Guidance, ideas and examples to support schools in developing their curriculum, pedagogy, enrichment and support for more able learners, within a whole-school context of cognitively challenging learning for all. Includes ideas to support curriculum development, and practical examples, resources and ideas to try in the classroom. Popular topics include: curriculum development, enrichment, independent learning, questioning, oracy, resilience, aspirations, assessment, feedback, metacognition, and critical thinking.
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Posted By Elena Stevens,
28 March 2022
Updated: 24 March 2022
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History lead and author Elena Stevens shares four approaches she’s found to be effective in diversifying the history curriculum – helping to enrich students’ knowledge, develop understanding and embed challenge.
Recent political and cultural events have highlighted the importance of presenting our students with the most diverse, representative history curriculum possible. The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the tearing down of Edward Colston’s statue the following month prompted discussion amongst teachers about the ways in which we might challenge received histories of empire, slavery and ‘race’; developments in the #MeToo movement – as well as instances of horrific violence towards women – have caused many to reflect on the problematic ways in which issues of gender are present within the curriculum. Diversification, decolonisation… these are important aims, the outcomes of which will enrich the learning experiences of all students, but how can we exploit the opportunities that they offer to challenge the most able?
At its heart, a more diverse, representative curriculum is much better placed to engage, inspire and include than one which is rooted in traditional topics and approaches. A 2018 report by the Royal Historical Society found that BAME student engagement was likely to be fostered through a broader and more ‘global’ approach to history teaching, whilst a 2014 study by Mohamud and Whitburn reported on the benefits of – in Mohamud and Whitburn’s case – shifting the focus to include the histories of Somali communities within their school. A history curriculum that reflects Black, Asian and ethnic minorities, as well as the experiences of women, the working classes and LGBT+ communities, is well-placed to capture the interest and imagination of young people in Britain today, addressing historical and cultural silences. There are other benefits, too: a more diverse offering can help not only to enrich students’ knowledge, but to develop their understanding of the historical discipline – thereby embedding a higher level of challenge within the history curriculum.
Below are four of the ways in which I have worked to diversify the history schemes of work that I have planned and taught at Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 – along with some of the benefits of adopting the approaches suggested.
1: Teach familiar topics through unfamiliar lenses
Traditionally, historical conflicts are taught through the prism of political or military history: students learn about the long-term, short-term and ‘trigger’ causes of the conflict; they examine key ‘turning points’; and they map the war’s impact on international power dynamics. However, using a social history approach to deliver a scheme of work about, for example, the English Civil War, complicates students’ understanding of the ‘domains’ of history, shifting the focus so that students come to appreciate the numerous ways in which conflict impacts on the lives of ‘ordinary’ people. The story of Elizabeth Alkin – the Civil War-era nurse and Parliamentary-supporting spy – can help to do this, exposing the shortfalls of traditional disciplinary approaches.
2: Complicate and collapse traditional notions of ‘power’
Exam specifications (and school curriculum plans) are peppered with influential monarchs, politicians and revolutionaries, but we need to help students engage with different kinds of ‘power’ – and, beyond this, to understand the value of exploring narratives about the supposedly powerless. There were, of course, plenty of powerful individuals at the Tudor court, but the stories of people like Amy Dudley – neglected wife of Robert Dudley, one of Elizabeth I’s ‘favourites’ – help pupils gain new insight into the period. Asking students to ‘imaginatively reconstruct’ these individuals’ lives had they not been subsumed by the wills of others is a productive exercise. Counterfactual history requires students to engage their creativity; it also helps them conceive of history in a less deterministic way, focusing less on what did happen, and more on what real people in the past hoped, feared and dreamed might happen (which is much more interesting).
3: Make room for heroes, anti-heroes and those in between
It is important to give the disenfranchised a voice, lingering on moments of potential genius or insight that were overlooked during the individuals’ own lifetimes. However, a balanced curriculum should also feature the stories of the less straightforwardly ‘heroic’. Nazi propagandist Gertrud Scholtz-Klink had some rather warped values, but her story is worth telling because it illuminates aspects of life in Nazi Germany that can sometimes be overlooked: Scholtz-Klink was enthralled by Hitler’s regime, and she was one of many ‘ordinary’ people who propagated Nazi ideals. Similarly, Mir Mast challenges traditional conceptions of the gallant imperial soldiers who fought on behalf of the Allies in the First World War, but his desertion to the German side can help to deepen students’ understanding of the global war and its far-reaching ramifications.
4: Underline the value of cultural history
Historians of gender, sexuality and culture have impacted significantly on academic history in recent years, and it is important that we reflect these developments in our curricula, broadening students’ history diet as much as possible. Framing enquiries around cultural history gives students new insight into the real, lived experiences of people in the past, as well as spotlighting events or time periods that might formerly have been overlooked. A focus, for example, on popular entertainment (through a study of the theatre, the music hall or the circus) helps students construct vivid ‘pictures’ of the past, as they develop their understanding of ‘ordinary’ people’s experiences, tastes and everyday concerns.
There is, I think, real potential in adopting a more diversified approach to curriculum planning as a vehicle for embedding challenge and stretching the most able students. When asking students to apply their new understanding of diverse histories, activities centred upon the second-order concept of significance help students to articulate the contributions (or potential contributions) that these individuals made. It can also be interesting to probe students further, posing more challenging, disciplinary-focused questions like ‘How can social/cultural history enrich our understanding of the past?’ and ‘What can stories of the powerless teach us about __?’. In this way, students are encouraged to view history as an active discipline, one which is constantly reinvigorated by new and exciting approaches to studying the past.
About the author
Elena Stevens is a secondary school teacher and the history lead in her department. Having completed her PhD in the same year that she qualified as a teacher, Elena loves drawing upon her doctoral research and continued love for the subject to shape new schemes of work and inspire students’ own passions for the past. Her new book 40 Ways to Diversify the History Curriculum: A practical handbook (Crown House Publishing) will be published in June 2022.
NACE members can benefit from a 20% discount on all purchases from the Crown House Publishing website; for details of this and all NACE member offers, log in and visit our member offers page.
References
Further reading
- Counsell, C. (2021). ‘History’, in Cuthbert, A.S. and Standish, A., eds., What should schools teach? (London: UCL Press), pp. 154-173.
