T&L Bitesize Blog T2 / Week 7: The widening gap between richer and poorer students at KS4!

 

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read a recent article about the widening gap between richer and poorer students at GCSE level in the UK in The Conversation. In particular, it was interesting to consider given our focus on the WA Way strand ‘Assess and Adapt’. 

Objectives: To understand the gap between the richest and poorest students at GCSE level, and propose solutions to alleviate this.
 
Summary: 

• The attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their peers is now the largest it has been in a decade. 
• Centre-based assessments in 2020 appeared to alleviate the gap significantly, although teacher-based assessments in 2021 widened the gap again.
• The author proposes this is due to the compound effect of two years of disruption on disadvantaged students, whereby an ongoing lack of access to resources seems to have had an impact.
• The author argues that there is a misunderstanding that in returning to normal-style GCSEs, the assessment of students is more robust. In fact, the author claims that there is no good evidence that teacher-assessed grades are less robust.
• The author also argues that the supposed anonymity afforded by normal-style GCSEs is not necessarily good at eliminating marking biases that may impact the attainment gap.
• The author proposes that a better way to truly assess students would be to use a variety of ways, combining teacher-based assessments and exams.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

What does this tell us about WA’s attainment gap (much lower than the national average) and approaches to assessment?
What are my current approaches to assessment? What would I like to change?
What support do I need?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks,

Jaya

L&T Blog T2 Week 5: Challenging misconceptions about learning

 

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read a summary from Edutopia about common misconceptions about learning. 

Objectives: To debunk some common misconceptions about learning and strategise for more robust strategies influenced by cognitive science.
 
Summary: 

The three misconceptions that the article aims to debunk are:

• 1) That every student has a ‘learning style’. Instead, the authors argue that educators are better to focus on processing information in multiple different ways (e.g. diverse examples, use of different senses, abstract and concrete representations). This helps to cement long term retention of the knowledge. 
• 2) That testing should be used only to assess student learning. Instead, the authors argue that as well as assessing student learning, testing actually changes student learning. This speaks to important cognitive science about retrieval practice.
• 3) That concepts that are easy to learn are easily remembered. In fact, techniques that speed up the acquisition of ideas often speeds up the forgetting of the ideas. The authors recommend considering the level of challenge and struggle to support with this and with the long term retention of concepts. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

Which of these myths are ones that I consciously or subconsciously subscribe to?
How can I tweak my practice to be more aligned with developments in cognitive science? 
What support do I need to be able to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog T2 Week 3: Boys Perceptions of Andrew Tate

 Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read some recent survey research conducted by YouGov on boys’ views about Andrew Tate. This is something that I know many people have raised concerns about, and led to some of our YCs taking on some training last year and then disseminating this to all staff.

Objectives: To understand the current landscape of boys’ views about Andrew Tate.

Summary: 

The headline findings are that 1 in 6 boys between the ages of 6-15 have a positive view of Andrew Tate, but that twice as many in the same age group have a negative view.
The study suggests that boys believe that Tate’s views on women are less appealing than his views on work, success and masculinity.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What have I noticed about the views of Andrew Tate amongst my students recently?

• What concerns me?

• What sorts of strategies are helpful in working with our boys about this? 

• To what extent does our Personal Development/RSHE curriculum help to re-shape these views?

• What further support do I need?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog T2 Week 2: Scaffolding - improving our adaptive classrooms!

 

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read about the recent evidence for differentiation and adaptive teaching in an article by Edutopia. This is very much linked to our ongoing work on making learning personalised and student-centred. 

Objectives: To suggest evidence-based strategies for differentiation and adaptive teaching.

Summary: The article outline a number of scaffolding strategies that can be used to support student understanding as follows:

• Checking your resources: Making resources as clear and as concise as possible. The meaningful and judicious use of highlighting, underlining and arrows can all be used to better support retention of knowledge. The author also suggests asking students ‘Are my lessons and assignments clear?’ to gain valuable feedback about this.
• Building up relevant prior knowledge: Neuroscientific research has demonstrated that the brains seek to make connections with previously taught material. As such, giving students opportunities to retrieve or reactive prior knowledge before moving forward is very important from a scaffolding perspective.
• Offer multimodal materials: Pairing teacher instruction with visuals, videos, role play opportunities and diagrams has a significant impact on the ability to retain information.
• Use of graphic organisers: Making a summary visual representation of complex ideas is likely to support student understanding and retention. 
• Use ‘pre-testing’: Giving students a ‘pre-test’ can help students organise thoughts and enhance curiosity to get to the ‘correct answer’ when they actually learn the material. 
• Use of metacognitive questioning: When giving students something new, encouraging them to ask ‘What parts are familiar to me? What parts are new?’ and ‘How does this connect to what I already know?’ is likely to provide a help scaffold.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• Which of these strategies am I currently using? How are they working out? How do I know?
• Which would I like to incorporate into my practice? What support will I need to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog T2 Week 1: Parental attitudes towards attendance

 

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well and that you had a restful half term break! A key focus for us, and for schools nationally, is to improve attendance to school. As such, a recent report about parental attitudes towards attendance by Public First was an interesting read. 

