How Many GCSE ‘Clean Sweeps’ Should We Expect in our Results?

Prologue: I asked my GCSE German teacher if she would tell me my mock grade before our lesson. I cannot believe how well she said I had done! I got a 9! Yay! 

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We are at the end of an unprecedented period of reform for GCSEs. It is still unclear exactly the level of challenge reformed qualifications and assessments give a pupil, nor are we yet able to predict with any certainty where grade boundaries might be set. At GCSE the grade 9 was to be reserved for only the very highest performances. Tim Leunig, then chief scientific advisor of the Department for Education, ‘guessed’ on Twitter in 2017 that only two pupils in the UK would achieve a clean sweep – straight grade 9s in all of their GCSEs – once the qualifications had swapped to number grades (Leunig, 2017). A more scientific approach to this estimate was conducted by Cambridge Assessment in the excellent article by Tom Benton in the run up to the summer 2018 exam session. It was predicted that:

• Of pupils taking eight GCSEs, between 200 and 900 candidates will achieve straight 9s.
• Of pupils taking ten GCSEs, between 100 and 600 candidates will achieve straight 9s.

(Benton, 2018)

Nationwide this means we are potentially looking at a very small number in contrast to the familiar newspaper stories of huge swathes of pupils at the most selective schools achieving a clean sweep of A*s. It is therefore unfair to expect a raft of pupils to achieve straight 9s in the summer. Are your school leaders aware that there is a possibility only 100 pupils will achieve ten 9 grades this summer? If not show them Tom’s article in all its glory, it really is a thing of beauty.

So how many students actually achieved straight 9s in the 2018 results? A good question! Dave Thomson at the Education Data Lab has written a far better blog than the one you are reading that answers it (Thomson, 2018). He points us to Ofqual’s official guide to the 2018 data, which looked at pupils who took at least seven reformed GCSEs; only 732 achieved a grade 9 in all of their GCSEs; of this number 62% were female and 38% male (Ofqual, 2018). Do you think this data should be something your school knows about? If you think so send them a link to Dave’s wonderful blog.

The overall picture is that the new GCSE qualifications are purposefully tough – the new “gold standard” according to the DfE (Hansard, 2019) – but still in their infancy. The more data that is formally collected and analysed, the better we can evaluate the new qualifications. It is certainly clear that comparisons to pre-2018 data will be tricky if not actively unhelpful. Yet you can be sure that there will be an unhealthy focus in some quarters on achieving ‘clean sweeps’. To end the post and counteract this tunnel vision I would like to bring attention to this quote from Tom Benton:

“Regardless of whether the predictions [of how many pupils will achieve straight 9 grades] are right or wrong, one thing is clear: achieving grade 9 in any GCSE subject is hard. Congratulations to all those students who achieve it in any subject at all.”

(Benton, 2018)

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Epilogue: I asked my A Level Spanish teacher if he would tell me what my UCAS prediction was. I am so disappointed. I really feel I can do better than a C. It’s not fair 😦

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References:

1. Leunig, T (2017) “2 is my guess – not a formal DfE prediction. With a big enough sample, I think someone will get lucky…” Tweeted 25^th March 2017. Accessed 10^th June 2019. View here.
2. Benton, T (2018) How many students will achieve straight grade 9s in reformed GCSEs? Accessed 10^th June 2019. View here.
3. Thomson, D (2018) GCSE results 2018: How many grade 9s were awarded in the newly reformed subjects? Accessed 10^th June 2019. View here.
4. Ofqual (2018) Guide to GCSE results for England, 2018. Accessed 10^th June 2019. View here.
5. Hansard (2019) IGCSE: Written question 231357, answered on 19th March 2019. Accessed 10^th June 2019. View here.
6. Prologue and Epilogue ‘jokes’ the work of the author of this blog post. Sorry!

Key Words in A level Biology

This post follows up from Keywords and fluency of understanding, a post written before the Autumn Term. It seems apt that I reflect back on the vocab books and weekly testing I have introduced with my Upper Sixth class.

How it looked in the classroom

Every student in my class was issued with a vocabulary book in September. This was specifically for the first topic, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry. The students themselves numbered it from 1 to 35 with two numbers per page. Examples from three different students should make this format clear, see below. I had decided the key words in advance (see appendix for the full list) and – as we gradually covered the topic – gave them words to put in the correct place. E.g. number 13 was the Calvin cycle. For homework students found a definition – handily enough there was a full glossary at the back of their textbook – copied it down and learned it for a vocab test at the start of the next lesson.

