STUDYING ERRORS - USING SHOW CALL IN THE CLASSROOM

PEDAGOGY

and appreciation helping to communicate the normalcy of this in the classroom. Throughout, a smile and a thank you go a long way in helping to build a culture where the students are comfortable with sharing their work and the practice of studying errors.

After the students recognise that sharing their work is part and parcel of the classroom, I can then begin my circulation by declaring, “I am coming round to look for great work to Show Call”, making it something for the students to strive for in the classroom.

Getting this part right is arguably the most important aspect of a Show Call. We would never want to humiliate a student or make them feel targeted so being super selective on whose work you Show Call, especially at the beginning will help to generate a culture where students work is studied deeply.

THE REVEAL

The way that we ‘reveal’ work will shape how students interpret it and sets the tone for the work that lies ahead. Initially, I won’t name the student whose work is being beamed onto the projector. I will state that “we are going to look at someone’s work and talk about it for a little bit” setting the scene for the discussion to follow. It’s important to note that the tone that you use needs to be as casual as possible, like this is the most normal thing in the world to happen.

As we begin to study errors more deeply naming the author of the work can come into play but often maintaining anonymity can be super powerful. We could move onto saying “let’s check someone’s work to see if they remembered to simplify their fraction” and if we wanted to use names we could say “Here’s how Daisy solved this problem. What do you think?” or “Martin has made a simple common error. Take a minute to look at his work silently to see if you can spot it”.

Now that the work has been displayed and the students are giving it their full attention what happens next should always focus on getting better and helping the students get better at the task in hand.

THE COGNITIVE WORK

As the work is being beamed onto the projector from under the visualiser an important part is considering how you want the students to interact with it. Perhaps they could read it silently for a minute and compare it with their own work or maybe they could discuss it with a shoulder partner. Whatever path you choose making sure that it is the students that are doing most of the cognitive work is key. You could say “take a minute to silently read Jamie’s work” followed by “take thirty seconds to share with your partner how you would solve this problem”.

With either option I would then cold call a student to have them share their thoughts “Gabriel, what do you think?” or “Keira, what should Jamie do to fi x his error”. As the students are o ering their thoughts and building on one another’s ideas I will chart the conversation on the board over the top of the image being projected, helping everyone to keep on track. By now the students will have concluded and it is time to wrap up the conversation.

Sometimes, I will provide a review to make sure everyone knows how to fi x the error we have just studied and other times I will say “as Keira mentioned Jamie needed to do this, so take a minute now to tidy up your work”. It is important that time is given for students to tidy their work and make any necessary changes before moving on.

Show Call is a regular feature in my classroom and with time it becomes a rigorous process for studying errors and what makes it powerful is that through questioning and probing it is the students themselves that improve the work of their peers. This builds a scholarly culture to the classroom that keeps the cognitive workout fi rmly on the side of the students.

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TRAINING TEACHERS: EXPLORING THE ITE CURRICULUM

Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is complex. In this piece, Henry Sauntson focuses our attention on what matters: not the curriculum itself, but how it is applied by today’s trainee teachers.

By Henry Sauntson

[On Teacher Educators] ‘our calling after all, is to shepherd and enable the callings of others’ (Ayers 2001).

The introduction of your friend and mine, the Early Career Framework (ECF) and it’s reverse-engineered progeny the ITT Core Content Framework (CCF) - is perhaps the biggest standardisation of Initial Teacher Education in a generation. A form of National Curriculum for teacher development, using an evidence-based approach and a series of Learn That and Learn How To statements that endeavour to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

We can perhaps see the CCF as a specification and the Teacher Standards as the mark scheme. From September 2024 it will be the duty of every ITT provider (many already do) to have ‘have a fully developed, evidence-based curriculum which explicitly delivers all aspects of the ITT Core Content Framework (CCF) and ensures that trainees are prepared for the next stage in their professional development as teachers, the Early Career Framework (ECF) induction’ (ITT Draft Criteria 24/25). They must also consider the following:

• The curriculum must be designed in the light of the best evidence for effective teacher training and development

• Programmes must be designed to reflect how children learn most effectively and, wherever appropriate, reflect cognitive architecture in curriculum design

Furthermore, they should ‘integrate well-evidenced content into their ITT curricula, including relevant subject-specific content and critique of theory, research (including, where appropriate, their own) and expert practice’ and weave this into a ‘sequenced and coherent curriculum which supports trainees to develop their classroom practice.’

Back in 2000, Hillary Burgess looked to the future of teacher training, quite presciently: ‘It is important to note that with the introduction of the National Curriculum for ITT a new language has also emerged. Teacher education is now teacher training; students are trainees; the curriculum is expressed as a set of standards for qualified teacher status (QTS) and subject knowledge is content; the expansion of school-based routes and employment schemes means that training institutions are often referred to as providers. All these terms hold implications for the way student teachers and student educators are perceived’ (Burgess, 2000, p406).

One of the biggest challenges providers face is not the design of the curriculum but ensuring that it is understood by all engaged in its implementation. The provider can put the content on the ‘road map’, but it is the trainee and mentor that oversee its implementation in diverse classroom settings; this is not easy to monitor, manage or manipulate.

There are many layers, each filtering the content from the Core Curriculum and adding their own twist, their own opinion, their own experience. With so many layers comes the possibility of a game of pedagogical Chinese Whispers - lethal mutations derived from surface-level awareness of terminology or concepts but perhaps lacking the firm knowledge base.

The provider MUST ensure

that the curriculum is not only principled - based on a firm vision of what teaching ‘looks like’ - but also coherent; internal coherence through the relationships between the taught content, and external coherence through the relationships between that taught content and the multitudinous implementers across the provider’s partnership settings.

Indeed, the draft criteria is quite explicit about this: ‘Those responsible for teaching, tutoring and mentoring trainees should have a deep understanding of the provider’s planned curriculum and its basis in evidence, to ensure that trainees experience consistent training and support at all stages’.

So many times we see implementation hampered by the lack of sufficient understanding or a confused cacophony of feedback; a Tower of Babel.

For me, the key is the ‘eff’ words that we are allowed to use in school settings - efficiency and effectiveness; a curriculum must be both in order to be properly understood; it must be deep, rich and worthy, but it must also be simple.

Trainees are adult learners, subject to the same principles of learning science and curriculum design that we would adopt for students, but with the added layer of increased ‘life’ experience and self-regulation - therefore there is more of a challenge to cater for everybody due to a more diverse range of preconceptions and attitudes formed by experience.

A further challenge of the ITE provider is that of balancing the trainee’s dual identity as both aspiring teacher and novice learner; they work through the 5 stages of Furlong & Maynard’s proposed pre-service year, they adopt Korthagen’s onion model of competencies with Core Beliefs and Vision at the core, they strive to be the best but they also suffer from the difficulties of filtering myriad critical voices, translating generic theory into domain-specific practice and also cultivating their own development.

To return to Burgess, ‘Successful initial teacher training also involves knowledge, expertise, accountability and ideals. The interaction between the teacher and the learner is dependent not only on subject knowledge and skills but it is also an expression of personal values and beliefs about teaching. These important components in the programmes of student teachers can only be developed where time for reflection on practice is given space. The processes of teaching need to remain high on the agenda of initial teacher education if it is to produce the inspirational teachers of the future’ (408)

All curricula require practice in order to authenticate them and make them ‘real’; there are many active facets of the ITE curriculum that must be considered within its intent (abstract concepts) and its manifestation in practice (concrete constructs), all supported by constant observation, feedback, discussion and dialogue, underpinned by reflection.

As with many counterintuitive elements of learning science, we must remember from the outset of our design that to increase expertise, trainees shouldn’t look to simply imitate experts. The performance of the trainee in the short-term is not indicative of their longer-term progress through the course. They will learn only their interpretation of what they are taught, based on their own prior knowledge Finally and most importantly, the generic skills I hint at above - evaluation, reflection, interpretation - have to be robustly and securely underpinned by swathes of domainspecific knowledge.

There are, in my view, guiding principles and ideas around which a teacher training curriculum must be designed:

1. Elicit, diagnose and dispel trainees’ preconceptions and misconceptions

2. Structure trainee access to the curriculum at the right time, level and complexity

3. Create a learning timetable, not just a teaching schedule; there needs to be an appropriate balance of the two

4. Iterative exposures to opportunities for engagement in planning, teaching and assessing

5. Plan for careful progress - formative assessment that builds through observation, feedback and evaluation, centred around curriculum goals. Avoid the summative judgments until they are necessary

6. Structure observation of trainees to avoid irrational judgment or excessive subjectivity

7. Provide trainees with opportunities to observe, with guidance and focus, experienced teachers and their practice

8. Create multiple opportunities for dialogue, deconstruction and critical thinking

9. Set targets drawn from the curriculum

10. Use the curriculum as the lowest common denominator for the shared language

11. Consult all stakeholders - mentors, students, trainee teachers - about their learning experiences