On Teaching...

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BASS.

Over the past year, I have found great solace in trying to improve my bass playing, mainly as a distraction from the stresses of education and as a way of stabilising my mental health. As the worst member of the greatest (cough) staff band around – The Lines – I have always tried to bring energy to the group but really, I should bring better bass playing. So recently I have been trying to learn a variety of bass tabs, with varying rhythms and from different genres, from the Spice Girls to AC/DC and beyond. Whilst on this learning journey though, it made me reflect on how bass playing offers many lessons to the classroom environment.

The rhythm of the lesson – along with the drums, the bass player makes up the rhythm section of most bands. They keep a steady beat that drives a song along. Sometimes the pace will need picking up and sometimes it will need slowing down and this is exactly what a teacher is doing within the classroom environment. They are continually assessing when a lesson has started to drag and needs freshening up but at other times, particularly after question and answer sessions, it will be important to slow things down in order to ensure that everyone has understood the learning objective.
Knowing what to leave in and what to leave out – when I’m learning the bass, I’m trying to replicate bass players who are much, much better than me and most of the time I can’t…yet! There are ghost notes, slides and pulls that I struggle to do, despite hours of practise but when push comes to shove, most of those fancier elements are not needed for the heart of the song. Therefore, I simplify the tab in a way that means I can play it and the band can perform. At the start of teaching, it is very easy to over-teach subject areas that can overly confuse students. You do this normally because you can feel confident that they know more than enough to answer any questions asked around the topic. However, this often puts additional cognitive load on students and they may struggle to remember the core concepts that are essential to do well or get confused about what the most important information is. So a good skill to have as a teacher is that appreciation of core knowledge and knowing what to leave in and what to leave out as you teach. You can always tell students about the hinterland and get them to explore it in their own time. A bit like when I try and stretch myself with a big bass slide during Lizzo’s ‘Juice’.
Mix it up a bit – recently I have purchased a bass guitar pedal, the Big Muff Pi Distortion to be exact. I wanted to play ‘Figure It Out’ by Royal Blood which has a lot of sustain and distortion on it. When I turn the pedal on it sounds great and I feel proper rock and roll. However, at the heart of the song is a very simple catchy bass tab and that’s important to remember. In teaching, we often feel that we have to have lots of tricks up our sleeves to keep students interested in lessons but ultimately if you have good teaching at the core of your lessons, the students will be engaged no matter what. Of course it’s good to use the teaching equivalent of a bass pedal once in a while but don’t get distracted from the basic techniques needed to deliver a solid performance.
Learning is the focus – name a famous bass player? It’s pretty difficult isn’t it? There are the odd ones who are well known purely for bass playing like Mani from the Stone Roses or Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers but the main ones known are those that have fronted a band like Mark King from Level 42 or Lemmy from Motorhead. Generally, the bass player is the one person you can’t get in a pub quiz when trying to name the band! In many respects, the bass player doesn’t want to be noticed, like John Deacon from Queen. As previously stated, the bass player’s role is keeping the flow going whilst allowing others in the band to shine. In many respects, you could argue that teachers are like lead singers, keeping the audience spellbound in the classroom but really we should be more like bass players, allowing students to shine through their contributions to the learning environment. The learning is the focus and not you, despite what many might think! And this has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve never done a bass solo for The Lines…mainly because I can’t!

So there you have it…I’m sure most people can see how doing one thing, such as playing the bass, can give you insight into how to do your job better or at least remind you of some of the key elements that bring about great performance in the work that you do. Why don’t you give it a go? How does rock climbing make you a better teacher? Or collecting stamps? Or brewing your own beer? Have a think…and listen to the amazing bass player Bootsy Collins whilst you are doing it!

BEWARE THE ZOMBIE TEACHER!

After the financial crisis of 2008, a phenomenon emerged in the business world that has continued to this day – the ‘zombie’ business. This is a business that staggers along, earning enough money to cover its debt but not enough to pay it off. It covers daily expenses but doesn’t make enough to invest in itself to grow and make it better. Often they are reliant on loans from the bank to keep going. Sooner or later, they fall and die. Normally it will be a poor quarter or some unexpected event that pushes them over the edge. A good example recently has been Debenhams but sadly there have been lots of recent examples hence ‘the death of the high street’ and the lockdowns have only accelerated the process of ‘zombies’ finally falling.

There is obviously an equivalence here with teachers. We can see in the data that there are many potential ‘zombie teachers’ out there. We are all aware of polls that suggest two in three teachers want to leave the classroom within two years and there is no doubt that the mishandling of education over the past year would have pushed many more into thinking about their career in teaching.

The constant criticism of teachers during lockdown when it was assumed we were all on holiday, the continual U-turns from government about a number of educational issues, the pressure from parents with regards the centre-assessed grades (CAGs) and the expectations about online teaching would have pushed teachers to the edge.

Clearly in the middle of a pandemic induced recession, this is not the time to quit teaching as you would find yourself in the middle of a hugely competitive labour market and like ‘zombie’ businesses, ‘zombie teachers’ have bills to pay and therefore they will continue in the classroom, feeling disgruntled, demotivated and disrespected. This can be seen in the data where there will always be a time lag with regards quitting the profession.

