It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. . .
Since writing last week about the problems with the sorts of lessons which typically get judged as outstanding, I thought it might be helpful to illustrate further what I mean by describing two lessons* I observed last year.
Lesson 1 – Year 7
This was one of the most impressive lessons I’ve ever seen in terms of how slickly organised it was. In the space of 50 minutes the students took part in a bewildering array of activities; they had a starter in which they were asked to analyse a text a describe, using keywords, the techniques that had been used. They then had to get out the piece of work they have been working on for the past few lessons and set themselves a goal for the lesson. They then had to complete their chosen goal, take part in a mini-plenary assessing their progress and giving advice to other students on their table for the next lesson. The fact that all this was possible is a testament to the fact that the pupils had obviously been thoroughly drilled in the expectations of how to behave. There wasn’t a second of wasted time; the students work independently for the vast majority of the lesson and the teacher’s input was minimal as they wandered the class giving brief suggestions here and there. If a pupil asked for help, they would be questioned on how they might work out the answer for themselves without recourse to the teacher – they were clearly well used to this and knew how to go about solving the problems they encountered. The pupils’ engagement and behaviour for learning were exemplary It all looked amazing.
But was it? Well on the face of it, the lesson was incredibly well planned, was clearly a typical example and the pupils were enthusiastic about their experience. Their performance in the lesson was tip-top. But were they learning? Well frankly, I disappointed by the quality of their writing. Oh well, I thought, that’s just because they’re in Year 7. I stamped on these nagging doubts and both me and the other observer were more than happy to chalk the lesson up as outstanding.
Lesson 2 – Year 10
This lesson was a shambles. For a start, the objective was overly complicated and confusing with most pupils unable to explain what they should be doing. There was no differentiation – everything was pitched right at the top with little support for those that might struggle. While some students were clearly enjoying the challenge, others were distracted and ‘off-task’ for extended periods. In one activity, pupils read a very complex text and then had to answer a number of fiendishly difficult comprehension questions that required all sorts of background knowledge which many of them didn’t have. Chaos ensued. The teacher allowed the class to struggle and then intervened to didactically explain, at some length, what they should have been doing. This too was clearly a typical lesson and many of the pupils complained that they often ‘didn’t get it’ and that Miss didn’t explain things clearly enough for them to make clear progress. These were kids that knew what to expect and were vocal about demanding it. And as an observer I couldn’t help but agree – it was hard to see that any but a few very able pupils had made any progress. Again, both me and the other observer were unanimous: inadequate.
There’s no question that the pupils in Lesson 1 were happier, performing better, more engaged and better behaved. The weird thing was that the teacher of Lesson 2’s exam results were much higher. And consistently higher – over the previous 5 years they had outperformed every other member of the department by a fairly significant margin. She is quirky, fiercely intelligent, remarkably knowledgeable about her subject and constitutionally incapable of turning out a ‘good’ lesson. The exam results for the teacher of Lesson 1 weren’t awful, but neither were they what you would expect. Could this be an example of short term performance gains actually getting in the way of long term retention and transfer?
Once in an exam analysis meeting a member of SLT who taught in a particular department said that the reasons the exam results of that department were so poor was because of their outstanding teaching. They concentrated on independent learning and refused to ‘spoon feed’ and obviously this meant kids did less well in the test. I kid you not – that really happened.
Now, of course, none of this constitutes evidence, and I’m certainly not proposing a free for all where we all do whatever the hell we please and damn the consequences. But it does raise some interesting questions about what we value. Is the ability to deliver outstanding lessons more important than getting great results? Who would we be more likely to promote, or put on capability? Which of these teachers is more likely to lead a school, and what are they likely to train their staff to do?
It’s clear to me that we tend to value what we’re good at and most schools are led by teachers who can teach ‘outstanding’ lessons. Teachers who teach lesson like Lesson 1 get promoted. They becomes ASTs, and Assistant Heads in charge of Teaching & Learning and train others how to do what they do.
And it’s equally clear that we tend to be suspicious of what we don’t understand and likely to dismiss it as dangerous and aberrant. Teachers who teach lesson like Lesson 2 get put on capability. They are marginalised, ignored and, ultimately, if they fail to put on the required show, forced out.
So, to be absolutely clear, I am not, repeat not advocating ignoring what goes on in classroom and focussing solely on results. All I’m suggesting is that we think a little more and jerk our knees a little less. We understand a hell of a lot less than we think. And maybe now it genuinely is the best of time and worst of times. Belief and incredulity are currently battling it out and while it’s anyone’s guess about whether we’re heading straight to Heaven or the ‘other way’ I’m betting that the east wind is blowing and change is on its way.
