Learning Stuff About Stuff

Learning styles are a myth and I am not an auditory learner

2018-06-17T09:20:00.001+01:00

I switched on Radio 6 this morning, and the track they were playing had a drum sound which caught my ear. It reminded me of a rototom - a tuned drum which was quite popular in the 80s. I had a set of three in my drum kit.

I doubt many listeners would have made that connection. I suspect many listeners would not even have particularly distinguished that drum sound. I think many people just hear songs in a much less differentiated way, unless they make a real effort. I, like most musicians, tend to hear the guitar, the drums, the bass, the keyboard and the vocals separately.

In other words, I am extracting more information from the audio than some might.

It would be tempting to imagine, therefore, that I would learn better through hearing than through other senses. But that is nonsense. Imagine trying to learn about the physical geography of a country through hearing about it without a map!

But this is exactly the argument made by people who insist they are "visual learners" despite all the research showing that learning styles are a myth (and it's always "visual" isn't it?). Just because you see ten colours where I see three, and see a rich tapestry of symbols and allusions where I see a table with some fruit on it, it doesn't mean you learn better through seeing stuff than through your other senses.

Sacrifice and Memory

2018-02-03T10:17:00.002+00:00

I'm reading Jordan B Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" - got to keep my finger on the pulse!

He offers an analysis of how ritual sacrifice arose in societies, which I find fascinating and utterly convincing. His contention is that it arose after our ancestors developed the capacity to think about the future, and therefore began to realise that delaying gratification could deliver longer term benefits. In other words, that sacrificing something of value in the present could lead to good things in the future. Having discovered this, it is a small step to imagine that sacrificing something of value, like a goat, might also lead to good things happening in the future.

This link between delaying gratification, personal sacrifice and ritual sacrifice had never occurred to me before. It now seems obvious. Perhaps it was already obvious to most people.

I am absolutely certain that I will never forget this. I may review it if I am presented with a different analysis which challenges Peterson's view. But I will never just forget it, and return to not seeing the connection.

I wonder how this fits into the models of memory developed by cognitive psychologists. Is there a place, in the world of forgetting curves, for concepts and connections which, once realised, can never be forgotten?

Some Thoughts about Skills-Based Curricula

2017-09-24T15:40:00.000+01:00

I hear a lot of talk about skills-based curricula in Scotland these days, with the general vibe being that skills-based curricula are a Good Thing™. I'm not entirely clear what people mean by a skills-based curriculum, because it is one of those phrases which has slipped into the common parlance of educators without any clear definition (see also "learner conversations"). Try searching on the Education Scotland website for "skill based curriculum" and you'll draw a blank. I guess it means a curriculum defined in terms of the competencies being developed by our learners: a curriculum defined in terms of the things we want our learners to be able to do, rather than what they know.

I can see the appeal of this, but I am wary. Here are a couple of things which would worry me if they were true:

1. Is this curriculum seeking to develop generic, transferable skills?

If so, we really need to distinguish between actual skills which are applicable in a range of contexts (such as being able to speak clearly, spell accurately, read well, be punctual, perform arithmetic, understand basic statistics etc.) and so-called "generic transferable skills" such a problem solving, critical thinking or creativity. The former are vital and should rightly be prioritised in a curriculum. The latter don't exist outwith specific domains of knowledge. If you are surprised to hear that, read this.

2. Does this curriculum prioritise skills development above the building of long-term knowledge?

If so, it fails to recognise that "in every domain that has been explored, considerable knowledge has been found to be an essential prerequisite to expert skill"? ("Expert and Novice Performance in Solving Physics Problems" -- Larkin, McDermott, Simon and Simon -- 1979-1980). Skills such as problem solving, creativity and critical thinking do, of course, exist. But they are developed by individuals within specific domains of knowledge, and rely upon the development of a considerable body of knowledge within that domain. It is nonsense to imagine that the expert problem solving skills I have developed within the domain of mathematics will in any way equip me to be a good problem solver in the world of graphic design, say. This article by Daniel Willingham looks at the challenges of teaching critical skills. If the curriculum recognises the importance of knowledge acquisition, focuses on that and then proceeds to provide learners with opportunities to apply their knowledge meaningfully, then it has a good chance of genuinely developing skills.

I am all in favour of a curriculum which focuses on the things learners end up being able to do, but such a curriculum must recognise that the principal means of increasing skill is to increase domain-specific knowledge. It is interesting to note that this message is entirely commonplace and mainstream in England, but is rarely voiced in Scotland.

Much of the work in Scotland on skills development is entirely rational and worthwhile. Take this example from Castlebrae, for example. The programme clearly understands that skills exist within domains of knowledge, and seeks to clarify what these important skills are, so that teachers can provide opportunities to develop them. The cross-curricular skills it identifies relate to literacy, numeracy and health-and-wellbeing. These all fall into the "former" category I identified earlier.

But schools only have 27.5 hours per week. Time spent on try to develop skills such as critical thinking in the abstract rather than within a specific domain of knowledge is time wasted, and there is no time to waste.

Knowing and Understanding in Mathematics

2017-06-25T11:39:00.001+01:00

In order to investigate the current debate about knowing and understanding sparked by David Didau's post, I want to examine one small part of mathematics, which I happen to be teaching to a Higher maths class at the moment: finding the point which divides a line segment in a given ratio.

