how to teach

Tags

2018, 4*, Academy, accountability, betrayal, career, classroom, corridors, flowers, game, ideas, infrastructure, management, OFSTED, politics, Principal, requirement, resentment, school, special measures, teaching, teaching craft, thinking

                I suppose it’s not actually your fault
                that I brought to the point of fruition

                those things which you were required
                to require to keep your sorry arse out of

                special measures and you didn’t have the
                first or second idea what to do with them

                because you had long since moved on to
                eleventh and twelfth ideas playing

                some stupid game about infrastructure
                and accountability and completely forgot

                how to teach

 

about and dedicated to the former Principal of the former school (oh, sorry, Academy … what was I thinking) where I spent the whole 29 years of my former career which had calcified even as it flowered it’s most beautiful petals and eventually snapped under so much pretty weight and fell silent and unnoticed to the ground (and a good job too, it would have been a light, colourful mess in the corridor or the classroom); all of which I am required to not name if I’m to keep the paltry amount of money given for me to just shut up at long last; even after years of escape it seems I still bear a grudge – I really must find a honey pot for it somewhere …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: I am not yet ready
game wormhole: [once a] dilemminal [always a dilemminal]
management & teaching wormhole: new blue porsche
politics wormhole: looking / ridiculous
school wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
teaching craft wormhole: Structure & d y n a m i c
thinking wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron

 

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

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

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.

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

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!

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

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

 

the Hierarchy of Knowing

Tags

applying, Bloom's taxonomy, cognitive, cognitive hierarchy, concepts, empirical, evaluation, facts, knowledge, learning, levels of attainment, questioning, teaching craft, understanding

So why does learning have to happen in a K>U>E way?   (In a relative universe why cannot it happen E>U>K or U>K>E or K>E>U or X>Y>Z?).   The reason is because learning happens (and can only happen) in an integrative way.

Knowledge: is facts, are discerned, are identified, concern levels 3/4 (KSIII), grades G-D (KSIV), grades E-D (KSV).   If you take the simplest piece of learning it is made up of elemental components – pieces of knowledge, facts, things to be recognised.   The starting point of learning is to recognise those basics, to identify them, to discern them.   To identify or discern them you need to be actively ‘looking’, ‘hearing, ‘smelling’, ‘tasting’ or ‘feeling’ for them – you need to be open and ready to ‘get it’, ready to recognise them.   This recognition is the simplest form of cognition – it is empirical (seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched) and then named.   This is Knowledge (K).

However learning cannot stay at mere recognition otherwise it remains just a functional skill – it has no meaning or purpose.

Understanding I: perceives the function, concerned with how facts are connected, involves level 5 (KSIII), grade C (KSIV), grade C (KSV).   To ‘make sense’ of a fact you need to find how it links with other facts – how they connect, how they work together, how they relate.   When a link has been found, then understanding has been developed (you stand ‘under’ the two, otherwise discreet, facts seeing a link between them that wasn’t perceived before, you have abstracted from the erstwhile discreetness).   With this understanding you can then go on to explain (show) the connection and use or construct the newfound connection…

Understanding II: perceives the contingency of the function, how facts are connected on a more macro level, webbed understanding, systems understanding, involving level 6 (KSIII), grade B (KSIV), grade B (KSV).   This is a higher level cognitive apperception because the link/connection can only be made by this abstraction-from-discreetness which enables perception of structure, process, function in the first place.   You cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch structure, process, function, you have to cognise it.   To move from factual knowledge to structural understanding you need to abstract from discreet exclusivity.   To abstract from discreet exclusivity you need to think – and here is the work of learning.   You don’t just ‘get it’, you have to ‘work it out’ (and then report how you worked it out in order to have it recognised, assessed).   This is Understanding (U).

