January 19, 2025 • 49 mins
This episode focuses on bridging the gap between educational research and classroom practice. Professor Rob Coe offers insights on effective professional development and the challenges faced by teachers and school leaders. Rob emphasises the importance of making research accessible and actionable to improve teaching quality and student outcomes.
• The journey from teacher to researcher informs Rob’s approach
• Emphasising the role of professional development in educational settings
• Identifying barriers to the implementation of evidence-based practices
• The significance of behaviour change in educational environments
• Measurement as a tool for growth rather than accountability
• Insufficient evidence regarding effective leadership practices
• The enduring importance of foundational teaching principles amidst technological advancements
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast
connecting, developing andempowering educators.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hi everyone.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Teach Middle East
podcast with me, Lisa Grace.
Today I have the distinctpleasure of having Rob Coe on
the podcast with me Now.
If you are from the UK, youmight know who Rob Coe is and
you might be familiar with hiswork.
If you are not, then this is afantastic opportunity to pop
(00:35):
your headphones in and learn alittle bit about what Rob does
and also some of the researchthat he has carried out in
education and how that mightimpact your school and your
classroom.
Rob, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Thank you for having me.
It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Thank you.
So Rob is on this podcast as aprecursor to his appearance at
the Middle East SchoolLeadership Conference on
February 5 and 6.
Well, he's going to be on onFebruary 6 in Dubai.
If you're listening to thispodcast before then, you have to
go and get your ticket, and ifyou're listening to this podcast
afterwards, you missed it.
What's wrong with you?
(01:14):
Okay, now Rob, let's go to alittle bit more about who you
are and the work you currentlydo.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay, okay, yeah, so who am I?
Well, I am what I currently do.
Let's start with that and maybework backwards.
So I'm the Director of Researchand Development at a group
called Evidence-Based Education.
We're a small startup in thenortheast of England and we're
all about trying to helpteachers to understand, engage
(01:45):
with, respond to researchevidence about best practices in
teaching and school leadershipand understanding the teaching
and learning process and so on.
So I would say our main focusis on professional learning for
teachers and school leaders,trying to build expertise in the
system so that people getbetter at what they do.
(02:07):
And I've been at evidence-basededucation for about five or
just over five years, and beforethat I was a professor of
education at Durham Universityand before that I was a teacher,
maths teacher in secondaryschools.
So that's kind of my CV.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I like it.
I'm tempted to talk only aboutyour maths teacher days because
the people who listen here theyknow I like maths teachers.
We do a maths teachersconference, which has now rolled
into a STEM conference, and inmy time in schools I would
always be sitting either withthe design technology teachers
in the staff room or the mathsteachers, because they were like
(02:47):
fun yes, well, they, we, apeculiar group, I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I mean I still I still identify in many ways as a
maths teacher.
I think you know it's anexperience.
I was a teacher, I was inschools for seven years teaching
and, and you know you learn alot in that time and you learn a
lot about well teaching andlearning.
You learn a lot about studentsand how they interact.
You learn a lot about schoolsand what they're like and other
(03:14):
teachers and what the kind ofconstraints are.
And I think because of that myfocus has always been on trying
when was it became a researcher?
Always trying to do researchthat I think I always had the
audience in mind as beingteachers, not specifically math
teachers, but teachers ingeneral, and I am.
(03:36):
I'm actually doing some worknow with the math schools, which
is a group of of post-16schools in eng that are
selecting highly high attainingable mathematicians and really
giving them a focused diet, andyou know that's an interesting
piece of work I think.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What led you to research?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
That's a really good question.
Yeah, so I was a teacher.
I wasn't really.
I mean, you know, people talkabout research evidence and what
did you think about researchevidence when you were a teacher
?
And the answer is I knewnothing about it.
I didn't.
Nobody was really interested init very much.
I did a master's in mathseducation just because I was
(04:19):
interested and I, you know itjust seemed like a good thing to
do, I think relatively easy todo a master's.
And then, because I was doingthat, I got I got a bit more
interested in research and Ithought I'd like to do some more
of this, I think, and so Ithought about maybe doing a PhD.
And you can do degrees likemaster's and PhDs part-time
(04:44):
while you're teaching.
Many teachers do that.
I think it's very, very hard.
I've supervised a lot ofteachers doing Masters and PhDs
and I absolutely have hugerespect for all of them because
you know they're both full-timejobs, basically, and you try and
do two of them at once.
So that's very challenging.
But I was lucky that I had thechance to do a PhD full-time.
(05:06):
So I gave up teaching and myassumption was that I'd come
back into teaching.
You know, I liked the job.
I was enjoying it.
There was nothing.
There was nothing kind ofpushing me out of it.
I did have a question aboutwhere I was going with it.
So I was.
I was a second in department inthe maths department in the
school I was in and I thought,wow, do I want to be a head of
department?
Yeah, maybe do I want to be alike a, an assistant head or a
(05:30):
deputy head?
Don't think I do really.
So I couldn't quite see myselfgoing down that route and
therefore I suppose I was a bitthinking I wonder what the
career progression is next year.
But anyway, I just thought I'vegot an opportunity.
I'm going to do this.
Three years of research.
It's an indulgence.
That's what it was.
(05:50):
It felt like a just a fun timeto wallow around in research for
a few years and my wife wasworking so she could support me.
We didn't have any childrenthen, so it was an opportunity
that I could be unpaid for three, or pretty much unpaid, and I
did my PhD and then I did enjoyit and it led to me applying for
(06:11):
a job in the university whereI'd done my PhD at Durham and
carrying on as a researcher.
That certainly wasn't the planwhen I started on it, but I
really loved research and I justthought this is a great thing
to be able to do.
I really loved research and Ijust thought this is a great
thing to be able to do.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So how has your experience, then, as a
mathematics teacher, how hasthat shaped your approach to
evidence based education,particularly in making research
practical for teachers?
Because we look at the papersand we're like, oh my God, how
do we translate this into theclassroom?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, so I think most academics.
If you ask them who's theaudience for your research,
they'll say other academics.
And that is the way you know.
That's the environment you'rein.
You're writing papers to submitto journals that are read by
other academics at best,actually, because most papers
never, in most academic journalsnever get cited by anyone.
(07:04):
They may get read, but thenliterally the, the, the modal
citation number is zero, themost common number of citations
for academic papers, I know.
So you think, right, well,who's going to read these things
?
You give papers at conferences,you, you interact with other
academics, um, peer review, lotsof other stuff like that.
(07:25):
So that's who your audience isand that's who within the
university system, your career,your status depends on the
esteem that you have within thatacademic community among other
scholars, other academics.
So you're writing papers forother academics.
So you're writing papers forother academics.
And so when you read thoseacademic papers you think, well,
(07:46):
did this person deliberatelymake this incomprehensible, or
was it just a sort of?
Did they not realize that anormal human being couldn't
possibly read this?
And I think that's you know.
You might argue well, if you'restudying quantum physics or
something, ok, members of thepublic are not going to be able
(08:06):
to pick up those journals andmake sense of it, because it is
quite technical and you knowthat would be true in a lot of
disciplines.
But in a discipline likeeducation, which is, if it
matters at all, it mattersbecause it impacts on people's
lives.
Children in school, students,teachers, we all interact with
education every member ofsociety pretty much in some way.
(08:28):
So it's a practical, it's anapplied discipline and therefore
and not all academics ineducation departments in
universities think that, ofcourse some of them are, you
know, they're philosophers ofeducation or they're interested
in sociology or other issuesthey're not specifically looking
, they're trying to build theory, they're trying to build
(08:50):
understanding, they're notlooking for practical
applications.
So not everybody's thinkingthat way, but I always was.
So why not try and write thingsthat people could actually
understand?
You know, that's a goodchallenge, I think.
Think that anyone should whodoesn't have that technical
knowledge.
And it's difficult becausesometimes, particularly if
you're doing, let's say, somequantitative analysis I mean you
(09:13):
know there is technical stuffthere and you can't it becomes
very difficult to go right backto basics every time you want to
talk about those things.
So there are limits to that.
But I think, broadly speaking,most of if you're talking about
ideas that you want to, toresonate, to have impact on
people's lives, then, yeah, youshould try and make it
comprehensible.
So I think, even when I becamean academic, I was always had in
(09:36):
mind that the audience wasmainly teachers.
That's a that made me not assuccessful as an academic,
probably, but I think it allowedme to engage more with teachers
.
And the other thing that Ithink that I always did was that
I had a lot of interactionswith teachers.
I mean, I had been a teacherbut I continued.
(09:56):
I'd give talks to groups ofteachers and people would
question and challenge and we'dhave discussions.
I want to know what's going onin schools, what are the issues
and what are the barriers, whatare the opportunities?
You know why.
Why are you doing these things?
Why are you not doing thesethings?
To try and understand theteacher's perspective and to try
(10:18):
and connect that with theresearch, which has been really
helpful, I think, for me inthinking about and shaping the
things I've been interested in,but also thinking about those
ideas and how to present them.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I also wonder if, when teachers look at
research, because of some of thethings you've pointed out, they
do not want to interact with itregularly because it takes so
much time and can be so dense.
And also it makes me wonder, aswell as it relates to school
(10:52):
leaders, if that is one of thebarriers to them implementing
research based practices intheir schools.
What do you find are some ofthose barriers for that
implementation of research-basedpractices?
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Well, I absolutely agree and of course that's right
.
I mean, there have been quite alot of attempts and I was
involved with some of these inmy early days as a researcher
about trying to summarise andpresent research findings in a
more accessible way than whatyou typically find in research
outputs like journal papers, andthere are some quite good
(11:28):
examples of that, and peoplehave been doing that for quite a
long time.
So I think, although maybethey're not, you know, they
haven't been that easy or thatprominent, they're easy to find,
but there's there's a lot moreto it than that.
So that is definitely part ofit.
It's necessary to find ways ofcommunicating complex, abstract
(11:50):
ideas that make sense topractitioners.
So the practical application ofthis thing rather than just the
theory.
Sometimes you do need tounderstand the theory, but then
you need to have a presentationof those ideas that is
accessible.
One of the problems with thescholarly community is that they
talk about lots of ideas andthey don't say, oh, this means X
(12:11):
, y, z, because they assumeeverybody knows what it means.
It's like any other kind ofwriting.
You know there are certainassumptions, but of course
school leaders and teachers maytry and read those papers and
not know what those things mean,and that makes it very hard.