One way to approach this is to teach a formula:

The position vector of P, where P divides AB in the ratio m:n, is given by p=(na+mb)/(m+n)

If you know

how to convert a position vector to a coordinate
the convention that capital letters represents points and bold lower case letters represent corresponding position vectors
how to multiply or divide a vector by a scalar
how to add vectors together

then can probably now solve a problem such as:

Given that the point P divides S(3,4,-1) and T(5,8,11) in the ratio 3:1, find P.

At this point, a student knows how to find a point which divides a line segment in a given ratio. They may have no idea why this rule works. They may have no idea what a position vector is. They may have no idea what a ratio is. They may have no idea about the 3D coordinate system. Do they understand the rule?

In maths, it seems to me, knowing means being able to recall a particular mathematical result, such as the formula given above. Understanding means grasping to some extent the chain of previously established facts and causal links which lead to the given mathematical result being true. In this sense, knowing and understanding are different in maths.

You might say the "understanding" I describe is just more knowing. I disagree, because there is a categorical difference between knowing a particular fact, or set of facts, and understanding why that fact is true. The litmus test, for me, is that anyone could remember the formula given above. Most people could be trained to apply the rule to solve problems using the formula, provided the problems were stated in a fairly standard way. Only those who have already mastered a sufficient body of knowledge and understanding in maths would be capable of understanding what the formula is actually about, and why it works.

I suppose I am saying that understanding is about the connectedness of one's knowing. Maths is a domain in which this distinction is particularly evident, because it is relatively easy to learn a fact which has no connection to anything else you know. For example:

A Hermitian manifold is a complex manifold with a smoothly varying Hermitian inner product on each (holomorphic) tangent space.

I could memorise that, and regurgitate it. I have no idea what any of the mathematical words in the definition mean, apart from "complex" and a very vague recognition of "manifold". I don't understand this definition because it does not connect to anything else I already know (and understand through connections to other knowledge) in maths.

My Leadership Story

2016-11-30T21:59:00.001+00:00

I have volunteered to "share my leadership journey" for ten minutes before leading a discussion with other middle leaders at a SCEL event in Edinburgh. This blog post is a rehearsal of those ten minutes, and I would gratefully appreciate any constructive feedback.

I have a leadership story rather than a leadership journey to share. This is the story I tell myself about how I got to where I am now as a leader, and about where I might go next. It is very subjective and selective. Nonetheless I think it is worth sharing, because this is the truth I inhabit. You also have stories you tell yourself, and you inhabit your stories every day of your professional life. It is sometimes easy to recognise these stories in others - the colleague who sees themselves as the victim of unreasonable burdens regardless of changing circumstances or another who sees themselves as blessed and lucky no matter what misfortunes befall them. It is much harder to identify the stories we tell ourselves, because we tend to see them not as stories but as "how things are". These stories have immense power to shape our motivations and actions. If we are willing to examine them critically, we may even be able to reshape them into more powerful, positive stories.

Here's my story. It highlights the biographical moments which seem significant to me, and takes for granted my enduring desire to improve the lives of the young people of Scotland through education.

As a young teacher, I had no interest in leadership. I thought leadership was synonymous with dominance and control. I wanted to do neither. My worldview was influenced by Buddhist and psycho-therapeutic ideas. I believed in human growth and human potential, not in command-and-control.

I also thought promotion just meant less teaching and more administration (I was right about that!). And so I avoided anything I would have described as a leadership position for many years. I did, however, become a senior teacher with responsibility for ICT. But that wasn't leadership in my head, because I wasn't anyone's boss. During this period I began to blog and use Twitter, thanks to the work Don Ledingham, Ewan McIntosh, Louise Jones, David Gilmour, John Johnstone, Neil Winton, Kate Farrel, Ian Stuart and others were doing. They formed the core of my growing professional learning network. My horizons expanded beyond my room and the colleagues in my department. I participated in an early Teachmeet.

Then eventually my PT announced his impending retirement, and I was faced with the possibility of having to work under a new PT who might be younger and less experienced than me. That didn't seem like it would be fun, so I decided to apply. I had a lot of support and encouragement via Twitter and my PLN, who convinced me to go for it. Ollie Bray was particularly supportive in terms of getting my application right. I remember being conscious at the time that I would have to really want it to get it, so I invested much time and energy in preparing over a 6 month period. During that time I began to read about leadership, and found, to my great surprise, that modern thinking about leadership actually resonated with my beliefs about human potential and the nurturing of human growth. This was a real turning point for me. I saw the possibility of being a leader whilst remaining true to myself - leading with integrity. I began to learn more about coaching.

All I had to do now was to convince someone to give me a job. I had the great good fortune to work under a head teacher, Colin Sutherland, who saw potential in me, and he promoted me to PT.

I loved being PT maths and did a great job (even if I say so myself!), and might have remained one for the rest of my career had East Lothian schools not restructured their departments into faculties. This meant that every PT had to reapply for their job. After my interview, one of the panel asked Colin "why isn't Robert a depute already?". When Colin told me this, it had a big effect on me. I began to believe I could make a difference on a bigger scale than one department. I applied for the flexible route to headship programme. This was the best CLPL I ever did. I was coached by Dorothy Hillsley, to whom I am eternally grateful.

