It would be great if some of our students were to read this article: it's mostly about what they should be doing between lessons or in the runup to exams to improve their retention of material. That said, it's really useful for us to think about how we want to tell them to revise, as well as the tasks we're setting for homework or even in lessons. As ever, you can download the full article - and the much longer one on which it is based - below. The article covers 10 strategies; I've summarised the most effective below. If you just want the headlines, here they are: Again, practice testing comes out on top. Here's what the researchers say:“by viewing tests as the end-all assessments administered only after learning is complete, teachers and students are missing out on the benefits of one of the most effective strategies for improving student learning”. This doesn't mean that we should be setting practice exams instead of teaching - although practice exams are an indispensible study strategy. Rather, it means that we should use quizzes regularly to help students embed key information. This could be quotations in English, key terms in Science, dates in History or fundamental processes in Maths. Quizzing is an effective strategy across the curriculum. I've written a longer post on the efficacy of practice testing here and I don't want to repeat material. This is what 'Strengthening the Student Toolbox' says which 'Inexpensive Techniques to Improve Education' doesn't:
The second really effective strategy is distributed practice. Again, I have written about this elsewhere and won't repeat myself here. I used the analogy of myself playing golf in my previous post. Dunlosky uses the more student-relevant analogy of video games: “when playing video games, students see their abilities and skills improve dramatically over time in large part because they keep coming back to play the game in a distributed fashion”. We need to try and encourage this model in lessons, mainly through returning throughout a year to topics studied earlier in the course. Doing so will make it more likely that students will retain key information when they come to revising for their exams. Similarly, we should try in lessons to advise students on how they should space their revision in our subjects. For exampe, rather than encouraging students to do one hour a day of English revision ahead of their GCSE exam, I should encourage them to follow a more specific timetable that looks something like this: Monday: Quiz on Macbeth quotations - Practice essay on Unseen Poetry - Quiz on Macbeth. Tuesday: Test on themes from poetry anthology - Practice response to extract from Macbeth - Quiz on poetic techniques. Wednesday: Quiz on Jane Eyre quotations - Practice respons to poetry anthology question - Quiz on Jane Eyre quotations. Thursday: Quiz on An Inspector Calls quotations - Practice response on Jane Eyre - Quiz on An Inspector Calls quotations. Friday: Practice An Inspector Calls Essay.
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This article was put together by The Sutton Trust. It is a huge review of decades of educational research. If you want to read the whole report, scroll to the bottom of the page where you can download it. The review set out to address three apparently simple questions:
Having looked at decades of research done in univerisites and schools and focusing on educational effectiveness research, intervention studies and cognitive science, the authors identified six components of great teaching, about which they say: "This should be seen as offering a ‘starter kit’ for thinking about effective pedagogy. Good quality teaching will likely involve a combination of these attributes manifested at different times; the very best teachers are those that demonstrate all of these features”. This point, I think, captures our intuitive idea that there is more than one way of being a great teacher. 1. (Pedagogical) content knowledge (Strong evidence of impact on student outcomes) The most effective teachers have deep knowledge of the subjects they teach: this is especially true of teachers of maths, English and science. Coe et al explain: "As well as a strong understanding of the material being taught, teachers must also understand the ways students think about the content, be able to evaluate the thinking behind students’ own methods, and identify students’ common misconceptions". On this, I've included a link below to a grid that I use when planning that encourages me to think about potential misconceptions, keywords and also to plan the key questions. Feel free to have a look and use if it's helpful. 2. Quality of instruction (Strong evidence of impact on student outcomes) Quality of instruction is at the heart of all frameworks of teaching effectiveness. Key elements such as effective questioning and use of assessment are found in all of them. Specific practices like the need to review previous learning, provide models for the kinds of responses students are required to produce, provide adequate time for practice to embed skills securely and scaffold new learning are also elements of high quality instruction. 3. Classroom climate (Moderate evidence of impact on student outcomes) Again, the empirically based frameworks all include something on classroom climate, though this heading may cover a range of aspects of teaching. Some emphasise the quality of relationships and interactions between teachers and students. Also under this heading may come teacher expectations: the need to create a classroom environment that is constantly demanding more and never satisfied, but still affirming to students’ self-worth and not undermining their feelings of self-efficacy. Promotion of different kinds of motivational goals may also fit here, as may the different attributions teachers make and encourage for success and failure (e.g. fixed versus growth mindset, attributions to effort and strategy rather than ability or luck). Related to this is the valuing and promotion of resilience to failure (grit). 4. Classroom management (Moderate evidence of impact on student outcomes) All the empirically based frameworks include some element of classroom management. A teacher’s abilities to make efficient use of lesson time, to coordinate classroom resources and space, and to manage students’ behaviour with clear rules that are consistently enforced, are all relevant to maximising the learning that can take place. These factors are mostly not directly related to learning; they are necessary hygiene factors to allow learning, rather than direct components of it. 5. Teacher beliefs (Some evidence of impact on student outcomes) The idea that it matters why teachers adopt particular practices, the purposes they aim to achieve, their theories about what learning is and how it happens and their conceptual models of the nature and role of teaching in the learning process all seem to be important. Although the evidence to support this claim is not unequivocal, it seems strong enough to include it at this stage. 6. Professional behaviours (Some evidence of impact on student outcomes) It seems appropriate to include a final heading that captures some broader aspects of professional behaviour. Danielson’s Framework for Teaching includes elements such as reflecting on and developing professional practice, supporting colleagues, and liaising and communicating with stakeholders such as parents.
Interestingly, the Sutton Trust report also provides a list of strategies that, despite frequent advocacy, lack a solid evidence base. There may be some controversy here. I'll list them with quotations but without comment. Feel free to respond in the comments box below. Again, the whole report is attached at the bottom of the page if you'd like to read it. Things That Don’t Work: Allow learners to discover key ideas for themselves Enthusiasm for ‘discovery learning’ is not supported by research evidence, which broadly favours direct instruction (Kirschner et al, 2006). Although learners do need to build new understanding on what they already know, if teachers want them to learn new ideas, knowledge or methods they need to teach them directly. Group learners by ability Evidence on the effects of grouping by ability, either by allocating students to different classes, or to within-class groups, suggests that it makes very little difference to learning outcomes (Higgins et al, 2014). Although ability grouping can in theory allow teachers to target a narrower range of pace and content of lessons, it can also create an exaggerated sense of within-group homogeneity and between-group heterogeneity in the teacher’s mind (Stipek, 2010). This can result in teachers failing to make necessary accommodations for the range of different needs within a supposedly homogeneous ‘ability’ group, and over-doing their accommodations for different groups, going too fast with the high-ability groups and too slow with the low. Encourage re-reading and highlighting to memorise key ideas This finding has already been mentioned in summarising the review by Dunlosky et al (2013). Re-reading and highlighting are among the commonest and apparently most obvious ways to memorise or revise material. They also give a satisfying – but deceptive – feeling of fluency and familiarity with the material (Brown et al, 2014). However, a range of studies have shown that testing yourself, trying to generate answers, and deliberately creating intervals between study to allow forgetting, are all more effective approaches. Ensure learners are always active, rather than listening passively, if you want them to remember This claim is commonly presented in the form of a ‘learning pyramid’ which shows precise percentages of material that will be retained when different levels of activity are employed. These percentages have no empirical basis and are pure fiction. 'Memory is the residue of thought' (Willingham, 2008), so if you want students to remember something you have to get them to think about it. This might be achieved by being ‘active’ or ‘passive’”.
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