It's like trying to readsomething in a different
language.
So so, yeah, we need to haveforms of summarizing and
(12:33):
presenting research evidence inaccessible ways, but I I think
we need to do a lot more thanthat so it isn't just and people
talk about the idea thatthere's kind of research
findings and we need to getpeople to understand them and to
use them.
And again, I think maybe I didthink that in the early days.
I don't think now that that'squite the right way of framing
(12:55):
it.
I think what school leaders doand what teachers do isn't
there's more of an interaction.
I think is what I'm trying tosay that we have to sort of
build a new kind of knowledge.
It's not taking knowledge fromresearch and saying can we apply
this in schools and getteachers and school leaders to
do this, you know, to use thisresearch, to do this research.
(13:18):
I think we actually have tolearn new things about how you
change people's behavior, forexample.
So one of the things we know isthat knowledge on its own
doesn't or isn't very effectiveat changing people's behavior.
We all know lots of things weshould do that we don't do.
You know?
Time of new year resolutions,everybody's saying, oh yes, I'm
(13:38):
going to go to the gym everyweek.
You know, we know we should dothese things, but we don't
always do them.
So changing behaviors is reallyhard.
If that's not something you'vedone regularly, then turning
into a thing that you do dohabitually, that's difficult and
it didn't.
Just knowing isn't enough.
Knowing that you should do it,or knowing, deciding that you
(13:59):
want to do it even isn't enough.
It takes more than that.
So, and that's more like, Ithink, what we're trying to do
when we're thinking aboutpractices in a classroom, if we
talk about classroom teachersbecause I mean a classroom with
full of kids is one of the mostchaotic environments in the
world, isn't it?
There's 30 youngsters or thatorder of none.
(14:20):
Um, they're all different.
They're all have differentkinds of needs, they all
different expectations,different kind of norms about
behavior and different priorknowledge, and as a social
environment it's just incrediblycomplex.
So there isn't time forteachers to think about oh, what
(14:41):
should I do next?
You know, by the time you'vethought about it, you've missed
it.
And so mostly what teachers dois quite intuitive, instinctive,
if you like.
It's an automatic set ofbehaviours that we can reflect
on them afterwards.
But we're not mainly acting inways that are well considered.
(15:04):
We're not thinking, oh, whatshould I do here?
Oh, let's do that in the waythat it might be if you just sat
at a desk thinking about aproblem, because it's just too
fast, it's too crazy, it's toobusy.
You're just acting all the time.
So changing the way peoplethink has a limited impact on
what they actually do inclassrooms.
It can have some impact it'spart of the story but it's not
(15:27):
enough on its own.
So the idea that we'd say, well, just using research, then you
know it sort of gets you a bitof the way.
It doesn't get you all of theway, because we need to think
about changing the way peoplethink, changing the way they
behave, changing their actions,their defaults, their habits,
their automatic routines and soon, and that's much harder.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
How do we do that?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Well, we know a bit about it.
I mean, there's quite a lot ofresearch, for example,
particularly in health, aboutchanging behaviour, and actually
I think the irony of it is thatmostly changing behaviour like
this is what we call learning,because it's exactly what we do
with children.
When we want them to learn stuff, they have to automate those
(16:14):
behaviours because we want them.
If we take well, let's take anexample from maths.
So supposing we want them to beable to rearrange equations or
something like that Now whenthey start out they have to
think quite hard about whatthey're doing, why they're doing
it, how it works.
You know, you take a number andif it's added on this side, you
can take it away from bothsides and it becomes a negative
(16:35):
on the other side.
Let's say something like that,and that's quite
counterintuitive and it takes alot of getting your head around
and you see a few examples andyou start to do it and then it
gradually becomes a bit morefamiliar and we hope it does and
then after a while children canjust do it without really
having to think too hard aboutit.
It becomes more or lessautomated, and that's really
(16:58):
necessary because when you thenwant them to use that as part of
solving a harder problem, ithas to be automated.
If they have to stop and thinkhard about how do I just move
this number to the other side ofthat equation, or get you know,
get this variable over to there, then they've lost the shred of
the bigger problem and theycan't kind of see the next step.
(17:20):
You have to be able to seethree steps ahead to be able to
think, well, is this the beststep for solving that problem?
And you can't do that if you'rethinking hard about the details
of that step.
The step itself has to beultimate.
What maths teachers have beendoing for thousands of years is
to get students to automatethose processes to get them so
(17:41):
fluent that they can do it moreor less without having to think,
having to give it consciousattention.
And it's exactly that.
And you know teachers know howto get kids to do that.
It's mainly just throughpractice and certain kinds of
practice.
So you practice examples andthen you gradually make the
examples a bit more complex anda bit more varied.
You probably give people abreak and then they come, you
(18:03):
know, give them a bit of time toforget and they come back and
practice again to refresh it.
And maybe you make those gapsget a bit bigger and you make
the practice harder as you goand eventually it becomes a
thing.
If you do it enough and withenough variation, it becomes a
routine thing.
And I think it's exactly thesame for how teachers learn to
do things like I don't know,let's say, to use mini
(18:26):
whiteboards in a questioning,question and answer session,
where you're getting every childto write on the mini whiteboard
their answer and then they allhold them up at the same time
and just just learning thetechnique of doing that.
The first time you try it itprobably doesn't work very well
and the kids don't know what todo.
You know you haven't quite toldthem exactly enough and they so
, but then after a few goes, youget it, you get better at it
(18:49):
and then, if you do it enoughtimes, it becomes a routine and
it becomes just something thateverybody knows how to do and
you don't really even thinkabout it, just it just becomes
more or less automatic.
And I think it's much the sameas learning to rearrange an
equation or learning about youknow, I don't know the carbon
cycle or or you know, any of thestuff that we we try and teach
(19:11):
youngsters.
It's about repetition andautomation, and one of the
things that I think is reallyinteresting in terms of helping
teachers is about some peoplehave called this rehearsal, the
idea that you can practice athing not just in the lesson,
but in a simpler and perhapssafer space than in a lesson
full of kids.
So that might be practice it infront of a mirror or practice it
(19:35):
in front of a video camera andthen watch it back.
So that's a safer space becauseyou're the only person who can
see it and if it's terrible youcan just, you know, delete the
video.
If it's also safer, because ifit is terrible it doesn't matter
to anyone.
No one's going to be affected.
It's not like a lesson where ifyou give a, you know you do
something really badly.
(19:55):
Then you've got to dig yourselfback from that.
So so, safe and and simple asfar as rehearsal goes is a good
thing.
And again, that's exactly whatwe do with the kids.
We give them nice simpleexamples to begin with and then
we gradually build up thecomplexity once they get that
fluency with the simple onesyeah, which kind of leads me
(20:16):
into the great teaching toolkit,because that identifies the
dimensions of great teaching.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Help me out how can school leaders create those
systems that measure, you knowand support these dimensions?
Because you talked aboutstarting simple and that's what
kind of got me thinking how dowe do that without overwhelming
the teachers?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
yeah, well, okay, but you know, people can learn
incredibly complex things.
They just it just takes time,okay, and you do have to start
simple and and things likeunderstanding cognitive load for
can be helpful because it makesus realise that the amount of
information we can process at agiven time is quite small, but
(21:05):
the amount that we can store inlong-term memory is pretty big.
In fact it's probably unlimited.
So you can kind of cheat thatworking memory by having enough
stored in long-term memory thatyou can, uh, you can, draw on
that and effectively think withit.
But that's how.
The same kind of thing when wewant teachers to understand or
school leaders to understandyeah, these are complex ideas
(21:28):
about the dimensions of greatteaching.
How do, how do they know whatthat is?
And you know, you mentioned theword measure, which is really
important.
Measurement is right at theheart of everything that we're
doing in the Great TeachingToolkit.
And again, maybe that reflectsmy background in maths I don't
know Certainly.
My research in the early partof my time as a researcher was
(21:50):
mostly in assessment, which isbasically all about measuring
attainment.
So I did a lot of work on thatand know about that, but I think
it has a lot of power to helppeople to.
I mean, there are lots of wayspeople can use measurement and
when you talk about trying tosort of measure the quality of
teaching, people get a bitanxious because they they think,
(22:11):
oh, this is all aboutperformance management or
accountability or those kinds ofthings and we are doing
measurement, we are trying tomeasure the quality of teaching
in in different ways, but it'snot about performance management
and it's not aboutaccountability.
So we think that measurement isvaluable because of the
insights that it gives.
When you give that feedback topeople, it gives them a deeper
(22:35):
understanding of their classroom, their context, their school
and and that's why that's thereason that we're doing that.
So it's not about sort ofranking people in order, it's
not about giving some people apay rise or sacking teachers or
nothing, nothing like that.
So we've created a whole suiteof tools which are trying to do
this, to give those insights to,to create measures, if you like
(22:58):
, and.
But we've always said thatthey're optional.
If anybody chooses to use themand a teacher or a school leader
, that's up to them.
If someone doesn't like thelook of it, then they won't.
And most people don't like thelook of it frankly, because if
you, if we think about somethinglike a student survey where you
ask the pupils what theirperception of what's going on in
(23:20):
that lesson is that's not athing that most teachers do
routinely, and if you ever havedone it you'll know or if you
haven't done it and you sort ofthink about what would this be
like?
It can be quite bruising,because some you know kids can
be quite honest, can't they?
But it can also be reallyhelpful to tell you things that
(23:40):
you didn't realise werehappening, or that their
perceptions are different fromyour perceptions, and you might.
Very often people will look atthat feedback and they'll say,
well, I thought I did thisreally well, but the students
are saying they don't think I do.
And you might say, well, thatteacher would be happier if they
never knew that, because theycould just carry on thinking
(24:01):
they do it well.
But they would undoubtedlywhich is probably true, and
that's the reason, I think, whypeople often don't want to do
that get that feedback.
But there'd be a better teacherif they do get the feedback,
because they'll then understand,they'll have a more realistic
picture of what's actuallyhappening, which is that they
probably don't do it as well asthey thought and they'll also be
(24:22):
much better equipped to try andaddress that and do something
about it and improve it.
So those feedback tools arevery powerful, I think, but they
are.
They're optional, they're ondemand.
If you wanted to use it, youcan.
If you don't, then youshouldn't.
I mean, in some schools schoolspeople will be encouraged to
use them, of course, and that'sfine, I think.
