What I have learned about learning from my learning

One thing I haven’t really talked about on this blog is learning from my own perspective (or perhaps it is all about my learning: discuss). So I thought I would dedicate some wordage to that.

Number 1: I don’t respond well to targets

Set me a goal, go on, please. I may ignore it, or embrace it enthusiastically, but without a doubt I will forget it. Stand at the front and tell me the learning objectives for a lesson I will generally go: yeah yeah, whatever, get on with the bloody learning. Although to be fair, most of the times people have done this to me, I’ve either not been terribly interested in it, or have read them and realised I could already do most of the things listed. I have had goals set as appraisals, I have tried setting fitness and health targets, and each and every time they have failed. Dismally. I even struggle to use a “to do” list. I remember doing my last formal teacher training course and being reminded every time that my personal objectives for each observed lesson were supposed to be linked to my last observed lesson. I never did remember.

Here’s my question, then: why? Perhaps the targets set have never really been owned by me, and I’ve not had a role in negotiating them. Very possible, and in the case of the learning outcomes at training events, this is almost certainly the case. I think that motivation is definitely part of it, like when I think about the health goals I have tried setting myself, it’s usually been because I consciously know and would like to lose weight, but deep down, it’s not an ingrained, deep desire. So…

Number 2. Motivation is important.

If I really do want something I don’t need goals setting, or encouragement. I don’t need motivational cant either – I had a running app on my iphone once that used to say positive encouraging messages every mile or so. I disliked running anyway, and this definitely didn’t help. I once startled an old lady by shouting abuse at the phone when it did this, so decided the app wasn’t for me. So, trying to jolly me along or inspire me with “you’re doing really well, keep it up” type crap is going to jar with me.

Motivation can come from the session itself, a kind of integral motivation, where the manner and the style of the session is so good that you want to learn anyway. But this is rare, and hard to master. Differentiation here is important: I was bright kid at school, and I pick stuff up pretty quickly, so someone like me needs a push or I will get bored. Tell me what I already know and you’ve lost me. Motivation will plummet.

Like I said, if I want to learn it, I will. So lessons and training need to meet a clear need which I have recognised (no, that’s not goal setting: any performance management expert will tell you there is a difference between “you will be able to do x” and “this is a session on x”). I will dedicate time and energy off my own back, at the expense of my pocket, my health and my family, I will be quite pathetically obsessed by it at times. Like when I did the LSIS Research Development Fellowship, I didn’t use a conscious process of goal setting or marking off achievements, I just got on with it.

Number 3: reflection is overrated.

Given that this blog is all about me reflecting on stuff, that seems odd, but let me explain. The problem I have with reflection is that a lot of the time it’s either forced into a structure (no, you may not just ramble about it in your own style, you must reflect on X in the manner of Klebb’s Maceration Cycle) or it isn’t needed (or perhaps wanted?). The beauty of blogging as reflection is that you are free to do it how and when you like, and I think the reflections are much richer for that. The other thing with reflection is that people tend to reflect then forget about it. So the reflection becomes a paper exercise that doesn’t have an impact on reality.

So OK, reflection isn’t overrated but it is usually badly done. But the “overrated”heading there will hopefully annoy a few people…!

Number 4: the trick to effective technology use is confidence.

If I had a pound for every time I’ve been to training or on courses and the speaker/teacher says “ooh, I hope the technology works” I would be a rich man by now. Hell, I’ve no doubt said it myself before. The thing is, when you do that, you immediately underline the use of the technology as a gimmick. I get technology, I use it a lot, and nothing puts you off it like that. Do share with me that your experimenting – I like that in a teacher/trainer – but don’t fret about the technology. Digital technology can be a fantastic resource, so don’t play the “crusty academic new-fangled computerational machines” card, it’s not cute, just rubbish. Nobody ever said “ooh, I hope the paper works”. So practice before the session, then bloody use it and get on with it. (And I promise not to say it myself ever again)

Number 5: Collaboration is important

…but be careful. People who know more (also known as “smug bastards”) can get complacent and arrogant (that’s me, by the way) when they work with people who have more to learn. It’s OK from time to time, but for collaboration to really work you have to get the mix of abilities and temperaments right. You put a shouty strong learner with three quiet less able learners you may as well just get that shouty strong learner to do it on their own, and let the others relax. It’s quicker, and saves excruciating discomfort for all involved. On the other hand put a bunch of shouty strong learners together and it (can be) marvellous fun, in a “light the blue touch paper and send well back” way. So again, differentiation is important (I should give it its own paragraph).

