I’ve just read this article on TES, entitled ‘Why education needs more fuzzy thinking’. In the article, Ewan McIntosh proposes a “fuzzy world” of education where there are “activities that help students to learn for themselves, synthesise complex information, generate large numbers of ambitious ideas and build prototypes”. It is also an education where there is “almost no content”.
I’ll ignore the fear mongering attempted with his entirely irrelevant reference to terrorism, but McIntosh finishes by telling us: “We don’t need people who know about history; we need people who can think like historians to help us prevent future conflicts.”
How does he think historians think like historians? Does he really assume they can think the way they do without knowing about history?
These sorts of suggestions from experts make me cross. They make me cross because the expert seems to have spectacular amnesia about the content that they have consumed and the knowledge that they have built up over the many years that has led them to their expertise. As such, they seem to assume that they are just innately skilled and so further assume that such innate skill can just be brought out of children, and the passing on of knowledge is entirely absent in the process. This is not only wrong, it’s selfish. It says: I’ve had a good education which has put me in the position I am in, but I’m not going to offer you the same standards of education I had.
Anyway, I couldn’t help reading that article without thinking of this brilliant Saturday Night Live sketch:
McIntosh’s article is just missing these lines:
Now, thanks to technology… it doesn’t matter if you have skills or training or years of experience: you can do it! You can do anything!
The world needs more singer-songwriters and fewer doctors and engineers.
Originally posted on Labour Teachers, June 1st, 2015. If you haven’t read the posts on Labour Teachers, you really should. Even if you aren’t a Labour supporter, or even a UK teacher. The blog – contributed to by a variety of educators (not all Labourites) – articulates many of the concerns and hopes of people working in education today.
Einst fiel einem Züchter ein,
Wie die Tierwelt würde sein,
Wenn man durch geschicktes Paaren
Fische schüf’ mit krausen Haaren.
Die könnt’ man wie Pudel scheren
Und die Arten sonst vermehren…
…Was wir brauchen, ist ein Schwein,
Das Merinowolle trägt
Und dazu noch Eier legt.
Das soll Ihre Züchtung sein!
(One day a breeder thought he’d see,
Imagining how the world might be,
If you carefully chose the pair,
Fish could be made with curly hair,
Which could be sheared and bred for more…
…What we need is a pig,
that grows merino wool and lays eggs
That is what you should breed!)
A German poem, ‘Der Kampf um das eierlegende Wollschwein’ (‘The Fight for the Egg-laying, Wool-Pig’), translation from this site.
When I was eleven, I got a Swiss Army knife for Christmas.
I’d wanted one for what seemed like my whole life, though in reality it was probably only a few months. But during those few months, I dreamt of how, with this compact gizmo in my pocket, I would be able to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. With that little red Sampo, I would conquer worlds, defeat fearsome beasts and build fortresses. And when I’d finished all of these things, I could give myself a manicure and kick back with a freshly opened tin of baked beans.
The thought that I wouldn’t need to have separate utensils for everything was enticing. No longer would I need a set of screwdrivers or an individual pair of scissors. Gone would be the necessity to own a corkscrew (to be honest, I hadn’t needed one up until that point in my life, but I knew it would come in handy for the post-battle toasts during all of the world-conquering). And never again would I have to wield a cumbersome full-size wood saw.
Except the reality of a Swiss Army knife is that it performs none of the roles it purports to anywhere nearly as adequately as the individual tools it mimics. When I received the gift, I showed it off as much as I could. But when it came to performing functions such as sawing, cutting, tightening screws and opening tins, I shunned the various limbs of that little MacGuffin in favour of proper tools – tools that were designed to do their one job well.
Policymakers seem to want to turn schools into Swiss Army knives. Rather than wanting schools to be charged with doing the one thing they need to do well – educate young people across a range of subjects, politicians from all sides seem to want schools to do everything from babysitting to building character to teaching Britishness. The problem is, like the Swiss Army knife, if schools are spread too thinly on what they are asked to do, they will do all of those things badly.
It seems that, whenever society is presented with a problem, it is down to schools to solve it. In the eyes of politicians, schools have become what the Germans would call die eierlegende Wollmilchsau: the egg-laying, wool and milk-giving sow. Plainly put, this is the name given to an all-in-one entity that can – or at least attempts to – do the work of several specialised tools.
The idea of a single animal that lays eggs, produces milk, gives wool and then provides you with a side of bacon when it’s done is indeed an enticing one. But, of course, it is a mythical beast. Nobody believes in it. Nobody except politicians, that is.