Evaluation: involves questioning, developing, operating at level 7+ (KSIII), grade A+ (KSIV), grade A+ (KSV).   Are we finished yet?   No, because you could then question, improve, alternate, innovate, combine, revise, expand, plan, rewrite, extend, pose questions on, synthesize, generalise, propose, theorise, create, integrate, project, invent, rearrange, modify, develop, appraise, conclude, critique, judge, assess, contrast, deduce, weigh, criticise, evaluate those links/connections and find all sorts of ways to advance and exploit that initial abstraction of Understanding.   The connections found between facts are not empirical – they cannot be verifiable simply by looking/seeing etc. again.   They are verifiable through reason, cohesion, concordance, performance etc. etc, which can be challenged and alternated and modified as there is need and context.   As this verification is refined and developed, the application of the idea deepens, in that the initial connection, the initial understanding (‘standing under’), refers to more than the initial referents, it includes alternative referents, it includes related referents, it can even come to include erstwhile un-related referents as the concept deepens.   The concept deepens because of another abstraction: an abstraction which moves from the functional and mechanistic (Understanding) to the considered, reflective, principled, metaphysical.   The concept becomes deeper – expertese and mastery is developed.   The scope of this application is as wide as the sky, the result of this application is a one behind the many.   This is Evaluation (E).

~~~

You cannot have an understanding until you have something to ‘stand under’ – facts.   You cannot evaluate and play with an understanding until you have an initial functional understanding in the first place.   This has significant implications for learning (i.e. you cannot evaluate before you’ve understood, before you have knowledge of; you have to learn K>U>E).   Likewise you have to just recognise Knowledge, you cannot work it out, you cannot conjecture it; you have to work out Understanding, you cannot just see it or receive it (‘get it’); you have to experiment to Evaluate, you cannot just be briefed.   This has significant implications for teaching (i.e. you, as the teacher, have to move from E > broken down to U > broken down to K in order to ‘feed’ it back to pupils through your teaching), (or rather, U >>> breakdown for K (differentiation), and U >>> springboard to E (extension); see ‘constructalesson’, coming to a screen near you … soon; (and the ‘Cone of Knowledge’ which is in pre-production but which will be a blockbuster when it launches!)).

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

evaluation & knowledge & learning wormhole: something simple to offer
teaching craft wormhole: the Lamp

 

the Lamp

Tags

accountability, assessment for learning, communication, curriculum, learning, management, managerialism, National Curriculum, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, resource, responsibility, syllabus, teaching craft

Since 1988 the government has been ‘reforming’ education: to make provision and attainment nationally uniform and transparent equally for the government, schools, employers, parents, teachers and, yes, pupils.   Since 1997 the government has ‘managerialised’ education: it has dismantled the semi-autonomous remit of the teacher to practise h/er vocation, it has redefined ‘professionalism’ away from vocation and value and into process and productivity in the name of ‘accountability’, and it has quantified this process and productivity and called it ‘professional development’ (soon to be ‘licensed’).   This has left teachers estranged from, and distrustful of, the very dynamic that makes teaching happen: the skilful, adaptive, speculative, compensatory, dancing, alternative, bargaining, creative, tentative, controlling, releasing, playing, explorative, human dialectic of communication between teacher and pupil.

How is this ‘reform’, this ‘professionalism’, experienced?*   The National Curriculum has been defined – and is periodically juggled with – into core/foundation/statutory subjects, clearly and simply, so that they could be listed in a pamphlet.   Very quickly these subjects became disseminated out into national/local/exam-board subject syllabi – what needed to be ‘covered’ in each subject, especially when the need to level/grade the content became compulsory as well as statutory (‘so amusing how the syllabi, at this point, became known as ‘specifications’ rather than syllabi).   When the syllabi arrived in schools they had to be managed into a fit state to enter the classroom, so they had to be disseminated again (perhaps, better, ‘dissected’), (or even ‘disembowelled’).   Each syllabus topic to be broken down into differentiated tasks, mapped cross-curricular-ly, and All/Most/Some’d.   The fragmentation going on from the simple National Curriculum to the classroom has been almost exponential.   What was simple at the essential level (government) became overwhelmingly complicated at the practical level (classroom) – it was pamphlet-able at the government level, it became incommunicable, unlearnable, at the classroom level.

