How teachers can help or hinder learning -1
The Factors that Affect Learning 11; Teachers: 1 of 3
This Substack started a year or so ago with a series of posts that looked at what learning is, how it happens and what it looks like in action. As a result, we ended up in a workable, shareable definition of learning that was based on both the evidence of brain research and of watching hundreds of hours of learning happen (or not) in classrooms and other places. It’s been a while since we reminded ourselves of that definition, but it is important to keep it in mind. It’s what we mean when we talk about learning and it is, therefore, what defines good enough teaching. So here it is again.
Learning, getting better, happens successfully when our brains, through repeated experiences, engage in a good struggle to a) create or extend an existing neuronal chain b) make a neuronal constellation more complex or c) hardwire an existing chain so that it fires automatically and becomes sticky. When this happens we acquire knowledge, develop our skills and deepen our understandings in different ways and over different periods of time.
Since arriving at that definition, we’ve been looking at some of the key factors that help our definition of learning come alive or that get in its way.
On a daily basis, there are hundreds of small factors that can get in the way of learning, from a family argument just before school begins to the arrival of hoped-for and scarce tickets to something you are desperate to see. These things, and many more, will likely overwhelm the possibility of other kinds of learning for some time. In this Substack, it’s impossible to focus on all of these micro factors that are at work when learning happens (or not) but we need to keep in mind that they exist.
What we have been doing is identifying a core group of factors that we see help or hinder learning in action and which are broadly common in many schools, homes and classrooms. So far, we have looked at how Evidence, Curriculum, An agreement about the kinds of people we are hoping to help develop, Structures and Systems, Cognitive Overload, Time, Technology, Governments, Children and Students and, most recently, Parents can all help or get in the way of learning happening.
We’ve now reached factor 11 of the 12 factors we identified and the next few posts are about Teaching. Given how long children and students and teachers spend together and given that it is the responsibility of teachers to plan and guide the learning in their classrooms, it’s not surprising that they play such a big part in whether learning happens or not.
This series of posts about Teaching is a microcosm of the whole of this Substack. We can’t cover every way in which individual teachers help or hinder learning with their particular group of students. What follows are the common characteristics we have seen in classrooms where learning happens better, or where, in their absence, learning happens less well and less often.
In this first of three posts, we are starting by saying something about teaching in general, Then, we’ll look at the one teaching factor that has to happen if learning is to be as good as it can be, wherever it happens. In the next two posts, we’ll look at eight other important elements of teaching that can make a real difference to whether learning happens or not. Here goes.
About Teaching
Teaching isn’t easy at any level. It can be technically difficult and frustrating. Even when it goes well, it can be simply tiring.
Oddly, bad teaching is less easy than good teaching. Bad teaching is an enabler of student misbehaviour, disinterest and/or boredom, of colleagues’ irritation, of parental concern, of bad learning and of increased monitoring by school leaders. Bad teaching makes teachers exhausted, self-conscious and unhappy, enables those dissatisfactions to be taken home with them and then creates family tensions which are brought back into school to start the cycle all over again.
Good teaching is easier, but not easy, because the basics are right. Children and students are enabled to come to school, behave reasonably well in a good atmosphere, show some respect to or, at least, tolerance of their teachers and other students, play their role in the classroom and, at least, attempt to make sense of most of the experiences their teacher has prepared for them. Good teaching - and, therefore, good learning - means that colleagues are happy enough to share their workload and experiences with each other, that school leadership can give teachers a little more freedom, and that parents want their children to be in your class and are generally satisfied that their children only grumble about you in age-appropriate ways.
But no teaching is easy.
School days are spent mostly with young people of varying ages, abilities, intelligences and dispositions all of whom are at different stages of their development. There is a constant hum of activity and the imminent possibility that disorder might break out. Even in good schools, teachers scan the horizon like secret service agents, ready to step in and head off small and large crises amongst the children and students.
This is currently exacerbated in many schools still struggling with the different after effects of the pandemic and the economic recession. Disadvantaged children and students have lost learning time and may now be losing it through absence. (UK school absence - potential learning time - since the pandemic has doubled from 4 per cent to 8 per cent, especially in secondary schools. Economically disadvantaged children and students are not getting the sleep and food they need.
At the same time, every teacher is co-working in the same building with tens of other teachers, all of whose effectiveness impacts on each other. Behaviours maintained (or not), the curriculum covered appropriately (or not), a sense of shared teamwork (or not) don’t only impact children and students; they impact on how teachers can work well and feel good about what they do.