Objectives: To understand parental attitudes towards school attendance and how they may have changed.

Summary: 
The research has the following key findings:

• Covid has caused a significant shift in parental attitudes towards attendance to school.
• Parents no longer believe that it is important for their children to be in school every day.
• Schools and parents are communicating less effectively across the socioeconomic spectrum.
• Parents perceive school attendance systems as draconian, and as not based on robust information. This erodes trust further between parents and schools.
• Mental health issues and the cost of living crisis are compounding issues with attendance to school. 
• Despite popular perceptions, the increasing frequency of parents working from home is not driving the issues with attendance to school

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

What does this mean for the students I work with in my classes and tutor group?
How do I communicate about attendance with parents?
What might schools do differently to combat some of the shifts in parental attitudes about attendance?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog T1 Week 7: Assessment in Practice

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! One of the key strands of the WA Way is Assess and Adapt. Assessment is an ongoing focus for us, following on from the work Rob has done in creating a WA assessment philosophy, and we look forward to building on this. As such, I was interested to see an Edutopia article focussed on this area.

Objectives: To understand and synthesise the best in current research on assessment practices.

Summary: 

• The article reminds us that grading practices are very embedded in the educational system, but that they are not sufficient on their own in improving student performance or motivation more widely.

• It states that the following assessment practices can be helpful in supporting better ongoing learning and motivation:

• 1) Giving written or verbal feedback before giving a grade. 

• 2) That frequent, low stakes assessment (including quizzing) is highly effective in improving learning outcomes.

• 3) That meaningful, well designed peer assessment is highly effective

• 4) That the use of rubrics in assessment can support in the elimination of unconscious bias - which is in and of itself important to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students or students of colour.  

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using these best practices for assessment? How impactful have they been? How do I know?

• Which elements of my assessment practices do I want to work on? What support do I need for this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog: Week 6 - Inquiry Based Learning Vs Direct Instruction

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was really interested to see some research from May 2023 into inquiry-based learning and direct instruction. These two styles are important for us to consider at WA in particular. Firstly, because the IB states clearly that they have a preference for inquiry-based learning, and secondly, because there is an ongoing debate about ‘which style is better?’ and this regularly plays out in education circles online, particularly on social media.

Objectives: To understand the existing research landscape about the effectiveness of inquiry-based learning.

Summary: 

• The study is clear that inquiry-based learning is likely to be effective for supporting students to develop their conceptual understanding. 

• The authors show that it is also very impactful in developing what they describe as ‘deep learning processes’ which include metacognitive strategies. 

• The authors also show that contextual factors are really important to determine the likely success of any given instructional approach.

• The authors are clear that having sufficient prior knowledge is essential for the success of inquiry-based learning. 

• They conclude that a curated and deliberate combination of direct instruction and inquiry is likely to have the best and most effective outcomes

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I currently balance inquiry-based methods and direct instruction? What have I found to be effective about this?

• How could I consider the use of inquiry-based for heightening conceptual understanding in particular?

• What questions do I have about this? What support do I need to develop my use of inquiry-based learning?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

L&T Blog W5: Are the risks higher for disadvantaged students with scam emails?

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! With Curriculum Drop Down Day coming up, and with our ongoing work on the Personal Development curriculum, this week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to see a recent reported study done by the UCL Institute of Education student responses to scam emails, and in particular, disadvantaged students. 

Objectives: To understand the level of risk for opening scam emails, particularly for disadvantaged students

Summary: 

• The study looked at 150,000 teenagers aged 15

• It reports that one in five deprived teens could fall victim to opening scam emails or phishing. This makes them much more likely to do this than their more advantaged peers. These students are also more likely to have poorer learning skills.

• The study also found that currently, students who are educated about the dangers of online fraud, are just as likely to fall victim to this as those who are not.

• As such, the author of the study is urging schools, particularly those serving more deprived communities, to ensure they have the highest quality of education on this topic. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How have I already worked with students on this topic? How effective was my teaching and learning practice on this?

• What might help me to improve my practice in teaching this area?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog W4- Technology in education

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to look more closely at the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report for 2023, which this year was focussed on technology in education. This resulted in lots of headlines about mobile phones in schools during the summer holidays.

Objectives: To understand the impact of technology in education. 

Summary: 

• The study states that there is a lack of good, impartial evidence about the impact of technology in education, insofar as much of the evidence is commissioned by educational technology companies.

• It states that educational technology has opened up lots of opportunities - particularly for students with SEND and during the pandemic, but that these are unequal across the world.

• There is some evidence of the impact of technology on outcomes for specific types of learning - including, for example, practice and fluency for primary mathematics. The authors argue that future studies of educational technology need to be focussed on the learning outcomes primarily. 

• There is some good evidence that even proximity to a mobile phone has a negative impact on learning insofar as it is highly distracting for students.

• The authors argue that the following should act as a way of determining the appropriateness of educational technology for government policymakers as well as educators themselves:

• 1) Is it appropriate for our local context? This includes looking at teaching the basic skills to use technology well and using evidence-informed approaches to educational technology.

