Articles – Page 4 – Shooting Azimuths

In Digital Strategy, Education, Educational Technology, Modern Foreign Languages

Modern Foreign Languages Pedagogy Review —Considering the implications for practice, technology adoption and initial teacher training

On Monday 16 January 2017, I was part of a panel discussing the recommendations of the Modern Foreign Languages Pedagogy Review, which was published in November 2016. Panellists were asked to contribute a five minute introduction. Below is the transcript of my contribution.

At a time when a greater appreciation of the important role of research in informing our profession is emerging, I see the MFL pedagogy review as a welcome and timely examination of the prevalent pedagogical practices in languages teaching, making some very useful recommendations for its improvement.

Systematic teaching of grammar and vocabulary

In particular, I welcome the recommendation that teachers should teach grammar and vocabulary explicitly and systematically with the aim of promoting the genuine manipulation and production of language (i.e. not just repeating set phrases). This is indeed one of the features that tend to repeat themselves across academically successful environments.

Why languages?

I wince at the accepted norm that languages in schools should be promoted as valuable in terms of usefulness to the prospects of employment or to the country’s future economic performance, rather than something that is intrinsically valuable and enriching to the person. But I greet with enthusiasm the recommendation that teachers should teach explicitly knowledge, metalanguage and strategies that can help students to continue learning in the future. Although I would add that such metacognitive strategies have been shown to play a substantial role in improving learning, not just in languages, but also across the curriculum.

The role of cognitive science

I also welcome the incorporation of findings from cognitive science about how we learn most successfully. The promotion of more frequent low-stakes testing of vocabulary and grammatical structures as key to their long term retention and embedding can be traced directly to findings in cognitive psychology about the importance of retrieval practice. The suggestions about the sequencing and frequency of lessons can be linked to findings in this field about the value of spacing and distributed practice, which suggest that little more often is best and that instructors should plan the return to key content at various points in the course.

Technology for fun?

But as a former head of MFL and current senior leader with responsibility for my school’s digital learning strategy, what caught my eye most strikingly was the notion that teaching should be supplemented with technology because technology is an “attractive resource”. Having spent the best part of ten years opposing the idea that technology is a tool for “fun and engagement”, the first thought that crossed my mind was: teaching shouldn’t be supplemented with technology to make it attractive, rather technology should be used when it supports teaching and learning — for example: online quizzes for frequent retrieval practice; presentation of content with the benefits of dual-coding in mind; and online collaboration tools that facilitate the timely administering of feedback. To be fair to the writers, the report does go on to mention how technology can support the acquisition of vocabulary, but overall I found the tacit acceptance of the view that technology is just fun and engaging a little troubling.

Implications for teacher training

In this I see implications for initial teacher training. I would suggest that, as a profession, we need MFL teachers who know their subject (the content); know how to teach it (the pedagogy); and know which tools are best for a specific purpose (the technology). This review tackled two out of these three pretty persuasively, but would have benefitted from exploring more explicitly the link between great teaching and great, effective use of whatever technology is available to support the processes involved in teaching and learning. Now, there’s a good reason to use technology!

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In Education

The Road to Damascus —Why we need more level heads

Saul was a “zealous” Pharisee who had spent his life persecuting early Christians. According to the New Testament, on the road to Damascus, Saul saw a flash of light that came down from heaven. He then heard the voice of Jesus, who asked him why he was persecuting Him and His followers. Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit and from that moment on became Paul the Apostle. Paul’s divine revelation caused him to see clearly “between righteousness based on the law,” which he had sought in his former life, and “righteousness based on the death of Christ”.

I was recently part of a panel discussing whether schools ought to invest in technology or textbooks (I was there arguing that they should do both). Colin Hughes, a fellow panellist representing Collins Learning, described how, when ebooks were first introduced he was bowled over by their potential. He was convinced that the future was digital and that he was witnessing the death throes of print as a medium. As a result, Collins invested heavily in digital only to not see a return on that investment because, of course, what actually happened was that ebooks carved themselves a niche in the market but sales of printed books remained strong. This was Hugues’s Damascene moment, when the revelation came to him that schools were wasting their time on digital resources. He had seen the light and from that moment on he would proselytise the superiority of print.

Recent years have seen the development of a new traditionalism in education that espouses the return to the more effective practices that were prevalent before a more progressive philosophy of education became widespread across schools structures and curricula, resulting in huge damage wreaked on the life chances of poor children in particular. If you disagree with the assertions in this one-sentence summary, new traditionalists would not hesitate to class you as a progressive.

In my experience, new traditionalists tend to be bright, eloquent, passionate individuals who — as any teacher would — want the best education possible for children. They believe that this is achieved by teaching a rich, knowledge based curriculum, enforcing strict discipline and promoting a back to basics approach to classroom instruction that dismisses alternative approaches as nothing more than gimmicks and clutter.

New traditionalists are, of course, right about many things, in particular about the importance of a knowledge rich curriculum and about the need for a drive to improve the quality of instruction. But, in the course of our conversations, I noticed how new traditionalists would often speak about how wrong they used to be about group work, 21st century skills, discovery learning or what have you, and how they changed their minds once, in a Damascene moment, the truth was revealed unto them.

Now, I’m not against changing one’s mind or admitting one is wrong. That would be silly. Everyone does that all the time, quite rightly. As John Maynard Keynes famously quipped “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” And I’m not against Damascene conversions either. Who knows, perhaps there is one in store for me yet. But one thing is to change your mind about what strategy you are going to use in a lesson and quite another is to be persuaded to perform a hard reset of your values and principles.

Would Collins’s strategy for ebooks have been more successful if they had taken a more level-headed approach to digital publishing? Would their fortunes had turned out different if, instead of falling head over heels for the twentyfirstcenturyness of ebooks, they had seen a more likely truth: that ebooks would simply coexist with traditional print, not take over? Similarly, would our values and principles as teachers be more enduring if we’d been more critical and sceptical when they were being shaped? Would we then be less likely to swing from extreme to extreme?

I don’t know. Perhaps not. There is clearly a tension between the different approaches that may lead to a great education for children, and the ensuing debate can be very healthy, but I think it would be healthier if it were more moderate and balanced. At the minute, it seems as if the tenor of the debate and the policy agenda are being set by those who believe the most and shout the loudest, and I’m not sure that is good for anyone.

In Education

Walk a mile in my boots —The importance of learning the habit of empathy

As a languages teacher, it never ceases to astound me to think that the rasping, whistling and vibrating sounds emanating from our mouths and noses when we talk can be effortlessly decoded by others as meaningful language. This allows us to communicate with one another in astonishing levels of complexity. Language is a defining feature of people. If you think about it, language allows us to insert ideas in other people’s brains without the need for surgery.

In many western societies we might be tempted to assume that being able to speak and understand more than one language is the exception. However, it is estimated that between half and three quarters of the world’s population is bilingual to some degree. I am bilingual. Trilingual even, on a good day. And I am not alone. There are more than four billion people around the globe who understand that with different languages come different ways to interpret the world.

The real voyage of discovery

Marcel Proust observed that “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new lands but in seeing with new eyes”. Proust realised that by working with other people we learn about their cultures and become able to explore new ideas and prospects. Options that would not have occurred to us before stand out as obvious if we understand how other people experience the world. This is why it is so important for students – as it is for us– to experience and develop deeper empathy and understanding of others, to be able to experience the world from other people’s perspectives, to put ourselves in other people’s shoes.

In my own experience, leaving my small town in southern Spain to explore Italy for two weeks during my sixth form – the first time I ever travelled abroad – opened up a whole new world. As I found myself immersed in Italy’s culture, it struck me that Italians, who I had previously perceived as peculiar beings, were in fact the norm in their context and that I was the stranger.

Students nowadays are much more likely to have travelled abroad by the time they are sixteen and have easy access to a world of information through the internet. However, they still need to be guided expertly through the process of discovery so that a deeper understanding of their own place in the word can be developed.

Empathy as a learning habit

This is why fostering empathy as a learning habit in our classrooms is so beneficial. At Surbiton High School, we understand this and have traditionally encouraged the need to put learning into context. The Classics trip to Italy, the expedition to Iceland, the French exchange, the cultural visit to Andalucía and foreign language assistants who bring a little bit of abroad into our classrooms are just a few of the many examples of contextualised learning that we provide our students with.

The moment in which a cohort of year 10 pupils land in Málaga and realise that Spanish has a life beyond the textbook; the students visiting Germany and noticing that people behave and react in familiar ways but the small differences are what really matters; the awkward dinner conversations between foreign exchange students and their French host families, the sudden realisation that Tanzania is such a long way away on so many different levels. These are character building experiences that bring out the best and worst in all of us, and from which we learn so much.

What is it like to teach a lesson? What challenges does a teacher face? Where does my teacher want me to go, ? A greater sense of empathy and its development as a learning habit result in students becoming more rounded and knowledgeable individuals, encouraging them to see things from different perspectives and helping them to make better informed decisions, and to acquire knowledge and skills that will be useful to them and will remain with them for life.

Based on a school assembly I delivered on the topic of Empathy, drawing heavily from a piece I wrote originally for The Guardian.

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In Education

Love thy teachers —On the challenges of recruiting and retaining great teachers

I wasn’t always a teacher. I only became one after spending six years working in industry, where I was doing well but always wished I’d taken that extra year to complete my PGCE – unfortunately I was not able to afford another year in higher education. However, when the opportunity arose to do a PGCE, I grabbed it with both hands and, as the cliché goes, I have never looked back.

After my PGCE I was fortunate to be appointed teacher of Spanish at an excellent school that looked after its teachers as much as it looked after its students. Professional development opportunities came in many guises, but mainly via the dedicated mentorship I received as an NQT and never really stopped throughout my time there. I was loved in the best way a school can love its teachers: by supporting, stretching and challenging me to become the best teacher I could be. And I am still at it.

