Do attitudes to and understandings of text books provide a key?
The facts
Teachers in England participate in less subject specific CPD than their counterparts in other countries and report less interest in it too. For example, while just under 50% of teachers in England; had participated in curriculum-related CPD in the 12 months before TALIS, almost 90% of teachers in Shanghai and 80% of teachers in Singapore had done so. Similarly, teachers in the 34 nations who participated in TALIS 2013 were a whopping three times more likely to say they needed subject-related CPD than teachers in England. Why should that be so?
The reasons
There are several of possible explanations. Our rapid review of subject specific CPD for Wellcome suggests a few:
- Perhaps our teachers know their subjects better and also feel it is their responsibility to stay up to date with their subject as it develops?
- Some teachers reported feeling that their professionalism is slighted if they are invited to participate in CPD related to their subjects - does that apply more broadly?
- Has the appetite for internalising CPD in school to reduce costs and build capacity through SLT-led CPD, led to generic pedagogic approaches providing a highest common factor (or lowest common denominator) diet of pedagogic CPD geared to consistency and getting everyone delivering “outstanding” lessons?
- Perhaps the lack of access to high quality subject specific CPD shown up by our study means teachers in England don’t know what they are missing?
There’s some evidence for all of these explanations. But there seems to be something deeper going on. I have spent the last few months gnawing away at this problem and think I might have alighted on a bigger and more important explanation. I’d be grateful for your thoughts and perspectives – or better still come and debate and explore these issues 5 July 2018 with colleagues from England and a South Korean teacher who is researching for her D.Phil at Oxford.
The hidden legacy of our post graduate approach to teacher preparation
I am wondering if, at the heart of the issue, lies the dominating “study-for-your-subject-first-and-learn-about-teaching-and-learning second”, PGCE model. This is pretty unusual. In most countries, especially high performing ones, teaching degrees give students the opportunity to study a subject the curriculum and what they need to know to connect the two (often described as pedagogic content knowledge) side by side. For primary teachers the difference between practice in England and the high performing countries we have visited is starker. Elsewhere, degrees in primary teacher preparation often involve studying 4 to 6 subjects in depth which are offered as specialisms alongside their work as class tutor. In England teachers will have majored in just one subject, or at most two, if they pursue a first degree and post graduate qualification route.
What the student teachers, new teachers and their tutors and mentors, in the other countries I have studied, describe as being particularly helpful about studying subject, curriculum, pedagogy and patterns in the way pupils learn side by side, is the opportunity to cross examine them iteratively . At its best this leads to questions such as; why is it that the curriculum and assessments emphasise mathematic techniques when I am studying mathematics as a form of mathematical communication and thinking organised around some fascinating big ideas? How can I most effectively teach some complex and invisible phenomena like forces or gravity cumulatively over time? In other words, it helps develop deeper, more contextualised questioning and reflection.
What our teachers may be missing
Teachers in England on degree and PGCE or other post graduate programmes don’t get that opportunity. Their first degrees focus on their subjects divorced form issues about how the might be taught or learned. Their post graduate focus is practice and pedagogy. Our trainees and early career teachers’ engagement with why the curriculum is as it is and how this map on to patterns and sequencing in learning in any depth depends on being lucky enough to be in a phase group or department with a strong curriculum focus. In other words, it depends on luck in placements and the quality of middle leadership and is not structured systematically into teachers’ career pathways. So the opportunity to make powerful connections between the two let alone test and strengthen their curriculum knowledge against their subject knowledge in an explicit way is thin; especially so when compared with the South Korean approach to developing pedagogic, subject and curriculum knowledge in parallel or the Norwegian approach to developing pedagogy, subjects and didactics (the equivalent of pedagogic content knowledge) side by side.
Text books- a surprising catalyst for teacher efficacy
In South Korea they go a step further. Alongside studying their core subjects and pedagogy, South Korean student teachers (who are, incidentally the crème de la crème) study text books; there are courses focussed on how to analyse and critique them. In this way courses supporting the development of subject, curriculum and pedagogic knowledge and skills can be explored and tested against school and assessment realities - whilst learning to be a critical and reflective professional. In this sense the text books serve to organise complexity enough to enable student teachers to navigate it reflectively and critically.
Now there are key differences in context which are important in interpreting this. South Korean learning often includes, among other things, a good deal of memorisation; something which is part of their culture and alien to ours. Text books have a serious role in South Korean society. Taken together they are the local medium for ensuring that learning is cumulative and is coherent so that pupils can make powerful connections between ideas and phenomena in different subjects and contexts. They are seen as helping to develop meaningful schemes of learning – a guide on the side rather than a map or instruction manual. Text books are also positioned more broadly as part of how generations hand on social and intellectual capital – they even go so far as to have a museum of text books!
I am not suggesting this is a transferable approach. We have concerns about text books, especially using them in ways that diminish teacher professionalism and judgement. But being taught how to analyse and critique text books is another matter. Are our views overly limited by past practices and concerns about teacher professionalism and agency view to the point where we are missing their potential strengths and contribution to teacher formation? The opportunity to observe teacher training and interview students, teachers and school leaders in other countries has made me consider anew the role of text books in teacher preparation. For example, I was deeply impressed by the capacity of even very new teachers to take a strategic view of the curriculum, contribute to curriculum design and make skilled selections between text book content to configure learning sequences that meet the specific needs of their students. This seemed to me to relate directly to being taught how to critique them.
The next step?
So, my question is this - Would re-positioning the role of text books and emphasising the importance of critical engagement with them in both ITE and CPD increase teachers’ capacity for curriculum design, help them see the virtues of subject specific CPD that is a priority for teachers elsewhere and especially in high performing countries? Would it also help us respond with depth and skill to the important challenges that HMCI is posing to school leaders and teachers across the system in relation to curriculum planning?
- Click here for more information about the event on 5 July
- Click here to go to the full Developing Great Subject Teaching report or here for a presentation which summarises the findings of that report
Philippa Cordingley
Chief Executive