Learning and Teaching in Secondary Schools

Viv Ellis, Viv Ellis

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781446293591
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Secondary Education

Linked to the new Teachers? Standards, this is an essential text for all secondary trainees and PGCE students, training at an ITT institution or in a school. The text covers all fundamental issues for learning and teaching in secondary schools. It guides trainee teachers through the professional attributes, skills and knowledge they need, focusing on a range of key topics and summarising important educational research. It examines the curriculum, planning, assessing and SEN and explores EAL, equality and diversity and pastoral care. A chapter is included to help support students in their Masters level work at PGCE and throughout, interactive activities make essential links between theory and practice. In all chapters, practical examples demonstrates how all aspects relate to the classroom.

About the Achieving QTS Series

All the books in this successful series support trainees through their initial teacher training and guide them in the acquisition of their subject knowledge, understanding and classroom practice. All new titles within the series are linked to the 2012 Teachers? Standards adn consider the impact of key government initiatives.

Viv Ellis is Professor of Head of Education at Brunel University in London, UK, and a Visiting Professor at Bergen University College in Norway.

PART 1 PROFESSIONAL ATTRIBUTES AND LEARNING

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1

Introduction

Viv Ellis

This book was written for anyone undertaking a course of training leading to qualification as a school teacher in the secondary (11–18) phase. If this applies to you, then you may be registered at a university or college on an undergraduate degree programme with QTS, you may be taking a Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course, or you may be following the new ‘School Direct’ programme led by one of the outstanding new Teaching Schools in England. Whatever the particular route, you will be based in schools for most of your time and working with tutors and mentors towards the same goal: becoming an effective new teacher and achieving the Teachers’ Standards. This book offers you useful guidance and support during your initial teacher education and shows how the information and guidance it provides relate to the Teachers’ Standards and the relevant educational research and inspection evidence.

The title of this book is Learning and Teaching in Secondary Schools. Our intention here is to emphasise the learning for two reasons: first, to acknowledge that this is what you – the trainee teacher – will be engaged in for a significant period and with some intensity. For this reason, the book addresses you directly, provides some classroom-based illustrations, and offers practical and reflective tasks and further reading to consolidate your understanding. The second reason is that fostering, developing, assessing, planning for and managing student learning is your primary role as a teacher. This may sound obvious but very often trainee teachers will initially focus on the performance aspects of teaching – how teachers look, behave and sound – rather than how and what their students are learning. We hope you will find it reassuring when we say that very good teachers do not need to be extrovert or overtly ‘charismatic’ performers; very good teachers listen to students carefully, think about what they see, hear and read analytically and treat students and colleagues with respect and sensitivity.

Learning to teach

Becoming a teacher is a rewarding, stimulating and challenging process. Do not underestimate the changes in your life and circumstances that may occur during this process.

This is not to say that undertaking a teacher training course will inevitably lead to divorce, stress-related illness or the decision to keep a small-holding on Skye. It is fair to say, however, that the process of becoming a teacher involves personal, intellectual and professional transformation and that, for many trainees, it requires them to consider what is important and meaningful to them for the first time. As a consequence, most trainees feel that – at the end of their initial training – not only have they learned a lot about teaching and learning but they have also learned a lot about themselves. For most, this acts as confirmation of their initial desire to teach and confirms that they have entered a profession that they will find rewarding. For some, however, whether early on or at the end of the course, it will confirm that teaching is not for them. This is an important decision that carries with it no sense of failure.

One of the most interesting writers about the process of becoming a teacher is the American psychologist Seymour Sarason, and his book You Are Thinking of Teaching? is recommended as further reading at the end of this introduction. Sarason’s point is that any decision to enter the teaching profession must be an informed one: you must understand why you want to become a teacher and what it means to be a teacher (the responsibilities and the constraints):

If you conclude that teaching is for you, it should be on the basis that you know who and what you are, the ways in which you will be challenged, and that you are prepared to be other than a silent, passive participant in the socially fateful and crucial effort to improve our schools; that is, the particular school or schools in which you work.

(Sarason 1993, p. 4)

In addition to knowing why you want to become a teacher and that you understand its active and socially important role, Sarason also draws attention to the ‘political’ dimension of teaching, with which you might feel uncomfortable. Couched in the following terms, however, it is difficult to disagree with the view that teachers effect this kind of change:

It is unfair and unrealistic to expect teachers to change society. It is not unfair or unrealistic to expect teachers to change, in part if not wholly, the conditions in which they and their students experience personal and intellectual growth.

(ibid., p. 5)

The Teachers’ Standards recognise that this kind of change is at the heart of the teacher’s role.

The current context for teacher education and training

Teachers’ Standards

In England, the Teachers’ Standards (DfE 2012) replaced the standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), the Core professional standards previously published by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), and the General Teaching Council for England’s Code of Conduct and Practice for Registered Teachers. The standards apply to the vast majority of teachers regardless of their career stage and they define the minimum level of practice expected of trainees and teachers from the point of entry to the profession. Your initial teacher training provider will assess you against the standards in a way that is consistent with what could reasonably be expected of a trainee teacher.

The standards are presented in three parts. The preamble summarises the values and behaviour that all teachers must demonstrate throughout their careers. Part 1 comprises the Standards for Teaching. Part 2 comprises the standards for professional and personal conduct.

The preamble states:

Teachers make the education of their pupils their first concern, and are accountable for achieving the highest possible standards in work and conduct. Teachers act with honesty and integrity; have strong subject knowledge, keep their knowledge and skills as teachers up-to-date and are self-critical; forge positive professional relationships; and work with parents in the best interests of their pupils.

