You can download an mp3 of the podcast here.
Sarah Donarski’s tips:
- Know how to effectively assess (03:31)
- Choose the right feedback type (17:00)
- Be aware of student bias (29:59)
- Use, where possible, dialogic teaching (46:25)
- Ignite the CPD culture (1:04:15)
Links and resources
- On Twitter, Sarah is: @s_donarski
- Sarah’s blog is: perspected.wordpress.com
- 1.Donarski, S. & Bennet, T (2020) ResearchED Guide to Assessment, John Catt Publishers: https://johncattbookshop.com/the-researched-guide-to-assessment-an-evidence-informed-guide-for-teachers…
- 2.Macpherson, R. & Jones, K., (2021) The Teaching Life, John Catt Publishers.
- 3.Mercer, N., Howe, C., (2012), ‘Explaining the dialogic processes of teaching and learning: The value and potential of sociocultural theory’, 1.1, pp. 12-21 a.Note: Anything by Neil Mercer is excellent here for the dialogic.
- 4.Education and Endowment Foundation (2017) Dialogic Teaching: Evaluation report and executive summary. (Accessed: 26 April 2019)
- 5.Education and Endowment Foundation (2017): Feedback https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/feedback…
- 6.Hendrick, C & Macpherson, R. (2017), What does it look like in the classroom?, John Catt Publishers
- 7.Stuart Kime and Rob Coe’s Research for Evidence Based Education (2017) on Whole-Group Feedback: a.https://evidencebased.education/guest-post-point-marking/… b.https://schoolsweek.co.uk/what-happened-when-teachers-stopped-marking/…
- 8.Dylan Wiliam (2020) on Assessment: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nfAutEWaqOE&ab_channel=DylanWiliam…
- 9.Dunning Kruger Effect (Bias): https://britannica.com/science/Dunning-Kruger-effect…
- 10.Chiles, M. (2021), The Feedback Pendulum, John Catt Publications.
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View the videos of Sarah Donarski’s tips
Podcast transcript
Craig Barton 0:00
Hello, my name is Craig Barton and welcome to the tips for teachers podcast. The show that helps you supercharge your teaching. One idea is this episode I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to head of English and author, a wonderful Sarah and asking. Now two pieces of pretty exciting news before we dive in first, I have finished recording all 10 of my online on demand CPD courses based around the ideas from tips, teachers, I’ll give you the big 10 here the number one course is habits and routines. That means your participation to the one that one checking for understanding is a course on responsive teaching, planning prior knowledge explanations modelling your words examples course at student practice, but it’s memory retrieval. Finally, I’ve kept the cost nice and low. There’s hundreds of short sharp videos in there. You can access it at any time we visit it anytime I hope you find you have to the tip for teachers websites and click on CPD. find details about those. And you can also book me for face to face tips for teachers workshops, keynotes, presentations, and so on. All the details are at tipster teachers dot forward slash d. So that’s exciting piece of news number one. An exciting piece of news number two is that I’m delighted to say that the tipster teachers book will be released on the sixth of January 2023. Just this morning, I’ve signed off on the final proof I’m really excited. It’s called out so well designed isn’t added. Fantastic job on the marketing campaign for this you ready? Tips for teachers. That’s the title of the book 400 Plus ideas to improve your teaching, I’ve tried to make this one of the most practical, actionable CPD books around so many ideas, covering all the things that we’ve talked about on the tips of teachers, podcast, but also all the things that I’ve learned visiting schools and teachers and working with schools and teachers and students all around the world over the last few years. So if you want to make sure you get one in the first print room, you can preorder that now on Amazon or John cat. And there’s if you go to the tips for teachers website, and there’s a book section Ford slash book, you find out all about that, right? Let me shut up now let’s get back to the show. So let’s get learning with today’s guests. But wonderful Sarah Lasky spoiler alert, here are Sara’s five tips. Tip one, know how to effectively assess tip to choose the right feedback type. Tip three, this is my favourite beware of student bias tip for use where possible, dialogic teaching. And finally, Tip five ignite the CPD culture. The really good ones, these you know, and all the tips are timestamps, so you can jump straight to the one you want to listen to first. And as ever, videos of Sara’s tips are available on the tips for teachers website, if you wish to share them with colleagues enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Sarah and ASCII to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Sarah. How
Sarah Donarski 3:08
are you? Hi, Craig. I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
Craig Barton 3:11
Very good. Thank you very good. Right for the benefit of listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence?
Sarah Donarski 3:18
Yeah. So I’m currently head of English in the northwest of England. I’m an educational writer and speaker with particular interests, I’d say in assessment, feedback and bias.
Craig Barton 3:28
Amazing, fantastic. Well, let’s dive straight in. What’s tip number one that you’ve got for us today?
Sarah Donarski 3:34
Right. So my tip number one is to know how to effectively assess, obviously, I said that I’m massively interested in assessment,
predominantly, because I think when we have a look at what assessment is, fundamentally, it is controlled. It’s small scale, it’s low stakes. And the sole purpose of it, at least up until the final exams is to improve the learner and identify any misconceptions that a learner has. And I think understanding that definition actually enables us to recalibrate the way we see assessment across the course of our curriculum.
So yeah, so I would probably break that into two areas. I think, first thing, particularly in an English setting, but this happens a bit more naturally in medicine and music, say is to employ incremental assessment. And the second thing is to imply assessment that enables flexible learning. So I’m happy to talk more about both of those.
Craig Barton 4:38
This is good, this this is good. Can you tell us a little bit more about those two, those two facets, so we just dive a bit deeper into those last two things if that’s okay.
Sarah Donarski 4:45
Yeah, no worries. So um, so yeah. So the passerby to employ incremental assessment and I think this is quite a practical way to look at the theories and the discussions that have been coming out perpetually by the big hitter in interest Assmann Dylan William, who probably probably from the get go, regretted he’s spoken quite a lot about this regretting their definitions of formative and summative assessment, because actually, he’s sort of done a complete U turn on that and said that every single assessment is formative until the final examinations. And again, that’s what that’s what we assess for I’m not assessing to judge, I’m assessing to identify misconceptions, right? So when I’m looking at, say, a Macbeth essay, across the course, to get to the end goal, and Dylan William also speaks about this, you know, knowing at first what the end goal is, say, the end goal is that my students can go into a Macbeth exam and write a question or write a response in essay response to any question that comes up about a theme or character. There are so many steps along the way that I need to break down and skills that I need to know they have to get to that goal. And so I think in your curriculum planning, if you break those skills down, so from the tiniest of they understand the play, you know, they have knowledge about the play, to they can write an introduction to they can write an analytical paragraph, to they can do that when I say I give them three themes to study, and then they and then I throw one at them to then the complete unknown of the final assessment. And when you do that, then you actually find that assessment becomes very nice and fluid, because all you’re trying to assess is, do they have knowledge? And you can do that through using multiple choice? Short, very short answers, very short question and answers, to just getting them to write paragraphs and paragraphs about various different themes. Because if they can’t write a paragraph, they’re not going to write an essay. So it actually enables assessment to be that bit more fluid. And again, low stakes, which is what you want, right, we’re going to just kind of write a paragraph today, we’re going to really hone in on that. And I think a plot employing that more in English, particularly, but again, in all subjects is is really the key to making sure that conversations are happening to in the right direction. And that assessment is really being used, like you said, to identify these misconceptions and move the learner forward, which is is fundamentally the core of why we assess prior to the final examination.
