Research at Berkhamsted - Issue 4

RRESEARCH

AT BERKHAMSTED

Introduction

Berkhamsted aims to develop students who do more than simply pass public exams with exceptional results. The ideal Berkhamsted alumnus is better-rounded than that. They are someone who flourishes – in Higher Education, in employment, and in society more broadly (for more on student flourishing, see Kristjansson, 2019; Hampson et al., 2022; McConville et al., 2021; Swaner and Wolfe, 2021). They don’t simply ‘earn a living’ but ‘enjoy lives worth living’, because they forge happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, and a sense of meaning and purpose in life, character and virtue, and strong social relationships (which are the domains The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science uses to measure the extent of ‘human flourishing’).

A key part of the school’s nurturing process is the focus on the education of student character: at Berkhamsted, the development of character is as important as the content in lessons and extra-curricular activities. Such ‘Character Education’ is celebrated in this fourth issue of Research at Berkhamsted. It offers insight into some of the evidence, research, and thinking underpinning our emphasis on this key facet of education in 2022, and helps explain why it is so important in developing flourishing, remarkable people.

We open with Edward Cain’s detailed and lively literature review, ‘What can your subject contribute?’, which helpfully – and thoroughly – serves to contextualise the character-focused pieces that follow. The first of these is Richard Backhouse’s ‘Character – Universal or Just Vital’, with contributions from Mark Turner and John Browne, whose Janus-faced approach outlines the tradition and modernity of character education, as well as, ultimately, its value in three very different contexts. Ben Kerr-Shaw’s ‘What makes a “remarkable” person?’ builds on Backhouse’s, succeeding in crystalizing the potentially nebulous idea of an individual being ‘remarkable’, with an investigation into the character traits that parents, pupils, and colleagues look for in a ‘remarkable person’. Next, Aidan Thompson, PhD student and Director of Strategy and Integration at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue at the University of Birmingham, argues in ‘Educating character through song lyrics’, that popular song lyrics are as morally useful for the ‘betterment’ of the individual as some of the greatest works of Literature. Former Head Girl, Daisy Holbrook, then reflects on how her character was developed throughout 15 years as a student at Berkhamsted in ‘Character Education at Berkhamsted’. Duncan Hardy’s contribution is also Berkhamsted-focused: in ‘Leadership at Berkhamsted and “the advantage it offers”’, he outlines his initiative of embedding a culture of leadership throughout the school, which has been crucial in the formation of students’ character. An alternative view is provided by Dr. Lee Jerome, whose article, ‘Problems with Character Education’, finishes this section of the issue, critiquing the efficacy of certain actualisations of character education, providing food for thought about how best to deliver it.

The issue then broadens out with Alastair Harrison’s, ‘What is the purpose of the Key Stage 3 curriculum?’, which interrogates whether KS3 in English should be GCSE preparation or subject enrichment. Following this, Hannah Galbraith’s ‘Pen-on-paper versus stylus-on-tablet’ investigates whether some of the cutting-edge technology used for learning and teaching during lockdown still has a place in the Mandarin classroom. Similarly, Anna Dickson’s article asks how ‘digital technology [can] be used to support effective assessment and feedback without increasing teacher workload’? The post-pandemic classroom is also central to Sophie Brand’s work in ‘Reflections from a Covid Classroom’. It draws on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to explore a ‘teaching without organs’ approach. In ‘Improving children’s vocabulary: does it progress their writing?’, Emily Bowers then explores her efforts to improve Year 2 pupils’ writing by exposing them to more contextual vocabulary, which could have been seen as lacking during lockdowns throughout the pandemic. George Picker from Downe House School follows this in ‘Assessment: a meaningful process?’, calling for ways to make assessment more meaningful in Music and Isla Phillips from Sevenoaks School examines how the ‘Harkness’ discussion method can enhance the teaching of Critical Thinking.

The issue is brought to a close with a precis of Adeeb Ali’s A* ‘Extended Project Qualification’ essay which evaluates antitrust law in the regulation of ‘Big Tech’ in the USA before book reviews by Nick Cale and Lucie Michell.

Depending on why you are reading, I hope the inspiring work on display motivates you to tweak your practice or pursue a line of research; or demonstrates a small sample of some of the research-informed thinking that contributes to the development of 'remarkable' people at Berkhamsted.

Once again, thank you wholeheartedly to all contributors, to Hannah Butland, Deputy Head: Teaching, Learning, and Innovation, for guidance and proof reading, and to the exceptionally creative Jen Hallesy for the graphic design.

Dr. James Cutler (Head of Research and Teacher of English)

Contents

Character Education: What Can Your Subject Contribute? by Edward Cain 3 - 7

Character – Universal or Just Vital? by Richard Backhouse 8 - 11

‘What Makes a ‘Remarkable Person?’ - a Report Into Current Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Character Education at Berkhamsted Schools Group by Ben Kerr-Shaw 12 - 16

Educating Character Through Song Lyrics by Aidan Thompson 17 - 19 Character Education at Berkhamsted by Daisy Holbrook 20 - 22

Leadership at Berkhamsted and ‘The Advantage it Offers’ by Duncan Hardy 23 - 26

Problems with Character Education by Dr. Lee Jerome 27 - 30

Preparation for GCSE or an Opportunity For Subject Enrichment - What is the Purpose of the Key Stage 3 Curriculum? by Alastair Harrison 31 - 34

Pen-on-paper Versus Stylus-on-Tablet: An Investigation into the Effect of Surface Texture on Vocabulary Learning in Chinese by Hannah Galbraith 35 - 39

How can Digital Technology be Used to Support Effective Assessment and Feedback Without Increasing Teacher Workload? by Anna Dickson 40 - 49

Teaching Without Organs: Reflections From a Covid Classroom Using Deleuze & Guattari by Sophie Brand 50 - 56

Improving Children’s Vocabulary: Does it Progress Their Writing? by Emily Bowers 57 - 58

Experimenting With the Harkness Discussion Method by Isla Phillips 59 - 60

Assessment: A meaningful Process? by George Picker 61

How Successful has Antitrust Law Been in Regulating Big Tech in the USA? by Adeeb Ali 62 - 65

BOOK REVIEWS

What Does This Look Like in the Classroom? Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice. by Nick Cale 66

The Boy Question: How to Teach Boys to Succeed in School. by Lucie Michell 67 - 68 Works Cited 69 - 74

Character Education: What Can Your Subject Contribute?

If you could choose a new name for our noble profession, would you choose ‘teaching’? Given everything else that we do, it seems too limited. In my first year of teaching in a state boarding school, I quickly discovered that despite the academic job description my role actually required pastoral advice, parenting, sports coaching, chapel talks, CCF and extra-curricular clubs for leadership. Perhaps it was the same for you because, school to school, expectations seem similar. As teachers we are implicitly asked to help develop our pupils as whole persons. ‘Whole person, whole point’ as Rugby School neatly puts it.

As a Philosophy graduate, I self-importantly rationalise these activities with reference to Aristotle: we contribute to pupil flourishing. In education literature this is theorised under the umbrella term ‘character education’ (Kristjánsson, 2017). But I struggle to square this high-minded aim with classroom pedagogy. Should character education form part of a teacher’s professional classroom practice too? And if so, what can each of our own subjects meaningfully contribute? These questions formed the basis of my firstyear research project on the MSc in Learning and Teaching in 2019-20, and what you read below is selected more-or-less directly from the literature review.

You might like to consider the questions for yourself. Here at Berkhamsted they are especially pertinent because our formal adoption of Guy Claxton’s Building Learning Power imposes a framework for developing ‘habits and attitudes’ that have been chosen to ‘help young people become better learners, both in school and out’ (Claxton, 2002). We should plan a third of our lessons in a way that explicitly promotes pupils’ ability to collaborate, explore, link, listen, notice, persevere, plan, question, reason, or review. These are character dispositions. But are they the only character dispositions we should be instilling through academic study in each of our own unique subject areas? In RE, for example, are we grasping the character potential of a subject that ranges so widely across religion, philosophy, and ethics?

In 2011 London was burning. Prime Minister David Cameron expressed horror at this August rioting with the familiar proposal that schools should cure our social ills. His government would seek, he said, a first class education that ‘doesn’t just give people the tools to make a good living – it gives them the character to live a good life, to be good citizens’ (Cameron, 2011). This grand aim wasn’t new in itself. Since 2002, UK schools have had a statutory duty to promote the spiritual, moral social and cultural development of their pupils (Education Act, 2002, c.32). But what followed was the explicit rise of character education as Conservative government policy (Jerome & Kisby, 2019).

It took a few years, but in 2014 Education Secretary Nicky Morgan formalised the building of character as one of her department’s aims (Arthur et al. 2017). Resulting projects included the Character Innovation Fund and Character Awards (Morgan, 2014) and later, under Damian Hinds, an advisory group to help schools self-assess their development of character education (Hinds, 2019).

This advisory group showed that there is a good appetite for character education in schools as well as government. Of the 880 schools that completed its character education survey, 97% of them ‘sought to promote desirable character traits among their students,’ but that nearly half were not directly familiar with character education (Marshall et al., 2017; White et al., 2017). Most secondary schools were motivated by their pupils’ future employability, alongside citizenship and academic attainment.

The new Ofsted inspection framework is now likely to spur overt character education in maintained schools anyway. The handbook for full inspections (Ofsted, 2019) now gives just as much weight to the personal development of pupils as to the quality of education they receive: if either is inadequate then a school may be placed in special measures (Buzzing, 2019). Character is specified as one of the most significant dimensions of this personal development.

Renewed focus on character education and the accompanying funding has spawned a ‘significant, multidisciplinary field of research’ (White et al., 2017), most notably the University of Birmingham’s omni-present Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. You will see them cited again and again in this article because since 2012 their researchers have utterly dominated the field with prolific paperloads of publication.

With government, Ofsted, and the massed firepower of education researchers on the case, there is no escaping character education. It’s certainly not an arcane Victorian interest.

So what actually is character education?

Policy announcements give the impression that character education is largely about improving a young person’s performance in challenging circumstances. The term ‘character’ rarely appears unaccompanied. Nicky Morgan speaks of building ‘character, resilience and grit’, and Damian Hinds pairs character with resilience. In its assessment of character education interventions, the Education Endowment Foundation conflates character with essential life skills. It’s the same with recent bestselling books about character. Authors tend to focus on particular characteristics and promote their benefits for individual or economic success (Jerome & Kisby, 2019). Character aspects highlighted include growth mindset (Dweck, 2008), grit (Duckworth, 2019; Duckworth & Gross, 2014), confidence and curiosity (Tough, 2013).

These popular ideas are limited, instrumentalist, views of character education because they focus on performance benefits alone. However, the theoretical work emerging from UK universities puts characteristics like resilience, grit, and confidence within a wider philosophicalmoral framework. It all has a long lineage. Earlier on I mentioned Aristotle, and the dominant

theory of character education is overtly Aristotelian (Jerome & Kisby, 2019). This is because in the Nicomachean Ethics he coined the foundational concept of hexis or ‘state of character’ (Aristotle, Ross, & Brown, 2009). Aristotelian person-based ethics were popular with some revision amongst early and medieval Christian philosophers, until Enlightenment thinkers instead pivoted towards rationalising the morality of individual actions and rules – rather than moral character of the person doing them. There was a belated revival of Aristotle’s virtue theory among 20th-century ethicists (Anscombe, 1958; Foot, 1978; MacIntyre, 1981) whose work informs modern exploration of character. There might be well-founded misgivings about the baggage all this entails (Kristjánsson, 2013), and challengers have emerged from other retro philosophies including Stoicism and Thomism (Gill, 2018; Hacker-Wright, 2018). Discussion can get rather niche: in January 2020 a character education conference at Oriel College, Oxford, comprised 52 papers discussing precisely what constitutes human flourishing (Jubilee Centre, 2020). Nonetheless, the dominant model currently has the advantage of offering a coherent philosophical framework to what might otherwise be a competing selection of characteristics.

So here is the York Notes version. The Jubilee Centre defines character in neo-Aristotelian terms as ‘a set of personal traits or dispositions that produce specific emotions, inform motivation and guide conduct’ (Jubilee Centre, 2014). Character education is an umbrella term for 'the cultivation of positive character traits called virtues' (Arthur et al., 2017). Through repeated choices, virtues form stable patterns which might be called habits or dispositions. Overall, ‘good character is a stable and well-integrated cluster of dispositions’ (Curren, 2017).

Character education is informed by the ancient Greek philosopher’s claim that eudaimonia (flourishing) is the ultimate good, that ‘good character contributes to a flourishing life’ (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2014) and is ‘formed in large part through habitual behaviour’ (Pike, 2010). Despite the siren voices of instrumentalism, this philosophical-moral framework allows educators to justify building a wider range of character virtues than just the ones which make them good workers. Higher educational attainment, rather than being the goal itself, is a ‘happy side-effect’ of wider personal development (Arthur et al., 2017).

Why would this be a school’s responsibility?

Schools are uniquely well-placed to develop the character of our young people because they provide all-round opportunities for virtues to be ‘caught, taught and sought’: caught from the culture and influences that a pupil is exposed to; taught both in and out of the classroombecause virtues should be understood and reasoned; sought by the pupil freely pursuing 'varied opportunities that generate the formation of personal habits and character commitments' (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2014).

Precisely what virtues should be encouraged? There is ‘no definitive list,’ and ‘particular schools may decide to prioritise certain virtues over others in light of the school’s history, ethos or specific student population’ (Jubilee Centre, 2014). Nonetheless, general categorisation could be applied to any shortlist. The Jubilee Centre’s Framework distinguished between four types: intellectual virtues (e.g. curiosity and reasoning), moral virtues (e.g. courage and honesty), civic virtues (e.g. citizenship and service), and performance virtues (e.g. perseverance and resilience) (Jubilee Centre, 2014). Overarching all of these, practical wisdom or phronesis helps the pupil judge what best to do when these virtues are in competition with each other (Arthur et al., 2017).

In very simplest terms, character education comprising intellectual, moral, civic, and performance virtues is about ‘developing good people’ (Jerome & Kisby, 2019).

What could this look like within a subject?

Although a pupil’s whole life at school might be seen as a Vale of Soul Making, this doesn’t mean that character education must be taking place everywhere within it. Character development comes through habit and practice, so a classroom seems like the wrong place to expect it to happen. For an extreme illustration of this, look at university ethics professors: they spend their lives reflecting on right action, but are no better behaved than the rest of us (Schönegger & Wagner, 2019; Schwitzgebel & Rust, 2014)! Practical guides to character education emphasise the dangers of just bolting it on artificially as a classroom module (e.g. Roberts & Wright, 2018).

Nonetheless, individual subjects might have an angle on character and virtue that lets them contribute towards character education as a whole-school endeavour. To demonstrate this I look at the example of my own subject, and invite you to reflect whether your own has a place in the effort too.

What can RE contribute to the education of character and virtue?

Character is arguably the very subject matter of religion: ‘great religious texts – and great religious leaders, prophets and gurus – have all wrestled with such central questions as the need to grow in self-knowledge, build strong relationships, and live in a responsible, reflective and considerate way… Judicious exposure to the best that has been thought and said can lead directly to personal application – or rejection – of such considerations’ (Arthur et al., 2017). It is perhaps telling that the Jubilee Centre’s pilot project on developing virtues through the English curriculum explored C.S. Lewis’s Christianity-infused Narnia novels (Francis et al., 2018; Hart, Oliveira, & Pike, 2019). In RE, pupils already analyse role models who are ‘related to life in its full extent, including its moral complexities and ambiguities’ (Vos, 2018).

Despite this rich potential, since the 1970s RE pedagogies have been looking for a secular grounding (Gearon, 2014) tending to ‘studiously avoid’ looking at the inner religious life (Copley, 2008). Character education moves towards fixing this blind spot. Yet there is some doubt that the classic Thomist theological virtues of faith, hope and love could be accommodated in a way ‘relevant to those outside of particular faith communities’ (Carr, 2014).

Doubt can perhaps be overcome by limiting personal development to the moral rather than spiritual sphere. Focusing solely on moral virtues would not be much of a limitation, since suggestions for dispositions that can be developed in RE usually often turn out to be moral ones anyway (e.g. Felderhof & Thompson, 2014). And (Christian) moral education was previously a recurring feature of RE throughout the 20th century (Moulin-Stożek & Metcalfe, 2018). It might be that pupils are resistant to this since ‘many young people, whose beliefs are instinctively postmodern, will find it difficult to hold moral positions derived from religious beliefs’ (Kay, 2014), but at least the teacher’s role can be to give maligned views a fair hearing (Felderhof, 2014).

In Aristotelian terms, the point of this moral study is to develop pupils’ phronesis (good judgement). This has four aspects. First, the perception of virtue: ‘through engaging with ethical issues, pupils grow in their ability to discern the most important features of ethical situations and recognise which virtues are required to resolve ethical issues.’ Second, the conception of the ‘good life’: ‘where we understand the meaning and importance of virtues as part of a flourishing life and apply these in our lives accordingly.’ Third, virtue reasoning: ‘pupils gain awareness into how religious followers reach conclusions and grow in their own knowledge of how to integrate components of the good life in ethical situations.’ Finally, emotional regulation, where a calm exploration of ‘reasons why faith holders take action in their lives’ (Metcalfe, 2019) helps them ‘eschew the extremes of narrow rationalism and superficial emotivism’ (Barnes and Wright, 2006, cited in Metcalfe, 2019).

When surveyed, 98% of RE specialists agreed that ‘RE contributes to pupils’ character development’ and 94% that ‘RE teachers should model good behaviour for their pupils’ (Arthur, Moulin-Stożek, Metcalfe, & Moller, 2019). It is not clear, though, that this amounts to a mandate from teachers for explicitly educating character and virtues in the RE classroom. There is rather a difference between modelling good classroom behaviour and modelling a virtuous life! Respondents may have had the former in mind. Some further cause for doubt lies in the detail: teachers who themselves have a religious faith tended in the interviews to see exposure to religious teachings as the vehicle for pupils’ character development, while nonreligious teachers tended to attribute it to the practice of critical inquiry instead. So there seems to be fundamental disagreement here on the means and nature of implicit character education currently happening in RE.

Nonetheless, one popular theme emerges from those interviews. RE teachers feel that their subject offers a particularly strong contribution to the development of virtue literacy (Metcalfe & Moulin-Stożek, 2020). Specifically, the perception of specific virtues in action, reasoning about their wider application, and reflecting on one’s own development of them. This is in line with the opportunities outlined above, and is ripe for further research. My continuing MSc study explores how it could be practically implemented.