Student A – key words 23 to 26

Student B – key words 27 to 30

 

Student C – key words 31 to 34

Fortuitously the arrangement of other Upper Sixth Biology classes gave this intervention a quasi-experimental design that I could compare my class to the other three classes. The fact that the cohort numbers 40 and I have ten, exactly a quarter, in my class was further good luck. This would allow me to evaluate the vocab books and weekly testing for my class which I will now call the experimental group. All 30 other Biology A level students in the Upper Sixth did not use the vocab books or have regular key word testing, therefore these students will be called the control group.

What happened?

Good question (and for those who like a bit of value-added data (VAD) tomfoolery this will be a real treat!). Firstly, as a basic comparison the table below compares the mean average score for the Plant Physiology and Biochemistry end-of-topic test for the experimental and control groups:

Experimental Group	66%
Control Group	64%

Two percent! I have written before about gains as small as 1%, but is 2% a good result? Ultimately this does not tell us too much. The classes are all mixed-ability by the standards of the school, so it might seem that my intervention has had a positive effect. But students are organised into classes by option blocking of their other subjects, therefore I might have randomly been allocated students whose attainment is higher by chance.

This is where VAD might help. Our students are given ALIS scores which project future A level performance from GCSE results; see the clever people at CEM for more details. So I can now use the projected ALIS grade to compare to student performance in the end-of-topic test to calculate a residual. E.g. if a student is projected an A grade but scores a B their VAD residual is -1, if the same student gains an A* their residual is +1 and if they get their projected grade the residual is 0. The table below shows the average VAD residual for both groups:

Experimental Group	-0.8
Control Group	-1.2

This means the experimental group, on average, scored 0.8 of a grade lower than their projected grade. However, this was better than the control group where students scored, on average, 1.2 grades lower.

Does this mean anything? Well, let us muddy the waters a little by considering that the experimental group has a second teacher (an excellent person and very knowledgeable biologist) who takes them for half of their allocated teaching time. How do the experimental group’s scores compare in the topic they did with me, using vocab books and regular testing, to the topic they did with Teacher 2? The information is tabulated below:

Topic	Mean average score	Average VAD residual
Plant Phys. and Biochem.	66%	-0.8
Genetics	65%	-1.1

We are still looking at very fine margins but it certainly seems that they have attained better grades, in terms of VAD, for the topic they used vocab books and regular key word testing. However, (and as all good biologists know) correlation does not mean causation. There are a huge number of reasons for this, really very small, discrepancy. For example, is the Plant Physiology and Biochemistry topic the same difficulty as the Genetics topic? Questions like this will continue to be considered as the year goes on.

What did the students think?

They have humoured me and done as asked, producing the vocab books and gamely accepting the vocab tests. They seem to not object massively to the intervention and, as the topic came to an end, were quite pleased with their final vocab books (I think). In fact, they have even suggested making the vocab test harder by mixing up previous key words.

What next?

My class / the experimental group have almost finished their second topic, Energy and Respiration, so I will have further data to consider in due course. However, their points of view are equally important to me so I have arranged a group interview with a few of the students and another separate group interview with a few students in the control group. It will be interesting to consider their responses amongst the data!

Appendix

Key words for the Plant Physiology and Biochemsitry topic:

1. Abscisic acid (ABA)
2. Absorption spectrum
3. Accessory pigment
4. Action spectrum
5. ADP
6. Aerenchyma
7. ATP
8. ATP Synthase
9. Auxin
10. Bundle sheath cells
11. C3 plant
12. C4 plant
13. Calvin cycle
14. Carotenoid
15. Chlorophyll
16. Chloroplast
17. Dormancy
18. Endosperm
19. Giberellin
20. Granum
21. IAA
22. Light dependent reactions
23. Light independent reactions
24. Limiting factor
25. Mesophyll
26. Palisade mesophyll
27. PEP
28. PEP carboxylase
29. Phosphorylation
30. Photoautotroph
31. Photolysis
32. Photophosphorylation
33. Photorespiration
34. Photosystem
35. Reaction centre

 

Keywords and fluency of understanding

In many ways learning Biology is like learning a language. All subjects are laden with specific terminology, often with meanings that have a greater level of precision than when the words are used in everyday speech, but Biology must surely take the biscuit in this regard. The sheer scale of rote learning needed to access understanding of topics at A level is quite phenomenal. Certainly in the past I have been guilty of taking this for granted; the curse of knowledge has often led to some muddled conversations with pupils. So this year the main tweak to my A level teaching will be to focus on keywords as a way to drive a greater fluency of understanding.

