Primary First

PrimaryFirst The journal for primary schools Issue 14 £5.00 “If we do not keep on speaking terms with children we become merely machines for eating and earning money”.

National Association for Primary Education

John Updike

Hamilton Trust is a UK charity working to support high quality teaching and learning. Under the guidance of Professor Ruth Merttens, we provide adaptable plans for whole and mixed year age groups.

Hamilton’s plans are comprehensive and authoritative and come with complete sets of resources.

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Use a paper fastener to attach the tail to make a tadpole.

Attach front and back legs to make the adult frog.

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Tadpole to Frog

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English plans stimulate spoken language, reading and writing.

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Skeletons

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If you made skeletons of each of these shapes using straws and blobs of Plas cine to join them together at the ver ces, how many straws and blobs of Plas cine would you need to make each model?

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Maths plans promote wellpaced skills progression, confidence and mastery.

Copyright C Cop Co opyright i © Hamil Hamilton Trust 2013

Investigative Science sessions facilitate understanding.

Cross-curricular Topics’ purposeful outcomes motivate children.

Tracker (HAT) Hamilton Assessment English 6 Reception through Year USER GUIDE

NEW THIS YEAR!

h and Maths. lis g En r fo r ke c ra T nt Hamilton Assessme the curriculum to h g u ro th y e rn u jo ’ Track pupils teaching. r u yo rm fo in d n a ss record their progre It’s all available online! Try the Hamilton website using one of the three access routes below. keep an eye on our e this tracker. Please to develop and improv Hamilton is continuing ck once you’ve used it! on to give us your feedba website for an invitati

Main texts: Chants, rhymes, Gingerbread Man, skipping rhymes

Wk 1

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Whole class teaching

Y1: Autumn Term Poetry: Plan 2A Pattern and Rhyme Prepared an enlarged version of Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat (see resources). Read the rhyme to chn, then repeat it, encouraging them to join in. Point out to chn, that the rhyming words are at the end of each line, and using a highlighter colour the pairs of rhyming words. Draw chn’s attention to the repeated phrases/words. Read Two Little Dicky Birds with the chn. Find and colour the rhyming words Discover hundreds free of plans and notice that theof names across the curriculum the characters are repeated.

Finally, introduce two poems FREE from a non-British cultural heritage, Hippity-Hippity-Hatch and Sugarcake Bubble, (see resources). Talk about why these are different, i.e. the way they sound, the language used.

Comprehension 1

Show chn an enlarged version of Down Behind the Dustbin, (see resources). Before you read it to them, ask them what they notice, i.e. it contains names that begin with capital letters, that the poem is made of verses of 4 lines separated by a space, that the first line of each verse is the same. Read it through with chn a few times asking them to join in not just the repeated phrases, but as much of the poem as possible. Model writing one or two new verses by altering the name of the dog and the final line, e.g. Down behind the dustbin/ I met a dog named Mina/I said your hair is very long/You really should have seen her! Emphasise parts of poem which are repeated in new verses. Composition 1

Explain to chn that you will re-tell the story of The Gingerbread Man without the book. Talk about key elements in story telling: recalling events in correct order, adding detail, including the repeated phrases, using different voices for characters and looking at the audience. Ask chn what the repeated phrase in the story is.

Read enlarged repeated refrain: Run, run as fast as you can… and encourage chn to read with you, Donate to Become a to Friend matching spoken word text.and access the whole of a Key Stage Retell story; when you get to repeated refrain, read enlarged £24/year text with chn, pointing to each word as you read. Talk about order of the animals and people who chased him (see resources) and as you mention each one, display the illustration, e.g. stick to the w/b.

Spoken Lang 1 /Comprehension 2

Talk about all the elements of The Gingerbread Man story which are repeated, e.g. the gingerbread man meeting different animals or people, they all chase him, he escapes from them, the repeated phrase. Talk about why the story changes at the end.

Return to the repeated phrase used throughout. Ask chn which words rhyme. Write up the repeating phrase on w/b.

Emphasise the rhyming words, e.g. write them in a different colour. Write a list of words rhyming with can: e.g. man, ban, fan, nan, plan, tan.

Model writing it with a new last line, e.g. Run, run as fast as you can/You can’t catch me/I’m a wrinkly old man!

Composition 2

Show chn a selection of traditional tale titles (write these on the w/b or show chn the front covers of books from the library or find an image of a front cover from the Internet) that have repeated phrases, e.g.

The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Gingerbread Man, Goldilocks, Rumplestilskin, Little Red Hen, Chicken Licken. Explain that today chn will be composing their own short chant with a repeated line. On the w/b write: Once upon a time there was a tiger. Read this with chn. Underneath it write: The tiger as a a twitchy school for met aSubscribe rabbit with nose. / The complete access to all Key Stages rabbit ran away. Read this together.

Write the same three lines again but this £120/year time change the animal: Once upon a time there was a tiger. /The tiger met a squirrel with a bushy tail. / The squirrel ran away. Repeat this again with a different animal. Explain that you are writing a chant with a repeating phrase.

Composition 3

Objectives

www.wrht.org.uk/PrimaryFirst Dimension

Resources

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Editorial When governments change their policies, particularly when the change is the outcome of criticism they seldom, if ever, seek publicity. The myth is that government is always right and has never made a mistake. So it was when the DfE announced three new review groups to consider and report on the workload of school staffs. One group will consider the marking of children’s work, another will be concerned with lesson planning and resources, the third with managing data. All three are highly relevant to the wellnigh intolerable load carried by those of us who work with young children in their primary schools. And the change of policy slipped in without a fanfare? For the first time since the unlamented rule of Michael Gove and many years before that, representatives of the major unions have been invited to join the groups. Yes that’s right, the unions, hated by government, steadfastly ignored and recognised only through Govian insults about the blob, are at long last to join in offering advice to government about one of the most pressing issues facing us today.

Doubtless the invitations have sprung from the growing concern about the haemorrhaging loss of qualified teachers from the profession. A study earlier this year found that only 62% of teachers were still in the education sector a year after qualifying. This was a steep decline from 2005 when 80% of newly qualified teachers stayed in the profession 12 months after qualification. DfE figures show that in the 12 months to November 2014 (the most recent year for which data is available) almost 50,000 teachers left the state sector. Haemorrhaging losses indeed and it is no wonder that there is more than a whiff of panic in the verdant halls of Sanctuary Building.

One of the prime reasons former teachers offer us in explanation of their flight from the work they were trained at considerable expense to undertake is the imposition

of a workload which contains all too much bureaucracy so leaving them little time and energy to focus upon the children in their care. This is why post graduate student teachers asked why they were dropping out of training immediately following their first school experience would reply that what they had found in school wasn’t what they had chosen teaching to do.

Teaching is the prime and overriding purpose of our schools but a substantial proportion of the bureaucracy which drives away so many colleagues is the current fixation with assessment. Assessment of the progress made by our pupils is important but it has grown over the years to be the driver of our work and this is a profound error which impoverishes teaching and harms children. This has at last been recognised by the government’s acceptance of the recommendations made by the recently published report of the McIntosh Commission. The challenge now is for heads and teachers. We are invited to frame our own assessment systems and to accompany this reform with a major reduction in useless data gathering. Get to it!

Ben Ballin Our eagle eyed proof readers didn’t spot that Ben’s name was wrongly spelled underneath the title of his excellent article in issue 13, our apologies, Ben. Ben Ballin can be contacted through the Geographical Association or directly at benballin@hotmail.com

About us

Editorial Editorial Board

John Coe Peter Cansell, Stuart Swann, Robert Young

Primary First magazine is published three times per year by the National Association for Primary Education.

Primary First, 57 Britannia Way, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS14 9UY Tel. 01543 257257, Email. nape@onetel.com ©Primary First 2015 No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the editorial content the publisher cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the publisher.

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CONTENTS In this issue we publish an article edited by Robert Young from the transcript of David Reedy’s 2014 Schiller Memorial lecture. It is seven pages long and this is only the first part, the second will be published in Issue 15.

It is appreciated that we are trying the academic patience of our readers but please forgive us - it is long because it is an important statement about the language development of children in primary school at a time when so much of our attention has to be focused upon preparation for tests. We feel that not a word is wasted and we hope you will agree.

05. Getting writing for teachers right

Kate White looks at lesson plans and

how they influence what happens.

27. The Book Page - Carey Fluker Hunt

introduces the new feature.

28. Three Reviews

09. Learning about language when stakes

are high Part One of the 2014 Christian

Schiller Memorial lecture.

16. Leadership in action

A head speaks from experience about

the pressure of leadership.

20. Mark Brundrett questions whether

collegiality is the right approach to

leading primary schools.

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30. Children as researchers - Information Then

Data or Data Then Information?

35. Geography Matters - A vital element of a

contemporary curriculum says Paula Owens

Getting writing for teachers right

by Kate White

Google ‘work-life balance for teachers’ and prepare to drown in articles, responses and threads about the workload in primary schools. Nicky Morgan’s face appears, promising working parties to tackle marking and planning demands, alongside pop-up adverts for stress pills and relaxation techniques. Even the phrase ‘work-life balance’ puts the emphasis firmly on ‘work’. Teachers are stretched and stressed. Many are struggling to keep in step with their own families, never mind with trending pedagogical debates in the national education arena.

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06 Faced with a weekend of writing daily lesson plans, many teachers reach for their tried and trusted published sources.

Some, in schools where senior management believe their staff write fresh and original material, do this secretly.

Others can be more open, but all teachers know the value of not reinventing the wheel.

As a writer of published lesson plans, I feel a certain weight of responsibility. Not just to produce good quality sessions that can be adapted to different classrooms. But the work can feel a bit like that of a translator, listening to wider pedagogical debates and converting the essence of these into practical, accessible and current lessons.

To translate well, writers need to know what works in classrooms and why. Experience is important, but reflective practice is everything. For me, effective noticing on the job is the key to unlocking that experience and making it useful for others. John Mason, in his seminal work on reflective practice, talks about learning to notice “in the moment” so to make “a distinction, to create foreground and background”(i). When I teach, I try and notice those catalysts of effective learning; so, when I write, they can work their way into my lesson plans.

knowledge and control. It’s not about letting go. It’s about holding on.”(ii) As a teacher who has worked alongside students and recently qualified colleagues, I understand that it can sometimes be unnerving to teach in a more flexible, creative way. It can look and feel like a loss of control.

Detailed lesson plans can model creative teaching using structures and formats, because using creative teaching styles isn’t about letting children just get on with it. But it is sometimes allowing children to talk and explore and work in groups. It is sometimes about letting children lead the direction of learning. Doing this in parts of a lesson, sandwiched between a more formal structure, can often help less experienced teachers understand and value the power of such approaches. A good prescriptive lesson plan should be a signpost to creative teaching and to a place where the lesson can be shaped by the personality of the deliverer.