To add to this complexity, all teachers are at the mercy of all the factor we have talked about in these posts being done well or badly in their school. A shared awareness of what learning looks like, the quality of evidence, the curriculum, the shared agreements about the kinds of children and students the school is helping to develop, the structures systems and processes, cognitive overload, the amount of time available and the technology that is or isn’t fit-for-purpose; all of these, individually and collectively, either free teachers up or bind them tight.
This is why the last factor of these 12 factors that help or hinder learning will explore how school leadership is so vital to setting teachers free (or not) to facilitate good learning.
Surrounding all of this is the general sense of value which teachers feel the community has for them. At home, parents and carers of every child, with their own experiences of each teacher or, if not, then with the local rumour mill, are having those school gate and social media conversations that do or don’t create a culture of support for teachers. When and where teachers feel valued, it helps to ameliorate the times when things aren’t currently going that well for them or their students.
In 2022/23, the latest data figures I have available, there were approximately 643,500 teachers in the UK’s primary and secondary state and private schools (the number differs slightly depending on the source.) That’s a lot of people. Let’s just say the obvious. Not all of them are going to be great or good; not all of them are going to be competent, which is the least we should expect for our children and students. With that number of people, it’s impossible. Some aren’t competent because they find out that they don’t have the attitude or skill set required to be able to do the job but they stay in the profession. (Teaching is one of those jobs where you only know if you are going to survive and grow by doing it for a couple of years at least.) Some had the attitude and skills some time ago but times have changed and different skill-sets are now required; some are just tired and worn-out. A few shouldn’t have ever thought about becoming teachers in the first place.
This is why it is helpful to bring ‘good-enough’ into our expectation of teachers in the same way that Winnicot helped us think about parents. There are truly outstanding teachers; I have worked with just one of those in my entire career. There are some truly shocking teachers; I once worked with two of those in the same school. But most of us, like violinists, gymnasts, authors, scientists and any other workers we can think of, fall in between the outstanding and the shocking. We do a more or less good enough job most of the time.
It all sounds a bit miserable doesn’t it? In many ways it is. But, if much teaching is played out in a minor key there is a major key, too, with uplifting tunes and much positivity.
Teaching is simply one of the most rewarding jobs in the world if you are lucky enough to be in a place where - academic, social, emotional and physical - learning happens. Being in a classroom or around a school when a child or student makes a breakthrough in their current learning struggle is nothing else other than thrilling, especially so if you know that your thought and preparation last evening was the trigger for the improvement. Being in a school where the majority of your colleagues are focused on the same good things as you are and conscious of their mutual responsibility to each other can send a shiver down your spine and put a spring in your step as you walk through the door each morning. Being in a school where you know that any parental challenge is offered not through malice or dissatisfaction but because they want you or your colleagues or your school to be even better is rewarding and not frightening.
Generally speaking, the schools in which teachers are able to feel like this are learning-focused schools; schools that put learning front and centre of everything they do. Generally speaking, these teachers who find so much that is rewarding in what they do are learning-focused teachers. In these kinds of schools and with these kinds of teachers, and given that the factors we have been talking about are in place and working on behalf of learning and not against it, the student, parental and community tides start to run in favour of teachers and not against them.
Everything we have spoken about so far in these Substack posts is, in the end, mediated for children and students through teachers or the school leaders. You might remember one of our favourite structures and systems questions: ‘What’s the difference between an ‘x’ and a ‘learning-focused ‘x’? That question works for teachers, too: ‘What’s the difference between a teacher and a learning-focused teacher? Let’s try to answer that by looking at nine of the most important things that learning-focused teachers demonstrate better or more often than teachers who are less learning-focused. To start with, here’s what I think is the most important, the most radical and the most fundamental change in teaching and teachers that a focus on learning has brought about.
1
Learning-focused teachers know that they are the roadies and not the star
I’m going to a gig in my home town. On the morning of the show, there’s a van being unloaded outside the back of the theatre. A group of men and women in very lived-in black t-shirts and trousers are unloading speakers, cables and stuff from the back of the van into the theatre. Later in the afternoon, a friend who works at the theatre tells me the band has arrived and are doing the sound-check. My friend tells me that there are problems and the men and women in black are scurrying around trying to sort it all out. Just before the gig is due to begin, we sit in our seats watching two or three black t-shirted people give the guitars and other instruments get their final tuning and sound-check .
