It’s About Learning

The frequency of feedback in classrooms is low (Hattie & Timperley) and if we focus on providing students with improved, quality feedback in individual classrooms, departments and schools we will “have an almost immediate positive effect” (Dinham).

Dylan Wiliam shows us that, “Giving students marks is no better than giving no feedback at all. Giving comments, on the other hand, produces substantial improvements in learning. However, what is surprising is that giving both marks and comments together produces no improvement.”

Wiliam also points out that, “Teachers who spend time crafting helpful comments are wasting their time if they also give a mark. The teachers would be better off just giving marks. The students won’t learn anything, but it saves time. A teacher will typically spend more time marking a student’s work than the student will spend on following up the comment. This is crazy.”

Wiliam advocates comment-only marking or feedback that engages students by asking them to think. For instance, instead of telling students that they got 15 out of 20 in Maths, the teacher could tell a student that five of their answers were wrong, and that they should find them and fix them. Rather than correcting spelling, punctuation and grammar, English teachers could put a letter in the margin for each error in that line using a G for an error in grammar, an S for a spelling mistake, a P for a punctuation.

Interestingly, Wiliam also points out that while students need some feedback about how they are doing in terms of marks or grades, he suggests this should be no more than once every two or three years in primary schools, once a year in lower secondary , and once a term when before school-leaving exams.

So my challenges this year are to:
1. Focus on improving the quality and quantity of feedback.
2. Give written or verbal feedback one week before giving the mark.
3. Provide feedback that requires students to think.
4. Reduce the amount of marks and grades.

Problem of Practice

Our students often seem to rely on teachers telling them what to do and they place considerable emphasis on extrinsic motivators such as marks and ranks. Too often the responsibility for learning seems to lie with the teacher, rather than the student. This is particularly evident with the provision of feedback. Effective feedback is central to the learning process and requires a mindset of thinking and learning rather than performance and achievement. What evidence will demonstrate that our students and teachers are providing feedback which leads to deep thinking and powerful learning? How do we develop a shared understanding of what constitutes effective feedback between teachers, students and the wider school community?

Theory of Action

If we improve the quality and quantity of feedback, then students will take more responsibility for their own learning.

• We will audit patterns of feedback by conducting subject department and student surveys in order to consider how we could provide improved feedback.
• We will provide comments instead of marks wherever possible and when marks or grades are required we will provide comments prior to the marking/grading wherever possible.
• We will ensure that students spend more time following up comments than teachers spend marking the work by providing feedback that forces students to think and builds students’ capacities to educate themselves.
• We will develop a repertoire of feedback strategies that work for different subject areas and students.
• We will devise activities and questions that provide feedback about the effectiveness of our teaching, so as teachers we know what to do next.

Conclusion

This Theory of Action will be subject to ongoing revision. It is intended to make explicit the goals, frameworks and strategies relating to feedback that we take for granted, and to expose the gulf between what we say about our teaching practice and what is actually occurring. This Theory of Action will promote reflection, dialogue, collaboration, and develop a shared understanding of good practice in relation to feedback.

I just spent a week on a Year 10 camp with 13 boys. While I can still top them hiking, sea kayaking and canoeing, a bruised shin testifies that they have better balance on mountain bikes than me. I had been told that I would be placed with the most physically capable students and that we would be pushed hard during the week. In this respect the camp was a slight disappointment as it was all well within everyone’s comfort zone.

I found the group dynamics really interesting. On the first day, a student started openly eating the group food one meal too early in an attempt to win approbation from his peers. The students also made it clear that they would try the patience of every outdoor education instructor assigned to supervise them for various skills (via nicknames, jellyfish fights, buried clothes, etc). Initially I observed this with a feeling of detached disappointment until the young outdoor ed instructor allocated to my group let me know that I should take a more active role in disciplining students. I had to think about this, as this was not what I was expecting to be doing on the camp. Over the coming days I seemed to strike an unspoken bargain with the students. I allowed them their fun: ribbing instructors, jumping over fires, swimming in the river, but when I said OK enough, they knew to rein it in and shut up.

One activity we were assigned was called the city challenge. We caught the train into the city and were given three hours to get to various checkpoints and answer questions about each checkpoint. The rules were that the group could not split up, use the internet, ask passers-by, and we had to carry our backpacks. The students heard the rules and asked, “what’s the point?” And I had to agree with them. Well meaning adults had designed a supposedly fun activity that had so many rules and regulations that the students found it ridiculous. It seemed like busy-work homework. So we agreed to pretend for a while before heading back out to the bush and back to more purposeful activity.

