Philippa retweeted
New post 👇👇
There are lots of views about how to improve our education system. Not enough of them focus on the classroom. We pursue big structural solutions, when we should be looking at how to create calm, quiet, peaceful classrooms.
New post, please share!
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ALL school districts need to embrace the one or two really nerdy teachers that read 50 educational books a year or listen to podcasts on a daily or weekly basis. The ones with really good outcomes with their students year after year. I've heard too many stories from teachers on here that they are basically deemed the "difficult" teacher or are just sidelined in their district. Not all schools/districts do this, but far too many. This is a call to admin. It is perfectly fine if a teacher knows far more than you. Listen to them. Learn from them. Appreciate them. Put them in positions to help improve your district. Admin that do this are truly the best. It is about the kids. That is what we are all here for.
“Mossborne, Ark King Solomon and West London Free School all opened before Michaela. So if a school decides "oh you know what, let's go knowledge rich and do centralised behaviour etc etc" that isn't necessarily because of Michaela, because there are many forces involved.”
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"Can Michaela be scaled?" was an interesting question in 2016
It's not an interesting question today, because we know the answer, and it's "no."
Whatever the reason for that (see first reply), it seems to be a simple fact that it hasn't been scaled, despite everything being in place for it to be scaled:
It's had *thousands* of visitors. Books, blogs, conferences, national press, a documentary and a headteacher with more air time than any other in the country, and despite all that there are but a handful of schools that have come close to emulating what it's achieved.
That's not to say it hasn't been influential. It's helped many to raise their expectations and it has helped shift the overton window on "acceptable approaches to pedagogy and curriculum" in this country. But that isn't the same as "scaled" or "emulated" in any way.
And it's also hard to disentangle the influences back in those early days. Mossborne, Ark King Solomon and West London Free School all opened before Michaela, and that's not even to mention the influence of the KIPP school in the US. So if a school decides "oh you know what, let's go knowledge rich and do centralised behaviour etc etc" that isn't necessarily because of Michaela, because there are many forces involved.
None of this is to denigrate Michaela's achievements, which are clearly astonishing. It's just to say that if the model hasn't scaled by now, it's unlikely that it ever will.
Philippa retweeted
Exercise books are so temptingly inspectable. You can flick through then and feel you’ve seen learning. But full pages, neat titles, coloured pens and polished paragraphs are, at best, just proxies. The more beautiful a book is often the less evidence of learning it provides. More often, it’s evidence we’re looking in the wrong place. open.substack.com/pub/davidd…
Philippa retweeted
Fidget toys: no evidence of help, some evidence of harm.
Philippa retweeted
'lessons are followed up with formal write-ups detailing ‘strengths’ and ‘areas for development’ as if those can be meaningfully established in an hour. (Sometimes, schools even grade the show-ponying but let’s not go there again this time.. ) teacherhead.com/2024/05/12/t…
Philippa retweeted
Excellent in a very under-researched area. Not wasting children’s time and adult resource on wasteful interventions is almost as important as doing the right things.
🚨New paper released today:
10 Common SEN Mis(Interventions)—An Evidence Summary
steplab.co/news/common-sen-m…
Supporting students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is a vital and growing challenge for schools. But it’s not straightforward. Learning is complex, marketing claims are confident, and the evidence is often hard to access. As a result, we can sometimes end up adopting approaches which are less effective than we initially think.
For some, this may well be uncomfortable reading. As a profession, many of us have put time, effort and belief into these things, and lots will have seen students who looked like they were getting something from it. However, it’s essential that we temper our intuition with evidence, because ultimately: our most vulnerable students deserve it.
This new paper co-authored with @Barker_J is an attempt to raise the visibility of the best available evidence around several commonly used SEN interventions. For each, we provide an overview of what the research says, offer a more informed approach, and provide a suite of rigorous links to help you get started.
We hope it will serve as a useful resource and over time: push us to be even more 'evidence demanding' as a profession.
As ever, let me know what you think. If you have pushes or suggestions for how this paper could be better, hit reply and give it to me straight.
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I think a lot of leadership teams really don't understand the role and function of Heads of Department (HoDs).
In many schools, HoDs are purely technocratic. Their job is to deal with things like timetables, set changes, data deadlines, detention systems and cover. Occasionally they venture into the realms of more "curriculum" type issues, but often these are still things like ordering textbooks, setting homework centrally, making sure there are clubs and extra-curricular activities and the like. Come summer, they project manage curriculum improvement work, which again is often bureaucratic and mostly focused around "why haven't my colleagues hit their deadlines?"
Rarely is the HoD considered the driver and champion of Teaching and Learning in their subject. But that's what they should be. A true leader or teaching and curriculum, helping their colleagues develop their practice and skills in the classroom, and coordinating the team to ensure that the curriculum and resources are effective and supportive.