Creative, responsive teaching styles start with the child, first finding out where they are in their knowledge and experience. They build on that knowledge, bending and flexing with the learning as it progresses. Good prescriptive lesson formats should also do this, incorporating similar I am an advocate for reflective, responsive teaching and activities throughout. In the hands of a perceptive I write published lesson plans. Is this a contradiction? I practitioner, these prescriptive lesson plans are not a don’t think so. Authors of such lesson plans expect and dictated script, but become structured encourage teachers to reflect on and adapt Overfeeding children opportunities for assessment for learning. their work to fit their situations. They want They maintain teacher autonomy whilst them to stamp their own personalities all on a diet of core being a vehicle for the delivery of wellover the lessons. They want them to be subject content, researched curriculum content. autonomous and creative in their teaching hoping that they styles.

The prelude to creative thought and will spew it out onto learning is imagination. How is it possible There is enormous pressure on schools appropriate test to spark imagination and foster creative to produce good data in core subjects. papers, can seem like thought using prescriptive lesson plans?

Overfeeding children on a diet of core Well-constructed published lessons often the only option for subject content, hoping they will spew include hooks, but if they don’t, then it out onto appropriate test papers, can many. complement and precede one with a seem like the only option for many. More carefully chosen hook of your own. This than ever, therefore, promoting creative teaching styles could be a picture related to the session or topic, a piece of is essential if we are going to keep learning fresh and music or an artefact. It might just be a little scrap of cloth learners engaged. Likewise, encouraging children to think but it just needs to whet the appetite for learning. When creatively and develop their creative capacities is essential. choosing an item, don’t look at it with your adult mind There should be no yawning crevasse between content-rich but try and unlock a different sort of innocent, imaginative curricula and creativity. The two complement each other, as noticing. Teach children to look at the detail of an item, Ken Robinson explains; “creativity is also about working in quietly and in the moment, so they are drawn in by “the a highly focused way on ideas and projects, crafting them intimacy of its tininess”(iii). Ask open-ended questions and into their best forms and making critical judgements along encourage day-dreaming. I have spent time with children, the way…in every discipline, creativity also draws on skill, sitting in a circle, all of us just holding an edge of a tattered

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cloth. We have imagined that cloth to have travelled the There are no written off-the-shelf lessons in the land that ancient Far East, wrapped around the most exquisite of can do this. But making learning irresistible starts with treasures. And we have smelt its mustiness and imagined getting to know the children it is designed for. Influential it keeping us warm in an Anderson shelter during a cold, educators throughout the years have recognised the frightening night. Powerful memories are impact of the environment on children’s created when you allow children to slow Activities and zones learning, with the Reggio Emilia approach down and savour the moment. even describing it as ‘the third teacher’(iv). in this setting have Make the classroom irresistible and vibrant to be so attractive The mindfulness movement tends to call and reflective of the topic. Immerse their this ‘beholding’ – an unrushed, savoured, to the children that senses and the children will respond to sustained beholding that can lead to great they feel compelled the opportunity to learn. I once spent and expansive moments and unexpected a school holiday taping twisted hazel to go and engage encounters. Slot the habits of beholding cuttings from my garden onto every table in some quality into the teaching tool box and they will leg in my classroom, each one with its end snuggle up happily alongside the published learning. in a plastic milk bottle of water. We were lesson plans. about to launch into a topic on Robin Hood and I had no idea if the hazel would do anything. I took a The classroom environment sparks imagination and can risk and it paid off.

Three weeks into the topic, the cuttings actually place the hook in context. I have recently moved budded, then leaves grew and the classroom became our into the Early Years setting, after years of working in Key own little corner of Sherwood Forest!

Stage 2. This move has given me a renewed appreciation for the classroom environment. Activities and zones in Creativity has a tricky time thriving in isolation. Creative this setting have to be so attractive to the children that thought feeds on interaction and thrives in community. they feel compelled to go and engage in some quality Choosing well-constructed sets of published lessons that learning. I find this mind-blowingly refreshing, because for help gather the different curricula together can make an activity to be irresistible, I have to know just what each learning more meaningful and give children a chance to child can’t possibly resist. I have to actually get to know apply skills together through a multi-discipline approach. them as people.

Working on projects and end tasks, they can share in

Work life balance is important for all teachers

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08 the collective purpose and see the value of each other’s abilities and ideas. Last year, my class had to write letters home to their loved ones, from the trenches of the Great War. So, we made helmets out of casting plaster and learned to speak the colloquialisms of the soldiers. We moved the tables, turned them on their sides and sat in rows on the floor in our ‘trenches’. We did this for three consecutive literacy lessons (and some of our maths lessons) because they loved it so much. When they came to the end task – writing their letters home – they had discovered something deeper than how to construct a letter. They had worked together on a project and felt like a tribe. And when children find their tribe, they realise their place in a community that can inspire, expand ideas, plant seeds and nurture.

There is a place for prescriptive lessons in the arena of education. They are signposts and time-savers and help guarantee curriculum coverage. A valuable tool for the busy teacher, they are just waiting to be stamped and stickered with personality and discernment. Ken Robinson believes “education is personal or it is nothing.”(ii) and I wholeheartedly agree.

References and links i) Mason, John (2002). Researching Your Own Practice – The Discipline of Noticing. London: RoutledgeFalmer. ii) Robinson, Ken (2011). Out of Our Minds. West Sussex: Capstone Publishing Ltd iii) Thornton, L and Brunton, P (2015) Understanding the Reggio Approach Oxon: Routledge iv) Wegner, Susan (2015). http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guidessub-pages/contemplative-pedagogy/ The Pedagogical Role of Mindfulness.

Kate White is an experienced Early Years teacher who works at Chipping Warden Academy in Northamptonshire.

She is a frequent contributor to the learning resources published by the Hamilton Trust.

‘Learning about language when stakes are high‘ Part one: Focus on Language, Reading Development and Testing Part two: Focus on Language Development and Knowledge about Grammar

(to be included in the next edition of Primary First)

The Christian Schiller memorial lecture 2014 by David Reedy

I am delighted and honoured to be invited to give this Christian Schiller memorial lecture.

Prior to the invitation I have to admit I was unaware of Christian Schiller and his work. John Coe sent me a copy of the book of Schiller’s lectures and I began to see what I’ve missed.

I read the book with great interest and what struck me as I read it through in preparation for this evening, was the consistency of his thinking throughout his career, and also how relevant his ideas still are in the current context of primary education. We could still draw on the optimism present in his writing, an optimism for the future of primary education. Finally what struck me was the distinct difference between the thinking of Schiller as the chief HMI then, and the thoughts of the chief HMI now.

I have tried to combine what I think are some of the most interesting points contained in the book of Schiller’s talks with my current concerns that about primary education. I will outline how Schiller’s words can help us to reflect on the current context and which of Schiller’s principles still remain key, when we consider the pressures that arise particularly from high-stakes testing. In particular, I will want to highlight the issues around language knowledge, phonics and grammar.

I have been involved in the campaign to put the educational arguments about the recently introduced phonics check for six year olds to ministers and to the DFE, sadly with very little effect. Our arguments fall on deaf ears, even though the weight of evidence demonstrates that such high stakes testing is counterproductive and the fact that virtually every education organization and association in England has called for a review and ultimately the abolition of the test.

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Schiller, sound development and testing In a good junior school we might expect to find: •

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That the school conceives of primary education, not as a preparation for something to follow, but as a fulfilment of a stage of development; That the school seeks to achieve this fulfilment, not by securing certain standards of attainment, but by providing in abundance such experiences and activities as will enable all the children to develop to the full at each phase of growth. (Schiller, p.1, 1946)

The first statement could have come straight from the Cambridge Primary Review Final Report in 2010, where exactly the same point has been made. The Primary phase is a distinct stage in the education process, and it should be seen as that. It’s not just simply a preparation for secondary school, a stage which makes children secondary ready, in the words of our thankfully old out-of-office Secretary of State. On the second point, where Schiller says that The school seeks to achieve this fulfillment not by securing certain standards of attainment, I disagree. We should be aiming for children to all reach a certain level of attainment; but what I do think is important is the emphasis on providing in abundance such experiences and activities as will enable all the children to develop to the full at each phase of growth. I like the emphasis on all the children; we are responsible for providing experiences which lead to all children developing to the full. But, rather than focus on what leads to sound development, increasingly over the last two decades, we have given primary children the experience of more testing.

Do these new experiences enable all children to develop to the full? The answer, as you might imagine, is no. The Cambridge Primary Review (CPR) Final Report did talk about the evidence concerning the detrimental effect of high stakes testing. And since the report was published in 2010, the coalition government introduced further high stakes tests, notably the phonics check and the introduction of the grammar strand in the test for 11 year olds. Now the government will introduce a similar grammar test for seven year olds in 2016.

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Policy makers such as Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, claim that tests like these raise standards but the Cambridge Review found absolutely no evidence of a causal relationship between tests and raised standards. The CPR final report stated: …high stakes tests force teachers, pupils and parents to concentrate their attention on those areas of learning to be tested, too often to the exclusion of much activity of considerable educational importance(CPR final report, page 325).

The CPR Trust has just published a new review of assessment and accountability arrangements by Professor Wynn Harlen, updating the 2010 review, published on The Cambridge Primary Review Trust website. Again, it reinforces the evidence that high stake tests force teachers, pupils and parents to concentrate their attention on those areas of learning to be tested, too often to the exclusion of much activity of considerable educational importance. And of course, the results of the tests are absolutely crucial to children and how they are viewed.

Secondary schools, for example, take the results of the high stake tests at the age of 11 and use them to predict how children will do at the age of 16 in their GCSEs, so the stakes are not just high for school accountability, the stakes are high for children too.

Current testing arrangements I now want to focus on those two newest high stakes tests: the phonics check and the grammar test, draw out the issues and then talk about what the teacher can do – and indeed already do - to help mitigate the negative backwash from the tests on the curriculum and the children themselves.

Extract from Phonics Check 2014 Children have to pronounce 20 real words, and 20 non-words in the Phonics Check. And just to help them pronounce the non-words, they have a picture next to each one; nice little monsters. Because otherwise, as we know, children will get very confused if they see a word which doesn’t have a picture next to it. But, interestingly, there aren’t any pictures next to the real words. So, it does strike

The key points I would want to make regarding the dangers of the phonics check are as follows: •

it promotes a narrow and erroneous view of reading

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high stakes tests have a pronounced negative impact on the curriculum

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workload issues are of concern, given the fact that the average time for preparation and administration was 15.5 hours in the pilot

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many higher attaining pupils are confused by pseudowords

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there is no relation between phonics check result and attainment in reading at the end of Y2

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it undermines the professionalism and capacity of teachers when decisions are made about how to help children to get better at reading

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it is expensive

Extract from Phonics Check 2014

me that coming across a monster at this point, although they do look quite friendly, the frem and the cloin and the bulm and the harnd is likely to be quite confusing, or at least distracting from the purpose of the test.

What might it feel like, at the age of 6, to be told that you haven’t met the expected standard; to have not decoded 32 out of 40 words absolutely correctly, and in line with the criteria which you don’t quite know?

This test promotes a narrow and erroneous view of what development in reading is about and how it happens and it is having a pronounced negative impact on the reading curriculum for young children.

Teachers are teaching to the test. We’ve got clear evidence now over the last year or so that Year One teachers are now spending time teaching children how to pronounce non-words in preparation for this test, in order for more children to reach the required standard. The data concerning the number of children in each school passing the test is recorded and analysed in Raiseonline which OfSTED inspectors use to make judgments about each school’s effectiveness, so it is not surprising that teachers engage in the pointless activity of teaching the reading of non-words as children cannot pass without reading at least 12 ‘correctly’.

We need to consider why we have this test in the first place and what the tests imply about teaching.

The intention of a test such as this is that it is explicitly designed to ensure teachers are teaching reading in a particular way. It is specifically designed to ensure that teachers spend almost all their time on teaching decoding skills through synthetic phonics. It also suggests that learning to read in school at this age is linear - it goes in predictable stages: first we need to know our phonics and we need to have our phonics secure before we move into comprehension. I am sure you’ve heard that risible saying - and certainly Nick Gibb said it fairly recently that children need to learn to read, and then to read to learn. Actually, children need to do both and more all of the time. It is perfectly true that children do need to have to crack the alphabetic codes, no doubt about that, but if they’re doing that in isolation from the other things that they need to know and understand about what it is to be a reader, then they are getting a very narrow experience in coming to understand what it is to be a reader in the fullest sense. If children do not know what word reading skills, including phonics, are good for, then why on earth would they be motivated to do it?

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Stages of reading development

My point is that if we only focus on the alphabetic code through the teaching of synthetic phonics, we ignore, as teachers, the other two sets of crucial experiences - the what goes before and beyond phonics - at our peril and to the detriment of the very children we seek to develop as readers. The result will be that we will have groups of children, particularly those who may not have had much of this early experience, who will see reading as simply about being able to accurately pronounce words on a page, rather than making sense of them and putting them to use - and it’s putting them to use in a satisfying way which is the crucial factor.

I think that individuals go through two stages; prior to reading independently, and becoming independent readers. Across these two stages there are three elements of experience or learning going on at the same time, all of which interrelate to develop individuals as readers.

First we have oral language development, which includes increasing vocabulary, increasing control over syntax and the phonological awareness that comes through such activities as rhyme and discriminating between sounds, much of which is developed through language play. The second and third elements are: increasing understanding of what reading does - what it is for The importance of engagement and and how it is utilized culturally - and how reading works; how words are As educators, we must knowing what reading is for was made up of sounds and syllables also attend to children obvious to Schiller In 1948. He said: Children want to read as soon as they and how words are combined into as individuals.

We experience that there’s something for sentences which are then combined them in reading, even though this need to recruit what into texts whose text structures are related to the communicative function children know already time may not come at five, six, seven or eight years old. and meaning of the text. All three of about it their skills, those three elements of experience I’m not sure about that second part, their experience and and understanding develop right from because I think that with experience the beginning. An understanding of interests. it happens earlier on but he is right what reading is for comes from the about what makes children want to experience of being immersed in it read. Schiller made the same point about writing: They at home, in a cultural context where children see and want to write when they experience satisfaction from experience what print is good for. writing that neither you nor the LEA nor the Ministry of Education can decide when that moment shall come.

That means being read to, being in situations where (p.16) reading is a natural part of social life; notices, letters, postcards, emailing, Facebooking, texting, for example.

Being read to develops the implicit understanding of how stories work and how texts function, and the different functions of text. If you look at children’s early play, when they pick up pens they show an understanding of the different purposes of texts and the ways that different texts are shaped. They will do a shopping list in the shape of the shopping list even though it might literally be scribble. They know that a story works differently to a shopping list. And so they begin to see the connection between what reading does and how reading works.

Children who have these experiences also develop an implicit understanding of how print operates and the alphabetic code.

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Schiller was clear, and significant subsequent research has confirmed, that children will want to read, will read, and they will be helped to be guided to reading and to independence when they know that there’s something in it for them and it is worth doing.

A six year old boy in Dagenham brings to school a book about trucks and lorries, a key topic of interest and expertise for him because his dad drives a truck; for him it is a matter of bonding with his father as well as something special to be shared with the teacher Where’s the evidence?

The UKLA has published two booklets outlining the

evidence about early literacy development: Teaching Reading: What The Evidence Says, (2010) and Teaching Writing: What The Evidence Says (2013). UKLA is convinced of the need to put in front of people what the current research evidence says about the teaching of reading and the teaching of writing, to counteract the narrowness and the selectivity of ministers when they decide on a particular policy. They decide on the policy, and then they look for the bits of evidence that support the policy that they’ve decided on, rather than the other way around; what does the evidence tell us, therefore what should the policy be?

The evidence says that where children are taught to read most effectively, and they actually like it and do plenty of it in those schools, the teachers adopt a balanced approach with attention to word recognition, but matched by attention to comprehension, attention to individual children, and they promote high levels of engagement, i.e. promoting what reading is good for and why it’s worth doing, and those three things go together. So, a balanced approach means: -

we help children to accurately pronounce words,

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we focus on making sense, supporting the children to reflect on and enlarge their experience,

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we ensure that the classrooms are filled with interesting written texts, and children are given rich experiences in putting these texts to use.

We hear a lot about reading for pleasure currently, and in my view that’s good, but actually reading, for me, is about fulfillment because sometimes reading is not necessarily pleasurable but hard work.. But if one achieves the original purpose, reading is intensely fulfilling. Thus rather than simply expressing this area as reading for pleasure perhaps we should describe it as reading for pleasure, purpose and fulfillment.

Communities of readers In 2010, UKLA was involved in a project called Building Communities of Readers. It was the second part of a long project. The first part was called Teachers As Readers, and the second part was about Building Communities of Readers. Teachers were asked to think about and explore

This six year old in Year One in a Dagenham school brought this book into school.

children’s literacy lives - their literacy lives outside school and in the home.

The teachers involved interviewed parents, and asked children to go home and to record the literacy experiences and activities that they engaged in with their families. A broad definition of literacy activities was utilized, so reading football and car magazines as well as playing computer games counted as exemplars. Contrary to some expectations the teachers found there was a rich array of home literacies of which they were unaware.

The children took disposable cameras home and took photographs, and parents or carers took photographs of the children engaging in literacy activities. Examples of these literacy practices within the families included reading annuals, perfume labels, games like Topic cards, picture books, letters, and so on. The teachers began to discover that there were particular kinds of literacy practices which they hadn’t known about, and actually found they were very useful to build on in the classroom.

For example, in one of the schools involved in the project, they found that for one of the communities the key book was the Bible. It was an evangelical community in part.

On most nights of the week, these children went home

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and they engaged in discussions around Bible stories. But yet, in the classroom there were no Bible stories. The children who were involved in the study didn’t do much reading in class, but when they introduced just one or two Bible stories into the class library the children made a beeline for those texts, because they recognized them as being part of their own experience. And again, of course the teacher found this an immensely useful insight into what these children could actually do when they were provided with text and content with which they had some familiarity.

the teachers. They were finding out what they now saw as valuable information about the literacy experiences of the children in their class. The school developed the practice of Interest Trees where the children came and wrote what they were interested in on a sticky note and posted it on the tree, and the teachers then considered how they could incorporate those interests into their ongoing planning.

These insights led to considerable changes to the school’s practice, based on a new understanding of what children’s literacy experience was, acknowledging, building on and extending what children brought to school. Another Another household gathered round the television aspect of this research which made screen, not to watch television but a real difference was the exposure to play video games and, of course, These insights led to to teachers reflecting on their own a considerable amount of text as considerable changes literacy lives with the children. They well as digital information was to the school’s brought in examples, talking about coming through on screen. And that’s what they had read over the last few where a lot of the children’s literacy practice, based on a days. This included texts like Hello experience activities came from. The new understanding magazine and gossip magazines, as teachers found that the children were of what children’s well as novels, labels, texts and so extraordinarily knowledgeable about literacy experience was, on, which they pulled out of a bag digital texts and in particular, computer acknowledging, building and said, “These are the kinds of games in one form or another. And things that I’ve been reading,” thus while they were playing computer on and extending what games, there was also conventional children brought to school. beginning to acknowledge that there is a whole breadth of different kinds reading going on, for example, how of texts that we read every day, and to get through to the next level of the that experience of these texts can support the reading game, or just looking at what mum’s doing in terms of curriculum. modelling reading as she browses or sends emails, for example. But the home literacy experiences weren’t just The last word in this part of the lecture should be left to about digital texts. When the teacher was investigating Christian Schiller (1955). Schiller was insightful about the home literacy experiences, one six-year-old boy started problems with reading tests and the following quote has talking about going ferreting with his father. He knew a even more relevance now with the high stakes reading lot about ferrets; they had books and pamphlets about tests that all children take at 7 and 11 years old. ferrets in the home, and the natural world in general, so There has been some talk about ….tests in the he brought some of those in to school and talked about performance of reading skill, but I believe the head of the what they did and how these texts helped them know worm stretching forward into the future is seen in those more about wild life. primary schools where concern is not about children So, in this school, as they found out more about passing tests but about those many children who pass children’s literacy experiences outside the home, the the reading tests but have no interest in books, who have been taught the skill to read but have not grown through teachers began to change their practices in light of their learning what it is to read because you want to read, observations. Show and tell became a crucially important part of the school day and much more popular than it had because you feel it is worth while to read, and enjoy reading. (p.62) been before, because it had some kind of meaning for

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So to return to the title of this talk, if we are to enable all children to become readers in the fullest sense, we must be vigilant to ensure that the experiences needed in school are not narrowed in the context of this high stakes test. Children need to be partners in the process. Educators need to draw on knowledge of what children’s experiences are beyond the school gate and plan further ones based on an evidence-informed view of reading development.