* I have changed some details and worked hard to make it impossible to know to which teachers I’m referring.
Another one to think about for sure, though playing devils advocate – when I have been in a lesson or lecture where I have struggled to grasp info, I tend to do a lot of self study to understand. Could the better exam results be due to the learners doing more self study? Or is this crazy talk?!
Also, do all lessons with ‘performance’ mean that learning is not as great as without performance? I think the notion of prescribing guidelines for outstanding is wrong and knowing what outstanding looks like is extremely complex for sure.
I always enjoy reading your views and they help to keep my mind open. Look forward to hearing from you David.
Hi Dan
Yes, I think the exam results could have been down to the students studying more – still interesting, isn’t it?
There is a fair bit of compelling evidence to suggest that good performance can retard long term learning. I linked to it in previous posts.
Cheers, D
Did you ever investigate why the lesson 2 teacher achieved such good results even though seemingly teaching inadequate lessons? If so, what did you find out?
A combination of things seem to have been at play: high expectations, challenge, expert subject knowledge
But ultimately, it was mysterious to me.
Subject knowledge is sadly the lowest valued of the 4 qualities that make a teacher.
Our inspection culture derives from Ofsted and most inspectors are from a generation when you could get into teaching without any qualifications – therefore pedagogical skill is often more highly valued than subject knowledge.
I think you’ve nailed it with this post – subject knowledge is the thing we need more of across the profession.
Quite so. We are, as teachers, riding two horses that don’t necessarily go in the same direction. The teacher of exam performance, and the teacher of generic styles & procedures deemed to exemplify best practice. But there’s no reason to think that satisfying examiners, and satisfying lesson observers should necessarily coincide. They did – for a short while – in the early years of Ofsted inspections when teams of 11 inspectors descended on you for a week, each with its subject specialist who would be like a house-guest within the department. Then you knew you had someone who understood your subject inside out and they would judge the thread of lesson performance in the light of what examiners deemed subject expertise. But once that became too expensive, and we got the narrow-team, non-subject specialists dipping in for two days – all they could (can) judge confidently is generic teaching practice and try to spot the visible flags of cross-subject commonality. By their nature, the criteria of ‘outstanding teaching’ had to be visible in all classrooms (and sports fields) and started to detach from the highly specific skills and qualities necessary for individual subject expertise. Not saying there aren’t common elements to effective classrooms – but they’re probably ones that define teachers’ managerial competence of young people in the approved style of the moment rather than performance requirements of the exam hall.
Enjoying reading your posts – at the moment in particular.
Andy
This is a very thought-provoking read and I think it would be equally interesting to question the pupils’ experience of each lesson; the pupils in Lesson 1 sound as though they would be most likely to report really high levels of enjoyment and zeal, compared to Lesson 2 pupils, but it would be interesting to see whether these perceptions alter after examination I know that when I was in secondary school for example I had a very clear idea of who the ‘best teachers’ were, but almost as soon as I left, it became clear that actually, those whose lessons may have been a little less cabaret and a lot more monastery actually served me better.
When we look at pupil satisfaction and enjoyment, we tend to focus on short term measures – either did they look happy in the lessons, or did they report being content and engaged immediately after the lesson. Perhaps, just like knowledge, affective responses also take a little while to settle in.
Absolutely agree – effective teaching almost certainly is about managerial competency. In part anyway.
Your latest post rings true. I’ve been posting practically the same comment on your blogs for some time. I teach in a private school and am virtually never observed. Even when I am there are very few hoops to jump through. My lessons sound more like number 2 than 1 (I don’t think kids often complain they don’t understand and I wouldn’t like that). My results are really pretty good, even if I do say so myself and the kids seem to find lessons interesting enough of the time. It is not a very academic private school, very few kids that would ‘teach themselves’.
As I have got into blogs and twitter over the last year or so I am so struck by the absolute obsession with polished individual lessons. I do spend a long time planning but by the time I finish planning a coherent sequence of content I have run out of time to plan great activities and it is all a bit of a ‘teacher led’ splat. All my planning energy was focused on identifying a coherent framework of understanding of the material.
I do wonder whether your focus on making stuff a bit hard could be viewed as coming full circle back to discovery learning. My kids do lots of consolidation work independently, for homework and so they are working hard rather than me polishing up bite sized chunks in lesson times but any teacher of an essay subject knows what happens when you send kids away to write up stuff they didn’t really understand. So while I take your main point about lesson observation I am a bit more nervy about lessons that regularly lead to really genuine confusion.
