Leadership and Management Archives

School Governor

The work of Ofsted comes under scrutiny from the Commons Education Select Committee

Nick Holt looks at the future for extended services in the new education landscape

In a new report, Fulfilling potential, the business role in education, the UK’s largest employers’ body, the CBI, welcomed the coalition government’s reforms for expanding the number of academies and enabling new schools to be set up, which it considers should lead to greater innovation in the classroom

The new Department for Education demonstrates the unfamiliar look of coalition politics with Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather taking on the role of Minister of State for Children and Families under the new Conservative Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove

A recent Ofsted report has highlighted the role of governors in evaluating CPD. David Gordon examines the report and other sources of information that will be valuable to governors in this task

The long-awaited report of the Ministerial Working Group on School Governance comments on the performance of governing bodies and makes recommendations for change. David Gordon examines its findings

A new report has found that well deployed teaching assistants help raise a school’s attainment. David Gordon looks at the details

Outstanding e-safety provision requires clear leadership vision and whole-school involvement. David Gordon looks at new recommendations from Ofsted

What do the four main parties (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green) have to say about education?

As Bike to School week approaches, David Gordon looks at what governors can do to make sure their school is ‘bike friendly’

Two recent Ofsted reports highlight the characteristics of schools that have excelled against the odds. David Gordon examines the reports and looks at what governors can do to help their schools achieve and sustain excellence

As the government warns schools to start planning for a period of austerity, David Gordon rounds up essential information to help your school prepare for the future

As Ofsted urges schools to make sustainability a top priority in their improvement plans, David Gordon looks at what governors can do to help their school go green

School business managers may sometimes be called upon to deal with staff behaviour that is causing problems – this week we look at how to deal effectively with this thorny issue

David Gordon looks at the problem of fraudulent admissions applications and provides a set of common ruses to look out for

School governors have been told that they can expect to be at the forefront of the government’s latest drive to improve behaviour in schools

This issue we take a look at ways of bringing governors into the fold when it comes to CPD and improving professional skills

Modular changes to A-Levels and the introduction of diplomas are just a few changes that have come to the secondary curriculum since September 2008. David Marriott offers a related guide for governors

Joan Sallis opposes the removal of ‘untrained volunteers’, such as parents and members of the community, from governing bodies – or the attempt to ‘professionalise’ them

Do we really need governors? Roger Smith considers the governing role of this seemingly random assortment of stakeholders

A no-nonsense whole school approach to behaviour can be led from the top, says deputy headteacher David Morley, who here shares tips on how

There is value in building a working link between school governors and school business managers says Crispin Andrews, who strongly advises bringing them into the senior leadership team

It is important for gifted and talented (G&T) coordinators and leading teachers to garner the support of governors. G&T Update offers suggestions as to how and why governors can be an ally to those working with G&T

How can a new team of governors work together to make sure that their efforts produce the most effective results possible? Joan Sallis believes a good team of governors needs to be managed from the start

Author: Edited by David Gordon

School Governor Update delivers news, professional tips and advice for school governors. The perfect companion for members of the school governing body and school leadership team to keep updated on issues most relevant to governors, with a strong editorial focus and digestible in-depth case studies

As part of Primary Leadership Focus, Jane Golightly considers the important role that governors play in a primary school, and affirms the importance of a good school-governor partnership

How can the process for meeting the government’s Financial Management Standard be made more manageable for school governors? Lindsey Wharmby offers some tips

Many schools have rethought their exclusion policies since the sixth day exclusion law was introduced in September 2007. Eileen Field explains the options now surrounding school exclusion

Joan Sallis looks back at the successes and obstacles she experienced during a year as a primary school governor, and considers the one ahead

Do you know your way around educational employment law? Does your school’s pay and remuneration package meet or exceed minimum standards? Tamara Ludlow gives a legal overview of essential information for both leadership teams and staff

We’ve been collecting your stories about the inspiring and encouraging experiences you’ve had at work during 2008. Here is a collection of the leadership and management themed responses you sent to the question, What has been your most positive experience at work this year?

What are your responsibilities and obligations towards pupils at your school who are disabled? Mark Blois discusses the relevant legislation and explains what you need to know and do

Michael Segal looks at a legal case where the parents’ religious beliefs demanded that their children have home schooling

Schools that are properly prepared for employment tribunal hearings can minimise cost and maximise their likelihood of success, writes Tamara Ludlow

Does your governing body help your school remain accountable, and therefore more efficient? Stephen Adamson looks at how this should be done

In a move away from strict liability in terms of accidents at school, the courts have said that they are sometimes nobody’s fault. Kris Lines explains

With the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) due to launch at the end of 2009, Chris Webb-Jenkins takes a look at the practical implications of the complete overhaul of our vetting and barring system

A headteacher and a governor from Havering report on their experiences of amalgamating an infant school with the neighbouring junior school

Should we be encouraging school business managers and bursars to progress into headship? Ruth Bradbury, who speaks on financial management at schools, voices her thoughts on the subject, as do three School Financial Management readers

Mark Chaplin shares insight into how primary headteachers can design a questionnaire for parents that will help them carry out effective self-evaluation at their primary school

Your teaching staff must have the health and physical capacity to teach, but in assessing this you must make sure you comply with disability discrimination rules, says Yvonne Spencer

Whose opinion takes precedence in a dispute over provision, asks Michael Segal – parent or local authority?

Are students and student voice involved in strategic decision making at your school? ‘Learning conversations’ at Rivington and Blackrod High School, near Bolton, means that they are, explains Ingrid Cox

Is this the last year for SATs? Sam Derby discusses a possible end to SATs, and looks at the opinion that the exams are “too stressful” for young pupils read more

If you work with children or vulnerable adults, there are difficult decisions regarding when to disclose sensitive information. Chris Webb-Jenkins examines the impact of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 on this issue

Admissions authorities and statutory appeal panels can avoid potential litigation from parents by using tactical decision making, says Yvonne Spencer read more

Governors have a great chance to improve pupils opportunities for taking part in physical activity, with the government’s school sport strategy read more

Michael Segal explores a school’s legal position in implementing a reinstatement order, and how far they are obliged to enforce it

If a child makes a vague allegation is it OK to ask questions? How should an allegation against a member of staff be treated? Jenni Whitehead discusses some of the concerns facing managers when coping with these issues

Chris Webb-Jenkins walks you through the new vetting and barring regime, which comes into effect in autumn 2008

A qualification for life skills development

// by Admin

Do your pupils struggle to reap the benefits of GCSEs? Would your school benefit from courses which reward your students’ personal effectiveness and social skills? Bedminster Down School in Bristol feels that it did

Marius Frank, Headteacher, Bedminster Down School, Bristol

School context

Bedminster Down is an 11–16 co-ed community school with more than 1,000 students on roll, serving predominantly white working-class areas on the south-west side of Bristol. Although broadly average in terms of free school meals, three out of four wards in the catchment area fall in the bottom 1% in the country in terms of education deprivation. The historical patterns of staying in education post-16 and post-18 are also among the lowest nationally. The social impact on the rising generations is significant. Feeder schools struggle to make progress at national rates, from a low baseline. On entry, the percentage of students arriving with Level 4 in English and maths is commonly 10% below the national average. Poor literacy is a major barrier. For example, out of 185 students in the 2007 exam cohort, 120 entered the school with a reading age that was two or more years behind their chronological age. Fischer Family Trust (FFT) analysis of the year group reported just two able girls. Across the South Bristol communities, one of the most significant underachieving groups is middle-ability girls. Until recently, headline GCSE five or more A*–C grade results have oscillated in the low to mid 20%s, with the percentage for five or more A*–C grades including English and maths significantly lower even than this. However, despite these challenges, the school has never been in special measures, given notice to improve, deemed to be failing or have significant weaknesses. ‘Raising expectations – valuing achievement’ has been the strapline that has focused the energy of generations of teachers at the school, and is as relevant today as it was more than a decade ago. Over the past four years, Bedminster Down has won back the confidence of the community it serves, and is now oversubscribed.

Bedminster Down School responded well to the national strategies and imperatives aimed at raising standards – from assessment for learning (AfL) and behaviours for learning (B4L) to the range of extended practice encouraged through the Excellence in Cities programmes – but headline GCSE results were stubbornly stuck in the mid-20s. It was also fair to say that teachers were working far harder than the students! We needed a spark to ignite our broadly GCSE-based curriculum.

