the Apple

Tags

analysis, cognitive, connection, creativity, educational behaviourism, evaluation, feedback, function, growth, knowledge, learning, learning objective, lesson planning, measure, organic education, play, preparation, pupils, questioning, resource, results-led education, task, understanding, value-bled education

 

 

Teaching and learning can ONLY happen organically – when infused, before, during and after, with an understanding of how a mind builds its cognitive structure.   It’s simple: Knowledge >>> Understanding >>> Evaluation (KUE; actually I wonder if ‘Exploration’ is a better word than ‘Evaluation’, less preclusive, more open).   You can teach unorganically, reductively, intensively (as in, farming), results-led (value-bled).   It is much easier to measure (and therefore be used as political manure) like this.   But the learning becomes Pavlovian – set stimulae, set responses to get the grade – pupils are given the knowledge, and they learn (= remember) it, or not.   Pupils are also given the Understanding and the Evaluation/Exploration, and they learn/remember that as well, or not.   They are not taught, as such, but are Educationally Behaved.   Organic education is … the teacher’s apple (look at the shape of the diagram).

 

Preparing: teaching is the unpacking of (already established and recognised) knowledge.   Unpacking happens every lesson, beginning with the identification of the Learning Objective (Learning Horizon) from the curriculum.   Having focussed on the horizon, the map to it is opened-out by the teacher.   The map is the structure/template through which to unpack knowledge – the components of Knowledge, Understanding and Evaluation (KUE) which are the structure and levels of cognitive learning – and this map is the PLANNED lesson.   The way to write the map is to start with the learning objective and ask three sets of questions which deconstruct it into its constituent cognitive components – what are the facts (K), how do they work (U), what are the issues (E)?   The answers to these questions yield the raw ingredients of the lesson.   This level of analysis is conceptual and learned and requires a mastery of the subject in order to achieve it, clearly and efficiently.

Tasking: then comes the creativity in the lesson planning.   Working from the raw ingredients you ask: how could the pupil find, identify, collect, collate etc. the facts of the topic (knowledge), how could the pupil connect the facts together to see how the topic functions (understanding), how might the connections be tested to evaluate the functionality of the topic (evaluation)?   What is different about this stage of questioning is that you are thinking of questions that enable pupils to make the discovery themselves – the creativity is in the enabling, thinking of tasks that let them work the cognitive way back to the learning objective from discovery (of facts features – knowledge) through linking (the knowledge – understanding) to playing (with the links – evaluation).   If the tasks do not allow discovery/linking/playing then they have lost reference to what they were trying to achieve (the Way to the learning objective) and they become directionless and pointless – there is activity, but it is not clear why it is being done even though it may have some related or recognisable association with the learning objective.   The key, therefore, to this stage of lesson planning, is to build not any-old tasks that keep them occupied for a lesson, but tasks which ‘window’ the discovery, ‘thread’ the linking and ‘allow’ the play: growth.   If you ask the right questions in the lesson, the learning will grow itself.   Once you have got the questions right, only then do you think about resources and delivery – a mere formality after the main work of questioning has been done.

Lesson: then comes the magic of the lesson.   The pupil works as far as s/he can through the lesson (K > U > E) and checks their progress through feedback which is phrased in the same KUE references.   The journey is made naturally if the lesson has been constructed right ( // the questions have been posed organically).   There is no chore here (in the sense of work for a deferred or prospective outcome), there is the momentum of: what-is-it, how-does-it-work, let’s-play-with-it?   The learning should develop through stages of integration: having found things (discovery), you see how those things fit together (how they work, function), then you test how they fit together (practise their use if the subject is a skill, develop their use if the subject is a study).   There should be no sense of having to lead-the-horse-to-water, the only thing holding back the pupil will be h/er current cognitive development.*

*There are some pupils with a measured low cognitive ability (i.e. CAT score), or low ability to develop (SEN), who, indeed, are ‘stuck’, lesson after lesson, year after year, because – I would argue – they have inexorable experience of task-for-no-immediately-discernable-gain which emphasises the frustration that their diagnosis identifies.   Organically grown lessons should enable practice, lesson after lesson, year after year, of meeting the limit of their cognitive and learning ability and then pushing that limit a little further, rather than confirming their limit.   In this way their education would truly be a transformative experience of growth rather than a consignment to limitation.