And yes, we do need to teach them how to crack the alphabetic code, but within a broad and rich context which pays central attention to meaning and engagement.

References Alexander, R. (ed.) (2009) Children, their World, their Education: Final Report and Recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review. Abingdon: Routledge.

Cremin, T., Mottram, M., Collins, F. and Powell, S. (2008) Building Communities of Readers. Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association.

Dombey, H. (2010) with assistance from Bearne, E., Cremin, T., Ellis, S., Mottram, M., O’Sullivan, O., Öztürk, A., Reedy, D. of UKLA and Raphael, T. and Allington, R. of the International Reading Association Teaching Reading: What the evidence says.

Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association.

Dombey, H. (2013) with assistance from Barrs, M., Bearne, E., Chamberlain, E., Cremin, T., Ellis, S., Goodwin, P., Lambirth, A., Mottram, M., Myhill, D., O’Sullivan, O., Öztürk, A., Reedy, D. and Rosen M. Teaching Writing: What the evidence says. Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association.

Schiller, C (1984) In His Own Words Moulton. National Association for Primary Education.

David Reedy is a co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT) and an educational consultant with a particular interest in the area of literacy. He is currently General Secretary of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) and was Principal Primary Adviser for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

Christian Schiller ~ In his own words In response to many requests a reprint of the Schiller book in its original paperback format is available from the National Association for Primary Education £4.95 + £1.00 P&P Moulton College, Moulton, Northampton, NN3 7RR Tel: 01604 647646

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Heading the right way?

by John Gawthorpe

When I took on my headship in the late 1980’s, there was little in the way of training for the role. Most Heads in my experience arrived in post determined not to follow many of the poor examples of leadership they had observed and experienced as teachers. Sadly this too often produced leadership styles which might kindly be called ‘idiosyncratic’.

In a Deputy Heads’ network I joined, we identified a ‘Prat Factor’ which afflicted colleagues shortly after becoming Heads. Sadly we never identified its source, nor anything to give each of us immunity.

My first day as a Headteacher was thrilling: my first assembly, fielding phone calls, dealing with letters, pupils, parents, builders, catering staff and the Local Authority. At 3.15 I came out of my office to see the pupils leave, satisfied with the feeling of a hard day’s work done, only to discover that the work in earnest started at that moment: it quickly became clear that, like an orderly queue of piranhas, all the teachers wanted a bit of me for something or other. After a while I learned to pace myself better, and to ensure that – given an open door policythe door was indeed open. However I have to admit it was some years before a senior member of staff was honest – and brave – enough to say ‘John, you do know that nobody asks you anything important before 10:30? You’re such a miserable so and so first thing’. The down side of not being a ‘morning person’.

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For the Year 2 pupils in the neighbouring Infant school, their first taster day at ‘big school’ was always important, one of the rites of passage that characterise our education system.

One sunny morning I was standing as usual at the front door waiting to greet and welcome the newcomers. And a delightful bunch they were, in a fine array of sun hats and bonnets. I heard myself saying ‘You’ve either got, or you haven’t got, style’. I hadn’t realised I was thinking aloud until I heard Jade’s incredulous voice behind me, in tones that only an 11 year old can master, ‘Style? Style? What do you know about style Mr G?’ Little enough was the truth of it. Her remark made its way – approvingly – into the Head’s comments on her report. A fact she drew to my attention some years later whilst waiting on my table at a local restaurant. I am proud to say she is now a secondary Maths teacher, where I am sure her quick thinking and lively mind serve her well with her pupils.

and his immediate fear that Susan was dead. That thought chilled the assembly, for Susan was known to face multiple disabilities, including significant communication problems.

Engaging mouth before brain I quickly stepped in: ‘Don’t worry children, Susan is not dead … are you Susan?’

Her response was a loud and beautifully articulated ‘YES’.

The assembly collapsed into laughter at my expense.

I have always believed that routines and formalities, ‘the way we do things here’, help to foster a sense of security and belonging for all members of a school community.

However there can be down sides. After many years in post, I was walking with the Year 3 children to their first assembly, when Emily piped up. ‘Mr G’, she enquired, ‘my Mum says are you going to read the poem you read on her first day at school?’ The answer, of course, was yes. But I did wryly reflect on that answer as, starting on the poem, I caught Karen’s eye. Karen, in the first week of her NQT year, had, like Emily’s mum, heard the same poem as a pupil.

Come September, and the ‘First Day At Big School’ can be a daunting prospect for many children, and not a few parents.

The responsibilities of headship may take a while to become To address those anxieties head on, we would gather all apparent. A friend in his first headship was intrigued new parents and pupils in the playground – invariably and a little concerned at some odd and contradictory on a dry and sunny morning – and then start a tried and developments in the school. Even more so when, on tested routine. First I would call each child to join their enquiry, the response was ‘but it is your policy we’re class, crossing my fingers that there would be nobody left following’. At last the light dawned: as a Deputy he had without a class to go to. Next I would urge the children to been fond of going into the staffroom conceal their excitement at the start of and ‘shooting a line’ on a current issue, school, and pretend as well as they could I have always enjoying the subsequent debate. As a that they were really sad to leave their believed that routines Head, he had not realised that staff took parents. Parents were requested to hide this to be him outlining policy. Giving hard and formalities, ‘the their relief that the holidays were over messages is part of the job, but, in my and the local coffee shop beckoned, and way we do things experience, there is no acceptable way for fake a reluctance to leave their offspring. here’, help to foster the Head to inform the NQT that he had The absurdity of this pantomime, just reversed into her car. a sense of security cheerfully accepted by all, seemed Another aspect which still troubles me to assist some in managing genuine and belonging for all is, over many years, my inability to anxieties. members of a school differentiate between a decision which Another rite of passage was participation community. would be accepted without a murmur, in residential activity weeks, for many and one which caused uproar. The only children their first time away from clue I can recall is that almost inevitably home. On one occasion at 11pm fire alarms sounded and those decisions which had taken the longest to arrive at emergency lighting came on. Moving swiftly to manage passed by unnoticed, whilst many of the ‘obvious simple the evacuation of the dormitories we realised quickly that choices’ turned out to be something completely different. for some children getting them to wake was even harder Some in the village still recall the temerity of the Head who than getting them to sleep. In fact in Susan’s case she never indicated that he thought crisps were not a healthy lunch woke at all, we carried her out wrapped in her duvet. In an time option. Back in 1988 the locals were demonstrably assembly back at school, one child recalled that moment, not ready for that revolutionary notion. In the same year 17

18 the Chairman of the Education Committee, no less, had to be reassured that I was not a vandal intent on destroying learning in my cull of library books. (Our library then contained reference works published in the 1950’s and others which, among other things, looked eagerly forward to the anticipated launch of the QE2.)

some Year 6 boys had been flicking wet toilet paper onto the ceiling of the – newly refurbished – boys’ toilets. A group of the ‘usual suspects’ had been kept behind after assembly, for the Head to ‘reason with them’. Quite loudly, as I recall.

‘You thought it was us, but you had no proof. We knew you had no proof. I just wanted to say that… yes it was us.’ ‘I knew it!’ was my instant response. ‘We knew that too’ he confessed.

The perils of underestimating children, not least the youngest were ever present. Not wishing to get the class over excited, on one occasion I informed the stand in The village was served by three main roads, each of which teacher – in French - that the class teacher had come to included a fairly steep incline which notoriously became school with her tiny new-born, to allow the children to impassable after a sudden snow fall. On one morning in make her acquaintance. The buzz of excited chatter as I 1997 I was joined by just one teacher who lived in the left the room reminded me that the bi-lingual 7 year old adjoining school flat. Before the prevalence of texts, emails sitting near me had effectively conveyed my message to the and local radio broadcasts to alert the community we were class. In the same class was the son of a local Educational soon faced with 200 children who had braved the snow Psychologist. His skill in taking me deep to arrive on foot. By some miracle my into negative numbers as we counted up colleague had been to a book fair that I grieve that and down a number line was instructive; weekend and had a copy of the recently I was totally unprepared for his input relatively few published ‘You wait until I’m older than and relied heavily on his forgiving and teachers are willing you’ by the incomparable Michael Rosen. understanding nature not to reveal my So began my onslaught on the World’s to take on the lack of preparation to the class.

Longest Assembly Record. With book in perceived risk of hand I somehow managed to keep the By far the most instructive encounter was children amused and engaged – not least headship. with a class of Years 3 and 4, taught by because as a first time reader of the book an NQT at the start of her second half I frequently had to stop to laugh – until term in the profession. I had arrived at the at about 10a.m. the roads had cleared enough for other school as a stand in Head a few days before, and was keen colleagues to struggle in. to be supportive: these were lively, occasionally challenging and not fully engaged children. For some reason I offered to do a demonstration English lesson (‘my’ subject … and after all, I was the Head.) I launched forth and it quickly became clear that it was not going well. A quick re-think, and I raised my game. No positive response came back. Another instant re-think was necessary and only then, perspiring rather, was I – a teacher of 34 years and a Head of 20 - able to gain the respect and attention which the class teacher had managed in 9 weeks.

I have lived and worked in the same area throughout my career, and it has been a pleasure meeting each succeeding generation. Placing a former pupil can be tricky on the first occasion, as one struggles to see the 11 year old child in the adult before you. Some faces are unforgettable, and can appear in unexpected places. A quiet beer with the manager of my son’s football team was interrupted by a lad who asked if I remembered him. I certainly did. Pleased at the recognition, he went on to recall an incident when

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Having seen and heard Michael read his poetry at a NAPE meeting, I subsequently and unashamedly stole his act, an admission I was able to make to him in person when he came to the school on my retirement. (I think he has me marked down as ‘The Plagiarist Head Teacher’, and I’m happy with that.)

I grieve that relatively few teachers are willing to take on the perceived risk of headship. We now have a culture of fear and pressure, where encouragement and enthusiasm should be fostered. I have seen colleagues work very hard to gain the NPQH and similar qualifications. They have gone on to be successful heads but, I suspect, not due to what they picked up when qualifying. To my mind personal relationships, shared goals and a willingness to innovate are far more important than a systems led, bureaucratic and formulaic approach. And now, heaven help us, some of this soulless drudgery is creeping into teaching styles.

I think back to an officer of the LEA who said, back at

the start of my career, that he knew little and cared less about management qualifications or systems. He had two precepts, the first ‘management by walking about’. Not the portentously titled ‘Learning Walks’, but a head, out of the office, around the school, observing, assisting and enjoying children’s learning. (My first caretaker took to referring to me as ‘the rubber ball’, since nobody knew where I would bounce up next. I hope he meant it kindly.) The second precept was to state that everyone had the right to say ’No. Not me. Not now.’ I wish more of us in the profession had been able to articulate to our political masters ‘No. Not us.