Craig Barton 7:29
Love this. I love this one, Sarah. So just a couple of questions here. What was what what are some of the ways you see assessments go wrong? What are some of the kind of classic traps that perhaps teachers will fall into where they’re not gonna get the things that we want to get out of the assessments out of it?
Sarah Donarski 7:47
Well, I think I mean that, I think the biggest mistake and I’ve I’ve 100% done this is teachers will assess without a secure, understanding that their students, so they, they will assess bigger before they start small, like like I said, if we look at this incrementally, so they go straight in for those end goals, like I’m going to throw this Macbeth essay at them. When I haven’t yet assessed that my students understand the play, I haven’t yet assessed that they can recall quotations, I haven’t yet assessed that they understand, you know, what Macbeth is doing at this particular point. And so therefore, if you throw that final assessment at them, actually, it’s a waste of time, not just for the student, but for you as a teacher, because you’ll be marking in it depends on how you mark, but what I envision is, is if you’re throwing that bigger thing, it’s probably more of a traditional written marking thing. And you’ll be like, you need to know your quotations. Whereas had to been quite close monitoring in a low stakes way. How well that’s up to do their quotations in the first place, then it would save the feedback for later if you jump to the bigger assessment too soon.
Craig Barton 8:53
Interesting. Interesting, right? I’ve been I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask this to Sarah, you’re just my personnel. Right? So a mistake? Well, I think it was a mistake that I used to make was all my assessments were topic themed. So an example here, you know, two weeks teaching the kids Pythagoras. And then here comes the Pythagoras and of topic assessment. Now, the reason I think that was a mistake, was because you get this kind of illusion of mastery, you know, the kids nail Pythagoras, and then we move on to the next topic, and then they nail that one. But of course, because I’ve been doing retrieval, it’s all performance and they forgotten it, you know, in the high stakes exam. The problem another problem with it is it gives the message that cramming is actually quite an effective strategy. Because if you know exactly what’s going to be on the test, and you you know, just absolutely hammer that for three hours the night before, you’re probably going to do all right on it, then you get to you know, your GCSE, right could be on anything, and then you realise that that strategy isn’t gonna be affected. So I thought I have that sorted. But then I hear people say that actually, no, it’s a good idea. If the kids know exactly what they’re going to be assessed on, so that they can prepare adequate, adequately, they can learn these effective revision strategies and so on. So where do you stand on kind of topic themed assessment versus kind of anything could be on the assessment?
Sarah Donarski 10:10
I think that’s a great question. And actually, I recently spoke about this. I think if you break down this, this is how I think about it. But I do think it’s an effective way. And I’ve seen educational papers do this in a different level for biology, where they break down the learning journey into these four categories, as a novice learner, a rote Lana, an inflexible learner, and a flexible learner being the final. And I think what we sometimes do, and that was going to be my second point, whereas talking about assessment to encourage flexible learning, is we sometimes when we prepare students incrementally, perhaps too much, we get them from a novice to a rote learner, so they can recall what we’re saying, then we get them to an inflexible learner, like you said, they, they have this mastery in what we’ve given them because they’ve had adequate time. But what they can’t be, then we were not assessing them then in how to be a flexible learner, which is where they get given a situation of the unknown. So I completely agree with you that there needs to be incremental assessment to build confidence towards a particular particular topic. But what we definitely need to throw on top of that is that level of in Flex flexibility, sorry, is where it is completely unknown environments, and they’re able to apply the knowledge to that particular situation. And I think where we can really build this in quite a lot is in the Key Stage Three curriculum, I think, kind of taking what Mary Meyer says about the case history curriculum needing to be the intellectual powerhouse of our curriculum design, I think what we should be doing is spending a lot more time in the case history curriculum, not just rote learning and building mastery towards particular subjects, which we might do more at GCSE. But actually the throwing in very odd, flexible learning situations, such as you know, right, you’ve learned this, you’ve learnt Romeo and Juliet, here’s a picture, apply what you know about Romeo and Juliet, his picture, just enabling that level of play with learning that I think you really make, if you think about it, most students really only get flexible learning when they go into their examinations. And then it’s no wonder that they fall down because we actually haven’t tested them necessarily in the unknown in the ability to apply all of that into a completely unknown situation. And that’s where you get students who get thrown at GCSE when they have, for example, I remember a few years ago, there was a sorry for the English examples, but you know, there was a Jekyll and Hyde question a few years ago, and obviously different Hi, do you think themes, I think, duality, you know, power, concealment? Fear, you know, you think of all of these classic themes, which teachers would have taught, and then they would believe they’re teaching flexible learning, because they’re like, oh, they can go in and do this. But actually, there’s still an element there, of unknown. And the question was help. How does Jacqueline hide, explore help? And, and what they would need to do is go right, well, there’s a fear towards help seeking, you know, there needs to be that complete level of flexible application. But it meant that a lot of students fell down. So I think, I think just teaching to subject specifics, as you’ve given that example, I think, will will have that negative effect, I think, where we could really utilise going a bit beyond that is earlier on, to encourage students to be a bit more confident in situations that they don’t, they’re not prepared for
Craig Barton 13:45
is interested in this. Just Just one more thing for me on this. I don’t know if this is a math specific thing. So I’m interested in your perspective on this. But one good thing about kind of topic specific assessments is you can go a bit deeper. So if I’m asking you, if I’ve taught you pay for progress, and I set you like an eight question assessment, low stakes quiz or whatever on Pythagoras, the chances are the final two questions, we’re going to be going pretty deep, it’s going to be some conceptual understanding. Maybe I’m weaving in some different areas of maths, maybe it’s contextual, all that kind of stuff. Versus if you do mix topic assessments, what tends to happen in maths is that they then almost revert to quite kind of surface level procedural style knowledge because you’ve got all this and you’ve got eight questions. So I’m only going to ask so one, one of those questions is going to be Pythagoras. So I’ll probably just ask kind of a procedural Pythagoras question. Then I’ve got another fraction square, I just asked, you know, quite a straightforward fractions question. And my fear there is when you have these kind of mixed topic assessments, you don’t really get that, that that depth of understanding assessment of that depth of understanding because you try to cover to broader, broader spectrum of content. I don’t know if that makes any sense and if you can relate to that in any way in in in your subject.
Sarah Donarski 14:59
I I can I would come back and it goes with the purpose of the tip that I’m trying to say like, what is the purpose of that assessment? So why are you developing an assessment with five or six? And is it because there is that there is a need that these students will go into an exam or, or go into particularly thing where they’re going to need to switch very quickly between those different schools of knowledge, in which case, assessing that is super important, you know, we will eventually in English, get to a point where students are going to need to stop writing Shakespeare midway through a two hour exam and start writing about poetry. So actually assessing eventually, that they can deal with the exhaustion of that time. And that mental shift is actually really important for us. But if you’re just trying to trick them and trap them, there’s probably no purpose to that assessment. Because, again, where it how useful is that feedback. And again, if we’re just looking at assessment with that core definition of being purposeful, because we are trying to figure out where students misconceptions are in how to move them forward, then then there’s no purpose to trapping them by doing that particular exercise either. So yeah, so I think that’s, that’s where that’s where you would see probably some assessments being planned poorly. And, you know, I’ve had the fortunate experience of moving into our department roll in, and that has given me a lot of autonomy. And every time we have an assessment, we sit down and we say, right, this is what our assessment looks like, is this, what we want our students to know, is this assessing them in all the skills so that we can identify the misconceptions, to move them forward effectively to the next thing that we’re doing? You know, and that because that is that purpose, it’s not to trap them, it’s not to judge them, it is for us to know that they are in the right, academic place to move forwards, comfortably and appropriately.
Craig Barton 16:53
It’s really interesting. I’ve never thought about that practising the switch between topics. That’s really interesting. That’s fantastic. All right. So what is tip number two, please?
Sarah Donarski 17:03
Okay, so tip number two is closely related. And again, it does go with that idea of assessment, but it is to choose the right feedback type. So I actually think that you can’t separate assessment and feedback, especially if you’re looking at assessment as being something to help. When we talk about assessment, it must be integral with feedback. And when I was writing with, with researchers, the original title of the assessment book was actually assessment, marking and feedback, because as a collective, you can’t separate them, we shortened it down, because it’s easier to say I’m assuming, but but it is so important that Okay, so when I’m saying, right, I’m gonna give them a quiz or a short answer question, How am I feeding back on that, so that we are then developing the right movements forward. And so where you sort of imagine the incremental steps towards that final assessment, you can also imagine incremental stages of feedback moving from say, you know, you can peer mark or whole group marking with with a multiple choice test. But then what do you do with that as well. So for when I teach Macbeth, obviously, given that it’s a closed book, and knowledge of the text is key to succeeding, we will start every lesson with a low stakes quiz, where students get their responses wrong, it’s not for me to be like, Oh, you’ve only got 68, I’m going to write that in my MacBook, it’s right, highlight the ones that you’ve you’ve, you know, gotten incorrect, because those are, where your knowledge gaps are. I will test this again in a week. So your homework is to study or your you know, our school is to study those, particularly those areas, because they’re the ones that are obviously falling short when it comes to your memory recall. Yeah, so in terms of then how you can provide feedback, I think that’s a really important discussion for departments to have. Because otherwise, then you do get into this, perhaps poorly planned, immediate recall, like for teachers to go immediately back to just written marking, without anything being done with it. You know, that sort of I receive your work, I will mark it and I deliver it back to you and actually a bit more of a discussion in curriculum planning, alongside assessment with feedback, I think would encourage more discussion about what are we doing with that feedback.
Craig Barton 19:41
This is again, another massive one, you’ve gone for his I love this. Now. We’ve got to do the big issues on the show. I like this. I’ve struggled with this with with with feedback in mathematics. And again, I’m always interested from a cross subject perspective here. There’s certainly been a pleasing shift in both schools away from kind of long form written feedback. Because what tends to happen, teacher spends hours doing it, you give it back to the kids, you’re lucky if they glanced at it. Or if they do, perhaps they can’t then kind of act upon it. It’s quite difficult to act upon it. And Dylan Williams suggests making feedback into detective work and have played around with that idea. I think that can work quite well. I guess my big question is, how are the kids? So let’s take them Macbeth essay. So let’s say you take that in, you do some written feedback? What kind of written feedback? Do you find that kids can then act upon deed? Is there a certain way that you’d rather phrase things or a certain level of depth that you go into where a child can actually read it and then can independently get on with improving that word, because that feels to me the big challenge when you’ve got 30? Kids, you’ve got to give them solid that they can then kind of crack on with how does that play out in English?
Sarah Donarski 20:52
And it’s a great question. And, again, I think this and I know, obviously Daisy would have spoken about this. But I think the you know, you can’t I don’t think you can do feedback effectively without models. And without perhaps a practical breaking down of, again, skills. So returning back to skills that you can assess that that student might need. So again, learning quotations, that’s a nice practical bit of feedback you could give to a student that you could then assess separately and low stakes to then re implement later. So it is about thinking about practical things that the student can move, move forwards with. In terms of written feedback, though, and I think this is why the discussion to me is so important. And I’ll probably mention this in my next tip a little bit as well, is how that feedback is received. And I think if you have a good understanding of where each feedback type has its pitfalls, then I think that it also helps to, to deliver more effective feedback. So for example, if you are saying, Okay, I have fortunate enough to have a smaller level class, and I want to give students one to one feedback, verbal feedback on their essay, right? Then you’ve got to remember that actually, verbal feedback, doesn’t actually isn’t actually better than written feedback, they are, evidentially the same level of effect in the same way that written and whole group feedback is the same. Because there are processes limiting that student from retaining that information. So if I sit down and have a one to one conversation for about 20 minutes with a child on a piece of work they’ve done, we have to think about cognitive overload in that process, that, okay, I might have walked away going, I’ve just given the absolute best verbal feedback to that students. And I have been really thorough and very clear. But what that student walks away with is something that we also need to consider what is happening in their mental processes, whilst we’re giving that 20 minutes and how can we then again, just allow ourselves to use extra resources to make that feedback, the absolute best that it can be such as getting them to record it, if you know your student is not a student who is particularly independent, probably would never listen to that recording again, getting them to minimise what you said in that 20 minutes to five clear things. Like tell me what I’ve told you that what are your next steps, and having that, that conversation a bit more clearly and openly because again, if you don’t understand that cognitive overload can happen in feedback, then you walk away, you think I’ve given this amazing feedback, and then we see those issues happen again and again.
Craig Barton 23:43
That’s great. That’s great. Just one more thing on this for me, Sarah, the I’m really interested in these kinds of next steps, because I think this is where a lot of feedback certainly that I’ve given us fallen down. So let’s get another math example. Let’s imagine you’re teaching your kids to factorise quadratic expressions, or whatever it is, you can, you know, you correct one of them. And then you can say to the kids, okay, right, you find the other mistakes and try and correct them, and so on, that can work well in the moment. But alas, then they’ve got somewhere then to go away, and then further practice that whether they’ve got so that they can then take, you know, this new thing that they’ve got their head round, and then you know, practice it and solidify it, and so on. There’s a danger that we get this classic performance learning thing where kids are just performing in response to that feedback. But then a week later, we give them a question, and you know that they revert back to stage one, I get the sense in maths, this is a little bit easier to do. I’m intrigued how on earth is worse in English. So let’s imagine you’ve given this feedback on the Macbeth essay to a child. Is it a case of they just go away and rewrite the essay or try and apply that to a different essay? What does the follow up kind of work to that feedback look like?
Sarah Donarski 24:51
Yeah. So and again, I think different schools would apply different different ways of doing this, hopefully, but yeah, well One of the things that I like to one of the things I’ve spoken about recently is identifying when you see these, are they mistakes? Or are they misconceptions? I think is the first question is this because you know, sometimes I’m sure is the case, in maths that a student might just write, they know what they’re doing, they’ve just written a three instead of a two because they were being lazy and rushing, or whatever it is. And you will have your knowledge, obviously, and your understanding of your class, but you will be able to say, You know what, actually, I’ve seen this a couple of times. Now, this isn’t a mistake. This is a misconception. A good example of this in in English is capital letters. You know, some students are very lazy with putting capital letters at the start of their sentences, they don’t have a misconception that capital letters aren’t a thing. Mostly, they’re just being lazy. And so they it’s a mistake. And you’ll say, right, you know, look at your capital letters. For misconceptions. I think having a sheets at the front or back of a book with the topics that students have done. So very quick sheet that you just have date, topic, misconception. And if you say to a student, right, I know I’ve had this conversation with the student three or four times about the fact that they, they’re not writing their topic sentences at the beginning of their essays, I know, I’ve had that conversation with them a lot. So be like, right, I’ve had this conversation with you a couple of times, turn to your misconception sheet and write it down for this topic. And then before they hand in any work thereafter, double check your misconception sheet and check that you have actually done the things that I last gave you feedback on. And I think those little nods, and those reminders that you won’t take in that work unless they have actively thought about feedback that you’ve given them before. Is is nice, because then it will force them. You know, like we said, learning comes from, from memory from the fact that you have things at the forefront of your memory, and the things that you’re thinking about. So we as teachers have to make students think about those things, before we just take in their work. Otherwise, we’re thinking about it, but they’re not.
Craig Barton 27:01
Brilliant. Brilliant. And was there anything else you wanted to add on this before we move on to tip three?
Sarah Donarski 27:06
And yeah, I did just want to quickly say, obviously, in sort of thinking about, these are all big, big, nice discussions about feedback, I completely understand. But the complexities of of getting a school to implement these things are actually really, really challenging. And I think partly to do with the reporting system. I think some schools are when we report and it comes with that idea. Like we know, there’s so much research going, right actually, if we take off grades from work, if we if we remove a grade, and we just focus on the feedback, then students will be more encouraged to look at that rather than a grades, right. So Ruth Butler, obviously, in 88, and then numerous studies thereafter. But if you’ve got reporting systems still based on that number system, then it becomes very challenging, because the conversation is still about that. So if I didn’t know, systems of reporting, so one of the things we did a reporting overhaul of years ago, was break down the reporting system about learning behaviours, so does the student does the student respond to feedback, and it’s like a positive or a negative, you know, like ingest actually, the, the way that we were doing reporting was less about the number, and so much more a breakdown of, of, of learning behaviour. And then it also made conversations about learning better at parents conferences, because you were able to track reports not based on numbers, because again, much as probably the same with maths where they might, students might get an eight, an eight and eight in Macbeth, and then a six and a three in poetry. And you have to sit there and explain to a parent, they haven’t gone backwards. We’ve just started a new topic and their knowledge and understanding awareness. And maybe their interest in this is not as strong as Macbeth, and they haven’t quite mastered it. And, you know, we will build them there. Whereas if you say, You know what, actually, I’m looking at their report, and they’ve constantly gotten minuses for responding to feedback. That’s what we need to see changing. It’s less about what they’re achieving, and how to achieve which I think is a better conversation to have, regardless,
Craig Barton 29:18
as approximated. I just want just just one more question on that, sir. How, how are you judging how they’ve responded to feedback? If that’s not a daft question?
Sarah Donarski 29:27
No. So it would be as you said, like, identifying, like I said, tables such as the misconception ones help with that, but it wouldn’t be the case where you didn’t have that resource and you would be receiving essays and and knowing that I’ve said this to that student three or four times I’ve seen this before. Or just yeah, just not. Yeah, not listening to all taking the active steps to make their skills better for the next time.
Craig Barton 29:56
Got it? Right. So what means to go on birth three, please.
Sarah Donarski 30:02
Okay, tip number three is my favourite one, this is my little Geek Love. And it’s one that I spoke about a few years ago, I sort of did some work with Harry Fletcher would on it as well. It is to beware of biases. And it’s something that as a young teacher, I had no idea about. And just as I’ve, I’ve been teaching now for about, Gosh, 11 years. So across the course of those 11 years, just figuring out exactly what is going on, in my students minds, when, for example, I have a student who I’ve given, you know, has not received anything under an A star for an essay across the course of the year, and yet still fundamentally believes that they will do badly, like what is happening in their processing, that is that them being super anxious, you know, I all the feedback I’ve given, will have been positive or have been wow, like, you know, whatever it is, and yet somehow that’s being interpreted as still potential to fail. And on the opposite end of that, students who you have been, you know, hammering, and you have been receiving decencies, and are very confident that they will be completely fine in the final exam. So, just thinking about this a little bit more and, and using that to perhaps, have a bit better conversations with students, by just thinking about where they might be lying on that spectrum of sort of complete negativity bias or a bit of bit too much illusory superiority is the the other way.
Craig Barton 31:52
Wow, I love a bit of bias this this is right up my street. This one, I can certainly relate to teaching both those types of students the the supremely overconfidence, and then the the ones who should be a bit more confident. What can you do, Sarah? What what what are some of the, those conversations that you can have with those students? What what works in both cases?
Sarah Donarski 32:14
Yeah, so. So again, it’s so it’s thinking about where trying to think about exactly where those students are lying in regards to their own belief, with top end students who are particularly critical, I did some studies on this a few years ago, and it was so interesting, because I asked them to rank themselves in the class. And they genuinely believed that they were probably middle, middle to bottom. And I think that is a to even just having that comes a wedding. Where do you think you sit in the class is a really nice way to just see how that students feeling about themselves. But funnily enough, like after doing that, and then you have that conversation, like, no, you’ve you’ve been taught, but then you you become aware of the teacher that actually I know that but of course they don’t. Because in the process of, of taking in work and marking and looking at it, we have a very good overview don’t we have of how all the kids are performing, but they don’t see that. And so again, it does really come down to using models, really, fundamentally using models, but also having very astute and honest discussions with students. So it’s, it’s a bet, I guess, it’s sort of using models with coaching is what I would say is, is the best way to do it. So a really good example is that I had a boy a few years ago, again, he was that perfect, like, really, genuinely believed that he would be fine in the final examination. And I had been giving him an essay for a while. And his context, context was worth sort of 30% in this in this essay was so weak, and I couldn’t tell you the amount of times where I was like, use more content, you need to have more context, you need to include more context. And I decided that I would sit him down. And I sort of asked him to rank the learning objectives for this essay out of 10 to see how strong he was. So he gave himself like, 10 for his ideas. Because, you know, he thought he was really, really good. And his ideas were good. So I didn’t sort of necessarily dispute that one. But then he did say to me, I know you’ve said that I need more context. So I’m giving myself an eight instead of a 10. And I’m like, okay, and I said, Alright, this is really interesting for me, because I would have ranked him out of 10 about a two in context, it was so clear that he he knew it wasn’t his best thing. So actually, my feedback was being completely disregarded because he knew it. He’s like, I’ll listen to him adding more context meant maybe a sentence. So the best the best thing that I I think I did. I did at this point is I took another student’s essay and he said, Look, this is an eight. This is a three, the context here, let’s highlight the context. This is a context eight. And he was like, Oh, my God, I am a two, you know, is that recalibration of where he sat, because he was able to see something that was, you know, again, recalibrating his view of himself. And I think, like I said, I think models are key for this. And coaching is a bit of key, just to enable students to see exactly where they are, and exactly how they sit. And I think models are the best way as well not to make it personal, just like, ask students how, how good you think you are at this, you know, what do you think you’ve done wrong here where, you know, out of 10, quantify, out of 10 quantify this level of skill here for me, and, and even working the other way, a student might say, Oh, I think I material like No, actually, this is a two, you’ll see that you know, as a way to build confidence if you need to.
