Archive for Featured

Second thoughts

27/03/2011 active learning, assessment, cfe, change, Featured, MEd, reflection No comments

In a recent post I outlined my proposal for the final part of my MEd. In it I provided a rationale for my intention to involve pupils in planning learning in order to increase their engagement and described the steps I intended to carry out to achieve this. However, as I’ve mentioned – I’ll be going to a new school pretty soon. So, should I continue with my plans?

My initial thought was that I would…and the school was very supportive of this, but that Cramlington visit has really begun to change my mind. The school is really going for implementing the accelerated learning cycle and learn2learn and I’ve become concerned that whilst my proposal is complimentary to these developments, it is coming from a different angle and could well become a bit of a ‘bolt-on’ for anyone I managed to convince to become involved.

So, what am I going to do? I’ve decided that I need to shift the emphasis of the intervention to be much more aligned to the direction of the school and the needs (and workload) of the staff. So I’m considering instead coming from the perspective of evaluating the impact of the learning cycle on learning. This could be in terms of knowledge, understanding and skills development, but also in terms of pupil involvement and engagement.

I’m even finding some really useful literature on this, such as Geoff Petty, Black et. al. and Paul Rose. Through this reading I’m becoming increasingly convinced that my intervention could end up becoming much enhanced by this change by adding a much greater depth to the learning process, and therefore the enquiry.

Having said all that, it is pretty daunting to make such a fundamental change after writing and submitting a 5000 word proposal…but I have to respond to the needs of my new school…

Writing critically

20/03/2011 Featured, MEd, reflection One comment

As always on my MEd, we’re being encouraged to both think, and also write, critically. We spent a lot of time on this on our previous module and I feel that I’m making progress with this, but I’m nowhere near being confident as yet – as demonstrated by yesterday afternoon…

There are two primary aspects to the work I am doing towards completing my MEd. One is surrounding evaluating the impact of involving pupils in planning learning in terms of their engagement in lessons. On this side I feel I have made significant progress in my ability to write. My ideas are getting to the point where they are informed by research and I even manage to do so critically occasionally.

Yesterday we were focusing on the other side of the work, which addresses working collaboratively. When writing about working with others I find that I am still some way short of where I’d like to be. To try to simplify the steps I need to take to make my writing more sophisticated I’ve devised a three part scale:

  1. Appending references: This is what a lot of my writing on collaboration is like at present. This involves writing what you’ve done or are planning to do, and then dropping in a reference which is vaguely related at the end.
  2. Literature informed: I have managed to do this occassionally. This is where I start with the reference and use this to plan and explain what it is I’m doing rather than tagging it on afterwards.
  3. Critically informed: I’ve not made it here yet. I imagine this is where you start as above but you don’t simply then follow on to explaining the positive link between the literature and your actions. You include a critique of the literature, outlining the limitations and explain why you’re still using this to inform your work – perhaps bringing in further literature to support your point.

I’m not sure if this is correct or not, but I think if I can move my writing up this scale then I’m likely to be more successful. It then dawned on me however, that this is not actually about the writing. It’s about the doing. The real point is to actually do the reading critically before planning what to do with others and then evaluate the outcomes against this reading. If I can embody this approach, then the writing will naturally fall into place. This is what I’ve begun to do with the other side of the work, and I need to bring this into the more intuitive aspect of the enquiry also – collaborating with others…

What is knowledge?

22/02/2011 change, Featured, reflection, science One comment

Academics often have a real knack for hurting your head. They can take a word that you use every day and turn it inside out, upside down and really challenge some of the most fundamental assumptions. I had one of these very experiences this week at the first of the University of Stirling‘s ESRC Seminar Series entitled ‘Curriculum for the 21st Century’. The focus for seminar one was ‘Knowledge and the Curriculum‘ and the word which had some serious analysis was knowledge. It’s a word we use a lot in our profession, but what do we mean by it? How we view this word can have a massive influence on our approach to curriculum.

Although Michael Young couldn’t make the seminar due to illness, we were treated to presentations from Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Laura Colucci-Gray on this topic followed by opportunities to question each of them in small groups. All of the presentations and discussions were very stimulating, but it was Professor Biesta who really got my brain working, as demonstrated by the following tweet:

Gert’s presentation was heavily influenced by the work of Dewey and I am clearly going to fail to summarise what he was saying here. So I’m not really going to try to do that. I’m instead trying to summarise what I took from his presentation. During his presentation I had four inter-related recent thoughts swimming through my mind…

  1. Mark concluded his presentation by pointing out that although school subjects were derived from the disciplines, they were not in themselves disciplines as such…
  2. This then got me thinking about a post I wrote once on teaching science…
  3. This in turn reminded me of another post I wrote on teaching doubt…
  4. This then linked to something which occurred on Sunday at an SQA CfE QDT [acronym triple point score!] meeting when a teacher suggested that we needed to include the definition of species into the National 5 Biology content to general approval in the room – except from one member. He represents a University and asked to be informed exactly what the definition of a species is once we’d worked this out [if you're not a biologist, have a look at this].

