Wading knee-deep into the debate over lesson grading vs. non-grading I’ve come to feel that part of the reason this contentious exchange even exists is because for too long how we judge teaching and learning has been shrouded in mysticism and complexity. Personally, I am someone who needs a grade somewhere along the way; I need to contextualise the feedback i’m receiving because I can be in danger of over-interpreting the feedback i’m given either too positively or too negatively.
Part of the problem for me has been that for years I had been distracted by the pressure of teaching buzz words and structures taking over my pedagogy, rather than being used selectively, e.g. the 5-part lesson, multiple activities, card sorts, think-pair-share, mini-plenaries etc.
The journey I have undergone over the last year, and the ever-exhilarating discourse held with colleagues, is in realising the need to massively simplify the way we observe lessons; to distill the key things that contribute to progress over time – recognising that teaching behaviours in a 20-25 min observation might contribute towards looking for evidence of progress over time, rather than a lesson grade hinging heavily on progress during the observation period. There needs to be a triangulation of evidence to show this e.g. evidence in books of redrafting so that significant improvement is made, evidence of lesson planning that indicates the progress that will be made (projections of progress if the class continue along this path), talking to students, talking to the teacher about what came before and what comes next (and being able to clearly see the end in mind) in the sequence of lessons.
The benefits to both teachers and students are enormous:
- ‘Outstanding’ teaching becomes something very achievable rather than an idealistic notion of absolute perfection. If there is solid evidence from a variety of sources that students are making excellent progress over time then, if not every minute of a 20-min observation is near-perfect, does it really matter?
- More recognition for staff who consistently work hard to improve their students’ outcomes e.g. by asking them to redraft and then committing to remarking the redrafts
- Conversely, recognition that pulling an all-singing, all-dancing one off observation lesson out of the bag does not necessarily mean that students are making sufficient progress over time, and if the rest of the triangulated evidence is lacking, that this can mean teaching requires improvement
- This all should lead to easier recognition of the typicality of teaching for staff and accepting the view that a 25min observation is just a snapshot so therefore we owe it to the teacher to look for other ways that progress can be seen from before, and the potential after, this snapshot of time.
As we embark down this path there are some pitfalls that will need consideration:
- We’ve been so long distracted by lesson ‘tricks’ that staff need time and patience to adapt to a new mindset
- There will need to be a lot of moderating of all people involved in observations to ensure continuing dialogue about the different ways we can evidence progress over time e.g. How does a practical subject like Drama or PE evidence this when there are no exercise books to look in for evidence of redrafting/redoing?
- There is a danger that the ‘progress over time’ emphasis could be used as an excuse for a poor quality lesson
Here’s an idea: what if we were to stop giving lesson grades to individual lessons and, rather, one observer were to undertake a series of learning walks of the same teacher over a specified period of time, then engage in a dialogue with the teacher about the different pieces of evidence of progress over time, only arriving at an overall judgement of their teaching once all this has been triangulated, rather than based on an individual lesson grade? This could be done three times a year with each teacher. Surely we owe it to our hardworking teachers to allow them the maximum opportunity to show that they are typically good at their job rather than just a series of snapshots?
habitsofhighlyeffectiveteaching 