I used the nightly campfire sessions to do my teaching. I spoke to the students about how disappointed I was that the majority of good students stayed silent while one or two loud idiots set a negative tone, I singled out quiet acts of community and kindness for special mention, and I spoke to them about how difficult I was finding it treading the balance between knowing when to be a teacher and when to join in the water fights on the river. The instructor allocated to us described his role as being like the roller-cage on the downhill luge.

I did have fun on the camp and I’d do it again, I just didn’t expect to be playing the role that I ended up playing.

By the end of the week, the student who had proudly eaten the group food too early was being ostracised by his peers.

Most of my group wagged the final debrief back at school and went home early. Can’t say I blame them, it was a total waste of time. So that was my group. I’m still not sure if I did a good job with them, but that’s why I love teaching.

By creating a very positive atmosphere you feel much more inclined to write notes and just enjoy history, instead of becoming consumed by marks and the associated pressure.

I like the fact that we have been encouraged to pursue our own perspectives in what we learn, as it also creates a more personal experience when writing essays and it does pay off, as thinking outside the box usually provides the marker with something that is original.

The variety of lessons that you have used has allowed us all to learn the content in quite an easy and enjoyable way. For example, the class discussions, where you allow us to run the discussion with minimal input from you have been very effective.

Unlike many other classes, I have found history a great deal more interactive, with your teaching techniques making the understanding and application of our studies a lot more efficient.

Continue to teach how you teach, with fun and thought, but please maybe a little more notes to learn from also.

I was recently handed a copy of the book Sparking Student Synapses 9-12: Think critically and accelerate learning by Rich Allen and Nigel Scozzi.

I enjoyed the engaging lesson ideas and there is no doubt that the widespread adoption of these techniques would significantly enhance student engagement and learning. However, since I was first introduced to ‘brain-based learning’ (isn’t all learning brain-based) by one of the authors, Rich Allen, in 2007, I have been slightly unsettled by the approach and I struggle to put my finger exactly on why.

The book claims that it shows educators how to “Teach material in a rapidly memorable way” so that they can “devote significant class time to critically analyzing this information.” The authors go on to argue that “facts are the beginning point – without them there can be no in-depth processing or discussion.”

Help me here, why does this make me queasy? If we need to make the facts memorable, do they deserve to be taught in the first place? Where is the emphasis on questioning, inquiry and personalisation? Are facts really the beginning point?

I coached basketball at a fairly elite level for many, many years. I loved it, but enough was enough. This year, after returning from living in the US for a while, I was posted to a lower team. I had said that I was happy to coach anywhere and I always felt sorry for the kids on the lower teams who often seemed to get coaches who didn’t really know what they were doing (very much like the lower-performing kids in schools). Anyway, I have been coaching these players for four weeks now. I am loving it. The pressure is off me and if I asked the boys to run up Mt Everest and do three somersaults they would do it without blinking. They are amazing kids and I am very lucky. But this week a player came to me and said that he wanted to drop out. The reasons he gave were that he had been in the same team the previous year, he wanted more Year 11 boys in the team (there were 4 out of 10) and he didn’t like the late games we were allocated on Saturday afternoon. In essence he told me that he was not enjoying playing basketball.

It gave me reason to pause and take stock. At the next training I asked the players if I had been pushing them too hard. They all told me that the first few trainings had been hard, but they were now used to it and they were really enjoying being part of the team. Even so, I have been asking myself all week, what is the balance between coaching seriously and having fun? We are undefeated, but from the word go I have emphasised to the players that I don’t care about winning and losing, I just want them to play hard and play as a team. I am still wondering, I am so used to coaching at the elite level, how does this translate in terms of expectations for kids who just want to have fun?

Yesterday we hosted a couple of small teams of educators from other Sydney schools to undertake ‘instructional rounds’ at my school (on Melbourne Cup day, not smart!). While the purpose was to introduce them to the rounds process, it also provided an invaluable expert insight into learning and teaching at my school. The rounds debrief culminated in an opportunity for the visiting teams to provide recommendations to us.

Of particular note was the visitors’ opinion that we should be proud of the strong relationships between students and staff which were clearly evident as they conducted the rounds. The visitors also appreciated the openness and transparency of the staff.