Gert was using pragmatism to resolve the objectivism vs relativism debate – which focuses on the existence of knowledge as either fixed truth, or subjective to each individual. This notion of objectivism stems from a philosophical position that the mind is immaterial so cannot therefore ever contain the material world – there will always be a gap between the two. Apparently Dewey stated that this is the wrong starting point for the discussion. The mind and world are not separate. We interact with the world and change it. At its most fundamental, this could be exemplified by breathing – but extends to knowledge also.

From this starting point, Gert led us to a point whereby that it was ok for all knowledge to be socially constructed and subjective and any gap between knowledge and truth is temporal – between current actions and future consequences. The only problem arises is when we have to work with others and we all have our own subjective knowledge. In order to get round this, we develop an inter-subjective, shared, coordinated world.

So what does all this mean for education? Gert stated that as a result of these ideas, the key process for learning is experiences, or transactions. It’s only by doing and undergoing can we develop our understanding of the world. I think that it’s also clear here that even though we can view knowledge as inter-subjective, this does not decrease its value. Curriculum can still include knowledge, and in fact must, if future generations are going to be part of this shared understanding of the world.

It does however mean that we need to constantly remind ourselves that we are not imparting truths, but sharing our subjective understanding of the world. We need therefore to provide learners with the opportunity to learn the limitations of our models and encourage them to question – which relates back to my teaching doubt post.

This then caused me to reflect on my own understandings of knowledge. Whilst I was at school I accepted knowledge as truths and did my best to regurgitate these on the lines and in the boxes provided to me in large silent halls. By the time I finished my degree however I realised that there was no such thing as proof and that we were all just slowly collaboratively constructing best fit models to explain the world, some of which we all agreed upon and others less so.

Somehow however after eight years of teaching I’ve somehow reached the point where it seems acceptable to state that students need to know what the definition of a species is – even though ten years ago I would’ve strongly questioned this. This in turn leads me back to the difference between school subjects and the disciplines.

It feels as though I should now be reaching for some sort of conclusion to this blog post, but I’m not sure what the conclusion is quite at this point. I think I know what this means for my own practice as a teacher, but what impact this should or might have on the curriculum is another question…?

Some thoughts on formative assessment

30/01/2011 active learning, assessment, cfe, change, Featured, learning communities, reflection 2 comments

Are your traffic lights doing anything? What happens after your two stars and a wish? Do your pupils listen to their peers?

For some time now I’ve been concerned by the frequent utterance of the phrase “AifL is embedded”. There is often a perception that schools and teachers did all that work sharing formative assessment techniques as part of the AifL programme, and now we’re onto CfE so all is fine. I’ve often struggled to articulate my concerns with this point of view…but I’m clear that I have not fully embedded all aspects of the AifL triangle into my practice and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I’ve also demonstrated in the past that BtC5 raises the bar in terms of expectations of pupil involvement in assessment.

A couple of things recently have really helped clarify my thoughts on this. Firstly, I’m very lucky to be working with Myra Young to develop some Assessment & Moderation Circles with Secondary Teachers in East Lothian. She has a great way of describing the difference between formative assessment and formative assessment techniques. For example, if your pupils peer assess each others work with traffic lights then while this has the potential to be formative it only becomes formative if the recipient of the feedback does something with it. They need to make a change and learn from it. Otherwise you have a multicoloured piece of peer summative assessment. Likewise, if you give the pupils a prelim examination and then provide an opportunity to reflect on this and improve as a result – then this is formative assessment.

I think perhaps we have too often allowed the techniques to become synonymous with ‘formative assessment’ and we’ve forgotten that doing the techniques isn’t enough – the pupils need to learn from them.

This weekend, I’ve also discovered a fantastic Research Briefing from the TLRP programme which addresses this issue also. In it they state:

Assessment for Learning helps teachers promote learning how to learn in ways which are in line with their own values, and reduces excessive performance orientation. But it is difficult to shift from reliance on specific techniques to practices based on deep principles.

Advice on Assessment for Learning techniques is useful to teachers in the short term. But progressive professional development requires teachers to re-evaluate their beliefs about learning, the way they structure tasks, and the nature of their classroom roles and relationships.