- Dennis, N. (2021). ‘The stories we tell ourselves: History teaching, powerful knowledge and the importance of context’, in Chapman, A., Knowing history in schools: Powerful knowledge and the powers of knowledge (London: UCL Press), pp. 216-233.
- Lockyer, B. and Tazzymant, T. (2016). ‘“Victims of history”: Challenging students’ perceptions of women in history.’ Teaching History, 165: 8-15.
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Posted By Kirstin Mulholland,
15 February 2022
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Dr Kirstin Mulholland, Content Specialist for Mathematics at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), shares a metacognitive strategy she’s found particularly helpful in supporting – and challenging – the thinking of higher-attaining pupils: “the debrief”.
Why is metacognition important?
Research tells us that metacognition and self-regulated learning have the potential to significantly benefit pupils’ academic outcomes. The updated EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit has compiled well over 200 school-based studies that reveal a positive average impact of around seven months progress. But it also recognises that "it can be difficult to realise this impact in practice as such methods require pupils to take greater responsibility for their learning and develop their understanding of what is required to succeed” .
Approaches to metacognition are often designed to give pupils a repertoire of strategies to choose from, and the skills to select the most suitable strategy for a given learning task. For high prior attaining pupils, this offers constructive and creative opportunities to further develop their knowledge and skills.
How can we develop metacognition in the classroom?
In my own classroom, a metacognitive strategy which I’ve found particularly helpful in supporting – and, crucially, challenging – the thinking of higher-attaining pupils is “the debrief”. The debrief as an effective learning strategy links to Recommendation 1 of the EEF’s Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning Guidance Report (2018), which highlights the importance of encouraging pupils to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning.
In a debrief, the role of the teacher is to support pupils to engage in “structured reflection”, using questioning to prompt learners to articulate their thinking, and to explicitly identify and evaluate the approaches used. These questions support and encourage pupils to reflect on the success of the strategies they used, consider how these could be used more effectively, and to identify other scenarios in which these could be useful.
Why does this matter for higher-attaining pupils?
When working in my own primary classroom, I found that encouraging higher-attaining pupils to explicitly consider their learning strategies in this way provides an additional challenge. Initially, many of the pupils I’ve worked with have been reluctant to slow down to consider the strategies they’ve used or “how they know”. Some have been overly focused on speed or always “getting things right” as an indication of success in learning.
When I first introduced the debrief into my own classroom, common responses from higher-attaining pupils were “I just knew” or “It was in my head”. However, what I also experienced was that, for some of these pupils, because they were used to quickly grasping new concepts as they were introduced, they didn’t always develop the strategies they needed for when learning was more challenging. This meant that, when faced with a task where they didn’t “just know”, some children lacked resilience or the strategies they needed to break into a problem and identify the steps needed to work through this.
As I incorporated the debrief more and more frequently into my lessons, I saw a significant shift. Through my questioning, I prompted children to reflect on the rationale underpinning the strategies they used. They were also able to hear the explanations given by others, developing their understanding of the range of options available to them. This helped to broaden their repertoire of knowledge and skills about how to be an effective learner.
How does the debrief work in practice?
Many of the questions we can use during the debrief prompt learners to reflect on the “what” and the “why” of the strategies they employed during a given task. For example,
- What exactly did you do? Why?
- What worked well? Why?
- What was challenging? Why?
- Is there a better way to…?
- What changes would you make to…? Why?
However, I also love asking pupils much more open questions such as “What have you learned about yourself and your learning?” The responses of the learners I work with have often astounded me! They have encompassed not just their understanding of the specific learning objectives identified for a given lesson, but also demonstrating pupils’ ability to make links across subjects and to prior learning. This has led to wider reflections about their metacognition – strengths or weaknesses specific to them, the tasks they encountered, or the strategies they had used – or their ability to effectively collaborate with others.
For me, the debrief provides an opportunity for pupils’ learning to really take flight. This is where reflections about learning move beyond the boundaries and limitations of a single lesson, and instead empower learners to consider the implications of this for their future learning.
For our higher-attaining pupils, this means enabling them to take increasing ownership over their learning, including how to do this ever more effectively. This independence and control is a vital step in becoming resilient, motivated and autonomous learners, which sets them up for even greater success in the future.
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Posted By Lauren Bellaera,
03 March 2021
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Dr Lauren Bellaera is Director of Research and Impact at The Brilliant Club, a UK-based charity which aims to increase the number of pupils from under-represented backgrounds that progress to highly selective universities. In this blog post (originally published on The Learning Scientists website), Dr Bellaera explores research-informed approaches to develop critical thinking skills in the classroom – ahead of her forthcoming live webinar on this theme for NACE members (recording available to watch back when logged in as a member).
What is critical thinking?
Many definitions of critical thinking exist – far too many to list here! – but one key definition that is often used is:
“[the] purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which judgment is based” (1, p. 3).
Despite the different definitions, there is a consensus regarding the dimensions of critical thinking and these dimensions have implications for how critical thinking is understood and taught. Critical thinking includes skills and dispositions (1). The former refers to reasoning and logical thinking, e.g., analysis, evaluation, and interpretation, whereas the latter refers to the tendency to do something, e.g., being open-minded (2). This blog post primarily is referring to the development of critical thinking skills as opposed to dispositions.
Critical thinking can be subject-specific or general, and thus can either be embedded within a specific subject or it can be developed independently of subject knowledge – something that we will revisit later.
How are critical thinking skills developed?
Developing critical thinking is often regarded as the cornerstone of higher education, but the reality is that many educational institutions are failing to develop critical thinking consistently and reliably in their students, with only around 6% of university graduates considered proficient (3), (4), (5).
Thus, there is a disconnect between the value of critical thinking and the degree to which it is supported by effective instruction (6). So, what does effective instruction look like? Helpfully, cognitive psychology provides us with some of the answers:
1. Context is king: the importance of background knowledge
The important question at hand here is: are some types of critical thinking more difficult to develop than others? The short answer is yes – subject-specific critical thinking appears to be easier to develop than general critical thinking. Studies have shown that critical thinking interventions improve subject-specific as opposed to general critical thinking (7), (8). This is also what we have found in our own research (9).
