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.
Emma Sanderson, Head of English at NACE member and Challenge Award-accredited Hartland International School (Dubai), shares advice for successful use of “Genius Hour” project-based learning to challenge and motivate learners, inspired by Google’s “20% time”.
As teachers, our awareness of the importance of challenging questions is always at the forefront of our minds, particularly with our more able learners. However, the onus of asking challenging questions shouldn’t always be placed on the teacher. Cue Genius Hour, an idea inspired by Google’s “20% time”, in which employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on any project of their choosing, on the condition that it ultimately benefits the company in some way, and which is famously credited with giving rise to many of Google’s most successful innovations.
Google’s “20% time” is similar to the use of Genius Hour in our school: encouraging students to take ownership of their learning by using a proportion of curriculum time to focus on topics they are passionate about. By coming up with their own driving question to focus their research, students manage their own learning journey and subsequently become even more engaged with the learning process.
Here are three key steps to use Genius Hour project-based learning effectively:
1) Support students to develop their driving question.
The driving question of the project will become the focus of the students’ research. Whilst students may be tempted to simply find out more information about a topic close to their heart, the key is to construct a question that allows for in-depth research and is also broad enough for students to include their personal opinions. Even our most able learners will need support with this task, and for this, question stems can be incredibly useful:
What does _______ reveal about _________?
To what extent does…?
What motivates_________?
How would you develop…?
What alternatives are there for…?
How can technology be used to…?
What assumptions are there about…?
What are the [ethical] implications of…?
How can we challenge…?
What would happen if…?
How can we improve…?
What might happen if…?
Students might be encouraged to come up with solutions to real-life problems or delve into ideas linked to current affairs that they are intrigued by. Either way, these broad question stems allow for thorough exploration of a topic.
2) Help students develop their research skills.
Left to their own devices, students may be tempted to simply Google their question and see what answers come up. Instead, offer guidance on the best and most reliable sources of information for their project.
It may be that students are directed towards relevant reference books in the library. Additionally, online resources can prove invaluable; the Encyclopaedia Britannica offers a wealth of knowledge for students, whilst news websites aimed at teenagers (for example Newsela and The Day) encourage students to form their own opinions on current affairs and offer suggestions for further reading.
Our more able learners may be more adept at focusing their internet searches and filtering through the vast array of results. If this is the case, students would be expected to determine whether a source is reliable or biased and should be confident at citing their sources.
3) Encourage creativity in how students present their findings.
Ideally, students will be excited and motivated to complete their Genius Hour project, and originality in how they present their results should be encouraged. Students may want to create a video, make a presentation, write a passionate and persuasive speech, design an informative leaflet… The more freedom the students have, the more their creativity will flourish.
One of our students gave a rousing speech on the question, “What alternatives are there to living on planet Earth?” (ultimately concluding there were none and that we need to change our lifestyles in order to save the planet). Another offered a passionate presentation on the theme “How can we improve Earth’s biodiversity while allowing people to still eat meat and plants?” And after witnessing the impact of Covid-19 first hand, one student wrote an insightful article to answer the question, “What has Covid-19 revealed about our society in 2020?”
This approach to project-based learning can also be effectively applied during distance learning – students can be given the success criteria for the project and set the challenge of managing their own time. There is ample opportunity to use technology to give presentations remotely, either live through Zoom or Teams, or recorded individually using a platform such as Flipgrid.
In summary…
Overall, Genius Hour is a fantastic tool to promote deeper thinking in the classroom, whilst also having huge benefits across the wider curriculum. We have found this approach has worked particularly well with Key Stage 3 students and is the perfect opportunity to refine the research and presentation skills required at GCSE, whilst also impacting positively across the curriculum in all lessons. Furthermore, it sends the message to students that their passions outside of school are valued, which in itself can prove to be hugely motivational. Presenting their findings at the end of the project instils confidence in our learners, giving them the vital communication, leadership and time management skills necessary for life beyond education.
Further reading: “Cognitive challenge: principles into practice”
NACE’s report “Cognitive challenge: principles into practice” explores approaches to curriculum and pedagogy which optimise the engagement, learning and achievement of very able young people, combining relevant research and theory with examples of current practice in NACE Challenge Award-accredited schools. Preview and order here.
Alison Tarrant, Chief Executive, School Library Association (SLA)
I struggle with addressing the importance of diversity accurately, but fundamentally I think Ruth Bader Ginsberg sums it up best:
“When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.”
Every child should read about how other children live and about alternative experiences, and I don’t think we should limit this to a certain percentage or context. Until children can pick up a book and not be surprised that a character looks like them (or doesn’t look like them), we have work to do. It’s vital that the resources children engage with are noticeably representative (there are many studies which show even animals are more likely to be male in books, so the argument that animals or monsters are equally representative doesn’t work). For more on this, watch the SLA's webinar "Representation for All" – available for NACE members until the end of January 2021.
If we look at BookTrust Represents' interim research and CLPE’s Reflecting Realities survey of ethnic representation in UK children’s literature, both report some positive progress in recent years:
3% growth in the number of authors and illustrators of colour published in the UK in the last two years.
7% of the children’s books published in the UK over the last three years feature characters of colour.
This is progress, but the pace of change doesn’t yet seem to match the level of the discussion which has taken place. I’m hopeful that the new initiatives launched in light of the events of this year will lead to a significant increase on these figures next year. In the meantime, how can schools ensure their resources are diverse, representative and inclusive?
Key questions to consider
For many schools, the topic of diversity and inclusion prompted self-evaluation this year. An audit of the curriculum and/or resources may have taken place, though this can be done in many different ways. Here are some core questions to ask when thinking about diversity within your resources:
How many of your resources are written by ethnic minorities or people seen less in the public eye? This may include consideration for UK-based ethnic minorities, authors with disabilities, authors from working-class backgrounds.
How many of the resources reflect stories from these groups? When thinking about this, consideration should also be given to how those characters are represented; if every story which includes a black character shows them suffering abuse, it embeds a story overall. Are these stories “issues” stories, or simply great stories with authentic characters? Are they suitable for discovery alone, or do they need a conversation and some scaffolding beforehand? (There was a very interesting and upsetting discussion around the impact of “Of Mice and Men” on pupils and teachers recently – you can read it about it in this Twitter thread.)
