This post is linked to a session at PedagooHampshire in September, and is offered as a start point for discussion.

The school holidays area upon us and across the country, the opportunity will be taken to share experiences with children.
A rite of passage can appear to be learning to ride a bike and that I want to take as my analogy for this post, especially as this week sees the end of the Tour de France, with the Vuelta in a couple of weeks, the Olympics a few weeks later, showcasing the pinnacle of the rider ability.

In thinking about riding a bicycle, I am reminded of the Chinese proverb; Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll remember. Involve me, I’ll understand.

You probably wouldn’t try to teach a child to ride a bike by sitting them down and just talking to them about it. It is more likely that they are encouraged onto the seat, with or without stabilisers, with an adult holding them steady and walking along beside them, giving encouragement and advice in equal measure, leading to a point where some kind of alchemy tells the adult to let go and let the child free. At which point they quite often fall off. They are encouraged back onto the bike and offered some further support while they gain a little more confidence, with the adult slightly releasing their hold.
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Once the adult is confident that the child is capable, they encourage some independent practice and refinement of technique. Eventually they have sufficient competence to be allowed to ride alone without supervision or support. They are still likely to have incidents, but adult judgement about their decision making skills is likely to be a determining factor in an agreement that they can “go it alone”.

At every stage of our lives, we are faced with novel situations, some of our own choosing, when we are returned the phase of being a learner, or less independent that we thought.  New job, new child, new technology, problem with heating, plumbing, car, health, when we may have to call on expertise outside our own.

A particular example for me was joining the beginner guitar class at a school in my early career and literally starting from scratch. Motivation being high, I practiced as required and a bit more for good measure and managed to learn the seven chords with which I was able to accompany a number of simple, but enjoyable songs for children. Adding a few more over time extended the repertoire and as a head, several years later, I was then happy to take both Key Stages for a singing half hour to enable the staff to meet as a group.

Reading the excellent Tom Sherrington http://headguruteacher.com/2013/01/06/behaviour-management-a-bill-rogers-top-10/ writing about a part of his early career, where he describes feelings akin to inadequacy, echoing with each move I made as a teacher. While confident in my ability to teach, there was always a period of acclimatisation before comfort in the context settled in.
 
We have phrases like “fish out of water” and “out of his/her depth” to describe these feelings at an extreme. As we are at the beginning of a holiday with significant staff change usual for September, many teachers will feel the same. They may be seen as “master” teachers, but may well experience insecurity.

Apprenticeship is a teaching method used by educators to teach students how to solve problems, understand tasks, perform specific tasks, and deal with difficult situations (Collins, Brown, and Newman 1989).

The phases of apprenticeship as articulated by Hansman (Hansman, C.A. Context-based adult learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 89, 43-51.2001) are:-

1)      Modelling. Showing the bigger picture to demonstrate both the skills and processes. Reflection

2)      Approximating. Trial and error phase, copying the original. Reflection.

3)      Fading. The master “fades” as the student tries more alone. Reflection.

4)      Self-directed learning. Learning by doing. Finding the points where reference to master or other source is necessary. Reflection and refinement.

5)      Generalising. Bringing to bear the experiences from a range of sources to make personal use of a broad range of skills and knowledge. Reflection, refinement and creativity.

I once worked with a PE inspector who used a very simple mantra that summed this up as whole-part-whole, with specific skills being added and practiced before being put back to whole game. Modelling came from within the group, feedback from the participant observer/coach. Time was given to reflection, evaluation and paired challenge.

According to Pratt (Pratt, D.D. (1998) Five perspectives on teaching in adult and higher education. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company), successful development through apprenticeship involves three key factors, the learning process must be active, social, and authentic. All three interlink to ensure that students understand the processes within which they are required to work, in real world situations. They can see the point of what they are doing.

Master synonyms include pedagogue, skilled person, expert, guru, leader, tutor, guide, mentor and also more dominant words such as boss, captain, chief, commander. The first group is more likely to describe teachers in the classroom, but there are some whose nature takes them more towards the latter group.

Apprentice synonyms include learner, novice, disciple, pupil, with disciple suggesting discipline, external and self-imposed.