Four years later I was a depute head teacher, after one spell as an acting depute which ended with my failing to secure the permanent post. That hurt, but I learnt a lot, and came back more resilient and determined. I have my current head Lauren Rodger to thank for this: she didn't appoint me the first time, but she always supported and believed in me. I have now achieved the standard for Headship, am loving having the opportunity to make appoint difference at NBHS and more widely and aspire to headship - gies a job!

So that's my story. 25 years condensed into a few paragraphs. Many failures, mistakes and moments of doubt along the way have been edited out. This can't possibly be the whole truth, and some of it may be entirely untrue. The causal links are far too simplistic and it paints me in an altogether too positive light. Small incidents are given perhaps unwarranted significance. It skips entirely any examination of the values which underpin my motivation to be involved in education. It's just a story, not the truth. But it is an (incomplete) approximation of the truth I inhabit. I think it's a good story, because it motivates me to keep learning and working hard. It also keeps me humble as it recognises the good luck and support of others which have helped me along the way. I'm keeping my eyes open for a better story.

What's yours?

Planning for Learning or Planning for Behaviour?

2016-11-03T17:42:00.000+00:00

Several months ago I found myself sitting beside a quite senior staff member from one of our colleges of initial teacher education, who complained to me that her student teachers all seemed to be obsessed with behaviour management.

I was flabbergasted, but failed miserably to put together a reasonable argument for why the students were quite right.

That conversation came back to me today as I taught a maths cover class, who were learning about the graphs of linear equations. The class had some lively characters in it, and they were clearly struggling with the central concept: that a line on a coordinate diagram represents all the points where a particular linear equation involving x and y is true.

As they explored this concept through a series of activities, many of them experienced confusion and frustration. These are normal, healthy emotions for learners. We were able to stick with these challenging experiences partly because the pupils were operating in an environment in which misbehaviour wasn't an option. I'm not bragging here - they behaved themselves mainly because I'm a depute head and they don't know me very well.

It struck me that things would be very different in an environment in which the good behaviour of pupils was always contingent upon them enjoying themselves, experiencing success or performing well. In such an environment (which prevailed in some of the classes I taught in the early years of my career, by the way), the teacher would veer away from tasks which involved challenge and required perseverance. They would lean towards activities which were entertaining and provided quick gratification and the illusion of learning, for fear of otherwise provoking poor behaviour.

If your (and by "your" I refer to the school as a whole as much as to individual teachers) - if your behaviour management is impeccable and the expectations of behaviour and effort in your classes are sky-high, then you are liberated from that fear, and can focus on planning for learning rather than planning for behaviour. Your students are then more likely to experience the profound gratification of learning, rather than the shallow gratification of success-in-the-moment.

That's why student teachers are right to be obsessed with behaviour management.

And what if we don't achieve our dreams?

2016-09-11T15:50:00.003+01:00

"If A then B" is logically equivalent to "If (Not B) then (Not A)". For example "if a shape has three sides, then it is a triangle" is logically equivalent to "if a shape is not a triangle, then it does not have three sides". The second statement in quotes is called the contrapositive of the first statement in quotes. Logically speaking, they are identical statements. If one is true, the other must be, and vice versa. In this case, they are both true statements.

A commonly touted inspirational message we deliver to young people can be distilled down to "if you do all the things right that are within your power, then your dreams will come true". Consider its contrapositive.

NQT Professional Enquiries

2016-06-17T16:18:00.003+01:00

Our school's NQTs presented their professional enquiries to staff at an in-service session this afternoon, with each one at a different table in the canteen. I was humbled and thrilled by the depth of their thinking, and by the tone and level of their discussions with staff.

I picked up the following key insights from the three enquiries I heard about:

female pupils still often appear to defer to male pupils in group discussions. Randomised groups aren't good enough.
pupils prefer to work with friends, but the quality of their discussions might actually better when they are with peers they know less well. With the right support they can realise this themselves.
we hold enormous power as teachers, and the language we use with pupils can make a huge difference to how they feel about learning and about themselves as learners.

About the ensuing discussions at the canteen tables, I was particularly delighted that:

many teachers hung around in conversation with the NQTs long after the session was supposed to have finished.
the teachers with whom I shared discussions were genuinely curious about the NQTs' enquiries - open minded about actually learning from the NQTs.
the tone of the discussions was so supportive. Not the slightest hint of "yeah yeah I knew that already - I have nothing to learn here".

Now it may be that my presence affected the tone of the discussions in which I participated (I really don't think so), but even then I would be delighted: if teachers think "keeping Jonesey sweet" means being curious, humble and open-minded about pedagogy, they are right!

Classroom Rules: Imagine it's the last lesson of the year.

2016-06-13T22:17:00.001+01:00

This tweet

Drawing up class rules collaboratively should be compulsory in every class! #edchatie
— Bríd (@BridCarlow) June 13, 2016

led me to this video

in which Tom Bennett says that teachers should not negotiate classroom rules with students, because they may produce rules which are not sensible. I'm not sure if I agree, but it struck me that I should share what I do.

I start new classes by asking them to imagine it is the last lesson of the year. They are walking out of the door, and I have a wee tear in my eye, because they have been the best class I have ever had, and am really going to miss them. I ask them to tell me what they think they will have to do during the year in order to make that happen.