I have spent the last ten years in middle and senior leadership trying my best to replicate this approach to professional development, having understood that the best way to attract new, quality staff is to look after the staff that you already have. But every so often, usually for very happy reasons, folks do move on and vacancies arise. And no, it turns out that not everyone is as keen as I was to become a teacher. So, what challenges have I faced recruiting teachers?

Number of applicants

“I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well”

— Alexander the Great

The first time that, as a head of department, I sought to recruit a new teacher of languages, I really thought there would be deluge of applications. Why wouldn’t there be? The school was great. The kids were brilliant. It was a vibrant city. What was not to like? Well, we received five applications in total. Including one from a Colombian waiter with no teaching qualifications and two from overseas, with degrees but no teacher training. A total of two people from the UK with relevant qualifications applied for the position. Both were invited for interview and one was eventually appointed. It turned out to be a great appointment, but that was due to sheer luck rather than the breath and quality of the shortlist.

Shortage subjects have always had it tough. I know of schools who have appointed two good mathematicians when they only needed one just to keep one in the bank, as it were. Similar story for languages, a subject that has always been reliant on oversees recruits (such as me) and is now bracing itself to have this pool shrunk even further, as options for EU nationals become more attractive elsewhere post Brexit.

Why don’t more people apply to become teachers? Well, the simplest answer is that teachers don’t get paid as much as other graduate professions. 20% less in fact. Remuneration does even out later, but this means that many potentially great teachers are not as drawn to the teaching profession as they are to the bright lights of industry with its fatter pay cheques and higher status. There are other issues, of course, but getting this right would be a good start.

Quality of applicants

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,” he said. “Have you thought of going into teaching?”

― Terry Pratchett

There haven’t been many occasions when I have been in an appointing panel where everyone from the shortlist could have easily been offered the job. In reality candidates who look really good on paper can disappoint in person for a variety of reasons. Apart from begging the question “how many candidates who disappoint on paper but would have otherwise made great teachers were never called for interview?” there are other considerations we need to take into account.

Let’s begin with the old adage “hire for attitude and train for skill”, which is one many senior leaders stick to faithfully. Personally, I think that in a profession such as ours your skills as a teacher need to well honed. Teaching, after all, is not rocket science, it’s much harder than that. In many cases – such as shortage subjects – I would argue that skills are more important than attitude, although it would be clearly ideal if a candidate were able to demonstrate both.

In some countries candidates need to be qualified to masters degree level before they can apply to become teachers. I’m not suggesting this is the solution to our recruitment problem, but I do believe that greater emphasis on pedagogical content knowledge during teacher training, which perhaps could benefit from being extended to two years in partnership with schools, would work wonders for the profession. Teachers need subject knowledge, but they also need to know what great teaching looks like and how students learn best.

Retention

“The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching”

— Aristotle

Another well-known precept is Richard Branson’s “train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to”. Highly performing education systems around the world all have two things in common. Firstly, teaching is a well remunerated, high status profession, and secondly, teachers are allowed the time and the resources to develop professionally. Yet our schools often face the double whammy of not having much money in the budget for salaries and not being able to invest in quality, ongoing professional development. This is pretty much the opposite of what highly performing organisations do, and it needs to change. Many of the challenges we face in recruiting teachers would dissipate if we treat the teachers we already have as high status professionals, with the all rights but also the responsibilities that this would entail.

Am I wide off the mark? What do you think?

This post was originally published in The Educator Blog, under the title “Top challenges I face recruiting teachers“.

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In Digital Strategy, Education, Educational Technology

Teaching to the text: Textbooks or technology? —Why it is not one or the other

I was delighted to be invited to take part in a panel discussion at this year’s Battle of Ideas titled Teaching to the text: Teaching or technology?, which took place earlier today. Speakers were asked to introduce their position for five minutes before opening the discussion. Below are my opening words:

Good morning. I find myself in a peculiar position. I am speaking in panel about textbooks or technology even though I disagree wholeheartedly with the premise of the discussion – that it has to be textbooks or technology.

Let me paint a picture for you. I teach in an excellent, forward looking school where all teachers and students use, among other things, a tablet to help them teach and learn. Despite this appearance of twentyfirstcenturyness, at heart we are a school with very traditional values about what makes great teaching and learning.

In my school there would be outrage among our staff and children if we were to tell them that they had to choose between textbooks or technology. Why? Because both are useful. Both facilitate learning. So, on their desks, students will refer to their tablets for some resources; to printed textbooks if they are being used for others; to exercise books; and, sometimes, even to lever-arch folders. They’re all still there, alongside pens, pencils and pencil sharpeners. From our perspective, it is not print or digital, nor should it be.

While it can undoubtedly be very useful to debate opposing topics – the very word debate derives from the Latin for to battle the opposite, and so here we are, having a “Battle of Ideas” – we must be careful not to frame the discussion in such a way that the resulting polarisation makes its relevance increasingly moot.