(24:43):
Um, but also, the feedback youget is for you, it doesn't go to
anyone else.
It doesn't go to your linemanager or the head teacher or
principal or anybody else.
It goes to you.
If you want to share it with agroup of trusted colleagues,
great, and we definitelyencourage you to do that,
because we know that you're muchmore likely to act on it in
(25:05):
constructive ways if it's notjust you looking at it and
thinking okay, right, and it'smuch more likely to lead to
benefit if you share it withother colleagues.
So we very much encourage youto do that, but that has to be
something that you choose to dobecause you trust those other
colleagues.
So we very much encourage youto do that, but that has to be
something that you choose to dobecause you trust those other
colleagues and they're doing thesame, that they're trusting you
as well, perhaps with theirfeedback, and you're working
(25:27):
collaboratively to help eachother to improve.
So that's the ideal and withinGreat Teaching Toolkit we set up
, we have a structure forsetting up those great teaching
teams where people collaboratetogether, they share their own
insights, they watch eachother's teaching, they look at
the other instruments, the data,and they support each other
(25:49):
with choosing things thatthey're going to work on and
choosing how they're going towork on them and actually doing
the work to make them better,and sort of checking in to see
how it's going, and all of thatkind of thing that great
colleagues do.
So is it overwhelming?
That was part of your question.
Well, of course, teaching'shard and finding time to do
(26:10):
these things is hard and youknow there's lots of information
to take on board.
As you say, our model for greatteaching.
We think teachers need tounderstand a bit about the
theory of that and how it works.
So there's stuff to learn.
So all of that, I think, comesdown to schools prioritizing
professional learning, becauseif you think professional
(26:33):
learning is just a thing thatyou squeeze in on top of your,
your full-time job is to teachchildren every day and
professional learning.
Well, if there's time, we'll doa bit of that.
You know, just squeeze it in,maybe do it in your own time.
If that's your approach, well,obviously it's not going to
happen and it's going to beoverwhelming because just
teaching is a full-time job.
How are you going to do this aswell?
(26:54):
But I think in great schools,where school leaders don't adopt
that approach, they say andthis maybe comes back to your
earlier question about what whatare the barriers to school
leaders using evidence well anddoing things that really make a
difference?
And I think one huge barrier isprioritizing time and, in
(27:14):
particular, time forprofessional learning, because
professional learning is neverurgent.
There's so many things inteaching that are urgent.
If you haven't prepared yourlesson, then that's going to be
bad.
If you haven't done some pieceof marking, that's going to be
bad.
If you haven't dealt with thatbehavior issue or safeguarding
or whatever, you know you can'tnot do those things, you have to
(27:34):
do them.
If you haven't done your a bitof professional learning, no
one's even going to notice.
So it's not.
It doesn't have immediateconsequences, but it is
important strategically.
It should be the highestpriority, I think, for all
schools to invest in staffprofessional learning.
So it takes a brave schoolleader to say this is not urgent
(27:57):
, so it doesn't have its owninherent drivers to do it, but
it is important.
So we're going to prioritise itas a matter of strategy.
We're going to make time for it.
That means reducing the timethat people spend on other
things, which is very hard.
It's really hard to do that,but it is possible.
So we're going to ring fencesome time by by carving out some
(28:19):
time from other things thatteachers do and make sure that
that time is dedicated toprofessional learning.
And if you do that, then Ithink it shouldn't be
overwhelming.
It should be manageable withinthe normal set of hours and
work-life balance and everythingthat everyone should want and
have.
And that's what we're trying todo within great teaching
(28:40):
toolkit.
We're trying to create toolsthat help people to make that
manageable, so it's efficienttime but it does need some time
educating.
It's not something that you'rejust going to magic out of no
time at all yeah, and at the.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Well, I know you've got two appearances here.
You've got one at the abudhabhabi Teachers Conference
where you're going to be talkingpredominantly to teachers.
So if you are listening andyou're a teacher, hopefully
there are still ticketsavailable for that.
But then you also have asession at MESLC where you're
discussing what leaders can doto improve teaching quality.
Leaders can do to improveteaching quality.
(29:16):
Give us some counterintuitivefindings from your research,
that you know some little quicknuggets that school leaders
might not be thinking about whenthey're thinking about
improving teaching quality.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah Well, there's a whole lot of stuff.
I mean, I think the thing Istruggled to get my head around
maybe other people won't findthis counterintuitive but it's
just how little good evidencethere is about leadership.
So when you think about theleadership industry, you think
about all the training, all thebooks, all the experts who go
around to conference well, likethis conference and all the
(29:54):
millions of pounds and dollarsand money that's spent on
leadership training andleadership conferences and
leadership gurus.
And you might think and thishas been going on, this isn't a
new phenomenon.
It's been going on for many,many years, forever.
And yet there's really no goodevidence that any of this works
(30:14):
for school leaders.
We don't know how to selectgood school leaders.
We don't know how to supportthem, how to train them, how to
what advice to give them.
That's not.
That doesn't mean people aren'tgiving advice.
They are selecting, they aretraining, they are giving advice
.
It's just that none of it isevidence-based.
None of it is evidence-based.
(30:36):
There are no good studies thatsay if you get leaders to do
this particular course, thenthey end up being better.
Being better for me means thatthe students in their schools
learn more.
That would be my criterion, sothere might be other criteria.
The leaders are happier, theyfeel more confident.
There are a lot of studies thatshow you can do things that
(30:57):
make leaders feel more confident, but actually to impact on
learners in the school noevidence at all of anything.
So we, we're just completelyignorant.
Despite more than 40 years ofresearch, many, many events,
conferences, gurus, books,leadership training we actually
(31:18):
don't know what works inrelation to leadership, which is
extraordinary.
So we've got to go with bestbets, which I think are really
focusing on what's happening inclassrooms.
That's the most important thing.
I don't know would that becounterintuitive?
I mean, it's not what everyleader does.
I think leaders get absorbed inthe business of running a school
(31:39):
and things like you know,building a vision and all of
that sort of strategy,high-level stuff.
They can easily get caught upin that.
I think they can also easilyget caught up in day-to-day
stuff.
Like you know, there's a leakin the roof.
We need to get someone in tofix it, that type of thing.
Our toilets are blocked again.
That you know.
(32:00):
The management, quite sort oflow-level management stuff.
And actually the thing thatmatters above all of those is
what's happening in classrooms.
What are teachers and otheradults in the classroom doing
and what kinds of expertise dothey have and what kinds of
interactions are they havingwith the youngsters and what can
(32:20):
I do as a leader to supportthose?
What can I do to build thatexpertise?
What can I do to makeclassrooms more effective?
And there are some things thatthere is some evidence that
points to some things.
So things well, professionaldevelopment, obviously that's
one.
I've said that already,emphasizing that making sure
(32:41):
collaboration is effective, lotsof.
There is some evidence thatshows where you get
collaborative cultures, studentsdo better and teachers are
happier.
Trust is obviously part of that.
Having the right incentives sothat people think that what
matters is what really matters.
You know, it's not justcreating lots of paperwork so
(33:02):
that we've covered our backshere.
It's about doing things thatgenuinely make a difference to
valued outcomes, which aremostly about children's learning
.
So aligning those incentiveswith the actual intended goals,
those kinds of things.
So some of those things do makea difference, we think.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
But it's a really patchy space where the evidence
is much more limited than reallyit should be.
So I know I asked for thatcounterintuitive thing.
But when you look at schoolleadership, what is the one
action that a school leader cantake that you think would move
the needle the most?
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Right.
So the one action that movesthe needle the most beyond doubt
and I don't think there'sreally much any competitors for
this is sorting out professionaldevelopment.
The problem with it is, as Isay, it's never urgent, so it
gets pushed out by other things.
But that's the job of a leaderis to say, well, what's
(34:03):
important, let's make sure thatthat important stuff happens.
It's not just to go with what'seasy.
So it's always important, neverurgent, and so we need to make
sure it doesn't get pushed out.
The other thing aboutprofessional development is it's
not the quick fix.
So if you're a school leaderand you come in and the school's
a mess in different ways andyou need to turn it around in
(34:26):
six months or a year, thenprofessional development is not
going to do that for you becauseit's more of a slow burn.
You know, if you want to be thebest school in the Middle East
in five years time, well then,yes, professional development
that's, you know beyond doubt.
That's the thing you shouldfocus on.
Getting that right.
(34:50):
How do we support and build theexpertise of professional
teachers?
And that's some of that's aboutrecruitment as well.
Of course, some of it's aboutretention, but a lot of it is
about taking the staff you'vegot and making sure that this
time next year they're moreexpert than they were in, you
know, on the 10th of January.
How Well, okay, so so that'sexactly the stuff that we've
tried to condense into the GreatTeaching Toolkit, taking that
(35:13):
best evidence.
So the short answer is you know, use the Great Teaching Toolkit
a bit.
More detail is to say what's theevidence about best
professional development?
The best review is the one thatwas commissioned by the
education endowment foundation,by sam sims and colleagues from
about three years ago, and theysay they focus on the mechanisms
(35:35):
by which professional learninghas an impact on children's
outcomes and they identify fourmechanisms.
They talk about we actuallychange the, the presentation of
this a little bit when we use itin the great teacher.
So we talk about goals makingsure that teachers believe that
they can get better.
You know that's anotherchallenge with professional
development.
Most teachers have experiencedprofessional development.
(35:58):
Most teachers it hasn't beengreat and they just think well,
I don't deep down, I don'treally believe that this is
going to make me a betterteacher, because that hasn't
been what they've experienced.
So goals is about changing thatis about changing those beliefs
and getting people to set agoal that says, yes, I'm going
to do work on this thing, yes,I'm going to get better at this
(36:19):
thing, knowing that if I getbetter at this thing, that means
kids are going to learn more.
So every teacher in everyschool should have a really
clear goal for theirprofessional learning.
Over this six weeks I'm goingto get better at responding to
if I ask a question and I getanswers.
I'm going to improve how Iinvolve the whole class in that
(36:42):
process.
Let's say, or somethingspecific like that so that's the
first one goals in that process.
Let's say, or somethingspecific like that so that's the
first one goals.
Then the second is aboutbuilding understanding or
insights, so that teachersunderstand the principles behind
what they're doing.