We had rejected the dash for GNVQs simply to raise standards, feeling that our pupils would benefit more from as broad and as balanced an education as we could possibly provide (until the majority left formal education at 16 to begin work). However, this left us exposed, near the foot of the attainment league tables, with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) as frequent visitors. We needed to raise standards and achievement quickly.

Up until that point, we had used the Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network (ASDAN) in a conventional way within the school curriculum. Some of the weakest learners followed the Bronze and Silver programmes as part of a ‘pre-vocational’ option. We were pleased with the engaging nature of the ASDAN course, and the challenge-based impact of a ‘can-do’ curriculum. But, although these awards have built self-esteem, grown self-worth and self-confidence, and helped the students to develop an invaluable skillset for the world of work, they did not show up as points on the league-table scoreboard.

Why use CoPE?

Do we value what we measure, or do we measure what we value?

This phrase, coined by Professor Bart McGettrick of the School of Education at Glasgow University, summed up our ethical dilemma. GCSEs appeared to ‘fail’ well over half our pupils, but counted for something. The ASDAN Awards had the potential to impact on the development of a young person’s life skills in a deep and direct way, but ‘counted’ for nothing. That was until the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) approved the ASDAN Certificate of Personal Effectiveness (CoPE) qualification (the first pilot studies for which were completed in 2005). We seized the opportunity to take up this new qualification.

Introducing CoPE
The ASDAN CoPE qualification is not easy to introduce. It cannot be taken off the shelf, deployed across the whole school, then left for two years to impact on outcomes.

Firstly, the standards associated with each of the six skill domains have to be understood and assimilated thoroughly by teachers, students and any other adult involved in delivery, monitoring or support. The six skill areas are:

research
oral presentation
discussion
working with others
problem-solving
improving your own learning and performance.

Attempting to absorb, and immediately deliver, all six at once can be an extreme challenge in itself.
Then there is the mandatory paperwork, the plan-do-review trinity at the heart of good ASDAN practice. Some complain about the amount of paperwork associated with the qualification, but the way to approach it was to view the mandatory sheets as a kind of ‘thinking scaffolding’ that could be used to help guide students through high-quality planning, thinking and reflection.

But CoPE is an amazingly flexible qualification: for example, you could use it as a standalone option, to accredit personal, social and health education (PSHE), or make it a part of your vocational programme. We decided to use the qualification in two ways.

Firstly, it was introduced as part of an accelerated progress initiative, targeted at a group of borderline C grade students in Year 11. A total of 45 pupils were selected:
the ‘shoulds’ – students targeted for achieving five or more A*-C grades but, who for a variety of mainly social and attitudinal problems, were not on track
the ‘coulds’ – genuine borderline students targeted to achieve the bare five C grades, but on a bad day might miss them
the ‘maybes’ – a group of students sometimes overlooked, and who may even be overperforming, but only capable of four C grades at best, who would benefit from the opportunity of scoring an additional C+ grade.

We created capacity in the curriculum by withdrawing the identified students from French GCSE at Christmas in Year 11, and forming two CoPE teaching groups from then until exam leave in May. It was a pragmatic decision, based on forecast GCSE grades, timetabling capacity and costs (it would have been better to have withdrawn students in smaller groups from a wider range of options, but this would have been prohibitively expensive). One member of staff coordinated the programme, but delivery was left to supply and cover teachers known to the students and the school.

Through workforce remodelling, we appointed a personal development curriculum (PDC) coordinator at head of faculty level – which was instead of a PSHE manager post, used by many schools. Their core duties were similar to that of a head of year in terms of team leadership and management – as well as mapping topics and areas of interest to cover the CoPE framework, and also to meet statutory responsibilities in sex, drugs, citizenship,
RE and ICT delivery.

Achieving credits for the accelerated progress initiative
At first glance, delivering 120 guided learning hours in six months seemed an impossible task. But when we realised that, as part of the ASDAN accreditation framework, learning experiences that otherwise would be missed actually ‘counted’, we soon saw how this would be achievable.

An outstanding example of this is work experience. We are proud of our record for guiding every student in Year 10 on to a work placement. A record of the preparation, activities and reflections was kept in a logbook prepared by our local Connexions service. ASDAN validated a completed logbook (with clear inherent plan-do-review structured activity associated with 25 hours of work-related learning) as three out of 12 credits straight into the CoPE qualification! The students responded to this very positively, and it acted as a catalyst for many of them to engage with the qualification, even at such a late stage in Year 11.

We then put in place a strategy that, on reflection, had the single-most significant impact on the future performance of the school: we looked to GCSE coursework as a means of securing evidence for key skill development and accreditation within the CoPE qualification.

Due to the nature of our catchment area, much of the coursework elements tended to be carried out under controlled conditions in the classroom. The six identifiable skillsets in CoPE that we needed to evidence and assess were mapped across the faculties by the leadership team.

A good example of this was French. Even though the students had been withdrawn from French GCSE, they had completed their coursework under ‘teacher-guided’ conditions (the distinction between teacher-guided and teacher-led is important, as it frames whether a student is working at Level 2 or Level 1). This assignment was an extended piece of writing about ‘How fit and healthy I am’, but researched and written in French. This was used as the source material for students to give an oral presentation (mainly in French) to Level 2 standards, for inclusion into the CoPE portfolio of evidence. The evidence included completion of mandatory plan-do-review recording sheets (by student and witnessing tutor), the coursework, cue cards prepared to help with the talk (simply reading it out was not permissible), artefacts and images brought in to help communicate, and a tape of the presentation, and so another credit was achieved.

Other faculties played their part – see the box below.

Examples of how faculties incorporated CoPE

Humanities felt that a focus on ‘research’ and ‘discussion’ would help the students gain more from their revision and completion of coursework. For example, an investigative study of Bristol Docks, utilising a mixture of internet browsing, face-to-face interviews, pedestrian and traffic counts proved an excellent vehicle for also evidencing the development and growth of research skills.
‘Improving own learning and performance’ was assigned to PE and expressive arts, who also looked for opportunities to accredit ‘working with others’ through sports, dance, drama and musical activity attached to GCSE courses.
‘Problem-solving’ fitted neatly into science and design technology (DT), especially the design realisation phase of the extended coursework element.

So, with a team of supporting tutors working on the plan-do-review sheets to go with the coursework that was accumulating, the CoPE portfolios were completed. The tutors were trained by ASDAN, and supported by regular visits over the six-months period. This was part of a city-wide support plan commissioned by the local authority, so that every school in Bristol benefited from direct support as well as from the chance to share learning with other schools. As expertise grows, the CoPE leaders within the schools take on the training and staff development role to spread best practice.

Role of personal development curriculum
But we did not want the CoPE qualification to simply be a short-term achievement solution, so our second strategy was to round up all those lessons that exist in the Key Stage 4 curriculum for statutory reasons (RE, ICT, PSHE, careers, active citizenship, and so on) and ‘brand’ them into what we called the ‘personal development curriculum’ (PDC).

We were able to allocate six lessons out of a 60-period fortnight to the personal development curriculum. A team of six specialists (in the identified subjects RE, ICT, PSHE, careers, active citizenship) was recruited, and the students rotated around the team during the course of a year, conveniently enabling six challenges in Year 10, and a further six in Year 11. The ‘10-hour challenges’ were carefully chosen to give a broad and balanced learning experience, mapping into the 12 possible areas of interest within the CoPE framework (see the box below), but also meeting statutory requirements for sex education, citizenship and RE, for example.

CoPE challenges: 12 areas of interest

Communication
Community and citizenship
Sport and leisure
Independent living
The environment
Vocational preparation
Health and fitness
Work-related learning and enterprise
Science and technology
International links
Expressive arts
Beliefs and ethic

The delivery of the subjects was subtly different: for example, instead of ‘learning about contraception’ and ‘teaching about contraception’, the challenge was to ‘improve your research and communication skills by preparing an information pamphlet on a contraceptive of your choice for students a year younger than you’. When you unleash learning, you may have to be ready for the consequences: for example, some of the first draft cartoons needed to be toned down somewhat, and as for the ‘pop-up’ pamphlet…!

In addition to pupils accumulating evidence through the PDC route, faculties continued to embed personal skill development as part of the coursework experience. There was a staff training and development advantage to this strategy: subject teachers were not required to absorb the entirety of the CoPE standards framework in one go. Instead, they had a chance to study, absorb and implement a teaching and learning programme to address just one of the skill domains. It is a massive conceptual challenge to pick up and run with the whole CoPE framework, unless you have been delivering ASDAN programmes in the past, so this gradual approach helped to build staff confidence and competence with delivering this new qualification.