For when society throws up a concern, politicians know that schools can add the solving of that concern to their ever-burgeoning to-do-lists. They think that schools will give society milk, eggs, wool and bacon on demand. The problem is that schools won’t be able to do that, but what they will do is try. And in trying to feed and clothe everyone, they’ll end up falling short on all counts.
What politicians needs to realise is that anything they scrawl on the schools to-do-list will diminish our ability to do everything else well. Just like the Swiss Army knife, when given lots of things to do, schools will do most of those things badly.
What we need right now is the direction to do one thing well – teach our subjects. Anything else is making an egg-laying, wool and milk-giving pig’s ear of education.
One of the many powerful things to come out of the brilliant team at the Michaela Community School in North London is the use of knowledge organisers to specify what core knowledge is to be taught in a scheme of work. If you don’t know what these are, before you go any further you should read MCS Assistant Head Joe Kirby‘s blogpost explaining why and how they use them:
Brilliant, eh? I recently nicked this idea from the MCS crew and shared one of these for one of the texts on the new English GCSE (Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and it got a lot of interest. In fact, pretty soon a lot of people were sharing their knowledge organisers for other texts on the new GCSE and there was talk of collecting them somewhere.
Knowledge organisers are used across all subjects at MCS, so rather than just collecting them for English, I thought it may be more of a useful resource for all subjects to share them in one place. These can then be downloaded and adapted for your needs if required (for example, someone might choose to add ‘Freudian psychoanalysis’ in the context section for the Jekyll and Hyde knowledge organiser I uploaded).
With all this in mind, and with Joe’s blessing, I’ve set up a shared folder in Google Drive so that anyone can add their own or download an existing one.
I’ve just added a few subjects to begin with – feel free to add a new folder if you are uploading a knowledge organiser for your subject and there isn’t a folder already there.
Thanks to Nick Wells, Brittany Wright and Bryn Davis who have been incredibly quick off the block in adding their knowledge organisers for English texts.
Please get involved – this could be a great resource across all subjects.
NOTE: Please don’t delete or move the folders or documents to somewhere else on your Google Drive – you are working with a a shared folder, so if you delete/move anything, you are moving them for everyone else. Just download any you need. You can then upload them again to your own Drive folders if necessary.
Thanks in advance!
Unfortunately, the knowledge organisers folder is no longer available. I was hoping that this would be an easy and accessible resource but, despite putting PLEASE READ notices everywhere I could, people are still accessing the drive without care and consideration and deleting them for everyone else. Since May 2015, I’ve had to regularly spend time retrieving files but, as a full time teacher, this is hugely time consuming and I can no longer continue to do this. If somebody else would like to set up a similar system and manage it, please do.
I love poetry. Actually the truth is – as I often tell my pupils – I love some poetry. Whenever a pupil says “I hate poetry”, I usually tell them it’s like saying “I hate music” – a sweeping statement that doesn’t really express the truth: The Cure genuinely send shivers down my neck, whereas Nickelback make me do a little bit of sick in my mouth. Likewise, Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’ stirs me, but I never really felt the remotest of interest in Tony Harrison’s ‘v.’
On paper, ‘v.’ should say more to me than ‘Prufrock’. Harrison’s poem is written in and of a time contemporary to my growing up and the class-laden references are entirely familiar to me, whereas Eliot writes of manners and allusions that I have had to work at to understand. In terms of accessibility, the directness of ‘v.’ should trump the ambiguity of ‘Prufrock’, yet for some reason the subtle, arcane and foreign emotions expressed in the latter have a far greater pull for me.
If poetry was written as a formula, I’m sure I’d be more drawn to the formula of ‘v.’ than that of ‘Prufrock’. But poetry isn’t like that. Ultimately, it’s irreducible, perhaps because it is itself a reduction (of language).
As teachers, we often try to reduce complex ideas to formulas. One way that we do this is to create acronyms as mnemonics. It’s entirely well meaning, and I’m sure there are examples of memorable and effective acronyms. But often they are clumsy attempts to reduce the irreducible.
It always surprises me to see the same comments year after year on the AQA examiner’s reports for the poetry exam. They argue that there’s an over-reliance on these acronyms, suggesting that they are holding pupils back. Despite this problem being noted by the exam board every year, here it is highlighted again (and again) in the most recent reports:
AQA Report on the Examination – GCSE English Literature, Poetry Across Time, June 2014, Higher paperAQA Report on the Examination – GCSE English Literature, Poetry Across Time, June 2014, Foundation paper
And it isn’t just in poetry that these acronyms hinder pupils. The examiners’ reports for the English Language GCSE also suggest that language analysis seems to suffer because of a reliance on acronyms too.
