Tell Us What To Think

The last few years have been transformational for education in many ways. From certain perspectives, such as funding and accountability pressures, things have become pretty dire with only a few people who seem to be very well-connected with those in power arguing that we are better off in this regard than we ever were and that everyone should just jolly well crack on and stop complaining. In other areas, however, things have really taken off in a positive manner and perhaps the obvious improvement that the educational sector has made is teachers being much more well-versed in terms of recent research into all things educational and actually using some of what has been championed on social media and during conferences to improve their professional practice. Research into how things work best in schools, I should say from the outset, is clearly a good thing; I can’t personally see why anyone who works in education would not want to make continuous professional improvements. What I do have a bit of a problem with, however, is how some of the research seems to be favoured with absolute certainty by an obvious high-profile educational elite whilst other aspects that may well also be of use to teachers everywhere is belittled and derided at what seems like every opportunity. What’s worse, this polarised stance of this stuff is good and this stuff isn’t, which has caused and will undoubtedly continue to cause a great deal of division within the profession, appears also to be used to push a political agenda of what education should look like and how schools should function. In some cases, and in particular during a recently published open letter to the latest version of the government’s education select committee by a colleague who I once sort of knew professionally (we were both head teachers in the same town for a brief time although I only remember really ever speaking to him on one occasion) it is even made strikingly clear what research we should pore over and which we should pour down the toilet: “Why Knowledge Matters by E.D. Hirsch, Making Good Progress by Daisy Christodoulou and Tom Bennett’s Creating A Culture,” are good, he clarified, before helpfully reminding us that “You can also immunise yourself against the well-meaning but damaging ideas that abound in child-development circles like ‘attachment theory’ and ‘trauma-informed practice.’” The point, surely, of research is to explore all avenues and to keep an open mind, wherever possible; that in this instance we are told to only look at certain elements and to outright ignore others makes, in my opinion, an absolute mockery of what this hugely valuable recent upsurge in wanting to use research to inform best practice is all about. It would also appear, having done some research of my own, that I am not the only one who feels that we are perhaps aligning ourselves a little too quickly with certain kinds of evidence and dismissing other potential alternatives, as Dr Phil Lambert from the Australian College of Educators has pointed out thus: “But evidence is not as straightforward as some might imply. Like all knowledge, evidence is socially constructed, context dependent and highly contested. Too often ‘evidence-based’ policy has involved limiting rather than broadening alternatives, privileging particular forms of evidence over others, and narrowing consultative processes. It is more about whose evidence is valued, and for what underlying purpose, than employing an ‘evidence-based’ approach to policy making. Don’t get me wrong: it’s essential that policy and practice are based on solid evidence. But too often only half the picture is revealed. Either evidence is sought to justify an existing preferred position, or the complexities of teaching and learning are glossed over in favour of an ‘evidence-based’ silver bullet.’”

 

I may, in writing this blog (should anyone actually read it!), be open to accusations of being an educational conspiracy theorist, such is the fairly typical response of anyone who is ever suggested to be actively pushing the agenda or promoting the policy of a government who really have, let’s be honest, made it clear that schools should be run with a certain Etonian vibe and that any excuses that vulnerable students may present about inabilities to learn are simply examples of everything that is wrong with the bedraggled and socially immobile working classes. But perhaps the most obvious indicator that our current government is forcibly pushing their agenda at every turn is just how politicised Ofsted, who are supposed to be a neutral regulator and not an enforcer of DfE policy, has become. The most recently published Ofsted inspection framework, for example, openly makes reference to the knowledge curriculum elements of educational research (which, interestingly, would fit rather snugly with the this is good and this isn’t parts of the open letter alluded to earlier) and states that inspectors will be looking for implementation of these ideas when they visit schools. This, quite frankly, should not be the role of a governmental watchdog; they should be checking the quality of schools and not telling them what research findings they need to be adhering closely to. Steve Munby, in a recent blog posted on the Headteachers’ Roundtable site, noted the following: “Why has a regulator become so powerful? Would famous writers for television look to Ofcom in order to make their programme outstanding? Of course not. They would take into account the basic requirements of the regulator, but they would look elsewhere for their ideas. Nor should schools look to Ofsted for their inspiration. Like Ofcom, most regulators set out the required standards that providers have to meet; they don’t then go on to grade the quality of that provision.” Steve Munby, of course, should any further proof of governmental agendas be needed, is a former CEO of the National College who left this post when the Conservatives gained power via a coalition arrangement in 2010 because, in his words (and from his book Imperfect Leadership), “I didn’t move in the right circles. I was not sufficiently ‘on message’”. The message being, in case you weren’t sure, that all schools, and therefore all teachers and school leaders, should be restricted to a certain set of ideas with all those who choose a different path rewarded with incredibly damaging inspection grades.