So if we're talking aboutsomething like retrieval
practice, they need to know howdoes memory work, why is
retrieval a good thing, why isit good to allow time to forget,
(37:03):
what kinds of retrievalquestions are more effective
than others for different typesof learners, and so on.
So that's theory, really.
I would say.
Not all teachers are stronglydrawn to that, but they do need
to understand those principles.
The third is skills, which isthe practical thing of actually
(37:23):
doing it, being able to actuallymanage a retrieval quiz,
keeping it short, keeping ittight, making sure everyone
engages, making sure they getgood feedback, making sure you
follow up, actually justmanaging it with a group of kids
and that's where the rehearsalstuff comes in and practicing
and getting feedback and andrepeating it again and again and
(37:43):
again till it becomes automatic.
And that's the one which isabout embedding, to make it
habitual.
So, making sure you repeat itenough times, making sure you
keep coming back to it, becausetoo often professional
development we hear, oh, thisterm we're all going to focus on
language or literacy, let's say, or something like that, and
everybody does training onliteracy.
And then next term it'ssomething else.
(38:05):
And if I came, came back in ayear, would I see any impact of
that literacy?
No, because we've moved on andobviously that means it's had no
impact.
If there's no evidence a yearlater of any change, then it
hasn't worked.
You've done it.
You can tick it off, you cansay, oh, everyone engaged in
this process, but unless it haslong-term sustainability, then
it hasn't worked.
(38:26):
So, making sure these things getembedded, they become habitual,
routine, automatic, part ofeveryday practice.
So it's those four things goals, understanding, skills and
habits and we talk about gushg-u-s-h to remember how that is
goals, understanding, skills andhabits.
So that's what the evidencesays pd should look like and if
you're looking at how you frameprofessional learning in your
(38:49):
school, then compare it withthat.
Does every teacher have a goal?
Do teachers spend time readingand thinking and discussing to
build their understanding andquestioning them?
You know, when we want childrento learn hard ideas, we make
sure they have to answerquestions about it.
They don't just read stuff,they have to answer questions
about it.
They don't just read stuff,they have to answer questions
and produce work.
You know, write essays orwhatever.
(39:09):
So teachers have to do the samething in order to build their
understanding.
Skills come through practice,yes, in rehearsal spaces, but
also in real-world classrooms.
Embedding comes from makingsure that we follow up and
repeat and make sure thesethings become fully automated.
So if cpd offer is not doingall four things, then it's not
(39:30):
going to work as well as itcould do and you need to think
about well, how can we addressthose?
And, as I say when, when we'vedesigned or are still designing
it's a work in progress thegreat teaching toolkit.
That's exactly what we've gotin mind.
How can we help people to doall those four things across a
school so that we make it aseasy as possible for them to do
(39:52):
all of that?
Because you have to do all ofit.
That's what the research says.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Is there a place for inset days?
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Well, inset days are interesting, aren't they?
I think that that probablyknows the short answer to that,
and I know that's probably whatwe do.
I think that probably no is theshort answer to that, and I
know that's probably what we do.
I think you know it's like, ifwe're thinking about children's
learning and the idea that youcould have, say, five days a
year where you teach themsomething at the beginning of
term, you expose them to someidea, and then you never revisit
(40:23):
it again and you think, oh,they've learned this.
Well, no teacher would everthink that you wouldn think, oh,
they've learned this.
Well, no teacher would everthink that you wouldn't think
that they've learned this.
You'd know that.
You know within a week, they'veforgotten it.
That's not, that's not howlearning happened.
Well, why do we think it shouldhappen like that for adults?
You know it's absurd, it makesno sense, it goes against
everything we know aboutlearning.
So why do we hang on to them?
(40:43):
Well, because they're kind ofeasy to manage.
Um, and what we actually needis and many schools do this they
take that same amount of timeand they, they spread it across
the year and they say we'll take, we'll have those days.
You know you won't.
Those days are not set asidefor that.
You can do other things, but thesame time has to be spent an
(41:04):
hour a week, whatever every weekwith a meeting where you're
focused on, let's say, in thosegreat teaching teams, working
together, collaborating to helpeach other to get better, and
then maybe.
So a typical model we would sayis, if you've got an hour a
week for that meeting with theteam where you're focusing on,
each person in the team ishelping everybody else on their
(41:26):
goal, so everyone brings theirgoal and the rest of the team
are helping everybody else ontheir their goal.
So everyone brings their goaland the rest of the team are
helping them with their goal.
So let's say you have an hour afortnight for that team meeting
and then on the other week youthat same hour is spent in your
own individual study.
So that might be doing studentsurveys or capturing video of
your classroom, or it might bereading or doing courses.
(41:47):
We have courses in in theprogram.
You know there's a whole lot ofthings you might be doing.
You might be watching video ofsomebody else in order to help
them.
That those kinds of things.
That's another hour a week.
So by setting aside an hour aweek, and ideally it should be
much more than that.
So you know.
But many school leaders willsay, oh, that's, you know, far
too much, we couldn't possiblydo that.
(42:07):
I think that's a much bettermodel than, let's say, sort of
two days at the start of termand then one day at the end,
that kind of thing.
Because I just think mostlythose don't lead to proper
learning for teachers and theycertainly don't need to change
in classroom practice or changein thinking.
And if they don't do that well,why would we expect them to
(42:29):
have an impact on children'slearning?
Speaker 2 (42:32):
yeah, that's, that's that's true.
Is there a place forconferences?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
well, conferences is is a bit different, I think,
because you know, obviously, asyou've said, I'm going to be
talking at these conferences andyou can't stand up at a
conference and say, by the way,this is a complete waste of time
, it's pointless, you shouldn'tbe here.
And well, I mean, if I reallydid think that I presumably
wouldn't go.
So I don't think that, becauseI think that having groups of
(42:59):
people together to think aboutthe thing is most school leaders
don't think in this way.
They they're still using thefive insert ways, they're still
not prioritizing professionallearning, really not giving it
enough time.
So one of the things that Iwant to try and do is to change
that, to make them think it'simportant, to make them think
that it's possible to find adifferent way of thinking about
(43:22):
professional learning.
And how are you going to dothat if not in an event like a
conference, where you have agroup of people together, you
present some ideas to them, theytalk to each other, of course,
because they're there with theirnetworks and, hopefully, if you
make a good case and youpersuade some people, then
they're in the room persuadingothers and saying, yeah, I think
(43:42):
we're going to give this a goand it becomes a sort of group
thing thing that people do and Idon't know how else you could
do that.
It's the same.
If it's school leaders you get,you know you're we're trying to
change the way they think aboutstuff.
Same with teachers.
And the thing is, if youpersuade some teachers to change
what they do, then you knowthey're either the future school
leaders or they're influencingcurrent school leaders, because
(44:05):
school leaders talk to theirteachers and they you know
people come up with ideas abouthow they should change the way
they do, inset, for example.
So all of those are ways ofgetting in, to help people to
think differently about theproblems that they're.
They know that what theproblems are they're trying to
solve, they've just they're kindof stuck in particular ways, I
think sometimes because that'show it's always been done and it
(44:27):
takes a brave person to breakout of that and that's why you
need to have a network of peoplearound you who can tell you yes
, you know, we've tried it andit worked for us and there's
nothing.
You know, that's the best wayto persuade people to make a
change is to see someone elsedoing it and it working.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, final question Okay, looking ahead then, rob.
How do you see the relationshipbetween classroom teaching
qualities and school leadershipevolving?
Yeah, especially with theemergence of AI.
I just had to put AI in there.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Okay, yes.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
And all the other technological advances that we
have.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yeah, well, I think the answer is it's very hard to
predict, actually, and I thinkif you look at the history of
people trying to predict howtechnology will make a
difference to education, theonly thing you learn from it is
that they're almost always wrongAlmost every prediction that
anyone made about some newtechnology.
When we look back at it now, wejust laugh and we think, well,
(45:31):
they had no idea.
So rather than trying to makethose predictions, I would say
try not to make them, because Idon't think we're very good at
it.
I do think these differenttechnologies well, technologies
have made a difference toclassroom practice already, and
certainly AI, I'm to make isalready making a difference to
(45:51):
lots of aspects of our lives,including teaching and learning.
There's no question it will,but predicting how it will, I
think, is very, very difficult,because until you see that, you
know somebody will have abrilliant idea for a technology
and then it will just take offand it will go, and some of
those are already happening.
I think there's someinteresting things, but I'd also
(46:11):
say that.
So I'm definitely not againsttechnology.
I think it's great and Iembrace it, but I also think
that, in many ways, the thingsthat matter most about teaching
and learning are not reallyaffected by technology.
They're not changing.
If you went back to some of theearliest schools, you know
proper schools where one teacheris working with a group of of
(46:33):
children.
Let's say, I don't know thefirst schools, maybe starting
about 600 years ago or somethinglike that.
Um, it would be quiterecognizable what those teachers
were doing and the kinds ofthings that would help them to
do it better are the same todayas they were, let's say, 600
(46:53):
years ago.
Very much the same.
The technology would bedifferent, but the fundamental
things about, for example, howthey explain complex ideas they
were doing that then.
They still need to do it now.
They didn't know about cognitiveload theory, but they did know
that if you explain too much atonce, people can't take it in.
You know, people have knownthat always.
(47:15):
You don't really need cognitiveload theory to tell you that.
They knew about the power ofquestioning and the kind of
Socratic method that goes back.
You know much, much further, ofcourse.
So I don't think the thingsthat matter are fundamentally
changed by technology.
I think the things that helpteachers to be even better than
(47:36):
they are are mostly the same asthey've always been.
So we should embrace technology, we should use technology.
We should certainly keep oureye on it.
I don't think we should try andpredict what it's going to do,
because we'll get that wrong andI don't think fundamentally it
changes how we think about thebest ways that we can improve
school systems.
Let's say, and help children tolearn more.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
That's a great place to end the podcast, Rob.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Well, thank you, it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Where can people find more information about
evidence-based education and thework you're doing?
Speaker 3 (48:11):
OK, well, yeah, I mean, if you just search for
evidence-based education, it'sall on our website and
information about the GreatTeaching Toolkit and if you're
interested in it, obviously wedo demos and we can show it to
you.
We can come out while we're outin the UAE for a week at the
end of January, beginning ofFebruary.
So I know we've got somemeetings scheduled, but if
(48:32):
anybody else wants to catch upthere, they've still got a bit
of time to do that, so that'd bereally good.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Brilliant.