As is always the case, I am neither alone nor the first to look into this. The importance of learning and recalling keyword definitions is a well-known and discussed area of education. For example, Dawn Cox’s recent post detailed her own thoughts and strategies to give pupils the best possible chance to understand Religious Studies holistically (pun most certainly intended). In Biology there has often been a focus on ‘big ideas’ that connect topics. Seeing the subject as a whole rather than as piecemeal topics is the difference between having a good understanding of Biology or an excellent one. Pupils who can interpolate within the A level topics are invariably those that do the best when confronted with atypical demands.

The word I have been using more and more to describe this sophisticated understanding is ‘fluency’. This term works well on two levels. Firstly, the more easily and articulately a pupil can express themselves is fundamental to showing what they understand, whether in writing, orally or in exam papers. Secondly, and aping the linguistic simile at the start of this post, fluency pertains to the ability to speak and write in a foreign language easily and accurately. In this case Biology is the ‘foreign language’ and once again the ease of communication is highlighted, but without the required accuracy there will be no deep understanding. Therefore, fluency within a subject depends on ease, articulation and, above all, accuracy of communication. If accuracy is the foundation of fluency, then it seems logical that having a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of keywords will allow a pupil to develop within the subject.

So what does this mean in a practical sense? What will I do differently this year in my classroom? Inspired by Dawn, I will be introducing weekly ‘vocab’ tests for my Sixth Form classes. We will spend about 5 minutes a week of lesson time looking through a selection of keywords for a topic, even if they are yet to be studied. Pupils will have a ‘vocab book’ and be expected to keep it up to date with the words covered. Then the next week they will be tested on the definitions of keywords. All of this will definitely be happening. I also hope to add in a comprehension task that will assess understanding more effectively… But this will require more time and thought. Bear with me while I try to find the right balance, but in time I hope to report any interesting findings.

Sweet Success

Recently I have enjoyed a ‘healthy’ discussion with a colleague about rewarding work in exercise books and reward systems in general. Although we disagree about what the reward should ultimately be, we both agree that many systems just peter out and become ineffective as a student progresses up the school. The house points / merits / commendations that work so well in the early career of a secondary school student hold no currency later on, neither with student nor teacher. Currently there is a lot of thought from the pastoral leaders at my school to try and get the best system for throughout the five years of KS3 and KS4. Reading through the blurb from other schools I can’t help but wonder whether they too suffer from the ‘Year 9 dip’; chatting with acquaintances is an easier way to get closer to the truth. Certainly a policy on rewarding work should not be merely window dressing to look good on a website or prospectus. It needs to be applied consistently and to actually engage the students, motivating them to improve and contribute to the school community in a worthwhile manner. This is where I hope we are heading.

Returning to the opening sentence of this post, the ‘healthy’ discussion on how to reward students centred on whether confectionery was a good choice of reward. Despite my musings on Jaffa Cakes, it will surprise very few people to know that I was very much against this… Not only on physical health grounds, but also the mental association of success and chocolate. I strongly believe this is not a healthy coupling to make. As part of a healthy balanced diet and with regular exercise I am all for sweets, chocolates and other unhealthy foods. In fact I am quite the chocoholic, but I do not eat chocolate to reward myself for having done something good. To equate success to sweets is a terrible policy.

PS: I am also against the random bringing in of cakes for Sixth Form classes, something that seems to have grown in popularity. In the past my classes have received short shrift when trying to bring up the subject of ‘cake Fridays’. This year my timetable has me teaching two different Upper Sixth classes after lunch during period five and six (of a six period day) on Friday. When the inevitable questions was posed I have relented, to an extent. We now have ‘fruit Fridays’, instead of cake someone brings in enough fruit to satisfy our postprandial cravings. Happily one class has totally gone for this, we’ve had blueberries, satsumas, grapes aplenty. While I am sure students would prefer cake there needs to be a good deal more ego and less id, to paraphrase Dr Freud’s suspect theory.

PPS: Just so no-one thinks I am a totally miserable so-and-so, the header image is a lovingly made Chocosaurus birthday cake for my son. It would be a bit much to have just carrot sticks and grapes!

Tomatoes and Pens: Revision Ideas

Despite what one of my colleagues might think (don’t ask!) the Pomodoro technique is a way of helping focus attention over a short period of time. It helps to break up uninteresting or hard work, not all people need to use it but it can be a valuable tool for students overwhelmed by revision and something that I would advise they at least try. Essentially you set a timer for 25 minutes and start working – during this time there should be no access to phones, internet, talking or any other distractions – once the timer starts you are on the clock until the 25 minutes is up. There is much more detail about this process in A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley, which I would highly recommend. And if you are into R2D2 you’ll want to read the mention at the bottom of Nick Dennis’ post.

