​I have read many pieces over the years about how gaming might be used as a pedagogical tool in teaching. Today, I want to turn this on its head. I think new teachers can use gaming, or rather the principles behind gaming, as a mirror to reveal some aspects of effective teaching.

Let me explain a bit further. All games, at some level, have to teach their players how to play and be successful in the game world. Once upon a time, this was done with weighty manuals (Civilization 2 had a manual spanning 200 pages when I got that in 1996), but now the teaching aspects of games tend to be embedded in the gameplay. Although games are only ever going to be a proxy for classroom teaching, I do think there are some essential principles followed by the best games, which make their ‘teaching’ elements effective. I call these the “Nintendo Principles”, after the company who, according to Metacritic, have made 5 of the top 10 games of the last 20 years.

These ‘Nintendo Principles’ are perfectly illustrated in the most recent release from the Japanese game studio, the Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. The game follows an ‘open world’ approach, meaning that players are thrown in with very little preamble, and can pursue their own path through the game. So far, so progressive. In all honesty, I am not recommending an ‘open world’ approach to teaching, curriculum is too important, but because of its structure, the Legend of Zelda has to do almost all of its ‘teaching’ in game, whilst ensuring there is a good balance of challenge and reward. My contention is that these ‘Nintendo Principles’ are comparable to the fundamentals of good classroom teaching and provide a useful starting point for new teachers to consider their practice. They are also principles which pupils will be aware of, either implicitly or explicitly.

Principle 1: Challenge is Important to Motivation
​Video games producers have a direct interest in ensuring their games hit the right level of challenge. For producers, getting this spot on means more interest, greater longevity, and the prospect of better reviews and critical acclaim. In most adventure games, challenge is linked to story progression (another powerful tool), but it might also be connected to collecting a range of items, achieving certain goals in a number of areas etc.

In my last two blogs, I explored some of the problems which have arisen from a limited engagement with historical interpretations and a general fear of talking about historical truth. In this final part of the series, I hope to offer some tried and tested classroom approaches which might help students build a better understanding of the provisional nature of historical claims, whilst not going down the rocky road of vague relativism.
​
Tackling the issue of oversimplification
To prevent students from falling back to a lazy cynicism about historical interpretations, I like to use the following approach which I term the “IMA” approach to unpicking interpretations. This works best when students are asked to read extended extracts from historians, or even whole articles. It certainly would not work with tiny gobbets. In essence, the process involves: 

In my last blog, I spent some time explaining why I think we still have a long way to go in teaching students how to engage fully with historical interpretations, and not simply dismissing views on the grounds of an historian’s motive. Today I want to deal with a second key aspect of helping children to become better critical readers both in history, and more broadly, namely historical truth.

Putting truth back into history
I fear we spend too little time talking about historical truth in schools. This is because the idea of historical truth has become immensely unpopular. Post-modernists like Jenkins have argued that history has no objective truth, and that to pretend otherwise is a dangerous fallacy. Indeed, Jenkins (1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2009) suggests that all history writing is a battle for different groups to construct their own histories in their own self-interest. Taking this to its extreme, he even made the case for the removal of the study of history altogether (Jenkins, 1999, 2009). To my mind, this rejection of the possibility of historical truth is a dangerous stance to take, now more than ever, and one which prevents our students from being properly critical of different truth-claims.

Just a short blog to thank all of you who attended my session at TFSI yesterday. As promised I am uploading the session resources here for you to download. Please do have a browse around the rest of the site whilst you are here. There are lots of links to blogs on progress, progression, second-order concepts and substantive knowledge in the blog bar on the right.

Alex

Blog posts which may be of particular interest:

• Progress & progression - special issue of Teaching History
• Making progress in understanding progression: a blog series
• Dealing with GCSE grades replacing NC Levels: advice
• An example of task-specific assessments and mark schemes
• ​Planning for the new History GCSE: making it more complex to make it more coherent
• Trainees and NQTs: The first rule of History Club...
• On planning for substantive knowledge development: HERE and HERE
  
• Top tips to make learning stick and more HERE
• The importance of subject knowledge and being more than "two pages ahead"
• Flight paths, GCSE grades and the problems of assessment post-levels
  
• Some thoughts on planning a unit on the Normans
• Some thoughts on planning a Reformation unit

I have long been a fan of Tom Bennett’s no nonsense approach to behaviour management. I have recommended Bennett’s blog many times to trainees and NQTs nervous about expectations in the classroom (as you will see from these pages). As such, there are many things I like about the ITT behaviour report (one of the long-awaited responses to the Carter review) which was published on Wednesday:

• I think it is good for trainees to learn about classroom routines at uni as well as at school (I can’t think of many providers who won’t cover this, although SD/SCITT courses may use their own particular school approaches which might be accused of lacking breadth).
• I think it is a great idea for trainees to have considered how they might respond effectively to common misbehaviour or issues in the classroom (again this is covered through observations of experienced teachers, discussions of approaches to behaviour management, use of videos etc.)
• I think it is good for trainees to be aware of the importance of relationships with students (again this is covered and dealt with in our course and certainly by the schools we partner with. Of course things break down more when schools have their own ideas about those relationships which jar with university input eg. When schools allow children to take a time-out by their own choice, or when pupils can ‘appeal’ a teacher’s sanction.
• I think it is very important for trainees to get support with behaviour management. This does however need to come from the most credible sources – often this means in schools.
• I love the idea that trainees should have to observe people with excellent behaviour management – behaviour experts. However I also feel that schools tend to define these as the people who don’t have behaviour problems. Far more useful might be to observe a teacher for whom behaviour is an effort, but who does not let their standards slip and deals with issues. The risk with the “behaviour expert” approach is that it becomes all about personalities and those behaviour demagogues which all schools have.
• I think it can be a powerful tool when trainees video and watch their lessons critically.

​So far, so vanilla. Yet I also feel there are a number of fundamental issues with the approaches suggested by Bennett and his team. The following points are very much a response to the report and to Tom's blog "Let's fix this together" published today.

Just wanted to say a huge than you to people who attended my (rather history focused) talk on life after levels at ResearchEd today. I am posting the powerpoint and links to other useful resources on this blog post. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss further.

• ​Progression in history -a support pack
• Progress & progression - special issue of Teaching History
  
• Making progress in understanding progression: a blog series
  
• Dealing with GCSE grades replacing NC Levels: advice
  
• Example task-specific assessments
  

​I have also uploaded my notes from two other sessions, in case you missed them:

• ​Peter Henderson from the EEF on effective marking
• ​Philippa Cordingley from CUREE onwhat makes an exceptional school (this is particularly interesting)

Or to give this it’s fuller title: “Shackled to a corpse by hands and feet, tied to a 50 tonne block made of GCSE specifications, in a sea of indifference, blinded by the sea-spray of accountability, with a guy sat in a boat asking why we are not swimming better: Why can’t we make progress in our understanding of progression?” To be honest, if you want the short version and have a bit of imagination, you can stop reading right there.

I will warn you now, this is a long post. But then again, progression is a complex subject…or rather it is a subject which has been made complex. Please bear with me though, because I think this is fundamental!

If you have not yet read my “primers” on progression, you may wish to do so now.

• PRIMER: The problem with linear progression models
  
• PRIMER: Research-based progression models.
  

If you are already familiar with the two aspects above then please feel free to read on...

Context
Over the last week or so I have been marking PGCE trainees’ assessments on planning for progression in history. As I have done this, I have found myself returning to a common theme in my comments; namely that trainees first need to consider WHAT they want pupils to get better at before they start considering HOW they want to achieve this. Where trainees did focus on the substance of history, there was either too much generic focus on the development of historical “skills” and processes (and issue which I will deal with later), or too much time spent on discussing knowledge acquisition and aggregation with little sense of how this contributed to overall historical progression. Knowledge acquisition certainly is a type of progress, but I would argue is insufficient to count for all progression in history. In essence, trainees have found themselves wrestling with history’s twin goals of developing pupils’ knowledge as well as their second-order modes of thinking. Too often they fell down the gap in between.

Interestingly, these confusions were much less evident in work produced by maths trainees. This may be because the maths curriculum specifies a series of substantive concepts for students to master. For example, in understanding algebra, students are asked to “simplify and manipulate algebraic expressions”, to “model situations or procedures by translating them into algebraic expressions”, or “use algebraic methods to solve linear equations in 1 variable” (DfE, 2013, p. 6). As such, maths teachers can help pupils progress to more powerful ideas about maths through a clear content focus. Maths does still have its unifying second-order concepts, “select and use appropriate calculation strategies to solve increasingly complex problems” for example (DfE, 2013, p. 4), but progression in these is can be tied to precise curriculum content. To be fair, this does also come unstuck, as pupils failed to use their second-order ability to apply maths in context in the “Hannah’s Sweets” controversy last year!

A very real confusion
In many ways, the confusion about progression is at the heart of history teaching more generally. Indeed, the recent book "New Directions in Assessing Historical Thinking" (Ercikan & Seixas, 2015) suggests that there are vastly different approaches to understanding historical progression both internationally and within countries and states. This is certainly true of history education in England. There are many reasons for this:

Over the last two days I have been writing an account of what happened during one of the most stressful school trip experiences of my teaching career. Yesterday I focused on the challenge of keeping calm and relinquishing some aspects on control. In this final blog I hope to look at those areas where the team and I were able to play a more active role in events. 