I will link to evidence-basededucation in the show notes.
And remember you can catch Robat the Abu Dhabi Teachers
Conference and the Middle EastSchool Leadership Conference.
One is on February 1 and theother is on February 6.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to theTeach Middle East podcast.
Visit our websiteteachmiddleeastcom and follow us
on social media.
The links are in the show notes.
You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast
connecting, developing andempowering educators.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hi everyone.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Teach Middle East
podcast with me, Lisa Grace.
Today I have the distinctpleasure of having Rob Coe on
the podcast with me Now.
If you are from the UK, youmight know who Rob Coe is and
you might be familiar with hiswork.
If you are not, then this is afantastic opportunity to pop
(00:35):
your headphones in and learn alittle bit about what Rob does
and also some of the researchthat he has carried out in
education and how that mightimpact your school and your
classroom.
Rob, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Thank you for having me.
It's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Thank you.
So Rob is on this podcast as aprecursor to his appearance at
the Middle East SchoolLeadership Conference on
February 5 and 6.
Well, he's going to be on onFebruary 6 in Dubai.
If you're listening to thispodcast before then, you have to
go and get your ticket, and ifyou're listening to this podcast
afterwards, you missed it.
What's wrong with you?
(01:14):
Okay, now Rob, let's go to alittle bit more about who you
are and the work you currentlydo.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay, okay, yeah, so who am I?
Well, I am what I currently do.
Let's start with that and maybework backwards.
So I'm the Director of Researchand Development at a group
called Evidence-Based Education.
We're a small startup in thenortheast of England and we're
all about trying to helpteachers to understand, engage
(01:45):
with, respond to researchevidence about best practices in
teaching and school leadershipand understanding the teaching
and learning process and so on.
So I would say our main focusis on professional learning for
teachers and school leaders,trying to build expertise in the
system so that people getbetter at what they do.
(02:07):
And I've been at evidence-basededucation for about five or
just over five years, and beforethat I was a professor of
education at Durham Universityand before that I was a teacher,
maths teacher in secondaryschools.
So that's kind of my CV.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I like it.
I'm tempted to talk only aboutyour maths teacher days because
the people who listen here theyknow I like maths teachers.
We do a maths teachersconference, which has now rolled
into a STEM conference, and inmy time in schools I would
always be sitting either withthe design technology teachers
in the staff room or the mathsteachers, because they were like
(02:47):
fun yes, well, they, we, apeculiar group, I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I mean I still I still identify in many ways as a
maths teacher.
I think you know it's anexperience.
I was a teacher, I was inschools for seven years teaching
and, and you know you learn alot in that time and you learn a
lot about well teaching andlearning.
You learn a lot about studentsand how they interact.
You learn a lot about schoolsand what they're like and other
(03:14):
teachers and what the kind ofconstraints are.
And I think because of that myfocus has always been on trying
when was it became a researcher?
Always trying to do researchthat I think I always had the
audience in mind as beingteachers, not specifically math
teachers, but teachers ingeneral, and I am.
(03:36):
I'm actually doing some worknow with the math schools, which
is a group of of post-16schools in eng that are
selecting highly high attainingable mathematicians and really
giving them a focused diet, andyou know that's an interesting
piece of work I think.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What led you to research?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
That's a really good question.
Yeah, so I was a teacher.
I wasn't really.
I mean, you know, people talkabout research evidence and what
did you think about researchevidence when you were a teacher
?
And the answer is I knewnothing about it.
I didn't.
Nobody was really interested init very much.
I did a master's in mathseducation just because I was
(04:19):
interested and I, you know itjust seemed like a good thing to
do, I think relatively easy todo a master's.
And then, because I was doingthat, I got I got a bit more
interested in research and Ithought I'd like to do some more
of this, I think, and so Ithought about maybe doing a PhD.
And you can do degrees likemaster's and PhDs part-time
(04:44):
while you're teaching.
Many teachers do that.
I think it's very, very hard.
I've supervised a lot ofteachers doing Masters and PhDs
and I absolutely have hugerespect for all of them because
you know they're both full-timejobs, basically, and you try and
do two of them at once.
So that's very challenging.
But I was lucky that I had thechance to do a PhD full-time.
(05:06):
So I gave up teaching and myassumption was that I'd come
back into teaching.
You know, I liked the job.
I was enjoying it.
There was nothing.
There was nothing kind ofpushing me out of it.
I did have a question aboutwhere I was going with it.
So I was.
I was a second in department inthe maths department in the
school I was in and I thought,wow, do I want to be a head of
department?
Yeah, maybe do I want to be alike a, an assistant head or a
(05:30):
deputy head?
Don't think I do really.
So I couldn't quite see myselfgoing down that route and
therefore I suppose I was a bitthinking I wonder what the
career progression is next year.
But anyway, I just thought I'vegot an opportunity.
I'm going to do this.
Three years of research.
It's an indulgence.
That's what it was.
(05:50):
It felt like a just a fun timeto wallow around in research for
a few years and my wife wasworking so she could support me.
We didn't have any childrenthen, so it was an opportunity
that I could be unpaid for three, or pretty much unpaid, and I
did my PhD and then I did enjoyit and it led to me applying for
(06:11):
a job in the university whereI'd done my PhD at Durham and
carrying on as a researcher.
That certainly wasn't the planwhen I started on it, but I
really loved research and I justthought this is a great thing
to be able to do.
I really loved research and Ijust thought this is a great
thing to be able to do.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So how has your experience, then, as a
mathematics teacher, how hasthat shaped your approach to
evidence based education,particularly in making research
practical for teachers?
Because we look at the papersand we're like, oh my God, how
do we translate this into theclassroom?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, so I think most academics.
If you ask them who's theaudience for your research,
they'll say other academics.
And that is the way you know.
That's the environment you'rein.
You're writing papers to submitto journals that are read by
other academics at best,actually, because most papers
never, in most academic journalsnever get cited by anyone.
(07:04):
They may get read, but thenliterally the, the, the modal
citation number is zero, themost common number of citations
for academic papers, I know.
So you think, right, well,who's going to read these things
?
You give papers at conferences,you, you interact with other
academics, um, peer review, lotsof other stuff like that.
(07:25):
So that's who your audience isand that's who within the
university system, your career,your status depends on the
esteem that you have within thatacademic community among other
scholars, other academics.
So you're writing papers forother academics.
So you're writing papers forother academics.
And so when you read thoseacademic papers you think, well,
(07:46):
did this person deliberatelymake this incomprehensible, or
was it just a sort of?
Did they not realize that anormal human being couldn't
possibly read this?
And I think that's you know.
You might argue well, if you'restudying quantum physics or
something, ok, members of thepublic are not going to be able
(08:06):
to pick up those journals andmake sense of it, because it is
quite technical and you knowthat would be true in a lot of
disciplines.
But in a discipline likeeducation, which is, if it
matters at all, it mattersbecause it impacts on people's
lives.
Children in school, students,teachers, we all interact with
education every member ofsociety pretty much in some way.
(08:28):
So it's a practical, it's anapplied discipline and therefore
and not all academics ineducation departments in
universities think that, ofcourse some of them are, you
know, they're philosophers ofeducation or they're interested
in sociology or other issuesthey're not specifically looking
, they're trying to build theory, they're trying to build
(08:50):
understanding, they're notlooking for practical
applications.
So not everybody's thinkingthat way, but I always was.
So why not try and write thingsthat people could actually
understand?
You know, that's a goodchallenge, I think.
Think that anyone should whodoesn't have that technical
knowledge.
And it's difficult becausesometimes, particularly if
you're doing, let's say, somequantitative analysis I mean you
(09:13):
know there is technical stuffthere and you can't it becomes
very difficult to go right backto basics every time you want to
talk about those things.
So there are limits to that.
But I think, broadly speaking,most of if you're talking about
ideas that you want to, toresonate, to have impact on
people's lives, then, yeah, youshould try and make it
comprehensible.
So I think, even when I becamean academic, I was always had in
(09:36):
mind that the audience wasmainly teachers.
That's a that made me not assuccessful as an academic,
probably, but I think it allowedme to engage more with teachers
.
And the other thing that Ithink that I always did was that
I had a lot of interactionswith teachers.
I mean, I had been a teacherbut I continued.
(09:56):
I'd give talks to groups ofteachers and people would
question and challenge and we'dhave discussions.
I want to know what's going onin schools, what are the issues
and what are the barriers, whatare the opportunities?
You know why.
Why are you doing these things?
Why are you not doing thesethings?
To try and understand theteacher's perspective and to try
(10:18):
and connect that with theresearch, which has been really
helpful, I think, for me inthinking about and shaping the
things I've been interested in,but also thinking about those
ideas and how to present them.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I also wonder if, when teachers look at
research, because of some of thethings you've pointed out, they
do not want to interact with itregularly because it takes so
much time and can be so dense.
And also it makes me wonder, aswell as it relates to school
(10:52):
leaders, if that is one of thebarriers to them implementing
research based practices intheir schools.
What do you find are some ofthose barriers for that
implementation of research-basedpractices?
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Well, I absolutely agree and of course that's right
.
I mean, there have been quite alot of attempts and I was
involved with some of these inmy early days as a researcher
about trying to summarise andpresent research findings in a
more accessible way than whatyou typically find in research
outputs like journal papers, andthere are some quite good
(11:28):
examples of that, and peoplehave been doing that for quite a
long time.
So I think, although maybethey're not, you know, they
haven't been that easy or thatprominent, they're easy to find,
but there's there's a lot moreto it than that.
So that is definitely part ofit.
It's necessary to find ways ofcommunicating complex, abstract
(11:50):
ideas that make sense topractitioners.
So the practical application ofthis thing rather than just the
theory.
Sometimes you do need tounderstand the theory, but then
you need to have a presentationof those ideas that is
accessible.
One of the problems with thescholarly community is that they
talk about lots of ideas andthey don't say, oh, this means X
(12:11):
, y, z, because they assumeeverybody knows what it means.
It's like any other kind ofwriting.
You know there are certainassumptions, but of course
school leaders and teachers maytry and read those papers and
not know what those things mean,and that makes it very hard.
It's like trying to readsomething in a different
language.
So so, yeah, we need to haveforms of summarizing and
(12:33):
presenting research evidence inaccessible ways, but I I think
we need to do a lot more thanthat so it isn't just and people
talk about the idea thatthere's kind of research
findings and we need to getpeople to understand them and to
use them.
