Stuart Physics

For some time now I have been pondering over several related issues, and coming to some conclusions about the directions in which I think there ought to be travel.  Part of this is related to the reading I did around professionalism for my PhD as well as related topics of agency and autonomy.  Another is coming to the conclusion that the importance of a teacher’s capacity to explain concepts and topics is undervalued and given insufficient prominence in initial teacher education (ITE), career-long professional learning (CLPL), or in resource development.  Finally, there is the issue of curriculum making, both in terms of the development of national curriculum frameworks and local classroom curriculum and the related schemes of work, teaching resources, and pedagogical decision-making by teachers.  In this blog I would at least like to surface some of my thinking, and I am very happy to discuss things further with anyone who would like to engage with me.  Maybe then we might come to some firmer conclusions, as I am convinced it is only through discussion of such issues by people with different perspectives will significant progress be made, both in terms of national policymaking and in the day-to-day practices of teachers.

I will explore different issues in each of a series of related blogs.  First, I turn to explanations.

Explanations

Having been impressed with Ros Atkin’s ‘explainers’ on the BBC for some time I decided to take his book (Atkins, 2023) as some recent holiday reading.  I normally access his explainers through Twitter and have always been surprised and somewhat annoyed that the BBC often seemed to have hidden them away in some of its more obscure corners such as the BBC World Service rather than devote time to them on their more mainstream UK programming.  I suspect that many of the UK population would benefit from these concise explanations of important current topics.  The book provides a good description of Ros’s method of crafting a good explanation.  It immediately struck me that time-poor teachers never have the time to devote to the research and honing of the message he describes.  I thought it also interesting that he had seemed to have hit upon, described and addressed many of the aspects of cognitive load theory as he had developed his strategies and tactics to develop a clear concise explanation fit for its likely audience.  Recently I have had conversations with several teachers and teacher educators who have had similar thoughts about the need to increase our emphasis on the crafting of good explanations, orally and in written materials. 

Textbooks

In the past, textbooks gave a ready supply of explanations for any given topic.  Unfortunately, in recent years, there has been a tendency for teachers to move away from using textbooks to teacher prepared booklets and other resources.  When I was teaching this was the case for me too.  I am using the term ‘textbook’ somewhat as a catch-all term as these can be electronic as well as hardcopy and can take the form of workbooks, books of problems and other resources too.  I think this trend has been driven by both dwindling budgets making it difficult for teachers to purchase class sets of textbooks but also a widespread and I think misguided understanding of what personalisation for learners means.  I also think this trend has been detrimental for several reasons.  First and foremost, this trend has significantly increased teacher workload with much ‘reinventing wheels’ going on as many teachers work in parallel producing similar materials for similar purposes the length and breadth of the country.  This is highly inefficient and takes time away from teachers focusing on improving teaching and learning, including an opportunity to focus on crafting good explanations.  Secondly, it is something of a truism that not all teachers can be excellent resource developers just as not all chefs are worthy of a Michelin star, or not all footballers are good enough to play in the Premier League.  It follows that the resources being used by many learners are not as high-quality as ought to be the case, including the explanations of important content.  I suspect that many teachers will be making do with resources that are ‘just good enough’, possibly repeatedly for many years without significant improvement, as that is all they have had the time and energy to produce.  I know I felt like that many times during my teaching career.  With teachers of the same subject all using slightly different materials the efficacy and opportunities for collaborative working are diminished. If teachers were to use common core resources this would provide a focus for collaboration and mutual support.

I remember many years ago hearing a talk by a lecturer from the Open University talking about the development of their books and resources for physics students.  This was before the internet as we know it today.  Their estimate, and I suspect it was a conservative one, was that it took ten hours to prepare one hour of teaching material.  When I helped write Higher physics examination papers, I worked as one of a team of six which would typically take one hour to vet and suggest amendments for every ten marks of examination questions written by the setter, and that process was gone through twice at a similar rate at meetings several weeks apart.  I know that the writing of high-quality materials which actually say what you intend them to say is a non-trivial task.  Unfortunately, this means that many of the textbooks available to teachers are less good than ought to be the case.  This may also be a contributory factor to the decline in use of textbooks I have observed.  Many textbooks are now ‘syllabus specific’ rather than more generic and covering the core knowledge of a subject area.  Publishers therefore engage authors to write the textbooks on short timescales often before a new syllabus has been finalised by the curriculum or assessment body responsible for the syllabus.  An increasing proportion of textbooks also take a revision guide format.  It is not a recipe for well-considered materials.  Just as I found when working in teams producing examination papers, good materials benefit from the involvement of a range of people with relevant knowledge and perspectives.  Any such writing team must of course include teachers with direct experience of the needs of learners but can also benefit from those who have developed wider expertise in pedagogy, assessment, curriculum-making and of course the writing, graphic design and publishing process itself.

Some of the textbooks which were around when I began my teaching career came with a Teacher’s Guide which provided the rationale for the content of the pupils’ textbook as well as guidance on its use.  This was a valuable and easily accessible source of professional learning for teachers.  It was a way for the authors of the textbooks to make some of their tacit knowledge visible to other teachers.  This is an effective way for the experienced and knowledgeable to share important knowledge with the more inexperienced and less knowledgeable.  In teacher education, both initial and career-long, I think that not enough emphasis is probably placed on facilitating knowledgeable, experienced teachers making their tacit knowledge visible to others by them modelling their behaviours and through good opportunities for peer observation, instructional coaching and lesson study.  The low priority given to subject-specific professional learning and networked learning communities by education leaders is likely to hamper this.  

Unfortunately, I fear that some will argue that the widespread use of common resources will decrease teacher autonomy and their ability to tailor their teaching to the needs of their learners.  With well designed textbooks and other resources I do not see this as being the case.  Having good resources which are well designed for learners for teachers to then use as a starting point will free up time for teachers to display their agency in supporting the needs of their learners, something more important than teachers having autonomy over what they can do.  It may also free up some time for teachers to collaborate with colleagues on the use of these common resources and so facilitate a more effective community of practice better able to engage in practitioner enquiry to further improve practices using the resources.

To enable the development of good quality textbooks and other teaching and learning resources we need some curriculum stability and agreement about the big ideas on which the curriculum in any given subject area ought to be based.  The learned societies in the sciences have been working on a set of principles to be used by curriculum developers in their subjects (RSB, 2021; RSC, 2020).  All subjects have powerful enabling knowledge which gives a good foundation on which further study can be built firmly, and of which it is reasonable to expect citizens to know if they are to engage effectively in society.  If there was good agreement about this, it would make the development of resources much easier and more worthwhile as well as ensuring that learners build knowledge more effectively. 

The next blog I will explore how we might develop more effective curricula and teaching resources.

References

Atkins, R. (2023). The Art of Explanation. Wildfire.

RSB. (2021). Evolving 5-19 Biology: recommendations and framework for 5-19 biology curricula. https://www.rsb.org.uk/policy/education-policy/curriculum

RSC. (2020). The elements of a successful chemistry curriculum: The Royal Society of Chemistry’s vision for 11-19 chemistry education. https://www.rsc.org/globalassets/22-new-perspectives/talent/chemistry-curriculum-framework/chemistry-curriculum-brochure.pdf