Does a textbook need to be in print form? Can it not be in digital form? Can it be accessible both digitally and in print? If not why not? Why can’t we just print what we require for a particular topic of study, in the knowledge that all the other topics can be easily accessed, downloaded and printed, if necessary, at any time?

When you listen to people’s reasons as to why they say they prefer print over digital – these may range from “they are easier to issue” (easier than a tap on a screen or a click of a mouse?), to “easier to refer back to” (have they not heard of hyperlinking?), or even “I enjoy the smell of paper” – you realise that digital resources are dismissed often for the wrong reasons by people who really don’t have a sufficiently good understanding of how these digital resources are actually used in practice.

And yes, I know, there are also studies and surveys that show that “students prefer print”. Leaving aside the fact that students – like all of us – prefer what they are used to and that these preferences will change over time, we must remember as teachers that what students prefer may not always be what’s best for them. So I remain fairly sceptical about this claim.

The reason why I am sceptical is because I know that practices that have been shown to improve teaching and learning – such as spacing study, interleaving topics or frequent low-stakes testing – often don’t come naturally to the learner. In fact, what learners prefer to do often goes against what cognitive psychology tells us is best for learning.

And it so happens that well-designed digital resources can support these more successful pedagogical practices and others – such as paring text with interactive graphics to aid conceptualisation, featuring sound or video recordings or modelling solved problems to encourage metacognition – much more easily and pedagogically effectively than a paper textbook ever could.

But there will be good and bad textbooks. And there will be good and bad digital resources. In many respects it’s how they are used and in what context that matters. Proclaiming that one is inherently better than the other and that we must make that choice today is not helpful and, ultimately, won’t contribute to improving the education children receive. So let’s not polarise, and let’s agree that resources — of any kind — play a hugely important role in great teaching and learning and focus instead on how we can make these resources better.

Below is a recording of this debate:

Many thanks to Susanna Goldschmidt (Discovery Education), Colin Hughes (Collins Learning), Tim Oates (Cambridge Assessment), David Perks (East London Science School) for a very stimulating conversation and to Harley Richardson (Discovery Education) for inviting me in the first place and being an excellent chair.

In Education, Educational Technology, Modern Foreign Languages

This is how I teach —A summary of the strategies and methods I use in my lessons

As a languages teacher, I’ve always believed that the main purpose of learning a foreign language is, not only to understand, but also to be able to express oneself in that language.

There are various approaches to language learning. The grammar-translation method, derived directly from traditional Latin and Greek teaching, requires students to learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules by translating sentences to and from the target language. In contrast, the communicative language teaching approach emphasises learning to communicate through interaction in the target language, often using relevant or authentic language.

At a time when one must describe oneself as either traditional or progressive, it is easy to ascribe the grammar-translation method to the traditional school of thought, and even easier to denounce communicative language teaching as hopelessly progressive.

Wo ist der Bahnhof?

In truth, of course, both methods can be done badly. As a schoolboy in Spain, I learnt English exclusively via the grammar-translation method. As a result, I was extremely adept at translating sentences such as “the fox jumped over the fence” or “it will have been seventy years” but, faced with an actual English speaker, I would have failed miserably to utter a single meaningful sentence with anything resembling a comprehensible accent. Some say that is still the case.

On the other hand, many of my British contemporaries studied languages with a more communicative approach, though unfortunately the only thing many of them can remember now is how to ask where the train station is.

But this can also be done well. As a teacher, I believe that grammar is inherently beautiful and worthy of explicit study. Yet I want my students to be able to express themselves in the target language with high levels of fluency and authenticity. I really don’t see these approaches as mutually exclusive, but rather as tools that can and should be deployed depending on varying circumstances and contexts.

In my context, these are some of the strategies that regularly feature in my lessons, drawing from both approaches:

Frequent Low-Stakes Testing

Testing has a bad reputation. I believe that when people lash out at testing, they refer mainly to high stakes testing. Proponents of these high stake tests will point out that children’s progress does need to be measured at regular intervals and that their results can be used to build a better picture of the quality of the education in large areas or countries, whilst opponents often highlight the adverse effect of teaching to the test and its ramifications on children wellbeing.

Low stakes testing is nothing like that. In fact, not only don’t I use them to measure progress, but students also love taking them. Why? Because it helps them learn. Watch the video above and listen to the quiet concentration in the room as the children test themselves.

Modelling and Redrafting

There is a lot of modelling, drafting and redrafting in my lessons. Typically, after vocabulary is introduced and students can recall it easily, I would pose a question and ask the students to think about how they can use the sum of their knowledge to best answer the question.

Every week, I reinforce key grammatical concepts and vocabulary by either using quizzing software for a few minutes in every lesson (see above) or via good, old teacher-student interaction. “Tell me, Maddie, quick, what is a juxtaposition? And can you give me an example in Spanish?”

Once the seeds have been planted the children attempt an initial answer. Each answer is different. There is no excessive scaffolding, only a basic list of things I wish to see in their answers, e.g. sophisticated vocabulary, three tenses, adverbial phrases and justifications. The rest is up to each student.

