Excellence & Growth Schools Network | Working harder makes you smarter Talking about teaching in a world without lesson grades Images: @jasonramasami Teaching is a lonely profession. Outsiders rarely understand this. On any given day, I might communicate with over a hundred children, adapting my register and tone according to the needs of the class, the child and the situation as best I can. Yet, for many of us, communication with our colleagues can become little more than a passing word in a noisy corridor. Days or even weeks can gently slip by with little more than a cheery “Morning!” The equation we work by is simple but probably wrong: hard work equals better educational outcomes. Nothing, however, is worse than the forced feedback discussion that takes place after a graded lesson observation. This gross crudity destroys the opportunity for the feedback session to become the vital meeting it should be. Roll on this week and roll on my first non-graded lesson observation. In the feedback meeting our discussion was wide-ranging. The end of lesson grades has given birth to something much more exciting.
National Teacher Enquiry Network | Teacher Development Trust There is huge pressure on schools and colleges to improve the quality of teaching and create better learning outcomes for young people. Research shows that the most effective way to achieve these goals, while also improving staff morale and engagement, is through high quality professional development. However, while this is easy to accept it is very hard to implement. The National Teacher Enquiry Network has been created to support organisations that are facing up to these challenges. It is a collaborative partnership of schools and colleges focused on innovation and improvement through highly effective and evidence-based staff professional development and learning. It has been developed alongside schools, in consultation with experts, through a series of pilots supported by the National College for Teaching and Leadership and the National Union of Teachers.
GoodCPDGuide Training, consultancy, INSET, and courses for teachers and education staff in schools and colleges. Do you want to engage with research to become a better teacher/leader? | Are your students thinking? Just taken the lead on research in our Teaching School Alliance. This means we are expected to: “-build on existing research and contribute to alliance and wider priorities - base new initiatives within your alliance on existing evidence and ensure you can measure them - work with other teaching schools in your area, or nationally, where appropriate ensure that your staff use existing evidence - allow your staff the time and support they need take part in research and development activities - share learning from research and development work with the wider school system.”The Department for Education Things I have been doing to help us 1. Subscribe to NFER updates 2. We have experienced everything in school from an RCT conducted by EEF to large scale qualitative work with the IoE. In conclusion, as a staff we develop our thinking, but that has not had the impact it should on the school’s overall strategic thinking. Like this: Like Loading...
Archimedean leadership (1): What problems could leverage observation solve? Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.” Archimedes, on the action of a lever More modestly, introducing leverage observations, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo quoted Abraham Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” (citation issues) Many aspects of lesson observations inhibit their usefulness and prevent them from sharpening our metaphorical axes. They are usually infrequent. Many observations remain judgmental. Teachers often receive too much feedback. Alternatively, teachers may receive too little useful feedback. Observations rarely support teachers to implement change. Effective follow-up is very rare. Solutions to problems of frequency are often superficial or unhelpful. I’m painting a gloomy picture deliberately to set the stage for a proposed solution. At GFS, we introduced leverage observations this term, an approach developed at Uncommon Schools in the USA. Like this: Like Loading...
How would you like to be observed? by As Ofsted continue to face yet more challenges over the validity of lesson observations, I discuss how best we can develop as teachers and ask the reader, ‘how would you like to be observed?’ Context: An article I wrote was published in The Guardian on 27th May 2014. The catalyst for writing this commentary, follows my blog on the future role of lesson observations in England, which stemmed from an event organised by The Teacher Development Trust at Teach First headquarters. Off-target: What has sparked The Guardian to publish my article (in my opinion), was this article by the TES: ‘Ofsted should no longer judge quality of teaching, says former Gove aide’. I may need to define what I mean by ‘observe learning’ in a future blogpost. I also argue, that none of the proposals I have read, shared by those in other echelons of education, for example Policy Exchange, the TES or by Ofsted, are proposed by current practising teachers. And does this matter? Carpe diem: A solution? Photograph: Alamy
Mrs P Teach: Very Late Thoughts on the Observation Game Ever since OfSTEd, at a meeting with education bloggers, confirmed that in most cases inspectors should not be giving judgements on individual lessons, I have deliberated again and again about my thoughts on the matter. I read the blogs of those in the meeting, followed by Mike Cladingbowl’s Guardian article and then the blogs of “mere mortal” teachers, those of us in the classroom day in and day out. As I read each article, the same question went through my head – is this a good idea or a bad idea? When I had two PGCE students in March, I came to think about observations again. I did it throughout my NQT observations. So, as I sat there giving meaningful and constructive feedback to these lovely PGCE students so early in their teaching careers, my mind was made up about observations. My own performance management observations this year show how fluid and unreliable the grades are. If that were the case, I wonder if teachers would welcome more observations. Links:
Lesson Observations. My thoughts. Fear/support. | cherrylkd This post concerns my musings on lesson observations. The mere thought of lesson observations can have some teachers quaking in their boots. Others will take it in their stride and show no fear. This is in part due to the personality of the individual teacher, partly due to the culture of the school and a large part of it is due to the fear of Ofsted. The unions say that teachers should be protected from stress and the unnecessary workload caused by excessive use of classroom observation. Observations are now a part of Performance Management. This brings me to Ofsted. Schools have a huge role in preparing teachers for Ofsted. It is very easy to pull a lesson apart simply because it is not delivered the way you would do it. Feeding back constructively is essential. There are alternatives to observations which I believe are more beneficial. In summary lesson observations are a necessary evil. Like this: Like Loading...