Craig Barton 35:58
This is interesting, right? I like to try and ask the awkward questions wherever possible on the ship. So here’s it, here’s an awkward one, I can see this working really well, this kind of almost kind of comparative judgement approach or you know, using exemplars, I can see this working really well with two types of students. So your overconfident students who need to kind of realise that they’re not quite as good as perhaps Perhaps they think they are. And also your lower confidence students who are a lot better than they than they kind of think they are. What about your students who are low confident, but also are really struggling? Because I’m thinking, you know, they they think they’re struggling? And then they say, actually, you know, what you are, you are probably getting a three or something on this. Is that going to kind of as soon as you start ranking kids or you know, comparing, you could imagine for some kids, it starts to go the other way? Is that a concern? How does that play
Sarah Donarski 36:53
out? Yeah, no, and that is the complete other end of that. So when we have students with illusory superiority in the bottom end, but you’ve also obviously got the other students, what is really interesting is that some of this, this builds in as well, with the sort of negativity that is employed upon students, when you’re in a setting score, you know, if you completely set for a long time, you see a positive, a positive progress model at the top end, but a negative usually in the middle to low because students get into that bias that I am bad at this, and I’m not good at this. And they build that narrative. So they actually did do a study in this in 2008, comparing the way that students thought about themselves in regards to how much progress they made. And they looked at that exact comparison, so low achieving students, one who believed that they were really good, and one who didn’t. And they saw that the student who believed they were really good, made more progress across the course of the year, not necessarily because they were good, but because they were taking more creative risks. So it was about the sort of positive belief and self that encouraged more risk taking and learning. Whereas when you have that negative belief, there seems to be less obviously less movement into taking taking risk, in general, in the top end, this is a different effect. Because in the top end, if you’ve got a top performing student who has a massive belief in themselves, they actually make more mistakes, because their error detection goes down, because they’re taking more risks and their error detection goes down. So that was a really interesting study, I thought that’s wehrens in 2008, about how you think about yourself, and how that then impacts your motivation. So what you could do about that? I mean, and who was it it was Mark, boys don’t try is a great book for this as well. He speaks about this in regards to learning and identity and memory. And then obviously, that all linking into motivation. So it’s very similar thing with low achieving is to break down that narrative and, and, and really retaliate against that narrative that I you know, I can’t do this, I’m not good that the absolute truth that that student believes is part of their identity. And and showing them where no, actually look, you have done this, you’ve done that really well bear in actually lifting that student up, so that they’re taking more risks, because with more risk will come that progress later.
Craig Barton 39:26
Wow, this is this is fascinating. Just one final reflection for me on this, Sarah. So we have a website diagnostic questions.com. And we did a big study about 334 years ago now where we took 10,000 Kids results. And what what we do on our app is when kids vote whether they think the answer is A, B, C or D for a multiple choice question, we did an experiment where we asked them to decide how confident they felt in the answer, and was like five point emoji scale. So therefore, for each kid, we had a measure of the kind of accuracy and then we also had a measure of their confidence. So it’s kind of a measure of their understanding this is their perception of their understanding. And it was fascinating because the first thing was, the spread of results was all over the show. So you had your classic overconfident kids and you’re under confident kids. And you have that at all kinds of achievement levels, it wasn’t the fact that it was, you know, lower achieving students were underestimated, and it was spread out all over this unit. But most well, I don’t know if it’s surprising, or whatever. But one real clear finding came out was that boys really far more than girls overstate their, their, their perception of our understanding is far greater than their actual understanding, again, at all achievement levels. So it wasn’t just the case that you know, lower achieving boys are more confident than lower achieving girls, or higher achievement boys are more confident than how he because at every achievement level, the boys were more confident the girls, it’s it’s fascinating, isn’t it? Because there’s, there’s no biological reason why that should be the case or whatever. But it’s, and again, it’s probably anecdotally everyone can think of these kinds of overconfident boys. But it’s, it’s fascinating when data isn’t
Sarah Donarski 40:59
completely and I think that’s something again, sort of slightly touched upon by Mark and his, his when he’s, he’s talking about boys and their achievement and boys during trial, etc. That maybe at times when we maybe that’s got to do with how we’re processing our feedback towards those students, you know, that maybe because we see a boy who’s generally a low achiever, and then they do something really well. We say, Oh, my God, that’s so amazing, you know, amazing, maybe we do that sometimes. And then that perpetuates their understanding another great, their understanding sorry, of being better than what they think they are. But I think the best thing to do is try and figure out exactly where that student lies. Because I think even knowing that you’ve got a lower achieving boy who does have that illusory superiority, does think they’re more confident, that is actually really a really useful thing to for you to know as a teacher, because then you can help be like, you know, what, actually, you haven’t done this, right. And you can make sure that you are recalibrating their understanding where they’re at so that they are making progress in the way that you need. A really good example, which was given about this is when you would write, so if in English, if you’re annotating an essay, you would put it on a scale, it would be like a some a clear, a developed and an outstanding, that’s usually how the mark scheme sort of go on evaluative at the top. And so if I was to write some wider reading done on the car on it, that would probably be a level two out of a level five, so that would be a low, some wider, it’s like, it’s okay. But somebody who does have that illusory superiority, it would be like, Yeah, I did. Yes, I did some guided reading, you know, yes, I’m so glad they’re acknowledging that, because some way to reading done is actually can be very much read as a positive. So again, if for that student, maybe perhaps, you know, more wide reading needed is a better a better way to give feedback there or to annotate that that essay, rather than what you might do where you’d like some, because you’re trying to say you’re a level to where it’s actually that’s being misinterpreted.
Craig Barton 43:14
Got it. Last question. I could speak to all day about this. But last question on this on this on this bias thing was kind of a Chico, there’s two parts to this question. So I really liked this phrase kind of calibration. I really like this, this idea of trying to bring students perception of their understanding in line with their actual understanding. So there’s two parts of the question of this. One, is there any exception to that way? Actually, you’d want a child to tell us not realise where their understanding is, is there any case you can make where you want perhaps a lower achieving child, you actually want them to feel, you know, better than perhaps their achievement level warrants? And the second part is, over time, the more you do these kinds of comparative judgement, things and exemplars and feedback, do you find that this calibration improves that kids generally get a better sense of where where they are actually?
Sarah Donarski 44:06
Yeah, so again, I think, again, I would love obviously, this research with biases is quite new. So I think I think ultimately, I think Watch this space on how that’s that’s developing. But what has come out in education so far, does seem to suggest that if we can encourage students to at the lower end to feel a little bit more positive, and then negative, about their ability, that they will then take more risks in their learning, which will lead to better progress, like I said, so I think there is a case to be made. For some students that encouragement and creative risk taking, you know, at least they’re trying and by trying to get to get something down. So fundamentally, they’ll probably do better than if they got nothing done right. So, so there would be quite an obvious reason why a student trying to do better would do better than a student who’s not. So yes, I do think that I think the other really interesting thing that has come out though, is that actually negativity bias can be a motivator. So there are some papers that suggest at the top end. And I guess that sort of drives into a little bit of what we see with with the high performing people not not feeling like they did doing it well enough, that actually their negativity bias is a key motivator in their success. So in understanding that I think it’s interesting to then see, right, is this negatively bias at the top end? Is this detrimental to that students, you know, is that perfectionism is it bordering perfectionism? Which, then then it actually does become something past or really, that you could look into. But otherwise, if if it’s just that they want to succeed, and they want to do better, making sure that again, it’s just about clarity, right? You want to do better, okay, well, let’s work on this, then let’s push that extra level. So it’s not saying, Oh, they’ve got a negative vibe, they need to know they’re amazing, necessarily. Because if that negativity bias is a slight motivator, in that students in work ethic, then it actually can be used and can be sort of, yeah, like captured to help move that student and motivate that student further.
Craig Barton 46:22
fascinate absolutely fascinating stuff. Right, Sarah? What is tip number four, please.
