So, You Want To Engage Your Learners More Effectively?

Do you want to know why some learners are really disengaged from lessons?  If you want to get an idea across to your learners then you have to give them some sort of emotional stake in their learning.  Advertising executives and politicians have known this for years.  Cars are not sold on their mpg figures and the capacity of their boot.  They are sold by appealing to the buyer's emotions.  For years Audi has sold its cars with the slogan, "Vorsprung durch Technik."  The fact that few people know what it means does not matter.  People just assume that it has something to do with quality German engineering and therefore it must be good.  All the talk in the political arena about immigration has little to do with the facts; politicians are blatantly appealing to voters' emotions.

So, what has this got to do with the classroom?  If you want to engage your learners then you really should try to engage their emotions.  Imagine a lesson about nuclear power.  Imagine that the teacher has put the objective on the board: to understand the advantages and and disadvantages of nuclear power.  I bet that more than 50% of the class would turn off as soon as they read that.  Now imagine the next door classroom where the teachers has put up a headline: "Permission to Build Nuclear Station in [insert name of the next town] Granted," along with a photo of a nuclear power station.  I bet there would be a buzz in the room straight away.  Suddenly, the learners have a stake in the lesson.  The lesson could be constructed to look at the advantages and disadvantages and next lesson there could be a full blown debate about the issue.  I am certain that, in their research, learners would unearth most of the hard facts required in this science lesson.

Recently a colleague started a Year 10 lesson by telling the class that Facebook would be enforcing a strict minimum age limit of 16, and that all the accounts of those under this age would be wiped.  As you can imagine, the learners were engaged from that first moment.  The only problem was containing and channeling the students' reaction effectively.  I am sure that the lesson was far more memorable than, objective: the advantages and disadvantages of social networks.

A few days ago I taught a lesson about copyright.  I put up on the board a series of scenarios for the students to consider.  Is it alright to copy homework?  Is is alright to copy a cd to listen to in the car,  or to give it to a friend, or to sell it?  What about downloading music?  Or using a photo you have found on the internet on your Facebook page?  All the questions were designed to be issues that the learners deal with themselves.  I put the questions up and let them talk.  I did not intervene, I just let the discussion develop and it was very interesting hearing the different points of view that the learners expressed.  Eventually we came round to the idea of copyright and why it exists.  Again, the learners' reaction and engagement was far better that if I had started with, objective: understanding copyright.

If you really want to engage your learners in their learning, you must engage their emotions.  You must provoke a reaction so that they really think about what you are presenting them with.  this is especially important if what you are teaching is very factual.  It is a bit like poking a stick into a wasps' nest; you get a reaction, you get emotional involvement, and you get engagement.

Playground Culture

I was amazed to hear my son utter the immortal words, "Quis...ego," when he came home from his school, which is a 'bog standard comprehensive'.  When I was a schoolboy - in the depths of the last century - at a traditional English school where we studied Latin, there were often cries of "Quis" closely followed by "Ego".  Us boys were so lacking in gumption that it took our Latin teacher to explain to us why we used these terms.  Quis is Latin for 'who?'  Quis was called when someone had something that they did not want any longer.  It may have been some food, a marble, a conker or other small item.  So, quis was code for 'who wants it?'  Ego means 'I'.  So the call of 'Ego' simply showed that the caller wanted the item.  The first person to call ego received it, which meant that at times there was a veritable chorus of boys shouting 'Ego!' You has to watch out as sometimes the item was something that you really didn't want, rubbish, for example.

As soon as I heard the phrase I quizzed by son about it and how it is used in the playground.  He confirmed that it is used in exactly the same way as it was in my school which is over 300 miles and over 30 years away.  I asked him if he knew where the words came from and he had no idea - much as I hadn't all those years before.  My son had more of an excuse though; Latin is not taught in his school and hasn't been for decades.

I have to say that I was secretly pleased that this tradition from my own school days is being continued but I would love to know how it has survived.  I would like to think that it has been used in the playground all that time and it has been passed on from generation to generation without a break.  There is another possibility.  Perhaps it has been reintroduced into the school by a pupil from another school who has brought the tradition with him.  I think I may well have to do a little detective work on this one.

How ever this piece of playground lore has survived, it is interesting that it has.  It has also outlived the school subject that brought it into being by some margin.  This devise clearly has an ongoing currency in schoolboy culture or it certainly would have fallen out of use.  It would be interesting to know if my son's children will use 'quis...ego' in their playgrounds in years to come; I know my father would have certainly have recognised it.

In a Position to Learn?