So how does this all help learning and teaching?

We need to have a clear picture of where the learning is going and share it (whole picture), make activities enjoyable, challenging and social where possible (context), engage fully within the process (including purposeful observation) and tweak as necessary giving supportive feedback, review at different points to keep a steer on the direction of travel.

We all, at some stage, have the need to look something up, ask a friend or colleague, when we get to a point where we are “stuck” with an idea. Apprenticeship offers the potential for this to happen. Design and technology tasks are well suited to this end, as they offer the chance to identify the “resource tasks” to prepare for “capability tasks”, where the skills are developed within projects. Other subjects have their equivalents.

The principle is, “You need this to be able to do that”, and that probably sums up a lot of education, the use and application of a sequence of skills or capabilities that define a subject. (See current National Curriculum for examples).The problem is often that the skills are identified and taught outside a useful context, so in the absence of application, the skill falls into disuse, or they are sequentially taught with an assumption that the child will make the necessary links, whereas, in reality, apart from a few who can do so, it is likely that links with prior learning and associated ideas need to be made overt.

The hallmark of good education is the progressive building of capacity, coupled with the learner’s developing confidence to tackle problems as they are highlighted.
 
So, if I was looking for an alternative to mastery, I’d prefer capable, competent and independently use and apply, to allow for progressive achievement. Teachers don’t need to be nose blowers, shoe tie-ers and dressers after PE for ever. You can do this for yourself is an important statement.

Will any female readers please indulge me a little?

When will I, will I be famous? I can’t answer, I can’t answer that... so sang Bros, in 1987, and, living in a house with two teenage daughters singing along, the tune and the words stuck.

The relative simplicity of the question came to mind when the word mastery entered a recent conversation; it seems to crop up in different scenarios. A visit to the city of Limoges, in central France took in a trip to a museum dedicated to the development of master craftsmen and women in a wide range of fields, engineering, plumbing, stone masonry, timber and glass working among many others. The clear route through apprenticeship to mastery status, was demonstrated through the creation of miniature macquettes, miniature versions of potentially larger projects. These had to be created by the aspirant, to be judged by their superiors to apply for entry into the upper circles and only then could they call themselves master craftsmen and women.

Apprenticeship is seen, in France, as an equivalent route to a successful life, in a system that does cream off particular students into different universities. The artisan is seen as someone of value, in part because the public know that they have been fully trained, know the job and are skilful. Most people will not be famous, but they will get satisfaction from a job well done. The same cannot be said of the UK, where it can appear that anyone with a bit of DIY background can set themselves up as a jobbing builder. There have been stories of “cowboy builders” during the whole of my life.
 
Equally, it can seem to be the case that non-academic routes through education can be seen as second-rate, something that is unusual across many areas of Europe. These routes can start at Baccalaureate level, with an academic bac, or technical bac. Both can lead to university level study.

​Mastery, to me, implies capabilities, the ability to effectively put the known into practice at a high level a mix of knowledge and skills.
 
I feel that, in a number of areas, I am capable, but would not claim mastery in any particular field. I got quite good as a teacher and then as a head teacher. I am seen as doing a positive job in the range of roles that form my current portfolio. But this is a result of a long career, during which time I held most management roles, subject and pastoral, in Primary education up to headship. I did some periods of extended study, to provide extra insights. I see myself as a Jack of many trades.

Among other things:-

• I can play the guitar; ok, I can strum about ten chords and use this to accompany simple children’s songs.
• I can play the bodhran, the Irish drum and did so in barn dance and demonstration dance group bands, as well as a summer in France, when our ad hoc group reached the finals of the “Truffe de Perigeux”.
• I started as a teacher with an environmental science background, did a post grad certificate to deepen my understanding then a few years later a post grad diploma in Language and Reading development.
• I played a wide range of sports; some to District and County Schools level.
• I enjoy painting and photography. I love being outdoors, exploring the natural world, gardening and doing conservation activities. I can coppice and pollard trees. I can identify a range of trees, flowers, insects and birds.
• I love DIY; there is a special feeling about seeing a project through to successful completion.
• My own life has had more than it’s fair share of trials and tribulations, so I can support pastorally.
• I know some stuff and can use this to help children to learn, by creating situations within which they can learn and I can teach, coach and support as needed.