And again, I think maybe I didthink that in the early days.
I don't think now that that'squite the right way of framing
(12:55):
it.
I think what school leaders doand what teachers do isn't
there's more of an interaction.
I think is what I'm trying tosay that we have to sort of
build a new kind of knowledge.
It's not taking knowledge fromresearch and saying can we apply
this in schools and getteachers and school leaders to
do this, you know, to use thisresearch, to do this research.
(13:18):
I think we actually have tolearn new things about how you
change people's behavior, forexample.
So one of the things we know isthat knowledge on its own
doesn't or isn't very effectiveat changing people's behavior.
We all know lots of things weshould do that we don't do.
You know?
Time of new year resolutions,everybody's saying, oh yes, I'm
(13:38):
going to go to the gym everyweek.
You know, we know we should dothese things, but we don't
always do them.
So changing behaviors is reallyhard.
If that's not something you'vedone regularly, then turning
into a thing that you do dohabitually, that's difficult and
it didn't.
Just knowing isn't enough.
Knowing that you should do it,or knowing, deciding that you
(13:59):
want to do it even isn't enough.
It takes more than that.
So, and that's more like, Ithink, what we're trying to do
when we're thinking aboutpractices in a classroom, if we
talk about classroom teachersbecause I mean a classroom with
full of kids is one of the mostchaotic environments in the
world, isn't it?
There's 30 youngsters or thatorder of none.
(14:20):
Um, they're all different.
They're all have differentkinds of needs, they all
different expectations,different kind of norms about
behavior and different priorknowledge, and as a social
environment it's just incrediblycomplex.
So there isn't time forteachers to think about oh, what
(14:41):
should I do next?
You know, by the time you'vethought about it, you've missed
it.
And so mostly what teachers dois quite intuitive, instinctive,
if you like.
It's an automatic set ofbehaviours that we can reflect
on them afterwards.
But we're not mainly acting inways that are well considered.
(15:04):
We're not thinking, oh, whatshould I do here?
Oh, let's do that in the waythat it might be if you just sat
at a desk thinking about aproblem, because it's just too
fast, it's too crazy, it's toobusy.
You're just acting all the time.
So changing the way peoplethink has a limited impact on
what they actually do inclassrooms.
It can have some impact it'spart of the story but it's not
(15:27):
enough on its own.
So the idea that we'd say, well, just using research, then you
know it sort of gets you a bitof the way.
It doesn't get you all of theway, because we need to think
about changing the way peoplethink, changing the way they
behave, changing their actions,their defaults, their habits,
their automatic routines and soon, and that's much harder.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
How do we do that?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Well, we know a bit about it.
I mean, there's quite a lot ofresearch, for example,
particularly in health, aboutchanging behaviour, and actually
I think the irony of it is thatmostly changing behaviour like
this is what we call learning,because it's exactly what we do
with children.
When we want them to learn stuff, they have to automate those
(16:14):
behaviours because we want them.
If we take well, let's take anexample from maths.
So supposing we want them to beable to rearrange equations or
something like that Now whenthey start out they have to
think quite hard about whatthey're doing, why they're doing
it, how it works.
You know, you take a number andif it's added on this side, you
can take it away from bothsides and it becomes a negative
(16:35):
on the other side.
Let's say something like that,and that's quite
counterintuitive and it takes alot of getting your head around
and you see a few examples andyou start to do it and then it
gradually becomes a bit morefamiliar and we hope it does and
then after a while children canjust do it without really
having to think too hard aboutit.
It becomes more or lessautomated, and that's really
(16:58):
necessary because when you thenwant them to use that as part of
solving a harder problem, ithas to be automated.
If they have to stop and thinkhard about how do I just move
this number to the other side ofthat equation, or get you know,
get this variable over to there, then they've lost the shred of
the bigger problem and theycan't kind of see the next step.
(17:20):
You have to be able to seethree steps ahead to be able to
think, well, is this the beststep for solving that problem?
And you can't do that if you'rethinking hard about the details
of that step.
The step itself has to beultimate.
What maths teachers have beendoing for thousands of years is
to get students to automatethose processes to get them so
(17:41):
fluent that they can do it moreor less without having to think,
having to give it consciousattention.
And it's exactly that.
And you know teachers know howto get kids to do that.
It's mainly just throughpractice and certain kinds of
practice.
So you practice examples andthen you gradually make the
examples a bit more complex anda bit more varied.
You probably give people abreak and then they come, you
(18:03):
know, give them a bit of time toforget and they come back and
practice again to refresh it.
And maybe you make those gapsget a bit bigger and you make
the practice harder as you goand eventually it becomes a
thing.
If you do it enough and withenough variation, it becomes a
routine thing.
And I think it's exactly thesame for how teachers learn to
do things like I don't know,let's say, to use mini
(18:26):
whiteboards in a questioning,question and answer session,
where you're getting every childto write on the mini whiteboard
their answer and then they allhold them up at the same time
and just just learning thetechnique of doing that.
The first time you try it itprobably doesn't work very well
and the kids don't know what todo.
You know you haven't quite toldthem exactly enough and they so
, but then after a few goes, youget it, you get better at it
(18:49):
and then, if you do it enoughtimes, it becomes a routine and
it becomes just something thateverybody knows how to do and
you don't really even thinkabout it, just it just becomes
more or less automatic.
And I think it's much the sameas learning to rearrange an
equation or learning about youknow, I don't know the carbon
cycle or or you know, any of thestuff that we we try and teach
(19:11):
youngsters.
It's about repetition andautomation, and one of the
things that I think is reallyinteresting in terms of helping
teachers is about some peoplehave called this rehearsal, the
idea that you can practice athing not just in the lesson,
but in a simpler and perhapssafer space than in a lesson
full of kids.
So that might be practice it infront of a mirror or practice it
(19:35):
in front of a video camera andthen watch it back.
So that's a safer space becauseyou're the only person who can
see it and if it's terrible youcan just, you know, delete the
video.
If it's also safer, because ifit is terrible it doesn't matter
to anyone.
No one's going to be affected.
It's not like a lesson where ifyou give a, you know you do
something really badly.
(19:55):
Then you've got to dig yourselfback from that.
So so, safe and and simple asfar as rehearsal goes is a good
thing.
And again, that's exactly whatwe do with the kids.
We give them nice simpleexamples to begin with and then
we gradually build up thecomplexity once they get that
fluency with the simple onesyeah, which kind of leads me
(20:16):
into the great teaching toolkit,because that identifies the
dimensions of great teaching.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Help me out how can school leaders create those
systems that measure, you knowand support these dimensions?
Because you talked aboutstarting simple and that's what
kind of got me thinking how dowe do that without overwhelming
the teachers?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
yeah, well, okay, but you know, people can learn
incredibly complex things.
They just it just takes time,okay, and you do have to start
simple and and things likeunderstanding cognitive load for
can be helpful because it makesus realise that the amount of
information we can process at agiven time is quite small, but
(21:05):
the amount that we can store inlong-term memory is pretty big.
In fact it's probably unlimited.
So you can kind of cheat thatworking memory by having enough
stored in long-term memory thatyou can, uh, you can, draw on
that and effectively think withit.
But that's how.
The same kind of thing when wewant teachers to understand or
school leaders to understandyeah, these are complex ideas
(21:28):
about the dimensions of greatteaching.
How do, how do they know whatthat is?
And you know, you mentioned theword measure, which is really
important.
Measurement is right at theheart of everything that we're
doing in the Great TeachingToolkit.
And again, maybe that reflectsmy background in maths I don't
know Certainly.
My research in the early partof my time as a researcher was
(21:50):
mostly in assessment, which isbasically all about measuring
attainment.
So I did a lot of work on thatand know about that, but I think
it has a lot of power to helppeople to.
I mean, there are lots of wayspeople can use measurement and
when you talk about trying tosort of measure the quality of
teaching, people get a bitanxious because they they think,
(22:11):
oh, this is all aboutperformance management or
accountability or those kinds ofthings and we are doing
measurement, we are trying tomeasure the quality of teaching
in in different ways, but it'snot about performance management
and it's not aboutaccountability.
So we think that measurement isvaluable because of the
insights that it gives.
When you give that feedback topeople, it gives them a deeper
(22:35):
understanding of their classroom, their context, their school
and and that's why that's thereason that we're doing that.
So it's not about sort ofranking people in order, it's
not about giving some people apay rise or sacking teachers or
nothing, nothing like that.
So we've created a whole suiteof tools which are trying to do
this, to give those insights to,to create measures, if you like
(22:58):
, and.
But we've always said thatthey're optional.
If anybody chooses to use themand a teacher or a school leader
, that's up to them.
If someone doesn't like thelook of it, then they won't.
And most people don't like thelook of it frankly, because if
you, if we think about somethinglike a student survey where you
ask the pupils what theirperception of what's going on in
(23:20):
that lesson is that's not athing that most teachers do
routinely, and if you ever havedone it you'll know or if you
haven't done it and you sort ofthink about what would this be
like?
It can be quite bruising,because some you know kids can
be quite honest, can't they?
But it can also be reallyhelpful to tell you things that
(23:40):
you didn't realise werehappening, or that their
perceptions are different fromyour perceptions, and you might.
Very often people will look atthat feedback and they'll say,
well, I thought I did thisreally well, but the students
are saying they don't think I do.
And you might say, well, thatteacher would be happier if they
never knew that, because theycould just carry on thinking
(24:01):
they do it well.
But they would undoubtedlywhich is probably true, and
that's the reason, I think, whypeople often don't want to do
that get that feedback.
But there'd be a better teacherif they do get the feedback,
because they'll then understand,they'll have a more realistic
picture of what's actuallyhappening, which is that they
probably don't do it as well asthey thought and they'll also be
(24:22):
much better equipped to try andaddress that and do something
about it and improve it.
So those feedback tools arevery powerful, I think, but they
are.
They're optional, they're ondemand.
If you wanted to use it, youcan.
If you don't, then youshouldn't.
I mean, in some schools schoolspeople will be encouraged to
use them, of course, and that'sfine, I think.
(24:43):
Um, but also, the feedback youget is for you, it doesn't go to
anyone else.
It doesn't go to your linemanager or the head teacher or
principal or anybody else.
It goes to you.
