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Plus ça change
John MacBeath
In 2008, English newspapers reported on a major scandal. There was a call for the sacking of the headteacher who had introduced a policy of no homework, no setting, no detentions, no bells and no packed lunches. How could schools survive without these essential conventions? How dangerous might it be to confront the expectations of parents and young people who know what a school âisâ and what purposes it serves?
Plus ça change, plus câest la meme chose, say the more cynical of French critics, a challenge to convention, bringing us back to the question â what do we want from our schools? Who are the âweâ? And why change what, in the view of so many, appears to be working well? What are our common, or peculiar, sources of knowledge as to the purposes and effects of schooling? What qualifies as a âgoodâ school?
There are three major sources of intelligence on which answers to these questions rest â politicians and policy makers, researchers and academics, parents, public and pupils themselves. There is an uneasy balance among these perspectives and continuing contention as to which carries the most weight in reinforcing or challenging inert ideas. Or is there a more subtle and dynamic relationship among these three primary stakeholder groups?
The balance among these seminal sources has clearly changed over the last few decades. The weight of political advocacy and intervention appears to have become progressively deeper and more powerful. It has been served by the new âscienceâ of allowing school âeffectsâ to be measured and compared. âLeague tablesâ as they have come to be known, have been potent and durable, telling a more âscientificallyâ grounded story than had been possible hitherto. This has been helped immeasurably (or more apt, âmeasurablyâ) by the introduction of performance data able to compare like with like, made possible by the trilogy of national curricula, high-stakes testing and market forces.
Among the increasing demands on schools, the value of data brokerage assumes a new currency. As data demands become more complex, time and energy consuming, there is a growing and important role for data brokers. These are individuals or groups who know how to connect data needs with data supplies and are able to build bridges between discriminating data and potential data users (Van Gasse, Vanhoof and Van Petegem, 2019). Describing the situation in Flemish schools, these researchers argue that the need for brokerage activities is made more urgent as the majority of teachers do not have the skills or residual energy to interpret, challenge and transform data usage. This is even more vital in a situation where governments struggle to keep up with comparative data and the extent to which such data are both valid and reliable.
In England, for example, the term âheadlineâ measures of school attainment was seen as an apt term to describe an accessible easy-to-understand approach to comparing schools. However, progressively over a decade the headline measure of school progress changed from âvalue-addedâ (2002â2005) to âcontextual value-addedâ (2006â2010), to âexpected progressâ (2011â2015) and to âprogress 8â from 2016. More complex measures such as âcontextual value addedâ (CVA) were abandoned in 2010 because, it was argued, they were too difficult for the public to understand.
Leckie and Goldstein, in a 2010 critical appraisal of government policy, contested this rationale, illustrating how government itself had failed to present data in a way that could be understood. They refer to Hong Kong, among many other school systems which have adopted âcontextual value addedâ, and citing, as exemplary, the Tennessee value-added assessment system. They conclude, âA more general concern is the degree to which school league tables, progress or otherwise, should be used to hold schools accountable at allâ. The rationale for comparative measures, they write, was:
âCareful and sensitive investigationâ presupposes a will, a challenge and a toolbox of measures with which to gain deeper insights into what have come to be known as the 5Ws Plus H â the what, when, where, how, who, why and how of learning, teaching assessment and evaluation.
The what
There remains a continuing debate as to the primacy of the how and the what of learning. While academics and researchers may privilege the former, it is ultimately the what that has triumphed in policy and practice, and continues to do so. In exams, how you express yourself may be regarded as important, yet what you have remembered and reproduced is ultimately the decisive factor. In classroom interrogation, right answers generally trump thought processes, raising the question as to the extent to which curriculum design favours thinking as against reproduction, creativity over conformity, and authority in both behavioural and institutional senses.
When Herbert Spencer, in 1884, posed the question âwhat knowledge is of most worth?â it was a reference to the intrinsic value of knowledge rather than the instrumental value of knowing what has been taught, very often a token to be quickly forgotten or laid aside once it had served its immediate purpose.
When ideas and questioning fall into a predictable and formulaic response it defines the very nature of the what of learning. While alternative forms of expression may speak more eloquently than closed question and answer, a more discursive approach is constrained by exams and time-limited protocols. Scholastic conventions require the specific ability to compose a linear narrative within a given time allocation. Even concept maps (connecting and bringing together of ideas) would appear to enjoy limited sanction, however much they may illustrate an ability to connect ideas. In 2002, George Oduro, a PhD student in Cambridge submitted a thesis which contained an elaborate drawing of a Ghanaian school and compound. Its detail and fluidity of expression was eloquent and informative, exemplifying the clichĂ©, âworth a thousand wordsâ. The origin of that epithet has been attributed to Ivan Turgenevâs Fathers and Sons in 1861, in which he wrote, âThe drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a bookâ, a view echoed by Marshall McLuhan:
The pre-eminence of verbal facility, quick thinking and access to an âelaboratedâ repertoire of ideas and prior experience receives its initial test virtually from day one of school. In a 2015 paper Dillon described the origins of ritualised guessing as assuming priority when the teacher says to the class, âWho can tell me âŠ?â then calling on one student to answer the question. While this, he writes, is perfectly innocent and there is nothing inherently wrong with that question, the problem lies in the context in which the question is asked and what happens in the minds of those who hear it.
As he argues, there is an implicit, or âhiddenâ, curriculum which conveys a clear message, that the person in authority holds the answer to the question by virtue of the fact that she is the one in charge. Some pupils, those with their hands in the air, think they know the answer that the teacher is looking for. Many of these pupils want to answer the question publicly to please the teacher and gain public approval for what they know. Pupils learn that already having the answer or quickly retrieving it is preferable to taking the time to think about it. They quickly learn that there are ârealâ consequences to having the right answer or not having it. Dillon goes on to write:
If pupils donât view their mistakes as a valuable asset it is because they donât think about their mistakes rationally, but emotionally, in a social context in which they learn early on that teachers are only interested in right answers. If making a mistake results in a pupil feeling stupid it is because it has become an ingrained response to being wrong. But, it has been argued, academic success comes from how children and young people feel about their mistakes.
It is possible, although perhaps challenging, to swim against the current, for teachers to create, from the outset, a mistake-friendly climate. They may open up to discussion how pupils feel when you make a mistake and why they feel that way. A teacher may ask âHave you ever discovered something new from making a mistake or ever felt pleased or proud of having made a mistake?â Does it depend on who judges you on a mistake? Perhaps, of course, the addiction to the one right answer is training from day one for unforgiving tests and exams.
Carol Dweck (2007) has found that getting the answer wrong creates greater activity in the brain than when someone gets the answer right. The cognitive dissonance which a wrong answer provokes is, in a supportive environment, a positive stimulus to try again and âfail betterâ, an aphorism attributed to Samuel Beckett.
The status of the âwhatâ is obviously related to the when and where, given the classroom as the primary locus of learning. Both the âwhenâ and the âwhereâ have been subject of inquiry as to whether knowledge travels from classroom to other sites and as to when learning is more, and least likely, to take place. The convention of putting âhardâ subjects in the morning is a tacit recognition of diminishing returns in energy and application over the course of the school day.
The when
Pinning down and explaining when learning takes place may be revealed by brain scanning technology but is far more difficult to determine in the relentless tide of classroom activity. In his book Flow, Mihalyi Czikzentmihalyi describes occasions when, in the course of school and classroom life, students experience the kind of lighting up that might be revealed by a scan of the brain. It is, in his words, the optimal meeting point of challenge and skill (or disposition). In Vygotskyâs terminology this is the zone of proximal development where the brain moves beyond its habitual comfort zone to embrace something new, engaging and worth investing in. This is the learning moment.
