Professional Studies in the Primary School

Thinking Beyond the Standards

Eve English, Lynn Newton

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136765315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Full of school-based examples supplied by practicing teachers, this accessible text:

• encourages trainees to "think beyond the standards"
• promotes the development of reflective, creative and imaginative teaching skills
• links theory with practice to show students how to apply these skills
• leads the reader through the key issues and concepts in general professional practice.

Written specifically for Professional Studies modules in primary education, this book will guide trainees in the early stages of their careers to become the imaginative teachers we need in our primary schools.

CHAPTER

1

Teachers as professionals: the background

Eve English

Introduction

Welcome to the first stage of your teaching career. You will be very well aware that you have chosen a profession that seems to be subject to constant change and is forever in the media spotlight. It is certainly a challenging career, demanding your time and energy, but, at the same time, very rewarding. You have the opportunity to make a difference to children's lives; and you only have to think back to the important teachers in your own school education to realise that good teachers are not forgotten.

So where do you fit in? This first chapter will place you as a trainee teacher in the current educational climate. It will consider recent developments and initiatives in terms of the curriculum and organisation of schools. It is important that you have an understanding of what has led up to the curriculum that you will be required to teach. This understanding will help you reflect on your own teaching and make decisions about the effectiveness of new initiatives. Changes have not only taken place in schools, of course; the actual training of teachers has also been subject to upheaval, and this will also be discussed.

Primary education — recent developments

The 1988 Education Reform Act brought about far-reaching changes in education. The advent of the National Curriculum and the monitoring and assessment of that Curriculum was part of the Act. When you, as a trainee teacher, go in to schools, first as an observer and later as a fully fledged teacher, you will be prepared for and familiar with the requirements and the structure of the Curriculum, but for teachers in 1988 the Curriculum (both content and delivery) was changed in a way that they could never have imagined. Up to this point teachers had decided what they were going to teach and how they were going to teach it. The content of the curriculum and the style in which it was delivered differed from school to school, and often from class to class. It was not uncommon for Mrs A. to be teaching a child-centred curriculum in one classroom — attempting to address the needs of all the individual pupils but doing little direct teaching — while next door Mr B. was delivering very formal, undifferentiated lessons where all teaching consisted of whole-class lessons. Very often head teachers would not intervene in the teaching process and formal planning and assessment were minimal. While teachers were influenced by research, courses and advice from the local education authorities, in the end the responsibility for the teaching of pupils in a particular class belonged to the teacher. This all changed very dramatically with the introduction of the National Curriculum. The ‘what to teach’ was determined by the National Curriculum; and the ‘how to teach’ was later prescribed by the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) (DfEE 1998a) and the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) (DfEE 1998b).

What led to these changes? Concerns about standards in education and accountability were, and continue to be, the major factors underpinning the changes. You will be very aware that the media, as well as employers, educationists and taxpayers, have an interest in standards. Every year, in August, the newspapers are full of headlines about the supposed decline in A-level standards. This concern begins much earlier in the education process with the publication in newspapers of Key Stage 2 Standard Assessment Task (SATs) results, comparing the results of different schools and LEAs.

Throughout the 1970s there was much debate surrounding standards and accountability and this came to a head with the Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan's speech to Ruskin College Oxford in 1976 when he spoke of ‘core curriculum subjects’, ‘national standards’ and ‘the role of the inspectorate’. The ‘Great Debate’ followed Callaghan's speech, resulting in the publication of the Green Paper (DES 1977). This focused on a need for a national core curriculum and also for schools to become more accountable. The 1988 Education Reform Act pulled together the intense debate that took place throughout the 1980s, following the Ruskin speech and the Green Paper, and the National Curriculum was born. The National Curriculum was introduced gradually from 1989 and was revised in 1995 and again in 2000. The NLS was implemented in 1998 and the NNS in 1999. These two strategies are not statutory but are strongly recommended.

You need to make yourself familiar with the structure and content of the National Curriculum. But first let us think of the main aims of education. Before we look at the educational aims as set out in the National Curriculum, try the first activity.

Activity 1.1

What would you consider to be the main aims of education in the twenty-first century?

How do your aims compare with those stated in the most recent National Curriculum (DfEE/QCA 1999) orders?:

Aim 1: The school curriculum should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve.

Aim 2: The school curriculum should aim to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare all pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life.

(DfEE and QCA 1999: 11)

Within those broad aims there are requirements that schools should encourage pupils' progress through a stimulating curriculum that equips them with the ‘essential learning skills of literacy, numeracy, and information and communication technology, and promote an enquiring mind and capacity to think rationally’ (ibid.: 11). The two aims reflect section 351 of the Education Act 1996 which requires that:

all maintained schools provide a balanced and broadly based curriculum that:

• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society;
• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life.

(ibid.: 12)

The four main purposes of the National Curriculum are:

• to establish entitlement for all pupils
• to establish standards
• to promote continuity and coherence; and
• to promote public understanding.

Activity 1.2

Think about the purposes described above and consider how, before the National Curriculum, there might have been problems in ensuring that all pupils had an appropriate curriculum.

The ‘broad and balanced’ nature of the curriculum has been questioned of late and new documentation is seeking to address concerns (see below). But, first of all, it is important that you find your way around the National Curriculum.