If you want to share it with agroup of trusted colleagues,
great, and we definitelyencourage you to do that,
because we know that you're muchmore likely to act on it in
(25:05):
constructive ways if it's notjust you looking at it and
thinking okay, right, and it'smuch more likely to lead to
benefit if you share it withother colleagues.
So we very much encourage youto do that, but that has to be
something that you choose to dobecause you trust those other
colleagues.
So we very much encourage youto do that, but that has to be
something that you choose to dobecause you trust those other
colleagues and they're doing thesame, that they're trusting you
as well, perhaps with theirfeedback, and you're working
(25:27):
collaboratively to help eachother to improve.
So that's the ideal and withinGreat Teaching Toolkit we set up
, we have a structure forsetting up those great teaching
teams where people collaboratetogether, they share their own
insights, they watch eachother's teaching, they look at
the other instruments, the data,and they support each other
(25:49):
with choosing things thatthey're going to work on and
choosing how they're going towork on them and actually doing
the work to make them better,and sort of checking in to see
how it's going, and all of thatkind of thing that great
colleagues do.
So is it overwhelming?
That was part of your question.
Well, of course, teaching'shard and finding time to do
(26:10):
these things is hard and youknow there's lots of information
to take on board.
As you say, our model for greatteaching.
We think teachers need tounderstand a bit about the
theory of that and how it works.
So there's stuff to learn.
So all of that, I think, comesdown to schools prioritizing
professional learning, becauseif you think professional
(26:33):
learning is just a thing thatyou squeeze in on top of your,
your full-time job is to teachchildren every day and
professional learning.
Well, if there's time, we'll doa bit of that.
You know, just squeeze it in,maybe do it in your own time.
If that's your approach, well,obviously it's not going to
happen and it's going to beoverwhelming because just
teaching is a full-time job.
How are you going to do this aswell?
(26:54):
But I think in great schools,where school leaders don't adopt
that approach, they say andthis maybe comes back to your
earlier question about what whatare the barriers to school
leaders using evidence well anddoing things that really make a
difference?
And I think one huge barrier isprioritizing time and, in
(27:14):
particular, time forprofessional learning, because
professional learning is neverurgent.
There's so many things inteaching that are urgent.
If you haven't prepared yourlesson, then that's going to be
bad.
If you haven't done some pieceof marking, that's going to be
bad.
If you haven't dealt with thatbehavior issue or safeguarding
or whatever, you know you can'tnot do those things, you have to
(27:34):
do them.
If you haven't done your a bitof professional learning, no
one's even going to notice.
So it's not.
It doesn't have immediateconsequences, but it is
important strategically.
It should be the highestpriority, I think, for all
schools to invest in staffprofessional learning.
So it takes a brave schoolleader to say this is not urgent
(27:57):
, so it doesn't have its owninherent drivers to do it, but
it is important.
So we're going to prioritise itas a matter of strategy.
We're going to make time for it.
That means reducing the timethat people spend on other
things, which is very hard.
It's really hard to do that,but it is possible.
So we're going to ring fencesome time by by carving out some
(28:19):
time from other things thatteachers do and make sure that
that time is dedicated toprofessional learning.
And if you do that, then Ithink it shouldn't be
overwhelming.
It should be manageable withinthe normal set of hours and
work-life balance and everythingthat everyone should want and
have.
And that's what we're trying todo within great teaching
(28:40):
toolkit.
We're trying to create toolsthat help people to make that
manageable, so it's efficienttime but it does need some time
educating.
It's not something that you'rejust going to magic out of no
time at all yeah, and at the.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Well, I know you've got two appearances here.
You've got one at the abudhabhabi Teachers Conference
where you're going to be talkingpredominantly to teachers.
So if you are listening andyou're a teacher, hopefully
there are still ticketsavailable for that.
But then you also have asession at MESLC where you're
discussing what leaders can doto improve teaching quality.
Leaders can do to improveteaching quality.
(29:16):
Give us some counterintuitivefindings from your research,
that you know some little quicknuggets that school leaders
might not be thinking about whenthey're thinking about
improving teaching quality.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah Well, there's a whole lot of stuff.
I mean, I think the thing Istruggled to get my head around
maybe other people won't findthis counterintuitive but it's
just how little good evidencethere is about leadership.
So when you think about theleadership industry, you think
about all the training, all thebooks, all the experts who go
around to conference well, likethis conference and all the
(29:54):
millions of pounds and dollarsand money that's spent on
leadership training andleadership conferences and
leadership gurus.
And you might think and thishas been going on, this isn't a
new phenomenon.
It's been going on for many,many years, forever.
And yet there's really no goodevidence that any of this works
(30:14):
for school leaders.
We don't know how to selectgood school leaders.
We don't know how to supportthem, how to train them, how to
what advice to give them.
That's not.
That doesn't mean people aren'tgiving advice.
They are selecting, they aretraining, they are giving advice
.
It's just that none of it isevidence-based.
None of it is evidence-based.
(30:36):
There are no good studies thatsay if you get leaders to do
this particular course, thenthey end up being better.
Being better for me means thatthe students in their schools
learn more.
That would be my criterion, sothere might be other criteria.
The leaders are happier, theyfeel more confident.
There are a lot of studies thatshow you can do things that
(30:57):
make leaders feel more confident, but actually to impact on
learners in the school noevidence at all of anything.
So we, we're just completelyignorant.
Despite more than 40 years ofresearch, many, many events,
conferences, gurus, books,leadership training we actually
(31:18):
don't know what works inrelation to leadership, which is
extraordinary.
So we've got to go with bestbets, which I think are really
focusing on what's happening inclassrooms.
That's the most important thing.
I don't know would that becounterintuitive?
I mean, it's not what everyleader does.
I think leaders get absorbed inthe business of running a school
(31:39):
and things like you know,building a vision and all of
that sort of strategy,high-level stuff.
They can easily get caught upin that.
I think they can also easilyget caught up in day-to-day
stuff.
Like you know, there's a leakin the roof.
We need to get someone in tofix it, that type of thing.
Our toilets are blocked again.
That you know.
(32:00):
The management, quite sort oflow-level management stuff.
And actually the thing thatmatters above all of those is
what's happening in classrooms.
What are teachers and otheradults in the classroom doing
and what kinds of expertise dothey have and what kinds of
interactions are they havingwith the youngsters and what can
(32:20):
I do as a leader to supportthose?
What can I do to build thatexpertise?
What can I do to makeclassrooms more effective?
And there are some things thatthere is some evidence that
points to some things.
So things well, professionaldevelopment, obviously that's
one.
I've said that already,emphasizing that making sure
(32:41):
collaboration is effective, lotsof.
There is some evidence thatshows where you get
collaborative cultures, studentsdo better and teachers are
happier.
Trust is obviously part of that.
Having the right incentives sothat people think that what
matters is what really matters.
You know, it's not justcreating lots of paperwork so
(33:02):
that we've covered our backshere.
It's about doing things thatgenuinely make a difference to
valued outcomes, which aremostly about children's learning
.
So aligning those incentiveswith the actual intended goals,
those kinds of things.
So some of those things do makea difference, we think.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
But it's a really patchy space where the evidence
is much more limited than reallyit should be.
So I know I asked for thatcounterintuitive thing.
But when you look at schoolleadership, what is the one
action that a school leader cantake that you think would move
the needle the most?
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Right.
So the one action that movesthe needle the most beyond doubt
and I don't think there'sreally much any competitors for
this is sorting out professionaldevelopment.
The problem with it is, as Isay, it's never urgent, so it
gets pushed out by other things.
But that's the job of a leaderis to say, well, what's
(34:03):
important, let's make sure thatthat important stuff happens.
It's not just to go with what'seasy.
So it's always important, neverurgent, and so we need to make
sure it doesn't get pushed out.
The other thing aboutprofessional development is it's
not the quick fix.
So if you're a school leaderand you come in and the school's
a mess in different ways andyou need to turn it around in
(34:26):
six months or a year, thenprofessional development is not
going to do that for you becauseit's more of a slow burn.
You know, if you want to be thebest school in the Middle East
in five years time, well then,yes, professional development
that's, you know beyond doubt.
That's the thing you shouldfocus on.
Getting that right.
(34:50):
How do we support and build theexpertise of professional
teachers?
And that's some of that's aboutrecruitment as well.
Of course, some of it's aboutretention, but a lot of it is
about taking the staff you'vegot and making sure that this
time next year they're moreexpert than they were in, you
know, on the 10th of January.
How Well, okay, so so that'sexactly the stuff that we've
tried to condense into the GreatTeaching Toolkit, taking that
(35:13):
best evidence.
So the short answer is you know, use the Great Teaching Toolkit
a bit.
More detail is to say what's theevidence about best
professional development?
The best review is the one thatwas commissioned by the
education endowment foundation,by sam sims and colleagues from
about three years ago, and theysay they focus on the mechanisms
(35:35):
by which professional learninghas an impact on children's
outcomes and they identify fourmechanisms.
They talk about we actuallychange the, the presentation of
this a little bit when we use itin the great teacher.
So we talk about goals makingsure that teachers believe that
they can get better.
You know that's anotherchallenge with professional
development.
Most teachers have experiencedprofessional development.
(35:58):
Most teachers it hasn't beengreat and they just think well,
I don't deep down, I don'treally believe that this is
going to make me a betterteacher, because that hasn't
been what they've experienced.
So goals is about changing thatis about changing those beliefs
and getting people to set agoal that says, yes, I'm going
to do work on this thing, yes,I'm going to get better at this
(36:19):
thing, knowing that if I getbetter at this thing, that means
kids are going to learn more.
So every teacher in everyschool should have a really
clear goal for theirprofessional learning.
Over this six weeks I'm goingto get better at responding to
if I ask a question and I getanswers.
I'm going to improve how Iinvolve the whole class in that
(36:42):
process.
Let's say, or somethingspecific like that so that's the
first one goals in that process.
Let's say, or somethingspecific like that so that's the
first one goals.
Then the second is aboutbuilding understanding or
insights, so that teachersunderstand the principles behind
what they're doing.
So if we're talking aboutsomething like retrieval
practice, they need to know howdoes memory work, why is
retrieval a good thing, why isit good to allow time to forget,
(37:03):
what kinds of retrievalquestions are more effective
than others for different typesof learners, and so on.
So that's theory, really.
I would say.
Not all teachers are stronglydrawn to that, but they do need
to understand those principles.
