Wednesday 19 August 2015

Results Day is looming, why do we do this?

It's the day before results day (gulp!) and I find myself looking to write. No shame in that I suppose.
I've been racking my brains for something interesting, insightful, topical and/or controversial to write about. However, I think I'm a little distracted (see above.) so I thought I would write something to myself that I'd like you all to share in.

No matter what happens tomorrow, the past 2 years have been a real blast. I have had the pleasure of working with some truly incredible individuals. These people have inspired me, they have infuriated me, they have done things I would never do, they have made me question everything I do, they have made me laugh and they have changed my life. These people? They are, of course, my students. 

A proportion of those young people will be collecting their GCSE results and this will be a huge day for them, it's the crowning moment of their studies.

Alongside this, you have had some incredible personal and professional support from friends and colleagues. All in all, it's been pretty good.

I hope they aren't too nervous tomorrow. I will do all I can to reassure them, remind them of the effort they put in, remind them of their controlled assessment grades, but I don't think it will truly go in and why should it? There's a piece of paper with a letter on that means more than anything I can say tomorrow. 

That makes me a little bit sad. Actually, that makes me a lot sad. However, I digress, this post is not a critique of the assessment systems we subscribe to in our educational system.

Tomorrow has the power to shape the rest of my summer holidays. Good set of results - happy days! Relax and go in confident and fresh for next year. Bad set of results? Unhappy days - all that work? What was the point?! 
(I can only talk about this from my perspective, that of a relatively inexperienced teacher, so I'm sure others will approach tomorrow differently.)

But, I don't like framing it in opposite binaries so, I thought I'd write myself a letter:

A letter to myself, 19/08/2015

Dear Tom,

I hope that when you come back to reading this, you are happy with your results. I hope that everything went swimmingly and all the students made outstanding levels of progress and achieved outstanding grades. 

However, if that didn't happen, don't be too downbeat, don't be too distressed. Teaching is a phenomenal profession and one where you can truly make a difference. That's why you do it, right? To make a difference. 

That difference can be through the very tangible reality of a great GCSE grade or it can be through being a role model, trying to encourage students to be a positive influence on the world. That change might be something you never see, and as sad as that might seem, just remember you have helped to sow the seeds to make a difference.

You teach because you were lucky enough to have some amazing teachers, some people who inspired you to change the world, some people who challenged you, chastised you but ultimately made you literate, empowered and interested in the world around you. These people showed you the power of education and that's something nobody can take away. 

You teach because your fiancée convinced you that you'd be pretty good at it. I have her to thank (and to blame!?) for all of this.

Teaching is a privilege. You are in a privileged position, in spite of its challenges and difficulties, so don't forget that.

Accountability is important. Tomorrow you will be held to account, by yourself and others, for the results you get. That's scary. But just keep in mind, that's only one part of the job (albeit an important one!). Use it as a driver, frame it in a positive way. What did I do well? What can I do better? These are the questions you ask your students, you won't accept them giving up, so don't accept it from yourself.

You are very lucky as an educator, and you get to do something not many other people do. At the start of year, you get to start again, knowing everything you know, it all begins again and you get the chance to be better.

So, remember the amazing memories of the last 2 years, remember the challenges and go and be better.

From your past self.

Thursday 6 August 2015

We need to talk about: Technology in the Classroom - Challenges and Opportunities

(Disclaimer: Whilst I try to make my entries academically rigorous, supported by educational research, I have had some difficulty in constructing this entry owing to a real lack of accessible research on Educational Technology and its pitfalls. Please direct/link me to research and I will amend any points accordingly.)

What is educational technology? The term appears to have become truly ubiquitous in education today. It's used a lot in Twitter bios, particularly by educational consultants, and, increasingly, teachers are starting to use the phrase.

In my search for a definition, I have encountered a wide variety of definitions, each with different emphasis and nuance on the phrase. After sifting through a wide number of definitions, the one that most closely fits my understanding of 'EdTech' and my experience of it is offered by Januszewski and Molenda (2008):


"Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources."

A full conceptual rationale for this definition is offered by the authors in the referenced text. To simplify this, I see EdTech as any form of technology that can be utilized to support learning.




Common challenges with EdTech

A) The lack of appropriate resources to implement effective learning. 
By this, I mean: the computers are too slow/the computers only work for some students/some students have forgotten log-in details/the computer has restarted because it needed to be updated/the previous class shut down the computers.

B) Prioritizing the use of tech over good curriculum planning.
The temptation to use EdTech can mean that we may create a stand-alone lesson to maximize the technology, but sacrifice the curriculum plan to accommodate it, creating mismatched learning episodes.

C) Loss of learning time.
Similar to A, the movement/log on/log off process that teacher must go through each lesson can result in a loss of instructional time, which can cut into the learning.

