A shared language for talking about teaching
Clarity is a good thing in conversations about teaching, but it has some unfortunate side effects
Some of the worst feedback ever given
In my two-and-a-bit decades of teaching, there have been several times when I have been observed teaching, and the feedback has been ridiculous. A few times it was so absurd that it has stayed with me ever since. On two occasions, what made the feedback ludicrous was the language used to criticise the lesson.
The first of these was back in the 00s. I was teaching how to find the gradient of a line. I explained the concept and wrote questions on the board. All pupils held up their answers on number fans, and I used their answers to inform my questioning and adjust my explanation.
Afterwards, I was told the lesson wasn’t “interactive” enough.
The second was in the 2010s. I was teaching a small, high-ability Year 8 group. I think the school was worried about results for high achievers and had created some special high-ability classes with ten or so pupils. For some reason, several of the pupils in the class had another engagement, so, as a result, I was observed teaching about half a dozen pupils. I don’t remember the topic. What I do remember is that I was able to circulate and look at each child’s work several times, pointing out errors, and suggesting improvements.
Afterwards, I was told there hadn’t been any “formative assessment”1 in the lesson.
I remember both of these because, of course, the feedback made no sense. The first observer believed “interactive” meant something (perhaps group work or discovery learning) that wasn’t teacher-led. The second observer almost certainly thought “formative assessment” meant using mini-whiteboards. That’s a practice I’ve no objection to, but did not consider necessary with such a small class. I suspect that the observers had never really thought about what the phrases they used meant; they had just come to associate them with some activities rather than others.
Empty jargon and useful jargon
Education jargon is often vague, and frequently becomes detached from its original, or literal, meaning. This is how some teachers could say things like “work independently in groups”.2 This is how some education pundits say they are not against punishment, but don’t think it should be punitive. Jargon becomes a way of signalling one’s insider status, and speaking without saying anything.
I’m sure some more recent jargon still indicates one’s insider status, but it’s often much more practical. Probably the most fashionable terminology these days comes from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like A Champion.3 Aficionados of this particular book use phrases like the following:
Cold Call - Asking questions of individual pupils, whether or not they have raised their hands;
Ratio - The balance of cognitive work done by pupils compared with the teacher;
No Opt Out - Getting a pupil who couldn’t answer a question to repeat the correct answer, once it is given by another pupil;
Do Now - A short activity that students begin immediately upon entering the classroom.
None of these terms refers to activities or concepts that were unknown, or even rare, before Lemov wrote about them. However, I do not recall knowing what to call them beforehand.4 Naming a routine makes it easier to refer to it. Even OFSTED reports can refer to routines, for example:
Pupils receive plenty of praise for what the trust deems small but important acts of respect that everyone learns together, such as ‘lovely lining up’ and ‘wonderful walking’
(From the report for Beck Row Primary Academy)
Pupils follow important routines, such as ‘fantastic walking’… Children learn new routines and how to be polite…
(From the report for Greyfriars Academy)
The disadvantage of clarity about teaching
There is a curious flip side to being able to talk more clearly about what teachers do: it becomes easier to object to what teachers do. Almost any teaching practice that is given a name soon comes under attack. Not because it’s new, but because people can jeer at it more easily. Five years ago, anyone who said it’s a good idea for children to slouch, look away and fiddle with their pens when the teacher needs them to pay attention would have seemed crazy. Now, though, there are people who become furiously angry at the mention of SLANT, a routine that reminds pupils not to do those things. All my blogging about the debate over SLANT5 has left me no clearer about what the problem is, beyond bad ‘vibes’ and a dislike of teachers giving instructions (especially to SEND pupils).
I don’t think I realised the extent to which the use of labels makes it easier to criticise certain practices until I saw the Twitter debate about Cold Calling. As I mentioned earlier, Cold Calling is a term used to describe the practice of selecting a pupil to answer a question without getting them to volunteer first. This is something that, as far as I know, teachers have always done. I remember very well the days when teachers were encouraged to have a “no hands up” rule or to pick random names from a pot of lolly sticks when asking questions. These approaches, which I never liked, guarantee that questions will be Cold Called and were incredibly fashionable in the 00s. I had never heard anyone object to asking questions of children who haven’t volunteered, until it was renamed Cold Calling. Now, however, you can find people claiming that asking questions in this way is an act of abject cruelty used to humiliate pupils.
I don’t think that insane criticism of everyday practices is a reason to stop naming those practices. Nor is it a good reason to return to the days when clarity seemed the last thing anyone wanted when discussing pedagogy. But it does suggest that some people don’t like it when teachers talk clearly and honestly about teaching. Almost anything a teacher might say in these circumstances, and any opportunity provided for such talk, will attract controversy. There is a bland and meaningless way of talking about teaching. We hear about teaching being engaging, enthusiastic, compassionate or inspiring, without any description of what was done or why. Real teachers cannot learn from this. We all benefit when we can discuss the technicalities and details of teaching, and we have to wonder why some people are so desperate to find fault when teachers do this.
There is a chance they said “AfL” (i.e. Assessment for Learning) and I’ve misremembered, but if so, the points in this post still stand.
Seriously. I assume that if you didn’t live through the group work fetish of the mid-00s to early-10s, this doesn’t make any sense at all. However, “independent work” became code for “not teacher-led”. The idea that a pupil’s independence might be compromised by talking continually to the pupils next to them was not entertained.
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The only possible exception to this is Do Now. I think I heard it called “bell work”.
The following blog posts mentioned the debate over SLANT:
It’s hard not to keep returning to the debate about SLANT, as an example of bad arguments in education.