Possible reasons for why this is the case include the fact that the length of time needed to develop general critical thinking is much greater. This is coupled with the idea that general critical thinking is simply not as malleable as subject-specific critical thinking (10). For balance, though, some studies have reported improvements in general critical thinking, indicating that under the right circumstances, general improvement is possible (6), (11). The key message here is that background knowledge is an important part of teaching critical thinking and the extent to which you aim to develop critical thinking beyond the scope of the course content should be assessed dependent on what is achievable in the given context.
2. Be explicit: approaches to critical thinking instruction
The importance of background knowledge also has implications for critical thinking instruction (12). There are four main approaches to critical thinking instruction; general, infusion, immersion and mixed (13):
The general approach explicitly teaches critical thinking as a separate course outside of a specific subject. Content can be used to structure examples and activities but it is not related to subject-specific knowledge and tends to be about everyday events.
The infusion approach explicitly teaches both subject content and general critical thinking skills, where the critical thinking instruction is taught in the context of a specific subject.
Similarly, the immersion approach also teaches critical thinking within a specific subject, but it is taught implicitly as opposed to explicitly. This approach infers that critical thinking will be a consequence of interacting with and learning about the subject matter.
Lastly, the mixed approach is an amalgamation of the above three approaches where critical thinking is taught as a general subject alongside either the infusion or immersion approach in the context of a specific subject.
In terms of which are the best instructional approaches to adopt, evidence from a meta-analysis of over 100 studies showed that explicit approaches led to the greatest increase in critical thinking compared to implicit approaches. Specifically, the mixed approach where critical thinking was taught explicitly as a separate strand and within a specific subject was the most effective, whereas the implicit immersion approach was the least effective. This research suggests that developing critical thinking skills separately and then applying them to subject content explicitly works best (14).
3. Be strategic: effective teaching strategies
The knowledge that critical thinking needs to be deliberately and explicitly built into courses is integral to developing critical thinking. However, without the more granular details of exactly what teaching strategies sit beneath this, it will only get us so far. A number of teaching strategies have been shown to be effective, including the following:
Both answering and generating higher-order thinking questions have been shown to increase critical thinking (8) (14). For example, psychology students who were given higher-order thinking questions compared to lower-order thinking questions significantly improved their subject-specific critical thinking (8). Alison King’s work on higher-order questions provides some useful examples of question stems (15).
Ensuring that critical thinking is anchored in authentic instruction that allows students to engage with problems that make sense to them, and that enables further inquiry, is important (6). Some ways to facilitate authentic instruction include simulations and applied problem solving.
Closely related to higher-order questions and authentic instruction is dialogue – essentially discussions are needed to develop critical thinking. Teachers asking questions is particularly beneficial to the development of critical thinking, in part because teachers will often be asking questions that require higher-order thinking. A meta-analysis study showed that authentic instruction and dialogue were particularly effective for developing general critical thinking (6).
Engaging pupils in explicit self-reflection techniques promotes critical thinking. For example, asking students to judge their performance on a paper can increase their ability to understand where they need to improve and develop in the future (16). Other formalisations of this include reflection journals (17). In my current role, we also employ self-reflection activities to increase critical thinking.
So, to conclude, remember when developing critical thinking skills that context is king, always be explicit and always be strategic!
Find out more… On 29 April 2021 Dr Bellaera presented a live webinar for NACE members exploring the research on critical thinking and how to apply it in your school. Watch the recording here (login required). Plus: Dr Bellaera's research paper on critical thinking is available to read and download here until 4 August 2021.
References:
(1) Facione, P. (1990). Critical thinking: A statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (The Delphi Report).
(2) Ennis, R. H. (1996). Critical thinking. Upper-Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
(3) American Association of Colleges and Universities (2005). Liberal education outcomes: Preliminary report on student achievement in college. Washington, DC: AAC&U.
(4) Dunne, G. (2015). Beyond critical thinking to critical being: Criticality in higher education and life. International Journal of Educational Research, 71, 86-99.
(5) Ku, K. Y. (2009). Assessing students’ critical thinking performance: Urging for measurements using multi-response format. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4, 70- 76.
(6) Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Waddington, D. I., Wade, C. A., & Persson, T. (2015). Strategies for teaching students to think critically: a meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 85, 275-314.
(7) Williams, R. L., Oliver, R., & Stockdale, S. (2004). Psychological versus academic critical thinking as predictors and outcome measures in a large undergraduate human development course. The Journal of General Education, 53, 37-58.
(8) Renaud, R. D., & Murray, H. G. (2008). A comparison of a subject-specific and a general measure of critical thinking. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 3, 85-93.
(9) Bellaera, L., Debney, L., & Baker, S. (2018). An intervention for subject comprehension and critical thinking in mixed academic ability university students. The Journal of General Education.
(10) Facione, P. A., Facione, N. C, & Giancarlo, C. A. (2000). The disposition toward critical thinking: Its character, measurement, and relationship to critical thinking skill. Informal Logic, 20, 61-84.
(11) Halpern, D. F. (2001) Assessing the effectiveness of critical thinking instruction. The Journal of General Education, 50, 270–286.
(12) Lai, E. R. (2011). Critical thinking: A literature review. Pearson's Research Reports, 6, 1-49.
(13) Ennis, R. H. (1989). Critical thinking and subject specificity: Clarification and needed research. Educational Researcher, 18, 4-10.
(14) Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M. A., Tamim, R., & Zhang, D. (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 78, 1102-1134.
(15) King, A. (1995). Designing the instructional process to enhance critical thinking across the curriculum. Teaching of Psychology, 22, 13-17.
(16) Austin, Z., Gregory, P. A., & Chiu, S. (2008). Use of reflection-in-action and self-assessment to promote critical thinking among pharmacy students. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 72, 1-8.
(17) Mannion, J., & Mercer, N. (2016). Learning to learn: Improving attainment, closing the gap at Key Stage 3. The Curriculum Journal, 27, 246-271.
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Posted By Ann McCarthy,
17 November 2020
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Dr Ann McCarthy, NACE Associate and co-author of NACE’s new publication “Cognitive challenge: principles into practice”.
When you’re planning a lesson, are your first thoughts about content, resources and activities, or do you begin by thinking about learning and cognitive challenge? How often do you consider lessons from the viewpoint of your more able pupils? Highly able pupils often seek out cognitively challenging work and can become distressed or disengaged if they are set tasks which are constantly too easy.
NACE’s new research publication, “ Cognitive challenge: principles into practice”, marks the first phase in our “Making Space for Able Learners” project. Developed in partnership with NACE Challenge Award-accredited schools, the research examines the impact of cognitive challenge in current school practice against a backdrop of relevant research. What do we mean by ‘cognitive challenge’?
Cognitive challenge can be summarised as an approach to curriculum and pedagogy which focuses on optimising the engagement, learning and achievement of highly able children. The term is used by NACE to describe how learners become able to understand and form complex and abstract ideas and solve problems. Cognitive challenge prompts and stimulates extended and strategic thinking, as well as analytical and evaluative processes.
To provide highly able pupils with the degree of challenge that will allow them to flourish, we need to build our planning and practice on a solid foundation.
This involves understanding both the nature of our pupils as learners and the learning opportunities we’re providing. When we use “challenge” as a routine, learning will be extended at specific times on specific topics – which has useful but limited benefit. However, by strategically building cognitive challenge into your teaching, pupils’ learning expertise, their appetite for learning and their wellbeing will all improve.
What does this look like in practice?
The research identified three core areas:
1. Design and management of cognitively challenging learning opportunities
In the most successful “cognitive challenge” schools, leaders have a clear vision and ambition for pupils, which explicitly reflects an understanding of teaching more able pupils in different contexts and the wider benefits of this for all pupils. This vision is implemented consistently across the school. All teachers engage with the culture and promote it in their own classrooms, involving pupils in their own learning. When you walk into any classroom in the school, pupils are working to the same model and expectation, with a shared understanding of what they need to do.
Pupils are able to take control of their learning and become more self-regulatory in their behaviours and increasingly autonomous in their learning. Through intentional and well-planned management of teaching and learning, children move from being recipients in the learning environment to effective learners who can call on the resources and challenges presented. They understand more about their own learning and develop their curiosity and creativity by extending and deepening their understanding and knowledge.
2. Rich and extended talk and cognitive discourse to support cognitive challenge
The importance of questions and questioning in effective learning is well understood, but the importance of depth and complexity of questioning is perhaps less so. When you plan purposeful, stimulating and probing questions, it gives pupils the freedom to develop their thought processes and challenge, engage and deepen their understanding. Initially the teacher may ask questions, but through modelling high-order questioning techniques, pupils in turn can ask questions which expose new ways of thinking.
This so-called “dialogic teaching” frames teaching and learning within the perspective of pupils and enhances learning by encouraging children to develop their thinking and use their understanding to support their learning. Initially, pupils might use the knowledge the teacher has given them, but when they’re shown how to use classroom discourse effectively, they’ll start to work alone, with others or with the teacher to extend their repertoire.
By using an enquiry-orientated approach, you can more actively engage children in the production of meaning and acquisition of new knowledge and your classroom will become a more interactive and language-rich learning domain where children can increase their fluency, retrieval and application of knowledge.
3. Curriculum organisation and design
How can you ensure your curriculum is organised to allow cognitive challenge for more able pupils? You need to consider:
- What is planned for the students
- What is delivered to the students
- What the students experience
Schools with a high-quality curriculum for cognitive challenge use agreed teaching approaches and a whole-school model for teaching and learning. Teachers expertly and consistently utilise key features relating to learning preferences, knowledge acquisition and memory.
Planning a curriculum for more able pupils means providing a clear direction for their learning journey. It’s necessary to think beyond individual subjects, assessment systems, pedagogy and extracurricular opportunities, and to look more deeply at the ways in which these link together for the benefit of your pupils. If teachers can understand and deliver this curriculum using their subject knowledge and pedagogical skills, and if your school can successfully make learning visible to pupils, you’ll be able to move from well-practised routines to highly successful and challenging learning experiences.
Taking it further…
If we’re going to move beyond the traditional monologic and didactic models of teaching, we need to recast the role of teacher as a facilitator of learning within a supportive learning environment. For more able pupils this can be taken a step further. If you can build cognitive challenge into your curriculum and the way you manage learning, and support this with a language-rich classroom, the entire nature of teaching and learning can change. Your highly able pupils will become increasingly autonomous and more self-reliant. They’ll become masters of their learning as they gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter. You can then extend your role even further, from learning facilitator to “learner activator”.
This blog post is based on an article originally written for and published by Teach Primary magazine – read the full version here.
Additional reading and support:
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Posted By Chris Yapp,
08 September 2020
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Dr Chris Yapp, NACE Patron
This past month has been marked for me by the death of two major influencers on my thinking and life over 30 years. Lord Harry Renwick died from COVID-related complications and Sir Ken Robinson from cancer.
Harry was a past Chairman of the British Dyslexia Association, a lifelong passion, and an early supporter of the societal and economic good that computing could bring. He was generous to me with his time and opened many doors in parliament, but also outside. Importantly, he led me to the work of Thomas G West. I still have a signed copy of “In the Mind’s Eye” (first edition) on my shelf. I have been delighted to discover that there is a new edition now available.
Tom’s work in the USA on visual giftedness ought to be as influential and well-known as Howard Gardner’s books. His evidence on visual thinking and creativity in science and mathematics made sense of various anecdotes I had collected over the years but could not make coherent.
That is where the link with Sir Ken Robinson comes in. I did not know him well; we met five times over around 15 years, the last time being a decade ago. I would like to add my tribute to him and address a criticism of his thinking that has been raised in many of the otherwise warm obituaries and tributes to a life well-lived.
I followed Ken Robinson speaking at a conference around 1995. My advice to anyone who would listen was, “Do not accept an invitation to speak after Ken Robinson.” At that time the usual reaction was, “Who is he?” I don’t think there is anyone connected with education now – since his famous TED lecture "Do schools kill creativity?" – who would ask that. He was a brilliant communicator, of that there is no doubt, but I want to pay tribute to him outside the podium.