From TLRP RB17: Learning how to learn – in classrooms, schools and networks

That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say. AifL provided many of us with the techniques, but CfE is asking us to take the next step to deeper principles. How do we do this? The Research Briefing suggests:

Classroom-focused inquiry by teachers is a key condition for promoting learner autonomy.

Sound familiar?

Can involving pupils in planning learning experiences improve learner engagement in lessons in S1?

09/01/2011 active learning, cfe, Featured, learning communities, MEd 4 comments

I’m pleased to report that I have passed my latest MEd module! This module involved writing a proposal for a collaborative professional enquiry to be carried out in August/September 2011. I don’t feel able to share the whole proposal on here (and I’m not sure you’d want to read it all!), so I thought I would extract a few edited excerpts to give you the drift…

Summary

There is an increasing expectation on teachers that the young people in their classes will be engaged in their own learning. These expectations are set by schools, national policies and increasingly by the young people themselves. For many teachers achieving learner engagement within the confines of a curriculum still poses a major challenge. The aim of this enquiry is to investigate whether involving pupils in the process of planning their learning can provide an opportunity for them to become more engaged. This will be carried out by a group of teachers from different curricular areas working with S1 pupils from August 2011. The teachers will start a topic of learning differently by asking the pupils for their ideas on what and how they will learn.

What’s the rationale?

The aim of this enquiry is to improve pupil engagement in lessons through involving them in planning learning experiences.

My interest in involving pupils in planning learning experiences arose initially from an evaluation of my practice against policies outlined as part of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Early in 2009 I became increasingly enthusiastic to begin to make changes to my practice as a result of the momentum behind CfE. However, at the time I was struck by the lack of clear support and guidance for teachers as to what it was we were to change.

At this time the most current policy document available was ‘Building the Curriculum 3: A framework for learning and teaching’ (Scottish Government 2008). There were numerous possible areas for development of my practice arising from the text, however there was one in particular which I felt was largely absent from my classroom. This is summarised as:

“all learners should be involved in planning and reflecting on their own learning”
(Scottish Government 2008, p.27)

I felt that this was not common practice in my classroom and so I decided to make this my focus. I had also already noticed that the learners in my classroom, at all stages, had become heavily reliant on me and had little ownership of their own learning and assessment. I realised that although this reliance resulted in efficient coverage of the content it did not ensure that the pupils were developing the understanding or skills one would expect of young people working towards the four capacities which serve as the purpose of CfE (Scottish Government 2008, p.22).

As a result I decided to radically alter my approach to planning for one of my S1 biology classes for the remainder of that session. I tried to involve them in the process by asking them to plan the content, activities, assessment and success criteria for a topic. I shared and reflected upon this process on my blog, which I use as an electronic learning journal (Kelly 2009). I was overwhelmed at the time by the impact this change in approach had with the pupils in the class, and amongst those in the profession who read my blog. I intend to develop and expand this approach through this collaborative professional enquiry.

It is the purpose of this enquiry to investigate the impact involving pupils in planning learning can have on their engagement in the process, and ultimately on their learning. My intention is to carry out this enquiry with a small group of teachers from a variety of curricular areas which I believe will have a substantial benefit to their professional development as well as my own.

What’s the context?

As already stated, CfE clearly sets out the need to involve learners in their learning in ‘Building the Curriculum 3’ (Scottish Government 2008, p.27). This message has since been reinforced by subsequent policy documents (Learning & Teaching Scotland 2009, p.13; Scottish Government 2010, p.19), including an explicit emphasis on engaging and involving learners in approaches to assessment as the top priority in the recent summary of ‘Building the Curriculum 5’ (Learning & Teaching Scotland 2010, p.4). The concept of involving pupils in decisions regarding their learning pre-dates CfE in policy terms given that this was one of the principles underpinning ‘Assessment is for Learning’ (Scottish Executive 2005, p.2). Much of this policy is based upon formative assessment literature, which also identifies the need to take risks and “relinquish control” (Clarke 2005, p.12). However, despite the successes of ‘Assessment is for Learning’ HM Inspectorate of Education in Scotland still stated that one of the areas for improvement for secondary schools as:

“Engaging all young people actively in learning, giving each a sense of personal responsibility for their own learning and encouraging them to think independently and creatively.” (HM Inspectorate of Education 2009, p.46)

This resonates with my own experience also. Whilst many secondary teachers, including myself, have begun to use some of the techniques associated with formative assessment very few have gone so far as to involve learners in the process to the extent that they have genuine responsibility for the learning taking place in classrooms.