I am not pretending that they are in control, but having generated the list of behaviours (which has always been pretty good, even with some very challenging classes) I ask them if they think they can live up to this list. They have always said yes to me. I must say I only began doing this some years into my career. I don't think I would have had the confidence to do it as an NQT.

I then ask them what I have to do for them to say at the end of the year that I have been the best teacher ever. This does usually generate some humorous answers - CAKE! - but by and large they tell me what they actually want: patient, clear, fair etc. I tell them if I can live up to their list. Usually I can agree to most of their expectations. If they don't say it, I will add "have high expectations of you" to the list, and explain why.

If the "imagine..." chat doesn't work for you, a more straightforward approach is simply to ask "what do you think I am going to expect from you?" Again you are not kidding on that they are in control, but you are giving them the opportunity to show that they know what is expected of them, rather than presenting them with rules without discussion. Then ask "what do you expect of me?"

I'm sure I didn't make this technique up, but I can't remember where it came from. Please let me know if you know. It works for me.

An exercise to explore school improvement

2016-05-20T14:40:00.002+01:00

1. Consider this list of "changes" that one might make as a teacher in order to improve one's effectiveness: "write a new course", " read about and implement a different approach to marking homework ", " change one's beliefs about the potential of one's students", "reflect on the language one uses with students, consider the extent to which it empowers or belittles them, and make changes", " go to a sharing-good-practice session and implement something from the session in your classroom", "invite a colleague to observe a lesson and give you feedback about your 'way of being' with the students", " flip your classroom", "reflect on your body language in the classroom and improve it"...

2. Add some more to the list yourself.

3. Write each of the "changes" on post-it notes, and give each a mark out of ten for the potential they have to improve outcomes for learners in your classroom.

4. On a board, draw a wee picture of yourself in the middle, and place each of the changes on the board, depending on how personal they feel: "be a different person" would be right on top of you and "perform an administrative task" would be far away.

5. Step back and survey your creation.

I'm not really expecting you to do this (though it might make an interesting task for an in-service session), but as a thought experiment I hope it illustrates why I believe that school transformation requires the personal transformation of its staff - teachers and leaders.

The Challenge of Integrity as a School Leader (or anyone else for that matter)

2016-03-08T22:18:00.001+00:00

I'm currently reading Theories in Practice by Argyris and Schön. It is a remarkable, thought-provoking work, exploring the inconsistencies between the things people claim to value and the things they actually value; between the theories they claim to have about how changes occur and the theories they actually use to direct their actions. It is easy to reflect on how these inconsistencies are evident in the words and actions of others - much harder to see our own inconsistencies.

As school leaders, we say we seek to increase the effectiveness of our schools. But what do we mean by effectiveness? Do the things we claim to care about improving match the things we actually demonstrate caring about by our actions - the things we actually care about improving? And how do we claim to be going about effecting improvement - what are our espoused theories of improvement? Do we use these espoused theories to guide our actions, or do we actually operate according to different theories, of which we may or may not be consciously aware?

These questions are difficult but worthwhile, particularly if we are feeling frustrated by our attempts at school improvement. Frustration arise when things don't go the way we hope or expect. We are in big trouble if we try to analyse such failures by looking at our espoused theories, when in fact we aren't using them! And doomed to disappointment if the things we claim to be trying to improve aren't actually the things we value.

I'm thankfully not feeling frustrated in my school-improvement efforts, but I do see inconsistencies in myself. For example, I espouse a non-judgemental, growth-mindset, coacherly approach to raising the capacity of colleagues, but have been guilty on occasion of operating on the assumption that colleagues are incapable of changing. I espouse an open, consultative style of leadership, but have been guilty of making assumptions about the motivations of colleagues then failing to check these assumptions with them.

I'm not beating myself up here. I'm just curious about how to become a better leader, and this seems like fertile ground.

Teachmeet+

2016-03-06T11:41:00.001+00:00

Fearghal has asked on his blog if we should be doing something collectively in Scotland to re-energise the Teachmeet movement.

I've attended and presented at several Teachmeets over the years, and found them uplifting, energising experiences. I don't think, hand on heart, that I have adopted long-term very many of the good practices being presented by others. This isn't because I didn't consider them worthwhile. It's just that they didn't quite match my context, or I just forgot about them in the daily maelstrom of the classroom.

I suspect that most participants would say the same, or something close to it. Now maybe the point of Teachmeet is to embed the good practices in the classroom of the presenters themselves. This seems more likely. I think that might apply to me. If so, we should return to the principle that Teachmeets are for presenting, not for listening.

If we want the audience to get something out of Teachmeet that will lead to positive impacts on their learners, we need to consider how that is going to happen. Is our theory something like this?

If so, we are likely to be disappointed. As I said before, the chances of a sustained change in practice are low. And even if the new practice is implemented, who is to say that it will actually make a positive difference for my learners in my situation?

I would propose this as a more likely path to impact:

I don't have an answer to how we support that path, but I'm interested in trying to work it out!

