It was great to speak to Ewan McIntosh from the enigmatically-named NoTosh global consultancy this week.

Ewan didn’t want to be a teacher and went as far as joining the army to avoid his family tradition of entering education. However, he ended up teaching in France for a time and found he really enjoyed the process of switching learners on. In the early 90s, teaching was a difficult profession to be in, financially, so Ewan considered creating some kind of online business instead but, after the McCrone report made changes to teachers’ salaries and conditions in Scotland he returned there and started engaging learners through the new tools of social media. His school was the first in Europe to start podcasting and they also blogged extensively.  In those days he had to have students hand-coding xml files in order to get the podcast episodes into itunes – how things have changed!

On the back of creating large partnerships of schools, the Scottish Government asked Ewan to come and lead some projects for them. These were initially very successful but, when he tried to spread the practice to other local authorities, he ran into many cultural problems which made the adoption of the projects impossible.

This experience prompted Ewan to leave education and he found himself working for Channel 4, developing digital products. This showed him what it meant to be really creative and he wondered why we weren’t teaching to children the fact that it was possible to be creative and still do really well.

So as a result, Ewan created NoTosh to work with anyone in education or the creative industries. It’s all about showing how people can create a much brighter future for their employees or their learners.

The original idea behind NoTosh was to work with creative businesses and then bring that learning back into schools, blended with relevant research. The aim was to show that creative and academic goals could live side by side and complement each other.

Find Ewan and NoTosh on Twitter – @NoTosh @ewanmcintosh

Check out the book – How to Come Up With New Ideas And Actually Make Them Happen

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site

Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks

Newly-created Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks are now available from Amazon. There will be a huge range of Pocketbooks from Pivotal Education, starting with the edited transcripts of some of the most popular episodes of the podcast.

The idea of releasing written versions of episodes came from listeners who wanted to be able to make notes and use the content in different ways. If you would like a particular episode to be converted into an ebook, please let us know!

(Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.com/ http://www.freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/)

What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected]

We were delighted to welcome Sarah Simons onto the podcast this week to share her views on Higher Education in the UK.

We learned that Sarah has a fascinating background, beginning when she was newly out of college and landed a part in the UK soap opera, Coronation Street. She held that role for about a year and then turned to writing. She had a sitcom made by the BBC and spent the next 17 years in the world of showbiz. After having her son, she was persuaded by a friend to try FE lecturing. She was immediately hooked by the chance to work with students, some of whom were overcoming serious problems in their lives to turn up at college and learn. Sarah realised she could do something to make a difference through working in Further Education.

After a couple of years, Sarah contacted the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and asked if she could write for the paper. She has been a columnist and a podcaster ever since.

Her latest venture, however is #UKFEchat, which started, by accident, as a Twitter hashtag and has now grown into an exciting set of projects run by FE people, sharing good practice and helping each other.

Pivotal Education in FE

Paul points out that 50% of Pivotal’s work is in Further Education in the UK. Despite the common misconception, there is plenty of need for behaviour training in FE.

Sarah agrees and says that the issues in FE Colleges are similar to schools. There is a lingering belief amongst FE student who have just come from schools that the fact they are in a new environment means they are now ‘adults’ and can’t be told what to do. In fact, Sarah says, the rebellious feelings don’t go away at all and she classes herself as ‘disruptive’ in some CPD sessions!

Behaviour management with adults in FE

Even with adult learners in FE, Sarah believes the usual behaviour management strategies have a place. She mentions consistency, routine, the security that predictability brings and sanctions and rewards.

Paul and Sarah agree that even some basic primary school behaviour management techniques can work just as well with adults. Sarah recalls that, when she was new to FE teaching, she now realises that she was ‘playing the role of a teacher’ – she wasn’t treating the students as individuals and she feels they really suffered as a result. She experienced a behaviour management session from Paul quite early on and says that rewards, sanctions and predictability all work brilliantly but being kind is also crucial.

Sarah describes her current functional skills work with a group of plumbers. She found herself counting – “You have until 5 to be quiet – 1-2-3-4-5”. She was mortified but the technique work and her relationship with the class is excellent….

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site

Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks

Newly-created Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks are now available from Amazon. There will be a huge range of Pocketbooks from Pivotal Education, starting with the edited transcripts of some of the most popular episodes of the podcast.

