This TED Talk by Professor Carol Dweck provides a good catch-all summary and introduction for anybody wanting to start doing some thinking around Growth Mindsets.
I’ll be adding this to the Core Professional Curriculum iTunesU course we have at school. This talk is only 10 minutes, so we’ll be using it as an introduction to the start of an EduBook Club Meeting. It also works well as a stimulus for a departmental meeting with a team wanting to undertake some subject-specific action research or a staff meeting in a smaller setting where you want to start focusing in on the big hitters such as motivation and engagement.
Here are just a few prompt questions I have posed in the past when using Ted Talks and other short videos and podcasts of educational thinkers in this way:
What do I know about the perceptions my pupils have of their own ability and how can I find out?
How does this relate to me, in my subject area, for the groups I teach?
How can I use the information from this research to refine my questioning to encourage pupils to refine, redraft and act on feedback?
In what ways does this prompt me to consider the way I design learning activities?
How does teacher-mindset influence verbal and written feedback?
How can we develop a shared language of learning that explicitly promotes the belief that learning is a developmental process?
Dweck’s earlier book, Self Theories is well worth a read (be warned, it’s quite pricey!) as it gets right into the different ways that pupils perceive their own ability, respond to praise, feedback and criticism, based on years of research undertaken by Dweck and her team.
In this typically engaging short video piece from Hans Rosling, the world-renowned data visualisation and data-entertainment guru (see his brilliant TED Talks for more), identifies the power of explaining using props. He emphasises that although video can be used to explain some concepts, (see Ted-ED for examples to use if you’re looking to implement some flipped learning in your lessons), nothing replaces the teacher and their ability to make learning fun through the explanations they can offer. For teachers and presenters alike, being able to draw upon a vast repertoire of explaining is fundamental to being able to meet the needs of all learners/ listeners. As a result, there’s a great opportunity to keep refreshing ‘explaining techniques’ and consider the many ways we can employ quality teacher talk to differentiate, challenge and encourage learners to understand new concepts and think in new ways.
I’ve included a screen shot of an observation format I use very regularly for you to have a look at: ‘Explaining – Improving the Quality of Teacher Talk’ The original version plus others that I regularly use, adapt and tweak can be found in “Full On Learning”. You’ll notice that this is a very focused observation tool, as it ONLY looks at the quality of teacher talk in relation to EXPLAINING. Hence it can be used as part of a developmental coaching approach..which is just how I use it.
I use this particular one as part of my pedagogical coaching toolkit. I’ve got others that focus on questioning and a more generic one that looks ONLY at ‘Pupil activity during the lesson’. They’re all developmental in design as they are limited by their focus on a very specific element of pedagogy. In practice, they work as a simple tally sheet during the lesson. You can add additional layers of complexity, according to what the teacher wants to focus on, but my watchword is and always has been to keep it SIMPLE when it comes to observing the complicated world of teaching and the similarly complex world of learning.
The strength of this tool is:
1. When you work with a group of teachers to create and amend the observation format you get into wonderful discussions and sharing of expertise. In fact, it’s at THIS point when you get the really crunchy discussions about ‘quality teacher talk’ and how various concepts can be explained and what else could be used to aid the communication of complexity, of topic fundamentals and of core concepts so that learner understanding is secure.
2. When used as part of a pedagogical coaching programme, the results can be put into a simple spreadsheet to generate a visual chart (Hans Rosling would be proud!). This then forms the basis of your coaching discussion, as it places the focus of the discussion on the teacher, enabling them to reflect and consider their own practice.
3. Coupled with a skilled coach possibly also with video, you get rewarded by by using this as part of a MARGINAL LEARNING GAINS approach and find that you get those sought-after MULTIPLE GAINS from one simple pedagogical focus.
This a strange post, so forgive me. I think it must be what happens when you’re trying desperately hard not to stray into something that you’re not yet prepared for, but can’t help thinking about, and yet keep recognising that it is evident in everything you do, how you think and certainly, how you view the world and always have. And after that introduction, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to click away…but if you don’t, just to let you know, this post is about HOPE.
