Resilience – Why do our youngsters lack Resilience? – What we can do to help them

Do you find your students (or your children)

• Often give up too easily?
• Lack initiative?
• Deal with failure badly ?
• Blame others when things go wrong?
• Want you to solve their problems?
• Fear failure, so use avoidance strategies?

They are possibly lacking in resilience

The American Psychological Association defines Resilience as:

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means “bouncing back” from difficult experiences.

Research has shown that resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary. People commonly demonstrate resilience. One example is the response of many Americans to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and individuals’ efforts to rebuild their lives.

Being resilient does not mean that a person doesn’t experience difficulty or distress. Emotional pain and sadness are common in people who have suffered major adversity or trauma in their lives. In fact, the road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress.

Resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone.

I decided to ride up a mountain on a borrowed bike this morning. Setting off optimistically up a 2050 foot climb, I soon realised it was going to be tougher than I’d predicted – Being realistic has never been my forte. Negative thought processes almost immediately appeared, blaming external factors – ‘It’s too hot, the bike is too heavy, the gears are too high,’ (It was an old 1980s road bike with dodgy ancient tubular tyres and those horrible biopace chainrings – info for those cyclists geeks) ‘No one knows I’m challenging myself, I’ll just turn back’.

I nearly stopped several times but kept going, mainly because I wanted to write a blog on resilience and didn’t want to feel hypocritical. Then my thoughts started looking for excuses to do with my own failings – ‘I’m not feeling too well, haven’t ridden for a while, maybe I should just turn back’. Then a guy on a much better bike than mine burned past me, obviously because he was on the better bike! – he was under much greater pressure though as he couldn’t blame his bike if he failed. I plodded after him, then he stopped for a cigarette ! – ”Thats it I’m not letting this mountain beat me if a smoker can get up it” It was hard, it hurt, voices in my head were telling me to stop – ‘Whats the point? ‘ but I made it.
Did I feel good? No, I felt terrible, exhausted! Then the great feeling came, I had conquered the mountain (or more precisely my own demons) , I could write this blog, but more importantly, I had a long downhill blast that I had earned.

Why do so many of our students give up, or scream for help when the going gets tough?

In Psychology Today Dr Peter Gray writes

Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges
College personnel everywhere are struggling with students’ increased neediness.

A US College found that emergency calls to Counseling had more than doubled over the past five years. Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap for them.

Faculty at the meetings noted that students’ emotional fragility has become a serious problem when it comes to grading. Some said they had grown afraid to give low grades for poor performance, because of the subsequent emotional crises they would have to deal with in their offices.

This mirrors what huge numbers of teachers around the world have said to me. Students lack independence and require constant handholding and support. Teachers are having to deal with this lack of resilience. Our students don’t expect to struggle at all, if they do, It’s our fault for not teaching them properly. Failure in a test is seen as a catastrophe, not something you can learn from, but something you can blame someone for. With the ever-present pressure of exams teachers are stuck in a situation where we all too often cave in to their helplessness (and they know we will!)  and so the neediness cycle continues.

Dr Gray theorises that much of this has to do with the lack of free play experienced in childhood. Children rarely have to make decisions for themselves away from adults, so therefore when they reach adulthood they are poorly prepared.

What elements of play might be missing?
Ellen Sandseter, a professor at Queen Maud University in Trondheim, Norway, has identified six categories of risks. These are:

Heights: Most children love to climb whether on climbing frames or trees. Shouting excitedly’ look at me ‘ often to the horror of parentis who would not have allowed them to go that high
Rapid speeds: Even tiny children love swings and want to go faster, then scooters, bikes, skateboards etc.
Dangerous tools: It isn’t random behaviour that causes children to be drawn towards the knives, drills and other things that parents immediately move out of the way (A Swahili proverb state: If a child cries for a knife give it to them – they will learn)
Dangerous elements: All children are fascinated by fire, are drawn to deep holes or fast currents
Rough and tumble: Play fighting and chasing each other. They seem to prefer being chased and being thrown around rather than being the ones in control
Disappearing/getting lost: Hide and seek gives the thrill of separation at an early age. As they get older they make dens and find places away from adults if they can.

Looking at these I realise I climb and coasteer, ride a fast motorbike, love my chainsaw , am a pyromaniac, do judo and Thai Boxing and rarely know where I am going – Can anyone recommend a good psychotherapist? But we take risks not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us.

We are living in an increasingly risk averse ‘safe’ society ,by overprotecting our young people are we actually damaging them?  Is there much adventure in our children’s lives?
Children allowed to explore, learn from small painful episodes (or larger ones) and failures. They learn that in play fighting, hurt can happen without intention.  They discover how to regulate their own behaviour and response to being hurt. They learn how to assess risk. How to balance the reward of the thrill, with the actual danger. They can learn from failure, take responsibility for it and hence build their own resilience.  They learn to deal with unpredictable events and not to fear the unknown.

Without these learning experiences they may become adults incapable of making decisions for themselves, paralysed by irrational fear.

Resilient people tend to have the following characteristics:

Optimism: There is a clear link between optimism and resilience. The most resilient people tend to be those who feel when faced with adversity that things could be worse. This is certainly true of survivors in shipwreck situations
Faith and/or spirituality: Having a belief in an external deity or a belief in yourself that things will get better. Having a strong moral compass
Humour: Being able to reframe the situation and either laugh at it or at yourself. Always look on the bright side of life!
Social support: There is huge amounts of evidence that cancer survival rates for example go up when that person has strong and supportive friendship groups.
Can Learn from Role Models: Resilient people take responsibility and action learning from others who have been in similar situations

Resilient people tend to feel they have a measure of control, or that its all a journey and a new learning experience is taking place.

Does the online world help our young people?

Many students can escape this scary real world into an online world of gaming. Your failures happen away from people you have to meet every day. There is a sense of order and predictability in the game and you can learn in safety without damaging social repercussions. There are lots of benefits to gaming – evidence Players show huge resilience in that they fail,learn from that failure and try again. Does this translate into the real world? I fear not but maybe that is just my own non – gamer bias, then I watched this:

You may want to try this  SuperBetter

Other children turn to a virtual online social media world that is potentially hugely rewarding or damaging. People present on sites such as Facebook an airbrushed, perfect life. Had a wonderful day …., what a perfect husband/friend/parent/child .. We get a rose tinted distorted window into the worlds of others . You can control what others see, but not how they react to what you show them so there is a high stakes and often high fear . The evidence from researchers  appears to show it makes us unhappier and almost certainly wont improve your resilience.

The team found that Facebook use correlated with a low sense of well-being.

“The more people used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time,” they said. “Rather than enhancing well-being… these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it.”

Does Facebook infantilise us?  Lady Greenfield thinks so here  Im not a big fan of these, but you can test yourself here:  howinfantilizedareyou.com

What can be done to help our young people in a resilience crisis?

Understandably some schools have adopted the approach that the results are the only thing that matter and hands are held all the way through to the end of school. Thus the job is done in getting the students the qualifications needed (and in some schools this is what the parents have paid for and expect )

The work of Carol Dweck and her Growth Mindset has revolutionised some peoples lives

Some strategies for teachers: 

Have a clear definition of what you want your students to be like that is achievable by all and not simply based on performance. Resilient, creative, risk taking etc.
Deal with helicopter parents ,  encourage them to let their sons/daughters to make decisions for themselves. To be clear what the damage that frailty can cause and to buy into your vision of an outstanding student.
Encourage students to look at failure in a different way. Let them fail in low stress environments. For example get them used to pre-topic tests as a simple diagnostic tool – you need to know what they know before you teach them a topic. Or simply a question they shouldnt be able to answer yet and get them to consider strategies for answering it.

In Maths use dan Meyers 3 Act Maths here, in science try my  (being developed) 3 act science. here
Teachers need to model failure and how to react to it by failing themselves
Using strategies outlined in Visible Thinking Routines get students to look at dilemmas and difficult decisions and practice reframing and dealing with problems  here  You can just  add – ‘What might happen if? ‘ questions
For a way of breaking down barriers you might try the ‘Yes factor’ outlined below
One interesting thing is my high school principal like to use the “Yes Factor” when she runs a post-suspension meeting with a student and his/her family. How does she do this? She always starts with “Today we are here to resolve the matter so that you can come back to school. In the last few days you probably have thought about what you have done. We would like to talk about this now so that we can move on and not to dwell on this matter any more.“Today we are here”, “to resolve the matter”, “so that you can come back to school”, “In the last few days”, “you probably have thought about what you have done”, “We would like to talk about this now”, “”we can move on”, “not to dwell on this matter any more” are all the “Yes Factors” and undeniably true as everyone in the post-suspension meeting tends to agree with that. When people agree with what you say with the first few statements at the beginning, it is more likely that they will also agree with some suggestions you are going to bring up. find out more here
Some Strategies for Parents:

Try to let go and give them some freedom to explore their 6 risky behaviours and allow your partner to do the same (maybe not hand them the knife!)
Let them solve problems by themselves, you may suggest strategies and ways of tackling the problem, but try not to influence their decisions too much.
Talk through how you make decisions yourself, weighing up the pros and cons of different approaches.
Discuss films and decisions the characters made and the consequences.
The film Inside Out provides great opportunities for opening discussions
Talk about what happened at school. Not by using the question. ‘What happened at school today ?’ that normally generates a monosyllabic response – 25 questions you can use instead are here
For teens here are 28 questions here  though don’t have a high expectation that it will bring forth much. We can but try!
Learn basic counselling skills -Ideally on a course with a tutor but there are plenty of online courses for example here 

What do we mean by Grit?

