L&T Blog: W/C 04-03-2024 SPECIAL EDITION FROM BEN: AI at the BETT Show 2024

 

A few weeks ago I visited the BETT trade show in East London with the goal of learning more about how generative AI is being used within the educational sector. Throughout the day I listened to panel discussions, participated in a couple of workshops and went to talk to representatives at a number of company stands. Since the last BETT there has been incredibly rapid development of generative AI and Microsoft and Google along with smaller tech companies are all competing to get at the front of the pack. One insider said he had never seen such a pivot in twenty years and only a lack of experienced, qualified AI engineers was holding them back. 

• Generative AI, put simply, is a program that can create totally new output from a vast bank of inputs. ChatGPT is a generative AI program running as a chatbot that many are familiar with - its bank of input is essentially the entire internet and it can analyse and look for common patterns in text and images. Using those patterns it can respond to a user's question or request by predicting which words (or pixels for images) go before and after each word. As you will know if you've used it, ChatGPT gives an impression of intelligent understanding through this process.
• For instance I could prompt: 'Please write a 150 word summary of the British military intervention in Iraq with a reading age of 12 years old' and it will provide me with exactly that based on information it synthesises from the internet.
• I could then prompt it again: 'Please provide another summary of 250 words with a reading age of 15, and one final summary of 500 words with a reading age of 18'.
• You can see in this example - which I actually did recently - there is great potential for preparing differentiated lesson materials to provide greater access to learning (it goes without saying that a specialist teacher has to review outputs for balance and judge if they are right for their students).
• I'm not alone in using generative AI in this specific way - Microsoft Education is a similar platform to Google Classrooms but with an integrated generative AI program (Microsoft Copilot) so teachers can create bespoke texts for students at different reading ages. The AI part of the platform is still in its infancy but in a year things will likely look very different.

I attended several panel discussions and the general tone of debate around AI was, as expected for the context, boosterish. However, many ideas seemed grounded in reality and responsive to educational problems: Could AI be used as a personal tutor for school avoiders to help them keep up whilst they worked towards rejoining mainstream schooling? Could AI speed up some administration tasks to free up overburdened teachers to do more teaching? Could AI provide hyper-individualised learning that accelerates progress by engaging students more in and out the classroom?

As well as Microsoft and Google I spoke to a representative of Redmenta, a Polish company which won the 'AI in Education' award at BETT 2024. From what I could see the platform did everything that a teacher could do, creating straightforward reading comprehension tasks and worksheets but in literally seconds rather than hours of a teacher's time (likely outside of work hours). In this situation the teacher becomes an expert editor of material rather than a copywriter. The potential for AI to increase productivity across industries is very clear but in education where recruitment and retention is the number one employment-side issue, this is even more relevant. For this reason, one speaker at a talk hailed it as a 'saviour of education'. 

Other ideas from panellists were more leftfield and less convincing: one speaker suggested that the secondary stage could become more like primary with one teacher per class and AI doing the job of specialist as they changed subjects across the day.

Later in the day I participated in a Microsoft workshop to have a go with Copilot. It runs on an enhanced version of OpenAI's ChatGPT and also provides references and web links for the responses it gives. I can see this becoming the standard type of web search tool for internet users in the future - in contrast to the normal format of paginated search results. As with many of the demonstrations I saw, presenters were vague on the details of how it could be used in teaching but big on overall vision.

One of the key takeaways from my visit came from something that was said at a Google for Education panel discussion with several practicing teachers and leaders - I'm paraphrasing but a teacher said 'whatever technology you are putting into your school you need to make sure you are identifying an area of Teaching and Learning to improve first and then finding the right tech to help improve it - not just shoving in the latest tech for the sake of it'. 

A digital strategy in a school cannot sit separately to its teaching and learning strategy - it must be fully integrated just like any other pedagogical idea the school wants to introduce. In practice that means training staff to use the tech properly, then having patience to stick with it and develop it so that every teacher is using it effectively and consistently, then attempting to measure its impact on students progress and reflecting deeply before moving forwards. 

One of the panellists earlier in the day made a prediction that in one years time there will be a greater divide between schools that embrace it and those that don't, but in ten years time everyone will have adopted it. I think this is an easy prediction to make given AI is likely something we will have to reckon with in all areas of work and life very soon. Whatever your current thoughts on AI in education, it is unlikely to be a passing fad and a forward thinking school will be seeking ways it can help students achieve success right now.

Thank you,

Ben

T&L Blog (Special Edition) PGCE Research into the SEN students in the Responsibility Room, by Elif

 

Dear WA colleagues,

I would like to present to you one of very excellent examples of research conducted by one of our PGCE students, Elif (who was on placement at WA in Terms 1/2). I we lucky enough to visit the PGCE presentations with Yamina in Term 2 and listened to some really useful findings from action research at WA. Below, is a synopsis from Elif from their studies. I really hope you enjoy reading about this work and this, in turn, feeds back into our conversations about how and why we do things.