 

Once you’ve been a teacher or a school leader for a while (24 years and counting, yikes!) you realise that we have a tendency, like the character in Life Of Brian who claimed that the titular character was indeed the Messiah because “I should know, I’ve followed a few!”, we tend to get attached perhaps a little too quickly to whatever the latest thing is that somebody has published. Learning Styles, Thinking Hats and Bloom’s Taxonomy, for example, were not only everywhere at one point in my career but teachers were also actually judged against how well they were implementing these ideas in their classrooms. Those who didn’t cater for kinaesthetic or visual learners in their lessons were scolded by leaders who hadn’t heard of such concepts only a couple of terms previously but who now believed, with all the conviction of a modern-day knowledge-curriculum enthusiast, that it was a form of educational heresy to have not provided a hands-on task for the grinning student at the back of the room who probably wondered what the hell the lunatics in front of him were arguing about. Findings change over time and we almost always realise eventually that at least some of the new ideas that we followed blindly because someone else who looked and sounded quite important told us to follow actually weren’t that crucial to success after all. I’m not stating, to be clear, that we should just ignore new initiatives or research, but rather that a healthy pinch of salt should be taken each time someone announces loudly that they’ve found the thing that we should have been doing all along. Discovering new ideas is brilliant and there are so many educational books – of varying stances – that have been published over the years (Mary Myatt’s The Curriculum: From Gallimaufry to Coherence, Paul Dix’s When The Adults Change, Everything Changes and Tait Coles’ Never Mind The Inspectors, Here’s Punk Learning, to name but some) which have genuinely impacted my own practice for the better and, I suspect, what goes on in many other schools as well. But, and I probably can’t emphasise this enough, we shouldn’t just accept everything that everyone tells us – even if they are in a position of authority. It really is a nonsense if a colleague in the teaching profession, no matter how much of a big name they might be, claims to have reduced qualitative things such as humans and teaching into very neatly packaged numerical proxies which indicate how things must be done from now on. Schools, and dare I say it, life itself, just doesn’t work as simplistically as that and all research needs to be considered with context and intent in mind. Indeed, it may even be worth noting at this stage that the most recent research into school funding, which was conducted by Ofsted itself, has been dismissed by their usually in-cahoots colleagues at the DfE for being “based on a very small and unrepresentative sample.” If there has ever been a clearer indication than this spat that educational research is currently used for political means then I have yet to see it, to be honest. Research findings also often represent a place in time rather than a final position on something and there have been many well-documented examples of things that some very powerful people in our society have looked into and found out which we have subsequently realised are a load of bollocks, to be frank. Bill Bryson, for example, notes in his book At Home that “As late as 1878 the British Medical Journal was able to run a spirited and protracted correspondence on whether a menstruating woman’s touch could spoil a ham.” Not quite the belief that all corridors should be silent or that cognitive overload is what gets in the way of committing facts to long-term memory, admittedly, but I would guess that many educated people at the time were nodding smilingly along to what was pushed then in the same way that others are happily just going along with everything now. In one hundred and fifty years from now, it could be that educationalists are looking back at (the best of?) what is presently being thought, said and done in schools as being as interesting as what those in healthcare might think when they read the comment above about what was held to be true during the period (sorry!) when we wondered whether menstruation may be linked with food hygiene. Or it may not, and that’s kind of my point. We need to keep an open mind and it would be ridiculous if we were continue to accept that it’s ok to be told what to think.

 

There is plenty of room in education for different ideas and there is certainly something to be said about professional experience being a useful tool for teachers and school leaders to use whenever they are trying to get on with their jobs as well as they can. It’s not just a case, as Tom Sherrington has noted in a recent blog of leaders running their schools via “gut-instinct”, but rather experienced professionals who have performed their roles for a long time knowing what works best in their context. Indeed, it is possible for personal experience and external research findings to coexist in either an individual’s mind or in a particular setting with certain elements of recently published work used to secure improvements and others deemed to be perhaps not right for where they are. The oft-repeated refrain of but research shows us that shouldn’t be something that sends leaders into a panic about whether or not what they’ve been doing well for a while should be instantly binned in favour of something that fits a different agenda altogether. Leaders should carefully consider what is right for their school and bear in mind the impact that adherence to what may be short-term fads could have; your own experience, knowledge and understanding of how your school works is just as important as what somebody who has never been to your school has just written and everyone else seems to be congratulating them about. Our professional diet of ideas and influences should be varied in the same way that our food and drink intake is (seriously, who would only eat one kind of food?!) and we should be brave enough to stand up for what we believe to be right for the young people in our care, without feeling like we need to resort to any name-calling on social media, of course! We were all told, I am sure, as kids to not just do what our friends told us to do so it seems rather odd to me that as adults and as professionals we are suddenly so desperate to be seen be towing the party line of what kind of educational research is acceptable in schools.