Initial problems
It was not all plain sailing. This was a late intervention strategy. Not all the pupils knuckled down, time was wasted, and opportunities missed. As a result, only 26 out of the 45 actually completed their portfolios for assessment. And ‘complete’ they had to be! ASDAN’s moderation meetings are rigorous and fair, but if a section in the portfolio is incomplete, the qualification cannot and will not be awarded. Also, it does take time for teachers to learn the standards and guide students to produce work that meets the standards. In fact, three folders submitted for early moderation did not get through. However, the post-moderation comments from ASDAN’s assessors were extremely helpful, ensuring that our challenges were finely retuned, to pass the relevant standards on next submission – as the example in this box illustrates.

Meeting the level 2 standard for working with others

The plan-do-review documents helped guide the students into working collaboratively, with its questions such as ‘What is the shared task?’, ‘What needs to be done, and who will do it, by when?’, ‘What are you going to do?’, and so on. However, although some discussion might have occurred, the process of working with others was very poorly evidenced. An easy trap to fall into is to submit the final PowerPoint presentation as an outcome of collaboration: but the journey, and the personal growth of the students on that journey needed to be there too. Schemes of work were rapidly changed: after every group discussion, students were encouraged to keep rough notes on agreed actions; then chairpersons and notekeepers were elected (even for a five-minute starter or plenary), and students were encouraged to reflect on their role as a chair or secretary. Another method of capturing the process was to keep a log of activity: What did you do? What did you learn? What will you do next lesson? Regional managers from ASDAN also visited the school, helped with standardising work, and helped teachers to think deeply about what makes for an appropriate challenge, for which appropriate skill area.

Benefits
Did it work? At first, we were unsure. There appeared to be some pleasing attitudinal spin-offs. One such example was ‘Natalie’, your average disengaged Year 11 student with a quick tongue and an interesting manner with some staff. In the first interviews, when asked what she did in the evenings (as we searched for activities that could be accredited), she simply said ‘nuffick!’ Eventually, we discovered that, for the past three years, she had been helping out at her local Guides and Brownies Group (… ‘sumfink to do, innit?!’…). She became engaged and motivated when she was given credit for this community work, and this engagement spread into the other subjects. Natalie achieved five A*–C grades, when, eight months previously, there appeared no hope.

There are usually at least three local ASDAN moderation meetings in a school year so CoPE students felt very motivated and upbeat when they gained a GCSE equivalent before their friends had.

Results day in August 2006 was a delight. On GCSE grades alone, we touched 32% five A*-C (good for us!). But when another nine students were added to the stats because of the extra CoPE qualification – and in some cases achieving an Adult Literacy and Adult Numeracy (ALAN) basic skills Level 2 qualification too – our stats soared to 37%. What was particularly pleasing was the fact that nearly every member of staff felt ‘ownership’ of this boost, as coursework from nearly every subject contributed to the success of the CoPE outcomes.

In 2007, 50 students completed a Level 2 CoPE qualification, along with a similar number who managed all or part of the ALAN qualification too (as alternative accreditation supplements to their GCSE diet). The 2007 cohort was significantly weaker than the previous year. However, we still attained 41% five A*–C grades, which was comfortably the best results in the school’s history. We also achieved 27% of students gaining five or more A*–C grades including English and maths, which was equivalent to our FFT D indicator (equivalent to making progress with top quartile schools). In the new era of National Challenge, and the pressure being exerted to achieve the 30% benchmark irrespective of the starting point of your students, we were delighted to get so close to the target a year earlier than anticipated.

Engaging learners
It would be grossly unfair to suggest that all school improvement was due to CoPE (quality teaching and learning, rigorous tracking, mentoring, coaching, monitoring and support also featured significantly), but the ASDAN can-do curriculum certainly had a weighty impact.

The students were being given credit for what they could do, rather than being graded on what they couldn’t do. This kept them engaged in learning right up to and beyond the exam season. It was a remarkable and warming sight to see many Year 11s, after their formal exams had been completed in late June, coming to work in the library to finish off or tidy up their CoPE folders.
Another indicator of engagement was our five A*–C including English and maths results in 2007. We are again anticipating even better results in 2008, with hopefully 100 CoPE qualifications completed, and headline stats reaching the stellar 50% mark (stellar for us, that is!).

The brightest students in a school community can also benefit hugely from the CoPE experience too. CoPE Level 2 challenges can be used as gifted and talented activities in Key Stage 3. The CoPE Level 3 qualification is worth 70 UCAS points, and really does encourage the growth of high-level independent and transferable learning skills, and could be used to give breadth and enrichment at Key Stage 4.These are opportunities that we are actively considering, to stretch and challenge our most able students.

Preparing for PLTS agenda
The ASDAN CoPE qualification is preparing the school community for the personal learning and thinking skills (PLTS) agenda at the heart of the latest round of curriculum reform. PLTS are normally associated with the new diploma learning lines, but there is an expectation that every student at Key Stage 4 should in reality be benefiting from embedded and assessed PLTS. Through a remarkable bit of educational serendipity, there is an almost total mapping of the six PLTS domains into the CoPE accreditation framework. Simply put, you are delivering PLTS if you are delivering CoPE!

Taking stock A great deal of thought and planning needs to take place if CoPE is to be used across the whole school, with different teams of teachers helping to deliver aspects from within their subject areas.

CoPE cannot be taught from the front of the class. It has to be a conversation, a dialogue between teacher and learner. Once the generality of a challenge is presented to the class, individual students should then crystallise their own plan in their own way (this has to be the case to satisfy the Level 2 standards, but can be more relaxed if the ‘teacher-led’ Level 1 standard is the desired outcome). The teacher becomes the critical friend, rather than the delivery agent. In this way, the curriculum becomes co-constructed, rather than imposed or fixed. Some teachers can find this highly disturbing at first – but eventually, with experience, they can feel liberated from content-based restrictions and grading criteria.

ASDAN insists that student work is presented from each centre at ‘standardisation meetings’ throughout the year, before folders are submitted for final moderation. As well as securing quality assurance, this process also promoted sharing of good practice, which is one of the strengths of the ASDAN philosophy.

If CoPE is to be used across an entire cohort, a great deal of logistical planning is required to support the teachers delivering this programme of study. Because the CoPE qualification is awarded on the basis of evidence, it has to be accumulated, and stored, which creates resource implications. Every student will need personal folders, and the CoPE team will need a centralised bank of filing cabinets to store completed work in an organised and easy-to-find way.

If coursework activity from a variety of faculties is used to evidence skill development, copying every single piece across the entire cohort could be extremely timeconsuming and expensive. We get around this problem by storing the actual coursework within each of the faculties (standard practice) and passing the supporting plan-do-review sheets and additional evidence to the CoPE team. If a student’s work is called for moderation by ASDAN, the work is recovered from the relevant faculties. Any work that we have to send to other exam boards, we copy beforehand just in case that student’s work is called for moderation by CoPE as well.

CoPE began at Bedminster Down nearly three years ago. We have made great progress, but we are still learning. Our most recent moderation event has thrown up a series of issues that need to be addressed. For example, more ‘process evidence’ is needed, rather than simply fixating on the outcome (diaries or logs of learning, draft work and reasons for change, selection of information after first attempts to research a topic, and so on).

We realise that colleagues in the CoPE team need time to meet, discuss and internally moderate samples of work, which can be problematic when considering the number of meetings in a school week, and that most of them are already attached to faculties. There must also be time allocated to induct new members of staff into the challenge-based way of working.

Critical self-evaluation such as this plays a vital role in improving the quality and effectiveness of the curriculum. Teachers and our support staff involved in CoPE are becoming more and more creative in the way assignments and extended projects are being constructed. We are looking to draw in more and more learning from outside the school day into the accreditation framework (such as Saturday jobs, helping infirm relatives or neighbours, contributing to charity events, helping at local youth centres, football clubs).

There is no doubt that CoPE is helping us help our students perform beyond expectations. We have learned many lessons along the way – the first box below gives advice on how to go about introducing CoPE, while the second box gives our top tips on how to develop this qualification to bring about improvements in student achievement.

