Ask any teacher what the foundation of schooling is and chances are they’ll say the curriculum. It underpins nearly everything a teacher does – structuring lessons, delivering content and assessing how well students are performing.
So when schools and the wider education world emerges from the pandemic, will the curriculum save the day in terms of the attainment gap and accountability?
Ask any teacher whether it is possible to raise pupil outcomes while reducing their workload and most will probably answer the same – no.
However, a new book by Robert Powell called Live Feedback explores strategies that promise to engage learners, raise attainment, and reduce the time spent on detailed marking of students’ work.
It has been approximately one year since the coronavirus pandemic changed the way in which we live, work and socialise. But how well are teachers coping with their remote education environment?
For many, it has been a constant struggle of trying to stay on top of increasing workloads alongside the challenges that come with permanently being online. As a result, this has led to a disconnect between the teacher and the student.
This time last year, teachers up and down the country were looking forward to the second half of the school year after a restful festive season. Little did they know that their approach to teaching would have to change drastically towards working remotely.
It’s been a steep learning curve for teachers and students alike, with many struggling to adjust to our current COVID normal. But have we learnt anything about how best to teach remotely?
A new research paper has revealed that the type of recall task a teacher chooses can substantially influence the effects of learning by retrieval practice.
It matters how to recall – task differences in retrieval practice (Endres et al, November 2020) explores how 54 university students studied two expository texts, followed by retrieval practice tasks.
Questioning and teacher scripts have immeasurable benefits as an assessment tool. They can help with retention, behaviour and self-regulation, not to mention the long-term impact on teacher workload both in and out of the classroom.
What’s more, dialogue in class can help students activate hard thinking, enabling them to elaborate on themes and topics:
“One way for students to shoulder the responsibility for learning is for them to be the readers, writers, speakers, listeners, and thinkers in the classroom through active engagement in social interaction with others,” (Alvermann & Phelps, 2005; Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2011).
Weighing and measuring instead of growing and feeding is all well and good. But in several schools up and down the country, we are still seeing monitoring and evaluation schedules alongside quality assurance timetables.
The problem with this is that it focuses on judgement when we should be giving precedence to improving the quality of teaching and learning in school. Thankfully, there are ways in which you can switch your mindset and deliver truly great teaching.
During the middle of this year’s coronavirus pandemic, a report published by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) looked at how the school system was progressing with the country’s ongoing teacher supply challenge.
Key findings of the Teacher Labour Market in England Annual Report 2020 included:
There is a good chance you have heard the buzzwords ‘metacognition’ and ‘cognitive sciences’ banded around education circles over the past few years.
But how can teachers use them to their advantage and tangibly help students become more aware of their learning for better outcomes?
In the book How We Teach Now (2017), Carole L. Yue of Covenant College provides several valuable insights to teachers on improving learning metacognition and self-regulation.
The closure of schools during the coronavirus pandemic poses a significant threat to the ‘educational development of a generation of children’. That is the opinion of Francis Green, Professor of Work and Education Economics, UCL Institute of Education.
In a recent research paper, Green looks at whether schoolwork assigned during lockdown has resulted in educational poverty for students.