In addition to policy encouraging the involvement of pupils in the learning process, there are others who promote this approach also. In fact, this view of pedagogy is not a new one. Paulo Freire explains the need for a shift in education through teachers and students who “become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow” (Freire 1970, p.61). Head (2003) uses a social constructivist view of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development to explain the effectiveness of collaboration in learning. Based on this he argues for the creation of communities of learners where “teacher and pupils agree on areas and themes for research within an overall context” (Head 2003, p.59).

More recently, Guy Claxton (2008) uses what we know about learning to suggest that if we want our pupils to be “powerful learners” we need to provide them with opportunities to be “creative”, have “courage”, “explore and investigate”, “experiment”, have “imagination”, “reason”, be “social” and “reflective” (Claxton 2008, p.122-126) all of which could be provided by giving them greater responsibility for their learning.

Whilst there are many others who also make this case for a greater involvement for learners in their learning (Hopkins 2000; Rudduck 2003; Higgins et al 2008), not everyone agrees. Johnson (2004) thoroughly criticises the concept of “Personalised Learning” as put forward by the UK Government of the time. I feel that he starts with the extreme assumption that personalised learning means that every child is following a completely different curriculum from each other, which I do not envisage being the case. I intend to involve learners in the planning process, but only allow personalisation and choice at the individual level where it is practically possible. Skinner (2010) is critical of another aspect of this pedagogy. He suggests that “constructivism ignores much normal learning, disparages direct teaching and fails to match schooling realities” and goes on to suggest that teachers and learners need to develop the skills required in what he describes as the “four modes” of learning (Skinner 2010, p.23). I think that Skinner has a point when he suggests that we should not rely on one approach to learning due to the complex nature of learning, but also due to the reality of secondary schools in the current context. There is a danger that teachers and pupils may see this proposal as being unrealistic and unsustainable and so I intend to bear these messages in mind when developing this enquiry.

Assuming we do want to give pupils greater responsibility for the learning process, how could this be achieved in practice? Given the title, one would expect that John Loughran’s (2010) recent book might provide some ideas. However, whilst he does make a strong case for giving students responsibility for their own learning (Loughran 2010, p.49) much of the remainder of the book is still very teacher-centred. Surprisingly, when describing the strategies required of learners to develop their metacognitive skills of “planning, monitoring and evaluating” he still discusses the use of these strategies in the context of completing “a set task” (Loughran 2010, p.143). In my experience, supporting pupils to develop these skills within a set task is not new and has limited success. This enquiry is interested in the extent to which young people can become involved in setting the task in the first place.

Chris Watkins (2005) makes the case for developing what he describes as “classrooms as learning communities” and gives some ideas as to how to achieve this in practice. Again, Watkins (2005) develops his case from the standpoint of social constructivism, or as he simplifies it “learning = building knowledge through doing things with others” (Watkins 2005, p.17) but in his book, he goes on to suggest possible approaches to achieving this, including:

“it is possible to consider how pupils might make classroom choices on:

  • what they learn;
  • how they learn;
  • how well they learn;
  • why they learn.

And on each of these dimensions there could be more or less significant choices made.”
(Watkins 2005, p.76-77)

This list bears a striking, and coincidental, similarity to the opportunities I provided with my S1 biology class in 2009 when I asked them to contribute to the planning of “content, activities, assessment and success criteria”. I intend to use these overlapping lists of areas for pupil choice when developing this intervention. The topic will be set by the teacher in each case, but pupils will have opportunities to contribute to these dimensions within the set topic. For the purposes of this proposal, this is what I mean by “planning learning experiences”.

What, however is meant by learner engagement? Harris (2010) provides a very useful account of student engagement. She classifies two types of student engagement: engagement in schooling and engagement in learning (Harris 2010). Harris 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 with associated approaches to achieving these levels of engagement. I have summarised these in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Continuum of Learner Engagement (What) and how teachers
can achieve these levels of engagement (How). Adapted from Harris (2010).

I have found this continuum to be useful and as such this is what I mean by “Learner Engagement” or the purposes of this proposal.

What will be different?

In order to involve pupils in the planning process, it is necessary for teachers to begin a topic of learning differently. Rather than informing the pupils of the title of the topic and proceeding with their plan, instead pupils are led through a process which supports them to contribute their own ideas. It is envisaged that this planning phase will last for approximately two one-hour lessons with the following structure:

Lesson 1

Setting the scene. Stimulating images and questions are displayed to generate discussion as a class surrounding the area of learning to be covered in the topic.
What do we know already? Pupils work in groups to complete an activity designed to draw out what they already know about this topic.
Homework. Between the two lessons pupils are set the task of listing the questions they would expect to be answered through this topic.

