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Is listening really passive?

2019-11-10T13:13:35+00:00June 30th, 2014|learning|

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it. David Hockney Like many others, I got very excited to see this published on the Ofsted website back in February: Inspectors must not give the impression that Ofsted favours a particular teaching style. Inspectors should not criticise teacher talk for being overlong or bemoan a lack of opportunity for different activities in lessons unless there is unequivocal evidence that this is slowing learning over time. Do not expect to see ‘independent learning’ in all lessons and do not make the assumption that this is always necessary or [...]

Listen up: Improving the quality of classroom discussion

2014-06-29T16:17:38+01:00June 29th, 2014|learning|

We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.Diogenes Pupils are asked to discuss stuff in class all the time. As, from time to time, are teachers. Think back to the last discussion you took part in. No matter how civilised they are, it tends to be an exercise in patience; we spend a lot of time waiting for everyone else to shut up so we can have our say. Inevitably, this de facto approach allows discussion to be dominated by the loudest, most confident participants. As John Wayne put it, we [...]

What I got up to at the Wellington Festival of Education Part 1

2014-09-21T22:12:27+01:00June 22nd, 2014|learning|

Sadly, I missed most of the Friday. I spent the morning speaking at a maths conference (I know, right?) on correcting the mistakes made in the name of ‘numeracy across the curriculum’. If you’re interested, I argued that whilst numeracy has a pretty superficial connection with much that goes on in other subjects, mathematical thinking would be a far more powerful way to explicitly teach pupils to filter how they viewed the curriculum. I may blog on this at some point in the future. Then, channeling the spirit of the John Cleese film Clockwise I had to race across to Wellington [...]

Why I changed my mind about the SOLO taxonomy

2017-01-25T23:25:31+00:00June 15th, 2014|learning|

I've been meaning to write this for quite a while. Increasingly, I've become rather embarrassed about my erstwhile advocacy for Biggs & Collis's generic taxonomy, the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes. I used to have a separate page of SOLO resources on my blog which I have now removed, but even so my SOLO posts still get a surprising number of hits, and this presentation has been downloaded over 50,000 times. If you've got 8 minutes of your life you want to waste, there's also this video of me extolling the efficacy of SOLO at a teachmeet in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4h1nOdnXDI I was [...]

Differentiation: Are high expectations enough?

2015-01-02T14:57:48+00:00June 12th, 2014|learning|

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation. Charles F. Kettering Last night someone retweeted a tagline from a post I wrote earlier this year: "Teach to the top, support at the bottom". Inevitably perhaps, someone else took great exception to the word 'support' and asked why those at the bottom shouldn't be taught. Why should they have to suffer support while everyone else got taught? This isn't an unreasonable position and begs the question, what do we mean by 'teaching' and 'support'? If it means the most able are given explicit instruction whilst the least able are consigned [...]

Squaring the circle: can learning be easy and hard?

2014-09-17T19:56:47+01:00May 11th, 2014|learning|

Regular readers will know I've been ploughing a furrow on this question for quite a while now. Last June I synthesised my thinking in this post: Deliberately difficult – why it’s better to make learning harder. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the arguments, I'll summarise them briefly: - Learning is different from performance (the definition of learning I'm using here is the long-term retention and transfer of knowledge and skills) - We can't actually see learning happen; we can only infer it from performance - Performance is a very poor indicator of learning - Reducing performance might actually increase learning This [...]

Getting feedback right Part 4: How can we increase pupils’ aspiration?

2015-07-08T20:26:01+01:00April 2nd, 2014|assessment, learning|

You may remember that over the past few weeks I've been trying to refine my thinking about how we can improve the way we give feedback. If you haven't already read the previous instalments, you might find it helpful to go over  Part 1 (which discusses the different purposes for giving feedback) Part 2 (which looks at how to increase pupils’ understanding) and Part 3 (which considers how to get pupils to expend greater effort.) In this post I want to explore how feedback can be used to encourage pupils to aim higher, want more and go beyond their current performance. Many high achieving pupils [...]

Focusing on performance is the enemy of the growth mindset

2014-03-02T22:06:46+00:00March 2nd, 2014|learning|

Over the past year or so I've been following a line of thinking which has gone something like this: Learning and performance are not the same thing. Pupils' performance in lessons does not correspond with learning. Learning is invisible and takes place over time. We may be able to infer something about what has been learned by examining performance, but more often than not, we won't. Learning may follow from performance, but it may not. Performance may indicate learning, but, again, it may not. Responding to cues when something is fresh in our minds is easy. Learning is only learning if skills [...]

"The kids absolutely love it!" The phrase that launched a thousand gimmicks

2014-02-05T22:39:28+00:00February 5th, 2014|learning|

I attended a TeachMeet recently where a number of the presenters argued that their teaching strategy of choice was worth trying out because, "The kids absolutely love it!" This seems to me to be a wholly inappropriate reason for teaching something. Then, in a wildly irresponsible fit of despondency, I tweeted the following: Predictably several people saw fit to take me to task, saying variously that I sounded "really boring", was in favour of "dour" lessons, that I judged the success of my teaching on whether kids hated learning, or that I was just indulging in some sort of "bear baiting". [...]

“The kids absolutely love it!” The phrase that launched a thousand gimmicks

2016-09-18T09:12:05+01:00February 5th, 2014|learning|

I attended a TeachMeet recently where a number of the presenters argued that their teaching strategy of choice was worth trying out because, "The kids absolutely love it!" This seems to me to be a wholly inappropriate reason for teaching something. Then, in a wildly irresponsible fit of despondency, I tweeted the following: Predictably several people saw fit to take me to task, saying variously that I sounded "really boring", was in favour of "dour" lessons, that I judged the success of my teaching on whether kids hated learning, or that I was just indulging in some sort of "bear baiting". [...]

Practical differentiation: high expectations and the art of making mistakes

2014-02-03T20:18:38+00:00February 1st, 2014|Featured, learning|

Differentiation? I hate the word as I hate Hell, all ludicrous bureaucracy, and thee! Er... Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Differentiation is one of the darkest arts in teaching. The generally accepted position is that differentiation is wholly good, and this is the cause of the wracking guilt felt by harrowed teachers: it may well be good, but it's bloody hard work. My bottom line is this: any policy predicated on the idea that teachers should work harder is doomed to failure. Thankfully, teaching's enforcement arm seem, at long last, to agree: "It is unrealistic ... for inspectors to necessarily expect that [...]

Force fed feedback: is less more?

2014-01-26T20:14:25+00:00January 26th, 2014|Featured, learning|

It is commonly and widely accepted that feedback is the best, brightest and shiniest thing we can be doing as teachers, and the more of it the better. Ever since Prof Hattie published Visible Learning in 2009 we have had conclusive proof: according to Hattie's meta-analyses, feedback has the highest effect size of any teacher invention. QED. And this has led, unsurprisingly, to an avalanche of blogs (many of which I've been responsible for) on how to give feedback more efficiently, frequently and effectively. Teachers the world over have rejoiced. But perhaps we've been a little uncritical on just how best we [...]

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