One thing Ms Morris said really struck a chord with me. In her response to her introduction, and after she had said, “Please call me Estelle”, she reflected on how she had been introduced. She said that she felt that she needed to define herself as what she was not.** She acknowledged that in a room full of educational researchers and a very small number of teachers, she was not…
a teacher
a researcher
a politician
But that what she was, or rather, where she was, was in ‘the gaps’ in between these things:
“…it is because I’m not these things, what I hope to bring…is an attempt to fill the gaps between all the things I’m not.”
She went on to say that wisdom is required to ensure that the connection between these things is made strong so that the gaps in between the three are reduced. This is something that definitely informs my thinking about the research, practice and evidence debate.
But back to this post…
Sometimes, I come across an idea, a quotation, an approach, a picture, a piece of text, a film or a sound that sits in the gaps between what we do, what we think and what we hope for. The job for us, then, is to make sense of it and in doing so, bring it closer to our own lives through our values and expertise. This is how our wisdom gets exercised and this is the wisdom of teaching. Because once we make those connections, we get to offer the very same opportunity to our learners.
So here is one such stimulus.
For me, this 3:14 minute trailer could be shared with learners in pretty much every subject area and chime with any theme connected to resilience, grit, learning, determination and aspiration. In doing so, it offers leaners the opportunity to forge their own connections between the subject of the film, their ideas and actions and thereby offer them the chance to reduce those gaps and develop their wisdom. By exploring the many different ways in which they can connect the film to the subject, topic or theme, they are learning about, they get to generate quality questions and begin to create their very own links that in turn will connect to their prior and present learning.
Because it is such a rich resource, if nothing else, at the end of the day, projects like the one outlined in this film give us all a much needed and refreshing dose of one thing that lies at the heart of everything that drives us in education, research and, I would like to think, politics too: hope.
If you want to really immerse yourself in hope and, given the times, why wouldn’t you? Then there’s also this inspirational 18 minute TED Talk all about the origins of the Barefoot College and where the concept of solar electrification first evolved. I’ll be posting it on my TEDUCATION site to sit alongside similarly inspirational and education-applicable TED Talks, with some of my own reflections soon.
*NB If you want to find out more about the evidence, research and education debate, I strongly suggest you sign up for The ResearchED 2013 Conference (@researchED2013) being organised by Tom Bennett and follow the twitter stream and fabulous blog posts that have been stimulated by the debate.
AND...There’s also the fabulous work of The Coalition for Evidence Based Education CEBE. They’re already set up to create one of the proposals that Ben Goldacre calls for…the equivalent of a ‘dating service’ to enable educators and researchers to develop projects together. I’m saving specific references to it for another time, after some careful reflection (regular blog readers wouldn’t expect anything other than that from me, I am sure).
**I am probably biased here as this is one of my favourite philosophical approaches, the ‘via negativa‘, if you’re interested. It is always a fabulous stimulus for any ontological debates for the existence of…well, anything, really.
In my coaching work with practitioners, I work with them to un-pick the skills involved in expert questioning.
At the heart of our coaching conversation, the practitioner breaks down the whole of the issue at hand, in this instance, QUESTIONING, into its constituent parts. This enables them to build on the specific strengths of their questioning strategies. This may identify times for them when they may have used a framework such as Bloom’s to construct their questions, but found that they haven’t waited long enough to allow ALL learners to come up with a range of quality answers.
Alternatively, they may know exactly who they need and want to ask as part of an inclusive questioning strategy to ensure that everybody is included in their questioning, but when they get a response, they get over-excited, particularly when they hear the one they were waitingfor and use this as a prompt that everybody isready to move on. This then misses the chance to use the answer(s) received as an opportunity to adapt teaching to meet learning needs.
So often, the difference between good and outstanding teaching comes down to just such missed opportunities.
So here’s what I’ve been working on in coaching sessions with practitioners who want to develop their expertise in questioning. I hope you find this deconstruction helpful!