So, pending teacher buy-in and debate on the details, this is what RE might contribute to character education: ready-made historical examples of realistic moral and civic virtue with all its imperfections, through which students can become literate in what the virtues are and what they look like in reality. Ethical frameworks, both religious and philosophical, to analyse moral claims. Critical thinking skills – intellectual virtues – with which to do that reasonably. The potential outcome is well-developed practical wisdom, phronesis, which can then be exercised in other areas of school life.

What can your subject contribute?

BIO Edward Cain is currently studying towards an MSc in Learning and Teaching at the University of Oxford. He joined Berkhamsted in 2018, having previously taught RE, Politics, and History at a state boarding school in Dover. Edward’s scepticism of employability as the aim of education can be blamed on his rather gloomy first career in marketing.

Character - Universal or Just Vital?

While there is evidence that both China and Egypt saw the first schools spring up approximately 2000 years ago, the earliest forms of character education are usually ascribed to the Greeks (Doyle, 1997).

In the UK, character education has been seen as one of the advantages of a system of education which was established in boarding schools, and flourishes still in private schools. Successive Secretaries of State for Education have seen the breadth of education in independent schools as better educating character, and have sought to emulate it (DfE, 2019).

Character education is regarded by many as having a moral dimension. The Jubilee Centre at Birmingham University advocates a Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Development which is congruent with its Character Education focus. CS Lewis is often quoted as having said that 'Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil', but this is widely thought now to be a misquotation (O’Flaherty, 2014). He did say that education has intrinsic moral value: 'The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes' (Lewis, 1943).

The universality of underpinning values links CS Lewis’ writings to the programme put in place more than 20 years ago on the other side of the world, in New Zealand: Cornerstone Values sought to establish basic programmes to teach honesty and truthfulness, kindness, consideration and concern for others, compassion, obedience, responsibility, respect and duty in schools (Keown et al., 2005).

More recently still, the work of James Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, demonstrates that ‘non-cognitive skills’ (which we may call character, or virtues) have at least as much effect on post-education ‘success’ as cognitive ability – or intelligence (Heckman et al., 2006).

If character education helps people both to do well and be well, then the question is: how? In the remainder of this article, three different approaches are outlined in three different contexts.

St. Michaels University School, Vancouver

(Mark Turner, Head of School)

Here at St. Michaels University School, based in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, Canada, we have an interesting perspective on character education. Of course, many of the leading HMC schools have several centuries of tradition that inform their view of character education in the present. Here in Canada, we are relatively unencumbered by the precedent and traditions of the past. Although our School has been in existence since 1906, it has only grown to full maturity since a merger between St. Michael’s School and University School in 1971.

Given that we are situated at the southern point of Vancouver Island, we have always been committed to the notion that the ‘great outdoors’ is the best classroom. Even though our campus is now urbanized, many faculty and staff will regularly take their classes outside in preference to the confines of four walls. This sense of engagement in the environment is of course very relevant today, with the rise in international concern for climate change and environment degradation.

We are also committed to the notion of leadership opportunity for all. My experience in the UK led me to believe that schools provided many wonderful leadership opportunities, but often unfairly biased towards the most capable. Here, we have a very egalitarian commitment to ensure that every individual is able to develop their own potential. Naturally enough, maximizing the advantages of our position, there are numerous programmes in the world of outdoor and adventure recreation. Winter survival training, constructing snow holes, and operating as a team take on a new urgency when the temperature outside is minus 25.

Although our School does not have the strong religious traditions of many in the UK, we do seize every opportunity to emphasize our values, courage, honesty, respect and service. These four themes are repeated like a mantra and used in a plethora of different contexts multiple times every day.

On arrival in 2018, I have to confess to a degree of cynicism about how effective this would be. Four years of experience has taught me that it actually works. Every student from Kindergarten to Grade 12 knows our values and has to relate to them as they make every day decisions around the School. Of course, failure to live up to any of these values presents a tremendous learning opportunity. Almost everyone can recognize when they fall short.

Here in Canada, since the publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report in 2015, all schools have taken steps to engage with their Indigenous neighbours in a spirit of learning, and in a desire to reconcile some of those aspects of history of which we are least proud.

This year started off with a whole-school ceremony where we received four spindle whorls, which are the manifestation of our four values as depicted by Indigenous artist, Dylan Thomas. 1 A deliberate attempt to connect more meaningfully with Indigenous heritage and culture gives us a new perspective on the future, with opportunities to take character education in a different direction.

Proximity to nature, respect for the environment, sustainability, non-hierarchical structure, and the importance of serving the community, particularly helping the disadvantaged members of it, are given new expression as we plan our character education for the future. All very much in line with Indigenous cultures evolved over millennia.

Words of Recognition

1 A spindle whorl is a weaving tool, traditionally made of amber, antler, bone, ceramic, coral, glass, or stone inserted into a spindle to increase or maintain the speed of the spin in the making of thread.

'We acknowledge that our school rests in the heart of Straits Salish territory, a living culture with its own rites, ceremonies, and unfolding history.'

'We honour the Esquimalt, Songhees, and WSÁNEĆ peoples - whose homelands we share and whom we recognize as our neighbours.'

The

Catholic (Jesuit) Tradition (John Browne, Headmaster Stonyhurst)

Introduction

The Society of Jesus (the ‘Jesuits’) was founded by Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish soldier turned priest, in 1540. Ignatius arguably started one of the greatest educational movements the world has ever known. The Jesuits were known as ‘the schoolmasters of Europe’ and the Ratio Studiorum of 1599 standardised regulations of their schools globally. Today approximately one million young people attend a Jesuit school or university worldwide. Jesuits were innovators in education and created the concept that each year group should have a different curriculum. Year groups were named (and still are) Figures, Rudiments, Grammar, Syntax, Poetry, Rhetoric, etc. The foundations of the curriculum were the classics (theology, philosophy, Latin and Greek), but also including the study of native languages, history, geography, mathematics and the natural sciences. Astronomy is still taught in some Jesuit schools (including Stonyhurst) and the Vatican Astronomer is a Jesuit!

What do we do in a Jesuit School?

The Jesuit Pupil Profile has been developed by the schools of the British Jesuit Province as a successor to the Jesuit School Leaver Profile published in 1995. The new Jesuit Pupil Profile was launched in the schools in the autumn term of 2013.

Our aims in creating the new Jesuit Pupil Profile (JPP) have been:

• to propose a simple but challenging statement of the qualities we seek to develop in pupils in Jesuit schools, using key words which unfold Ignatius' own stated aim of 'improvement in living and learning for the greater glory of God and the common good.'

• to produce a profile that describes the whole process of Jesuit education (from age 3 or 5 or 11 or 17 - the common ages of entry into our schools in Britain) rather than that of a school leaver.

• to create a JPP image in the style of a tag-cloud which can be used alongside the formal statement. Both image and statement are designed to provide a rich resource to stimulate discussion in class, assemblies, retreats and liturgy, in meetings of governors, with school leaders, teachers, support staff and parents; and which can be used to explain to prospective parents the aims of Jesuit education.

The JPP proposes eight pairs of virtues that sum up what a pupil in a Jesuit school is growing to be. Alongside the pupil profile itself, we have developed a parallel statement of what a Jesuit school does to help its pupils grow in the virtues listed in the JPP. There is also a brief expansion of the profile explaining its gospel and Ignatian roots.

Jesuit Pupil Profile

Pupils in a Jesuit school are growing to be . . .

Grateful for their own gifts, for the gift of other people, and for the blessings of each day; and generous with their gifts, becoming men and women for others. Attentive to their experience and to their vocation; and discerning about the choices they make and the effects of those choices.

Compassionate towards others, near and far, especially the less fortunate; and loving by their just actions and forgiving words.

Faith-filled in their beliefs and hopeful for the future.

Eloquent and truthful in what they say of themselves, the relations between people, and the world.

Learned, finding God in all things; and wise in the ways they use their learning for the common good.

Curious about everything; and active in their engagement with the world, changing what they can for the better.

Intentional in the way they live and use the resources of the earth, guided by conscience; and prophetic in the example they set to others.

Berkhamsted School

Acknowledging that Berkhamsted is less developed in its thinking about character education than the Jesuit Foundation of Stonyhurst, it is striking, nonetheless that the plaque outside the Chapel records the values of the school in the time of Dean Fr y as being loyalty, simplicity, and discipline. Such a record is the exception rather than the rule. In this respect, Berkhamsted exemplifies the liberal tradition of English public schools that important matters of character were rarely written down; codification was not seen as necessary for character to be developed and celebrated through the breadth of the School’s endeavour.

The breadth of the curriculum (once the School had been wrestled back from the control of the Dupré family in the early nineteenth century) has for a long time included sport, performing arts and adventurous activity: the School boasts one of the oldest Combined Cadet Forces in the UK, for example. We approach character education therefore with the advantages of the more recently arrived – able to celebrate those elements of modern character which we believe to be relevant and important, and without being tied to traditions which have lost relevance or, worse, offend a different time and audience. At the same time, the history of the School allows the narration of stories (for example about the three Victoria Crosses gained by alumni, or the status of former pupil Euan Lucie-Smith as the first Black officer in the British Army) based on a rich history of achievement; these stories illustrate the education of character throughout the School’s history.

A great danger awaits those schools which place an explicit value on character: the attempt to turn character development into some sort of production line produces an industrialisation of the process. As Max Weber identified in the early nineteenth century, the attempt to turn organic processes into rationalised ones may be self-defeating, as it normally depersonalises processes, eliminates individuality, and thereby loses the essential ‘why’.

One advantage to tradition is that time tends to build an organic focus on human flourishing (‘eudaimonia’). Modern individualism might enable a school to ally this with an explicit acknowledgement that each person may define their own version of flourishing. Encouraging young people to have regard to the flourishing of their whole self, blending modern thinking with ancient wisdom, seems likely to this author to attract the young to attend to the development of their character rather than be unaware of the manner in which each action or habit is building up into a whole. All three approaches above give licence to value tradition and seek new expressions of their historic role in helping the young bring out the character within.

Conclusion

Character education is worth the debate it causes. It’s evident all over the world; it differs locally to meet local needs; it has a deep history; it has rich traditions, and modern expressions.

Perhaps the most surprising development in thinking about character is Heckman’s: that character education brings financial benefits to those who experience it (2006). Thus the least noble of reasons may justify the most noble elements of education…

BIO Richard Backhouse is Principal of the Berkhamsted Schools Group.

(With gratitude to Mark Turner - Head of School at St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC, Canada - and John Browne - Headmaster of Stonyhurst and a former Director of Music at Berkhamsted School - for their contributions.)

- a Report Into Current Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Character Education at Berkhamsted Schools Group

Background

The purpose of this article is to assess the ‘ground truth’ of character education culture and practices at BSG schools to provide a foundation for future strategic planning around character education.

The research questions addressed are:

Education theory and practice show a renewed interest in character education (see, for instance, Morgan, 2017, Kristjansson 2015, Jubilee Centre, 2017) and the strategic direction of BSG makes ‘developing remarkable people’ a priority. Character education is one key element that underpins this strategic priority.

Methods

This study used a mixed-methods approach using an abridged version of The Jubilee Centre’s Character Education Evaluation Handbook for Schools. Quantitative research involved a four-question survey distributed to all parents, staff and KS3+ students in BSG. 809 responses were received. Qualitative research took place in which nineteen key stakeholders from across the BSG teaching community were interviewed. Those interviewed oversee areas of the school in which character education is believed to take place. The qualitative research followed the same methodology as Character Education at Eton College (Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning, 2019)

Which character virtues are most valued by the Berkhamsted School community?

What is Berkhamsted School currently doing to support the development of these virtues?

What action should we take to better support the development of these virtues?

‘What Makes a ‘Remarkable Person?’

Findings

1. There is significant interest in character education among parents and staff. To this voluntary survey there were 247 replies from parents, 127 replies from staff and 434 replies from students. Many respondents added detailed comments at the end of the survey. All key stakeholders interviewed spoke about the importance of character education in their area.

2. Berkhamsted provides a wide range of opportunities for character development, meeting most of the published studies’ examples of best practice. For example, Arthur et al., (2017) lists the following examples of best practice: developing virtue literacy, co-curricular activities, civic engagement (including volunteering), partnership with parents, role modelling and opportunities for dialogue.

3. Staff and parents agree that ‘Resilience/Persistence’ is the most important trait for BSG to develop in its students. This was also the most frequent trait identified by school leaders as being important. Students only ranked this as 13th most important out of 25 traits listed.

4. There is no significant overlap in the character traits ‘which the school should develop’ between students on the one hand and staff and parents on the other (persistence, integrity and empathy feature in staff/ parents' top four traits; these do not feature at all in the students’ top six traits, although both staff and students put ‘confidence’ as number two).

5. Students, parents and staff agree that their key hopes for young people centre on ‘being the best version of themselves’ (a simplified view of ‘flourishing’) rather than objective measures of success and achievement, or collectivist views of an equal society.

6. Several school leaders believe that as both a diamond school and large school group that takes in children at nursery age and can educate them through to Sixth Form, BSG has unique opportunities for character development. Some of these opportunities are yet to be fully realized.

7 The language used by school leaders to describe character education, and possibly their understanding of what character education means, is diverse. In addition, no evidence was found of character measurement tools being used, planning of wholeschool approaches to character, parental engagement programmes centred on character or a whole-school organized approach to character education.

Quantitative data review (student, parent, and staff survey)

Creativity 142

Curiosity 114

Open-Mindedness 117 Love of Learning 80 Honesty 177 Courage/Bravery 129 Persistence/Resilience 117 Zest 66 Kindness/Service 160 Love 81

Empathy/Social Intelligence 151 Fairness 169 Leadership 120 Teamwork 205 Modesty/Humility 78 Self-Regulation 69 Appreciation of Beauty 36 Gratitude 115 Hope 68 Humour 157 Confidence 194 Citizenship 68 Integrity 151 Environmental awareness 59 Self-motivation/autonomy 129 Other 11

250 200 150 100 50 0

Which character strengths are most important for BSG to develop in its students? 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

STUDENTS:

1. Teamwork (n 205) 2. Confidence (194) 3. Honesty (177) 4. Fairness (169) 5. Kindness/ service (160) 6. Humour (157)

Creativity 50 Curiosity 75 Open-Mindedness 101 Love of Learning 70 Honesty 81 Courage/Bravery 76 Persistence/Resilience 152 Zest 30 Kindness/Service 81 Love 28 Empathy/Social Intelligence 101 Fairness 45 Leadership 37 Teamwork 60 Modesty/Humility 40 Self-Regulation 39 Appreciation of Beauty 8 Gratitude 58 Hope 23 Humour 26 Confidence 118 Citizenship 19 Integrity 118 Environmental awareness 22 Self-motivation/autonomy 97 Other 14

Fig 1. Which character strengths are most important for our school to develop in its students? (students’ response)

PARENTS:

1. Persistence/Resilience (152) 2. Confidence (118) 3. Integrity (118) 4. Empathy (101) 5. Open mindedness/ critical thinking (101) 6. Self-motivation/ autonomy (97)

Fig 2. Which character strengths are most important for our school to develop in its students? (parents’ response)

Creativity 20

Curiosity 39 Open-Mindedness 43 Love of Learning 33 Honesty 35 Courage/Bravery 25 Persistence/Resilience 73 Zest 11 Kindness/Service 51 Love 9 Empathy/Social Intelligence 56 Fairness 31 Leadership 11 Teamwork 31 Modesty/Humility 23 Self-Regulation 26 Appreciation of Beauty 4 Gratitude 34 Hope 10 Humour 13 Confidence 39 Citizenship 12 Integrity 67 Environmental awareness 22 Self-motivation/autonomy 42 Other 5

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

STAFF:

1. Persistence/Resilience (73)

2. Integrity (67) 3. Empathy (56) 4. Kindness/ service (51) 5. Open mindedness/ critical thinking (43) 6. Self-motivation/ autonomy (42)

Fig 3. Which character strengths are most important for our school to develop in its students? (staff response)

School leaders recognized the importance of character education and in each area there existed a range of opportunities for character development amongst students. Most school leaders made links between character development in school and a wider vision of a flourishing society (a key principle in neo-Aristotelean character education).

Most school leaders believed that ‘resilience’ was among the most important traits to develop:

Several school leaders believed that there are more opportunities to leverage the through-school/ diamond school opportunities at BSG.

The language used by school leaders to describe character education, and possibly their understanding of what character education means, is diverse. In addition, no evidence was found of character measurement tools being used, planning of through-school approaches to character, parental engagement programmes centred on character, or a BSG-wide organized approach to character.

Summary and key recommendations

It will come as no surprise to students, parents, and staff that Berkhamsted School is a community where character is valued and opportunities for growing in character are abundant. That said, BSG still has some distance to travel if we are to truly embody the vision of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue’s Framework document:

'The sensible question to ask about a school’s character education strategy is not, therefore, whether such education does occur, but whether it is intentional, planned, organised, and reflective, or assumed, unconscious, reactive, and random.'

Therefore, the following recommendations are made: i) create a common language at BSG around character; ii) leverage the throughschool/ diamond school opportunities at BSG to develop character over the students’ time at Berkhamsted; and iii) character instruction should focus on a values-led, meta-cognitive approach, rather than developing a pre-selected list of virtues. By building on its strong foundations in character education, Berkhamsted School will not only fulfil its aim of ‘developing remarkable people’ within our own community but can go on to provide guidance and resources for many other schools seeking to embed effective character education programmes.

BIO Ben Kerr-Shaw is Head of Churchill House and Teacher of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Berkhamsted. He is completing his final year of a Masters programme in Character Education at Birmingham University.

Educating Character Through Song Lyrics

Music is performed, but lyrics are written. Written in song books, journals, on scraps of paper, on napkins, on iPhones, on laptops, iPads, tablets; they are written, edited, re-written and crafted in much the same way that page-born poetry is crafted. Where poets craft their lyrics to particular rhythms and meters – iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter – songwriters and lyricists craft their verses to a musical beat, melody, or harmony. The care and effort are no less worthy of consideration, however, and the mass appeal of popular music, the global commerce that it creates, and cultural critique that its content stems from, almost demand that greater literary attention is paid to the lyrics that constitute popular music.

Literary critic Adam Bradley claims that the work he undertook for his 2017 The Poetry of Pop consisted of listening to pop music ‘for hours, really for years, to the detriment of my ears and the betterment of my being' (2017, 5). If we both interpret ‘betterment’ to include moral and virtuous benefits, then it is plausible to argue that pop lyrics hold ethical value, and that this ethical value can be utilised in the classroom. I consider this a helpful refocusing of Bradley’s use of the term, particularly with regards to the application of moral development of students. We listen to music for pleasure, but I contend that we can go beyond the simple pleasures of listening to pop songs, and, through a close analysis of pop lyrics, particularly those that address moral issues, see ‘betterment’ from a moral perspective. This is helpful when considering the positive outcomes of analysing pop lyrics.