But, I can never say that I have fully mastered anything. Competence is a positive and confident place to be. I can have a go at a lot of things and do them quite well, in most things, certainly better than the children whom I taught.

There are side issues to the current description of mastery that worry me. An article headline that passed by on my Twitter timeline suggested that differentiation was dead, as mastery was the new buzz word. I’d argue that, as every learner is an individual, any teacher needs to know their learners well, in order to fine tune the necessary support and guidance that enables them to understand and to make progress, with any requisite practice en route.
When the learner, at any age, can see the journey, the point of practice and can enjoy the fruits of their labours, then they can begin to be autonomous learners.

And maybe that would be my preferred word, independent or autonomous, rather than mastery; the ability to use the known in practice, identifying the point where there is a need to know something else and to have the skills to address the shortfall in skill. These skills could be in collaborative endeavour, learning from another, book or internet research, or simply asking someone with the skill to teach it. Apart from anything else, these terms are gender neutral.

With, hopefully, more time available to hone some of the hobby skills and interests, I will, when work stops, take lessons, especially in painting and in music. I will learn from people who have spent a greater part of their lives honing a particular aspect of skill, whether watercolour, acrylics or oils, or possibly a mis-spent youth playing an instrument. I will, happily, become a learner again. There may be areas where any expertise that I have might be of use to another; that will be happily shared.

To my mind, mastery or misstery or mrstery, whatever the title, should not be applied in any form in a school learning environment, especially if it applies to a small group of children, without, yet, clear criteria.

If a child can confidently, competently and independently use and apply learned knowledge and skills in a range of novel situations, appropriate to their age, this can be acknowledged, but a “title” might just be the point where they stop making an effort, as they might think that they know it all. All should be challenged and enabled to aim high, accept the need for effort and to be prepared to learn from each other; they, and we, should acknowledge that we are all learners.

A master learner is not a know-all. They recognise their limitations and also the skills of others which are available to be learned.
The learner mantra should be “I can, but I could do this even better...”
The teacher mantra should be “ I know where you are and where you need to be challenged next…”

Downtime can be mulling time, but it is essential for everyone to have some “me” time. People in education spend their lives giving and there’s never a shortage of takers. So, once the response to whatever the latest Government, school or Governor need is complete and detailed plans and aides-memoire for the autumn are recorded, make time for yourself. Whether walking, cycling, cooking or any other pastime, enjoy yourself, enjoy the people around you and let the mind wander. Try for a period of total immersion in an activity. For a while, in a past life, before Ofsted, I was a member of folk bands, where a three hour ceilidh would provide sufficient immersion to unwind from the week.

I’ll be hoping to do a very bad Monet impression, at least as far as the straw hat is concerned, accompanied by a passable glass of red wine. Paint will from time to time be placed on the canvas, after this first week being spend putting paint n walls and shutters. It’s the thought that counts. The product hopefully, will be pleasing, but the relaxation is the most important element.

Books will be read; the hammock will be used and hopefully will result in extra sleep, or mulling, which for me will be reflecting on this year of school visits for a range of providers and the many positive outcomes, which suggest that personalising (refining) learning is having a significant impact.

Bonnes vacances tous le monde. A la vie simple.

Salut. Santé.   
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As a Secondary school library manager, M enjoys reading and keeping up to date with current literature, to be able to advise children about available books. Annually she creates a list of suggested recent books for feeder schools.

​Here's the 2016 list, books from the past year. 

There was a significant announcement yesterday, 12th July 2016, where the Schools’ Minister, Nick Gibb, announced a £40million budget to embed “Shanghai Maths” into 8000 British Primary schools. This was for textbooks and, we assume, staff training. That this works out at £5000 over apparently four years, or £1250 a year per school, doesn’t seem like a great sum, even on my simple calculations, with training cover somewhere around £170-200 a day.