How often do you create displays around these characters, authors, books? Celebrate these authors alongside their mainstream colleagues, rather than as part of Black History Month or awareness days, as consistently “including” them in this way may actually send a message of “othering” as opposed to inclusion.
Are your resources providing a broad range of experiences and perspectives? Match the resources to the cohort, absolutely, but include resources for wider awareness as well. For example, resources about travellers are important for the travelling community; but they’re also important for representing an alternative narrative to the stereotype which is so easily absorbed, so should also be available in schools without those cohorts.
Is your school collection keeping pace? Ensuring representation and inclusion doesn’t happen by accident. It requires an in-depth knowledge of the school’s resource collection, it can be supported or hindered by the collection policy, and it does require funding. There are equity issues with schools which are not funding their resources sufficiently; these schools are often pushed to get resources from donations or charity shops, and while there may be an occasional bargain to be found, these should not form the basis of a collection. Publishers have been increasingly proactive in paying attention to these issues, and are constantly scanning and reacting to the world around them. The books produced in the last year or two will take a long time to filter through to donations (most often as children grow up or out of books), so if schools rely on donations/second-hand purchases, this delays the impact of changes and leaves some children missing out.
Note on diversity in resource formats
Diversity should also be reflected in the type of resource encountered. Throughout this blog I’ve used the word resources instead of “book” – this is not just because schools should be considering all their resources, but also because “book” can be taken to have a very narrow meaning. Resources, in this blog, means fiction books, information books, e-books, audio books, graphic novels, poetry books, wordless books, picture books and much more. Teachers are incredibly good at selecting the right resource for the right piece of work, but we also need to be mindful of the overall messaging when all those resources are put together, and those with responsibility for the school library need to make sure that representation, inclusion, and importantly choice, are available to all pupils.
Further reading and resources
Free webinar: "Representation for All". The SLA has written multiple articles on this topic and provided a free webinar for SLA members. The webinar recording is available for NACE members until the end of January 2021. Watch the webinar here.
Share your views: UK School Library Survey 2020. The SLA is partnering with Softlink on a survey into key issues for school libraries in 2020; and indeed one of the questions is about how schools and school libraries have responded to the varying key themes of this year. Children are curious and will have had a huge number of questions about different things throughout this year; schools are key allies in supporting their learning journey through these cultural issues, and we’d like to know how these subjects have been tackled. Take part in the survey here.
Blog post: Librarians under lockdown: rising to the challenge– Bev Humphrey, Literacy and Technology Consultant and Digital Content Manager at the SLA, shares some of the ways in which school librarians have risen to meet the challenges of lockdown life.
New reading list for able readers at KS3. NACE trustee Sue Mordecai has compiled a list of recommended reading for able readers in key stage 3, available in the templates and checklists section of the NACE members' resource library (login required). This is a working list and one we will continue adding to. To share your suggestions for this list, or for other age groups, please contact communications@nace.co.uk.
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.
For all of us in the teaching profession, September 2020 has been a return to school we are unlikely to forget for many years. Amongst the struggles, anxieties and restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the UK have reopened to all pupils, and teachers have found themselves at the centre of media and political scrutiny as they attempt to craft and deliver a ‘recovery curriculum’ for learners. There is a balance required between addressing and supporting pupil wellbeing, whilst assessing the impact of four months of school closure on educational attainment. As much as I read about ‘lost time’, ‘regression’ and ‘recovery’, the reality of being back in the classroom has, for me, brought about many different questions: Where are these learners at now? How can I best support them? And perhaps more importantly, do I need to change my expectations of where they should be and how well they will progress? These questions are all pertinent for more able learners, many of whom have worked consistently and independently at home throughout the lockdown.
I find myself thinking… no. Perhaps a ‘recovery curriculum’ is not what these children really need. Instead, do learners need the consistency they have come to expect from their teachers and schooling? A consistency of “keeping standards high for everyone” (Sherrington, p148) will ensure that our expectations of all learners, and particularly our more able learners, are behind all the decisions we make regarding curriculum. I am reminded of a TES article I read in April 2020 headlined ‘Dumb down at your peril!’ As practitioners, we need to ensure that we do not inadvertently add to the time lost by lowering our standards and expectations of learners. If learning really does “require forgetting” (Wiliam, 2016) then the classroom becomes an exciting place for innovation this year as we are able to move learners forward in a new way, ensuring our teaching focus is on moving forward, rather than looking back. (For additional perspectives on this, take a look at NACE’s free “beyond recovery” resource pack.)
Here are five practical ways I’ve been putting this approach into practice:
1.Encourage learners to explore and share their passions
For many more able learners, the time spent at home will have been a positive experience. The additional time to explore their passions (reading, writing, painting, problem solving) and really delve into areas of interest is something that school often struggles to provide. I believe that our “curriculum is more than the lessons” (Waters, 2020) and so taking the time to talk with more able learners about their experiences during lockdown is vital. This insight allows us to plan tasks where the pupil becomes the expert, e.g. the learner leading a class session, teaching others about their talent, sharing their work (writing, art) or creating a ‘how to’ guide/video which can be used by their peers. (I’ve found this has been particularly successful with classroom mathematics and learners with sporting talent.)
2.Draw on current events to develop independent thought and debate
Many more able learners are likely to have high levels of interest in contemporary issues surrounding the pandemic. In my experience, these children (even at age 10 and 11) are beginning to form and question their own opinions, undertaking their own research, watching the news and reading online, and engaging in discussion (often with adults) at home. Harnessing these issues in the classroom provides an opportunity to teach “creative and critical thinking” (one of the 12 pedagogical approaches required in the new Curriculum for Wales 2022 – read more here), and provides an excellent stimulus and authentic context for many cross-curricular skills, e.g. debating, evaluating information sources and identifying bias.