Having spoken to my Upper Sixth about this method since September I finally made them work in this way during a lesson on Monday. After five minutes of setting out the task and ensuring everyone had what they needed, we set off on 25 minutes of focused revision. Everyone was engrossed in their work, actively revising by making resources, answering questions or testing their knowledge. Following this period of deep concentration I encouraged students to get up and take a stroll around the classroom. After this short break we reconvened and students were then free to work as they wished, most had questions to ask. Either I answered them or they came to agreement in discussions. Once again everyone was on task. They felt this exercise was very productive and something they will try independently in their own time.

The Pomodoro technique has become one of my favoured ways of working for many tasks throughout the day. However, I do not always stick to working for just 25 minutes. Sometimes I find that I am on a roll and want to finish the report or marking I am working on. Very rarely do I ever end early. Once again I would suggest that this is not necessarily a method for everyone, but definitely worth trying. I find it most helpful during those odd periods where I feel listless and lack the drive to “eat my frogs” (to use another term from A Mind for Numbers). And if you are wondering why it is called Pomodoro, this is due to the use of a tomato-shaped kitchen timer by Francesco Cirillo, the originator of the idea.

Monday’s lesson was a double, so after the Pomodoro task I handed out the old staple of revision lessons – a past exam paper. Once again I had a particular trick that I wanted students to use to help with the revision process. It has been something I have urged them to do but thought that modelling it in a lesson would help pupils see the benefits. I call this method the three pen technique, so called because you need three different coloured pens (as I type this I realise that requiring pens and the need for them to be of different hues has stirred up a lot of discussion in the past. I suggest you read this surreally brilliant blog by Whatonomy as a way of catching up on this). E.g. blue, green and red. Students would complete the paper under the following conditions:

1. Using the blue pen and under timed exam conditions, answer all questions on the paper.
2. Using the green pen and with the help of notes, textbooks or a classmate, add to the answers given in step 1 and finish the paper if necessary.
3. Using the red pen use a mark scheme to add further details to the paper.

 

Come revision time I have used this technique for a while and in a number of different environments. Here are some examples of step 2 and step 3 from a student on course for a high grade:

 

Step 2:

Step 3:

And another step 3:

Should students complete a series of papers in this way it is interesting to see how the proportions of each colour change. In many ways this acts as a crude diagnostic test to see why students are losing marks. E.g. Lots of blue and red but little green can show a lack of understanding or poor choices of selecting information from their notes (or indeed poor notes to work from). Similarly a lack of blue denotes a student has not committed to memory the key aspects of a topic. It is easy to see how the combinations can help a teacher infer where a student is in terms of their revision; therefore making suggestions to help the student better prepare for their examination. It is also easy to discuss with a student how they might take this way of working as an opportunity to self-assess where they need to target revision. Therefore helping a little with the journey towards independent learning.

So there we have it. Two simple ideas that have been around for ages but can help students as they embark on revision. Both have the potential of making a student more independent and go a little further to taking ownership of their revision. And if the pen is mightier than the sword, imagine how mighty three pens are!

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

What links an inept bank robber, Charles Darwin and two Cornell University psychologists? Read on to find out!

David Dunning and Justin Kruger describe the Dunning-Kruger effect as a cognitive bias of both unskilled and highly skilled individuals. What I find most interesting is the differentiation between how the bias affects the skilled versus the unskilled.

• Those that are relatively unskilled are biased towards thinking that they are better at a task than they actually are.
• Whereas highly skilled individuals underestimate their competencies, instead thinking that a task that they find easy will be easy for everyone, regardless of how objectively difficult it might be.

This is aptly summed up in the statement below:

“The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others”

(Kruger and Dunning, 1999)

This topic is such a huge source of fascination to me. One reason in particular is that it is by no means a new phenomenon. Although given its Dunning-Kruger moniker in only 1999, scientists have been aware of it well before. For example the extraordinarily talented Charles Darwin commented in the Descent of Man that

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”

(Darwin, 1871)

This covers precisely the bias of unskilled individuals; they think they know something exactly because they do not know it well enough (feel free to swap know for understand  or vice versa at any point in this post, depending on what side of that particular precipice you stand). Darwin goes on to say

“It is those who know little…who positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved”

(Darwin, 1871)

Or, less eloquently put, individuals without the skills to understand an issue will often by the first to say it is intractable. Even more interestingly we are all prone to some degree of agnosognia, or deficit of self-awareness, about ourselves. If you are not very good at something then often it can be impossible to know you are not very good at it!

