Author: Gary Henderson

Gary Henderson is currently the Director of IT in an Independent school in the UK.Prior to this he worked as the Head of Learning Technologies working with public and private schools across the Middle East.This includes leading the planning and development of IT within a number of new schools opening in the UAE.As a trained teacher with over 15 years working in education his experience includes UK state secondary schools, further education and higher education, as well as experience of various international schools teaching various curricula. This has led him to present at a number of educational conferences in the UK and Middle East.

Whats in language?

During the last week the issue of how simple changes in the words we use can have a large impact on perceived meaning has arisen on repeated occasions.

The first instance of this was in reading Drive by Daniel Pink in which he mentioned the long established practice of issuing students home work.    Daniels book discusses the impact of motivation on the things we do and on the point of home work he raises the issue that generally the term work doesn’t inspire a large amount of intrinsic motivation.    The task is “work” and therefore is perceived to involve no pleasure or enjoyment.   As such the term home work turns students off the activity even before we have begun.   He suggests that we might rename it as home learning as our urge to explore and to learn brings with it intrinsic motivation which is not associated with work tasks.   A simple change.

Later in the week in a meeting discussing appraisal or performance management depending on which term you prefer, the issue of the use of the terms, reviewer and reviewee was raised.   A focus on looking forward and improvement was indicated within the policy and by the appropriate senior managers however the terms reviewer and reviewee seemed to indicate a post event reflection as opposed to looking forwards.   One suggestion as to a possible change in relation to the language was to use facilitator, rather than reviewer; so the facilitator of performance management or appraisal.

As an EdTech advocate I am often aware of the use of “enhance” as a term using in relation to technology use in the classroom.    Again this week I saw the term used.    To me the term implies a bolt on, a bit like tomato sauce enhancing chips; it isn’t required by the chips but adds to it.   At its basic level, and as indicated in the first level of the SAMR model, EdTech is a bolt on however its potential doesn’t lie here.    Its potential lies in its potential to redefine how we learn as well as what we learn.   Again another example of a simple change in language betraying a massive difference in meaning.

Recent news has had a lot of discussion on the SATs or Standard Assessment Tests, with the term tests or testing being used almost on every occasion.   This has led to lots of discussion with regards the pressure being put on students as a result of such testing.    Those teachers who are trying to make the best of this prescribed activity however refer to the SATs as an assessment.   They refer to them as just another tool they use in the day to day act of teaching and learning, and of assessing students to check that they are understanding, making progress and are engaged, etc.

How often do we stop and consider the words we use regularly?   As I type this I notice my use of “We” as opposed to “I”.    What difference does this slight change in language convey and what difference in perception of me does it encourage?

Maybe we need to find the time to stop and look at the big picture but in doing so look at the little things like the language we use as it rhough language which we communicate and are understood and it is through language that a significant part of how others perception of us is developed.

 

 

Differentiation, resilience and motivation

I recently read a post on StaffRm regarding Differentiation (read it here ) which I believe to be a very complex subject that can be boiled down and simplified to “knowing the student”.     The post made a very interesting point with regards catering to students needs, and in particular the areas which they need to develop.   The suggestion was that by repeatedly adjusting learning to accommodate these needs we might in fact encourage students to not address areas for improvement and therefore compound the issue at hand.

This got me thinking about all of the other things we should develop or encourage in students.   We want to develop 21st century skills including collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking.    Taking critical thinking we might provide students with a framework with which to question a particular situation or scenario thereby scaffolding the learning activity.     If we consistently provide these questions and frameworks students may come to believe these are the only questions and therefore miss other questions which may be appropriate to a given situation.

Having recently read Drive by Daniel Pink I also wonder what the impact of this constant scaffolding would have on students intrinsic motivation.    To a student it may appear that every time a task may appear at the outset to be difficult, that the teacher has put differentiation in place to make is easier and more achievable.     Also every time a task turns out to be difficult during the completion of the task itself, that the teacher will step in and put in place supporting measures, frameworks, etc to make things more achievable for the student.    The teacher here is doing the hard work so from the point of view of the student there is no need to be motivated to overcome any difficulties in hand, as the teacher can be expected to step in.

