This time last year, schools had shut for a second time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and although we have remained open this time, the continued disruption to students’ learning cannot be ignored. Earlier in the academic year, we hosted a Teach Meet specifically to look at building confidence in a ‘post-COVID’ classroom. I thought it would be pertinent to look at how we can build confidence in our classrooms, as from talking to teachers as well as parents and students, I think it’s fair to say that COVID has had a significant negative impact on our students’ confidence and that this may be the biggest blocker to their academic success, rather than easily identifiable gaps in learning. I don’t think we are in the ‘post’ Covid stage just yet; nevertheless, this Teach Meet did raise some really interesting ideas and responses which are meaningful today and beyond. For this Teach Meet, I took inspiration from the format that Lucy Crehan used in our final Teach Meet last year. So, discussions were based around 3 ‘provocations’: How can we build in lesson confidence? How can we lower the stakes around exams? And how can we fully future proof and develop genuine ‘grit’?
How can we build ‘in lesson’ confidence?
A few years ago I read Matthew Syed’s Black Box Thinking. It’s not explicitly about education but there is a lot that we can take from it for the educational sector. The book is titled ‘Black Box Thinking’ as it talks about how in aviation, they use the black box to pinpoint exactly what went wrong so that it can be fixed. This is key in aviation, as mistakes cost lives. That is why air travel is so safe. The ideas in the book around ‘failure’ and learning from mistakes are particularly relevant to the classroom, especially as fear of failure is something that has a real detrimental impact on the confidence of our students. Syed also looks at the car company Toyota, a highly successful business that uses instant feedback (and failure) to constantly ensure standards of their product and to avoid producing products that aren’t up to standard. If anyone on the production line is having a problem, or observes an error, they pull a cord which halts production across the plant. Senior executives then rush over to see what has gone wrong and help to fix it. This made me think about how we can normalise ‘failure’ and ‘mistakes’ in the classroom? If we accept them as part of the learning process then ‘failure’ might not have such a negative impact on confidence.
To embrace this idea, I’ve been using a similar concept with my exam classes. When introducing a new concept or text, I issue them ‘bells’. This way, when there is something they are unsure of or need clarifying again, they simply ring the bell. As the bells are a frequent feature of the lesson, there isn’t a real ‘stigma’ around using them either. From this we discussed if there are other ways that we can ‘normalise’ or ‘celebrate’ failure in the class. In terms of ‘celebrating’ mistakes, we talked about how we as teachers can model mistakes, by making deliberate mistakes for students to spot. This could be in our thinking aloud when explaining how we have ‘solved’ a problem. Or by simply providing work that we have created which has several errors within it and then asking students to spot the possible errors. These are all great ways of emphasising how we can all make mistakes in our thinking/learning. A much ‘bigger’ idea, but one which the Education Endowment Fund has shown can add an additional 5+ months of progress, is Peer Tutoring. This includes a range of approaches in which learners work in pairs or small groups to provide each other with explicit teaching support. The common characteristic is that learners take on responsibility for aspects of teaching and for evaluating their success. This not only builds confidence in those being tutored but those tutoring which can build confidence which is then taken into the lesson (and beyond).
How can we lower the stakes around ‘exams’?
For the next provocation I shared some of the key messages from when I saw Carol Dweck and James Nottingham present their most recent research. In this seminar, Nottingham put forward the view that ‘We should never test… once! In fact we should test twice as much.’ Controversial, I know, but the rationale makes so much sense when it comes to embedding a growth mindset and lowering the stakes around ‘exams’. If we as teachers tell our students, “You have an end of unit test and this test is going to be recorded, sent home to parents and even determine your predicted grades, you have one week to revise”… students who value our subject will panic and spend that week fretting and revising none stop, those who do not value your subject (or have a huge fear of failure), will do nothing and say that is why they won’t do well. However, for all types of students, having high stakes end of unit tests, is telling them to have a fixed mindset of themselves. Rather, we should ‘surprise’ test students, let them know it is low stakes and that this test is to help them identify their strengths and weaknesses, so that they can revise for the real thing more effectively. Then, when they take the ‘real’ test, they will have made progress and most importantly, they will see that progress. Thus, their mindset will be more set for growth.