Report Comments

2015-12-09T14:04:00.000+00:00

As I proof-read sets of reports, I wonder if we should only make a comment if we would be willing to state its opposite:

Joe is a bright and very pleasant pupil	Joe is a dim or very unpleasant pupil
Joe is making excellent progress with this course	Joe is making poor progress with this course
Joe is highly motivated	Joe is unmotivated
It is a pleasure teaching Joe	I am not enjoying teaching Joe
Joe is an excellent student	Joe is a poor student
Joe always acts on advice	Joe sometimes fails to act on the advice I give him
Joe is very capable	Joe is not very capable
Joe is a hardworking boy	Joe is a lazy boy

We would happily state some of these "opposites", but some seem completely inappropriate!

Actually it seems to me that we are happy to make positive statements about the identity of a person - they are bright, excellent, intelligent, capable, hardworking etc., but much more reticent about making matching negative statements. We couch them in process language, so the opposite of "Joe is a hardworking boy" becomes "Joe needs to put more effort into his classwork" rather than "Joe is…". The thing is, you can't have one without the other. In a world where there are "bright" students, there are also "dim" students. In a world where there are "pleasant" students there are also students who are "unpleasant". Our statement of the former acknowledges the existence of the latter.

I draw no conclusion - I'm just taking a break, having read 20 sets of reports. 45 to go.

Mindset is a Social Justice Issue for Scottish High Schools

2015-10-05T18:43:00.001+01:00

Students arrive at high school with varying degrees of prior learning. It is clear from national statistics in Scotland that children from deprived homes have learned less by the end of primary, on average, than children from affluent homes. It's an uncomfortable but undeniable fact, and I am in no way criticising the efforts being made by primary schools. At high school, just like our primary colleagues, we want to do something about closing this gap.

If, when children arrive at high school, a teacher mislabels these levels of prior learning as levels of ability, brightness or intelligence (which is a fixed-mindset approach) then I can't see how such a teacher will really believe that under-attaining children from deprived homes will be able to close the gap between their learning and the learning of their higher attaining peers. Such a teacher will recognise that there is a gap and may aspire to do something about closing it - but they will also believe that the under-attaining students are inherently less able to learn. If, on the other hand, a teacher sees levels of prior learning as just that, and makes no judgement about the potential of their students (a growth mindset approach) then they are more likely to believe in the possibility of closing the gap.

Clearly a fixed-mindset attitude towards the potential of students is bad for all under-attaining students, but children from deprived homes will be disproportionately disadvantaged.

Yet Another Post About Growth Mindset

2015-08-23T17:17:00.000+01:00

We want to promote growth mindsets in the North Berwick High School community. If you haven't heard of growth mindsets, this video by Carol Dweck (who developed the concept) explains it well. Here's how I picture the virtuous cycle of beliefs in a growth-mindset relationship between a student and her teacher:

Image by IntelFreePress

Mindset is not magic, as Nick Rose explains so clearly here. Effective learning relies on us getting many other things right: curriculum structures; excellent course and lesson plans; strong positive relationships with students and parents; teachers with sound content knowledge, high expectations and excellent pedagogical skills; communities that value learning... the list could fill a book. But it is clear from the research that growth mindset interventions do have the potential to make a positive difference. I believe that psychologically informed approaches to school improvement will gain traction in the coming years, and that growth mindset interventions will come to be seen as one strand of broader work on nurturing students to develop positive concepts of themselves as learners. Looking back, our growth mindset programmes will probably appear clumsy and crude. But we have to start somewhere!

I have been interested in growth mindsets since 2009 when I read Carol Dweck's book, and have written about the concept several times:

Mindset (2009)
Headway for 'growth mindsets' (2010 article in TESS)
Notes for a Future Self (2012)
Success and Failure (2012)

Everyone and their dog are interested in growth mindset just now, of course, so why bother writing a blog post? Well I want to make clear exactly what we are aiming for, and the trap that we want to avoid, which looks like success but definitely isn't.

Success will look like the above picture. Students might say:

"My teachers believe that I can become more intelligent if I make the right kind of effort. They don't really talk about growth mindset - I can just tell by the way they speak that they have faith in my capacity to improve. My teachers celebrate my mistakes and failures, and I enjoy being given really challenging tasks."

We will have gone badly astray if any students says this:

"My teachers keep going on about how I should have a growth mindset. The fact that I give up apparently proves that I have a fixed mindset, and that's bad. So not only am I rubbish at school; I also have a fixed mindset - just another thing that's wrong with me."

So for students, we want to have brief sessions to teach them about neuroplasticity and the concept of growth-mindset. These sessions will emphasise the fact that mindsets can change, and that we can have different mindsets in different fields of knowledge. The aim is for students to know intellectually that they can change their intelligence through deliberate practice. But they will not necessarily believe this deeply until they experience some success as a result of holding it to be true. This was my experience, as described in the two posts from 2012 above: the students really changed how they felt about themselves as learners of maths only after they passed the second test. It was that concrete experience of success that validated for them all my talk about how they could become better mathematicians through practice. This point is made in an excellent post on the Evidence into Practice blog.

For staff, we will similarly give them an overview of the topic, including evidence from research on the potential impact on learning of changes in mindset. We will then provide staff with some ways of communicating with students that would demonstrate a growth mindset towards them. In other words, we will say to teachers "please think about your own beliefs in the light of the facts we have given you. Do you have a growth mindset about the potential of your students? If you already have such an attitude, or can develop one, here are some ways of communicating that belief to the students. Failing that (and it may be very difficult for teachers to change their beliefs if they have deeply entrenched fixed-mindset attitudes), fake it 'til you make it by using the ways of communicating we are suggesting!"