He was as engaging and fun away from the speaker platform as he was on it. He was an avid networker who loved to connect people who he thought would find each other stimulating company. His network of contacts was truly global. An educator I much admire, Richard Gerver, who was mentored by Sir Ken, has written a very personal tribute here. It is well worth a read.
1999 was the 40th anniversary of a famous speech by C P Snow, “The Two Cultures”. I gave a talk at a conference on the “Renaissance of Learning”. After leaving the platform Ken came up to me. He wanted to talk about one slide. I had argued that there was a false dichotomy in education policy in the UK but also internationally, that the arts were creative, and engineering was a discipline. Drawing on C P Snow’s ideas I suggested that you could not be a great engineer if you were not creative or a good artist without discipline. I had given examples of “seeing” the mathematics as an aesthetic experience. Ken wanted the reference, which was to Tom West’s work. His advice to me was simple: “Keep saying it, one day they’ll listen.”
Over the years I have been contacted by people around the world on email or social media, where the opening line has been: “I met Sir Ken at a conference and he suggested I look you up. He said you’d been thinking about this for years.”
None of the exchanges that followed have ever been with timewasters. I think the last was around five years ago, five years after we last spoke. He used his global celebrity status to bring like minds together. He was far humbler and more cautious than the public speaker image may project.
The criticism I want to address is this: that he did not appreciate creativity in science and maths. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, he avoided the celebrity status trap of pontificating on things that he had little mastery of. I think he was right to do so.
Of course, he was a passionate about the arts, but he had a genuine interest in creativity in all its forms. The people he pointed in my direction were engaging with his ideas in physics, chemistry, mathematics and many more disciplines.
He will be much missed as an inspiration, but he has left a legacy of a life lived well.
If you are passionate about creativity in education, I can pay no finer tribute to Sir Ken than his own words to me: “Keep saying it, one day they’ll listen.”
About the author
NACE patron Dr Chris Yapp is an independent consultant specialising in innovation and future thinking. He has 30 years’ experience in the ICT industry, with a specialisation in the strategic impact of ICT on the public sector, creative industries, digital inclusion and social enterprises. With a longstanding interest in the future of education, he has written and lectured extensively on the challenges of personalised learning, lifelong learning, educational transformation and the knowledge economy.
Join Chris at this year’s NACE Leadership Conference (16-20 November) for a session exploring the use of learning technologies to extend and enrich learning.
View the conference programme.
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Posted By Hilary Lowe,
11 December 2019
Updated: 03 December 2019
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NACE Education Adviser Hilary Lowe goes in search of the perfectly pitched challenge...
Building on NACE’s professional development and research activities, we continue to explore and refine the concept of ‘challenge’ in teaching and learning for high achievement – the central tenet of much of our work and the heart of provision for very able learners.
What do we mean by challenge?
The notion of challenge is multi-faceted and goes further than designing individual learning and assessment tasks. It merits a subheading which makes it clear what we mean. As a provisional and necessarily evolving definition:
“Challenge leads to deep and wide learning at an optimal level of understanding and capability. It encompasses appropriate learning activities but is more than that. Its other facets include, for example: the learning environment, the language of classroom interactions, and learning resources, together with the skills and attributes which the learner needs to engage with challenging learning encounters. These encounters may take place both within and beyond the classroom.”
Some of these building blocks coincide with pedagogical approaches and theoretical perspectives which enable challenging learning for a wide group of learners. It is important therefore that we also interrogate these perspectives and adapt related classroom practices to ensure relevance and application for the most able learners.
Our work on challenge in teaching and learning is part of a wider campaign that will also explore and promote the importance of a curriculum model which offers sufficient opportunity and challenge for more able learners.
Below, we focus on the design and delivery of challenging tasks and activities in the classroom which are likely to enable more able learners to achieve highly and to engage in healthy struggle.
Pitching it right: keep the challenge one step ahead
If teaching for challenge is providing difficult work that causes learners to think deeply and engage in healthy struggle, then when learners struggle just outside their comfort zone they will be likely to learn most. Low challenge with positive attitudes to learning and high-level skills and knowledge can generate boredom within a lesson, just as high challenge with poor learning attitudes and a low base of knowledge and skills can create anxiety. Getting the flow right, ensuring the level of challenge is constantly just beyond the learners’ level of skills and knowledge and their ability to engage will then create deeper learning and mastery.
By scaffolding work too much and for too long, and stealing the struggle from learners, we can undermine expectations and restrict the ranges of response that our learners could potentially develop unaided.
Implications for planning and teaching
What then are the implications for planning and for using every opportunity inside and outside the classroom to “raise the game”? Challenge should involve planned opportunities to move a learner to a higher level of achievement. This might therefore include planning for and finding opportunities in classroom interactions for:
- Tasks which encourage deeper and broader learning
- Use of higher-order and critical thinking processes
- Demanding concepts and content
- Abstract ideas
- Patterns, connections, synthesis
- Challenging texts
- Modelling and expecting precise technical and disciplinary language
- Taking account of faster rates of learning
- Questioning which promotes and elicits higher-order responses
When considering the level of challenge in your classroom, ask:
- Do you set high expectations which allow for the potential more able learners to show themselves?
- Have you reflected on prior learning and cognitive ability to inform your plans?
- Is your classroom organised to promote differentiation?
- Do you plan for a range of questions that will scaffold, support and challenge the full range of ability in your class?
- Can you recognise when learners are under- or over-challenged and adapt accordingly?
- Are you using examples of excellence to model?
- Will learners be challenged from the minute they enter?
Share with your learners your expert knowledge, your passion, your curiosity, your love of the subject and of learning. Have high expectations – and resist the urge to steal their struggle!
Challenge in the classroom: upcoming NACE CPD
New for 2020, NACE is running a series of one-day courses focusing on approaches to challenge and support more able learners in key curriculum areas. Led by subject experts, each course will explore research-informed approaches to create a learning environment of high challenge and aspiration, with practical strategies for challenge in each subject and key stage.
Details and booking:
An earlier version of this article was published in NACE Insight, the termly magazine for NACE members. Past editions are available here (login required).
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Posted By Sue Cowley,
11 November 2019
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Alongside her webinar for NACE members, author and teacher trainer Sue Cowley shares five ways to ensure all learners are stretched and challenged – it’s differentiation, but not as you might expect!
It is tempting to think of differentiation as being about preparing different materials for different students – the classic ‘differentiation by task’. However, this type of differentiation is the most time-consuming for teachers in terms of planning. It can also be hard to create stretch through this approach, because it is difficult to pitch tasks at exactly the right level.
In reality, rather than being about preparing different activities, differentiation is a subtle skill that is not easily spotted ‘in action’. For instance, it might include adaptations to the teacher’s use of language, or ‘in the moment’ changes to a lesson, based on the teacher’s knowledge of individual learners.
1. Identify and account for prior knowledge
The highest-attaining students often have a great deal of knowledge about a diverse range of subjects – typically those areas of learning that fascinate them. They are likely to be autodidacts – reading widely around a favoured subject at home to find out more. Sometimes they will teach themselves new skills without any direct teacher input – for instance using YouTube to learn a language that is not on offer at school. At times, their level of knowledge or skill might outpace yours.
A key frustration for high attainers is the feeling that they are being taught things in school that they already know. Find ways to assess and ascertain the prior knowledge of your class before you start a new topic, and incorporate this information into your teaching. One simple strategy is to ask the class to write down the things they already know about a topic, before you begin to study it, and any questions that they want answered during your studies. Use these questions as a simple way to provide extension opportunities in lessons.
Where a learner has extensive prior knowledge of a topic, ask if they would like to present some of the knowledge they have to the class – this can help build confidence and presentational skills. It can also be useful for high-attaining learners to explain something they understand easily to a child who doesn’t ‘get it’ so quickly. The act of having to rephrase or reconceptualise something in order to teach it requires the learner to build empathy, understand alternative perspectives and think laterally.
2. Build on interests to extend
Where a high-attaining learner has an interest in a subject, they typically want to explore it far more widely than you have time to do at school. Encourage your high attainers to read widely around a subject outside of lesson time by providing them with information about suitable materials. A lovely way to do this is to give them suitable adult-/higher-level texts to read (especially some of your own books on a subject from home).
3. Inch wide, mile deep
When thinking about how to make an aspect of a subject more challenging, it is helpful to think about curriculum as being made up of both surface-level material and at the same time ideas that require much deeper levels of understanding. A useful metaphor is a chasm that must be crossed: those learners who struggle need you to build a bridge to help them to get over it. However, other students will be able to climb all the way down into the chasm to see what is at the bottom, before climbing up the other side.
For each area of a subject, consider what you can add to create depth. This might typically be about digging into an area more deeply, going laterally with a concept, or asking students to use more complex terminology to describe abstract ideas.
4. Use questioning techniques to boost thinking
The effective use of questions is vital for stretching your highest-attaining learners. Studies have shown that teachers tend to use far more closed questions than open ones, even though open-ended questions lead to more challenge because they require higher-order thinking.
Socratic questioning is a very useful way to increase the level of difficulty of your questions, because it asks learners to dig down into the thinking behind questions and to provide evidence for their answers. You can find out more about this technique at www.criticalthinking.org.
Another useful approach to questioning is a technique commonly used in early years settings, and known as ‘sustained shared thinking’ (for more on this, see this report on the Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years Project). In this approach, the child’s thinking is developed through the use of a ‘serve and return’ conversation in which open-ended questions are asked to build understanding.
5. Consider learner roles
Taking on a fresh role or perspective can really help to challenge our thinking. This is particularly so where we are asked to argue in favour of a viewpoint that we do not ourselves hold. This encourages the learner to build empathy with different viewpoints and to consider how a topic looks from alternative perspectives. A simple way to do this is by asking students to argue the opposite position to that which they actually hold, during a class debate.
Sue Cowley is an author, presenter and teacher educator. Her book The Ultimate Guide to Differentiation is published by Bloomsbury.
To find out more about these techniques for creating stretch and challenge, watch Sue Cowley's webinar on this topic (member login required).
Not yet a NACE member? Find out more, and join our mailing list for free updates and free sample resources.
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Posted By Helen Green,
08 May 2019
Updated: 06 August 2019
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In April 2019, Dubai’s Hartland International School became the third school outside the UK to gain the NACE Challenge Award, in recognition of high-quality whole-school provision for more able learners. Amongst the school’s strengths, the Award report highlighted Hartland’s innovative and wide-reaching enrichment programme. Here, Gifted and Talented Coordinator Helen Green shares 10 challenging enrichment activities to try in your own school…
At Hartland International School we believe in the potential of all children to achieve. All students are given access to enrichment activities as part of the school day, four days a week, and many of our more able learners are invited to specific sessions targeted at their strengths and interests. It is an innovative programme which supports our aim of stretch and challenge for all.
All teachers are expected to deliver one or two enrichment activities, depending on their timetable; these sessions are planned for and monitored for consistency and value. Our sports provider delivers sessions to all students once a week. All enrichment activities are financed by the school, except those involving external providers (for example skiing and sailing).
Based on our experience of delivering a diverse and ambitious enrichment programme, here are 10 challenging enrichment activities to engage your more able learners…
1. Debating
Debating is an engaging, active learner-centred activity. Reasoning, research and public speaking are just some of the positives behind learning how to be a great debater. From planning an argument (even if you don’t agree with it), to choosing your words wisely, debating will help you take on whatever life chooses to throw at you. It is always good to have a debate showcase to aim for. Consider collaborating with other schools to hold a debate morning, where students can practise what they have learned over the course of the enrichment course. Alternatively, inviting experts in can also be very motivating (for example through an organisation such as Debate Mate, who offer training as well as running showcase debates).
2. General knowledge
The importance of general knowledge reaches far beyond books and exams. Whether in the classroom or the workplace, good general knowledge can help in all walks of life. Having general knowledge about different countries and geographies helps students to form a perspective about the world and a culture that may be different from their own. In a school with over 60 nationalities, this is especially important to us. This enrichment activity should be offered to all interested students; often it is the more creative students who surprise us with their quest for knowledge of their surroundings. This year we have found resources from Quiz Club to be really useful in supporting children in developing their general knowledge, as well as many library- and research-based enrichment sessions, in preparation for competitions with other schools.
