Progress Plain and Simple

What Every Teacher Needs To Know About Improving Pupil Progress

Michael Harpham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000037821
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Secondary Education

What is progress in learning? How do we see progress being made in a lesson? This book offers a fresh perspective on teaching, learning and progress in the classroom. Written by an experienced teacher and school leader, Michael Harpham, it explores the different ways in which progress can be made in the classroom and how it can be more effectively delivered, identified, evidenced, measured and assessed.

The book provides an overview of progress in schools for both teachers and school leaders, including what is meant by progress and what it looks like in lessons, as well as its implications on assessment, leadership, and internal and external school evaluation. It offers over thirty situation-driven strategies and activities to help develop and deliver progress in and beyond the classroom, focussing on five measures:

• 
  
  

• Skills

• 
  
  

• Knowledge

• 
  
  

• Accuracy

• 
  
  

• Resilience

• 
  
  

• Independent learning

Full of tips to help improve progress in schools, this is essential reading for all teachers, school leaders and parents.

I	Progress: just before you enter the classroom – a little background

1	Progress: introduction

Introduction

When you were a pupil, who were the teachers you remember as making a positive difference to you and your learning? What did they do that was different, special and memorable? Was it a specific lesson, a key moment when the penny dropped, or a life-changing piece of advice? Either way, I am guessing that you will be thinking of those teachers now and hazard an even bigger guess that you remember their names, who they are and what they said and did.

This is the impact that those moments of great teaching have on all of us; moments that are life-changing, inspirational and memorable. This is the goal of this book. To help create more opportunities in lessons where every teacher and every pupil in every school experience magical moments of learning that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

There is a vast amount of research available about progress, attainment and achievement in schools. Much of it is complex, theoretical, academic or written with a data-proficient professional in mind, all of which is valid. However, the people who really matter and can make the most difference in helping a pupil achieve their potential are the teachers, the parents, the school leaders and not least, the pupils themselves. Thus, in writing this book, it was important for me to write in a way that everyone can access and understand. This book therefore offers a plain and simple look at how learning progresses in the classroom and, as a result, helps everyone involved in helping pupils learn have clearer, more effective conversations about the progress.

Why this book is needed

Even after millennia of research into education, we appear to be no nearer finding the holy grail of education. We still do not appear to have the magic formula that teachers can use in lessons and ensure that all their pupils learn everything they’re taught and pass every exam they take with flying colours.

With progress being the measure of success for school effectiveness (Reynolds et al., 2014), until such a formula is found, teachers and schools must look to themselves and others for ideas and answers. This book offers a fresh, current perspective on a universal, age-old theme, by looking at progress in education today; what it looks like, what the current educational themes and variations are in relation to progress and what they mean for pupils, teachers, school leaders and parents.

Whilst there is much written about progress in various shapes and forms, there doesn’t appear to be a book that brings the diverse thoughts, writings and musings on progress together.

This book attempts to bring the most current thoughts and writings around progress in schools together and offer some further clarity on it.

Further, just like it is important for any established company to regularly review and update its policies, so that they know what they are doing is best practice and fit-for-purpose, I think it is important to do the same by writing this book, reviewing and updating our educational practice around the most important measure of success for any educational establishment – the progress of its pupils.

Last, but not least, in 2016, teachers in the UK were working on average 52.6 hours a week, compared to 45.9 hours a week in 2013, an increase of 15% (Higton, 2016). In addition, 93% of respondents said that workload was at least a fairly serious problem, with over half (52%) saying it was a very serious problem. I have no reason to believe this issue has gone away since then. If this book helps (in)experienced teachers and school leaders save a few hours of additional work by being a go-to book for ideas, advice and guidance that they know will work, then my work here is more than justified.

Our experience of progress in school

When interviewing potential teachers and leaders, I have a favourite question to ask: “I tend to walk around school and look in on lessons to see what learning is taking place. If I walked into one of your lessons, how would I see progress being made?”

A reasonable question I hear you think.

Indeed, I think so too. However, rarely do I hear an answer that is as complete, as accurate or as clear as it could be.

When I was at school in the 1970s, teachers taught, and pupils learnt. If the pupils did well, that was great. If they didn’t, they didn’t. Such was the education system then, and how it had been for decades before.

In the late 1970s and 1980s with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher and her conservative government, a new order was brought into education. Within two decades and an unprecedented centralisation of power and control, the government increased their grip on education with far more measurement and accountability of schools.

Since then, and with little changed by subsequent governments, the currency of accountability and target-setting in education is progress, especially, the quantitative currency of numbers, levels, test scores and grades.

The work of the teacher, school leader and headteacher today only has currency and validity if the language has a smattering of numbers; preferably upwardly mobile numbers.

The purpose of this book, in response to Biesta’s excellent and still relevant challenge to schools today (Biesta, 2008), is to re-find our enjoyment, awe and wonder in teaching and learning; provide a “good” education for all our young people that stacks up as “effective”; and remind ourselves that education is literally a wonder-ful journey to be experienced, not just a profit-and-loss balance sheet to be justified.

In schools today, we are clear about three things: teaching is still the largest influence on a pupil making progress (Coates, 2015, p.84), the most important influence on a pupil’s progress is the quality of the teacher (Lenon, 2017, p.55), and there is a marked difference between poor and great teaching (Slater, Davies and Burgess, 2009).

Thus, the focus of this book: progress plain and simple.

I wish I’d had this book as a new teacher to give me easy-to-use ideas and strategies that worked. I wish I’d had a book like this as a new head of department and senior leader to help me get the best from my team. I wish my parents had had a book like this to help them support me, my brother and sister with our education.

This book then is for teachers. It offers an alternative perspective on teaching, learning and progress. I hope, as a result of this book, both experienced and inexperienced teachers can more easily recognise and celebrate those wonderful, fabulous moments in their lessons when we see pupils “getting it”, when the penny drops, when the lightbulb comes on and when we explicitly see progress being made.

This is a book for school leaders. Almost every school leader today operates in a world where data is king. However, data comes from assessments: tests of teaching and learning. More testing creating more numbers will not necessarily create more learning and see more progress being made. Only improvements in teaching and learning will do this.

This book seeks to help school leaders more effectively identify and address issues in the progress of teaching and learning. In reading this book, I hope, as a result, that the learning walks, book scrutinies and general monitoring of school life more effectively enable school leaders to see at a glance the progress being made in their school.

This book is also for parents because much of what they hear from schools, the government or the media about progress can be almost impossible to connect with their own experience of school or their own daily experience of their child (Hattie, 2009). I hope in reading this book, parents come to know and understand a little more of what teachers are talking about, in real language, in real life, and in the real world.

Features of the book and how it can be used

The first section of the book gives an overview of progress in schools, including what we mean by progress and progress over time in education. The second section is aimed at schoolteachers and leaders, offering over 30 strategies and activities to help develop and deliver progress in the classroom. These strategies and activities a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Section 1 Progress: just before you enter the classroom – a little background
• Section II Progress: in and beyond the classroom
• Section III Progress across the school
• Bibliography
• Index