in Scotland highlighted the “significant potential for greater collaboration in supporting inquiry-based improvement” (Donaldson 2010, p.70), however the potential contribution of these approaches to professional development in general, and Curriculum for Excellence in particular, had already been highlighted by the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board the previous year (Scottish Government 2009, p.15).

Hargreaves (2003) also argues for the need for teachers to work together, but further suggests that this work “consistently focuses on improving teaching and learning, and uses evidence and data as a basis for informing classroom improvement efforts” (p.134). This way of working is very much in line with the definitions provided for collaborative professional enquiry provided by others (Jackson & Street 2005, p.10; Watkins 2005, p.191; Drew et. al. 2008, p.53). Collaborative professional enquiry promotes practitioner research as both an effective tool for improving teaching and a key aspect of professional learning (Loughran, 2010), but also builds on this to encompass a Vygotskyan view of teacher learning (Warford, 2010).

We discussed the concept of collaborative enquiry as a group in the first of our meetings and agreed that the phases outlined by Temperley & McGrane (2005, p.73) provide a useful sequence to guide our enquiry.

References

Black, P., McCormick, R., James, M. and Pedder, D. (2006) Learning How to Learn and Assessment for Learning: a theoretical enquiry. Research Papers in Education, 21 (2) pp.119-132

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (2009) Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21 pp. 5–31

Donaldson, G. (2011) Teaching Scotland’s Future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland. Edinburgh, Scottish Government

Drew, V., Fox, A. and McBride, M. (2008) Collaborating to improve learning and teaching. In: Reeves, J. & Fox, A. ed. Practice-Based Learning. Edinburgh, Dunedin Academic Press, pp. 52-66

East Lothian Council (2011) Curriculum for Excellence in East Lothian Planning Ahead 2011/12. http://edubuzz.org/blogs/curriculumforexcellence/files/2009/09/CfE-in-East-Lothian-Planning-Ahead-2011-12-A3.doc [accessed 30 June 2011]

Hargreaves, A. (2003) Teaching in the Knowledge Society: Education in the age of insecurity. Maidenhead, Open University Press

Harris, L. (2010) Secondary teachers’ conceptions of student engagement: Engagement in learning or in schooling? Teaching and Teacher Education, 27 (2) pp.376-386

Heron, J. (2009) Life cycles and learning cycles. In: Illeris, K. ed. Contemporary Theories of Learning. Abingdon, Routledge, pp.129-146

HM Inspectorate of Education (2009) Improving Scottish Education 2005-2008. www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/ise09.pdf [accessed 4 July 2011]

Jackson, D. and Street, H. (2005) What Does ‘Collaborative Enquiry’ Look Like? In: Street, H. & Temperley, J. ed. Improving Schools Through Collaborative Enquiry. London, Continuum, pp. 41-70

James, M and McCormick, R. (2009) Teachers learning how to learn. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25 pp.973–982

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. New Jersey, Prentice Hall

Learning and Teaching Scotland (2009) Building the Curriculum 4: Skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/BtC4_Skills_tcm4-569141.pdf [accessed 30 June 2011]

Learning and Teaching Scotland (2010) A Summary of Building the Curriculum 5: A framework for assessment. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/btc5_tcm4-605259.pdf [accessed 30 June 2011]

Loughran, J. (2010) What Expert Teachers Do: Enhancing professional knowledge for classroom practice. Abingdon, Routledge

McCarthy, B. and McCarthy, D. (2006) Teaching around the 4MAT cycle: designing instruction for diverse learners with diverse learning styles. London, Sage Publications

Meier, D. (2000) The Accelerated Learning Handbook. New York, McGraw-Hill

Petty, G. (2009) Evidence-Based Teaching. 2nd ed. Cheltenham, Nelson Thornes

Scottish Government (2008) Building the Curriculum 3: A framework for learning and teaching. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/building_the_curriculum_3_jms3_tcm4-489454.pdf [accessed 30 June 2011]

Scottish Government (2009) Towards a Professional Development Strategy for Curriculum for Excellence: Management board discussion paper.
www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/ProfessionalDevStrategy_tcm4-565591.pdf [accessed 12 July 2011]

Scottish Government (2010) Building the Curriculum 5: A framework for assessment. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/BtC5_assess_tcm4-582215.pdf [accessed 30 June 2011]

Smith, A. (1996) Accelerated Learning in the Classroom. Stafford, Network Educational Press

Temperley, J. and McGrane, J. (2005) Enquiry in action. In: Street, H. & Temperley, J. ed. Improving Schools Through Collaborative Enquiry. London, Continuum, pp. 72-103

Warford, M.K. (2010) The zone of proximal teacher development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27 (22) pp.252-258

Watkins, C. (2005) Classrooms as Learning Communities. Abingdon, Routledge

Willms, J. D. (2003) Student Engagement at School: A Sense of Belonging and Participation, Results from PISA 2000. www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/35/33689437.pdf [accessed 30 June 2011]

Striving for Excellence

24/06/2011 change, Featured, reflection, science 2 comments

Cramlington Learning FestivalI’m just in the door from my first visit to the Cramlington Learning Festival, and my head’s still swirling. Although this was my second visit to the school, it was still mightily impressive.