Sarah Donarski 46:28
So tip number four is to use where possible, dialogic teaching. So I just thought I’d bring this one into the mix, having had quite a unique teaching experience, in that I taught in Australia, and I’ve taught in state and academies, and then private and the IB, and all of it. And I think one of the things that really got me into even educational research was, was working with Carl Hendrick when he was doing his PhD on dialogic teaching, and we did a research talk, probably in 2016 on it. But it was because I was teaching the IB alongside a level, I’d never taught the IB before. And part of the IB was that students did an oral presentation, written and oral. So I mean, this is astounding, but a 16 year old, I would have to teach them a particular thing they would walk in there would be unseen envelopes. And they would pick up the envelope. And it would be either an extract from a Shakespeare play we’d studied or a poem from a poet we had studied, and they had to speak to me about it for eight minutes. Without me into interjecting. And so so much of building and assessing for that along the course of the curriculum design was to get students to talk as much as possible and to have confidence in talking. Again, seeing a 16 year old pick up a Keats poem and speak for eight minutes about it, they cannot hide, if you really listening to them, they cannot hide their knowledge to succeed in that, they need to know it incredibly well. And part of the ways that we would build the confidence in this is by using Harkness, or by having lessons where we would say throw that poem in the classroom, and just sit at the desk and say absolutely nothing. And actually, I wouldn’t even listen to the students, I would just track who’s talking and listen to what they’re saying. So I won’t even look at them, I would just be on the desk. Because if you really do in tune into how your students are talking, you will really get an understanding as to how much they know. And I think the more we use this, sometimes when we believe that our students are at that point of mastery, you wouldn’t do this when they don’t know nothing, because then the talk will be empty, much like throwing them into an assessment without any knowledge. But as you walk through does that right? We’re going to just discuss this extract today, I’m going to put it on the table I want you all to discuss. And if you track how those students are responding, it’s a really nice, clean way to assess how much they know.
Craig Barton 49:21
Keep going with Kiki
Sarah Donarski 49:24
Yeah, so um, so one of the ways that I would assess and this isn’t the case for everyone, but I did write about this. And it’s drawn to my Australian roots, but I did you know, we love an acronym in, in teaching. So it was just a nice clear way for me to remember but as a sort of ACDC approach, nailed it. Whereas listening to where the students are just agreeing as the A so when you’re hearing right, so I’m tracking say your boy, I’m not sure if he just sat there agreeing if He’s agreeing, then I think is he listening you know, that would be a really interesting way for them to to me You’ve been and be like, Oh, what do you agree with? You know, if you find them just agreeing, it could be a nice way to identify that. They don’t actually know. So there’s a knowledge gap. The second is, are they contradicting? So that’s quite interesting. Like, are they like, oh, I don’t agree with that. I think that’s in which case, you could be able to see that students are, you know, evaluating internally, they’ve thought about that idea. They’re able to, to say, Actually another idea exist, or that’s a student who’s read a different paper versus other maybe a tutor. She just told them the right answer. So there’s, there’s there’s reasons, if they’re just doing that, then I think that you could then have nice discussions. Right? Well, why did you think that student’s point was relevant? Then, you know, nice discussions to just bring that conversation, that knowledge to the surface? And others are they developing on on those those ideas? And again, you can teach those. So that’s the so yes, I agree with you. No. And I thought that that symbol also represented, you know, so is it a sort of nice development of the idea that’s happening? Or do they just always change the idea, and again, you can see changing the idea as Potat, perhaps that student has a particular school of knowledge. But again, and then moving to that back to what I said earlier about, perhaps routes, knowledge that they have, where like, I know, I can say this and put this idea out there. But I’m not actually responding or engaging to the ideas that are being put forward in a flexible way. So I think that’s a really nice way to think about how students are responding and talking. And again, either intervening as a teacher, if you feel it is right to be like, right, we’re going to stop there. I’m just going to ask this question. And I’m just going to challenge people on that idea. And then enable that to go back to your teacher and be like, right, I definitely know that the student has this particular school of thought, but they haven’t yet developed that. So what can I do in my classroom? How can we build on this? How can we discuss more role? Or how can I reteach this other perspective, so that that student understand that both schools of thought, are a nice way to articulate and I think it was Tom Sherrington. A little while ago, he he said, he sort of spoke about this briefly with you, but it was on classroom talk in general, making sure that all of this happens with sort of the accurate sentence stems up on the board, you know, just giving those platforms to say, Yeah, I absolutely agree. But I would consider, you know, I have a class at the moment. And they are incredible. They’re very, very mixed set. But Oh, quite, quite vulnerable students quite fragile. So we are working every week to have a debate lesson. So every week, we have a debate lesson. And we’ll put up an idea. And, you know, we might do some research around it or whatever. And then I basically say they have to either they have to position themselves in that either agree or disagree. So it has to be predominantly one or the other. Now, they can say, they can say, obviously, that they mostly agree with but also understand, but at the very end of that, I say right, I’m gonna give you a minute now. And I want you to think about your sentence of your one sentence summary. So in summary, I believe that you know, and giving this sentence stem so that they’re able to put forward their argument in a considered measured, but also an evaluative way. And all of that is is modelled for them throughout the process of those discussions. But obviously, as you get to a level or you know, and again, something I stole from the IB that I absolutely use in a level now is just getting my students to have a conversation, they might have to go away and read some articles, different perspectives, different theories that I’d give them, but then this conversation is going to be a Harkness conversation you are talking and I am just there to to really see how well they are engaging with that material and able to articulate that material.
Craig Barton 53:59
Flip X Ira this this is a biggie this is this is good this right? What’s what you’re gonna have to put up with now? It’s just a big ramble where I try and pour our thoughts on this. God knows what’s going on my mouth here. First thing to say, I think my eight minute thing, I would hate that that is hot. That’s hardcore. That right that speak eight minutes on a subject without interrupting that is that serious stuff? Well, one thing that I think certainly gets underrated, I’ve underrated how complex it is to have a converse of a productive conversation with a fellow student. And what I’ve done in the past is, you know, done an example on the board or whatever, discuss it with your partner. And the thing is, I’ve not appreciated what a skill that is to have that kind of conversation. I really like these the idea of these verbal kind of stems the sentence structures to to have it almost feels a bit I don’t know about you, it feels a bit awkward at first when you’re saying to get you know, responding this way, but the more you stick at it, the more they get used to it and as long as do you explain why you’re doing this and it’ll transition to be able to write more fluidly and so on. I think it works works? Well. I’ll tell you where I struggle. And I’m interested in your take on this. I find whenever kids are discussing things in pairs, I find it hard to assess because versus the mall holding up a mini whiteboard or something, because I can’t get round. You know, it’s hard to get around everybody and dedicate enough time to listening. So I’m interested in what you’re when you’re circulating the room, or you mentioned kind of sitting at your desk and listening. Are you targeting particular groups, I’m interested in how you get as much useful information as possible. And the second part is, I’m also interested in how you share good practice. Because if kids are like writing things down in the books and mini whiteboards, I can take a photo of that and grab it up and so on. But if I overhear a good conversation, or you know, a good dialogue is gone. How do I share that with the rest of the class? So that my two questions? How am I How are you assessing? And how are you sharing? Good practice?
