Teacher development with a focus on pedagogical toolkits enables teachers to be exposed to clean strategies that take us from an inconsistent approach in the classroom to being more assured as teachers in what may happen next. Teachers make real-time decisions in their classrooms, informed by the response of pupils and when we think and move at speed in this way, it can be difficult to even consider making predictions about the direction we aim to take pupils in with regards to the content. It’s why planning is such hard work: why many new teachers find the process of planning rather challenging through a lack of experience of teaching the specific content, and a lack of mental models to form the pathways of the lesson itself. A number of pedagogical principles have a helpful as a foundation here, but are not the Holy Grail upon which our enacted curriculum rests.
Moreover, more experienced teachers also find planning lessons difficult, because they have developed an awareness that planning can only account for a limited number of directions that the lesson might take and so the task of planning for an experienced, highly knowledgeable teacher might feel futile beyond a few key moments. And so, how do expert teachers choose what to include within their teaching plans and what to discard, and what factors contribute to such a process? It is this gap I would like to consider.
To mitigate against the gap between novice and expert, we have a few elements at our disposal to support. Yet, we might often not move beyond the first and this is where I think subject awareness plays such an important role to planning to teach content.
The pedagogical principles that we know will support pupils in making sense of the content. For instance, modelling as a scaffold before independent practice, or cold calling to increase means of participation. Even to the more simplified aspects such as waiting for silence to give instructions, or giving specific praise to pupils who are doing the right thing, knowledge of pedagogy and the way in which it manifests as classroom experience provides novice teachers with parameters to then teach subject content.
However, very quickly, without a consideration of subject and endpoint, these tools become a collection of nothing more than jigsaw pieces that may or may not fit for the specific content we intend to teach. It is the awareness of what the task intends to impart, build upon and connect to in terms of curriculum journey that helps a teacher develop a repertoire as opposed to a toolkit. In isolation, a toolkit will provide teachers with a more efficient way to use the time in a classroom, but are merely the starting point at which the teacher can begin to consider subject content as a key informant of how these tools might be useful to them.
To take an example, an English teacher might choose to use a prepared model to exemplify how to annotate the two line stanza of Dulce et Decorum Est during class analysis. If the class have previously studied Macbeth, the teacher may want to place emphasis upon ‘dreams’ to utilise prior knowledge of the significance of sleep and disturbance of it for the speaker, who, in the same way that both Macbeth and his wife are haunted to a demise, this narrator is also plagued by a sense of regret at what cannot be undone. They might want to focus upon the shift to present tense, or use of parataxis to emphasis this recurring memory that transports the speaker to reliving this moment, or they might wish to merely highlight the use of the pronoun ‘me’ that attempts to capture the responsibility felt by the speaker. Much of these choices within the model itself will rely upon what has come before and the conceptual threads that will aid pupils onward through their experience of literature. Whilst the use of a model anchors pupils to be able to see what it looks like, it is only a starter for ten unless we consider where attention should be directed for future progression.
For instance, an Art teacher might be modelling using Franz Marc as a key influence that will lead to pupils drawing an octopus. The nature of expressionism might mean that pupils need to consider shape and form as rather prominent features of their initial draft, to ensure that when they consider the role of the backdrop of the natural environment, the animal holds the audience’s attention in the way that they intend. Therefore, when the teacher models their example, the success criteria and sequence of the model will be paramount to ensuring that pupils are not simply drawing a head, a body, some tentacles, but considering the position and possible contortion for the animal against the setting, how the tentacles will be positioned to create the harmony reminiscent of Marc’s work, as opposed to the predatory nature of the animal, and later, how Marc’s use of colour depicted meaning beyond the aesthetic. It means that teacher may use a non example against an example in an entirely different way that marks out the distinction between colour for contrast and colour for symbolism. Whatever the rationale, the subject leads the way.
Why does the tool not get the credit here? Because if not embellished by the journey of knowledge building in that discipline, there is a danger of resorting to a formula to teach.
This is not to make a case for discarding the leading principles of what we know make for more efficient teaching and ensure that time carries the value in the classroom that it should: the choices that we make- what will make for a useful scaffold; what question will mark a milestone in regards to understanding; what exemplification will assist with the next steps for the lesson next week, next term or the design of a retrieval task to draw to mind prior knowledge that will be well utilised for what comes next. Yet the complexity and fragility of the subject matter being taught should be seen as our architect of design as opposed to a passive ornament carried within it after its construction: It should sit centrally to each one of those choices. To let the subject lead our decisions enables us to see pedagogical tools as exactly that- the instruments we have at our disposal to construct the pupils’ subject experience, but not the experience itself.
Kat Howard 