D.Lambert | Post-Primary | Science
I was involved in a good debate about teaching and learning recently. My thinking was challenged but by the end I was failed to be convinced to try the new educational practice at the centre of the debate. I couldn’t articulate my thinking well during the debate, my thinking on why I thought the education practice may not be that beneficial. I’ve thought a lot about it since and I have come up with a list of 8 questions I consider when an educational practice is presented to me. These have been largely unconscious but it always helps to write things down. These are the 8 questions I want to ask those promoting any practice.
Have you considered how learning happens?
Have you considered how to assess the learning?
Have you considered how to reward the learner?
Have you considered the teacher workload?
Have you considered if it is practical to do?
Have you considered the process?
Have you considered the ease of implementation
Have you considered if it is better?
1. Have you considered how learning happens?
I find it bonkers that this has to be raised in teaching and learning discussions. Students could research and teach themselves the atom. Fine. No hassle. Is that the best way to learn it? Is there enough challenge in that? Will that create a desirable difficulty? What’s the cognitive load like? What level of prior knowledge are we expecting here? Are we talking about performance or learning here?
2. Have you considered how to assess the learning?
How do we know this thing is going to work? Let’s give every student an iPad. Fine. How will we know that it has been a worthwhile thing to do? We should do more group work. Fine. But how will I accurately assess the group and learning? What prerequisite knowledge is needed here and how will know if they know it? Hour long classes will improve teaching and learning. How will we know? What is the quality of the evidence we can get from a decision we want to make? Back to the previous point, are we assessing performance or learning?
3. Have you considered how to reward the learner?
This is a broad point but will the practice lead to studnets feeling successful? Will it reward them with fun and no learning or learning and no fun? Let’s allow the students to do a poster? Fine. Will they actually enjoy that? Would they prefer to write a page? How much time am I taking away from the student for the sake of a poster? Am I efficiently using the precious homework time? Will students reap the rewards now or later in their education? Students don’t like learning their times tables. Maybe. But those who do learn them find a lot more success in maths in the immediate proceeding years. Success leads to motivation. That’s their reward.
4. Have you considered the teacher workload?
I don’t think any teacher minds working a small bit more for a more successful practice but how many practices are proposed or implemented without considering teacher workload. Let’s get key words on paper hexagons and get students to make unique connections of key words. No. When I am expected to play arts and crafts? You can just laminate it and reuse it! That’s even more of my time for something I may never use again. Oh get the students to help you make them. No. Since when is arts and crafts better use of time then learning? If the practice promoted takes up additional time from teachers then we are fully entitled to ask for something else to be cut in its place. No quicker way for people reduce the promotion of poor ideas.
5. Have you considered if it is practical to do?
The idea could be great, meets all the criteria above but just not be possible to do. We know that retrieval practice can be an effective way for students to learn. We know that increasing the variation of the content can help learning and transfer. But we are limited by the time in the classroom, and a bloated specification and syllabus don’t help. I have to reduce retrieval practice to just 10 minutes in a lesson, and I end up lowering the different number of angles from which I approach a concept. I need to keep the course moving. Not all great ideas can implement as well as we hope.
6. Have you considered the process?
This one annoys me the most, where ideas are shoved into finely planned and well thought out schemes of work. You should collaborate with the geography department on teaching the water cycle. No. It is great there is an overlap, but we planned out our scheme of work that’s best for learning science. If they do the water cycle before we do it then great. If they don’t then grand. The cross-curricular stuff can undermine the process of making a scheme of work for you own subject discipline and should not bend because there is an overlap. It’s a silly romantic idea. It’s helpful and powerful to know what they have already covered in other subjects. That’s the overlap.
7. Have you considered the ease of implementation
Is this practice easy to do? Will the worst teacher be able to do it, or will the only the best of the best be able to pull it off? Makes no sense rolling out a rainbow flick training if only some teachers can pull it off. The practice needs to doable by the majority of teachers. We want to focus on increasing the use of group work and mini whiteboards. Which of these is easier for the majority of the staff to do well? Which will then have a bigger impact. Adam Boxer has an excellent blog on this.
8. Have you considered if it is better?
Everything above may be considered with a meaningful impact is expected, but the simple question remains, is it better than what we are actually doing? We should scrap summer exams and move them to Easter. Fine but what will it achieve more than the current summer exams? If it’s not better then it’s a no from me.
All of the above are questions to consider. A practice proposed may hurdle some questions better than others but all questions must be considered. A practice is only as a strong as its weakest link.