D) Technology, and particularly the internet, offers a huge bank of information.
This sounds great right? However, this can be a hugely limiting factor in the use of internet based lessons. Without proper planning and implementation, students can follow any leads they find, with sometimes disastrous (incorrect information) results, a problem often called the 'Wikipedia Problem'.

E) A lack of training can lead to bad experiences.
In the 21st century, we tend to assume all people have been exposed to a range of technologies and thus are confident and able using them. This, naturally, isn't the case and can lead to a bad experience for practitioners. This bad experience, often manifested through disruptive behavior/poor quality learning, can lead to practitioners attributing this to the technology and being cautious/rejecting it for future use. 


Photograph: Rex Features. Image Source / Rex Features/Image Source / Rex Features

So, how do we deal with these problems?

A) This is obviously a challenge for the individual educator to deal with, whilst we may not be able to completely overhaul our institution's technology resources, we can work smart. By this, actively seek out the people responsible for technology in school (IT Technician?) and have the discussion with them.

- What are the problems with the tech? Are there any machines to avoid?
- What can be done to help it run more smoothly? 
- What is the protocol for students forgetting passwords? 

B) Most important thing to remember here - technology is a tool to support the learning. It certainly shouldn't be used to jeopardize great medium-term plans. It's easy to fall into this trap, especially if you find a great new piece of EdTech you're desperate to use. That said, don't reject EdTech outright because it doesn't fit with current schemes of learning. Be creative, find ways for it to fit in, it can enhance already great plans. A great example of this, from a fellow Geography teacher, revolves around the Skype Classroom. This practitioner planned to link his students to a scientist in Svalbard to augment a scheme of learning on glaciation. The great thing from this was that this teacher planned with students, the week before, some key questions and clearly outlined the learning outcomes to guide student experience of the technology. By all accounts, great success!

C) Now this one may not even apply to most of you! However, I've had some experience with this and it comes back down to routines and expectations. Just because the environment has changed (e.g. the computer room) that shouldn't have any affect on what you do. Don't let the change of environment change what you do - keep up those routines.

D) Now this problem just requires a little bit of forethought and planning. Using a Geography example (banging the Geo drum!!), if I have asked my class to research development indicators for a variety of countries, I need to be aware of saying to a group of students; "Go and find the life expectancy of a country in Sub-Saharan Africa." I need to be aware of two things:
- 1) My students may not have any idea what life expectancy looks like beyond the abstract teaching of the classroom.
- 2) How many teenagers would have any idea where that information could be found, short of a Google search?
It is these questions that I need to account for in my planning. Using EdTech just frames lesson planning in a different way. The internet is an amazing resource, but as with any other resource, it may require differentiation to allow students to maximize its learning potential.

E) Great schools and learning communities have a culture of collaboration. We share what works, we share our failures and we offer our advice and guidance to our colleagues when and where it's appropriate. EdTech seems to be a bit of a taboo in some schools, professionals seem afraid to admit fault or misunderstanding of how to use different forms of technology, meaning they may be missing out on a whole world of opportunity. As professional learning communities, and as individuals, we need to make sure we don't neglect technology in the classroom and instead embrace it and all of its potential.

And my final two cents? Technology is merely a tool to support great teaching, it's not a gateway to great teaching. Be sure to trial and experiment with it, but never forget those core things that make great teaching and learning.

This entry is designed to be a quick overview of my experiences of EdTech and not anything like an exhaustive list! Feedback and sharing are key here - we're a professional learning community after all!


Bibliography

- Januszewski. A and Molenda. M, (2007) Educational Technology: A definition with commentary. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Monday 3 August 2015

We need to talk about: Burnout

You know what? You matter. You really, really matter. No matter who you are or what you do, you are really important - Good job! I think it's important that you're reminded of that. (I don't usually open my blog posts with a compliment to my a reader, but it felt nice to start that way.)

In this entry, I write about burnout and the cultures we, as educators, exist in can contribute to this phenomena. Carson et al (2011) have shown that burnout can have a significant impact over quality of life and over a teachers effectiveness. It is these very reasons that talking about burnout (identifying it, dealing with it and finding ways to reduce it) really matters. 

What's the problem?

I have been a teacher for 2 years, during which time I have experienced feelings of burnout and have witnessed colleagues going through the same. The worst thing about it, it felt like a natural part of the job. I felt as though it was something I had to deal with and overcome, we all know teaching's hard, right? Whilst I am most definitely enjoying my summer holiday, I have full embraced the chance to reflect on the past year. There have been times this year where I have been completely burnt-out. And the scariest thing about all of this? The impact this had on my students, and, sadly, only now I'm starting to realise this...