 

What have you found works to improve resilience = either your own or other peoples?

Please add comments and resources below

 

Motivating the Lower achievers – Humanising the Education system – Ipsative Assessment

Think about something that you have little talent for. Now imagine that you spend your days continually assessed on that area that you lack talent in.  You are constantly compared to your peers and shown how poor you are.

I love singing, but sadly have very little talent, not helped by congenital hearing loss. I wasn’t aware of my lack of ability, choosing to ignore the negative comments until I used the playstation game Singstar that brutally and quantitatively confirmed how bad I was.  Did this motivate me to try harder ?  It did briefly , although it was more about trying to find a song I could sing (Clash Should I stay or should I go! ) but being trashed by everyone soon lost its appeal and now I don’t sing any more in public. Which is no great loss to the world, but it is to me.

The thought that singing ability could be what the education system values allows me to empathise with the lower achievers. Of spending my days singing in front of others and however hard I try most other people are better than me. I may have other talents (I may be deluded here) but these are not recognised. My only value is my singing, the good singers are celebrated and their superiority over me quantified and celebrated.. This carries on for 11 years until in relief I leave an education system that has utterly failed and humiliated me.

This is how many lower achievers spend their school life. You are really not very good and if you put lots of effort in you probably still wont be . You can argue for a growth mindset at this point (which I believe in to a point)   or take the view that we are telling penguins that they might be able to fly if they flap their wings really hard (reality also has a place )

Research from the EPPI in 2002 has found that Summative assessment, so loved by those who are good at it and who also run the system  can be highly motivating to some higher achievers , but damaging to many others with the lower achievers particularly vulnerable.

The current widespread use of summative assessment and tests is supported by a range of arguments. The points made include that not only do tests indicate standards to be aimed for and enable these standards to be monitored, but that they also raise standards. Proponents claim that tests cause students, as well as teachers and schools, to put more effort into their work on account of the rewards and penalties that can be applied on the basis of the results of tests. In opposition to these arguments is the claim that increase in scores is mainly the consequence of familiarization with the tests and of teaching directed specifically towards answering the questions, rather than developing the skills and knowledge intended in the curriculum. It is argued that tests motivate only some students and increase the gap between higher and lower achieving students; moreover, tests motivate even the highest achieving students towards performance goals rather than to learning goals, as required for continuing learning.

What were the findings ?

Evidence of impact – Remember this was from 2002

Between them, the identified studies considered a number of the component aspects of motivation, but none considered all. The following main findings emerged from studies providing high-weight evidence:

• After the introduction of the National Curriculum Tests in England, lowachieving pupils had lower self-esteem than higher-achieving pupils,whilst beforehand there was no correlation between self-esteem and achievement.

• When passing tests is high stakes, teachers adopt a teaching style which emphasises transmission teaching of knowledge, thereby favouring those students who prefer to learn in this way and disadvantaging and lowering the self-esteem of those who prefer more active and creative learning experiences.

• Repeated practice tests reinforce the low self-image of the lower achieving students.

• Tests can influence teachers’ classroom assessment which may be interpreted by students as purely summative, regardless of the teacher’s intentions, possibly as a result of teachers’ over-concern with performance rather than process.

• Students are aware of a performance ethos in the classroom and that the tests give only a narrow view of what they can do.

• Students dislike high-stakes tests, show high levels of test anxiety (particularly girls) and prefer other forms of assessment.

• Teachers have a key role in supporting students to put effort into their learning activities.

• Feedback on assessments has an important role in determining further learning. Students are influenced by feedback from earlier performance on similar tasks in relation to the effort they invest in further tasks.

• Teacher feedback that is ego-involving rather than task-involving can influence the effort students put into further learning and their orientation towards performance rather than learning goals.

• High-stakes assessment can create a classroom climate in which transmission teaching and highly structured activities predominate and which favour only those students with certain learning dispositions.

• High-stakes tests can become the rationale for all that is done in classrooms, permeating teacher-initiated assessment interactions.

• Goal orientations are linked to effort and self-efficacy.

• Teacher collegiality is important in creating an assessment ethos that supports students’ feelings of self-efficacy and effort.

• An education system that puts great emphasis on evaluation produces students with strong extrinsic orientation towards grades and social status.

It would appear that the more importance we put on summative assessment the more likely our education system is to become;

• A narrow, what gets tested gets taught, system
• Focussed on performance rather than learning with all the damage that this entails
• A qualification system rather than an education system
• Highly divisive with those exam decoders motivated by success and those without this arguably arbitrary skill
• One that only values those high performers and there is evidence these high achievers at school do not continue into society as high achievers in life  (link to blog)
• One that dismally fails and alienates many students who leave feeling they have no value and have had their school years wasted

Does these sound depressingly familiar?

Formative assessment (see blog here for ideas ) has developed hugely where students are told what they need to do to improve, however this for some has only limited value. Would I be motivated to sing in public if after tuition I went from being appalling to pretty awful? Probably not. The system has inherently damaged many of these students and caused them to withdraw from putting in effort. You can only be humiliated if you have appeared to have tried. Want to keep your self esteem? Then don’t participate, show you don’t care or deliberately under perform to demonstrate your contempt for the system.

It doesn’t matter how good your formative assessment is if your students cant see the point in improving and are still measured against their peers.

Enter Ipstative Assessment

Rather than comparing yourself to the world, you look at creating personal bests. I am a cyclist and if I compared myself to Chris Hoy or Bradley Wiggins I could never feel good about myself. I am however motivated to improve my best times and that has sufficient value to not care how far behind the others I a would be.

This is the fundamental principle behind appositive testing. Research has been limited to distance learners but the results encouraging here http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/6744/1/Hughes2011Towards353.pdf  and workshop files here 

You mark progress rather than simply products. Bringing in formative assessment in order to improve their appositive mark.

To give a measured grade a students work is compared to a previous piece of work

If a student has improved from 50% to 60% they would get an ipsative mark of 10%

The focus is on improvement and being the best that you can be hence everyone can make progress

The research which was the effects on distance learners looks highly encouraging and it makes sense as a human being.

I can find limited evidence of it being used in classrooms so please get in touch if it has been trialled and any thoughts on it

Behaviour Management – beyond compliance – Humanising the Education System

Behaviour – beyond  compliance – a personal viewpoint / ramble

There are a lot of behaviour gurus out there, some offering genuinely good advice and others with very slick and entertaining stage shows that lack any real substance. This is a personal account of what I have found works for me. I feel immensely privileged that within my various roles I still teach regularly, observed by others, and can be in a failing inner city comprehensive one day and a top performing independent school the next. We have to take our students on a journey they may be reluctant to go on, armed with only the force of our personality! That is a serious challenge! I have taught in some of the toughest schools on the planet, sometimes successfully, at other times failing miserably. Failure is always a learning experience and my last nine years of teaching as an AST in challenging schools was filled with many of these. There were also those days where you walk out of the classroom buzzing, knowing why you are a teacher; a feeling you can’t explain to those who have never felt it – those who often decide educational policy!

Turning around failing schools is not rocket science, it’s very hard work. You need to change an embedded culture of anti learning. One model is to follow the way that the New York Subway System was reclaimed in the 1980s – identifying the ‘broken window syndrome; where if one window is broken and not fixed then all the windows would be subsequently broken. The carriages were covered in graffiti, a clear indication of lawlessness and this was the first priority to fix. The strategy was interesting: they found that the graffiti artists/vandals (use whichever fits your viewpoint) would take 3 days. The first day they would paint the carriages white then build up their artwork over the next 2 days. They were not prevented from doing this, instead as soon as they had finished the work it was painted over, thus demoralising them. They were not preventing them from wrongdoing, they were preventing them from benefitting from wrongdoing. No car covered in graffiti was allowed back into service.  Not letting miscreants benefit from their bad behaviour can be more effective than trying to prevent them doing it. Think the torture of the Grinch when he realised that stealing the presents hadn’t affected the happiness of the town

Another example in New York  was fare dodging which was endemic: when others were clearly getting away without paying the temptation was to do it yourself. A very visible system of punishment was created with fare dodgers daisy chained together on the platform and processed in a bus parked outside the station. No windows left broken; rules that are enforced clearly and consistently undeniably work and can lead to compliance and hence control is regained. Is it simply compliance we want in the classroom though?  It is possible to make a dog come towards you by offering a treat and move away from him by kicking it, what is much harder is to get the dog to obey you without these extrinsic drivers..Reward and threat can give us the behaviour we want to see, but is this enough? I want my students to behave because they understand that it is the right thing to do, not from a fear of the consequences or a rote response. Students misbehave because their needs are not being met. The behaviour may not be the problem, it may be their way of dealing with a problem. Should we be ignoring their needs and just deal with the symptoms rather than trying to find a cure?

I am sure I am not alone in admitting that I am often probably the most disruptive influence in my classroom. When they are all quietly getting on with work I get bored. I hated teaching in a school where the students worked in silence. I wanted to know their hopes, dreams and fears, what motivated them. I teach young people first and the subject second and find that showing a genuine interest in them pays dividends in their behaviour and performance. By building relationships, I could use the most powerful weapon of all – disappointment. We reflect anger but disappointment is crushing (I can still remember the sad look on my much loved Biology teacher Mr Woodward’s face when I hadn’t done my homework!) I hope I have been a good role model by showing those with challenging home lives how to build genuine caring relationships. The teachers who influenced me most and had a lasting impact on my life were not the most efficient ones, they were the ones with a passion who were not afraid to show their humanity.

We can create systems that force compliance. We can make students stand up as we enter the room to ‘show respect’. These systems of rules tend to have the opposite effect on me personally and bring out my subversive side, honed in my own traditional grammar school education that bored me to distraction. I was very successful at decoding exam papers and that was all that was required to be ‘successful’ with very little effort nor in depth thinking taking place (hence the shallow person I am today!) Reactance – What would you do when faced with this photo?

Why the compulsion to do what it tells us not to? We suffer from reactance which often compels us to break rules because we have lost the right to choose. an interesting study here suggests that raising the drinking age actually caused higher levels of underage drinking     Reactance often causes us to act irrationally, particularly in those ‘difficult’ teenage years where our reaction to the nagging of our parents rarely was the way they intended, nor what was best for us. Yet somehow we expect our young charges to take notice of us! Some interesting research on reactance is here.

Evidently we need to make our rules purposeful, but rather than set rules I negotiate inviolable rights The right to be safe – mentally and physically The right to learn The right to be treated with respect These are then protected with rules We have the right to be safe so I will not endanger others We have the right to learn so I will not interfere with the learning of others We have the right to be treated with respect so I will respect others This is pretty much a catch all – you will only fall out with me if you break any of these 3 rules, but you will always fall out with me if you do. This also allows us to deal with the students talking when we are by challenging them with “if you were talking to me and I started talking to someone else, would I be treating you with respect?” They can’t answer ‘yes’, so you point out they have broken the rules and hence have lost the right to …. sit there/leave the lesson on time/other benefit. As opposed to getting into the argument ‘ I was talking about the work ….’

I never talk about work in my lessons, always learning. I’m not impressed with pages of notes that have no meaning to the student or the copied and pasted stuff they seem to consider as good enough.

As the students come in I smile at them firing up their mirror neurones Using brain imaging, scientists have explored the areas of the brain that are activated when we see another person smile. Of course, you’d expect the visual areas of the brain to light up. But other areas of the brain light up too, including the premotor cortex, an area that helps activate our own smiling muscles and the somatosensory and insula cortices, areas that report what it feels like physically and emotionally to smile. Neurons that fire both when we observe and when we take part in an action are called mirror neurons. When we see someone smile, mirror neurons simulate our own smiling. Does this simulation or reenactment help us to understand what another person is feeling? Full article here  Similarly if you frown at your class you will get them mirroring unhappiness back at you – that doesn’t seem worth it to me!

I now attempt to analyse my class to identify and work with any threats, using a not very scientific version of Mclellands Theory of needs . This is a very imprecise technique but it seems to work for me. It is very easy to label students and then use confirmation bias to see what you expect to see, so please use with caution and forgive me for gross generalisations. We have three basic needs according to Mclelland. The need to achieve, affiliate with others and to have some power. I’m looking for the individuals who have a major need for power. I watch their body language as they enter the room: some will be making themselves small, these are unlikely to be threats. Others will have wide open stances and hold eye contact for a little longer than the rest, it is within this group that there is likely to be the possible threats.

Achievers have a key driver of being successful. I divide them into two broad categories: Quiet achievers : groups of girls who tend to sit near the front and never say anything. The ones I used to feel guilty about for never giving them enough attention or knowing anything about them when parents evening came (and their parents always came!) Individual boys who often would be sneered at by the others for the crime of trying hard. These types are not threats, but are often very needy and can dislike independent learning tasks.

Noisy achievers: spotted as soon as the first question is asked as they shout out or wave frantically at you. These can be the most annoying kids on the planet, often the offspring of the most annoying parents on the planet. These can destroy your lessons by dominating questioning. They are often deeply unpopular with their classmates but are completely unaware of this. Using ‘pose pause pounce bounce’ outlined by @teachertoolkit here and Dylan Wiliam below. I target them first and regularly come back to them.

Affiliates: By far the largest group, these may well be wearing the regulation Superdry/Hollister/Nike/Armani (delete as appropriate to the socioeconomic status of your school!) or the slight defiance to school uniform short fat tie etc. The haircut will also conform to the unofficial (hence far more likely to be adhered to) regulation norm. Being part of the group is far more important than being successful and if you have an embedded anti-learning, or that which I find worse, apathetic culture, then you have your work cut out. I remember as a clueless NQT admonishing the whole class with ‘if you carry on like this you will all fail!’ Thus bonding them together to fail as one with all the nonsensical rationale that only teenagers can muster.

Power People: This group hold status as the most important driver. These have the potential to be a threat, either in terms of behaviour or in turning the class against me or my teaching methods. If they are a personal power person they tend just to want to fight and have little influence on the others. Group power people have the potential to lead the affiliates and hence every lesson can turn into a battle over the allegiance of the affiliates. Male power people: tend to be alpha males and will enter your room noisily. Falling out with males rarely is a long term issue and tends not to extend to their friends who can be marvellously disloyal. Female power people: tend to be those that are the most extreme in dress – the brightest orange/shortest skirt/most makeup/biggest hair/other extreme feature! However, it is the number of social interactions which really hold the key to their power. Falling out with these can create an enemy for life and one with a hugely loyal army who also hate you unreservedly! Sometimes there is little you can do apart from damage limitation and wait for them to leave! How to deal effectively with these power people in the longer-term, I’ll leave for another blog. However if their status depends entirely on how well they perform in your classroom and they are not naturally gifted at your subject then you will tend to suffer. By being aware and dealing with these different drivers we can create a classroom climate where the needs of the individual students are being met. Seek to understand, then to be understood and you can create self regulating students better equipped to deal with the world .

These are some resources and blogs that I have found useful The first person who ever seemed to give me stuff that worked was Bill Roger,s the ever reliable Tom Sherrington @headguruteacher has a great summary blog here  Sarah Findlater  @Msfindlater has got some useful links on her excellent Pinterest account here  Ross McGill @teachertoolkit has some useful stuff as always including the 5 minute behaviour plan available here

Comments welcomed

Restorative Justice – Humanising Education

Restorative Justice – What is it and how can it make our education systems more human?

School discipline has for the most part based the criminal justice system. A compelling idea for many elements of society (and a great vote catcher)  we punish wrongdoers with the aim of enforcing behaviours that are safe and non-disruptive. One of the biggest flaws with this system is that it assumes that the perpetrators when punished have the will and capacity to change their behaviour.  This works very well for the majority of people, but not for those ‘now orientated’  ones incapable of delaying gratification. (ie the ones most likely to get into trouble)  The products of upbringings where actions were rarely questioned, with very poor role models. When punishment does not work, misbehaving students may be excluded through suspension or expulsion, with possibly serious long-term harmful consequences to them and society. There is little or no opportunity for any social and emotional learning. We cast these students adrift, they don’t feel part of our wider community and so feel no responsibility to it.  Instead they may find acceptance in a different and antisocial community.

I worked with young offenders before I became a teacher and what was very clear was how ineffective at changing behaviour punishment was for most of my charges.  Punishment was a way of life for these children.  Its easy to forget when you see them strutting around with their gang mates that they are children.  On their own, out of their gang, you would realise how emotionally vulnerable they were, kids who had needed to be hugged and to be told they were loved by parents.   Often they were simply amoral with no understanding of the impact of their actions.  The biggest sanction society could impose was removing their liberty, but for many their life conditions were massively improved when they were incarcerated, safer, better fed.  Some of my charges went into Borstal (it was a while ago) as daft petty offenders and came out as hardened well connected criminals.  The rise of the structure of ISIS may well have been massively facilitated by imprisoning large numbers of people with a similar mindset to create their own communities. There is an interesting article here  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story

Restorative practices in schools are based on restorative justice principles instead of punishment. They aim first to build classroom communities that are supported by clear agreements, authentic communication, and specific tools to bring issues and conflicts forward in a helpful way. They provide specific pathways to repair harms by bringing together those who are affected by misbehaviour in a dialogue to address concerns, achieve understanding, and come to agreement about setting things right.In addition to serving the cause of fairness and justice, restorative approaches make safer schools and contribute to social and emotional learning

Restorative justice is not a ‘cup of tea and a hug’ approach to changing behaviour.  The first time I saw it used was with a couple of our students who had set fire to the local heath. The people who had been affected came and sat in a circle, a fireman, heath warden, dog walker, local resident whose house was next to the heath and a policeman.  The students were as uncomfortable as it was possible for them to be. They would have taken any punishment rather than sit through something that forced them to consider the consequences of their actions on others. Each in turn spoke about the effect the fire had had on them without blame or anger.  These were apparently ‘hard’ kids, they reflected anger with anger, its the only defence mechanism they had. But make them try and explain why they did it in front of others without emotion and it was clear how poorly equipped these children were to make good decisions.  We didn’t talk about punishment, we talked about how to put things right and they negotiated that they would work with the warden pulling up bracken – the bracken grows faster than the heather and can choke it if left unattended. The result of this was something that genuinely changed the behaviour of the students and built relationships with the community. A win-win compared to the possibility of alienation and further divisions.

On a smaller scale two of my students broke a school picnic table, so the restorative justice was to work with the site manager fixing it.  Not only did they build a good relationship with him, I also caught them berating another student they found jumping on ‘their’ picnic table. They had come from outside the system to feeling part of it.

What shifts are needed – These are all about empowering the students and making them feel part of a community that they share responsible for.

The first shift acknowledges that troublesome behaviour is normal, and when students behave in troublesome ways they create opportunities to learn important social and emotional skills. What is important is not so much that they got into trouble in the first place, but what they learn along the way. Making things right is a powerful learning experience.

