Best of the Best

Progress (Best of the Best series)

Isabella Wallace, Isabella Wallace, Leah Kirkman

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781785831607
• eBook ISBN: 9781785831959
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In Progress, Isabella Wallace and Leah Kirkman explore our understanding of this core educational concept, drawing together ideas from leading international thinkers and practical strategies for busy teachers. The Best of the Best series brings together for the first time the most influential voices in education in a format that is concise, insightful and accessible for teachers. Keeping up with the latest and best ideas in education can be a challenge as can putting them into practice but this new series is here to help. Each title features a comprehensive collection of brief and accessible contributions from some of the most eminent names in education from around the world. In this exciting first volume, Isabella Wallace and Leah Kirkman have curated a collection of inspiring contributions on the theme of progress and have developed practical, realistic, cross-curricular and cross-phase strategies to make the most of these important insights in the classroom. Each expert has provided a list of further reading so you can dig deeper as you see fit. In addition, the Teacher Development Trust has outlined ideas for embedding these insights as part of CPD. Suitable for all educationalists, including teachers and school leaders. Many myths abound about progress. We have to show that learners are making progress, but what do we really mean by the term? Who decides what constitutes progress? Who should set targets, and why? How do we measure progress? How do we know when pupils are demonstrating it? How do we differentiate and allow for learners' different starting points? Should we be measuring everyone against the average or should we be looking at ipsative progress, where achievement is relative only to the pupil's personal best? Indeed, if everyone is making expected progress, is that really progress or just doing as expected? Do we need to rethink assessment? Does meta-cognition hold the answer? What about other approaches like SOLO taxonomy or Building Learning Power? If progress isn't linear, what kind of shape does it have? What implicit value judgements may we be making when applying the term uncritically and unthinkingly? How do we ensure that funding, including the Pupil Premium, is having a tangible effect on progress? Can we make learning and progress visible? What does the evidence base the research studies and meta-analyses have to say? Will that be applicable in all contexts? These are just some of the questions that the educational experts delve into in this first volume in the Best of the Best series. The practical strategies offered by Isabella Wallace and Leah Kirkman demonstrate how teachers can immediately use these ideas in the classroom. Advice from the Teacher Development Trust demonstrates how to plan sustained and responsive changes to practice based on the book's key insights. Contributions include: Professor John Hattie Pupil premium monitoring what works. Geoff Petty Improving progress by learning from the best research. Sir John Jones Demographics, destiny and the magic-weaving business. Sugata Mitra Schools in the Internet age. David Didau The real shape of progress. Professor Mick Waters Doing well for your age? Will Ord What is progress? Claire Gadsby A climate for learning. Professor Robert Bjork Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. Professor John West-Burnham Progress and practice. Professor Guy Claxton Building Learning Power: finding your own sweet spot. James Nottingham Progress, progress, progress. Mark Burns Learning without limits. Martin Robinson The pupil's progress. Mike Gershon Exemplar work. Pam Hook On making progress visible with SOLO. Andy Hargreaves Uplifting colleagues. Teacher Development Trust Next steps

CHAPTER 1

PUPIL PREMIUM – MONITORING WHAT WORKS

PROFESSOR JOHN HATTIE

JOHN HATTIE is professor and director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne. His ground-breaking book Visible Learning (2009) synthesised the results of more than fifteen years’ research involving millions of students and represented the biggest ever collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning.

Funding based on equity is a no-brainer; how to use these funds is the more difficult task. Ensuring that only high-probability programmes of high impact are chosen is a great start. The Sutton Trust–Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit1 is emerging as a key resource to sort the wheat from the chaff. It is helping to stop schools implementing low-probability programmes, stop the ‘but we are different’ mentality that pervades school innovation and stop the tendency to see satisfaction as the outcome. We know much about what works best and what does not, and we know that we can have high impact on all pupils.

The three keys are:

Ensuring that there are the funds and capacity to evaluate the fidelity and quality of implementation.

Developing programme logics so there is a common understanding of what the processes and outcomes are.