It is at this point that I select strategically two or three examples of student work that I wish to model to the rest of the class – either because it is excellent or because I’ve identified a common misconception that I wish to dispel – and photograph them with my iPad.

By using my iPad as a portable visualiser (see photo, above), I project the the photographs to the front of the class and and use my stylus to annotate corrections or suggestions, giving general yet highly relevant feedback that students can use immediately to improve their answers. This process of drafting and redrafting often culminates in a homework task, samples of which you can see below from a Year 11 class. As you can see, few corrections are needed at this stage, making marking light and, actually, enjoyable.

Metalanguage and Metalearning

Subject specific language is used throughout. I specifically avoid using terms such as doing words or describing words, and instead use their proper linguistic equivalents. So we talk about verbs, adjectives, adverbs, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, juxtapositions, etc.

If students come to my class not knowing these terms at the beginning of a course, then I spend time explicitly explaining what these things are. Why? Because being able to refer to abstract grammatical concepts during feedback and explanations saves time in the long run and gives the children the tools to reflect about and take ownership of their own learning.

Feedback

Explaining to students where they are, where they need to be and how to get there is at the heart of great teaching and learning. Marking policies in schools range from utterly sensible to completely barking mad. Many teachers understandably detest marking, especially when it’s done following a policy that everyone knows has little discernible impact on student outcomes.

Though I still make frequent use of exercise books, every now and then I set my students homework that is to be completed on their iPads. Above is an example. The drafting and redrafting process I referred to earlier ensures that there are precious few corrections, but I would still wish to leave some feedback or targets. Instead of writing these targets down laboriously, I can simply record my voice setting targets or giving feedback for each individual student to listen to and act upon. Pieces of work that are sixty to eighty words in length can be marked and meaningful feedback can be left in just a few seconds each, certainly under a minute.

As students can also record their own voices in this manner, I can set speaking for homework regularly and, as a native speaker of Spanish, not only can I feedback on content and grammatical accuracy, as were traditionally the only options, but I can also record myself to model accent and correct pronunciation.

Speaking

We practise speaking in every lesson too, generally after completing the tasks I describe above and a quick recall exercise that ensures key grammatical concepts and structures are retrieved from memory and are raring to go. As frequent low stakes testing ensures that vocabulary is readily accessible to students from memory, they are able to construct new sentences and manipulate language on the fly.

Importantly, they are not simply reading in the target language or translating from a text, but they are actually replying using their knowledge to construct new language as they go, as we would naturally in our mother tongue. The language is fresh in their memory, but responses are not memorised. The video, above, featuring some of my Year 9 students hopefully illustrates this.

The Role of Technology

It is almost fashionable in education circles to decry the use technology as gimmick or an impediment to real learning. Hopefully these examples of technology being used to support what I hope are decent classroom practice and sound pedagogical principles are sufficient to question that perception.

But if technology really gets in the way, is a gimmick or does not add value to learning, then I think we are probably doing something wrong.

There you have it. What are your lessons like?

In Education, Featured

Five revision strategies every student should know —Some key principles from cognitive psychology

When I was at school I wasn’t a terrible student, but I was terrible at studying. Yes, I was good at cramming my head full of facts and concepts at the very last minute that I was able to recall for tests and exams, but the good grades I often obtained concealed the fact that I wasn’t learning very much at all in this way. Every exam was an uphill struggle and, as soon as it had finished I would forget a considerable amount if not most of what I had learnt.

Like most of my contemporary students and many students nowadays, I believed that spending hours reading, rereading and underlining important bits before an exam was the best way to learn. But it isn’t. It is in fact a very poor way to learn, as none of this does very much for the long term retention of knowledge and improved understanding, which, arguably, are the main objectives of studying.

But in recent years a greater understanding of the principles of cognitive psychology among the teaching profession has generated a renewed interest in what works well and not so well in terms of teaching and learning. So, what do we know about successful studying? How can we best prepare for impending exams?

Space your studying – Don’t leave revision to the last minute. Instead organise yourself so that you space your studying, revising smaller chunks more frequently in the run up to the exam or, preferably, throughout the course. This is an effective strategy because learners remember information better when they are exposed to it multiple times, not when they cram.

Interleave different topics – Closely related to the notion of spacing revision, interleaving is the practice of alternating different topics and types of content. Although we may intuitively feel that we learn better by focusing on one topic at a time, this is not actually how we learn best. Research suggests that better, long term retention is achieved when students interleave different but related topics or skills into their revision schedule.

Pair graphics with text – Your textbook or teacher may well have started capitalising on this by providing you with relevant diagrams, illustrations or mind maps. The reason why this is a great strategy is because graphics present examples and depict overarching ideas or concepts, and in so doing they help to explain how these ideas and concepts connect. If ready-made graphics are unavailable, spend some time as part of your revision schedule creating your own graphics. Not only can this be very handy when it comes to last minute revision, but it will also help you organise and conceptualise your knowledge more effectively, so that you remember it more easily.