Feedback: after the journey has been made, the product of the lesson is given to the teacher who measures how far the pupil got and puts a level/grade on it.   Every lesson.   Is this onerous?   No, because the breakdown of the lesson by the teacher should be clear and organic enough that the measure of the progress through it will be one of recognition, of mere identification: does it have those facts, does it show the connections between the facts, does it use/test the connections?   The only ‘new ground’ that might be developed in the pupil’s work (and will therefore need more than cursory viewing) will be the higher explorations in evaluation; but these will be new findings, new applications, and the teacher will want to read them in full.   Will the teacher need to give summative and formative analysis for each piece of work?   Once there is a shared assimilation of cognitive development (K > U > E through teaching, K > U > E in learning) between teacher and pupil, borne through lesson-after-lesson, year-after-year of organic experience … no.   Until then, yes, but make it a learning experience: single-word summations, prods, suggestions, questions, directions related directly to the level they have brought their work to and the next step beyond it.   Again, if the cognitive road-map of the lesson has been constructed clearly and organically then the summative and progressive feedback to be given is clear.

 

 

 

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creativity wwormhole: relapse
evaluation & knowledge & understanding wormhole: Structure & d y n a m i c
learning wormhole: no biggie:
results-led education: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie

 

Structure & d y n a m i c

Tags

assessment, cognitive hierarchy, evaluation, knowledge, learning objective, lesson planning, medium term planning, teaching craft, understanding

The ‘unpacking’ of the Learning Objective needs to be done by applying a cognitive ‘filter’ to the Learning Objective so that its ‘Knowledge’, ‘Understanding’ and ‘Evaluation’ elements are discerned.   If the topic is understood well by the teacher/subject leader, this analysis will be quick and easy – the progression from easy to difficult, from knowledge to evaluation, from level 3/E to 8/A* is coordinated and parallel.   The lesson almost constructs itself – the decisions to be made will be one of resources/access.

This becomes directed learning: in unpacking a topic according to a cognitive hierarchy and providing a roadmap that shows the route of this unpacking, the way for the pupil is clear – to integrate back through the hierarchy with h/er study.   If the presentation of all topics is done according to the same cognitive development hierarchy, what needs to be done for the pupil will always be clear (indeed for higher ability pupils they should become self-directed in their learning, they will be able to work the template themselves).

Assessment for Learning simply becomes the completion of the experience for the pupil – the measure of how far s/he managed to take it.   Self-assessment, peer- assessment and group-assessment are formative assessments, done when there is a pause after the initial impetus of effort has happened (the first ‘go’/’shot’), a check to orient how far the pupil has got and where s/he needs to go.   The teacher-assessment is summative, corroborating what all have commonly understood about development if they have been using the same cognitive hierarchy.

Assessment for Learning means the integration of the lesson/study/assessment through this common cognitive hierarchy – it is the means through which the topic, the lesson and the pupil’s work can communicate; it is the dialectic between the curriculum and the pupil.

The teacher is axiomatic to this dialectic, not just in constructing the lesson and learning (structure), not just in measuring the learning (assessment), but – vitally – in having the instinctive, adaptive, visceral, intuitive human skill to connect it all together (dynamic).   You might have a Medium Term Plan, Lesson Plans and a method of assessment and these might all be present in the classroom as paper, and they might be ostensibly happening in the classroom, but without the Alchemist turning all of this (iron) into gold, you would have an immovable, unchangeable process-led lesson in which minds were not learning.

In recent years teachers have been disempowered from their own art of teaching.   Assessment for Learning should re-instate the integral-ness (the integrity) of the teacher back into the heart of learning, the catalyst/dynamic/alchemy outside the structure that enables the process to actually happen.   Structure just ‘sits there’ without the dynamic to make it work. Targets will just ‘sit there’ without the dynamic to realise them, ’doesn’t matter how much you ‘work’ the structure, ’doesn’t matter how much you treat the teacher as part of the structure.

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evaluation & teaching craft & understanding wormhole: constructalesson
knowledge wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak

 

constructalesson

Tags

allmostsome, course, evaluation, knowledge, learning, learning objective, medium term planning, plenary, questioning, starter, syllabus, teaching craft, understanding

 

How do courses start for a teacher?   We have a syllabus or specification which is often little more than a list of topics.   All a medium-term plan should be is a matching of those topics against dates and the curriculum time you have to teach the course, when coursework and exams are, and what overall resources you have to meet them.

