HWRK Magazine: Issue 28

educational magazine the online magazine for teachers

HWRK ISSUE 28 / FREE HWRKMAGAZINE.CO.UK

ALSO INSIDE

written by teachers for teachers

Supporting Your pupilS to FlouriSh in An increASinglY DigitAl WorlD

• How SHould we evaluate engagement witH ProfeSSional learning?

• How i teacH StudentS to exPlain and aSSeSS in geograPHy • wHat makeS an effective Senior leader?

• effective mentoring StrategieS for induction tutorS and ect mentorS • SHould teacHer-fatHerS take SHared Parental leave?

WE BELIEVE IN A WORLD THAT IS FREE FROM ALL TYPES OF BULLYING BEHAVIOUR.

A G N I K MA E C N E R E DIFF G N I R WE O PLE O P EM NG PE YOU INSPIRING E CHANG

Established in May 2006, we are one of the UK’s most dedicated and ambitious anti-bullying charities. Our award winning work is delivered across the UK and each year, through our work we provide education, training and support to thousands of people.

If you would like to support us and help us to continue our lifechanging work, you can:

Through our innovative, interactive workshops and training programmes, we use our experience, energy and passion to focus on awareness, prevention, building empathy and positive peer relationships all of which are crucial in creating a nurturing environment in which young people and adults can thrive.

\ Fundraise for us

Our Mission is to support individuals, schools, youth and community settings and the workplace through positive and innovative anti-bullying and well-being programmes and to empower individuals to achieve their full potential.

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PEDAGOGY

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Supporting Your pupilS to flouriSh in an increaSinglY Digital WorlD

CURRICULUM

How does this apply to assessing?

I teach assessing in much the same way by explicitly teaching useful phrases and then modelling them into written tasks. A key difference is that I call them Concluding Phrases. I have found this allows students to see where they fit into their longer written work more easily.

PEDAGOGY

For KS3 and KS4 questions where students are asked to assess or evaluate something, they need to weigh up options and decide using evidence. The commonly used paragraph structure is Point, Evidence, Explain, Link - but I often change the Link to Mini Conclusion. This encourages students to give their opinion on the paragraph they’ve written and justify it instead of repeating the question again. It also provides a reminder that these mini conclusions and overall conclusion are where Concluding Phrases go.

Task:

Whilst we should be encouraging more use of technology throughout the entire curriculum, we must also recognise that more can and must be done to protect children and young people as they navigate online spaces. Just as we keep them safe from physical harm, we should be doing the utmost to limit their exposure to digital dangers.

Ongoing discussions around the Online Safety Bill bring this to the fore, as the government endeavours to place duties of care on tech companies to protect users from harmful content. In the meantime, these harms can be limited on an individual basis within schools by simply blocking certain keywords or sites on the school’s networks. An even more effective step in digital safeguarding is the implementation

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Developing Metacognitive planning SkillS

PEDAGOGY

between pupils, both within their school networks and with the wider world.

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of safeguarding software. Such software can, among other functions, appropriately monitor online activity and detect keywords which can identify concerning trends or indicate when a young person may be at risk.

they are required to share certain information and informing them when they have deleted the data when it’s no longer required, will help them gain an understanding of responsible data handling and recognise risks.

However, in the same way we teach our children how to recognise physical dangers themselves and take steps autonomously to protect themselves – such as teaching them how to cross the road safely – we should also be giving them the knowledge and agency to do the same with online dangers.

Digital citizenship skills are also critically important in ensuring that our young people are responsible, careful users of the internet. This ought to include topics such as encouraging empathy and respect in online interactions, understanding how the internet works and ensuring students know how to correctly identify risks such as fake profiles. Not only does this protect them from online dangers, it also helps them to be on the lookout for ways in which they can support others to avoid harms – or even preventing them from engaging in harmful behaviours targeted towards others, such as harassment or bullying.

For example, when and why safeguarding software is deployed should be communicated openly to help students gain awareness of the measures being taken to keep them safe. Additionally, software with informative pop ups to explain to students how their data is being handled i.e. why

- What am I being asked to do?

Developing Metacognitive planning SkillS

- What are the marking criteria?

- What format must the response be in? strategies: - What different approaches do I have to a task such as this one?

- Have I had previous experience using these strategies with a similar task?

- What content do I need to know for the task?

- Do I know all of the content required for this task?

- How are any gaps in knowledge going to be filled?

Where next?

By Nathan Burns

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If you haven’t yet read the first article in the series, then it will be worth reading that first. Once that is done, you are ready to get started on the first ‘strategies’ articles, homing in on metacognitive planning. This piece will provide you with a range of strategies, to complement your current practices, leading to improved metacognitive planning abilities from students.

works their way through each of these aspects. One way in which to ensure that this occurs with students is to provide them with a ‘knowledge of’ grid. Simply provide students with a table with three columns, titled (knowledge of) task, strategies, self.

As part of the planning for a task, students must work their way through each of these columns, making key notes, before they are allowed to move on to the task itself.

‘Knowledge of’ grids

As with many (if not all!) of these strategies, you will need to take time to both model this strategy to students, as well as scaffold their first few attempts. For example, take time to explain to students what each of the three ‘knowledge of’ areas mean:

Metacognition has its processes, including the knowledge of process – knowledge of task, knowledge of strategies and knowledge of self. For successful planning, it is crucial that an individual consciously

As geographers progress past GCSE there are many opportunities for their writing to develop beyond the short-form essays I’ve referred to here. However I am finding that these basic building blocks of geographical writing help them to not only achieve at GCSE but also have the tools to move into their own style and know which skills they are using when doing so.

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@hwrk_magazine

FEATURE

A CurriCulum Of PurPOse

By Marc Hayes

Marc Hayes explores the role of curriculum design in the primary years and how consideration of curriculum outcomes for our children, which sit above those of individual subjects and the National Curriculum, might lead to a more empowered and informed society.

If you’re still not convinced of the importance of culture, try this mental exercise. Imagine a highly effective teacher moving from a school with an ‘excellent’ culture to one with a ‘toxic’ culture. What’s the result? That teacher is likely to remain relatively effective in relation to their new colleagues, but they will slowly but surely adopt negative behaviours from the new culture. It may be unconscious, or they might even deliberately opt for these behaviours to gain acceptance from their new colleagues.

If the opposite situation happened, an ineffective teacher would likely up their game in a positive cultural environment, HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

The school should have a general prevalent set of cultural norms, but each group (formal or informal) will have their own subcultures which come with their own beliefs, rituals and behaviours.

The importance of subcultures

The extent to which these subcultures differ from each other and the overall culture will tell you a lot about how cohesive your school is. Having a wide range of subcultures suggests groups are operating in siloes with little meaningful communication, interaction or collaboration. Schools like this are likely to have wider internal variation in their results, so if you have a department that is performing as an outlier (better or worse), step back and consider whether it is due to significant cultural differences in the department from the rest of the school.

So far, I’ve been talking about school culture as if it were a single coherent entity. In reality, schools are riddled and layered with subcultures that may compliment or aggravate each other.

Different departments may have their own norms and ways of doing things, there might be a ‘staff room gang’ or differences in culture between the new staff and the old guard. In the same way, your student body will have a vibrant set of subcultures, from Year 7 Minecrafters to Year 11 goths, and everything in between.

The recent heatwave in September was a reminder of the very visible effects of human-made climate change. Despite the widespread complaints of the summer weather’s late arrival, muggy classrooms, and disruption to sleeping patterns, the increasing temperatures of these heatwaves nearly always result, at least on social media, in both celebrations and denials of one of the biggest risks to society’s future.

The complexity of climate change, and its far-reaching effects on many aspects of society, can be challenging for many adults to appreciate: if adults do not study Geography or Science beyond KS3, their knowledge of its effects is likely to be limited at best.

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Just like immigration, the cost-of-living crisis, and access to healthcare, climate change is but one of the many significant issues facing modern Britain. But does our

Students’ conclusions are often a one line ‘I agree because…” which usually repeats something already said rather than summarise or further the key geographic themes being discussed. By using Concluding Phrases we are giving students other ways to develop their writing and show their understanding in a more nuanced way.

self:

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adopting new habits and ways of thinking to conform and fit in. Whether we like it or not, human behaviour is heavily influenced by the environment they find themselves in.

I again have a simple list of suggested Concluding Phrases displayed in my classroom which is there to be referred to. However, when discussing how to answer a longer assess question, I will often brainstorm others that are more relevant to the question being answered with the class before starting. This modelling with the students shows them my thinking and gives them the tools to be able to be more resilient when faced

“This question is asking about the sustainability of transport systems in a UK city, so after I’ve explained each strategy with my case study evidence I will need a mini conclusion. If it’s about sustainability I want to be assessing how sustainable they are, so Concluding Phrases like ‘I think this is quite environmentally sustainable because…’ and ‘Overall this is…’ could help me. In my overall conclusion I need to compare so ‘more sustainable than…’ will be useful.”

- Which strategy is likely to be most efficient?

This is article 2 in a series of 9 articles exploring the theory and application of metacognition. The aim is to provide you with bitesize chunks of information on metacognition, and metacognitive strategies, for you to start implementation in your classroom.

Managing culture to achieve long laSting change

student body. Unfortunately, this is not a straightforward task and requires a lot of time and energy, and I don’t know about you, but I’m often lacking in both.

with an unfamiliar exam question.

Concluding Phrases I believe this is…

I think…

Based on the evidence…

To summarise…

Overall…

This is more significant/important/ sustainable/_______ than… because…

education system ensure that if pupils stop their study of subjects like Geography at the end of Year 9 (or Year 8 in some schools), they have a sufficiently solid understanding of the local, national, and international issues for which they will elect politicians to resolve?

Moreover, does our education system ensure that pupils have the knowledge they need to be able to feel empowered to take action to resolve (or at least play a meaningful role in resolving) some of these issues themselves?

Curriculum Design When we consider curriculum design, we are often encouraged to start with the outcomes in mind and plan backwards.

More often than not, this can lead to carefully designed teaching sequences which ensure that children are able to know more, do more and remember more over the long term.

Over the last ten years, there has been much discussion surrounding the identification of the key concepts across the different subjects of the National Curriculum and the considerations which have been necessary due to the lack of specification for many of the foundation subjects. Many schools have moved away from topic-based curriculum, instead favouring the teaching the different disciplines more discretely than was more common before the 2014 National Curriculum.

The lack of specificity in the 2014 National Curriculum provides curriculum designers with a complex mix of freedoms, responsibilities, and considerations.

Schools have the freedom to design a curriculum which meets the needs of their pupils and communities; the responsibility to make the right choices in relation to these needs requires no explanation; once the curriculum outcomes have been decided, schools need to consider the provision and time required to achieve them.

A cursory glance through the Primary National Curriculum reveals almost paradoxically both a torrent of curriculum concepts for each subject yet scant detail regarding the content to be taught.

Treating these concepts as outcomes as an end in themselves satisfies the requirements of the curriculum, but this approach can fail to appreciate some of the bigger ideas which transcend subject disciplines.

Despite the somewhat heated discussions about whether a knowledge-rich curriculum is appropriate for primary pupils, there are some ‘big ideas’ which require intentional teaching for children if children are to be given any chance of understanding them. Not including this knowledge at KS1 and KS2 can restrict learning at KS3 and in some cases mean that some children in society will have a much more limited understanding of important issues thus disempowering them and contributing itself to social injustice.

@hwrk_magazine

hoW i teach StuDentS to explain anD aSSeSS in geographY

FEATURE

EXPERIENCE

Key bodies of knowledge, such as food production, sustainability, justice, and

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Whatever one regards as the principal purpose of education (whether it be to prepare individuals to make positive contributions to society, to reduce inequality, or to engender a love of learning) curriculum design plays an essential role in achieving these purposes.

teaching Behaviour aS an earlY career teacher

However, there is a strong argument for going one level of curriculum planning above that of subject disciplines when we are determining curriculum content.

A great model for building these relationships is the ‘emotional bank account’. There will be countless opportunities during the average week to show interest in a student, to ask how they played in the rugby game last night, or if they caught anything when they went fishing with Grandad at the weekend.

Similarly there are opportunities to give a little focused help to individuals with the learning. All these interactions are moments when a deposit can be made in the child’s emotional bank account. By taking an interest, showing kindness, or simply spending time, you are building up credit with that child. Then, in November, when you are tired and going down with a cold and you snap at them, you will pay out from that account, but you’ll still be in credit, because you paid in, day in and day out.

Teaching behaviour is about being explicit.

How exactly will your routines work?

When you collect the homework, do they pass their books to the end of the row, or

forward? Thinking your routines through in as much detail as possible will save you from looking like a ditherer and losing learning time.

Highly successful sports coaches talk about ‘process’. Instead of encouraging their teams to focus on the outcome, with a ‘win at all costs’ mentality, they emphasise sticking to established processes, that will tend to bring about a positive result. In football for example, such a process might be to keep the ball, by passing it swiftly and moving in patterns that provide a free colleague to pass it to. Stick to the plan says the coach, focus on the process, and the result will take care of itself.

We can apply this thinking in the classroom. Instead of worrying ‘Will my class behave?’, establish processes that you will focus on. Some good examples would be following a ‘one voice at a time’ routine, taking an interest in your pupils, and paying attention to those who get it right. Do these things relentlessly and ‘behaviour’ will improve.

I adopt a simple model when I think about teaching behaviour: Teach it, Model it, Highlight it. ‘Teach it’ covers the explicit teaching of the behaviours you want to see, such as lining up outside the room, answering the register with a ‘Yes Sir’ or using one voice at a time.

Creating and sticking to routines is the way to do this. ‘Model it’ is about showing your pupils what these behaviours look like. When you hand out books, don’t throw them on to your pupils’ desks; place them carefully instead, and when your pupils speak to you, listen and be seen to listen. The rules must apply to you to. Finally, ‘Highlight it’ means take every opportunity to single out and praise by name, pupils who demonstrate the behaviours you want to see.

If you systematically and relentlessly teach, model and highlight desired behaviour you will find that these processes deliver the classroom in which you and your pupils can thrive.

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@hwrk_magazine

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@hwrk_magazine

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CONTENTS EDITOR’S LETTER: Things I love about being Editor of HWRK Magazine

FEATURES 6. A CURRICULUM OF PURPOSE

Marc Hayes explores the role of curriculum design in the primary years

PEDAGOGY 36. DEvELOPING METACOGNITIvE PLANNING SKILLS

A range of strategies, to 10. MANAGING CULTURE TO ACHIEvE LONG LASTING complement your current practices, leading to improved CHANGE metacognitive planning The importance of organisational culture is well abilities from students understood in big business, but often overlooked in schools 16. HOw SHOULD wE EvALUATE ENGAGEMENT wITH PROFESSIONAL LEARNING?

An exploration of ways we might evaluate our CPD provision and its impact 24. IS YOUR CLASSROOM vENTILATION GOOD ENOUGH?

40. SUPPORTING YOUR PUPILS TO FLOURISH IN AN INCREASINGLY DIGITAL wORLD

Is the current education system preparing children for a world that may no longer exist by the time they reach adulthood?

More than half of teachers think that ventilation problems in classrooms could be hindering learning 45. MAKE A NOTE OF THIS! Was I right to make my 30. OUTDOOR PLAY: KNOw THE BENEFITS AND GET students hand write summaries SOME IDEAS! of information I wanted them Knowing how you can encourage your pupils to engage in to learn? play activities that support their classroom learning is vital @hwrk_magazine

CURRICULUM 52. HOw I TEACH STUDENTS TO EXPLAIN AND ASSESS IN GEOGRAPHY

How to teach geographers to use data, apply understanding, discuss and make judgements, to link the world together

LEADERSHIP 58. wHAT MAKES AN EFFECTIvE SENIOR LEADER?

Key takeaways from experience and research to help others consider how to ensure effective team leadership

EXPERIENCE 62. TEACHING BEHAvIOUR AS AN EARLY CAREER TEACHER

How do you want your pupils to feel when they are in your company?

65. EFFECTIvE MENTORING STRATEGIES FOR INDUCTION TUTORS AND ECT MENTORS

Tracey Leese explains what she sees as key priorities for mentors inducting Early Career Teachers 68. SHOULD TEACHER-FATHERS TAKE SHARED PARENTAL LEAvE?

Taking shared parental leave is uncommon, but as Will Pope explains, there’s an excellent case for it 72. COMPUTING POSTER

Tips on computational mastery

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h w r k M A G A z i n e . c o . u k // M e e T T h e T e A M

CONTRIBUTORS WRITTEN BY TEACHERS FOR TEACHERS

Nathan Burns

Eve Draper

Nathan is a Head of Maths, education article writer and the author of “Inspiring Deep Learning with Metacognition”.

@EveDraperGeo

William Pope

Eve Draper is a Teacher of Geography and an ITT mentor in East Yorkshire. She loves all the usual Geography teacher cliches like maps, hills, the sea and a good walk!

William is the Head of Year 13 in a school in Surrey, having previously been Head of Physics there for 5 years. He has taught in the UK and Australia, and has two young daughters.

Al Kingsley

Marc Hayes

Alan Siggins

Al Kingsley is Chair of Hampton Academies Trust, Digital Poverty Alliance Ambassador and Forbes Technology Council Member. He writes about education, technology, leadership and governance on his blog https://alkingsley.com/

Marc is an Assistant Headteacher and Year 6 teacher at Roundhay All-Through School in Leeds.

He leads on curriculum development and is passionate about curriculum design, teaching and learning, and school leadership. He blogs at www. marcrhayes.com

Alan joined Airflow Developments in 2008 as Managing Director. Prior to this, he served in various other industry sectors. Alan has represented BEAMA the industry body for ventilation when helping to design and implement compliance and competency schemes for ventilation.

He also represented industry for the Government commissioned review Each Home Counts.

Dan Pullin

Faheema Vachhiat

Stephen Baker

Dan is an Assistant Headteacher and Economics teacher in a comprehensive school in West Oxfordshire. He holds a master’s degree in educational leadership and management and is particularly interested in curriculum, data and how behavioural science can be applied in schools.

Faheemah always seeks ways to innovate her teaching. Through her substack, she shares her reflections on teaching and learning, explores the latest trends and best practices and shares strategies for other educators looking to enhance their approaches to curriculum design.

Stephen Baker spent 17 years in teaching before working with local authorities and for the National Strategies as a regional adviser in Yorkshire and the Humber. He is now a behaviour consultant and trainer, passionate about helping teachers to succeed. His new book That Behaviour Book: The simple truth about teaching children (Crown House Publishing) is out now.

@MrMetacognition

@AlKingsley_Edu

@pullinecon

@mrmarchayes

@FVachhiat

@behaviour_steve

Tracey Leese

Nikki Sullivan

Lindsay Galbraith

Lucinda Powell

Tracey Leese is an Assistant Headteacher at St Thomas More Catholic Academy in Longton, co-author of Teach Like a Queen and a passionate advocate for women in leadership

Nikki is a Deputy Head teacher.

With experience in both pastoral and academic senior leadership in the UK and Malaysia, Nikki has led implementation of policy development, CPD, and building a team of Faculty Research Leads.

Lindsay Galbraith is an educational leader, currently serving as the Assistant vice Principal at Charlton School, Telford. Her passion for teaching and learning ignited a deep commitment to shaping engaging and comprehensive educational experiences for students.

Lucinda Powell is Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning and a psychology teacher at Abingdon School.

She has taught psychology since 2002 in a variety of schools in London and Oxfordshire. She also works to support teachers to use evidenced based psychology in all aspects of their classroom practice, her Podcast ‘Psychology in the Classroom’ brings psychological research directly to the classroom teacher.

@MrsqueenLeese

@Nikki_Sullivan

@MsGHist

@LucindaP0well

HWRK MAGAZINE PUBLISHED BY EDU ONLINE GROUP LTD 1st Floor, GD Offices, 47 Bridgewater Street, Liverpool, L1 0AR E: enquiries@edu-online.co.uk T: 0151 294 6215 EDITOR Andy McHugh PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Alec Frederick Power DESIGNER Adam Blakemore MANAGING DIRECTORS G Gumbhir, Alec Frederick Power Legal Disclaimer: While precautions have been made to ensure the accuracy of contents in this publication and digital brands neither the editors, publishers not its agents can accept responsibility for damages or injury which may arise therefrom.

No part of any of the publication whether in print or digital may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owner.

Letter from the editor In this issue, we dive into many of the key areas that schools must get right if they’re to succeed in their mission.

We range from strategies on molding overarching school culture, to how we mold our individual staff and students.

Things I love about being Editor of HWRK Magazine

Our writing team also explored research around leadership and how to develop the knowledge, skills and experience of our newest entrants to the profession. We also picked out some especially useful tips and tricks for teaching our students in a way that prepares them for a new future - one that we could only have imagined a few years ago.

2. I feel like I get the best CPD just by being exposed to so many great ideas every time I read a draft piece.

It has been such a privilege to have worked with such fantastic writers in this issue, as it has been with writers in so many previous issues. I’ve compiled some of my thoughts below:

HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

1. I get to find out about how things are done in loads of schools that I would never manage to visit.

3. I’m reminded daily about how wonderful the job of teaching is, despite so many stories of things not going so well.

4. It gives me an insight into the issues really facing teachers and ways we can address them.

5. I feel part of a very special community (#TeamHWRK) of teachers who come together to share what they know, to make the lives of other teachers easier and more fulfilling.

Thank you to everyone who has written for us, during my time as Editor, over the past two and a half years. You’ve made a huge contribution to the profession and I can’t wait for your next pitch landing in my inbox!

As for anyone who reads this and thinks “Well, I could do that”, you’re probably right.

Send me your ideas and let’s get you involved. The more niche the better!

Best of luck for your start to the new school year and if you’ve had the time to read this far, then you’re probably doing just fine!

Andy McHugh

Editor | HWRK Magazine

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A CurriCulum Of PurPOse

By Marc Hayes

Marc Hayes explores the role of curriculum design in the primary years and how consideration of curriculum outcomes for our children, which sit above those of individual subjects and the National Curriculum, might lead to a more empowered and informed society.

The recent heatwave in September was a reminder of the very visible effects of human-made climate change. Despite the widespread complaints of the summer weather’s late arrival, muggy classrooms, and disruption to sleeping patterns, the increasing temperatures of these heatwaves nearly always result, at least on social media, in both celebrations and denials of one of the biggest risks to society’s future.

The complexity of climate change, and its far-reaching effects on many aspects of society, can be challenging for many adults to appreciate: if adults do not study Geography or Science beyond KS3, their knowledge of its effects is likely to be limited at best.

Just like immigration, the cost-of-living crisis, and access to healthcare, climate change is but one of the many significant issues facing modern Britain. But does our

0 6 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // I S S U E 2 8

education system ensure that if pupils stop their study of subjects like Geography at the end of Year 9 (or Year 8 in some schools), they have a sufficiently solid understanding of the local, national, and international issues for which they will elect politicians to resolve?

Moreover, does our education system ensure that pupils have the knowledge they need to be able to feel empowered to take action to resolve (or at least play a meaningful role in resolving) some of these issues themselves?

Curriculum Design When we consider curriculum design, we are often encouraged to start with the outcomes in mind and plan backwards.

More often than not, this can lead to carefully designed teaching sequences which ensure that children are able to know more, do more and remember more over the long term.

Over the last ten years, there has been much discussion surrounding the identification of the key concepts across the different subjects of the National Curriculum and the considerations which have been necessary due to the lack of specification for many of the foundation subjects. Many schools have moved away from topic-based curriculum, instead favouring the teaching the different disciplines more discretely than was more common before the 2014 National Curriculum.

However, there is a strong argument for going one level of curriculum planning above that of subject disciplines when we are determining curriculum content.

@hwrk_magazine

The lack of specificity in the 2014 National Curriculum provides curriculum designers with a complex mix of freedoms, responsibilities, and considerations.

Schools have the freedom to design a curriculum which meets the needs of their pupils and communities; the responsibility to make the right choices in relation to these needs requires no explanation; once the curriculum outcomes have been decided, schools need to consider the provision and time required to achieve them.

A cursory glance through the Primary National Curriculum reveals almost paradoxically both a torrent of curriculum concepts for each subject yet scant detail regarding the content to be taught.

Treating these concepts as outcomes as an end in themselves satisfies the requirements of the curriculum, but this approach can fail to appreciate some of the bigger ideas which transcend subject disciplines.

Despite the somewhat heated discussions about whether a knowledge-rich curriculum is appropriate for primary pupils, there are some ‘big ideas’ which require intentional teaching for children if children are to be given any chance of understanding them. Not including this knowledge at KS1 and KS2 can restrict learning at KS3 and in some cases mean that some children in society will have a much more limited understanding of important issues thus disempowering them and contributing itself to social injustice.

FEATURE

Key bodies of knowledge, such as food production, sustainability, justice, and

Whatever one regards as the principal purpose of education (whether it be to prepare individuals to make positive contributions to society, to reduce inequality, or to engender a love of learning) curriculum design plays an essential role in achieving these purposes.

HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

I S S U E 2 8 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // 07

climate change, are not specified in the Primary National Curriculum yet depend on a strong grasp of the content from KS1 and 2. The foundational knowledge provided at primary needs to be sufficiently robust for children to understand the nuance of content at KS3 and KS4 and be able to make connections relevant to the world in which they live.

Long before universal education existed, the practices of agriculture would have been a key component in any farming child’s education. When Britain was an agrarian society, much of the knowledge related to food production would have been passed down from generation to generation.

Without this education, crops might have failed, thus incomes would have dwindled, and hunger would have eventually ensued. These days, food is something which might as well appear by magic on the supermarket shelves. In my school, a Y1 child told their teacher quite confidently that vegetables came from ‘Abel and Cole’ (a premium vegetable box subscription service).

As children develop tacit knowledge about ‘food growth’, they might begin to understand food availability depends on the time of day, or day of the week, a supermarket is visited. Despite it being so fundamental to our survival, our advanced economy means that agricultural practices need not be taught to every member of society.

However, when our pupils grow older and are eligible to vote, hold positions of responsibility, and generally live their lives, they need to understand about so many of the factors that relate to such a fundamental need if they are to have any chance at making informed decisions.

All of these concepts can be taught at primary, and many are indeed specified outcomes of the science and geography curriculums. While vegetation belts, for example, may not immediately appear as a central curriculum topic, their importance becomes evident when viewed through the lens of how comprehending them contributes to a broader, more profound understanding of larger concepts. This perspective underscores their significance within the curriculum and justifies the allocation of curriculum time to their study.

based on the significance of disciplinary concepts in achieving the wider goals of the school’s curriculum offer.

In what is perceived to be an already overloaded curriculum, how might it even be conceivable to allocate further curriculum time to seemingly minor concepts? This isn’t, however, an argument for allocating more time to any curriculum area, rather it is an argument for how these considerations might be made.

A democratic curriculum ensures that our pupils become adults who can make informed decisions about the world in which they live. The intent behind each subject’s curriculum in terms of the depth of understanding we want our children to achieve is critical to how well our children will be able to engage with the more complex, multi-disciplinary ideas that they encounter as they move through secondary education and into their adult lives.

Considering the level of understanding we want our children to have is a helpful way of selecting and sequencing curriculum content, as well as informing necessary curriculum time and significance. When these considerations are made at a level above that of the individual subjects, leaders can make more informed decisions

Although I have mentioned concepts such as climate change and sustainability, this article is not an argument for politicising the curriculum. Rather, it is about making the curriculum more democratic. If knowledge which unlocks understanding of complex issues isn’t taught to our children in a meaningful way, we run the risk of closing doors to pupils rather than opening them.

Designing the school curriculum to enable pupils to understand these broader ideas means that we can move from a curriculum of content coverage to one which can truly change lives.

Food production is but one example.

Others include concepts such as sustainability, justice, health, and conflict. Whilst teaching this content directly to young children is not always required or developmentally appropriate, teaching the content that enables understanding of these concepts most certainly is.

For children to understand the complexity of food production, they need to know, among other things, about the necessary conditions for plant growth, the places in the world where types of foods can grow, the dependency of these vegetation belts on climate and ecosystems, the environmental impact of food transportation, the seasons in which foods can grow and how this affects availability.

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Managing Culture to aChieve lasting Change

By Dan Pullin

Culture is the unwritten rules. It’s the tangled web of social norms and expectations within a group that determines much of the behaviours of the members. The way things are done. The importance of organisational culture is well understood in big business, but often overlooked in schools.

Why is culture important?

“If you don’t manage culture, it manages you.” These wise words came from the social psychologist Edgar Shein, who passed way at the start of this year.

According to Shein in his seminal model, culture has three levels: • Artefacts – this is all the things that you can easily see or hear in the environment.

It could be how staff dress, how they interact with each other or even in-jokes told in the staff room.

• Espoused values – how members explain their actions. This is what members say is important. Many schools have a set of values that (allegedly) underpin the decisions made.

• Underlying assumptions - these are the unconscious beliefs that influence how 1 0 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // I S S U E 2 8

people think, feel and behave. This is the deepest and most important level of culture but, unfortunately, also the hardest to measure.

More recent models of organisation culture consider the visible and invisible.

Vision statements, strategy documents and policies – those are visible – the way the school says it does things. The invisible is the way the school really does things – the unwritten rules, beliefs, traditions and stories.

Leading change in education (or any industry) is about improving outcomes.

Better GCSE results, better punctuality, fewer exclusions, the list goes on.

However, as much as we’d like to, we can’t simply change outcomes. To do so we need to change how staff or students behave because:

Behaviours -> Outcomes Initiatives to change behaviours in school are plentiful, but have you noticed how many fail to have any lasting impact? I’ve experienced dozens of initiatives that have been lost without a trace by the next academic year, resulting in no lasting behaviour change and certainly no impact on outcomes. The missing link leading to these failures is that the implementation failed to understand the vital role of culture in influencing behaviours. Put simply:

Culture -> Behaviours -> Outcomes Therefore, if you want to achieve lasting behaviour change and improved outcomes, the goal is to change the culture – whether it be in the staff or @hwrk_magazine

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student body. Unfortunately, this is not a straightforward task and requires a lot of time and energy, and I don’t know about you, but I’m often lacking in both.

If you’re still not convinced of the importance of culture, try this mental exercise. Imagine a highly effective teacher moving from a school with an ‘excellent’ culture to one with a ‘toxic’ culture. What’s the result? That teacher is likely to remain relatively effective in relation to their new colleagues, but they will slowly but surely adopt negative behaviours from the new culture. It may be unconscious, or they might even deliberately opt for these behaviours to gain acceptance from their new colleagues.

If the opposite situation happened, an ineffective teacher would likely up their game in a positive cultural environment, HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

adopting new habits and ways of thinking to conform and fit in. Whether we like it or not, human behaviour is heavily influenced by the environment they find themselves in.

The school should have a general prevalent set of cultural norms, but each group (formal or informal) will have their own subcultures which come with their own beliefs, rituals and behaviours.

The importance of subcultures

The extent to which these subcultures differ from each other and the overall culture will tell you a lot about how cohesive your school is. Having a wide range of subcultures suggests groups are operating in siloes with little meaningful communication, interaction or collaboration. Schools like this are likely to have wider internal variation in their results, so if you have a department that is performing as an outlier (better or worse), step back and consider whether it is due to significant cultural differences in the department from the rest of the school.

So far, I’ve been talking about school culture as if it were a single coherent entity. In reality, schools are riddled and layered with subcultures that may compliment or aggravate each other.

Different departments may have their own norms and ways of doing things, there might be a ‘staff room gang’ or differences in culture between the new staff and the old guard. In the same way, your student body will have a vibrant set of subcultures, from Year 7 Minecrafters to Year 11 goths, and everything in between.

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Changing the culture So, you’ve considered the culture of your school, department or even class and you’ve decided something needs to change – where do you start? Firstly, timing is key.

Over time there are points when culture is weaker and more open to change. These are known as leverage points.

We all instinctively know you don’t attempt cultural change on a cold, dark day in the middle of January. The strongest regularly occurring leverage point is the start of the new school year in September.

Staff and students come back refreshed after a break and are open to new ways of working, or at least may have forgotten

Now you need to target these leaders and relentlessly model the new desirable behaviours to them, explain to them why they are needed and send them out to do the same.

Finally, you need patience and perseverance. Cultural change is slow, like turning a tanker. Be warned that ‘culture treats change like a virus’. It mobilises its members like antibodies to attack anything foreign to it. Even when pursuing positive and well-meaning changes to a culture some staff will fight it. They may even genuinely believe they are doing it in the best interests of the group. Fighting the good fight and standing up to the dark overlords.

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some of the ingrained habits of previous academic year.

Other leverage points could include things like a change of staffing, the opening of new facilities or a significant anniversary.

For example, a new headteacher is a powerful opportunity for cultural change in the staff, as would be the opening of a new sixth form block for the culture of the sixth form students.

Second, you need to identify and target your cultural leaders - the group members who have greatest influence over the culture of the group. Again, depending on what you are trying to influence, these could be staff or students. In whole

school change, these influencers are often found among middle leaders, though this isn’t a universal rule. You may find it useful to turn this process into a diagram, particularly with larger groups: 1. Make a list of all the group members.

2. Highlight the cultural leaders.

3. Draw lines from the leaders to those group members who they are likely to influence forming a cobweb-style model.

4. Work through identifying who the leaders are to influence the whole group.

Change is seldom embraced because it embodies uncertainty and demands extra effort when energy is scarce and where maintaining the status quo feels safer.

Leading this change will take time, energy and persistence.

If you are interested in understanding more about organisational culture, I can highly recommend the following books:

You will ‘promote what you permit’ so be prepared to relentlessly challenge behaviours that go against the cultural change you are pursuing. Turning a blind eye, even to a small minority, can be kryptonite to what you are trying to achieve as, ultimately, the culture is defined by the worst behaviours the leaders will tolerate. However, if you persist you will get there and eventually achieve the lasting change that is often illusive.

• Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging by Doug Lemov

• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

• Leveraging the Impact of Culture and Climate by Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker • Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us about the Business of Life by James Kerr

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How SHould we evaluate engagement witH ProfeSSional learning?

By Nikki Sullivan

In my previous article, CPD and Protecting Peoples’ Pie Charts (HWRK Magazine, July 2023), I wrote about how we must ensure that our enthusiasm for staff professional development does not lead to us to (1) seeking false proxies for effective CPD and (2) consequently placing undue burdens on staff, who are, ultimately, “humans first, professionals second” (Mary Myatt).

In this follow-up piece, I will be exploring some of the ways we might evaluate our CPD provision and its impact because, despite the challenges around this, our staff’s time is too precious, and CPD is too powerful an investment, not to engage in this ongoing review.

I must start with a caveat. One of the key messages that has come out of my reading and writing in this area is: “Good evaluation does not need to be complex; what is necessary is good planning and paying attention to evaluation at the outset of the professional development program, not at the end.”

Guskey, quoted in Earley and Porritt This article explores principles of evaluation which may prove helpful both retrospectively when looking to refine our approaches, or at the start of a CPD-based implementation project.

The problems When evaluating CPD, we face issues around correlation and causation, multiple inputs affecting singular outputs, and the intangibility of some of the impact measures we seek to evaluate.

Peps McCrea describes teaching as having a “fuzzy feedback loop”. Unlike darts, the relationship between action (teaching)

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and impact (student learning) is unclear, consequently making it harder to improve our practice. Therefore, if we consider CPD as ‘teacher learning’ we are no further forwards because of the same “fuzzy feedback loop”. A quiz to check for understanding might have its place as part of a CPD event. Still, it would be unwise to rely solely on such strategies.

Should we look to evaluate CPD in schools by looking at student outcomes (e.g. SATs results or P8 scores) this issue is only exacerbated – the “fuzzy feedback” is multiplied. To extend the analogy, if we put in place CPD for 100 darts players, we can evaluate the impact (scores) from the refined action (throwing the dart). If we put in place CPD for 100 teachers, this causal connection is not as clear or attributable. Even if a school has been cautious in its implementation of a singular CPD refinement, it is rare that there is not more of an orchestra (or even cacophony) of implementations in schools which could have impacted students’ results.

We could look at staff retention as an easily quantifiable measure that evidence suggests is impacted by “the feeling of undertaking good professional development” (Coe et al.), but again, we face issues of sole attributability.

If we go from the problematic to the downright ugly, we might look to evaluate the impact of our CPD model by evaluating the quality of teachers. As has been highlighted multiple times over, this is foolish. As Dylan Wiliam states: “Even if we combine classroom observations, measures of student progress and student surveys, the ratings of individual teachers are still not very accurate unless we use data over a number of years. In fact […] we would need to collect data on each teacher for eleven years.”

In addition, we don’t just want to know if something is having a positive impact – our evaluation needs to tell us what’s working, what’s not working, and why? Some of the above measures would provide some spurious data but may not provide insights into how to refine our approach.

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The easy(/easier) Time As shared recently in a blog post from Professor Rob Coe, “roughly 1% of an average teacher’s working time is spent in professional development (PD),” despite the evidence base around its positive, sustainable impact. Time spent on CPD is easy to measure – it may not be a measure of impact, but it can be an evaluative indicator.

Common approaches This is not the article to get into the debate around teacher autonomy, but for argument’s sake, let’s assume that there will be some things we want to be common within a school. As an example, meeting and greeting at the door, with a bell task on the board. Let’s say that some CPD time has been used to support staff in engaging with the thinking behind this practice, what this could look like in their subject/phase, and the mechanics in the classroom.

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Here, we can be clear about what we want to measure; we can easily see whether it is happening and how quickly students begin work. And, although this is one very specific kind of CPD (because we are not just using CPD to train staff in a set of pre-determined or even co-constructed strategies) if we have decided that we value it, then we need to attend to it. The specificity we see here gives us a way into considering the evaluation of CPD.

Untangling the complexity How much time is one thing. The effectiveness of the use of this time is something else altogether. As discussed in Part 1, we must always consider the “opportunity cost” (Dylan Wiliam).

Consequently, evaluating our CPD offer isn’t only about evaluating its impact; it’s about evaluating the impact of each element in relation to one other. What is working better, what is working less well, and why?

The below is as far as I have got with pulling my reading and thinking together.

1) Be specific about what we want to measure, both “macro and micro,” action and impact “We do want small micro effects to cumulatively create a macro impact.”

(Weston and Clay) As Weston and Clay discuss, sometimes we want to evaluate small changes which give us feedback about a specific element of CPD, and at other times we need to step back and consider, “How did we do overall?” The latter is almost easier to answer and a key part of a yearly CPD evaluation process. But we need to also shape this into what’s working, what’s not working, and why? Here is where we need greater specificity and, consequently, ongoing evaluation.

When considering the actions we wish to review, we need to recognise the multitude of components that constitute CPD – the forms, the mechanisms that make up these forms (Sims et al.), the content the forms of CPD serve, the logistics of this

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CPD in school… the list goes on. If we were to look at the “micro”, it might be focusing our evaluation on a particular CPD mechanism or the use of a specific time slot. Moving slightly up the scale, we might want to evaluate a singular form of CPD. When considering the impact we wish to review, although ultimately “direct CPD” (Weston and Clay) has improved student learning as its ultimate goal, again, we often need to go more “micro” in our evaluative measures, considering individual teachers, teams, culture, and students. Earley and Porritt discuss looking at the impact on products, processes and outcomes. Guskey (discussed in Bubb and Earley) explores five levels of impact: participants’ reactions; participants’ learning; organisation support and change; participants’ use of new knowledge and skills; pupil learning outcomes. Ultimately, clarity is critical.

Are we looking at the impact on teacher understanding of spaced retrieval? Or reduction in teacher workload? Or how much time staff have to collaborate? Or how quickly Year 9, Set 3 start work? As quoted by the TDA in their 2008 report, when evaluating impact, the closer we get to our ultimate goal of student learning, “the greater number of other variables come into play.” This is why, although it is pivotal to be clear on a specific intended impact on student learning, we must also consider the incremental impacts that will lead to this.

There will be times when it is the action we wish to evaluate – I want to know more about the impact of our introduction of peer observations. There will be times when it is an impact measure we wish to evaluate – I want to know more about the actions helping and hindering teacher motivation. This ‘either end approach’ is an additional layer of stickiness, and why specificity at the outset of our evaluation is key.

2) Inform what we want to measure and any relevant ‘success criteria’ through engaging in best bets and external expertise Because teaching has a fuzzy feedback loop, trial and error is an ineffective route to refinement. The same, therefore, can be said for CPD. These challenges are the very

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reason it is pivotal to engage in ‘best bets’ and ensure our CPD planning, including evaluation measures, is evidenceinformed. Whether it be Zoe and Mark Enser, the EEF or Shaun Allison (all listed in the bibliography), through engaging in this reading first, it becomes more likely that we will be choosing a ‘worthwhile’ measure (whilst, of course, also improving the quality of what we implement).

This engagement in the literature around successful CPD also enables us to create greater detail, where relevant, around ‘success criteria’ or WAGOLL (what a good one looks like). For example, when evaluating a particular form of CPD, is there sufficient clarity around its ‘active ingredients’? If looking to evaluate the culture of CPD in our schools, have we engaged with the ‘School Environment and Leadership: Evidence Review’ from the EBE to help us determine what criteria within this broader measure we should focus our attention on?

3) Engage in a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, considering patterns across groups, and take a baseline “Establishing the current practice or baseline is vital to help colleagues articulate the quality and depth of the subsequent impact on adult practice and young people’s learning.” (Porritt, 2009, quoted in Earley and Porritt) The greater the complexity, or the more “macro” what we want to measure, the more likely it is that we will need multiple sources of information to form our insights.

The likelihood is that we will be using a combination of the following: Staff voice (deliberately at the top of the list!)

Student voice (carefully!)

Walkthroughs Student work Internal data Student outcomes

Observation of, and resources from, CPD activities Pivotal here is that we remember that we are evaluating our CPD provision, and therefore the actions should be for us as senior and middle leaders. In a cohesive CPD model, teachers will already know what they are working on – this review is for us to determine what we can do better, feeding into future CPD plans.

Many of these strategies involve asking staff, which takes up their time. Asking is invaluable, but we need to ensure it is manageable. At our school, we utilise ‘60-second staff voice’ using Microsoft Forms, usually doing no more than two per half-term. We also put quantitative questions first and make the qualitative questions optional. This is developing work but has already afforded us some valuable insights.

Additionally, both quantitative and qualitative methods need to be designed in such a way as to give us insights into patterns, e.g. across teacher career stages or student groups. And, for both methods, we take a baseline.

Quantitative measures can, most obviously, give us insights into growth/ decline, e.g. the number of minutes lost to low-level disruption in a classroom.

We should aim to be specific in our goal – not just look at whether measures are going up or down, but by how much.

If we are looking at the response to the survey question, “Leaders make appropriate provision for my professional development,” then ‘an increase’ is not sufficiently clear. How much of an increase? This will depend heavily on our baseline measure (consider a school at 57% vs 97%).

Getting close to the action is important.

If we want to evaluate a particular form of CPD – get in and see it. If done supportively, formatively, it need not feel ‘top down’ and can be part of a school’s ‘improve not prove’ culture, in the same way that we visit lessons. Where we attend sessions, because we have co-constructed or shared our success criteria, we can see what is working well and how we might refine approaches. And, in the same way that the person observing a lesson is often the one who gets the most out of the process, we can enable other staff members involved in delivering CPD to also participate in this activity.

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4) Systemise and yet be responsive Key dates and milestones for evaluation and attending to what we value need to be scheduled in advance – schools are too busy, and roles too multifaceted, for it to be otherwise. Building a calendar ensures we start from a position of clarity and cohesion. Where appropriate, choose dates linked with data drops, allowing systems and structures to work together, considering where one activity can serve

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multiple purposes. Without this efficiency, we run the risk of spending too much time on evaluation and leaving insufficient time for the action it is intended to lead to.

Make it so you don’t have to remember to remember.

What we want to measure and, subsequently, the appropriate evaluation methods, will determine when this evaluation should occur. When we are looking to set up our evaluation for a new refinement to our CPD model, setting a

realistic timeline is key – the amount of time it might take to see an impact on the use of wait time in the classroom versus teacher motivation will be different.

Allow for flex where needed – if we get to that point in the calendar and there was meant to be some staff voice, but we know now is not the time, remember we made the calendar in the first place – the systems we build serve us, not the other way around.

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5) Speak to staff “If schools are going to transform themselves into places where teachers can thrive, then we’ll need […] the collective knowledge available...” (David Didau) In theory, this section could sit in with point 3 about quantitative and qualitative sources. But, for me, it is too important not to sit separately. Staff sit at the centre of our CPD model – the opinions and insights of the professionals in our schools are invaluable.

Once-year surveys or Ofsted staff surveys don’t do the job. Firstly, they are too far apart and too all-encompassing. But in addition, especially in schools with a strong culture, colleagues know these surveys are high-stakes and, therefore, might not share what they think could be refined, choosing to focus solely on the positive. We need our own internal, low-stakes, formative staff voice systems.

Anonymity can be used to ensure staff share their ‘whole truth’. Do we want feedback which helps us improve?

Or positivity that makes us feel good but has no impact on CPD and school improvement?

Passing conversations where staff share their positive or negative feedback about CPD can be easy to dismiss because they feel immeasurable. But these conversations are indicators nevertheless.

What we cannot do is take this positive or negative feedback wholesale – we must be careful not to just listen to the loudest voices. When we have invested time and effort into a project, it can be easy to be over the moon when staff come and tell us their tales of reading, collaboration, 2 0 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // I S S U E 2 8

and subsequent classroom development.

And yes, these are wonderful moments for which I am endlessly grateful. But we must remember the quieter voices, especially as these voices might have concerns, questions or brilliant suggestions. Part of our ongoing evaluation needs to be about seeking these voices out so that we can better invest in and protect all our staff… and their pie charts.

6) Supporting staff in their own evaluation Both Jim Knight and David Didau talk about the sense and power of supporting teachers in evaluating whether they have met with the goals they have determined for themselves. There can be parameters around this, such as a personal goal still linked to broader school or team improvement priorities, or depending on career stage, staff may require more or less support in determining a goal that is high-leverage. Nevertheless, for me, this is a pivotal part of CPD evaluation.

Evaluating CPD through this individual lens isn’t logistically easy, but it has the benefit of being able to give us lots of information at the ‘micro’ level.

When embedded in a strong culture of professional learning, any associated documentation serves a reflective as opposed to ‘logging that I’ve done it’ purpose, again providing us with a great source of qualitative evaluation.

7) External tools “We don’t know what we don’t know,” therefore, engaging in evaluation without being sufficiently outwards facing can lull

us into a false sense of security. As Tracy O’Brien states, “Good schools benchmark themselves against best practice elsewhere.”

Alongside looking at what other schools do in order to help us in our evaluation, there are an increasing number of external tools that schools can access: - TeacherTapp’s School Surveys: https:// teachertapp.co.uk/school-surveys/ - TDT’s CPD Diagnostic Tool: https:// tdtrust.org/cpd-diagnostic-tool/ - Kathryn Taylor’s ‘Culture Insights Self Evaluation Tool’: https://my.chartered. college/impact_article/are-we-all-on-thesame-page-with-professional-learningexploring-the-relationship-betweenorganisational-cultures-and-teacherprofessional-learning-in-secondary-schools

To close…

I will finish with a final quotation from Earley and Porritt, which provides a valuable framework of questions when looking to engage in that invaluable evaluative process at the start of a CPD project: • “What is impact evaluation? Why should we do it?

• What is your current practice, your baseline? What is the evidence to show this?

• For whom do you want professional development to make a difference?

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• Does it make a positive difference? How much of a difference?

• How do we know? What is the evidence of impact?

• How can we evaluate impact simply and practically?”

I am not writing this article from a position of thinking that we have it ‘nailed on’ when it comes to evaluating CPD in our school. In fact, it is because I wanted to reflect upon this thorny issue myself that led me to want to write this article.

One thing that has struck me is that if we are trying to evaluate CPD and know what has had what impact, then this

takes time – we can’t just throw ourselves in. We need to be more careful, more deliberate. We need to engage in thorough pre-evaluation, reading, baselining etc.

Yes, whilst considering the opportunity cost of such activity and striking a balance between growth and inertia. That being said, if this makes us move slightly slower, I often think this is no bad thing.

“We can never know enough to make perfect decisions.”

(David Didau)

to be strong enough not to pass on this unintelligent accountability through the gathering of data which does not give us valuable information and wastes valuable time.

We are building this CPD provision for our colleagues in school, so the best bet might be to start and come back to them.

This is what a ‘person-centred CPD’ model is all about – not only building based on our students and our staff but reflecting alongside them too.

And although, as leaders, we may be in a position of feeling all too acutely the accountability of our position, we need

Bibliography Allison, S. (2014) Perfect Teacher-Led CPD. United Kingdom: Crown House Publishing.

Bubb, S., Earley, P. (2010) How to... evaluate impact. Available at: https://www.teachingtimes.com/professional-development-evaluate-impact/ Coe, R. (2023) Why are we holding out for more professional development time (even though school leaders say they can’t manage it)? Evidence Based Education.

Available at: https://evidencebased.education/why-are-we-holding-out-for-more-professional-development-time-even-though-school-leaders-say-they-cant-manage-it/ Coe, R., et al. (2022) A model for school environment and leadership (School environment and leadership: Evidence review). Evidence Based Education.

Available at: https://evidencebased.education/school-environment-and-leadership-evidence-review Didau, D. (2020) Intelligent Accountability: Creating the Conditions for Teachers to Thrive. United Kingdom: John Catt Educational Limited.

Earley, P., Porritt, V. (2010) Effective Practices in Continuing Professional Development – What Works? Available at: https://www.teachingtimes.com/tda-effective-practices/ Earley, P., Porritt, V. (2010) Effective Practices in Continuing Professional Development – Evaluating Impact.

Available from: https://www.teachingtimes.com/pdt-effective-practices-professional-development/ Sims, S., et al. (2021) Effective Professional Development: Guidance Report. EEF. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/effective-professional-development.

Enser, Z., Enser, M. (2021) The CPD Curriculum: Creating Conditions for Growth. United Kingdom: Crown House Publishing.

Mccrea, P. (2023) Expert Teaching. Spain: Independently published.

Myatt, M. (n.d.) Humans first, professionals second. Available at: https://www.marymyatt.com/blog/humans-first-professionals-second O’Brien, T. (2022) School Self-Review – A Sensible Approach: How to know and tell the story of your school. John Catt.

Training and Development Agency for Schools (2007) Impact evaluation of CPD available at TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT AGENCY FOR SCHOOLS (ioe.ac.uk) Weston, D., Clay, B. (2018) Unleashing Great Teaching: The Secrets to the Most Effective Teacher Development. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Wiliam, D. (2018) Creating the Schools Our Children Need: Why What We’re Doing Now Won’t Help Much (And What We Can Do Instead).

West Palm Beach, Florida: Learning Sciences International.

Wiliam, D. (2021) [Twitter] 11 March. Available at: https://twitter.com/dylanwiliam/status/1370099308532531200

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Is Your Classroom VentIlatIon Good enouGh?

By Alan Siggins

When the new school year kicks off this month, students should be refreshed and focussed on learning. But more than half of teachers think ventilation problems in classrooms could be hindering that learning.

Over half of teachers believe poor ventilation could affect students’ performance

(72%) classrooms is ‘below standard’.

Responding to the report, the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) labelled indoor air quality (IAQ) in UK classrooms a ‘national scandal’.

Issues with facilities are nothing new in schools, but a new report has highlighted ventilation as a key concern among teachers.

What is indoor air quality?

The Air Quality in UK Classrooms Report – conducted by experts in air movement and ventilation solutions Airflow – asked teachers at 133 UK schools for insights into working and learning conditions.

Some 53% of them detailed a negative impact on grades and performance when air quality is poor.

What’s more, the report revealed that the air quality in almost three in four

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Air quality refers to levels of pollutants in the air we breathe. Indoor air quality is concerned with the quality of air in and around buildings, particularly in relation to its effects on occupants’ health and comfort.

Various sources of pollution can affect indoor quality. These include radon, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and even the carbon dioxide (CO2) we breathe out.

Different authorities have different limits for each pollutant, particularly in places like classrooms. For example, the Health and Safety Executive in the UK says that in an occupied room, CO2 levels consistently above 1,500 parts per million (ppm) point to poor ventilation and require action.

Even levels closer to 1,000 ppm can cause fatigue, headaches and a loss of focus.

The impact of poor air quality on students It’s abundantly clear that many teachers have seen first-hand the effects of poor air quality. According to the report, 91% of teachers believed that poor air quality affects students’ health, behaviour or focus. For London, the figure was even higher at 96%.

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Meanwhile, 6 in 10 teachers (61%) have witnessed an effect on pupils’ health, such as asthma or other lung conditions.

Plus, more than three-quarters (77%) of teachers stated poor air quality in their school meant students found it harder to concentrate, potentially affecting their performance.

The impact on teachers Almost three in five teachers thought a classroom with poor air quality was ‘not fit for purpose’ – for students or teachers.

Even more than that (63%) understood that poor air quality could affect their physical and mental health.

Unsurprisingly then, almost a quarter of teachers (23%) in schools with ‘below

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standard’ air quality worried about resulting school closure.

How does temperature affect indoor air quality?

In particular, colder temperatures can have a considerable effect on indoor air quality.

In the UK, an obvious problem is mould, a pollutant that can form when spaces are consistently exposed to condensation or there’s excess moisture in the air. When the mercury drops, there are more cold surfaces to draw the water vapour out of humid air – and cause condensation. Left unchecked, condensation can easily result in mould, which can lead to allergies, respiratory infections, asthma

and various other health issues.

Another factor during the colder months is that exhaust pollutants from roads often linger close to the ground, trapped by dense cold air. The result is that indoor environments, especially in busy cities, are subjected to more exhaust pollutants during the winter.

What’s more, whether it’s exhaust pollutants or mould schools are trying to banish, winter makes it harder to ventilate classrooms properly.

What improvements do teachers want to see?

Teachers obviously care deeply about their students’ welfare. So, not only are they keenly aware of air quality issues

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in their classrooms, but they’re quick to raise the alarm. However, almost a third (31%) of teachers at schools with ‘below standard’ air quality said that no action had been taken when they requested improvements to air quality.

Around a quarter (27%) worked at schools that are trying to improve air quality, but are held back by insufficient funding or government support. If funding was available, these are the changes that most teachers wanted to see: • Replace old heating appliances (which can be sources of indoor air pollution) 72% of teachers • Fit air purification or filtration systems - 71% • Ban cars on school-adjacent streets during school run times - 38% • Move playgrounds and classroom windows away from roads - 32%

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How can schools improve air quality and ventilation in the short term?

While poor air quality is clearly a serious problem in schools, some of its causes will take time and significant investment to eliminate. And as we all know, funding is a persistent problem.

But even in the short term, schools have options.

The most obvious – and crudest – measure available to schools is opening windows and doors whenever possible. Having applied such measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, schools should already have guidance in place on this. However, this is clearly not a workable solution during the cooler months.

and asbestos can be found in the very structures of our schools, so it can be difficult to banish them entirely, but it’s easier to make sure no toxic cleaning products are used.

As 71% of teachers in the report said, air purifiers can help to improve air quality, but going beyond that, ventilation systems can have a much greater effect.

For example, a mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system can make sure polluted, stale air is constantly replaced with fresh air from outside.

Whatever steps schools take, one thing is certain: monitoring air quality is vital.

Not only will this make sure students and teachers aren’t exposed to dangerous levels of pollutants, having data on air quality can be a powerful weapon in the fight for more funding.

Naturally, getting rid of sources of indoor pollution will go a long way to improving air quality. Chemicals like formaldehyde

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Alan Siggins, managing director of Airflow Developments, said: “This report makes clear the need for urgent and long-lasting action on air quality in schools. It also makes a compelling case for government funding.

“Teachers can see the everyday impact of poor air quality on concentration levels in students – and know that students’ futures can be affected. They also see how serious respiratory conditions and allergies are aggravated, and how their own health can suffer.

“I hope that greater awareness of air quality post-Covid means authorities will prioritise proper ventilation in schools. If they invest in modern ventilation systems, they’ll also find that their schools use less energy, so it also makes financial sense.

“As the new school year begins, it’s an opportunity for authorities to take stock and make sure schools are healthy places

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to be. Both students and teachers deserve an environment where they can learn and work to the best of their abilities.”

Mrs. X, who works at a London primary school but did not want to be named for job security reasons, says: “Even with windows open, pollution around the school area means that air quality is not drastically improved.

We know that poor air quality and ventilation lead to higher levels of CO2 in the classroom, which affects cognitive performance (reduces memory, impairs concentration, lowers decision-making abilities) and inhibits learning.

“In addition, children who struggle with self-regulation find it particularly hard to be in poorly-ventilated environments and may demonstrate disruptive behaviour, leading to them being sent out of the classroom, meaning they are not learning from their teacher.”

Nicola D’Urso, school speech and language therapist, adds: “Some schools I work in have indoor areas which are poorly ventilated without any windows. I’ve seen examples of children fainting and disengaging due to dehydration in excessively hot and stuffy classrooms. It’s not uncommon for children to become drowsy and even the brightest students can stop interacting in lessons.

I notice caring and responsible teachers often having to prioritise children’s health and wellbeing during lessons instead of teaching them the educational content.

“The main obstacle is that senior leadership teams in schools are at the mercy of their local council’s policy on clean air and limiting air pollution. The roadblock for schools is that it’s a bit out of their hands given that it’s up to the council and the government to get a grasp of air pollution and put adequate policies in place.”

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OutdOOr Play:

KnOw the Benefits and Get sOme ideas Play is central to early childhood education. Pupils need play to develop an awareness of themselves, objects, and others in the available space around them.

Creating a play space where this is possible, and knowing how you can encourage your pupils to engage in play activities that support their classroom learning is key in cementing classroom learning.

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The Importance of Learning through Play Classroom learning is vital for teaching children’s key concepts about the world around them, however, play provides an outlet for pupils to relate that knowledge to a relevant experience to them, solidifying it in their brains.

For example, learning how to count from 1-10 may seem confusing initially, until they begin to use that knowledge to count the blocks that they are using to build their tower. This helps to cement the

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knowledge in their heads and encourages them to use these skills more often.

Jean Piaget once said, ‘play is the work of childhood’, and he doubled down on this by identifying the 4 different types of play (Functional, Constructive, Symbolic and Games with rules) that children engage in, focusing in on just how children learn through play: Each of these stages teaches children

different life skills and helps them to solidify the knowledge they’ve learnt within the classroom.

Spending time outdoors is also beneficial for pupils. Immersing themselves in the outdoor world keeps them active and healthy, away from screens and interacting with the world around them.

So naturally, outdoor play has all of these benefits and more!

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Outdoor Play Ideas Whilst encouraging free play outdoors is great for stimulating children’s imaginations and giving them independence, sometimes it’s nice to have a guided activity to lead, or some inspiration to give them to keep them on the right track of supporting their school learning.

Hence why we’ve collated some outdoor play activities and ideas to inspire you and ensure that your pupils are making the most of their outdoor playtime!

An Active Play Activity- Going on a Bear Hunt Themed Tell the children that they’re going to be going on their own bear hunt in the playground – they have a special route to follow in a particular order if they’d like to be able to meet the bear.

Don’t worry, it’s a very friendly bear - and it even has a name (you choose)! So, they’re going to need to listen very carefully to your instructions, and make sure that they follow them in the right order.

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At this point, you can describe to the children a route to follow that you have pre-planned, using the whatever facilities you have in your play space, whether it be a bridge, a trim trail, a hopscotch marking or something similar. Of course, it’s absolutely fine to be flexible and make up the route on the spot, just so long as you’re sure to use all of the different directions and positional concepts that you want to teach the children, e.g. “Oh look, grass! Long, wavy grass. Ask the children to climb up some steps/blocks, over an incline object, and slide or roll down something with a decline, which acts as the ‘grassy bank’ to the bottom.”

Supporting understanding of the world.

This activity is ideal for getting Early Years pupils involved in active play!

Find something that could work as a bridge- even better if the pupils can actually cross it- but if not, construct one from cardboard boxes or toy blocks to show the basic bridge structure.

Ask the children - do they know what bridges are used for in the world around

us? Can you explain some of their uses?

Have any of them been on a bridge before, perhaps to cross a road or a river? Now ask them to take a closer look at the Play Bridge. Can they describe its shape? Tell the children that they’re going to do some stretching exercises, making the shape of a bridge using their own bodies. Here you can demonstrate how and encourage children to do some core strengthening exercises.

• Sitting with their knees bent in front of them, feet placed on the floor, to create a bridge with their legs. Too easy? Try lifting alternate legs in the air - it’s harder than it sounds!

• Keeping their feet on the floor, place their hands behind them on the floor, palms down, and lift their body up towards the sky to make a crab-shaped bridge. How long can you hold it for?

These activities have been brought to you

by Pentagon Play. Pentagon Play is the UK’s Leading School Playground Provider, who produce a variety of education play products and lesson plans to support learning through play.

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PEDAGOGY 36. Developing Metacognitive Planning Skills

A range of strategies, to complement your current practices, leading to improved metacognitive planning abilities from students

40. Supporting Your Pupils To Flourish In An Increasingly Digital World

Is the current education system preparing children for a world that may no longer exist by the time they reach adulthood?

45. Make A Note Of This!

Was I right to make my students hand write summaries of information I wanted them to learn?

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PEDAGOGY

Developing Metacognitive planning SkillS This is article 2 in a series of 9 articles exploring the theory and application of metacognition. The aim is to provide you with bitesize chunks of information on metacognition, and metacognitive strategies, for you to start implementation in your classroom.

By Nathan Burns

If you haven’t yet read the first article in the series, then it will be worth reading that first. Once that is done, you are ready to get started on the first ‘strategies’ articles, homing in on metacognitive planning. This piece will provide you with a range of strategies, to complement your current practices, leading to improved metacognitive planning abilities from students.

works their way through each of these aspects. One way in which to ensure that this occurs with students is to provide them with a ‘knowledge of’ grid. Simply provide students with a table with three columns, titled (knowledge of) task, strategies, self.

As part of the planning for a task, students must work their way through each of these columns, making key notes, before they are allowed to move on to the task itself.

‘Knowledge of’ grids

As with many (if not all!) of these strategies, you will need to take time to both model this strategy to students, as well as scaffold their first few attempts. For example, take time to explain to students what each of the three ‘knowledge of’ areas mean:

Metacognition has its processes, including the knowledge of process – knowledge of task, knowledge of strategies and knowledge of self. For successful planning, it is crucial that an individual consciously

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PEDAGOGY

Task: - What am I being asked to do?

- What are the marking criteria?

- What format must the response be in? strategies: - What different approaches do I have to a task such as this one?

- Which strategy is likely to be most efficient?

- Have I had previous experience using these strategies with a similar task? self: - What content do I need to know for the task?

- Do I know all of the content required for this task?

- How are any gaps in knowledge going to be filled?

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PEDAGOGY Comprehension, ConneCTion, sTraTegies and refleCTion This strategy is perhaps more focussed on STEM subjects, but equally could be adapted to all subjects, I am sure. This strategy complements the previous one, in that it requires students to focus on different key areas in their planning, prior to beginning a task.

This strategy would again be based upon a template, perhaps with four columns, or four boxes, with each section labelled, in turn, comprehension, connection, strategies, reflection. As with the previous strategy, students would be expected to work through this planning template before beginning a task.

So, what do these areas mean? In the main, they are similar to the previous headings, but there are some subtle differences.

Comprehension: - What is the question asking you to do?

- What are the key command words?

- What limitations are there for your response?

- What format should the response take?

Connection: - When have you seen a similar task before?

- How did you approach the similar task previously, and what went well (and not so well)?

- What strategy have you used previously, and how effective was this?

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strategies: - What are the different ways of completing this task?

- Does one strategy appear superior to others? Why? - What strategies have you used previously (linking with connection), and how effective were they?

The final section is that of reflection.

This is, naturally, a stage completed once the task itself has been completed. The purpose of including reflection on this planning grid is to allow students to revisit what it was they had planned, and evaluate both the effectiveness of their plan (what helped? What didn’t help? What would they do differently next time?) as well as the approach that they took to the task itself. reflection: - How successful was your planning?

How do you know?

- Did you complete the task?

- Was your comprehension of the task correct? How do you know?

- How effective was the strategy that you chose? Is there a more efficient or effective strategy that you could have chosen?

As this part of the process is that of reflection or evaluation, there are a significant number of other questions that you may wish to pose to students. Equally, as this is a reflection of the approach taken to planning, it would be wise to use these reflection, and challenge students to replan for the same or similar task, taking their evaluations and instantly using them in order to improve their approach. This avoids the pitfall of evaluating, but not taking any actions thereafter (a missed opportunity at best, a complete waste of time at worst).

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PEDAGOGY exam answer analysis This strategy, more so than other, may appear to be one that you have come across time and time again.

However, in this situation, an exam answer analysis is undertaken in order to support the planning of a student, before they themselves complete a similar exam question.

(Note, the similarity of exam question later completed by the student is crucial. You are looking to limit the cognitive/content load, and instead focus on the planning process and what is learnt through the exam question analysis).

For this strategy to be most successful, you need to ensure that you chose three (ish) exemplars which are similar in their levels. For example, if we took answers at GCSE grade 1, grade 5 and grade 9, not much would be gleaned about the subtleties that improve an answer.

Instead, reflection on answers within a grade or two of each other (for example, a grade 7, 8 and 9 piece, or, even better, a low 7, high 7, and middle 8).

The focus here then is not necessarily on the significant differences in quality of answer, but rather the subtle differences between the pieces. Students, with your support, should glean small nuggets from this that they can then put towards their own planning, and later completion of the similar exam question.

Knowledge organisers One thing that is common across multiple secondary schools now (and perhaps primary as well), is the use of the knowledge organiser.

Putting aside questions over their worth and quality (areas I have debated and written about extensively previously – so don’t get me started again!!), knowledge

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organisers provide a high-quality tool to support students when they are planning.

Students are often taught how to use a knowledge organiser to support their revision (for example learning key dates or definitions), but instead, through teacher-led guidance, students can be shown how they can synthesise key information from a knowledge organiser into their plan for a given question or task.

For example, if students were producing a plan to respond to a question on the causes of the Second World War, they would utilise the knowledge organiser to identify the key events, dates, and figures. Each of these could be bullet pointed into the plan that students are making for their question response.

Through use of this strategy, not only are you ensuring that knowledge organisers are become a live (and useful!) document, but we are also helping to ensure that students do not miss out any key information required for the completion of a task. Through bullet pointing all of this key information, students will instead focus on the write-up of their question, rather than trying to also recall key dates, events and figures. Consider the significant reduction in intrinsic load that this approach will bring!

So, that brings us to the end of planning strategies. As you will see, none require significant changes to your teaching approach, but small tweaks can lead to significant improvements for students in their planning abilities. Good luck using them!!

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PEDAGOGY Supporting your pupilS to flouriSh in an increaSingly digital world There are growing concerns within the sector that the current education system is preparing children for a world that may no longer exist by the time they reach adulthood.

by Al Kinglsey, CEO of NetSupport

We are undoubtedly in an era in which rapid transformation is the order of the day; indeed, the very definition of the word “rapid” is being reshaped, as each groundbreaking innovation increases the pace of change exponentially. Much ink has been spilled discussing the potential perils these innovations represent to education in particular, but arguably a much greater emphasis now needs to be placed on how the system can flex and adapt to meet these changes head on and embrace the potential benefits they promise to bring.

Whilst overall job postings decreased globally by 13% from 2021 to 2022, the number of tech jobs listed for the same period actually grew by 15%. In order to safeguard our young people’s future, we should be actively preparing them to enter the jobs market armed with the competencies and confidence being sought by

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businesses and organisations around the world.

To achieve this, we need to instigate a change in the ways students have the opportunity to develop digital skills throughout their education.

Bringing digital skills into the classroom and embedding them throughout the curriculum is critical to cementing the ability to adapt to an ever-evolving world.

XXX Technology can enhance and transform classroom learning whilst instilling essential digital skills. Business lessons can be supplemented with app building or website creation activities, giving them insights into branding and marketing as well as user experience and product design.

Getting to grips with graphics and 3D modelling can bring science and geography lessons to life, and digital art software provides new avenues for young people to express their creativity.

These skills can give young people an invaluable chance to understand topics in greater depth, whilst also giving them hands-on experience to prepare them for workplaces in which technology will certainly be in use, regardless of the sector or industry.

Rather than relegating digital skills to IT lessons and the computer lab, embracing such skills across numerous subjects will make this a more engaging and dynamic process, whilst ensuring that these skills are cemented in students’ understanding. It is becoming increasingly clear that an evergrowing value will be placed on so-called “soft skills”, such as communication and critical thinking.

The use of technology in the classroom can foster the development of these skills, providing opportunities for collaboration and communication

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PEDAGOGY

between pupils, both within their school networks and with the wider world.

Whilst we should be encouraging more use of technology throughout the entire curriculum, we must also recognise that more can and must be done to protect children and young people as they navigate online spaces. Just as we keep them safe from physical harm, we should be doing the utmost to limit their exposure to digital dangers.

Ongoing discussions around the Online Safety Bill bring this to the fore, as the government endeavours to place duties of care on tech companies to protect users from harmful content. In the meantime, these harms can be limited on an individual basis within schools by simply blocking certain keywords or sites on the school’s networks. An even more effective step in digital safeguarding is the implementation

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of safeguarding software. Such software can, among other functions, appropriately monitor online activity and detect keywords which can identify concerning trends or indicate when a young person may be at risk.

they are required to share certain information and informing them when they have deleted the data when it’s no longer required, will help them gain an understanding of responsible data handling and recognise risks.

However, in the same way we teach our children how to recognise physical dangers themselves and take steps autonomously to protect themselves – such as teaching them how to cross the road safely – we should also be giving them the knowledge and agency to do the same with online dangers.

Digital citizenship skills are also critically important in ensuring that our young people are responsible, careful users of the internet. This ought to include topics such as encouraging empathy and respect in online interactions, understanding how the internet works and ensuring students know how to correctly identify risks such as fake profiles. Not only does this protect them from online dangers, it also helps them to be on the lookout for ways in which they can support others to avoid harms – or even preventing them from engaging in harmful behaviours targeted towards others, such as harassment or bullying.

For example, when and why safeguarding software is deployed should be communicated openly to help students gain awareness of the measures being taken to keep them safe. Additionally, software with informative pop ups to explain to students how their data is being handled i.e. why

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PEDAGOGY

Digital citizenship skills also include encouraging young people to use technology in a way that benefits – or at least does not harm – their wellness. Digital wellness includes teaching children to place limits on their screen time and remain cognisant of their usage levels of social media or streaming services.

Equipping young people with strategies to practice self-regulation and understand the limits between positive and negative online activities is paramount to raising a generation of engaged, competent and responsible digital citizens.

Online media literacy is another critical component of a strong digital skillset. This is particularly important from the perspective of a society struggling to get to grips with fake news and deepfake images. In fact, we know that this is an area that young people are finding particularly difficult; according to Ofcom’s recent survey into Media Use and Attitudes among children, nearly a quarter of 12-17 year olds who claimed to be

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confident in their ability to discern real from fake content online were unable to correctly identify a fake social media profile when presented with one.

In debates on the Online Safety Bill, much discussion has been had on the subject of fake news and helping the public identify such stories through media literacy skills; educators certainly have a role to play in this regard.

Media literacy can – and should – be incorporated across all subjects, encouraging students to build research skills and the ability to discern credible information sources for themselves. Subjects such as history and science are the perfect opportunity for students to learn how to verify sources and be able to carry out research tasks in a media savvy way.

Such skill developments also unlock the potential of learning in new, creative ways, engaging a wider group of students in more subjects.

Additionally, encouraging students to interrogate the information they are consuming will again develop their critical thinking abilities, a skill that has wide benefits across many different subject areas and, later, careers.

Further research suggests that to respond to the “incredible proliferation” of technological innovations, businesses – and therefore society as a whole – is a move to a “perpetual learning culture”. Digital skills, and wider workforce requirements, should be thought of through the lens of “perpetual learning”, reframing the approach to skills education as a constant evolution rather than a narrow focus on a discrete set of competencies that may become outdated. Unleashing the ability of children to learn how to learn is critical to ensuring that we are fostering a generation of independent, curious and skilled young people capable of meeting any challenge they come across, whether in the workplace or beyond.

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Pedagogy

Make a Note of this!

For the past year I have been grappling with the best way to get my A level Psychology students to take notes. Over the past 20 years in the classroom note taking has become an increasingly digital activity. So last year I decided to revert back to getting my students to handwrite notes as I felt it could be a really effective learning tool. They did not like it, but was I right to make them hand write summaries of information I wanted them to learn?

By Lucinda Powell

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Pedagogy Why write notes at all? When I was at school textbooks were very dense and not course specific, and photocopying was expensive (we are talking a long time ago) so teachers dictated a lot of notes.

Nowadays with course-specific textbooks which are also available online and document sharing, it could be argued that note taking is not needed and class time could be dedicated to other learning activities.

they gave students one of 3 lists of words: words in capitals or lower case (structural processing - what it looks like), words that rhyme with a second word (acoustic coding - what the word sounds like) and with the request to include the target word in a sentence (semantic processing - what the word means).

When they were tested later it was this latter group whose recall for the words was best. Therefore the most effective way to take notes is not to copy (structural) or dictate (acoustic) but to generate your own notes because it requires you to understand the content about which you are writing. In addition, in the classroom this serves as an excellent formative assessment opportunity, if students are summarising verbally delivered content or the textbook, they have to understand it.

Wandering round the classroom it is easy to identify who is struggling and give them an extra bit of support.

ability to apply newly-learned information to novel situations and this is strengthened when we encourage students to summarise their learning without the visual cues of powerpoint slides or printed resources.

2. Generative learning theory

1. Levels of Processing

We can go further than this though and say that we not only have to understand to-be-learned information but we have to reorganise it and integrate it with our existing knowledge (Fiorella and Mayer, 2015). By physically reorganising information into written notes students are more likely to transfer new information into long term memory. Therefore to encourage encoding to long term memory students should read the to-be-learned information then not only rewrite it in their own words but generate links to previously learned information. For example if students are learning about memory in Psychology they might make links to research methods and include this in their notes.

Many students nowadays tend to type notes and many will need to type as their ‘normal way of working’. From a practical point of view this seems sensible - no bits of paper to lose at the bottom of the bag or heavy files to carry. However, there is evidence that typing notes means that students retain less information than handwriting (Smoker et al, 2009). It may well be the case that many students can type faster than they can write, so if they are typing as you talk they can type verbatim what you are saying (processing information at a shallow level), whereas if they are handwriting they have to be more selective about what they choose to write and identify the key words and points to include - processing at a deeper level (e.g.Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2015).

Craik and Tulving (1975) suggested that the deeper our understanding of material the more easily it sticks in long term memory. In one study

Furthermore, in a recent piece of research by Fiorella (2022) it was shown that this not only aids memory but also students’

This suggests that we should encourage hand written notes, or if a student must type, encourage them to either handwrite a few

However, I believe that, done well, effective note taking can be a really beneficial learning tool and is an opportunity for formative assessment. In terms of learning, note taking can enable more to-belearned information to be encoded into long-term memory on the first pass, this does not mean to say that it will not need to be revised or revisited but effective note taking should aid the learning process and given how little students enjoy revision learning more in the lesson should be a bonus.

So what makes effective note taking (in or out of the classroom)?

Notes can come in many shapes and forms, for me it is a summary of information that you have read, heard or seen that is written in your own words. This therefore excludes copying or dictation. Over the past year my classes have written notes in a linear form, structured forms such as Cornell Notes or more unstructured forms such as mindmaps.

So here are 5 evidence based reasons why I believe note taking can support learning:

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3. Retrieval practice Most of us, I am sure, will be well aware of the benefits of retrieval practice. Information is more strongly encoded into long term memory when we have to recall it rather than just passively receiving the information (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Therefore it is fair to conclude that if we are keen for students to retain more information we should give them as many retrieval practice opportunities in class as possible, note writing (summarising from memory) affords one more opportunity.

4. Handwriting vs Typing.

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Pedagogy

key words to prompt their notes or type up your explanation in their own words after you have finished speaking.

5. Identify Key Terms Something worth encouraging students to do during the note taking process is to identify key terms or ‘cues’. Given that in schools we are aiming to pass exams this part of the notetaking aims to highlight terms that are likely to appear in exam questions - cues to recall. The theory that underpins this idea is ‘cue dependent forgetting’ and suggests that cues (in this instance words though it can be images, smells or sounds) trigger memories, acting a bit like a key to unlocking other memories. If a student learns a specific word as a cue and then hooks other information to this - let’s say ‘photosynthesis’ is the cue word, there might be 5 other ‘items’ that link to this: chlorophyll, plants, respiration, the equation for photosynthesis and energy, from this list a student can expand out further to explain why each of these is important and links to photosynthesis.

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The Challenges I hope that I have persuaded you that notetaking is a worthy classroom learning activity when it is done from memory, summarises information, identifies key words, links new information to old information and is (preferably) hand written as it helps students retain information in their long term memory, enables them to transfer newly learned information to novel situations more effectively and can act as a useful formative assessment tool. But getting students to do this is really hard. So I wanted to address a few of the barriers I have faced.

Firstly, be aware of cognitive load.

We know that working memory has an incredibly small capacity but when also processing information this can be further reduced.

Therefore when we are asking students to summarise notes we should break down to-be-learned information into manageable chunks. It is tempting, especially when students are older and the amount of content to be covered is greater, to use a more lecture based teaching. Be aware of how much

information your students can cope with and how well developed their note-taking skills are when you ask them to write summary notes.

On this note (no pun intended) because of the pressure to cover content students are rarely taught how to effectively summarise information into note form: you will need to teach them. You may want to have a go at different styles and scaffolding the different ideas such as Cornell Notes. Do not assume that they can just ‘do it’. In reality this means setting aside time to do this in your lessons, however, this is such a good skill it is worth the effort. For more ways of doing this check out Fiorella and Mayer (2015) cited below.

The biggest challenge though is student reluctance, students do not like to write notes that they might use at a later date for revision, from memory. Many of them really worry that they will not get the information ‘correct’ or they will miss vital bits. As a result they like to copy. I have tried several things to help get over this:

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Pedagogy • The first iteration of notes are thrown away; • Initial notes are written in pairs, checked and then put into ‘neat’; • The notes are written from memory in one colour and then added to with additions from slides/ me/textbook in another colour; • Notes are structured in such a way that it is easy to add in missed bits of information (e.g. mindmaps are easier to change than linear notes); • Typing can allow reordering, change and improvement.

Finally, oe of my biggest problems is typing whilst I talk. We now

know that typing verbatim requires little processing. The student will feel like they have a comprehensive set of notes but they may not understand them. Firstly I insist on all laptops being closed whilst I talk, then if they really need to get something down whilst I talk they have to use paper and pen (regardless of whether they type or not in the end). When I have finished explaining then, and only then, may they open up their laptops to type.

Students do not like this way of note taking - it is unfamiliar and they feel insecure, however it should aid longer term retention of information. The problem is that copying, reading and dictating give the illusion of fluency. Students

feel like they really know and understand information when they use these techniques, they are easy and comforting. Writing notes, in your own words, from memory is challenging, it highlights what you do not know and it makes you feel less like you have learned anything.

This illusion of fluency means that students do not want to do the difficult thing because it feels wrong and ineffective - it is taking a risk.

Your challenge is to persuade them that it is right!

If you want to find out more about the concepts addressed in this article the hyperlinks will take you to a ‘Psychology in the Classroom’ podcast episode that delves a little deeper.

References:

Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104(3), 268–294. https://doi.org/10.1037/00963445.104.3.268 Fiorella, L. (2022) Learning by explaining after pauses in video lectures: Are provided visuals a scaffold or a crutch? Applied Cognitive Psychology 36:5, 1142-1149 https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3994.

Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2015). Learning as a generative activity: Eight learning strategies that promote understanding. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107707085 Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168. https://doi. org/10.1177/0956797614524581 Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14679280.2006.01693.x Smoker, T. J., Murphy, C. E., & Rockwell, A. K. (2009). Comparing Memory for Handwriting versus Typing. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 53(22), 1744–1747. https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120905302218

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EXPAND YOUR MIND ONE SUBJECT AT A TIME

52. How I Teach Students To Explain And Assess In Geography How to teach geographers to use data, apply understanding, discuss and make judgements, to link the world together

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CURRICULUM

How I TeacH STudenTS To explaIn and aSSeSS In GcSe GeoGrapHy GCSE Geography exams demand that students use an array of skills to succeed. Geographers should be able to use data, apply understanding to it, discuss and make judgements and link the world together.

By Eve Draper

Explaining and assessing are worth many marks on a GCSE Geography exam paper.

Teaching our students to use these skills effectively helps them to access those marks more easily. It also teaches them to become more fluent geographers.

STEP 1: Defining command words Have you ever asked a class of teenagers what ‘explain’ means? I have. They usually tell me it means to describe. At that point I try not to look too pained, as I remind them describe and explain are not synonyms.

I usually follow this up by standing at the front right in the middle and saying ‘Describe me!’. I do then add a belated caveat of ‘Please be nice!’.

After a few seconds of eyes staring at me someone will say ‘You’re tall!’ followed by ‘You’re wearing glasses!’ and ‘You’re wearing a black top.” etc. and I nod: they know how to describe.

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I then follow up with ‘So what does describe mean?’ and we get to ‘say what you see, say what something is like’. Then we can draw parallels to other subjects like English and the skill of describing a character or a setting in a story which they are familiar with.

how it is decided how much they know so far about something. The teacher uses them to weigh up and decide what students know and what students don’t. So I signpost to this and we have an understanding of a more abstract word.

Then we’re back at ‘explain’ and by now they realise they do know it is different. I ask a few fun ones like: explain why gravy is the best thing on chips or explain why school has rules. When they give an answer it starts with because. We’ve made it:

I find that these definitions need teaching explicitly multiple times.

Especially as these command words are not tier three Geography vocabulary - rather they are used in everyday life and most other subjects. It really does require practice for students to remember what is being asked of them and applying it to the situation.

Describe = say what something is like Explain = give reasons why I introduce assess/evaluate a little later as we need to have built on explaining first. I often find that my classes are used to the word ‘assess’ as they have regular assessments. Students are aware that a classroom assessment is

Assess = weigh up and decide

STEP 2: Modelling and practice When teaching Geography from Year 7, I like to use a consistent approach to teach explanation. I use the following modelling process as a scaffold which can be removed steadily or added back in.

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CURRICULM

I introduce Explaining Phrases.

Explaining phrases are exactly what they say on the tin - phrases that mean you are explaining. I purposely call them this so students more easily know that when they see ‘explain’ this is what comes to mind.

Explaining Phrases This is because…

This means that…

As a result… …which leads to…

So… Therefore…

In my classroom ‘explaining phrases’ is one of my most used displays. I have about 8 printed out and stuck on the wall. Students know where they are and refer to them until they don’t need to and can remember ones that work.

For the first introduction I model

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making a point and explaining it using I do, we do, you do. It’s important at this stage I narrate my thinking so students can learn how to make their own decisions. I want them to use their Explaining Phrases as a tool to develop their own writing.

“I’ve given one advantage of solar energy, that is my point. But the question says explain so now I need to explain it. I need to choose one of my explaining phrases, which one follows this sentence I’ve written well?

Hmmm, ‘this means that’ or ‘as a result’ both work well. I haven’t used ‘as a result’ in my writing yet so I’ll choose that one.”

When they have independently practised, I can build on this to practise chains of explanation. It is a necessary exam skill and is needed to develop extended geographical writing. For example, explaining how improvements in water supply can impact school attendance in Mexico City’s squatter settlements requires connections to be made

between water supply, health, disease and access to education.

If a student can explain well and is familiar with the skill, they will have a framework in which to seek links. Therefore knowing how to explain well enables young geographers to make connections and understand the world better.

STEP 3: Self-review Another benefit I find is that students can self-review or peerreview more easily. I ask them to go through their work and underline Explaining Phrases. Depending on the task, I might provide a success criteria, or at GCSE, a mark scheme.

If the success criteria isn’t met or there’s a whole paragraph with no chains of explanation, they know where to improve and importantly, how to improve their writing.

By building in the checking step to the teaching process, we can begin to develop this as a habit in our students. This helps them to produce better writing but also to understand the skill better.

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CURRICULUM

How does this apply to assessing?

I teach assessing in much the same way by explicitly teaching useful phrases and then modelling them into written tasks. A key difference is that I call them Concluding Phrases. I have found this allows students to see where they fit into their longer written work more easily.

For KS3 and KS4 questions where students are asked to assess or evaluate something, they need to weigh up options and decide using evidence. The commonly used paragraph structure is Point, Evidence, Explain, Link - but I often change the Link to Mini Conclusion. This encourages students to give their opinion on the paragraph they’ve written and justify it instead of repeating the question again. It also provides a reminder that these mini conclusions and overall conclusion are where Concluding Phrases go.

with an unfamiliar exam question.

Concluding Phrases I believe this is…

I think…

Based on the evidence…

To summarise…

Overall…

This is more significant/important/ sustainable/_______ than… because…

I again have a simple list of suggested Concluding Phrases displayed in my classroom which is there to be referred to. However, when discussing how to answer a longer assess question, I will often brainstorm others that are more relevant to the question being answered with the class before starting. This modelling with the students shows them my thinking and gives them the tools to be able to be more resilient when faced

“This question is asking about the sustainability of transport systems in a UK city, so after I’ve explained each strategy with my case study evidence I will need a mini conclusion. If it’s about sustainability I want to be assessing how sustainable they are, so Concluding Phrases like ‘I think this is quite environmentally sustainable because…’ and ‘Overall this is…’ could help me. In my overall conclusion I need to compare so ‘more sustainable than…’ will be useful.”

Students’ conclusions are often a one line ‘I agree because…” which usually repeats something already said rather than summarise or further the key geographic themes being discussed. By using Concluding Phrases we are giving students other ways to develop their writing and show their understanding in a more nuanced way.

Where next?

As geographers progress past GCSE there are many opportunities for their writing to develop beyond the short-form essays I’ve referred to here. However I am finding that these basic building blocks of geographical writing help them to not only achieve at GCSE but also have the tools to move into their own style and know which skills they are using when doing so.

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LEADERSHIP

58. What Makes an effective senior Leader?

Key takeaways from experience and research to help others consider how to ensure effective team leadership

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LEADERSHIP

What Makes an effective senior Leader?

I have encountered many challenges since my leadership role has overtaken my teaching role, struggling to accept criticism and taking on too much. I did not anticipate the personal reflection needed as a leader to ensure that I could lead effectively. In this article, I hope to share some key takeaways from my own experiences and research to help others consider how to ensure effective team leadership.

By Lindsay Galbraith

Senior Leaders form the core of school culture and standards, whilst often managing different responsibilities and often teaching. Leaders often get negative press amongst those that they lead, and this is often because mistakes are made about our purpose in the organisation.

Effective senior leaders must commit to continuous personal development, alongside improvements to their professional knowledge.

1. Communicating your vision How can people follow if they don’t know where they are going?

Ultimately, a Senior Leader’s role is to set the tone and to lead their organisation to reach goals. But, if those you are leading do not know what the goal is, how do

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they know what I needed of them? If we want engagement, empowerment and ownership from those that we need, we must take everyone on the journey with us.

This means that we must regularly communicate and reinforce what we want to achieve. In schools, we have priorities and short term goals, but do we think enough about long term vision? In my opinion, we don’t and if we do, I don’t we make this clear. We must always return to the long term goal and think more strategically about actions we take to lead the organisation towards the end point.

2. You are not supposed to know everything When I became a senior leader, I assumed I needed to have all the answers. Everyone was looking to me to solve problems and

provide the answers. I spent my first year working myself to the bone, reading, listening and swotting up on all things I line managed. In honesty, I burnt myself out and I became pretty useless to anyone.

What I have learnt through my own studies and experience is that you are not supposed to know all the answers. Instead, a leader facilitates problem solving. A leaders helps those that they lead to find the answers and works collaboratively to solve problems.

We must accept that often, those that we lead will have more knowledge, confidence and experience in some areas and therefore we need to empower those people and work with them to drive this knowledge towards the overall vision and priorities.

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3. Modelling Leadership As the face of an organisation, those in senior leadership roles have a responsibility to model behaviours that they want from those that they lead.

In teaching, we often talk about being role models for students and ensuring that we model behaviours that we want our students to exhibit but the same can be said amongst adults. If we want commitment, passion, and engagement, we must also explicitly model these behaviours.

In my experience as a teacher, one thing that would really demotivate me would be when someone in leadership would tell us to do something and then not do it themselves. How can we expect others to do something if we don’t?

Leaders must be professional but also human, empathetic, and transparent.

We want teachers to be warm, caring, compassionate and kind therefore, we must model these virtues.

5. Managing Projects

6. Receiving Feedback

During my first year as a senior leader, I made many mistakes, but my biggest mistake was trying to manage too many projects all at once. At times, we must step back, examine the bigger picture, and carefully plan to execute projects well. In my own experience, when I have tried to manage too many things at once, often they have either failed or taken so much time and effort to get over the line. We may have so many ideas running through our heads (mine are usually when I am in the shower!) but we must be mindful that the more we take on, the less we give to each project.

We lead an organisation. As leaders, our role is to meet the goals and ambitions of the organisation. In schools, we serve those we lead including, teachers, support staff, students, parents, and many others in the community. We have a duty to listen to and respond to our own areas of improvement.

As humans, we are often not very good at taking feedback. I personally struggle with positive and negative feedback. But as a leader, I have had to learn that all feedback helps me to grow.

Often our drive and passion can takeover, I know mine does. I get a great idea and immediately run with it. However, this impacts my work-life balance and the time I put into my teaching. Thus, return to your vision.

Be clear on what you want to achieve and consider – Why now? What impact? Who will benefit?

We want teachers to listen and act upon feedback to improve, we want students to listen and act upon feedback to improve, so we must also listen and act upon feedback to improve. We must change the perspective on feedback we are given as leaders.

We are all learn, no one is the finished article and often how we view ourselves is not necessarily how we are viewed by others. So, if we care enough about the people we lead and the organisations we manage, we must listen to those that we impact.

4. Valuing Others If we are not expected to always be the expert, we must accept that others may be more skilled and more knowledgeable in areas of our responsibility. Therefore, collaboration is vital. We must work with others, regardless of position in schools and organisations to achieve our goals.

In that, we must recognise and value the contributions of others. Through acknowledgement, trust and reward those that we lead are empowered to engage, commit and drive towards the vision.

My most successful projects have been when I have worked with others to launch projects and initiatives but then I have trusted others to take the lead and drive the projects forward. Huge gestures are often not needed or wanted by others. In fact, quiet praise, extended trust and responsibilities are often the greatest reward for others.

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62. Teaching Behaviour As An Early Career Teacher

How do you want your pupils to feel when they are in your company?

65. Effective Mentoring Strategies For Induction Tutors And ECT Mentors

Tracey Leese explains what she sees as key priorities for mentors inducting Early Career Teachers

68. Should TeacherFathers Take Shared Parental Leave?

Taking shared parental leave is uncommon, but as Will Pope explains, there’s an excellent case for it

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EXPERIENCE

Teaching Behaviour as an early career Teacher How do you want your pupils to feel when they are in your company? Stephen Baker explores how our interactions with students set the tone for the classroom culture and ultimately the relationships that good behaviour is often built upon.

By Stephen Baker

Do you remember your teachers? For most early career teachers, secondary school is not that long ago, so it should be possible to dredge up memories of the range of human life that paraded in front of you: the trendy, the tired; the good, the bad, and in my case at least, the distinctly odd.

You might not remember much that they taught you, though some fashion habits, nicknames and other idiosyncrasies will have stuck in your mind, but I will bet good money that you can remember how they made you feel. Some will have inspired you to feel welcome, valued or enthralled, while others may have prompted darker emotions.

This is a good starting point when considering your approach to behaviour.

How do you want your pupils to feel when they are in your company? If we think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for a moment, safety is one of our most basic needs, so you’ll need to establish some boundaries. They had better feel interested too, or time will crawl in your classroom, so teaching vibrant, engaging lessons had also better be high up the list.

But how did you feel about your teachers? What determined that? Was it how they listened, or failed to? How they

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laughed at themselves, or could not? How they appeared confident, or nervous?

When I was at school and a new teacher walked into the room, we knew instantly whether we would behave for them or not. It had nothing to do with fear, but everything to do with respect, and selfrespect. Did this adult look confident? Did they look like they wanted to be there?

Were they looking forward to the next hour, or dreading it? All this was detected using a sixth sense, but other evaluations were more prosaic.

It is worth considering the judgements that your pupils will make about you, before you open your mouth. For example, think about your posture. Do you stand straight, or crouch? Do you fidget or remain still? Do you smile in a relaxed manner, or do you look so tense that if someone pops a balloon you’re going to have a coronary?

When we spoke to the teacher, how did she look at us? In a friendly manner, or as if regarding something on the bottom of her shoe? Was her tone of voice warm and engaging, or stiff and robotic? You can choose how to behave in the classroom and this will have a major bearing on how your pupils behave.

Then, when it is time to speak, have you given thought to your voice? Speak too quietly and your class will give up trying to listen. Speak too loudly and they’ll assume you expect trouble. Have you come up with some scripts for the various moments that are likely to occur in a typical lesson? When someone turns round and chats to a friend on the row behind them, how exactly will you react? An irritated ‘Excuse me!’ will give a different message from ‘Jason… facing me?.. thank you.’

The good news is that you can be as friendly as you like, within limits. Any talk of ‘Don’t smile until Christmas’ is nonsense. So long as you teach routines, establish boundaries, apply consequences, and keep your promises, it pays to be friendly. Trying to be a tyrant is a fool’s game. The pupils in your classroom are far more sophisticated than my peers and I were a few decades back. You will simply end up with 30 enemies.

Then of course there is what your pupils glean about you and what you choose to tell them. ‘Where were you born Sir?’ is a fair enough question. ‘Where were you Saturday night?’ is not. ‘What made you teach French?’ is a question I would answer. ‘What made you choose that dress?’ is not. It is vital to establish good relationships with pupils but this must be about mutual respect, not idle curiosity.

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EXPERIENCE A great model for building these relationships is the ‘emotional bank account’. There will be countless opportunities during the average week to show interest in a student, to ask how they played in the rugby game last night, or if they caught anything when they went fishing with Grandad at the weekend.

Similarly there are opportunities to give a little focused help to individuals with the learning. All these interactions are moments when a deposit can be made in the child’s emotional bank account. By taking an interest, showing kindness, or simply spending time, you are building up credit with that child. Then, in November, when you are tired and going down with a cold and you snap at them, you will pay out from that account, but you’ll still be in credit, because you paid in, day in and day out.

Teaching behaviour is about being explicit.

How exactly will your routines work?

When you collect the homework, do they pass their books to the end of the row, or

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forward? Thinking your routines through in as much detail as possible will save you from looking like a ditherer and losing learning time.

Highly successful sports coaches talk about ‘process’. Instead of encouraging their teams to focus on the outcome, with a ‘win at all costs’ mentality, they emphasise sticking to established processes, that will tend to bring about a positive result. In football for example, such a process might be to keep the ball, by passing it swiftly and moving in patterns that provide a free colleague to pass it to. Stick to the plan says the coach, focus on the process, and the result will take care of itself.

We can apply this thinking in the classroom. Instead of worrying ‘Will my class behave?’, establish processes that you will focus on. Some good examples would be following a ‘one voice at a time’ routine, taking an interest in your pupils, and paying attention to those who get it right. Do these things relentlessly and ‘behaviour’ will improve.

I adopt a simple model when I think about teaching behaviour: Teach it, Model it, Highlight it. ‘Teach it’ covers the explicit teaching of the behaviours you want to see, such as lining up outside the room, answering the register with a ‘Yes Sir’ or using one voice at a time.

Creating and sticking to routines is the way to do this. ‘Model it’ is about showing your pupils what these behaviours look like. When you hand out books, don’t throw them on to your pupils’ desks; place them carefully instead, and when your pupils speak to you, listen and be seen to listen. The rules must apply to you to. Finally, ‘Highlight it’ means take every opportunity to single out and praise by name, pupils who demonstrate the behaviours you want to see.

If you systematically and relentlessly teach, model and highlight desired behaviour you will find that these processes deliver the classroom in which you and your pupils can thrive.

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EffEctivE MEntoring StratEgiES for induction tutorS and Ect MEntorS An Early Career Framework without effective mentoring to support it is a waste of time. Tracey Leese explains what she sees as key priorities for mentors inducting Early Career Teachers.

By Tracey Leese

When I qualified as teacher well over a decade and a half ago, NQT mentoring was inconsistent. Yes there were statutory entitlements such as a reduced timetable – but the actual mentoring part can’t really be deemed as mentoring in the way we would consider today. With

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no real need for teachers joining the profession to be meaningfully mentored (ostensibly because there were more teachers than jobs in these halcyon days) the induction period was reduced to completing a termly form and a couple of observations.

In my own experience at least, I remember feeling like a massive inconvenience and I was also hyper-aware of taking up the precious time of my colleagues. Truly, I don’t think any amount of training can prepare you for how little time teachers actually have, until you’re qualified and are in post.

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EXPERIENCE I look back on my first few weeks as a qualified teacher as akin to treading water – in the sense that I felt that I was one unguarded moment away from drowning. All my focus went onto staying afloat… and the reality was that had I been actively mentored, I would likely have preferred to spend the time planning and marking. With that said, I remember also being hungry for feedback and watching colleagues intently in order to try to do the best job possible.

Had I been offered access to an expert colleague in the way that the Early Career Framework enables, I wonder what difference it would have made to my career… 17 years later I am still here, still striving to be the most effective practitioner possible and still negotiating a demanding workload.

It’s entirely possible that the general lack of coaching and mentoring at the time created an entire generation of resilient, proactive and empowered teachers.

Though, of course it’s impossible to know for certain what impact a bespoke CPD programme such as the Early Career Framework could have had on our ability to do our jobs in the best way possible.

Fast forward to 2023 and the teacher recruitment crisis has brought the need for early career mentoring into sharper focus.

We have come to recognise at a professionwide level that we cannot afford to be remiss about mentoring, nor the teachers who have recently qualified.

Enter the Early Career Framework – a DfE-led initiative designed to induct teachers more effectively in the hope that they will stay in the profession for longer.

The ECF is not an assessment framework – it cannot be “passed” or “failed”, but its ambitious aim is to provide support and development for teachers in the early years of their careers and, ultimately, induct them better (so we can keep them longer).

As lead for Early Career Teachers in my school, it’s fair to say that the demands of the ECF are significant and not to be underestimated. My concern since its introduction is that the very thing implemented in response to the teacher recruitment crisis, could actually put early career teachers off the profession. Despite

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the intentions behind the ECF, it’s still a big commitment at the aforementioned ‘treading water’ phase.

encouraged to participate in Professional Learning Communities beyond their own schools.

The following tips have been compiled to support Early Career Teachers and mentors to navigate the ECF whilst avoiding figuratively drowning in the process:

4. See them teach:

1. Respond to emerging needs: The ECF modules can feel didactic – obviously a consistent and nation-wide mandatory CPD offer isn’t going to feel terribly bespoke (on paper at least).

Therefore, in addition to the specified module content, still consider the emerging needs of ECTs. When looking at behaviour management for example, many of the strategies will be specific to your own school or trust, so it’s natural that you may need to provide additional content and strategies depending on the emerging needs (and experience) of your ECTs. In the same way you wouldn’t ignore a clear development area for any given teacher, just because there isn’t an ECF module specifically based on it.

I know it sounds obvious, but an oldfashioned lesson visit (without the old school judgemental grading of course) is still an incredibly useful aspect of induction ECTs, and a good use of a mentor’s time.

In addition to dutifully engaging with the modules, mentor time should also be flexible enough to allow for lesson visits, drop ins and subsequent reflection.

2. It’s not optional: For all parties involved, it’s important to point out that mentoring is a key entitlement of the ECF – and the requisite funding and allocation implications. Many Early Career Teachers feel like a burden and are all-too-accommodating if their mentors are taken for cover/ busy during their mentor meeting. However, without mentors the ECF is little more than a two year long tick-box-project. Therefore mentor time needs to be protected and given credence accordingly.

3. Peer support: Depending on how many ECTs are in your school or trust, it’s a great idea for them to work collaboratively as much as possible.

This could take the form of reciprocal learning walks, jointly organising a trip or extra-curricular sessions or developing resources together. The benefits of meaningful ECT collaboration can be enormous. Similarly, ECTs should also be

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5. Operational matters matter:

6. Prioritise face-toface sessions:

It may not be listed on the course objectives, but do not underestimate the core role that mentors play in equipping ECTs with operational information as well. Understanding the idiosyncrasies of your school’s MIS or how to un-jam the photocopier and (crucially) which day the cafeteria serves chips are all examples of helpful and worthwhile information for mentors to share and impart and (in the case of chips) digest!

There is a consensus among all ECTs I have worked with that the face-to-face sessions are their favourite aspects of the ECF. Generally speaking teachers return from these sessions energised, inspired and fired up! The impact of providing staff with the opportunity to share ideas and network should never be underestimated.

7. Above and beyond: The ECF is not intended to limit teachers or cap their potential.

Certainly it isn’t the only CPD ECTs will need over the two year induction period – remember that in addition to your school’s main CPD programme, there is a wealth of other CPD (formal or otherwise) which mentors may also wish to facilitate.

8. Keep it simple: Perhaps the key to managing the Early Career Framework (as with so many other things) is not to overcomplicate it. Straight forward mentoring in which mentors take the course content and use this to facilitate discussion – agree actions and reflect can still be incredibly impactful.

9. Be proactive: In my experience it’s easy to let the online tasks and webinars build up – as the intention behind the ECF gives way to the demands of the profession.

It is the role of mentors and Induction Tutors to ensure that the online tasks don’t build up and are contextualised in practice so they feel less like a box to tick.

10. Great expectations: Mentors and Induction Tutors need professional expectations to be made clear to them, this can be achieved through observing expert colleagues, jointly planning learning activities or moderating assessment. In order to become the best teacher possible, it’s vital that ECTs know what success looks like.

Further reading:

Mentoring in Schools: How to Become and Expert Colleague, Haili Hughes, Crown House Publishing You got This: Thriving as an Early Career Teacher with Mr T, Andrew Taylor, Bloomsbury Education

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EXPERIENCE

Should Teacher-FaTherS Take Shared ParenTal leave?

Taking shared parental leave is uncommon, but as Will Pope explains, there’s an excellent case for it.

By William Pope

Just over a year ago I was in the dreaded position of returning to school after an extended period of time off, following the birth of our second daughter. When back for INSET at the start of term, however, I didn’t have dreadful anxiety at leaving my beloved daughter at nursery or streams of people asking me how it was to be back.

It was like I’d never been away. After what had been such a monumental, life changing phase for me, nobody else seemed to have even noticed my absence.

I think this was probably for two reasons: firstly, I’d only been away for a term, and secondly, I’m a dad.

My wife had taken seven months off after having had our second daughter and I arranged with my school to take Statutory Shared Parental leave for the entirety of the Spring term. In this article I hope to share my thoughts for any future or new teacher dads (or secondary carers) considering exercising your legal entitlement to an extended amount of time off school to look after a newborn child.

The excellent book Cribsheet, by Prof Emily Oster and her blog helped influence both

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my decision to take parental leave and to write this article. I strongly recommend reading both Cribsheet and its prequel, Expecting Better for data driven, evidence supported advice around raising a family. Please note that in this article I refer to fathers and dads as the nonprimary caregiver, but I hope that it applies equally well to any two-parent relationship.

While America is viewed as the bogeyman of parental leave, it seems that Scandinavia is generally viewed as leading the way in progressive approaches. Research by Maya RossinSlater (2017) suggests that reducing the amount of time that mothers are away from work to below 12-months both improves a woman’s job continuity and their employment-rate several years after childbirth; longer leave periods for mothers had the opposite effect.

She also claims that fathers will take extended leave if the option is available to them and that such leave has minimal adverse affect on organisations. This final point had been a significant concern for me. Running our Physics department, I feared that my absence

would have negative effects on our external exams grades, and result in my team resenting covering my absence internally.

The reality could not have been a greater example of how categorically expendable I seem to be and how brilliantly my team continued without me. Historically, I had typically taught a heavy load of exam classes and I did not want to risk leaving them with cover teachers for a whole term.

Planned well in advance, the solution we came up with was that I would be timetabled to teach Yr 9, 10 and 12 for the entire year, hence not teaching any final exam classes.

My Spring term absence was covered by my colleagues in the Physics department who were scheduled to be available to teach specific classes for the whole term.

Our department ECT and I team-taught my Yr 9s for the Autumn and Summer terms while he took the Spring term solo; while younger members of staff were trained in advance and prepared to step up to A-level content for the year.

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EXPERIENCE At the end of the term, we found that my colleagues greatly preferred having their week’s allocation of ‘cover’ lessons spent teaching their specialty with class continuity rather than being pulled to cover Yr 7 Latin or Yr 13 Economics, which would normally be the case. The colleague who had taken on the role of HoD in my absence was asked by the school to take the role permanently (I was already due to move to a new role the following September) following a fantastic period acting in the role to prove their worth.

to suggest that financial worries, risks to future career advancement and cultural stereotypes play a significant part in preventing fathers from taking up their entitlement, with Harvard Business School (Fuller, 2019) claiming that 40% of men (compared to 25% of women) strongly agreeing that “caregivers are perceived to be less committed to their careers than non-caregivers”.

With these opinions so widely shared, culturally we are facing an uphill battle to

encourage men to take time away from their work to look after their children, despite figures such as Serena Williams’ husband, Alexis Ohanian encouraging us all to do so in a brilliant article for the New York Times. (https://www.nytimes. com/2020/04/15/parenting/alexisohanian-paternity-leave.html ) Compared to the complexity of my wife’s return to work before our first daughter could start nursery (multiple nanny shares, relying on grandparents, accrued

The ECT seemed grateful to have me back, but had used my absence to really make his mark on the class and essentially ran them single-handedly from that point onwards.

The option of making family leave a shared concept, as we have in the UK, appears to result in limited take up from fathers. Hoping to counter this, Norway has a policy reserving 4 weeks of the family’s 42 week allocation for the father; if the father does not take it, it’s lost. The uptake of paternal leave increased by 40% as a direct result of the implementation of this policy.

The authors of the research (Cools et al, 2015) found that, especially if the father had a higher level of education than the mother, taking a period of paternal leave increased children’s early school performance. Meanwhile, examining the same ‘Daddy quota’ of four weeks paternal leave, Kotsadam and Finseraas (2011) reported a clear rise in fathers increasing their contribution to household chores, presumably as a result of having been left on their own to do it for an extended period of time.

The numbers also claimed 11% lower levels of conflict over household divisions of labour, and 50% more likely to equally divide laundry chores; clear signs of a happier household.

The UK’s shared parental leave policy allows qualifying families to split 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between them. The BBC reports (Cox, 2021) that in 2018, around 1% of the 900,000 UK parents able to follow the policy did so. There is strong evidence

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@hwrk_magazine

annual leave, etc), this arrangement was immeasurably simpler, only marginally more expensive and was much less stressful for our family.

It also enabled my wife to focus on returning to work without worrying about any admin at home and free from the emotional guilt some parents feel around returning to work too early.

By being paid for the school holidays on either side, an unpaid term (with a little statutory) was less challenging

on the household bills than initially feared, but had required some saving beforehand.

I predict absolutely no harm to my future career trajectory as a result of taking a break. The fact that a term later, many of the students and my colleagues had forgotten I was ever away shows how seamlessly the arrangements worked and makes me question anyone’s opinions of selfimposed “irreplaceability”.

I have no idea whether the mini-Pope will perform better at school as a result of me taking her to MiniMusicMakers once a week, nor do I know if my wife and I have 11% fewer arguments about cleaning than the average couple, or if we’re anywhere near laundry equity.

What I strongly believe, however, is that every time a non-birth parent takes time to look after their child, they are boosting longer-term equality in the workplace.

Perhaps most importantly, I absolutely loved it. It was a little odd being the only dad in 90% of the classes we went to, but my daughter and I had a blast. (To all those mums who view the dad in the class with suspicion, please be nice to him; he’s not there to hit on you.)

My relationship with both my girls is stronger as a direct result, I feel that I played an active and instrumental role in our child’s first year that I may not have been able to do without being sole care-giver for an extended period of time.

I know that this won’t stop me being mortally embarrassing in ten years time but I hope it has set the seeds for a long and loving family relationship.

To any non-primary parent considering taking extended leave but worried of any consequences, be rational, think about what really matters. And then fill out the form.

References:

Cox, J. 2021, Paternity leave: The hidden barriers keeping men at work, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/ article/20210712-paternity-leave-the-hidden-barriers-keeping-men-at-work Cools, S et al, 2015 – Caual effect of Paternity leave on Children and Parents, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ sjoe.12113 Fuller, J. and Raman, M. 2019, The Caring Company, Harvard Business School, https://www.hbs.edu/managing-thefuture-of-work/Documents/The_Caring_Company.pdf Kotsadam, A and Finseraas, H, 2011, The State intervenes in the battle of the sexes: Causal effects of paternity leave, Social Science Research Vol 40 Issue 6. https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X11001153?casa_token=uj8OQ82F_I4AAAAA%3AILT9y1tmI9dTtBLeFm09hSvh2HIRO56eNwCcS3PnYbROXKaOXEF9uJnKZUGMGeoqvO7zpyr9E3k&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=emai Oster, E. Cribsheet, 2019, Souvenir Press Rossin-Slater, M. 2017, Maternity and Family Leave Policy. https://web.stanford.edu/~mrossin/RossinSlater_maternity_family_leave.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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