Lesson 2

Explaining the task. Teacher explains to the class that the purpose of the lesson is for each group to draw up a plan for the topic, which will be amalgamated by the teacher. It is crucial that at this point the teacher clarifies that there will only be one plan for the whole class, and the final decision for what takes place rests with the teacher.
Linking to the Curriculum. The teacher shares the chosen experiences and outcomes which this topic should address with the class. The experiences and outcomes can be modified and rewritten to make them accessible to the pupils.
Planning the topic. Each group is given a large sheet of paper and tasked with using what they already know, the questions they wrote for homework and the experiences and outcomes to produce a plan for the topic under the following headings:

  • What is the title of your topic?
  • Why should we learn about this?
  • What do you already know about this topic?
  • Which questions do you intend to explore?
  • How will you go about exploring these questions week by week?
  • What skills do you think you will develop through this topic?
  • How will you share what you have learnt from this topic?
  • What will be the criteria for success?

This lesson concludes with each group attaching their plan to the wall and the teacher beginning to formulate a joint plan through whole class discussion.

How will the enquiry be evaluated?

Through this enquiry I intend to answer three interrelated questions. These enquiry questions are:

  1. Can pupils become more involved in planning their own learning?
  2. Can pupil involvement in planning learning increase engagement in lessons?
  3. Can pupil involvement in planning learning improve learning outcomes?

I hope to carry out a baseline “Learning Survey” in January 2011 electronically with the current S1 pupils at the school, and also amongst the P7 pupils in the cluster primary schools. This survey is adapted from Watkins (2005) and is intended to gauge the extent to which pupils feel in charge of their learning. I intend to use this information for two purposes. Firstly, this will inform the direction of the intervention as the scores will indicate whether pupils currently feel ownership of their learning or not, and should therefore provide some justification for the enquiry and assist in the recruitment of colleagues to the group. However, I also intend to use these results as a baseline to which I can compare the pupils involved in the enquiry. By carrying out this same survey with the pupils in the classes involved at the end of the intervention, I will be to evaluate whether the pupils now feel that they have a greater sense of ownership over their learning compared with their own cohort, and compared to the previous S1 cohort. This will assist in the answering of the first of my enquiry questions.

In addition to the results from this survey, I will also be able to gauge the extent to which pupils can become involved in planning their learning through the items produced as part of the planning process. By comparing the plan which the classes followed to the teacher’s plan from the previous year, and the group work from lesson two, it should be possible to determine the extent to which the learning experiences changed from the previous year and how much of this was a result of the pupils’ ideas. I expect that these changes will also be highlighted by the teachers themselves when we meet to discuss the intervention at it the end of the topic. I also intend to develop a topic evaluation for the pupils to complete in conjunction with the other teachers in the group. This is relatively common practice in the school already, but I will need to ensure that the evaluations used in this topic are relevant to the enquiry questions. For example, most evaluations used in the school currently do not make reference to pupil involvement or engagement, so questions will need to be developed accordingly in conjunction with the other teachers.

Given the complexity of involving learners in planning and evaluating pupil engagement, I also intend to carry out semi-structured interviews with a sample of pupils from each of the classes involved. Burton & Bartlett (2005, p.109) suggest that less structured interviews are useful when the emphasis is on the respondent’s own account which is exactly what I hope to achieve through these interviews. The learning survey described above is heavily structured and quite limiting in terms of allowing pupils the scope to express their own thoughts on the process, which I hope to address through these interviews. I intend to ask the teachers to identify three pupils from their class to be interviewed – the three should represent the range of opinions and involvement in the class where possible. I would welcome the teachers to carry out the interviews themselves, but will offer to do them to reduce the burden on their time. I intend to interview and record the pupils in these groups of three rather than individually. This is based on my own experience of a prior intervention in which I interviewed three pupils separately. I found as a result that the pupils often struggled to communicate their thoughts, particularly on those complex issues which have led me to choose to interview them. I quite often found myself ‘leading’ these interviews much more than I intended. It is hoped that by interviewing them in groups they will stimulate each other to express their thoughts. I intend to use the outcomes from this interview to answer all three of the enquiry questions and will semi-structure the interviews around these very questions.

In order to assess the level of engagement achieved through this intervention I intend to classify the responses from the teachers and pupils involved against Harris’ (2010) continuum of learner engagement.

In addition to the pupil evaluations and interviews already discussed, further evidence will be required in order to address the third enquiry question. In order to assess whether the pupils’ learning outcomes have been improved through the intervention it will be necessary to gather the assessment items from the topic and compare them to the previous year. I do not intend to ask the teachers to administer the same assessment which they used the previous year as this would not be appropriate given that the pupils need to have a say in how they are to be assessed. A comparison between the two years will therefore naturally be limited. I will therefore be reliant on the professional judgements of the teachers to assess any improvements in learning outcomes which they feel have resulted through the intervention. I intend to gather these judgements when we meet as a group at the end of the enquiry.

