Upload
odin
View
106
Download
1
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Improving Education: A triumph of hope over experience. Robert Coe Inaugural Lecture, Durham University, 18 June 2013. A triumph of hope over experience. Experience Have educational standards really risen? School improvement: Isn’t it time there was some? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Citation preview
Improving Education:A triumph of hope over experience
Robert CoeInaugural Lecture, Durham University, 18 June 2013
∂
A triumph of hope over experience Experience
– Have educational standards really risen?– School improvement: Isn’t it time there was some?– Can we identify effective schools and teachers?– Is ‘evidence-based’ practice and policy the
answer? Hope
– So what should we do (that hasn’t failed yet)?
2
www.cem.org/publications
Have educational standards really risen?
3
∂
4
∂
5
Equivalent change in GCSE grades
∂
6
(Updated from Coe, 2007)
∂
ICCAMS (Hodgen et al)
7
School improvement: Isn’t it time there was some?
8
∂
1. Wait for a bad year or choose underperforming schools to start with. Most things self-correct or revert to expectations (you can claim the credit for this).
2. Take on any initiative, and ask everyone who put effort into it whether they feel it worked. No-one wants to feel their effort was wasted.
3. Define ‘improvement’ in terms of perceptions and ratings of teachers. DO NOT conduct any proper assessments – they may disappoint.
4. Only study schools or teachers that recognise a problem and are prepared to take on an initiative. They’ll probably improve whatever you do.
Mistaking School Improvement (1)(Coe, 2009)
∂
5. Conduct some kind of evaluation, but don’t let the design be too good – poor quality evaluations are much more likely to show positive results.
6. If any improvement occurs in any aspect of performance, focus attention on that rather than on any areas or schools that have not improved or got worse (don’t mention them!).
7. Put some effort into marketing and presentation of the school. Once you start to recruit better students, things will improve.
Mistaking School Improvement (2) (Coe, 2009)
Can we identify effective schools and teachers?
11
∂
Problems with school effectiveness research
‘Value-added’ is not effectiveness (Gorard, 2010; Dumay, Coe & Anumendem, 2013)
Characteristics of ‘effective schools’ – ‘strong leadership’, ‘high expectations’, ‘positive
climate’ and a ‘focus on teaching and learning’– Too vague– ‘Effects’ are tiny anyway (Scheerens, 2000, 2012)
Correlations, not causes (Coe & Fitz-Gibbon, 1998)– Can ‘effective’ strategies be implemented?– If so, do they lead to improvement?
12
Is ‘evidence-based’ practice and policy the answer?
13
∂
Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning
The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit http://www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/
∂
Impact vs cost
Cost per pupil
Effec
t Size
(mon
ths g
ain)
£00
8
£1000
Meta-cognitive
Peer tutoringEarly Years1-1 tuitionHomework
(Secondary)
Mentoring
Summer schools After
school
AspirationsPerformance pay
Teaching assistants
Smaller classes
Ability grouping
Promising May be
worth it
Notworth
it
Feedback
Phonics
Homework (Primary)
CollaborativeSmall gp
tuition Parental involvement
Individualised learning
ICT
Behaviour
Social
www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit
∂
Some things that are popular or widely thought to be effective are probably not worth doing– Ability grouping (setting); After-school clubs;
Teaching assistants; Smaller classes; Performance pay; Raising aspirations
Some things look ‘promising’– Effective feedback; Meta- cognitive and self
regulation strategies; Peer tutoring/peer‐assisted learning strategies; Homework
Key messages
∂
Clear, simple advice:
Choose from the top left Go back to school and do it
17
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong
H.L. Mencken
∂
18
Why not? We have been doing some of these things for a long
time, but have generally not seen improvement Research evidence is problematic
– Sometimes the existing evidence is thin– Research studies may not reflect real life– Context and ‘support factors’ may matter (Cartwright and Hardie,
2012)
Implementation is problematic– We may think we are doing it, but are we doing it right?– We do not know how to get large groups of teachers and
schools to implement these interventions in ways that are faithful, effective and sustainable
So what should we do (that hasn’t failed yet)?
