How I used to teach

Viewing ‘How We Used to Live’ was quite the occasion for my primary school self. Anticipation built as the TV stand was wheeled out and its concertina shade-flaps adjusted to give 30 children a half-decent view of the convex screen. Necks craned upwards, we kept our eyes glued to the sixty-seconds-to-go dots disappearing one by one.  The boys, all squinting to get a sure-shot, pretended to blast the dots away with cocked gun-fingers.   

Our patience was rewarded with 20 minutes of cosy historical drama: a story about Victorian children at the seaside, or helping mum put up the blackout curtains in WW2.  It was simultaneously strange and familiar; not so long ago that we couldn’t have been those children in their 1940s duffel coats, but far enough removed to make us appreciate the magical mod-cons of the 80s: telephones, seatbelts, Angel Delight.

I could re-purpose the title of the show to describe the early days of my career.  Not ‘How We Used to Live’ but ‘How I Used To Teach’.  It’s the same feeling of looking back with fondness at a bygone age, whilst simultaneously being relieved it’s over.

I was inspired by AERO’s Dr Zid Mancenido’s reflection at the recent Matthew Flinders Science of Learning Conference on the staff-room advice he was given as a new teacher: “The best way to learn is to teach.” It was a reminder of how insecure novice teachers can hoover up anecdotal advice from old hands, convinced by the years of expert experience it seems to rest on. And yet exposed to the rigorous testing of today’s research, such claims prove unfounded.  As Zid explained, unless compared to nothing, teaching is not, as it turns out, the best way to learn.

Examples of my own acceptance of anecdotal evidence came flooding in.  I write not to scoff at the naivety of younger-teacher me, but as a reminder of how far we have come, and how exciting it is to be teaching at a time when we have a body of evidence to go on, rather than a collection of hunches about what works.

My Head of Department in my first teaching role encouraged me to use ‘active learning’.  The rationale was threefold: a) we have to get the children to enjoy History, and children love making things, b) it will tick the ‘Kinaesthetic’ Learning Styles box on my Scheme of Work and c) what else will you get out of them on a Thursday afternoon?

So – after a brief grapple with the ins-and-outs of the French Revolution, questions 1-10 on Robespierre and a quick drawing of the Estates-General, the craft supplies came out and we started to make guillotines.  Rolled up cardboard formed the two sides of the frame, heads were fashioned out of paper and sticky tape, and we passed around someone’s red felt-tip pen to give the whole scene some authenticity. It took at least a week.

Looking back, I can’t imagine what I was doing while the children were crafting.  This wasn’t the kind of lesson where I could circulate to give feedback or check for understanding.  Of course, historical understanding can be expressed in many forms, but these students weren’t thinking about French politics.  It wasn’t a demonstration of learning; it was a substitute for it.

A quick scan of the classroom would suggest students were ‘fully engaged’, but there was never any evidence they liked me, or History, more as a result.  Maybe they resented my low expectations and wanted to, well, learn something.

Now the evidence would tell me that motivation is a result of experiencing success from something hard-earned, rather than a state of being I need to cultivate with games or crafts.  Cognitive Load Theory would suggest that the task’s intrinsic load was so low that boredom and disengagement were just as likely to ensue.  What would I have done if someone slacked off in my guillotine lesson? Back on task with those instruments of terror, Y9! This is important!

Where does this happen today? Which instructional decisions are still based on a hunch, a long-held assumption?  The value of group work and the role of student choice in learning both spring to mind; greater scrutiny of the evidence could make a big difference to student outcomes. But it is hard to change our habits. As Carl Hendrick recently confirmed, twenty-odd years after my guillotines, the myth of learning styles persists.

I have a lot to thank my early mentors for, who like me were all swimming in the same ocean of teaching-as-intuition.  When you know better, you do better. 

I’m still learning. Exciting times ahead.