The National Strategies in the UK describe this as the âteachable momentâ, the point when learning and teaching meet. âIt is in the moment of curiosity, puzzlement, effort or interest â the âteachable momentâ â that the skilful adult makes a differenceâ.
This carries an implicit recognition that where the learning moment and the teachable moment meet is something special and reliant on a skillful adultâs facilitation or intervention. In researching âthe learning momentâ Reinsmith (2003) argues that not even the most outstanding teacher can easily summon a learning moment, but he or she can âfashion a context for themâ. It happens, he argues, when there is an openness and playfulness, a sense of ease which may mean abandoning what the teacher thought was important, surrendering to the serendipitous opportunity for learning, both on the part of students and the teacher.
Reinsmithâs thesis posits a context for this to occur, one in which, in his example, the teacher is the facilitator. Learning moments also occur when challenge and skill meet without direct intervention but in a context which invites a challenge, and with rewards that come primarily from the exhilaration of achievement. Such moments, it may be argued, are more likely to occur in art, music, dance, drama, sport and physical activity in which the pupilâs own goals are more likely to be set, realised and exceeded.
The pragmatic question, writes Reinsmith, is how to make the most of these learning moments. By pausing? By honouring them? By celebrating them? Should we ask students to talk about what theyâve just experienced? He writes and suggests that teachers should âride the waveâ, seeing if the moment can be made to last longer so that others may find their way to the new understanding.
Applause and congratulation occur most easily where, in many of the (unfortunately described) âcreativeâ subjects, there is a âperformanceâ. This may occur more rarely in the maths or science class, but that may be because nothing exceptional has occurred, or perhaps because significant individual accomplishment is less easily observable.
The where
Roger Barker (1963, 1968) is credited with the concept of behaviour settings, âsynomorphsâ which describe the relation between how we behave and where we behave. The test of any such setting is the degree to which the behaviour which that place elicits, or constrains, must be specifically distinct from other settings. In other words, place and behaviour have an interdependent relationship. An empty classroom with 40 forward-facing desks, with a blackboard, a teacherâs desk at the front and single entrance door tells a unique story about expectations, authority and containment. The addition of a cane beside the teacherâs desk is, in some countries, a further symbol of what to expect, eloquently testified to by a Ghanaian pupil, âMaster, if we are not punished we will not learnâ (in MacBeath and Swaffield, 2010).
While it may be considered a relic of a bygone age, headteachers may still walk the corridors to ensure that all classroom doors are closed, that children are facing the front and that the only voice to be heard is that of the teacher. This classic version of a behaviour setting encourages a mindset, a version of what learning is, how and where it occurs. It appears to encourage the idea that the âgame of schoolâ is to internalise symbolic rules which may serve the schoolâs immediate purpose but find little relevance anywhere else.
In a very different context, in rural America, there are similar insights in Sara Westoverâs book Educated. In her autobiographical account she provides a telling example of how lack of familiarity with the appropriate conventions can be powerfully disenfranchising. As a student newly arrived in Cambridge University from small town rural America, she describes âtrying to squeeze meaningâ out of the printed word, âfrom a world beyond my ability to perceiveâ. Much of what she encounters is âgibberishâ, full of âblack hole words which suck all other terms into themâ. She eventually learns to âtranscend embarrassment, after being humiliated by asking questions in lectures and now, although wanting to ask for clarification, something stopped me â the certainty to do so would shout to the room that I didnât belong hereâ (p. 297).
The concept of âknowledge transferâ from one context to another is particularly problematic, write Argote and Ingram (2000), because knowing, in specific circumstances such as school, resides in organizational members, in their inter-relationships, sub-networks, access to, and use of, tools, the nature and perceived relevance tasks, and because much of knowledge in organisations is tacit or hard to articulate. Schooling is coming to look increasingly isolated from the rest of what we do, concludes Resnick (1987), but this is particularly the case for those who experience an acute disconnect between what they know and what they know i...