The medium-term plan could comprise the ‘menu’ for a course, written in Powerpoint perhaps, it need only have the list of Syllabus Objectives to cover, some dates / lesson-apportioning, assessment tasks if needed and a fundamental layout of the Facts of the Syllabus Objects (the Knowledge), the Concept of the SO (Undertsanding) and the Issue of the SO (Evaluation).   What else would it need other than the actual details of weaving them into individual lessons?   Each Syllabus Objective in the MTP could have a link to its own individual lesson …

… a template which gives the ‘layout’ of a lesson in the form of key ‘construction’ questions which work from the Title/LO/starter >>> ALL-task >>> the MOST-task >>> SOME-task >>> Plenary.   This would supply the whole lesson, constructed from the start to the height develop-able, all on one slide viewable for most of the lesson.   If the purpose of the lesson is clear and stimulating from the Title/LO/starter, and the development of the learning is integrated and mapped out before them, theoretically there is no excuse for the pupil not to WANT to progress through it – unless they are pathological.   Pupils would work through this lesson as fast as they are motivated and as far as they can.   The Title/LO/starter, the ALL-task, the MOST-task, the SOME-task can each have their links to stimulus resources (although I wonder if only the Title/LO/starter would need this if the succeeding questions are clear enough).

So, for the teacher, how do you construct a lesson from scratch?

Why construct it from scratch, why not use the textbook and the questions, why not use the lessons already constructed? Because lessons from textbooks mostly do not, or lessons written before do not necessarily, follow a cognitive development pattern – therefore delivering them can be meandering.   Because even if they are cognitively-constructed their breakdown-analysis has been done by someone else and therefore the way to integrate may be awkward to you – the teacher – to take pupils through it.

Is it from scratch?   No, actually, you would have the ingredients of the LO (from the syllabus/course…) and any resources already owned.   The construction will be purely analytical at this stage.   Take the LO and ask ‘what is it?’.   Write down the answer – this will be the definition, basic or complicated, according to the level of study.   This will also comprise the ‘U’ objective of the lesson.   Then take the definition and break it down by asking the question ‘what are the components/parts of the topic?’.   Note down the components, this will comprise the ‘K’ objective of the lesson.   Then return to the Understanding Objective and ‘open’ it out by testing its definition respectively – improve, what if, solve, devise, revise, expand, rewrite, compose, synthesize, theorise, integrate, project, invent, modify, develop, conclude, critique, judge, weigh, evaluate?   Note down the issue(s).   This will comprise the ‘E’ part of the lesson.

This leaves you with the elements / raw ingredients: the LO, the concept (U), the knowledge (K), the issue (E).   Then you need to plot the way to ‘cook’ the ingredients – put the elements into a provocative, stepped learn.

First you need to provoke the learning: headline the topic, plot their co-ordinates and start the enquiry.   You need to take the title as the ‘window’, as the ‘view’ (within the whole of all knowable things in the universe, or even within the syllabus/subject/course being studied) through which is de-fined the Particular that will be concentrated on for this lesson.   But we still have a large ‘area’ to navigate through, so we need a Title to tell us what it is we are looking at through this window (… telescope?); the LO is the co-ordinate of the topic.   Then we need a starter.   Why do we need a starter?   Because we need to provoke the impetus to find out, provide the motivation to learn.   We need to present a ‘snapshot’ of the topic which shows why it is important (to know about it), a snapshot which shows both the function (K & U) and which opens the conjecture (analysis, evaluation, issues, E) on the topic.   There are various ways this could be achieved – show the end result, use juxtaposition, picture & question, demonstration, theatre, role reaction, video clip …   These elements/raw ingredients are not so distinct as their listing suggests, they work together to introduce the lesson, they are integrated: the opening shot of the film-with-title, the riff and beat of the song, the setting of the joke.   The result of the LO/title/starter is a stimulus to learn: they should leave in the pupil the impetus to want to find out, it should provoke curiosity.

This initial analysis is brief – ‘what is it?’ >>> ‘how can I show it/demonstrate it?’ – and if we know our subject we can ask and answer those questions within a minute.

