I want to continue on a theme I started recently.
You see, there is a not a simple route to improving pedagogy and we can do a lot of damage by suggesting that there is. An allegory will help and I am sorry for the inevitable generalisation.
With global pedagogy, it is best to recognise there are at least three Villages. To the East, there is a village where the teachers and classrooms work very well with a model that comprises: ‘teacher, text, talk and test’. Teachers know what to teach, students know what has to be learned, parents can see what is going on and everyone can see – reasonably simply – how everyone is doing. It is fairly easy in this village for a good teacher to be better because, mostly, what they do is to work harder, prepare better, strengthen their subject or specialist knowledge, love the children and react more sensitively to all the student test results. It is fairly easy for parents too because they can see where their child might need extra help.
To the West, there is a second Village where the teachers are using something they like to call ‘modern pedagogy’. Just like it is in the East, the curriculum is well delineated and there are age-related expectations for what students should learn in different subjects. There are then some thematic studies which people call ‘cross-curricular’ or even ‘co-curricular’. The teachers are different, however, and they are expected to generate more student classroom activity than occurs in the East Village. The teachers prepare ‘differentiated’ class activities that perhaps allow students to work at three different speeds or at different depths. There is a lot of talk about making classwork more engaging, more challenging or more supportive. There is a lot of getting together to see if the teachers can help each other improve skills like using feedback or new technology. There is a lot of anguish because the poorer children keep on doing worse than the wealthier ones. They think the best teachers love the children and have great technique.
A third Village lies to the North. Here, the people like to talk about ‘learning and teaching’ rather than teaching and learning. Much of the curriculum is organised in thematic studies and units of inquiry, so that students can drive the learning. Teachers have a much more sophisticated set of challenges. They have to establish class routines that the students can follow in order to be serious about their individual work. They need to teach the children how to formulate questions, how to organise their research, how to scrutinise and doubt sources, how to reach conclusions, and how to marshal their evidence. The North Village has discovered that some teachers just find this all too difficult and it can lead to chaos. So, they have made sure that their teachers have years and years of preparation for this approach. The whole village thinks the best teachers love the children and let learning lead the way.
In this world of Three Villages, each one seems to work quite well. Students prosper. Often the East Village does best in tests that they all use every couple of years, for comparisons. The West Village thinks it is technically adept and their best students are full of understanding. The North Village is sure that everyone else has got it wrong and theirs is the right and true way.
The major problems come when weird things happen. Experts from the West Village visit the East Village and tell them they should use the West Village techniques. They send inspectors to the East schools who look at classrooms as if they should be like theirs, at home. The inspectors love it when they see lots of student activity. Even when the student outcomes are worse! But the West Villages are relentless: when they see student activity and yet the work is trivial, they say the East Village teachers haven’t yet learned the techniques to be challenging. Then, when that doesn’t quite work, they say that the management is wrong and it should be more ‘distributed’. And so a bumbling criticism keeps going, one point leading to the next.
Let’s face it, those who come from the West don’t plan to stay in the East; they just want them to be like them because that is what they know best.
It gets weirder. Someone from the East Village goes to the North and is inspired by just how cool it all looks when students take more on themselves. Some of the results are pretty good too although comparison is not so easy when the North doesn’t really like tests. The intrepid pioneer from the East rushes back to their village and tells everyone to copy the North instead. The visitors from the West nod wisely because, secretly, they are a bit in love with the Northern cool thing too.
Only, the East finds the North approach even harder than the West. They haven’t had the years of preparation. Nor have the students or the parents. Result: chaos. And it is even worse when West visitors pretend they can show the East how to teach the North way!
Now, I don’t really object to any Villager, anywhere, wanting to migrate and I don’t object to anyone who wants to do things that they believe might be better.
But I do want to say – over and over again – that (a) we should be respectful of each Village and its great strengths, (b) we should recognise that the approach each Village takes is a deep culture and not a simple thing to change, (c) we should never ever go to another Village and behave as if we are their experts, and (d) we should never think that change is simple.
For example, you don’t get to be like the North by copying their books and their class size or even the work schemes. You have to create teachers, philosophies, understanding and approaches – which takes years even when you have the very best guides, trainers and co-workers back on your site.
We have got to understand our challenges better.