Sarah Donarski 56:01
Yeah, again, good question. So I think when I’m talking about these class discussions, they are whole class. Usually, when you get to the point of complete autonomy, you would be looking more at it at a sort of a level thing. Like I said, this is something for the end of you want to put this at the end, probably more so when students have knowledge. And I think for that exact reason that if I put it in pairs, you’re right. I’m not sure I can’t be certain that conversations are happening that are honest. So if I sit at my desk, and every single person is involved in this conversation, then I’m hearing everything that is said. So I did this with a GCSE class, quite recently. And again, it was quite nice, because it was about like, so when when I heard a really great idea, I would then interject and say, right, what, what Steph has just said, is a really brilliant, brilliant idea. Steph, can you drive one’s attention to what page that was on? And can you repeat that for me, please. And then what ended up happening, which was quite nice was that students would then say to each other, oh, I really liked that. Can you repeat that. And again, it’s modelling that idea that we’re all here to share, we’re all here together in that learning journey. And of course, I’m saying this, there’s obviously so many processes behind doing this, such as, you know, learning behaviours, and having that nice environment, if you can, if you can, possibly, if you can possibly get it, where students are listening to each other, but where you build that, that then students can come together and listen to each other. And, and then then even if you notice that a student is quite not not responding to that conversation, you could just obviously give a prompt if if you’re willing, you know, okay, well, what did everyone think about this? And then, and then draw attention to one other student? But I think I think the process of me bringing it up to date is because I think it comes something you’ve touched on just in your questions, I think as teachers actually we accidentally infer far too much. And, and there’s great, great, you know, dialogues and scripts of teachers, and I would 100% encourage every single teacher to to record a part of the lesson and script it and actually see what’s going on with this. It’s the same with verbal feedback. Because often, when a student is saying an idea, a teacher will actually sometimes just infer what the student was sort of saying to the right answer and be like, Oh, yes, yeah, that and then and then conclude that that student understands, because they’ve actually made that leap. Whereas by having more of a dialogical classroom, and it goes back to how I was phrasing before, I think you end up asking better questions. If you’re thinking about right, is the student actually exploring that? Are they developing on that idea? Are they just being contradictory? contradictory to the students? Well, why do you think that’s contributing? Why do you think, and I think it enables you to really dig a little bit more deeper into exactly how much that student does know. And instead of just being like, right, I’m going to ask that question. We’ve had a little bit of a chat that I’ve actually inferred from that student who was sort of on the right track, what they meant, you know, I know what they meant, oh, yes, you meant this. So I write that on the board and then we move on, whereas actually, there’s a lot to be said to be like, right? Is that quite it? Like have a discussion? Can we can we actually get to the purpose of that and throwing it back just that little bit more often?
Craig Barton 59:42
Really interesting, really interesting. Just one bonus question. This is a terrible question to ask. I apologise before we move on to your fifth tip. A really bad question. Um, you mentioned you’ve taught in AWS in the US and also in the UK. Obviously, this is kind of school specific stuff going on and so on. Are there any general agenda general differences that you would pick up between the three countries that you think of fairly valid in terms of in terms of how they approached the teaching of English or teaching in general, and any trends that you think are kind of generalizable.
Sarah Donarski 1:00:13
I will just correct sorry. I’ve taught in the UK and Australia. I’ve taught it just in the UK, I’ve taught in state sector academies, that’s probably where so just
Craig Barton 1:00:25
across, go for that.
Sarah Donarski 1:00:27
So I mean, that’s only two. Yeah, it’s that’s a really, I think it was a general general things, I think it’s hard. It’s really hard thing for me to actually, refract, reflect, reflect on because I don’t think I have the right amount of knowledge to do so. Apologies. But I do think my experience has been very varied, like I taught with Indigenous students in Australia, predominantly. Yeah, so it was for 25% Aboriginal Australian population of the school, which was incredible, but it was so poorly funded that I was teaching English history, geography and maths. And so that was my first job outside of uni. So I was doing all sorts of things there. I think there is a freedom in the state sector in Australia that I loved, and that I missed when I came over. I did feel that moving over to the UK were obviously there’s great things about Ofsted. But I did move over nine years ago, when we’re on that sort of pendulum swing, weren’t we over here of being all about, like, you know, the sort of blown up volleyballs with your learning objectives on them that we threw around the room sort of thing, which blew my mind, I was like, this is why. And it was so difficult for me to arrive from a state sector over in Australia where there was this nice, beautiful freedom to then this very, you know, remember and actually, it’s so interesting that you’ve asked this because I caught up with one of my mentors in my very first school I was I was living in working in Leeds, actually for two and a half years. And she was she she just recently published and we were at a conference together. And I hadn’t seen her in nine years. And we were joking, because I said, I remembered my first lesson observation when I moved and I love teaching like teaching, it’s really lame, but I’m from, you know, quite a low income family, my cat, my cat, my goal was to become a teacher. And I feel like I did that now. I’m like, okay, cool. I didn’t know what else to do. Because I made my goal. You know, I You knew they were like, where do you see yourself in five years, and I was like, just being a really good teacher. So that was always the thing that I wanted to do. But um, so I moved over. She, I was in my first lesson observation, I’ve received really, really good grades and results in Australia, and you know, had sort of came second in my course and loads of stuff. And so, you know, less than observation, I was really excited for it, because no one had seen me teach in the UK. And she took me aside and she said, that was a really good lesson. Like this was a rough school, a really challenging group of pupils who were sat there working quietly, working independently asking great questions. She was like, this was a great lesson, but you would have failed. And I was like, very, and she’s not you know, we’re good friends. She wasn’t that never was criticism at all. I said it actually helped me massively. And because I was confused, and I was like, why would I fail just like, Well, you didn’t do a plenary and then you didn’t check for understanding, like five times and hold up paddle pop sticks. And I was like, Oh, this is this is crazy. This is bonkers. And it probably was partly what influenced me in getting into educational research, because I’m like, This can’t be what good learning needs to be, you know. So yeah, so it was like a fascinating journey. Sorry, I don’t I’m not sure if that answered your question. But lots of observations that I’ve had having done, having done both of those different systems and situations.
Craig Barton 1:04:13
that interesting. Right, so what is your fifth and final tip, please?
Sarah Donarski 1:04:18
So it’s actually quite a nice segue, actually, what you just asked into my final one, which is something that I just recently wrote about, and it’s something that I think I’m more and more becoming quite passionate about, because I think it is super fundamental, and it is a tip to leaders, this one to ignite CPD culture. And I, you know, like I said, I’ve sort of I have been a teacher who thought that CPDs were a waste of time, and that’s probably because of the ones I was going to wear. And, you know, I have been part of being entirely critical of CPD, but I think that if you can get it right If you can explore exactly how to ignite CPD culture within your school, you will fundamentally have special staff staff retention. You know, like we’re looking at all of these numbers, and I thought it was really crucial to bring up with you today because all of these numbers and graphs that are coming out recently about teacher retention, and, you know, not being able to hold young teachers down, and how actually schools are still doing CPD, you know, ineffectually. Yeah, it’s fundamentally that. So
Craig Barton 1:05:33
good one. So I guess the obvious question is, how do we do this error? Because you’re right, I, I visit lots of different schools and see lots of different approaches to CPD. What what’s been your takeaway? What are some of the good things that schools can do?