AQA Report on the Examination – GCSE English Language, November 2014, Foundation paper (note the pun at the end – even English examiners can’t help being playful with language)
That is not to say that acronyms can’t be useful. When I did closed book exams during my degree, I’d memorise quotes that might be helpful. And to help do this, I’d initially commit to memory the first letter of each quote. This meant that I might have 12-15 letters to remember, so I would arrange them so that they would produce a pseudoword: a nonsense word that followed spelling patterns of English words, despite it having no meaning. The reason for this is that I could commit it to memory as one, pronounceable word, rather than a series of letters – what we know as chunking.
This was perfectly serviceable for what I needed. The acronyms themselves were usually gibberish because I’d have to be pretty lucky if what I needed to remember could actually spell out real English words. Apropos of this, it means that I’m usually pretty sceptical about the utility of an acronym if it happens to conveniently spell out a word. I’m even more suspicious if that word happens to link to the topic.
Something like this, for instance, fills me with worry.
This mnemonic is suggested for pupils to use in analysing a poem. It’s awfully convenient that it spells out the word POETIC, isn’t it? Okay, let’s look at why it might cause problems…
Purpose – This is clarified by “the meaning of the poem?” Wait, do you want me to think about the purpose or the meaning? Those are different things, and it probably isn’t helpful to conflate them. Now, I can work with ‘meaning’ – that’s what we do when we read poetry: interpret meaning. But I’m not sure it’s always our place to decipher the purpose of a poem. Why did Sylvia Plath write ‘Cut’? We can read biographical information into the poem, but not sure we should be discerning purpose.
Organisation – Okay, this is useful. What we might call ‘structure’ and ‘form’.
Emotive Tone – Again, this might be useful. But I would suggest that this isn’t isolated from Organisation and Techniques. It is important that pupils see how tone is created through these things.
Techniques – Okay. But I would suggest that Languageis what we should look for, and if there are specific techniques in that language we might discuss them. Feature-spotting is a common mistake made in analysing poetry.
Individual words – Ah – this is the Language I was talking about. But why is it ‘Individual words’? It goes on to specify ‘words and phrases’, so ‘individual’ is a misnomer.
Contrast – Right… isn’t this to do with language? At best it’s a technique, if we follow this mnemonic? Why does it needs its own category? If only there was some sort of justification… wait – “there will always be a contrast in a well-written poem”. Hmm. That’s a bit of a sweeping value judgement, isn’t it?
Whilst there are arguably some useful directions for pupils in this acronym, they are often clouded by distant synonyms which obfuscate the real meanings – Purpose actually means ‘meaning’, which is a different thing entirely, and Individual words isn’t just asking for individual words, it’s asking for phrases. And if it isn’t clouding meaning, it’s deviating from the utility of the mnemonic by adding in things that don’t need to be there – Contrast is an unnecessary focus. By needlessly yawing off course like this, we are asking pupils to store redundant information in their memories.
Here’s another example of an acronym that might actually make things harder for pupils. This is for close reading of a text.
Yet again fortune has given us the letters to spell a word linked to the topic! But if you look at the words that CLOSE helps us remember, you’ll notice that they aren’t actually content words – they aren’t the actual things we want pupils to remember. Check, Look, Observe, Study and Examine do not only arguably operate as function words in the sentences they are in, they are also almost synonyms of each other (making it even more difficult to discern them from one another). What we would want pupils to remember in each of these sections would be unknown words, ideas and details, book and text features, sentence structures and author’s message or theme. How CLOSE helps us remember those is really a leap of faith.
I absolutely understand the intentions behind using these – they are utterly well meaning. We desperately want to break down information for our pupils, and acronyms seem a good way of doing this. However, in breaking it down this way we often make common mistakes.
If we must use mnemonics like this, perhaps it is best to first ask the following question:
Am I trying to reduce the irreducible? For example, can this topic really be studied effectively using a formulaic approach? Or better still, should it be studied this way?
