One of the more enigmatic findings in Graham Nuthalls work is his unpicking of classroom and learning cultures , not all of which are positive and nurturing. Where the
relationships between students determining largely whether they are supportive or
not. Nuthall shines a light on this problem but gives (disappointingly - am I allowed to even think this? )little by way of practical solution. He suggests that to negate negative peer cultures teachers should “subtly work with it to manage each students
learning opportunities “ and to “ create a powerful classroom culture that
overrides the natural peer culture”.[2] So what might a "powerful classroom culture" look like?
Due to the complex nature of
cultures, it may be useful to look at some case studies of how different
institutions have set about tackling establishing a “powerful classroom
culture” .
The Expeditionary Learning schools, and Uncommon school may at first appear
diametrically opposed being either student centric to teacher centric models.
However, it is the commonalities that may provide more use in establishing our
classroom cultures. I recognise strategies and approaches from both in my
classroom, and that’s OK. It really is.
The clearest and most impassioned
view of what powerful learning communities can look like can be found within
the pages of Ron Berger’s inspiring book “An Ethic of excellence” If you
haven’t read it, you must. Do it now. Go to a bookshop. Take my car. Just do
it. In it, Ron shares his passion for high quality student work, which provides
for him, and the teachers at Expeditionary Learning Schools, the mechanisms for
building a supportive and challenging community. High quality student work
encapsulates all aspects of how and what students do: from Maths work to how
they communicate publicly. They make clear what the expected standards are for
each aspect of school life and then relentlessly teach and model it so that
students understand what they must do in order to attain it. It clearly makes
for aspirational and motivated students who know how to provide one another
with “kind, specific and feedback” during the act of learning.
At the heart of Expeditionary
Learnings philosophy[3]
(and similar schools such as the High Tech High group of schools in San Diego)
is that success is defined by getting everyone to the top of the mountain not
just ourselves. The strength of the school resides in the strength of its
community. Students are therefore obliged to think of others and their role
with their community, and as a result see themselves as active participants in
their education becoming “crew not passengers” [4] along the way. In fact, my first
classroom experience at High Tech High saw me naively ask a student what they
were working on. The student showed no signs of pity in his response, but did
not show me his work, but showed me around the classroom describing in
astonishing detail the work of his fellow students. It was clear that their
work was his work, and as result he benefited from a deep understanding of the
subject.
It is no surprise that these
schools engage with the wider community as a lever for student responsibility
and learning. In these schools, the students undertake public exhibition of
their work. These high stakes, reviews of their learning and character occurs
regularly throughout the year and becomes the motivational mechanisms for the
students.
My first exposure to students
exhibiting their work was at High Tech High in San Diego. The students had been
building toys for first graders that involved using a cam in the toys
mechanism. The first graders had been interviewed by the students to develop a
design brief, allowing them to make a bespoke toy for the younger child. A
dozen or so international visitors were lead into the exhibition hall by the
Larry Rosenstock, CEO and founder of HTH, and Rob Riordan, the legendary
Emperor of rigour. The hall was already a mass of parents, families and
business leaders from local toy factories. This was quite a daunting audience.
My eyes settled instantly on a student who appeared to have no toy on display
in front of them. Approaching her, she smiled, and I asked “Where is your
toy?”. She smiled again and said “I did not get it finished in time”. At this
exact moment David Price, our party leader and very astute educator,
interrupted and asked “Where is your work?”, “Again she smiled and began to
explain again “I did not get finished in time, but I will get it ready for the
first graders on Monday”. Just as I was about to ask what had happened, Martin
Said, a true gent and master classroom craftsman, interrupted asking "Sorry, where is your work... This is a rather
extreme form of student accountability. As extreme as this sounds, with three
unknown adults, who are hugely interested in education, that have travelled
thousands of miles to be there are grilling you on where your school work is.
The surprising thing for me was how
well she coped with this. She smiled, listened
to our questions, communicated clearly, honestly responded to our
queries. Infact, she excelled in this situation. Her work was actually
finished, but she had run out of time putting a high-quality finish onto it,
and was not prepared to put inferior work on show. Yet, she had a large ring binder
file, overflowing with her learning, which she gleefully shared and explained.
It was very clear that she had learned lots of physics, lots of technology and
was getting to grips with how to be a very successful learner. The exhibition
served as very productive reflection for this student.