Literary texts, novels, dramas, poems, and films are utilised in education as tools from which we can develop morally and ethically, and yet songs, and specifically lyrics, are often overlooked. Equally, ‘good’ books, plays, and poems are analysed by scholars for their ethical value and content, and their moral value debated as a philosophical aim of good education (see, for example, Bohlin, 2005; Arthur et al., 2014; Kilpatrick, Wolfe and Wolfe, 1994). Indeed, the interest in the potential of the arts, generally, and literary narratives, specifically, to educate character has received sustained scholarly attention (see, for example, Conroy, 1999; Carr and Harrison, 2015; D’Olimpio, Paris and Thompson, 2022, forthcoming). Where ‘good’ books, tales, and other literary narratives are used in moral education, popular song lyrics are not as regularly considered as morally valuable tools for moral education. Some recent scholarly attention has been paid to popular music in debates over ethical and aesthetic value (see, for example, Stone, 2018). This has coincided with a rise in interest in moral education, particularly in terms of what constitutes moral/character education and what works in the classroom (see Arthur, Fullard and O’Leary, 2022; Morgan, 2017). As the moral development of young people can be framed as helping young people develop and acquire a sense of moral purpose, so a logical step for practitioners is to seek out theoretically sound tools that can support such outcomes (see Damon, 2009; Cotton Bronk, 2013). What pop lyrics offer, then, is content that is emotion-rich, descriptive, and depicts ethically challenging situations for a reader or listener to engage with, but presented in an aesthetically pleasing way that is ‘easier’ for teachers to use and students to engage with, due to pop’s mass consumption and commercial value.

We regularly turn to music, to our favourite songs, at times of emotional strain, or emotional pleasure. What we recognise in our favourite song lyrics are the ways in which lyrics provide comfort, familiarity and sometimes support. They help us escape, overcome loss, move past a metaphorical obstacle, and help us find a sense of purpose. That is not to say that the lyrics of Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ (2010) provide more insight into the idea of love than, say, W.H. Auden’s ‘The More Loving One’, or that Ed Sheeran is a ‘better’ story teller than Dickens. Such comparisons are unhelpful. What can be argued, though, is that the lyrics of pop songs contemplate ethical dilemmas, the excesses of vice, and topics of virtue, so provide rich and accessible content for discussion.

Most music listeners may be content to never consider the lyrics that they sing along to as pieces of poetry, to be poured over and analysed, but given the mass consumption, mass appeal, and emotion-rich content of pop songs, it seems essential that we consider the power that they hold over our lives, why we turn to them in times of happiness, grief, celebration, hurt. The themes pop songs discuss are more than trivial, surfacelevel discussions of love, lust, and loss. They are rich with emotion, with feeling, with vice and with virtue, driven by the lived experiences of the artist/songwriter made accessible to all, or created by the committees that write to manipulate the listener into feeling a certain way. Much of this ‘manipulation’ is achieved through the rhythm and melody of the song, as much as the content and structure of the lyrics, but let us consider some examples to emphasise my point.

The role of the singer/artist is important, particularly when a lyric is presented in the first person. Whilst there is undoubted separation between the singer and their lyrics, artists often draw inspiration from personal experience. Artists seek to engage their listeners, or in the words of Kanye West, ‘first I snatched the streets then I snatched the charts / First I had they ear, now I have their heart’ – ‘Never Let Me Down’ (2004). West raps that he has moved from capturing the ear of his listeners, to getting them to love him, accepting him and also following his every word. As we are considering the poetry of pop, here, interestingly, the J. Ivy verse in the track was originally penned as a poem.

Yet virtue is not always depicted positively, as The Killers tell us in ‘Human’ (2008), ‘Pay my respects to grace and virtue / Send my condolences to good’. ‘Human’ is a song that contrasts being ‘human’ with being ‘dancer’ or puppet-like, on strings. Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers, doesn’t conclude whether he is either human or dancer, asking the question a total of nine times in the lyric. In speaking in the first-person plural, the lyric

includes the listener in the dilemma, of whether they are alive or being on strings, asking the listener to ‘let me know’ and participate in the debate.

A third example can consider the virtue of gratitude, a philosophical ‘hot topic’ in terms of recent research into virtue and emotions. Gratitude is conceived of as taking a triadic structure where three variables interact, the beneficiary, the benefit, and the benefactor (see Arthur et al., 2015). Whilst there are other conceptual approaches to gratitude that do not require there to be a beneficiary, we can understand gratitude to be a virtuous emotion that has generally positive connotations attached to it, even a moral virtue, that evokes a positive emotion, and valuable for a flourishing life (Kristjánsson, 2018).

‘Thank You’ by Dido (1998) is a song that has gained huge commercial success. In the lyrics, there is a benefactor, a beneficiary, and a benefit all present, fitting the requirements of the philosophical structure. Even though the song only says ‘thank you’ four times throughout, the juxtaposition of the depression and desolation experienced by the author in the verses against the gratitude and pleasure of the choruses is compelling. For context, the premise of the lyric is one of gratitude for sharing time with another during a bout of depression, with the singer presenting in verses one and two her feelings of sadness and depression at the circumstances of her life, but ending with positive emotions of seeing a picture of a loved one (verse one) and receiving a phone call (verse two), which reminds her that things are ‘not so bad’. Verse three then follows the same structure, but describes the presence of the partner being enough for the singer to temporarily escape the turmoil and depression of their life.

On the surface, the lyric is simply presented as a contrast between the despair of the author’s life with the cheer of experiencing the very ‘best day of my life’ in being with one’s lover. The acts of gratitude are multiple, and escalate in significance throughout the song; beginning with seeing a picture, to receiving a phone call, to being handed a towel when coming in from the rain, and culminating in seeing the lover and being in their presence. The author is grateful to the other party for being able to transport them from their state of depression into something that is ‘not so bad’. The unnamed other party is the benefactor of the gratitude, and the lyric itself is the articulation of it. The gift is being able to brighten someone else’s day by your mere presence, particularly if that person is experiencing depression or despair.

What endures in the lyric is the notion that however hard one’s life gets, it is always possible to lift them and provide them with a little bit of happiness through

one’s presence, through a phone call, picture, or a memory. The obvious interpretation is that the other person is a partner or a lover, but that is open to interpretation; it could be another meaningful person. The lyric appears simplistic and, perhaps even twee, but its popularity suggests that there is an enduring notion of gratitude that the listener can engage with and learn from. We don’t all need to have been in the depths of despair to be able to engage with the emotional uplift that a significant other can bring to us on good and bad days.

It is the reflection on that uplift, who is responsible for it, and how it ‘saves’ the author that creates the lasting meaning. Whilst we might feel a fleeting notion of thanks, a pang of love, or another positive emotion in response to seeing a picture, receiving a phone call, or returning home to see that person, reflecting on that emotion sufficiently to then thank the person for doing nothing more than being there is unusual. Perhaps the polarisation of emotions created in the description of the depression and the resulting uplift allows space to reflect and acknowledge the cause for the positive change in emotion. Regardless, the gratitude experienced and the description of that experience appear to fulfil the requirements of a ‘virtuous emotion’. It is not necessary for listeners to need to engage and empathise with the level of depression experienced by the singer, and it is plausible to think that the lyric expresses too much gratitude in response to relatively little action; however, such is the polarisation of the negative (‘I’m wondering why I got out of bed’, ‘I might not last the day’) and the positive (‘best day of my life’) creates a balance that works for Dido. We must also remember that this is a pop lyric, where repetition of choruses is a feature designed to move the song forwards, rather than a device to gauge the level of emotional content.

So, what is the purpose in deconstructing pop song lyrics in this fashion? Is it all moot, or can there be an educational benefit that aids reflection and ‘betterment’? Do we need to engage with a lyric in the detail we have begun to engage with ‘Thank You’ to gain pleasure from the song? No, of course not, but in reading and re-reading the lyrics, analysing their structure and form, as well as discussing their content in detail, we can engage with the lyric, the singer, and one another in terms of any virtuous feeling that is inspired by the song.

As I began with quoting Bradley, so I will close by quoting him again, ‘What artists do…is to take the everyday and make it unusual; to make us look at the things around us with new eyes, to listen with new ears. Great poetry of all stripes, great literature of all stripes has the capacity to do just that.’ (Bradley, 2017). Ultimately, if pop song lyrics are to be considered as useful tools for moral development, we must engage with them in a meaningful way – akin to how we engage with other forms of narrative art. I contend that where Bradley acknowledges that pop artists are taking everyday topics and everyday situations and making them appear unusual, and affecting how we see and hear those topics through rhyme and expression, so we can push further. Where pop lyrics engage us emotionally and ethically, even if initially only for a fleeting period, we can harness this potential for emotional and moral progress. If we encourage students to take time to analyse the lyrics of such songs, facilitate structured discussions on the meaning of metaphors and imagery and how they engage our emotions, then the opportunity to reflect on the emotional and ethical value is where this educational potential of pop lyrics can be realised.

BIO

Aidan P. Thompson works at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. He is part of the Management Team and leads on strategic and operational matters. He is also a PhD candidate in the School of Education, University of Birmingham under the title ‘The Ethical Value of Pop Lyrics’.

'What artists do… is to take the everyday and make it unusual'

Character Education at Berkhamsted

Character Education as a concept appears self-explanatory, but it actually relies on a collection of smaller factors that ultimately have profound impact upon the jigsaw that makes up our personality. As such, I would argue that Character Education is the most important learning that takes place during our years at school, in that it makes up the basis of who we are today and how we shape the 'habitus', so to speak, within which we interact. Lao Tzu comes to mind here in that I firmly believe ‘Character becomes your destiny’ in that it shapes who we are and what we do, be that in exams or in the everyday fabric of our lives and it turns us into remarkable individuals.

What is character education?

At its core, Character Education is the subliminal shaping of an individual’s personal characteristics through other extracurricular activities or social processes. According to NatCen Social Research and the National Children’s Bureau, there are four key indicators and areas of learning which are essential to develop one’s character.

Developing the ability to remain motivated by long-term goals, to see a link between effort in the present and pay-off in the longerterm, overcoming and persevering through challenges.

Learning and habituating of positive moral attributes, sometimes known as ‘virtues’ (i.e. sense of justice).

The acquisition of social confidence (i.e. developing social mannerisms and listening skills). Having an appreciation of the importance of long-term commitments which frame the successful and fulfilled life.

More specifically, research has identified that the most influential place in which this is learnt is within formal education (Orchidadmin, 2021). The benefits of developing one’s character can be seen in the short run but more predominantly in the long term; the development of the aforementioned traits can not only improve individual educational attainment, but also is associated with better performance in the workplace, higher levels of self-control and more sophisticated coping strategies thus increased wellbeing. The Department of Education has thereby produced extensive recommendations as to how this can be done, and noted that it requires strong leadership, a diverse curriculum, and provision of a wide range of extracurricular activities.

In From Able to Remarkable, Robert Massey explores how this can be reflected within the school environment and suggests that students tend to be underestimated in their potential; he goes on to remark that good teaching is more important than ability for influencing student achievement (2019). In fact, he suggests, and indeed I concur, that by categorising students by ability in some cases we are in fact missing the true point of education (ibid.). We aim to push each individual to be the best version of themselves, not the best version of what is expected of their ability, and thereby inherently limiting their self-perceived potential. Thus, categorisation of students by ability could be considered a contradictory principle in some cases, reinforcing the importance of extra-curricular character development and a nurturing environment outside of class (Massey, 2019). Extensive studies have also shown that activities are good for the soul, making children feel better ‘physically, socially and mentally’ (ScienceDaily, 2010), and through years of reinforcement and expanding opportunities, students are left with generally higher levels of self-esteem and mental health. To that end, categories of activities can be perceived to develop specific ‘nutrients’ (Oberle et al., 2010) that feed this character development. For example, team sports are essential in building up social skills with teammates and coping with pressure, whereas the arts focus on building up creative expression and self-regulation. Therefore it is essential that all ranges of activities are available to young people to enable a broad development.

How does Berkhamsted ‘walk the walk’? What does this actually mean to me though? I take character education to be about turning everyday experiences into life shaping lessons that I carry with me always. I like to think of it like a ‘jigsaw of me’, as it were, and each activity or lesson learnt helped create my ‘future me’. Whether that be through my friends, the environment, or the activities I had the opportunity to partake in. I am profoundly grateful for what I have learnt and only having left Berkhamsted in 2021 can I begin to see the true breadth of the picture. My experience has taught me that I can face every challenge as an opportunity and progress towards curating my dream life through hard work, tenacity, kindness, and self-reflection. For this grounding at Berkhamsted I will forever be grateful.

To give a broad overview of how Berkhamsted does this we must first start beyond the curriculum, primarily looking at the phenomenal arts and sports programmes. The yearly productions and talent shows are always fantastic, including the occasional staff panto, accompanied by the annual house music competitions that always

promise good fun. The great music programmes also allow students to pursue any instrumental passions they may have beyond that, with accessible practice spaces for all students. Outside, the countless provision of sporting activities ranges from traditional sports like football and netball, to activities beyond the curriculum like fencing, climbing or fives, all of which anyone can join at any age or experience level (which was especially useful for me when I spontaneously decided to take up squash having never played it before).

Outside the hours of 08:30 to 16:20, there is also a huge amount to do. In my 15 years at Berkhamsted I was lucky enough to engage in the following activities: DofE gold, flying planes with the CCF, debating competitions, sports competitions (swimming and netball), choir practices, cooking club, as well as trips to Berlin, Washington, and Moscow. I also enjoyed holding two positions of responsibility in the form of House Captain and then later becoming Head Girl. This is just my personal snapshot of some of the amazing experiences provided for students, with even more being developed every day as the provision expands. To top it off, all of this is overseen by some of the most devoted and passionate role models I have encountered, and in my opinion, this is what helps deliver this personal development without us really noticing.

This development starts with the clear grounding of Berkhamsted key values in the heart of every aspect of life. To Aim High with Integrity, Be Adventurous and Serve Others are at the core of what is expected of any student. Berkhamsted doesn’t ask you to be anything you’re not. You don’t need to be the top scorer at netball or to walk out as the national debate champion to embody these values. I never felt I fitted into one group, I wasn’t sporty but I liked the outdoors, I wasn’t especially creative or musical but I enjoyed learning about these things, I liked academics but exams weren’t my life - I really didn’t know what I was supposed to be but I found as long as I tried my hardest to be kind and pushed myself to be better, it didn’t matter.

That is not to say this is an instant process. You don’t go on one 5-day hike in the Brecon Beacons and are suddenly ready to take on the world – I certainly wasn’t! However, even then I learnt something about myself, I’m stronger than I realised. Similarly, be it the CCF, or the school trips we were fortunate enough to go on, each opportunity provided us with a platform from which to grow. And even then, these are just some of the opportunities, let alone the collective possibilities, provided by Berkhamsted to its hundreds of students over the course of a possible 15-year school career.

What is remarkable to me?

I don’t think any single trait makes someone remarkable. Rather, their experiences, resilience and learning do and that all comes from Character Education. I have not been asked for my A-level results since leaving Berkhamsted, but I have needed all the skills it taught me every day at university, and I am still learning. Berkhamsted doesn’t produce one type of person, students aren’t all maths geniuses or sports scholars, there isn’t one mould that students must fit into to succeed.

What it does produce are well-rounded, determined individuals who have been able to make the most remarkable memories, friendships and develop life skills from their time at school. Thanks to the fantastic opportunities presented to them they are as prepared as possible to move onto the next stage of their lives. To me, this is what it means to be remarkable and the Character Education approach at Berkhamsted is the best way to help do this.

BIO Daisy Holbrook finished Berkhamsted School in 2021 after 15 years and is currently studying at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Leadership at Berkhamsted and ‘the Advantage it Offers’

Leadership is a skill that all parents may reasonably hope their children will be able to achieve if they want to. Few parents would hope for their child to be lacking in independence, initiative or resilience. For some families, leadership may be an expectation or hope for their children. The local demography of Berkhamsted suggests that a large proportion of families will have a heritage of leadership, with parents or grandparents they might wish to emulate.

Leadership is both simple and complex. It may relate to having responsibility for a large number of people as in a company CEO, or for none, as in a newspaper columnist; it may require predominantly interactive skills as a developer of the capabilities of other people, or it may require inspirational insight in pushing the boundaries of human knowledge alone in a laboratory.

This article explores my thoughts on why I see leadership as important, why all schools should see leadership development as a core skill, and how we are approaching this at Berkhamsted.

Why I believe leadership should be a formal part of school life?

I joined Berkhamsted Schools Group in September 2012 having spent twenty-four years in the Royal Marines. When I started at Berkhamsted I believed I understood the art of leadership. I had been taught to lead, I led and taught leadership. I had worked within the MOD, FCO, UN and NATO in a variety of strategic, diplomatic and military advisory roles and led in operational environments such as Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I taught diplomacy and strategic leadership at the UK Defence Academy as a Director and I believed I knew my stuff! I was wrong.

Moving into education I quickly identified that I did not know as much as I thought and I needed to adapt to my new surroundings. I took a keen interest to read widely about education, to review my thinking on areas such as emotional intelligence and my approach to empathy. I had spent plenty of time working in international settings working with diverse groups and recognised the strengths of it as well as the challenges. What I did not consider was how much time I had spent working with colleagues who were like me and this meant ‘Group think’ tendencies. Teachers are different, with different needs, views and ideas. I understood that ‘different isn’t wrong, it’s just different’ but I needed a rethink. I noted that teachers generally had more empathy and specifically the culture at Berkhamsted has a strong empathy thread, which supports both colleagues and pupils. I remember Andy Ford on his first day as Vice Principal saying to all staff during his first INSET day that at Berkhamsted “It’s okay to say you are not okay”. During my early years, my journey of self-discovery allowed me to think more about leadership and how to lead and continues to this day. The more I learn, the more I appreciate how much more there is to learn about leading and I feel more humbled by it.

I started in Outdoor Education, which is excellent for developing pupils in so many ways beyond the classroom. My aim was to help pupils to develop self-confidence through controlled exposure to risk and to link classroom theory, where possible, to the outdoors. Using techniques such as blank recall testing on navigation or weather fronts in a relaxed way on a mountain would reinforce learning in the classroom. A key strand of Outdoor Education is delivering expeditions for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Approximately four hundred and fifty pupils are involved in the scheme at Berkhamsted in any given year and each pupil must take part in two, a practice and a final. I am sure you can imagine this means a lot

of expeditions, but it also provides a great opportunity to see a large cross section of pupils across Years 9 – 13. Every expedition group is required to deliver a presentation on their expedition. Watching pupils present each week, I was struck by a lack of leadership and noted how nervous many were. Some students were excellent, mostly those who regularly participated in activities such music and drama. However, the majority lacked confidence. This was the moment that I knew I wanted to introduce leadership development at Berkhamsted.