When I started in teaching, there were sets of textbooks on the shelves; there were dog-eared, scribbled on and torn copies of Alpha and Beta maths. I’ll leave you to guess which were more challenging. The school had introduced Fletcher maths, created by Harold Fletcher. The appropriate teacher’s book for every level, to go with the set of textbooks, was available. The head teacher at the time was also a County advisory teacher for maths, so had good background and also very good access to some of the County inspectors who regularly visited.

A significant aspect of these visits, and the accompanying discussions, was that they would rarely refer to the textbooks, which were a distillation of the underlying concepts that were fully explored within the teacher guides. It was the underlying thinking that mattered, not just getting through the books.

The phenomenon of “getting the books finished” can become a driving force when a textbook is used as the core of a school’s approach to any subject. It means that ensuring coverage trumps children’s understanding, leaving some children with gaps in their learning that they carry into the next phase. This could also now be argued with year based curricula such as we currently have in England.

Mathematics has long been decried as a national need for improvement, and, over the past twenty years, since the National Strategies, has, in many ways become ever narrower in outlook, to become arithmetic, rather than mathematics. Number facility is critical, but the practical aspects of learning can enable the practice and application of number in meaningful ways, leading to broader ideas such as data handling from a real life context.

Reference to the teacher guides for any maths scheme offers insights into the underpinning principles of the mathematics, provides the appropriate vocabulary and avoids the teacher regressing to inappropriate language interpretations which may have derived from their own childhood. Kind teachers can offer metaphors which move a child away from the maths. I can remember as a child being told about the “bottle on the step”, to deal with addition and bridging ten.

Mathematics, to some extent, exists for people to make sense of the need to count things and probably started as some kind of one to one matching system, as a tally or knotting system, allowing herders to keep a track of their flock numbers. Other needs pushed the numbers to a point where groupings, or sets of numbers supported a system of values, based on ten-ness. The incorporation of a zero, from, we are told, Arabic scholars, allowed place values to include the empty set.

Mathematics, as it largely relates to the real world, can be captured within alternative objects, matching one to one, thus allowing groupings for different purposes; 2s,3s,4s,10s, etc. Zoltan Dienes created a multibase system that underpinned the maths curriculum of my second Primary School, again with a County maths advisor as head.

Working from concrete apparatus through drawn models to mental imagery, the children developed a very clear facility with numbers, based on elements such as the function machine idea; capturing the idea of “something happening” to the original number, having passed into the machine. Exploring more challenging ideas with multi-function machines, allowed children to analyse what was going on, so that a 15 times table machine would have three elements, multiply by ten, multiply by five, add the two together. Mental maths was supported by such imagery, but those who needed it could use drawn or concrete imagery. The analytical thinking process was what was important. This was always shared, in a kind of “debrief, or sharing” (I’m sorry, I don’t like the word plenary).

I have to say that this was 1979-82.

Making sense of the development of mathematical thought is an essential precursor to being able to teach it effectively. Counting is not, of itself mathematical. It could be seen as part of mathematical poetry, words that repeat every time one restarts the counting process. Young children can learn the poetry without understanding the concepts. More than, less than, conservation of number, commutative laws, etc, all play a part in the development of understanding.

Young children using multilink for counting need to be moved to more formal systems to be able to explore fully what happens with ten-ness, hundred-ness and so on. Over-reliance on the unitary value of multilink can hinder later thought. Using metre sticks for measuring enables the incorporation of larger numbers, as a carpet of 2 metres 45 centimetres is 245 centimetres long. Children get used to bigger numbers naturally and the “playing with” or rehearsal with numbers is an important means to embed them more firmly.

Mathematics, for most purposes, is a practical skill and should retain that base.

It does become abstract and can incorporate aspects of algebra early, with empty set challenges; () + 6=14, which could be presented as x+6=14, what’s x?

My understanding of Shanghai maths, currently being advocated, is that concrete and mental modelling are central to the process of learning maths, as I have described earlier.

Real understanding, by teachers, should be the baseline for development, so that challenges developed for children are progressive in nature, rather than stand-alone activities, over reasonable timescales, to enable embedding and security. There needs to be reflection of the links between concepts, to be made overt, so that children are not continually learning new things in isolation. The growth and development of the subject should be fundamental elements, layering and revisiting, using earlier experience as the platform for progress, through judicious use of concrete and drawn models. Too often, this style of approach is sidelined for pure number, when understanding, at least of a significant proportion of the class, might be insecure.

