Developing Effective 16-19 Teaching Skills

John Butcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134334636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Developing Effective 16-19 Teaching Skills aims to enhance the competence of student- teachers in secondary schools and FE college as they confront sixteen to nineteen teaching for the first time. Based around the new standards set out in Qualifying to Teach and the Fento standards, the book will help student- teachers address the different teaching strategies needed to teach post-sixteen students. The book will also appeal to practising teachers who are looking for a fresh perspective.
Full of case studies and questions for reflection, this comprehensive textbook includes chapters on:

• sixteen to nineteen teaching contextualized
• effectiveness defined
• avoiding preconceptions sixteen to nineteen: planning for differentiation
• subject expertise
• assessment sixteen to nineteen
• active learning in the sixteen to nineteen classroom
• the importance of the tutor role in sixteen to nineteen teaching
• learning with colleagues: developing a career in sixteen to nineteen teaching.

Emphasizing the minimal attention given to sixteen to nineteen teaching in the Standards for Secondary QTS, the book is organized to prompt trainee teachers to draw more fully on sixteen to nineteen evidence and enhance their competence and confidence in teaching that phase. Trainee college teachers are also given a route to meeting the FENTO standards.

1 Introduction

I really appreciated the opportunity to talk about 16–19 teaching and learning … we haven’t had time to do that for years.

(Experienced 16–19 teacher evaluating a staff development session in school)

I certainly think a PGCE doesn’t address how to teach A level.

(Mentor)

I have not come across any particular help with post-16 teaching and I would be glad of more guidance.

(Trainee secondary teacher)

WHY THIS BOOK?

This handbook is aimed at trainee secondary and college teachers, and existing school and college teachers, interested in enhancing their competence and improving their

OBJECTIVES

Reading this chapter and engaging actively with the tasks will enable you to:

• understand the unique demands of 16–19 teaching
• reflect upon the training gap for 16–19 teachers
• plan a route map towards becoming a more effective 16–19 teacher
• consider evidence to meet the professional values dimension of secondary and FE teacher training.

confidence in teaching 16–19 students effectively. Drawing on primary and secondary research data, the book is meant for a professional audience with the intention of providing fresh insights into the skills needed to be an effective 16–19 teacher, and to stimulate thinking about effective practice in the classroom. It recognises the increasing convergence of the 14–19 curriculum across schools and FE and foreshadows any proposed link between current Standards for school teachers and those for FE teachers (Ofsted, 2003). In addition, it is hoped the book will encourage the academic and policy-making community into taking 16–19 teaching more seriously.

This book was written in recognition of the fact that 16–19 education continues to represent such a significant shift from compulsory secondary schooling in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are three distinct features to the phase:

• Different demands: most significantly for teachers, the curriculum and assessment systems on offer to 16–19 students are completely different from the National Curriculum 11–16, from SATs taken at 14 and from the group of GCSE assessments generally available at 16.
• Selective choice: the 16–19 student’s school or college is likely to have selected them for a particular academic, vocational or pre-vocational pathway.
• Lack of homogeneity: unlike pupils in 11–16 secondary education, post-16 students (as they are likely to be called, although the Qualifying to Teach Standards call them all pupils) have chosen to remain in education on completion of the compulsory phase. Staying on in full-time education is the one shared feature common to all 16–19 students. Their abilities, motivations, attitudes, aspirations, institutional contexts and personal circumstances are so varied that they should not be viewed as a homogeneous group, although they are often (wrongly) represented in policy documents as such.

So the phase is unique, and implicitly, much of the literature endorses the powerful belief in a break in schooling at 16 as a crucial rite of passage. There are examples of challenge to this mindset, especially the work of Hodgson and Spours (1997, 2003) who advocate a change to a 14–19 phase to provide comprehensive continuity and cohesion across academic and vocational curricula. However, as Hodkinson (1998) recognises, a break at 16, though problematic, is an institutional and structural reality. So this book concentrates on the need for effective teaching 16–19, while recognising an emerging notion of a 14–19 curriculum.