We also seek to make our students more resilient however how are students likely to become more resilient when we limit the challenges and difficulties they have to overcome.

I wonder whether the above points towards two different perspectives on education.   One perspective being the importance of attainment, and therefore the need to provide all students an equal opportunity to achieve through providing support and differentiation.    The other perspective focuses on preparing students for the future where they will come across challenge of significantly varying degrees.   Here focus is not on making the challenge easier or more achievable but on asking how can we overcome the challenge.   The focus is on the students and on developing the skills within them to overcome difficulties, the motivation to keep going in the face of challenge and the resilience to not give up.

 

I believe the answer here lies between the two perspectives however I feel it is a worthwhile exercise to consider which of the two you tend more towards and what you as a teacher could do to offer a more appropriately balanced educational experience for students.  I know I will be giving this some thoughts myself.

 

Some thoughts on Data

A recent article in the Telegraph (read it here) got me thinking once more about data.   This also got me thinking about the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman which I have only recently finished reading.  The book highlighted a number of issues which I feel have implications for education and need to be considered by school leaders.

Firstly the small numbers effect:  The Bill and Melinda gates foundation commissioned a study to examine schools in search of the most effective schools.    It found, unsurprisingly that small size, in terms of student numbers, schools achieved the best results, over larger schools.   Contradictory it also found that small schools also achieved the worst results.   The reason for this as explained by Kahneman is that where a data set contains only a small number of items the potential for variability is high.   As such, due to a variety of random variables and possibly a little helping of luck, some small schools do particularly well, out achieving big schools.    Other small schools are not so lucky and the variables don’t fall so well, resulting in the worst results.

To clarify this consider throwing three darts at a dart board aiming for the centre.   This represents the results of a school with a small number of students with higher scores being nearer centre and a lower score being those darts ending further from the centre.   In the case of student results an average result would then be calculated for the school and the same can be done looking at the position of the darts.   Assuming you are not a professional darts player you may do well or you may not do so well due to a variety of random variables.     Given the limited number of darts the potential for variability is high hence a high average or low average is very possible.   Next consider if you were to continue and throw sixty darts at the dart board, taking the average across all the dart throws.    Given the number of darts the average will regress towards your mean darts throwing ability.    The increased number of data items means that variability is reduced as each significant good or poor throw is averaged out among the other throws.

Within schools a great deal of value is being attached to statistical analysis of school data including standardised testing however care must be taken.   As I have suggested above a statistical analysis showing school A is better than school B could easily be the result of random factors such as school size, school resourcing and funding, etc as much as it may be related to better quality teaching and learning, and improved student outcomes.

Another issue if how we respond to the results.  Kahneman suggests that commonly we look for causal factors.   As such we seek to associate the data with a cause which in schools could be a number of different things however our tendency is to focus on that which comes easily to mind.   As such poorer (and better, although not as often,) results are associated most often attributed to teachers and the quality of their teaching as this is what is most frequently on the mind of school leaders.    We arrive at this conclusion often without considering other possible conclusions such as the variable difficulty of the assessments, assessment implementation, the specific cohort concerned, the sample size as discussed earlier and a multitude of other potential factors.   We also, due to arriving so quickly at a causal factor which clearly must be to blame and therefore needs to be rectified, fail to consider the statistical validity of our data.   We fail to consider the margins for error which may exist in our data including what we may consider acceptable margins for error.   We also fail to consider a number of other factors which influence our interpretation of the data including the tendency to focus more on addressing the results which are perceived to be negative.   This constant focus on the negative can result in a blame culture developing which can result in increasing negative results and increasing levels of blame.   Maybe an alternative approach which may work would be to focus more on the marginally positive results and how they were achieved and how they could be built upon.