So, rather than spend money on textbooks, I’d be an advocate of well-selected apparatus purchase, but with an investment of time in really understanding how the whole is put together and how that impacts on particular year groups, thus creating  a holistic approach to the subject development. This should be repeated regularly, captured in some kind of school handbook and new teachers well-mentored into god ways of working.

Avoid the sparkly worksheets, ban the photocopying of 30 sheets and get children talking maths. Talking allows analysis or diagnosis of need. Heads down over a sheet won’t, unless it is specific to the child.

I can imagine a closure day, or a series of twilights, in the school hall, with apparatus and year-group grids, exploring the use of apparatus in each year group, “passing the baton” to the next year group to explain how they use it. Understanding the whole learning journey also underpins support for children whose learning may be less secure or less complete, ie, those who may have specific learning issues or SEN. This is particularly important in “receiving” schools, who need to have a good awareness of what has gone before, to avoid under-expectation, or to deal with their own over-expectation, leading to “deficit teaching”.

Talk maths, model maths, create lasting images. It’s all in the mind, not in the textbook.

Thinking is free; quality thinking time may need to be bought or allocated. Teaching is a team game. Let's focus on team development, not just the "hero(ine) innovator" maths leader.

Over the past few months, I have been working with a school to explore and enhance their links with parents. This is through the Leading Parent Partnership Award scheme, for which I have been an adviser and assessor for over ten years.

The initial discussion demonstrated a great willingness to embrace the philosophy that engaging with parents has a significant impact across many areas of child, class and school performance. This has been explored over the past fifteen years, with notable reports by Charles Desforges (2003) and the Department for Education and Skills (2007). Links to both reports are at the foot of this blog.

The LPPA has a long track record of working closely with schools, to enhance interaction, tailored to the contextual needs of the school. This must be the reality, as every context has nuanced differences, which need to be accommodated, if the project is to be successful. Some schools already do a great deal and want to have validation of their practice, while others see a need to improve or change the ways in which they interact with parents.
In the summer of 2015, I visited several schools and wrote a blog to capture some of the benefits derived from a close look at parent-school interactions and the impact on the school of relatively simple tweaks to practice.

Three months ago, the visit was a general discussion, based on the school’s initial auditing of the current situation. During the discussion, I offered a couple of relatively simple tweaks; the first was the idea of a “stay on and …” sharing activity, for 15-25 minutes at the beginning or end of the school day, where parents and children actively engage with a joint task, many of them leading into the first lesson of the day. The second was based on an exploration of parent involvement in assemblies. At that point they did not participate.

Arriving at the school for a 9am start, I was whisked around the school to see 1) an assembly that involved a parent audience and 2) several classes, across both infants and juniors, where a large number of parents were involved in active learning with their child. The school had investigated how the parents, staff and children felt about the changes and everyone expressed delight at the impact.

Parents were getting to understand more about how their child’s class was running, staff were able to interact informally with parents, even with some who previously had been seen as “hard to reach”, who had been “encouraged” into school by their children’s invitation. Children’s attendance had improved over that period.
The school is reflecting on the project to date, is looking to distil the essential elements for the autumn term and will be actively pursuing these elements, over a longer timescale, to more fully understand the benefits.

Stay on and… activities

An image that links with a piece of writing; write a set of adjectives to describe elements in the image.
An image that links with the class topic theme. Describe what you can see; what do you know about the image?
Read together, from the current reader.
P4C question; Thunks; General topic question; Moral dilemma; School/class rules…
Play a game; generic; mathematical…
Draw; still life; plants; use pencil, ink, crayon, pastel, charcoal.
Write a short description of a character.
​Solve some maths problems.
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Please add any thoughts through the comment thread.

Charles Desforges http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/18617/Desforges.pdf
DfES file:///C:/Users/Owner/Documents/Documents/LPPA/6937_DFES_Every_Parent_Matters_FINAL_PDF_as_published_130307.pdf