3.Explore digital teaching and learning, together
The new Welsh Curriculum also requires teachers to use a “blend of approaches” in the classroom (12 Pedagogical Principles CfW 2022). For many learners, particularly more able learners, the opportunity to use digital technology as part of their everyday ‘learning diet’ (Waters, 2020) has been exciting and for me, it has been an element of lockdown I am determined to sustain in my classroom. We have, together, explored new software and learnt new skills, with the children often emailing me to say “Miss, I found a much easier way of doing this…” There is always the risk that it can feel intimidating as the teacher to admit that the learners may be ahead of us. However, in my experience, it is an incredibly motivating concept for learners, particularly more able learners, as they are keen to share and model their learning for me and for others.
4. Embrace the challenge: make it harder!
Mary Myatt’s words struck such a chord with me – a chord that has resonated all the more since returning to school: “What do most children want? … Harder work!”
With my head swimming with ‘recovery’, ‘catch-up’ and ‘back-filling’, I approached my planning this year with some trepidation. Lesson three of the maths scheme we use at school presented learners with a Chinese counting frame, unlike anything I had ever seen, as a tool to develop place value understanding. My first thought on looking at the lesson was, “Perhaps I will miss that one out!” I convinced myself that I could justify skipping the lesson as we had missed so much and I could give myself and the learners an easy ‘get-out’ of this lesson. However, troubled by that looming TES headline, I reflected on ways I could make the lesson approachable… could the learners potentially reach the ‘hard’ lesson? With some additional planning time, the use of some highly effective concrete manipulatives (Skittles and chocolate buttons) and the shift in my own mindset to embrace the challenge, the children rose to and exceeded my expectations – understanding the lesson, completing the work and craving “some more hard lessons please!”
5.Continue to strengthen links with parents and carers
Finally, the time spent home-learning has provided us with a unique opportunity to engage with parents and carers in a different way. The contact we have had with parents, providing academic and in many cases emotional support, has strengthened our relationships with the home, and for our more able learners this can be such a valuable additional tool. I have been able to recommend reading material from nominee lists for awards, provide challenging maths activities online (such as The Daily Rigour) and work one-to-one as an editor for a learner who wanted to write her own novel at home!
Furthermore, I have gained an additional team of experts in the parents of my class, drawing on their skills, career paths and interests to enhance the curriculum provision in my classroom.
References
Myatt. M., Curriculum Thinking: A Masterclass, 16.10.19
Sherrington. T., The Learning Rainforest, 2017
Waters. M., Seminar: From the big picture to the finer detail, 13.03.20
Wiliam. D., The nine things every teacher should know, 2016 (summary available here)
When thinking about the future of any part of the economy and society, most futurists will start by looking back. The reason for this is quite simple. First, it is important to understand the journey to where we are now, or where we think we are. Second, it helps us focus on past predictions about what would happen that did not and why. Finally, it helps understand if the sector being considered has taken full advantage of long-term trends and that trend has run out of steam, or still has a while to go.
Much hype in the tech sector over the last decade and more has been around “big data”. Since the exam chaos of the summer, there has been an increased interest in alternatives to the current systems of assessment and certifications. One topic, learning analytics, has been growing in interest in my email and social media conversations since lockdown. This is the “big data” in education movement in one of its manifestations.
Here, I want to look at the wider issues of data in education by contrasting my school years (the 1960s) with today.
Try this as a little exercise. Think of a year between 1990 and 2015. Now choose a F1 Grand Prix race. Then Google “winner 1997 Monaco Grand Prix” with your chosen years and race substituted for mine. In less than a minute from start to finish you can get the answer.
Now back in the 1960s, maybe some people would have had sports annuals and could look the answer up. Maybe you had a racing nut among your friends who would know the answer. If not, a trip to a local library which may or may not have had a book with the answer, during opening hours. Most people would have given up.
Note: it does not matter whether you are interested or expert in F1; the answer is available on demand.
So, the first question I want to pose to educationalists is this:
“How has what is taught, how it is taught and assessed changed to take advantage of the widespread availability of data on demand?”
This growth of availability also brings new challenges.
First, different cultures have different answers to the same questions. Try asking Siri who invented television. The Americans claim Philo Farnsworth. As you enter Helensburgh in the West Coast of Scotland the welcome sign says, “Birthplace of John Logie Baird, inventor of television”. Who is correct?
Add to this various conspiracy theories around COVID-19, vaccines, 5G and many more issues: the need for information literacy among teachers and pupils is clear if we are to benefit and minimise risk over this vast treasure trove of data.
So, my second question is this:
“Where in the school curriculum is this challenge addressed to ensure our youngsters have the skills to navigate the data landscape?”
If we try a more complex question, the possibilities become apparent. Jane Austen’s garden at Chawton House was laid out last time I visited using only plants that were known in England while she was alive. “What flowers were introduced into the UK during the life of Jane Austen?” would have been a PhD thesis back in the 1960s.
In an area of your own interest, think of a similar question when you have 30 minutes spare and research it online. Having worked in the industry for decades, it is amazing still to be astonished at what is available now – with all the necessary caveats about quality.
It is in this last area – quality of information – that I think support for the most able learners has the most potential. Rather than focus on teaching them against a fixed syllabus, there is potential for giving them learning challenges and developing their research capabilities and skills to discriminate among the contested claims in the information they can discover for themselves.
If interested, spend half an hour looking at the history of flight online. It is an extraordinary tale from ancient times, not just a story of the 20th century and the Wright brothers.
Online learning is not the same as online teaching.
Over 20 years ago I remember a young lad, who was a troubled individual, researching and building a history of boxing project of his own volition. His pride in demonstrating what he had discovered for himself and his desire to articulate and share his story changed his teacher’s perceptions of him.
So, here is my third question – and challenge – for you, dear reader:
“How can schools develop in the 2020s so that all our children have the skills to use the avalanche of data available on demand to stretch their imagination, creativity and learning?”
Under this there are many questions that need to be addressed, around curriculum, assessment, resources, inclusion, and importantly professional development.
In my talk at NACE’s upcoming Leadership Conference (16-20 November 2020) I will be developing this and other themes to encourage us all to imagine what schooling needs to be post-pandemic to tackle the challenges we all face as parents, teachers and citizens.
Join the conversation… NACE patron Dr Chris Yapp will lead a session at NACE’s 2020 Leadership Conference exploring how schools can optimise the use of digital technologies to extend, enrich and develop independent pursuit of learning. View the full conference programme.