Introducing ASDAN CoPE

Start with a small test cohort, and a small cross-faculty team of teachers
Ensure that staff have been trained by ASDAN lead professionals
Make sure there is enough curriculum time to complete the challenges involved
Look to existing school activities as sources for accreditation
Attend local standardisation meetings organised by ASDAN – meet other local professionals, and share activities, resources and approaches
Learn the standards, learn how to support and guide without directly leading students, and plan activities carefully, so that the students meet the standards as defined in the manuals
Use ASDAN regional managers or trained assessors to constantly check that you, and the students, are on track
Work out systems and procedures for collating and storing evidence (dedicated administrative support is vital if the cohort grows bigger than simply standalone option groups)

Growing CoPE

Ensure strategic leadership is in place, and agree a training and implementation plan (ask for help from ASDAN regional managers – someone somewhere may have done it already)
Look at your current formal curriculum – are there formal projects or coursework activities that can be used for more than one purpose (GCSE and CoPE, for example)?
Seek informal curriculum opportunities that may fulfil dual purposes (such as a Sports Specialist College running primary school sports events, giving students opportunities for community service, and helping with redesignation)
Ensure that adequate administrative support is used, as well as storage space for the folders (unless you choose the e-portfolio version of CoPE: but that’s another story!)
Extend your CoPE team – train your librarian and learning support assistants (LSAs) as CoPE moderators as well as your teachers, so that they can guide students too

Marius Frank, Headteacher, Bedminster Down School, Bristol

Coaching the teachers

// by Admin

Coaching and mentoring activities should play a role in the development of all teaching professionals, according to the TDA (Training and Development Agency for Schools). Although the two terms seem to be used interchangeably in the official literature, do they really serve the same purpose and if they have a strategic function to perform in school, what exactly is it? Who is the coach/mentor and who is the ‘client’? Finally, but perhaps most importantly, do pupils really benefit?

Buried in the TDA’s Professional Standards for Teachers, from QTS through ‘core standards’ and ‘post threshold’, are three short but clear references to the importance of coaching as a tool for contributing to the professional development of colleagues. We find that to attain QTS, teachers should demonstrate that they can ‘act upon advice… and be open to coaching and mentoring’ (Q9). The same sentiment is included among the core standards every teacher is expected to meet at the end of induction where teachers are urged to ‘act upon advice and feedback and be open to coaching and mentoring’ (C9). Finally, the post threshold teacher is expected to ‘contribute to the professional development of colleagues through coaching and mentoring, demonstrating effective practice and providing advice and feedback’ (P10).

Beyond ‘experts passing on wisdom’

While the standards framework is progressive, reflecting teachers’ increasing effectiveness in their roles as their professional attributes, knowledge, understanding and skills grow, the emphasis is very much on more experienced teachers acting as role models for teaching and learning. But the idea that coaching and mentoring is all about ‘experts’ passing on their wisdom as exemplary models of their craft to their less experienced colleagues is a rather simplistic analysis of the issues involved, according to Edward Gildea, ex-secondary head and educational consultant with Cambridge Education and ASCL (Association of School and College Leaders).

The tendency to blur the distinction between coaching and mentoring is not helpful, according to Gildea, who prefers to see the two activities on a continuum: ‘Mentoring lies at the “directive” end of the spectrum. It does exactly what it says: it directs the client in a traditional, instructive way. As an approach it is limited because it assumes that the coach has all the answers and the client’s job is to passively receive the information. Coaching, in contrast, is “the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another” (Downey, 2003). Coaching requires the creation of a dynamic relationship between coach and client that is based on the belief that we have an innate capacity to learn. An effective non-directive coach seeks to access that instinct and act as a catalyst, enabling the client to learn for him or herself.’

This is not to say that the directive approach is rejected out of hand. There are times when it’s a very useful tool, ie when the coach really does know the answer to a specific question and the client is at a loss to know what to do, but it is a delicate balance. As Gildea emphasises: ‘Mentoring can be very useful, especially with younger teachers, but only for as long as the suggestions made by the mentor are perceived and welcomed by the client as being relevant and helpful. It’s critical to retain the vital characteristics of the non-directive model – ownership, responsibility, learning, high performance. The directive technique can quickly regress from making suggestions to attempting to control the subject. An essential part of non-directive coaching is to acknowledge that the client has experience, imagination, intuition and insight.’

Indeed, Gildea would argue that it is this last attribute which holds the key to successful coaching – a belief that is underpinned by latest neurological studies on the subject. He cites recent breakthroughs in brain research which can now explain how behavioural change actually takes place (see box, below).

The neuroscience behind behavioural change

Scientists at Northwestern University’s Institute for Neuroscience have established that during moments of insight, complex sets of new brain connections are created. These connections have not only the power to enhance our mental resources, but also the potential to overcome the brain’s resistance to change. Change will only result, however, if the insight is ‘hardwired’ – which demands repeated attention and a high degree of attachment to the idea. This is why, for coaching to be successful, the client needs to have a strong sense of ownership. (Rock and Schwartz, 2006)

To effect a transformation in someone’s mental ‘map’, they require some kind of event or experience which allows them as individuals to provoke themselves into changing their attitudes.

Transforming ‘good’ into ‘great’

Although mentoring can perform a vital role in school, enabling experienced (and usually, but not always) older staff to help their colleagues develop their professional skills, it cannot substitute for coaching and does not fulfil the same function. While mentoring can be both formal and informal, it tends, as a rule, to take place intra- departmentally and requires neither specialist training, funding nor organisation to be effective.

Coaching, meanwhile, represents a major commitment on the part of senior management and requires all of the above. ‘When we look at ways of supporting teachers in rising to the combined challenge of meeting the social and emotional demands of their students while also satisfying the academic requirements of the curriculum, an established and properly resourced coaching programme can play an important part,’ says Gildea. ‘Teaching can be a tough environment and teachers can lose their way, their energy and their morale. We need to look after our colleagues and offer them tailored support which is focused on personal development and specific need.

‘Coaching can be applied peer to peer and cross-departmentally. It can help transform good teachers into great teachers as well as retain staff within the profession who may be demoralised and drained by their experiences. Coaching can enable them to re-capture their initial enthusiasm and regain some job satisfaction,‘ he adds.

Despite its value and its inclusion in key documentation, including the latest recommendations by the National College of School Leadership in their guidance Learning-centred Leadership: Towards Personalised Learning-centred Leadership, Gildea has encountered very few secondary establishments that have embraced the concept seriously enough to train their own cohort of coaches and fund an ongoing scheme.

Supporting vulnerable staff: a case study

One such school is CTC Kingshurst Academy in Solihull, West Midlands. With some 1,600 students between the ages of 11 and 18, Kingshurst is a popular, over-subscribed secondary school which draws students from a very large number of primary schools in Solihull and beyond. Its students come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, with more students than average experiencing aspects of disadvantage. The sixth form is large and welcomes many new students who join at Year 12, when they can study for the International Baccalaureate (IB) in addition to vocational courses. Tim Boylan, vice principal, explains the background:
‘Coaching was set up at Kingshurst to help colleagues who were struggling in the classroom. We had a programme that identified good practice as well as not so good practice, but needed a mechanism to support vulnerable staff on a more intensive level.

‘Staff have been very receptive to the programme, often themselves recognising a need for support and so embracing the scheme with open arms. There have been a number of staff who have particularly benefited and who have perhaps remained in the profession because of this intervention.

‘Relations with students have improved because planning and effectiveness in the classroom have improved, and the performance of the students has progressed commensurately. I think that the levels of stress that these particular staff are under has eased because they are better able to fulfil their professional role and are thus happier in their jobs.’

Dealing with lack of confidence
The coaching process is overseen by teaching and learning manager Paul Harris, who sees it as the logical outcome of the school’s auditing system which has, for six years, been monitoring standards of teaching and learning across the curriculum on a regular basis:

‘As we got better at auditing, we increasingly began to standardise what constituted “satisfactory” as opposed to “unsatisfactory” performance in the classroom.

‘After the first few years, we realised that there was a growing need to follow up classroom observations in a more constructive and structured way. We acknowledged that we were not doing enough to support those teachers who were falling short in performance terms. For standards of learning to be as good as they can be and for students to progress, teachers need to feel supported and know that there are support systems in place to help them.

‘In many cases, when there is a specific issue around lesson planning or organisation, the “solution” can be identified and the problem resolved with the assistance of one of our team of assistant principals. Coaching comes into its own when the problem involves multiple issues and the individual has lost confidence in their ability to teach on a daily basis.’

Cristina Garcia, Kingshurst’s head of MFL, was one of the first coaches to be selected and trained after funding was approved by the board of governors in 2008. Motivated by a desire to help and an irrepressible enthusiasm for her chosen profession, Cristina found the training a revelation in itself: ‘Our one-day course was absolutely vital and taught us some invaluable techniques and strategies to use in our new role. We all thought we knew what was involved, what coaching meant and what we would be required to do, but looking back, we would have been ill-equipped to deal with what lay ahead without specialist skills and an in-depth understanding of the task.