References

Burton, D. and Bartlett, S. (2005) Practitioner Research for Teachers. London, Paul Chapman Publishing

Clarke, S. (2005) Formative Assessment in the Secondary Classroom. London, Hodder Murray

Claxton, G. (2008) What’s the Point of School: Rediscovering the heart of education. Oxford, Oneworld

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 2nd ed. London, Penguin

Harris, L. (2010) Secondary teachers’ conceptions of student engagement: Engagement
in learning or in schooling? Teaching and Teacher Education, doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.09.006

Head, G. (2003) Effective collaboration: deep collaboration as an essential element of the learning process. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 4 (2) pp. 47-62

HM Inspectorate of Education (2009) Improving Scottish Education 2005-2008. www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/ise09.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Higgins, S., Sebba, J., Robinson, C. and Mackrill, D. (2008) Personalising learning: the learner perspective and their influence on demand. http://research.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=14551 [accessed 28 November 2010]

Hopkins, D. (2000) Powerful Learning, Powerful Teaching and Powerful Schools. Journal of Educational Change, 1 pp. 135–154

Johnson, M. (2004) Personalised Learning – an Emperor’s Outfit? London, Institute for Public Policy Research

Kelly, F. (2009) Having a bash at a Curriculum for Excellence. Blog entry. www.fkelly.co.uk/2009/04/having-a-bash-at-a-curriculum-for-excellence/ [accessed 28 November 2010]

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 28 November 2010]

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 28 November 2010]

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

Rudduck, J. (2003) Research Briefing 5: Consulting Pupils About Teaching and Learning. London, TLRP

Scottish Executive (2005) Assessment is for Learning Information Sheet. www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/09/20105413/54164 [accessed 28 November 2010]

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 28 November 2010]

Scottish Government (2010) Building the Curriculum 5: A framework for assessment. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/BtC5_assess_tcm4-582215.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Skinner, D. (2010) Let the Four Modes Lead Our Way Forward. Times Educational Supplement Scotland. 26 November, p.23

Watkins, C. (2005) Classrooms as Learning Communities: What’s in it for schools? 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 28 November 2010]

My Chartered Teacher story so far

23/11/2010 cfe, change, Featured, MEd 2 comments

In January 2008 I took a big step – I embarked on the Chartered Teacher programme. Having reached the top of the main pay scale at the beginning of the session, I had been considering it as an option but it seemed like such a big commitment. Come January I decided to go for it…why? By that point I had been teaching for almost six years in a number of different contexts and I think I found myself in a bit of a rut. When I arrived in Scotland I had lots to learn about how things worked up here, but once I got the hang of NABs etc I found that a lot of the time I was ‘going through the motions’. To be frank, apart from the odd bit of challenging behaviour, it had all become too easy and a bit routine. This had been brought to my attention by my foray into blogging. Blogging had not only provided me with glimpses into other inspiring classrooms, but also forced me to reflect on my own practice to a much greater extent.

So I headed to Edinburgh University for Module 1 of their MTeach programme – which turned my professional world upside down! I was forced to really reflect on what it means to be a professional. For the first time in a very long time I articulated my values as an educator and began to change my practice accordingly. I also began to inform these changes based on literature, for the first time since my PGCE. My classroom changed rapidly during this module. The desks were rearranged to form groups, the tasks were redesigned to allow opportunities for learning based on social constructivism, my relationships with my pupils improved dramatically and the discourse in the room shifted to ‘learning’ from ‘work’. At the same time I was writing an essay on Professionalism and Curriculum for Excellence which provided my first serious insight into what Curriculum for Excellence was all about, but also encouraged me to critically reflect on my practice and the policies.

Following completion of Module 1 I switched to Stirling University’s MEd programme. This was primarily a practical move as at that time Edinburgh’s modules were ‘single’ whereas Stirling offered ‘doubles’. This meant that by switching I would complete the programme in half the time! Through the Stirling MEd I have continued to develop my ability to reflect and read critically and have really begun to embed this approach into my everyday professional life. I’ve also completed two pieces of professional enquiry whilst at Stirling. In one I decided to try to embody the principles of Curriculum for Excellence and social constructivism with my S1 class by giving them a much bigger say in how they learn in a topic. This had a massive impact on this class, and my own understanding of the power of involving pupils in their own learning to a greater extent. By sharing the outcomes of this intervention on this blog, in my school and at TeachMeet a number of teachers have come back to me since to tell me that they have tried out this approach in their own classes with very positive results.

In another of my professional enquiries I worked with one of my classes to try to improve their confidence for learning. A large number of the class regularly refused to even attempt tasks claiming that they wouldn’t be able to do it so there was no point trying. Prior to the CT programme I probably would’ve continued to plough on with the course and just try to come up with more engaging tasks. However, through reading I concluded that there was a much bigger problem here. I discovered the work of Carol Dweck on mindsets and set about working with the class to change their mindset from fixed to growth. Once again this had a powerful impact on many of the pupils in the class – who would now refuse help if they were stuck as they wanted to learn! This enquiry also changed my view on the complicated factors at play when a pupil isn’t working as I’d like them to.

At this point I was half way through the programme, and still am. I became so interested in Curriculum for Excellence and its implementation that I applied for my current Secondment and as I would no longer have any classes, I took a year out of the programme. However, although I’m not currently in the classroom, the Chartered Teacher programme has still played a massive role in my work. My efforts to develop professional learning communities has been largely informed by my reading which I would never have undertaken otherwise. And my enthusiasm to promote the messages in Building the Curriculum 5 is borne out of my belief that this policy is grounded in sound educational theory which I’ve seen have an impact with my pupils.

I’ve recently returned to the programme and I’m currently writing a proposal for the collaborative professional enquiry which will form my MEd dissertation, but as I’ll hope you’ll agree I’ve already changed dramatically as a teacher as a result of this fantastic CPD.

Classrooms as Learning Communities

01/11/2010 active learning, cfe, change, Featured, learning communities, Reading One comment

Many readers of my blog have told me that they liked my post on Having a Bash at CfE. This was pretty much the last big thing I did in the classroom before going on Secondment, and feels to me like unfinished business. As time has passed and I’ve delved deeper into CfE, I’ve become even more convinced that genuinely involving pupils in the learning process is a central part of what CfE is trying to achieve.

With this in mind, as you’ll see from the image below I’m currently in the midst of trying to put a proposal together for a collaborative professional enquiry focusing on this very issue. This is to form part of my MEd as part of the CTeach programme.

In order to inform this proposal, I am trying to read as much as I can around this issue and I’ve recently discovered two fantastic books. Both of these stress the importance of involving pupils in their learning, and they do so in a very appealing style. They manage to blend theory and practice in a very accessible and compelling manner.

If you’re at all interested in developing your practice in this area, I recommend you have a look at these:

I’m particularly taken by the latter of these. Chris Watkins has a great writing style and I love the fact that I now have a name for what it is I’m trying to achieve: a “classroom as a learning community“.

Technologies for Learning Strategy

15/10/2010 cfe, change, Featured, glow 8 comments

If you’re on twitter, you might have noticed the hastag #ediff appearing today. It was one of those sneaky little hastags which appeared unplanned this morning to coordinate the discussions surrounding a Scottish Government sponsored event at the International Futures Forum in Aberdour.

A group of Scottish education tech-types were gathered together to attend a Technologies for Learning Workshop. This workshop formed part of the initial exploration work contributing to the potential development of a Scottish Government Technologies for Learning Strategy.

Obviously, we spent a lot of today talking about Glow and all its various success and failures. For many of us, this was relatively old ground. What was more interesting was taking the opportunity to think about the bigger picture. A couple of key questions which I took from today were…

  • What do we want/need from technology to support learning?
  • What is the role of the state in technology & learning?

For the first question, I feel that we need a range of tools which reflect those tools which are available outside education. For example, we need ways to create, share and collaborate and crucially, these tools need to be easy and desirable to use. So, why don’t we just use what’s already available outside of education? I think there is an argument for having some sort of element of security which allows a degree of separation. I think we do need some private spaces which pupils and teachers can work within, and share within securely – but with the easy option of publishing online also.

And what’s the role of the state in this? I think Government can set expectations and, as much as possible, remove barriers:

  • Scottish Government could make it very clear that using technology to support & enhance learning across the curriculum is not just desirable, but essential.
  • They could then set about ensuring that barriers to access are reduced. This could take the form of encouraging innovative approaches to lack of hardware (i.e. by encouraging schools to install free wifi and allow pupils to bring in their own devices or supporting the procurement of netbooks etc.), and also ensuring an equity of access to high quality & easy to use webtools.

So, where does Glow fit into all of this? I find elements of Glow when reading back through this post actually. It aims to provide that secure online space for collaboration and sharing whilst ensuring an equity of access to a network. However, in its current form Glow is not easy to use, does not supply the high quality tools which are available online today and is probably a little too heavily weighted towards privacy and security.

Glow, or something like it, clearly has a role to play in driving the use of technology in learning in Scotland. The question is, can it continue to adapt successfully to meet the needs of our learners in the future as it currently is doing? Or do we need to relook at Glow’s antiquated and hierarchical core structure and start again?

One thing’s for sure for me. The outcomes from today’s discussion, and those at the Scottish Government Summer School on School Leadership have demonstrated that there is a real appetite for change to develop a 21st Century system for learning in Scotland…can we harness this appetite and make it happen?

With the impending financial situation, can we afford not to?

EDIT

Check out these links for more of the outcomes from the workshop:

How to implement CfE

17/09/2010 assessment, cfe, change, Featured No comments

At the minute, I’m going around and speaking to lots of PTs in East Lothian to see how they’re getting on with CfE. This is resulting in a lot of conversations about how best to approach the Curriculum for Excellence as a department/faculty. I thought I’d try and produce a really simple summary of the sorts of steps some people have taken to implement CfE. This will be an amalgamation of different ideas distilled by me. This list could evolve and change as I continue to visit PTs and departments, and if you input your ideas as comments or on twitter. Hopefully this will be useful to folk who are still unsure of the way forward…

Ok then, here goes…

  • Audit what you currently do against the Experiences & Outcomes. Don’t just think about what you teach already, but how you teach it, making use of the Principles & Practice papers for your curriculum area and subject. This is a necessary first step, but it is only a first step – be careful not to get stuck here.
  • Move the Experiences & Outcomes to be the starting point for your planning for the future. Incorporate the ideas from your previous courses from your audit, and build/adapt these where appropriate. Make sure that you consider the fact that some pupils will need to consolidate their learning from Second Level when they start S1 but that others could be well into Third Level already. Consider speaking to your primary colleagues to find what learning will have already been taking place.
  • Build your ideas for assessment into the planning stage. Visit the National Assessment Resource to see how others have approached this. Examine the effectiveness of your assessment arrangements. Look again at Assessment is for Learning. How evident are all the aspects of AifL in your S1 course really? Are pupils engaged in their assessment? Do you need to consider a greater variety of evidence? Do your current assessments allow learners to demonstrate the acquisition of the full range of skills included in your Experiences & Outcomes? nationalassessmentresource.org.uk
  • Begin to find a shared a standard. Arrange a moderation meeting within your department. Ask your colleagues to bring samples of pupils work and see if you can assess their progress against the Experiences & Outcomes and if you can agree on this. This is the professional dialogue which is outlined in BtC5 repeatedly. Have a look at the new BtC5 reporting document. Can you make use of the terms developing, consolidating and secure to describe progress within a level? ltscotland.org.uk/buildingyourcurriculum/policycontext/btc/btc5.asp
  • Plan for choice within the delivery of your courses – both for the teachers and the learners. Agree the outcomes which will be met, but understand that different classes, and indeed different learners, could get there in different ways.
  • Incorporate Literacy, Numeracy and Health & Well-being Experiences & Outcomes into your courses where appropriate. Make sure that when they’re present that they’re meaningful and that you discuss the learners’ progress within these E&Os as well as the Curricular Area E&Os. Consider speaking to your English, Maths and Guidance colleagues for advice on content and teaching approaches.
  • Look for opportunities for inter-disciplinary learning where appropriate. Again, make sure this is meaningful and that progress is made against E&Os for both Curricular Areas. See the LTS website for the recent report on Interdisciplinary Learning for further advice and ideas. Interdisciplinary Learning
  • Look for ways of building on learning outside of the classroom. What are the pupils learning through extra-curricular activities? Can you make links, i.e. with Community Learning & Development, to develop this?
  • Consider the arrangement of your courses. What is the most appropriate way of delivering the E&Os? Work with your SMT and colleagues to find a way of making best use of time.
  • Use the SQA website to engage with developments in National Qualifications. Sign up for the MyAlerts service for your subject area, share what’s going on as a department and contribute your feedback to the process. sqa.org.uk/curriculumforexcellence

You can download this summary as a word file as well by clicking here.

I acknowledge this could be perceived as quite a crude and incomplete list, but it’s a start and I think some people might find it useful.

CfE Language of Progression

06/09/2010 assessment, cfe, Featured, progression One comment

I’d really like your thoughts.

I’m in the middle of planning how to support the launch our system of moderation across the authority. This has led me to think quite a lot about how best to communicate progression under Curriculum for Excellence. As a result of this I came up with the following presentation which I think quite simply explains how progression under CfE might be communicated. Perhaps too simply? I thought that this might be useful for others and worth sharing here, but I’d like your thoughts on this also.

Does this clearly address the issue? Is it too simplistic? Is it realistic? Is it helpful?

Please be honest.

PS You can download the PowerPoint here.

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