I would say that I balance myself between 1 and 2, dependent on mood, outside factors, the class etc (obviously without the kids complaining so much). I often hear the phrase “I don’t know this” or “I can’t do this”, but I then go on to encourage the students to think about who else they might ask or what else they might do to get the response they need. My lessons are often hard but the students still progress because they (hopefully) learn that the answers won’t always be given to them on a plate and independent learning isn’t always fun and games.
We are in the middle of changing our curriculum at the minute and it’s been astonishing to watch. We introduced blind assessments from Y7 and asked staff to rise to the challenge, teaching skills, not exam responses. With the exception of Y9, who have found the change hard to deal with after years of structuring and spoon feeding, the kids have adapted well. There are many lessons that seem chaotic and where the children are stumped, but the data shows that achievement and progress is better than it’s been in years.
Definitely an interesting topic of debate.
I may have got the wrong of this stick, but what you’re saying appears to run counter to what I think. At the moment, many secondary schools give KS3 students a rich diet of ‘independent learning’ only to realise that my KS4 they don’t know very much and so spoon feeding commences as teachers teach to the test. This strikes me as foolish. Much better to design instruction in years 7-9 that will mean students have the ability to genuinely learn independently in KS4.
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Fascinating article but perhaps It’s not entirely surprising. It is a classic pedagogic technique to let learners struggle and then intervene. The learner then understand the breadth of the issue because they have had to engage with them. A lack of knowledge is not an issue because ultimately thinking is not dependent upon knowledge. Expertise is dependent upon knowledge – it’s not the same.
It’s very sympathetic to how cognition works. The brain needs to understand the problem before it tries to resolve the problems. There is a breadth and depth to learning that doesn’t exist with knowledge based teaching or badly taught constructivism.
That is why constructivism has struggled because too much spoon feeding alongside constructivist techniques just means that no one learns anything. In other words group work only works if they genuinely have to solve a problem and not simply go though the motions whereby every time there is a challenge, teacher panics and helps them.
Of course the skill is knowing when to intervene and keep the whole thing going.
Lesson 2 sounds like a very skilled practitioner I would love to peer observe her work.
If you want someone to solve a problem they need to know & understand the underlying concepts first. This requires teaching. The teacher of Lesson 2 was (and is) the exact opposite of a constructivist. She is a highly didactic teacher who panics at the though of being observed. The reason constructivism struggles is because it only works after explicit instruction whereas many teachers mistakenly believe it can be a successful way to teach.
I guess we’ll probably disagree but nonetheless this is certainly challenging some of my assumptions. So thank you for the article nonetheless here’s my opinion.
“If you want someone to solve a problem they need to know & understand the underlying concepts first.”
Well true but it doesn’t stop you thinking about a problem and that can set in place the cognition to help you contextualise the problem. It’s often quite useful to be forced to struggle with a problem prior to truly understanding it.
it’s easy enough to accept concepts at face value without any underpinning knowledge. OFSTED do it all the time that is why there reports are such gibberish. The ability to parse concepts without challenging their meaning is how much of modern life works. We accept at face value concepts that represent knowledge that is probaby nonsense.
I don’t think constructivism is antagonistic to some didactic teaching. In fact from my perspective what you describe is very constructivist teaching. Allow learners to personally research and own the subject, then construct boundaries, offer guidance and allow the learner to continue on. Then iterate. Students personally research, stop, offer guidance, then continue.
The reason constructivism fails is because of rank bad teaching whereby independent learning, group learning etc are delivered without challenge. using pre-packaged concepts that are unchallenging reside in short term memory and then are forgotten. At every sign of difficulty you get teacher intervention.
It’s hard to get across all the points in a small response to be honest:
btw
There is a field of Constructivist didactics:
To the extent that constructivist didactics limits itself to the claim that all learning starts from already existing knowledge, and the teacher, therefore, has to start always with students’ pre-existing knowledge in order to facilitate construction processes in the direction of the acknowledged instructional goal of transmitting book and scientific knowledge, it is dismissed by more radical exponents of constructivism with some justification as ‘trivial constructivism’ (von Glasersfeld 1996).
Wow! Who’d have thought constructivist didactics was a thing. Thanks for this – I’ll look it up.
For the record, what you describe above as being what I describe is certainly not what I intended to describe. Here are some posts on my proposed teaching sequence for developing independence: https://www.learningspy.co.uk/category/teaching-sequence/
“For the record, what you describe above as being what I describe is certainly not what I intended to describe.”