* We were having a nice game of football one day.   As with all games there were hard bits, exhausting bits, unfair bits, but we were holding a 1-1 draw.   Then – while we were playing – there were new rules to the game introduced.   The goalposts were left where they were, actually, but we now had to move the ball around the field …on a trolley!   We all had to have trolleys ready for when we had possession of the ball.   The trolleys were fitted with directional wheels to aid mobility around the field, baskets to hold the ball, racks to hold the football boots that we’d need when we had to pass the ball, shoot or defend a negotiated tackle.   We were told, ‘We have given you all this equipment.   In return we want a fast, exciting, entertaining game.’   So we pushed these trolleys around the field.   The wheels mostly got stuck.   The ball usually fell out of the basket.   No one scored any goals.

The pupil thereby received curricula which were overwhelmingly broad and complicated.   They received them in restricted amounts of time (in an ever-squeezed timetable with up to fourteen different subjects including drives on technology, IT, Citizenship alongside the drives within the Big Three subjects) which, even for the most able, required them to develop guerrilla tactics to learn – in, learn-something, get out, next.   The pupil has lost the sense of studying (exploring, wondering … mastering) a subject, it now just receives – it consumes.     The pupil has become passive, incapable of developing h/er skills of independent study – not enough time for it (or rather, not enough perspective to develop any motive other than ‘getting’ it).   The pupils have become overwhelmed, even, with the simple ‘getting’ of education: overwhelmed by content, they have no perspective, or will, to link their knowledge together (to ‘stand under’ their studies to see how they all fit together), and they will become satisfied with a factual-based appreciation of their subjects at best (making A-level teachers scratch their heads at times wondering why on earth some pupils chose their subject).   At worst they will ‘can’t be bothered’ with it all because there is more to be gained in self-esteem by publically rejecting it all rather than the impossibility of trying to master it.

For the teacher: s/he might have been able to rationalise and deliver the disseminated monster that education has become, but it was decided that teachers are fundamentally a-qualified to do the job (certainly, any profession which strikes over pay in the early 80’s needs to be sorted out)!   The nobility of the teacher has therefore been systematically (and publically) dismantled.   Professionalism has been re-defined by questioning the received image of teacher as authority-by-role (both in discipline and knowledge), and even questioning the ‘semi-autonomous professional’, by infiltrating the hallowed ground of the classroom to ensure … measurability of what they do.   ‘Measurability’ of what the teacher does is now quantitative: by input (the production of the paperwork for the lesson which proves that it was planned, what can be seen to be ‘in’ the lesson to be ticked off), and output (professional development is now linked to a performance which is measured statistically – there is so much that needs to be ‘reduced’ and screened out of consideration to make a statistic measurable – even pay is now linked to that same extracted performance).   Teachers are no longer respected but are now accountable (as well as ‘accounted’) to their Head of Department, their Head of Year, their Senior Management team, their School Governors, parents, the government, the public…   The overwhelming proportion of a teacher’s energy has now to be focussed on making sure that they are justified to all parties, before they can start to communicate.   Teachers are now taxed by needing to manage their curricula fit for process and attainment (managing ‘within’) in response to a pervasive management from ‘outside’.   The management of courses has become more important than their delivery.   It is difficult for these courses to be coherent or stepped; it is easy for them to be overwhelming for both teachers to deliver and pupils to receive.   In the past some teachers were inspirational because they could provide the portal to the world of their subject by skill of communication – they knew, through their teaching, what the seed of the subject was that drew a child’s eye.   Now most teachers have a ‘seed catalogue’ and no ‘field’ in which to sow.   Teachers have been ‘accountability’d’ and ‘consistency’d’ out of their skill of communication – out of the skill of drawing the child’s eye – by having to focus on the (measurable) process of teaching rather than the communication of teaching.   Communication has become a rather indulgent distraction in the face of ‘hard’ realities like (selective) statistical results, finance, the school’s PR with parents.    Teachers are left actively paralysed in having to meet impossibly (impractically, needlessly) wide and widening curriculum and (summative) performance indicators.^

                                       ^
                                       The centipede was happy quite
                                       Until the toad, in fun
                                       Said, ‘pray, which leg moves after which?’
                                       This raised her doubts to such a pitch
                                       She fell distracted in the ditch
                                       Not knowing how to run.
                                                     – Marion Quinlan Davis

So how is Assessment for Learning a solution to the atrophying of teacher professionalism?   So many curricular and cross-curricular teaching schemes have been floated during the last twenty years that have shown that attainment (no matter how you measure it) is not affected.   It was necessary to look at the learning in education as much as the teaching.   It has emerged that Assessment for Learning is the mechanism which links the teaching (delivered) to the learning (received) and still enable the measurability so desperately needed (needed, needed) when education has become the political potato that it has.   How does it connect teaching with learning?   It provides a template through which topics can be taught and learnt using the same language.   Topics are delivered broken down into levels 3-8 or grades E-A* and pupils apprehend them at whatever level/grade they can develop.   Both teachers and pupils understand the language of levels 3-8 or grades E-A*.   The skill of the teacher is in providing the ‘field’ of endeavour, the work of the pupil is to cultivate 3-8/E-A* as far as they can.   This co-working, through a commonly understood language and purpose, is called a dialectic; the working of this dialectic is called … teaching and learning.   Assessment for Learning enables that dialectic so that the power to teach and learn can be returned back to their rightful owners.   When Assessment for Learning happens the whole of the edifice which has become education becomes workable rather than impossible – education becomes what it always should have been, an enlightenment.

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication & performance management & professionalism & teaching craft wormhole: I don’t think I could do it anymore
learning wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
management wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’
politics wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

I don’t think I could do it anymore

Tags

2012, 6*, bureaucracy, career, communication, creativity, disempowerment, expectation, identity, managerialism, performance management, professionalism, question, recognition, resource, teaching, teaching craft, voices

 

 

 

                                              why
                do you ignore what I think
                                then tell me how to construct

                                              why
                do you ignore what I have constructed
                                then tell me how to communicate

                                              why
                do you ignore what I have cognitively modelled
                                then tell me how to be professional

                                              why
                do you ignore the craft of my plan and resource
                                then expect the art of communication

                                              how
                do you ignore the presence of what I think and create
                                then tell me that I am valued

                                              how
                can you work in education
                                and not see the psychology of what you wreak

                                              so
                tell me Principal Principle are you never tempted to get back into the classroom
                                ‘no, I don’t think I could do it anymore’

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career & teaching wormhole: the Big Stage
communication & performance management & recognition wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’
creativity wormhole: as they wish
disempowerment wormhole: Resource
identity & voices wormhole: in verse / question / m a r k ?
managerialism wormhole; teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?
professionalism & teaching craft wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

Tags

Academy status, capability, career, compromise, consultation, government, money, obligation, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, recognition, slogans, teaching art, teaching craft

Preface: the UK government is driving all sorts of misery right through the art of living in the name of preparing national life for the future and responding to The Economic Situation That We All Find Ourselves In!!!   Nowhere more so than in public service, and most keenly felt by myself in Education, where the reform seems to be aimed at disenfranchising the professional teacher from the very exercise of their own skill: teaching.   Schools are being put in a position whereby they have become reliant on providing an education service which can only run on various extra fundings (erstwhile specialisms); the fundings have now disappeared – ‘wail, what can we do?’ – and ‘never fear, we offer you … Academies’.   With what seems a lot of money – we were made an offer we couldn’t refuse.   However, legally, these Academies have now haemorrhaged from local authority control – big saving of money.   Management of Academies has devolved to the Academies themselves.   “Freedom,” bannered our school when it became an Academy at the beginning of this year (‘aha,’ I thought ‘this could be creative’) “… to all think along the same lines” (‘wail’).   Towards the end of this year the government has made proposals that Performance Management (through which a teacher is targeted and measured how well they do their job) and Capability Procedures (through which a teacher goes if their work is perceived as inadequate) should be grafted together into one procedure.   Our Review would henceforth start with the check to see if we are still capable, and that if there is the slightest question over any aspect of our performance our review would suddenly become a struggle for our jobs.   Our Academy would like to take this up.   We have a period of consultation.   The following is what I offered to the discussion:

Of course the government document highlights and emphasises that grafting performance management and capability is the way forward in management of teachers.   The ‘way’ ‘forward’ is to streamline the teaching workforce into a unified cadre of Education Deliverers and the only way to do this is to nullify teacher thought and experience – the very vocation that has moved a person to turn their life to teaching in the first place – to sterilise it by declaring it an obstacle to progress, to make it un-relevant.   But this does not fore-decide that we should do likewise.   We are an Academy now.   This means we have the freedom … (oh, ‘to all think along the same lines’, damn, I thought I had a good point there – even the opportunity to pursue a dialogue is now denied me).   In pursuing this ‘reform’ the school is demonstrating its willingness and determination to weed out those who are not ‘like-minded’ (as narrowly and ineffectively defined by the school), quite independent from whether they are good and effective teachers or not.   How ironic, now, that this would be performed under the aegis of what was formally known as ‘professional development’.   This move would simply make it easier to define individual teachers out of their jobs – it would complete the bypassing of the organic, sharing, collegiate creativity that is the craft and art of teaching.

‘FREEDOM … to all think along the same lines’ isn’t this the most oxy-moronic slogan to have been heard?

More and more, a career in teaching feels like life in a cult: the over-riding and rendering-irrelevant of the very basis and reference that formed an individual’s teaching identity in the first place.   If my thought and creativity do not comply with the ‘acceptable’ practice of the organisation I am immediately rendered anathema by the organisation which holds tight to the only means of endorsement of my work and identity: performance management.   My thought and creativity will be banished, excluded, rendered untouchable, polluted, much like the ultimate punishment of early societies – to be banished was to lose your very identity, it would have been far better to have just been killed.

This is not what I came into teaching for and yet I am obliged to have to respond to it.   I am obliged to have to conform in it.   And the proposed streamlining of capability and performance will complete the alienation from my own endeavour in teaching that has been making me ill, now, for the past decade.   How on earth can I be expected to believe that this is in the ‘best interests’ of teachers, let alone pupils or their parents?   When the proposal goes ahead – as it inexorably will – will my objections in this consultation render me ‘incapable’ unless I change them?   And will I then be ‘performance managed’ out of my career?

I will say it now, and I will say it here, (even though it will not have immediate sway over what is happening anyway, but being one in a million who marched on the streets of London in 2003 saying ‘NO’ to Tony Blair obliged him to become so ridiculous in his determination to go to war that it rendered him a liability, I can hope): government-nurtured management of education/schools/teachers is just plain, simple wrong.   This current proposal is the epitome of wrong management, of either people or public service.   It is demotivating.   It is mechanised only to identify the lack (or even just the ‘satisfactory’), it absorbs the good and immediately takes it for granted, rather than seeing how it works and cultivating it.   Teachers work hard now to cover their backs and stay out of hassle rather than culture their practice.   Lazy management just demands over recognising or understanding or nurturing; it doesn’t bother working out how to meet (and therefore manage) the demands itself.   It narrowly pre-defines success criteria – extracting from the whole community that is communication – reducing education to a process rather than a growth.   It practises outcome-led management to the detriment of value-informed practice, and in this way exploits endeavour rather than nurturing it.   Management does not recognise teachers as a resource but as mechanisms (reductio’d ad absurdum) to those imposed outcomes in which they have no investment and in which they had no decision.   Management has become dictatorial and inconsistent and determinedly non-democratic or non-nurturing.   It may be the way the government wants management to be, but it is wrong.   Governments are often wrong.

Am I saying all this simply because of my own experience of being ignored rather than managed during the last decade?   Yes.   Are my words therefore rendered irrelevant because of this?   No.   Unless the way I have been treated was all a very long-running mistake.   And unless the litter of other teachers’ careers I have seen discarded by the roadside, crumpled and shaking, was wrong as well (I have seen teachers with decades of successful experience reduced to ‘satisfactory’ and then retired; I have seen teachers hounded to cure a hastily diagnosed symptom until they became ill and left the profession; I have seen passionate teachers walk out of their career with no forwarding post, during a recession; I have seen teachers shift out of their job to become successful elsewhere where they were listened to; I have seen teacher’s whole legacy rubbished once they were retired; I have seen teachers dis-abled in their career because they hadn’t been practising the sudden advent of a new initiative for years previously; I have seen teachers shifted into teaching wholly different subjects as a reward for evading being made redundant; I hear, every day, the attrition of spirit every time an e-mail is opened).   Wouldn’t it be better for my career if I just shut up and didn’t express my unhappiness and reservations about this ordeal which is my career?   For the decade past, it makes no difference; if this proposal goes ahead: yes.