Not now’. Although ‘Not ever’ might have been a better answer in terms of the needs of the pupils.

Although I can look back on my career with satisfaction and no yearning to be back, I can’t help reflecting that the children – and indeed the nation - would be better served

by a generation of school leaders who were experts at staff development and children’s learning, not purveyors of SATs speak, testing regimes and target setting.

John Gawthorpe is an experienced primary specialist. He retired recently from his headship of the Mayhill Junior School in Hook. John is the Immediate Past Chairman of the National Association for Primary Education.

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Leading schools in times of change: are collegiality and distributed leadership suitable approaches for primary schools?

by Mark Brundett

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Introduction

Leadership has become something of an obsession in education and in wider society in recent years. This is quite a transformation since it is not so long ago that we would have been more likely to talk about the ‘management’ of schools or the ‘administration’ of the education system. These development are, I would argue, particularly important and problematic for primary schools since I have noted on several occasions over a long period that primary school leadership lacks a clear conceptual base because much of the writing on school leadership tends to focus on secondary education or on overarching models that are considered to apply to all phases of education.

(Brundrett, 1999; 2013).

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In this article I reflect on the concept of distributed leadership, which has become almost the ‘officially recommended’ approach to leading schools, and its close predecessor, collegiality. In particular, I try to address the comparative paucity of material on primary leadership by considering the relevance of such approaches to that phase of education and in doing so I draw on my own time as a primary headteacher and on twenty years of researching school leadership whilst a lecturer and professor in several higher education institutions that has included projects which involved interviews with many dozens of primary headteachers working in schools of different sizes in a range of geographical and social locations. I frame my discussion through the use of a series of questions about what we mean by these key concepts, how we moved from one model to another and which, if either, is suitable for primary education.

Why do we mean by ‘collegiality’ and ‘distributed leadership?

leadership tasks to staff as he or she thinks appropriate. In other words, one approach is a flat management structure where equality is the key, whilst in the other approach there is more of a pyramid structure in which the headteacher ‘distributes’ leadership and, by implication, authority and power (see, Davies and Brundrett, 2010). Of course both approaches require that leaders throughout the school, and particularly middle leaders who are likely to be slightly more experienced staff, are trained appropriately in order to take on important responsibilities (Burton and Brundrett, 2005).

Why the change from collegiality to distributed approaches?

If we ask why there has been a change from one ‘recommended’ approach to another, it is no coincidence that this change has come about during a time when the ways in which schools are governed has itself gone through a dramatic transformation from a system that was managed

by Local Education Authorities to a time when schools are increasingly operating as autonomous institutions because of the distribution of funds and responsibilities to headteachers and governors, the most developed example of which is the increasingly common academy status in which schools run, in effect, as small to medium sized businesses.

The language that we use to describe leadership has also changed too. In the late 90s and early 2000s the ‘buzz word’ in terms of the leadership and management of schools was ‘collegiality’, which is about respecting the work of colleagues in order to work towards a common Collegiality was always subject to the criticism purpose (Brundrett, 1999). In this form Collegiality was that it is very difficult to operate in reality of school organization, the headteacher always subject to the because getting agreement between staff was the first among equals whose main criticism that it is very can be challenging and time consuming and, role was to bring colleagues together to in any case, the headteacher is considered to develop a better future for the children difficult to operate be in charge of the day to day management in the school. However, the term that in reality because of the school and so will have to take is now most commonly employed is getting agreement responsibility if things go wrong, making ‘distributed leadership’, which suggests between staff can be it potentially hazardous to step back from an approach where leadership is spread challenging... taking a decisive lead in taking decisions amongst the staff of the school. The (Hammersley-Fletcher and Brundrett, 2008). two approaches seem similar in that they both imply that leadership is somehow shared out These issues have been exacerbated seriously by the massive amongst the staff rather than resting solely in the hands transfer of powers that has taken place from Local Authorities of the headteacher but there are crucial differences. In the to schools and, while there has long been a discussion first approach the headteacher accepts that he or she is the about whether the role of the head should be as curriculum equal of the staff and the leadership of the school is about leader or chief executive, the changing landscape of school agreement and compromise; in the latter approach the governance has meant that the argument has shifted headteacher is firmly in charge of the school but allocates decisively in the direction of the latter.

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Nature distributes its power 23

24 For these reasons the newer idea of distributed leadership has grown in its appeal. Indeed, the argument goes that there is now just too much leadership to be carried out for one person to try to lead and manage everything amongst the myriad of activities that need to be dealt with in a school.

Which approach is suitable for primary schools?

Which of these approaches, if either, is suitable for the primary school? Of course the answer is potentially both and much will depend on contextual factors such as the size of the school and thus the number of staff available to take on leadership roles; the experience, expertise and training of the staff; the style and personal approach of the headteacher; and, to some extent, the guidance given by the governors. For large secondary schools operating a distributed leadership system is the obvious approach to take because the size and complexity of such institutions means that dispersing responsibilities is not only desirable but essential and the fact that there will be large number of

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staff who are likely to be formed into faculties, departments and year groups, and with several senior leadership posts likely to be available, means that there are many highly qualified candidates to take on a variety of roles. With the exception of the larger schools, which can operate systems quite similar to their colleagues in the secondary sector, the situation in primary education can be very different. This is because the average one form entry (or smaller) primary school is likely to have insufficient staff available even to provide curriculum leaders for all of the National Curriculum subjects unless several staff take on more than one subject area. In addition, there is likely to be, at most, only one deputy headteacher, who will almost certainly have a whole class teaching responsibility. Indeed, even the headteacher themselves is likely to have to (and usually will wish to) undertake some teaching. In the smallest of schools this problem is likely to be exacerbated since the headteacher may have a major teaching responsibility. In such circumstances employing a distributed leadership approach

is challenging to say the least but, ironically, it may well be that a great deal is shared out amongst the staff who have to work as a small but very supportive team which may operate a form of shared rather than distributed approach with something more akin to the older idea of a collegiality in operation.

What are the other problems with distributed models of leadership?

I have already noted that collegial or distributed leadership models can cause problems because of time factors and because it can take bravery for the headteacher to relinquish control. In addition there are certain ‘moral’ issues that have to be addressed. There has long been a concern that collegiality can be ‘contrived’ rather than real in the sense that teachers can be given comparatively trivial responsibilities in order to give the impression that everyone is involved in some way while the real power continues to rest in the hands of a small group of people or just one individual (Brundrett, 1998). The same issue can be attributed to distributed leadership where staff can be asked or required to take the lead in some area which may bring quite burdensome and time consuming work but with no real level of authority and it is notable that many headteachers in primary schools are particularly reluctant to devolve powers over school finances. However, there has been much discussion about more democratic, dialogic or heuristic approaches to classroom management that ‘co-contruct’ learning in order to give children more genuine responsibility in their learning (see, for instance Silcock and Brundrett, 2006). This being the case it seems logical that if we believe that schools should commit themselves to engaging and involving children in the learning process then, similarly, the best leaders should want to give staff really genuine involvement in the running of the school to the staff and so give them responsibilities for which they are training and qualified which will also develop their skills further and give them a sense of achievement.

What does research tell us about the key factors in being a successful leader?

Whatever we call the approach that is used all the evidence suggests that really successful school leaders work with their staff to develop a team of teachers who feel respected and

who take on responsibility for key areas of curriculum and the management of the school. This means the headteacher will focus on: • Vision and mission – these can be overblown and overused terms but it is, nonetheless, true that school leaders need to have a clear idea of the kind of school that they wish to lead and how they would like it to develop. This ‘vision’ may relate the social location of the schools and the specific needs of the children and it may involve the religious denomination of the school, if any.

It is crucial that teachers at the very least understand and work with this vision and school governors must be fully involved since they are responsible for the long-term strategy for the school.

• Honesty – school leaders need to be honest with themselves and with their staff, governors and the rest of the school community. This takes a surprising amount of strength because it can be easier to back out of tough discussions than it is to confront the many difficult situations that present themselves almost daily.

• A team approach – effective schools always have a staff that work together and have complementary skills.

• Working with governors and the school community – governors hold the headteacher to account, oversee the financial performance of the school, and work with the headteacher to set the strategic direction of the school.

Good school leaders will work with their governing body and accept any challenges that they may set. The good school leader will draw on the expertise that is in the governing body as much as they can, especially in a primary school where there are comparatively few administrative staff or leadership posts.

• Distributing roles – whether we call it distributed leadership, collegiality, shared leadership or whatever else we may wish to label it, using the skills of the staff and having confidence in their abilities is essential. This is particularly true in relation to the curriculum but this in itself may mean offering some responsibility in terms of other areas of school management such as financial management in order to acquire the necessary resources for the subject.

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These are some of the factors that will be looked for in terms of leadership during inspection (see, Brundrett and Rhodes, 2010) and many of them underpin recent initiatives in terms of leadership training both in the UK and internationally (Brundrett and Crawford, 2008) but a variety of other factors come into play in addition to those noted above, some of which are in the control of the person involved and some are not. These things include determination, good health and good luck, which are all essential but impossible to assure. It is also equally true that being able to work with or develop a great team or being able to draw on the skills of the governors will depend to a large extent on the staff and governors that the headteacher inherits but it is crucial to be able to develop good and positive relationships whatever the circumstances that obtain (Hammersley Fletcher and Brundrett, 2005; Brundrett, 2010).

Conclusion The dominant models of leadership in primary schools tend to match the wider requirements of the school system at any particular time. It is no mere chance that distributed leadership has become a dominant and almost ubiquitous approach in recent years when more and more power has been devolved to schools. Such approaches can work very well in primary schools, however large or small they may be, but they can take determination and confidence to implement and are often contingent on the circumstances of the school such as the skills of the staff and the governing body. If they are implemented they should be put into practice for genuine and positive reasons and, if that is the case, they can pay dividends for all concerned.

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References Brundrett, M. (1998) What lies behind collegiality, legitimation or control? Educational Management and Administration, 26, 3: 10 – 27.

Brundrett, M. (2010) Developing your leadership team, in B. Davies and M. Brundrett (Eds), Developing Successful Leadership, New York: Springer.

Brundrett, M. (Ed) (1999) Principles of School Leadership, King’s Lynn: Peter Francis Publishing.

Brundrett, M. (Ed) (2013) Principles of School Leadership (2nd Edition), London: Sage.

Brundrett, M. and Crawford, M. (Eds) (2008) Developing School Leaders: An International Perspective, London: Routledge.

