This is just a short blog on the back of discussions I had yesterday evening about Teaching and Learning policies in secondary schools. I posted out some extracts from T&L policies from a couple of different schools, which (in my view): manage to place students at the heart of the teaching experience; set out broad principles for why teaching is important; promote wider aspects of good teaching; and are not overly prescriptive in terms of pedagogy.
The reaction to this post was very interesting. On the one hand, the examples got a handful of "likes" but there was quite a lot of criticism too:
This got me to thinking about T&L policies more broadly, so I posted a survey asking people to give some views on them:
Although it is only a very small sample, I was interested to note that the vast majority of schools seem to have a T&L policy, but that it only guides teaching in around a third of cases. This in turn brings up the broader questions of this piece:
1) What should a good T&L policy do if it is going to be followed? 2) Why do we create T&L policies if nobody looks at them? 3) Should schools be criticised if they set T&L policies but then don't enforce them or follow them up? I am going to endeavour to offer my own embryonic thoughts, but I am very interested in what others think of this. What should a T&L policy do? There is a semantic question here about whether or not policies need to be enforceable. I had an interesting discussion to this end with Michael Fordham. For my part, I think having a broad set of principles which guides the teaching and learning in a school is no bad thing, as long as those principles allow enough latitude for teachers to teach their subject using appropriate pegadogies. Good T&L policies for me do not stipulate whether group work is allowed or not, or that iPads must be used in all lessons - this I fear is counterproductive. By and large, I think the policy extracts below achieve this (if they are adhered to)
Therefore, I suppose my view would be that wider T&L principles, which encompass issues of why we teach, and the end goals of our efforts, make more sense than more enforceable pedagogical "how" directives. Of course, Toby French raised the valid point that reducing professional freedoms might lead to more effective teaching overall...
As you can see in the extracts below, which are taken from T&L policies (or pronouncements) from different ends of the educational spectrum, dictating pedagogy in a T&L policy puts excessive focus on the "how" of teaching, without considering the subject specific "what". The problem with both of these is that they risk impinging on subject specific decisions. In the first extract, I might be forced for example to introduce unnecessary "teaching styles" into a topic best suited to a single mode of delivery. In history, I might be forced to teach the League of Nations and its constitution through independent discovery, or group presentation, when (in my experience) direct teaching and quizzing of the nuances as a whole class works better. Equally the second extract, would prevents me from doing a group discussion to develop students' arguments on why the Soviet state collapsed in 1991, a mainstay of my A Level teaching. As ever, the subject specific tends to suffer at the hands of the generic when we don't consider the interplay carefully.
My argument relating to this is that what determines effective pedagogy has to come from wider educational research, but crucially from subject specific understandings of how curriculum and pedagogy connect. It would therefore be better addressed at a departmental level, within the broader principles of an accommodating T&L policy (or principle set).
Why create T&L policies? The real question of course is why so many schools seem to spend time creating policies which nobody then reads, or which do not actually guide what happens. It is very interesting that so many T&L policies have exactly the same content, and even phrasing, suggesting that many simply adapt a pre-existing policy for their school. I am genuinely interested in why people think this is. My only thought so far is that there must be some Ofsted demand, or people just love writing policy documents. But even then, what does it say about a school if they have a policy which nobody follows? This brings me neatly on to my next point... Should schools be criticised for having policies they do not follow? As ever, this is more nuanced than it first appears. Clearly all policies undergo review and modification over time. However, if a school creates a policy (whether good or bad) with no thought or intention of enforcing it, then it begs questions about appropriate use of time, and raises even bigger questions about which other policies are there just for show. Given the documentary focus of Ofsted, surely it is important for schools to be seen to be promoting the policies they share with staff, students and parents? This brings me back to the point that good T&L policies should therefore be broad enough to allow for subject specific pedagogical breadth, and rooted clearly in educational aims which all staff, students, and parents can agree to and support. Anything else seems like a bit of a waste of time... I would be very interested in people's thoughts on this. Please do share your own T&L policies. Comments welcome via the form below or Twitter @apf102 or @andallthatweb * First policy sets taken from HERE and HERE; second sets come from HERE and HERE
2 Comments
John Etty
1/6/2018 06:27:50 am
Very interesting post - thanks! Rather than a T&L policy, I'm working on a T&L staff survey. The idea is to offer staff an opportunity to have a share in creating a picture of what T&L actually looks like in my school. I don't want a T&L policy to be the outcome of this process - I hope it will be more useful as a starting point for discussion about how to improve T&L. I haven't found any models to follow, so I'm constructing my own. In order to avoid wasting my time (as you suggest in your piece) I'm keen to make sure that the survey doesn't betray any biases or imply that certain answers are more correct than others. Any advice on what such a survey should include?
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Alex Ford
1/6/2018 08:06:24 am
This sounds like an interesting approach. I imagine you might get a very broad range of responses. For me I think the key is to stay at a high level. What is school trying to achieve in the long term? How will you know if you have been successful? The micro aspects of how we teach are a bit more of a distraction I think. Would be interested to know how you get on.
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