In the opening weeks of this term, we held two online meetups for NACE members – focused on exploring challenges and opportunities in the current context, sharing ideas and experiences with peers, and identifying priorities and core principles for the coming weeks and months.
While acknowledging the significant differences in the experiences of both students and staff members over the past six months, the two sessions also highlighted some strong common themes and key messages:
1. Humanity first and teaching first
While wellbeing is and should remain a priority, NACE Associate Neil Jones makes the case that for more able learners, study is in fact an intrinsic part of their humanity. The meetups highlighted the need to focus on restoring learners’ confidence and self-belief; reinstating healthy and effective learning routines; showing care, calm and confidence in learners’ abilities and futures; continuing to consider the needs of the more able in planning and practice (and supporting colleagues to do so); maintaining high expectations and ambitions; and being aware of the risk of learning becoming “endless” for the more able (particularly in remote/independent learning).
2. Assess, but don’t add stress
While meetup attendees agreed on the importance of understanding where students are and identifying gaps in learning, they also emphasised the importance of achieving this without creating additional pressure, either for staff or learners. Take time over this, building in low-/no-stakes assessment, regular verbal feedback, and involving students in the process of identifying where they feel more/less confident and what they need to do next.
3. Stay ambitious in teaching and learning
A recurrent message from the meetups was the importance of remaining ambitious in teaching and learning – balancing the need to pare back/streamline without narrowing the curriculum or lowering expectations, and auditing deficits without leaping to remedial/deficit thinking. Key ideas shared included a focus on meaningful tasks; teaching to where learners could be now; choosing language carefully to inspire, excite and set high expectations; finding ways to incorporate hands-on as well as theoretical learning; finding opportunities for collaboration; and prioritising dialogic teaching and learning – recognising the loss of rich language exchange during school closures.
4.Continue to build on “lessons from lockdown”
Both sessions also highlighted the many innovative practices developed during school closures, many of which will be retained and further developed. Examples included the use of technology and/or project-based learning to support learners in working both independently and in collaboration with one another.
Finally, the meetups reinforced the importance of engaging and listening to students – involving them in conversations about their experience, interests and passions, and making them part of the creative, innovative thinking and discussion that will help schools and individuals continue to move forward positively. Or as NACE Associate Dr Keith Watson has written, “Not merely recovering, but rebounding and reigniting with energy, vigour and a celebration of talents.”
For more on these key messages and other ideas explored during the meetups, watch the recordings:
NACE member meetups are free to attend for all NACE members, offering opportunities to connect and share ideas with peers across the UK and beyond, as well as hearing from NACE Associates and leading schools.
Not yet a NACE member? Starting at just £95 +VAT per year, NACE membership is available for schools (covering all staff), SCITT providers, TSAs, trusts and clusters. Members have access to advice, practical resources and CPD to support the review and improvement of provision for more able learners within a context of challenge and high standards for all. Find out more.
This article was originally published in our “beyond recovery” resource pack. View the original version here.
In the context of “recovering” teaching and learning at secondary level, I want to suggest that the principles of working with the most able learners remain the same. The crisis – as crises do – has provoked polarised responses: Tiggerish optimism about opportunities to change the way education works on the one hand; Eeyorish despair on the other, doubting whether anything can be recovered during or after this hiatus.
There is no doubt that this crisis has brought disasters with it for young people and their secondary education. But crises reveal, in a sharp and heightened way, what is already the case. It remains the case that schools need:
To include the most able students explicitly in their thinking, for those students’ benefit and the benefit of all;
To use current technology (the word “new” gives away how slow we can be), intelligently and responsively, to enable excellent work from the most able students, independently and collaboratively;
To remember that teaching and learning, with the most able and with all students, is fundamentally a human relationship, not a consumer transaction.
Below are some suggestions that you may already be considering as you gear up to get back into the secondary classroom.
1. Take “accelerated learning” seriously – but don’t use it as “cramming”.
Tony Breslin, in the draft preface of his forthcoming book Lessons from Lockdown: the educational legacy of COVID-19 (Routledge, to be published end of 2020 / beginning of 2021), writes: "from a societal and educational standpoint, post-virus rehabilitation is not about how quickly we can get back to where we were. Nor is it about reconstituting our schools in the image of ‘crammer’ colleges, obsessed by catch-up and curriculum recovery, as if all the last few months have left us with is a shortcoming in knowledge and a loss of coverage." [Emphasis mine]
This is an important point, worth serious reflection. Teachers and most parents will understandably be anxious to make up for lost time and lost learning, particularly those whose children and students are at the pinch points of transition between key stages. Breslin continues: "Rather, it is about how far we can travel in light of our shared experience, and the different educational and training needs that will surely manifest themselves in the years ahead. It is also about acknowledging those longstanding shortcomings at the heart of our schooling and education systems, around persistent inequalities of outcome, around the need to build inclusion and attainment alongside each other rather than posing them as different and sometimes conflicting opposites, and around attending to the wellbeing of children, their families and all who support their learning – as if we could build a sustainable education system without doing this." [Emphases mine]
Most teachers would agree, surely, with the wisdom here. “Cramming” or force-feeding our students course content as if we were fattening geese, would be horribly stressful, and pedagogically ineffective in the long term. Yet there is an opportunity for us, instead of “cramming”, to take accelerated learning very seriously indeed.
In his article exploring current priorities and opportunities for primary schools, NACE Associate Dr Keith Watson highlights Mary Myatt’s insistence on professionals paring back course content to the essentials. He is, of course, right to point out the dangers of narrowing the curriculum even further. As an English teacher, I understand why the GCSE exam boards have elected to remove poetry from the exams, but it chills my blood to think of the lost potential for thought, feeling and understanding that this represents – particularly for our more able students.
I do wonder, though, whether we now have an opportunity to introduce just a little more urgency – but not panic – into teaching and learning. Accelerated learning strategies aim to achieve both inclusion and attainment in learning, in the ways that NACE has advocated for so many years: help your most able students to go as far and fast as they can; teach to the top, support from the bottom, and so on. This approach should still be used; we will just have to use it on less material. Don’t over-rehearse, i.e. don’t plan to teach new Year 10 students six months of missed Year 9 course content first. Do over-learn, with regular, no-stakes tests to embed knowledge and build confidence and mastery. Crucially, teach what needs to be taught now and scaffold knowledge and skills “just in time.”