‘I remember thinking, “Wow, that was really difficult,” after one particularly demanding role play situation. We learnt the power of silence, how to listen and ask the right questions and, most importantly, how to be patient with our subjects. Sometimes it can take a very long time to make an initial breakthrough and begin the process of change.’

Gaining the trust of ‘clients’
Despite the utmost discretion and confidentiality, there is still an element of stigma and fear attached to the referral process which is difficult to eliminate altogether. Sometimes ‘clients’ can be reluctant or even resistant, but this, Cristina emphasises, is only to be expected: ‘People only come to us when they are at a low ebb. If you’re lacking in self-belief and have lost confidence in your professional abilities and your capacity to control a situation and command the respect of your pupils and your colleagues, you are not likely to be in a positive frame of mind.

‘By the same token however, some referrals are manifestly relieved to have been offered a helping hand and some welcome support at a moment in their career when they feel undermined, unable to communicate effectively with their students and locked into a vicious circle.

‘We start from the premise that Kingshurst only employs the best teachers and that we are there to help them get back to where they were originally. Each individual knows why they are there, what their targets are and the objective of the coaching exercise.

‘As coaches, our first task is to gain the trust of our “clients”, reassure them that they have our complete confidence and that we believe in them and in their ability to get there.’

‘A no-brainer’
Sessions take place once a week and can last for anything up to an hour at a time. These are supplemented with classroom observations by the coach to check on progress. The system operates on a one client per coach basis and coaching may continue over a period of months and even terms. So far some 18 teachers have benefited from the service which, as fellow coach Sharon Clift (a teacher of French and Spanish) points out, represents a huge collateral benefit for the school:

‘Each teacher impacts on hundreds of pupils’ experiences over the period of a school week. Every teacher that is helped by the scheme means a more effective presence in the classroom which in turn and in time converts to improved student performance and better exam results. It’s a no-brainer.’

On a macro level, if the scheme has helped prevent even one teacher from leaving the profession by enabling them to turn their career around, then it more than justifies its existence financially as well as morally and ethically.

The first step is always to encourage the subject to look outside the ‘box’ and take a more objective view of the ‘problem’: ‘It’s sometimes difficult for people to change perspective. We often hear comments like “But this is how I’ve always done it”; nevertheless, it’s so crucial not to revert to the default position of offering advice in terms of “Well, if I were you, I would do it like this…” says Sharon. ‘Nothing is likely to make someone feel even more entrenched, alienated and isolated than being told what to do and how to do it. Our aim is to encourage reflection. You can’t tell someone how to do their job; they have to find their own style and the methods that work best for them.’

At Kingshurst the coaches volunteered for the honorarium positions and were selected for suitability by senior management using a range of criteria. In addition to being excellent classroom practitioners, factors such as profile, reputation and integrity were taken into consideration. Perhaps the disciplines of the incumbent team suggest something about their credentials, for they are all from subject groups which perhaps demand an exceptionally high degree of classroom interaction and student communication: PE, music and languages. Teachers are always referred to someone outside their own subject group and attention is also paid to the matching process in terms of personality and style.

The emotional dimension
Although the key indicators behind most referrals from the audit team involve lack of student progress in exams and/or classroom participation, in combination with issues around discipline and control, 80% of cases are most definitely not about failing teachers, according to both Sharon and Cristina: ‘A lack of motivation can often be a cumulative matter. Things might start to go wrong almost imperceptibly – a bad day, a lack of planning or simply a particularly difficult student. Once someone starts to lose their professional self-assurance in front of their class, however, things can quickly spiral downwards into anxiety and stress,’ adds Sharon.

‘Coaching is about getting “clients” to see and acknowledge the positive and to be open to new ways of doing things. Often we find that they have become very fearful of experimenting and that’s when occasionally we take a more “directive” approach and make a suggestion which we think has a high degree of potential.

‘Sometimes it’s the smallest thing, but it breaks the deadlock and kickstarts the process. It might be a useful technique for getting pupils’ attention at the beginning of a lesson, for example, or laying ground rules with pupils about speaking in class or even adopting a more commanding mode of delivery, but once a “client” realises that they can make a difference and be effective again, one success leads to another quite quickly.’

Testimony to the success of the scheme is the support of the governors and the fact that Kingshurst’s coaching team has doubled in number since its inception.
It is perhaps this emotional dimension that ultimately differentiates coaching from mentoring. Teachers can easily become quite defensive when they feel that management is trying to change the way they teach or challenge their performance – defensiveness which makes change and development virtually impossible. The techniques employed by successful coaches seek to overcome this mindset first and help teachers on a more holistic journey towards improved performance.

Carrie Saint Freedman is a freelance journalist. For further information on coaching see Effective Coaching: Lessons from the Coach’s Coach by Myles Downey (2003) and ‘The neuroscience of leadership’ webinar by David Rock and Dr Jeffrey Schwartz at www.strategy-business.com/webinars

The key to successful behaviour management is… you!

// by Admin

Look after yourself and you’ll be in better shape to help your pupils. Phil Craig suggests eight strategies

A few years ago, I heard Simon Cusworth, an educational psychologist, talking at a conference about a concept he referred to as ‘selfish altruism’. He said the first priority for all teachers was to look after their own emotional, physical and psychological well-being. If they were able to do that successfully, then they would be better placed to be ‘altruistic’ towards their pupils. Conversely, if teachers are constantly stressed by the inappropriate or challenging behaviour of their pupils, then they are likely to react in ways that will actually escalate situations rather than calm them. The end result of this is that the process damages both teacher and pupil, creating lose-lose situations rather than the win-win ones that we want to achieve.

This concept of selfish altruism makes sense to many teachers and support staff in schools. The simple fact is that if we become involved in situations that develop into confrontations, we damage not only the pupil, but ourselves as well.

When talking about behaviour management in the classroom, Alistair Smith (1) says that pupils need to know:

who is in charge?
what are the rules?
are the rules applied fairly and consistently?
what are the consequences of breaking the rules and/or adhering to the rules?

That’s the ‘what’ of behaviour management in the classroom. Quite simple really, isn’t it? However, the ‘how’ is much more difficult to accomplish. It’s my belief that implementing many of the strategies of positive behaviour management espoused by colleagues such as Bill Rogers, Alistair Smith, Andy Vass, Trevor Hawes, Sue Roffey and Sue Cowley, will make the ‘how’ a lot easier to achieve. In fact, these strategies are the very foundations of selfish altruism.

It is estimated that over 20 per cent of teachers leave education within the first three years of qualifying and up to 50 per cent within five years (Roffey2, 2004). Many of these teachers cite the poor behaviour of their pupils as one of the principal reasons for their departure. For that reason alone, it is plain to see that effective and positive behaviour management in schools is a very important issue for all concerned with the future of education, not only in this country but elsewhere, because this crisis in teacher retention is mirrored in the USA, Australia and many other European countries.

What then are the key concepts in achieving ‘selfish altruism’?

It’s not personal – so don’t bite!

A good beginning is to tell yourself that it’s not personal. Easier said than done, I hear you say, but it really is true. Very, very rarely is it personal. When a pupil has lost control in the ‘immediate emotional moment’ (as Bill Rogers calls it) he or she is telling authority (because that’s what you represent), the school, the world to ‘get lost’ (that’s the polite version) – not you! If the problem you’re facing is just general, low-level misbehaviour, then it’s a case of pupils testing the limits. Again, it’s not personal – it’s just what pupils do. The important thing is not to bite. If you do, then you break Alistair Smith’s first rule about the teacher being in charge. In the classroom, only one person can be in charge and it’s got to be the teacher. If we react badly, we have lost control twice – of ourselves and of the class. We have shown them how easily we can be wound up and isn’t that entertaining for the rest of the class? Additionally, we have raised our own stress levels and damaged at least two people in the process.

A really good example of ‘not biting’ came from a teacher in a Bradford secondary school. A pupil had said to her, for no apparent reason, ‘Miss, why are you so fat’? She would normally have gone ballistic with the pupil. However, this time some-thing inside her clicked into gear and she heard herself say to the pupil, ‘You know, Jack, I’ve often asked myself the same question. I go to the gym, I try to eat sensibly but I still can’t seem to shift the weight’. The pupil was shell-shocked by her response and blurted out an immediate apology. This was not the response he had expected from her and, as a result, she had created a win-win situation out of something that could have spiralled out of control. She also reported that she had felt ‘powerful’, in control of the situation and that this interaction had marked a turning point in her relationship with the pupil.

