Meeting OfSTED: The Game has Changed. Left to right: @TomBennett71; @LearningSpy; @ClerkToGovernor; Mike Cladingbowl; @headguruteacher & @TeacherToolkit (18.2.14) This post follows on from the excellent accounts from David Didau (@LearningSpy) and Ross McGill (@TeacherToolkit) about our meeting with Mike Cladingbowl at OfSTED HQ on Tuesday this week. (Update: Shena Lewington (@ClerktoGovernor) and Tom Bennett have now also written accounts of the meeting.)
For me, this was the second time I’d met Mike Cladingbowl, OfSTED’s Head of Schools, within a few days, following the Headteachers’ Roundtable meeting with Michael Gove and Sir Michael Wilshaw as reported here: The Headteachers’ Roundtable Meeting. Click to follow the link. The Headteachers’ Roundtable meeting at the DFE emerged out of discussions with Michael Gove last summer; it was something we’d been working towards for months. Our visit had parallels to this one. David and Ross have given detailed accounts of the discussions. The OfSTED Game Has Changed. Like this: Turning the tanker: lesson grading. I spent a good part of the past year or so railing against the injustices of lesson grading: My impatience with some Ofsted inspectors 24th July 2014Ofsted: The end of the (lesson grading) affair 4th June 2014Should Ofsted judge ‘quality of teaching’? 26th May 2014A horror story: Does Ofsted get it wrong again?
23rd May 2014Ofsted inspectors continue to do whatever they like 21st May 2014Watching the watchmen: Is Ofsted fit for purpose? 16th March 2014The mystery of Oldfield School’s missing Ofsted report 17th March 2014What inspirational teaching looks like according to Ofsted 18th February 2014What I learned from my visit to Ofsted 19th February 2014Are we any clearer? Ofsted explain what they do and don’t do 21st February 2014Ofsted’s Evaluation Form: the next skirmish!
22nd February 2014The shocking mediation of Ofsted criteria by ‘rogue’ inspectors 10th November 2013Who inspects Ofsted? The good news is that Ofsted listened: But, as the cliche goes, it takes time to turn a tanker. Much can be achieved with a bit of TLC - News. Last Updated:16 October, 2009Section:News Formative assessment will drive the success of A Curriculum for Excellence Teacher Learning Communities have been likened to support groups such as WeightWatchers or Alcoholics Anonymous. They help people to change their ways. The communities, created by Dylan Wiliam of the Institute of Education in London, consist of eight to 10 classroom teachers in the same school who have committed themselves to embedding formative assessment techniques in their teaching. Professor Wiliam contends that teachers need to engage with colleagues in a TLC for at least two years in order to change habits and see the improvements in pupils’ learning. In Scotland, the Tapestry Partnership has set up the “Sustainable Assessment for Learning with Teacher Learning Communities” programme, a two-year course consisting of a masterclass with Professor Wiliam for TLC leaders, support sessions with Tapestry tutors, plus materials and ongoing liaison.
What the pupils say. ResearchED article: Why every school needs a research champion. | chronotope. By Carl Hendrick, Head of Learning and Research, Wellington College For too long the classroom practitioner has been the researched as opposed to the researcher. Teachers have been given answers to questions they didn’t ask, provided with solutions to problems that never existed, and assailed by counterintuitive theory when practical advice was more appropriate. Where there has been good research, it is often sidelined by short-termism, a near fetish for data or the Sword of Damocles of a looming inspection. By the same token, school staff rooms are often dominated by teachers whose only serious reflection on their practice comes from their own limited experience and confirmed biases, and whose only measures of success are exam results and league tables.
This attitude is often typified by a deep and open antipathy to anything too reflective labelled ‘evidence based’ or ‘research.’ So how do we emerge from this primordial soup? 1. 2. 3. This is a central problem. 4. 5. 6. 7. Www.bond.org.uk/data/files/resources/463/No-5.1-Action-Learning-Sets.pdf. How colleges improve.pdf. How colleges improve report summary .pdf. From Little Acorns. E14-5_JoyceandShowersarticle1.pdf. Dylan-Wiliam_breakout.pdf.