I have been promoting with staff for several years the benefits of having a growth mindset about ourselves as learning professionals, and have shown them Dylan Wiliam's "Every Teacher Can Improve" video on several occasions. Our Professional Learning Communities programme is predicated upon this attitude.

For parents, we will run evening sessions, supported by the excellent resources at Mindset Kit. The aim will be for parents to understand how we think about learning as a community, and to encourage them to communicate with their children in ways that nurture a growth mindset. This is sensitive territory, but I can talk from experience about how I changed the way I spoke to my son after reading Mindset by Dweck.

We are not interested in plastering our school in motivational posters about growth mindsets. We want growth mindsets to be apparent in the all the myriad conversations that take place between students, parents and teachers every day in our community.

We will evaluate our efforts through attitudinal surveys of students. Whilst we clearly seek to improve learning, we will measure changes in mindset as a proxy. The evidence of a positive link between mindset and learning is so strong that I feel comfortable doing so.

If you are thinking about nurturing growth mindsets in your school community, you may also find the following links useful:

Growth mindset posts at Learning Spy
Becoming a growth mindset school by Chris Hildrew
This much I know about…developing a Dweck-inspired Growth Mindset culture by John Tomsett

School Leadership: The Journey to the Dark Side.

2014-09-06T14:46:00.002+01:00

As Professional Learning Communities get under way here at North Berwick, I can see how a school leader might be drawn to the dark side. It goes something like this:

Start teaching

"School leaders are idiots. They think that top-down direction will improve schools, but what teachers really need is the space and time to collaborate and enquire into their own practice. Teachers are not the problem - teachers are the solution"

Get promoted

Implement a programme in school that sets aside time for teachers to collaborate and enquire into their own practice

Some teachers think the programme is a waste of time. They think that another idiot leader is trying to change the school through a top-down intervention

"What is wrong with these teachers? They are a real problem."

I will strive to avoid falling into this trap!

Professional Learning Communities: Why bother?

2014-09-01T19:05:00.000+01:00

I imagine some colleagues thinking something along these lines about being in a PLC:

Seriously Robert, I do buy into the whole improvement thing, but if you want me to get better as a teacher, why don't you just observe me, then tell me something that I could improve? I'd be up for it. Why do I have to spend hours attending PLC meetings, observing, coaching, being observed and being coached? It just seems like a huge waste of time, when we all know that we are desperately time-poor as teachers.

I would respond as follows:

There are many reasons why I think it is better to be in a PLC than to follow your suggestion, even though PLCs take more time.

1. Being told to make a change to one's practice rarely leads to a permanent change in practice. I wish this were not true, but all the research I have seen indicates that it is. And not just for other people - it is true for you and me!

2. PLCs improve the capacity of participants to drive their own improvement. Even if my intervention in your class did lead to a permanent change in your practice, further intervention would be required from me to elicit further improvement in your practice. My effort is like pushing a car with square wheels. It moves, but generates no momentum of its own.

3. In your PLC, you will (if it works well) be exposed to the ideas of colleagues and educational thinkers in a way that challenges and deepens your thinking about education, learning and teaching. You will reflect critically on the ideas of others, and have others challenge your thinking. This is the real meat of professional learning. You get none of this if I tell you how to change your practice.

4. I don't necessarily know how you can improve your practice. Nor do you! The best you can do is to reflect on your current practice, look at what research says, try something that has been seen to work for others, and evaluate the impact that the change in your practice has on your learners. This is how we work in PLCs. This approach puts you in control of your own practice.

5. PLCs offer you enormous professional autonomy. The price for this autonomy is your commitment to continuous improvement throughout your career, and to engagement in the systematic processes that drive that improvement. The alternative is to go through your career being told how to get better by others.

5. The new standard for full registration expects you to have a reflective, enquiring, research-engaged approach to your practice. PLCs will support you in developing this stance. My telling you how to change your practice will not.

Professional Learning Communities: What do I mean by a PLC?

2014-08-31T20:51:00.002+01:00

PLCs have been around for years in a variety of guises, including Teacher Learning Communities in the Dylan Wiliam/Tapestry model.

As I understand them, PLCs aim to improve the learning of pupils through the professional learning of teachers.

Our implementation of PLCs at North Berwick High School has grown organically over a period of 18 months, and has been described both as "The Coaching Project" and "Coaching for Professional Enquiry". We eventually settled on "Professional Learning Communities" when we realised that our model bore so many similarities to other implementations that it seemed pointless to hold on to our distinct name.

The North Berwick PLCs are groups of eight to ten teachers who have volunteered to participate. They come together for 75 minute meetings six times per session, and participants engage in peer-observation, peer-coaching and collaborative professional enquiry throughout the year. Each PLC is chaired by someone who has previously participated in a PLC. The meetings provide opportunities for planning, goal setting, reporting back on progress and discussions about pedagogy.