The key issue in my belief is that we need to take care with data and the conclusions we infer from it.   We cannot abandon the use of data as how else would we measure how we are doing, however equally we cannot take it as fully factual.   The world is a complex place filled with variables, randomness and luck, and we need to examine school data bearing this fact in mind.   We also need to bear in mind that data is a tool to help us deliver the best learning opportunities for students;  data is not an end in itself!

 

Reflections on Month 4 of 2016

Another month gone, so we are now into May 2016.

Its been quite a frantic and busy month and even more so than March, April seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye.

April contained another excellent #appsharelive event which once again involved some excellent App ideas.     In addition I found another site for app ideas which has further allowed me to add to my toolbox of app ideas.    April also saw me take a trip down to London for the Westminster Education forum which I blogged about previously, and I got my #staffrm mug.

Throughout April I managed to blog a number of times, maintaining my target as part of #44weeks to blog at least once per week.   I keep trying to set aside a specific day to write and post my blogs however never seem to manage to keep to the schedule I try to set myself.   Going forward I think I will need to just accept that this irregularity is likely to continue and that I will just need to take care to ensure I manage the minimum of 1 blog entry per week.    One particular technique to help with this is that I am setting a weekly set of goals and am including the need to blog on this goal list.

My twitter activity in April increased on March largely due to my involvement in #sltchat on a couple of occasions plus my attendance at the Westminster Education Forum during which I tweeted a number of comments and images.    I also finally got round to starting to tidy up my twitter account in terms of creating lists, etc.   Clearly I would have benefited from doing this at the start of using twitter rather than leaving it until now which required significantly more work to sort.   I will need to try and ensure I periodically tidy things up as I go forward as opposed to putting it off.

My book reading in April was pretty steady although “Thinking, fast and slow” is quite a significant book to read and therefore took me some time to get through.    I am already making very quick progress through “Drive” which is already around 50% complete after only a couple of days.   It is interesting that I had selected both books independent of one another however having started “Drive” I was interested to find the author D. Pink referenced D. Kahneman the author of “Thinking, fast and slow”.

Fitness and exercise still sits as an area where I am making little progress although I need to admit that I did exceed my step target on a number of days in April which is an improvement and my overall weekly exercise level in terms of average steps per week has steadily increased in the last few weeks.   I need to try and continue to build on this.

I have also set myself a couple of new goal areas however I may write about those later.   Overall April has been another good month so onwards to May.

Westminster Education Forum

Tuesday marked a very early start, setting off at 4:30am for the 40min drive to the train station before hopping on a 2 ½ hour train journey down to London.    Am sure for many this would just be part of the normal run of the average week however after almost 8 years in the Middle East during which time I never set foot on public transport, I consider it to be something new.     Mind you, some may consider Etihad and Emirates airways which are both UAE air carriers to be “public” transport at least within a Middle East context.

The overall purpose of the trip was an #edTech event being held in central London focusing on initiatives and ideas for the use of technology in education, in schools and in learning.    The event was titled “Digital Technologies and Innovative Teaching practice in the classroom: Latest thinking and policy options”.

It was nice one again to hear Stephen Heppell present and to have a brief chat with him and it was also good to hear Bob Harrison present although sadly I never had the opportunity to say hello in person.

Of particular note from the event was Stephen Heppell’s discussion of policy disconnect in which he suggested teachers being innovative charge ahead trying new ideas and new technologies, taking with them parents who see the impact of these new ideas and technologies.    The centralized policies which are determined at a governmental or similar high level however are unable to keep pace leading to a disconnect between what teachers and parents want and the policies which govern what should be happening in schools.   I can identify with this as I see so many examples of teachers trying new ideas, sharing tips, etc. with new and exciting suggestions appearing on the likes of twitter and other online media on a daily basis.     From this point of view it is important to keep innovating and Stephen even made the point of stating teachers should just “do it” and be the driving force.

Peter Twining however put across a slightly different viewpoint during one of the panel discussions where he suggested that success couldn’t be achieved purely through this bottom up process, and that it was equally important to have some top down leadership of educational technology usage.   He suggested that should the government or OFSTED indicate an expectation then schools would adjust accordingly in order to comply in order to avoid unsatisfactory inspection results.   As such for educational technology use to be truly successful we need to have both the grassroots leadership of educational technology, leading from the bottom up, but also the top down leadership setting out the framework and expectations.