Obviously some of the responses in these surveys will be bravado or heat of the moment stuff but there seems to be something quite different about the way we are currently seen by this government and some of the more vocal members of the mainstream media. Long after Gavin Williamson has gone, there will be a need to heal the divide between the profession and Whitehall. This has not been helped by a Prime Minister who was prepared to put our lives in danger and a Chancellor that has already announce a pay freeze.

Therefore classrooms up and down the country might be swarming with ‘zombie teachers’. This might not be obvious to students, after all, we are a caring profession and on the whole will do our utmost to give them the best education possible but if you think you are going to leave the profession within a couple of years, then standards might start slipping in areas that you might not see as being worthwhile. There might be a lack of engagement at CPD events and an unwillingness to offer extra-curricular activities and other additions that come from the ‘goodness of the heart’.

This disillusionment will have to be carefully managed. It might be that after all the lockdowns are over and teaching becomes normal again, most of the past year or so might be forgotten but with pay freezes locked in and catch-up classes expected for another year or so, this is unlikely.

This is obviously another issue for SLT to deal with, who themselves are likely to be suffering. There will no doubt be plenty of ‘zombie senior leaders’ as well and this can be seen in the data also with over two-fifths of teachers, school leaders and support staff wanting to quit within the next five years. This was originally due to ‘workload pressures’ and ‘excessive’ accountability. Now imagine that over the next year or so and what we have seen recently! Clearly for many, the coronavirus will be the unexpected event that will push many over the edge. Let’s hope there is a safety net.

UNDER PRESSURE – The legacy of CAGs.

‘Have a fun INSET day everyone. What are you doing?’

‘Revising’

‘Have a lovely weekend everyone. What are you all up to?’

‘Revising’

‘Anybody up to anything fun this evening?’

‘Revising’

Revising, revising, revising. That’s what Y13 students tell me all the time now. It didn’t use to be like this. They’d tell me about the party that’s on at the weekend or the shopping trip they were going on but now it is revising, revising, revising. Why is this? It’s not lockdown, the rule of six or the 10pm curfew. The answer, quite simply, is CAGs.

The summer debacle of no exams has left a legacy like no other. When it was decided that centre assessed grades were going to be used for students’ grades, the rules of the schooling game had changed. The destiny of a student’s grade was no longer in the lucky dip of a one-off set of exams but potentially in the continual assessment from their teacher. This means that every assessment at school now REALLY meant something. If CAGs were going to be used again (and the government hasn’t ruled it out), then they will have to perform better than their classmates in every test/assessment/assignment, in order to achieve a high ranking from their teacher.

It doesn’t matter if a teacher tells them not to worry about a test and patiently explains to them that a test is purely about finding out what they don’t know, if the teacher is collecting the data, then the students will be concerned and will be desperate to do well. Sixth Form students are not stupid and if CAGs are going to be used, the teacher will have to use every bit of data at their disposal in order to justify why they have given certain people a grade and why they have ranked them above someone else.

Of course, you can say you will only use a Mock result but what if a student gets the same score as someone else? Then other data will have to be used to separate as you can’t rank at the same level. What if someone has a ‘bad day’ in the mock? Surely it’s right to use other data isn’t it? Of course but then we go back to every assessment matters and if every assessment matters, you can understand why students are revising, revising, revising.

And what impact is this having on students’ wellbeing? If students are continually pushing and pushing and pushing, then eventually something is going to break. I’m sure I am not alone in believing that my students’ mental/physical health is more important than a letter on a piece of paper. But this is the situation we have ended up in and everytime I see an article about using teacher assessment and cancelling exams, I want to roll up and die.

Obviously I know that exams are not perfect but are people like Kenneth Baker aware of the impact that CAGs will have on schools and the students themselves? It’s not just about the constant workload the students will feel they have to do but it will lead to a breakdown in the relationships between students, teachers and parents. Imagine a mock exam where a student is two marks off a higher grade. Marking is subjective, we all know that, hence all the remarks in a normal summer, therefore the student will be desperate to find those extra two marks, just in case the mock gets used as the CAG. What happens if a teacher doesn’t give it to them?

We have already seen relationships break down after the 2020 CAGs, with many people contesting their results and causing huge misery for everyone involved, as well as wasting a huge amount of resources within the school setting. It’s understandable if you are unhappy to challenge the school…a parent wants what is best for their child but ultimately not everyone can get an A or A*.

I’ve been amazed that there have been so many people on Twitter who would be happy to continue with teacher assessment. I genuinely felt it was the worse thing I’ve ever had to do in my teaching career. It was like the educational equivalent of ‘Sophie’s Choice’. You have spent two years getting students ready, enjoying their company, revelling in the camaraderie of it all and then suddenly the onus is on you to rank them and give out grades that you genuinely aren’t sure about. I’ve written before about the difficulty of predicting grades and therefore the thought of them being used horrors me.

I was genuinely happy when I saw a TeacherTapp survey that suggested that teachers didn’t want exams cancelled but was still amazed that 28% wanted them to be. I just don’t get that given the additional pressure put on teachers and students for the whole year.

I would love the government to do the exact opposite of what Kenneth Baker suggested and announce that, by hook or by crook, the summer exams will be going ahead. If teachers are concerned about finishing courses, either make them later or cut some content as they have already done. What we can’t have is students continually on the edge…it’s a depressing time to be a teacher at the moment and it’s even more depressing knowing that these fun loving teenagers are forever stuck in a room revising, revising, revising.