Number 6: differentiation is important.

See 2 and 5 above. And probably the rest as well.

Number 7: I like learning.

I do. I will digest facts and figures, carry out micro scale action research projects, read stuff, do stuff, all those things. Learning is possibly one of the most fun things you can do either on your own or with other people. Your job, dear teacher, is to make sure I remember this.

So, how long does it take to learn English, then?

Bad news, I’m afraid. I’m not going to answer the question, but rather I’m going to explain why I can’t answer it, why it probably can’t be answered, and what we could do about this. I’m also likely to get a load of people trying desperately to work this out for their own studies, so my sincere apologies, but I hope that you enjoy this nonetheless.

To set this in context, however, earlier this year those highly experienced educational experts (Oh, how I long for a sarcasm punctuation mark) at the Skills Funding Agency set out some apparently random rules that the courses they would fund are only those leading to an award (approx 50 hours) or a certificate (approx 100 hours). My numbers are rough, and as things stand it’s looking increasingly like for the next year at least things are unlikely to change too terribly, (probably because nobody had time to actually write the qualifications) but it gives us a clear idea as to where the government is going with this one. Either way, the implied fifty hours to move forward in speaking and listening seems arbitrary at the least: certainly, it’s not based in any kind of research or evidence. And just speaking and listening? As ever with UK ESOL policy the assumption is that all skills are equal, and that grammar and lexis are merely adjuncts to the skills. The systems of grammar and lexis needed to progress from level X to level Y are the same whether or not you demonstrate proficiency in those systems through speaking or writing, so to add 50 odd hours extra for reading and writing seems random to say the least.

There was a glamourously headlined article in the Guardian last year, How I Learned a Language in 22 Hours. It was interesting to read and I’ve no doubt that language teachers the world over had a good long read to see what the secret was. The secret, of course being that it’s not quite 22 hours. It doesn’t take much time before the essential lie of the headline writer becomes clear: the writer is referring not at all to learning a language but to learning only the most common 1000 words. This is rather different. It’s also only time spent using a particular online system, and doesn’t take into account wider factors in the writer’s non-online time, which may or may not have influenced things.

What is interesting here, from a policy influencing point of view, is that this article, with its frankly inaccurate headline, gives the impression of speedy progression from no language to language. Far be it for me to assume that the government would ever base policy decisions on such things as articles written by journalists or clearly biased research by private companies, of course, and I have no doubt that they use well planned, well researched evidence. (Again, that sarcasm mark, please.)

The thing is, by its very nature, the length of time it takes to learn a language is always going to be tricky to measure. It will vary hugely from person to person, even where you take into account the various individual differences. A quick google search threw up this link which although it doesn’t suggest a time for English (being focussed on the time it takes for English speakers to learn another language) it does suggest between 550 and 2200 taught hours, depending on the language being learned. If you flip those figures (yes, I know), you could get an idea of how long it would take for a speaker of those languages to learn English.

So far, this is pretty dodgy ground, I have to be honest, but this is a blog post based on a Google search, not a serious literature review.

There is page 17 of this which cites the same data as above, but which talks in terms of years of study as well as specific hours. There’s a great post hereon the subject (which is where I found the last link) which also brings into the equation the 10,000 hour theory.

What’s especially interesting here is the recognition that the number of hours spent per week has an impact, as opposed to just Guided Learning Hours, which is important, and the impact of immersion, both of which are relevant for ESOL learners.

So then I find this, from an intensive training French language school, suggesting that they can get people up to the first level of the CEFR (page 24 is the easiest summary) in 60 hours. This looks familiar. But lets hang on before we get too excited. Here we are talking both immersion (it’s in France) and high intensivity: that’s 60 hours without distractions like, say, children, relationships, work, and the rest of your life, and aimed probably at wealthy, educated middle class English speakers, whose language shares great swathes of similarity. I’m not saying it’s wrong to suggest 60 hours here, just that a little context is important. And anyway, as the language level increases the amount of time suggested goes up, until you are looking at 100-200 hours for the mid to higher levels, equivalent to Entry 2 to Level 2, where the majority of ESOL learners in the UK sit.

Then there is a section here where it’s suggested that children in an immersive learning environment but using a different home language, need about 2-3 years to become proficient enough to function.

I could go on, I really could, but I think we can safely say that nobody can say for sure, apart from the claims of people trying to flog you audio-lingual “listen and repeat” self study courses The general feeling seems to be around 150-200 hours per level, although this is mostly hunches and guess work, but still. I’ve not even gone into tryibg to find out what the definitions of “proficiency” are, which adds another layer of confusion to proceedings.

Of course what we really need is a proper study of ESOL learners in the UK, based on objective assessments of their performance and improvement over time.

Rather handily, although I never thought I would say this, thanks to the pressures of public accountability, we are sitting on a mountain of data which could give us more than a few clues as to how long it takes a UK ESOL learner to progress from level to level, and which takes into account spiky profiles. Major chunks of a senior manager’s life, it would seem, is about finding and channelling data, and among the most important sets of data is student achievement data, that is what qualifications learners have achieved, and, crucially, when and how long it took for them to do that.

Every college in the country has this data going back years. Really actual proper years, in some cases perhaps a decade. Massive heaps of data on students who achieve, return to study more and achieve again, progressing slowly but surely up the levels. Even without this, when I get into work today I could easily go and grab about 12 case studies of learners who have progressed from Entry 2 to level 1, as could many teachers around the country.

And these are exactly the learners we want to know about.

What’s annoying, however, is that the same accountants and non-teachers who decided upon the 50 hours thing have access to all of this data. All of it, for every ESOL learner in the UK. And yet they seemed to pick 50 hours out of the air.

Maybe they didn’t, maybe 50 hours is the average. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe my own observations and reflections of learners is wrong. Maybe the reflections, experiences and observations of experienced ESOL professionals (remember them?) around the country are wrong and the accountants are right. Maybe.

Reported speech: whose speech?

This week I broke some rules. I taught grammar (whisper it) without setting a clear context first. I didn’t share the learning outcomes. I didn’t root the language in the learners lives and experiences.

But it was a damn good lesson, all the same.

The focus of the lesson was reported speech, and in that respect, it had a very clear aim: learners will be able to write sentences reporting speech using appropriate grammatical structures (AKA “use reported speech” but when writing learning outcomes why use three words when you can use eight? (Joke!)) we also covered a number of spellings, the appropriate use of punctuation when writing direct speech and a few issues around intonation for subordinate clauses.

I should add that the procedure described is pinched partly from a colleague and then expanded slightly, so thank you, anonymous colleague.

The lesson started with a load of random statements in speech bubbles around the room. We discussed what the contexts might be, who might be talking, and so on, then, aft demonstrating how with the whole class, in groups the learners turned the statements into four line dialogues.

Again, beginning with a teacher led demonstration, the learners then took their dialogues and turned them into direct speech. Some of the group particularly enjoyed doing this in a mock-dramatic style (“You can’t do that!” Ben said, in shock”) and there was a clear focus here on the appropriate punctuation, and discussion around intonation. Both of which I recorded on flip chart paper on the wall as an outcome to reflect upon later.

Then carefully eliciting and getting the learners to practice a couple of times, we turned the direct speech dialogue on the board into reported speech, with the first sentence being demonstrated/teacher led, and the other sentences being worked on in groups using miniwhiteboards before sharing as a class.

The learners then went back to their own dialogues and did the same, with lots of peer support and monitoring from me. And then we recorded “use reported speech” as something they had done.

So, would it have been better had I set a context? No. In fact, the learners set their own contexts for the language, which is far more meaningful. We are conditioned by our early training to set and context for the language, which is fine, sometimes, and I could have set contexts here, but I don’t think it would have made the slightest bit of difference, and would, if anything, have restricted the language developed.

Would it have been better to have shared the outcomes? No. Because they would have been trying to use reported speech from the outset, and would have missed all the work on punctuation and intonation. They wouldn’t have been focussing on how to make the changes, about what is different in direct and indirect speech. I did make the purpose of each stage clear, I should add, but the overall aim wasn’t made clear until the end. I did make time for reflection and self assessment of confidence in the language at the end of the lesson, however which is good for me as I have been known to forget this! But definitely my feeling is that sharing of the overall aims in this particular instance would have been detrimental to the scaffolding of the lesson. To use another metaphor: had the learners know where they were going they wouldn’t have been looking properly at the scenery on the way. (In that metaphor, the road, the scenery and the destination are of equal importance.)

And rooting it in the learners lives? Well, reported speech is not what you would call a major functional piece of language for the most part. Indeed, the most obvious day to day uses of it would probably be gossiping, talking about something on TV or when complaining about customer service. But learners can apply their own meaning, their own usefulness to a piece of language, apply it to their own experiences themselves (which is what happened when one learner pointed out the gossiping function of reported speech). And sometimes, you know, the idea of setting language in a personally meaningful context in the learners’ lives is just not appropriate, as you shoehorn a language point into repeated uses where normally it might occur once. Reported speech is rarely used more than once or twice in a conversation or a piece of writing, I’d argue, as we tend to mix it with direct speech and other forms of saying what someone has said, simply because its more interesting. So if the idea of a whole conversation or piece of writing in reported speech is essentially unreal, why not make the whole thing unreal? We can always go back to blending it with other forms later. It was certainly funnier for all of us when one group of learners tried to get the phrase “fifteen green ones and a pink cockatoo” into a dialogue.

In a sense it was an inverse dogme lesson: the contexts emerged from the language, rather than the other way round, but it was no worse for that. For me, the joy of it was that the contexts belonged to the learners, and so, therefore, did the language. It might not rate highly in teacher training terms, it might not have gotten me a good grade, but lots of good learning definitely happened. I knew it, and the learners knew it, which is all that counts.

Reflect for ESOL: The Employment Orchard

I tooka bit of a leap, for me, this week, and we did two sessions with my level 1 group using what is now an old resource, the Reflect for ESOL tree. The reason this was a leap was not the focus on the emergent and developing language in the context, but rather because I followed someone else’s instructions. To be fair, they’re not the most insistent or demanding instructions, but still….

Anyway, to those who aren’t familiar with the Reflect for ESOL pack, it was published in 2007, is freely downloadable, and uses a learner centred approach, based on Freirean principles of education as a mobilising, empowering force. The pack is in two halves: the tools – essentially learner generated graphic organisers used to explore issues – and then ideas on how to apply the tools. I’ve already used the River tool this year with some success, and employment and barriers to it using the methodology described in the pack looked eminently appropriate for where we are.

And my goodness was it ever terrific! Starting on Monday with a discussion to get the ball rolling, we had finished the roots (the barriers) and had managed to review a range of conditional sentences and causative clauses based on the ideas generated in the session. This fed really well into the session on Thursday where we picked up the posters and developed the discussion into the actions a person could take to deal with those problems (branches) and the benefits and positive results of gaining employment (leaves and fruit). Some groups, while cutting out the shapes, had created an insect like shape by accident, so I asked them to imagine what the insect might be. As a plenary, once the trees had been completed, I formed the group into two groups to think about outside influences on getting a job and to write these on an image of the sun and of a rain cloud (emphasising that they should be writing both negative and positive ideas – sun and rain can be good or bad for a tree). The main emergent language here was more around vocabulary, as well as providing practice opportunity for the language which emerged on Monday.

Why did it go so well? For one, it was a topic close to the learners’ hearts and which touched on a number of issues they had either experienced (being unable to take on work because of childcare issues) or could empathise with (disability discrimination). There was a clear structure to the work, even though there was plenty of scope for movement within that, which meant that they could see where it was going. I made sure there was a clear language development focus in the session: the learners could see that they were developing grammar and vocabulary as well as skills. And finally, it was fun. It tapped into some of their creativity in order to explore an issue which is serious and relevant, which really is the point behind the Reflect for ESOL approach.

I wondered perhaps whether I could have been a bit faster with the whole process: with less focus on dealing with the emergent language (particularly the conditionals) as it arose and saving it until afterwards. However, had I done so the learners wouldn’t have had that opportunity to put the language into place and practice it inside the task, as they could with the conditionals. The language would have become a cold artefact, distanced from the act of communication which generated it.

I downloaded and have been sat on the Reflect pack pretty much since it was published: back then I was a grammar McNugget lovin’ kid* barely out of Headway, and so my biggest regret is not opening it back then. Quite why I never did I’m not sure: perhaps my foolish career youthfulness (!) made me cocky and dismissive of “hippy stuff”, and I was very much under the spell of the teacher driven learning objective at the time. There are changes to be made, tweaks, of course, but that is true of every resource or idea book under the sun. I need to think more about how to fit this approach into a system which values the achievement of specified learning outcomes, and I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. But as resources go, I shall be returning for further exploration and refinement. I see a future of rivers, trees, matrices, body maps and learners using lots and lots of scissors, markers, paper and glue.

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*31 year old, actually, but never mind.

A Simple Lesson

It’s been a while since I did a simple classroom reflection, and I thought that this week offered a good opportunity to do one.

I did a nice, honest, solid bit of teaching this week. It was Monday morning with my level 1 group, and to help get things started I asked them to find three things they did over the weekend which were in common with someone else in the room. Anyone who finished early had to team up with their partner and find a third member, to see if they could find groups of three.

Nothing exceptional, or unusual there. A simple Monday morning warmer. To bring it together, and with the intention of leaving it there, I then asked the group to tell me what they had found out about each other. It was also a notable weekend for me, as my brother had got married, so there were lots of mini-talks about weddings and engagements.

As the group shared their findings with me, I started to note their errors verbatim on the board, for a brief feedback on errors. So far, so normal. I did mix it up a little, however, and I started to write a selection of answers on the board, most of the errors, but also a few correct ones, and what was going to be a simple error correction became a more competitive, challenging activity.

Instead of me talking to the whole class, or else eliciting ideas from the group, I got the learners to work in groups, threes and fours, to correct (or not) each sentence. The only rule was that each group had to agree the answer before the end of the time limit (seven sentences, so I let them have about 10 minutes, or so). Cue some frantic discussions about grammar, including a few lovely moments, like when one of the weaker learners got an answer right ahead of the rest of her group. The impact of introducing this collaborative and mildly competitive activity was to generate more energy, more interest, more engagement in what, basically, was just looking for mistakes in a bunch of sentences.

It was only during the feedback from this stage that I led from the front, and got ideas from each group, and “delivered” a lesson. And, of course, letting the weaker learner have her moment of class glory.

So nothing special, but it was a pleasant, useful hour where learners got to recap and review some useful language in a context of their own. What I think made this special was both the simplicity of it, in terms of procedure (erm… Read the sentences, discuss them) and in terms of technology: learners used technology they were comfortable and familiar with, rather than technology I was forcing on them: their own mobiles, paper dictionaries, paper, pens, all that hi tech wizardry. (It’s worth adding we were in a room with an interactive whiteboard, and enough PCs for one each, all of which were used in the next part of the lesson).

I think it lacked the checking of the learning at the end, some sort of activity where the learners repeated, or did a variation of the initial task, but this time paying attention to the areas which arose in the feedback, and trying to use any new vocabulary we had generated. But I think after the best part of an hour, I felt that it was time to move on to the main bulk of the planned lesson: I guess in my mind it was very much still a “warmer” rather than the main learning of the lesson.

I do think I will use something like this again, if the time, place and learners are right, and include some sort of opportunity to use the language correctly. Indeed the final reflection/what have we learned stage is still the bit I forget, which I is a shame, because this is important. Particularly when you do a lesson which is based on emergent, unpredictable language like this, I think a bit of summarising would be good. So I’m going to make a conscious effort to try something tomorrow around that, and if I get chance, I’ll let you known how I get on.

Why Learning Styles are important

Don’t worry, I haven’t cracked. Not yet, anyway. But learning styles serve as a nice object lesson in why evidence is important and should be important.

In the last few weeks, the issue of evidence based practice has been floating around my mind, mainly after Ben Goldacre published, on behalf of DfES, and at the request of the delightful Minister for Education, a short and accessible paper on how randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in particular, but research and evidence in general can benefit teachers, and teaching and learning.

The main paper is published “here” with a summary as a Guardian article here and a response, of sorts, published by those fine folks at the Institute of Education can be found here. There have been a number of other responses as well, all of them interesting: from the Guardian Blog an evaluation from a scientist: which includes a link to a response from the British Educational Research Association, a response so charmingly sniffy and redolent of old-fashioned academia you can practically see the tweed and the half-moon glasses perched partway down the writer’s nose as they type it out on an old manual typewriter in an oak panelled study.

But what came out of it for me was the importance for teachers to be able to draw on solid evidence and research to support their points of view, and to empower them to have a more even and fair debate when discussing their own practice, rather than relying on “vegetable cures cancer!” type of science you find in articles from the Daily Mail  or “psychology” articles in that particularly aspirational class of magazine aimed at women* (“Live life more fully! Revitalise your neurones with daily mushroom meditation!”).This kind of pop psychology seems to inform a lot of what teachers do, and it’s often sold as such to us, using the same kind of chatty journalistic writing, snazzy graphics, and so on. But so rarely do teachers turn around and say “yes, but…” And for me, research and study, of any sort, gives weight to your arguments, especially when you are being presented with some smug trainer type in Converse trainers and a goatee beard saying things like “research says…” Hey trainer, we should be saying, tell me what your evidence is, give me the chuffing reference!

Anyway, all this set me to wondering, and discussing online (again) about not just learning styles, but also their spiritual cousin, the wonderful cobblers which is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (I had an awkward moment the other week when a teacher told me she was interested in how NLP could help her teaching. I’m a nice person so I nodded and smiled, and absolutely resisted the urge to say “and while you’re at it, you could also look at using fairies, aliens and the One Ring.)

You would think that by now the message finally would seem to be sinking in about learning styles, but as this sort of not-even-pseudo-scientific tosh demonstrates, the idea still clings on, temptingly, sexily wooing people with phrases like “optimal learning styles…customize the perfect opportunity for children to grow… strategizing lesson plans…”.

Even when people admit there is no evidence base for VAK, they still somehow want to use it as a justification for using different modes of delivery – sometimes using visuals, sometimes using audio, sometimes doing physical activity, etc. It’s as if they want the justification, the pop-science support for their own ideas. Rather than drawing, as teachers do, on their own experiences and the experiences of others, it’s as if we need the comfort of something science-y sounding to justify what is common sense: it’s more interesting to do stuff in different ways. That, basically, is the appeal of learning styles as a theory, it’s nothing more complex than that. No matter the evidence base, if you get learners to spend two hours faffing about with cards or posters, or listening to a lecture, it is going to be boring as hell. We don’t need to pretend that it’s about meeting individual needs, yadda yadda (it’s not, anyway): we do stuff in different ways because it’s interesting to change approach.

The learning styles/NLP discussion is important because it shows us that teachers do need to engage with evidence, read it critically, and do need to be able to say “this works because…” when discussing practice. When we don’t, no matter how well meaning we are, we spend twenty years peddling lies to learners. So can we stop. Now. Please. I may pop otherwise.

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*you know these, they usually have inspirational stories of how wealthy, middle class women in their 30s gave up their 9-5 job as senior partner in a law firm to set up a boutique candle making company in the Cotswolds, who struggled with the changes but luckily was supported by her whose husband, an astonishingly well paid company director.

Evidence: something I’ve learned from being a parent

Having babies is a life changing experience, I can tell you this now with some conviction. The benefits, for most people, balance out the assorted deprivations (sleep, money, sanity). It’s fab, and there is no feeling in the universe like having your son or daughter come up to you with the seriousness and honesty that only a small child can manage, and say “I love you” and “I’ve just snotted in your hair. Hee hee.” And watching them grow and change and do all the brilliant children things which adults have forgotten. Cheesy, yes, but also undeniably wonderful. No disrespect meant, but other people’s children really don’t cut the mustard here.

But why am I getting all sentimental here on my usually cynical and questioning blog, you may ask. It’s about one of the worst things about being a parent. It is not the children, but rather the problem with being a parent is that everyone, and I mean everyone, including people who only had the briefest interactions with babies and children 20 years ago, everyone has an opinion. Everyone thinks they know how to do it, what advice to give, what is best for children, what is worst, what to avoid, and so on. So you will get (I kid you not) dopey statements like:

“ooh, stop rocking her to sleep, you’ll make a rod for your own back”
“make sure you trim that fringe out of her eyes, she’ll go blind”
“don’t you think that she’s getting too attached to you?”
“Don’t let them into your bed, you’ll never get them out”
“Of course he does that, he’s a boy.”
“You’ll just have to get used to the pink stuff, she’s a girl”

All of which, like most children based theories and discussions (cf. the almost violent arguments you hear about breast “vs” bottle), are not based on that individual finding out proper research but rather it is based on personal anecdote, urban myth or “what I read in the paper”. (Or more often: “what the people on TV said when they talked about the headlines in the paper”)

This is not unlike advice you get about teaching (including the point about TV). Very very few people read research into education, including those who should know better, (including me, sometimes, I have to be honest). I have yet to meet someone in FE who can cite much beyond Geoff Petty (for whom, I should add, I have the greatest respect for). And practitioners get sniffy about academic research: “what do they know, they don’t have to do it every day.” So battle lines get needlessly drawn, we ignore research-based evidence, and take on practices placed on us without any supporting evidence offered – sometimes where no evidence exists beyond anecdote and hearsay.

There’s nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence. A lot can be learned from this “it worked for me, why don’t you give it a go?” approach, as long as the practice can be rejected if it doesn’t suit. As long as it doesn’t get dressed up as “best practice” or worse an essential component of practice because it suits a particular ethos or political viewpoint.

The other challenge with evidence is that it takes time to read it. But I would strongly recommend it. Don’t just read “Evidence Based Practice”, as good as it is, and believe everything, but look through the references, and see which apply or are analogous to your own context of teaching. While there are indeed parallels between the learning of 16 year old ICT students and 30 year old ESOL students, and while there may be something to learn from this, these parallels are never absolute nor applicable in every context.

And we need to read the research well. Avoid the “scientists say” lazy thinking applied by newspaper articles. Read it critically. Certainly before you start throwing bricks at established practices, find some good evidence to add weight, particularly if your intention is to smash windows. Anyone can write up an extended anecdote as a case study but it needs to be read as such, in the wider context in which it is written.

Then there is the issue of bias. I’ve always been blasé about bias, especially in education research, assuming always that educators are writing to make a better experience for learners. However, education research is just as dogged by bias, particularly articles in wider, less scholarly texts. I’d want to question anything funded by a government or a government agency which almost certainly will have a bias. Bear in mind that no government quango or department, using their own publication channels, is going to happily publish research which goes against what it has been saying for the last x years, after all. And even if an independent, thorough, critically reviewed piece of research came out which demonstrated that some key element of the Common Inspection Framework was wrong, then it would take years before anything changed. Look how long it took to get learning styles out of the inspection regime. (Note for readers in the 22nd century: learning styles was a bonkers idea cooked up by businessmen in the 1980s which lots of people slavishly followed in a misguided attempt to meet individual needs)

Technology in education is another area where bias might easily be an issue: who paid for, or who is promoting the studies into the effectiveness of interactive whiteboards? If it’s SMART technologies or Promethean, then you have to read very very carefully. It’s very seductive to read something like this http://www.fenews.co.uk/fe-news/the-mobile-e-volution and think “hmm, interesting, authoritative, well written” and yet the writer clearly has an interest in getting us to engage with a product which will enable us to do the very thing he is telling us about. This fact makes any claim or suggestion made therein highly suspect: he’s hardly going to exhort us to abandon the ideas that drive the software he is promoting. In the nicest possible way, because I do love them, an organisation like JISC are unlikely to support research which goes against their main raison d’être. The same line of argument could be applied to published materials: a coursebook publisher is unlikely to argue for materials-light learning (unless, of course, they’ve just published a “how to teach materials light” book…).

Evidence is sometimes sadly lacking when it comes to influencing much of what we do, which is ridiculous, when you think about it. After all, educational progress and achievement is regularly and reasonably thoroughly tested, and a fairly well researched and understood area of education, so to assess the impact of a given measure is not always going to be that hard. You would have to be very careful with things like control groups, and making sure that teacher perceptions are taken into account, for example, but it could be done. But also research, in its basic form, is learning, and really, learning is what we are all about.

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For more on evidence and so on, try reading these, http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/b/ben%20goldacre%20paper.pdf and http://thesuttontrust.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/evidence-is-just-the-start-of-finding-what-works/ both arguing not just for better evidence, but also discussing what to do with the evidence once you have it.