The second shift is a departure from the retributive model in which an authority, after taking testimony from the aggrieved party, decides guilt and assigns punishment. In restorative practices the authority figure acts more as a convener and facilitator. The initial investigation is concerned with identifying who was significantly affected by the incident. The facilitator invites them into a circle dialogue and, if they accept the invitation, helps prepare them. During the circle dialogue the problem and its impacts are explored and the group comes up with ideas on how to make things right. Usually this means the students who were the source of the trouble take specific actions that address the consequences of their choices. Consider the difference in outcomes between the authoritarian/punitive approach and the restorative approach: the first breeds resentment, alienation and shame and/or possibly an equally troublesome habit of fearing and submitting to authority; the second builds empathy, responsibility and helps restore relationships.

The third shift moves the locus of responsibility for well-being of the community from the shoulders of the experts to the community itself.  While counselling and similar strategies have their place and are often helpful by themselves, they are immeasurably strengthened when complemented by restorative practices that challenge those who are in the circle dialogue to share information with each other and to come to agreements as a group.

Is Restorative justice the answer to all our problems?

Clearly not, it is simply another tool that is very effective in most cases but there will always be those that it has little impact on.

It is a step forward in humanising our education system though link

More information on Pinterest here 

Please add further resources and comments

A fair education system – Is it possible? Reducing the Poverty Gap

Where are we at in the UK now? Does this look equitable ?

The Brilliant Club here http://www.thebrilliantclub.org/  show these really stark statistics that highlight the extreme disadvantage of those on free school meals. 

In my teaching career I have taught in some of the most challenging schools on the planet. In my role as a consultant I still regularly teach across the board from outstanding to failing.  What I have found that in many of the highest achieving schools that the students are merely compliant , they do what you tell them, but often are not very engaged in the subject, simply just wanting the top exam grade as efficiently as possible. In some of these schools the students struggle to tell me what they are thinking – apparently fearful of getting the ‘wrong’ answer. (some high achieving girl’s schools are particularly bad) These students have a learned dependence and need the teacher to be their guide at all times. They can be ‘failure avoiders’, paralysed by fear when challenged but can still perform very well at exams as they have learned how to effectively decode exam papers. This is enough for many of them to get into top universities but is not a great preparation for life. Some of these high achieving schools do a magnificent job so this is not a pop at high achieving schools in general.

By contrast in some very challenging schools the students are only compliant when they are engaged (or entertained which is a completely different thing) .  Often they can be very sparky and intelligent students, but they have no concept of studying beyond the compulsory age. Evidence suggests that this is particularly prevalent in 11-16 schools where far less students carry on to higher level qualifications.  I grew up with teacher parents and an expectation of going to university, if school doesn’t trigger these possibilities for our students, no one else will.  Some schools have embedded a culture of talking about how what they are learning will help them at college to facilitate this and there is evidence that this can be effective.  These schools tend to be in areas of social deprivation and can have a deeply embedded anti-learning culture in the local communities. This lack of societal diversity in schools can lead to ‘sink’ schools. This was the case in one I taught in which was seen as the school that you wouldn’t choose to go to. House prices around the more popular schools were artificially inflated and so there was an intake primarily from the local estate.

The school was constantly in and out of failing status, there was poor behaviour in many lessons and a lack of attendance at parents evenings. You often hear that in these communities that the parents don’t care. That certainly wasn’t my experience, most parents I encountered cared deeply, but many lacked the expertise to deal with their offsprings challenging behaviour at home and were embarrassed to go to school to hear of more problems. Not going to school was a defence mechanism rather than a lack of concern.

Taken from a recent report from  Demos

“ Harnessing what works in eliminating educational disadvantage…”

http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Two_classrooms_-_web.pdf?1417693373

The school mix

There is disproportionate clustering of students within schools in terms of their personal characteristics, such as family income and ethnic origin. Clustering students with similar backgrounds in schools tends to strengthen social reproduction over generations because students in segregated poorer schools can receive poorer instruction at school, less qualified teachers, substandard resources and facilities, and generally poorer local services. These disadvantages feed on each other and perpetuate problems.

Segregation by poverty tends to depress the scores of the already disadvantaged, and so increase the poverty gap in attainment. 

 I taught at a school that for generations had the reputation as the school you wouldn’t choose to send your kids to. Constant name changes and ‘fresh starts’  did nothing to change the culture of the school as the demographic remained the same. My first visit to the school the taxi driver told me “you dont want to go there mate, it’s well rough!” In morning briefing the 

This particular school had a fascinating culture, the toughest students and at one time the best staff I have ever worked with. It was a school where you could enter the staffroom at breaktime in a deep despair and emerge fifteen minutes later laughing.  Despair often followed, but also those moments of elation , where you walked out of the classroom knowing you had nailed it and that being a teacher was the best job in the world. The misplaced feeling that you had now got it sussed was often quickly dissipated.

As a newly qualified Mountainbike Leader I took my students on a ride out from the school. The bikes they turned up on were mostly  dodgy with no front brakes – “Front brakes are dangerous, they throw you over the handlebars” . An exception was  very new and shiny Cannondale that the owner almost certainly didnt have receipts for. Eventually I’d fixed the bikes up to a level that was just below death trap and we set off. I watched in horror when I said to go out of the school and turn left assuming they would use the cycle lane , but they all set off on the pavement, narrowly missing a frail little old lady. I took the front to take them through the estate and hence didnt see one of our year 11 students come out of a house  and punch Lee, knocking him off his bike and riding off on it. Lee then ran away so I had lost him and his bike within 10 minutes of setting off. I also hadnt included mugging as a potential hazard on my risk assessment. I phoned Lee’s parents in trepidation, but they seemed completely unfazed.  Eventually we got out and had a great time. On returning the students were saying ‘that was great, when can we go out again?’ What they didnt see was that they could go out any time they wanted. There was a self imposed barrier to them accessing what was on their doorstep. Interviewing the year 11 mugger later I asked him what was going on

“I sold him the bike for a tenner and he hadnt paid me so I was getting it back’

“Where did you get the bike from?

‘Well I nicked it, but he didnt pay me for it…’

Nothing I could do could convince him that he wasnt the owner of the bike. This warped moral compass was fairly widespread. One time some of our students had attacked a couple walking home, the man, a barrister, had fallen and banged his head and went into a coma. The overwhelming feeling in my form class was that the attackers were unlucky that the injury had been so severe .. deeply embedded cultural values.

These are the experiences of three very different ex-students of mine from this school.

The quiet one

(School name removed)  was a very difficult environment to learn in. Many of the teachers had little control over the pupils as a lot of my classmates just did not want to learn and were extremely disrespectful. I really think they had their work cut out for them! As a naturally shy child I found it easier to just ‘disappear’ and become invisible as a lot of the time in the classroom the other kids would bully anyone who actually wanted to learn. Often we were unable to have proper, structured lessons anyway.  Because I was so quiet and did not speak out in class (and was very rarely, if ever, encouraged to speak out) it made it hard for me later in life to voice my opinion in college and in work, as I had 4 years of being silent, so this is something I have really had to force myself to do.

I found that there a couple of teachers there who really stood out for me and if it wasn’t for those few who really were able to control the class and were passionate about their subject, it would have been an even bigger struggle. I was also very lucky that I made a good group of friends who also wanted to learn so they were a very good influence on me.

For me, the school was quite a traumatic and hostile place to be in and all I ever wanted was to escape from there. Maybe this is why I have travelled the world so much and wanted to better myself constantly since I have left so perhaps it’s been good for me in some ways. I think if I had been in an environment though where I was better able to learn, then I possibly could have got better GCSE and A level results and gone on to university. As this is something I did not do as I had no belief that I was clever enough to do this.

The transformed one

I used to muck about at school, in the lessons they used to keep changing the group of people I was with so there was always someone new to talk to. If they had kept us in the same groups I’d have got bored and maybe done some more work. My parents had split up and didn’t really do anything to make me feel that school was important. A turning point came for me when I went on a snowboard trip to Italy that I paid for from my paper round money. It made me realise that there were other ways of living your life other than on the estate. I wanted out so started working harder. Many of my teachers struggled to control the classes, but a few really took an interest and seemed to care. I did ok in my GCSEs then stayed on at school for 6th form.  A couple of teachers persuaded me to try to get to uni and now I have a degree. I think the school taught me that nothing comes to you unless you make it happen yourself.

A life transformed by one school trip, this is impossible to measure and sadly school trips are on the wane. A 2010 report from MPs, Transforming Education Outside the Classroom, found that there was a risk that school trips were becoming the preserve of private school children.

What can be done?

The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom is the national voice for learning outside the classroom. We believe that every young person (0-19yrs) should experience the world beyond the classroom as an essential part of learning and personal development, whatever their age, ability or circumstances

The NCETM has ideas for learning maths outside the classroom here

The truant

School always seemed to me to be a place to have a laugh with your mates. A few lessons were interesting , but most were really boring and seemed to have no relevance to my life. My uncle gave me a job labouring for him when I was 14 so I stopped going to school and most teachers didn’t seem to care, but one didn’t give up on me and I got an A level. I got excluded a few times for fighting , but you had to stand up for yourself. 

My experience of the school is that those who came out of it well came out of it very well indeed,  with huge resilience and self – motivation. Sadly for most of the students they were failed by the education system that was a post code lottery.

So what can be done?

Can we change their mindset?

The work of Carole Dweck and her Growth Mindset is very persuasive

Geoff Petty has written an interesting article  here http://www.teacherstoolbox.co.uk/T_Dweck.html

I quote

Dweck divides students into two types, based on the student’s own theory about their own ability.