Brundrett, M. and Rhodes, C. (2010) Leadership for Quality and Accountability in Education, London: Routledge.

Burton, N. and Brundrett, M. (2005) Leading the Curriculum in the Primary School, London: Sage.

Davies, B. and Brundrett, M. (Eds) (2010) Developing Successful Leadership, New York: Springer.

Hammersley-Fletcher, L. and Brundrett, M. (2005) Leaders on leadership: the thoughts of primary school headteachers and subject leaders, School Leadership and Management, 25, 1: 59 - 76.ISSN 1363-2434 Hammersley-Fletcher, L. and Brundrett, M. (2008) Collaboration, collegiality and leadership from the headteacher : the complexities of shared leadership in primary school settings, Management in Education, 22, 2: 11 - 16.

Silcock, P. and Brundrett, M. (2006) Co-constructing learning in primary schools: new perspectives on pedagogy, in R. Webb (Ed) Changing Teaching and Learning in the Primary School, Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Mark Brundrett is a former primary teacher and head teacher. He is currently Professor of Educational Research at Liverpool John Moores University. Mark is the editor of the journal, Education 3 to 13. He may be contacted at m.brundrett@lmju.ac.uk

The Book Page by Carey Fluker Hunt Ask adults what they remember about learning to read and you’ll get some mixed results. But question them about the books they loved as children, and things will be different. From The Faraway Tree to Milly Molly Mandy via TV tie-ins and Dad’s tractor catalogue, their responses share an emotional depth that can be very moving.

Take some time to think about the special books that linger in your memory. What drew you to them? What did they offer your childhood self that made them so important? And if you could return to them, now, with your adult eyes and heart and brain, what would you discover?

Maybe they were ephemeral, and didn’t really matter all that much. But maybe you’ll find that they’re a part of you; that they built you, piece by piece, into the adult you’ve become.

Whether you read voraciously or only ever watched TV, the stories you encountered when you were young will have marked you forever. And it’s not just the stories. From poetry and biographies to manuals, dictionaries and comics, they’ll have shaped your world and peopled it; shown you other lives and points of view and helped you to connect. In short, they’ll have given you the words you need to think and talk and write and be.

So what should our role be, now, as adults working with young people? How can we help children to meet, explore and fall in love with the best books on the planet?

There are thousands of titles in print, and hundreds more appear each year. We need guides - people who know their stuff and love to share - but in a world of internet spending and funding cuts, it’s hard to get our hands on honest, real advice. Bookshops are closing at an unprecedented rate and our libraries are crumbling.

Add this to a curriculum that squeezes reading-for-

pleasure to its very margins and it’s no wonder that teachers and parents are struggling.

But if we’re convinced that books and stories really matter, that they have the power to affect children’s development, that the benefits they bring are lasting and immense, then shouldn’t we be doing more?

I think we should, but I think we need to act collectively. The UK produces some of the best books in the world, and some of the best ‘book people’.

Think of the dynamic and warm-hearted people you know, who spend their lives getting books into the hands of children and encouraging a lifelong love of reading. But their influence is piecemeal in a system that doesn’t prioritise quality reading-for-pleasure experiences. Our government must raise the status of these ‘book people’ and fund them properly. And we need to put books at the heart of each and every classroom in the country.

I can hear the politicians squawking as I write. But just for moment, can we pretend that this is possible, and that all we need to do is get on with it?

Forget the reading theories and the party ideologies.

Forget the ticky boxes and the complex strategies.

Let’s read with children, for the sheer pleasure of it - as well as all the other benefits that sneak in there and work their magic - and let’s shout about it, loudly, so that everyone can share what’s going on.

Of course, there’ll need to be a plan, but we could always look to Michael Pollan for help. He’s the diet guru whose directive to eat food, not too much, and mostly vegetables strikes me as refreshing in a world of overload, and I’d like to propose that we adopt a similar approach.

Share books... as often as possible... .....mostly good ones I’ll be back next issue.

Carey Fluker Hunt is Creative Projects Manager at Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books. She writes in a personal capacity.

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Reviews

by John Coe

The Beach Book by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield. Published by Frances Lincoln In ancient times when I was first a primary teacher, trips out of school were regarded as treats to be enjoyed almost as a reward for serious work in the classroom. But times change and now we know more about how children learn, particularly how core skills are acquired so much more easily by young children when those vital skills are met and understood in the context of the reality of their own personal experience.

Today some of the most exciting and productive work by primary children takes place outside the classroom where only too frequently these days, study is given over to dull preparation for tests.

Outside, where the world is real, the opportunities are endless, the excitement is intense and core skills are learned quickly and easily because the children have high levels of motivation. Such a learning experience is of particular importance to children who come from less privileged families since they may well have only limited contact with the world outside the immediacy of their home.

Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield have written a book which schools will find invaluable as a source of ideas for activities on educational visits to the seashore. There are 68 projects many of which are rich in potential not only for the moment but for the recording of experience. The recording, perhaps through sketches, written notes, photographs, or audio and video, will provide the data necessary for in depth study and reflection back in the classroom. This excellent book, so well illustrated, is strongly recommended and will be invaluable to schools which are demonstrating how far we have come from the days of the school treat.

The SEND Code of Practice

by Rona Tutt and Paul Williams Illustrated by Amy Husband Published by SAGE Publications Ltd This most useful book deserves a place on the bookshelves of every SENCO and head teacher. The authors, who are experts in the special needs element of our work, explain the changes to the SEN Framework resulting from the Children and Families act 2014 as set out in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (DfE/DoH, 2015).

The writing style provides easy reading and is blessedly free from jargon. Key points are emphasized and this will be particularly helpful when the book is used for the initial training of all teachers whatever their specialism.

There are children with special educational needs in every school and in the majority of classrooms. The careful attention we give to individual needs in our primary schools will be supported and illuminated by this book.

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By Mervyn Benford and self published.

What they don’t tell you about Education A review by Jeremy Rowe This huge tome, with its sub-title “....or why I feel sorrier for those who think they succeeded!”, is a monumental gathering of Mervyn’s life work. For almost 250 densely worded pages, Mervyn has collated fifty years of experience and sets out in considerable detail a range of blueprints for primary education.

(There are also a number of references to secondary education).

to find a way to present them so that those who do not understand child-centred education can see how they could transform a primary classroom.

Inside this mass of experience, there is a smaller book struggling to get out! The obvious wisdom and talent of this gifted teacher is almost overwhelmed by the volume of anecdotal evidence presented. Mervyn’s collected experiences make excellent reading, and perhaps this book should be compulsory reading for trainee teachers, but what would a modern young teacher today make of all these confusing and “oldfashioned” ideas? For those who understand education to be about children, and developing their skills and personalities, Mervyn’s book is a welcome and challenging addition to the literature; but for those dedicated to examinations, and all the nonsense of current educational practice, it will be extremely puzzling.

I am pleased to urge anyone with the welfare of our children in mind, to buy Mervyn’s book, and plough through it – marking constantly his wisdom and understanding of children. As he says on the front cover, “We need to return education to its roots in families and communities.” Everything implicit in that statement is between the covers of his book.

Those who buy (or luckily are presented with) a copy of this book will see it as a treasure-trove of educational practice. It pulls off that difficult trick of combining theory and practice. It’s a big and bold undertaking, and deserves a wide audience.

I would love Mervyn to go back, and turn the first half of the book into a slimmer volume which will reach out to student teachers, and make them challenge the current ideology. Mervyn knows, especially from his time as head teacher at Lewknor, but also from his other wealth of experience, what education is about.

There are very many teachers, head teachers, parents and politicians who have no idea why children are in school, and Mervyn’s knowledge and wisdom needs to find its way to them. The essence of what’s needed is in this big book.

The second half of the book, from page 150 onwards, is a splendid list of very good lessons. Buried within this section are, of course, many examples of exemplary practice. Again, a smaller, pithier book is hiding in there. And again, huge numbers of student teachers, young teachers, indeed all involved in education, can gain from these outstanding lessons, but Mervyn needs

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CHILDREN AS RESEARCHERS: WHERE SHOULD THEY START?

By Andrew K. Shenton Introduction: Research in the Primary School It is often said that children naturally ask questions about the world around them. In the absence of appropriate opportunities for direct, personal exploration, very young children who seek answers are heavily reliant on verbal responses from their elders.

Only when they have developed sufficiently advanced skills in reading, writing and understanding during their primary school years are more independent approaches to investigation – and indeed learning more generally – feasible. We may say it is at this point that elementary research skills can be taught.

“Research” in this context can be defined as any systematic approach to acquiring knowledge through the use of both existing literature and personally gathered data.

If we support the increasingly common argument recognised in the DVD, Designed for Learning, that schools in the twenty-first century should aim to light sparks of interest, rather than fill empty vessels with knowledge, it would seem essential that we also equip young people with the skills necessary to pursue these interests and satisfy their urges to know.

As Farmer reminds us, any question begs an answer.

Certainly, once pupils have acquired the appropriate skills, they can use these to add another dimension to their personalised learning, since they have the means to construct, from a greater range of evidence, their own understanding in terms of matters that are especially meaningful to them. Many of the skills they gain or hone in a research situation, notably with respect to planning, time management, problem solving, finding/using information, data handling,

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communication and critical thinking, are not only transferable to their studies in other areas of the curriculum; they will also stand the individuals in good stead throughout their later lives.

Kellett argues that the research conducted by children may benefit adults, too. In particular, she points to how youngsters can elicit “responses from within their peer group in ways that would not be possible for adult researchers because of power and generational issues” and she highlights how their work “adds to the body of knowledge about children’s experiences from a genuine child perspective”. Let us briefly consider one school-related example. It is not inconceivable for a school whose leaders are preparing a policy on bullying to gain fresh insight into the problem from research on the subject conducted by pupils within their organisation.

Irrespective of whether the primary school teacher’s priority is to increase their own understanding or widen the skills of their pupils, one of their first challenges lies in devising a method for training children in the research process or at least selecting a framework to be followed. This article offers one such approach.

The Conventional Paradigm In undertaking small scale research projects, many of us have no doubt followed the classic model: nominate an area for coverage; examine existing work on the subject; define appropriate aims and objectives for the inquiry; collect and analyse data; present and discuss findings; draw conclusions; make recommendations. Where pupils in secondary schools conduct research and they follow this sequence, a crucial area for teachers supporting the work lies in the second stage, specifically by facilitating access to and use of relevant information sources. It is entirely possible that, in addition, youngsters will want to return to the literature when discussing their findings, although this is by no means always the case and, as I have pointed out elsewhere, even in published research comparisons between the results of the project at hand and those of previous studies are often made somewhat half-heartedly. In short, it is not unusual for such links to seem as if they have been added as an afterthought.

However, regardless of whether or not the literature is revisited, we may well question the suitability of the standard research model when those doing the work are primary school children.

Information Then Data or Data Then Information?

Even pupils of junior age can tackle projects that incorporate scrutiny of the literature and analysis of data that the learners have gathered themselves. Given the level of cognitive development of young children, there are, though, substantial arguments for altering the usual sequence of research tasks so that data are collected and analysed first, then information sources are consulted.

When teaching pupils in Reception and Year One, it is, of course, important to start with the learner’s immediate world. Consider, for a moment, how many children of this age begin their academic lives with projects on “my body” or “myself”, before studying “our neighbourhood” or the locality. In time, there is a greater concentration in class on the wider world. With older pupils from, say, Year Four upwards, the research they carry out can mirror this outward reach – the children first examine their own data, then those of their classmates and finally, through the use of information sources, the broader situation. The overall process is modelled in Figure One. Let us consider two exemplars of how such a project may take place.

5 Analyse wider data

4 Collect wider data

3 Analyse personal data

6 Form intermediate conclusions

1 Define research aim

2 Collect personal data

7 Investigate information sources

8 Develop multi-level understanding

9 From overall conclusions

Figure 1: An Alternative Research Model

Exemplar One: Family Size Investigation It is not difficult for teachers of primary school children to conceive of easily collectable, statistical data relating to their pupils’ personal situations. Various books offering teaching ideas suggest possibilities. Bright Ideas: Maths Activities outlines a data display task that can easily be modified and embellished so as to create a small scale research project. We may begin the work from the standpoint that we want to investigate the accuracy of the oft-quoted statistic that the average family includes between two and three children. This constitutes our research aim. Each member of the class states how many sons/daughters (including themselves) live in their own house; the data are summarised in a frequency table and analysed via the basic statistics of mean, mode and median; findings are presented via column charts and conclusions formed with regard to the family size figure initially mentioned. The research commenced with the pupil stating the number of sons/daughters within their household; attention then shifted to figures for everyone in the class. It is in the next phase that information which is more external to the children’s situation comes to the fore. The youngsters start this stage by exploring how the statistics for their class compare with those for England as a whole, and, ultimately, the focus may widen to the entirety of the United Kingdom or even to countries further afield, in mainland Europe, for example, or beyond. Overall conclusions are then drawn from the totality of the data and information.

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Personal Research Projects

In many primary schools cross curricular projects devoted to books and literature are common. Sometimes these are centred around a school book fair or a comparable event. Studies of favourite books can be used in surprising capacities to support research-oriented mathematics work. In this context, too, we may begin by defining an aim for our investigation. Let us imagine that this relates to whether it is always the case that the letters most frequently employed in the English language are the five vowels. Each pupil brings to school their favourite book. They choose an extract and log via tally marks the frequency with which the individual letters of the alphabet appear in their passage. When each child has completed their personal analysis, their data can be compared with those of their classmates. At this point, again a wider information search – probably involving the Internet – can be conducted, with the personal and class patterns viewed against the results of broader research. The child once more draws on all the material they have prepared and seen in order to reach final conclusions. Although this second project follows the same essential model as the first, the early part is clearly more demanding of the pupil, since each individual begins by collecting their own data, rather than merely stating a number to their teacher.

Some years ago, as part of an investigation into the local community, I removed from my class six youngsters and gave them the opportunity to plan, undertake and write up personal studies pertaining to the area. The projects were diverse and some related to places in the region, rather than merely the town in which the school was located and its environs. Nevertheless, my prescribed emphasis on the locality provided a form of restriction that was essential if the children were not to be overwhelmed by the possibilities available to them and enabled them to investigate, if they so wished, their immediate and familiar environment.

In both the activities discussed above, the research aim was predetermined by the teacher. Where the adult is keen to allow pupils to personalise the work further, they may be asked to formulate their own aims instead but this substantially raises the level of challenge within the research. Many children will, no doubt, require much help in creating a statement to represent the aim. Comparisons can be drawn in this respect between pupils defining the purposes of a research study and tasks in which children plan how they will exploit a computer database. It is much easier for young people to interrogate a database in order to elicit answers to questions that have been set by the teacher than it is for them to construct suitable questions of their own. The next section addresses a project in which a small group of the most able children within a particularly talented Year Four class were indeed given free rein to formulate their own research aims and carry out their own projects.

Three proposed projects ultimately proved unworkable as either a proper focus could not be found or a realistic method for conducting the study remained elusive. The others were all successful. One girl’s plan to research her family history initially seemed somewhat tangential to the theme I had intended but she was able to justify the subject as one dealing with the locality by agreeing to give particular attention to places within north-east England that had a special family significance. After collecting data from various relatives and friends of the family, the girl used published information to increase her understanding of the places in question. Meanwhile, a boy whose interest had been aroused by local media coverage of plans to introduce open-cast mining in a nearby village based his research around the question of whether the development would be “a good thing for Hartley”. He talked to residents of the village, collected cuttings from the local newspaper, which reported on the story extensively, and concluded by consulting books on the nature of open-cast mining in order to further his understanding of the process at the heart of the controversy. The most sophisticated project, however, came from a boy who was keen to delve into the notion of “community”. Moving away, house-by-house from his own home, he talked to people in his street and asked each resident who in the street • • •

• •

they knew by sight only they knew by name they would acknowledge with a wave or a word if they saw them they would talk to on a superficial level they felt they really knew

This strategy enabled the child to map the extent of the community of his street. He then repeated the exercise in the street of a friend who lived in a completely different area. Using the two sets of data in concert, he was able to compare and contrast the two communities. He, too, completed his work by going to the literature, in this case to look at other, more abstract constructs of the term “community”.

what the child has learnt from their own data and in the case of the exemplar studies the overall data of the class.

The teacher’s role then lies in enabling the youngster to contextualise this understanding in relation to wider knowledge. Still, whatever the position of the information element within the project, the material extracted from the sources must be meaningful to the child, trustworthy and of high quality.

Although all three projects followed the “data then information” format that is advocated throughout this An Iconoclastic View? article, they also posed several major challenges to the Some readers may believe that the “data first” method teacher. Each necessitated much work away from school, advocated here is rather revolutionary. The most extreme so – at the final assessment stage – it was difficult to critics may even go so far as to suggest that by diverging ascertain both what exactly the from the norm, teachers taking this ...a swift, systematic progression child had done and how much perspective are encouraging the can be made in terms of moving of the study was truly theirs, development of “bad habits”. In truth, from a personal situation (i.e. rather than that of a parent or however, the approach recommended my family or my favourite book) elder sibling. Given that the in this article is by no means so radical. three projects were entirely to one pertaining to the world The “data first” strategy has been different, resourcing the literature- beyond the school. This switch championed by others previously, albeit based element adequately was is ideal in helping to counter the for different reasons. For years, there especially onerous, and even egocentricity that characterises have been proponents of qualitative more problems would have many young children and in research who object to the principle emerged had a larger group promoting thinking on a more that the individual should review the of children been involved. As abstract level. literature before embarking on the data Joyce and Joyce remind us, “truly gathering stage of a study. Typically, learner-centered inquiry takes students in all directions”, the charge is made that exploring information sources and the full implications of this diversity must be early on may close the researcher’s mind and result in understood by the teacher when planning the activity. that person bringing to bear a biased perspective when Implications of the Placement of the Information Dimension In both the exemplar studies discussed above, a swift, systematic progression can be made in terms of moving from a personal situation (i.e. my family or my favourite book) to one pertaining to the world beyond the school.

This switch is ideal in helping to counter the egocentricity that characterises many young children and in promoting thinking on a more abstract level. Yet, here and in the personal research projects reported, the sequencing of activities imposes significant demands on the teacher when supporting the element of the project in which information sources are consulted. Most fundamentally, in all the studies outlined this phase takes place near the end, rather than at the start. A more flexible approach is required on the teacher’s part as they must begin with

analysing the data subsequently. Glaser, for example, recognises the danger of immersing oneself in the literature near the start of a project, writing that it is important “not to contaminate one’s effort to generate concepts from data with preconceived concepts that may not really fit, work or be relevant”.

Since children are not simply miniature adults, it is ill advised to impose blindly on them an adult perspective as to how academic work should be carried out. The approach that has been proposed here emphasises the need to begin with the immediate world of the child’s own experience and extend, progressively, away from that. I must stress that in the two exemplar studies the data gathering and analysis stages do not involve material that merely relates to the youngster directly; they have also collected it personally. It constitutes their record and it is thus far more particular to that individual

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34 than any published information they may find. In contrast, the oblique nature of some of the information that is retrieved by children from sources during their attempts to address situations peculiar to them was demonstrated to me in a research project I conducted a few years ago.

After looking for information about fossils in several books with a view to learning about one that had been given to her, a six-year-old girl to whom I spoke expressed her grave disappointment. She recalled that the books she had consulted “didn’t really tell me anything about my fossil. They just showed me like pictures of fossils... and told me things more about dinosaur fossils” No doubt some academics will baulk at the prospect that if the “data first” method is taught to children, in years to come they will have to alter their perspective when they are required to undertake research in accordance with the conventional paradigm. Let us remember, however, that it is not unusual for us to make comparable conceptual adjustments in other areas of academia. Many of the well established models for teaching information skills, notably the groundbreaking framework devised by Marland, highlight the importance of considering the authority of the writer when assessing a source. Yet, as I have pointed out in a previous article, those of us who serve as peer reviewers and evaluate research papers for academic journals pay no attention whatsoever to this criterion when we make judgements on the quality of incoming manuscripts. Indeed, since such journals use a double blind system for reviewing, referees do not even know the name of the author whose work they are reading.

Ultimately, the priority we attach to following unswervingly a prescribed sequence of tasks when carrying out an investigation that draws on information and data perhaps depends on what we think is meant by “research”. Whilst the term clearly involves undertaking a particular set of actions with the intention of furthering one’s knowledge, changing the order in which these are tackled neither dilutes the rigour of the investigation nor makes the work less scholarly. There are other academic behaviours, too, that are often assumed to take the form of a constant, linear progression but the reality presented by commentators frequently shows a different picture. In considering how people find information,

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Westbrook delineates five elements – needing, starting, working, deciding and closing. She suggests, “Rather than a sequence, model, or process, information seeking might best be described as the interconnection of these activities”. It may be said that a similar comment can be made about research.

References Bright Ideas: Maths Activities. Leamington Spa: Scholastic, 1985.

Designed for Learning: School Libraries. DVD. CILIP School Libraries Group. MLA/Partnerships for Schools/CILIP, 2007.

