Meanings that matter

The Learning Pit

Ever since James Nottingham introduced the idea in 1999, the concept of "The Learning Pit" has gained significant traction in schools. When coupled with other ideas such as John Hattie's "Visible Learning", Carol Dweck's "Mindset" theory, Vygotsky's "Zone of Proximal Development" and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's (I wish I knew how to pronounce his name!) "Flow" theory, it gives teachers a powerful model for developing independence and resilience in children. But don't take my word for it - listen to the children of Year 5 at Pembroke Dock Community Primary School (below).

Explanation Writing - The Learning Pit from Pembroke Dock Year 5 on Vimeo.

Letter to Nicky Morgan

Dear Ms Morgan

I write to express my grave concern over the perfect storm that is set to engulf the assessment and qualifications sector of the English education system.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am not defending the status quo, nor am I opposed to change – the world changes and schools must reflect this fact. What concerns me most is the scale of the changes and the rapidity of their introduction.

Let me begin with the new national tests for Y6, introduced at the same time as a new grammar test for Y2.The overriding problem with the new national tests is the idea of a national standard (100) which, per se, is not controversial, except that nobody has any idea of what the new national standard is. The current guidance from the DfE is “equivalent to Level 4b”, in other words higher than the current standard. This is marginally helpful, but as nobody can say how many marks will be required to meet this standard, schools are left in the dark as to how well their pupils will need to perform. So much rests on these outcomes that it seems dangerous to rush these changes in before they have been properly trialled and the standards fully understood by those who have to prepare pupils for them.

There are also suggestions that national testing will be re-introduced for 7 year olds, meaning that with the Y1 phonics check, the grammar test and new national tests at Y2, our Key Stage 1 pupils will be assessed to death. One can only guess at the backwash effect on the curriculum.

Let me now consider the simultaneous reforms of GCSE and A Level. To say that this is ambitious would be to describe it generously. I prefer insane. How can you possibly reform A Level until you know what the standards are at GCSE? In 1982 I was part of a group of teachers who worked on something called the Joint 16+. This was the precursor to GCSE. The specification I worked on was accredited for first teaching in 1986 and first examination in 1988, in other words 4 years development and 6 years for first assessment. Here we are with 9 months to go before new specifications are to be introduced, and of the 156 which are to be introduced only 24 have been accredited.

To complicate matters further, the regulatory body OFQUAL will be leaderless as of next month, so no doubt there will be some form of interregnum until a new chief regulator has been appointed, with a concomitant further loss of momentum. Apparently there are no obvious candidates to pick up this poisoned chalice. Already damaged  by the departure of executive director for general qualifications Ian Stockford, there are serious concerns about OFQUAL’s capacity to deliver such a massive programme of reform in such a short space of time.

In terms of impact on schools, departments are now expected to prepare, train and build up resources for teaching specifications about which they have no knowledge. Even the awarding bodies are beginning to raise concerns. especially in view of the fiasco over the maths specifications, where all four awarding bodies’ submissions were rejected, three for being too easy and one for being too hard!

If you persist in keeping to this unfeasible and ridiculous timetable, please be aware of the law of unintended consequences. I have no doubt that a couple of years down the line there will be DfE officials in testy meetings saying “But that’s not what we intended at all”. You have only to look at the history of controlled assessment – introduced in haste with little preparation and next to no training, and it became something different from what was originally intended and a millstone round the necks of teachers. There are precedents.

To avoid the looming apocalypse,

• ensure that primary schools have clear and specific guidance on the new national standard
• delay the introduction of the new examination specifications by a year at least
• stagger the introduction so that A Level follows on from GCSE
• do whatever is necessary, and rapidly, to ensure that OFQUAL has the capacity to oversee the changes

I am aware that it was your predecessor who instigated this perfect storm but it will happen on your watch while he is safely insulated from the blowback.

EBacc to the future, or forward to the past?

Well it's over now. The General Election has been done and dusted for over a month. I don't know which of us was more shocked and disappointed at the result, me or David Cameron. Leaving aside some of the more sinister features of this Tory majority (is 36% of the vote a majority?) government, like abolishing the Human Rights Act and the behind-the-scenes machinations of TTIP, some education policies have started to emerge blinking into the sunlit uplands of Cameron's brave new England. I won't mention Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, as they've been comprehensively written off by Sir Michael Wilshaw anyway (see https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-at-the-future-of-education-inspection-launch). 

The stand-out announcement was that of the Return of the EBacc. In a flurry of press coverage, it was reported that Secretary of State Nicky Morgan, aka "Gove-in-a-dress", would be "compelling" schools to enter all pupils for the EBacc suite of subjects, namely English and maths, a science, geography or history, and a language. There is no doubt that in the period following its retrospective introduction, the EBacc did arrest the slide in numbers taking a language to GCSE to some extent, so one should not be too churlish. At first glance this seemed like a draconian announcement - all must, without the most should and some might. Then the worms began to slither out of this recently opened can.

There are languages departments up and down the country which have contracted substantially in the wake of falling numbers post 14. Where are the teachers coming from to cope with the sudden expansion in Key Stage 4, and at a time of crisis in recruitment? Oh, hang on, we'll just recruit more native speakers to make up the shortfall, presumably the kind that will be welcomed here rather than subject to some arbitrary interpretation of EU freedom of movement of labour regulations.

But just a second, where does it say that the EBacc will be compulsory? I quote from Nick Gibb's speech:

 In due course, we will also set out details of our expectation that secondary school pupils should take English Baccalaureate subjects at age 16.

Hmmm. "Expectation". "Should". It doesn't smack of rigorous compulsion, nor does it say all  secondary pupils. So what exactly do they intend? Is anybody the wiser? Of course lurking in the background is the scarcely veiled threat that if your school doesn't enter pupils for the EBacc you can expect to be downgraded by OFSTED. This is very worrying. The Secretary of State will be deciding what grade your school should get based on whether or not your pupils are examined in a  certain basket of arbitrarily-defined subjects derived from personal prejudice? Whatever happened to an independent inspectorate, operating without fear or favour?

Speaking of whatever happened...whatever happened to Progress 8? First there was the EBacc, then Progress 8 was introduced as the defining measure that would drive the league tables. The EBacc would be a "softer measure", whatever that means. Now, nobody seems to be talking about Progress 8 any more. Has it been abandoned? If not, how will it work vis-á-vis the EBacc? Does anyone know?

What about the students in all of this? According to Gove-in-a-dress, these subjects will set every child up for life. (I didn't see her interview with the Sunday Times of 14.06.15 as it's paywalled, and I refuse on principle to put any money into Murdoch's pocket. Here's the Guardian's take on the interview: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/14/schools-gcse-ebacc-ofsted-nicky-morgan) She wants every child to be entered for these subjects in order to achieve this vague objective of being "set up for life". (How is that defined? Just asking.) Presumably entering for the EBacc subjects is enough, then. Entering and failing them all shouldn't be a problem. How will independent schools react if vast legions of state school pupils suddenly start vying for the top jobs in law, finance, the judiciary, politics? Will they just stand aside with an "After you, dear boy"?

Don't get me wrong - I am not against any of these subjects in their own right, and I defend to my last breath the right of every child to a broad, balanced curriculum which enables them to build cultural capital and a sound knowledge base. I am deeply worried by the way in which this has been perverted into an ideological crusade based on selective interpretation of evidence, prejudice and anecdote. *

It is certainly true that in languages we have suffered in the past from "gaming" and "guided options". But simply shoe-horning every child into a GCSE examination is plain wrong-headed. It is yet again the wrong answer to the right question. We had over the years developed alternative accreditation routes in languages that offered different challenges to different groups of pupils and were no less rigorous for doing so. Despite all of this imaginative work, the likes of Asset Languages, CBLC, NVQ Units, Edexcel Vocational French GCSE and ABC Units were swept away by Gove's myopic resistance to anything that wasn't GCSE. (I did once send him an Asset Languages Intermediate French Reading paper and asked for his comments on its "rigour". Needless to say, he never replied.)

So now we're left with a potentially catastrophic one-size-fits-all assessment and the prospect of trying to motivate disaffected Year 11 students again. All very well for Nick Gibb to pronounce on this. He'll never have to do it. And yet he must have a brain the size of a planet, because he knows the difference between a performance measure and an accountability measure. (Hint - it's approximately the same as the difference between "over-firmly denying" and "lying")

 

*Nick Gibb talks about how good 15 year olds in Shanghai are at maths. He doesn't mention the "tiger mother" syndrome, the sweat-shop over-coaching that gives Chinese pupils 14 hour days and deprives them of a childhood, and the fact that most pupils in China leave school at 14. The 15 year olds are the ones whose parents have the money to keep them on and the sharp-elbowed desire to see them "succeed". He also conveniently omits any reference to adolescent suicide rates and incidences of self-harming. Be careful what you wish for.