This led to discussion specifically on what else can we do to lower the stakes around exams? What was interesting here was that suggestions of support refered to both ends of the spectrum; modelling from the top and building up from the bottom. This was really useful, as the variety of approaches meant that there was something that could work for all of our students. One such example of support from the ‘bottom’ was collaborative planning and modelling next steps. In this students are given the exam question and asked to plan it together so that they feel it is a collaborative effort, this also means that any constructive feedback doesn’t feel personal as it has been a team effort. From this, the teacher can then model next steps, what do they need to do now to improve the answer. Again, they may continue to collaborate in how they implement the next steps or this can be the point at which they start independently writing. This will depend on the confidence of the class. The other idea we discussed looked more at ‘starting with the final product’. In this, the teacher models exam success by giving an exemplar, and then explaining how they got there through metacognitive talk (or think alouds). This models for students how they can themselves create an ‘exemplar’ answer. Most importantly, and also echoing what was said by Nottingham, the most important element in all of these ideas is feedback. Through feedback, whether verbal or written, whether engaging with collaborative ideas or talking aloud the thought process, students are encouraged and supported to feel more confident in their exam technique.
How can we future proof and develop genuine ‘GRIT’?
For our final provocation, we looked at Angela Lee Duckworth (2007) whose now famous research on whether we can measure ‘grit’, and carried out a questionnaire on Spelling Bee students. She found that those who scored highly, did so because rather than focus on what they do know, they focus on what they don’t know (they asked, what words can’t I spell?). This is the ‘mindset’ that we as teachers want to encourage, how we do this though, is a bit more difficult. How do we get our students to move out of their comfort zones of what they know (and just keep practicing that) to be replaced with the attitude that, in order to learn, I need to know what I don’t know and then work on that. This is more difficult, as it will essentially make students ‘less comfortable’. However, there are some excellent meta-cognitive tools such as using exam reflection and exam wrappers to get students to engage with what they don’t know or what they got wrong. This will also build the skills that they need for the future, as this form of self-regulation, involving self-awareness, critical analysis skills, and the ability to problem-solve is surely what future employers want to see? Thus, our final point of discussion was a tricky one. We considered, how do we support our students to know what they don’t know? And still keep them motivated?
Some practical ideas from this were that we could do more scaffolding at KS3 of meta-cognition. In fact the EEF research on metacognition talks about explicitly teaching meta-cognitive strategies, and in discussions it is clear that we all use these strategies, but don’t necessarily convey exactly what it is that we are doing? For example, when we ‘think aloud’ our workings in front of the class, we should say ‘I’m going to model my thinking, I want you to do this for the next problem. This is a form of meta-cognition that will help you in your independent learning and study skills’. The other practical tool that we can give to students to support them in knowing what they do and don’t know is by providing revision lists and topic overviews, which can be at any level. Having the ‘big picture’ of their learning will help them see what they know as well as what they are unsure of. A final, and really interesting thought that came from our discussions was the importance of fostering a culture of independent learning and love of learning. We have to give our students permission to think outside the box, make connections and ask the questions they really want to answer. Most of our students seem to be spending their thinking time trying to figure out what their teachers want, when rather than wanting to ‘please’ us, they and us teachers should gratify their own curiosity. This way they will not lose the impulse to be intellectually curious, as they have decided that what is required to pass the exam is more important than further pursuing the ‘why’? Or what next? Again, if we ensure that students feel supported in knowing the big picture of their learning, once they feel secure that they know this, they can start to look beyond this and make links and connections to other ideas. This can ignite their curiosity beyond the lesson and keep them motivated in their learning.
Conclusions
As always, these sessions are full of incredible ideas to magpie, as well as an opportunity to think and reflect on what will work for your students in your specific context. This makes me think about a quote from Dylan William, “Everything works somewhere; nothing works everywhere.” (Creating the Schools Our Children Need, 2018) and how important it is that we as professionals, engage in educational research to inform our practice, and then use our knowledge and expertise of our students to find the strategies that work for them. If we as professionals are constantly seeking to do this, our students will flourish, feel supported in their learning and feel more confident, even in the ‘post-COVID’ world. Thus, for me, my main take-aways are; learning from mistakes (not mistakes on their own) is something we should celebrate, confidence can be fostered in how we model metacognition, if we are forthcoming about the bigger picture of what they need to know, students can start to look beyond this and so become more confident and curious learners.
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