Tes Podagogy

“I have some sympathy for people getting nervous when discussing genetics and education,” says Dr Kathryn Asbury, a senior lecturer in psychology in education at the University of York. 

Unfortunately for her, though, she can’t avoid it: Dr Asbury is one of the country’s leading genetics researchers and is co-author of G is for Genes: The Impact of Genetics on Education and Achievement.

In this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, she talks at length about why the teaching profession needs to get beyond its nervousness on the topic of genetics. She argues that the problem for teachers is often not the research, but how they fear it may be used. 

She also details common myths around genetics (such a what heritability means), how teachers might take genetics into consideration in terms of pedagogy and also why genetics research demands more diversity of options after education (a theme she also mentions in this Tes article). 

“The international research is very clear that overall there is no positive impact of setting and streaming on young people’s attainment,” says Professor Becky Francis, director of the UCL Institute of Education.In this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast, she explains in detail why this might be and reveals just how damaging setting often is for the education prospects of disadvantaged children.

“We find a disproportionate amount of kids from low social economic backgrounds in low sets and streams,” she says. “And we also know that kids in low sets and streams make poorer progress than higher sets and streams. So those children are subject to a double advantage, that is being pushed onto them by the education system. The kids that need the best help and the best practice, are being disadvantaged by grouping practices. This is why grouping is an issue for social inequality. “

In a detailed discussion around setting practices, professor Francis explains where schools often go wrong when setting and the logistical challenges in opting for alternatives. She touches on behaviour, SEN, teaching effectivness and she also reveals that mixed-ability teaching is currently not a valid alternative due to a complete lack of research about how you do mixed-ability teaching well.

“If we are not able to tell teachers what the alternatives look like and provide good quality materials and support and so on, then why on earth would they discard the practice of a life time?” she asks.

Touching on social justice, her current research project pinpointing where setting goes wrong, and a range of other issues including self-perception, motivation and peer impact, it is a podcast that should give you everything you need to know about setting in schools.

“If you have a child that is more practical, that is not getting there academically, and you do not build their confidence, you do not equip them with life skills, then how have you prepared them for life?”

Alex Richards is the farm manager at West Rise Junior School in Eastbourne. The school is famous for its risk-embracing pedagogy, with students engaged in multiple out-of-the-classroom lessons, predominantly on a large marshland rented from the council.

Since winning the Tes Primary School of the Year award in 2016, it has received a lot of coverage for taking its students shooting and teaching hunting skills and for its headteacher, Mike Fairclough, a self-proclaimed hippy.

But for this episode of Tes Podagogy, I went down to the school to look beyond the headlines, to find out what drives the pedagogical approach and to talk to the children about their experiences at the school.

In the podcast, I chat to pupils, to Mike, to Alex and to other staff members to see how they can manage to balance an academic programme that has put the school (which is situated in a derpived area and has a high percentage of chidlren eligible for pupil premium) among the best in terms of results in the region, and a pedagogy aimed at life lessons, too.

For some photos of the day follow this link

I went down on a snowy day in December and, a warning, the podcast also contains audio of the gutting, cooking and eating of pheasents.

“If you listed everything that all the experts we spoke to as part of the Carter review said was essential for the basic understanding a newteacher needed, it adds up to five years [of training],” states professor Samantha Twiselton, director of the Sheffield Institute of Education, on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast. “There would be nothing on that list you would disagree with, but it is completely unrealistic [in the timeframe we have].”Initial Teacher Training is regularly criticised on social media and by some in the DfE, with accusations about ideological bias and ‘missing’ elements. On the latter, professor Twistelton is clear that – as her quote above demonstrates - too much is expected of ITT in the time they have, and she adds that often people misunderstand the timeline of a developing teacher.

“We need a better understanding of the stages of development a trainee teacher will go through,” she says. “Early on they do need lots of practical things, until they have got the behaviour and routines sorted, and know it is not going to go completely wrong for them. We have to recognise that the bigger picture has to come a little later in the course.”

As for the ideological criticism, she explains that the nature of ITT means such a one-sided approach would be impossible.

In a wide-ranging discussion, professor Twiselton also talks about the role of research in ITT, how schools can best support trainees, and the importance of behaviour management quick wins.

“If you are a white teacher in a classroom, you still have a responsibility to think about, teach about, and understand issues of racism,” states Kalwant Bhopal, professor of education and social Justice and deputy director of the Centre for Research in Race & Education (CRRE) at the University of Birmingham.In this episode, she explains that, too often, issues around diversity and racism are left to BAME teachers to call out. She adds that in everything from behaviour techniques and recruitment decisions to curriculum choices and pedagogy, every teacher needs to have race issues in mind.

“We have to start dismantling and disrupting the social structures that continue to perpetuate the notion of whiteness,” she says. “It is not just the job of the BAME teachers [to think about and tackle race issues], quite frankly BAME teachers need white allies to stand up and say racism is going on. A white person saying that will be seen quite differently to someone like me saying it, I am quite often told I have a chip on my shoulder.”

In a wide ranging discussion, professor Bhopal details how racism can occur in schools, the need for more BAME teachers, and the fact that issues can be worse in schools where there is the least diversity.

“You can shout as often as you like that ‘x’ should work, but if it is not working while I am teaching, I will do other things that on paper might not be as efficient,” says Dr Christian Bokhove, a lecturer in mathematics education at the University of Southampton and a specialist in research methodologies.

Speaking on this episode of Tes Podagogy, which focuses on spotting research myths and how teachers can be empowered by research, Bokhove explains that the relationship between teachers and education research is a difficult one to get right. On one side, it has huge scope to improve practice; on the other, there are real dangers in how teachers often consume research.

Bokhove – a former teacher - identifies some prime examples of where he feels research has been oversimplified or misconstrued by educators, including popular work from the likes of ED Hirsch and John Sweller. He also details things teachers should look for in research and discusses issues such as publication bias.

“The curriculum is quite weird, the learning a certain feature at a certain point, I do not understand that at all,” says Mark Brenchley, associate research fellow at the Centre for Research in Writing at the University of Exeter.

 He and Ian Cushing, a teaching fellow in English linguistics at University College London, believe that is not the only weird thing about grammar teaching in schools and how teachers perceive grammar. In the 8 December issue of Tes, they detail a number of these aspects and in this episode of Tes Podagogy they build on these and add a few more. 

In an advice-packed podcast the pair discuss how to teach grammar most effectively, what impact grammar teaching has on writing, why grammar is “fuzzy”, how we empower teachers to be more confident with grammarand the delightful sounding “noun-y nouns”. 

The last thing Sir Kevan Collins, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), wants teachers to do is to log on to the organisations Teaching and Learning Toolkit and read it like a prescription: do this, then this, this number of times a day.“We are absolutely not looking to nail what works – there are no absolutes in this,” he explains. “It is always about trying to reduce your uncertainty, to get a bit more confidence about what you do.”

For Sir Kevan, research is only useful when it is viewed in the context of a teacher’s own classroom and is part of a much broader body of knowledge.

He expands upon this theme in this episode of Tes Podagogy, discussing whether research is useful to teachers and how it should be used.

He also tackles criticisms of the EEF’s work, including the use of “months progress” as a measure of potential impact of an intervention, the reliance on RCTs and the lack of analysis of specific SEND interventions.

Across all these themes, though, is an insistence that research is something that should empower teachers, not dictate to them.

“It should be the starting point of a conversation,” he says, “not telling you what to do”

The education author and teacher explains how teachers need to set out and establish routines for learning behaviour so all children can thrive“Sometimes our most rigorous intentions in the classroom are undone by a lack of the attention to mundane details of how things should go right,” says Doug Lemov.

He details some of the routines that he advocates in the podcast, including ‘cold calling’ and ‘tracking’. He also details the theory behind his work, and  discusses the role of knowledge in learning to read, how to establish behaviour systems and how teachers need to be more appreciated.

 “The best teachers are outstanding problem solvers. They are some of the smartest and most important people in our society,” he says.

The videos Doug mentions can be found here

“People used to think dyslexia was a clear cut syndrome with signs and syndromes like a medical disease, but it is actually much more like blood pressure – it can range from very low to very high,” explains professor Margaret Snowling, president of St John’s College Oxford and one of the world’s leading dyslexia researchers.

Speaking on the Tes Podagogy podcast, she addresses numerous others myths around the condition, provides some tips and strategies to support dyslexic learners  and explains that education is still missing opportunities to help students with dyslexia get support at an earlier stage.