To recap and then complete:
1: SO (from the syllabus); ask ‘what is it?’, the answer provides the key concept to be understood (U) of the lesson
2: of the concept to be understood (U) ask, ‘what is it called?’ (answer = title, will mostly be the same as the Syllabus Objective), then ‘what does it ‘do’?’ (answer = Learning Objective for the lesson), then show it (U) (= starter).   This is the spine of your lesson.
3: ask of U/LO ‘what are the parts (that work together)?’ (answer = the facts of the lesson), then ‘how are the parts related (connected) to work together?’ (answer = the patterns/arrangement of the facts).   This comprises the Knowledge base (K), the access point to the lesson for pupils
4: ask of U/LO ‘does it work well?’, ‘can (and should) it work alternatively?’; these questions (not their answers) provide the springboard for the evaluative part of the lesson (E)

So the lesson happens – hopefully well, constructively and different pupils of the class having worked through as far as they can, then …

… and especially if the lesson has studied well, have a good, whole-class exploration of …

… responses to provocative questions and ‘what if’s such that EVERY pupil should be able to contribute because they have just studied it

This is how pupils will experience your constructed lesson: the title and LO will locate them, the starter will pique them, the K task will find and then sort the facts, the U task will require them to explain how the facts work, the E task will get them to test if they work well, the Plenary will allow them to sit back and survey the big picture.

Here is a suggestion of a lesson format that could be used for a constructed lesson

 

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evaluation & knowledge & learning & teaching craft & understanding wormhole: the Telescope

 

the Telescope

Tags

assessment for learning, evaluation, integration, knowledge, learning, learning objective, lesson planning, questioning, teaching, teaching art, teaching craft, telescope, understanding, unpacking

Unpacking the Telescope

Having ‘sighted’ the Learning Objective, here is where the true magic begins.   The teacher – with all h/er degree course, holistic understanding of the Learning Objective – needs to ‘unpack’ it.   The whole Learning Objective (the topic) needs to be broken down so that the pupil can begin to access it.   A skilled teacher does not wade straight in with the issues and analysis of a topic, s/he will plan the lesson which starts with identifying the topic (knowledge), then showing how it works (understanding) and finally, if a pupil can get that far, nurture analysis or discussion of it (evaluation).   The lesson is the topic unpacked (which takes a high level of discerning analysis on behalf of the teacher, we do need to know our subjects at degree-level).   Teaching is the alchemy of taking the pupils’ minds through the lesson, of making them see, guiding them, allowing them, clueing them in, clueing them through, pointing them to the Bigger Picture of the Learning Objective.   This requires the art of communication – the tricks, foolery, adjustment and dancing which can never be captured in a tick-box sheet of paper.   This is where the power of the teacher lies, not just in producing the lesson (a marvel in itself if well unpacked – and mapped), but in taking the pupil through the lesson (the creative, unmethodical dynamic which is communication).   The ‘telescope’ needs to be opened out in order to see through it.

Looking Through the Telescope

The pupil’s learning – the response to the lesson – is one of finding and then integrating.   Finding straight facts is one level of learning, categorising them is a higher level, linking them together is a higher level, relating them is yet higher, testing them is yet higher still, analysing them still higher, contextualising them from a macro perspective…   Each successive level of learning requires the fitting of what has been already learnt into a wider perspective – integration.   The lazy pupil will be satisfied with the straight facts (the disaffected pupil won’t even get this far); the enquiry of a pupil (or the skill of a teacher) will seek to see how far their knowledge can be taken.   If the way to integrate the knowledge is clear (again the skill of the teacher) learning will develop (not just be ‘received’).   The telescope will be folded back once the view has been seen: knowledge fits into understanding fits into evaluation.

 

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evaluation wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
knowledge teaching craft & understanding wormhole: the View: from Here to the Learning Objective to the Learning Horizon
teaching art wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

the View: from Here to the Learning Objective to the Learning Horizon

Tags

cognitive hierarchy, communication, evaluation, hierarchy of learning, knowledge, learning horizon, learning objective, openness, teaching craft, understanding, windows

 

The Learning Objective …

… has got to be simple – simple-enough through which to deliver so that it can be understood, and simple-enough for the pupil to know how to work it and take the learning of it as far as s/he can.   What ‘it’ is, is the Learning Objective.   The Learning Objective is what it says it is: the objective to be learnt – of the great Sea of All Knowable Things in Existence, the Learning Objective is the particular one selected for this particular lesson.   As such it is what is to be achieved, it is the window through which learning will take place, and therefore it needs to remain just the window.   An open window.

It must not have any cognitive qualifiers …

Cognitive qualifiers (such as ‘know’, ‘understand’ or ‘discuss’, ‘appreciate’, ‘be aware of’) have presumed what the pupil will do with it, they have closed down what could be done with it.   Once something is just ‘known’ there is no point in going on to understanding it, once it is just ‘understood’ there is no point going on to evaluate it.   If the Learning Objective contains the qualifier ‘evaluate’ only, this will automatically put it out of reach of the lower ability pupil (or, worse still, it will seem to empower a pupil to evaluate something without understanding what it is); if it contains the qualifier ‘know’ only, it will ‘ceiling’ the attainment of the higher ability pupil.   The Learning Objective needs to be ‘open’ in the sense that it merely indicates what is to be explored, not how it is to be explored.   Any cognitive qualifier would preclude exploration.   In fact, even the word ‘objective’ feels too preclusive, and should only be used to specify what is to be understood.   Perhaps thereafter ‘Learning Horizon’ should be used for the evaluative part of the lesson – that once the ‘objective’ as been reached all that is left is to see what can be done with it … over to you, pupil, see what you can do with it.

