Research School Network: False Economies vs Teaching for Learning

How did we end up with the term ​‘Teaching for Learning’? We might be forgiven for believing that at best it’s a truism and at worst a tautology. For a teacher to teach just is for a learner to learn. Surely? Besides, why would busy teachers engage in anything that doesn’t lead to learning? It’s probably safe to assume that it’s not because they have time to kill in the classroom. But we all know the truth – teaching and learning are not synonymous. Nor is it safe to assume the link between the two, let alone that one follows the other as a matter of course.

If pupils do learn, can we be sure that it was anything to do with us? The Philosopher David Hume pointed out the causal fallacy back in the 17^th Century: simply because B follows A, we cannot infer that A is the cause of B. Nowadays researchers refer to this as ​‘correlation not causation’ (and there are some great examples of spurious correlations out there).

More than a decade ago when I walked through the doors of my first school I did so with a naivety that was matched only by a total ignorance as to what constitutes true learning. The one confidence I held was my ability to communicate ideas and this proved to be my biggest weakness. It was also the hardest thing to unpick in those early days in the classroom. I’d fallen victim to those most classic of causal fallacies in teaching:

Telling is teaching. Told is taught. Listening is learning.

Fortunately, I had a mentor who took the time to support me through the long reflective process required to switch my emphasis from teaching to learning. ​“Teach the way they learn”, he said. And he was right, of course – he wasn’t the Teacher of the Year for no reason!

I was taught to apply strategies that I now know were rooted in: Assessment for Learning, Metacognition and Collaborative Learning. The evidence for these strategies now is compelling. But what is often over-evidenced, is frequently under-practiced and this has never been more true than in the light of the new GCSEs. And so, for the first time I feel myself slipping.

This summer my Year 11s will sit three exams with over four hours of written assessment (five for those with extra-time!). The cognitive load-bearing required of them to perform such a feat can’t be underestimated. And so for almost three years now I have been teaching them… and teaching hard. Fortunately, I have two things working in my favour:

1. A department that has co-planned a rich series of lessons with diverse activities running through them.
2. A fantastic class who have bought into the principles of collaborative learning and who have experienced the success that comes with taking time for metacognitive thinking.

However, there have been plenty of times I have consulted the specification and decided that they needed more information to supplement their learning. On occasions I’ve crudely bolted-on a couple more slides of quotes, technical language and details in the haze of paranoia that comes from not knowing what a grade 8/9really requires!

Now, as we enter the revision phase, it’s clear that in the areas where I prioritised ​‘getting through the content’ over weaving in collaborative learning, metacognition or AFL, this has been a false economy. We know from Prof Rob Coe’s work that simply getting through the content is one of a number of poor proxies for learning (along with ​‘the students were busy’ and ​‘the classroom was calm and ordered’). We also know that finding out what the students can already do and then teaching ​‘from there’, not ​‘to there’ can improve learning. So it’s confession time: the ​‘increased rigour’ of the new curriculum bumped AFL down my list of strategies and I now need to re-prioritise it to avoid teaching without learning! If I don’t, I risk slipping back into the scenario Dylan Wiliam describes and that many of us know well – ​“we teach the pupils, take in their books and wonder what planet they were on when we were teaching this stuff!”

Maybe it’s not that I’ve forgotten the need to emphasise learning over teaching. Perhaps it’s simply that I’ve fallen victim to the ​‘Curse of Knowledge’. First introduced by Camerer et al in a journal of 1989 and since built upon by thinkers such as Steven Pinker, it explores the cognitive bias in which individuals, communicating with other individuals, have unknowingly assumed that the others have the background to understand. Researcher Elizabeth Newton carried out a study on this phenomenon in which participants listened to other participants tapping out a well-known tune such as ​‘Happy Birthday to You’ and they had to guess what the tune was. She found that the tappers were confident that their tapping would lead to the right guess from the listeners – but it rarely did. Tappers got frustrated with listeners being unable to pick up what they were trying to communicate. As teachers (tappers) we have the knowledge and we feel we communicate it effectively, but the we are often cursed with assuming that the problem lies with our students (listeners) and their understanding of it.

So now, ten years into my teaching career, I find myself having created gaps in student learning through the same self-imposed mistakes I made in 2007. And each gap has something in common: it arose from believing Telling is teaching. Told is taught. Listening is learning. We all have those lessons where slides have been added to a PowerPoint but students aren’t required to do anything with the information. Fortunately, the tools that exist for diagnosing these gaps can help to highlight what needs re-visiting. There’s also the reassurance of knowing that these tools don’t need to be ​‘new and shiny’, as Dylan William puts it. And he’s also right to point out the need to avoid the pitfall of seeking out new ideas through sharing good practice: ​‘teachers have enough strategies to last them a lifetime. The issue is not one of finding the next shiny new thing but of mastering what we already know can work for us…”.

Lorwyn is a Teacher of RE and Philosophy at Kingsbridge Community College. He is also an Assistant Principal and Director of the Research School Network in Devon and Cornwall.