“The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is”

(Morris, 2010)

From a personal perspective there are obvious exceptions that come to my mind; I know I am not very good at singing or speaking Russian. There is no false sense of expertise in these fields! But my concern is the things that I think I am good at… Perhaps my confidence in thinking I am good at explaining the semi-conservative replication of DNA is totally misplaced? Perhaps it is a combination of the Dunning-Kruger effect twinned with “The Curse of Knowledge” (another closely linked cognitive bias, this time held by people who know a great deal on a subject and assume others know as much causing issues when they try to explain concepts)?

At times in my teaching career I have had the immodesty to think that I am good at helping students learn in general. Reverse Imposter Syndrome* might be the culprit?! I am an impostor thinking that I understand a topic, simply because I do not have the capability to realise I do not understand it. Or as Dunning put it perfectly:

“We are all just confident idiots”

(Dunning, 2014)

There have certainly been watershed moments in my time as a teacher. When looking back I have realised that certain techniques or strategies didn’t really work. Certainly reading literature on learning has allowed me to see how I can refine and improve my practice. With each epiphany helping to shed a little more of my Dunning-Kruger outlook with the realisation that I did not know enough or understand what I was trying to do to actually evaluate it properly. I might venture to suggest most teachers are subject to a little of the Dunning-Kruger effect at one time or another. We are all, and this is by no means a criticism, “confident idiots” some of the time. Conversely we also fit the bill as unconfident geniuses* at times too. 

What of the inept bank robber mentioned at the start? This is perhaps the reason I find the Dunning-Kruger effect so interesting! The story goes that a man named McArthur Wheeler inspired the eponymous psychologists. Perhaps recalling the childhood activity of using lemon juice as invisible ink, he rubbed it into his face then set off to rob two banks. To his astonishment he was arrested shortly afterwards, police simply watched the CCTV footage from each bank. The height of stupidity one might argue? Yet this was not a spur of the moment decision; Wheeler had planned this novel approach, testing the lemon juice’s effectiveness by taking a photograph. The fact that the Polaroid picture in question was empty should not surprise us, it is thought that the camera had not been set up to face him. Wheeler fitted the bill of an unskilled individual so well that he could not even take his own photograph correctly! Or in more blunt terms:

“Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber [so] perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber”

(Morris, 2010)

*Recently there have been suggestions that the Dunning-Kruger effect leads to Imposter Syndrome, suggesting that feelings of inadequacy are due to the skilled thinking what they do is easy, thus devaluing the skill. This is exactly the reverse of the “confident idiot”, e.g. the unconfident genius.

Sources:

Darwin, Charles, 1871, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, John Murray, Introduction, p3.

Dunning, David, 2014, “We Are All Confident Idiots”, Pacific Standard, Tuesday 27th October 2014.

Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David, 1999, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 77 (6), p1121–34

Morris, Errol, 2010, “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)”, New York Times, Sunday 20^th June, 2010.

What will SASFE be like?

Unbelievably it is just under two months until Forum on Education takes place in St Albans on Saturday 28th May. Although the official St Albans School blog has been detailing most of the information for the day itself (St Albans School Forum on Education), I thought I would take this chance to set out the vision of what delegates can expect.

Certainly SASFE will be deliberately smaller in scale than some teacher-led CPD events and education conferences. This is to encourage a collegiate and collaborative atmosphere, bringing discussion and sharing of ideas to the fore. The keynotes will be delivered in the School’s library, an intimate and scholarly setting as befitting the three distinguished speakers. Martin Robinson, of Trivium fame, will kick the day off, no doubt posing the questions that truly challenge how we think about education. Just before lunch Ian Yorston will discuss how technology can aid and abet assessment and feedback in and out of the classroom. As a final act Jill Berry will speak about leadership, bringing the curtain down on the day.

In between the keynotes delegates will attend three seminar-style workshops, led by some incredibly talented teachers from both the state and independent sectors. There will be a choice of different seminars covering a diverse range of subjects and concepts that are representative of the debates and discussions currently occurring in education. A full list can be found on the official St Albans School blog SASFE Keynotes and Seminar Information.  The workshops classification as a “seminar” is deliberate, once again reflecting the small-scale and collaborative nature of Forum on Education. These sessions will eschew didactic presentations, instead very much being an exploration and discussion of a topic to encourage a conclave of collaboration. The study group concept of the seminar returning delegates to the tutorial atmosphere of higher education and allowing discussion to flow, bringing nascent ideas to fruition.