As part of the coaching conversation, I focus on the following elements:
1. Decide on the purpose of the question
Why are you posing the question?
To prompt deeper thinking or because you and your students need to ‘cover the ground’?
To illicit a range of responses or a achieve specific response?
To assess security of understanding or reinforce existing knowledge?
To find out what you need to do next in your teaching or to reassure yourself that you can stick to a fixed plan?
N.B. There is no judgement on any of these suggested purposes. It is just a way to reflect on whether questions are ‘fit for purpose’
2. Construct the question
How can you use a thinking framework, a taxonomy or a graphic organiser to design your questions? For example, inference squares, 8-way thinking, 5 Ws, Bloom’s, De Bono’s hats, SOLO, P4C and so on are all great tools and processes to construct quality questions, develop deep thinking and foster curiosity.
Who’s question is it? Do all the questions come from you? How do you design opportunities for students to ask their own authentic questions?
3. Deliver the question
Who will you ask what questions and at what stage of the lesson do they need to be asked for greatest effect?
When will you use your deliberately planned ‘Big Bang Questions’ (BBQs) and what questions can you rely on as your standard ‘go-to’ questions to ‘scatter’ throughout the lesson? How can you deliberately design lessons in response to students’ questions?
How will you pose your questions? What ways can you deliver your questions in a creative and engaging way? In what ways might you be able to use technology to deliver your questions for you, using apps to animate your questions and surprise pupils as the lesson progresses. Just one example, ‘Talking Animals’ is great for this but there are loads of different ways to animate your questions.
How could you design learning so that questions are presented as clues hidden and slowly revealed during the lesson or placed around the room or site, or give them to pupils for them to make their own meanings collaboratively?
Will you be the sole questioner or will you delegate some questions to be asked by students, groups or as individuals?
4. Wait for the answer
How we you ‘grow the thinking gap’ . That is the time between the question being asked and the answer being expected? There’s a load of research about the power of such wait time, but here’s one nice summary from the Independent Thinking Blog.
5. Respond to the answer
What will you do with the information that comes back to you in response to the question you have asked? Handily, this links back to the first element of questioning expertise, “What is the purpose of your question?”
How will you respond to inaccuracies in understanding? What kind of inaccuracies are you likely to encounter? How will you use these as critical teaching moments ‘CTMs’? How will you handle the completely unexpected response? What will you do if your question illicit nothing but the ‘tumble weed’ effect and how will you adapt your teaching to address a whole-scale misunderstanding or lack of confidence with the learning?
Trying to develop expertise in questioning involves reflecting and developing all of these elements in order to master one coherent approach to achieve the greater goal of, “Fostering curiosity”. In a coaching conversation, focusing on developing questioning expertise provides a rich vein of exploration and many opportunities for very specific formative lesson observation.
The complexity of learning is constantly matched by the complexity of teaching. I am always mindful of the dangers of un-picking expertise in this very specific way. If we’re not careful, teaching could be reduced to a mechanical activity. We may then start to think of it as a straightforward checklist of processes, rather than the more organic craft that we all know it to be. So having deconstructed these elements, the trick is to coach the practitioner to be able to stick everything back together, ready to be applied with confidence back in their busy classroom.
For me, then, questioning continues to be hold my fascination. I use a variety of formats to support formative lesson observation as part of my coaching practice. Each one takes a specific element of questioning and limits the focus of the observation to describe (not interpret or judge) what takes place in a specific time period within or over a series of lessons. I am always testing new versions so that I make sure I can capture exactly what it is the practitioner has asked me to look for.
Once we become expert questioners, we are likely to be far more confident to continuouslymodel what great questions sound like and, more importantly, the effect that posing a great question has. This is equally true for coaches and practitioners. In this way, students are far more likely to develop confidence as expert questioners in their own right. It is at this moment, when students take responsibility for the lion’s share of the questioning during a lesson that curiosity will reign supreme!
Full On Learning 