I was thinking aloud about why Lesson 2 would work.
I’m interested in your teaching sequence. I’m working it through in my head at the moment.
It’s a slow process.
Yes, sometimes what is most interesting and stimulating for students is a straight answer to a straight question. If you always answer a question with a question the kids soon learn to stop asking questions; but telling them stuff is actually part of what we’re paid to do.
Students relish being in the hands of someone who clearly knows their stuff, provided they are also in command of the class. Over-emphasising constructivism in teaching seems really tedious to me, but if you weave it in to your lesson subtly, and they are still interested enough to be paying attention, then you’re really getting somewhere. Have you ever noticed how fact based TV programmes contain a steady flow of “reveals”, e.g. “Coming up next, how to boil an egg”. Doesn’t seem to matter how banal these things are, our brains just love sucking up bits of knowledge. Turning this into fully fledged theoretical understanding then requires the challenge of applying the knowledge to something, possibly failing, then having to re-think. There’s a lot to be said for rough diamonds in the classroom.
I thought the focus on making stuff hard would seem to endorse discovery learning and it seems to be that is how some have interpreted your comments. It is something to think over but I guess it depends WHY it seems hard to kids. Is it because work demands higher standards than kids are used to but there is actually plenty of guidance available. Or is work viewed as hard because kids are used to spoon feeding? I do know that in mixed ability A level classes the brightest don’t need the structure the weaker ones absolutely require but brighter kids are very cross if they don’t get all the essay guidance they aree used to although they are capable and would benefit from thinking things through for themselves.
This brings to mind a weekend LEA (Cornwall) Inset course I attended in the 90s where the graveyard slot was allocated to the PGCE tutor (English) from Leeds University. Eight o clock on a Saturday night. The King of Prussia (a pub in Fowey) beckoned. There are three English departments in the world, we were told. Number 1 is an intimidating castle on the brow of a very large hill. Once each year, the portcullis rises. The drawbridge is lowered. The King, with his Knights, rides out and inspects the local villages. After a slow circuitous route, the entourage retreats to the castle – not to be seen to the same time next year.
The second type of department is a pastoral scene. Imagine Dartmoor. Several sheep are munching slowly. Occasionally, a head lifts up. It gazes. it returns to the grass. That’s it.
The third type of department is a shopping precinct. There are very many individuals darting here and there pressing leaflets into people’s hands. The key here is lots of leaflets; lots of hands.
This is what reading this blog feels like. I have been teaching English since the 80s. I am turned this way and that. This taxonomy then that one. Didactic or FOFO.
You know what? Kids put their trust in teachers they like and feel happy with. Learning happens in the margins. Abstract not concrete. One day everything works. The next it does not. You keep looking for a successful system; there is no such thing; that is what makes it interesting!
Martin
We need to distill the secrets of teacher 2: the holy grail! Willingham tells us learning comes from being taught ‘stuff’ and being made to think about it in various challenging ways over time until they have it. Is this what teacher 2 has done? If so then the answer may not be so far away.
You have certainly made me question my notion of what constitutes ‘good teaching’ with this post. Reflecting on my own experiences as a student, it was often the classes and lectures where the content was pitched beyond me that resulted in my doing more study outside the classroom. In classes where I felt ‘comfortable’ with content (maybe because the teacher had done a great job of sequencing, scaffolding and providing feedback) I was less likely to explore further or study at home because, well, I thought things were going fine. Consequently, I think, I actually learnt more for the first type of classes.
If I think about my teaching now, I would never aim to plan a lesson where students left feeling that they didn’t understand things – that would mean that I hadn’t supported students enough (through modeling/scaffolding/providing feedback etc). A real brain-spinner of a post and I look forward to reading more!
Interesting. I am an AST and have taught with an eye on achievement over enjoyment for 20 years. I have never taught an outstanding lesson during my 12 career Ofsted inspections but have frequently come ‘top’ for VA in my schools results. Career promotion has never been about being the ‘best’ teacher, but always the ‘best teacher that fits the current management team / head teachers latest agenda to promote themselves on a wider stage’. That’s the employer/employee relationship worldwide. It’s just another job.
I’m unclear whether you are sharing your experience to support my assertions or challenge them. Certainly I would suggest that your career progression is untypical – most ASTs are required to put on an ‘outstanding’ show – and it’s great to know that there are schools and school leaders who have the wit and wisdom to see beyond fads and gimmicks.
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