As a reminder of the nuts and bolts of what else is on offer, tea, coffee and refreshments will be provided before, during and after the conference. Lunch is also included as part of the £30 ticket cost. Finally an on-site parking space or collection from St Albans City railway station is also part of the package, another way to try to make attending the conference as hassle-free as possible.

Writing less, better. TMLondon

I love the phrase “writing less, better” and have blogged on this idea before. Indeed the Jaffa Cake Conundrum was the title of my presentation at TMNQTHerts in October. Since then I have tried to develop simple and effective ways to encourage students to respond efficiently to written tasks. I am still amazed at how much student written work is just spurious fluff with no real meaning. Too often the task instructions are rewritten, wasting time for both the student writing the work and teacher feeding back.

My presentation at TMLondon looked at five ways of encouraging students to ditch the bluster and hone in on the task. Below is the list of ideas, perhaps you recognise the acronyms?

1. Don’t rush! RTQ
2. Don’t repeat the task instructions! ATQ
3. Don’t use pronouns! Write names, key words, etc
4. Don’t panic with exam questions! BUG
5. Don’t overcomplicate! KISS

RTQ = Read The Question, or RTFQ*. Don’t assume you know what the task is about, read instructions carefully and ask if unsure.

ATQ = Answer The Question, or ATFQ*. Having read, and clarified where necessary, the instructions start writing something that is directly relevant and meets the success criteria.

What is the meaning of this?! Well, since you ask, it’s a pronoun used to identify a specific person or thing close at hand. What “this” certainly is not, is a good way of demonstrating a good grasp of a topic or task. By far the better course of action would be to use key words and terminology to make a more lucid and effective piece of work.

BUG = Box the command word, Underline the key words, Glance at the mark allocation. To avoid losing marks in test questions use BUG as a way of structuring a response. It surprises me that some A level students do not know the difference between describe and explain!

KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid. This principle was apparently used by the US Navy and Lockheed aerospace (thanks Wikipedia!). Why try to make things more complicated? Sure there might be complex processes that need to be learned, but making the simple complicated is an easy trap to fall into.

KISS leads directly to the idea of “intellectual impostors”, or more accurately Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Richard Dawkins’ excellent book review Postmodernism disrobed in the scientific journal Nature was brought to my attention by Tim Jefferies in a tweet about UCAS personal statements. He observed that some students overcomplicate to try to appear more intelligent; this is something I can verify too. The contrast between a clear and lucid literary style to the passage below from Felix Guattari could not be starker:

“We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.”

As Dawkins states, “an intellectual impostor with nothing to say” would not cultivate a literary style that was clear or lucid (Dawkins, R (1998) Postmodernism disrobes, Nature, vol. 394, pp141-143). Instead they create something that is quite the opposite as a kind of snake oil to obfuscate. Returning this train of thought to our students, although we should be encouraging flair in writing it should not be at the expense of clarity. An easy strategy a pupil could take to check they have not fallen into this trap is simply to read the written work out aloud. Prose that a student might think reads articulately on the page can often be byzantine, convoluted and thorny when properly analysed. This is where KISS comes to the fore!

I hope you enjoyed this post and or the TMLondon presentation. If so you might be interested in a secondary education conference on Saturday 28^th May in St Albans. Tickets can be bought for just £30 through TicketSource.  

Full information can be found here.

*The F stands for Full!

UPDATE:

Thanks to the wonderful Leon Cych you can now watch the two minute nano-presentation from the night itself here. 

Header image courtesy of canva.com

Teaching and Learning Observations

One of the duties of my role is to “undertake an extensive programme of lesson observations”. This is a task I greatly enjoy and not an altogether new assignment. In my former life as a Head of Department lesson observations were an annual duty as part of Performance Reviews. However, I was always left dissatisfied with the focus on accountability rather than the craft of the classroom. Certainly more time was taken up with the nuts and bolts of performance management than having a proper discussion on teaching and learning. Ultimately this would often leave both parties involved in the process a little short-changed when it comes to actually reflecting on the observed lesson; more a case of box ticking than profound contemplation.

Therefore it was a very happy coincidence that the eminently sensible Dawn Cox was at hand with advice. Last year she blogged on how lesson observations were often divorced from what really mattered. This was just as I was coming to similar conclusions and yet here it was in black and white, with a clarity and directness my own thoughts lacked. Dawn highlighted a list of some of the worst points of lesson observations. Some of these points I could identify having occurred when I have been observed and also, more distressingly, some mistakes I have made when observing as a HoD. To improve what is a vital and omnipresent part of teaching she suggested several ideas; these got me thinking about what lesson observations should really focus on.

Before I describe and explain my adaptations of Dawn’s ideas it should be pointed out that as Head of Teaching and Learning my observations are completely decoupled from performance management. I go out of my way to make these as stress-free as possible, including the option to say no to the observation (most colleagues are pleased to invite me in…I think!) and no need to provide any planning or paperwork. Listed below are three distinct stages that my ideal teaching and learning observation would comprise:

1. Pre-observation – teacher and observer sit down to agree and discuss a lesson to observe. This discussion would cover what the teacher of the lesson would like to take from the observation. The focus would therefore come from the observee / teacher not the observer. Alternatively the observation could have a more general focus, if the observee wishes.
2. Observation – this would be recorded in the narrative style, listing actions that have occurred during the lesson. This objective viewpoint would then form the main stimulus for stage three of the observation. Additionally, and with the observee’s permission (agreed during the pre-observation meeting), student work would be looked at and specific students spoken to during the lesson in an attempt to glean more information.
3. Post-observation – a formal meeting between the teacher and observer. The observer would act both as a sounding board as well as bringing constructive ideas to the discussion, sharing the narrative record of the lesson and any other relevant information.

Time. It always comes back to time with any new idea in teaching. In practice I had to almost abandon stage one due to lack of time, particularly mutually free time. In the picture below you can see the top section is called “arrangement of observation”; this can be as simple as “via email”. Sadly it has been almost impossible to schedule a meeting before and after an observation; I feel that of the two the post-discussion is more vital to the process.

Here is an anonymised scan of section 1. As stated before it is incredibly difficult to have the pre-observation discussion, however, I feel that this section should still have some role in the form. So, like the human appendix, it is there shrivelled and of no real use hanging on in vestigial format.

From the same lesson is the narrative account, making up section 2. Note the post-it note box, which I use to record my musings. In this anonymised version it states “A picture tells 1,000 words!” and “Live marking – in front of student”. Both of these I picked up during the lesson and wished to remember for the Teaching and Learning newsletter, used to share good practice. The narrative record is split into two columns and has notes on what was going on.

Finally the third section shows my attempts at noting down the major discussion points during the debrief. To write everything down would detract from the reflection, certainly it is difficult to be in the moment when trying to scribble down each point. This lack of comprehensive notation is a nod to Dawn’s proposed coaching suggestion and very much the essential part of feeding back observation details. However, the point detailed below were all discussed and considered in one way or another. I believe it is important to have the signatures to show that this is an official observation, albeit divorced from performance management, and also gives a more formal ending to the process.

This post-lesson discussion actually led to me arranging a second observation to watch the same teacher with the same class (hence the “Tue p2” scribble) as part of a longer reflection on teaching and learning.

Should anyone be interested I am more than happy to share the blank pro-forma. Essentially I have tried to shape teaching and learning observations to best suit the observee. As with everything this is an ongoing process and very much of the ‘design-refine-redesign’ model of formative evaluation. My thanks go to Dawn Cox for providing the inspiration in her original blog post. Although I have adapted it and focused on just three of the key points, it is very much the offspring of her thoughts.

DID YOU KNOW??? Dawn was a presenter at the St Albans School Forum on Education on Saturday 28th May. Follow @SASForumEd to keep up to date!

The Assessment Working Party’s Findings

Since June I have been convening a working party to discuss assessment. Originally meetings were wide-ranging and took in plenty of discussion and ideas of what did not work. It is a precious balance between focusing a discussion and allowing a free-flowing debate to occur. Certainly our first meeting was characterised by the latter, but at the expense of actually getting anywhere in terms of a tangible outcome to help student learning in the school. However, as we met more regularly our agenda became more focused and something quite spectacular happened; we came up with a detailed and concrete proposal to take to the next level.

Assessment is a huge tranche of teaching, but as we honed into what we did at our school it became apparent that the working party would concentrate our thoughts on what happens after a piece of work has been assessed or marked. It was clear that the standard of marking was very high across departments. However, a common issue was that students did not make enough of the extensive comments, formative assessment and feedback given to them, whether written or verbal. Often it was lost in the maelstrom of comparing performances and grades, or at times completely ignored.

Throughout the process we had three main pillars of thought that we would bear in mind for any proposal:

• It must directly benefit student learning.
• It must avoid a “one size fits all” approach and be flexible enough for different departments to use successfully, but have common elements to tie the system together from one subject to the next.
• It will not increase teacher workload, if it requires more time then time must be found from elsewhere in the school’s assessment programme.

Our proposal is essentially a process of formative evaluation, encouraging the view that learning goes beyond the end of a topic in a scheme of work. In that manner it gives a nod in the direction of mastery learning, with the idea that students are ever building up their skills, knowledge and understanding of a subject. It also looks to focus on what students can do rather than what they cannot; a bank of “I can…” statements are included to highlight the progress made as well as helping to focus the next steps to take. There would be blank spaces for students to add their own “I can…” statements, further tailoring the self-assessment. The process can be summarised in the text and pictures below and would take place on a half-termly basis (NB this example is very much knowledge based as it is coming from a clearly defined Biology topic).

1. On completing a piece of work, topic or area students read through a bank of “I can…” statements associated with skills, knowledge or understanding of that work – ideally there would be no mark or grade associated with the work. Students then rank their competence as either 1 – consistently excellent 2 – good or 3 – inconsistent (this did raise the wonderful question of whether we could use emojis for this purpose). The bank of “I can…” statements are presented in the same format from subject to subject but their contents are subject-specific.
2. Students use the information from step one to set a target to work towards, at the same time setting a date to review progress. The teacher comments on the target and signs the sheet.

Steps one and two would be presented on the same document.

3. In the next half-term students are given a second self-assessment document, deciding how much progress they have made towards their target using a four point scale of None, A little, Nearly there and Got it! Pupils also need to decide the next steps they will take with regards to the target. They also link this work to the School Values, circling those that are appropriate to the work they have completed.
4. They then go on to rank themselves with a new set of “I can…” statements (or indeed some of the same from before depending on the subject) relating to the new piece of work or topic.
5. Students use the information from step four to set a target to work towards, at the same time setting a date to review progress. The teacher takes in the self-assessment document, commenting on progress made towards the original target and also on the new target.

Steps three, four and five would be presented on the same document.

Each department would have free reign to decide the content of the self-assessment document, however, it would need be presented in the same way with the same style and look (see pictures above). This will help to create a common framework that ties the system together so that while the content differs from subject to subject pupils will understand the process and become accustomed to the routine of reflecting on feedback. We proposed that the system be used with our Year 9 classes in September 2016 and that the system would then be reviewed and refined as feedback from teachers using it came back to us (self-assessment of the self-assessment, very meta).

Did we stick to our three pillars of thought?

• It must directly benefit student learning. I hope so! Encouraging reflective practice in students, tasking them to show independent resourcefulness and motivation can only be a good thing. As mentioned earlier this does drill down into the concept of mastery and hopes to give rise to an appreciation that learning is not consigned to individual lessons, pieces of work or topics, but is rather a continuous process that does not sit in defined and discrete blocks of time.
• It must avoid a “one size fits all” approach and be flexible enough for different departments to use successfully, but have common elements to tie the system together from one subject to the next. With HoDs having a free hand to decide what is included within the “I can…” statements it avoids being an unworkable centralised system that will ultimately fail to deliver. By ensuring the documentation looks the same and is formatted identically it gives a common framework to the process.
• It will not increase teacher workload, if it requires more time then time must be found from elsewhere in the school’s assessment programme. Although there is a definite set up cost to deciding the content of the self-assessment document, time has been set aside in a future INSET day for this purpose. Additionally the self-assessment takes the place of a homework on the homework timetable; teachers would collect in and comment on the students’ targets in place of marking their books for that week too.

Some self-criticisms and unanswered questions are listed below. These are issues we are still considering and hope to answer by the time we launch the self-assessments in September 2016.

Q: Where will the self-assessment document reside? Will it be in folder, books or an electronic copy?

Q: How will the self-assessment link to the pastoral system? Can Form Tutors access it to help guide and inform their tutoring of students?

Q: How will it link with reporting? Is this something we would encourage to be shared with parents / guardians?

Q: How do we link it from one year to the next?

What next?

Having shared our findings at a recent Head of Departments meeting we will be given a slot at INSET to present our findings and detail the proposal. Some of the day has also been given over to starting to plan and create self-assessments in departmental meetings. Exemplars will be provided from a range of subjects (Biology, Drama, English, French, Geography and Maths). The aim is then for us to launch in September 2016, informing students of the system through an assembly before they receive their first self-assessment and discussing with parents via written communication and an information evening.