WHAT ARE YOU REBELLING AGAINST? WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?

If you look around at the moment, the world seems an angry place. There has been a fair bit of writing on it and many commentators think it explains why Brexit occurred and why Donald Trump was elected in America. If you spend any time on Twitter or Facebook (in public forums), you will see that anger again and again and again. As a teacher, I’d like to think that in the world of education, this wouldn’t happen. We’re educated people and therefore you’d expect to see a bit more nuance in terms of the discussions that we have but every now and then, you’ll see anger and lots of it and it makes me think why? Why do some teachers get so worked up over issues that seem rather trivial?

Recently I wrote an article about Joe Wicks and what teachers can learn from his lockdown lessons. It was a pithy piece that I thought would be fun to read if you are a teacher. It clearly wasn’t going to be revolutionary…most articles about what teachers could or should be doing are always going to be very similar as there is nothing really new out there, you’re just putting a new twist on things and in my case, it was lockdown lessons with Joe Wicks. I always think with anything you observe/read, you can take lessons from, even if it just acts as a reminder to do what you’ve always been doing.

Most of the comments were pretty positive but I was quite surprised at the number of negative comments, whether they were on Twitter, Facebook or below the line in the article itself. Patronising comes up a lot, as does the fact that I clearly don’t spend enough time in the classroom (I do) and I haven’t observed enough lessons (I have) but overall I have to admit, I thought it was quite funny that such a harmless article can cause such anguish but it is worth reflecting why this might be the case.

One of the books I read over lockdown was Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment’ and I found it very interesting. He talks about this word called ‘Thymos’ which is a Greek word that Plato uses in ‘The Republic’. Thymos is part of the soul that craves respect and recognition of its worth. He goes on to explain that if you do not get respected at the rate that you think you deserve, you get angry. He later on discusses the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, a vegetable seller in Tunisia, who has his vegetable cart confiscated and because he is then mistreated and ignored, he sets himself on fire. This was a catalyst to the 2011 Arab Spring.

If you look at the teaching profession in Britain, we can see why there might be many angry teachers. If you look at reports related to the retention of teachers, you’ll see that the disrespect shown to teachers is something that is continually mentioned. Quoting from this report it says ‘A number of teachers reported that increasing respect for the profession would support retention, believing that levels of respect needed to be improved across society, the media, young people, graduates, and parents/carers. Teachers felt there needed to be more understanding of teaching and the expertise and dedication of those that teach.’

Therefore if a fellow teacher writes an article about what they can learn from Joe Wicks about teaching, it can be seen as belittling and disrespecting the profession. Comments pointed out whether Joe could show the same amount of energy with students who didn’t want to be there on a wet and windy Wednesday afternoon. They also pointed out that there was no differentiation for SEND students and that Joe was not being judged on results and was only doing half an hour each morning.

If like me, you have been the butt of your friends’ jokes for years about being a teacher, it can slowly grind you down. Add in the stereotypical nature of PE teachers as well (Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t teach, teach PE) and again, I can understand how the Joe Wicks article can make you rather angry, as it seems to be more of an attack on them. It clearly isn’t if you read the piece as it’s just a general article on the kind of things we want to be doing as teacher but the fact that I use the phrases ‘PE teacher to the world’ and ‘PE with Joe’ that he used, it gives a sense that I’m saying his lessons are PE lessons, when they are clearly not. At the same time, Joe Wicks is getting huge respect and recognition for what he was doing whilst teachers are being slated on social media for sitting on their behinds during the pandemic (which we all know was not true) and that they don’t deserve a 3.1% pay rise. Whilst Joe has been at home protecting himself and his family, many PE teachers, like my good chum Duges, have been in school providing lessons for key skill workers and potentially putting himself at risk.

Another recent book on this subject, has been ‘Angrynomics’ by Eric Longergan and Mark Blyth and you can see an interesting discussion about it here on Renegade Inc. One of the areas they talk about is tribal rage, as shown amongst football fans. As teachers, we are a tribe and therefore we will kick back against anything that might be seen as a criticism. This can be seen clearly where the profession pretty much united against Andrew Adonis’ comments about online learning. But we also see tribes within tribes and I have written about this before, with regards the progs vs trads debate. Some of the angriest tweets I witness are ‘debates’ between fellow teachers/educators, when you would assume we would be in this together. In the interview above, Eric states the same in football, where violence amongst fans of the same team is common. They talk about how some fans get angry with others because they do not show enough commitment to the cause. We can potentially see this when teachers get angry with other teachers (or at least get very sarcastic) for putting up nice displays in their classroom. The reason is that there is little evidence that this helps learners and therefore if you really care, then you should be focusing on other things, like spaced learning. Unlike James Dean, these people are rebels WITH a cause but sometimes they don’t appreciate how much anger they provoke.

Relating it back to my Joe Wicks article, it should come as no surprise that the angriest comments would be from fellow teachers because in many respects, I am wasting their time with something so obvious, that it is not even worth repeating! It is patronising!!! And in many respects, I can see why they say that.