Importantly, this book focuses on 16–19 rather than 16–18 in recognition of the increasing number of students who seek a one-year course or programme of study to enable them to progress to the most popular two-year A level or AVCE route. These students thus spend three years in tertiary study. Such flexibility accords with current policy targets which proclaim achievement by 19 as a benchmark of success, and with the legal status attached to full-time study up to 19.

So what is it that makes particular groups of 16–19 learners really distinctive from their younger peers? How much account can a teacher take of factors affecting individual student learning like: ability, motivation, personality, attitude, age, home life, previous learning experience and learning style? This question is important, because even highly prescribed courses like A level or AVCE (see Chapter 2) allow teachers, individually or in teams, to operate professionally, to judge and evaluate what they can do to facilitate effective learning. This can include decisions made about sequencing teaching opportunities, planning individual lessons, and organising resources which maximise opportunities for effective 16–19 learning.

There are undoubtedly an increasingly broad range of students electing to stay in full-time post-compulsory education, and as a consequence teachers would be wise to seek effectiveness in a diversity of approaches to teaching and learning 16–19. Ofsted recognises that these approaches are not the same as those found effective 11–16. For example, in English:

A level represents a move into a specialist academic area from GCSE with its own methods of study and specialist terms.

(Ofsted 2001g, p. 1)

If methods of study are different across other A level subjects (and the examples in this book will seek to demonstrate this), and the same is true in other 16–19 courses, there is a need for teachers to think very carefully about how they plan, teach and assess lessons. Very particular and focused teaching strategies are required throughout 16–19 education.

The jump from a secondary phase (currently 11–16 in most local education authorities) to a tertiary phase (16–19) has been present in slightly different forms for many decades. However, the changes introduced in Curriculum 2000 (QCA 1999, DfEE 2000) have had a major impact on the work of 16–19 teachers (see next chapter). The introduction of public examinations (Advanced Subsidiary) during or at the end of Year 12 has increased immensely the pressure on many teachers, who may feel themselves to be tied on a treadmill of ‘delivering’ heavy content in order to prepare students for assessment demands. This not only saps teacher morale, it can mitigate against exciting and creative approaches to teaching.

In addition, the design of the AS level has itself been questioned. The role of January and June modules, and a new retake culture, has shaken up what previously was a stable sequence of timings in the organisation of 16–19 assessment. There are fears that, as a result of such pressures, encouragement is given to a more didactic and superficial approach to teaching and learning. Teachers are under pressure to ensure coverage of the specifications in a short timescale (one academic year, September to the end of May) for young adults who were in Year 11 only a few months before. The effect of this can be to prioritise teacher-led input. At risk can be the opening up of student engagement in the learning process.

Clearly, not all 16–19 students are engaged in ‘academic’ A level work. But for the increasing number of students opting for a vocational alternative to A level, the academicising of the vocational curriculum to resemble A levels (Phillips and Pound 2003, p. 173, and see Ofsted 2004b) can affect teachers and their approach to teaching. This is important, and is a challenge to some of the assumptions that have previously underpinned BTEC National and Advanced GNVQ teaching. Such changes will be considered in some of the examples in the book.

Talking with 16–19 practitioners it is apparent that, as a result of changes introduced in Curriculum 2000, there is a shared concern that the assessment tail is wagging the curriculum dog even more than previously. If this is true, there can be little time for teachers to reflect upon the most effective teaching and learning strategies to meet student needs. As a consequence there may be even fewer opportunities for teachers to share good practice than there were in the past. The pressures of planning, the doubling of coursework requirements (and related standardisation), the need to facilitate end tests, all contribute to reduced time and opportunity to engage in 16–19 professional development.

In addition, an increasing focus on school and college improvement over the last decade has seen far more public attention on published results by the 16–19 cohort of a school or college (usually but not exclusively A level results) in the local and national media. This scrutiny is often intense and is fanned by the publication of league tables. It can also be amplified by the associated perception that Ofsted measures the effectiveness of 16–19 teaching by an over-reliance on the unmediated statistics of A level results, with too little account taken of the value added by 16–19 education. The key question emerging from this is whether 16–19 teachers, and those who evaluate them, really know the impact of effective teaching skills on such results?