Implementing excellent evaluation of the impact on student learning. (Note, I say learning, not achievement, as the latter can be too narrow.)

Ensuring students enjoy and develop a passion for learning, such that they want to come back to school to learn, is often a more critical outcome. This means evaluating whether schools are inviting places to come to. The core notion is the evaluation of impact, which raises the three impact questions:

What does impact mean (and is it shared)?

What magnitude of impact are you aiming for?

Is there equity in that all students gain at least a year’s growth for a year’s input?

From the evaluation of the pupil premium,2 it seems the first part (use of funds) is being well undertaken, but more needs to be done to scale up the nature of successful implementation. This will involve building evidence about implementation in local contexts (within the Toolkit, for example) and developing a language of scalability – what success means – and quality evaluation resources.

But this is all the right debate – the debate about the politics of collaboration is much healthier than the politics of distraction. Issues about impact, developing a best practice of teaching and collaborating to make the difference are at the core of a flourishing and transforming school system. Such focus changes the debate about what is not working to what is working well, and has the highest probability of impacting pupils’ lives. There is success in our schooling system, it is all around us, but do we have the courage to dependably recognise it, esteem it and scale it?

FURTHER READING

Fisher, Douglas, Frey, Nancy and Hattie, John A. C. (2016). Visible Learning for Literacy, Grades K–12: Implementing the Practices That Work Best to Accelerate Student Learning (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin).

Hattie, John A. C. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (London: Routledge).

Hattie, John A. C. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Achievement (Oxford: Routledge).

Hattie, John A. C. and Anderman, Eric (2013). Handbook on Student Achievement (New York: Routledge).

Hattie, John A. C., Masters, Deb and Birch, Kate (2016). Visible Learning in Action: International Case Studies of Impact (London and New York: Routledge).

Hattie, John A. C. and Yates, Gregory (2014). Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn (London and New York: Routledge).

http://visiblelearningplus.com

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES

RECOGNISING, BUILDING AND ESTEEMING BEST PRACTICE IN A LOCAL CONTEXT

Do you know what your colleagues are doing in terms of continuing professional development (CPD)? In order to create a common understanding of process and impact we need to know what others are doing professionally. Is there anyone on your staff team with common pedagogical interests to yours? Are there any individuals or groups attending an upcoming local TeachMeet? What external courses have your colleagues attended this academic year? Have you or your colleagues read any books/articles/blogs that have been useful or thought-provoking? Develop a program logic among your colleagues to understand each other’s theories of change, and agree short, medium and long term outcomes. Create a space for your staff team to share the various ways they are accessing CPD – this might be a physical display in the staffroom or an electronic resource to which all staff can contribute. Having a highly visible platform to see how your colleagues are developing professionally will get the dialogue going, whether this is being able to collaborate on a common initiative, sharing expertise and practice or even spotting someone from whom you can seek friendly professional advice.

Competition between schools can lead to educational establishments isolating themselves. But collaboration is invaluable. Seek out opportu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1: Pupil premium – monitoring what works (Professor John Hattie)
• 2: Improving progress by learning from the best research (Geoff Petty)
• 3: Demographics, destiny and the magic-weaving business (Sir John Jones)
• 4: Schools in the Internet age (Sugata Mitra)
• 5: The real shape of progress (David Didau)
• 6: Doing well for your age? (Professor Mick Waters)
• 7: What is progress? (Will Ord)
• 8: A climate for learning (Claire Gadsby)
• 9: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning (Professor Robert Bjork)
• 10: Progress and practice (Professor John West-Burnham)
• 11: Building Learning Power: finding your own sweet spot (Professor Guy Claxton)
• 12: Progress, progress, progress (James Nottingham)
• 13: Learning without limits (Mark Burns)
• 14: The pupil’s progress (Martin Robinson)
• 15: Exemplar work (Mike Gershon)
• 16: On making progress visible with SOLO (Pam Hook)
• 17: Uplifting colleagues (Andy Hargreaves)
• Next steps …: Teacher Development Trust
• Copyright
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