Farmer, Lesley S. J. “What is the Question?” IFLA Journal 33.1 (2007): 41-49.

Glaser, Barney. Theoretical Sensitivity. Mill Valley, California: Sociology Press, 1978.

Joyce, Bruce R., and Elizabeth A. Joyce. “The Creation of Information Systems for Children.” Interchange 1.2 (1970): 1-12.

Kellett, Mary. “Children as Active Researchers: A New Research Paradigm for the 21st Century?” 2005. Economic and Social Research Council. 3 June 2015. <http://oro.open.ac.uk/7539/1/> Marland, Michael. Information Skills in the Secondary Curriculum.

London: Methuen, 1981.

Shenton, Andrew K. Young People’s Information Universes: Their Characteristics and Development. Saarbrücken: VDM, 2009.

Shenton, Andrew K. “The Need to Take a Flexible Approach to Information Skills Teaching.” Education Journal 182 (2013): 16-18.

Shenton, Andrew K. “Demonstrating Impact: A Possible Approach for the LIS Researcher.” Library and Information Research 119 (2014): 67-81. www.lirgjournal.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/ article/view/636/665> Westbrook, Lynn. “User Needs: A Synthesis and Analysis of Current Theories for the Practitioner.” RQ 32.4 (1993): 541-49.

Dr Andrew K. Shenton is a former primary teacher who holds a PhD in how children and young people find information. He is widely published in this field.

Geography Matters

by Paula Owens

Introduction Geography is an exciting, relevant subject that has the capacity to link to and enrich other curricular areas yet it is has a reputation as one of the less well taught subjects. The ‘core subjects’ Maths and English have been a priority in the curriculum and thus in Initial teacher Education (ITE) and school settings for many years and this has arguably had a direct impact on teachers’ knowledge and confidence in teaching geography (Owens 2013).

The advent of a new curriculum in England (DfE 2013) may have strengthened the perception of geography as a separate and statutory subject with distinct areas of core knowledge but this in itself is fraught with problems. If teachers lack sufficient subject knowledge to understand the holistic nature of the subject and its encompassing breadth as well as depth, it still may not be taught as well as it might be. For example, while sustainability is not spelled out in the new curriculum, a teacher who is confident in their understanding of the subject will realise the potential of what Catling (2013) says is a key component of a worthwhile geography curriculum.

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While a greater focus on knowledge in the geography curriculum (DfE 2013) is a welcome one, as the subject ought to have rigour and leave pupils with knowledge and understanding as well as skills, ‘core knowledge’ alone is not enough. It is certainly not a guarantor of high quality geography. So what are the key components of high quality geography? Why do they matter and how can we ensure they happen?

Is it Geography?

Three big ideas can focus planning for successful and high quality geography : ‘place’, ‘space, and ‘scale’ (see Figure 1). These concepts suggest enquiry questions that prompt coherent and rigorous learning experiences. For example, thinking about ‘Place’ requires questions to be asked about what a place is like and why, how it is changing and what is happening there. This concept seeks to describe and explain the human and physical features and characteristics of a place and how, and why, they interact. Such rich descriptions are often seen in teaching and learning and are a great vehicle for English and mathematics as well as subjects such as art and music. However, unless they also have a strong locational context, such studies are not geography.

Figure 1

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A locational context is perhaps the very essence of rigorous geography and the concept of ‘Space’ provokes thinking about where places are and why this matters; it requires us to map and connect the spatial characteristics of places. So if for example, the learning is focused on a topic area such as ‘Rainforests’ (as it might if linked to work on biomes and South America in Key Stage 2) it begs questions such as ‘Where is this rainforest?’ ‘Why is a rainforest here and not there? ‘Where do you find other rainforests around the world and why? What is special about their location?

A greater understanding of what places are like and why and how they are connected happens when we ‘zoom’ in and out from the local to the global and add conceptual thinking about ‘Scale’ to the equation. Thinking about scale helps us to see and understand the bigger picture. For example the trauma in both human and physical terms of the terrible earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 can be seen at a local scale but understanding the logistical problems of communication, evacuation and supply requires a more ‘zoomed out’ view as does understanding the geographical processes at work in the tectonic upheaval of the Himalayas.

What happened, where and why? How did this impact on people’s everyday lives and why? What were these places like before and after the event ? Why and how did terrain and weather hamper rescue and supply at different locations? How did the international community respond to the tragedy? Why were so many people on Everest and where were they from? When such connections are made between human and physical processes, places, people and environments at local and global scales, the learning becomes truly geographical.

Taking a balanced view When investigating places, there can be tension between core knowledge and a ‘sense of place’: the former comprising core knowledge that is generally agreed fact and the latter comprising personalised, varied and non - static responses to places informed by individual and group values and cultures. This latter area is not specified in the National Curriculum but is every bit as essential. According to Ofsted

(2011) two important developments schools need to make in improving geography are to both develop pupils’ core knowledge and their sense of place. Rather than viewing these as separate entities, these aspects of geography might be thought of as polarised ends of a continuum (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

If we just provide core knowledge then whilst pupils may be good at answering geography quiz questions well they may lack the real -world contexts necessary for deeper understanding and applied meaning - making. Core knowledge alone denies the human agency that gives our understanding of geography breadth and depth. People perceive and use places in different ways; consider different groups of users in a local town centre. There might be for example: shoppers, shopkeepers; people meeting for food and drink; business users; children and teenagers playing on bikes or skateboards; tourists and street vendors. Different users will have different priorities for development: more youth clubs, houses, parks, new roads, less roads, new shopping centre, more local shops and so on. How people use and influence places is related to their culture and value and this kind of knowledge does not necessarily fit comfortably inside the ‘fact’ box. What about diversity of people and of nature and wildlife too? How do we measure the value of what matters most about a place?

We all have emotional ties to places for different reasons

and these stay with us as we grow older. This is especially true for children who carry remembered experiences into adulthood and may be influenced in the patterns of adult behaviour by such early encounters and belongings (Catling et al 2010). Tapping into children’s stories and feelings about places’ is a powerful way into early geography and helps too with aspects of Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural development (SMSC) as it offers a space to explore family and other connections to significant places and feelings.

Understanding different and often conflicting priorities and values is also important when thinking about sustaining and improving places and links well with the concept of ‘interdependence’ that is referenced strongly in the new National Curriculum for Geography (DfE 2013).

Geography as ‘Glue’ Geography is a powerful subject because it deals with the real world. It helps us to make sense of the world we live in and think about possible futures ahead. As such, geography offers a relevant and engaging context for work across the curriculum and it requires at the very least, the support of English and mathematics in its enquiry processes; but it also touches the heart of many other subjects. It has distinct skills such as mapping and use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as well as more generic skills such as enquiry, research, communication, graphicacy and of course literacy and numeracy.

Geography is given a high profile across the school and forms a large part of the creative curriculum. As you stated, ‘It’s the glue that holds the curriculum together.’

Ofsted (2012) p.3 This extract is from an Ofsted report on a school where the overall geography provision was deemed to be ‘Outstanding’. The report detailed, amongst other aspects of excellence, that pupils’ showed outstanding knowledge of places and that teachers’ had excellent subject knowledge. It also described how teaching stimulated the imagination and how well learners enjoyed the subject.

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Purposeful geography Geography at its best links well with and to other subject areas but it also has rigour in the form of core knowledge and understanding. When elements of empathetic knowledge are added as described above to balance this through a sense of place, the core knowledge is contextualised. The resulting complexity demands creativity and critical thinking - twin sides of the same coin. Creativity fires the imagination whilst critical thinking gives a sense of purpose and requires learning to be applied in some way.

The final essential component of high quality geography is therefore agency or participation. So referring back to the example of the earthquake in Nepal children might ask - so what? What’s it got to do with me? Children might discuss what they could do to support others and if aid is always the best solution. Challenging a charity mentality is a crucial part of the current government funded Global Learning Programme and while aid was clearly a big focus for media and news stories around this devastating quake, it is not the only story. So, teaching should provide a range of different stories about the world and accept the notion of ‘difference’ in positive and affirming ways rather than always adopting a deficit model. Genuine, lasting school links and dialogic spaces for intercultural understanding can be very powerful ways of learning about the world from each other: in this way, primary geography can contribute to global learning and sustainability by opening up a world of possibilities (Martin 2013).

Geography matters Geography matters. It matters that we teach it well and with confidence in our own subject knowledge and it matters that children’s understanding is built upon secure, factual knowledge too. But it also matters that we tell different stories about the world in which views are emotive, contested and sometimes difficult to comprehend.

It matters that we think about our own and others’ agency and give children the skills and knowledge to be confident decision - makers and to ask challenging questions rather than accepting things at face value. It matters that we find enjoyable and purposeful ways to use the subject as a rigorous context for linked curricular work and that

our geography is of a high quality. It matters that we as teachers are confident curriculum - makers, able to fashion a purposeful and relevant curriculum.

References and links Catling, S. (2013) Optimism for a revised primary geography curriculum, Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 41:4, 361-367 Catling, S. Greenwood, R. Martin, F. Owens, P. (2010) International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education Vol. 19, No. 4, November 2010, 341–350 DfE (2013) The National Curriculum in England: Framework Document Martin, F. Same old Story: the problem of object-based thinking as a basis for teaching distant places Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 41:4, 399-410 Ofsted (2011) Geography Learning to make a world of difference, Published: February 2011 Reference no: 090224 Ofsted (2012) Ofsted 2012 - 13 subject survey inspection programme: geography. Hursthead Junior School, 29 May 2012.

Owens, P. (2013) More than just core knowledge? A framework for effective and high-quality primary geography, Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 41:4, 382-397 Useful websites for Geography Geographical Association www.geography.org.uk Geography Expert Subject Advisory Group (GESAG) https://geognc. wordpress.com/ Global Learning programme for England http://globaldimension. org.uk/glp Global Learning Programme for Wales http://globaldimension.org. uk/glpwales Guidance on Assessment in Geography http://www.geography.org. uk/news/2014nationalcurriculum/assessment/ Primary Geography Quality Mark http://www.geography.org.uk/ cpdevents/qualitymarks/primaryqualitymark Paula Owens is primary Curriculum Development Leader for the Geographical Association and is a member of the Geography Expert Subject Advisory Group. She may be contacted at powens@geography.org.uk

“The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion – these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work. But in schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated with laziness.” Jerome Bruner October 1st was Jerome Bruner’s one hundredth birthday. Primary First offers warmest congratulations and our thanks for all you have taught us over the years. We are sorry that governments have not listened all that much but we teachers are determined to work on.

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