Maslach et al (2001) carried out a pioneering study into job burnout and what characterizes it. Their study identified three key features; 1) emotional exhaustion, 2) depersonalisation and 3) reduced personal accomplishment. Of these three features, the one I found most shocking was number 2. Depersonalisation is described as the development of negative emotions towards the people in one's care/receiving one's service. In the case of teachers, this would be our students. When a teacher is suffering burnour, students are the one's suffering. When we are burnt out, we no longer recognize, or choose to ignore, the things that make our young people unique and great. The impacts of burnout extend beyond short term impacts, Schaufeli & Enzmann (1998) demonstrated the impact burnout can have on motivation. Their research cites that burnout can reduce a professional's intrinsic motivation (and in teaching, for me at least, intrinsic motivation is the thing that keeps you going on the really tough days). Furthermore, Shen et al (2015) build on this work and explain how teacher burnout goes deeper with students, they have shown that burnout can affect the intrinsic motivation of students. A burnt-out teacher can very quickly lead to disengaged students.

At the most basic level, these findings show us the importance of being rested. (That remains my most common nugget of advice for teachers starting out in the profession today - sleep matters, don't neglect it.) Yet this research goes far beyond this, it shows us the importance of the school environment. 
At its root, burnout is a psychological problem, and thus any discussion of it relies on a degree of this research to be considered. Ryan (1995) suggests humans have three basic psychological needs that need to be met to ensure we remain motivated. These needs are framed within the wider concept of Self-Determination Theory (herein referred to as SDT) (Deci and Ryan, 1985) 

SDT identifies these needs as the following; the first is the need for autonomy. This evinces our need to be the source of our own work and this is realized when we conclude our behavior is self-defined. The second is the need for competence. This is based upon our desire to work with our environment and undertake opportunities to express ourselves to our full capacity, in essence, to show our full capabilities. And finally, the third need is relatedness. This is our want of strong and meaningful relationships with others. The arguments presented previously indicate that the absence of stimulus for any of these needs will result in a heightened chance of teacher burnout.

So, what do we do? 

I certainly don't claim to have all the answer, but there are some small changes we could make as individuals that would go part of the way to dealing with this chronic problem.

Firstly, we need to create an autonomy supportive environment. This means giving members of the school community their own responsibilities and believing in their ability to do it. I have seen some very, very busy senior/middle leaders. Delegate, give your teachers the responsibility to show you what they can do. It reduces your workload and empowers them. Equally, I've seen some very busy classroom teachers (I'm one of them!), lets give our students some responsibility. Once a term, challenge your students to plan and deliver a lesson. Let them be responsible for their learning for that hour. Naturally you may be constrained by the structures of your school, but try and present your argument for the validity of this. 

Secondly, we need to show teachers and students they really matter. We need to create a shared growth mind-set and make it a central part of the school culture. We need to encourage all members of the school community to value challenge and to rise to it. We need to allow people, teachers and students, to show us what they can do - you'd be amazed at what people can do if you believe in them. The caveat to this, of course, is that any challenge must be presented in a positive way. Staff and students alike need to be empowered to undertake challenge, creating this takes time.

Thirdly, to enhance relatedness, talking matters. I opened this blog post with telling you how fantastic you are (I still mean it by the way) and that's a really easy takeaway from this. Create that feeling of belonging for colleagues and students alike, take 5 minutes at the end of the day and have a chat with someone. Tell them how fantastic their contributions have been, tell them their efforts are not ignored, tell them their appreciated. It doesn't have to be about work, it can be about anything, but show you value that person. You'll feel better after doing it too!

I reiterate again, I don't have all the answers. These are my thoughts and ideas, open the discussion (comments below!). What do you think? How can we create great cultures of learning where teachers and students can do their best, show their best and celebrate their successes?



Bibliography
- Carson, R., Plemmons, S., Templin, T., and Weiss, H. (2011), “You are who you are:” A mixed method study of affectivity and emotional regulation in curbing teacher burnout. In G. Gates, W. Gmelch (Series Eds.), G. M. Reevy & E. Frydenberg (Vol. Eds.), Research on stress and coping in education: Vol. 6. Personality, stress and coping: Implications for education (pp. 239–265). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.

- Deci, E. and Ryan, R., (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

- Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W., and Leiter, M.,(2001), Job burnout, Annual Review of Psychology, 52, pp. 397–422. 

- Ryan, R. M. (1995). Psychological needs and the facilitation of integrative processes. Journal of Personality, 63, pp. 397–427.

- Schaufeli, W., and Enzmann, D. (1998). The burnout companion to study and practice: A critical analysis. London, UK: Taylor & Francis.

Shen, B., McCaughtry, N., Martin, J., Garn, J., Kulik, N. and Fahlman, M., (2015), The relationship between teacher burnout and student motivation, British Journal of Educational Psychology, doi: 10.1111/bjep.12089