Schemes of Work By James Atherton, 2011. Every teacher has a scheme of work, but it may exist only inside her head, and it may be incomplete. Just as the curriculum is the answer to the learner's question, "Why do we have to learn this?" the scheme of work is the answer to the teacher's question, "What am I going to do?" Unfortunately the Scheme of Work has been devalued by its bureaucratisation and the belief of many teachers that it exists only to satisfy—in this obsessional climate of morbid distrust of professional discretion, and of pulling up plants to see if their roots are growing—managers' and inspectors' craving for "evidence" of adequate practice. It needs to be rescued from this fate. It is the teacher's equivalent of the builder's plan and the engineer's blueprint. It is a working document. It is not immutable, just as building plans can be changed up to a point. It is made to be messed with, to be annotated and scrawled all over. It is the most useful evaluation tool you can have, because given that most of us repeat courses year on year, reference to last year's well‐worn Scheme (and the year before's) is the best guide to how to change things for this year (particularly if you are conscientious enough to enter in the findings from your evaluation exercises).
Lesson Plans and Schemes of Work What's the difference? Simply one of scale: the Scheme sets out what you are planning for the whole twelve or thirty weeks of the course on a session‐by‐session basis, while the session plan is finer‐grained and looks at what you are going to do within each lecture or seminar or workshop. (Some people even put in timings, minute‐by‐minute, in the session
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plan. Inspectors might like that, but I find it too constraining because it cannot allow for contingencies and opportunities.) Severe Practicalities
I have included a template for a Scheme to download (see it below), but it is not a document to use on the computer, after you have written the original version. Leave lots of white space, keep it in your course file and take it to every session, and annotate it by hand, in the teaching room, before you leave after the session. It's the best way I know to keep track of it all. ... and a confession I'm an opportunist. For reasons to do with my early experience of teaching I rarely if ever manage to stick to my Scheme. As I am free to do in my discipline (but others working in more serial areas may not be), I can pick up on points because the students seem to be interested at that moment, rather than because the schedule requires it. Paradoxically, this makes the written Scheme more important than ever: my notes on how far I have slipped behind what I should have been doing in Week 4, but that I have already addressed most of the material for Week 9, are crucial to some semblance of organisation. 2
Format for a Scheme of Work Date 1
18 Jan
Topic
Out‐ comes
Introductions What is learning? Cultural issues
1 1, 4
Resources
Assessment
Memory and neuropsychological aspects
2
Use "Is it Baselining/diagnostic Admin: Learned?" assessment via exercise as ice- introductions Handbooks: go breaker linked through reading to list introductions. Assignment S. Korea video briefing including level Fun memory test for next Ethics clearance week procedure Links to "accelerated learning" sites on web-page
2 25 Jan
Notes
Tulving article
Need more vivid cultural stuff (madrasahs?) Check reading etc. done
Imitation not properly covered
Quiz on memory Level of critical analysis Link to Miller test of Accelerated article? Learning sites? OHTs Add links to web-page
3 1 Feb
Motivation to learn
2, 3 Morgan handout Exercise on critique of Maslow? Herzberg blanks
Remember "because of"/ "in order to" distinction
OHTs Add links to web-page 4 8 Feb
Learning theories 1: behavioural
2, 3, OHTs 4
MCQ quiz
3
Shaping exercise if we have time
Skinner video Add links to web-page 5 15 Feb
Learning theories 2: cognitive
2, 3, OHTs 4 Add links to web-page
Check understanding of developmental issues.
Social constructivism not addressed Betty the crow (Gestalt) Knack of riding a bike
6 22 Feb
Learning styles
2, 3, Learning styles 4 questionnaire
Check quality of discussion of questionnaire results
Do Vygotsky/Bruner first
OHTs Add links to web-page 7 1 Learning by Mar experience
2, 3 OHTs
Pick up on last week's stuff on Kolb
Add links to web-page 8 8 Intelligence and Mar ability
2, 3 Sample test
Don't!