I can see the merit in both approaches, top down and bottom up, however have always been quick to suggest that it is important to have both in place to make the best things happen.     That being said, in more recent months I have found myself prioritizing the grassroots bottom up approach over top down.   Good things can happen in lessons despite poor leadership however I am not as convinced good things can happen where grassroots teaching is poor.

Overall it was a productive day and well worth the early rise.    I hope to have the opportunity to attend further similar events in the future.

 

 

Variability

I just finished watching the season finale of Teen Wolf (and yes I know that possibly isn’t something I should be admitting) which has been a bit of a chaotic season.   In all honesty I am not quite sure that I fully understand all that has happened during this season however I have sat and watched it.   It kept me glued because of its unpredictability.

When looking at teaching and learning we emphasize the features which a so called “good” lesson should contain.   It should be appropriately differentiated, it should develop 21st century skills, it should foster individual and collaborative learning, it should encourage resilience and develop character, it should include a global dimension, etc.

As we attempt to do these things this might encourage a formulaic approach.   Working in some schools in the middle east I noticed a tendency for differentiation to have become almost synonymous with differentiated worksheets in some schools.    In an attempt to meet the requirements a single approach had been identified, in this case a worksheet with easy and then extended questions.

It is possible that as we endeavor to improve through identifying the things which should be in lessons we remove some of the variability in lessons.

Thinking of my own school experiences I remember a number of unique events for those teachers who I consider to have been my best teachers.   These events are remembered largely due to their uniqueness.   I remember the English teacher who removed all the tables from the class and had us sitting in a circle, something that was very uncommon at the time.    I remember the health and safety session in DT involving a rubber glove filled with tomato sauce and a bandsaw.

If we remove the variability will lessons be so engaging?   In seeking to ensure all lessons contain the elements which we deem to be important will we end up delivering lessons which are largely the same and therefore not as engaging?  Will the quest for systemic improvement lead to formulaic learning experiences which are un-engaging and the norm?

Ultimately if lessons are equated to a roll of a dice, we want to prevent students receiving a low score from their roll; a poor learning experience.    Given this we want to try to ensure that each roll results in a higher score, better learning experience, however will rolling loaded dice ultimately result in negative results despite higher scores?

 

Class sizes

This morning before walking out the front door I saw someone on a BBC morning programme suggesting that their political parties contribution to the education sector was a reduction in classroom sizes.

I find this interesting that classroom sizes continue to be considered as a measure of how good a school or an education system is.   In the case of the comments on BBC the person making the comments was equating classroom size to an improvement in the quality of education.

Hanushek (1998) suggested that the linkage between smaller class sizes and improved students results was “generally erroneous”.     Kahneman (2011) went further in suggesting that the fact associated with such a claim were “wrong”.

Kahneman’s explanation (2011) was that the reason for the findings relates to statistics and what he refers to as the “law of small numbers”.     A small class is made up of a smaller number of students which therefore results in higher levels of variability in terms of the average.    He uses an example of drawing coloured marbles from a jar to demonstrate this.   Consider randomly picking marbles from a jar containing red and blue marbles.  There is a higher probability of drawing out 3 of acolour (3 high achievers in a small class) than of drawing out 6 of a colour (6, the equivalent number of, high achievers but in a bigger class).

Within a larger class size there is a greater tendency towards regression to the mean and therefore a more stable and less variable average across schools.

The association of improved results resulting from more teacher time, more support, etc resulting from a smaller class sizes is therefore unfounded.    The improved results in schools with smaller class sizes is simply a feature of the statistical analysis of small sample sizes.   Kahneman suggests that if the researchers were to change their question and look at if poor results could be linked to small classes they would find this to be equally true.