(DfE 2012, p. 7)

All the standards were underpinned by a document called Every Child Matters (discussed later) and the six areas of the common core of skills and knowledge for the children’s workforce. It is intended that the work of practising teachers be informed by an awareness, appropriate to their level of experience and responsibility, of legislation concerning the development and well-being of children and young people expressed in the Children Act 2004, the Disability Discrimination Acts 1995 and 2005 and associated guidance, the special educational needs provisions of the Education Act 1996 and the associated Special Educational Needs Code of Practice (DfES 2001d), the Race Relations Act 1976 as amended by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, and the guidance on safeguarding children in education (DfES 2004a). This body of legislation is referred to as appropriate in the chapters that follow; all of it emphasises the importance placed on achieving educational inclusion in practice. It is worth noting that the coalition government is reviewing the qualifications framework for teachers.

In the other countries of the UK, there are also frameworks of Standards or competencies and these are reproduced in the appendices to this book.

Every Child Matters

In 2003, the Labour government in England took a new approach to the care, education and well-being of children and young people, following the tragic death of a young girl called Victoria Climbié. Every Child Matters was published (along with the Children Act) in 2004 and represented the national strategy for professionals working together on the well-being of children and young people from birth to age 19. The intention was that organisations such as hospitals, schools, social services departments, the police and voluntary groups team up in new ways, share information and work together so that young people have the support they need to:

1. be healthy;
2. stay safe;
3. enjoy and achieve;
4. make a positive contribution;
5. achieve economic well-being.

Together, these statements have become known as the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda.

Secondary National Strategy

The Secondary National Strategy was also a key lever for the reform of teaching by the Labour government in England. There were six strands in the Strategy. These were:

1. English (including literacy across the curriculum);
2. Mathematics (including numeracy across the curriculum);
3. Science;
4. ICT (Information and Communications Technology);
5. Foundation subjects;
6. Behaviour and attendance.

The English and mathematics strands of the Secondary National Strategy were introduced to all schools in England in 2001 with science, foundation subjects and ICT following in 2002 and behaviour and attendance in 2003. The aim of the Strategy was to raise standards by strengthening teaching and learning across the curriculum. Literacy was one of the cross-curricular elements of the Strategy. Its main principles – derived from the Key Stage 3 strategy that came before it – were concerned with improving learning and teaching in the classroom and can be summarised as follows.

Set high expectations and give every learner confidence they can succeed

• Demonstrate a commitment to every learner’s success, making them feel included, valued and secure.
• Raise learners’ aspirations and the effort they put into learning and engage, where appropriate, the active support of parents or carers.

Establish what learners already know and build on it

• Set clear and appropriate learning goals, explain them, and make every learning experience count.
• Create secure foundations for subsequent learning.

Structure and pace the learning experience to make it challenging and enjoyable

• Use teaching methods that reflect the material to be learned, match the maturity of the learners and their learning preferences, and involve high levels of time on task.
• Make creative use of the range of learning opportunities available, within and beyond the classroom, including e-learning.

Inspire learning through passion for the subject

• Bring the subject alive.
• Make it relevant to learners’ wider goals and concerns.

Make individuals active partners in their learning

• Build respectful teacher/learner relationships that take learners’ views and experience fully into account as well as data on their performance.
• Use assessment for learning to help learners assess their work, reflect on how they learn, and inform subsequent planning and practice.

Develop learning skills and personal qualities

• Develop the ability of learners to think systematically, manage information, learn from others and help others learn.
• Promote learners’ confidence, self-discipline and an understanding of the learning process.

The Secondary Strategy also emphasised the personalisation of learning, specifically by encouraging:

• exciting whole-class teaching, which gets the best from every child;
• extra small group or one-to-one tuition for those who need it, not as a substitute for excellent whole-class teaching but as an integral part of the child’s learning;
• innovative use of ICT, both in the classroom and linking the classroom and the home.

Although the contract for the Secondary National Strategy was not renewed in 2010, it is expected that these principles will be embedded into secondary school practice.

The 14–19 curriculum

At the time of preparing the fifth edition of this book, proposals were once again under review regarding the 14–19 curriculum. The balance of subjects and modes of assessment for students in this age range have been a bone of contention for some time (see Chapter 11). There is potential here for radical change that may have a profound impact upon the way we organise our schools and colleges. But then again…

How to use this book

The chapters in this book are presented in what we hope is a logical sequence. The reality, of course, is that not all of you and not all of your courses will necessarily progress through the same sequence.

The chapters in the book are arranged into four parts:

1. Professional attributes and learning
2. Professional skills: planning and assessing learning
3. Professional knowledge: across the curriculum
4. Professional knowledge: inclusion

Each chapter is prefaced by a short statement that references the content of the chapter to the Teachers’ Standards. Because of the nature of the Standards, you will see them repeated in a number of chapters. This is the nature of teaching and of learning to teach: the Standards are not activities that can be atomised or isolated within the whole of what teachers really do in classrooms.

In the classroom

Some chapters also contain vignettes that illustrate aspects of the content of the chapter in a classroom context. These are introduced by the heading ‘In the classroom’. In Chapter 6, for example, some of the principles of formative assessment are illustrated in a dialogue between teacher and student. The classroom stories are not meant to be exemplary templates or models to be imitated, however. They are examples of individual cases and fully enmes...