The third is skills, which isthe practical thing of actually
(37:23):
doing it, being able to actuallymanage a retrieval quiz,
keeping it short, keeping ittight, making sure everyone
engages, making sure they getgood feedback, making sure you
follow up, actually justmanaging it with a group of kids
and that's where the rehearsalstuff comes in and practicing
and getting feedback and andrepeating it again and again and
(37:43):
again till it becomes automatic.
And that's the one which isabout embedding, to make it
habitual.
So, making sure you repeat itenough times, making sure you
keep coming back to it, becausetoo often professional
development we hear, oh, thisterm we're all going to focus on
language or literacy, let's say, or something like that, and
everybody does training onliteracy.
And then next term it'ssomething else.
(38:05):
And if I came, came back in ayear, would I see any impact of
that literacy?
No, because we've moved on andobviously that means it's had no
impact.
If there's no evidence a yearlater of any change, then it
hasn't worked.
You've done it.
You can tick it off, you cansay, oh, everyone engaged in
this process, but unless it haslong-term sustainability, then
it hasn't worked.
(38:26):
So, making sure these things getembedded, they become habitual,
routine, automatic, part ofeveryday practice.
So it's those four things goals, understanding, skills and
habits and we talk about gushg-u-s-h to remember how that is
goals, understanding, skills andhabits.
So that's what the evidencesays pd should look like and if
you're looking at how you frameprofessional learning in your
(38:49):
school, then compare it withthat.
Does every teacher have a goal?
Do teachers spend time readingand thinking and discussing to
build their understanding andquestioning them?
You know, when we want childrento learn hard ideas, we make
sure they have to answerquestions about it.
They don't just read stuff,they have to answer questions
about it.
They don't just read stuff,they have to answer questions
and produce work.
You know, write essays orwhatever.
(39:09):
So teachers have to do the samething in order to build their
understanding.
Skills come through practice,yes, in rehearsal spaces, but
also in real-world classrooms.
Embedding comes from makingsure that we follow up and
repeat and make sure thesethings become fully automated.
So if cpd offer is not doingall four things, then it's not
(39:30):
going to work as well as itcould do and you need to think
about well, how can we addressthose?
And, as I say when, when we'vedesigned or are still designing
it's a work in progress thegreat teaching toolkit.
That's exactly what we've gotin mind.
How can we help people to doall those four things across a
school so that we make it aseasy as possible for them to do
(39:52):
all of that?
Because you have to do all ofit.
That's what the research says.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Is there a place for inset days?
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Well, inset days are interesting, aren't they?
I think that that probablyknows the short answer to that,
and I know that's probably whatwe do.
I think that probably no is theshort answer to that, and I
know that's probably what we do.
I think you know it's like, ifwe're thinking about children's
learning and the idea that youcould have, say, five days a
year where you teach themsomething at the beginning of
term, you expose them to someidea, and then you never revisit
(40:23):
it again and you think, oh,they've learned this.
Well, no teacher would everthink that you wouldn think, oh,
they've learned this.
Well, no teacher would everthink that you wouldn't think
that they've learned this.
You'd know that.
You know within a week, they'veforgotten it.
That's not, that's not howlearning happened.
Well, why do we think it shouldhappen like that for adults?
You know it's absurd, it makesno sense, it goes against
everything we know aboutlearning.
So why do we hang on to them?
(40:43):
Well, because they're kind ofeasy to manage.
Um, and what we actually needis and many schools do this they
take that same amount of timeand they, they spread it across
the year and they say we'll take, we'll have those days.
You know you won't.
Those days are not set asidefor that.
You can do other things, but thesame time has to be spent an
(41:04):
hour a week, whatever every weekwith a meeting where you're
focused on, let's say, in thosegreat teaching teams, working
together, collaborating to helpeach other to get better, and
then maybe.
So a typical model we would sayis, if you've got an hour a
week for that meeting with theteam where you're focusing on,
each person in the team ishelping everybody else on their
(41:26):
goal, so everyone brings theirgoal and the rest of the team
are helping everybody else ontheir their goal.
So everyone brings their goaland the rest of the team are
helping them with their goal.
So let's say you have an hour afortnight for that team meeting
and then on the other week youthat same hour is spent in your
own individual study.
So that might be doing studentsurveys or capturing video of
your classroom, or it might bereading or doing courses.
(41:47):
We have courses in in theprogram.
You know there's a whole lot ofthings you might be doing.
You might be watching video ofsomebody else in order to help
them.
That those kinds of things.
That's another hour a week.
So by setting aside an hour aweek, and ideally it should be
much more than that.
So you know.
But many school leaders willsay, oh, that's, you know, far
too much, we couldn't possiblydo that.
(42:07):
I think that's a much bettermodel than, let's say, sort of
two days at the start of termand then one day at the end,
that kind of thing.
Because I just think mostlythose don't lead to proper
learning for teachers and theycertainly don't need to change
in classroom practice or changein thinking.
And if they don't do that well,why would we expect them to
(42:29):
have an impact on children'slearning?
Speaker 2 (42:32):
yeah, that's, that's that's true.
Is there a place forconferences?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
well, conferences is is a bit different, I think,
because you know, obviously, asyou've said, I'm going to be
talking at these conferences andyou can't stand up at a
conference and say, by the way,this is a complete waste of time
, it's pointless, you shouldn'tbe here.
And well, I mean, if I reallydid think that I presumably
wouldn't go.
So I don't think that, becauseI think that having groups of
(42:59):
people together to think aboutthe thing is most school leaders
don't think in this way.
They they're still using thefive insert ways, they're still
not prioritizing professionallearning, really not giving it
enough time.
So one of the things that Iwant to try and do is to change
that, to make them think it'simportant, to make them think
that it's possible to find adifferent way of thinking about
(43:22):
professional learning.
And how are you going to dothat if not in an event like a
conference, where you have agroup of people together, you
present some ideas to them, theytalk to each other, of course,
because they're there with theirnetworks and, hopefully, if you
make a good case and youpersuade some people, then
they're in the room persuadingothers and saying, yeah, I think
(43:42):
we're going to give this a goand it becomes a sort of group
thing thing that people do and Idon't know how else you could
do that.
It's the same.
If it's school leaders you get,you know you're we're trying to
change the way they think aboutstuff.
Same with teachers.
And the thing is, if youpersuade some teachers to change
what they do, then you knowthey're either the future school
leaders or they're influencingcurrent school leaders, because
(44:05):
school leaders talk to theirteachers and they you know
people come up with ideas abouthow they should change the way
they do, inset, for example.
So all of those are ways ofgetting in, to help people to
think differently about theproblems that they're.
They know that what theproblems are they're trying to
solve, they've just they're kindof stuck in particular ways, I
think sometimes because that'show it's always been done and it
(44:27):
takes a brave person to breakout of that and that's why you
need to have a network of peoplearound you who can tell you yes
, you know, we've tried it andit worked for us and there's
nothing.
You know, that's the best wayto persuade people to make a
change is to see someone elsedoing it and it working.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, final question Okay, looking ahead then, rob.
How do you see the relationshipbetween classroom teaching
qualities and school leadershipevolving?
Yeah, especially with theemergence of AI.
I just had to put AI in there.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Okay, yes.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
And all the other technological advances that we
have.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yeah, well, I think the answer is it's very hard to
predict, actually, and I thinkif you look at the history of
people trying to predict howtechnology will make a
difference to education, theonly thing you learn from it is
that they're almost always wrongAlmost every prediction that
anyone made about some newtechnology.
When we look back at it now, wejust laugh and we think, well,
(45:31):
they had no idea.
So rather than trying to makethose predictions, I would say
try not to make them, because Idon't think we're very good at
it.
I do think these differenttechnologies well, technologies
have made a difference toclassroom practice already, and
certainly AI, I'm to make isalready making a difference to
(45:51):
lots of aspects of our lives,including teaching and learning.
There's no question it will,but predicting how it will, I
think, is very, very difficult,because until you see that, you
know somebody will have abrilliant idea for a technology
and then it will just take offand it will go, and some of
those are already happening.
I think there's someinteresting things, but I'd also
(46:11):
say that.
So I'm definitely not againsttechnology.
I think it's great and Iembrace it, but I also think
that, in many ways, the thingsthat matter most about teaching
and learning are not reallyaffected by technology.
They're not changing.
If you went back to some of theearliest schools, you know
proper schools where one teacheris working with a group of of
(46:33):
children.
Let's say, I don't know thefirst schools, maybe starting
about 600 years ago or somethinglike that.
Um, it would be quiterecognizable what those teachers
were doing and the kinds ofthings that would help them to
do it better are the same todayas they were, let's say, 600
(46:53):
years ago.
Very much the same.
The technology would bedifferent, but the fundamental
things about, for example, howthey explain complex ideas they
were doing that then.
They still need to do it now.
They didn't know about cognitiveload theory, but they did know
that if you explain too much atonce, people can't take it in.
You know, people have knownthat always.
(47:15):
You don't really need cognitiveload theory to tell you that.
They knew about the power ofquestioning and the kind of
Socratic method that goes back.
You know much, much further, ofcourse.
So I don't think the thingsthat matter are fundamentally
changed by technology.
I think the things that helpteachers to be even better than
(47:36):
they are are mostly the same asthey've always been.
So we should embrace technology, we should use technology.
We should certainly keep oureye on it.
I don't think we should try andpredict what it's going to do,
because we'll get that wrong andI don't think fundamentally it
changes how we think about thebest ways that we can improve
school systems.
Let's say, and help children tolearn more.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
That's a great place to end the podcast, Rob.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Well, thank you, it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Where can people find more information about
evidence-based education and thework you're doing?
Speaker 3 (48:11):
OK, well, yeah, I mean, if you just search for
evidence-based education, it'sall on our website and
information about the GreatTeaching Toolkit and if you're
interested in it, obviously wedo demos and we can show it to
you.
We can come out while we're outin the UAE for a week at the
end of January, beginning ofFebruary.
So I know we've got somemeetings scheduled, but if
(48:32):
anybody else wants to catch upthere, they've still got a bit
of time to do that, so that'd bereally good.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Brilliant.
I will link to evidence-basededucation in the show notes.
And remember you can catch Robat the Abu Dhabi Teachers
Conference and the Middle EastSchool Leadership Conference.
One is on February 1 and theother is on February 6.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to theTeach Middle East podcast.
Visit our websiteteachmiddleeastcom and follow us
on social media.
The links are in the show notes.
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