And if we then decide to use an acronym as a memory aide, it is important that every word represented in that acronym counts. Avoid deferring to a synonym because its initial fits the acronym more neatly – synonyms carry with them different meanings and so confuse what is needed. And then we should make sure that we don’t add extra information just so that we have letters that neatly spell out a word. This is unnecessarily deviating from the purpose of the acronym. Why would we want someone to remember something they don’t need to?
We need pupils to remember stuff. But perhaps we should be a bit more precise when using acronyms. In the battle to get pupils to remember, we have created these absolute curses of retention and organisation: needlessly yawing mnemonics.
Now if only there was a way I could remember that last statement…
I’d hope that the responses to this range from “that’s a bad idea” to “that’s a very, very bad idea.”
I was more interested in the motives behind the statement though. One wonders why Dawe would see this as a good thing? Does he think it is good for pupils? Or is it good for his exam board? It’s important to note that, whilst there are a diverse range of roles in the education sector, each role comes with its own drives and that these might change as one moves from one role to another. Dawe has worked in a number of roles in education, and I’m curious as to whether he thought pupils using Google in exams was a good idea when he was a principal of a school, or when he worked for the DfES? We don’t really know, of course, but I would hope not.
Not long after I’d recovered from Dawe’s bombshell, I witnessed a Twitter exchange between David Didau and an executive headteacher on the subject of leadership decision-making. David tweeted the exchange here:
Here's the conversation for which @carljarvis_eos blocked me. What conclusions would you draw about his leadership? pic.twitter.com/DuJUq3Bb5a
In the ‘discussion’, the executive headteacher readily dismissed David’s polite and fair challenges on the basis that David himself was not a headteacher and couldn’t possibly understand or be in a position to question it: “When you’re not doing it, it’s hard to empathise”.
It’s an interesting view and it comes from an assumption that many of us are prone to make: You haven’t been in my position so any comment you make about it is invalid.Apart from this stance being a little tyrannical (note that I haven’t been an MP but it isn’t questioned that democracy allows me to hold MPs to account) there is also often a further implication when people take that slant, which is: I havebeen in your position so my views are even more informed than yours.
I see these sorts of discussions between teachers and leaders time and again on social media. In such discussions it appears that a leader taking the above stance would hold all the cards: I can challenge your position because I’ve been in it; you can’t challenge mine because you haven’t been in it. In short, leaders can dismiss a teacher’s view because they can empathise with it; the reverse is not true.
But can someone really always empathise with a position they once held? What if once they’d moved away from that position, they forgot how they had thought and felt before?
This could actually be the case.
You know that thing where you walk into a room and realise, as you stare blankly at every surface in front of you, that you’ve forgotten why you went into that room in the first place? Well, this phenomenon is down to something that some psychologists call event boundaries. According to Gabriel Radvansky, a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame:
“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away. Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalised.”
These event boundaries are not only spatial. They can also be created temporally or when circumstances change. So could event boundaries be created when people move into different roles in schools? Might it be plausible that a classroom teacher crosses an event boundary when taking on a leadership role? And in such a case, does the mind compartmentalise the thoughts and feelings of the self as a classroom teacher and lock them away in an obscure corner of the memory?
Obviously, this is just supposition on my part. There are plenty of great leaders in education who clearly empathise with their former classroom teacher self. But are there just as many who find it difficult to remember?
Here’s an example. When one takes on a departmental leadership role, the pressure for exam results really comes to the fore. For the humble class teacher, whilst these are important, the weight of them doesn’t bear down so stiflingly. As such, the classroom teacher can make decisions in a far less utilitarian way: in English, this might mean choosing books to study because (as I wrote about recently) they allow pupils to take part in the ‘conversation of mankind’ (the books are culturally significant), or that they present a purposeful challenge. A utilitarian leader, weighed down by the pressure of exam results and having crossed the event boundary from classroom teacher to their current position, may forget their earlier ideals and choose books based on how easily it will get pupils through the exam.
But if we are slaves to event boundaries, how can we ensure we are consistent to our former selves? (Aside: you might wonder if we always want to be?) Well, as in the case of our executive headteacher, perhaps he needs to consider the challenge that David Didau offered before dismissing it out of hand as he did. Isn’t it vital that leaders contemplate the ideas and views of classroom teachers? For one thing, they might be really useful. But they might actually also be echoing the pre-event boundary views of the leaders themselves, ideas that had been hidden away by memory. Meaningful discussions between teachers and leaders is not only a breach of any boundaries between those teachers and leaders, it could also be a breach of the boundaries of memory.