A document that has garnered interest, originating from the US, is the Learning Acceleration Guide published by TNTP. Like anything, you’ll not want to swallow it wholesale, but it does give a range of sensible suggestions, including those set out above. The main thrust is that we should not panic about teaching new material, as if the students will never be ready for it. Instead, teaching new and necessary material, if scaffolded, can prompt memory of previous learning and help students “catch up” by stealth, rather than by “remedial action” that brings their learning up to speed to where they should have been, rather than where they could be now. This is clearly a leading attribute of the challenging classroom at any time in history, pre- or post-COVID.
2.Be bold with remote learning – “homework” could be transformed.
You may have found yourself cursing Zoom, Loom, Vidyard, Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom at several stages over lockdown; or you may have been excited to learn how to use them, because you had to. Most likely, like me, you felt both. But I can’t complain any longer that I don’t have time to learn about “flipped learning”. For those students with access to a laptop, we should continue to experiment with how far we can enable students to work independently and with each other. Again, this is an opportunity for us to make a virtue of necessity.
At our school, and I’m sure at yours, our departments have put in place planning and resources that can be both taught in the classroom and remotely. A lot of labour has been put into producing packs of work. For the more able students, however, we mustn’t stop offering exciting invitations to push their interest further.
For the last two years, I’ve been able to group the most able students by subject and year cohort and set them up to research and write up their own projects, guided by their interest. I have been impressed and inspired by how well I could trust students to be “entrepreneurial” in their independent work, supported pretty minimally by caring subject specialists, but a lot by each other. We use Microsoft Teams to enable this, and I would point you to Amy Clark’s blog post on this topic for further possibilities in using Teams. See too, the recorded NACE webinar on using technological platforms to develop independence (member login required).
Our students, in these times and in all times, should be putting in at least as much creative labour as their teachers. A remarkable result of more enforced student independence is how much more we can trust them to adapt, re-combine and invent new responses to the information and tasks we give them. Many students, at all key stages, are adept at using technology in a way that most of their teachers haven’t been.
Consider, too, how you can use technology to gather student voice so that you know how your most able students are faring; and even better, garner suggestions from them of how they would like to extend the curriculum, so that they feel they have a say in the direction of educational travel. As always, these students’ insights into their experiences of teaching and learning bring us priceless information on what’s going well and what’s not. Online platforms make this process so much easier now.
3.“Humanity first” – but that doesn’t necessarily mean “teaching second”.
Barry Carpenter’s work on the very notion of a “recovery curriculum” has received widespread coverage among school leaders and teachers. At one stage in his talk for the Chartered College of Teaching, Carpenter urged teachers to “walk in with your humanity first, and your teaching skills second.” In the context of the therapeutic, wellbeing-centred vision for recovery from the shocks and anxieties of the last year, this clearly makes sense. With more able students in mind, however, and especially the exceptionally able students we teach, we must remember that study is an intrinsic part of their humanity: they are one and the same thing.
Again, then, crisis reveals what is already present. Our more able students will still need to know, in their relationships with their teachers and with supportive peers, that it is cool to be clever, interesting to be interested, exciting to be excited by the discoveries involved in learning. They do not need to be glum, or despair that they have stopped learning, because we can be confident that we are always learning if we have a mind to, and seek – as Dr Matthew Williams advocates – to turn work into study.
Those interesting questions that we pose; that palpable delight in our own subject interest; those personalised phrases of praise; the hints and foretastes of exciting future study and work – all those confident connection-points with our more able students are always vital, and continue to be so as we all move forward into an uncertain “first term back”. I found at the end of the summer term, teaching small bubble-groups of sixth formers, that they were desperate to talk and explore what was going on. So was I! This is clearly no surprise. The teaching skill required here will be to move between the personal and the abstract, as it always is in pedagogy worth the name.
Our most able students often think and feel things at a greater intensity. Managing this intensity with the general intensity of the overall experience of socially distanced schooling will take skill and humanity – but we as teachers are not in uncharted waters here: it is what we do under normal circumstances, too.
Join the conversation: NACE member meetup, 10 September 2020
Join secondary leaders and practitioners from across the country on 10 September for an online NACE member meetup exploring approaches to the recovery curriculum and beyond. The session will open with a presentation from NACE Associate Neil Jones, followed by a chance to share approaches and ideas with peers, reflecting on some of the challenges and opportunities outlined above. Find out more and book your place.
Not yet a NACE member? Starting at just £95 +VAT per year, NACE membership is available for schools (covering all staff), SCITT providers, TSAs, trusts and clusters. Bringing together school leaders and practitioners across England, Wales and internationally, our members have access to advice, practical resources and CPD to support the review and improvement of provision for more able learners within a context of challenge and high standards for all. Learn more and join today.
NACE Challenge Award Adviser Elaine Ricks-Neal shares seven key questions to help schools, teams and departments review their use of digital learning and plan for continued development.
Recent events, through necessity, have catapulted schools into a change of existing practice to meet the challenges of remote learning. An interesting outcome has been the rapid increase in skills and confidence levels of many teachers in the use of digital learning technologies and with it a growing enthusiasm to explore the potential of technology to really transform the way we teach and how pupils learn. Through effective use of digital platforms, tools and apps, many schools have enabled pupils to access the curriculum in rich and engaging ways, signposting pupils to quality online resources they can use independently, encouraging collaborative learning and finding ways to personalise learning and feedback to pupils, often with the added bonus of greater involvement of parents in that process.
With this unprecedented level of teacher, pupil and also parental engagement with technology, is this now the time for schools to revisit their vision for digital learning, providing a structured opportunity for colleagues to reflect on what has worked well and next steps? Below are seven key questions for teachers, phase teams, departments and schools.
Note: Remember to keep the focus on the impact on learning; don’t be side-tracked by looking at digital resources in isolation.