Test yourself frequently – Tests are not just good at assessing how much you know and, therefore, how much you still need to learn, but it turns out that tests may well be more effective at helping with the learning than they are with the assessing. This is because frequent retrieval practice – that is to say: recalling concepts or meaning – is one of the most effective ways to ensure you commit something to memory more permanently. Testing yourself is easier than ever these days, with a multitude of smartphone and tablet apps and web tools that allow you to create your own flashcards and quizzes that you can use and reuse as part of your revision routine.

Ask the right questions – Research suggests that planning, monitoring and evaluating your own learning have great impact on learning. You can achieve this by asking yourself where a task might go wrong; by breaking down the steps that you think will lead to mastery of a topic; by producing your own worked examples; and by formulating appropriate questions and providing possible answers beyond those already provided by your teachers or textbooks. These metacognitive strategies are effortful but extremely effective in achieving secure knowledge and understanding in any given topic.

When I was at school, I often felt that the climb to get to the top and over Exam Mountain was steep and daunting. With these strategies we are still climbing, but we do so by building the steps and pathways required to get us to the summit more leisurely, so we can then aim higher and be better placed to continue on to the next challenge.

This piece was originally published by Galore Park under the title “Gearing up for the exams”.

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In Digital Strategy, Education, Educational Technology

Technology: an unwelcome distraction or the catalyst for great learning? —A non-hysterical look at how technology can support teaching and learning

At Surbiton High School we have created an environment where teachers and students use digital technology habitually to support teaching and learning. We have achieved this by investing in professional development, connectivity infrastructure and by providing every member of staff and student with a tablet device. And yet ours is not some dystopian environment where technology enslaves us and dictates how we teach and learn, but rather a technology-infused traditional environment, where great teaching and learning – with and without technology – are the ultimate goals.

When we think about children using technology, we tend to associate their use with leisure. YouTube, SnapChat, Pokémon Go, Instagram and other such services keep our children connected and entertained – mostly with our blessing. From this perspective, it is easy to fail to notice the opportunities that mobile, digital technology offers education. Fears that technology distracts our children from proper, academic learning are very common, as is the assumption that schools who use tablets use them for edutainment, i.e. to play games. This is often reinforced by the kind of negative cultural bias felt by us all that demands we send a child to play outside and get fresh air if we catch her “staring into” a tablet, but not if she is sitting “staring into” a book, even if reading was what she was doing on both occasions.

Like everything, technology too can be used well or badly, so learning how to use it appropriately is equally important for both teachers and students. For this reason, even if the blocking and banning of mobile technologies are still the default option for many schools (sometimes for good reason), more and more schools are realising the importance of exploring and exploiting the opportunities that these technologies can bring to education. As a result, roles such as mine – which focus on the intersection between technology and pedagogy – are becoming markedly less niche and more common place. When looked at through a lens that focuses on pedagogy, the perceived challenges of technology can be more easily mitigated when it is used to support the processes involved in successful teaching and learning.

So, in our lessons, technology is not used to keep children pacified or entertained, but rather it is used to present new topics vividly and memorably; to facilitate and enhance the giving of feedback; to provide opportunities to practise the retrieval of concepts and meaning through frequent low-stakes testing and quizzing; to access more effective audio-visual subject specific resources at spaced intervals; to keep track of class- and homework; to work collaboratively when the need arises; and to promote the learning and working habits that will help students to continue learning and developing personally and professionally well into adulthood, all the while adhering to high expectations of appropriate use and behaviour.

But one of the greatest advantages of technology is as true in the classroom as it is in our daily lives: technology can help us do things that would otherwise be impossible without it. So our students have ubiquitous access to a curated corpus of knowledge that helps them to learn whenever the need arises; they can film science experiments easily for later study and reflection; they can video and edit well-researched films on topics from Shakespeare to the origin of our universe; they can record themselves speaking in a foreign language to fine-tune accent and pronunciation; or they can communicate and collaborate with students in the next classroom or on the other side of the world just as easily.

But none of this is to say that we eschew pen and paper. The whole point of technology is that it is used when there are clear benefits to teaching or learning. To us this means that great teaching and great, effective use of technology when appropriate are indistinguishable – they are one and the same. Therefore, great teachers are able to discern when technology is best and, crucially, when it isn’t. Just because students can use a tablet, it doesn’t mean they should be using it all the time.

Handwriting is still a crucial skill. So, alongside our tablets, our students still rely on older technology that has proven its worth throughout the ages: exercise books, textbooks and lever arch folders are all still there. If anything, handwriting is thriving, as students move seamlessly between printed and digital media. But just because students all have an exercise book, it doesn’t mean they should be using it all the time. In our context, there is always a time and a place. To us, technology does not substitute great, traditional teaching and learning, it enables them.

This article was originally written for and published by Galore Park with the title Technology in the Classroom.

In Digital Strategy, Educational Technology

It’s not about the tablets. It’s about the learning —My foreword to the new book: The Tablet Revolution

Earlier this summer I was enormously privileged to be asked by Jay Ashcroft and Charlotte Green to write the foreword to their new book The Tablet Revolution: How to Transform Student Learning with iPad, which you can read below.