Teaching guru is optimistic about education. Dylan Wiliam once had only one ambition: to become a famous and successful jazz musician. He turned to teaching only so he could raise enough money to buy amplification equipment. He could hardly have imagined then that fame would eventually come his way in the form of two one-hour, peak-time BBC2 documentaries on teaching techniques. Called The Classroom Experiment, they were broadcast last September and featured Wiliam, black-browed, bald and slightly menacing (he looks a bit like one of those Doctor Who characters who's about to dynamite the universe), chivvying Hertfordshire teachers into using lollipop sticks, coloured cups and mini-whiteboards, and the pupils into doing 15 minutes of exercise in the gym each day before lessons. It was entertaining enough, and the Times TV reviewer called it "utterly gripping", but it all seemed a bit gimmicky.
As another reviewer observed, Wiliam came over as a man with a box of unrelated tricks. WiliamArticle.pdf. Tlc.doc. Google Drive Viewer. Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration. Quality & Strategy. Quality & Strategy. Quality & Strategy. Quality & Strategy. Quality & Strategy. Evaluating and Improving our Practice: A Paradigm Shift. Everything we think we know is up for grabs.. Is this an Einstein quote?
No. In the last week, a series of events and meetings at my school signalled collectively that we’ve turned a corner with our view of some key processes. How we evaluate and improve the quality of teaching overall.The role of lesson observationsThe way we regard our action research activities as a feature of self-evaluation and CPD within a broader evidence-based professional culture The major changes in our thinking include the following: To some extent, these changes have been developing at KEGS for some time. Economics AS Lesson Study in action. As I outline in this post ‘How I do know how good my teachers are? Well, things are changing. Interestingly, during the week I had a tutorial session with one of my Y13 students, discussing Thomas Kuhn’s ideas about scientific revolutions and their relevance in the 21st century.
These are the events last week: Monday SLT meeting : We decided to abandon grading of lessons. Llaborative Inquiry in Practice: Action, Reflection, and Making Meaning. Evaluating and Improving our Practice: A Paradigm Shift. End graded observations: this year’s brain gym, and the gorilla in the classroom. Hidden in plain sight Research is powerful.
It can chime with your intuition, or shatter preconceptions. Like when half of all observers in an experiment to count passes of the ball, failed to spot a gorilla enter the game. On Monday 13th January, Professor Rob Coe gave a speech at an event co-hosted by the Teacher Development Trust on lesson observations in English schools. It was utterly shattering in its implications for school leaders. Ben Goldacre in Bad Science demolished brain gym as a widely but uncritically adopted fad, an unscientific and useless intervention. Professor Coe’s collation of the research suggests it is graded observations. Here are Professor Coe’s killer stats: if a lesson is judged outstanding, the probability that a second observer would give a different judgment is up to 78% if a lesson is judged inadequate, the probability that a second observer would give a different rating is 90%.
Graded observations: the gorilla in the classroom So what do we do about it? CamSTAR: Research as CPD: CPD as Research. One of the key things that first attracted me to KEGS was the concept of the ‘research-engaged learning community’. Although it has been articulated and organised in different ways over the years, we have always held the view that teachers should be both engaged with research and engaged in research as part of the CPD (continuing professional development) process. Teaching and learning is complex and, as professional learners, we need to participate in the process of finding out what works. Among our CPD processes at KEGS we have a number of avenues for engaging in research.
Every member of staff is involved in a Teaching and Learning Workshop. The results of our work last year have been recorded in my post about the ‘market place CPD‘ finale and in the lastest issue of our publication Learning Lessons: The KEGS Research Publication This involves staff meeting at various points in the year in self-selected groupings to pursue an area of mutual interest. The CamSTAR Website Like this: