Check out the EDUtalk website for much, much more fantastic audio…

So, why am I inspired to write something about it now? Because (touch wood) it seems to be really beginning to take off. The last I mentioned of the idea was when I floated the idea of a collaborative blog following the #CfEfuture debate - almost exactly a year ago. Since then the blogged morphed into pedagoo.org and has since been growing arms and legs. How did it morph into pedagoo from education futures scotland? This is explained over on pedagoo.org/about [and what a near-miss that was in terms of the name!]

Since pedagoo’s creation on the 24th May last year, the #PedagooAdmin team has grown to six very enthusiastic teachers, supported by many many equally enthusiastic teachers who contribute on twitter, facebook and on the blog. In fact, the blog recently has become quite overwhelming in terms of the quality of the posts – and #PedagooFriday is just something else. On top of that we’re planning TeachMeet Retreat and TeachMeet SLFringe…and we’re currently hatching another plan – PedagooCPD. Plus we’re receiving lots of great support from Universities, National Bodies and some fantastically enthusiastic and helpful individuals who are no longer in the classroom. All in all, it’s becoming quite breathtaking. But, why is it working and where are we going with it?

I think there are many reasons why Pedagoo might be beginning to get somewhere. I think perhaps it may be partly to do with the fact that there may now be a critical mass of teachers using twitter who we’ve been able to reach in a way which simply wasn’t possible at a grassroots level in the past. I think also that during this time of change, there are significant number of teachers out there who are looking for honest and challenging support and dialogue from like-minded colleagues and are finding that there are very few opportunities to develop these sorts of networks. Whatever the reasons, I’m just glad that folk are finding it useful.

But, where do we go with this? In the short to medium term, I’m hoping that we can…

• offer more, and more varied, opportunities for teachers to learn from other teachers – whether that be online, or through events we organise.
• continue to expand the membership and widen the involvement in all things pedagoo.
• encourage more members to contribute more frequently to the site, and to foster more debate on a wider range of issues.
• provide a space for communities and discussions which develop in the real world to continue after events such as TeachMeets, or any other form of CPD event for that matter.
• anything else…?

Given the current level of coverage of CfE in the press, any Scottish teacher is likely to be asked their thoughts on all of this, and I am no different in this regard. Where I do feel particularly fortunate, is the opportunity I had on an 18 months secondment to have the reasons for this change clearly and repeatedly explained to me through challenging and engaging discussions – if only this opportunity could have been made available to more. As such, I am very much in favour of the changes and more than comfortable with the direction of travel. If you watch the news or read the papers, you would think that I must be completely unique in this regard, I know for a fact I am not, however I would accept that we seem currently to be in the minority. So then, I thought I should try to outline some of my own thoughts on all of this on here…

Why do we need Curriculum for Excellence at all? Why do we need to change?

There’s a strange contradiction around CfE. On the one hand it is often described as “transformational change”, and yet on the other you’ll often hear teachers state “it’s what we do already”. So if it’s not a change, why all the fuss? As far as I’m concerned, little of CfE is new. Everything in the documents was already happening either in pockets of the country, or in pockets of time throughout the country. Or, as in the case of formative assessment, occurring throughout the country most of the time, but superficially.

CfE is about refocusing the entirety of the school curriculum onto a common purpose and striving to take these pockets of good practice and make them universal. It raises the bar and says that the quality of learning and teaching must be improved across the country, at all stages, and at all times. It takes widely accepted pedagogies such as formative assessment and active learning and builds them into Government policy. Sure, there have been flaws in the implementation of this change, but that doesn’t for one second diminish the need for, or the nature of, the change in the first place.

Why do we need to change the National Qualifications?

The Scottish Qualifications had got themselves into a bit of a guddle. We still have the now dated looking Standard Grades sitting alongside a suite of National Qualifications which don’t quite articulate. On top of that, if we’re changing/improving our view of learning, teaching and assessment surely it makes sense to update the Qualifications also? Otherwise, if we were ultimately leading to the same destination as before, the chances of us being able to make the desired changes would be reduced. Again, as always with these things, this could probably have been done better – but I think that the SQA have done a pretty stirling job under the circumstances.

Why should National 4 have no national exam?

This one’s an obvious one to me. One of our current equivalent courses to National 4, Intermediate 1,  is very much a skills based course. The unit content is very applied and the whole course could be approached from a “skills for work” type perspective. However, 100% of the grade for the course is determined by a traditional examination paper in a hall, in silence. Whilst this approach to assessment might be appealing to many teachers (who all successfully navigated the academic world and therefore view it favourably), the media (likewise) and many parents (either likewise, or if not, we spend so much time telling them that exams are all that matter that they believe us) but it’s simply not a valid form of assessment for this course.

Now, obviously, any variation from this form of assessment is going to bring issues of reliability – but these need to be dealt with in their own right. We can’t set about solving issues of reliability by making assessments invalid for the forms of learning we’re hoping to achieve. That’s not to say that tests can’t form part of the course assessment, but they do not need to form it all and they do not need to be set nationally. This more local approach to assessment frees up learners and teachers to take a more flexible approach to the learning.

I will finish this one by pointing out that I am (hopefully) about to receive an MEd (SCQF level 11) and I haven’t sat one exam, and all of the assessment has been internal. Even worse, there isn’t even an SQA equivalent to tell the University what they should be assessing! I simply do not understand why we cant take a more valid approach to assessment at SCQF level 4 if we can achieve it at level 11!

Why should schools be changing from 2+2+2 to 3+3?

This one’s particularly contentious just now. The reason 3+3 appeals to me is that it has the potential to allow us to treat our learners as people rather than cohorts. We currently have a situation whereby everyone churns through the two-year middle school in all subjects, which is a legacy of Standard Grade, whether its appropriate for them or not. I would like to reach a point where students are choosing courses at appropriate levels and for appropriate time-periods based on their own needs. I believe that the 3+3 model has a better chance of allowing for this. I’m also in favour of reducing the time we spend jumping through SQA hoops from four years to three in the Secondary school. Whilst the new National Qualifications should be more in line with CfE than the current qualifications, they’re still going to be national examinations for the large part. The more time we’re free to focus on and develop learning for its own sake the better I say. Let’s spend as little time capturing and certifying this learning as possible.

Why has all this proved to be so difficult?

Change is difficult. We’re creatures of habit. Things haven’t been helped by some of the approaches to implementation – but it was always going to be an uphill battle. Everyone was on board when it was just the four capacities, but as soon as it came to having to make real changes to the day-to-day, it became a lot tougher. What’s difficult just now is trying to work out who has the genuinely thought through grievances and who is just shouting no because they don’t like change. I think we should be very careful not to lump these groups together as both are in many ways understandable and predictable.

For many, the problem with the National Qualifications lies with the speed of their implementation. But this only applies if you’re sticking with 2+2+2. For these schools, which have chosen to ignore the national guidance, they are finding themselves in the awkward position of starting these qualifications before they have finished being developed in August of this year. But they knew this when they made their decision regarding the curricular model. For schools moving towards a 3+3 model, they will not begin teaching these qualifications until August 2013 – which is inline with the implementation timeline.

In my own opinion (for what it’s worth), there should be no more delays. I don’t believe the last one achieved anything…we’re creating a curriculum, which while still obviously flawed (they always will be), is an improvement on what has come before. Let’s get on with it for the benefit of our learners.

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 from 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 8:50 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@fkelly

Fearghal Kelly

The very helpful post I mentioned is here.

Update

As we’re part way through this topic now, I decided to take some time out last week to reflect on our progress. We did a “table mat” activity where I got the pupils to reflect individually on the positives and the difficulties and then they had to come up with possible improvements as a group. I then summarised all of this for each class. You can see one example of the sort of reflections they were coming up with, and the summaries for each class in the presentation below.

Both classes were quite anxious regarding how much they’re learning. To help them with this I used Flubaroo to create a little check test for them to show how much they are learning, and I’ve printed off a sheet for them to record their progress for them to stick into their jotters. I’ve also given them more help in terms of the websites to use for research, and the sort of activities which they could plan for the lessons.

Everyone’s finding it challenging, but I think more are beginning to get used to this way of working…I’m really pleased with the sorts of positives which they came up with already!

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.