Sarah Donarski 1:05:46
Yes. So I think I think the reason this is at my forefront is because I was just recently at the festival of education, and I was with quite an amazing few leaders and educators who I honestly just walked away, and I was like, I, I love teaching, I love education, I like walked away, again, just completely buzzing just to talk to people. But I think, you know, fundamentally where schools go wrong, and it’s drawing on, you know, use the term here, Ignite CPD cultures, because I’m drawn back to sort of David Western here, about a sort of Camp Fire leadership idea. But it is to have clear targets for school, like when we we know that educational research is takes time, and needs to be measured. So if you’re a school, it’s, it’s sort of, it’s sort of hard to see that you’re going to an effective CPD session when you every other week, it’s a different topic, and there’s no follow up, and you’re not integrating anything. So actually, if you start from, right, what is our school culture? Who are we? What do we need? And you say, right, we’re gonna implement a year, two years, three years, and it is that longer term sort of slow burn ignition approach, right, we’ve got these three targets, we need to measure before we need to see what’s going on before we need to discuss before with all staff, of course, because then you see, right, there is a purpose of this, we’re evaluating as businesses words, you know, or as, as other pieces, we’re evaluating this area of our school, you know, whatever it is lower achieving, boys, whatever it is, and then we’re going to have a couple of CPDs along the course of the year, to provide our knowledge as well as feedback from departments as to how it’s going, how it’s being implemented. And again, you can you could do this initially, as a sort of opt in approach, it doesn’t need to be every single staff sitting down all the time, you could say, right, we’re gonna have a core group who are sort of fundamentally in charge of feeding back this, obviously, all staff will go to the CPDs. But we have a core group throughout the year feeding back to us or to talking to other departments talking together, and then we can present and discuss and reevaluate at the end and talk to staff about how they’re going. So yeah, so I think that’s the thing, I think schools, you know, sometimes and I’ve definitely seen it where you’ve got like a CPD schedule at the beginning of the year. And it’s sort of like November 3, TVC. And it’s like, well, what’s the point of something that is to be confirmed, if we’re, if we’re going to look at this as being an opportunity to learn and to really engage with what’s happening within our school, it does probably need to have a bit of planning behind it in the first instance, and not just be something that we are tacking on. At the end of the school day.
Craig Barton 1:08:36
This is another biggie, so just just a few few thoughts from me on this one. So I’m very fortunate, I get to visit lots of schools, and I’m obsessed with how they they deliver CPD because often they come in as kind of a bit of an external speaker and, and one of my questions is always what’s going to happen after this, like after I go home or whatever, like I’m, you know, I try wherever possible, say, can I come like, you know, three days over the course of the year as opposed to one but if that’s not possible, what’s what’s the plan once once I go away? What’s the plan after the CPD and even if you have an internal CPD? If it’s just a one off? Like, how do you know it’s like the world’s worst lesson, right? You know, you teach a lesson, you think you’ve nailed it, unless you revisit our memories, you have no way of knowing whatsoever. So a one off simply, actually,
Sarah Donarski 1:09:20
really great, great analogy.
Craig Barton 1:09:22
And the other thing that’s problematic is, I see I saw this the other day in a school so their CPD for the year that they were aiming to box off within 12 months, and they wanted to sort out checking for understanding retrieval. They wanted to do responsive teaching and cognitive load theory to some extent, I’m thinking that that’s a decade’s worth of stuff to try and get your own. Yeah. And that’s, that feeds into the one off thing, right? Well, I’ve our retrieval CPD, then we’ll have a check for understanding CPD and it’s just it’s just a disaster way to talk about what my final thing is. i And I’m interested in your take on this. It what I think is really effective, but it’s quite hard to do but if you can I think it’s brilliant. And that’s where you have CPD, you have it on whatever, you know, check for understanding whatever it may be. And then before people meet up again, you have some way of assessing how they’re kind of responding to it. So whether it’s drop into lessons, whether they record things, whatever it is, and then the start of the next session, as opposed to it being a general, okay, what’s worked and what hasn’t, whoever’s running, the CPD can almost do like examples and non examples, because just like you would do with a lesson, there’s good like, just like, we know, there’s a difference between what we teach kids and what they actually understand. It’s the same with CPD. Right? So if you can go around in the interim, and you’ve seen an example of this, but you’ve also seen a really interesting non example, somebody who’s thinks they do in retrieval practice, but actually, it’s not quite doing it for whatever reason, it’s not quite what we talked about, and so on having those exemplars I think so useful. I don’t know about you, I very rarely see it with with with CPD, it tends to be almost right. We’ll start from scratch when we do the kind of second session. I don’t know what your take is on that.
Sarah Donarski 1:11:03
Yeah, no, that’s I would completely agree. And I think that’s, that’s everything that, you know, sort of leadership does need to look at, again, where you do see yourself in situations where you have worked with inspirational leaders who are getting this right, then you you know it, you feel it, you feel it within the culture. And I think, I think yeah, it does need to be that sort of follow up discussion. Here’s where it’s going, well, this is where you take from this, like, how can you try this in your department? Does it work? If it doesn’t work? Why doesn’t it work? What’s what’s, what’s the difference? What’s the shift there, you know, and really just opening up those conversations about what we’re doing on the practice side of our profession, as well as, as well as the sort of general general subject knowledge and stuff. And of course, a great CPD if you if is a great CPD target, of course, is to enable your staff time to develop the subject knowledge because subject knowledge is key, it’d be like, You know what, I want everyone to just be a bit more reignited in their subject knowledge. Let’s, you know, let’s see that happen. And that’s, again, another great practice target to have to have on CPD. But you’re right, they need to be much more focused. And then again, that constant discussion and evaluation, because otherwise, it’s it is pointless it is, there’s just like that it might be maybe you have a CPD where you you, okay, you get another little practice for your toolbox of teaching. And that’s okay, too. But when you’re looking at school saying, you know, we want to change these things, it can’t just be, it can’t just be the one off. Yeah, like another really good example is, you know, I was talking to a friend who was at a school where they’re like, right, we’re going to put on these like after school CBDs that all about wellbeing and teacher wellbeing so that you can be better by the end of the year. And I was like, well, have they actually captured how teachers are feeling about their well being? And then will they do that at the ends? And even so, they will have to differentiate between the fact that the well being hasn’t been just that we all got a pay raise the day before we gave you the final wellbeing essay, you know, it’s that you fundamentally believe that having these six sessions of school across the course of this year really contributed to your general sense of well being and if it didn’t, is there a point to it?
Craig Barton 1:13:35
That’s brilliant. That’s absolutely brilliant. Well, Sarah, these we don’t find Big Easy, right? There’s no mess. And I’m
Sarah Donarski 1:13:40
so sorry, I wish I could have done that. I was thinking about it. I could do little teacher things. But these are the things that I love. And that I’m I’m really interested in and I know they are a bit bigger, philosophically, but I think they do oversee quite a lot that that we’re talking about on the day to day.
Craig Barton 1:13:59
No, this is why this is absolutely brilliant. We have we have the big five like this. And then we’ll have another guest who will say remember to put your lids on your mini whiteboard pen. So we have everything on this show. So this is this is this is obviously Perfect. So now it’s time for me to hand over to you sir. What should listeners check out of yours? And I’ll put links to these in the show notes.
Sarah Donarski 1:14:16
Yes. So I mean, I’ve got blog. It’s perspect at WordPress. So I regularly write on that. I’ve written quite a few chapters for various people, but I also have my research at assessment book as well. So that’s me personally, but I have given a list of various other readings which are things that I think are really important. Education, Endowment Foundation, evaluations on feedback and of dialogue the dialogic classroom, Robin Macpherson’s, a teaching life, which I wrote about recently, which is on CPD culture. So everything I’ve sort of talked about today, I’ve Yeah, you will put those references up. I’m not gonna Yes, so yeah, some do. Williams stocks everything that sort of underpins the research that underpins the things that I’ve spoken about. I’ve passed on a list for you, which I’m sure you will put up.
Craig Barton 1:15:09
That’s brilliant. Yep, there’ll be they’ll all be in the show notes. Well, Sarah, this has been an absolute pleasure. I’ve learned loads of loads to think about and ask for more. So thank you so much for joining us today.