The Responsibility Room at WA:

The research conducted aimed to look at the effectiveness of G22 (the Responsibility Room) for SEND students specifically, at Westminster Academy. The rationale behind this research was due to the high number of SEND students at this school, and G22 being a key aspect of the behaviour policy. This research aimed to reveal any patterns (if any) between SEND students and the responsibility room. Existing literature implies that there are many reasons for behavioural issues, one being the four areas of SEND, which is reflected through an iceberg model (DfE 2015, cited in Sazkville-Ford, 2020). The process of the research included conducting unstructured interviews with SLT and different department teachers. The reason we took this approach was because we were interested in qualitative data. Given that we have built rapports with teachers, unstructured interviews allow us to ask follow up questions to enable teachers to explain their responses to open questions and be honest, increasing the validity of our research.

Specific findings on G22 and SEND included: the main reasons for students getting sent out were: disruptive behaviour, defiance and rudeness. All interviewees mentioned the importance of “knowing students” and looking at SEND profiles and strategies before giving out reminders that lead to being sent to G22.

Approaches taken by teachers, for SEND students:

- "For students with SEND I use several methods to de-escalate the situation for example: changing the tone of my speech to be clearer and calmer. Signalling what zone, I am in, also using verbal reminders throughout the class so it is not just directed at one student."
- Tries different ways to manage behaviour before sending student to G22 (e.g. “gentle approach”, reminding them verbally, giving verbal and written instructions)


Effectiveness of G22:
- "G22 serves its purpose of allowing students to reflect, but It is not effective for SEND, nor is the timings that students sit in, effective for their academic progress."
- "It definitely puts students behind by a lot – part of this is because some students are consistently in G22. It does not help when they have not had a successful restoration period and continue misbehaving the following lesson. Again, this causes a loss of learning for them”
- G22 is not “fully effective”
- “students do NO work while in G22”, and when they come back to lessons, they are clueless, they also tend to use G22 as an excuse for not having complete work
- “G22 can become a security/safety blanket as they sit there and do no work”
- “I use G22 as a last resort”

The interviews gave us a better picture of what some teacher’s thought of G22 and its effectiveness, specifically for SEND students. Recommendations were made by teachers as well as us (the researchers) in order to implement a better behaviour policy that works for all students with different needs. One being using LSAs to have 1-1s with students outside of the classroom, or forming focus groups with SEND students and using spaces such as break out spaces, global cafe, pods in the school. Our findings also concluded that spending 24 hours in G22 is not beneficial for SEND students and there needs to be other spaces / classrooms used in order to meet their needs. Another point highlighted was the importance of teachers knowing their students well and reading their SEND profiles/ strategies shared with them before sending students to G22 as there is no ‘one-size fits all’ consequence. These recommendations align with the schools trauma informed approach as it considers all types of factors that may be going on students’ lives. This is a small-scale study and more can be done to add to this research.

Thank you for reading this, and we hope we receive more very insightful research from our semester two PGCE students. 

Russell

T&L Blog Term 3 Week 4: Impact of informal mentoring on young people

Dear WA

I hope everyone is well and wishing you a really restful festive break when it comes around! For this final bitesize research article of T2, I was interested to read a study about the importance and power of informal mentors in the lives of young people. 

Objectives: To understand the impact of informal mentoring on the lives of young people.

 

Summary: 

• This study argues that informal mentoring is classified as relationships forged by young people and their teachers, sports coaches or other professionals working within their schools. 

• Using a large set of longitudinal data, this study states that 15% of young people stated that their most important mentors were teachers or sports coaches in their lives.

• The authors argue that these kinds of relationships have a significant impact on the lives of young people, including in their attainment, and in their likelihood of going to university.

• They also argue that the impact of these kinds of relationships are amplified for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as in schools where students have a strong sense of belonging.

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

• Does the idea of informal mentoring resonate with me? Have I had an informal mentor? Do I act as one for any students?

• How might this impact my conception of being a tutor?

• What support might I need to do this kind of work more effectively?

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: Term 3 Week 1: Behaviour management strategies of beginning teachers in classrooms!

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read a recent study that looked at behaviour management strategies of beginning teachers in classrooms.

Objectives: To understand the strategies used by novice teachers in classrooms to manage behaviour, and to examine which are the most effective.

Summary: 

• This study determined that in aiming to stop the misbehaviour of one student, novice teachers often ‘lost the rest of the group’, resulting in more chatter and unfocussed behaviours.

• It compares this to more experienced teachers who navigated the balance between collective and individual behaviour. For example, when faced with a disruptive student, more experienced teachers would often continue teaching the class, making subtle changes including with their body language and moving closer to the disruptive student.

• The study proposes that ‘intentionally ignoring’ disruptive students was one of the most impactful strategies, rather than one-on-one confrontations with disruptive students.

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

• How do my experiences with behaviour management align with these strategies in the study? Are they similar? Are they different?
• What can I take from the findings of this study?
• What support or actions might I need to implement strategies from this study?

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