Our PLCs are founded on the following principles:

every teacher needs to improve, because every teacher is capable of improving
improvement comes through increased awareness of our impact on learners, and through taking responsibility for developing our own practice
improvement comes through taking a positive, solution-focused approach
improvement comes through being asked good questions, not through being told what to do
improvement comes through looking in the right places
improvement comes through reflection, enquiry, evaluation, discussion and feedback - not through judging or being judged

Professional Learning Communities: Establishing Norms

2014-08-31T20:23:00.000+01:00

This will be something like the tenth post in a series (if I ever write the previous nine!) about the work I have been doing to establish and support professional learning communities (PLCs) at North Berwick High School (NBHS). It's a long story, which began 18 months ago with the growing realisation that the real work of professional learning looked more like personal growth than "going on courses".

A potted version of the story so far...

I became very enthusiastic in 2013 about the potential for peer-coaching to support the professional growth of teachers. This enthusiasm coincided with my temporary promotion to depute head, and my embarking on the Flexible Routes to Headship programme. My FRH project became the development of PLCs supported by peer-coaching, initially in a pilot project of ten volunteers. I failed to secure the permanent depute post, but continued to lead the pilot PLC as head of maths during the 13-14 session. The pilot was deemed sufficiently worthwhile by the participants that they all agreed to be facilitators of PLCs this session. Meanwhile I secured a permanent post as depute head at NBHS. I launched PLCs with the whole staff on the 19th of August, as a voluntary professional learning opportunity that they could opt-out of if they felt able to meet the aspects of the standard regarding engagement with research, evidence of impact and collaborative learning in other ways. Only a handful of staff opted out - all of whom who were about to retire this session or next.

I am absolutely delighted that so many colleagues are giving PLCs a go, but rather anxious too. I am anxious to ensure that we deliver on my promise that PLCs will provide rewarding, challenging experiences for teachers - experiences that will lead to real learning for them, and thus to real improvements in the learning of our pupils.

The PLCs are meeting for the first time this Friday. I am acutely aware, as Katz says (in the first video here, and in his book Intentional Interruption), that "there is no magic in collaboration" and that our PLCs must, therefore, adopt deliberate practices that avoid making "together... worse than alone".

Clearly PLCs are not new, so we benefit from the experiences of those who have gone before. All of my reading points to the importance of each PLC establishing its own norms, so this will be the principle agenda item for Friday afternoon. I like this activity, purloined from this pdf:

A Strategy for Establishing Team Norms

Ask team members to think of a past negative experience they have had serving on a team or committee and to identify a specific behavior that prevented that group from being effective: for example, whining and complaining, arriving late and leaving early, being disengaged during the meetings, and so on.

For each negative norm identified by members of your team, establish a positive commitment statement (a norm) your team should adopt that, if everyone adhered to it, would prevent the past negative experience from recurring.

If any readers have experience of establishing PLCs, I would very interested in any advice they have to offer!

Chaining down the goalposts

2014-08-31T12:53:00.000+01:00

I discovered this week that all hockey goals in my authority are now padlocked in place by chains, following an unfortunate incident when someone climbed on top of one and it fell over on top of them, to their considerable injury. The PE teacher who told me this complained that the chains made it very awkward for them to move the goals, which they often want to do in order to use the playing area flexibly.

I don't know enough about this situation to comment on the wisdom of the decision to padlock the goals in place, but it struck me at the time that this institutional response is a great metaphor for the way that we, as individuals, respond to painful experiences in our lives.

When we experience pain, especially in response to the actions of others, we have a strong tendency to react internally by seeking to shield ourselves from further pain. Unfortunately, this defensive response also restricts our openness to receiving positive experiences in future. In some small way we become less alive. And if we are not careful, we go through our lives repeatedly protecting ourselves, and repeatedly becoming safer but less alive. Like an institution where everything is safe but nothing functions.

Joyce and Showers

2014-08-26T15:43:00.002+01:00

In a post last year - Behaviour Management and Avalanches - I wrote about the failure of professional development activities to lead to actual changes in behaviour from teachers. At the time I thought that I had stumbled upon something new. It turns out, as usual, that I was just ignorant of the existing work in this area.

Joyce and Showers established, back in the 80s, that fewer than 10% of participants in staff development actually implemented new strategies in their classrooms. But they found that with peer-observation and peer-coaching this percentage increased to 90%!

This research is very reassuring to me, given that I am currently working with staff to set up professional learning communities in school, supported by peer-observation and peer-coaching.

A specific situation in which I have found SOLO useful

2014-06-13T16:55:00.001+01:00

I introduced an S2 (year 9) maths class to the SOLO diagrams and the language of SOLO, prior to giving them some nrich problems to work on in groups. My description of the task was for them to 'do some mathematical thinking' using the problems as prompts. I used the SOLO levels to give them a scaffold. When discussing their thinking, I asked them 'what level do you think you are working at now?' and 'what would you have to do to move to the next level up?'. Many of them found this very useful - for example they saw that to move from relational to extended abstract, they would have to generalise, make some predictions, make connections with other mathematical topics etc. and they then did so. I'm not sure how I could have given them this scaffold without some common language like SOLO or Bloom's taxonomy. I prefer SOLO, but I'm know people find Bloom's useful. It appeared to me that the language of SOLO created in the minds of youngsters some clarity about how to engage with a problem in increasingly deep ways. That seemed to me to be a good thing.