Providing pupils with mobile devices is an enormous decision for any school, and it is one that must be considered carefully. If you start from the assumption that providing pupils and staff with shiny slabs of aluminium and glass is all that is required and that everything else will take care of itself afterwards because “the children know how to use them anyway”, then you are in for a shock. Bringing in hundreds of mobile devices and only then worrying about the pillars that will prop up your mobile learning project is a recipe for disaster.

When it comes to successfully deploying a programme that results in every pupil having access to a mobile device, there are numerous considerations that need to be clearly thought out and weighed up – from visioning to budgeting, from infrastructure upgrades to staff professional development – and all the while keeping in mind two very important things: firstly, that the sole objective of a project of this magnitude ought to be to help children learn and, secondly, that the outcome of these considerations could well be an unequivocal “we’re not quite ready yet”.

There are many good reasons why making mobile devices available to pupils would be desirable for most schools, but the missing ingredient in the sauce is often the lack of a sound educational case for the use of mobile devices. This educational case needs to be built solidly around supporting, facilitating and enhancing the processes involved in teaching and learning. Nothing else will do. Put this on a poster and hang it somewhere where it will serve as a constant reminder, because, in the end, the success of any mobile learning programme will be judged on whether it had a positive impact on educational outcomes, so a well- informed and hard-headed approach is required to decide whether this avenue is one down which your school should be travelling at this particular stage in its development plan.

But it is certainly not all doom and gloom. Quite the contrary. There is an increasing number of schools who have started to explore and develop good practice in the area of mobile learning, both in procurement and pedagogy, and some who are beacons of excellence in a world where bad news makes headlines but great achievements and innovation pass us by unnoticed. Jay is in the unique position of having been involved in numerous mobile learning projects at schools internationally, expertly advising teachers on how best to apply their pedagogical content knowledge to the empowering and yet challenging opportunities of the mobile device-enabled classroom. This expertise, together with his experience in business and his keen awareness of what makes great teaching and learning, is encapsulated in this book, which is an essential source of knowledge and information for whomever is considering improving teaching and learning in schools through the use of mobile devices, so I encourage you to read on, take note and reflect.

‘The Tablet Revolution’ is a great companion read to Educate 1-to-1: The secret to successful planning, implementing and sustaining change through mobile learning in schools, which I co-wrote with four other experts in digital learning and mobile technology deployments in schools.

In Digital Strategy, Education, Educational Technology

Not all screen time is equal Some considerations for schools and parents

Human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

The notion of screen time evokes strong and often negative emotions. Photographs of people, young and old alike, staring into screens instead of talking to each other are almost always followed by dispirited comments about the dysfunctional state of our society.

Parents of young children, including me, worry and often feel enormous guilt when their children spend too long in front of devices instead of running around outside, getting fresh air and climbing trees. And spare a thought for parents of adolescent children. They too feel anxious and concerned about how long their 15 year old spends locked up in her room in front of a screen instead of getting more involved in family life.

Even if you don’t have any children, you are probably troubled at times by the realisation that you are surrounded by a seemingly ever-increasing amount of screens. Computer screens at work, television screens at home, and tablet screens in a variety of sizes for when you’re making your way from one to the other. Combine all this and you might be forgiven for thinking the world is going to pot and we have a big, big problem. But have we?

The media’s tendency to resort to click bait journalism and our human propensity to favour simple solutions to complex problems over complex solutions to simple problems have coalesced to create the widespread perception that technology is eroding away at our humanity. From Nicholas Carr’s implausible yet widely accepted claim that having more sources of knowledge and information at our fingertips is somehow making us dumber to Sherry Turkle’s specious contention that checking social media on smartphones and tablets is causing us to be “alone together”, the internet – and I hope the irony is not lost on you – is full of dystopian visions warning about the dire consequences of our addiction to technology.

So, is technology actually bad for us? Is it bad for children? It is certainly a question worth asking. There is a substantial number of studies that, for example, have looked at the effect of video games or at what effect looking into bright screens for prolonged periods has on our eyes. Whereas the balance is tipping in favour of ‘video games are good for you’, when it comes to screen time it is widely accepted by the scientific community that prolonged exposure to bright screens can harm our eyes. This is not disputed, but if you compare this to the fact that it is well known that simply reading paper books can cause myopia, and yet nobody seriously suggests that children should stop reading, you begin to realise just how hysterical the guidance surrounding screen time can be.

Chris Ferguson, professor of psychology, believes that much of this apparently negative expert opinion can be explained through a phenomenon he calls ‘the scientific pile-on effect’. Ferguson thinks that, in clinical psychology, “once something is identified as ‘naughty’, it’s predictable to see an ever-increasing crescendo of studies linking the naughty thing to everything bad imaginable… bad behaviours, low intelligence, adult health problems, cancer, global warming…” And he cautions that “this is really the inverse of snake oil salesmanship. Just as hucksters sold junk medicines with cure-all promises, academic psychology spends too much time selling moral agendas with claims that the naughty thing, whatever it is, causes all problems, just as snake oils cure all ills. This scientific pile-on effect should be a warning that something has gone amiss in the scientific process.”