Some of the key recommendations included:

Teacher talk: It was noted that lessons consisted of 80-90% teacher talk and limited student-to-student interaction. How can this balance be reversed?

Questioning: How can we ensure higher-order questioning versus lower-order questioning? One suggestion was for staff to collaboratively design higher-order questions ahead of lessons. It was also evident that the students with their hands-up were the ones being called upon to answer questions and consideration should be given to targeting students who don’t put their hands up or abandoning the strategy of hands-up altogether.

Extrinsic motivators: The appropriateness of using exams as a motivational tool was questioned.

Homework: Focus on the quality of homework tasks, not just the fact that students have done it, which was a point of emphasis in some classrooms.

While the focus yesterday was on ’rounds’ as a process, to receive such feedback from external experts was both a privilege and a bit confronting. While there was nothing in the recommendations that I disagreed with, the challenge is how to change institutionalised behaviour on a large-scale.

I am keen to grow the rounds network, so if you want to run it at your school, just let me know.

Last Thursday I became aware of an AIS Executive conference being held today and tomorrow. I scanned the program and, impressed with names like Michael Fullan, Helen Timperley and Brian Caldwell, registered on Friday. Due to other commitments I could only attend today and I was especially looking forward to Brian Caldwell’s presentation on ‘How independent schools in Australia can become global leaders in transforming education’. Unfortunately Brian was caught in the QANTAS kerfuffle and his presentation was moved to Monday. His paper was included in the conference pack though, and I guess that’s all I need.

This morning I listened to Michael Fullan’s presentation. He is a class-act and his presentation was polished. However, I had read his paper on strategic drivers several months ago and his presentation was largely a rehash of the paper.

Helen Timperley’s presentation on ‘Shaping professional and student learning’ was a bullet-pointed powerpoint, and she lost her place twice. I saw large numbers disengage and play with tablets and phones if they had the chance.

Both presenters included around 8 minutes of table talk, which was desperately needed and easily the most constructive use of the time. I learned a great deal from talking with Richard and Jason on my table, and continued the conversation later with Henrietta over lunch. I left after lunch. I had heard the afternoon replacement speaker, Mark Treadwell, many times before. There was a final one hour option offered later in the afternoon where you could choose a session and converse with one of the three presenters, but by that time participants had been talked at for the best part of three and a half hours.

I do appreciate the efforts of people to organise these conferences and I know that organising professional learning that caters to the needs of adults today is a huge challenge. I just don’t think that conferences reflect what we know about how people learn and I’m not sure that I can keep doing the traditional conference format anymore. I get so much more out of Twitter, blogs, TeachMeets, unconferences, edcamps, and instructional rounds.

“The topics on women/homefront were immensely tedious.”
“It seems that there is no real answer to whether the entry of the US or the exit of Russia was more influential.”
“The summaries which were handed out have been the most informative and valuable things which I’ve read on this topic so far.”
“The class discussions are very useful for just getting your head around a big topic and it is more useful than notes because you get many perspectives.”
“The discussions have also been good, however I find collaborative mind-maps on the board more interesting and easier to follow and record.”
“The most useful lesson was the one in which we looked at various sources which related to the topic, eg. Frank Cobb article.”
“Many history textbooks generalise about the situation, in that the horrors of the Western Front were due to the machine gun and the incompetent command.”
“This week I struggled somewhat to contrast views on the homefront, not seeing any visible difference between them and the soldiers’ changing attitudes.”
“I am pretty clear about the Russian withdrawal and can see the significance of it but I am confused as to the many elements that made the revolution happen.”
“I am able to contribute much more this term with confidence.”
“A class Facebook page was established and this proved to help me personally, along with other members of the class.”
“This week has changed my whole perception of WWI.”

“I especially enjoyed today’s lesson where it was an open discussion about various texts.”
“I have enjoyed studying the Battle of the Somme as I take a personal interest in this series of offensives, particularly that of the Battle of Poziers Ridge.”
“The readings were actually interesting and made me want to know more about battles such as Ypres, Verdun, and the Somme.”
“There was quite a lot of reading to do for homework and I plan to summarise this on the weekend.”
“I think that the videos are actually more helpful than the textbook sometimes.”
“I personally don’t take much out of the videos as I find it hard to extract the best information.”