Now, I know that at first glance
this looks almost superficial with students standing next to their work in a
kind of glorified show and tell. I know it also sounds risky, with parents and
visitors coming in to view the quality of student work, ergo your work.
Furthermore, I know this sounds a complete pain in the backside scheduling
student work, writing letters and organising an event in an already bounteous
workload. I know these things, yet I wholeheartedly recommend that you do this.
If I can’t convince you then please speak to your Art department at school, who
have always done this, and ask what effects it has on the students. It does
indeed require a curriculum set up to do this to this scale, but even small extent
it can raise the stakes for students on quality and importance of their work
matters. A simple mechanism is to may be sit at parents evening looking at
student work rather than just some numbers on a piece of paper.
These schools clearly and obviously
value both academic and character building success, and provide the operational
conditions that allow student to thrive here. Berger challenges us to imagine a
school culture that for students to fit in they must do well academically and
be kind. What would you have to do in your school and classroom to start to
work to this end? To normalise academic success as “what we do around here”
requires more than one teacher efforts being supported fellow teachers, sharing
and using consistent language of practice and shared values are essential. We
intuitively understand this, as part of what we rely on to work as teachers.
Our challenge is to provide classrooms that students get to see this too.
On a visit to two expeditionary
Learning schools I was struck by the consistency of language used by the
teachers. Nearly every classroom exchange (and hallway for that matter)
involved the language of choice that lead in making their own decisions. The
notion that self-direction is powerful in these communities, although it should be noted that students may
not naturally provide such a supportive environment. Communities need building,
and one such story comes from Kathy Greeleys’ wonderful book “Why fly that
way?”[5]
The transformation of a disparate and fractious groups of students into a
cohesive and supportive community is far from a straight story, beset with
setbacks and slow progress. Greeley’s persistence and belief in keeping
classroom culture at the heart of her endeavours and planning eventually works
for these students. At times, she took the brave decision to shelve the
curriculum until the issues in the class had at least been challenged. This
will certainly ring true to a lot of teachers where either the students’
behaviour, attitudes and relationships must be addressed before they are able
to productively engage with the curriculum. It reminds me that sometimes
culture must trump content.
At the heart of Greely’s approach
was the belief that rituals and routines can be used to value the qualities of
the community they were striving to be. Her students were provided many
opportunities to talk and share thought and feelings, as she sought agreement
on the student culture, in circle time. Circle time- the act of sitting
students in circles in order to talk may seem a little childish or even
hippy-ish, but they do allow sharing without authority, hierarchy and the
sharing of ownership, and in doing so help build relationships.
Berger, Greely, Expeditionary learning
and High Tech high encapsulate much of what was defined as the conditions for
“Powerful learning “ [6]
The components as:
- . What
they learn is personally meaningful.
- What they
learn is challenging and they accept the challenge.
- /What
they learn is appropriate for their developmental level.
- They can
learn in their own way, have choices, and feel in control.
- They use
what they already know as they construct new knowledge.
- They have
opportunities for social interaction.
- They get
helpful feedback.
- They
acquire and use strategies.
- They
experience a positive emotional climate.
- The
environment supports the intended learning.
Uncommon schools
“Teaching is the best and most important work in our society” Doug
Lemov 390
The first thing that strikes you
about Uncommon schools is just how teacher centric their approach appears. They
take this approach as a group of pragmatic idealists that didn’t chase
educational equity in the abstract but pursue it relentlessly as instructional
problem solvers in learning communities. It is based on a belief that students
rely on teachers to create such environments. They started by looking closely,
analytically even at what the most successful teachers did, the ones whose
students were “joyfully engaged academically, working collaboratively as a
team, and generating jaw dropping results”. In his book, Teach like a champion 390
Lemov identifies that teachers are not often serious about learning from
teachers that are like this.
This approach is remarkably similar
to the Effective Teacher behaviour research of Reynolds and Mujis [7]
we saw in chapter 7, in which we summarised effective teacher as:
Effective teachers are confident in
their ability, and highly committed to the success of all students. Their
interactions are consistently fair and respectful, inducing a sense of trust in
their classroom. They have the ability to think analytically and conceptually
allowing them to be flexible in their approaches. They act proactively and are
constantly seeking out information to make good decisions. They set high
standards, modelling them and hold others accountable. They have an
overwhelming passion for learning and what education can do. They work in
teams, understand the motivations of others and seek to influence them in
positive ways. They communicate clearly and are inclusive. They employ a
variety of teaching methodology that engage and stimulate thinking. They take
an active interest in their own pedagogical content knowledge and use this
knowledge to teach as well as they can. They create classroom communities that
provide an ordered and civilised climate where students feel safe and suitably
challenged. They teach and they learn and seek to model the behaviours that
exemplify these noble pursuits.