Fixed IQ theorists: These students believe that their ability is fixed, probably at birth, and there is very little if anything they can do to improve it. They believe ability comes from talent rather than from the slow development of skills through learning. “It’s all in the genes”. Either you can do it with little effort, or you will never be able to do it, so you might as well give up in the face of difficulty. E.g. “ I can’t do maths”.

Untapped Potential theorists : These students believe that ability and success are due to learning, and learning requires time and effort. In the case of difficulty one must try harder, try another approach, or seek help etc.

About 15% of students are in the middle, the rest are equally divided between the two theories. Surprisingly there is no correlation between success at school and the theory the student holds. Differences in performance only show when the student is challenged or is facing difficulty , for example when a student moves from school to college. Then research has shown that the ‘Untapped Potential Theorists’ do very much better, as one might expect.

It is possible to move students from the Fixed IQ theory to the Untapped Potential theory. However, the research which shows that this can be done, is not at all detailed about how exactly! It’s a matter of persuasion of course.

Many teachers, myself included, thought that “it’s obvious” that learning is worth the effort and can produce improvement. But almost half of our students at every level, do not share this view. The challenge to change their view will be well rewarded.

Why bother with Dweck? A recent review of research by Hattie, Biggs and Purdie into the effectiveness of Study Skills programmes found that the programmes that had the greatest effect focussed on the ‘attribution’ by students of what affected their learning – this is precisely Dweck’s focus. Whether students attribute their success to something they can change or to something they can’t is immensely influential, and this attribution can be changed. The effect sizes found by Hattie et al showed that work on attribution can improve a student’s performance by between two and three grades!

Dylan Wiliam says

“Students must understand that they are not born with talent (or lack of it) and that their personalities do not determine whether or not they are “good at math” or “good at writing.” Rather, ability is incremental. The harder you work, the smarter you get. Once students begin to understand this “growth mindset” as Carol Dweck calls it, students are much more likely to embrace feedback from their teachers.”

As a counterpoint to some who are approaching the work of Dweck with a simplistic and near religious zeal Disappointed Idealist has an interesting blog.

http://disidealist.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/242/

Her Summary

The above (Dylan William ) quote is wrong, and so is the notion of “Talent = hard work + persistence”

Dweck’s careful research is metamorphosing in the hands of others into a vacuous slogan

Ability, or talent, is significantly constrained by factors external to the student

These disadvantages cannot always be overcome

An education system which refuses to recognise these disadvantages punishes children, teachers and schools unjustly

The “Talent = hard work + persistence” version of the growth mindset is very useful for sociopaths

“Growth Mindset” is potentially the next “learning styles” or “progress in each lesson” fad

I have a bucket of penguin-regurgitated fish dinners waiting for any teacher who tells my children they only failed because they didn’t try hard enough, and for any head who uses the growth mindset to avoid providing the additional assistance they need

Other factors affecting those living in Poverty

Research indicates that other factors also influence brain plasticity including rate of maturation, hormones, diet, disease, medication, drugs and stress. This is a view of learning from a psychological or scientific perspective.

Educational disadvantage thought of in this way is a lack of stimulation and experience, and this can, at least to some extent, be remediated or compensated for by intervening to provide these experiences as early as possible or, if necessary, by providing them for older children, while the brain is still able to respond. Educational disadvantage differs from the variation in an individual’s physiology, outlined above, in that we can at least attempt to intervene to level the playing field by providing early intervention and targeted support. From the point of view of brain development, the earlier the better.

A food tech teacher friend was saying that her poorer students cant afford all the ingredients and as some of the grades are for appearance they are disadvantaged. One of my ex students still feels the guilt at stealing dye from Woolworths for an art project as she had no money. There are so many unheard stories that contribute to educational disadvantage.

Should we make reducing the Poverty Gap a priority?

Successive governments have repeated the vote- catching mantra of “closing the poverty gap” , “Every Child Matters (though if you are on the C/D grade boundary you may matter more than others ) or “No child left behind”

The problem is the gap isn’t getting any smaller, in fact in Britain last year it widened. This is clearly a complex issue.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/attainment-gap-between-fsm-pupils-and-the-rest

How about making all schools better?

You would think this would crack the problem , but it appears that the poverty gap remains stubbornly similar (or even greater ) despite how good the schools are. The free school meal students do better in good schools, than in poorer ones, but the gap remains the same or greater between them and their wealthier peers .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29342539

Countries with more equitable societies and schools (eg Finland ) do not suffer as much from this phenomenon of less bright rich kids outperforming clever poor kids. Improving schools per se seems to have less effect than making schools more comprehensive. Reflecting the mix of our society rather than the inequalities. There seems to be no silver bullet of certain types of schools being better than others. Research cannot give us a simple set of measures that schools can put in place to reduce this poverty gap. Some schools have removed it completely, but there are no common patterns emerging.

What about making teachers better?

Performance related Pay aims to reward the highest performers, but how can we know what are the best teachers?  All too often simplistic measures are used with spreadsheet accounting. A totally different skill  set is needed to improve the results of a class with a critical mass of students with behaviour issues and anti learning culture than those who are desperate to succeed. In some schools you can only achieve success by inspiring the students

From Demos

However, actually identifying differentially effective teachers is not easy. Confounding factors include the background, prior experiences and initial talent of the students,the variability between alternative measures of attainment such as examining body, year, syllabus, region, mode of examination and subject, and the inconvenient fact that most students are taught by more than one teacher, perhaps including those outside the school system such as family, peers and tutors. When assessing the impact of teachers on student attainment, the propagation of initial error (as above) and the stratified nature of the confounding variables faced are such that no teacher ‘effect’ can be safely attributed.

Again no silver bullet here. The range of variables are so massive that we cant identify the best teachers to reduce the poverty gap on external markers alone. There seems to be no description of the best teachers, because of the complexity and variation of humanity.Tutors are a factor that cant be measured and will skew results making a lot of research meaningless.  One survey suggested that 31 per cent of children from better off families receive private tuition, compared with 15 per cent from poorer families. So a poor teacher can appear to do well if the students have good tutors.  

However the measured teacher effect is massive to the lower achievers.

A more promising avenue may be to focus on teachers. The performance of teachers is much more varied than that of schools, and children from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately affected by the quality of teaching they receive. For pupils from poorer backgrounds, a very effective teacher enables them to make 1.5 years’ progress in one year; with a poorly performing teacher they make only half a year’s progress over the same time. By contrast, ‘average’ students make a year’s progress with poor teaching and 1.4 years’ progress with highly effective teaching.

We should place more emphasis on ensuring that highly effective teachers are teaching children from low income backgrounds.

Although clearly the best teachers have a huge impact, again like the schools there seems to be no clear description of what they do. We only know they are effective when we see their results. Although we cant identify the key features that make these teachers very effective when we find them we should use them. In my experience these are teachers who genuinely car, have a passion for their subject, understand where their students are coming from, but take no excuses for underperformance.

How about working on changing parental attitudes and expectations ?

Surely this will be effective

There is very little evidence that educational outcomes for disadvantaged families will be fundamentally affected by changing parenting styles, raising parental expectations, or

enhancing parental involvement.24 They are not important causes of low attainment, or of under-representation in post compulsory education. A fundamental problem lies in the fact

that parental involvement requires voluntary activity. Programmes to promote involvement do not seem to be effective for the most disadvantaged families; indeed such programmes may even widen the gap in attainment.

We seem to have a catch 22 here in that the parents we want to engage with the schemes are the ones who don’t engage. Schemes to improve adult literacy are notoriously hard to implement 

What about improving behaviour?

This is something that is essential in schools where the behaviour of some students impacts negatively on others. Streaming by ability can make these issues far worse. Behavioural problems are often associated with the lower set classes containing under performing students who see school as entertainment as opposed to an investment for the rest of their life. Perversely those students who most need good quality instruction and teaching are less likely to get it. This was the case of the ‘quiet one’ pupil who effectively disengaged with education to protect herself. I suspect the reason the classes with a poor teacher makes such little progress with the lower attainers comes mainly down to their inability to actually teach due to disruption. These same teachers may perform well in classes which are naturally compliant.

What do teachers feel the problems are with behaviour?

DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOUR CITED BY TEACHERS

Disturbing other children (38%)

Calling out (35%)

Not getting on with work (31%)

Fidgeting or fiddling with equipment (23%)

Not having the correct equipment (19%)

Purposely making noise to gain attention (19%)

Answering back or questioning instructions (14%)

Using mobile devices (11%)

Swinging on chairs (11%).

Source: Poll conducted by YouGov for Ofsted

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29342539

What works according to OFSTED?

OFSTED – Successful practice in spending Pupil Premium

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/pupil-premium-how-schools-are-spending-funding-successfully-maximise-achievement

1 Where schools spent the Pupil Premium funding successfully to improve achievement, they shared many of the following characteristics. They:

Never confused eligibility for the Pupil Premium with low ability, and focused on supporting their disadvantaged pupils to achieve the highest levels

Thoroughly analysed which pupils were underachieving, particularly in English and mathematics, and why

Drew on research evidence (such as the Sutton Trust toolkit4) and evidence from their own and others’ experience to allocate the funding to the activities that were most likely to have an impact on improving achievement

Understood the importance of ensuring that all dayto-day teaching meets the needs of each learner, rather than relying on interventions to compensate for teaching that is less than good

Allocated their best teachers to teach intervention groups to improve mathematics and English, or

Employed new teachers who had a good track record in raising attainment in those subjects

Used achievement data frequently to check whether interventions or techniques were working and made adjustments accordingly, rather than just using the data retrospectively to see if something had worked

Made sure that support staff, particularly teaching assistants, were highly trained and understood their role in helping pupils to achieve

Systematically focused on giving pupils clear, useful feedback about their work, and ways that they could  improve it

Ensured that a designated senior leader had a clear overview of how the funding was being allocated and the difference it was making to the outcomes for pupils

Ensured that class and subject teachers knew which pupils were eligible for the Pupil Premium so that they could take responsibility for accelerating their progress

Had a clear policy on spending the Pupil Premium,agreed by governors and publicised on the school website

Provided well-targeted support to improve attendance,behaviour or links with families where these were barriers to a pupil’s learning

Had a clear and robust performance management system for all staff, and included discussions about pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium in performance management meetings

Thoroughly involved governors in the decision making and evaluation process

Were able, through careful monitoring and evaluation,to demonstrate the impact of each aspect of their spending on the outcomes for pupils.