Yesterday’s OED word of the day was the beautiful citramontane, meaning ‘this side of the mountains’. It’s opposing term is ultramontane: ‘the other side of the mountains’.
The decisions and comments made by people in positions of power – be it heads of exam boards or executive headteachers – might be better informed with some ultramontane thought: cross the mountains and listen to what people are saying. It might be a useful reminder of an idea or ideal we once held dear.
In the Part One, I introduced the idea of satisficing: a decision making process that entails accepting choices that are ‘good enough’ for purpose, but aren’t optimal. I suggested that these choices are made when selecting texts to study because we base them on the false boundary of the fulfilment of the study, or to put it simply: the assessment.
My contention is that, if we remove the utilitarian boundary of the assessment, there are greater and more powerful attributes upon which to base our decision when choosing a text to study. And, importantly, I believe that, beyond this boundary, the goals of assessment can still be met with equal – if not greater – success. (English teacher Chris Curtis has written an excellent argument on why seemingly more accessible texts “do not naturally incline themselves for analysis by inexperienced readers”, and that complex texts serve them better. I urge you to read it.)
The attribute which I believe has the highest evaluability when selecting a text is the extent to which it gives pupils the ability to participate in what Michael Oakeshott calls ‘the conversation of mankind’:
“As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.”
“People discussing a specialist subject, it is often remarked, sound as if they are communicating in a foreign language. This is the sensation gained when you hear Americans talk about a sport, as Hirsch demonstrates by writing the simple sentence, ‘Jones sacrificed and knocked in a run’. To Americans, this is an everyday explanation of baseball tactics, but to a British listener it is meaningless. Now, imagine if every conversation, television programme or news article you encountered, which covered history, economics, literature, politics, world events or science, left you with the same sensation. Condemned by your un-ambitious schooling, the common reference points of the well informed would forever be a foreign country.”
In terms of teaching literature, we have the opportunity to give pupils access to texts that will be referenced throughout their lives. Texts that have endured and seeped into public consciousness will offer us touchstones and reference points that help us contribute to and understand the conversation of mankind. They supply us with a shorthand to use and understand throughout every stage of our lives.
“How refreshing to think of education, not as a journey but as an adventure; if we jettison the idea of journey and the obsession of getting somewhere ‘worthwhile’ and on time, we can also jettison such concerns as the need for grit and resilience to endure this journey. Yes, there may danger, we might have to take risks but we all have the wherewithal for adventure, especially when it is of itself and not a way to something else. This is an adventure, an exploration about what it is to be human.”
That “somewhere” that Robinson implies we often journey is perhaps, ultimately, jobs or careers. But it could equally be the false boundary of assessment. If we discard this boundary we can make choices that extend to informing the lives of the pupils and open up the ‘adventure’ of life. If we choose not to teach certain texts because of a falsely bounded rationality, we may deny our pupils participation in aspects of the conversation of mankind.
Here’s a reminder of the text choices offered by AQA for the Modern texts component of the new GCSE English Literature, the study of which begins in September 2015:
Texts like DNA, Anita and Me, The Curious Incidentand Pigeon English, whilst arguably enjoyable, are hugely overshadowed in their contribution to the conversation. Books like Lord of the Flies and AnimalFarm, however,give pupils threads which will return to them throughout life, through shared references that reverberate throughout society. We see references to both of these texts not only in other literature but also in music, movies and television. Other mediums make these references because they know they belong to a shared understanding. Whilst The Simpsons will dedicate an entire episode to a pastiche of Lord of the Flies, they are unlikely to do the same for The Curious Incident.
This is because there aren’t the widely shared reference points in The Curious Incident that Golding gives us. Take a situation in which a group of young people are acting out a power struggle and/or savage cruelty. Whilst Lord of the Flies and DNA both follow these themes, it is likely that people will make a reference to the former rather than the latter in succinctly expressing the politics and/or barbarity of the situation. Take this, for example:
Or the way this visual reference carries connotations that tell us a lot more about Ron Burgundy and his news team if we’ve read Lord of the Flies:
Of course, I am not arguing that Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm are necessarily – to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase – “the best which has been thought and said”. The very existence of a short list of GCSE texts means that our choice is still bounded. But, within the boundaries the exam boards have foisted upon us, perhaps those texts are more prevalent in the conversation.
As such, references to these texts abound in popular culture.