Allied to this strategy is ‘partial agreement’. Support staff in schools frequently report responses from pupils such as ‘You’re not a teacher’. Partial agreement requires them to respond with something like, ‘Absolutely correct, Kyle, I’m not a teacher, but I am a lunchtime supervisor (or what-ever the correct title is) and I am responsible for your behaviour during the lunchtime period’. Again, the secret is not to ‘bite’ and risk escalating any situation into a lose-lose one. This strategy works at all levels because teachers, and even senior managers in schools, also get retorts such as ‘You’re not the headteacher’.

Is it an eight or is it a two?

McGee (2001) proposes that when something negative happens in your life, give it a score out of ten, where nine or ten is really, really serious and two or three is much less so. He adds that when something happens today that you would score as an eight, nine or ten, ask yourself, ‘Will it still be that important in six months time or even next week?’ Hence, if a pupil does not respond in an appropriate way to you, ask yourself immediately, ‘Is this an eight or is it a two?’ You’ll find this strategy also works very well at home with your own children or even, dare I say it, your partner!

Rules rule

Alistair Smith’s second question about classroom management is whether or not pupils know what’s expected of them? He states that they need to know the class rules in order to comply with them. Every classroom should have the classroom rules on the wall in print big enough to be read by everyone in the class. Additionally, the language used on the poster should be the language of inclusion eg ‘In our class, we will keep hands, feet and objects to ourselves’. As well as governing everyone (adults as well) in the classroom, how many misdemeanours does that one rule cover?

The important point about rules is that pupils should be involved in the making of them and, once they have been decided upon, they need to be constantly reinforced with reminders. Otherwise, they get forgotten and become redundant. Additionally, when a pupil asks, ‘What have I done?’, it’s much more effective to point to a rule on the wall and say, ‘We all have a rule about keeping objects to ourselves (name of child), and I expect you to comply with it’.

Admit you’re fallible

Pupils like teachers who are human. When a situation has not ended in the way you would have hoped for (eg when a student has had to exit the classroom in a previous lesson), it’s okay to begin your follow-up with something like this: ‘Maybe I didn’t handle that situation in the best way that I could have, Saied, but in order to prevent this happening again, this is what I need you to do in the future’.

Sometimes you have to lose the odd battle in order to win the war

As a teacher, it’s sometimes easy to slip into the frame of mind whereby you can’t be seen to be wrong – or be seen to ‘lose’ in interactions with pupils. This is where we can inadvertently react to the ‘secondary behaviours’ of pupils and not focus on the primary reason for the interaction. For example, reacting badly to a pupil’s poor body language when they are doing (unwillingly) what you are asking of them, is a classic example. What do we seriously expect of them in this situation? They’re doing something that they really don’t want to do: do we really expect them to be (and look) happy about it? We’ve got to realise that the pouting and sulking is their ‘battle’ (their little bit of victory) after the ‘war’ has been lost.

Rewards are more powerful than sanctions – choice is the key!

In any school, the reward system is much more important than that of sanctions. Ridiculous as it sounds, I have had very difficult sixteen year olds almost turning cartwheels for a positive letter or even a phone call home, telling parents how well they were doing. However, no matter how good the reward system is in a school, unfortunately there will always be occasions when sanctions are needed. The key to effective sanctions is that they are ‘certain’ rather than ‘severe’. I believe that sanctions have to be perceived by the pupils as an irritating inconvenience.

For example, if a pupil is consistently off-task and not working during a lesson, then I think it is perfectly legitimate to say something like, ‘I need you to finish this piece of work during this lesson, Natasha. You’ve got 20 minutes left. If you don’t choose to finish it during class time, then you’re choosing to finish it during break/ lunchtime/after school. It’s your choice. I’ll let you think about it’. You then walk away, expect the pupil to be compliant and give him or her what Bill Rogers calls ‘take-up time’. You are not challenging and you matter-of-factly and unemotionally state the consequence. The important issue here is not to bluff. If the pupil doesn’t finish the work during class time, then he or she must finish it in his or her own time. The powerful message is that, if the pupil does not make the right choice, the teacher can say, ‘Natasha, you chose to miss your break’.

Use the collective power of the organisation: you are not alone!

All schools are powerful institutions. Don’t forget that fact. If you are struggling with a difficult individual or class, don’t suffer in silence. Tell someone. Members of the senior management team have a duty of care to all staff in their school and if you are really struggling with an individual pupil or class, then seek advice and support from one of them. If you are reluctant to involve a senior manager straight away, seek advice from a colleague you trust and respect. The worst thing you can do is to bottle it up and hope the problem goes away, because it won’t!

If you are struggling with a difficult individual or class, don’t suffer in silence.

Cherishing and cultivating your life outside school is, to me, the core of selfish altruism. Look after yourself first and be in a better state of mind to help your pupils. Some teachers feel guilty if they think they’re putting their own interests before those of their pupils, but McGee writes that ‘guilt’ needs to be re-defined as:

Give yourself
Uninterrupted
Indulgent
Leisure and pleasure
Time at least twice a week

Feedback from teachers who have adopted the principles of ‘selfish altruism’ has been very positive. Many have reported reduced stress levels both at work and at home, including comments from one colleague, ‘I wish I’d known all this 20 years ago. I could have saved myself, my pupils and my own family an awful lot of stress’.

What I’ve described above is only the start of a different way of thinking about the demands of behaviour management. Good luck and have fun! TEX

References

Alistair Smith, Accelerated Learning in Practice, Stafford: Network Educational Press, 1998
Sue Roffey, The New Teacher’s Survival Guide to Behaviour, London: Paul Chapman Publishing, 2004
B Rogers, Classroom Behaviour, London: Paul Chapman Publishing 2002
P McGee, 59 Minutes to a Calmer Life, Reading: Cox & Wyman, 2001

Phil Craig is Head of Service for Pupils with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties for Kirklees LEA. He has taught in mainstream and special schools in Britain and Canada and has lectured in both countries. He delivers training in positive behaviour management to colleagues in schools, colleges, universities, scout leaders and even office workers who have to deal with difficult customers.

Reproduced with permission of ‘Special’ Magazine.

A teaching elixir or best-fit pedagogy? Do learning styles matter?

// by Admin

Dr Steve Rayner (School of Education, University of Birmingham) explores recent criticisms of the use of learning styles in education, arguing that they are, when used in well-considered ways, an essential feature of personalised learning.

The idea of a personal style in learning has clearly spread across the globe during the last decade to occupy a prominent place in professional discourse about learning and teaching (Rayner, 2001; Coffield, 2005). Do learning styles matter in supporting learning? Recent work by Cheminais (2002), Reid (2005) and Burnett (2005) identify learning style as an important idea for inclusive learning and teaching in the classroom. Indeed, Cheminais (2002) foregrounds the concept in an approach to school improvement and writes that effective and successful teachers will:

show respect for pupils’ individual learning styles and differences
be responsive to pupils’ different learning styles
use different levels of tasks and activities.

Should the SENCO want to know more about research and work in this area?

Critics of learning styles would say no. In a recent wave of publicity for their own research, some educationalists have set a particular tone and stance with cleverly delivered put-downs to rubbish work in the field. For example, learning styles has recently been called educational snake oil and a teaching elixir (Hargreaves, 2004) and in what might be tentatively described ‘a style of plain speaking’ adopted by Coffield (2005), clap-trap that should be binned. I would argue that all teachers should want to know more about this debate.

The LSDA Report

A major debate has been triggered in the field of learning styles in response to Coffield and his colleagues publishing two reports for the Learning and Skills Development Agency (Coffield et al, 2004a, 2004b). What this review, originally tasked to examine the relevance of learning styles in the English context of further education, provides is a useful description of a wide selection of learning style models. It is difficult, however, to read either report without being affected by its tone or the partisan perspectives of the review team. Notwithstanding a vehement criticism of style, their review identifies the following key points:

Consistent psychometric failings in models and measures developed in conjunction with theories of cognitive and learning style
No consensual theory and ‘incestuous research’ in what is perceived to be a self-containing loop of replication
Commercial conflicts of interest that result in affirmation rather than genuine confirmation of proof for empirical research and in some extreme cases reveal a messianic drive for field domination
No clearly established evidence of positive effects related to the application and practice of learning styles
Disregard of a so-called ‘gold standard statistic’ used in evidence-informed methodology (effect size)
Competing theories and explanations of the learning process in social psychology and sociology that are seen to offer a better prospect of return for resource investment in the educational setting.