If I don’t send this, it is because I need to look after my health.   If I do send it, it is because I believed the word ‘consultation’ and because I shouldn’t be thinking only of myself.

(I did send it – it presumably got consulted, although I have not talked to any manager about it.   We hear the results on Monday 16th July – the week we break for the summer holidays.)

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: Child of Illusion
compromise wormhole: really
money & performance & politics & teaching craft wormhole: teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?
obligation wormhole: the / pyrrhic / play
performance management wormhole: teaching performance
professionalism wormhole: responsible
recognition wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
teaching art: Resource

 

teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?

Tags

government, managerialism, money, organic education, performance, politics, professionalism, resource, spending, structural time, teaching craft, value-led education, workload

The only solution to teacher workload is to structurally invest time.   Any other spending on education without investing in structural time costs less but is not cost-effective because it doesn’t enhance the provision of education.   The provision of education can only be enhanced by recognising and resourcing the central resource to teaching: the teacher.   The principle resource a teacher needs to do her job is structural time.   The job of a teacher is a holistic job which incorporates many aspects.   The individual teacher must manage those aspects pro-actively, not in crisis, and certainly not compromised into a situation of being exploited.   The teacher does not need to be managed by a system which doesn’t recognise the holistic nature of her job, nor by anyone who is not directly involved in her teaching.   When the job of teaching becomes divided, time-managed, finance-managed, politically-managed, pressure-managed, productivity-managed, then the workload becomes too much.   The cup is not even half-full it is leaking very slowly through numerous hairline cracks and the sellotape used to mend them.

Teachers need to be managed as a human resource rather than as an a-human means of productivity.   When this is done the ethos of teaching will take care of itself.

I see these two strategies (management of human resource; nurture of the ethos of teaching) as being symbiotic: having additional staff to teach the same number of classes will mean that each teacher will have more time to prepare, assess and feedback on the lessons they teach.   It is simply no use at all giving a teacher a full timetable and no structural support time to deliver that timetable.   When no structural time is given to the preparation/feedback of lessons it is left to the individual teacher’s sense of professionalism – in their own, unpaid, time – to provide that preparation/feedback.   If the management of teaching comes to rely on – and expect – that level of professional commitment without either paying for it or supporting it, then it is exploiting teacher’s professionalism.

You would need to halve every teacher’s timetable (// double the amount of teachers) in order to support professionalism rather than exploit it.   Only then could you expect (and receive) true, clear attainment in a school, a year group, nationally and for each individual without at all having to manipulate statistics.   Yes you would have to double expenditure on education but it would be the only cost-effective way of spending that much money.   Saving money by spending smaller amounts on peripheral items of education (yes even on new buildings, computers, status) makes little difference and is soon used up.   A teacher is integral to teaching and lasts for 30-40 years if well-maintained.

The national government ought to do its job (define the Education Act, provision/entitlement – not to stick pins into the system while seeking some other goal); the local government ought to do its job (provide the resources to schools with which to serve the provision/enablement and not have to find ways of saving money but simultaneously expect the same service); and the schools can then do their job: enable.   If this happened there would be no exploitation of teacher professionality, education would happen and there would be no need of bolt-on interaction between governments and schools.   And teachers would work primarily – and happily – with the true sense of professionalism (i.e. vocation) rather than the peripheral effect of professionalism, committed (obliged) hours of (result-only-measured) work.

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

managerialism & money wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
performance wormhole: Continuing / Professional / Development
politics wormhole: management and managerialism
professionalism & workload wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
resource wormhole: teaching performance
teaching craft wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
value-led education wormhole: I think I know why I don’t like teaching, even though I quite like teaching and am quite good at it, even if I do have to say so myself