Another Andrew Old Round Up

There’s been a bit of a lack of blogposts lately due to a mix of work and other commitments, but I thought I’d take the time to let you know what I’ve been up to, or am about to be up to.

1. The ResearchED conference was earlier this month. You can now see me interviewing OFSTED supremos Sean Harford and Mike Cladingbowl here. For some reason the part where I ask for questions via Twitter was cut, so if you wonder why part-way through the video I start looking at my phone, then I can assure you I didn’t get bored and I am not playing Angry Birds.
2. I wrote a few pages for a book, “Don’t Change the Lightbulbs“. Published in aid of charity, the book looks great and I’m really happy with how my section “Ten Things OFSTED Won’t Like” turned out. Please buy it.
3. On Thursday I am speaking on a panel at a Battle Of Ideas satellite event in Pimlico, on the topic of “What Makes a Good School”. Details can be found here.
4. On Saturday I will be doing a workshop on “Fluency in Mathematics” at the La Salle Education maths conference. There are still a handful of free tickets available here.
5. On the 18th of October I should be on another panel, this time at the Battle Of Idea Festival. The topic is: “Lessons from Asia: what is a world-class education?”. Details available here.
6. On the 23rd of October, I should be speaking to the Warwickshire Fabian Society, about “Obstacles to teaching”. Entrance is free and the event takes place from 7:30 pm (to 9 pm) at 28 Regent Place, Rugby, CV21 2PN

Why Most Behaviour Management Advice Doesn’t Work

This is the fourth and final post in my series of posts on discipline systems, originally inspired by this blogpost from @headguruteacher. The other 3 are:

1. What Makes A School Discipline System Work?
2. Seven Signs of a “Good Enough” Discipline System
3. The Behaviour Delusion (or “Why do Kids Kick Off?”)

I’ve put it in different ways, but most of what I’ve talked about has been the extent to which discipline systems and school culture, not teacher skill, determine behaviour. I’ve worked at a lot of different schools, and learnt that my effectiveness at behaviour management seems to vary massively between the schools. As I argued in the third post above, student expectations, usually acquired from their peers, have more impact than anything the teacher chooses to do. This is why I am outraged about many of those snake oil salesman who offer individual teachers a “magic bullet” solution to behaviour, usually built around platitudes about winning kids over. In particular, ignore anyone who claims to be able to solve behaviour problems by:

• Adopting a particular attitude;
• Using a particular style of teaching;
• Being nice to students;
• Rejecting punishment/sanctions/discipline;
• Negotiating with students;
• Staying calm (I’m not saying this is bad, but it is really unhelpful as advice);
• Avoiding confrontation;
• Solving children’s “underlying problems”.

But here I want to be sceptical even about the well-intentioned and more practical advice often given to teachers. If expectations at a school are low than behaviour will become challenging in response to any attempt to improve behaviour. That includes really well-thought out and cleverly planned methods and systems. No classroom strategy will work if kids truly don’t want it to work. Where teacher strategies work it is either because the kids wanted to behave and the teacher made it easy for them to do so, or where teachers have persisted with their strategies, even where they didn’t seem to be working, until the kids lost the will to fight. For this reason I have seen the following strategies have both positive and negative effects (in some cases I’ve seen the same approach both work brilliantly and fail utterly):

• Warning systems;
• Telling classes to stand up until they are quiet;
• Reward systems;
• Shouting;
• Calling parents;
• Lining kids up outside the classroom door;
• Waiting until students are in the room and quiet before starting the lesson;
• Counting down to get quiet;
• Confronting behaviour publicly;
• Confronting behaviour privately;
• Praise;
• Dressing really smartly;
• Monitoring the amount of work closely and punishing insufficient work harshly;
• Threats (or promises) to report back to form tutors/SMT;
• Sitting down at the front of the room for the entire lesson;
• Taking marking into the classroom and marking during the lesson (I admit I have only seen this work as a behaviour management strategy for cover lessons, but in the first school I worked at taking work with you to cover lessons indicated you were not supply staff and were also confident the kids wouldn’t misbehave);
• Following the school behaviour policy;
• Asking students to work in silence.

Sometimes, the strategies succeeded because the kids wanted to behave, and they helped kids comply without losing face. Sometimes they failed because every strategy would fail and any sign that the class was behaving well and working was such a break with expectations that it would upset the kids and they’d act to stop it. In other cases, success or failure was specific to the school, year group, or even class because of what they are used to. A particular rule or sanction that seems fair to one class, because they are used to it, will seem outrageous to another. Some parents will support, some won’t. Some year heads or managers are so feared or loved (frequently both together) that mentioning their name gives a teacher power, while the names of others will result in a derisive chortle. Some classes are happy to stand in the corridor, or behind their chairs indefinitely and, when teachers wait for their compliance, they will wait for the teacher to give up waiting. The triggers for bad behaviour and the cues for good behaviour vary between schools and between classes. The strategies listed above are worth having in reserve, but until you know your school and your classes you won’t know what will work and whether it failed for a specific reason, or because they would have kicked off regardless.