There is no doubt that a psychometric tradition clearly dominates the research of cognitive and learning styles and in part reflects a concern for psychological assessment as a means to an end – that is, the generation of evidence or proof by use of a test that a theory is valid. A further consequence of this approach has been the development of work on reliability – that is, the generation of proof that an instrument is accurate and can be safely and repeatedly used to measure a construct in psychology.

Coffield and colleagues are correct to say too that the learning styles field has most certainly not identified nor produced definitive proof for any single measure. It is disingenuous, however, to criticise learning styles for failing to offer a single explanation for structuring or understanding learning. Learning in its various forms as applied to formal education is complex and wide-ranging. To claim learning styles assessment as a single approach for all learning teaching is neither intended nor claimed by researchers in the field.

Learning styles research is not unique in this respect. Consider work in the psychology of self-reference, which for most teachers will always reflect a vital set of constructs in teaching and learning (self-concept, self-esteem and self-efficacy). The field of self-reference has seen academics calling for greater coherence and a consensual theory to help make sense of a disparate theory (see Byrne, 1996). Most fields of specialist knowledge or theory reflect a similar story, often frustrating a practitioner or policy-maker seeking one-size quick-fix expert advice.

So, given the Coffield Report, do learning styles matter and should the SENCO be at all bothered? I would still suggest yes and that the relevance of this debate and future research into learning styles – which in my view is a continuing story of work in progress and as it currently exists a ‘science for best fit’ – should not only interest the SENCO but involve them in an applied development of learning styles and a differential pedagogy.

The way forward: SENCOs and learning styles

I am convinced that research in the field might benefit from a new emphasis upon an applied educational research utilising practitioner enquiry and mixed research methodology. The DEMOS Working Group led by Hargreaves (DEMOS, 2005), in a useful response to the question of what constitutes learning and learning styles, advises us that ‘Many teachers are successfully using learning styles as a means of getting students to reflect deeply on their learning and thus develop their meta-cognitive capacities. If there were more substantial practice evidence and scientific evidence, the evidence base for learning styles would provide a guarantee of sound professional practice.’ (Demos, 2005)

This is exactly the kind of approach I argue when talking about learning styles and the need to consider developing a ‘best-fit pedagogy’ as part of the expansion of ‘personalised education’.

The extent to which an awareness of learning style or the self as a learner is currently considered and managed within the educational context raises key questions for the design of instruction and pedagogy, including a consideration of:

an assessment-based approach to learning and teaching
differentiation within the learning process of the curriculum
developing a theory of differential pedagogy
re-emphasising learning how to learn – strategies and routines – in the curriculum
continuing professional development in the area of a differential pedagogy.

Exploiting learning styles as a teaching device and utilising the theory means developing a broad-based approach to the idea of a process curriculum and the theory of differential psychology.

Building a best-fit pedagogy: assessment, learning and teaching

One of the most frequently asked questions is ‘What model of style should be adopted?’ The Coffield Report provides a useful summary of many models of learning style to be found on ‘the shelf’. What I refuse to supply is a simple recommendation that an existing off-the-peg style measure can be used in every context. It is worth remembering that assessment is a tool and not an end in itself. Style-led assessment is intended as a formative assessment in the context of school and instruction. Doing this can result is new forms of understanding about the nature and utility and use of assessment in the curriculum and pedagogy (see Black and Wiliam, 2003).

Notwithstanding the recent ‘academic conflict’ generated by one study, there are grounds for the research practitioner to move forward with the idea of learning style (Prashnig, 1998; Mortimore, 2003; Reid, 2005). Work related to such development includes a consideration of ideas associated with the learning how to learn field, curriculum process, differential pedagogy and meta-cognition. All these aspects of the learner and learning are part of a belief in the notion that moving toward a better-fit pedagogy can and should work.

Conclusion

The search for an assessment-led component in developing a pedagogy that will help practitioners better meet individual learning needs in the classroom is part of an approach that argues for building a process-centred curriculum. It should not, does not and cannot preclude other aspects of learning, teaching and the content of a curriculum. It must not be perceived as a substitute for knowledge or a way of reducing the learner to a label or category. To interpret or apply learning style in this way is a travesty.

In the field of learning styles, there is a need to further integrate the conceptual basis of diverse sets of theory in an applied context. Such a development is over-due. There is an already identified need for consensual theory (see Rayner, 1998, 2000; Armstrong and Rayner 2002; and Peterson, 2004), and the recent emergence of new literature looking at the research-informed applications of learning styles is welcome (see for example Reid, 2005). I hope the SENCO can lead in an approach involving practitioner enquiry contributing to this as work in progress, adding to an authentic personalising of education.

Dr Steve Rayner lectures in special and inclusive education at the University of Birmingham.

References

Armstrong, S and Rayner, S (2002) ‘Inquiry and Style: Research Verities and the Development of a Consensual Theory?’ in Valk, M, Gombier, D, Armstrong, S et al (eds), Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the European Learning Styles Information Network. Gent: University of Gent, 1-23.

Black, P and Wiliam, D (2001) Assessment and Classroom Learning. London: School of Education, King’s College London.

Burnett, N (2005) Leadership and SEN: Meeting the Challenge in Special and Mainstream Settings. London: David Fulton.

Byrne, BM (1996) Measuring Self-Concept Across the Life Span. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

Cheminais, R (2002) Inclusion & School Improvement. London: David Fulton.

Coffield, FC (2005) ‘Kinaesthetic nonsense’, Times Educational Supplement, 14 January 2005, 17-18.

Coffield, FC, Moseley, DVM, Hall, E and Ecclestone, K (2004a) Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning: Findings of a Systematic and Critical Review of Learning Styles Models. London: Learning and Skills Research Centre.

Coffield, FC, Moseley, DVM, Hall, E and Ecclestone, K (2004b) Should We Be Using Learning Styles? What Research Has to Say to Practice. London: Learning and Skills Research Centre.

Curry, L (1987) Integrating Concepts of Cognitive Learning Styles: A review with attention to psychometric standards. Ottawa: Canadian College of Health Services Executives.

Demos (2005) About Learning: The Report of the Working Group. London: Demos, www.demos.co.uk

Dunn, R and Griggs, S (2003) Synthesis of the Dunn and Dunn learning styles research: Who, what, when, where and so what? New York: St John’s University.

Hargreaves, D (2004) ‘Help Us Stop the Pedlars of Snake Oil’. Times Educational Supplement, 17 September 2004, 21-22.

Kolb, DA (1999) The Kolb Learning Style Inventory, Version 3 . Boston: Hay Group.

Mortimore, T (2003) Dyslexia & Learning Style. London: Whurr Publishers.

Peterson, E (2004) ‘Are we on a “quasi evangelical crusade to transform all levels of education?” Some thoughts on the Coffield et al Learning Style Report.’ The ELSIN Newsletter, Winter 2004, 4-5. www.elsinnet.org.uk

Prashnig, B (1998) The Power of Diversity: New Ways of Learning and Teaching. Auckland, NZ: David Bateman.

Rayner, SG (1998) ‘Educating Pupils with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties: Pedagogy is the Key!’ Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 3, 2, 39-47.

Rayner, SG (2000) ‘Re-constructing style differences in thinking and learning: profiling learning performance’ in Riding, RJ and Rayner, SG (eds) (2000).

International Perspectives in Individual Differences: New Developments in Learning/Cognitive Style. Stamford, Connecticut: Ablex Press. (115-180).

Rayner, SG (2001) ‘Cognitive Styles and Learning Styles’ in Smelser, NJ and Baltes, PB (eds) International Encyclopaedia of the Social And Behavioural Sciences. Oxford: Elsevier Press. (2171-2175)

Reid, G (2005) Learning Styles and Inclusion. London: PCP.

Ebac humanities: a saviour or a curse?

// by Admin

Two Ofsted reports later, and geography and history are back in the news. Suzanne O’Connell asks: will the arrival of the English baccalaureate improve their status, or will their clustering as part of ‘humanities’ be their downfall?

At a glance The Ebac has arrived and includes its own selection of subjects under the heading of humanities. Suzanne O’Connell analyses:

Ofsted’s recent report – History for All: History in English Schools 2007/2010 – which concluded that history teaching was strong in the majority of schools it visited
the views of those who disagree
the less complimentary Ofsted report into geography, Learning to Make a World of Difference
whether teachers of either subject need to worry now they have a place in the Ebac.