1. What has worked well?
Set aside dedicated time to share the digital resources and approaches you have used, commenting on the quality of the materials and how they supported your learning objectives. What worked well? How do you know? What could be the next steps?
2.How can curriculum and lesson plans be adapted?
Look at curriculum plans and learning objectives and identify where in the planning phases you could use digital learning. Be clear about why and what the learning impact would be. For example, increased cognitive challenge and access to complex material in class and home learning? Developing pupil independence? Are there distinctive opportunities for your most able pupils?
3.How can we involve pupils as partners in digital learning development?
Discuss how you can explore the impact of approaches through consulting pupils about what they see as the benefits, possible pitfalls and opportunities of using technology to help them learn. How can the pupils’ own skills now be further developed? Consider setting up a focus group of able pupils to monitor the impact of new approaches.
4.Are there opportunities to work with parents more effectively?
Make the most of the high levels of recent parental engagement to consider any new opportunities presented by digital learning to help parents engage with and support their children’s learning at home and in school. Workshops on learning platforms and online resources available to support their child’s learning? Seeking their own views on the recent remote learning experience?
5.What are the digital skills that teachers now need to develop?
To build on newly grown/growing confidence levels, identify future skills and CPD needs individually, as a department, and as a school.
6.Do we now want to revisit our vision and policy?
Use the discussions as a basis to revisit your teaching and learning, more able and/or other relevant school policies. Is the vision for the use of technology to impact on teaching and learning fully articulated and agreed by all colleagues? Do you want to add new commentary on aims or provision?
7.How do we plan for continuous improvement?
Plan strategically from your discussions, integrating your action points into school improvement plans, and being clear about how the actions will be implemented, resourced and reviewed for impact.
The review discussion can feed into the broader whole-school vision of the transformative potential of technology to drive innovation and create autonomous learners who have the digital skills which are vital in today’s world.
Coming soon: new guidance on digital learning and the NACE Challenge Framework
Element 3 of the NACE Challenge Framework focuses on curriculum, teaching and support; it includes a requirement for schools to audit how effectively their vision for using technology translates into improved daily practice within and outside the classroom. In the autumn term, a new Digital Learning Review and Forward Planning Tool will be available for schools working with the Challenge Framework to support a review of current policy and provision in the use of digital learning.
Listening in to over 200 school leaders, teachers and young people in online forums and in personal conversations, I am hearing a recurring theme: “Some children have done better without me teaching them.” Some teachers add, “…which is a worry.” Most are keen to explore the reasons why some children are thriving on home learning, when many appear to be struggling. While it is vital that the reasons for this struggle are identified and addressed, there is also much that school leaders and teachers can learn from the “rising stars” – young people who were not identified for a particular ability, skill or expertise in the classroom but who are blossoming at home, surprising their teachers.
Why were they not noticed in school? Why are they thriving at home? What can we learn from them, for our future practice, as we prepare for more students to return to the classroom?
Limiting factors within schools
Although the rising stars appear to come from all phases, types of school and a range of socio-economic contexts, common limiting factors in their schools’ culture and organisation are emerging:
Less confident schools, that are focused on exam outcomes, attendance targets and rigorous behaviour management structures, where young people are lost in the drive for data;
Schools with highly structured, frequent testing, where young people have too few opportunities to be inspired, to be creative, or to learn in depth;
Schools with strict ability grouping and differentiation practices, built on assumptions of ability;
Prescriptive schemes of work that leave little scope for teachers’ creativity, or for young people’s expertise – there is no time for deep learning in a classroom where quantity matters more than mastery;
Pedagogies that are teacher-focused and controlled, leaving too little scope for young people to become independent researchers, problem solvers or learning leaders;
Schools that misconstrue presentations of negative learning character as misbehaviour: the window-gazer, who finds the ideas inside her head more interesting but has no chance to share or explore them; the disruptive, who wants to let the teacher know that he is capable of much more challenging stuff but doesn’t know how to say it; the angry or withdrawn, who doesn’t understand and can’t process the work because her learning needs have not been recognised; the passive, unconfident, who finds the classroom crowded and oppressive;
Schools that have an extended core curriculum at the expense of the creative/expressive arts, design and PE, where young people have little opportunity to grow into disciplined, collaborative, creative learners and critical thinkers, or to have their creative/expressive/physical abilities and talents acknowledged and celebrated.
Why are some students thriving at home?
Teachers are telling anecdotes about the “rising stars” they are noticing and are asking their pupils why they are more engaged and making more progress.
What is striking is the deepening mutual trust and respect which is clear in their voices:
“I am encouraging students to engage with their world, to discover new resources. They are enjoying daily, short skills practices that they self-assess with the help of a simple quiz. They enjoy gaining mastery, rather than marks.”
“I have discovered hidden stars from having personal learning conversations. I was bogged down in a mountain of marking and concerned that only 30% of my students were submitting any work. So I decided to abandon the prescribed written feedback procedure and give each student a two-minute verbal personal moment each week. I didn’t realise how important it was for students to see me, to be called by their name and to feel they mattered to me. I have been really surprised by how able many of them are.”
“I find that quiet students are benefitting from being at home, without the pressures and noise of school. I didn’t realise how capable they are and am wondering why they are not in the top set.”
“I’m in a school where we are expected to maintain the full curriculum and schemes of work. We soon discovered that it was impossible, so my department re-designed the study programme, built on two principles: students can follow their own interests; they should create something – grow it, design it, build it, then teach your teacher and class what you know. We are on hand with advice and we have created a huge bank of resources for them to use, including examples of the department’s special interests and their own creations. Some great experts are emerging – both students and staff!”
Creative writing is a struggle for many young people, who often have a fixed view “I can’t do it.” One Year 5 pupil was very anxious about having to do creative writing tasks at home. “In school, there’s a plan on the board and I can put my hand up when I’m stuck.” Finding it easy to come up with “lots of ideas”, but getting stuck on how to develop them further, he is enjoying sharing his ideas at home and on FaceTime with his friends. “It’s much nicer than at school and I think I am getting much better.”