I remember once, a Maths teacher friend told me to be wary of anyone that was so passionate about something. I asked him why and he stated it was because it makes them irrational. They are blinded by their passion and therefore they can’t see the other side. We can clearly see this in football when looking at refereeing decision but again, take the Joe Wicks article, some teachers are so passionate about PE teaching, that they see his ‘lessons’ as being an insult to Physical Education. Therefore, if a fellow teacher even suggests (using the words of Joe Wicks) that they might be PE lessons, they get angry. They feel disrespected. I admire that passion and I expect it probably makes them exceptional teachers of PE but from writing a ‘fun’ article perspective, it can be hard work! This is the case in the evidence in education debate as well and this can be a tricky business because we might end up believing something so passionately that being told it might be wrong causes a huge amount of anger. Growth mindset is a an interesting case here. This is hugely debated but it’s fascinating seeing those who are pro-growth mindset only tweeting evidence that supports it and those who are anti-growth mindset only tweeting evidence against it. Confirmation bias reigns supreme!!!!

The world is an angry place and I saw a glimpse of that in the reaction to an article about Joe Wicks. In many respects, it is easy to laugh at the oddness of this anger over something so trivial but what we’ve noticed in recent times, is that you can’t ignore it and in fact, laughing at their concerns just adds even more disrespect into the mix. It’s clear that in all areas of life, we must try and understand each other a bit more, as that will make the world a happier place.

However, as teachers, I do think that we need to have more confidence in ourselves and our profession and appreciate the skills and talents that we have. We shouldn’t be so easily offended when people criticise us…lockdown learning has shown how valuable teachers are and how Joe Wicks lessons couldn’t replace the PE teacher at your school. Whenever my friends take the mickey out of me and tell me what an easy life I lead, with all my holidays and so on, I always say to them – come and join me!!! So far, no one has taken up the offer.

BEFORE ROSENSHINE, LET’S TALK ROSENTHAL

In 1963, after 6 years of teaching History, Barak Rosenshine went off to pursue his Ph.D. in Education at Stanford University. That was the start of the journey that would eventually make Rosenshine a household name in the world of education, as he eventually developed what would be known as the ‘Principles of Instruction’. There have been plenty of books and articles written about Rosenshine over the last few years (see Tom Sherrington/@teacherhead) and obviously you can read his own writing on those important principles.

But also in 1963, there was also a young psychologist at Harvard University called Bob Rosenthal who was running an interesting experiment in his lab related to rodents. Beside two cages, he labelled one set of rats as intelligent species and the other as dim-witted. He then instructed his students to take these rats and put them in a maze and time how quickly they completed it. The rats were exactly the same but they were labelled differently. To his surprise, those labelled as intelligent, completed the maze at a quicker rate. You can read all about this in Rutger Bregman’s excellent new book ‘Humankind – A Hopeful History’.

What he discovered is that students handled the ‘intelligent’ rats (and those with which they had higher expectations for) more gently and with greater care and it seemed that this treatment had changed the rats’ behaviour and enhanced their performance. He took this study into the world of education and eventually came up with the Pygmalion Effect – what he discovered is that teachers who expected students to do well, treated them in a different way, by giving them more attention, more encouragement and more praise and (amazingly) this had an impact on their performance.

In Bregman’s book, we also learn that there is a flipside to this called the Golem Effect – if we expect the worst then we treat them differently and we get the worst. There is a quote in the book that suggests the Pygmalion Effect is ‘great science that is under applied’ and obviously this got me thinking…specifically about target grades.

I’m sure my school is the same as pretty much every other school with regards target grades. At the beginning of studying GCSE and A-Levels, the school generates target grades based on previous data. This is then given to the teachers (alongside other additional data as well) and this is supposed to help us improve how we teach these students by maybe linking it to a seating plan or using differentiation or how we set students. In most schools from my experience (but not all), they are also given to students and parents. Clearly, the question we have to ask, given what we know about the Pygmalion and Golem Effect is, why do we do this? If we are interested in using science within education and have this knowledge at our disposal, why do we give information to teachers that will alter (unconsciously) the way they behave? Why do we feel teachers are immune to this stuff when past research shows this has not been the case? It relates to another point, why do some bits of research take-off within schools and some don’t? Surely in order for Rosenshine’s work to have the most impact, we need to be know about Rosenthal’s work.

A long time ago, there was a report written by the Policy Exchange that suggested every student should start with an A*. It was an interesting report that fitted in nicely with ‘growth mindset’ theory and the argument that there was no limit to your potential. Many will baulk at the link to ‘growth mindset’ as it has fallen out of favour (despite an interesting report from Chile related to this) but viewing it through the lens of the Pygmalion Effect makes much more sense. Is this the future for target grades or would it better for everyone not to have any at all? Is this something that the Chartered College should be pushing for? I’ve always argued that when it comes to evidence in education (to paraphrase ‘Animal Farm’) all evidence is equal but some is more equal that others. This can easily be applied to the BRs!

REBEL IDEAS IN EDUCATION

Recently I have been reading Matthew Syed’s ‘Rebel Ideas’ and his books are always rather thought provoking from an educational perspective. Previously he has written ‘Bounce’ that looked at Carol Dweck’s ‘growth mindset’ theory and ‘Black Box Thinking’ that leaned very hard on ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande, which inspired the book for schools ‘Ticked Off’ by Harry Fletcher-Wood. He has also written a rather inspirational book which is full of good advice for youngsters called ‘You Are Awesome’.