Applying for my BEd many years ago, I took the option of specialising in humanities. Humanities as defined by Leeds Polytechnic’s education department comprised history, English and RE. For some reason, probably related to the strength of the geography department at the college, geography had a specialist option of its own. Each subject was studied separately and there seemed to be little justification for this almost random combination. It was a marriage of convenience.

Now the Ebac has arrived and includes its own selection of subjects under the heading of humanities. In order for pupils to attain an Ebac they need to have achieved at least one GCSE at grades A* to C in geography or history (and this includes ancient history). A victory for history and geography, perhaps at the expense of omitted subjects such as RE. So are history and geography in need of rescuing and will the Ebac be the superhero to do it?

History is holding its own…
At least as far as Ofsted is concerned, history teaching is strong in the majority of schools visited. History for All: History in English Schools 2007/2010 is the latest report from Ofsted evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of history in primary and secondary schools. It suggests that overall, history is being taught successfully in schools and that most pupils enjoy it. In 59 of the 83 secondary schools visited achievement in the subject was good or outstanding. ‘History was generally taught well and the subject was well led. Most pupils enjoyed well-planned lessons that extended their knowledge, challenged their thinking and enhanced their understanding.’ Secondary schools, in particular, are congratulated. Ofsted notes that the teachers of history in secondary schools are very well qualified and comments on the strong leadership they witnessed in the history departments.

Interestingly, it also comments that, ‘the view that too little British history is taught in secondary schools in England is a myth. Pupils in the schools visited studied a considerable amount of British history and knew a great deal about the particular topics covered.’ What Ofsted does criticise is an overemphasis on English history at the expense of the other countries in Britain.

The content of the history syllabus is almost as controversial and frequently discussed as how to teach reading. Teaching factual knowledge in history is almost seen as being on a par with teaching ‘the basics’. Alongside the importance of learning phonics and how to check your change comes the recitation of Kings and Queens of England. Some would say that without this information we are ill-equipped for the future and will lose sight of our past. Include Henry VIII and sanity is restored.

Nick Gibb, minister of state for schools, has strong views about what should be taught. In his speech at last summer’s Reform think-tank conference he was far less complimentary about history teaching and learning than Ofsted: ‘Professor Derek Matthews’ practice of quizzing his first-year history undergraduates over a three-year period shows depressing evidence of the state of teaching knowledge in history. Almost twice as many students thought Nelson rather than Wellington was in charge at the Battle of Waterloo and nearly 90% couldn’t name a single British prime minister of the 19th Century… What is to be criticised is an education system which has relegated the importance of knowledge in favour of ill-defined learning skills.’ These were comments that the newspapers fell upon with relish.

In response to Ofsted’s report, Nick Gibb is unequivocal in his view that secondary schools are squeezing history out of the curriculum in favour of general humanities courses. ‘The facts, dates and narrative of history cannot be learnt in disparate chunks – without them we cannot compare, interpret or evaluate the past or draw lessons from it.’ We can all picture, and some of us have experienced, the kind of history that Mr Gibb would prefer to see.

The evidence from Ofsted is that rather than being in decline, history is largely holding its own. It continues to be a popular subject at Key Stage 4 and the number of students in England choosing to study it has remained stable. History is certainly alive and kicking – if a little diluted in places. But what about geography?

… but geography is causing concern
The picture here isn’t quite as rosy. The Ofsted report into geography, Learning to Make a World of Difference raises a number of concerns about geography teaching in both primary and secondary schools. Achievement at KS3 was reported as being ‘relatively weak’, with uninspiring teaching during this Key Stage deterring many pupils from taking the subject for GCSE.

Ofsted claims that secondary schools have reduced their time for geography in KS3 and that this is partly due to the introduction of ‘poorly planned and taught integrated units of work in the humanities in Year 7′. Fieldwork and current events are not used often enough, there is insufficient opportunity for writing in-depth and geography teaching and learning does not help pupils understand their place in the world, either locally, nationally or internationally.

Ofsted reports that the number of schools not entering students for GCSE geography is increasing, with 137 schools not entering students for GCSE in 2009 compared to 97 in 2007. Many pupils at KS3 reported that they found the subject boring or irrelevant, an opinion that seems to be reflected by an increasing number of schools ignoring its study. So in the humanities wars, it would seem that history comes out top, on occasions at the expense of geography. But do teachers of either subject need to worry now that they have a place in the Ebac?

Subjects fighting for inclusion
Never has there been more debate about what humanities is and should be than with the advent of the Ebac. Suddenly a theoretical debate that was perhaps the preserve of university lecturers has entered mainstream discussions and peppers Twitter. The government has not been over-generous with its choice of subjects in the humanities category. Most surprising is the absence of RE or RS – a decision with particular implications for schools with a religious character.

Feeling is running high at the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) about this omission. So much so that they are currently urging members and other interested individuals to lobby MPs and write to the secretary of state. Their concern centres around the impact as schools remove full-course religious studies options in favour of those subjects that do count towards the Ebac. ‘The unintended consequences of not including GCSE RS as an option in the English baccalaureate is that many schools will cease to offer RS at GCSE altogether. This in turn will have a very negative impact on the number of student taking RS at A-level, and therefore on the applications for theology and religious studies at degree level’ (extract from suggested letter to secretary of state supplied by RE Today and NATRE).

The inclusion and omission of any subject from a performance indicator such as the Ebac can have profound and devastating effects. NATRE is already reporting that schools are reacting to its omission with negative timetabling decisions and reductions in staffing in RE departments.

It’s not just RE that has been omitted. Across the country there are supporters of different areas of learning such as classical civilisation, citizenship and creative studies who are up in arms at the absence of their subjects. The Spanish bachillerato and the French baccalauréat both include ‘philosophy’ as part of their core entitlement. Should this also be included under a humanities option?

A broader concept of humanities
Specialist humanities colleges represent a far broader understanding of the concept of humanities. They must select as their specialist subject a minimum of one subject from English, history, geography or citizenship and choose two other subjects from religious education, humanities, classics (classical civilisation, Latin or Greek), drama, English, history, geography or citizenships.

Through promoting the ‘humanities ethos’ these specialist colleges are expected to offer an enriched school experience. It’s not only the content of what is delivered but the way it is offered that matters here. Theatre in education, writers’ visits, poets and historians in residence, fieldwork and study visits are all seen as a feature of humanities in these schools.
The sense of extended services goes even further. Humanities colleges are charged with promoting learning in the local community through intergenerational initiatives, interfaith work and partnerships with local museums. This is more than selecting individual subjects under one heading. This is touching on a humanitarian definition of humanities. It suggests that there is so much more to studying the humanities than learning the names of the Kings and Queens of England and the lakes and rivers of Europe.

As things stand, however, the Ebac humanities has no interest in this wider brief and may even mitigate against the combined study of history and geography. What will its impact be?

Facing choices: the impact of the Ebac
We have already referred to the anxieties of the subject associations. For those subjects not included there must be implications. But as they continue to lobby for a place is the position of history and geography really secure? Rather than the Ebac enhancing their status, could these two companions find themselves at loggerheads?

Traditionally many pupils might opt to take both history and geography. Now timetabling restrictions could make this more difficult, with both subjects grappling with one another to gain the Ebac tick in the humanities box.

Professor Chris Husbands, director of the Institute of Education, University of London, raises concerns about the impact there might be of placing the two subjects in one category, saying: ‘Some pupils are taking both history and geography; that may be more difficult as de facto the Ebac will put history up against geography in the options system.’

If we use Ofsted’s subject reports as an indicator, we might speculate that it is geography that will lose out in this head-to-head challenge.

Of greater concern, however, to Professor Husbands is whether schools make the Ebac subjects available to all their pupils: ‘My assumption is that the effect of the Ebac will be firstly to force a choice between history and geography and secondly for this to be the case for only the top 70% or so.’ Those unlikely to make above a ‘C’ grade may no longer be given the option of studying history and geography at all.

It seems that the inclusion of humanities in the Ebac might undermine rather than enhance its study. Ironically, it may even cause tremors in geography and history departments too. History and geography in schools may not be perfect but there is still plenty to lose if the government’s plans go wrong. The human experience is worthy of study and all our pupils should have opportunity to select their preferences without timetabling restrictions forced on schools by performance table pressures.

Suzanne O’Connell is a former headteacher