This moral agenda, apparently backed by clinical psychology, contributes to the blatant medicalisation of this perceived problem, encouraging us to view the use of technology through the lens of pathology. So we talk about addiction, dependency and detox, as if the use of technology in our daily lives were analogous to injecting heroine or smoking crack cocaine. But professor Tanya Byron is sceptical about this medicalisation. Byron suggests that “by labelling [technology use] as an addiction before we really understand the processes at work we run the risk of removing our own responsibility for how we use technology”.

And herein lies the paradox: many things that you can do on screen – reading a book, video conferencing with relatives abroad, playing video games or watching a nature documentary – are generally good. Yet screen time is bad, for so say the experts. So which is it? Should we or shouldn’t we?

Maybe technology is not the problem. Maybe it’s just down to human behaviour. Consider again the parents of young children who worry about screen time but put their toddlers in from of an iPad for hours on end and then blame the technology. Consider the fact that teenagers have been locking themselves up in their rooms, avoiding talking to their parents and responding only with barely audible grunts to ‘how was school today?’ for, probably, centuries. Screens didn’t cause any of this. From this perspective, the mere existence of screens contributes to this problem in the same way that cars contribute to crashes. That’s right, car crashes wouldn’t happen if there weren’t any cars, but it is the person in control behind the wheel who causes them, not the car.

None of this is to say that we should carry on unconcerned when addictive behaviour is displayed around the use of technology, be it social media, video games or Pokémon Go. Instead I suggest that we should be concerning ourselves with controlling our behaviour, in the knowledge that most of us will be able to develop and exercise an appropriate level of agency and self-control, but fully aware that some individuals will inevitably lose control. As Byron observes, “of course there are those who are vulnerable and who may become addicted to new, pleasurable behaviours. We have a duty of care to those people. But as a species, this is about adaptation, it’s about understanding our behaviour, not panicking about change and taking personal responsibility – responsibility as parent, responsibility as individuals, and as a society as a whole.”

Personally, I am persuaded by the conclusions of Sonia Livingstone, professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Alicia Blum-Ross, research officer in the same department. According to Livingstone and Blum-Ross ‘screen time’ “is an obsolete concept. As digital media become integrated into all aspects of daily life, it is more important to consider the context and content of digital media use, and the connections children and young people (and parents) are making, or not, than to consider arbitrary rules about time.”

The essence of this approach is that we should fret less about how long we spend in front of a screen and worry more about what we are doing on said screens. Catching up with geographically distant friends and family members, keeping up with current affairs or reading an e-book are all demonstrably good and fruitful things to be doing in one’s spare time. The fact that we are doing this on a tablet, a laptop or smartphone should not really matter and it’s certainly not bad for us.

But do consider your context. There are occasions when – rightly so – it is socially unacceptable to spend too long or any time at all on devices. When you are out at the cinema, the theatre, or with some friends we should avoid the temptation to check our smartphones. This is not because technology is bad for us, but rather to avoid being rude to others.

If you feel trapped in a maelstrom of notifications, emails, messages, pings and whistles that are vying for your attention, it may feel that ‘detoxing’ and eschewing technology altogether for days or weeks at a time may be the solution. But this simple solution doesn’t even touch the more complex problem of controlling our behaviour. Instead of a full detox, we could first consider turning on the do-not-disturb feature our smartphones or tablets and leaving it on permanently. Perhaps switch off notifications altogether to avoid pop ups and vibrations. This is how my tablet and smartphone are set, so I am never disturbed when I am reading a book, marking students’ work or having dinner with my friends or family. I check any messages when I’m ready, not when my devices buzz a demand for my attention. It’s a more complex, but highly effective solution.

As schools begin to explore the educational potential of using more devices with screens in the classroom, parents who don’t necessarily understand how this technology is used might understandably but erroneously assume that technology in schools is used in the same way that it has traditionally been used at home, that is to say to keep children entertained, busy and quiet. Schools clearly have a responsibility to explain more clearly and justify how technology is being used to support great teaching and learning. Are the children reading and writing more? Are the children learning maths more easily? Is it easier to learn a foreign language? Can teachers give feedback more effectively? These are the really important questions that need an answer. This is where researchers need to be focusing their research. ‘Are the children spending more time on screens?’ is a valid but much less important question, since it’s what they are doing on those screens that really matters.

Angharad Rudkin, clinical psychologist, suggests that “any guidance needs to be based on solid evidence base rather than a fear of change. We need good quality research that looks in detail at different aspects of child development and their relation to screen time.” Rudkin concludes “I think the next step is to empower parents. Teach them how to identify when screen time is becoming problematic for their child (meaning that is interfering with normal development and functioning) and give them the confidence to manage it.”

In summary, not all screen time is equal, so we should probably adjust our advice accordingly.

Your thoughts and considerations are always welcome. Please consider sharing this article or leaving a comment.