My feeling on this is that generally class size doesn’t have a significant impact on student results within lower and upper limits.    Where the ratio is 1 teacher to 2 or 3 students I would expect to see a positive impact and equally at 50+ students I would expect to see a negative impact.   Within the larger range between 5 and 50 I would expect the impact to be minimal if evident at all.

Care needs to be taken with the use of statistics and care has to be taken in believing them.   As Kahneman explains, it is easy to create a causal explanation for why a given set of statistics such as those on class size make sense.   The ease with which a causal explanation comes to mind however doesn’t necessarily make the explanation and resulting judgement true.

Sources

Hanushek, E. A. (1998), The evidence on class size, W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy

Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, fast and slow, Penguin Books

 

 

Gaming

The subject of schools “gaming” school league tables and performance measures such as Progress 8 has made the news recently so I have decided to contribute my opinion to the mix.    Before doing so I need to be clear that I don’t have any particularly strong views with regards this issue.  I therefore believe that my points represent a balanced viewpoint.    I will however acknowledge that my assessment of my viewpoint as balanced is based on the context as set by my viewpoint, perception and the paradigms within which I operate as an individual.   As such, from the point of view of those reading, including yourself, this may not be balanced after all.    I make no apologies for this as all I can offer is my opinion, which is never wrong in that it is my opinion and therefore is formed based on my viewpoint and context.

Back on the subject of “gaming” the discussion seems to have opposing viewpoints.   One of these viewpoints is that a school should try to offer its students the best opportunities for success in the future.   As such it is important to enable them to achieve as many successful qualifications as possible.    These schools therefore look to enroll students in qualifications which for minimal effort return successful qualification, such as ECDL.

The other viewpoint is that schools enrolling students in bulk in ECDL are doing so in order to influence league tables and performance measures such as Progress 8.    Educators taking this position are of the opinion that these qualifications are of lesser value than other qualifications which may take longer to achieve or which are more difficult to achieve yet have comparable impact on league tables and other performance measures.

For me there may be truth in both viewpoints.   If the studying of specific exams is in the interest of students’ futures then surely it is the correct thing to do.    Consider two schools which are identical in outcomes except for the fact that students in one achieve an additional ECDL qualification.    Surely this puts students who leave with an additional qualification in a more positive position.   I myself worked in a school where we delivered OCR National IT to all students.   The reason we did this was due to vocational nature of the qualification which suited out student cohort plus the breadth of study and options available which allowed us to accommodate for individual student needs and interests.

Equally there is truth in the other viewpoint in that if a school put all students in for the ECDL qualification or the OCR National they may have done so purely in the interest of achieving a better league table position than other schools.   This may put students under stress where the qualification is additional, or may represent an unfair advantage where an “easy” subject has been substituted in place of a more difficult or valued subject with an equivalent or near equivalent league table or performance measurement points worth.

Both of the viewpoints include identical actions in the batch enrolling students in a given qualification yet both viewpoints result in totally opposing opinions.    The key fact is not so much what schools do but why they do it.    In one viewpoint it is about the students and the benefit to them while in the other viewpoint it is about the school and getting the best league table or performance measure result.

If OFSTED are to clamp down on “gaming” they are therefore going to have to try and identify why a school took the chosen action.     How are they going to do this?    How are they going to measure the “intentions” of school leaders?       Are we going to start seeing OFSTED inspectors administering polygraph lie detector tests on school leaders?

I also feel that this discussion has a lesser discussed aspect to it in the value of differing qualifications.   This discussion has raged for some time on the value of so called “core” subjects and the perceived lesser value of the arts and creative subjects.      The new “gaming” discussions adds differing values in terms of the perceived difficult level of a course along with the time taken to deliver the course, with shorter courses perceived to have lesser value.   Who will decide the relative worth of each course and the total worth of any individual students curriculum of study?

We should all be working in the interests of our students to try and provide them every competitive advantage with regards Further Education or Higher Education options, or options into employment, or even more generally into their future lives.   A key part of this is the qualifications they achieve so we need to get them everything reasonably possible.   In teaching we use every trick in the book to try and make sure students are learning plus are ready and able to succeed in whatever assessment is required to achieve a given qualification.   If this is “gaming” then maybe we are all involved.

