Teach Secondary 14.4

The case against PEDAGOGY If we want to make a real difference with our teaching and learning, we have to look beyond time-efficient, impersonal pedagogy, says Aaron Swan ... W hat pedagogical initiatives are you required to use as part of your teaching and learning? Do you need to provide pre- written lesson plans? Must they include starter activities, mini plenaries? How about whole class feedback? Regular interleaved recall and testing? Taxonomical questioning? Predefined learning objectives written on the board and in books? Scaffolded sentence starters? Seating plans grouped by SEN, target grade or attainment grade? At one time or another, these will all have been presented to teachers as somehow integral to improving teaching and learning. The thinking often goes that layering themup must then improve teaching and learning yet further, since the more pedagogy there is, the better – right? Thus, we attend courses to reinforce the pedagogy, undertake NPQs to qualify in the pedagogy, are given an observation rubric with which to appraise the pedagogy and so on... Leaps and bounds I found myself recently calling to mind two directly incompatible experiences frommy professional career. The first came during an NPQ session, where we were being shown a video of pedagogy in practice. I watched as a teacher marched around a classroom while the (primary) students worked in silence. In her hand, the teacher held a clipboard displaying the names of the students and attended to them in a particular order. Quickly scanning their pieces of work, she placed a dot against an area of focus, before thenmoving to the next student. Throughout, no words were exchanged. The second experience is a vivid memory I have of a student who became extremely angry with the quality of their work, and concluded that it couldn’t be completed. When I approached the student, I was met with a “ You might as well write it ” – because to them, that was the only way in which anything good could come of the activity. Though reluctant at first, I finally told the student that I’d write their work for them – and then promptly sat and listened as thoughts and ideas came spilling from the student like spaghetti from a saucepan. I tidied up their words into better phrasing, using only their ideas, and there it was – a sensibly laid-out essay. The change in tone was immediate. I’d been willing to sit and help the student, and listen to and support them. Naturally, this took up a significant portion of the lesson, during which no other student had my attention. It was pretty much just me and this individual student for 15 to 20minutes. Afterwards, the student never needed me in quite the same way again, and subsequently came on in leaps and bounds in terms of their confidence over the remainder of that year. Their pride in how they fared producing each new essay was astonishing and joyous for us both. Cognitive blockages Whenever I’ve seen education coming to mean something important to a student, it will typically have been after myself or a colleague have sat with them and listened to them. I’ve talked to students who have told me about a family bereavement, argument or sense of abandonment. I’ve spoken to students who have revealed to me their gender, their personality, their hopes. I’ve heard students riddled with self-loathing and a lack of self-esteem loudly doubt themselves. This type of interaction is often described as a ‘student- centred approach’, rooted in the pioneering work of American psychologist, Carl Rogers, in the 1960s. The underlying principle is that growth only occurs when people experience feelings of being valued; can deal with “Adesirable cognitive end state depends on the relationships wehavewith the peoplearoundus” 62 teachwire.net/secondary