In September 2019 we started the program with Year 10 pupils. I knew I needed a vision and the support of the school community. My desire was, and still is, to provide knowledge and to encourage pupils to search out leadership opportunities to put theory into practice. Leadership cannot be developed through theory alone: creating experiential opportunities is key and I strongly believe that leadership skills can be developed by anyone. The vision I came up with is in the text below:

My vision for leadership at Berkhamsted

How am I aiming to achieve the vision?

We know it takes a village to raise a child. To deliver the vision above we need to create a community where staff and pupils have a leadership culture mindset. Staff buy-in and motivation is always key to delivering any strategy in an organisation. When I think of leadership, I think of three words - what, why and how. Much of my time is spent explaining the ‘why’ to as many pupils and staff as possible. Buy in and driving forward leadership will only succeed if pupils and staff understand why and are motivated by it. Culture here is essential and ‘culture will always eat strategy for breakfast’! Culture is core to my approach alongside resource development and identifying experiential opportunities.

The Outdoor Education team are developing some great resources and lead on the years 7 – 11 formal leadership training. Leadership lessons happen during Clubs and Societies for half a term and are linked to a list of components, which can be seen below.

Components of Leadership

The following qualities are being used as a framework for our teaching sessions. I see these skills as a complex collection that may be developed in different ways and at different speeds by different young people. No young person should be labelled either as having an obligation to lead, or as having no/low ability to lead, at an early age. In addition, children should not be exposed to a course, or construct, in which leadership is construed to be one particular combination of dispositions and skills, nor where it is static. In different contexts, the requirements of leadership will draw differently on a palette of skills and abilities which may be described, practised, and reflected upon during that period of a person’s life in which their brain contains most grey matter, and they are therefore most able to learn – from 0 -18.

To offer formal leadership training to build knowledge for pupils from years 7 - 12 and to create the conditions for all pupils to have the opportunity to lead as widely and as often as possible in order to gain experience and practice.

KS3

COMPONENT

KS4

A DIFFERENCE

COMPONENT COMPONENT

TRACTION

COMPONENT

Years 7 – 9 and Year 11 take part in half-termly sessions, but Year 10 is a full year of weekly lessons. These are based on three distinct areas of public speaking, leadership theory, and debating. In Year 12 leadership sessions are run during private study periods to small groups of pupils on a voluntary basis. These are great opportunities for reflective discussions between pupils as well as providing deeper knowledge.

Leadership is learnt through leading There is a place for leadership theory and sessions specifically to develop the skills of leadership. My main focus for developing leadership is on giving students meaningful opportunities to lead. Experiential learning can be reinforced through the PLAN-DO-REVIEW model. It is important for students to experience leadership opportunities during their schooling, to learn the art of building relationships within teams, defining identities, and achieving tasks effectively. It also provides an opportunity to learn to identify and display effective communication and interpersonal skills. In short, students should be driven by real-world consequences of their leadership actions which aim towards intrinsic motivation, not teacher-imposed extrinsic, 'artificial' consequences.

Gaining experience – every student is a leader!

This is not an aspirational statement, rather a statement of fact. All students will, at some point in the future, be in a leadership position. Students need to comprehend this reality and prepare for it. There is a need to extinguish the 'I'm not a leader mentality' and shift the focus from examples such as prefects and sports captains. There needs to be leadership opportunities in every academic year from Stepping Stones to Year 13. My aim is to 'plant seeds' so that later in life all students have the confidence to step up and take a lead.

Leadership is currently happening everywhere: through friendship benches at Pre-Prep to mentoring roles in the Sixth Form. Older pupils mentoring younger year groups in activities both academic and non-academic is a great way to expand opportunities. We have Year 12 and 13 pupils leading in a variety of roles from academic enrichment to supporting classroom teaching during private study periods.

Values-based leadership

Using the school's strong commitment to its three values to guide the leader ship model (Aim High With Integrity, Be Adventurous, and Serve Others) provides an ideal framework to build a leadership development project around. We can instil these values through leadership opportunities; my aim is to change how the students see themselves. We should be cautious about over-reliance on leadership models based on sport, business and warfare; although these are often interesting, we can probably learn more about good leadership by observing a manager in a charity shop than the Google board room.

Why what we are doing is important and why all students should be leaders

Leadership skills are essential for personal development. Understanding how to lead yourself by becoming truly independent, and understanding how to manage your own time and become resilient is the first step to being a leader. Developing interdependence, so one can work with others and foster trust within teams is the second. The why is simple: the world beyond education is evolving rapidly and particularly post covid. More work-place environments are adopting remote working practices at least a few days each week. Opportunities for younger members of a team to learn in the office from more experienced staff is less common. So what? Pupils leaving education and entering industry will need to have the ability to survive independently, to build relationships online, and be proactive. They must be able to know when to comment, have the confidence to say what they believe and the emotional intelligence to know how to deliver points in a way that gains traction. This is where leadership skills take us into a different environment, where the building of socio-emotional growth mindsets and empathy, and developing soft skills will become desired by employers.

At Berkhamsted, we have chosen to seek to enable pupils to develop the many qualities and to encourage them explicitly to give instruction, practice-opportunities, reflection-opportunities and feedback in these qualities during their journey through the school. The acquisition of these qualities will be important to all pupils; some pupils may put them to use in a conventional way in conventional leaders. Some may not exercise obvious leadership which draws on positional authority or attracts the limelight; some may act as ‘trim tabs’ or environment changers in an almost imperceptible way; some may ‘merely’ demonstrate initiative, independence of mind, and emotional intelligence without choosing to lead; some may seek opportunities to influence, command or manage. All will gain from the qualities identified.

Conclusions

Great leaders are driven towards a mission that everyone can get behind. They know how to motivate a team. Developing a culture where leadership is just part of what we do at school will help to foster both a positive and motivating environment for staff and provide a high-quality experience for students. When pupils engage with pupil leadership it has a positive impact on their capacity for learning. This benefits everyone and is a win – win, which is always the best sort of deal.

BIO

Duncan Hardy

Duncan is Deputy Head of Leadership. He is responsible for driving the development of leadership, as well as Co-Curricular activities, and is the Contingent Commander of the School Combined Cadet Force. Prior to his ten years in education, Duncan spent twenty-four years as a Royal Marines Officer.

Problems with Character Education

Character Education Policy

‘Grit’, ‘resilience’ and ‘character’ are current buzzwords for many politicians, educators and authors around the world. A number of bestselling North American books have praised the benefits of individual character development, variously promoting perseverance, curiosity and self-control (Tough, 2013), persistence and resilience (Duckworth, 2016), a growth mindset enabling children to bounce back from adversity (Dweck, 2012), and the nurture of ‘eulogy virtues’ (Brooks, 2016). Considerable interest in character education has been seen in a number of countries, including Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan.

Several UK politicians support character education, most notably former Secretaries of State for Education Nicky Morgan and Damian Hinds. The Department for Education (DfE) has promoted ‘resilience’, ‘grit’ and ‘self-efficacy’ as part of a social mobility agenda and has provided in excess of £14 million in grants to character education projects (Marshall et al., 2017). In addition, a chain of Academy schools has been established to promote character (Allen and Bull, 2018), a teachers’ association for character education has been established (www.character-education.org.uk), the school inspection service has incorporated character in its inspection handbook and the DfE has published benchmarks for schools (DfE, 2019).

The UK’s leading centre for the promotion of character education is the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham. By 2017 the centre had received over £16 million from the controversial philanthropic organization the John Templeton Foundation (Allen and Bull, 2018, 6), which supports synergies between religion and science, the development of moral character and the promotion of free markets (Bains, 2011). Allen and Bull (2018) examine the Jubilee Centre’s role in the emergence and development of a UK character education policy community, including a range of politicians, academics, philanthropists and think tanks seeking to influence government policy. They argue that this network’s agenda reflects the priorities of the John Templeton Foundation, promoting individualistic, free-market and socially conservative ideas.

Critiquing Character

There are two inter-connected lines of critique I want to introduce: first that character tends to favour the status quo, and second that it does so through misrepresenting social issues as individual mor al issues. These can both be seen as elements of broader neoliberal developments in education policy (and social policy more generally). In relation to the first problem, Suissa (2015) criticises character education for its focus on the development of personal character traits, which tends to promote the idea that individuals must develop the personal capability to cope with adversity. This reflects Kohn’s (1997) argument that character education assumes adults need to ‘fix the kids’ rather than attend to structural inequalities. Such criticism responds directly to UK policymakers’ framing of character as a route to social mobility.

In relation to the second problem, Bates (2019) has argued that the individualised focus of character distorts moral education because it detracts from the importance of intersubjective relationships as the basis of moral action. To some extent this reflects virtue ethicists' concern with an individual’s ‘good character’ rather than on their actions in context (Jerome and Kisby, 2019). This individualised perspective ultimately excludes a political understanding of social problems, and therefore undermines the possibility of social rather than merely individual change (Suissa, 2015; Kisby, 2017).

Kristjánsson’s defence of character education

A varied literature defending character education has emerged alongside, and often in response to, this growing critique. One common response is to argue that a closer reading of Aristotle can provide a better balanced model of character education. For example, Peterson (2019) draws on the concepts of civic virtue and deliberation, to answer the critics’ concerns that character education pays insufficient attention to the political realm. Curren (2017) takes a different approach and rejects current policy definitions (such as perseverance and resilience) to embrace a much wider account of character, which (somewhat unexpectedly) incorporates policy promoting fundamental British values. Whilst the to and fro of debate helps to clarify the points of contention / refine character education (depending on one’s perspective), these defences also highlight how the type of character education promoted by its advocates is relatively fast-changing. Whilst one can engage in further theoretical debate about whether these revised models really do overcome the problems identified by critics, it leaves open the question about whether character education programmes ever really embody these increasingly nuanced philosophical solutions.

In order to explore that issue, I and my colleague Ben Kisby undertook an analysis of character education classroom resources to explore what was being promoted in practice. We took as our starting point an article by Kristjánsson, which sought to defend character from ‘Ten Myths about Character, Virtue and Virtue Education’ (Kristjánsson, 2013). By articulating and countering these myths he attempted to establish a robust case in defence of character education. As he is Deputy Director of the Jubilee Centre, we used Kristjánsson’s own criteria to critically evaluate some of the classroom teaching resources developed there.

Kristjánsson (2013) defends character education against a number of criticisms: character and virtue are unclear; redundant; old fashioned; essentially religious; paternalistic; anti-democratic and anti-intellectual; conservative; individualistic; relative; and situation specific.

Our analysis

The Jubilee Centre holds in excess of 5,000 documents on its website, so it is not feasible to conduct a comprehensive analysis of all of the output. Our selection of resources was driven by Kristjánsson’s argument. For each pair of ‘myths’ we identified some key questions and selected resources that appeared to be most relevant to those questions. We were looking for resources that focused on the issues raised by Kristjánsson and which offered specific activities and material to use in the classroom with students (as opposed to general advice to teachers).

TABLE 1.

SUMMARY OF QUESTIONS AND RESOURCES SELECTED FOR REVIEW

Questions for resource review related to the ‘myths’ about character and virtues

Myths: Unclear and redundant notions Does a focus on character and virtues result in a clear concept that could be taught in the classroom?

Myths: Old-fashioned and essentially religious Do the resources acknowledge a variety of ethical positions (such as those evolving norms around LGBT rights), or do they underline traditional morality?

Myth: Paternalistic, anti-democratic and anti-intellectual Do the resources impose one view or enable students to make informed ethical choices? How do the resources seek to promote phronesis (as a counter-balance to indoctrination)?

Myth: Conservative and individualistic Do the resources promote engagement with the social and political dimensions to issues?

Myth: Relative and situation specific How do the educational resources account for context in their stories and case studies?

Resources

selected for review

The Knightly Virtues resources

Character Education Secondary Programmes of Study lessons on the virtue of self-mastery

Growing Gratitude and Cultivating Compassion

The Knightly Virtues resources (Rosa Parks)

Secondary Programme lesson ‘why do good people do bad things?’

In this short article there isn’t room to share our whole analysis, but by way of illustration we share a brief overview of our discussion of the first two myths. One of the starting points for the Jubilee Centre’s work is that children lack a language for engaging with character and virtue and so many of the resources aim to explicitly teach relevant vocabulary. For example, The Knightly Virtues project is based on the virtues of humility, honesty, love, service, courage, justice, self-discipline, and gratitude (Jubilee Centre n.d. a) illustrated through a series of stories about heroic individuals (Jubilee Centre n.d. b). The evaluation report clarifies that the key objective of this project is to enhance 'virtue literacy', comprising virtue knowledge, reasoning, and practice (Arthur et al. 2014, 9).

The stories in these resources have been adapted 'to highlight certain issues and are not an accurate historical record' (Jubilee Centre n.d. c). For example, in the story of Joan of Arc, some 'incidents have not been included in the story presented in the pack as the political and religious dimensions of Joan’s trial are very complex and demanding for pupils to understand' (Jubilee Centre n.d. b, p. 104).

As an example of this selectivity at work, the narrator of the Joan of Arc story comments how unusual it was for a girl to dress as a boy and cut her hair short (ibid. 112), but there is no similar qualification or comment about how usual it was to hear messages from God relayed through the voices of angels. Joan’s visions and premonitions are recounted as facts, 'Joan had accomplished all that her voices said she would. She had served her country and its King faultlessly' (ibid. 117). This enables the narrator to conclude that:

Joan was a true and honourable woman who always put other’s needs before her own and gave her life in the service of her country. She was courageous, brave and showed tremendous fearlessness in the face of danger. I hope you… can understand how doing things for the benefit of others, even when you might be scared or nervous, can benefit the greater good (ibid.117).

Even these simplified stories fail to sustain a clear focus on the virtues. The story of Joan of Arc is supposed to demonstrate courage, but fails to reflect on the fact that she died for a king who betrayed her, based on a religiously inspired vision, which may well be a symptom of mental illness. The moral lessons are far from clear and elsewhere in the Jubilee Centre’s resources they argue that ‘over-doing’ the virtue of courage could be seen in acts which display 'hallmarks of ostentation… which may lead to significant harm and damage for the individual' (Wright et al. n.d. a, p. 6) – this might at least lead one to wonder whether Joan had similarly strayed from the golden mean. These resources seem not to sustain a clear focus on the concepts they seek to promote, indicating that these moralising stories might be more challenging to teach than Kristjánsson implies.

The authors of the Knightly Virtues evaluation report argue that mastery of such virtues terminology is essential but their evidence demonstrates that there is very little positive impact even in relation to the rather limited aspiration to teach specialist vocabulary through stories (Arthur et al., 2014).

Our conclusions

Our critical analysis of teaching resources reveals how they routinely over-simplify and individualise the analysis of social and political situations, and promote an intense form of 'self-

work' (Gerrard, 2014) blending 'emotional regulation, resilience, altruism, [and] responsibility… with positive psychology' (Ecclestone, 2014, 469). In doing so these resources promote a model of change in which the individual assumes responsibility for their own moral improvement as the precursor to any positive change in the wider world. Justice is rendered a personal character trait, politics largely disappears from view, to be replaced with the search for individual moral improvement. To the extent that the individual is promoted as the main unit of analysis, and political understanding is avoided, we would concur with the critics rather than Kristjánsson’s response.

Whilst Kristjánsson might believe the resources could be salvaged if they were brought into better alignment with his theoretical model, we believe these flaws reflect some fundamental problems with character education. By focusing on the materials designed for students we have clarified the following lines of critique, some of which have been absent or underplayed in the existing literature. Firstly, we suspect it is difficult for character education in practice not to be excessively focused on individualistic and de-politicised accounts, because these accounts are developed on the basis of individualistic and de-politicised premises (i.e. the philosophy of virtue ethics).

Secondly, we also suspect that the process of ‘phronesis’ invoked in Kristjánsson’s account of character education is providing cover for an inadequate conceptualisation of how a person engages in moral reasoning. Ultimately there is little room for moral reasoning in the classroom if someone else already knows both what a student’s answer should be, and what reasons are acceptable. Similarly, there is little incentive for a teacher to develop detailed case studies, reflecting contextually specific phronesis, if they believe that the correct ethical answer is already clearly evident.

Thirdly, it seems to us that there is problematic leap from the foundational ideas in virtue ethics to the practical content of a lesson. McCowan (2009) has observed that curriculum policy is translated from fairly vague aspirations to increasingly concrete activities as policy moves from government to mediating institutions, and from those institutions to schools, then through schools to class teachers, and finally from teachers to students. Each of these steps can be seen as a leap from one type of activity to another – from abstract philosophical goals to specific tasks and worksheets. As we have read these resources we have been struck by the idea that, whilst virtue ethics has been criticised for being too vague about what one should do in any given situation (Kisby, 2017) the resources themselves struggle with the opposite problem – they seem all too willing to assert unjustified right answers in any situation. This introduces a new line of critique about the problems of translation and interpretation as one moves from what McCowan (90) calls 'ideal ends' to the 'real means' of lesson plans and materials. It further suggests that claims to have resolved the problems with character education theoretically should be met with caution, and the materials produced by character advocates should be subjected to equal scrutiny.

Our analysis also raises the question of whether dedicated character lessons should be delivered at all in schools. Interestingly, as Purpel (1997, 143) notes, advocates of character education often argue that schools inevitably promote values and therefore, directly or indirectly, inevitably engage in character development. It seems then that character educators simply wish to seize control of how this is done, but the analysis of these resources indicates why such a form of moral education would be deeply conservative. Moreover, as we have argued, their vision of social development is problematic, being premised on the idea that individuals must improve themselves in order to improve society. In contrast, in our view, social progress can best be achieved by engaging young people in collective acts of citizenship, in which political problems are met with political responses.

This article is adapted from: Lee Jerome & Ben Kisby (2020): Lessons in character education: incorporating neoliberal learning in classroom resources, Critical Studies in Education https://doi.org /10.1080/17508487.2020.1733037

BIO

Dr. Lee Jerome is Associate Professor of Education, Middlesex University.

Preparation for GCSE or an Opportunity for Subject Enrichment -

What is the Purpose of the Key Stage 3 Curriculum?

Objective

At Berkhamsted, there is not a directive to follow the National Curriculum framework; we are able to design our own programmes of study. It has been a topic of debate within the English Department whether we start to prepare the students for skills needed for particular GCSE tasks from Year 7 or whether we reserve this for Year 10. Some subjects start their GCSE courses in Year 9. The dialogue between a knowledge-rich curriculum vs. skills-based curriculum is livelier than ever; without the imposition of external examinations, Key Stage 3 is at the heart of this debate. This action research project was designed to provide a timely insight into the ways in which teachers and students view Key Stage 3 at Berkhamsted.