Some of you will know that besides teaching, I coach rugby. I was coaching scrummaging recently to two groups. One group consisted of fairly experienced scrummagers who had played regularly for both the school team and their rugby club for a number of years. The other group were complete scrummaging novices.  I went through the absolute basics with both groups, mainly concerning achieving the correct body positions. It was interesting that at the end of the session, all the novices had better technique than all the experienced players.  It was clear that the experienced players had got away with poor technique and had been fairly successful with it and they were not very receptive to having their technique questioned and making an effort to improve it.

For me, there are several lessons for the classroom here. First, people who have no preconceptions can often progress fastest as there is nothing to unlearn, providing that the learner wants to learn the new skill. The learner's mind must be opened up to learning and then rapid progress is possible. This emphasises the importance of high quality first teaching. If the skill is taught rigorously and robustly then a new skill can be established quickly.  On the other hand, if the skill is taught poorly and a less than optimal technique is taught, then the learner can be at a permanent disadvantage.

Second, if the basics are not practised then the skill will deteriorate and bringing the skill back up to scratch can be difficult.  The learner may well think that they can perform the skill sufficiently well, let's face it, their experience tells them that they are right.  This shows that basics must not be taken for granted and that they need emphasising and making explicit especially when more advanced skills are being worked on. It is important that previous work is revisited and key points brought out before more advanced ideas are introduced.  This can lead to people moaning that they've done this before.  The trick is to dress up old ideas in new clothes so that learners don't necessarily recognise that they are doing the same thing again.  Changing context can work well here.  We have already seen that a skill can be established quickly with high quality first teaching, but it can only become embedded if it is revisited.

Third, people who think that they know what they are doing can be reluctant learners. Perhaps these people believe that they are expert because there experience tells then that they are doing well.  They are often unaware that another level of learning exists and, because they do not believe that another level exists they are unable to access it. These people simply rehearse their own tried and tested method without really engaging with a more expert mode. Perhaps they need to be put in a situation where their method no longer works and they are forced to confront the shortcomings in their method.  The challenge is to get these people to realise that their own method can be improved upon and that a more refined method may be more efficient and require less effort on their part.

Finally, I really do believe that teachers who get out of the classroom and do other things become better teachers.  I often find it interesting when inspiration strikes.  So, get outside the classroom and keep your eyes and ears open, you never know when you might get a deeper insight into your teaching.

It's Hard...

Computer Science; it's hard, and here's why.

Imagine a spreadsheet.  A spreadsheet that is being developed by the manager of your friendly local cinema.  He has been told to make a spreadsheet to predict how many seats he needs to sell on a Saturday night to break even.  It wouldn't be a huge surprise if the manager couldn't do this, despite spreadsheets routinely being used by school children.  The difficulty is that the problem is definitely at the top end of Bloom's.  It's hard.

First of all the problem has to be broken down into more manageable parts, perhaps the income and expenditure.  Let's look at the income in a little more detail.  There is ticket sales.  There has to be a prediction of the number of tickets that are likely to be sold.  This prediction could be based on how well similar films have done; the time of year and the weather amongst other factors.  The manager has control of the ticket prices so now it should be a simple matter to work out income from the tickets.  But how many of these punters will buy popcorn? Or coke?  This will require more analysis.  What about advertising?  You can see that modelling the income is not straight forward, and I haven't even touched on the expenditure.

Even at Key Stage 3 level, it's hard.  Using the scenario above, a KS3 example spreadsheet might automatically add up the number of seats occupied by adults and the number of seats occupied by children.  An instruction might be, "Add a formula to the spreadsheet to work out the total number of seats sold."  At first sight you might think that that the instruction is fairly straight forward but learners fail at several levels.  First they need to be able to understand the question.  Some lack the literacy skills needed to do this.  Then they need to analyse the question to work out the arithmetic required to solve the question.  Then they need to add a further layer of abstraction to translate the arithmetic into a formula using cell references from the existing spreadsheet.  This one seemingly simple instruction must fit well up on Bloom's taxonomy.  In other words, easy spreadsheet tasks are hard!  They rely on well developed skills from other areas, plus an extra layer of abstraction.

Footnote: If I was writing this post last year I could have written exactly the same thing, but with a different first line - ICT; it's hard, and here's why.  It is curious that in society at large, ICT is seen as 'easy' and Computer Science is seen as 'hard'.  I cannot understand this.  Is it because the majority of the population use computers and think that they are doing ICT but are bewildered about how they work?

Mentoring

I have frequently had the privilege of mentoring teachers who are new to the profession and it is certainly an aspect of my role that I really value - and I know that not all mentors do.  I have learned more about teaching from my role as a mentor than from almost any other CPD experience.  Observing a new teacher's lessons forces you to reflect on your own practice.  Sometimes you will see things that new colleagues do that you could incorporate in your own teaching.  Certainly, feeding back on other people’s work forces you to reflect more critically on your own work

No matter how much my own teaching benefits from me being a mentor, the main task is to nurture a young professional.  My best advice is that you have to start the process from where they are and not where you would like them to be.  Before a new PGCE student's first lesson I will tell them that however it goes, that is their starting point and we will move it on from there - and all first lessons will be different.  It is crucial to identify what a trainee’s initial steps will be in improving their practice – and these next steps will be different for different trainees.

One of the main skills of a mentor is knowing how to encourage your trainee to move on.  I am certain that I could write a huge list of suggestions after that first lesson, and if I concentrated on everything that was wrong with the lesson I could crush a fledgling career very quickly - but that would serve no purpose.  The trick is to use your judgement to decide which is the most important aspect, or possibly two aspects, that trainee can work on and improve first.  Once these aspects are improving, then it will be time to move to another aspect or two.  For some colleagues, progress will be faster than it is for others and that is absolutely fine.

The progress rate of trainees can be frustrating for mentors.  There are always times when progress is really rapid and this is really satisfying for the mentors.  This is often followed by a period of little or no progress which is when a mentor can become frustrated.  In fact, this is usually the time when the previous rapid progress is being embedded and it is a necessary part of the process.  With most trainees, after a short period of slow progress, another period of rapid progress follows.  If you drew a graph of progress against time, it would look a little like a stair case; it would have periods of rapid growth followed by slow growth, with the process repeated several times.

Expert experienced teachers are reflective teachers.  Reflection is an intrinsic part of being an expert teacher and it is important to start building this characteristic early on in a new teacher's career.  Initially, trainees will need help with reflecting on their work and asking questions that are too open or too closed will not be helpful.  It is very important that trainees reflect on their successes.  As a profession we are very good at focussing on what needs to be improved and we are not so good at recognising what we are good at.  I am convinced that we all need to recognise our successes, new trainees especially, and then it is easier to look at what needs to be improved in a positive way.  Initially the key questions to ask trainees are: what went well, and secondly, what do you need to improve.  That second question can be tweaked to, what is the one key thing that you need to improve.  As time goes on and the trainee has more experience of teaching and observing more experience colleagues, I change the second question to, what could you do to improve the lesson.  As always, it is far more powerful if the trainee can learn to solve his own problems.

At the start of the process the mentor will be driving the process quite hard.  Over time this should change and with a good trainee, by the end of the process they should be driving it.  Remember, all trainees are different and they all progress at different rates and need help with different aspects of their work.  They are all individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses that they need to work on.

One final piece of advice that I would like to add.  Don't forget where you came from.  Once upon a time all mentors were inexperienced teachers with a great deal to learn once.

Self Regulation

Self-regulation must be one of the qualities that teachers hope to instil in young people but too often the actions of teachers actually undermine self-regulation.  Research has shown that state school students do better at university than public school students.  I am certain that self-regulation - or lack of it - is at least partly behind these findings.  Public school pupils' lives are regulated from when they get up until they go to sleep.  They do not have the opportunity not to do homework because they are supervised in prep.  There is no surprise that this system gives good exam results especially when you factor in that distractions such as paid work are missing too.  But equally, it is no surprise that former public school pupils do not cope so well when they have to organise their own lives.  The urge to party that little bit too hard at the expense of work can be too hard to resist.

Average state school students will have had a different experience.  They will usually have had to organise their own homework and when they get older, typically they will get part time jobs.  In the short term these can be distractions and a certain proportion of them don't do well in the exams because the job becomes a little too full time and study a little too part time, but those who succeed will have learned the art of prioritising and will have started on the path to being self-regulated adults.

Teachers can, for the best of motives, undermine their learners' self-regulation.  I was talking to a well-respected and experienced teacher recently who said that if she didn't get an A* for a particular young man in his class, she would have failed - we'll see how she did in August.  This comment worried me.  If she meant that she would have failed if she did not create the right environment with the right stimuli do enable the young man to gain an A* for himself, and hierversion was only a short hand, then I have no problem with her stance.  But if she really meant what she said I am concerned.  Ultimately all our learners have to take responsibility for their results, not only at school but throughout their lives afterwards.  If a teacher thinks that she can get a result for a learner then that teacher is taking power from the learner and certainly undermining self-regulation.  Success is only true success if failure is a possibility and can only really be truly celebrated if there is real responsibility for that success.  I was also worried because the comment was made with a number of less experienced teachers present and I worry that they will take this comment to heart.

In a similar vein, I recently saw some work about inclusion, and in very large letters I saw, 'The teacher is responsible for behaviour.'  I am so pleased I don't work in that school, and if I did, I wouldn't for much longer.  Whichever way you look at it, every person in a school is responsible for their own behaviour.  I can only imagine the stress level if I was told I was responsible for the behaviour of every child in every one of my lessons.  I am not responsible for anyone else's behaviour and no reasonable person would expect me to be.  I am, however, responsible for carrying out the school's behaviour policy and maintaining an environment where poor behaviour is challenged and good behaviour is rewarded.  I am responsible for maintaining good relationships with all the learners I have responsibly for.  But this does not amount to, 'The teacher is responsible for behaviour.'  Once more, this statement undermines young people's self-regulation by making someone else responsible for their actions.  There is only one person responsible for their actions, and it isn't their teacher.

Building self-regulation must mean that young people take responsibility for their own actions.  This must also mean that they have the space to get things wrong and to make the wrong choices, and teachers need to recognise this.  If they have the opportunity to do this in the relatively safe environment of school then they should became more self-regulating which should mean that they have more fulfilling lives into adulthood.

What Do They Think?

Hattie tells us that feedback has one of the biggest effect sizes on learners' outcomes.  If this is the case, then surely feedback on teaching should have a large effect on teachers' outcomes too.  Having said that, in many schools teachers receive very little feedback on their teaching except from the more formal observations required by performance management.

Everyday, teachers are observed by people who see more lessons that any headteacher or inspector I know - the learners themselves.  These people know intimately what teaching styles, activities and methods work for them.  They know what attributes a good teacher has and they know what they can get away with!  The learners know their teachers better than anyone.  They are a massive reservoir of knowledge of teaching that should be tapped into.

I did tap into their collective experience that other day.  I asked them to reflect on my teaching and everything that I do in the classroom.  I gave each of them three sticky notes.  I asked them to write down the things in my teaching that they want me to Keep.  I asked them to note down those things that they like about my teaching that they would like me to do more of; the things they want me to Grow.  Finally, I asked them to write about the aspects of my teaching that they would like to Challenge; the aspects that they did not like or those that they would like me to change.  I divided my board into three sections: Keep, Grow and Challenge.  I told them that they could use their sticky notes for 3 Keeps; or 3 Challenges; or 2 Grows and a Challenge; or any combination that they liked.  When they finished their notes they stuck them on the board in the appropriate column.  Actually, there was a fourth category.  If they wanted to tell me something personal to them, then they could stick their note on my desk.

The results were very interesting and showed me that I am doing a great deal right although they have challenged me too.  I was really pleased that the learners liked some of the quirky things that I have tried, such as using music to time things.  I have pieces of music that last 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds and 2 minutes.  They told me to keep these, along with the Thunderbirds 5,4,3,2,1, countdown that I use.

For a long time I have tried to reduce the amount of time that I spend talking to the class.  I have tried to get more from my students through questioning and other prompts, rather than just telling them.  I was really pleased that the learners liked the quality of explanations that I give them.  They liked the way that I explain things and make them appear simple.  They did, however, say that I still talk too much.  This is something I will have to reflect on and look into ways that I can reduce the amount of time that I spend talking to them even further.  I already have some ideas!

With one of my classes have I taken time out of teaching my subject to reflect on what it is to be an effective learner.  I have introduced them to the idea of 'My Learning Universe' in order to get them to realise that they are the most important person who can influence their learning because too many of them, particularly the lower 'ability' ones, think that learning is done to them.  They have reflected on the qualities that their learning hero - Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games - has that makes her able to learn effectively.  They have transformed this to look at the qualities they need to have to be their own learning hero.  I was really pleased to see that some learners identified this as an area that they would like me to grow.  It is very clear that many learners are interested in their own learning, which has to be a good thing.

In my higher group it was fairly clear that they did not like a seating plan and that they wanted to sit where they wanted to.  At the end of the feedback session we had a class chat about this and why I use a seating plan.  The seating plans stay but at least the learners understand their purpose a little better.  My lower group said that they wanted to be allowed to listen to their own music more when they are working.  Again, it won't happen but we discussed it and they know the rationale behind my position!  It was interesting that the quality of the feedback that I received from the higher group was in the main more informative than the quality of feedback from the lower group, which really is not surprising.  The higher group concentrated on things that affect their learning whereas in the lower group there were more comments about peripheral issues.

All in all, this was a really worthwhile exercise and very reassuring that I am going in the right direction.  One of the most reassuring comments was - Keep: your teaching style.