Impact of Arts 

Some very encouraging statistics from the Cultural Learning Alliance

http://www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk/page.aspx?p=94&utm_content=buffer11df2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Learning through arts and culture improves attainment in all subjects

Taking part in drama and library activities improves attainment in literacy

Taking part in structured music activities improves attainment in maths, early language acquisition and early literacy

Schools that integrate arts across the curriculum in America have shown consistently higher average reading and mathematics scores compared to similar schools that do not

UK evidence shows that studying arts subjects increases confidence and motivation – things that equip pupils to learn. A systematic review of international evidence found that participating in structured arts activities led to increases in transferrable skills (including confidence and communication) of between 10-17%(1).  The Right to Read programme reported increases in social skills and self esteem(2). In the US, large cohort studies of 25,000 students done by James Catterall show that taking part in arts activities increases student attainment in maths and literacy, with particularly striking results for students from low income families(3).

“Our analysis of the NELS:88 survey established, for the first time in any comprehensive way, that students involved in the arts are demonstrably doing better in school than those who are not” Catterall, Doing Well and Doing Good by Doing Art, 2009

For example at age 16 41% of students from low income families who engage in the arts score in the top two quartiles of standard academic tests compared to 25% of students from the same backgrounds who do not(4). Other studies echo these results with Ruppert finding that students who take arts classes have higher math and verbal SAT scores than students who take no arts classes(5).

Research shows specific art forms have specific benefits, for example studies have shown that high levels of involvement in instrumental music result in significantly higher maths proficiency. Taking part in drama results in gains in reading proficiency, motivation and empathy for others. Young people using libraries read above the expected level for their age, young people who don’t read below the expected level(6).

In Summary 

The poverty gap is very real and a terrible indictment of our society.  Research seems to give us very little insight into how to close the poverty gap within the current school system. The key factor seems to be a more equitable society and a fairer education system but there is little sign of that happening. What is perhaps most worrying is that there is little consensus on what factors make for effective schools, or individual teachers.

In my experience the teachers who are most effective at teaching those in the poverty gap have the following features;

They have a passion for their subject

They genuinely care about the students and want to understand them

They dont take themselves too seriously and can laugh

They can engage their students rather than just make them compliant.

They are not afraid to give of themselves and can use their intuition

They build relationships based on respect

Useful Blogs

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation http://www.jrf.org.uk/topic/education-and-povertyhttp://www.jrf.org.uk/topic/education-and-poverty

Living and Learning in Poverty   http://livinglearninginpoverty.blogspot.co.uk/

Centre for Research on Families and Relationships  http://crfrblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/routes-out-of-poverty-education-and.html

Teacher Toolkit  http://teachertoolkit.me/2014/02/08/raising-aspirations-and-equal-access-by-teachertoolkit/

How to improve the quality of teacher development?

Ten essays

http://www.thersa.org/action-research-centre/learning,-cognition-and-creativity/education/teachers-and-teacher-education/licensed-to-create-ten-essays-on-improving-teacher-quality 

Some ideas by Tom Sherrington here

http://headguruteacher.com/2014/11/10/rsa-essays-licensed-to-create-incentives-for-improving-teacher-quality/

Getting the kids to ask why?  from Sarah Findlater

http://teachertoolkit.me/2012/11/13/ttkitthunks-msfindlater/

Is it different for boys?

There is much talk of a boy crisis and the redundant male,
A quick search on google  pulls out these statements.
Boys are underachieving
Boys need to understand the purpose of what they are doing
Boys have an anti-school attitude and a laddish culture
Boys like competition
There are not enough role model male teachers for boys
Boys don’t like reading
Teachers have lower expectations of boys work
Boys need more active learning styles
Boys overestimate their own ability
Boys are more disruptive than girls
Boys are more likely to have autistic spectrum disorders
Boys suffer from more mental health issues

Generalisations can lead to stereotyping at best unhelpful and often conceal more than they reveal. This is not a simplistic problem and there is a lot of evidence that the more gender considerations are applied , the worse things get.

The first thing that has to be said is that boys are not a homogeneous group with a single set of issues. What we really need to look for is which boys have the problem and ensure that by improving the performance of boys we don’t adversely affect the performance of girls or those boys who are already performing well.

As a parent with a daughter and three sons my feeling is that my boys show a far greater difference between each other than the gender differences they have with their sister. They act in certain ways because of who they are rather than because they are boys.

All of the statements have a degree of truth if we add some in front of the word boys. Many boys show none of these traits and are very successful. On leaving school the gender inequality in boardrooms is still massively weighted towards males. A mere 4.6% of the CEOs of the Fortune 1000 companies are female. here

Let’s look at these points one at a time

Boys are underachieving

IQs have been increasing at about 3 points every 10 years but whether our kids are any smarter is not so clear as outlined here 

The performance of boys and girls has improved on a yearly basis. However whether this is a real improvement or more to do with the way assessments are carried out again is not entirely clear. What is without doubt that on average boys are not improving at the same rate as girls. Certain groups of boys are faring far worse than the average boy.

Reports such as the ones below outline what researchers believe is happening. Though there seem to be few acknowledged truths.

Too Cool for School here

Raising Boys Achievement here

its a Global problem UNICEF report here

Boys need to understand the purpose of what they are doing

There is research that supports this West (2005) as a generalisation boys prefer to have writing tasks with a clear purpose rather than writing for the sake of it.
There is also sometimes a mismatch between the teachers perception and the boys, with teachers thinking boys taking notes are engaged, the boys thinking that they are wasting their time.

I have found that all students prefer to clearly understand the point of what they are doing. Girls often seem to have a greater motivation to please the teacher – Something I have found when talking to teachers of high achieving girls is that they can be desperate to get the right answer and do the right thing.

 

Boys have an anti-school attitude and a laddish culture

Many boys manage to be one if the lads and still be successful, but for others they need to conform to their peers. If the system is perceived to have little value to them many boys preserve their sense of self worth by fighting it. It is far easier to fit into an cultural norms than it is to fight it. I taught at a school with a very deeply embedded anti – learning culture that held most students back. The ones who came through it well have turned into some of the finest young men and women I know with massive resilience and the ability to make things happen.

There was some interesting research in the 70s by Paul Willis which still has some relevance today. He studied a group of 12 working-class boys during their last year and a half in school and their first few months at work. He conducted a series of interviews and observations within a school, with the aim of discovering why ‘working class kids get working class jobs’.

He identified two groups of pupils as the ‘lads’ and the ‘ear ‘oles’.

The ‘lads’ were working class boys who expressed a negative attitude to academic work and also showed strongly racist and sexist attitudes. They tried to drink and smoke to become part of a more adult world and thought that manual work, such as building, was far more important to mental work. Seeing as society is run by capitalism, the lads recognised that there was no such thing as an equal opportunity for them, as no matter how hard they tried, they would still remain far less successful than middle class students. This links to the Marxist idea that there is no meritocracy in a capitalist society.

One of the main motivations for the lad’s rejecting their education would be the ear’oles.

The ear’oles were seen as school conformists by the lads and were the complete opposite to them when it came to academic progress. Ear ‘oles were looked down on by the lads as they were the children who followed the school rules, respected their teachers, and commited to their education. Lads did not just dislike ear’oles, they felt they had superiority over them. This was because the lads believed that the ear’oles were wasting their time at school by not being able to have fun or be independent.

Willis found a number of similarities between the attitudes and behaviour developed by the lads in school and those on a shop floor at work. Having a laugh was important in both situations as a means of dealing with boredom, authority and repetitiveness.

The lads rejected school and mentally prepared themselves for a place in the workforce invariably at manual level. They learned to put up with boredom, had a laugh and to basically accepted the labour of low-skill and low-pay jobs.

Society has changed massively since the 70s but there are certainly elements I have taught within schools of boys looking for entertainment and seeing schools as an environment of hostile authority and meaningless work demands.
Boys like competition

In a study on running here  It was found that competition improved the performance of the boys, but made no real difference to girls

The study builds upon earlier work by the authors and Muriel Niederle of Stanford University, which also showed that competition improves the performance of males more than females, creating a gender gap which does not exist in non-competitive environments.

The earlier study tested responses to a mental rather than physical task. In a lab experiment, men and women were asked to solve simple maze problems on a computer, and were paid according to different criteria. The average age of the participants was twenty-three years old.

When subjects were paid for individual performance, there was no significant gender difference in the results. When subjects were paid on a competitive basis, and only the subject with the best outcome was paid, the performance of the male subjects increased significantly, while that of the female subjects remained constant.

Other studies have found clear losers in a competitive culture and a tendency to give up if success wasn’t instant. Competition should be used carefully.
There are not enough role model male teachers for boys

With a changing workforce that values traditional male strengths less and communication and literacy there are some boys who can’t see a future, nor the point of education.