Through surveying academic departments to discuss their KS3 provision, the intention is to explore the motivations and intentions for programmes of study. Locally, conclusions may be drawn on the impact of experimenting with the English Department programme of study with intervention units to promote subject enrichment in lieu of explicitly teaching GCSE skills. Pupil voice is instrumental to this research – students were surveyed to hear their experiences of Key Stage 3 education and the transition to GCSE courses.

Research Review

The National Curriculum and Key Stage 3

The current statutory National Curriculum dates from 2014 at which point it was introduced to most year groups across primary and secondary education.

Key stages of education were first introduced in the Education Reform Act of 1988 to accompany the introduction of the National Curriculum. The term ‘Key Stage 3’ is defined in the Education Act 2002 as ‘the period beginning at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in his class attain the age of twelve and ending at the same time as the school year in which the majority of pupils in his class attain the age of fourteen’ (National Archives, 2002). Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) were rolled out in each key stage, with KS3 students first sitting them in 1995. These tests became the main form of statutory assessment; however, by 2008, the SATs were scrapped for KS3 students.

In a 2008 report evaluating and analysing 'National Testing', the House of Commons and the Department for Children Schools and Families declared concerns with the current testing arrangements in state schools. It raised concerns that the 'professional abilities of teachers' were under-used and that the high-stakes nature of the tests led to 'phenomena such as teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum and focusing disproportionate resources on borderline pupils' (Select Committee, 2008).

OFSTED declares that it has no preferred curriculum or stance on the length of schools’ provision for KS3 and KS4. According to Lough (2019) 63% of state secondary schools now run lengthened Key Stage 4, dropping a year from Key Stage 3 to cater for GCSEs. The inspectorate has insisted it has no rule barring schools with three-year GCSEs from

achieving ‘outstanding’. A spokesperson for Ofsted said it had 'no view about whether Key Stage 3 should last for two or three years, and this is not a determining or limiting criterion within the handbook'. But they added research showed that a 'narrowed curriculum' could limit pupils’ choices and have a 'disproportionately negative effect' on disadvantaged pupils (AllenKinross, 2019).

Mark Lehain, Director of 'Parents and Teachers for Excellence' campaign, argues that starting GCSEs early means that pupils lose out to the breadth of knowledge they are entitled to. 'The best way to help pupils do well at 16 is to ensure they get maximum exposure to a wellsequenced, knowledge-rich curriculum throughout primary and key stage 3, not squeeze things out and start GCSE topics sooner,' he said. 'This is also the right thing to do in terms of their cultural entitlement. Better quality learning, not simply more time, is the key to everything' (Lough, 2019). A Department for Education spokesperson said: 'We have specifically designed the national curriculum so that Key Stage 3 is an important part of preparing pupils for GCSEs. Schools are free to decide how to teach the curriculum, but it should cover a broad and balanced range of subjects to ensure children are ready for study at Key Stage 4 and beyond' (ibid., 2019).

Independent schools and Key Stage 3 independent schools do not have to follow the National Curriculum; however, Regulation 2 of the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014 ensures that independent schools have a written policy on the curriculum they provide, which is further supported by plans and schemes of work (Legislation, 2014).

The majority of leading independent schools are structured traditionally where senior schools welcome students in Year 9 (with prep schools and feeder preps catering for Year 7 and Year 8 education).

In those senior independent schools which do teach the 11-18 age r ange, several have adopted their own pathway for Key Stage 3. Benenden School, an independent boarding school for 11-18 year old girls in Kent, has created its own bespoke ‘The Benenden Diploma’ which is advertised as a ‘highly interactive, investigative curriculum designed to provide challenge and intellectual stimulation and promote problem-solving and the application of knowledge’ (ibid., 2021). Although students are taught by subject specialists, each term, for a few days, the normal structure of the day is suspended to allow students to work on cross-curricular projects. These sessions are led by professionals such as working artists, writers, scientists or engineers. The themes for each of the six terms are: Identity, Journeys, Rites and Celebrations, Childhood and Adolescence and Around the World in 80 Days. Benenden School highlights that ‘in contrast to most schools, each lesson is delivered in a spirit of enquiry. Every lesson or series of lessons begins with a question: for example, if you were designing a building in an earthquake area, what would you need to consider? How can I write an effective news article and meet my publication deadline? How do Islam and Christianity differ?’ (ibid., 2021)

At the beginning and end of each term, the students experience a launch or plenary project that addresses the theme directly and where they can work on projects for a sustained period of time. Often the work developed in teams is presented to an adult audience, developing skills of collaboration, timekeeping, resourcefulness, etc. In the summer term of Year 8, the girls undertake a piece of independent research known as The Extended Project.

At Magdalen College School, an independent day school in Oxford, all pupils in Year 8 complete a Junior Waynflete Studies Project ‘on twelve-week rotations under the guidance of a supervisor. This is an extended piece of research and writing on a topic of their choosing, and is designed to build pupils’ independence in learning, to foster rigour and creativity of thought, and to cultivate the skills necessary for ongoing success and enjoyment of study at school and beyond’ (Magdalen College School, 2021).

Berkhamsted School is an interesting setting as a number of its students at the boys’ school enter in Year 9, which means that it faces obstacles in presenting all students with a consistent Key Stage 3 programme.

Data Collection

Due to the subjective nature of the research project and its intended outcomes, I mostly favoured qualitative data.

I distributed a survey to Heads of Department / Key Stage 3 Department Leads. This questionnaire asked for departmental perspectives on the purpose and place of KS3 and views on the potential introduction of the GCSE course. 10 Heads of Department / Key Stage 3 Leads replied.

I distributed a questionnaire to my:

Year 9 class (20 boys)

Year 10 class (20 girls)

Lower Sixth students (10 students: 6 boys and 4 girls)

This questionnaire asked for students’ views on programmes of study and assessments in Key Stage 3.

I then conducted a focus group (three students from Year 9, three from Year 10 and three from the Lower Sixth) to respond to questions more directly linked to Key Stage 3 provision in the English Department.

Key Findings

Berkhamsted School – Key Stage 3

· Students prefer the acquisition of knowledge rather than just a skills-based Key Stage 3 experience

· Students mark the distinction between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 learning by the high frequency of assessment at KS3

· In subjects where the GCSE course begins in Year 9, Heads of Department / Key Stage 3 Leads make this choice because of the lack of time allocation for Key Stage 4 in their subjects

· Whilst Year 9 students are positive about starting some GCSE courses early, those in Year 10 and the Lower Sixth are far less positive about a three-year GCSE course (particularly covering / revisiting exam material taught three years before the examination paper).

English Department – Key Stage 3

· Students do not wish to compromise the range of class readers and development of skills taught over the three years by starting either GCSE course in Year 9

· Students respond well to a variety of assessment tasks (creative, critical, written and oral) across the three years

· Students enjoy and benefit from the reading schemes in class (organised by the Library) – this is the only time in their timetable given to independent reading for pleasure.

Key Actions

English Department - Key Stage 3

· In designing the Programmes of Study for Years 7-9, there will be a focus on knowledge attainment and enrichment opportunities (e.g. covering the literary canon across the three years (from Anglo Saxon – Shakespeare in Year 7, the Romantics and Victorians in Year 8 and 20th/21st Century in Year 9))

· There will be a variety of forms of assessment – some critical tasks preparing students for GCSE style activities and some creative tasks to promote enrichment

· There will be opportunities to promote careers (e.g. The Newsroom project in Year 7, Travel Writing in Year 8 and tasks within Persuasive Writing for Year 9 (Law / Political sectors))

· Cross-curricular links will be promoted in the context of literary periods (History, Geography, RS, Classical Civilisation, Music and Art)

· Research will be undertaken into the National Curriculum Key Stage 3 English programme and Key Stage 3 English schemes of work in other schools

· Diversity and inclusivity will be celebrated in both text choices and for spotlight studies in Black History Month and Pride Week

· There will be further engagement with the Library reading schemes for Year 8 and Year 9 with the extension of the Bookopoly Scheme and the Berko Reads website

· Contact to be made with our feeder prep schools is important in ensuring that for the cohort of new Year 9 boys, their experience of Key Stage 3 is relatively consistent.

Berkhamsted School – Key Stage 3

· Might the school invest in a programme like Benenden with its own ‘Berkhamsted Diploma’? This could build cross-curricular links, promote research skills and give a sense of collective purpose to Years 7/8.

Where next?

The very nature of an 'Action Research Project' leaves more questions than answers. Aside from the key actions above, my mind is left with the following questions:

• What are the views of those directly leading this in Berkhamsted School – Deputy Heads of Curriculum, Teaching and Innovation and Academic Progress?

• Are we over-assessing Key Stage 3 students? Does the formative grading / standardising at the end of each Key Stage 3 year have an impact?

• How much of an impact does the introduction of new boys in Year 9 have on the Key Stage 3 provision at Berkhamsted?

What are the views of our parents?

• What are the views in local schools?

• Are there other successful Key Stage 3 ‘diplomas’ in other schools?

• Would a Key Stage 3 dissertation support the Key Stage 4 Learning Pathways programme and the Key Stage 5 EPQ qualification?

• What are the views of former students?

• How is the national picture changing for Key Stage 3?

BIO

Alastair Harrison

Taught at Taunton School before joining Berkhamsted School in 2012. Prior to that he graduated from the University of Exeter and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He is currently Assistant Head of English, EPQ Co-ordinator, a Sixth Form tutor in Tudor House, and also teaches Latin.

Pen-on-Paper Versus Stylus-on-Tablet:

An Investigation into the Effect of Surface Texture on Vocabulary Learning in Chinese

Introduction

The introduction of Digital Device Provision (DDP) at Berkhamsted School in September 2019 offered many opportunities for teachers and learners to explore new modes of instruction. It also raised important questions about the future of teaching and learning within an increasingly digital landscape. One such question is whether learning is affected by whether pupils write with a stylus on a tablet or with a traditional ink pen on paper.

The Chinese writing system uses characters, each with their own pronunciation and meaning, which for early learners of Chinese are difficult to deduce, though this can be achieved once a learner has amassed a vocabulary of sufficient breadth and depth (Lai et al., 2020). Therefore, when set vocabulary to learn in Chinese, pupils at the beginning of their studies in the language must memorise a word’s meaning, its written form, and its pronunciation.

The present study asks the question: is learning affected by whether students write using pen on paper or a stylus on a tablet screen? It uses memorisation of vocabulary in Chinese as a proxy for memorisation processes across all subjects.

The majority of studies concerning the benefits of handwriting concern contrasts between writing with pen on paper versus typing. Behavioural studies such as those by Longcamp et al. (2006) and James and Atwood (2009) find that letter recognition in language learning is helped more by handwriting practice than with typing practice.

Studies into the differences between writing with pen on paper and with stylus on tablet are growing. A study by Gerth et al. (2016) recommended that tablet devices should not be used in schools for writing acquisition due to an absence of motor control on the smoother tablet surface. The study identified surface friction as being the significant variable between paper and tablet screens as writing surfaces (ibid.), and this variable has been adopted for the present study.

In contrast with Gerth’s findings, Osugi et al. (2019) found that ‘for those familiar with its use, writing with a digital pen may improve learning relative to the use of the ink pen’. The authors suggest that among familiar users of the digital pen, it is ‘more fun to use’ (ibid.) and creates less of a workload, compared with unfamiliar users.

The present study examines whether vocabulary test scores in Chinese are higher when the pupil revises using pen on paper or with stylus on tablet. It concludes that pupils’ vocabulary test scores are not affected by the medium on which they revised, and that the pupils’ baseline ability had a greater effect. A further study which controls more effectively for baseline ability is suggested to confirm these results.

Methodology

The study took inspiration from Gerth et al. (2016). It identified the texture of the writing surface as the key variable, and compared vocabulary test results between two groups, one practising with pen on paper, and the other with their stylus on their smooth device screen.

In order to control for baseline ability, the two groups were selected alphabetically by surname, essentially random in terms of baseline ability. Both groups were to swap revision methods at the mid-point of the data gathering period. Because all pupils trial both methods (pen on paper and stylus on tablet) across the full study period, both revision methods comprised equal data from all pupils, and neither method would be skewed towards the upper or lower baseline abilities within the class. This approach had the ethical advantage of allowing all pupils to use both methods for revision for equal time, disadvantaging none should one method prove significantly more effective.

National and school interventions for managing the Covid-19 outbreak created practical challenges that impacted the study. The most major challenge presented was a delay in data collection of almost five months (October 2020 to March 2021) caused by the school’s policy of restricting the use of paper handouts to avoid transferring the Covid-19 virus among pupils and teachers, which was very important for managing the spread of the virus at this time in the outbreak. This restriction meant the inability to hand out and take in paper tests from pupils. It was felt that changing this aspect of the study would affect its value. Data collection was deferred until April 2021, after the Easter break, once routines could be re-established following the return to physical school midway through the Lent term.

The study was supplemented with a qualitative survey, which pupils completed in December 2021, a full term after the test period. This survey asked pupils which medium or media they continue to use for their Chinese vocabulary revision, and their perceived advantages and disadvantages of the two media tested in the study.

A single Year 7 set was selected as the test group, as it could be expected with reasonable certainty that all pupils begin the year with no prior knowledge of the subject, as none of Berkhamsted’s feeder schools offer primary level Chinese.

Results from the quantitative study

Group 1 used pen-on-paper revision for the first three weeks, and then switched after week three to revising with their stylus on their touch screen. Group 2 revised for the first three weeks with a stylus on their touch screen, then swapped to revising pen-on-paper after week three.

Figure 1 is a bar chart which shows the average percentage score for Group 1, shown with diagonally striped bars, and Group 2, shown with dotted bars, for each week’s test (Test 1 – 6).

The revision medium used by each group for each test is indicated by colour: bars in orange indicate revision with pen on paper, and bars in blue show revision with a stylus on a touch screen.

Figure 1.

A bar chart showing the mean test scores for Groups 1 and 2 per weekly vocabulary test, indicating revision medium

The data shows that Group 1 outperformed Group 2 in all vocabulary tests, regardless of revision medium.

Observation: Group 1 outperformed Group 2 in all vocabulary tests, regardless of revision medium

This observation suggests that the revision medium was not the most significant factor influencing vocabulary test performance. Group 1 having achieved test scores consistently higher than Group 2, regardless of test medium, suggests that another attribute of Group 1 besides revision medium enables them to memorise characters with greater success.

The mean MidYIS scores and skills scores for both groups are given below.

MidYIS Score Skills Score

Group 1 104.2 97.7

Group 2 89.9 93.0

Group 1 have higher MidYIS and Skills scores than Group 2. This aligns with Group 1’s consistently higher test scores, shown in figure 1. It is therefore very likely that baseline ability has a greater influence on vocabulary test scores than revision medium.

As the key variable between the two test media of pen on paper and stylus on tablet is understood to be texture following Gerth et al. (2016), the data can be interpreted as demonstrating that surface texture is less significant than baseline ability for memorising vocabulary, if it has any effect at all.

Results of the qualitative study

Following a delay of one term, the test class completed a questionnaire regarding their choice of revision medium. The results are shown below.

Following a delay of one term, pupils’ main method of revising characters for vocabulary tests is split as shown in Figure 2.

REVISION MEDIUM USE AFTER A DELAY OF ONE TERM

Stylus on Tablet Pen on Paper

A combination of both Other

The data shows that following their experience of trying both methods for the qualitative study the previous term, pupils settled on a diverse array of strategies, some opting for a hybrid approach, others preferring a single method, and a minority choosing neither. Stylus on tablet was a slightly more popular method than pen on paper.

Figure 2. A pie chart showing pupils’ main media of revision following a one-term delay

Positives and negatives of using pen on paper

The questionnaire also elicited free text responses and offered pupils the opportunity to expand on their preferences between the two revision media. Pupils were asked to give their personal views, both positive and negative, on using pen on paper to revise characters for vocabulary tests. Inviting free text responses, rather than multiple choice, enabled pupils to express their own views freely and fully. Common themes were drawn out from the answers.

The positive themes given for using pen on paper to revise, and the frequency with which each was cited are shown in Figure 3, and the negative themes in Figure 4.

Figure 3.

A bar chart showing the frequency with which the positive themes were cited for using pen on paper to revise

Figure 4.

A bar chart showing the frequency with which negative themes were cited for using pen and paper to revise

The closer simulation to the conditions of vocabulary tests of revising with pen on paper was the most frequently cited positive for revising with this medium, cited by ten pupils. Six pupils said that pen on paper helped them to memorise characters. By contrast, four pupils found that using pen on paper to revise takes longer than stylus on tablet.

Positives and negatives of using stylus on tablet

Pupils were then asked to give their personal views, both positive and negative, on using their stylus on their tablet to revise characters for vocabulary tests.

Figure 5.

A bar chart showing the frequency with which positive themes were cited for using a stylus on a tablet to revise

Figure 6.

A bar chart showing the frequency with which negative themes were cited for using a stylus on a tablet to revise

The positives given by pupils for revising using stylus on tablet were diverse, and the most often cited positive theme, raised by five pupils, was that revising using their stylus on their tablet devices offered greater freedom with layout.

A narrower range of negatives were raised by pupils in their responses, including the dissimilarity of revising using stylus on tablet to their actual vocabulary tests, the method being less helpful than pen on paper for committing characters to memory, and pupils’ work being less neat on the smoother surface.

Conclusion

The quantitative study found that the revision medium, be it pen on paper or stylus on tablet, had no effect on vocabulary test scores. This result contrasts with both Gerth et al. (2016) who conclude that children find the smooth surface of a tablet screen a challenge for writing, and Osugi et al. (2019) who suggest that the smoother surface of a tablet screen compared to paper is easier to use, for those already familiar with the use of a digital pen.

However, vocabulary test scores aligned with the mean baseline ability of each group, and therefore more effective controlling for baseline ability was needed to form a firm conclusion. This was a significant limitation of this study, which if repeated, would employ the control initially planned, which grouped pupils to include a representative spread of MidYIS scores for each test medium.

The qualitative study found that one term after the quantitative study, pupils employed a variety of revision strategies, across both media.

Pupils liked pen and paper for its simulation of real test conditions, and felt that this medium was more helpful for memorising vocabulary, even if this was not shown to be true in their vocabulary test results. However, pupils found that revising using pen on paper was slow.

The greatest benefit cited by pupils of revising using stylus on tablet was the freedom of layout on their page, on OneNote and other applications. Some pupils described the infinite space available as helpful to their revision. Greater speed was another commonly cited positive of this medium.

While further studies are recommended to further investigate these findings, this study has shown that pupils find positives and negatives for both media. With no discernible benefit to vocabulary learning shown in the data gathered, pupils can be allowed to choose the revision medium which best suits their needs and preferences.

BIO

Hannah Galbraith is Head of Mandarin at Berkhamsted School. She has an interest in digital learning and its interface with the physical classroom.

How Can Digital Technology be Used to Support Effective Assessment and Feedback Without Increasing Teacher Workload?

1 Rationale behind the research

The use of technology in the classroom is not a new phenomenon. Whilst at secondary school in the early 2000s, I clearly remember the unveiling of the newest technological resource to arrive in classrooms set to revolutionise learning: the interactive whiteboard. Skip forward to 2015 and the same IWBs were being removed from the walls at my PGCE placement school, no longer being the trending tool of the time. Five years later, I find myself in a breakout room with colleagues during a national lockdown discussing the potential of Virtual Reality in bringing First World War trenches to life for our students stuck at home in their bedrooms.

Clearly, teachers have been navigating this changing ‘EdTech’ landscape for many years, but undoubtedly the biggest bump in the road came in March 2020 when schools across the country were closed overnight and online learning commenced. For the class of 2020 (and 2021), the physical gap between teachers and students had never been greater, yet the potential for technology to provide solutions to bridge the lockdown learning gap for what the media has dubbed the ‘lost generation of students’ seemed similarly great.

For this Action Research project, I chose to focus specifically on digitising effective assessment and feedback for my Key Stage 4 and 5 exam classes, considering this to be more crucial than ever in the absence of the physical cues teachers typically rely upon in the classroom when assessing progress. After problematising exactly what it was I wanted to virtually assess, I came to realise this was the same for distanced learning as it had previously been back in the classroom, that is: the completion of and engagement with tasks set for classwork (albeit at times now to be carried out asynchronously); knowledge retention and recall; and skills in exam technique.

Whilst using technology to facilitate effective assessment and feedback was my primary focus for this project, I did not want this to come at the expense of increased teacher workload. In the 2016 DfE Workload Challenge Survey, 53% of respondents thought that the excessive nature, depth and frequency of marking was burdensome (DfE, 2016). It was in this area that I felt confident there was scope to take advantage of technological opportunities to streamline time spent marking, removing the burden of personalised written comments for individual students, instead redeploying energy into improving the timeliness and efficacy of whole-class feedback to accelerate progress for all.

Summary of literature review

Many teachers may feel they are well-justified in their position as ‘tech-sceptics’, having seen gimmicky innovations come and go throughout the course of their careers. However, recent research reveals a positive correlation between the effective use of technology and improved outcomes (Higgins et al., 2013), suggesting that when used well, technology has an important role to play in classrooms of the future. Furthermore, there is also emerging evidence that proves the specific impact of traditional marking in the form of lengthy written comments to be minimal (Elliott et al., 2016). When these findings are considered in the context of an education workforce exhausted after more than a year of COVID disruption, with 70% reporting increased workload over the last 12 months and one in three teachers planning to quit within 5 years (Weale, 2021), it seems the right time to reflect and ensure we are making IT work for us.

When asked to visualise the stereotypical overworked teacher, we might envisage lone individuals to be working until late into the evening rooted in the relentless practice of ‘tick-and-flick’. If this is the reality, perhaps the most pressing concern from a pedagogical perspective is that the time it would take for a teacher to see, let alone read, every page of work their students produce is wildly disproportionate to the outcomes it would lead to. Therefore, for the first tier of my threetiered assessment and feedback model, my aim was to utilise technology to create an alternative system to acknowledge efforts and hold students to account for classwork, without establishing a culture where written comments were expected on an individual basis for every page completed.

Much discussion has been focused on the second tier of my assessment and feedback model, namely knowledge retention and recall. The benefits of regular testing have been well-documented (Roediger et al., 2014) and many technological tools have been designed to serve this specific purpose. Retrieval practice platforms such as Quizlet provide students with real-time results, mimicking live marking yet requiring no input from the teacher. Therefore, for this second tier of the assessment and feedback model, I planned to explore the opportunities available for using technology to frequently test security of knowledge amongst students in my exam classes, empowering them to self-assess their retention and recall in a low-stakes format.

Finally, for the third tier of my assessment and feedback model I wanted to ensure that each of my students knew precisely how to improve their exam technique. Research has shown that encouraging reflection and resubmission, even in the absence of a grade, has high efficacy in promoting student progress (Walker, 2021). Therefore, rather than focusing on individual What Went Well’s and Even Better If’s, I instead hoped to carry out task-based analysis and identify overall patterns of strengths and weaknesses, before delivering whole-class feedback (Picardo, 2017). This process would require the careful use of technology to employ peer work as a formative assessment tool to model expectations clearly and at times facilitate students working collaboratively in well-matched groups (McGill, 2017). It was in this area that I wanted to dedicate most energy, maximising the time I had gained from ‘outsourcing’ the tracking of classwork and knowledge testing to technology.

3. Procedure

Below is a visual representation of my three-tiered assessment and feedback model (see Figure 1), followed by summaries of the different strategies I used to rigorously assess students and return timely, high-quality feedback, making the most of technological opportunities to reduce workload.

Figure 1. Three-tiered assessment and feedback model with most emphasis placed on exam technique

A Tracking the completion of and engagement with classwork and homework

To avoid falling into the trap of the problematic practice of ‘ticking-and-flicking’, I sought to be disciplined in spending the least time assessing this area of student work. I implemented the following coding system that effectively ‘graded’ students’ OneNote pages from 1 to 4 (see Figure 2). It established a channel of communication with each of my students without me having to write one word and allowed individuals to interpret the feedback with just one glance (see Figure 3). I also chose to record this data in my mark book, which provided me with a clear picture of completion of and engagement with classwork and homework, prompting me to intervene early when issues arose (see Figure 4).

Figure 2. Marking codes used to assess classwork and some homework tasks

Figure 3. Examples of coding used to provide feedback on students' classwork

B Knowledge retention and recall

To assess knowledge retention and provide feedback on accuracy of recall, I refined my use of online quizzing platforms to ensure my classes were retrieving knowledge on a weekly basis and that I employed spaced practice as part of this testing schedule. For each unit of the course covered, I created an accompanying bank of flashcards on Quizlet. Each week for homework, students were asked to make use of the different functions available on Quizlet to learn the flashcard bank. Helpfully, Quizlet provides detailed analytics on individuals, allowing me to gain insight into the ways in which different students were working (see Figure 5).

Figure 4. Coding data inputted into my mark book

Figure 5. Analytics provided by Quizlet on individual students' use of platform

Students were then tested on their recall of this knowledge, and indeed prior learning as a form of spaced practice, completing a self-marking Microsoft Forms quiz each week. Although these initial steps required time invested into creating the bank of flashcards and test questions, the reward was that a personalised, live feedback loop was established for each individual student to self-assess their performance, as well as holistic snapshots of class performance that informed my future teaching on a weekly basis (see Figure 6). Common misconceptions or gaps in learning were clearly diagnosed in this weekly data gathering process. Once again, I chose to record this data in my mark book, adding another layer to the picture I was building up of the progress each individual student was making over time (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. Data from weekly quizzes inputted into my mark book

Figure 6. Holistic picture of class performance in self-marking Microsoft Forms quiz

Skills in exam technique

For the final tier of my assessment and feedback model, I wanted to focus explicitly on students’ skills in exam technique. My aim was to generate formative feedback after identifying overall patterns of strengths and weaknesses in class responses to exam-style questions. Again, I sought to use technology to streamline this process and avoid providing individual What Went Wells and Even Better Ifs for each student.

The first method I trialled was using peer work as a formative assessment tool to model expectations clearly. In one example, students were asked to reflect on their own answers after reading an example belonging to a peer and generate their own written feedback (see Figure 8). On other occasions, students were required to go further than simply selfreviewing and instead redrafted precise portions of their answers implementing strengths they had seen modelled in the work of their peers (see Figure 10).

Figure 8. Students generating their own written feedback after engaging with examples of best practice from peers

Figure 9. Example of redrafting exercise after engaging with examples of best practice from peers

A second method I experimented with was to provide a holistic ‘checklist of ingredients’ required in a successful exam-style response and ask students to annotate their own work to show where they were (or were not) including the necessary elements (see Figure 10). Another way of achieving this was to ask students to colour-code their answers to highlight where they were demonstrating certain skills in their writing, such as analysis and evaluation (see Figure 11). Both strategies led students to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, arguably a much more desirable outcome when compared with the passive engagement with a teacher-generated WWW and EBI.

Figure 10. Student self-assessment against ‘checklist of ingredients’ required for successful response

Figure 11. Student self-assessment through colour-coding of exam-style response

I also sought at times to use feedback as a basis for collaborative exercises carried out during lessons. OneNote’s Collaboration Space proved a useful platform for this purpose, and I was easily able to manipulate students into well-matched groupings according to their level of progress in mastering exam technique. In one example, students worked together to apply their knowledge to make synoptic links to other topics, annotating and improving a sample paragraph in groups (see Figure 12). I also trialled the implementation of differentiated feedback activities, designing four separate tasks for a class of 20. This allowed the students who had attained the highest marks in the assessment to be stretched and challenged with harder questions, whilst I worked with the students who had attained the lowest marks to redraft work with the support of prompting scaffolds (see Figure 13).

Figure 12. Examples of student collaboration in improving sample paragraphs by annotating with synoptic links

Figure 13. Examples of differentiated feedback tasks for students collaborating in groups according to attainment

Recommendations

Overall, I feel that this model has significantly improved the way in which I assess and subsequently offer feedback to my students in exam classes at Key Stages 4 and 5. The picture I have built up of individual students’ progress is much more detailed than I have achieved in previous years, a snapshot of which is shown below in a segment of my mark book listing the data gathered after covering just one iGCSE topic:

Despite this being a small-case study, I do feel several successful outcomes have emerged from this research that I would recommend to colleagues.

I would advocate a mixed constitution when it comes to assessment and feedback. By creating a three-tiered assessment and feedback model, different feedback loops were established for different types of assessment for each student. When used in conjunction, this information could be interpreted by students on a regular basis to support them in making continuous progress towards the desired outcome.

I would highly recommend the ‘outsourcing’ of assessment and feedback to technology where possible. In my model, this was applicable to tiers one and two. It is also worth stating that the time invested in creating Quizlet flashcard banks and Microsoft Forms self-marking quizzes will be lessened in subsequent years as these resources can be easily updated where necessary and then recycled.

The strategy that I have judged to be most successful is that of only releasing grades to students after they have engaged in a feedback activity of some form, requiring them to be active in their reflections of their responses to exam-style questions. By making use of the functionality of Microsoft Teams, I was able to attach marks to students’ assessments without revealing them immediately. My rationale for this was that it placed much more emphasis on the process of the assessment, rather than the result, removing the likelihood of students disengaging with feedback and instead simply focusing on the raw mark.

As a result of experimenting with the different strategies that make up this model, I’ve felt time spent assessing and feeding back on different elements of students’ work is more proportional to outcomes than in previous years, and that I am also more accurate and informed in my tracking of student progress over time.

BIO Anna Dickson is Subject Leader of Politics and Learning Pathways. She always been interested in assessment for learning and has enjoyed exploring the role technology can play in our classrooms since the digital device provision was rolled out at Berkhamsted School. These two areas combined are the focus of her 2020-2021 Action Research Project.

Teaching Without Organs: Reflections From a Covid Classroom Using Deleuze & Guattari

The Covid pandemic brought change and difference to the forefront of educators’ minds. It required school leaders to reconsider what education might look like in these unprecedented times and practitioners to rethink their day-to-day teaching methods. Prior to the pandemic I had been teaching Economics for five years in the independent sector and had developed a toolkit of pedagogical approaches I typically used in most lessons. However, the introduction of alphabetical seating plans, restricted pupil and teacher mobility in the classroom, as well as pupils dialling remotely into lessons meant that a number of these techniques in my teacher toolkit were no longer suitable. This brought with it challenges but also opportunities.

This article outlines the research I conducted as part of my Master’s Degree in Teaching and Learning at Oxford University. Using the philosophical lens of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I examine how my teaching practice has changed since joining Berkhamsted School (at the height of the pandemic). Whilst the research outlined describes teaching in a Sixth Form Economics classroom, the pedagogical approaches could be used in any subject-setting.

The discussion will reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Using the philosophical lens of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) through which to examine change, it will consider whether it is ever really possible to 'Teach Without Organs'.

Research Methods and Ethics

I started writing my Master’s Degree in Teaching and Learning at the height of the Covid pandemic when completing research in the classroom added an extr a complexity to what was already a challenging time. The Master’s Degree in T&L at Oxford University is designed specifically for teachers which means that all assessments are due during the school holidays and the lectures mostly at weekends, making the course accessible for full-time academic teaching staff.

As with all practitioner-led research there are ethical considerations that need to be met: research at Master’s level must be approved by a formal application to BERA, the British Education Research Association. Teaching in the pandemic had already added huge additional burdens onto schools, academic departments, and pupils, so considering how to ethically conduct research at this time was at the forefront of decision-making for any research. Ethical approval must be granted before any research can take place, and so it was particularly important that the methods chosen could be lockdown resilient as relying on lesson observations was unwise. Practitioner researchers were also advised to reduce burdens that research can place on pupils during this time: Sixth Form pupils had enough stresses at this moment and adding interviews or focus groups to their commitments was not deemed fair.

These considerations influenced my choice of research method. Over the academic year I kept an auto-ethnographic research diary (a personal reflections diary) which I added to a few times a week. I kept screenshots of pupil work completed during the lessons on OneNote which was anonymised. Permission to record the lessons was already granted, as was standard procedure during the pandemic. I watched back some recorded lessons to listen to my teacher voice in the classroom, to map the student/teacher interactions and used this data to help track my physical movement around the classroom, also aided by use of a notebook in lessons. For mapping the classroom interactions, I took inspiration from a method termed ‘Mondrian Transcription’ used by Shapiro & Hall (2017) to map visitor engagement in a museum which bears similarity to the work of de Freitas (2012).

Bi) Theoretical overview: Teaching Without Organs (TwO)

The French Philosopher Deleuze is well known for his conceptualisation of change and difference. Given the changes to education in the pandemic it felt fitting to use his philosophy as the lens through which to examine change in my own classroom.

Deleuze, critical of traditional philosophy, writes how everything we observe in the world is in a constant state of ‘becoming’. Only through thinking about this process of ‘becoming’ can we start to comprehend ‘being’ in the present. He expands on this conceptualisation with his metaphor of the Rhizome which has no start and end point [see Figure 1]. I found the notions of ‘becoming’ and the Rhizome to be an interesting way to think about my changing teacher identity and pedagogical practice in the classroom.

Borrowing the phrase 'A Body Without Organs' from French writer Artaud (1947), Deleuze (writing with co-author Guattari in 1987) asks the question: 'How do you make a body without organs?'. First discussed by Deleuze in The Logic of Sense and later built on by the two authors in Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) encourage us to consider what a BwO might mean for our own lives. By a BwO they mean considering what a body could do if it was freed, without any boundaries or limitations.

Figure 1

Fascinated by the concept of the BwO I started contemplating what a BwO might look like in the context of teaching and education: what teaching might look like without boundaries or limits. This was particularly interesting in the current context during the pandemic when the environment of the classroom had changed and many of the pedagogical approaches, I had relied upon were taken away. I came to think about what a ‘Teaching Without Organs’ (TwO) approach might look like which led me to formulate the following research questions:

• What could a teacher do if we could overcome any limits or boundaries on us in the classroom in terms of mobility, group-work, and feedback?

• In the context of Covid, what might this look like? How could we overcome these boundaries or limits placed on us?

• How effective might overcoming these barriers be?

Photograph by C.W. Mims

As an initial reflective task, I began by writing down any aspects of my teaching practice in the auto-ethnographic diary that I felt would be non-negotiable, unchanging aspects of my practice. To borrow the term from Deleuze, any aspects that I felt were essential to my ‘being’ as a practitioner. I did this at the start of the academic year when joining Berkhamsted School. Some of the entries listed in the table were very prescriptive: 'I always mark pupil work with a red pen by hand'; 'I draw my diagrams on the whiteboard'; 'Pupils have access to a physical textbook'. These elements which I defined as key characteristics of my practice formed the ‘organs’ which Deleuze and Guattari describe, limiting and placing boundaries on my practice.

Over the academic year I used the autoethnographic diary, lesson plans and screenshots from pupil OneNote pages to trace how my teaching practice changed. At a time when Covid was placing more limits and boundaries on classrooms and education, I wanted to see how it might also create new possibilities and enable me to think beyond these confines I had placed on my practice.

Auto-ethnographic diary entry 1

What else is important to my teaching: That I mark pupils' work by hand using a red pen That pupils use greem pen to peer mark or self-mark Pupils have access to textbooks

What is important to my classroom space: Teacher-desk Desktop Computer Having a whiteboard in my classroom and access to whiteboard pens Large folders where I have collected resources Access to a photocopier Taking home pupil exercise books to mark My red pen My post-it notes

Figure 2

Ci) Classroom Mobility and Teacher/Pupil Interactions

In writing Capitalism and Schizophrenia Deleuze was fascinated by what Spinoza said about bodies: 'no one knows what a body can do'. The body, confined by its organs, has limited potential. Teaching in a classroom could be seen imposing limiting factors: the space is organised with usual classroom infrastructure and layout; typically, a whiteboard, a teacher desk, and a desktop computer.

I found that teaching in the pandemic meant increasing the restrictions placed on teacher mobility and the classroom space, in some ways moving further from TwO. At one stage due to necessities with contact tracing teachers remained within a 2x2 metre space at the front of the classroom. Given that so much of teaching is an embodied practice Spinoza’s question seemed particularly relevant to teachers at this time.

Interest in mobility and interactions in the classroom has been of particular interest to education researchers like de Freitas (2012). Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, de Freitas (2012) has used rhizomatic diagrams to plot interactions in the classroom.

Collaborative Creative Having many activities Contextualised with real-world examples

Figure 3 Figure 4

Taking inspiration from this, over the course of a week I produced similar diagrams plotting my movement around the classroom in a 20-minute period [see Figure 3] and a map of the verbal interactions which took place [see Figure 4]. In Figure 4, the thicker the lines the more frequent the interactions.

Because of the advice to socially distance in the pandemic Figure 3 shows that teacher mobility in the classroom was mostly restricted to the space surrounding the desk. Similarly, most of the interactions in Figure 4 were between pairs and there were few interactions outside of this. It was clear that the seating arrangement was placing boundaries and limits on the interactions in class and particularly noticeable was how most of the teacher interactions were focused on the first three rows of desks, and particularly on the right-hand side of the classroom.

Mapping these diagrams made me consider how it might be possible to overcome this so that the teacher interactions could be more like the rhizome diagram in Figure 1, which is a much more detailed web of interactions, rather than a few interactions concentrated to the pupils in the front few rows.