3. Critical thinking
Critical thinking at a critical age… In this enrichment course, learners are taught to reason, construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Through maths games and problem solving, critical thinking activities aid in making sense of maths problems and develop perseverance in solving them. This enrichment is particularly suitable for higher-ability mathematicians ready for a challenge.
4. Latin for beginners
Learning Latin encourages non-linear, outside-the-box thinking, as well as promoting greater focus and patience. This enrichment could be offered to highly able readers to enhance their enjoyment of literature. However, there are also some really fun Latin for beginner courses around (for example Minimus “the mouse that made Latin cool”), which would appeal to many students.
5. Biz kids
Many students have aspirations to run their own business and young entrepreneurs should be encouraged and supported to brainstorm their ideas; produce and market their product; and of course sell to the consumer. There are many ways to run this enrichment, from a Dragon’s Den-style approach to a young entrepreneurs programme which encourages students to develop their entrepreneurial skills. We spent a term developing, marketing and producing our products and ideas and then sold them to fund further ventures at the end of term.
6. Cooking through literacy
Most young people enjoy the challenge of cooking. If you have cooking facilities in your school, a great way to engage students in reading is to combine a cookery and reading enrichment activity. The Little Library Café has some great resources to facilitate this – providing recipes that are linked to a book, with a short note from the author. Students should be given ample time (maybe while their items are cooking) to be able to read and discuss the book and evaluate why the author chose to include the food in their writing. This is one of our most popular enrichments!
7. Research projects
Through detailed research on a project of interest to them, students develop critical thinking expertise, as well as effective analytical research and communication skills, that are incredibly beneficial. Ultimately research is essential to the development of our globalised society, so this is a great skill to develop from an early age. We find that our more able learners really embrace the challenge of research, being able to evaluate their findings and learn in depth about an area of interest.
8. Lego design challenges
At Hartland, we believe everyone can be good at maths; it is a set of skills that can be learned and practised. Through engineering and design challenges using Lego – such as designing transportation devices, musical monsters, bridges and ultimate playgrounds – our pupils are encouraged to be open-minded and flexible, thus developing the growth mindset that is so important to developing young mathematicians. The challenge for educators is to encourage this mindset and flexibility so that it stays with these young learners throughout their time in education and beyond.
9. Literary Society
Our Literary Society is an invite-only club for adventurous and keen readers in Years 8 and 9, designed to stretch and challenge students who have demonstrated an interest in literature. It combines great stories with stimulating discussion and probing debate. Each week students participate in discussion and activities that are intended to help them display their intellectual and independent thinking skills whilst discovering new literature. It is a safe space where they can explore and discuss without the worry of assessment or judgement. Students at Hartland have recently chosen “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett to discuss. The aim is to invite various guest speakers and other teachers to join and inspire our discussions. We are also hoping to link with a secondary school in the UK to collaborate across the miles.
10. Hour of code
During our coding enrichment, students create animated stories and interactive experiences while learning essential programming concepts with Scratch, such as developing their logic skills; improving their understanding of algorithms and learning how to debug their code. This drag-and-drop, creative environment developed by MIT uses sprites and code blocks to set a foundation of computational thinking. In addition as part of their gaming project, students managed to recreate popular games from the 1980s such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Although this is a challenging activity, many students thrive on this challenge and thoroughly enjoy the experience.
Read more: 7 ideas to enrich your curriculum for more able learners
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Posted By Matthew Williams,
15 April 2019
Updated: 07 August 2019
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What are Oxbridge admissions tutors really trying to assess during the famously gruelling interview process? Dr Matt Williams, Access Fellow at Jesus College Oxford, shares “four Cs” used to gauge candidates’ suitability for a much sought-after place.
Oxbridge interviews have taken on near-mythic status as painful reckonings. The way they are sometimes described, a trial by ordeal sounds more appealing.
I used to think as much, before I became an interviewer at Oxford. I’ve worked on politics admissions for several colleges for years now. And “work” truly is the verb here. Admissions tutors and officers at Oxford and Cambridge work very hard over months to ensure they choose the best applicants, and do so fairly. It’s honestly heartening to see how committed tutors are.
It is not even remotely in our interests to put candidates under emotional strain. So a mythic sense of interviews as tests of psychological resilience is nonsense. At Oxford and Cambridge we invite prospective students to come and stay in our colleges, eat in our dining halls and chat with our students and staff. As you’d hope from any professional job interview, the process is friendly, transparent and focused on encouraging the best performances from candidates. Below I’ve outlined a few concrete ideas as to what we are looking for, and how students can prepare.
In the interviews we tend to scribble down notes as the candidate is talking. But what exactly are we recording? What makes for good, mediocre and bad performances at interview? I record lots of data during interviews, which can be collated under four Cs. These help us gauge, accurately, a candidate’s academic ability and potential. This ultimately, is all we are testing at interview…
1. Communication
Candidates do not need to be self-confident and comfortable in expressing their ideas. Our successful candidates are mostly just normal people, with the sort of self-effacing humility you’d expect from a randomly selected stranger. As such, candidates should not be put off by cock-of-the-walk types who seem instantly at ease in our ancient surroundings.
We are not judging candidates by their ease of manner, but we do judge candidates by their ability to communicate. Meaning that candidates need to be able and willing to share their thinking as clearly as possible. Even if a candidate nervously glances at the floor and speaks softly, provided they answer our questions and help us understand their views they will be performing well.
More specifically, we are seeking answers to the questions we pose. There may not be a single answer, but it is not terribly helpful if students try to wriggle out of responding to us. As an example, the following question doesn’t have one correct (or even any correct) response:
“Can animals be said to have rights?”
Candidates need to avoid the temptation of saying either that the question is unanswerable, or sitting on the fence. Such responses are, to be blunt, intellectually lazy. We commonly have candidates “challenging the terms of the question” and thereby not answering the question at all. That is easy. Anyone can do that. Far harder is sticking your neck out and offering a solution, however tentative, to a very complex puzzle.
That said, we’re not expecting candidates to alight on their preferred solution immediately. So candidates should “show their working” and talk through their ideas as they coalesce into a solution. They can challenge aspects of the question and enquire about the wording. It may take the whole interview to come up with an answer, but at least an answer of sorts is being proposed.