Is there any universally useful behaviour advice? It is very little, but I’ll give what I can to avoid this being a counsel of despair:

1. Observe other teachers with your students. It is useful to have seen them behave and for them to know you have seen them behave. Or even just for them to see you know a teacher they behave for.
2. Use a seating plan and have several copies to hand. It is always best to know which student you are dealing with.
3. Write down anything serious or any detention set immediately including the exact wording of any insults or swearing even if it seems unforgettable. Stress will make you forgetful and undermine your follow up.
4. Be consistent. Enforce rules even when you regret instituting them, and only change them when you have an excuse to change them, not because they were disobeyed. Be prepared to stick with strategies even when they don’t work; good behaviour management strategies can still be resisted at first. Follow through on punishments.
5. Don’t put up with the obviously unacceptable, no matter who tells you it is normal. It would be better to drop out of teaching completely and feel a failure for it, than become a human punching bag for a few years and then drop out of teaching because it made you ill.

And remember, particularly if you’ve just started teaching, it all becomes easier with time.

10 Things To Avoid in INSET

At the start of a new year teachers face at least a day of CPD. Here is my attempt to identify the worst possibilities (with thanks to all those who suggested things on Twitter or told me what hadn’t yet died out).

1. Anti-education videos. In the old days it used to be “Shift Happens“. Now it is more likely to be Ken Robinson’s Animate. Both are quire explicitly arguing that kids should learn less.
2. Teaching programmes. These are a mix of theories and activities that are meant to indicate a different way to teach. Some are expensive, others largely in the public domain. The ratio of bullshit to insight provided by the methods is remarkably high but they tend to have a cult following that will throw money at them and force them on other teachers. The biggest one is Building Learning Power. Others include TEEP, Kagan Structures and Mantle of the Expert. The most ridiculous programme of the lot, not even deserving the name “teaching”, was the (still not completely dead) Brain Gym.
3. Taxonomies. This can be a way to subdivide learning. If so this is usually Bloom’s (in either original or revised versions) or its close relative SOLO. The idea is that there is a generic structure to learning that can be applied across disciplines to understand one’s subject better. Perhaps they fit some subjects better than others, but, inevitably, they are no substitute for actually knowing your subject and its structure properly in the first place. Far worse is where it is a way to subdivide thinking, like Thinking Hats (below) or teaching methods (like the learning pyramid/Dale’s Cone of experience). And the absolute worst of the lot is when it is a way to subdivide learners by “learning style” (again, something which is still not dead despite being utterly discredited) or “left and right brain”. 
4. Pre-determined discussions. Often in groups with somebody senior monitoring each table, this is a way of manufacturing “buy-in”. The idea is to have a discussion where ambitious people just repeat what those in charge wanted to hear. Flip charts and post-it notes feature heavily. The big craze a few years ago was having to write answers about what students should be like around an outline of a person. The correct answers were “independent”, “resilient”, and “motivated”. Any attempt to say “clever” or “good at maths” was considered a joke.
5. OFSTED training. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times they claim that they don’t want to see a particular teaching style, or even that they won’t grade teaching, nobody believes them. So schools are still telling teachers how to game inspection.
   

   A list of “what OFSTED want”

6. Sensible things made into gimmicks. I really don’t have a problem with Carol Dweck’s concept of a “Growth Mindset” if it means kids are encouraged to work hard by telling them they will get smarter. I do have a problem with the “weaponised” versions involving stickers and questionnaires. This seems like a rerun of AfL, where perfectly sensible ideas about feedback turned into compulsory mini-whiteboards and insane levels of differentiation.
7. Objective Mania. I don’t have a problem with learning objectives. I really don’t. A few words clarifying what kids need to know or practice can only help with my planning, and is unlikely to hinder their learning. However, multiple objectives to be copied down are a pain. These include “WALT and WILF”, “All/Most/Some” and “Must/Should/Could”. This is not differentiation, it is obstruction. And the worst of all is having to put levels or grades on objectives.
8. Behaviour Training that blames teachers. Teachers need to be taught how to use the procedures and where to get help. Also useful to tell them a few tricks appropriate to the school, and warnings about what won’t work. However, too much behaviour INSET, particularly from outsiders, is about making teachers feel they are to blame when they face bad behaviour. Planning well, being nice, making lessons fun, will not sort out behaviour problems. Being told to keep them to yourself (“swallow your own smoke”) will make them worse. And don’t get me started on anything with “restorative” in the name.
9. Bad SEN. Don’t know why but nothing seems to attract nonsense like SEN. The most common types of nonsense are in the descriptions of the conditions. Claims are made about the causes and characteristics of conditions that have nothing to do with how they are diagnosed (like claiming dyslexics have better spatial awareness, or we know which part of the brain causes ADHD). Worse, is when bogus treatments are publicised, like changing the colour of paper or ink for those who can’t read.
10. New marking policies. If your marking policy is so complicated people have to be trained in it, then it is too complicated. And I include in this (in fact I make a special effort to include this) those policies that are introduced that will “save everyone time”. They won’t. Set a minimum standard. Don’t expect everyone to be able to keep to it.

I realise that this is, no doubt, terribly negative. But it shouldn’t be difficult to get INSET right. Just do the following:

• Give teachers plenty of time for their own preparation during the day. Preparation is training.
• Let departments have time to help those with deficits in subject knowledge.
• Make some things optional.
• Concentrate on essential information.
• Make sure any training on how to teach is evidence-based and relevant to your school.

and most of all

• Don’t make anybody sit through something you wouldn’t sit through.