This would mean implementing tasks and activities that enable pupils to interact with each other to overcome these restrictions placed on mobility, so that my classroom could become closer to a TwO.

One way that this was achieved was through use of the collaboration space in OneNote which allows any number of pupils to be working on a single document at once.

Cii) Teacher Feedback

Technology played a key role in helping my classroom overcome restrictions on mobility and move closer to TwO.

A key exam skill in Economics is the quality of analysis or the chain of reasoning. An example of this might be: 'Economic growth leads to a rise in incomes. This is because the economy is expanding, so businesses demand more labour to work'. Pre-covid I would ask pupils to write a chain of reasoning on paper and swap with the person next to them. This worked particularly well when the paper was large A3 size so multiple pupils could sit round a desk and discuss the work together. The teacher could then circulate the room and give feedback.

As shown in the mobility diagram in Figure 3 the boundary placed on teacher movement meant that opportunities for teacher-to-pupil feedback in the classroom (about written classwork) also was more restricted.

On the one hand, this could be regarded as a movement away from TwO: greater restrictions placed on feedback.

However, over the course of the year, with the help of the department and the training received in technology at Berkhamsted, I implemented alternatives to overcome these boundaries or limits.

With the use of the Surface Pro devices, pupils could now write their chain of analysis directly into the Collaboration Space in OneNote. Instead of walking around the classroom to give verbal feedback I began to use the collaborative ‘sharing’ function on OneNote. An advantage of this is that the teacher can see what the pupils are writing in real-time and 'live-mark' the work. It was a much quicker and easier way for teachers to give immediate feedback in class: the teacher could write a few comments and the pupils could continue with the work and instantly make changes [see Figure 5].

This can also be done as a more targeted approach with individual pupils who are working directly into their own personal OneNote page.

An alternative to this is the “Share Message” function on SENSO where teachers can directly send a message to pupils’ devices.

A key advantage of this method is the ability for the teacher to see the pupils’ initials which automatically is added to the side of their entries. The new Collaboration Space method also allows for any number of pupils to be working on a document at once. Linking back to de Freitas’ (2012) rhizomatic diagrams, the Collaboration Space allows for much greater student interactions in the classroom beyond just the person they sit next to.

Figure 5

We can see how with the use of the Collaboration Space, the possibility for interactions within the classroom, by working on a shared document, is much greater. This overcomes the limit of the seating plan. However, it is necessary for greater teacher monitoring to take place to ensure that pupils are using this functionality wisely (not writing across each others’ documents, for example).

A further advantage is that it allows for pupil work to be saved automatically. With the original whiteboard method, pupils would take a photograph of the work they had produced. The Collaboration Space functionality is better in enabling pupils to return to the work and make revisions.

Ciii) Increasing Accountability in Group Work

Prior to the pandemic, a pedagogical technique I frequently used was ‘the whiteboard method’: pupils in my classroom would often be given a small whiteboard to complete work in groups (for example, to prepare a spiderchart on a topic). This was the method I had used in my interview lesson when joining Berkhamsted School. This method I deemed effective at increasing pupil work-rate, reducing work avoidance, and increasing pupil accountability. I found that giving pupils a different marker pen colour and insisting that the page was had a 50/50 red/blue pen ratio ensured that there was more even participation between pupils in group work. This also enabled for more effective teacher communication: teacher phrases such as 'Tom, why aren’t you contributing' could be replaced with more neutral phrases such as 'Group 1, I’d like to see more red pen on that page'.

With the original whiteboard method there also seemed to be something psychological about the ability to erase the marker pen and start over if a mistake had been made, which seemed to reduce a fear about failing. I noticed through observation that this seemed to particularly be the case amongst female pupils. When I have used the whiteboard method in class there also seemed to be less work avoidance strategies such as bathroom breaks or wanting to refill water bottles. There seemed to be a motivational impact when pupils completed visible work with a whiteboard pen on whiteboards.

Through self-observation of my own lessons over the course of a term, I noticed that the Surface Pen did not reduce work avoidance and hesitation about starting to the quite same extent as a traditional whiteboard method. I suspect that this is because the Surface Pen takes longer to erase than a normal marker pen and additionally, where pupils are completing work directly on their Surface Devices, they deem this to be ‘neat work’ if it is completed within OneNote. Pupil work rate increased most notably when pupils were completing work on the Whiteboard App, as it was deemed to be ‘rough work’ and not saved, or assessed by the teacher, unless they chose to screenshot it and insert themselves.

However, using the Surface Pen to complete work was deemed more optimal for increasing pupil work rate compared with typing. Apart from the strongest pupils in the class, pupils who typed appeared to have a noticeably higher rate of work avoidance compared with those who wrote directly with the Surface Pen. This might be because typing takes longer to delete and it is more obvious amongst peers when work is deleted, due to the sound the backspace makes in class.

Changing the landscape of learning such as asking pupils to complete work on whiteboards or using a Surface Pen on a Whiteboard App in rough had a marked effect on pupil work rate.

The use of the Collaboration Space had a similar effect on pupil accountability. Any entries into OneNote by pupils are initialled which means that it is easy for the teacher to see the rate of work completion by each individual student as shown by Figure 7 (the black X is for Pupil one and O for Pupil two).

D) Key Conclusions: Teaching Without Organs

• A 'Teaching Without Organs' (TwO) approach to teaching means thinking about and embracing new possibilities in the classroom and overcoming any boundaries or limits.

• A TwO approach to the classroom means not being limited by the organisation of the classroom space and considering ways to overcome restrictions on pupil or teacher mobility. For teachers this might mean asking an observing teacher to map where most of the interactions are taking place, or self-mapping your own mobility then thinking about ways to change this.

• A TwO approach to feedback means thinking about new possibilities for giving feedback. This might mean giving feedback 'live' on One Note, or by using the teacher comment function on SENSO. This removes the restrictions on pupil interaction caused by static seating plans.

• A TwO approach to group work means finding new ways for group work to take place and to ensure that pupils remain accountable, through a high work rate and low work avoidance. This might mean thinking about the technology we are giving pupils, such as the Surface Pen, and thinking about the different ways these could be optimised.

E) Reflections on the Master’s Degree

I wholeheartedly recommend the Master's in Teaching & Learning at Oxford University. Each year students who complete the degree participate in the annual research poster conference at Oxford, which bears similarity to the research evening completed at Berkhamsted by EPQ students and the new teaching and learning evening held last academic year. By participating in such events, we can model academic curiosity to our pupils and show continuous professional development. Students on the course were divided into small subject specialist groups for seminars. The course enabled me to connect with teachers and school leaders in a variety of school contexts throughout the UK (and overseas) and closely follow their research journeys with interest over the two years.

BIO

Sophie Brand

is Teacher of Economics at Berkhamsted and a member of the Digital Innovation group. She has a particular interest in Philosophy and Education which she researched as part of the MSc in Teaching and Learning at Oxford.

Improving Children’s Vocabulary: Does it Progress Their Writing?

Research

BookTrust recognised that during lockdown many children had less access to books which would have impacted language development and communication skills. The ‘Bridging the Word Gap’ study explained that this is a critical time for a focus on vocabulary development, especially with Covid-19 and the much-publicised broadening of the attainment gap. It suggested that three quarters of teachers thought that school closures contributed to an increase in the number of pupils with a vocabulary deficit. Biemiller (2003) previously discussed considerable differences in vocabulary sizes amongst 7-yearolds. Higher performing children demonstrated a vocabulary size of 7100 words, while lower performing children only knew 3000 words. My thoughts were led to think about how, if this were true nearly 17 years ago, what must vocabulary differences look like now with a pandemic, and increased use of technology and social media?

Research states that the conditions of lockdown meant that many children have had to face greater barriers to reading as some children lacked access to books because schools and libraries were closed. They had a lack of quiet spaces at home and a lack of school or peer support which had a negative effect on their ability to read and their motivation to read for enjoyment had decreased. Bruner believes that language is crucial for children’s development. He suggests the use of words can aid their development and stimulate their problem-solving skills. This research helped direct my school improvement project.

Data

To gather data on variations in pupil performance I completed a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of Year 2 data from 2018 to 2021. I used this tool to give me a focus for my School Improvement Project (SIP) by analysing the progress and attainment levels of individual pupils and groups.

From overseeing data from the previous three years (2018-2020), I found many strengths. Overall, the data showed that there were low percentages of children who did not meet the expectations in maths and reading (ranging from 7% to 16%). It also showed high percentages of children who exceeded the expectations in maths and reading (ranging from 21%-46%).

Between the years of 2018-2020, the independent writing data suggested that 27% (2018-2019 cohort) and 21% (20192020 cohort) of children were below in their independent writing. In 2021, after a global pandemic the percentage is at 34% (2020-2021 cohort). I looked at why this percentage was increasing as part of the School Development Plan (SDP). I planned to introduce a strategy to potentially improve children’s language and vocabulary exposure, story structure, and awareness of the key features of writing.

Previous data shows progress, but I wanted to explore why there was a higher percentage of children now falling below after the pandemic. There was also an element to my studies to make progress with all children and not simply ‘just’ looking at the learners who were not meeting the expectations, as only 5% of children exceeded the expectations in writing in 2021.

Implementation

To improve the children’s vocabulary and ideas to implement these words contextually into their writing, we introduced many vocabulary-based activities into our planning, teaching and learning.

Firstly, we looked at our English planning to ensure that it provided different writing opportunities for all learners. Creating different stimuli for different learners allowed all children to access the lessons. Providing multi-sensory experiences allowed visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners to engage in the activities and apply their learning. We completed a thorough analysis of the texts that we used in each topic and invested in some other texts to support the main story. For example, when looking at the topic ‘Rainforests’ and we focused on the fantastic high-quality text The Great Kapok Tree We then also supported this with many other books about the rainforest. We immersed the children in around 10 different books, both fiction and non-fiction, and made shared class notes about the texts to highlight key vocabulary, phrases, similes, and metaphors. The children could then recall vocabulary from their shared notes on our working walls, to apply to their writing.

We also introduced vocabulary-based starters in English lessons, three times a week. This involved a quick 5–10 minute engaging activity, purely based on vocabulary. This could be connected to the lesson itself (e.g. adjectives) or it may have just been an opportunity to give children experience of more higher-level vocabulary in a relevant context. These games included: only connect, missing word sentences, captions for pictures, brainstorming, mind mapping, question and answers, loop cards, sentence substitutions, and synonym starters. As practitioners, we reflected on these activities and thought that they were very useful and a valid use of teaching time as we found out a lot from each of our individual children and how they learn. We found the children all took a very different approach to the discovery, open-ended tasks. These tasks were also low-threshold and high-ceiling and therefore every learner could access them.

Finally, we introduced a ‘Word of the Week’. This was the most effective and measurable method introduced to improve the children’s language and writing. The word of the week was relevant to the learning that week (for instance, if related to 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', it could have been ‘scrumptious’ to describe the porridge). The word of the week was added to the criteria to allow the children to independently self-reflect on their steps to success to ensure that they had tried to include the higher-level vocabulary in the correct context. We would introduce the word of the week every Monday, provide a definition of the word and the use of the word in the correct context. Then the children had the opportunity to discuss any synonyms of this word that they could think of as another method of application to help their memory. Throughout the week, the word would be used in teaching and learning, and we gave the children incentives (stickers and house points!) to use the word into their writing or notice it in their reading books, giving them a holistic approach to learning new vocabulary.

Evaluation

Every half term, the children took part in an independent writing task with the same outcomes, focuses and success criteria for them to independently complete. We then moderated this as a team to assess writing and reflect on improvements, changes that needed to be made, progress and gaps in learning as well as positive results.

The SIP was hugely beneficial to the children in the 2021 cohort. Evidence of this was shown with the decrease of children falling behind in writing, which was 11%. This was significant as we also had to adapt our teaching to online during another lockdown. We also found that there was a large increase of 8% of children exceeding the expectations in writing which was an additional positive result during the pandemic. The discussions at the end of the year were around how this programme could be effective if we were at school the whole year without interruptions and how we could improve children’s outcomes significantly. We went on by continuing to use the strategies mentioned and implemented these into new year groups to give each child the opportunity to develop their communication and language skills and in turn, develop their writing. It was a brilliant project to be a part of, albeit with the challenge of virtual teaching. We were proud of the children’s engagement and enthusiasm with the different vocabulary activities and look forward to teaching similar strategies to our future classes.

BIO Emily Bowers is Head of Reception at Berkhamsted Pre-Prep.

Experimenting with the Harkness Discussion Method

I began to research the Harkness discussion method for teaching Core Critical Thinking lessons to de-centre myself (and my lesson plan), to encourage less vocal students to express their opinions, and to encourage the students to question ideas more rigorously (Harkness, 2009).

The name ‘Harkness’ sounds more intimidating than it is in practice (Williams, 2014). The key features are student discussion being the source of learning, preparatory student work and processes of reflection. Superficially the method seems akin to an Oxbridge tutorial or the Socratic Method; however it is actually very different as the teacher in the Harkness discussion is ‘the cultivator of that sense of responsibility [for the discussion], rather than the fount of information and analysis’ (Williams, 2014, 60). A loose definition suggests Harkness is about:

(Smith and Foley, 2014, 478)

The oval tables and small class-sizes that have come to symbolise Harkness may present a danger of Harkness becoming a method only utilised by elite schools (which have the funds to facilitate the buying of specialist tables and small classes) (Smith and Foley, 2014). There are, however, several ideas in the literature for using Harkness with all kinds of classes; for example, the obvious idea of rearranging desks instead of the oval table, and to reduce numbers by assigning different roles to students who are not in a discussion, having an outer circle of listeners/mappers, and setting up multiple discussions at once (Orth et al., 2015). For my own lessons to create more intimate discussions, students enjoyed pairing up and alternating who was active in the discussion. The listening student would either take notes on the discussion (such as their own ideas or points they found interesting) or take notes to provide feedback to their peer.

It was not possible for my students to do preparatory work outside of class, due to not having homework slots for my subject. Therefore, we did preparatory learning (either reading in Year 10 or a condensed version of lesson activities for Years 7 and 8) in the first ten to twenty minutes of a lesson before embarking on Harkness discussions. This not only provided more variety for the younger students but also meant the examples were fresh in their minds. It allowed students to use examples easily when making their points but also to explore their initial questions and ideas as a group.

To use Harkness as an effective learning tool with my students, it became apparent we needed to work on making sure every point developed/linked to a previous one and examples were used well. Sometimes, a discussion wouldn’t take off and it was a levelling experience to simply ask students why they thought this was. The feedback helped to build my confidence in the method and create a team-spirit in the classroom, contributing to the sense that the students were in control of their learning. They might reflect that a question wasn’t good enough (too vague or too specific), that they needed more preparatory knowledge, or that the group dynamic wasn’t working that day. Planning for flexibility became an

‘finding ways to get students to make the discoveries for themselves, to get them to draw their own conclusions, to teach them how to consider all sides of an argument, and to make up their own minds based on analysis of the material at hand.’

important element of setting up a successful Harkness discussion, such as having multiple iterations of the lesson’s question, and having material/activities to use if a discussion wasn’t progressing. Equally, if the discussion is going well, being prepared to scrap subsequent material, and just let the group continue.

It was also very interesting to play with the Harkness mapping technique. Beyond being able to visualise how well balanced the discussion was, in terms of who was speaking, I found annotating the charts enabled me to give precise and meaningful feedback and praise to students. These annotations were in accordance with the aims the class chose as the starter activity (such as to include examples, to make a link to another point, to listen well) or my own observations (such as taking a leadership role, nuancing the discussion, positive non-verbal gestures).

In a survey conducted after six different lessons, two thirds of the students (of a total of 86 responding) agreed or strongly agreed that they felt confident to contribute in discussions (66.3%), they felt like their ideas were respected and listened to (67.4%) and that Harkness was improving their critical thinking skills (67.4%). Reflecting on the positives and negatives of Harkness the key themes from student feedback were:

Finally, when asked to comment on the purpose of Harkness students wrote:

Ultimately, experimenting with Harkness has developed my teaching because I now feel more able to adapt my lesson plans on the spot and more confident to trust in the student voice. Of course, using Harkness for Core Critical Thinking was not a scary prospect as it is a non-examined and discussion-based subject. I am looking forward to the challenge of seeing if I can apply Harkness in Latin classes next year, with the reassurance that if it’s possible for Maths then it must be possible in everything (Isgitt and Donnellan, 2014).

BIO

Isla Phillips is Teacher of Classics and Core Curriculum at Sevenoaks School, and Director of Kent Academies Network.

Assessment: A meaningful Process?

Assessment is something we do every day as teachers. Whether that be formative judgements of pupil engagement on a specific task, observing progress in written work or summative assessments at the end of a topic, it is one of the foundations of pedagogy. As Keith Swanwick said: ‘To teach is to assess’ (1988, 149). But how far do we go to make assessment meaningful for us and our pupils?

Ever since I started researching assessment strategies, one question always seems to crop up: why do we all assess in the same way? Let’s look at it another way: what does 70% in a test mean for pupils and teachers? Does it mean the same for a Maths end of topic test and a Geography prep? Do pupils regard these as equal? What does this do to a pupil’s motivation towards a subject? I think you can start to see how troublesome assessment can be on a whole-school level and that one size certainly does not fit all. Yet, numerical grades, percentages and other similar methods are something we use regularly and without second thought. So, it begs the question ‘what can we do to make assessment more meaningful and to suit our subject areas whilst adhering to whole-school frameworks?’.

I’ll use music as an example, but I believe the principle can be shared by many different subjects. In music we broadly teach three main areas – composition, performance, and listening & appraising. Each one of these areas is very different in terms of the skills and knowledge needed to succeed. So, naturally, there is a need to adapt assessment to suit these different areas. From a poll I took of 53 music teachers across the UK earlier this year, there was a consensus that assessment criteria need to reflect the nature of the skill being learnt. Why is this important to making assessment meaningful? Well, this concept of adapting assessment to suit the skill is incredibly valuable for pupils, enabling them to understand how and why they are being assessed but also helping them identify strengths and weaknesses in areas of a subjects rather than the subject as a whole.

To this end, in 2019, Martin Fautley and Alison Daubney devised a framework that recognises these differences in music but also encourages teachers to visually demonstrate attainment to make it more meaningful (Fautley & Daubney, 2019). Different areas of musical learning such as singing, improvising and critical engagement are placed on a radar chart and a score (working towards (1), working at (2) and working beyond (3)) is given to each area for each pupil. The score is devised from formative judgements made over time by the teacher and is based on specific measurable criteria. For example, one criterion could be ‘Sings in tune with musical expression’ and it is up to the teacher to determine whether they are working towards, working at or working beyond what is expected of that pupil’s age rage. Over time and with more formative judgements made about different criteria, a comprehensive and visual representation of pupil learning is generated (See appendix 1).