Macdo ou Michelin? Mindset in MFL (ALL Language World 2015)

Download Macdo ou Michelin

This presentation came about as a result of pondering on the age-old cry of many pupils: "I'm no good at (insert language of choice)." It's difficult to persuade pupils otherwise, when they perceive that being "good at" languages is the result of innate talent or ability. If I haven't got it, then I can't do anything about it. My intelligence is fixed at birth, so I've just got to live with it.

Then I came across the work of Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Her "Mindset Theory" provides much food for thought. She differentiates between "fixed" mindset (intelligence fixed at birth, effort is a waste of time, avoid challenge, ignore criticism, threatened by the success of others) and "growth" mindset (intelligence can be developed, effort as pathway to mastery, inspired by success of others, embrace challenge, keep going when "stuck", learn from criticism). Unsurprisingly, students who develop a "growth" mindset tend to perform better than those with a "fixed" mindset.

So, how to translate this theory into an MFL context. First, I believe, is the concept of challenge, and by challenge I mean cognitive, conceptual challenge, not just linguistic (we have the subjunctive - what more do we need?). Think Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development - life begins where your comfort zone ends. It's a question of pitching the work into an area where students can achieve, but only after a struggle and with support. As Vince Lombardi, the American football coach once famously said, "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."

We have to become "Not yet" teachers:

Student: "I don't understand the passé composé"
Teacher: "Not yet, but let's break it down into its different parts..."

Student: "Miss, what's a tense? I don't get it."
Teacher: "Not yet, but let's see if we can find out what it is exactly that you don't understand."

We have to communicate the power of failure: First Attempt In Learning. We welcome mistakes; we make it safe for students to take risks; we acknowledge the "learning pit" and "stuckness" as valuable (see Andy Griffith and Mark Burn - Osiris Outstanding Teaching Intervention) and provide students with strategies to extricate themselves from the pit; we link challenge to students' own experiences - how did they learn to swim/ride a bike/play an instrument/juggle/do magic tricks/get into the 1st team? What changed as a result of dogged and determined practice?

We also have to communicate the link between effort and success, by implementing meaningful effort grades linked to clear criteria. How much store do we put by checking and proof reading to avoid error? How well are students trained to peer-assess?

We should also beware the dangers of praise - labelling students as "bright" can lead to complacency and lack of effort. So, should G&T now stand for Grit and Tenacity rather than Gifted and Talented? Such labelling can also engender resentment in other students.

Can we take a leaf out of the book of Dave Brailsford, the coach of Team GB Cycling in the 2012 London Olympics? Their success was unprecedented, and was attributed to the hard work of the cyclists, high quality podium coaching and minute attention to detail, what Brailsford referred to as "marginal gains". In other words, not massive improvement in one or two areas, but incremental improvements across a range of performance aspects which lead to a true "gestalt", where the whole equals more than the sum of the parts.

Our feedback to students can be critical in this respect.We should by now be familiar enough with the work of John Hattie and Dylan Wiliam to recognise the importance of high quality formative feedback which concentrates on information about the task, learning behaviours and future performance, rather than judgemental feedback, which focuses on a judgement on the task which gives no information about its completion,past performance and refers to students' ability.

Metacognition is also crucial to the process. Making students aware of the learning process through "split screen" objectives, which focus both on the desired outcomes for the lesson/sequence and the skills necessary to achieve them. Let's talk about learning, let's talk about thinking as well as the objectives for today's lesson.

In summary, we need to acknowledge, and in doing so encourage our students to recognise, the dangers of easy success, the rewards of failure and the power of metacognition. As John Hattie once said:

“There’s no challenge in doing your best, because whatever you do is your best.” (Visible learning Pt 2 – Effective methods, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pD1DFTNQf4 – about 1m10)

Le subjonctif Oldelaf

Thanks to Dominic McGladdery for the heads-up!

Languages – it’s a guy thing from Bootleian

Languages - it's a guy thing

Below is the presentation I gave to a webinar organised by the inimitable Helen Myers for ALL London branch on Friday 9 May 2014. Michael Gove take note - 25 language teachers, including colleagues from Uzbekistan and Brazil, coming together for an hour and a half on a Friday night after a long and no doubt exhausting week, and all showing that passion, dedication and above all humour that defines us as professionals. Enemies of promise, Michael? I don't think so.

Colleagues are welcome to have it if it's useful. It can be viewed on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/Bootleian/languages-its-a-guy-thing

The actual webinar was recorded and can be accessed at https://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/_a875817169/p7zvtv0jaqa/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal