The coronavirus pandemic has had a huge impact on the way we live, work, socialise and learn. Even though it’s been a challenge for many people, others have welcomed the flexibility and freedom that comes with ‘remote life’.
But what about the world of education? It goes without saying that teachers, parents and students have struggled more than most during lockdown. So how can we learn from what they’ve gone through and make their lives better moving forward?
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.
According to Just Great Teaching by Ross Morrison McGill, 92 per cent of teachers and school leaders feel confident or very confident with their day-to-day work around curriculum. However, 61 per cent still consider it a challenging area of practice, while 24 per cent believe it is a weakness in their school.
Even before COVID-19 changed the landscape of teaching, schools faced several challenges with their new curriculums. But this is only set to increase when you consider post-pandemic learning lost, the impact of mental health and the emergence of a vaccine.
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.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting health advice, lack of staff and social distancing measures, schools have had to adjust their class sizes accordingly. But does this mean that smaller class sizes are here to stay? And what’s better for the overall development of children?
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.