In ‘Rebel Ideas’ he looks at the important of ‘diverse thinking’ and it follows a similar path to the books by David Epstein (Range), Tim Harford (Messy) and Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From/Farsighted). So what can educationalists learn from this book?

Firstly it would be prudent to think about the cognitive diversity in your teams that are making the big decisions in your school. If not, how can you go around getting that diversity? At my school, we have a secondment onto the SLT and if you don’t do this, it might give senior management an opportunity to bring some fresh ideas into the team. I’ve been part of that secondment and I witnessed on a number of occasions about groupthink within the senior management team. Matthew Syed talks about the hierarchical issues you have within teams and how, over time, they conform to the thinking of the leader or just assume that they no best. For me there was no challenge to the Head’s authority and this was problematic. I think the Head rather liked me on the team (he once told a colleague it was better having me pissing out rather than pissing in) and was appreciative of the ideas I was bringing to the table. I thought it showed good leadership that he was prepared to have me on the team despite the hassle it may have caused him.

In the book, Matthew Syed discusses ‘Shadow Boards’ and this could potentially work in schools. Most of the time, senior management teams are made up of those that have been in teaching for years and may not have taught a full-time timetable or been a form teacher for a long time. Therefore if decisions are being made, they could maybe set up a ‘shadow board’ of younger teachers who could give them a different perspective to their decision making.

Obviously decisions made by SLT impact students and all schools have a Student Council that they could hear from that would create greater diversity in the decision making process, however, it is worth thinking about the diversity within the School Council. I’ve been in charge of a School Council and whether you like it or not, they are filled with the really keen students who might not be the school norm. How can you reach out to the wider school community and attract a greater variety of students to sit on the School Council? Maybe a better way to choose a School Council would be through a lucky dip, a bit like jury service, where you are then pretty much guaranteed diversity.

From a wider perspective, it’s also worth thinking about how we can get diverse thinking in educational policy making. In the book, Matthew Syed talks about the difference between information bubbles and echo chambers. Information bubbles are when you close off thinking outside of your own viewpoint whilst echo chambers are accepting of outside thinking but then demonise that thinking in order to solidify the original viewpoint. In the educational world you could argue that this is what happens between the trads and the progressives (if you wish to make it a binary world) and in the Twitter world, those echo chambers exist. At this moment in time, you’d argue that from the government’s perspective, they are on the trad side. You can see this within the educational debate and you wonder whether the new DfE Behavioural Taskforce (led by Tom Bennett) is significantly diverse enough to bring about solutions that could work for all.

Related to behaviour, Matthew Syed also has a chapter related to averages and how the world is designed around the ‘average’ person and again, this can easily be related to schools. Obviously behavioural systems are a ‘one-size fits all’ policy and rightly so in many respects as you need consistency. However, clearly students are all different, there is no average and within the behavioural debate that is going on in school, it is worth remembering that. As I was reading the chapter and thinking about school, it made me remember a bit in Mike Brearley’s book ‘The Art of Captaincy’ when he talks about the difference in motivating Bob Willis and Ian Botham. He said that Bob needed an arm around him, to remind him how good he was, whilst Ian needed to be told he was rubbish and get him fired up. This is always worth remembering in the classroom. I’m going to say something controversial now. I will sometimes treat naughty students a bit different to the norm. Why? Because sometimes (as long as they are not disturbing the class too much), I’d rather keep them in the classroom and in the long term, keep them in school. If you (sometimes) go too hard on students and follow policy too strictly, you could find themselves excluded from school, out with a gang and before you know it, they are a major headline in a newspaper. This is not being an apologist for bad behaviour, it’s just understanding that all students are different and behavioural systems have to have some flexibility built into them. Sometimes (in the words of Matthew Syed) we have to go ‘beyond the average’.

If you read the book, I have no doubt you will come up with even more ideas about how schools can embrace collective intelligence. You could even perceive a world where there should be much more cross-curricular work between departments in order for students to join the dots a bit more, which should make them stronger generally.

If you don’t fancy doing it for that reason, teachers should just read it so they can understand how they can choose the best team for the Parent Association School Quiz!!! Remember the power of diverse thinking!

HUNTING BLACK SWANS

Educational debates on Twitter are always wild affairs. It’s interesting in this brand new world of evidence in education, a lot of debate still comes from lived experience. This seems fair enough because if you have seen something or dealt with something that has changed your perspective on an issue, you hold that to be true. However, the point of evidence in education is to find out what actually works and not just go on hearsay. If I had used VAK to reinforce my learning and I saw my students’ grades go up, would I be wrong to argue that VAK aids learning? The answer would be yes because there is no scientific evidence to suggest that VAK does aid learning, hence the reason ‘learning styles’ is a neuromyth/edumyth and you can read many articles about it.