The idea of releasing written versions of episodes came from listeners who wanted to be able to make notes and use the content in different ways. If you would like a particular episode to be converted into an ebook, please let us know!

(Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.

Golden Time

After experiencing Golden Time for many years in Primary classrooms, Paul has come to the decision that he really doesn’t like it. He thinks it ends up being connected with the practice of putting names on the board for negative reasons – the ‘naughty names on the board’. He has talked before about how to flip this into a recognition board, trying to highlight the children who are doing the right thing. Ticks are added to the naughty names and these translate to 5 minutes off Golden Time.

What is Golden Time?

This is usually a 15 minute time slot on a Friday afternoon where there is a special activity or a free-choice of activities. Only the children who have managed to maintain some or all of their Golden Time throughout the week are allowed to take part. There are children who behave well and get their Golden Time every week. Similarly there are children who will never get Golden Time. It is possible that all Golden Time is lost on a Monday morning through a bout of bad behaviour.

Any ‘tension you had on the rope’ you had with that child is gone by 10:30am on Monday morning.

This is likely to affect their behaviour for the rest of the week negatively. Two labelled groups are also set up – those who have and those who don’t have Golden Time – and you end up taking things away from children during the week. Most people like to earn things and react negatively to things being taken away. Taking away Golden Time will immediately provoke argument and confrontations in some children.

Is it time to abandon Golden Time?

The strategy is driving a wedge between those who receive it and those who don’t. Even if you adjust it to enable children to gain their time back,  which seems sensible, children are encouraged to try to ‘game’ the system. Behaviour becomes less about self-discipline and more about how to play the game to ensure you have Golden Time left at the end of the week.

Paul points out that 15 minutes of Golden Time is also not much of an incentive for those who never get it and even the name suggests that those who don’t receive it are something other than ‘golden’ – are they ‘bronze’ or ‘brass’ – second best or not as good as the others. This ‘divide and rule’ approach is never productive. Paul has even seen a school in which the children who don’t receive Golden Time are made to sit at the side and watch those who have been successful. This is negative, humiliating and nasty.

What do you think?

Do you use Golden Time? Is it successful? Have you abandoned it? Have you managed to change it into something more productive? Let us know via Twitter – @PivotalPaul @PivotalPodcast or via email – [email protected]

We were delighted that our Educational Technology Correspondent, Chris Mayoh, was able to join us to talk about Early Years and Foundation Stage Edtech.

Firstly, Chris tells us…

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks

Newly-created Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks are now available from Amazon.

Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks

Before discussing the crucial topic of restraint, Paul and Kevin announce the newly-created Pivotal Podcast Pocketbooks which are now available from Amazon. There will be a huge range of Pocketbooks from Pivotal Education, starting with the edited transcripts of some of the most popular episodes of the podcast. The idea of releasing written versions of episodes came from listeners who wanted to be able to make notes and use the content in different ways. If you would like a particular episode to be converted into an ebook, please let us know!

Restraint

Children die in restraint. Paul was part of a group who looked at physical restraint in custodial settings for under 18s for the Department of Justice after there were two deaths in custody due to the inappropriate use of physical restraint.

However, restraint is not just a custodial issue – it has now become part of behaviour management in many settings, not just Pupil Referral Units but also mainstream schools.

What is restraint?

Restraint means ‘putting your hands on children or young people’. It is any kind of intervention which is physical. It might just be as gentle as leading a child by their arm or it might be as intensive as holding them back to prevent them doing real harm to themselves or others.

‘Safe touch’ where you might put your hand on a child’s shoulder to congratulate them is not restraint.

We need restraint training! Or do we?

Some schools call Pivotal saying that things have gone too far and they need restraint training as if it is a kind of panacea. However, training people in restraint isn’t as straightforward as adding it to the existing repertoire of behaviour skills. It’s much more complex than that. Often, schools who say they need restraint training actually need to look more carefully at their culture, train staff more carefully in other aspects of behaviour management and review their behaviour policy. Having done this, they often find they no longer need restraint.

Do we need restraint then…

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected]

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It’s the Pivotal Podcast Christmas Quiz 2014!

Play along with our very special guest, Calvin Robinson, and our Special Mystery Quizmaster!