For example, the television series Lost references Lord of the Flies not only thematically but also literally, with characters using it as shorthand for the atavistic behaviour of others: “Folks down on the beach might have been doctors and accountants a month ago, but it’s Lord of the Flies time now”; “They seem to have had a rough time of it. It looks like they went bloody Lord of the Flies out there.” On a simple level, Lost is actually a good example of the conversation of mankind in everyday operation, as it also references Animal Farm: “The pigs are walking,” proclaims one of the characters, expressing succinctly how the oppressed have become the oppressors. Of course, you can understand Lost without understanding these references, but it is like missing a part of the conversation or being left out of a private joke.
But these are only a few examples of how the references in these texts reverberate into popular culture. They stretch beyond that to permeate human experience. By satisficing when we choose our texts, by accepting bounded rationality, we cut pupils off from the touchstones of, in Oakeshott’s words, the “conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance.”
So, when choosing a text for study, avoid satisficing. Because one thing we shouldn’t give in to is satisf… wait, what is the noun we use for the act of satisficing when choosing texts to study?
Of course…
Satisfiction.
Boom-tish. Ahfankyoo. I’m here all week. Try the veal, etc.
Imagine I ask you to buy a pair of shoes for yourself. Hold on… before you rush off to ask Tom Bennett where he gets his cowboy boots from, I have a (rather obvious) stipulation: you should try and find a pair that fits your feet.
Now imagine that you come back with a pair of shoes that are half a size too big. One might assume that you have utterly failed in your task.
But suppose that there were a couple of other pieces of information that you knew about. Firstly, the shoes are to be worn to a wedding you are attending this afternoon. Secondly, you would have been able to purchase a pair of perfectly-fitting shoes, but only if you had visited 10 shops in variously dispersed geographic locations.
Now that we both know this other information, it might be considered a rational decision on your part to buy a pair of shoes that are half a size too big. The fact that you need the shoes by this afternoon and that you are uncertain about where to obtain them means that the decision to plump for slightly ill-fitting ones and bear some discomfort for a short while seems a reasonable one.
This is what economist and sociologist Herbert A. Simon calls ‘bounded rationality’. In the case given above, a suboptimal decision was made, but it is one that could be seen as rational when the decision-maker acts within boundaries and limitations.
I think a similar bounded rationality can sometimes be present when we make decisions about which texts pupils should study. There are various factors that limit the choices we make. Cost and availability are such factors, obviously caused by budgetary constraints. Therefore, a school without any money to buy new books might reasonably choose to study the only text that is currently sat in the English department’s book cupboard, no matter how appropriate it is for the purpose of study. There is bounded rationality in this choice: it isn’t necessarily a good choice, but it is rational given the circumstances – it’s either that book or no book.
I am going to argue, however, that there is a false boundary which is often put in place when selecting texts for study. In fact, I think it is a boundary that, whilst entirely constructed, is more influential than any other when selecting texts to study – particularly when it comes to GCSE texts. That boundary is: the fulfilment of the study.
By this I mean that there is a tendency to see a text’s utility as bounded by the study itself: the assessment is often seen as the conclusion of that study; once the assessment has been completed, the pupils will no longer utilise the text. At GCSE level, this means that the boundary is the final exam. This boundary is reinforced by the fact that we probably won’t ever see our pupils in a classroom again once they’ve sat the exam. But I think this boundary is illusory and that we should look beyond our classroom and, even further, to beyond the school life of the pupils when deciding what to study.
As an example of what I mean, let’s look at the choice of GCSE English Literature texts from the new qualification, the study of which begins in September of this year. Here are AQA’s choices for the Modern texts study:
Now this study is assessed in a closed book exam – pupils will be expected to study the text at length but won’t have access to it in the exam. So a choice that observes the exam as a boundary might choose the book based on attributes such as: length of text, proximity of historical and social context (the extent to which pupils need to learn contexts that are new to them), and complexity (of narrative, characters, themes, language).
Each of these attributes has a different level of evaluability – that is the level of importance placed on it in order to inform the decision. For example:
If a school sees length of text as having high evaluability, they might choose to study the plays on the list – they are all shorter than the novels. At around 60 pages, DNA would be the most rational choice based on this attribute; whereas they might discard Lord of the Flies, at over 200 pages.
If proximity of context is deemed to have high evaluability, texts like Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English and DNA would be rational choices, given that they were written in the last 6 years, set in contemporary British society and they focus on teenagers. These are familiar contexts to GCSE pupils. (Of course there may be other contexts within those texts that they aren’t familiar with – Pigeon Englishis set against a backdrop of gangs and migration, of which many pupils may not be knowledgable. However, the familiar contexts still exist alongside these and help make them ‘comfortable’ reads.)