The teachers the Uncommon Schools
studied excelled at the parts of a teachers job we often take for granted, or
consider to mundane: How we patrol our classrooms; How we ensure that all
students are engaged; How we target questions; How we frame situations in a
positive light; How we use time well; and how we strategically move students on
.
Uncommon schools take pride in “well delivered lessons [with] a heart of love,
and [the] celebration of teachers for their impact on students life
trajectories.” It sees itself as an organisation that is about great teaching
and teachers most of all.
Their approach is based upon “sure
fire routines, and a joyful culture that builds a productive platform for
learning”. It is more than just really good classroom management with a
critical focus upon a “culture of error” where it is safe for students to show
their mistakes. A culture that resonates loudly with the themes of this book:
students’ prior knowledge, their misconceptions and how we can use feedback
well.
Teachers are portrayed as artisans,
who use simple tools to craft learning and students. The tools may be simple,
but things of beauty can be created . It is the focus on getting what may be
considered the small things right, and much more. In perfecting the use of
simple tools, we get to reflect upon the art of teaching too. Lemovs’ book,
forms the basis of teaching toolkit for teaching well and ensuring all students
achieve. Lemov insists on naming techniques so that a common language can exist
to allow teachers to “analyse and discuss” the classroom, and perhaps more
importantly be ready to “adapt and adjust” the techniques so their style,
context and students are catered for as well as possible.
The problems of teaching are
endemic, and therefore “entirely predictable” according to Lemov. You may have seen
this approach alreadyon this blog, with PEEL’s “teacher concerns”.
Similarly the Uncommon Schools approach seeks to align common problems with
“specific, concrete and actionable techniques” . It is the skill of the teacher
to select the right tool, for the right job at the right time.
The Uncommon Schools is neatly
encapsulated in what seems to be a benign teacher action whilst issuing
resources., in this case a worksheet. The teacher has the student practice
handing sheets around the classroom so that it takes around 10 seconds to
complete, rather than the usual 80
seconds, thereby saving a significant amount of time each lesson, each day and
each academic year This allows the students to concentrate more on what
matters: the cognitive work, and many of
their routine and rituals are used to build “strong learning habits” and increase student autonomy so that the proportion of cognitive work
increases. This may not sound that important to leafy suburban schools, but the
structured approach and the accountability and autonomy the routines imparts
have been seen as instrumental in tackling the achievement gap between the rich
and the poor. The ethos of Uncommon schools is to focus “primarily on serving
students of the greatest need”. These may well be the students who do not have
the consistent and structured home lives that lead to good self-regulation and
learning habits, so the orderly approach provides their experience of how this
can help a person become successful.
Interestingly, the idea of culture
in Uncommon Schools is linked inextricably to behaviour, once more reminding us
that behaviour management is not enough, as Lemov rightly points out “order is
necessary but not sufficient for learning, and culture is more than just
eliminating disruption”. Lemov goes on to define what culture means in this context
identifying five principles, that when “well balanced” can provide for a
“strong” learning culture.
The following table will hopefully illustrate the hierachy within these principlesand gives prompt s for teacher thinking and planning steps.
Principle
|
Definition
|
Implications for the teacher.
|
Planning questions
|
Discipline
|
Knowing the right way to do
something.
|
Students must be shown/ taught
how the teacher wants each task done.
|
When and where do the students
get to practice these routines/ techniques?
How do you know when this routine
has become a habit?
|
Management
|
Process of reinforcing behaviours
|
Relationship building is an
essential part of this.
Rewards and sanction become less
effective over time.
|
How do you construct
relationships that are ”non-transactional” i.e. contain no rewards or
punishments.
How do I link good learning
behaviours and academic success?
|
Control
|
Capacity to cause someone to do
what you ask
|
The power a teacher has to assert
control over a class the more freedom can be given.
Students are more likely to be
controlled by someone they trust.