In a rather more chaotic episode than usual, we had a huge amount of fun with our first Christmas quiz. Have a go at answering the questions yourself and compare your answers with Calvin’s.

We reveal the identity of our Mystery Quizmaster and give the answers to the quiz questions at the end of the episode and also leave you with an additional question you can send us the answer to – with a chance of winning a bumper bundle of goodies from Pivotal Education!

You can also watch the unedited version of the Christmas Quiz on YouTube:

Many thanks to Calvin Robinson for agreeing to be the ‘voice of the listeners’ and taking part in the quiz.

Happy Christmas to one and all!

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

Creative Commons music is Mini Christmas Song by milton | This work is licensed under the Attribution Noncommercial License.

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Paul is not able to join me this week as he is unwell so I’ve been rooting around in the Pivotal Podcast archives and I’ve managed to find two great pieces of unreleased audio. The first is from our conversation with Isabella Wallace. We kept her after her great episode on talking less to ask her to respond to a voicemail we received from Mike about NQTs and seating plans.

Seating plans

Isabella thinks it’s very useful to have a seating plan when you first meet a class because it’s important to use learners’ names all the time. However, she believes that seating plans should be fluid. It’s important that children don’t know who they will be sitting with and working with. This is because Isabella believes we have a responsibility to get children working with as wide a variety of others as possible.

As teachers, we know that children will work better with certain others for different activities. This is why Isabella doesn’t think blanket advice from outside is helpful. This is particularly worrying because the teacher’s sense of autonomy can be threatened. She has heard teachers begin to ask about how long they should do certain activities, when they should be the experts in knowing how long their classes can be usefully engaged in a task.

Isabella’s controversial view is that…

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected]

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If you are reading this before 15th December 2014, before listening to the episode, please vote for the Pivotal Podcast in the Edublog Awards! We were delighted to be nominated and then short-listed for an award but we need as many votes as possible from listeners! Thank you for your help!

We had a very wide-ranging and fascinating discussion this week with Debra Kidd who has been a teacher for more than 21 years.

She started off in a Sixth Form College and then taught English and Drama in a secondary school where she became interested in the transition from Year 6 in primary school to Year 7 in secondary. Then she taught in primary schools and eventually teacher training courses in University before returning to the classroom to concentrate on the gaps she identified in Key Stage 3. Finally, Debra left the classroom to get involved in various consultancy areas all over the world. This move was prompted by the way in which teachers are being led to use data to ‘justify our own existence’ rather than focussing on what’s best for the children.

Debra feels that there was a low common-denominator being created in terms of expectations of children. The focus on pushing learners through exams was damaging them in terms of their human development, their sense of hopefulness and their confidence in the future.

She felt that she was delivering a good educational experience for the children but it was almost impossible also to fulfil the demands of the senior leadership team who were living in fear of Ofsted. It’s an understandable pressure when headteachers are treated like football managers who are only as good as their last results. The tendency in that position is to push the pressure down.

What we need now are lots of people questioning the system – and whether it is acting in the best interests of children.

What changes should teachers be making?

Pedagogical activism – use the power, the time and the autonomy you have in your classroom to build children’s conceptual understanding of their place in the world and their power to enact change. We should be allowing children to investigate what possible futures exist.

Be a little braver – ask bigger questions, teach beyond the syllabus, teach what made you passionate about the subject

Start asking difficult questions – question whether what you are doing as a school is really in the the best interests of your children

Read and always understand why you are doing what you are doing – be ready to explain the reasons behind the methodology you are using or the subject you are teaching

Debra supports the aim for teaching to be a more researched-based profession but she believes that there should be a wider definition of what research is. The questions we ask shouldn’t just be about what gets children through tests but rather they should be bigger and better questions.

Using international models

Debra says that a wide consideration of the cultural aspects of international models is needed. For example, in Finland most television is subtitled UK and US content. This means there is a cultural push to be able to read in order to be entertained.

Politicans

Debra believes politicians are ‘driven by protecting their position – securing their next term of office’ and questions the trend for professional politicians who have never experienced another job before moving into politics. Also, she sees the desire to ‘make your mark’, and the fact that the education department is often seen as a stepping stone to something bigger are negative. She believes that these positions should be held by people who have experience in the area and are passionate ab...

We were delighted to welcome back to the podcast our newly-designated Technology Correspondent, Chris Mayoh to talk about two of his areas of expertise, E-Safety and Cyberbullying.