Working with support 
​As I have already noted, one of the most amazing parts of the whole experience was just how co-ordinated the emergency response was. As soon as we had established the condition of students in each of the seven hospitals I endeavoured to speak with each of the representatives from the emergency response teams: Red Cross, Police, Coastguard, Public Health, Youth Hostel and so on. In doing this I was able to work out what their remit was and therefore know which aspects of our case were being dealt with effectively. On the first night for example it was clear that our immediate medical needs were being addressed and that the physical needs of food and shelter for the well students were also covered. I was also able to establish that nobody would be checking on the status of students in hospital and of course no-one would be contacting school. We were therefore able to access the hostel’s phones and focus on these tasks, allowing the emergency services to deal with the rest. By midnight we had therefore communicated the situation clearly back to school. 

On the Tuesday, further support was provided by the local police to coordinate returning students to the hostel and booking well students a crossing back to the UK with P&O. Again, this freed up time for staff to see to students’ more immediate needs such as eating breakfast and lunch and getting clothing and other items for them. It also gave us an opportunity to check all students still had their passports and other key documents.  
​
School were of course vital in supporting us. When we lost two members of staff the previous night I requested and was given two support staff who came from England overnight to join us on the Monday. They also brought a car which was extremely helpful in visiting the students.  Again, the choice seemed somewhat overkill at 7pm on Monday but by Tuesday morning I was extremely glad of the extra support.  
The one recurring question I was asked by the emergency staff throughout was what I wanted to happen. We decided early on, after discussions with school, that our main aim was to get students home as soon as possible, as long as this was safe and in their best interests. Therefore, the decisions made by the emergency services helped us to achieve this long term goal. It is well worth considering what your long term goals are for a situation early-on, as this will determine many of your options. One example is that the coach company offered to drive us to a second crossing at Calais. However, as I was not convinced the driver was fit or safe to drive, I opted to spend the night in Belgium. As it turns out, the Calais crossing would have denied us access anyway, but here my overarching imperative for student safety and welfare overrode the possibility of getting them home sooner. It was, in hindsight, the correct call. 

Accepting Your Limits 
As a trip leader I like to be in control of everything. I plan to the nth degree, providing colleagues with detailed itineraries and regular updates throughout the trip. I like to know who is going where and when, and to have a clear chain of responsibility with group leaders reporting back to me. This is how I feel comfortable.  
 
As soon as the ambulances arrived in the port, we were faced very quickly with a key decision: to try and control the whole situation or to relinquish some control and focus on other areas. In this instance there was little time to confirm with school. As more and more students began to fall ill, keeping up with who was being taken away became extremely difficult, especially with diminishing numbers of staff. I was forced to confirm and accept that the paramedics would give me a full list of all the people who had been taken. Once I had been given the assurance that every student would be assigned to a specific hospital and that a list would be given to me, I was able to partially let go and focus on other issues. Throughout the next two hours I continued to liaise with the paramedics and confirmed multiple times that I would get lists. This made communication back to school tricky, as we were unable to provide a definitive list of students for a time, however it was necessary for the emergency crews to complete their jobs effectively, and to ensure that the other students were being looked after. 

With the paramedics working with those who were ill, we shifted our attention to ensuring that students were aware of what was happening and that they did not panic. There were also practical issues to deal with such as access to toilets, stopping children from getting cold, and ensuring that luggage was in the right place to travel on to our hostel for the remainder. Again, having really good support meant that all these issues were dealt with, even to the point of staff collecting errant passports and EHIC cards, something which might have created chaos later.  Eventually I was given the list of students with their associated hospitals. We made multiple copies of this and used it as our master document for all updates. 

The situation was similar once the remaining students were transferred to a local hostel. Fifteen or so Red Cross volunteers helped to register and administer to sick students as they arrived. Remaining staff supported in keeping students calm and getting them to rooms. I ensured I was part of the registration process so that I knew who had arrived in the hostel. I therefore had a clear list of those who were well and based in the hostel and those who were sick and in hospital. Keeping and updating a single copy of these lists proved very important three more students fell ill during registration, requiring two more members of staff be sent to hospitals with them.  

So here is the scenario: You are leading a school group back home after a successful residential visit abroad. As you arrive at the ferry port, forty of your students and four members of staff fall ill. The ferry company refuse to let you travel. What do you do?

Any thoughts? Until recently, I would probably have laughed at such an outlandish proposition as being even vaguely plausible. Still, life brings nothing if not experiences and a good slice of humble pie.  The scenario outlined above is now a staple one for the local authority in its trip leader training and one which I ended up having to manage on the ground. 