Complexity actually presents a very real boundary, but I would contend that it is a boundary that can be more easily breached through study than we often tend to assume. (If you doubt this, you should read blogs by Joe Kirby and Katie Ashford on how they do it at Michaela Community School – this from Joe is an excellent start.) In this sense, it is a moveable boundary rather than a static one. Again, the more modern texts – Pigeon English, DNA, Anita and Me, Curious Incident – appear to be less complex than the others, mainly because the language is more immediately accessible. These are also stories told through the voices of children or teenagers, so the vocabulary and expression in them are more limited than, say, Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm. If complexity has high evaluability for schools in making the choice, they will probably elect to study the more modern texts on the list.
I would argue that making choices based on these boundaries is what Simon calls satisficing. A portmanteau of satisfy and suffice, satisficing is a decision-making process that entails accepting choices that are ‘good enough’ for purpose, but aren’t optimal.
In Part Two, I will look at how removing the utilitarian boundary of the assessment allows us to make choices using the attribute that, in my opinion, has the highest evaluability in the choosing of texts to study.
“The aim of this project is to avoid as much as possible stationary postures and promote mobility. My will is to introduce a “bearable discomfort” for our well-being.”
Benoit Malta
The above quote could very easily be a mission statement for a school. Certainly it would fit any school that follows what Keven Bartle calls a ‘deficit model’.
We are unable to adopt “stationary postures” – the essential states for completing many staples of teaching, such as reflection and planning. As such, we are in a constant state of “bearable discomfort”: as a collective entity, we just about endure despite the crippling workload, constant changes, regularly updated directives, scope creep, regenerating to-do-lists and time theft; however, as individuals many of us don’t survive: this is when the bearable discomfort becomes unbearable and teachers become headline-grabbing statistics.
In the quote that opens this post, however, Benoit Malta isn’t talking about teaching. As far as I know, he doesn’t have any influence on education policy. He is actually a designer from France. The quote is actually about this:
As you can see, the Inactivité is a two-legged chair. The thinking behind the design is that it forces the user to constantly make slight movements in order to maintain balance. One cannot simply sit back for a moment and relax in this chair – it is necessary to be in a perpetual state of response to external forces in order not to fall. This is the bearable discomfort of which Malta speaks.
I think the chair seems perfectly symbolic of what it is to be a teacher today.
The principles of the Inactivité are like the lot of the teacher: we must constantly respond to the forces around us to achieve stability. Of course, some of the forces we face are to be expected: those that come from direction of the students. This is because learning and behaviour are often unpredictable and so cause a disequilibrium that it is our job to stabilise.
However, I’d argue that the majority of the forces that cause teachers bearable discomfort come from other sources. This is a result of the endless accountability measures and extensive managerialism of the education sector.
What is the answer to this? Well, to continue the analogy of Benoit Malta’s chair… in order to be balanced, teachers need to be supported. To resist the forces from above, we need more stability at ground level. Teachers need to feel bearable comfort in the shape of a genuine focus on teacher wellbeing.
Nicky Morgan, Nick Clegg and Tristram Hunt have all taken up the issue of teacher workload in the run-in to May’s General Election. However, whilst this issue is in the hands of politicians, it is conveniently taken out of the hands of schools. Politicians aren’t going to provide the stability that teachers need for bearable comfort. That stability comes from the schools themselves. The best thing that politicians can do is to incentivise teacher wellbeing and retention and put the responsibility into the hands of schools. From here, we might begin to see some change in the manner in which schools respond to directives and trends.
Like many of these directives and trends in education from recent years, the two-legged chair seems eye-catching and innovative. But, of course, like many of those directives it could equally turn out to be counterproductive and harmful.
One of the questions we often ask when considering introducing something new into schools is: “Has this idea got legs?”
But perhaps we should be asking, “How many legs has this idea got?”
Now, how many times do I need to tell you – sit on that chair properly or there’s going to be an accident.
Pupil: One on’t cross beams gone owt askew on treadle.
Teacher: Pardon?
Pupil: One on’t cross beams gone owt askew on treadle.
Teacher: I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Pupil:[slightly irritatedly and with exaggeratedly clear accent] One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treadle.
Teacher: Well what on earth does that mean?
Pupil: *I* don’t know – Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the school, that’s all – I didn’t expect a kind of British Education.
[JARRING CHORD]
[The door flies open and Secretary of State for Education enters, flanked by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector and a SpAd]
EdSec: NOBODY expects the British Education! Our chief aim is literacy… literacy and numeracy… numeracy and literacy… Our two aims are numeracy and literacy… and creativity… Our *three* aims are numeracy, literacy, and creativity… and an almost fanatical devotion to British values… Our *four*… no… *Amongst* our aims… Amongst our chief aims… are such elements as numeracy, literacy… I’ll come in again.
[The British Education exits]
Pupil: I didn’t expect a kind of British Education.
[JARRING CHORD]
[The educationalists burst in]
EdSec: NOBODY expects the British Education! Amongst our aims are such diverse elements as: numeracy, literacy, creativity, an almost fanatical devotion to British values… and the forming of reflective independent collaborative problem solving self-managers – oh damn!
[To the HMCI] I can’t say it – you’ll have to say it.
HMCI: What?
EdSec: You’ll have to say the bit about ‘Our chief aims are …’
HMCI: [rather horrified] I couldn’t do that…
[The EdSec bundles the other two outside again]
Pupil: I didn’t expect a kind of British Education.
[JARRING CHORD]
[The educationalists enter]
HMCI: Er… Nobody… um….
EdSec: Expects…
HMCI: Expects… Nobody expects the… um… the British… um…
EdSec: Education.
HMCI: I know, I know! Nobody expects the British Education. In fact, those who do expect –
EdSec: Our chief aims are…
HMCI: Our chief aims are… um… er…
EdSec: Literacy…
HMCI: Literacy and –
EdSec: Okay, stop. Stop. Stop there – stop there. Stop. Phew! Ah! Our chief aims are literacy… blah blah blah. SpAd, read the charges.
SpAd: You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates fail to meet the aims of a British Education. ‘We are preparing students for jobs that don’t even -‘
HMCI: That’s enough.
[To Teacher] Now, how do you plead?
Teacher: We’re innocent.
EdSec: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
[DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER]
HMCI: We’ll soon change your mind about that!
(For a better and more serious discussion of this problem, in the post that inspired this, see @michaelfordham‘s blog here.)
Look at the image below and answer this question: how many empty spaces are there at the table?
Now look at this image and answer the same question: how many empty spaces are there at this table?Actually, the question I should ask is: which of the two people above appear to be less alone?
It seems a strange question. But not for a particular Seattle-based, world-dominating coffee peddler. According to author Karen Blumenthal, the belief that “people look less alone while seated at a round table” is the reason why you’ll rarely see a square table in Starbucks stores.
The company conducted research by interviewing hundreds of customers and studied the psychology behind what makes them tick. The idea behind the round table is that it doesn’t have any clear ’empty spaces’, unlike a square table. When you looked at the images above, according to Starbucks, the person at the round table should have looked less ‘alone’ than the person sat at the square table. Even if you didn’t register this consciously, you may very well have registered it subconsciously.
But the fact is that the two people in the different images are both as alone as each other. Even though one seems less alone, it isn’t true. They are both solo coffee drinkers.
The problem is that we are often easily fooled by what we glimpse, and we don’t often unpick the underlying truths to the meanings we’ve inferred. And no place is that more conspicuous than in lesson observation. We see things happening in lessons and automatically infer that learning has taken place. Often, we are very wrong.
Much like with Starbucks’ round tables, we see these things and assume something that isn’t necessarily true. Just because students are busy or engaged or calm, it doesn’t mean that learning is taking place.
Whilst these things are logically desirable, they don’t really have anything to do with progress. And whilst it is certainly okay for schools to ask for these standards in lessons, the sad thing is that careers are often made or broken on the achievement of them, irregardless of progress. I have a friend (not in my school, I should add) who always gets excellent GCSE results. However, this teacher has been placed on capability measures due to failing lesson observations. Meanwhile a colleague of theirs has poor GCSE results yet revels in ‘Outstanding’ observations. I’m sure we all know stories like this.
These poor proxies were highlighted by Professor Coe a couple of years ago, yet still aren’t widely known in schools. I think academic work like this is too important to not be recognised by teachers and school leaders. Organisations such as NTEN, EEF and ResearchED are working well to reach schools and teachers that are engaged with research. But what about those that aren’t? How do this information reach them?
Maybe Starbucks have got something they can teach us about ubiquity or presence too?
I'm just a teacher, standing in front of a class, asking them to be quiet and listen.
Othmar's Trombone 