Therefore whenever I see a debate related to mobile phones, exclusion booths or a three year KS4, I always wonder what the research says. I appreciate that context is everything and appreciate that teachers across the country have had experiences that shape their view and that they should be respected but what does the research tell us? We can have the debates and use data that might reveal something about the issues (there is clearly a lot out there about mobile phones in general) but a good study with RCTs would help clarify the situation. There does seem to be some data sets out there, for example, this article on cell phones show how they are bad for learning but the sample size of 43 is a concern. This is also an interesting article that cites a variety of research that also highlights how bad phones are. However you can also come across articles that argue the other perspective, which suggests that we need a really good in-school study that can answer the question in a definitive manner. Even then I’m sure we would have criticisms of the study and there could be a potential ‘replication crisis’ but at least we have something to use as a base point. Before that happens, feel free to ban them at your school if you are a Headteacher but to tell everybody else what to do seems a little bit odd to me. How can anyone know the answer for every school given the lack of comprehensive research and without the knowledge of the context of that school? There are so many variables within a school environment, it seems almost arrogant to tell others that you know best from a distance.

People get very passionate about educational issues and this is great to see, you want passionate people in education but if you have studied any work by Daniel Kahneman, you will know that this can often lead to irrational behaviour. That’s why it’s good that research can be used to clarify certain positions and sometimes point out our cognitive biases. It takes a strong person, especially on Twitter, to listen to a debate and consider that there might be other views out there that you might not necessarily agree with but might be right.

I always find it fascinating on Twitter that those involved in a debate will only ‘like’ the ones that support their argument. This then gets put on their timeline and it seems like the only people involved in the debate agree with their point of view, which in itself stifles debate because you don’t want to put your head above the parapet to argue the other side. This then creates an ‘echo chamber’ that can only reinforce the position that you are right – this is classic confirmation bias. What you should really do is hunt out the evidence that you are wrong. If you believe that mobile phones should be banned in schools, hunt down a school where smart phone use is encouraged and it works. If you believe that a three year KS4 hurts disadvantaged students, then go and find evidence that this is not the case. This is what hunting black swans is all about – you can learn about the crucial role of falsification here in this excellent video.

This is why I really respect this tweet by @mfordhamhistory where he has gone out to try and prove that his own beliefs about KS4 might be wrong. As the replies suggest, there is still a wider discussion to be had and this is clearly just a first look at the data but this is what educational debates should be like. This is why when I read about the success of ‘knowledge-rich’ schools, I also think about schools like School 21 that have had great success teaching in a slightly different way, as discussed in this article. This is the same with the exclusion debate. Whichever side of the argument you are on, go and find the school that has had success with the opposite approach and find out what you can learn from it. It’s very easy to lose sight of your biases and if you look closely enough there are probably biases at work in this blog but I try hard to check myself and believe others should as well. So…as weird as it may sound, go out there today and be a hunter of black swans!

WILD CARDS FOR SCHOOLS – Questions that get you thinking…

I love charity shopping and I’m always looking for the ‘diamond in the rough’. Normally I buy books or clothing but every now and then you find something that piques your interest. You wonder what it is doing in a charity shop and then snap it up to contemplate later.

Recently I came across a box of cards designed by The Clearing in association with The School of Life. I’m a big fan of Alain De Botton and have read many of his books and he is the man behind The School of Life. The products they produce are designed to get you thinking about your life and making you more aware of the world around you. The Clearing is a consultancy group that works with famous businesses in order to improve their brand. They have come together to produce ‘Wild Cards‘ that get people within organisations thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of their brand.

As a Business Studies teacher, I read quite a few business books and it’s always interesting to see how theories of management can be used within a school setting. In fact it is not uncommon for something that you have taught for a while to suddenly appear within a school setting. Whether you see schools as a business is a moot point but I think it is fair to say that we can definitely learn from businesses and if we can learn from businesses, we can probably learn from the businesses that advise them.

Looking at the ‘Wild Cards’, it’s clear to see that the majority of the questions can be used to get teachers and senior leaders discussing aspects of their school that they may not have thought about before. Some are quite controversial and others will split opinions but the point is to get a debate going about what your school can do to improve itself.

Sometimes I think schools can get a bit insular. There are only so many books on schools that you can read without reading about the same case studies and the same approaches. Sometimes it might be good to (BUSINESS JARGON ALERT!!!) get some ‘blue sky thinking’ into your school and these question cards could help.

So here is a list of questions, kept in the same 5 categories, that have been adapted from the ‘Wild Cards’ set, in order to get schools thinking about how they can improve their organisation. See what you think…

WILD CARDS for SCHOOLS

Belief

Which person in your school best represents the ethos/motto of your school?
When should you listen to students and when is it wise to ignore them?
What is the most offensive word in the world – in relation to your school?
‘The correct attitude to student insight is ambivalence’. Do you agree?
What do the parents mistakenly believe about the school? What can you do to change this?
What does the word ‘quality’ mean in the context of your school? Would other schools define it differently?
Research suggests that we are driven at the deepest level with Status, Certainty, Control, Safety and Fairness. Which of these do you feel underpins – or threatens – the success of your school?
What’s the smallest detail you can think of that makes a big difference to how your school is perceived?
What past decision has caused the most damage to the school’s reputation?
You must select your new Assistant Head Teacher for Learning from two candidates, one is impressively imaginative but disorganised, the other is highly effective but dry. Who do you choose?
Is it more important for your school to be behaviour focused or T&L focused?
What’s the biggest myth about your school?
Is your school driven by results or wellbeing?
Can you describe what your school will be like in five years’ time? Is that a good thing?
Budgets are cut, your school can only invest in new training for staff or new technology? Which do you choose?
What is your school for?
Would you send your child to your school? Would you be happy with them taking any subject?
Have you ever had to lie about your school in some way? If so, why?
How would you describe an ‘outstanding’ school?