Let me say this now, if you are running a school trip and want to choose a country for over half of your students and staff to fall ill, make it Belgium, the emergency response is outstanding! Coordinated services, clear communication, and everyone bending over backwards to be of assistance. When our history battlefields trip party fell victim to an outbreak of illness last week, every single agency we worked with in Belgium was absolutely fantastic. From the staff in the ferry terminal, to paramedics and police, right through to staff in the youth hostel. We could not have asked for more in terms of care and compassion. All of this, coupled with students who dealt bravely with the crisis and the support of my own amazing colleagues, meant that all students were eventually returned home safely. 

For those of you who missed the news headlines, a little extra detail. Recently, I was leading our annual battlefields tour of eighty students and eight staff . It was set to be a 5 day tour of the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme. Days 1 to 3 were brilliant, amazing students and real interest in the history. But on day 4 unexpected problems struck. By 11pm on our final full day in Belgium I had 45 students, 4 staff and 1 driver in 7 hospitals all across northern Belgium.  

Despite the fact we all got home safely, a situation like this is every teacher's worst nightmare! However, the purpose of this blog is not to reflect on the details of what happened, the newspapers have already covered that angle, rather to reflect on the issues that arose for us as teachers during the two days. Hopefully I will be able to offer some thoughts on what helped and hindered us in the process of getting our kids back home.  ​

Well as it turns out, we do talk about History Club...quite a lot actually...my wife suggests possibly too much, though I think not enough! Anyway, today's blog is a follow-up to Toby French's excellent post about the myths of good history teaching. If you have not read it, can I suggest you head over and have a look now. In the blog, French notes how he tries to get a trainee to look beyond the "strategies for engagement" taught to them at university and think more pragmatically about how they might deliver effective history lessons. I thought this would be quite relevant as many trainees begin to think about moving into their new jobs for September.

Reading the blog got me to thinking about my own work with trainees. To be fair they are quite a mixed bunch. Some come in with really clear notions about what learning means and how it might be achieved, some less so. However all come with one unifying feature, a lack of experience. I completely understand French's frustration when he talks about having been told that group work, co-operative learning and teacher facilitation were the ultimate answers to pupil learning. Many of the trainees I have worked with in the past seem to work on a lesson by lesson basis, not really looking at the larger picture. They tend to focus on activity over content and assume that "engaging" means "fun", and that all teacher talk is a bad thing. They look at assessment as a way of showing progress, rather than as a useful teaching tool. These are the rules of History Club for many trainee teachers. What trainees don't yet know, is that these are the rules of Trainee History Club...

Now I completely understand why universities have to equip their students with all of these beliefs. A single year is really not enough to become a good teacher. Hell ten years is barely adequate in my view! Universities therefore need to imbue their charges with a wide range of approaches to teaching, to allow them to deal with an even wider range of schools and students. Universities need to provide their NQTs with the milk needed to survive their infancy in teaching. This means quick ways to getting classes engaged and simple solutions to delivering content after only a few weeks of training. We all need to start somewhere, and the best universities couple this with excellent pedagogical training as well (the problem of poor training will if anything become worse as universities are cut off from the training programmes, as Rich Kennet has written about before.) The real issue with this form of training comes when such teachers are not weaned off this diet and into more complex understandings of their professional role. The best students should be moving beyond the "activity" approach to teaching within their first few months, others may take a bit longer, but all need to make this move. 

Well it seems Mr Hunt is in the firing line on Twitter once again for an article posted on the Sunday Times suggesting that, if Labour does manage to solve their infighting and get elected, as education secretary, he will bring in a kind of teaching MOT. Now this is not an entirely fresh piece of news. Indeed, as I rolled my eyes at the outcry and started thinking about my blog, I stumbled across this piece I wrote in January on the exact same theme! Now, to save you from my usual blog length, I will not repeat anything I have already said, but I do want to reiterate my call to get beyond the rhetoric around licensing teachers and consider the potential for positive impact.

This is really a follow-up to my post a week or so ago in which I tried to provide a set of resources for use with students based on Make it Stick. Here I am uploading a mostly-finalised 3 lesson sequence which I plan to use with students in Key Stage 4 and 5 in the run up to mock exams. If you do use the resource, please let me know how you found it. I have added some extensive notes to the slides and would like to credit Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel for their inspiration in the book.

The AndAllThat.co.uk teacher blog is moving from WordPress onto the main website. From now on you will find non-topic related content here. 

You can still access the archives from the WordPress site by visiting http://andallthatweb.wordpress.com . I will endeavour to transfer the content over the next few months.

Mr F