Stand and Deliver?

My first bit of reading for the Master's program. It is 'Approaches to Learning and Teaching' by Sue Cox

She begins by pointing out that the type of teacher you will be is dependent on how you think critically about your teaching. This basically means reflecting about what goes well and what falls on its face and what you can change going forwards.

She also stresses the importance between a teacher's aims and values and their approach to teaching. I'm not sure I understand this yet, but I'm sure I'll get there! It seems to be about what you believe in / what sort of person you are is linked with what and how you teach. Whether you will be a teacher who stands and delivers a lecture, or a teacher who gets on the level of the children and engages with them on a cognitive level. How teacher interacts with children is dependent on their own background and experiences in the past.

We bring into a classroom our own unconscious bias and assumptions about people, and about topics we are teaching. This will be from our own experiences as a learner and what we see from observing teachers.

Cox says that that rather than working everything out before we even begin,

it is an evolving cycle of learning from what we already do in order to improve and hone our teaching.

It is no good just regurgitating what another teacher has done. It wouldn't be authentic. Instead, you need to understand what you are doing and why. Part of this is considering and unpicking our our bias. This is why no teacher's lesson will (should!) be the same as another.

Sue Cox goes on to question what is learning? Is it simply getting facts or is it something more? It incorporates personal development, acquiring a new skill, developing tenacity. I would also suggest that it is about creating curiosity in the learner and allowing them to create.

There are different ways to help someone learn. Sometimes there is a bit of 'telling' (or didactic approach), but there are other ways such as though play, practising something new, talking to peers about a subject or challenge, while at the same time, the teacher engages at times and facilitates the learning through questioning and homeopathic doses.

It is the teacher's role to make sure that the child is in the right place and time for learning

The learner is not a "passive recipient" of information - they cooperate, communicate, question, investigate, experiment, explore, create, solve.....

Values in society filter into education and affect teaching. In the classroom teaching has gone from traditional approaches in the Victorian times. By the 1970s, there was an era of child-centred and progressive approaches where there was a lot of free flowing curriculum. The Plowden Report (1967) talked about an informal, individualised approach to learning, with little input from the teacher and an emphasis on self discovery. However people thought this was a chaotic order and conservatives blamed it for a drop in standards and championed a return to more traditional whole class methods.

The 'Oracle Project' Galton (1980) asserted that this might not have actually been the case and that teachers were way more involved than it was thought, although not always in a constructive way. There was little facilitation going on by the teachers. Galton said that teachers were not challenging the children's thinking. Maybe this was because they had 30 children doing different things?! Or is it because they believed the children would work stuff out for themselves?

The move in the 1990s back to traditional ways of teaching was not backed up by research.

Neither progressive, or traditional approaches can ever be effective without quality teacher-pupil interaction. Mercer (2007) describes this as 'exploratory talk' whereby teachers and pupils discuss ideas, questioning them.

Mercer used the phrase 'dialogic teaching' to explain this approach using talking as a 'tool for joint enquiry'. The teacher is less the source of knowledge and more the facilitator of this talking.

dialogic teaching reflects a view that knowledge and understanding comes from testing evidence, analysing ideas and exploring values, rather than unquestioningly accepting someone else's certainties (Alexander, 2008)

Critical issues

What would I do to change this dominant culture?

I would always begin by drawing on the class experience, try to make things relevant to them and their community. Make sure that my planning is for interactive lessons. Small group work where children can test theories and extend their learning and engage with the children using open questions.

It is not only this shift to traditional teaching. The National Curriculum dictated what teachers were to teach and then Ofsted came along to tell teachers how to teach! This brought with it a move towards learning outcomes, targets, data and Ofsted ratings - a 'performance culture' - where teachers are increasingly held responsible for children's achievement and where children are classified and labelled.

Critical issue

What are the implications of the 'performance culture'?

This increases the likelihood that children are being taught for external testing. Does this allow for individuality or teaching or learning? It limits the learning. An alternative could be teacher assessed learning and also a trust in teacher's abilities and knowledge.

In 2003 The Primary Strategy talked about 'effective' teaching. But what does that mean? Performance culture encourages teachers to 'deliver' their lessons. If we are talk what to work towards and only focus on the means of achieving that (and only that) we do not think about the aims of values behind the outcomes and what we want the children (and not the government) to get out of the lessons.

Things are changing! There is a move towards creativity and 'cross curricular' structure. There is more opportunity to look at what the child needs to get out of the learning, rather than on outcomes and data. Every Child Matters (2004) and the resulting Children's Act 2004 looked a keeping the child central and making links between the different agencies. THe Education Secretary said 'the learner is a partner in learning, not a passive recipient'.

There is a still a tension between data & performance vs. teacher ethos and concerns for the child and there may be times when a teacher has to go with their ethos because that is part of their values and aims.

Teachers have to analyse their practice and understand their values to underpin what they are doing. External influences affect the classroom and so it is so important to know your purpose and ethos within the profession.