One-to-one tutorials are building young people’s confidence and respectful relationships with their teachers, who are able to see their capacity. A Year 12 tutor was struck with how powerful the tutorial can be: “It’s fascinating to listen to him. He has great insight and knows more than I do!” Another Year 12 student is appreciating the value of having a trusting and mutually respectful relationship with her tutors. She had a difficult pathway through the GCSE years, excelling in the subjects where she had private one-to-one tuition but unable to achieve her best outcomes in the rest. Now, through daily contact with her tutors, personal advice whenever she wants it, constant collaborative learning opportunities with her peers and with new-found confidence in her capacity, she is totally engaged with her Year 12 studies. “I miss being in school and I certainly miss my friends, but the work is going well. And I am looking forward to going in after half-term for real, live tutorials.”
“At Key Stage 3, introverted students remain mute for the lesson, reluctant to engage or speak but still submit a high standard of work. In contrast, when speaking to these students on a one-to-one basis, they will be forthcoming with how they are feeling. One ‘live’ call a week from their tutor is making a big difference to their progress and their wellbeing. Key Stage 4 and 5 students have adapted exceptionally well. I should mention that they are used to independent learning: they do a lot of reading around their subjects.”
What can we learn for our future practice?
Good friends from the retired headteachers’ community are entertaining each other with tales from the home front. They are discovering that IT is not a mysterious world inhabited by the young but an exciting avenue into following their interests and exploring new places: playing in a huge online orchestra, singing in Gareth Malone’s choir, visiting the theatres, galleries, faraway lands. And they are clearing the loft! An opportunity to throw out unneeded items that must have been useful once, but you have forgotten why – but also to rediscover lost treasures, hidden gems, that deserve to be brought back into the home, polished and put to good use. Perhaps this period of home schooling is our chance to clear out the curriculum and pedagogy loft, to discard what is not useful and to rediscover and polish up the gems of our principles and practice in the light of what young people are telling us.
NACE’s core principles include the statements:
Providing for more able learners is not about labelling, but about creating a curriculum and learning opportunities which allow all children to flourish.
Ability is a fluid concept: it can be developed through challenge, opportunity and self-belief.
In its chapter on Teaching for Learning, The Intelligent School (2004) presents a profile of the Learning and Teaching PACT – what the learner and the teacher bring to learning and teaching and, in turn, what they both need for the PACT to have maximum effect. Features of the PACT are visible in the accounts of rising stars, where both learner and teacher bring:
A sense of self as learner;
Mutual respect and high expectations;
Active participation in the learning process;
Reflection and feedback on learning;
And where the teacher brings:
Knowledge, enthusiasm, understanding about what is taught and how;
The ability to select appropriate curriculum and relevant resources;
A design for teaching and learning fit for purpose;
An ability to create a rich learning environment.
“Place more emphasis […] on the microlevel of things […] It encourages a culture that is more open and caring […] It requires genuine connection.” – Leading in a Culture of Change (2004)
Chapter 4 of Michael Fullan’s Leading in a Culture of Change is entitled “Relationships, Relationships, Relationships”. Young people are letting their teachers know that personal conversations are enabling their learning. One group of Key Stage 3 students have asked their teachers to stop using PowerPoint presentations, which they feel unable to understand – “But it all makes sense when we talk about it with you.” Learning conversations may be a rediscovered gem in some schools, worth bringing down from the loft of forgotten treasure.
From the same chapter: “When you set a target and ask for big leaps in achievement scores, you start squeezing capacity in a way that gets into preoccupation with tests […] You cut corners in a way that ends up diminishing learning […] I want steady, steady, ever deepening improvement.”
Motivation comes from caring and respect: “tough empathy” in Fullan’s terms. The rising stars are being noticed in a learning environment free from classroom tests and marking. We may need to take a close look at assessment practices in our loft clearance and rediscover the gems of self-assessment, academic tutorials, vivas and reflective discourse.
Can we improve young people’s chances of stardom by considering some fresh thinking, as we prepare for more of them to return to school?
What will “homework” mean? Can we build on what we are learning about best practice in home schooling?
How will we inspire (rather than push) young people to high aspirations and outcomes?
How can we listen better and build respectful, healthier learning relationships?
Can we design learning for depth and mastery rather than for assessment/testing and quantity?
How can we open up the curriculum and learning to creativity?
How can we exemplify and model best learning in our lessons?
How can we give young people time, resources and personal space to learn how to learn, to become the best they can be?
References and further reading:
The Intelligent School (Gilchrist, Myers & Reed, 2004)
Leading in a Culture of Change (Michael Fullan, 2001)
Knowledge and The Future School (Young, Lambert, Roberts & Roberts, 2014)
Reassessing Ability Grouping (Francis, Taylor & Tereshenko 2020)
This article was originally published in the summer 2020 special edition of NACE Insight, as part of our “lessons from lockdown” series. For access to all past issues, log in to our members’ resource library.
Dr Matthew Williams, Access Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, shares his belief in the importance of “confident creativity” as the key to developing sustained effort and a lasting love of learning.
I am a fellow and tutor in politics at Jesus College, Oxford, and I’d like to share some thoughts on how students can be energised to “work harder”. Specifically how do we encourage sustained effort, leading to improved attainment? What follows are reflections on a decade of teaching and schools outreach work at Oxford and Reading Universities. There is a mixture of theory here, but readers should be warned there will also be big dollops of unscientifically personal recall.
As an undergraduate student of politics at the University of Bristol, the most significant learning experience came during seminars on the British Labour Party. At first, I was fairly indifferent on the subject, but the seminars entailed a mixture of traditional essay-based research and more flashy simulation-based learning. On the latter, we had a Cabinet meeting in our seminar with each of us playing real characters. I was Jim Callaghan, and I had to prepare Cabinet papers, work out strategy and tactics in order to win a fight with, in particular, Tony Benn!
The experience brought everything to life. The theoretical and practical came together, and I have to this day never forgotten the specifics of that fight in late 1976. On reflection, the primary effect of the simulation was the transformation of the subject matter from work into study. Studying is not work in the sense of being performed for someone or something else’s benefit. Instead, studying is intrinsically pleasurable. Whilst many students are motivated by long-term payoff (career prospects, reputation, power etc) many, like me, see more immediate feedback. This particular teaching style transformed the 9am walk to lectures from a reluctant trudge to an enthusiastic commute. It was revelatory.