2. Critical thinking
The question as to whether animals have rights is contestable. We will challenge any answer a candidate offers to see how they can defend their position. We are not expecting the candidate to drop their resolve and agree with us, but nor should they cohere rigidly to their position if it is clearly flawed. The important point is that candidates are open-minded to the possibility of other, perhaps better, solutions to the puzzle at hand, and a willingness to critique their own thinking.
Often candidates feel that they have done badly when they face critical questioning. Far from it. This is normal and reflects the fact that they have answered the question and given us (the interviewers) something to explore further.
3 and 4. Coherence and Creativity in argumentation
When posing critical questions we may encourage the candidate to identify incoherences in their case. Let’s say they argue that dogs have rights, but racing hounds do not. This could be a category error and we might ask whether they meant to say that all dogs except racing hounds have rights, or if they have made a critical misstep in the case.
Again, having a point of incoherence identified is not a bad sign. What matters is how the candidate responds. If they fail to recognise or resolve a true incoherence, that could suggest an inability to self-critically evaluate an argument.
Creativity, meanwhile, is something of an X-factor. We’re not expecting utterly original thinking in response to our intractable intellectual puzzles. But we do appreciate a willingness not to simply parrot ideas from A-level, or from the press. We appreciate a nascent (but not fully formed) capacity in a candidate to stand on their own intellectual feet.
This is where candidates can (but don’t have to) draw on wider reading or other academic experiences they have had. A lot of candidates are keen to show off what they know, but we’re testing how they think. So, we don’t want long quotes from highfalutin sources, per se; we want the candidates to come up with their own ideas, even if those ideas are half-formed and tentatively expressed.
The bottom line is that we are not looking for perfection, or else there would be little point in seeking to educate the candidates. We’re looking for potential, and it is often raw potential. Therefore willingness, motivation and enthusiasm all play a big part in the four Cs as well.
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Posted By Natasha Goodfellow,
14 February 2019
Updated: 08 April 2019
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Oracy skills underpin all areas of learning and life – and they certainly shouldn’t be taught only to those who join the school debating club, argues Natasha Goodfellow of the English-Speaking Union. Build oracy into every lesson with these five simple activities – suitable for all learners, phases and subjects.
Think about what you’ve done today. How much time have you spent talking, explaining, listening to deduce meaning or ease conflict? How much time have you spent persuading people to your point of view, or to do something you want doing, versus writing essays or doing maths?
Most communication is verbal, rather than written. And yet oracy receives much less attention in the school curriculum than literacy and numeracy. Even in schools which pride themselves on their oracy results, too often the teaching happens in debate or public speaking clubs as opposed to lesson time.
Why make oracy part of every lesson?
While a lunchtime or after-school club can be a good place to start, participants will generally be self-selecting, precluding many of those who might benefit the most. It’s far better to introduce an oracy element into every lesson.
As good teachers know, oracy is about far more than speaking and listening alone. Oracy activities encourage learners to voice and defend their opinions, to think for themselves and to listen critically. And, perhaps most importantly, they build confidence and resilience. However able an individual may be, it’s one thing to argue a point in an essay; it’s quite another to do that in person, in front of an audience, with others picking holes in your arguments, questioning your thought processes or your conclusions. And it’s another leap again to review the feedback and adjust your opinion or calmly concede that you may have been wrong.
With regular practice, what might initially seem uncomfortable or impossible is soon recognised as simply another skill to be learnt. Happily, it’s all part of a virtuous circle – the better learners are at speaking, the better their written work will be. The firmer their grip on the facts, the more convincing their arguments. And, ultimately, the more they are challenged and asked to think for themselves, the more rewarding their education will be.
Here are five simple oracy activities to incorporate in your daily teaching:
1. Balloon debate
Display a range of themed prompts on the board. For instance, in chemistry or physics you might choose different inventors; in PSHE you might choose “protein”, “fat” and “sugar”. Ask the class to imagine they are in a balloon which is rapidly sinking and that one person or item must be thrown out of the balloon. Each learner should choose a prompt and prepare a short speech explaining why he/she/it deserves to stay in the balloon. For each of the items listed, choose one learner to take part in the debate. The rest of the class should vote for the winners/losers.
2. Draw a line
This activity works well for lessons that synthesise knowledge. For example, you may use it to recap a scheme of work. Draw a line on the board. Label it “best to worst”, “most certain to least certain”, or whatever is appropriate. Learners should copy this line so they have their own personal (or small group) version. Introduce items – for example, in geography, different sources of energy; in history, difference sources of evidence. As you discuss each item and recap its main features, learners should place the item on their own personal line. In small groups or as a class, learners can then discuss any disagreements before placing the item on the collective class line on the board.
3. Where do you stand?
Assign one end of the room “agree” and the other “disagree”. When you give a statement, learners should move to the relevant side of the room depending on whether they agree or disagree. Using quick-fire, true/false questions allows you to swiftly assess understanding of lesson content, while more open questions allow learners to explain and defend their thinking.
4. Talking bursts
At appropriate points in a lesson, ask individual learners to speak for 30 seconds on a theme connected to the subject in hand. This could be in a colloquial mode – an executioner arguing that hanging should not be banned, for example; or a more formal mode – such as a summary of the history of capital punishment. Begin with your more able learners as a model; soon the whole class will be used to this approach.
5. Praise and feedback
Finally, make time for praise and feedback – both during oracy activities and as part of general class discussions. Invite comments on how speeches could be improved in future, and recognise and celebrate learners when they make good arguments or use appropriate vocabulary.
Natasha Goodfellow is Consultant Editor at the English-Speaking Union where she oversees the publication of the charity’s magazine, Dialogue, and content on its website. She has worked as an English teacher abroad and is now a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Week Junior.
NACE is proud to partner with the English-Speaking Union (ESU), an educational charity working to ensure young people have the speaking and listening skills and cultural understanding they need to thrive. The ESU’s Discover Debating programme, a sustainable programme designed to improve listening and speaking skills and self-confidence in Years 5 and 6, is now open for applications, with large subsidies available for schools with high levels of FSM and EAL. To find out more and get involved, visit www.esu.org/discover-debating
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Plus: for more oracy-based challenges to use in your classroom, watch our webinar on this topic (member login required).
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