The important bit is that a lot of leaders *tell* me that actually their HoDs do fulfil this vision. Unfortunately, as I've written before, ideality rarely matches reality, and when I speak to the HoD they tell me they have no time to go observe lessons, no autonomy over policies, no meeting time to discuss T&L, and are drowning in the implementation of other people's priorities.
If you want your HoDs to be able to do this job, you need to actively make it happen, rather than just hope it does.
You need to
- Give them free periods to go and observe
- Reduce the number of tasks they need to do that are unrelated
- Allow them the autonomy they need to make disciplinary changes and developments
- Ring fence meeting time for T&L
and, above all, trust them!
The generosity of @m_chiles and @LHS_HighSchool in sharing great practice is generous and inspiring in equal measures. This is the most useful way to undertake great CPD. Thank you 🙏
***STUDY BUDDY***
🚨 Download the booklet here if it’s helpful for your students - dropbox.com/scl/fi/d8a3u9lyg… 🚨
Introducing Lenny our Longdendale study buddy 😊
A guide for students to support their revision.
How to use past papers ✅
How to revise for specific subjects ✅
The Pomodoro technique ✅
Exam day tips ✅
Key revision websites ✅
How we learn ✅
How to create a revision timetable ✅
How to manage exam stress ✅
#TheLongdendaleLegacy
Philippa retweeted
Leaders: this is it, right? It's a hard ask, but a simple one. If you want to rapidly improve your school, you have to get in to every lesson, every day.
I loved this interview, do check it out, link in reply 👇👇
“These documents often produce a ‘tick box’ culture within schools, where, for example, the colour of pens used and frequency of marking appear to become more important than whether or not students’ learning is moving forward.” 👏🏻sarahlarsen.school.blog/2019…
Responsive teaching shifts the fundamental question from "Did I teach it?" to "Did they learn it?" @C_Hendrick
Philippa retweeted
The science of learning isn't about prescriptions, it's about probabilities. And this is where knowing the boundary conditions of any principle matters so much. Knowing when not to use it can be as important as knowing when to.
This is my problem with every lesson starting with retrieval practice "because science".
A principle applied everywhere becomes dogma; a principle applied within its limits increases the probability of it being effective, because it honours the conditions that make it work in the first place.
Retrieval practice is a key driver of learning but there are a lot of contexts where retrieval might be counterproductive: introducing new concepts or when prior knowledge is insufficient to make retrieval attempts meaningful rather than random guessing.
The boundary conditions matter precisely because they reveal the mechanisms underlying the effect. Retrieval practice works through the effortful reconstruction of knowledge from memory, which strengthens retrieval pathways. But if there's nothing meaningful to retrieve, or if the retrieval demands exceed working memory capacity, the mechanism breaks down. The practice becomes ritual rather than science.
Interleaving benefits discrimination between similar concepts, but becomes less valuable when categories are already easily distinguishable. Spacing enhances retention through forgetting and relearning, but may hinder initial acquisition when foundational knowledge is still forming.
Senior leaders saying "use retrieval practice when learners have established some initial knowledge of the material, when the cognitive demand matches their capacity, and when errors can be corrected through feedback" is less compelling than "start every lesson with retrieval practice." The nuanced version requires professional judgment; the simplified version offers algorithmic certainty.
This is where we need to move away from "what does the research say" but "under what conditions does this research apply/not apply to my context and how can I apply it?"
Philippa retweeted
I see a lot of schools, and in many of them behaviour is below what it could and should be. Very often I see some of the most common strategic mistakes in these schools:
1. Vague expectations of behaviour
2. No staff training in implementing the school behaviour policy
3. A belief that teachers should ‘own’ the behaviour (which usually means in essence that they shouldn’t bother anyone else with it)
4. Gaseous boundaries that can be crossed without consequence
Inconsistent consequences
5. An emphasis on restorative and purely therapeutic techniques over clear routines
Some of these strategic errors are believed to be virtues, eg ‘we believe that children must only behave because they want to, because extrinsic motivators are immoral.’ A lot of these mistakes stem from a Progressive view of the child, and how they behave in classrooms.
1. Children are naturally inclined to be good
2. Children are naturally curious about school work
3. Children will learn by themselves how to behave if we let them
4. Children will do things correctly as long as we ask them nicely
These are lovely but deeply flawed premises. Basing your institutional system of behaviour on these will lead to sub-optimal outcomes, very often disastrously so.
And when they don’t work, the most common reason cited for why is an appeal to society: these kids are poor, these kids are disadvantaged, what can you expect from kids like this? Too rarely do people reflect that it may be the strategies of the school, powered by the assumptions of helplessness mentioned above this sentence, that are the major factors in their outcomes.
Demographic disadvantage is a powerful thing, but it is not destiny, and I’ve seen hundreds of schools ignore the temptation to settle for less, and build cultures where everyone flourishes, not just the fortunate recipients of privilege.
Another waste of time,non evidence based technique @rlrossi64 @greeborunner and Bloom 🫣
Philippa retweeted
A general rule that has served me well in life is if you’re at a training day and see a triangle, then run for the hills.
