I listened to Dylan William speak yesterday at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
http://www.dylanwiliam.net/
He was speaking at one point about the best classrooms, the best teachers and the best lessons.
In the best classrooms, the best lessons are dynamic. They are interactive. They feature a high level of pupil participation. The best teachers know what they want to achieve. They're confident in their mastery of the subject at that point and light enough on their feet to change things as the lesson progresses. The best teachers understand the creative nature of both teaching and learning. They operate as creatives in the midst of the creative process that is going on around them, one that they call back at key strategic points that they have identified to orchestrate, rehearse, stimulate, provoke, challenge, refresh, capture, consolidate.
At its best, it is beautiful.
My mantra has always been high challenge, high engagement, high participation. I have always encouraged teachers to use a wide range of methods of assessing children's knowledge and understanding... talk partners and feedback, table discussions and votes, whiteboards, Nintendo DS Pictochat feedback, envoys, ask a child by name for an answer... anything and everything to ensure that the children constantly know that they have no choice but to be active participants in the session, that they have to be ready with a response... anything other than 'Hands Up' as a method of responding to a question.
By asking for hands up, the teacher is creating two classrooms - one of a few pupils and another of many pupils.
How many children is a teacher actually teaching if asking for and responding to Hands Up.
...How hardwired into adults is Hands Up?
It is interesting the number of things that are done in education because they've always been done. The hardwiring in adults is the models of teaching and being taught that they've got in their heads from when they were children.
And when did their teacher's practice date back to...
The noughties?
How much different was practice in most schools in the noughties than it was in the nineties?
The nineties?
How much different was practice in most schools in the nineties than it was in the eighties?
The eighties?
How much different was practice in most schools in the eighties than it was in the seventies?
The seventies?
How much different was practice in most schools in the seventies than it was in the sixties?
And so on (you get the picture) for the fifties, forties, thirties, etc...
Very soon, you can find yourself tracing practices back a long, long way in time.
That's scary, because - of course - If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got.
Not only that. Education served a different purpose for a very different society the further and further you go back in the past.
We've got to be careful about all of our methods. All of our hardwiring. All of the things that we do maybe without thinking about them.
What am I doing? Why am I doing it? What is it achieving? Is it achieving the effect that I want it to achieve? How do I know?
The most effective teachers ask themselves questions like this often. They challenge their own practice and develop their practice in the light of their own reflections, their conversations with colleagues and in the light of research.
I would dread to think that we're doing anything in our classrooms that aren't very carefully thought about and aren't designed to achieve a very specific objective.