Ego

A school should be confident in proportion to its competence. Is your school over or under confident?
When you look at people around the school, who seems to have the most meaningful job? Why is that?
Would you prefer your school to be seen as the most forward thinking or the most traditional?
Who or what is your school’s nemesis?
When is your school at its most charming?
Does your school come across as friendly and down-to-earth? Do you want it to?
If your school closed today, do you think the school stakeholders would miss it?
Do the teachers see the school the same way as the parents/students?
What does your school do that some colleagues say is completely unnecessary or inefficient but that you feel is a secret superpower?
Could you explain to your mother why you work for your school?
Is your school a window or a façade?
Which other school are secretly a little bit jealous of?
Could your school ever become too successful?
How do you feel when telling someone what you do for a living? And then the school that you work for?
Which of your school’s strengths would OFSTED be in danger of overlooking?
What will past students say about your school? What would you like them to say?
At your school’s funeral, the eulogy will make mention of…

Emotion

Deep thinkers about educational issues are rarely breezy team players – do you have the right balance in the Senior Leadership Team?
Would you be surprised if a teacher said they disliked working at your school?
Can you think of an assembly or an event at school that deeply moved you? Why was that?
Your school goes into rapid decline. Where or to whom would people assign blame?
When was the last time you felt truly excited at work?
In what ways does your school make students’ lives emotionally richer?
Does anything about your school make you feel ashamed?
What role does kindness play in your school?
Do your students feel they have a relationship with your school that is beyond the basic functions of the classroom?
How does your school respond to the students’ higher human needs? Friendship? Belonging? Calm? Confidence? Love? …
How often do you embark on projects where you feel real anxiety and uncertainty about the outcome?
If your school were a person, would they be in a happy relationship?
Which emotion would you like people to associate with the name of your school?
If your school were a person, would you spend time with them outside of work?
What might your school reveal to their therapist?

Habit

What could you eliminate from your school today that you suspect no one would miss?
Do you add more value than your team?
Is your school a monolith or a chameleon?
What one word would best encapsulate the point of your school?
In what context do you imagine your school most often crops up in conversation?
Do you ever take shortcuts at work you wish you didn’t have to?
Which of you schools flaws have you learned to ignore?
Anamnesis is the process of remembering something we have always known to be true but have temporarily forgotten. What deep truth can you help students, parents or staff to remember?
They say that work culture involves all the things you stop noticing after the first three months. What struck you most about the school when you first arrived? Has this changed since?
The best schools ae built from the inside out. What are you doing to influence the hiring, training and development of colleagues?
How large a gap exists between your school’s actions and its stated intentions in the School Improvement Plan? Why is that?
How do you feel Monday mornings? Do your colleagues feel the same?
You are called in to perform a pre-mortem on your school, you predict the cause of death will come from…
Other than gaining qualifications, in what ways does your school help student live better lives?
What disappoints you most about your rival schools?
What does your school do to make the world a better place?
Which person or group at work is most effective at sabotaging the ethos of the school?
What is your school’s guilty secret?
Do you have enough fun at work?

Creativity

If your school took a lie detector test, the most nerve wracking question would be…
List all of the negative externalities that your business contributes to. In what ways does your school try to deal with these?
You can employ any artist, writer, musician or film-maker to produce the school’s prospectus – who would you choose?
Does the Senior Leadership Team operate like an orchestra or an improvisational jazz band?
You’re introducing a new policy to the school and are in need of something inspiring to say about it – would you comb the words of Shakespeare, reflect alone, consult colleagues or talk to students?
How frequently does your school embark on something truly imaginative?
Outside of the educational world, where do you look for inspiration for your school (e.g. art, literature, science, etc.)?
How does you school challenge students to see the world differently?
If money were no object, what single thing could you do to make life better for students? What about staff?
What is your unofficial school motto?
Who would do the voice over for a documentary about your school?
Which fictional character best represents your school?
When the poet Louis MacNeice was offered a job as a BBC producer, he insisted half his weekly timetable remain empty ‘for thinking’. How much space to think do you allocate yourself each week?
You can choose between having a great culture or a brilliant strategy – which do you opt for?
To paraphrase William Morris, an advert should contain nothing that customers will not recognise to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. Would William Morris enjoy your Open Day?

You should randomly choose four or five of these questions at a time and then give staff time and space to respond. Hopefully their answers will be thought provoking and provide senior leaders some insight that they might not have got using traditional methods. Give it a go…what’s the worst that could happen?

*Note – I have put these questions on a randomised PPT and so if anybody would like to have that in order to use within your school, then get in touch.

The magic of teaching…

In my bedroom as a teenager, alongside pictures of pop stars like Wendy James and Whitney Houston, I used to have a postcard of William Blake’s ‘Ancient of Days’ on my wall. I think I picked it up at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on a school trip. I was slightly mesmerised by Blake’s artwork but that picture was the pick of the bunch.