As they finish, the house lights dim and, to an announcement and a roar of approval, the band comes on stage. It’s obvious who is the star of the show. The place goes mad and for the next 105 minutes, we are so wrapped up in the band that we barely notice the figures in t-shirts who creep on stage to make some subtle change or another. At the end of the gig the band gives us their, no-doubt already scheduled, two song encore and leave the stage to stomping applause. By the time we are leaving the now quiet hall, the group of black t-shirted people, the roadies, is already dismantling everything on stage and carrying things off the stage.
In the early years of my school career, there was no doubt who was the star of the show. It was the teacher. Children and students were grumbled about in the staffroom if they couldn’t learn what they were supposed to be learning or do what they were supposed to be doing. Teachers vied with each other to take the classes with the ‘best’ children and students. They grumbled if they had to take a class full of students who were not naturally academic or immediately well-behaved. In mixed ability classes, struggling students were disliked because their slower speed meant that the teacher couldn’t ‘get on’ with their teaching. Children and students who naturally made the teachers’ lives easier were praised; those who made it a little more difficult were criticised. Lessons often consisted of teachers enjoying their freedom to talk at their students about their favourite subjects, irrespective of whether the children were interested or not or, in the case of some of my own teachers, whether it was even relevant. In effect, the main task of children and students was not to make their teachers’ lives difficult.
Establishing learning as the Hedgehog Concept of schools and classrooms has radically upended all that in a way that some teachers are still struggling to come to terms with. Probably the single biggest change in the nature of teaching is that the learning-focused teacher is no longer the star of the show but is now a very important roadie.
How could it be otherwise? If learning - children and students actually getting better - is at the very heart of a learning-focused school then their performance - academic, social, emotional and physical - is what matters most. That’s what the audience wants to see. That’s what the stomping applause should be given for.
In learning-focused schools, children and students are now the band; the teachers are their roadies.
The learning-focused teachers’ job is to get everything ready for children and students to do their learning work and get better. Like the band’s roadies I saw setting up the gig, teacher roadies arrive earlier than the students and make sure everything is set up properly. They monitor how the last learning gig went and think about how to make it better next time. Every so often, during the learning gig, they spot that something isn’t right - a student struggling here, a lack of clarity there, - and creep onto the classroom stage to put it right. In their metaphorical black t-shirts, they kneel quietly by the side of the child or student, making the subtle interventions that will enable the learning gig to get back to action, in the hope that at the end of the gig the crowd can be excited not by them but by the learning that has collectively happened since the gig began 45 or 90 minutes ago.
None of this means that teachers can’t ever hold the stage while the classroom learning gig is in action, display their extravagant or shy personalities or engage in good humour and repartee. Roadies are individuals, too. But it does mean that when they do these things, it is always in the interest of the children’s and students’ learning and not for the teacher’s own self indulgence. None of it means that the children and students who now make up the band can be divas, either. They have responsibilities to each other.
There’s a view about teachers and students that is becoming more common. It says that if teachers are working harder than their children or students then learning can’t be happening. This is true in the classroom, when the learning gig is taking place. The classroom is the place where students’ brains should be working much harder than teachers’ brains. During the gig, the band should be working harder than the roadies.
But this idea isn’t true generally. By the time the band came on stage at the gig I went to, the roadies had already worked super hard on their behalf. By the time children and students arrive for their learning gig, the teachers will already have worked super-hard to make sure that everything is ready for the learning band to shine. Teachers and students should work equally hard, at different times and at different things.
Teachers as roadies are becoming more common but, in truth, are not yet as common as we might want. That’s partly because some teachers have had years of repeated and, therefore, sticky, experiences of being treated as the star and can’t break the stickiness of this idea. It’s partly because some teachers came into the profession to show off and be the star and they are going to fulfil their dream whether anyone likes it or not. It’s often because learning isn’t truly their Hedgehog Concept or that of the school they work in, whatever the school web site might say.
It’s also because some teachers are still encouraged to be the star. At the risk of upsetting some of my good friends and ex-colleagues, I still find myself more irritated than I like when I open one of my social media accounts and see too many schools glibly giving thanks to their ‘amazing teachers’ whilst knowing that amazing doesn’t apply to more than half their staff; without either giving evidence of the amazing learning they have facilitated; or without thanking their amazing learners who have actually been through the struggle.
The spotlight in truly learning-focused schools shines differently now. It shines first on the children and students who are going through hopefully good struggles and learning and then on the teacher roadies who have helped them. The mindset of learning-focused teachers has changed too. They don’t want to be in the spotlight. They want to be wearing lived-in black t-shirts, working hard before the learning gig starts and supporting the band as they are learning in their classrooms.
Next week, we’ll be looking at four more teacher qualities that are more likely than not to help learning happen. See you next Monday.
Martin