Structure and organisation of the National Curriculum

The National Curriculum divides schooling into key stages. In primary schools, Key Stage 1 relates to Years 1 and 2 while Key Stage 2 consists of Years 3 to 6. The Reception year is now part of the Foundation Stage, which has its own curriculum — Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage (QCA/DfEE 2000) — and covers ages 3 to 5.

For Key Stages 1 and 2 there are ten subjects. Three of these are core subjects (English, Maths and Science) and seven are foundation subjects (Design & Technology, Information & Communication Technology, History, Geography, Art & Design, Music, and Physical Education). In Wales, where the language of instruction in schools is Welsh, Welsh itself is also a core subject. In addition, all schools are required to teach Religious Education according to a locally agreed curriculum. For each core and foundation subject, and for each key stage, there are programmes of study. These set out the content, skills and processes that pupils should be taught. Attainment targets (ATs) set out the ‘knowledge, skills and understanding that pupils of different abilities and maturities are expected to have by the end of each key stage’ (DfEE and QCA 1999, Attainment Targets: 1). To sum up, the programmes of study set out what is to be taught while the attainment targets assess that learning. ATs consist of level descriptors of increasing difficulty and teachers use these to describe their pupils' performance. At Key Stage 1 the majority of pupils are expected to work within levels 1 to 3 while at Key Stage 2 the levels are 2 to 5. The same levels are used in the Standard Assessment Tasks that pupils take at the end of the key stages.

Activity 1.3

(This activity is designed to help you find your way around the National Curriculum.)

Observe a lesson in school. Is the lesson a core or foundation subject?

Discuss with the teacher the learning objective of the lesson.

Find, in the subject's programme of study, the content to which the learning objective relates.

The National Literacy Strategy

The National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was introduced into schools in September 1998. The Strategy followed a pilot Literacy Project that involved 18 local education authorities during the years 1997 and 1998. While the NLS is not statutory, it is highly recommended, and it was initially expected that the approach and content of the NLS would be adopted by all primary schools unless they could demonstrate that end-of-key-stage SAT results demonstrated that existing arrangements were at least as effective. There is more flexibility now, but in September 1998 schools were expected to provide a dedicated, continuous hour of literacy teaching each day in all classes. The NLS Framework for teaching (DfEE 1998a) gives very clear directions on how the Literacy Hour is to be divided up into whole-class shared reading and writing, guided and independent work and a plenary session. The content, as well as the structure, of the NLS is very prescriptive. The teaching objectives are set out year by year and, from Year 1 onwards, term by term. The introduction to the Framework describes a ‘searchlight’ approach (DfEE 1998a: 3) to the teaching of literacy based on an interactionist approach (see Stanovich and Stanovich 1995) where successful readers are seen as those who use as many strategies as possible, including knowledge of phonics, word recognition, grammar and context.

If class teachers' autonomy was threatened by the National Curriculum then the even more prescriptive National Literacy Strategy was quite alarming to many. Beard (1999) produced a rationale that considered the theoretical underpinning to the NLS, but many educational researchers were as critical of the strategy as were classroom teachers. The fact that speaking and listening were hardly addressed was a major criticism as was the reduced level of interaction between teacher and pupil that resulted as teachers produced ‘pacey’ lessons to meet the required objectives (English et al. 2003). Cajkler (1999) was also very critical of the misconceptions contained in the NLS. The title of his paper (‘Misconceptions in the NLS: National Literacy Strategy or No Linguistic Sense?’) says it all.

The NLS has addressed the lack of speaking and listening skills by producing new documentation, Speaking, Listening and Learning: Working with Children in Key Stages 1 and 2 (DfES/QCA 2003), and the National Primary Strategy (DfES 2003, see below ‘Excellence and enjoyment: a strategy for primary schools’) is encouraging schools to take ownership of the curriculum and be more creative. Many schools, as a result, are moving away from the rigid structure of the NLS.

Activity 1.4

Look at page 9 of the NLS Framework (DfEE 1998a) which sets out the structure of the NLS. Compare this structure with the way in which you have seen literacy teaching organised in schools.

The National Numeracy Strategy

The National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) was launched in 1998 and formally implemented in schools in September 1999. As with the NLS it is very prescriptive and there is a framework that sets out teaching objectives for each year of primary schooling from Reception to Year 6. Many skills have been introduced at an earlier age than was previously the case. A typical daily numeracy lesson uses a three-part structure, starting with oral work and mental calculation using whole-class teaching. The main part of the lesson is used for teaching new topics or consolidating previous work. The final plenary session involves the whole class and allows the teacher to draw together what has been learned. Again, as was the case with the introduction of the NLS, a national training programme was set up and run at a local level by newly appointed co-ordinators using videos showing good practice. It has been claimed by the government that the NNS has been an undisputed success. This has been questioned by researchers (e.g. Brown et al. 2003).

Curriculum guidance for the Foundation S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Teachers as professionals: the background
• Chapter 2: The reflective practitioner
• Chapter 3: Teachers and the law
• Chapter 4: Teaching and learning in the primary school
• Chapter 5: Planning for teaching and learning
• Chapter 6: Monitoring and assessing learning
• Chapter 7: Behaviour management
• Chapter 8: Classroom approaches and organisation
• Chapter 9: The individual in the primary classroom
• Chapter 10: Different needs and different responses
• Chapter 11: Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship
• Chapter 12: The way ahead
• Index