Being specific with language-e.g. instead of
saying “calm down” rephrase to say
“please return to your seat and
start your work”
|
How can you phrase your requests
so that they are more likely agreed to?
How do you build trust with
students/
|
Influence
|
Next step beyond control. Helping
a student to internalise the thing you suggest
|
Aim of using influence is to get
students to believe in long term success by wanting to behave positively.
Often a failure to exert
influence is what stops students from believing in classroom cultures
designed for their benefit
|
How do you move students from
behave to believe?
How can you building in greater
autonomy so that the students have greater ownership of the responsibility
for learning?
|
Engagement
|
Engaging students in “important,
interesting and challenging work”
|
How do we get students to do more
of the cognitive work?
|
How do we transport students to
“real scenarios?”
How do get students to have a
vested interest?
|
So, what can we learn about
classroom culture from these institutions?
Most importantly, culture does not
lie in the differences between these approaches, but rather in their
commonalties. Just as we need to be able to explain the concepts of our
subjects in multiple ways, we also need a variety of approaches to start, develop
and maintain a productive classroom community. Kathy Greeley’s book- Why fly
that way? – highlights that the answer will be different for different students
in different contexts, there is no one right answer. But it is in the blend of
elements that we can begin to understand.
Both emphasise high academic expectation as a central tenet to their approach,
communicating that all students are
capable of achieving highly. Students success is clearly correlated to
teacher expectations. [8]
However, this is easier said than done. Poor differentiation, along with
teachers de-selecting concepts which they believe students cannot comprehend,
even before the students have attempted them, ultimately cause our students to
experience low expectations All too often we just hidebehind the claim that we
have high expectations of their “behaviour”. Yet the mathematics here is
simple:
Low Academic expectations + High
Behaviour expectation= Low expectations
Our craft and skill here, is how we
sculpt a culture that encourages student to be willing to tackle all that you
throw at them academically speaking, and how we grant access to all of the
content to students who are “less able” or in reality students who have
impoverished prior knowledge. Lest we forget all students have the same
capacity to learn, it is just the so called “more able” have a higher starting
point when it comes to the attainment tests, that inform our opinions of
ability. Our ability to express high expectations
begins with how well we can cater to their needs.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect
that both approaches share is the prominence
of the teacher. Without highly motivated and supremely motivating great
teachers neither system would work. Do not be misled by the apparent student
centric view of Expeditionary Learnings approach. There is a great deal of
design, organisation relationship building along with brilliance in their
teaching behind this successful school culture. Likewise, it would be folly to
think that the teacher centric aspects of Uncommon Schools are the be all in
and end all of their success. Their culture works because the teacher creates
the environments in which students take increased
levels of autonomy and responsibility in their learning.
Both organisations believe that the act of learning can be
learned, so that students can increase their capacity to do more of the cognitive work of learning,
which ultimately, they develop deeper academic understanding. Routines and rituals are ubiquitous in
both approaches in order to provide smooth running classrooms and facilitate
student work. It is the habit-forming nature of these ways of working that
forms the basis of the students learning skill set and attitudes.
Routines and rituals require a common language and understanding.
Sharing language with fellow teachers and with students allows the conversation
of the classroom to be about learning, and how to do it. Learning becomes the
culture, and how we use routines and procedures and their associated pedagogical purpose are what changes
it.
Finally, both approaches understand
that it takes time to build a truly aspirational and supportive culture, and
that the rules and routines are just the start points, and that we must
proactively develop our classroom cultures.
Some suggested Reading and References
[1] An ethic of excellence _ Ron Berger.
[2] Graham Nuthall The Hidden Lives of Learners NZCER
[3] Now this section of the book is going to make me sound like some
right jet setting Charlie, and for that I apologise. Although the sweet Maine
lobster in Portland, and the view from the Pacific Beach Alehouse in San Diego
make it ever so hard to be sincere with this apology.
[4] Expeditionary Learning Core Practices.
[5] Kathy Greeley Why fly that way?
[6] Ron Brandt http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/198179/chapters/Conditions-for-Powerful-Learning.aspx Accessed 27/07/17
[7] Reynolds and Mujis 1999 The Effective Teaching of Mathematics: A
review of research
[8] Speybroek et al: The Role of Teachers' Expectations in the
Association between Children's SES and Performance in Kindergarten: A Moderated
Mediation Analysis
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