My teacher fail.

Read loads of Teacher Fails posted on Staffrm over the last few days, many of which I can identify with. The burst pen which you then unwittingly use to colour your face or colour the whole pocket side of your shirt along with the inside of your best suit. The mismatching shoes. I even split my trousers once when interviewing for a middle management position. I got the job as it happens although this may have been the result of the interview panel showing pity on me, but I digress.

The recent discussions make me reflect on a particular teacher fail from my teaching career. The lesson in question was being specially delivered for a lesson observation. Note that this was during the period when lesson observations where generally considered the best method for assessing teaching ability and therefore held some importance.

I had planned to push the boat out a little with a Computing class and get them examining how we might handle arrays of data through actually jumping around in a giant array grid I had taped to the floor before they arrived.

The idea was sound. The learning should have been engaging.

I failed to consider a couple of things. The first thing was that I hadn’t had this particular class for long and therefore they hadn’t fully became used to my active teaching style instead being more used to a passive almost lecture style approach. I also failed to consider that a senior school leader sat at the back of the classroom with a clipboard was a significant variable impacting on the potential success of the lesson.

When it came time for the students to get “engaged” they didn’t. Their nervousness at departing from the norm in terms of both being active and also in terms of such energetic behavior in front of a senior staff member, overcame any enthusiasm and excitement that might have otherwise existed. Despite my best efforts to encourage the students and drum up some excitement the lesson ended up being flat. It failed to live up my expectations.

The lesson learned from this is that it is all well and good having the best intentions regarding an active and participatory lesson however we need to give some consideration to the current norms. If students are used to being sat passive it is unlikely they will be able to directly progress to a lesson filled with student directed activities and groupwork. This particular lesson served me very well when I moved to work in the UAE where initially at least I found students very reluctant to express personal beliefs, views and feelings. There however, having learned my lesson, I went about encouraging and developing this in a more gradual way of a period of time.

On reflection it wasn’t a lesson fail, more a case of Not Yet the lesson I have hoped it would be.

Photo, Fail, by Amboo Who on Flickr

Seeking continual improvement

I am very committed to the process of continual improvement.   We live in an ever changing world with new opportunities, new people and new technologies constantly presenting themselves to us.    As such what may be considered “good enough” today is unlikely to be equally good in the new context in a years time, or possibly a months time, or maybe even tomorrow.    Due to this it is important to continually strive to improve.

The step I am currently undertaking as part of my bid to continually improve is to seek some anonymous feedback from colleagues with regards leadership where I myself am one of the leaders to which those invited will provide feedback.

Sticking your head above the parapet so to speak is never easy and never without some worry or concern with regards the feedback you may receive.

From a research perspective the responses received will be based on the interpretation of the questions being asked and then the perception of the individuals providing the feedback.    Their perception may be coloured by recent events, which due to ease of recall will appear more important than more frequently occurring events which may have resulted in an inverse response.    An individuals state of mind and emotional state on the day they provide their feedback may have an impact on the feedback they provide.    Where a person is having a good day and therefore feeling positive, they are more likely to respond in a positive fashion however where they are having a bad day, where the world is against them the opposite is also true.    If they have recently received bad news the response is also likely to be less positive.

From a statistical point of view I know there are various ways I can interpret the data with each approach potentially resulting in different findings.    A simple look at the highest and lowest average scores may seem to suggest the strengths and areas for development however a look at standard deviations may indicate a high average resulting from some widely fluctuating scores.    This initially apparent strength may therefore turn out to be either inconclusive or even an area for development.

Given all these variables it may be easier to decide to avoid asking the questions.   My choice however is to ask the questions as I would prefer to have data which may upset me rather than having no data at all.   At least if I have upsetting data I have a position to work from and to improve from as opposed to existing in blissful ignorance and therefore having no clue that things need improving.   I also have a baseline to work from in terms of checking if any actions taken have made any difference.

I await the results of the feedback with an element of trepidation and an element of anticipation.