19
∂
Four steps to improvement
Think hard about learning Invest in effective professional development Evaluate teaching quality Evaluate impact of changes
1. Think hard about learning
∂
Impact vs cost
Cost per pupil
Effec
t Size
(mon
ths g
ain)
£00
8
£1000
Meta-cognitive
Peer tutoringEarly Years1-1 tuitionHomework
(Secondary)
Mentoring
Summer schools After
school
AspirationsPerformance pay
Teaching assistants
Smaller classes
Ability grouping
Promising May be
worth it
Notworth
it
Feedback
Phonics
Homework (Primary)
CollaborativeSmall gp
tuition Parental involvement
Individualised learning
ICT
Behaviour
Social
www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit
∂
Impact vs cost
Cost per pupil
Effec
t Size
(mon
ths g
ain)
£00
8
£1000
Meta-cognitive
Peer tutoringHomework
(Secondary)
After school
AspirationsPerformance pay
Teaching assistants
Smaller classes
Ability grouping
Feedback
Phonics
Collaborative
www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit
Does your theory of learning
explain why … Thes
e work
?Thes
e don’t
?
∂
Poor Proxies for Learning Students are busy: lots of work is done
(especially written work) Students are engaged, interested, motivated Students are getting attention: feedback,
explanations Classroom is ordered, calm, under control Curriculum has been ‘covered’ (ie presented to
students in some form) (At least some) students have supplied correct
answers (whether or not they really understood them or could reproduce them independently)
24
∂Learning happens when people have
to think hard
A simple theory of learning
∂
Hard questions about your school
How many minutes does an average pupil on an average day spend really thinking hard?
Do you really want pupils to be ‘stuck’ in your lessons?
If they knew the right answer but didn’t know why, how many pupils would care?
26
2. Invest in effective CPD
∂
How do we get students to learn hard things?
Eg Place value Persuasive
writing Music
composition Balancing
chemical equations
• Explain what they should do• Demonstrate it• Get them to do it (with
gradually reducing support)• Provide feedback • Get them to practise until it is
secure• Assess their skill/
understanding
∂
How do we get teachers to learn hard things?
Eg Using formative
assessment Assertive
discipline How to teach
algebra
• Explain what they should do
∂
Intense: at least 15 hours, preferably 50 Sustained: over at least two terms Content focused: on teachers’ knowledge of
subject content & how students learn it Active: opportunities to try it out & discuss Supported: external feedback and networks to
improve and sustain Evidence based: promotes strategies supported
by robust evaluation evidence
What (probably) makes CPD effective?
3. Evaluate teaching quality
∂
Every teacher needs to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better.
Dylan Wiliam
∂
Sources of evidence:1. Colleagues (peers, SMs) observing lessons2. Trained outsiders observing lessons3. Pupils’ test score gains4. Progress in NC levels (from teacher assessment)5. Pupils’ ratings of teacher/lesson quality6. Teacher qualifications7. Tests of teachers’ content knowledge8. Parents’ ratings9. Ofsted ratings10. Colleagues’ (including senior managers) perceptions11. Teachers’ self-evaluation
Identifying the best teachers
∂
34
Next generation of CEM systems …
Assessments that are– Comprehensive, across the full range of curriculum areas,
levels, ages, topics and educationally relevant abilities– Diagnostic, with evidence-based follow-up– Interpretable, calibrated against norms and criteria– High psychometric quality
Feedback that is– Bespoke to individual teacher, for their students and classes– Multi-component, incorporating learning gains, pupil ratings,
peer feedback, self-evaluation, …– Diagnostic, with evidence-based follow-up
Constant experimenting
4. Evaluate impact of changes
∂
We are sure this works This is so important we need it to work Everyone is working really hard and fully committed to this Evaluating would be a lot of work We don’t have the data to be able to evaluate We don’t know how to evaluate We can’t do a really good evaluation, so what is the point of doing it
badly? We do happy sheets and ask people what they thought of it; isn’t
that enough? You can’t do randomised trials in education What works is different in different schools or contexts
Bad reasons not to evaluate
∂
Clear, well defined intervention
Good assessment of appropriate outcomes
Well-matched comparison group
Key elements of good evaluation
∂
38
A triumph of hope over experience
Experience– So far, we haven’t cracked it: don’t keep doing the
same things Hope
– Think hard about learning– Invest in effective professional development– Evaluate teaching quality– Evaluate impact of changes