It quickly became clear that Chris wanted to stress these are safeguarding issues, not ICT issues which means that responsibility for them lies with the headteacher of a school and not with an ICT leader, for example.

Issues to do with E-safety which happen outside school can often have an impact in school. This is difficult for schools to manage. Most Cyberbullying takes place outside school, for example, because children’s use of technology is much more likely to be monitored in school.

MacAfee on the Guardian website:

67% of parents allow their children unmonitored access to the Internet.

However, the results of Cyberbullying at home can have massive implications for children at school – these things can and do ‘blow up’ at school and behaviour and learning are impacted on in negative ways.

Paul points out that Pastoral Teams in school now spend a lot of their time dealing with social media Cyberbullying issues. Chris agrees and says that a lot of the bullying issues which have always been present have now moved to a different space.

Chris mentions Ask.fm as a particularly problematic service which can be used anonymously but even more worrying for him is a new.

Where can schools start…

(Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.com/ http://www.freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/)

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected]

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ATL’s National Learning Manager, Kate Quigley and Senior Policy Advisor, Alison Ryan joined us to talk about the Continuing Professional Development opportunities the ATL offers to its members and also about what makes great CPD and how we know when it is great.

Paul wonders what Kate considers a union like ATL’s role is in teacher CPD. Kate says that ATL recognises that teachers are professionals and as part of that they need to have a continuum of professional development. ATL demonstrate what they think that continuum could look like. They work with high quality providers to offer CPD from Initial Teacher Training and NQT level to school leadership.

CPD is best when it is tailored to the needs of the individual as well as the needs of the school.

ATL believes that teachers should have a contractual right to CPD. The single biggest influence on teaching and learning is having high quality teaching and this is about teachers maintaining their skills and knowledge. So it’s important to have a contractual right to dedicated time to research a subject, work with expert colleagues and to be free to innovate.

Shape Education

Kate describes and explains the ‘Shape Education‘ vision ATL has developed. It’s all about what ATL members think education should look like – what education is for and about.

Independent schools

Paul asks if ATL members who work in independent schools share the same passion for CPD as those in state schools. Kate replies that the whole teaching profession is a learning profession. By nature, all teachers want to learn, to develop and improve their practice.

What style of CPD do ATL members say they want?

Face-to-face training is the preference of the majority of ATL members…

(Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.com/ http://www.freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/)

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected]

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Paul answers a question this week which was posed by a listener on Twitter. It leads him to a consideration of whether it’s better to follow the behaviour management process slavishly or to try to solve the problem.

Do you have a process-driven mindset or a problem solving mindset?

Here is the tweet Paul received:

 “Any tips? Learner refuses to participate. Tried praise, encouragement, paired tasks, grp work, indiv tasks, sweets! no avail?”

In follow-up tweets, the low reading age of the learner as well as other issues were made clearer and the context of an English classroom was added.

Questions a teacher who is obsessed with process might ask themselves when faced with a learner who refused to participate:

* Where are we at in terms of the policy?

* What’s wrong with this learner?

* What am I expected to do?

* What sanction comes next?

* What punishment is next?

* Who can I pass this problem to?

* What forms do I need to fill in?

* How can I cover my back?

* How do I speed up the process to get this learner out of my classroom?

* Why doesn’t this process work?

The focus is on what the teacher should do to make the teacher’s life easier.

Problem-solving questions are similar but have a different slant:

* Where is the learner at?

* What’s driving this behaviour?

* How can I help?

* What positive behaviours can I find immediately?

* Who can stand alongside me and guide?

*  When are we going to organise a meeting to repair restore and review?

* How can I slow down the process in order to give the learner some breathing space to make some real decisions?

* How much persistence am I going to need in order to change this behaviour?

* What can I do as an adult to change what I do to really help this learner?

So, where to start with this learner…

(Creative Commons image by Chi Tranter. Creative Commons Sound clip by Johnny Pixel Productions, Inc. – http://www.johnny-pixel.com/ http://www.freesound.org/people/jppi_Stu/)

Read the rest of the show notes on the Pivotal Education site.

What would you like to hear covered in forthcoming episodes? Let us know by emailing [email protected]

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* Listen for free every week

* Send in your comments or questions

* Get involved!