During the term, pupils will have access to their radar chart and see their progress in different areas of the subject.

Appendix 1

Taken from Fautley and Daubney's framework (Fautley & Daubney, 2019, 18)

We must adhere to whole-school assessment frameworks, but within those parameters, we can make the process of assessment more meaningful to us and our pupils by recognising that different skills and knowledge within our subjects require separate assessment criteria. Being a Grade 8 pianist does not automatically mean you are an innovative composer or an outstanding musical analyst. Similarly, if you are an innovative composer and an outstanding musical analyst but don’t play an instrument, does that mean you’re not good at music? I believe it is time to recognise that music, along with so many other subjects, is multifaceted and that we should be clearly explaining this to pupils through the assessment process. If time is taken to explain and model this to pupils, assessment becomes a mechanism within pedagogy rather than a potential bolt-on at the end of teaching cycles to be put into a spreadsheet and forgotten about.

BIO Mr George Picker is Head of Upper School Music and Teacher of Music at Downe House School.

How Successful has Antitrust Law Been in Regulating 'Big Tech' in the USA?

This dissertation argued that Antitrust legislation is outdated and has failed in the regulation of ‘Big Technology’ companies in the U.S. and is in desperate need of reform. To achieve this, several reports from congress, academic journals and court proceedings were considered. My analysis focused on 5 of the top technology companies, under the acronym FAAMG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google). I analysed the current state of antitrust and evaluated the effect it has had on these 5 companies. Each company was given a section in which I broke down whether they have any ongoing court cases, and what each case may be about. The crux of my paper lies in evaluating whether this area of jurisprudence really protects competition, or does it play a minor hindrance to Big Tech companies.

What is Anti-Trust? (and why do we even need it?)

The birth of technology companies dates to the early 20th century; now they are the cornerstone of society. Why is this? The answer lies in their ability to innovate at such a blistering pace. This unprecedented growth has completely transformed the face of the earth.

Anti-trust is a term mainly coined in the USA; its European counterpart is more widely known as competition law. Antitrust law are pieces of legislation designed by governments to protect consumers’ interests and ensure competitive business practices are followed. The premise for this legislation existing is to regulate monopolies. These firms have developed or inherited pricesetting ability, and without appropriate legislation would be free to maximise producer surplus. This surplus is the difference between the price a firm would be willing to supply a product, and the price they in-fact do supply this product. In theory, the benefit of this for producers is an increased supernormal profit, at the detriment of consumer welfare. With this first interpretation of the legislation, the question does arise: how can regulation be placed on a product that has not cost at point of consumption? Social media and internet services are great examples of this question coming to light. In my project, I focus on companies that encompass this issue. Another facet of this legislation is to ensure fair competition in the mar ketplace; this includes restricting predatory practices which aim to stop new firms from entering the market. This is often done through manufacturing artificial barriers to entry, and the government aim to keep barriers of entry low to allow for the most efficient firm to enter and prosper. Firms which may not charge the consumer with a monetary cost may still behave in anticompetitive manners through vertical integration and loss leading measures.

My initial interest in this field was provoked by the increased media attention to these 'Big Technology' companies following congressional hearings in which CEO’s were subpoenaed to appear before a committee. In these televised and politicised hearings, Twitter and Facebook CEO’s were questioned on how their respective companies handle data internally, and how their company behaves in a global manner. An increased level of scrutiny for these technology firms was a target for the Biden Administration, and thus there were increased resources devoted to the FTC and DOJ (Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice) to investigate allegations brought to them. As these companies were now in the news more often with allegations of anticompetitive behaviour, I pondered the question why are they able to even be accused of monopolisation, isn’t there legislation designed to stop this dead in its tracks? Initially, my scope was on why monopolisation may be of detriment to the consumer, but this tied in closely to what the Year 13 Economics syllabus would cover. Upon revision, my focus was now firmly on researching and analysing what legislation was in place to regulate these firms, and how successful it has been in doing so.

In June 2019, it was reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agreed to divide responsibility over the investigations of the ‘Big Tech’ companies’ practices. These agencies are responsible for enforcing federal antitrust laws. Under this agreement, the DOJ reportedly have taken authority over investigations of Google and Apple, while the FTC will delve into Facebook and Amazon (Kendall & McKinnon, 2019).

Current state of Antitrust cases:

Google: Google is no stranger to scrutiny in the form of antitrust. The Tech giant licenses the Android operating system (OS) and owns a major ad-brokering platform (AdSense). In 2013, the FTC concluded an intensive investigation into the company’s business practices, including its alleged involvement in discriminating against vertical rivals, restricting advertisers’ ability to do business, and brokering exclusivity agreements with websites that used AdSense (Freeman & Sykes, 2019). Congress and agency staff recommended the FTC to bring a lawsuit challenging some of these activities, but the commission unanimously declined further action against Google after pledges were made on the Google side to make changes to its business practices. The reason for the FTC dropping action is very contested in the media as nobody seems to have a concrete answer. Many critics are basing this on the FTC’s alleged worry that the case will get held up in litigation, and taxpayers’ money and worker hours will be wasted. The mere threat of a lawsuit seems to be the FTC’s weapon of choice for policing these tech firms. However, European authorities have pursued investigations in differing manners. European antitrust authorities have conducted three separate investigations that have all yielded in large fines. In June 2017, the European Commission (EC) fined Google 2.4 billion euros for violations relating to Google Search’s preferential treatment of ‘Google shopping’. Further to this, the EC later imposed an additional 4.3 billion euro fine for exclusive-dealing arrangements with Android. In March 2019, the EC imposed a further 1.49-billion-euro fine for exclusive

dealing arrangements involving AdSense (Commission, 2017). How the EC can levy fines surpassing 8.2 billion euros, but the FTC let Google off scot-free is a perfect embodiment of how weak and in desperate need of reform US antitrust law really is. If the EC can find Google guilty on three accounts but the FTC won’t even continue with their investigations, that illustrates eloquently how risk averse the US agencies really are.

Facebook: Most of the commentary surrounding Facebook and antitrust is directed to their acquisitions (and for good reason). In particular, the acquisition of potential competitors: in 2012 Facebook’s acquisition of the photosharing service Instagram and its 2014 acquisition of the messaging service WhatsApp. In a letter to the FTC, the Chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee urged the FTC to examine whether these purchases violated section 7 of the Clayton Act. This section of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers and acquisitions where the effect may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly (Federal Trade Commission, 2021). Some estimates now have Facebook owning three of the top four social media applications. Unlike Amazon, the FTC appear to be taking these allegations seriously. Perhaps their manpower has been directed at Facebook, and this can serve as justification to why Amazon hasn’t had a formalised lawsuit headed their way, yet. In 2019, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the FTC could also be evaluating Facebook’s 2013 purchase of Onavo Mobile LTD - an analytics company that allegedly allowed Facebook to identify fast growing companies and purchase them before they pose a threat. Again, there are significant problems when pursuing such a suit against Facebook, but for different reasons this time. Due to Facebook operating in a market that does not charge users for use of its social network, this would require agencies to confront difficult conceptual ideas when deciding how to define and quantify zero-price markets.

It becomes infinitely harder to prove that consumer welfare has been diminished when a company doesn’t price gouge or operate in predatory pricing. The emergence of these free services is something that antitrust legislation has caught up with as current legislation stipulates that there must be concrete evidence of consumer welfare being damaged by a monopoly. Consumer welfare due to the Chicago school has been focused on prices and not choice or quality of goods or services. Due to the emergence of the Chicago school of thinking, antitrust law was focussed on proving whether mathematically there had been manipulation of consumers going on. Unfortunately, technology just doesn’t fit this old archaic model, and therefore Facebook may be able to defend their acquisitions that gave them such market power. However, even though there are evident flaws with the legislation itself, Facebook may still have a leg to stand on in the eyes of the law even if antitrust law was airtight. Facebook have argued that its large post-acquisition investment in these companies have improved the company’s performance and benefited consumers.

Apple:

Like Google, Apple has faced antitrust claims related to its mobile software. Although there aren’t any government sanctioned investigations at this time, Apple have been met with a flurry of private lawsuits surrounding their design of IOS. In an ongoing trial against Fortnite’s maker Epic Games, a court in California has ruled that Apple cannot stop app developers directing users to third-party payment options (Clayton & Fox, 2021). This came after Epic Games tried to move their in-app purchases system to their own website rather than using the App store where Apple are subject to a 30% commission of all purchases. Epic games argued that the App store was monopolistic and that they had the right to communicate

with their customers. The closed payments system they operate is hugely lucrative for Apple although allegedly the company says it does not know exactly how much it makes from these payments. On 10th September, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers ruled that ‘the court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist’. However, a permanent injunction was issued so Apple can no longer restrict purchases to through their app store. In the grand scheme of things, Apple came out victorious. Not only did Epic fail to demonstrate that Apple was operating in an illegal monopoly, they also have now provided precedence for Apple to roll back on in case of further allegations (Clayton & Fox, 2021). This shows that if you allege that a ‘Big Tech’ company has conducted illegal anticompetitive behaviour, you better be able to prove it, or they may use it against you. There is now case law ruling in favour for Apple that it does not own a monopoly over the app store.

Psychological Argument

When these pieces of legislation are enacted, of course they are going to be held to a utopian sense of scrutiny. The public and academics are never going to be happy or deem antitrust ‘successful’, as there are always improvements to be made. This view leads to a bias where everything is seen through a negative lens. This argument is more primary, as literature has not seemed to pick this up yet. Of course, Antitrust is going to be seen in a negative light, as exceptions where anticompetitive behaviour slips through the cracks, the whole sector of legislation is thrown into reputational damage. It is human nature for one to obey commands. Putting the argument forth that the mere existence of antitrust legislation in an economy is a success, is one that is not as common as initially thought. It is not possible to compare antitrust in the USA, to if there weren't antitrust in the USA, as this is strictly a hypothetical. It is not possible to determine if antitrust has been deeply unsuccessful without seeing the effect on the economy without any antitrust. For this reason, there is an argument to be made that the mere existence of antitrust is enough for most companies to abide by. It is not common human nature to break rules, and the regulatory headache is normally enough for firms to engage in competition fairly.

Conclusion

After inspection of all the ‘Big Tech’/ (FAAMG) companies and how antitrust legislation is affecting them, it’s clear to see that the effect is miniscule (Baer, 2020). The FTC and DOJ may be investigating behind closed doors; there is nothing of substance that has been formalised in the courts at this time. This may be subject to change, but the literature and current news do not point toward this conclusion. It is clear to see that ‘Big Tech’ companies are being regulated or efforts to regulate them are being made, but this is internationally, not in the US. This is evidenced by the fines the EC have imposed on Google.

This study concludes that Antitrust legislation has failed catastrophically in what it is designed to prevent anticompetitive behaviour. This is due to legislation always playing catchup to the innovation of FAAMG companies. In markets such as technology, a one size fits all antitrust stance cannot be efficient. Reform is necessary and luckily this seems to be coming. US senator Amy Klobuchar, the lead Democrat on the Subcommittee on Antitrust, introduced new legislation in February to reinvigorate America’s Antitrust laws. This bill has been read twice in the senate and is making its way onto the agenda slowly but hopefully surely.

BIO Adeeb Ali is a former pupil who studied A levels in Economics, Politics, Maths and Further Maths. He is reading Economics at University College London.

BOOK REVIEW

What Does This Look Like in the Classroom?

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice.

It’s rare to find a book about education that talks to you from the very first chapter, but this one does. Whether you are a PGCE student, ECT, experienced teacher, Head of Department or a Senior Leader, there will be something in this book to give you pause to reflect on your practice and ideas for how to enhance it. What Does This Look Like in the Classroom? Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice combines straight-talking, sensible advice and guidance, with research findings from heavyweights such as Wiliam, Christodoulou, Bennett, Berry, Murphy and Quigley. It discusses the research itself, and how to action the findings in order to have a real impact in your classroom.

Each chapter is presented as a conversation between one of the authors and two researchers, and begins with an introduction to the theme by one of the authors. This dialogic style means the language carries no ego; rather, the authors offer a simple presentation of distilled research and how to implement it as a teacher – the book developed, after all, on a nagging feeling Hendrick couldn’t shake at a conference, where he was listening to an accomplished speaker but wondering what this actually looks like in the classroom. The chapters each cover a fundamental aspect of teaching practice: Behaviour; Reading and Literacy; SEN; Motivation; Memory and Recall; Classroom Talk and Questioning; Learning Myths; and Independent Learning. This structure means that it is not necessary to read it from cover to cover (although I would recommend doing this!) – but instead you can dip in and out of areas as and when you want to know more about them.

To give one example, there is even a chapter for those that feel that they are on the wrong end of the work-life balance: Assessment, Marking and Feedback. It is estimated that £2.5 billion per year of teacher time is wasted in the marking process and the curation of feedback, all due to the ineffective impact that it has on student progress. Wiliam posits that a set of marked books may not be an effective proxy for good teaching – one of the surprising elements to feedback, according to the research, is not only that a lot of it has no impact, but sometimes it can actually do damage: when feedback is given with too much frequency, students become too dependent on the teachers.

The book concludes with a round-table discussion between all of the authors on the topic of Independent Learning – it is an apt way to round off the book and Lemov summarises his stance by saying that 'the most important part of independent learning is writing; it’s the coin of the realm.'

However, even the best books have some ‘even better ifs’! For one, there are some strange font selections in the book that make the bite-size tips at the beginning of each chapter difficult to read, especially if you are reading this with a bedside light, as I am sure many teachers will do! It was also published in 2017, and while Parmar and Picardo’s chapter on technology is excellent, technology is – as we all know – often out-of-date before it hits the open market. Life in a postlockdown classroom, with the significant leaps forward that teachers were thrust into, leaves this chapter feeling in need of a revised, 2022 version. But this can be the only real criticism: overall, it is a fabulous book that everyone in the teaching profession should read and enjoy.

BIO Nick Cale began his career as a French and German teacher and is currently the Deputy Head: Curriculum and Assessment at Berkhamsted School. He has a strong interest in using pupil data to facilitate better pupil outcomes and he has developed an innovative data-tracking tool in conjunction with Microsoft's Power BI.

Carl Hendrick, Robin Macpherson, and Oliver Caviglioli (2017). Melton: John Catt Educational.

The Boy Question: How to Teach Boys to Succeed in School.

Mark Roberts (2021). London: Routledge.

The Boy Question is the sequel to Boys Don’t Try in which the authors focus on debunking myths and common misconceptions around boys’ attainment. In this book, Mark Roberts has written an evidence-informed, yet practical and insightful, book centred around nine topical issues pertaining to the gender attainment gap. The essence of this review focuses on Part A and Part B as I felt this is most important to the central issue of improving boys’ attainment and most applicable to my craft of the classroom.

Part A: Motivating boys to work hard

The academic literature suggests that boys lag academically due to peer pressure, negative teacher expectations, counterproductive boy-specific engagement strategies, and lack of intrinsic motivation. Roberts suggests some practical solutions to these issues and the one that resonates with me most was r ather than focus on trying to ‘hook’ struggling switched off boys, they instead need to taste success in your subject: 'The effect of achievement on self-concept is strong than the effect of self-concept on achievement'. Once pupils have a flavour of success then their self-efficacy will grow (10). I have been actively trying to take on board the suggestions offered of ‘rephrase to amaze’ and ‘feed for fulfilment’ to provide a short-term sense of achievement that can be built up over time to develop self-efficacy. I particularly like the ‘rephrase to amaze’ in which you simply take part of their answer that is factually correct and retort back to the class with an improved version using subject specific terminology. I have noticed that some of the lower achieving boys have started to actively engage and volunteer in class more frequently and the construction of their written language is far better.

Roberts suggests that the use of model answers allows the more reluctant, demotivated boys to emulate success enabling them to grow in confidence. Factoring the use of modelling into my lesson plans has had significant benefits. Adopting an approach of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ provides an opportunity for pupils to help construct exemplar answers. With effective questioning you can draw on pupil input, so they get the satisfaction of doing something well and slowly but surely develop belief in their ability. In time, I have found this an effective tool to refer to as a springboard for success and instilling accountability in their learning. Not only can I see the benefits to pupil learning outcomes but also in my delivery and subject expertise. The process of constructing answers requires a thorough understanding of the assessment objectives and subject content, something that has proven invaluable with new exam board.

Part B: Instilling high expectations in boys

Reassurance was offered in Roberts’ words that 'no matter how good the teaching can be, their performance could be undermined by poor study behaviours'. The aforementioned poor study skills centred on two main aspects (though as a disclaimer this is a generalised stereotype): boys invariably start their revision or homework much nearer the deadline, and secondly, they have an inaccurate inflated perception of their own academic ability. Despite good intentions to adapt effective study skills due to the last-minute panic this is often fallen by the wayside and discarded, relying heavily on ‘last minute cramming’ and rereading notes and textbooks. This is widely acknowledged as less effective than low stakes spaced and retrieval practice.

In the words of Bruce Forsyth, 'it’ll be alright on the night'! This level of contentment impacts significantly on their academic outcomes. So, what is the potential challenge we face as a school on how best to encourage boys to make better metacognitive choices?

- Which revision technique to use (cognitive skill)

'it’ll be alright on the night'!

- Understand when to adapt and refine the use of these techniques (metacognitive skill)

I have reflected on the academic literature and subsequently done some further research to develop my understanding on how to promote effective study skills and feedback. I learnt that it is important to eschew feedback that praises their effort, focuses on their ability, or fixate on task completion. I have been making a conscious effort to feed back on specific elements of their work that is impressive and how it met the success criteria linking to the assessment objectives.

I am actively trying to promote the inherent value of being able to do something rather than seeing education as a means to an end and to show them that academic progress is within their control. I have found it useful to offer discreet praise to individuals, perhaps catching them around school or before the lesson, and found that these smaller scatterings of praise help promote positive relationships.

In summary, I found the insights and practical suggestions in this book helpful with many nuggets of useful suggestions to incorporate into the classroom, but also as a boost of confidence for practical steps that I already do to help narrow the attainment gap and instil motivation.

BIO

Lucie Michell is Teacher of Geography and Deputy Head of Swifts House

JAMES CUTLER

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EDWARD CAIN

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RICHARD BACKHOUSE

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BEN KERR-SHAW

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AIDAN P. THOMPSON

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LEE JEROME

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HANNAH GALBRAITH

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ANNA DICKSON

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SOPHIE BRAND

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EMILY BOWERS

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ISLA PHILLIPS

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GEORGE PICKER

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ADEEB ALI

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If you have an idea for a contribution for issue 5 or would like to be added to our Research mailing list, please express your interest at jcutler@berkhamsted.com.