Learning Horizons provide a view …

For a view to be functional it needs perspective – the contrast between here and there.   ‘Here’ is where you are, what you know, what you are; ‘there’ is where it is possible to go, what is possible to know, how it is possible to grow.   The contrast between here and there provides the impact of the view – the better the contrast the more the impact because the experience has shown how much more there is (possible) than just here.   It makes you want to go and obtain it from where you currently are.

Learning Objectives (as have been used) access a view alright, but restrict the impact because you have to pay 20p for a minute’s view (and you usually don’t have the exact money anyway), a Title for the work spotlights a feature of the view but provides no perspective, a Starter to the lesson might just focus on the ground, or it might just look at the horizon, but not both, and certainly not the chasm in between.   But put all three working together you have an inspiring view: the impact of here to there (an open Learning Objective), a destination (the Title) and a desire to get there (starter – stimulus – questioning).

So, you have the ground underneath you, you have spied a pathway to it (or maybe a helpful tourist has showed you a map – yes, we teachers are but fellow helpful travellers!!!), off you go!

 

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communication wormhole: fractured –
evaluation & knowledge & teaching craft & understanding wormhole: the Hierarchy of Knowing
openness wormhole: the pocket
windows wormhole: on

 

Assessment for Learning: the Prologue

Tags

assessment for learning, communication, giving, identity, learning horizon, learning objective, managerialism, National Curriculum, performance, performance management, professionalism, teaching craft, vocation

Assessment for Learning is not simply another government accretion brought-in-to-check-that-we-are-working-properly-and-measure-us-accountable-to-a-‘professionalism’-which-is-defined-despite-educational-values-and-teacher’s-morality … (breathe, breathe).   It has come from the government, it is true, and it has been administered, so far, as yet another measure with which to beat the ever-disinterested donkey that is the modern teacher – blinkered, pulling a large cart, uphill, when it doesn’t think it should go uphill and would rather take the long way round and enjoy life a little.   Nevertheless – quite by accident – AfL could be exercised as both a rationale and a practice which is at the very heart of teaching, something which might be hijacked by teachers to claim back the autonomy, the self-respect, the self-confidence, the prestige, the necessity, the indispensability that is the reality of a teacher nurturing her pupils in the million ways that he does.*

* The most damaging aspect of the ever-rolling-out Reform of Education was the seizure and exploitation of what constitutes teacher professionalism by Managerialism.   It became increasingly apparent that those defining, measuring and administering accountability of teaching were not … teachers.

There is nothing new under the sun.   And likewise in the classroom – no matter how much you try to mechanise the service by making it run to business models in the pursuit of economic prudence – you cannot escape the fact that teaching requires communication, communication requires flexibility and autonomy, flexibility and autonomy requires a workforce of people who have the vocation to GIVE and the vocation to Give needs a clear structure through which it can be exercised clearly, fairly and nurturing-ly.   Teaching with ‘aims and objectives’ – even with just a title – has always been the means by which teachers train, and exercise, their skills and qualification.   It is only recently, since the National Curriculum really bit down, that these means have been used to measure the teacher’s performance rather than to nurture h/er craft; to control rather than to enable.

Assessment for Learning is yet the latest way to tighten down the ‘business’ of teaching – to ‘tune’ the engine to reach maximum efficiency – but it has stumbled, in doing so, upon the very dynamic which makes the educative interplay between pupil and teacher possible.   Assessment for Learning is nothing new – it is the means of getting ‘to’ the ‘aim’, of getting from the ‘aim’ to the ‘objective’; it is the controlled burning of fuel which turns the engine, it is the valve which circulates blood around the body to work.   It is NOT a means to measure if the teacher is working hard- and responsibly-enough, it is the mechanism of teaching through which a teacher can wrest back the management of their own teaching and regain the honour which becomes anyone who chooses to grow knowledge in another.

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managerialism & professionalism wormhole: Apologia
performance & teaching craft wormhole: a bit painful this