Behaviour Management and Avalanches

2014-03-19T20:55:00.000+00:00

I've read a few blog posts recently about behaviour management - "Top Ten Tips for Behaviour Management" is a fine example. Many of them seem to be aimed at NQTs. I have agreed with almost everything in all of the posts, and use many of the strategies myself.

And yet these posts leave me with nagging questions - who are they for, and will they help? The short answers are, of course, that they are for whomever wants to read them, and that they are bound to be helpful to some teachers - the strategies are, after all, tried and tested, and they work! I think these posts would be particularly useful for an experienced teacher who is looking to expand his or her repertoire of behaviour management strategies. I have certainly found them useful (as a faculty head with over 20 years of teaching experience).

So what is my gripe? Is it just end-of-term malaise? Maybe. But I think this quote from a fascinating post by Harry Fletcher-Wood about trying to effect change in the behaviour of teachers highlights my concerns:

I noticed that later that week, delivering practice lessons for one of the other tutors and focusing upon their subject pedagogy, very few teachers actually employed the techniques they had learned.

This brings me to avalanches. I've attended many avalanche awareness sessions over the years, and all the recent ones have acknowledged this uncomfortable fact: training in avalanche awareness makes very little difference to the behaviours of mountaineers and skiers in the mountains! People in avalanche-prone areas fall into a number of heuristic traps: they continue to behave in the way they used to, even when that behaviour is now dangerous. In order to have a chance of making better decisions in the mountains, people need to become more conscious of the operation of these heuristic traps in their own decision-making processes.

I don't want to stretch the analogy too far, but it seems to me that giving teachers, especially NQTs, lists of behaviour management tips is akin to running avalanche awareness sessions for mountaineers. Teachers will not begin to change their behaviour until they become conscious of the heuristic "rules of thumb" that are subconsciously guiding their behaviours in classrooms when events are happening too quickly to allow considered reflection. For most teachers, this replacement of heuristic, unconscious patterns of behaviour with more effective conscious behaviours is the work of many years of practice. There are no easy short-cuts. If I were to posit a possible tool to accelerate the process, it would be coaching - providing teachers with the space to reflect on their own practice and a structure to guide their reflection in a positive direction.

Now if it is true, as I suggest, that NQTs in particular will struggle to implement the strategies listed in these "top tips", then what impact will the lists have on them? Will they not simply serve to demoralise them, by highlighting the gap that exists between them and highly experienced teachers?

How to Improve Reporting to Parents

2013-09-15T14:37:00.001+01:00

The practice of issuing an annual "chequebook" style set of reports to the parents of high school students seems well past its sell-by date to me. Surely modern communications offer opportunities for more flexible, timely feedback to parents and students.

Having said that, I think we could improve reports overnight by adopting a few simple rules:

no more "Joe is a clever boy / Joe is very able/ Joe is a hardworking pupil / Joe is conscientious" comments. These represent ego-centred feedback, and undermine resilience;
no more "If Joe works hard he will make good progress" comments. This is obviously true of all students to some extent, and so provides no information to parents and learners. "

What rules would you add to this list?

The "Good Enough" Teacher

2013-08-25T19:58:00.001+01:00

This is one of those "thinking out loud" posts. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, nor that my argument holds water, and I suspect that I am simply paraphrasing Dylan William. But I'll put it out there and see what you all think!

At the risk of being accused of setting up a straw man, I get the impression when I speak to some teachers about school improvement that they have the following model in their minds:

There is level of teaching competence which is "good enough";
Action needs to be taken if teachers fall below this level or fail to reach it;
It is the job of PTs and SMT to discover those teachers who are not "good enough" and do something about them - this is what we mean by "quality assurance".

I'll call this the "good enough" model. This model is dead and gone from Scottish education, if it ever really existed. It is replaced, I hope, by something like this:

Every teacher needs to improve (as does every school leader) - they have the capacity to do so, and therefore have a moral imperative to do so, given the massive impact they have on the futures of young people;
It is the job of every teacher to assess their own impact on the learning of young people, and to explore their own capacity to improve;
PTs and SMT do have a role to play in dealing with "fitness to teach" issues, but this only concerns a tiny minority of teachers, whereas professional improvement concerns every adult working in schools.

I'll call this the "continuous improvement" model. This model is written large into the new teaching Standards from the GTCS , developed following Donaldson's "Teaching Scotland's Future".

School leaders are on a hiding to nothing if they push for continuous improvement without explicitly tackling the assumptions inherent in the "good enough" model (or if, heaven forbid, they hold them themselves!) . If the "good enough" model has some currency in a school, then it is only natural that teachers will view CLPL (Career Long Professional Learning) as a threatening imposition - asking them to improve implies, as far as they are concerned, that they are currently not "good enough", which feels close to "incompetent". That's not a pleasant implication is it? Of course they resist, usually passively. And if school leaders still hold the "good enough" model, teachers are quite right to feel threatened by the school improvement agenda!

I'm not suggesting that a failure to embrace "every teacher needs to improve" is the only reason why teachers resist change, but it is an important one. It follows that school leaders should attach a high priority to changing the school's cultural attitude towards improvement.

Are we? If not, why not? This short clip of Dylan William is a great litmus test. Teachers that react negatively to his message are, I would suspect, working in a school where something like the "good enough" model still holds some sway: in their own heads, in the culture of some subset of the teaching staff, or worst of all - in the culture of the SMT.