Short reflections on ResearchED Blackpool

What a day! Really excellent ResearchED. From a logistical viewpoint; not too far from home (more northern ResearchEDs please!), easy parking, rooms all good size and close together, plenty of refreshments (no vegan options at lunch but I’m over it!), space to socialise and brilliant pupils helping out wherever possible.

The sessions were fantastic. Lots of choice with a good spread of topics. I wanted to quickly jot down some stuff before it leaves my brain, so here goes…

Keynote: Daniel Muijs

Daniel opened by concisely summarising why I became so passionate about evidence-informed practice in the first place. “Being evidence informed is a moral duty”. Ultimately it’s a social justice issue. We are morally obliged to do the best we can for our pupils, and we are best placed to do that if we have a good understanding of the research evidence that’s already available to us. The most disadvantaged pupils are those that need our help most.

Daniel mentioned that despite the big improvement in teacher awareness of research etc there was still a long way to go. I think he’s absolutely right. Despite the great turnout (on a Saturday) to events like ResearchED the number of teachers I’ve met who are aware of, for example Retrieval Practice is still a small minority. Research evidence needs disseminating effectively and staff need the time and resources to engage with it properly. Daniel suggests that we need to “invest further in intermediation”. This is something that I’ve considered a big part of my job for a while now, and I’m more convinced than ever that it’s vitally important.

Ruth Walker

She’ll probably cringe if she reads this, but I can’t think of anyone who has influenced my teaching more in the last few years than Ruth (sorry Adam Boxer, close second because Physics!). This is partly because she’s a force of nature and her output of quality blogs/resources is phenomenal (when does she sleep?) but also because of our (for lack of a better term) Zone of Proximal Development. She’s a fellow physicist on a similar evidence-informed journey, but she’s way ahead of me. I know enough to just about keep up and understand what she’s doing, but every interaction I have with her (whether it’s reading her blogs, watching her present, or discussing things with her) expands my horizons. Adam Boxer is the same. I’m like a year 7 pupil with brilliant Y11 mentors, and I honestly consider myself very privileged to know them.

Ruth’s session today was as mind-blowing as ever. I’d read her blogs on Legitimation Code Theory and love how it helps pick apart the structure of knowledge in Science (and other subjects). However, Ruth talking about it gave it extra clarity. I’m sure she’ll blog about her talk sometime soon, but the standout point for me was her discussion of how and why we should reclaim and rejuvenate How Science Works (although it may need rebranding).

Craig Barton

So much useful practical advice from Craig! I thought I had a pretty good retrieval practice/low stakes quizzing setup established but Craig has given me lots of ideas for how to tweak/improve.

Key points/things to do:

  1. Print quizzes out. I normally project them but printing means more heads down concentrating, fewer distractions. Think if I do this in a well organised way I can get benefits without too much workload increase (although I may get nagged about photocopying).
  2. Get pupils to add confidence scores. I’d read Craig’s blog posts on the Hypercorrection Effect, but his session has convinced me I need to start doing this. Errors made with high confidence are more likely to be corrected than those made in low confidence (Carpenter et al 2018). Craig suggests getting pupils to review wrong answers with the highest confidence scores first. Also has benefit of making pupils more aware of what they know and don’t know.
  3. Get teachers to write each other’s quizzes to avoid bias. This makes sense. Too often have I fired up Retrieval Roulette and repeatedly re-randomised until questions appear that I’m confident I’ve taught them well enough to answer. I shouldn’t avoid the tricky questions.

Amy Forrester and Rob Petrie

I’d already read Amy’s marvellous blog on the Performance Management system at Cockermouth High School. It’s a refreshingly simple and downright sensible system that removes really poor proxies for teacher quality like formal lesson observations and data targets and places personalised staff development as the ONLY focal point. It was great to hear Rob talk passionately about why they’ve taken this approach and to hear Amy talk so positively about the impact it has had on both staff development and workload. I was already convinced that this was the way forward for school appraisal systems but it was great to hear Amy and Rob talk about it first hand.

Robin Macpherson

Robin’s session was on effective questioning. He opened with the classic Ferris Bueller classroom scene (“Anyone? Anyone”) which was unnervingly familiar. A large number of questions that I see teachers ask in the classroom (and I’m guilty of this myself) often become just background noise and aren’t really effective in getting pupils thinking.

Robin highlighted some key strategies for effective questioning from Doug Lemov and Martin Robinson (as published in the excellent What Does It Look Like In The Classroom). An area I feel I need to work on is probing deeper with questions after the initial answer (rather than bouncing it on to another pupil), either by getting pupils to apply their answer to another context or to follow up with further questions (could be as simple as a “because” cue to get them to develop their answers). I could also do with expanding my range of question types, planning my questioning more and thinking more in terms of Ratio (See Lemov, TLAC). Lots to think about! The only thing that Robin suggested that I struggled to see much application of in my classroom was the Harkness method. I can see how it would be useful in other subjects but (at the moment, anyway) it feels like it would have limited usefulness for me (and would take some training to get pupils to use it effectively).

Deep Ghatura

Ok, Deep is my number one assessment expert/nerd, and there was so much to take away from his session that I can’t yet begin to summarise it here. Biggest things for me are:

  1. So much of the summative assessment we do in school is useless
  2. The way we try to measure progress is (at best) rubbish or (at worst) dangerously misleading, potentially leading to a huge opportunity cost by focussing interventions on the wrong pupils
  3. The Rasch method looks like one of the best ways of effectively measuring progress, but the assessments need to be set up carefully to make that possible
  4. Understanding of Assessment is one of my areas for development and I need further training on it. It’s not just me though. I feel I know as much as most of my colleagues do about assessment, but I think it’s something that generally teachers don’t know anywhere nearly enough about.

Deep is truly passionate about the effective use of assessment and it’s impossible to come away from his session without a feeling of excitement about a topic that I normally consider really dry. Deep’s session also included an amazing Physics question on temperature (as an analogy for the importance of zero point data) that I’m going to have to try using with pupils. Ruth and I figured out the answer but we had to think about it (although to be fair it was the end of a long day).

Overall another brilliant ResearchED. Thanks to everyone I listened to/conversed with. Now I need to sit down and do some action points so this valuable experience leads to something more tangible.

Already looking forward to ResearchED Rugby!

The Writing Revolution and blogging

I’ve never really got the hang of blogging. Partly due to time (lack of, although very busy people still seem to manage to do it) but mainly as I didn’t think I would write anything of value to anybody else. Why post stuff online?

This website was initially set up a few years back when I started a (very brief) career as a freelance educational consultant. It was mainly meant as a point of contact, place to explain what I do etc. I rarely used it, as I couldn’t see the point in writing anything. Everything felt a bit cringe. Why would anyone be interested?

I’ve wiped most of the website clean and decided to make an effort to blog more. Not because I’m trying to sell anything (I’m not a freelance consultant anymore, and have nothing to sell). Not (and this is the most liberating part) because I want anyone to read it. I really couldn’t give a monkeys if nobody ever reads this. It’s the writing that’s important.

I’ve been reading (and enjoying) Hochman and Wexler’s The Writing Revolution. Although only being about a quarter of the way in, it’s already changing my perception of writing and its benefits in both the Science classroom and my own professional development.

One of the key points that Hochman and Wexler make (and I’m intending to blog about some of the other points at a later date) is that when pupils write about what they’re learning they synthesise information and produce their own interpretations. The writing becomes a significant part of the learning process.

I’m sure to many this is stating the bleeding obvious. But for a significant proportion of my Science teaching career pupils writing was seen as getting in the way of learning Science rather than helping them. Reading and writing was the responsibility of the English department. Whole school literacy initiatives were something that you’d give a nod to in your formal lesson observations, but otherwise wouldn’t consider.

I’m not sure why recognising the value of writing as an aid to learning has taken me so long, but from having conversations with other teachers (both secondary and primary) I know I’m not alone. It seems really obvious to me now.

As Daniel Willingham is ALWAYS quoted as saying, “Memory is the residue of thought”. To write about something effectively requires deep thought.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see how this has applied to my own learning. When planning CPD I read extensively, make notes, write my own summaries. It takes time, and the writing is really only extended note form. But the writing allows me to become clear about ideas, concepts, and my own thoughts. By writing stuff out I develop and consolidate my own understanding. Worth noting: this is not the same as the zombie edu-myth The Learning Pyramid (this was the top Duck Duck Go search at time of writing).

The Writing Revolution has some excellent, powerful and manageable strategies for using writing within the curriculum (as well as improving literacy) and I hope to make use of these in lessons next week and beyond. In fact, I can see them becoming an established part of almost every lesson. But that’s for a later post.

In terms of my own professional development, it’s inspired me to write. Not for the purpose of anyone else reading (in some ways I hope these blogs posts are pretty much ignored, although I’d love to hear other people’s perspectives on things, especially if they have contrasting views), but because by writing things down I’m consolidating and developing my own understanding.

I’m going to try and use this blog for exactly this purpose. Chances are it will be education based stuff, but it may also be about the other important things in my life (family, books, running, beer, whatever!)

Big thanks to Rosalind Walker for flagging this book up to me in the first place. I’ve still got a lot of it to read but it’s already making an impact.

Short review: “What if everything you knew about education was wrong?” by David Didau (@LearningSpy)

9781845909635_WhatIf
What if… by David Didau

I’ve rarely found the time (or inclination) to blog or write a book review, but this book is special.

First, a disclaimer: this is not an easy read. Not because of the style of writing (David Didau’s style is clear and enjoyable to read) but because

  1. it’s a big book (for an education book anyway)
  2. for many teachers it will challenge an awful lot of what we believe/assume to be good teaching practice.

Didau starts off by explaining how the human brain is pretty bad at making rational, evidence based decisions due to significant cognitive bias: “we make decisions on emotional grounds and then justify and rationalise our choices after the fact“. I was aware of many of these psychological principles before reading this book, but Didau summarises them brilliantly. This is almost like tenderising a steak before cooking; knowing how bad our decision making can be is essential if we are to make it through the cognitive dissonance we are about to experience…

Didau then carefully dismantles large swathes of what is standard (and considered to be good or outstanding) practice in many classrooms across the country. I won’t/can’t go into more detail here, as I feel I wouldn’t do it justice, but it’s really quite an uncomfortable experience. As a teacher who has made a very successful career utilising a “progressive” teaching style, the amount of cognitive dissonance I experienced whilst reading this book was massive. It’s clear that Didau has been through the same process himself. He does, thankfully, offer plenty of ideas (backed up by evidence) for how to improve teaching and learning.

There have been a few education books I’ve been positively evangelical about throughout my teaching career, either because they’ve summarised my beliefs about education or they’ve been immensely useful.  Inside The Black Box (Wiliam/Black), Essential Motivation In The Classroom (Gilbert), The Teacher’s Toolkit (Ginnis), How To Teach (Beadle), Visible Learning (Hattie) and Evidence Based Teaching (Petty) are all books that I’ve ended up buying for others, or raving about to schools and teachers, particularly those new to the profession. What if everything… joins that list (and at times, contradicts some of the content of the other books). However, it will be my more experienced colleagues to whom I’ll be recommending it most; we have the most cognitive dissonance to experience. This is essential reading for all who work in education (particularly school leaders). Providing a copy for staff and giving them two days inset to read (and act) on it would probably be the most effective CPD a school could do. Sadly I can’t see that happening in many schools, as those higher up in schools probably have the most dissonance to experience and the most to lose…

The challenge I now face is to take what I’ve learnt from this book and apply it to my day to day practice. I can already feel the “experienced teacher” part of me itching to start the term teaching in the way I find comfortable. The scientist/rational part of me needs to fight that. It won’t be easy (most of our education system encourages my old habits), but then (and this is a key theme of the book) learning should be hard.