There are so many things to be impressed and inspired from today, that it’s hard to know what to reflect on and what I’ll do as a result. I attended five sessions today – the two keynotes and three workshops – all of which were quite different.

We started off the day with Alistair Smith, a long time friend of the school. We received a free copy of his new book in our conference pack and he spoke mainly around the ideas which have arisen from his discussions with leaders of successful schools which have formed the basis of ‘High Performers’. He talked a lot about the fabulous work of Carol Dweck and introduced quite a few new concepts to me, but unfortunately he had to speed through some of the more unfamiliar stuff. At least I can check it out in the book!

The second keynote was from David Price. He was both very entertaining and inspiring talking a lot about the idea of schools as learning commons. I definitely need to check out his blog!

As inspiring as these keynotes were, the really good stuff was the workshops. My first was with Darren Mead, who it was great to finally meet. He shared how they’re embedding both enquiry and project based learning into their year 7 & 8 science curriculum. I then heard how the key stage 4 science team have been developing a new GCSE science module from scratch based on a combination of backwards design and pathway approaches to curriculum development. My final workshop was on how CPD is led at Cramlington.

Whilst all of these workshops were on relatively different subjects, I’m thinking there was a common feature which really impresses. They keep trying things out, based on evidence and reflection, in a relentless pursuit of excellence. This is a school who I think has had straight outstanding inspections from OFSTED on the last three occasions, and yet they’re not convinced they’ve got it right. In fact, for every couple of examples they give of what’s working well, there seems to be another example of an improvement they’ve got in the pipeline. They seem to actually fully embody journey to excellence in a way I’ve never encountered before.

If there’s anything which inspires me most about Cramlington, it is their seemingly endless desire to improve to provide the best possible outcomes for the young people in their care.

The risk paradox

10/06/2011 cfe, change, Featured, learning cycle, reflection, science 7 comments

We changed our timetable this week and have made start on 2011/12, which means I got to meet my new classes and get going on their new courses. This is such a crucial time. Somehow, you’ve got to find the balance between setting the right tone with your new classes and the inevitable wind down towards the end of term. Two of my classes are making a start on their Intermediate 1 Biology courses and I’ve been fighting the strong urge to play it safe. I’ve decided to take what feels like a risky strategy, but why do I think it’s risky…?

To give a bit of context, this course kicks off by learning about the nature of health in terms of physical, mental & social health and then moves onto considering how physiological measurements of health can be taken. In the past, I wouldn’t have given too much thought on how to approach this…draw the health triangle…complete a worksheet on staying healthy…draw a table of methods of taking physiological measurements…and so on. My assumption had been that I would employ similar methods this time around, but I really didn’t want to. This was not the tone I wanted to set with my new classes and felt that if I started in this rather predictable manner, then I would struggle to ever break out of this in the future. Despite this strong desire, I was worried about taking a riskier approach. What if it didn’t work? What if the behaviour was awful?

The strange thing is, my old method wasn’t terribly successful. The pupils tended to find the content quite boring and would soon start playing up. Even worse, they wouldn’t be able to remember any of this particularly well in a few months time. So why on earth would I consider this approach to be the safe one? Is it because it resulted in a relatively quiet classroom with me in control? Or perhaps because it generated jotters filled with notes? Or maybe I just feel it’s what everyone, including the pupils, expect of me? It’s surprising how hard it is to break out of these drivers!

Anyway, despite this strange internal pressure, I managed to resist. I kicked off with some circle time to discuss how we should approach learning as a class. I followed this with a group challenge to draw the health triangle based on short 10 second individual opportunities to view one copy of it at the front. We then made a video of the whole class acting out the health triangle which we watched next lesson before designing posters for doctors’ surgeries to promote all three aspects of health. My plan for the next lessons was to break the groups up into expert teams to research and present on each of the four physiological measurements they need to know, but one of the pupils in one of the classes has suggested we make health promotion adverts instead so we’re going to do that first…

And the result? The pupils’ behaviour has been outstanding – they’ve been much more engaged and motivated so far than I would’ve anticipated from my old approaches – and more importantly, they’re really learning it. But why would I doubt that? All my experience and reading in the last few years emphatically point to these sorts of strategies being significantly more successful, but for some reason when faced with the reality of 40 new S3 pupils it still takes a bit of a leap of faith to take what feels like a risk, but really isn’t at all.

Getting to know the E’s and O’s

20/05/2011 assessment, cfe, change, Featured, learning cycle One comment

I know, I know. The experiences and outcomes have been around for ages now. Surely we’re long past getting to know them? In my experience however, this simply isn’t the case. Many of us seem to have taken something from them first time through, but now that we’re approaching the blunt end of assessment and reporting we’re beginning to wonder if we got them right.

