Beyond Good

In this episode Matt and Femi talk about Adam Boxer’s Book: How to Teach Secondary Science.In particular, they discuss Adam’s concept of ‘Directions of travel’, which provides a nice framework for characterising the way that we move through explanations.  Both feel that many teachers could spend more time thinking about and planning explanations than they tend to, so Adam's conceptualisation is useful because it enables us to expand our vocabulary and add nuance to our discussions and reflections on explanations.

Today’s topic is Year 11 mock examinations.  Matt and Femi discuss:-          Holding 2 or 3 sets of mocks vs just 1.-          That mocks should not be the main means by which we discover what students can and cannot do.-          Conditions for students to learn and improve on knowledge gaps exposed by tests, the  implications for ‘going through’ the test in lessons, and why that is rarely effective-          Best practice for giving feedback from mocks, and some examples of poor practice.-          Issues with question level analysis-          How Mocks can crystallise classroom culture, and setting up and capitalising on their success-          What happens when mock results are not so good or students are not prepared for them-          Giving scores back-          Turning around the marking of papers-          Postcards, emails or letters home praising effort-          Running mocks well-          Lending equipmentAs always you can get in touch with Matt or Femi through @BeyondGoodPod on X.

Femi and Matt speak to Dave Taylor on the topic of the maths curriculum.  Dave is a maths specialist and lead practioner, well known in maths circles for his ‘increasingly difficult questions’ and ‘backward faded maths’.  Dave has thought long and hard about curriculum issues such as sequencing and mastery, and has experience of creating maths curricula, so the trio go deep on the considerations, nuances and complexities of developing and implementing an effective maths curriculum.Topics covered include:-The value of having schemes of work-The fact that students don’t come into Y7 all at the same starting point, and the implications of this-Streaming and Pathways-Mastering material that is prerequisite to moving on-Setting, setting philosophy and setting conversations-Resources, and issues with centrally prepared lessons-Space and flexibility in the scheme work to do retrieval work, fill gaps, or push ahead-Designing a scheme of work that maximises students’ opportunity to succeed by accounting for their starting points-Importance of testing students on what they have been taught and the stupidity and cruelty of giving students summative assessments that contain topics that they have not yet covered.-The domain-specificity of teacher expertise, why it is hard to develop and some possibilities for doing that better-And Increasingly difficult questions, amongst other topicsYou can follow Dave on X @taylorda01, and listen to his own podcast here:https://taylorda01.weebly.com/podcast.html

Today’s discussion is prompted by the Bill Rogers interview that recently appeared in the TES titled: ‘Bill Rogers: Where we are going wrong on behaviour’.Matt and Femi discuss:-          The problem of COVID and re-victimising students-          Teacher’s being inclined to appease students rather than lead on behaviour.-          If you’re not in control it’s not a safe environment-          Relationships and how to respond and relate to students-          How do things change when you know the causative pathology for the a student’s antisocial behaviour-          Curriculum for behaviour, and the problem of differing conceptions of what teachers mean by poor behaviour-          Restorative conversations-          The power of behaviour routines (and the risk that they become performative)-          And the unhelpful contributions of commentators who do not understand schools and classrooms

‘Passive passengers!’ - students who are not especially engaged in lessons.Matt and Femi discuss some of the indicators and consequences of passive behaviours, how we might think about that as teachers in terms of tackling it vs accepting it, some causes of passivity, and how we might tackle it.

Today's guest is American Educator, Coach and Podcast host Dr Zach Groshell for a fascinating discussion about his work in US government funded schools and his drive for an increasingly evidence-based pedagogy.Matt and Femi talk to Zach about his role as an instructional coach, more and less directive coaching methodologies, the configuration of coaching within US public schools, characteristics of more effective teachers, implementing whole-school changes, high expectations, and structural impediments to raising standards in US schools.They discuss professional development, and some common misconceptions that are still being promoted, the adoption of pedagogical advances in the science of reading in contrast to more regressive approaches in mathematics.  Accountability, ideologues, ego-protection, the consequences of confusing ‘means with ends’ when designing teaching approaches, and Zach’s hopes and optimism for the future.Zach is active on X under the handle @MrZachG, has his own blog: www.EducationRickshaw.com and hosts the The Progressively Incorrect podcast. 

Today’s episode is prompted by a recent post on X which posed the following question:  “What do you do with your mathematics teachers while you do your whole school professional learning on literacy, reading or writing?”Femi and Matt discuss the two main failure modes for students on ‘worded’ maths questions – noting that the more common and critical failure mode is one that won’t be addressed in a whole-school context.  They talk about the rarely considered element of ‘opportunity cost’, optimum ways of developing student ability on worded maths questions, what the maths department could actually be doing on literacy PD, the role of subject leaders in setting the tone to make this PD a success, and the implications for taking ‘literacy is everyone’s responsibility’ forward seriously.Also discussed are the EEF guide to improving literacy in secondary schools, how we have to view the use of training time through the lens of impact, alternative and possibly more effective approaches to professional learning, the importance of identifying needs within a department and prioritising training to address those needs, and leaders having the strength and courage to take a differentiated and subject-specific approach to professional development.Finally the conversation moves on to the importance of airing conflict, different ways of handling conflict, learning from our mistakes, getting feedback on how well our approaches have worked, the importance carefully of defining success criteria and afterwards evaluating the impact of training.Please do join in and further the conversation - @beyondgoodpod on X 

In today’s episode, Femi and Matt discuss differentiation!  They talk about adaptive learning, differentiation as an advanced teaching skill that relies on solid foundations of strong learning behaviour and pedagogical subject knowledge and the botheredness to actually go and do it (especially when classes are compliant.)They talk about prioritising differentiating to support weaker students first, priority learners, and really knowing who needs your help. The amount of one to one interactions in lessons as a marker of teacher skill.  Some of the mistakes we can make when trying to ‘extend’ more able students, share some examples of approaches to differentiation that are not especially effective. 

In this episode Matt and Femi discuss culture - particularly from the perspective of heads of department trying to shape the culture of teaching staff in their corner of the school.  This one is not maths-specific –  the discussion is relevent to colleagues from any subject area or team.They consider the fact that culture exists – whether you actively seek to shape it, or not, the characteristics of good culture, shaping and maintaining culture, so called toxic environments: and how incongruence, unfairness and wilful blindness from leaders can play a role there.They talk about failing to listen for fear of endorsing the other person’s view, some challenges of open lines of communication, establishing and reinforcing norms, Tuckman’s stages of group development, being visible, engineering and celebrating success, and delegating and giving responsibility (while guiding and supporting appropriately), amongst other things. 

Today Femi and Matt are speaking about lesson observations and related activities such as lesson visits, coaching and feedback.  They talk about being clear on why the observation is happening; good and less good reasons for doing lesson observations and some of the issues around lesson observations as part of the performance management process.On lesson visits i.e. ‘walking the shop floor’, they discuss culture, feedback and follow up and then get into coaching observations and feedback:  3 common mistakes, models for structuring feedback, initial identification of the big ticket items and subsequent follow up staying with that focus. Jim Knight’s ‘Impact cycle’, teaching strategies, modelling and feedback.The attitude of the person being observed.  Trust.  How potential typically outweighs competence and the implications for ‘attitude’ when recruiting teachers.What makes for effective teams.What Matt has been working on to be trust-worthy on his end of the relationship, and how one’s behaviour can reveal underlying motivations and insecurities. What is a necessary professional conversation, and what isn’t, and what can be learnt from those encounters, and lesson observation etiquette, among other things!