It might also be argued that, in 16–19 education, too many generalised assumptions are made by policy makers about learner needs, despite the fact that 16–19 students do not form a hermetically sealed, distinctive and identifiable group. There are simply too many factors affecting the learning style of individual 16–19 year olds to propose any kind of one-size-fits-all model. Yet the importance of effective teaching in the 16–19 classroom continues to be ignored or undervalued by policy makers. For example, the significant changes proposed in the 14–19 Green Paper (DfES 2002) made little of the teaching skills required for such changes to be effective. Similarly, the developing arguments around the benefits of a shift to a Baccalaureate style qualification 14–19 or 16–19 (as initiated in Finegold et al. 1990, and considered afresh in Phillips and Pound 2003 and DfES 2004) pay little attention to potential teaching approaches when the bounded single subject is no longer king and the 16–19 student is no longer offered a series of discrete, assessment-driven packages.

To shed fresh light on 16–19 teaching, it is worth reflecting on the range of institutional contexts in which students and teachers might engage in 16–19 education. Individual school sixth forms have their own local history and are often used in marketing literature as a flagship indicator of a school’s effectiveness. Such instances can include:

• references to A level grades achieved
• the proportion of post-16 pupils entering Higher Education
• the staying-on rate from pre-16
• aspects of school culture and ethos such as Head Boy/Girl, prefects, uniform/ non-uniform
• the range of extra-curricular activities offered.

Most, but not all, local education authorities support systems which include schools with their own sixth forms. Of course not all sixth forms match the popular media stereotype of traditional A level examination factories. There may be sixth-form centres serving the needs of a cluster of schools organised on a collegiate basis. It is noteworthy that school sixth forms dominate in some subject entries, for example providing the bulk of A level entries in Geography, five times more than sixth-form or FE colleges.

However, in an increasing number of local education authorities there may be sixth-form colleges in lieu of, or even competing with, local school sixth forms. There may be Tertiary colleges in which academic and vocational courses are offered to post-16 pupils from a number of feeder schools. There may be FE or Technical colleges offering academic provision for full-time students amongst a plethora of vocational courses, often in competition with school sixth forms. Each may brand itself in relation to the distinctive achievements of its 16–19 students.

Tasks

Interspersed throughout each of the chapters in this book will be a series of tasks encouraging the reader to reflect upon a particular aspect of 16–19 teaching. The tasks are important for two reasons. First, because they provide a prompt to engage with the ideas raised (and are therefore intended to encourage a somewhat deeper consideration of 16–19 teaching). Second, given the limited opportunities for trainee teachers, newly qualified teachers and even experienced teachers to discuss aspects of 16–19 teaching, they provide an agenda for formal or informal meetings with colleagues in which 16–19 teaching can feature.

Task 1

Consider the context in which your 16–19 teaching takes place. Education is fraught with confusion over definitions: for the purpose of clarity, this book represents 16–19 teaching as being about academic and broad vocational

teaching, which is likely to be located in school sixth forms or sixth-form colleges or the academic departments of FE colleges.

Is 16–19 aminor part of your teaching commitment in a big secondary school?
Is it asubstantive role in ahuge college, or alittle part-time teaching in a small sixth-form centre or tiny department?

How will this professional context affect what you plan to do?...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
• 1: INTRODUCTION
• 2: 16–19 EDUCATION CONTEXTUALISED
• 3: EFFECTIVENESS DEFINED
• 4: AVOIDING PRECONCEPTIONS 16–19: PLANNING FOR DIFFERENTIATION
• 5: SUBJECT EXPERTISE IN 16–19 TEACHING
• 6: ASSESSMENT 16–19
• 7: ACTIVE LEARNING IN THE 16–19 CLASSROOM
• 8: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TUTOR ROLE IN 16–19 TEACHING
• 9: LEARNING WITH COLLEAGUES: DEVELOPING A CAREER IN 16–19 TEACHING
• 10: CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES