This is the presentation that myself and two colleagues from my school shared today at a workshop at the ACTS Winter Conference on Teacher Leadership.

We shared our own collaborative enquiry as a case study to consider the process of collaborative enquiry in general. We then held a short discussion around the process of collaborative enquiry. Some of the outcomes this discussion were…

• There’s a reliance on staff in your school being open to this approach and willing to become involved. In our case, it helped that the intervention was an aspect of a whole-school policy which meant that as teachers were to be implementing this change anyway it was possible to present this enquiry as an opportunity for support.
• Time is an issue, as always. Even with the explicit and full permission of our school, all of the meetings were twilight and most of the observations and interviews were carried out in participants’ own time. The lack of time in our case resulted in a decrease in a collaborative approach. For example, some of the approaches to evidence gathering were designed by myself and not by the group as a whole. The enquiry could always be better with more time, but what can be done in the time available is surely better than not doing anything.
• Continuity and commitment from staff is key to the success of this sort of approach. It requires a lot on behalf of the members of the group, but hopefully the outcomes for staff make this worthwhile. These outcomes include improved relationships between staff across the school

Been experimenting with the use of twitter in the classroom this week! #PedagooFriday #plbio

03/02/2012 7:50 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@fkelly

Fearghal Kelly

The very helpful post I mentioned is here.

I’m not sure about “good practice”. I haven’t been for sometime now. I used to think sharing good practice was a great idea, but I’ve slowly gone off it. I think this is partly because it rarely had much of an effect on me. In fact, if it had any effect at all it tended to be a negative one…i.e. something along the lines of “I’d never be able to do that”, or even worse “who do they think they are?” Of course, I would never say any of this out loud. I would nod and smile like everyone else and then get back to my own mediocre practice!

This perhaps isn’t surprising. Watching someone else’s practice will do little to change your own as you’re only witnessing the end product. You’re not seeing their context and the many ups & downs and small changes they made along the way in order to get to where they are now. Take the Australian Open Final this Sunday for example. I watched some extremely good tennis practice there…but I doubt I’m any better a tennis player as a result. In order to learn from them I would need to spend time with them and get to know how they got to where they’ve got to and begin at the beginning myself. Much of this relates to the excellent book I’m reading at the minute, Bounce [thanks to @dukkhaboy for the recommendation].

Syed points out that it’s the power of practice which makes people good at what they do. So, tell me about your practice. Tell me about how you ended up where you are. Tell me about the context, educational values and literature which have influenced your approach. Tell me about when it all went wrong and what you did about it. All of this will help me to relate your practice to my own and might just get me thinking, “do you know what, I think they’ve got something there…I’ll give that a try myself.”

Or in other words I suppose, start a blog!

Image by bourgol

I mean that. I think that starting my blog had the single biggest effect on my as a teacher since leaving Teacher Training. It finally forced me to do that thing I always struggled to find time to do – reflect on my practice. Although I obviously still struggle to find time to do this, the audience (perceived or otherwise) encourages me to make the time to reflect more frequently than I otherwise would. The resulting learning has become addictive and has led directly to me signing up for the Chartered Teacher MEd, and my secondment as a CfE Development Officer.

In an age of increasing austerity, and in a profession which should be increasingly moving towards individual-led professional learning – a blog is a completely free, yet incredibly powerful solution. I would strongly encourage any teacher to start one. If you do though, please remember two things. Firstly, you are writing it primarily for yourself. Although the audience encourages you to write it and to try to make it somewhat coherent, you are the main beneficiary of the effort you put in. And secondly, you will go through highs and lows. There are many months when you won’t post a thing, and others when you’ll post lots. That’s ok. Just leave it there, and keep it turning over for when you need it/want it.

Will I still be blogging in another five years…I very much hope so!

I know it’s nowhere near the idea that Ewan’s proposing, but I have made a couple of recent attempts to use the web to make learning a little more real in my classroom. The first was with an Intermediate 1 Biology class who were about to learn about body temperature. As a parent, I felt that the learning might seem more relevant if the pupils were to produce a website on body temperature for new parents – something I remember being quite anxious about first time round. I knew I’d use Google Sites for the actual creation of the sites, but I didn’t feel that the pupils would buy into this completely with the horrific URLs which Google Sites uses. So I bought a domain name to try and help with this…mybabystemperature.info

You can view their sites by following the link above. The pupils really engaged with the task, many of them taking the responsibility of producing a real website with an actual audience quite seriously.

I’ve since followed this idea up with something similar, but this time the site can be used with a wider range of classes: biologyrevision.info

As you’ll see, I’ve already begun to use this with Standard Grade classes as well as Intermediate 1. Once again, the pupils seemed to really enjoy producing something which is “real” and has an actual audience. And the beauty of Google Sites is that they can collaborate and review in private and only publish once they’re happy with it.

I’m looking forward to finding better and ever more challenging ways of opening up learning in my classroom…

If you know me your jaw may well now be on the floor. What? Fearghal agrees with Carole Ford’s piece!?! No, rest assured, I haven’t done a U-turn. No, I don’t agree with her points at all, but I think she unintentionally demonstrated why CfE is struggling to gain traction in so many parts of the country. Obviously there are many issues such as support, time, funding etc.; but perhaps the greatest barrier is the support for school leaders in understanding the change, which then impacts on their ability to lead the changes in their schools.

There are many points in her piece which I disagree with, but I’ll pick out a small sample to illustrate my point. In reference to literacy and numeracy she says:

pupils who fail to develop appropriate levels of literacy and numeracy skill in primary school rarely make good this deficit later in the educational process. The CfE solution to this is not, as one might expect, to focus attention on the primary years of schooling but to place responsibility for both onto secondary teachers. Thus we have physics teachers teaching literacy and French teachers teaching numeracy

I find this statement to be shockingly inaccurate for two reasons. Firstly, CfE is continuing to place a strong focus on literacy, numeracy (& health and well being) in the primary stages as well as secondary. And secondly, secondary teachers should not be ‘teaching literacy’ in place of their subject specialisms – but rather using their subject areas as contexts to develop these skills where appropriate. Throughout the broad general education the intention is to improve young people’s literacy and numeracy levels – this is not the sole domain of primary teachers, as any secondary teacher will tell you (bemoan)! Whilst there may well be a number of secondary schools around the country which are requiring their staff to be ‘teaching numeracy’ in place of their subject area, I would argue that this is not the fault of CfE, but of the school leaders who have misinterpreted the documentation.

She goes onto use a similar argument regarding interdisciplinary learning:

interdisciplinary learning, advocated by CfE, is a whole bone of contention in its own right. Why is taking a teacher out of his comfort zone a good thing? Do you wish to be treated by a doctor who is operating out of his comfort zone? The logic of interdisciplinary learning is that I will make better progress in German if the teacher is not fluent in German but pretty good at French or Spanish. In the language of Homer Simpson, “D’oh!”

It’s surprising that an article which criticises the lack of evidence presented to support CfE only itself contains a quote by Homer Simpson, but anyway, interdisciplinary learning. I personally don’t believe that interdisciplinary learning is the holy grail one might think it is if you listen to certain people, but I still think the quotation above misses the point. Interdisciplinary learning is not supposed to be about French teachers teaching German. It’s supposed to be about providing young people with opportunities to see their learning in a more joined up way and be beginning to make connections between the artificial barriers we’ve created between the subjects. This is a skill which I always say marks out the top candidates in Biology, and it is one which is becoming increasingly relevant in today’s world.

Once again, there may well be many teachers out there having to teach a subject outside their comfort zone under the banner of interdisciplinary learning and CfE, but I think Carole Ford is inadvertently highlighting an issue with her colleagues – not Curriculum for Excellence. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are many barriers facing the implementation of CfE, but not all of them lie with the policy documents or the national agencies – as demonstrated by this article.

Why do I dislike this commonly used word? I think it’s to do with the association ‘able’ has to a permanent state of being. It comes across as either/or – either you are able to study biology at a certain level, or you are not. For me, this links closely with Dweck’s concept of a ‘Fixed Mindset’. We have enough of a problem as it is convincing young people that they can change and it’s worth making the effort to learn and improve, so why therefore do we make it even harder for ourselves by constantly using language which implies the opposite?

I have a personal reason for disliking this term also. I was not a high flier at secondary school. For my GCSEs I found myself in the second from bottom sets for both English and Maths. As a result I became convinced that I was simply no good at these subjects, and never would be. Since leaving school I have slowly unlearned this. I learned during the course of my biology degree that I could cope with more challenging mathematical concepts once they had a context and a purpose. Since leaving Uni I relearned a love of reading which I’d lost during secondary school, and more recently discovered that I can read and write critically through the course of my MEd. So, it isn’t that I wasn’t able to do well in those courses…it was that I wasn’t ready to.

I realise that there are some young people who may never be ‘ready’ to do well in Advanced Higher Biology, but a great many of those we class as being unable to do it will be able to at a later date…especially if we haven’t locked them into a Fixed Mindset in the first place!

You’ll have noticed perhaps that I’m not actually arguing against setting here, which is a bit odd for me, I’m just suggesting we stop referring to these sets in terms of their ability…but in terms of their readiness instead.

What do you think?

@fkelly We are thinking about setting up an event for staff to develop such a framework for EL Any ideas how we can give teachers ownership?

22/10/2011 8:18 am via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@donjled

Don Ledingham

I was, of course, very intrigued and replied as follows;

@donjled Wow. A cracking question can I give it some thought? We should also ask how we can give learners ownership too? Event for them 1st?

22/10/2011 8:20 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@fkelly

Fearghal Kelly

This has since snowballed on twitter and has now evolved into #LearnMeet, which is beginning to look something like this;

My Idea for 1st #LearnMeet is a central Edinburgh venue, for senior pupils (S6) to give their ideas and opinions. Held after school hours.

22/10/2011 6:17 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@rjnicolson

Ruairidh Nicolson

I’m struggling to say what I think on all this, especially in 140 characters – so I thought I’d try a wee blog post instead…I’d like to start by saying I have nothing against the suggested format for a LearnMeet proposed above by Ruairidh - it could be great and I’d be encouraging our Seniors along. However, I think this is disjointed from the original discussion.

I really like Don’s idea, and I think it’s important that pupils and parents have opportunities to input into this framework…but this needs to be done as part of the system. Schools and Local Authorities need to continue to increase the opportunities for a wider range of stakeholders to formally input into the direction of learning and teaching in schools – but this needs to be taken seriously and carried out properly. If the students and parents consulted are to feel as though their opinion really matters, they need to be giving it in an appropriate context…which can of course be augmented by social media, but not entirely reliant on it. And if those who will be developing the framework are to take this input seriously, they need to be confident in the mechanism by which it was acquired…i.e. not in a fringe, twilight event with a small selection of our learners.

I think I would frame this process as updating East Lothian’s Teaching & Learning Policy, which as far as I know hasn’t been touched since 2007. I would certainly be wanting to involve as many pupils, parents and staff as possible in the process through a combination of physical face-to-face groups and online engagement with a clear outcome/framework produced as a result…

It is for this reason that I think the introduction of the learning cycle model and learn2learn at my school is being so positively received. This actual framework for learning and teaching is filling the vacuum left by the Curriculum for Excellence documents by providing teachers with something concrete to build learning experiences around. The implementation of the model is also being supported by those who’ve helped develop it – and crucially – use it day in day out. I’ve already begun to demonstrate how this approach relates to the literature and my experience of using it so far suggests that it has a positive impact on learning (in its broadest sense). I’m also finding that this model is in no way restrictive and actually provides vast potential for development of practice – but in a focused way.

I think all of this provides us with lessons on how to move forward. It’s not, as some would argue, that all secondary teachers are resistant to change. It’s that they need clear guidance and support to make change. In an ideal world we’d all be able to develop our own practice collaboratively based on literature and evidence, within very broad guidance – but this is just simply not realistic. Can Scotland now learn from past mistakes and develop the guidance which will actually impact on classroom practice and the crucial support to make it happen? I hope so, but I have my doubts.