Scale: CPD, research, and getting the basics right. In our quest for a deeper understanding of our work as educators, across all the debates, conferences and blogs, I sometimes think that we lose perspective on the relative scale of different aspects of raising achievement in schools. There are hundreds of variables and we’re rarely able to make like-for-like comparisons that help to identify the relative importance of different factors. A lot of the time we are guessing. A teacher could spend hours working on a new feedback strategy gleaned from an INSET day, blog or research journal. However, it could be the case that she would have had a much bigger impact by setting more difficult questions or by insisting on more silent individual work in class. I’ve used The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘fleet swallowed by dog’ scenario to make this point before: sometimes we get the scale wrong. Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy In one of my early blog posts, I wrote about Great Teachers. behaviour is a constant issue. Like this:
The Visible Classroom Our schools are full of great teachers, but often the specifics of what they do to make great learning happen remain hidden. In his Visible Learning series of books, Professor John Hattie has argued that we need tools and research to make visible how the best teachers teach in order to support all teachers have the most positive impact possible on children’s learning. Nesta is working with the University of Melbourne and technology provider Ai Media UK to explore the potential of real time captioning and transcripts of lessons to support teachers’ professional development. Teachers and their students will be provided with a real time text display of the teacher’s explanations and questions, which they can review during and after the lesson. We are working with schools in Dudley and Birmingham to develop the use of this programme, which will be independently evaluated by NatCen social research in a project funded by the Education Endowment Foundation.
Getting it right: The importance of observations by @TeacherToolkit (Part 1/2) The role of observations over the last few weeks, if not months, has debated the purpose of observations; the place – if any – for 20 minute observations; progress over time; one-off, snapshot judgements; the purpose of OFSTED and so forth and so forth. Context: What we have been trying to do within our school, is begin the dialogue with our own leadership team about the latest Ofsted headlines published 6 week ago in February 2014. This was one of the outcomes that stemmed from an edu-bloggers mandate after a meeting with Mike Cladingbowl. Since this landmark tête-à-tête, there have been many publications from Ofsted; editorials; bloggers; including (Think Tank) Policy Exchange: Watching the watchmen. Now, I do not intend to summarise what research says, or is currently saying; or what Ofsted and think-tanks have been suggesting any further than what has already been published. Our focus is this: Good teaching fair and square. By no means will this be the perfect model for you. Week 1: 1.
A culture of lesson observations by @adam_snell Almost three months have now passed since Ofsted announced the ground-breaking news, that inspectors would no longer be grading individual lessons. Except that it wasn’t that ground-breaking. Apparently this had been their instructions since 2009. Who knew? Yet despite this, it is “still possible for inspectors to record a graded evaluation, where sufficient evidence has been gathered based upon a number of criteria. Further still, inspectors can grade teachers in exceptional (Outstanding?!) Essentially, there is a lot of clarity and sense in what Ofsted are saying. An educational Narnia? So I’m on board. A suggestion: So is there a balance to be found? A place where the students’ voyage over time can be recognised, but where the immediacy of what was witnessed in the lesson, can also be formatively discussed to help improve teaching. I believe our school may have an answer. It starts with a culture: the culture of the individual teacher and the culture of the school. Empower teachers! End.
Classroom observation: it’s harder than you think - CEM Blog - Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring Professor Robert Coe We’ve all done it: observed another teacher’s lesson and made a judgement about how effective the teaching was. Instinctively it feels valid. I am a good teacher; I’ll know a good lesson when I see one. We’ve all experienced it from the other side – being observed – but this time the feeling may be more mixed. In September, I gave a talk at the ResearchED2013 conference. The evidence shows that when untrained observers are asked to judge the quality of a lesson, there is likely to be only modest agreement among them. Research Evidence: Can observers spot good teaching? There are two key issues here. Fortunately, a number of research studies have looked at the reliability of classroom observation ratings. One way to understand these values is to estimate the percentage of judgements that would agree if two raters watch the same lesson. The second key issue is validity: if you get a high rating, does it really mean you are an effective teacher? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.