OHTs Add links to web-page
9 15 Learning theories Mar 3: humanistic, social and critical theories
2, 3 OHTs
10 22 Independent Mar learning
2, 3, OHTs 4 Add links to web-page
Add links to web-page
Becker article
4Â Â
Check assignment What does a humanistic approach progress to e.g. accounting/ legal/ nursing education look like? (Need better school-based examples) Check experience of using web-site Teach-back on Laurillard
for next week 11 19 Situated learning April
1, 2
NQT experience exercise OHTs Add links to web-page
12 26 Evaluation, ReApril cap and loose ends
all
Evaluation questionnaires
Assignment issues
The scheme is not meant to be perfect, but a compromise: it exists to prod my memory, more than to satisfy a Quality Assurance bureaucrat. In particular, it lacks, for reasons of space: Any ascription of priority to the topics being addressed, or even to the learning outcomes, which are all treated as being on the same level. Any specification of the reading or other work to be undertaken between the sessions. (It has to be admitted that such "homework" is a two‐edged sword: if it is conscientiously done, it can free you from a great burden of simply informing the students about important content. If, on the other hand, it is not done, it can lumber you with uncomprehending students, who get lost and become demotivated—but if you compensate by filling them in and making up for their lack of reading, it gets them off the hook of actually having to do it.)
Level This is no more than a shorthand, but it is important, because it permeates the whole scheme. It is possible to teach the same material at a series of different levels (as indeed I do—from first‐year undergraduate to Master's). In particular, it affects the assumptions you are entitled to make about: •
the speed with which you can introduce new material 5
•
the amount of reading of primary sources you can expect
•
the level of critical analysis you can demand
In practice, however, note that your assumptions are not always justified! You have to make your expectations clear, and not to collude with students who do not meet them. Courses contributed to
It is not as common in Further Education, but on modular Higher Education courses, a particular module may be taken as part of a number of courses. A module on Company Law, for example, may be a requirement on both business and law courses. Sometimes serving more than one course is a way to make small modules viable: but it can lead to the student group having different interests and foci. In this fictional example I have to balance the interests of a group of school‐teachers (MA Education) and lecturers and even business trainers (MA Post‐Compulsory Education and Training, or "PCET"). Notes on baseline
So what can you legitimately assume? It is worth spelling this out to yourself and to the students. In this case as with other Master's modules, there is always the possibility of "elective" students, who may not share the same background experience and learning as your mainstream students. (And see the "Courses contributed to" point above.) You don't have to dumb down for them, but unless the module specification includes clear pre‐ requisites, they are entitled to be there and to understand what is going on. Required outcomes:
This is the bottom line (although merely a minimum): this is what the students should be able to do at the end of the process—not what you as a teacher intend to deliver. This is a crucial distinction: if it is specified as an outcome, then you as a teacher are responsible at least for providing opportunities to get the students there. It is up to them to take those opportunities, of course, but the shift from "what I am going to teach" to "what the
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students will (or at least 'should') learn" is the defining feature of teaching rather than simply presentation. My test for inclusion of material (and particularly of exercises) has to be, "does it contribute to the outcomes?" That is why there is a column for it on the main table. Contrary to some critiques, there is nothing here to preclude students going beyond the required outcomes: they are merely the as‐much‐as‐possible‐guaranteed minima: the bottom limit of your responsibility when related to level requirements. ("Must learn", but not precluding "should" and "could" learn material)
Must / should / could "Differentiation" is the current jargon. It means teaching people differently according to their needs or their capabilities or even their "learning styles". There is not much research evidence to support "differentiation" in the byzantine elaborations some theorists seem to want to promote for their own self‐serving reasons (no references or links here—I can't afford to be sued!) However, we all know from experience that students learn at different rates; some will have grasped the point before you have finished explaining it, and some may get there in the end, but only after much additional effort and support. •
(And, it should be pointed out, students are not consistent about this. I'm not going to label them, because that is the trap into which the learning styles theorists fall, but certainly different people respond differently to different kinds of ideas. [Plonkingly obvious comment, but often forgotten])
From the point of view of a scheme of work, how do you deal with this?