I never thought too much about the meaning of the picture, I just liked it from a visual perspective and thought it was very dramatic. When I heard that the Tate Britain was putting on a William Blake exhibition, I was really excited because it gave me the opportunity to see a lot more of his work but also I could see ‘Ancient of Days’ in the flesh. It’s a brilliant exhibition and would encourage anyone to go and see it but it’s a bit of a tease as the ‘Ancient of Days’ is right at the end and to be honest, at one point, I thought I had missed it. But there it was…just by the exit and it was magnificent.

And I finally found out what it was all about and was fascinated. According to the Tate, the picture was about scientists (like Newton) trying to measure everything (Urizen using his golden compass) in the world and Blake worried what that meant for creativity, imagination and emotion. You can read about it more here in this interesting blog post. It reminded me of a show I saw at the Soho Theatre – Rob Newman’s ‘The Brain Show’. If you read some interviews with Rob Newman, you can probably understand why. He is constantly thinking about the limitations of neuroscience to explain our actions and science generally to explain the world.

Rob Newman is not anti-science and I’m not anti-evidence when it comes to education but I do believe that some people have started to use the science of learning as a way of enforcing a view that there is only one way to teach. Obviously this is complete nonsense…as Blake and Newman point out, we are human, not robots, therefore to suggest that there is one way to engage someone doesn’t make sense. This relates a little bit to Dylan William’s comment about ‘everything works somewhere…’ and therefore it is important to think about context when discussing any educational intervention. As teachers we have to be continually questioning what is put in front of us and this blog by Gary Jones makes this point nicely. We should also question why they are putting this point of view in front of us, do they have something to sell? What are the biases concealed within their arguments? Have they ever tweeted (for example) evidence that counteracts their key raison d’être?

Also, I like to think there is a magical quality about being a teacher. When I think about my favourite teachers, there was something about them that could never be measured…they had a mystical quality about them and why would we want science to snuff that out?

So it’s interesting to think about ‘Ancient of Days’ being on my wall. Now that I fully understand it, I love it even more…maybe even more than my teenage love for Wendy James!

IF YOU HAVEN’T GOT SOCKS…

A point I’ve been making continually in my blogs is that there are huge structural issues that impact how well students do in school and I think the educational community should get more involved politically at trying to change them. This can be seen in the data related to poverty and how harmful it is to the education of those who come from low income backgrounds. The long summer break also has a harmful impact on the poorest in society and to confound all this, we also have a grading system set up whereby a third of those partaking in exams will ‘fail’.

This week I came across this interesting blog by Alex Tabarrok, who is an economist at the Marginal Revolution University. It’s all about the research that shows that air pollution has a huge impact on cognition. My favourite statistics (as Director of Chess) are the ones that show chess players make more mistakes on polluted days and in particular, when they are under timed pressure. It makes for a fascinating read and clearly has huge implications on student learning, as shown by the last study by Heissel et al. There is an argument to be had about whether IQ is a good measure of intelligence and the comments on the blog make for some interesting reading but I’ll leave that for the time being.

A lot of job adverts I see for Economics posts are at private schools and I’m continually amazed by the beauty of some of the places. They seem to have wide open spaces, lots of green and pleasant land, in the countryside, away from the polluted cities and towns. On the other hand I also end up reading articles like this about Ella Kissi-Debrah that are incredibly sad, who died of an asthma attack linked to pollution near her home. Clearly pollution is an issue for Lewisham and it’s interesting to note that 44% of students in the borough did not achieve A*-C grades in English and Maths, which is the worst performance in London.

Therefore I don’t think it is unfair to make the assumption that the wealthiest students probably have a ‘green’ advantage when it comes to schooling. If pollution really does lead to poor cognition, then over time, you would expect those in the leafier areas to achieve better grades. Going back to the chess study you could argue that if exams are sat on days of high pollution, more mistakes are likely to be made by those sitting them under timed conditions, which disproportionately impacts poorer students. Add this ‘green’ advantage to the all the other numerous ones the wealthiest in society have such as the lack of poverty/scarcity (which can lead to cognitive overload), additional private tutoring, money available for remarks, improved social networks, smaller class sizes and so on, you can see that playing field is uneven as it can be.

I don’t want to drag the people down from the top. I just want to see everyone have the same opportunities and currently we have a society that it is harmful for lots of children before they even enter the educational system. If you have a poor input, then it’s difficult to produce quality output, despite the processes that are put in place. As an old colleague of mine used to say ‘if you haven’t got socks, you can’t pull them up’ and at the moment we have too many people without socks.

General elections give us the opportunity to change things and I find it fascinating that you can vote for a party that has widened inequality to a point that it has to have a fundamental impact on learning. Christian Bokhove (a really interesting educator from the University of Southampton) is discussing it here in this tweet and then makes an interesting counterpoint about addressing inequality through powerful knowledge. But it’s not only about poverty and inequality, it’s also (as shown by the recent evidence) about green issues as well. Which political parties are providing answers to the structural issues in society that have a huge impact on the education of our children? The money they are offering to education is fantastic and I’m sure all schools would appreciate the increase but we need to think wider as educators, much wider.

So during elections, try not to think about who is providing the most money for the sock puller-uppers, think about whether they are actually providing socks in the first place!