Through our work with Myra Young, we’re being encouraged to take another look at the experiences and outcomes – this time starting with the purpose. This can often lead to a quite different approach to planning. Rather than looking at the experiences and outcomes and jumping straight to the activities we’d carry out, we think first about what the purposes of the outcomes are in terms of learning, how this could be evidenced and what the success criteria are.

On our inservice days next week at my new school, we’re lucky enough to be receiving CPD from teachers at Cramlington Learning Village with a view to planning our lessons using the accelerated learning cycle. But first I’m going to suggest that we need to ensure we understand the curriculum before jumping into detailed collaborative planning of lessons based on the learning cycle.

This can be illustrated with one of our science experiences and outcomes. Whilst in the past this might have led to us planning a series of lessons covering all the various organs of the systems we feel we need to ‘cover’, a fresh look at the purpose of the learning outlined in the curriculum brings a different emphasis and therefore quite different lessons.

We often complain the experiences and outcomes are vague and complex (which they are…but do we really want a version of the National Curriculum instead?) but if they are how can we expect to be fully familiar with them already? As difficult as it is to accept from the perspective of development work (which is going to get worse when the new NQs start arriving), the reality is that our understanding of the curriculum is going to evolve over time and I’m doing my best to try to keep my mind open to that…

Cross-posted on pedagoo.org

Sometimes, it’s the little things

27/04/2011 active learning, cfe, change, Featured 3 comments

Cross-Posted on pedagoo.org

I’m just back in the classroom this week – phew, I’d forgotten how much of a rollercoaster teaching is! You strap yourself in and off you go…good fun though!

One of the things though which has really struck me this week so far is how much I’ve changed as a teacher in the last couple of years – but if you were observing me you might not even notice. For example, when planning for some of the lessons this week I was looking through some of the supporting PowerPoints on the server and while the were perfectly fine, I just had to make a couple of changes. Rather than starting with titles and learning intentions, I added striking relevant images to the start to get the discussion going, their brains whirring and make them inquisitive. And where there was a diagram, I tried when possible to add a picture or a video to give the slide more relevance and interest.

There’s other examples as well. When meeting each of my classes, I haven’t started by reading out the rules and telling them the consequences of their actions and so on. I’ve started by telling them a little about me, finding a little about them and carrying out an activity which required them to work in groups to share their thoughts on how they learn, what they’ve learnt, why they want to do well, why science is relevant and how they should behave and then getting them to summarise the responses – some which are fantastic.

One of my classes is revising for an exam and so with 20 minutes remaining in a lesson I told them to open their textbook to the contents page, find the topic which they found the hardest and go to that chapter. I then told them to look at the questions in the chapter and not to do any which they knew the answer to, skip those and do the ones which they had no clue about. This threw quite a few of them, but I simply explained that they were there to learn and to do so they needed to search out the things they can’t do – not the things they can do already. I’ll be honest and admit I made this up on the spot – I’ve never taken this approach to revision before.

All of these examples are tiny. I’m almost embarrassed to be writing them up and publishing them on the web as so many of you probably to do all of this and more every day. What I am proud of, and the reason I can bring myself to publishing this, is that to me these are much more than simple ‘techniques’. These are the manifestation of much of the reading I have been undertaking into learning and I am therefore convinced that the consistent application of approaches such of these, and more, will lead to better learning experiences for the pupils in my classes.

So much of Curriculum for Excellence is being undermined by the perceived expectation that lessons need to appear radically different. I disagree with this assessment of the change. For me, lessons can appear to have changed only a little to the untrained eye, but should be increasingly planned with a sound educational rationale in mind. That will take time however.

Medicine and agriculture are now both ‘evidence based’, and it is time for education to follow their example. It is no shame to follow them; it is easier to work out how a liver works or how a plant grows than how a person learns. But we do know a great deal about how people learn now, and we need to change our practice accordingly. Geoff Petty, Evidence Based Teaching

#CfEfuture part 2

14/04/2011 cfe, change, Featured 5 comments

So, I’ve been mulling over lots and lots of ideas. I think whatever we do needs to be practised based and reach out. I think it needs to focus on supporting, encouraging and sharing innovative and effective approaches to education. And finally, I think it needs to be a bit different to what’s gone before.

How about we start with a collaborative blog…something like ‘educationfuturesscotland’? This could include guest posts, video content of practice and practitioners, links to literature and other suggested avenues of support. The collaborative blog would also have a twitter and facebook presence.

If successful, in the medium to longer term educationfuturesscotland could actually try to develop more physical support in the form of conferences/seminars/learning communities…?

All of this work would be grassroots led and not-for-profit, with this quote from Kenny’s fantastic blog post in our minds…

When belts are tightening, grades and numbers, for some reason, become more important. We teachers are asked to justify what we do even more than ever. So, keep your nose clean, your head down, don’t rock the boat. No chance. Shout from the rooftops. If Curriculum for Excellence is to mean anything then it should allow us to provide our students with meaningful learning experiences.

What do you think? Are you up for it?

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