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The simplest and most intuitive and for once, most effective, approach is the "must/ should/ could" formula. It needs no further elaboration! •
Use it as a guide in drawing up schemes of work and session plans
•
Make sure it is incorporated in assessable tasks done in class, so that even if students can only tackle a few questions, they will have covered the "must learn" content.
•
And so that more able students who get through more have a constant supply of useful if not essential material to work on.
•
And use it as a check on yourself, if like me you are prone to digression
Summative assessment
Specify in the scheme of work what the students need to do to earn credit for the module. Assuming the principles of Biggs' (1999) "constructive alignment", there should be a good fit between this and the module process and content. Notwithstanding the structures on surface learning, students are entitled to a transparent (and valid and reliable and fair) assessment scheme, and to assume that your teaching will prepare them for it.
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Special Issues
At this point the commentary becomes more opinionated: but who's writing this site...? It doesn't matter what you call this section, and its contents may vary from the profound to the very mundane (closing times for the canteen), but every class is unique and this is where to remind yourself of that, including the special needs of students. •
Some further education establishments, in particular, will provide you with a "group profile", which will set out previously identified special needs. There are ethical and confidentiality issues with this, to my mind, unless the students have explicitly consented to such use of information about them, but if used, this is where to note it.
Topic
Here's the syllabus! That is all many people think the Scheme of Work is—a list of topics to be "covered". It's certainly important, but it needs a context, which is what all the rest of it is about. Outcomes addressed
So here are the outcomes to be addressed at each meeting, as discussed above. However, a caveat is in order: some schemes of work, particularly for complex and reductionist competence‐based programmes, are totally driven by a baffling list of items in this column from the subject specification (C3.5a, C3.6b, T2.4a...) so that all the teacher ends up doing is effectively explaining what all these mean, and how to meet the assessment requirements for them. Our focus may be on the outcome of the overall process, but it is about learning, or the process of getting to the outcome. This may mean that the teaching is oblique, rather than head‐on. I'm not very good at pool or snooker, but even I know that the task is to hit
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the ball as it lies in such a way as to get it to the pocket: and in the teaching situation the balls are not merely reactive objects, but living subjects... Resources
This is a very practical column: what do I have to take with me when I leave my office for the lecture‐room? What photocopying do I have to order in advance? It just saves a lot of effort to get it organised in advance. (Who was that at the back who said "Practise what you preach?") The reference to web‐pages is not trivial: my own experience, no doubt borne out by many colleagues using VLEs or open web‐sites, is that if I miss something or do not have time to deal with it, I can compensate with web‐postings and links. But they do have to be relevant and reactive, showing students that their interests and concerns are taken seriously as the module unfolds: my own experience (blow the research, if any) shows that web resources are taken much more seriously if they reflect the teacher responding directly to issues in the class, rather than simply a standardised set of links posted without reference to where the class is at. Assessment
If, in the light of remarks about the outcomes, teaching is defined by student learning rather than the presentation, then some kind of assessment is essential at every stage to check whether they are learning (or at least understanding what you are on about). Most of the time the students will not even be aware such assessment is taking place, because at this level it is primarily for my benefit, to tell me whether I am getting through to them. The most basic and ubiquitous form is questioning (so much so that it is not mentioned here). More important than their answers to my questions are their questions to me, with due allowance for the odd‐balls in the group who have their own agenda behind not‐very‐ helpful questions. However, exercises are not simply good ways of getting the students to
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engage with the material—they also give me important feedback about their level of understanding and/or skill. Every session needs to have some kind of assessment of this nature built in to it. It's not often we can be that dogmatic about teaching, but this one sticks. Even week 8, where the note says "don't!" only refers to the undesirability of conducting an individualised IQ test in public. Notes
Those in red are the post hoc notes I scrawl on the Scheme as I go along. Some of the others are standard reminders of issues to raise at particular stages. The points below amplify some of the notes. Level of critical analysis
This is a really important aspect of informal assessment. On this particular topic (websites on "accelerated learning"—the Lozanov, brain‐based stuff, rather than shortened college courses), responses range from: •
"Gee whizz, I must give this a try!", or "What a load of old rubbish!" through,
•
"Well they're all just plugging their own stuff, aren't they?" or in more academic terms, "It's all very positive, but where is the objective research?", to
•
"What do they mean by 'learning' here? Isn't it largely about simply acquiring knowledge?"
All these responses are more or less legitimate, but I am looking for the more sophisticated ones: the absolute judgements about accelerated learning are less significant than the underlying processes of arriving at them. Given that I will probably get all three versions in the class, what is the quality of the debate about them?
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(Incidentally, this is particularly an area in which I need to hold my tongue and just listen to how the students are handling it: jumping in with the "right" or "most sophisticated" answer too soon is counter‐productive. I want to know how they are learning, remember?) Social constructivism not addressed
Make note of what you don't do, as much as of what you do. It doesn't really matter why it was not addressed (although this one is a pity big omission): it's usually quite a good sign if something gets squeezed out because the students have been too interested in something else. The question is what you do about it. •
Do you leave it to the next session and then try to trim other things to get back to schedule?
•
Do you mop it up with a handout or on the website? (That would be pretty ironic given the topic.)
•
Do you leave it for the "loose ends" space you have sensibly left at the end of the sequence?
•
Do you forget it and press on?
There are no absolutes on this judgement: it will depend on the group and the topic and the rigidity of the syllabus and how much control you have over the assessment (exams set by other people or a central body are just as likely to create surface teachers as surface learners). However, what this points to but the Scheme does not show, is the importance of having priorities for your topics, including occasional items which may be sacrificed because the timing has gone awry. And if the timing never goes away, that can only be because you keep too tight a control over it: "student‐centredness" (whatever that is) is only real if 12
occasionally it upsets your best‐laid plans. (Just like "free speech" is only free when it concerns the right for people to say things you find objectionable) "I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" Voltaire. Check assignment progress
This is one of the regular notes you can write in, in advance. To be frank, it is more of a process rather than a content issue: it is the fact that you check which is more important than any information you may gain or even help you may offer. It "sends a message" that you are interested in the students' experience. Even so, it make provoke some frequently asked questions which you can deal with quickly and which may save you having to go over them time and again in a tutorial. You can of course post your answers to those questions on a website or Virtual Learning Environment (or even a noticeboard). Teach‐back
"Teach‐back" is shorthand for getting the students to teach back to each other and to yourself what they have learned, in this case from set reading between the sessions. It is, according to Pask, one of the most effective ways of promoting learning. It is particularly suited to work on a clearly‐delineated set of ideas or material, such as here, on a particular author's model. Its downside, and why it may not really be appropriate here, is that it is potentially very time‐consuming, and it needs to be carefully managed to ensure that it is not merely about the keen students teaching and the lazier ones just coasting. Loose ends
As mentioned above, leave yourself time for slippage, possibly with a few lower‐priority topics in hand in case you are actually on schedule by the time you reach the end of the sequence. If topics came up earlier on, which you had to field at the time by saying that you would deal with them later, you should have made a note of them and you will be able to keep faith with the students by addressing them now (this is particularly useful when a bright spark raises a question you can't answer—it gives you time to research it!) 13
Incidentally, why is the "assessment" column blank for the last two weeks? It doesn't have to be, of course, but your room for manoeuvre is getting restricted by now, so it could be argued that the information you gain is less usable. On the other hand, evaluation for the next time around is assuming more importance—so do it properly, and read the results with the scheme of work in hand. If you are like me, you have this fantasy that you might really get it right before you retire! Now: your task is to evaluate whether this is a good scheme of work or not. •
What are its strengths?
•
What are its weaknesses and areas for development?
•
What aspects might be both?
•
How might you have tackled it differently? If you have read the Learning side of this site you should have a reasonable idea of the subject matter.
•
In particular, could it have been tackled more creatively, using Problem‐Based Learning, for example?
•
Would the outcomes be met (assuming mythically "average" students)?
Atherton, J. S. (2011). Teaching and Learning; Schemes of Work [On‐line: UK] retrieved 16 November 2011 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/schemes_of_work.htm
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