Male role models are still mainly sports stars and few intellectual pursuits are seen as being cool. Male teachers can show that learning can be a masculine activity. However Male teachers can sometimes reinforce a macho or ‘laddish’ culture and the learning climate can often be characterised by confrontation.

We all know teachers with the traits shown by Brian Glover

 

There has  been a huge reduction in the number of male teachers from 40% in the 80s to around 25% today . Only 13% of primary teachers being male and a rapid decline in the number of male teachers in secondary school. Some research has found that boys prefer male teachers as they ‘get them’ but other research has found that the gender makes no difference, what matters is the pedagogical approaches and respectful relationships.
What is certain is that we don’t necessarily need more unthinking male teachers, we need more male teachers who model a caring, thoughtful masculinity.

Boys don’t like reading

There is a wealth of research on this that indicates that boys are less inclined to read than girls globally. That may be in part that the type of reading and the types of books are not what many boys find interesting.

The literacy trust report has some recommendations – full report here

 

Boys’ underachievement in reading is a significant concern for schools across the country. In a National Literacy Trust survey, 76% of UK schools said boys in their school did not do as well in reading as girls. 82% of schools have developed their own strategies to tackle this.
 The issue is deep-seated. Test results consistently show this is
a long-term and international trend. Boys’ attitudes towards reading and writing, the amount of time they spend reading and their achievement in literacy are all poorer than those of girls.
 Boys’ underachievement in literacy is not inevitable. It is not simply a result of biological differences; the majority of boys achieve in literacy and are fluent readers.
 The Boys’ Reading Commission has found that boys’ underachievement in reading is associated with the interplay of three factors:
– The home and family environment, where girls are more likely to be bought books and taken to the library, and where mothers are more likely to support and role model reading;
– The school environment, where teachers may have a limited knowledge of contemporary and attractive texts for boys and where boys may not be given the opportunity to develop their identity as a reader through experiencing reading for enjoyment;

– Male gender identities which do not value learning and reading as a mark of success.

The Commission’s Recommendations
1. Schools should have access to an evidence framework to inform effective practice in supporting boys’ reading.
2. Every child should be supported by their school in developing as a reader. Crucially, schools must promote reading for enjoyment and involve parents (overtly fathers) in their reading strategies.
3. Every teacher should have an up-to-date knowledge of reading materials that will appeal to disengaged boys.
4. Parents need access to information on how successful schools are in supporting boys’ literacy.
5. Libraries should target children (particularly boys) who are least likely to be supported in their reading at home.
6. Social marketing and behavioural insight need to be deployed to encourage parents to support the literacy of their children – especially boys.
7. Every boy should have weekly support from a male reading role model.
8. Parenting initiatives must specifically support literacy and fathers.
9. A cross-Government approach to literacy needs to be developed and coordinated.

One of the key issues may well be how reading fits into their idea of masculinity, if reading is considered  feminine then any measure other than male role models is doomed to fail. . This is explored in depth here 

Pic of masculinity
Teachers have lower expectations of boys work

Some studies have found that teachers underestimate boys abilities due to the disorganised nature and poor presentation of work, compounded by weak literacy skills.
There are some great blogs on this by hunting English
Boys need more active learning styles

There was a push to give boys lots of kinaesthetic activities, but there is little, if any, evidence that it improved their performance. However it would be interesting to see if this reduced behavioural issues.
Making a generalisation that I warned about at the start as a science teacher I found that in a practical if boys didn’t know what to do many would just make it up themselves whereas most girls would ask (or do nothing)
Many boys would like to try a task without advice where girls would often prefer to know exactly what to do.

 

Boys overestimate their own ability

There is evidence for this particularly in maths.
Boys also have a tendency to put success down to luck and being clever, rather than effort.

However Westerners have a tendency to overestimate their ability (unlike eastern cultures ) with something called the superiority illusion full article here

Since psychological studies first began, people have given themselves top marks for most positive traits. While most people do well at assessing others, they are wildly positive about their own abilities, A researcher David Dunning said.

That’s because we realize the external traits and circumstances that guide other people’s actions, “but when it comes to us, we think it’s all about our intention, our effort, our desire, our agency — we think we sort of float above all these kinds of constraints,”

In studies, most people overestimate their IQ. For instance, in a classic 1977 study, 94 percent of professors rated themselves above average relative to their peers. In another study, 32 percent of the employees of a software company said they performed better than 19 out of 20 of their colleagues. And Dunning has found that people overestimate how charitable they’ll be in future donation drives, but accurately guess their peers’ donations.

Why the dumb think they are smart

In 1999, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, from Cornell University, New York, tested whether people who lack the skills or abilities for something are also more likely to lack awareness of their lack of ability. At the start of their research paper they cite a Pittsburgh bank robber called McArthur Wheeler as an example, who was arrested in 1995 shortly after robbing two banks in broad daylight without wearing a mask or any other kind of disguise. When police showed him the security camera footage, he protested “But I wore the juice”. The hapless criminal believed that if you rubbed your face with lemon juice you would be invisible to security cameras.

Why the not funny think they are funny !

Kruger and Dunning were interested in testing another kind of laughing matter. They asked professional comedians to rate 30 jokes for funniness. Then, 65 undergraduates were asked to rate the jokes too, and then ranked according to how well their judgements matched those of the professionals. They were also asked how well they thought they had done compared to the average person.

As you might expect, most people thought their ability to tell what was funny was above average. The results were, however, most interesting when split according to how well participants performed. Those slightly above average in their ability to rate jokes were highly accurate in their self-assessment, while those who actually did the best tended to think they were only slightly above average. Participants who were least able to judge what was funny (at least according to the professional comics) were also least able to accurately assess their own ability.
Boys are more disruptive than girls

Whatever the truth of this and some argue that schools are set up as havens for girls and prisons for boys the statistics show that boys are nearly 4 times as likely to be excluded than girls according to 2012 findings. here

Extract below

Despite our claims of being an equal society that treats children on their merits, some groups of children are far more likely to be excluded from school than others. These are children who are vulnerable because of who they are, and because of the challenges already present in their lives. They are:
• boys rather than girls;
• children with some types of special needs;
children from some specific ethnic backgrounds, and
• the children of the poor.

To illustrate the impacts on individual children, it is useful to imagine two hypothetical young English people: Jack and Jill. They are the same age, and attend the same school. They have the same rights under the Human Rights Act, and the UNCRC.
• Jack has SEN, assessed at School Action Plus. He is of Black Caribbean background, and lives in a low-income household. He receives free school meals.

• Jill does not have SEN, is from a White British background, and lives in a more affluent household.

The DfE’s analysis of the data shows Jack is 168 times more likely than Jill to be permanently excluded from school before the age of 16, and 41 times more likely than she is to be excluded for a fixed term. Truly frightening statistics.

Many teachers have a tendency to discipline boys publicly and girls privately and this can cause resentment and inflame tensions.

Boys are more likely to have autistic spectrum disorders

This is indeed true but with a proviso – taken from Autism.org  here
Autism (including Asperger syndrome) appears to be more common among boys than girls. This could be because of genetic differences between the sexes, or that the criteria used to diagnose autism are based on the characteristics of male behaviour. However, our understanding is far from complete, and this will remain the case until we know more about the causes of autism.

Why are boys far more likely to develop autism than girls?
There is strong evidence to suggest that there are more boys with ASDs (autism spectrum disorders) than girls. Brugha (2009) surveyed adults living in households throughout England, and found that 1.8% of males surveyed had an ASD, compared to 0.2% of females.

In epidemiological research Wing (1981) found that among people with high-functioning autism or Asperger syndrome there were as many as fifteen times as many males as females. On the other hand, when she looked at people with learning difficulties as well as autism the ratio of boys to girls was closer to 2:1. This would suggest that, while females are less likely to develop autism, when they do they are more severely impaired.

It is difficult to explain why the sexes should be affected differently by autism

Attwood (2000), Ehlers and Gillberg (1993) and Wing (1981) have all speculated that many girls with Asperger syndrome are never referred for diagnosis, and so are simply missing from statistics. This might be because the diagnostic criteria for Asperger syndrome are based on the behavioural characteristics of boys, who are often more noticeably “different” or disruptive than girls with the same underlying deficits. Girls with Asperger syndrome may be better at masking their difficulties in order to fit in with their peers, and in general have a more even profile of social skills. Gould and Ashton-Smith (2011) say that because females with ASDs may present differently from males, diagnostic questions should be altered to identify some females with ASDs who might otherwise be missed.

Another hypothesis (Wing 1981) is based on evidence that, in the general population, females have better verbal skills, while males excel in visuo-spatial tasks. There may be a neurological basis for this, so that autism can be interpreted as exaggeration of “normal” sex differences. But environmental and social factors may also play a part in sex differences in ability, which means that no direct analogy can be drawn between the poorer verbal skills of boys and the higher incidence of autism in males.

A couple of useful videos

 

And this truly amazing video

 

Boys suffer from more mental health issues

Aged 5-10 boys are almost twice as likely as girls to suffer from mental health problems (10.4% vs 5.9%) but in teenage years this gap narrows (12.8% vs 9.7%) the perception of boys can be that they are tougher than they appear.
Many boys lack the informal support networks that girls have.
Boy culture is often one where mocking is the main form of interaction and compliments rarely are given. If you have a problem you are on your own.

There is an alarming tendency of boys retreating into bedrooms and eschewing social contact. These are typified by the hikikomori in Japan here

Video games addiction is also massively more prevalent amongst boys than girls. The reasons are complex but should be seen as their solution to a problem, rather than the problem itself.
What is clear is that there are no simple solutions. High performing schools with little gender gap have not got in place ‘boy friendly’ curriculums or learning styles. What we need to do about some of our underachieving boys is still not clear, what is obvious is that stereotyping and quick fix solutions won’t make a positive difference.

An interesting read is the Gender and. Education Mythbusters here 

This is simply a draft and Id like to add any more information and blogs to it so please add links in the comments section

 

Behaviour – beyond compliance – A personal perspective

 

There are a lot of behaviour gurus out there, some offering genuinely good advice and others with very slick and entertaining stage shows that lack any real substance.

These are some that I have found useful

The first person who ever seemed to give me stuff that worked was Bill Rogers the ever reliable Tom Sherrington @headguruteacher has a great summary blog here

Tom Bennett @tombennett71 at the TES. Here

Sarah Findlater @Msfindlater has got some useful links on her excellent Pinterest account here

Ross McGill @teachertoolkit has some useful stuff as always including the 5 minute behaviour plan available here

Sue Cowley @Sue_Cowley talks a lot of sense and you will find her website here

This is a personal account of what I have found works for me.

I feel immensely privileged that within my various roles I still teach regularly, observed by others, and can be in a failing inner city comprehensive one day and a top performing independent school the next. We have to take our students on a journey they may be reluctant to go on, armed with only the force of our personality – That is a serious challenge! I have taught in some of the toughest schools on the planet, sometimes successfully, at other times failing miserably. Failure is always a learning experience and my last nine years of teaching as an AST in challenging schools was filled with these. But there are also those days where you walk out of the classroom buzzing, knowing why you are a teacher; a feeling you can’t explain to those who have never felt it – those who often decide educational policy!

Turning around failing schools is not rocket science, it’s very hard work. You need to change an embedded culture of anti learning.

One model is to follow the way that the New York Subway System was reclaimed in the 1980s – identifying the ‘broken window syndrome; where if one window is broken and not fixed then all the windows would be subsequently broken. The subway carriages were covered in graffiti, a clear indication of lawlessness and this was the first priority to fix.

1980s Grafitti

The strategy was interesting: they found that the graffiti artists/vandals (use whichever fits your viewpoint) would take 3 days. The first day they would paint the carriages white then build up their artwork over the next 2 days. They were not prevented from doing this, instead as soon as they had finished the work it was painted over, thus demoralising them. They were not preventing them from wrongdoing, they were preventing them from benefitting from wrongdoing. No car covered in graffiti was allowed back into service.

Another example was fare dodging which was endemic: when others were clearly getting away without paying the temptation was to do it yourself. A very visible system of punishment was created with fare dodgers daisy chained together on the platform and processed in a bus parked outside the station.
No windows left broken; rules that are enforced clearly and consistently undeniably work and can lead to compliance and hence control is regained.

Is it simply compliance we want in the classroom though?

It is possible to make a dog come towards you by offering a treat and move away from him by kicking it, what is much harder is to get the dog to obey you without these extrinsic drivers. Reward and threat can give us the behaviour we want to see, but is this enough? I want my students to behave because they understand that it is the right thing to do, not from a fear of the consequences or a rote response. In terms of motivation this is an interesting video by Dan Pink

I am sure I am not alone in admitting that I am often probably the most disruptive influence in my classroom. When they are all quietly getting on with work I get bored. I hated teaching in a school where the students worked in silence. I wanted to know their hopes, dreams and fears, what motivated them. I teach young people first and the subject second and find that showing a genuine interest in them pays dividends in their behaviour and performance. By building relationships, I could use the most powerful weapon of all – disappointment. We reflect anger but disappointment is crushing (I can still remember the sad look on my much loved Biology teacher Mr Woodward’s face when I hadn’t done my homework!) I hope I have been a good role model by showing those with challenging home lives how to build genuine caring relationships.

The teachers who influenced me most and had a lasting impact on my life were not the most efficient ones, they were the ones with a passion who were not afraid to show their humanity.

We can create systems that force compliance. We can make students stand up as we enter the room to ‘show respect’. These systems of rules tend to have the opposite effect on me personally and bring out my subversive side, honed in my own traditional grammar school education that bored me to distraction. I was very successful at decoding exam papers and that was all that was required to be ‘successful’ with very little effort nor in depth thinking taking place (hence the shallow person I am today!)

Reactance – What would you do when faced with this photo?

Why the compulsion to do what it tells us not to?

We suffer from reactance which often compels us to break rules because we have lost the right to choose.

an interesting study here suggests that raising the drinking age actually caused higher levels of underage drinking

 

Reactance often causes us to act irrationally, particularly in those ‘difficult’ teenage years where our reaction to the nagging of our parents rarely was the way they intended, nor what was best for us. Yet somehow we expect our young charges to take notice of us! Some interesting research on reactance is here

Rules?

Evidently we need to make our rules purposeful, but rather than set rules I negotiate inviolable rights

The right to be safe – mentally and physically
The right to learn
The right to be treated with respect

These are then protected with rules
We have the right to be safe so I will not endanger others
We have the right to learn so I will not interfere with the learning of others
We have the right to be treated with respect so I will respect others

This is pretty much a catch all – you will only fall out with me if you break any of these 3 rules, but you will always fall out with me if you do.

This also allows us to deal with the students talking when we are by challenging them with “if you were talking to me and I started talking to someone else, would I be treating you with respect?” They can’t answer ‘yes’, so you point out they have broken the rules and hence have lost the right to …. sit there/leave the lesson on time/other benefit. As opposed to getting into the argument ‘ I was talking about the work ….’

I never talk about work in my lessons, always learning. I’m not impressed with pages of notes that have no meaning to the student or the copied and pasted stuff they seem to consider as good enough.
This is a huge generalisation of a strategy I use for dealing with classes to manage them effectively without simply resorting to compliance.

Starting Lessons

As the students come in I smile at them firing up their mirror neurones

Using brain imaging, scientists have explored the areas of the brain that are activated when we see another person smile. Of course, you’d expect the visual areas of the brain to light up. But other areas of the brain light up too, including the premotor cortex, an area that helps activate our own smiling muscles and the somatosensory and insula cortices, areas that report what it feels like physically and emotionally to smile. Neurons that fire both when we observe and when we take part in an action are called mirror neurons. When we see someone smile, mirror neurons simulate our own smiling. Does this simulation or reenactment help us to understand what another person is feeling? Full article here

Similarly if you frown at your class you will get them mirroring unhappiness back at you – that doesn’t seem worth it to me!

I now attempt to analyse my class to identify and work with any threats, using a not very scientific version of Mclellands Theory of needs – summary here . This is a very imprecise technique but it seems to work for me. It is very easy to label students and then use confirmation bias to see what you expect to see, so please use with caution and forgive me for gross generalisations.

We have three basic needs according to Mclelland. The need to achieve, affiliate with others and to have some power. I’m looking for the individuals who have a major need for power. I watch their body language as they enter the room: some will be making themselves small, these are unlikely to be threats. Others will have wide open stances and hold eye contact for a little longer than the rest, it is within this group that there is likely to be the possible threats.

A great video that can help change lives is Amy Cuddy

Achievers have a key driver of being successful. I divide them into two broad categories:

Quiet achievers : groups of girls who tend to sit near the front and never say anything. The ones I used to feel guilty about for never giving them enough attention or knowing anything about them when parents evening came (and their parents always came!) Individual boys who often would be sneered at by the others for the crime of trying hard. These types are not threats, but are often very needy and can dislike independent learning tasks.

Noisy achievers: spotted as soon as the first question is asked as they shout out or wave frantically at you. These can be the most annoying kids on the planet, often the offspring of the most annoying parents on the planet. These can destroy your lessons by dominating questioning. They are often deeply unpopular with their classmates but are completely unaware of this. Using ‘pose pause pounce bounce’ outlined by @teachertoolkit here and Dylan Wiliam below. I target them first and regularly come back to them.

 

 

Affiliates: By far the largest group, these may well be wearing the regulation Superdry/Hollister/Nike/Armani (delete as appropriate to the socioeconomic status of your school!) or the slight defiance to school uniform short fat tie etc. The haircut will also conform to the unofficial (hence far more likely to be adhered to) regulation norm. Being part of the group is far more important than being successful and if you have an embedded anti-learning, or that which I find worse, apathetic culture, then you have your work cut out. I remember as a clueless NQT admonishing the whole class with ‘if you carry on like this you will all fail!’ Thus bonding them together to fail as one with all the nonsensical rationale that only teenagers can muster.

Power People: This group hold status as the most important driver. These have the potential to be a threat, either in terms of behaviour or in turning the class against me or my teaching methods. If they are a personal power person they tend just to want to fight and have little influence on the others. Group power people have the potential to lead the affiliates and hence every lesson can turn into a battle over the allegiance of the affiliates.

Male power people: tend to be alpha males and will enter your room noisily. Falling out with males rarely is a long term issue and tends not to extend to their friends who can be marvellously disloyal.

Female power people: tend to be those that are the most extreme in dress – the brightest orange/shortest skirt/most makeup/biggest hair/other extreme feature! However, it is the number of social interactions which really hold the key to their power. Falling out with these can create an enemy for life and one with a hugely loyal army who also hate you unreservedly! Sometimes there is little you can do apart from damage limitation and wait for them to leave!

How to deal effectively with these power people in the longer-term, I’ll leave for another blog. However if their status depends entirely on how well they perform in your classroom and they are not naturally gifted at your subject then you will tend to suffer.

By being aware and dealing with these different drivers we can create a classroom climate where the needs of the individual students are being met. We can then go beyond compliance towards a self – regulated class.