Demystifying the means of achieving distinction
Ever since those seminars I have aspired in my personal and professional life to transform work into study. The key ingredient used by the seminar tutor was positive motivation. He made clear his interest was in us and our ideas, rather than our performance in the exam and the reputation of the university. As such, he did not want us to regurgitate the literature, rather he wanted us to know the literature so we could analyse it critically whilst presenting our own original contributions.
This was liberating. All of sudden the most complex elements of social democratic ideology and post-industrial economics were not prohibitively intimidating; they were required reading for anyone wishing to have their voice heard. In this process, we had to acknowledge we could contribute to a debate despite our relative academic inexperience. The tutor was clear: good ideas are not the monopoly of tenured professors. If we wanted to, we were perfectly capable of contributing original theoretical insights and empirical discoveries. To achieve the distinction of a first class degree our work had to be creative and, crucially, the tutor made clear we were all capable of distinction if we wanted it.
This teaching style resonated with me because it demystified the means of achieving distinction. Previously, I had assumed distinction was a matter of talent, intelligence and luck – none of which I felt much graced with. Subsequently, I realised distinction meant creativity, and creativity needed energy and self-confidence.
Understanding the importance of “confident creativity”
“Confident creativity” is not my first teaching philosophy. For a job application in 2012 I proposed a similar philosophy focused on positive motivation and confident application of skills. Whilst this is seemingly the same philosophy, the older version was predicated on teaching as the transmission of knowledge, where now I see teaching more as developing and nurturing key skills. The transmission model prioritised interesting learning materials as the fundamental variable; whilst I still consider the materials to be important, they are secondary to the students’ nurtured development of complex skills. When students internalise the skills of processing complex information, they will find interest in practically all relevant materials, without the need for unrepresentatively “sexy” content. Even a 1970s Cabinet meeting can become enthralling!
The key change in my teaching philosophy has been the realisation that motivating students should encourage a sense of independent intellectual development. This change in emphasis can be represented as a synthesis of two learning outcome hierarchies, proposed by Bloom et al (left pyramid) and Anderson & Krathwohl et al (right pyramid).
I propose a synthesis of these taxonomies, fleshed out with qualifying adjectives:
Including qualifying adjectives in Anderson & Krathwohl et al’s hierarchy allows us to assess the learning objectives in greater detail, with clearer observable implications. Adding an extra level of nuance to the concepts enriches their meaning, without losing the parsimony and clarity which are such key strengths of the original taxonomy. The addition of adjectives could be criticised as creating needless tautologies – if, for instance, we assume confidence is a necessary condition of creativity. However, creativity can be achieved without confidence if it is accidental and the student is unaware of the merits of their creativity. We need to aim for confident creativity because it is significantly more sustainable and transferable for a student to create in confidence than to be creative by accident or with heavy-handed guidance.
Transferring this approach to different contexts
Critical reflexivity is a very personal journey, and the results of my personal reflections may not be transferable. Even the phrase “teaching philosophy” connotes a sense of philosophy as retroactive rationalisation of one’s own perspective, as opposed to the analytic use of the term as a clear, open and rigorous system of thought. As Nancy Chism states, somewhat ironically, “One of the hallmarks of a philosophy of teaching statement is its individuality.” Whilst a teaching philosophy is developed through self-reflection, it requires self-awareness before it can be applied to others. Notably, teachers are somewhat unusual in their relationship with knowledge. They relish the acquisition of knowledge as an intrinsic good, where motivation to learn is rarely absent and the desire to contribute is second nature.
But what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. For many students school and college is first and foremost about acquiring qualifications, and therefore simply an instrument for career advancement. As such, not all students want to achieve distinction, nor see the value in risking creative contributions when a less resistant path exists. For such students there is a risk that emphasis on creativity will alienate them from the subject and the teacher. Furthermore, the development of my teaching philosophy has primarily taken place at an elite university, where boundary-pushing and intellectual confidence is far less risk-laden than in other contexts. The unflinchingly liberal environment at Oxford ascribes considerable value to intellectual creativity, perhaps at the expense of consolidation. Yet there is little utility in a teaching philosophy that is contingent on where and for whom it applies.
Nevertheless, these concerns are surmountable. Yes, academics perhaps have a gilded view of knowledge, but only because they have internalised the skills of contributing knowledge to the point where it has become (for the most part) a pleasure. It is incumbent on academics to encourage students towards a similar relationship with the world. Whilst not all students will want or feel able to contribute genuine insights, “confident creativity” is the apex of the pyramid and there are other levels of learning available to differentiate between learners. The ambition should be to encourage confident creativity, but “critical evaluation” or “balanced analysis” will be satisfactory outcomes for many students. Learners should not be forced to fit a teaching style that alienates them and a degree of differentiation between students will be required with the proviso that “confident creativity” is unambiguously the preferred goal and should be encouraged as far as possible.
Ultimately, the point of education is to equip individuals with the skills to speak for themselves. This is best achieved when we mix up teaching styles, and jolt work into study.
References
Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (eds) (2001) A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc).
Bloom, B.S., Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., & Krathwohl, D.R. (eds) (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals – Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. (London, WI: Longmans, Green & Co Ltd).
Chism, N. V. N. (1998) “Developing a Philosophy of Teaching Statement.” in Essays on Teaching Excellence 9(3) (Athens GA: Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education).
Pratt, D.D., & Collins, J.B. (2000) ‘The teaching perspectives inventory: Developing and testing an instrument to assess teaching perspectives’ Proceeding of the 41st Adult Education Research Conference.
About the author
Dr Matthew Williams is Access Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford, where he teaches and conducts research in the field of political studies. Known as “the Welsh College”, Jesus College has a long history of working with schools in Wales and has recently taken on responsibility for delivering the university’s outreach and access programmes across all regions of Wales. Read more.
Live webinar: “Developing sustained effort in able learners”
On 2 July Dr Williams is leading a free webinar for NACE members in Wales, exploring approaches to developing confident creativity and motivating learners to be ambitious for themselves. This is part of our current series supporting curriculum development in Wales. Find out more and book your place.
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