• 2) Is it leaving anyone behind? This includes looking at whether all students can have equitable access to the benefits provided by educational technology, including disadvantaged students and students with SEND

• 3) Does it support sustainable futures? This includes establishing a broad set of digital competencies which enable students to benefit from technology’s potential in terms of citizenship and employment. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using technology? What evidence do I have of its effectiveness?

• What would I like to see WA students doing with technology in the future? How can I change my practice to support this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

T&L Blog W3- Student wellbeing

 Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to see some research findings about different aspects of wellbeing in school students from the University of Cambridge. 

Objectives: To look at broader notions of student wellbeing in schools, rather than just wellbeing equating to happiness. 

Summary: 

The author of this research looks at a broader conception of wellbeing, which includes ideas about students feeling capable and purposeful - sometimes called ‘eudaimonia’. 
The author argues that this broader conception of wellbeing improves student grades as well as their mental health. For example, students achieving top grades in Maths at GCSE had 1.5 times more eudaimonia than their peers. 
The author argues that this positive correlation is not apparent for ‘happiness’ (which is part of the RSHE national curriculum).
The author argues that wellbeing education should be broadened to ensure eudaimonia is included, and that this would unlock better academic performance in many students.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I currently support my students to feel capable and purposeful?
• How do I promote growth in students’ eudaimonia?
• What strategies could I try to support this?
• What support might I need to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

T&L Blog W2- How to support with teenage reading!

 

Dear WA,

Hope everyone had a great first week back. This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to

see some research findings from Aston university as reported by TES about teenage reading. Reading is something that we’ve discussed a lot already at WA, and will of course continue to do so, particularly under the leadership of our Literacy Coordinator, Ellie Winter.

Objectives: To understand what the issues are with teenage reading, and to consider

strategies to support this.

Summary: 

• The authors of the research started from the premise that many secondary teachers are explaining that teenage students are struggling with reading (particularly with respect to transitioning into secondary school, and when students have a limited vocabulary), and that they don’t know how to better support it.
• As such, the authors created two longitudinal studies to look at the issues and suggest possible solutions to support students.
• The authors discovered that there is no discernable ‘transition slump’ between YR6 and YR7, and rather there is a rise in expectations going from a primary to a secondary curriculum.
• Moreover, disadvantaged students appeared to have a difference specifically in vocabulary and reading comprehension when compared to their more advantaged peers. This was not the case for word recognition.
• The data suggests that many students entering secondary school have vocabulary and reading needs, and that also how good students are at reading helps students to learn directly about vocabulary.
• The authors suggest the following strategies to support teenage readers including:

• 1) Secondary schools should prioritise reading

• 2) Embedding a reading for pleasure culture should be prioritised at secondary level

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might

be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I teach vocabulary and reading in my lessons currently? What could I try to do differently?
• How specifically might I support disadvantaged students with their reading and vocabulary?
• How should we at WA encourage reading for pleasure? How do teachers and support staff play a role in this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

T&L Blog W1- Bitesize Research: Building connections at the start of the year

By Jaya Carrier

Dear WA,

Welcome back everyone! For anyone new to the WA community, Bitesize Research is a weekly WA blog article which looks to take some emerging education research and summarise the findings in an easy and digestible way. So, to get us started, I was interested to see an Edutopia article about research-backed methods that support building connections with students at the start of a school year.

Objectives: To consider evidence-informed strategies for building connections with students at the start of a school year.

Summary: 

• The article suggests 6 tips to support building connections with students at the start of the year:

• 1) Begin with a clean slate - allow students to start afresh, particularly if in previous years they may have demonstrated challenging behaviours. 

• 2) Tackle start of the year nerves directly - sharing common fears that students might face at the beginning of the school year, and how students before them have tackled these, can support students to put their fears into perspective. Allowing students to undertake some oral or written reflection using questions such as ‘What plans do you have for making friends?’ or ‘How do you plan to handle a busy timetable?’ might be helpful for this.

• 3) Check your classroom environment and resources - ensuring that displays or resources are as diverse and inclusive as possible can help students feel a sense of belonging.

• 4) Spend active time building relationships - there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that students will go the extra mile academically if they have an excellent relationship with their teacher. As such, considering how to actively build relationships at the start of the academic year is likely to be helpful in the long term for student progress.

• 5) Create Partnership Agreements - these are co-constructed, coaching-style agreements of how to ‘be’ together, and ensure that you can hold everyone accountable as the year progresses. At WA, we create these with all tutor groups - consider making one with your classes too.

• 6) Remain calm - using trauma-informed approaches to remain calm is likely to be the best strategy when students may try to test the waters. It can be helpful to actively prepare for times like this and consider different challenging scenarios and how you would respond to these.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What is important to me about working with students at the start of an academic year?

• What strategies might I try to support forging good relationships in academic year 2023-24?

• Which strategies appear to be clear to me? Which might I need more support to implement?

• When I create the Partnership Agreement with my tutor group, what do I want in there and how will we hold each other accountable to the agreement?