Relationships and technical skills: the synthesis and creativity of teaching

I love this whakataukī:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

If we were to paraphrase that for education, perhaps it might say:

'What is the most important thing that causes learning for the learner? 

It is the teacher, It is the teacher, It is the teacher'. 

Professor John Hattie, in his meta study that culminated in 'Visible Learning', states:

Teachers–     who  account  for  about  30%  of  the  variance.  It  is  what  teachers  know,  do,  and  care  about which is very powerful in this learning equation. (Hattie, Page 2).

I'd go as far as to say that a teacher's work can be reduced down to two major components: the ability to build and sustain learning focussed relationships with learners (which by the way I think must include a full kete of behaviour management techniques), and the technical ability to cause learning. In saying that, we have to be careful not to suggest that this is a binary thing i.e. it isn't one or the other. It is BOTH, simultaneously. I would go as far as to suggest that causing learning is a 'synthesis' of the two, a synthesis that I think is unique at every moment. As an act of synthesis, perhaps the act and the art of causing learning is in itself an act of creativity as we combine relationship building and technical mastery in our craft in order to cause learning.

My concern with that notion is that it may be interpreted by too many both in and out of the profession to mean that it is not possible to systematise the process of causing learning, and the corollary that to do so is to stymie this act of creativity. Reference to the work of Dr Kevin Knight, and Lois Chick, of the NZ Graduate School of Education, would show such a view to be the lie that it is.

With reference to the issue of teacher technical skill (perhaps better referred to as pedagogy, a word that I am not that keen on, if I am honest), as teachers we have been (if I may generalise) too poorly equipped by much of our initial teacher education. I know that my own initial teacher education 43 years ago included NOTHING about how to support low level readers. I am not seeing much of that in newer grads either, with the exception of one ITE provider. Therefore it is important that as professional educators we are supported to develop those skills. We are all teachers of literacy. How do we do that?

On the subject of reading for example, you only have to read the paper published in late 2020 by Professor Stuart McNaughton, Chief Education  Scientific Advisor (McNaughton, 2020), on the matter of reading, to see that well-espoused. To simplify his paper down to its simplest form, he states that there is no systematic, coherent, and consistent, approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. Teachers in my opinion simply do not have the necessary skills (again, a huge generalisation, but one that I make on the basis of repeated observation).

Yet we have to 'know stuff' if we are to go about our daily work, and in teaching 'knowing stuff' doesn't just mean knowing about supply and demand diagrams of past participles as much as it means knowing how to cause learning. 

Take Professor Peter O'Connor's Creative Schools Index (well, I refer to it as his, but I know that the index is the result of significant work by a large team, my reference is one of convenience). The index uses eleven dimensions in order to assess levels of creativity in schools, and one of those is Mastery. Learners and teachers need to develop, and to show, mastery of their subject matter as a component part of the act of creation. Reframed, that might be interpreted in this way. Jane Gilbert in her book 'Catching the Knowledge Wave' (Gilbert, 2005) redefined knowledge as knowing stuff, AND doing something with the stuff. Contrary to some claimants at no stage did she say knowing stuff was unimportant. Au contraire!! As I have often said, thinking, and creativity, are higher order skills. However to think, and to create, requires 'stuff' to think about, 'stuff' to create from i.e. you have to 'know stuff' to be able to able to think about it, or to be able to 'create' from it.

To briefly shift the focus to another currently contentious learning area, that applies equally to maths. You have to know about columns and place values, you have to know tables, if you are to think about mathematical problem solving. Similarly you have to know how to support and develop reading in learners if you are to cause learning.

Criticism of teachers sometimes suggests that teachers resist change. I reject that notion. While in my career I have met the occasional teacher for whom that might be true, my over-riding experience is of teachers who essentially say 'I understand what you want to change, and why, but I have no idea what that looks like in my daily work, and so how to do it. Show me and I can change.' I recall that personal revelation and revolution in my own teaching and literacy practice when I attended a number of sessions of what at that time was called the 'Secondary Literacy Programme'. It was game changing for me, because it showed my HOW to support reading development  and required only a limited amount of synthesis on my part to be able to adapt that for learners in my subject area. I was learning how to cause learning.

So when I saw the latest work coming from the Manaiakalani team supporting the teaching of reading I was overjoyed. They have by observation identified specific examples of good practice in how to teach reading and literacy across curriculum levels,  from across the network of Manaiakalani schools, on a series of web pages titled 'Literacy exemplars'. They have brought these together as a series of resources, tagged within our "Learn Create Share' framework, organised in a way that is consistent with our high leverage practices in reading, and made them freely available to teachers. The resources cover the whole range of years and curriculum levels, and an increasing range of the specific subjects that students tend towards in middle and senior secondary school.

What's more (and this is the 'piece de la resistance' for me) they are accumulating video recordings of good practice via the Manaiakalani 'Class On Air' programme, video snippets of good practice, open to all. So teachers can see exactly what it looks and sounds like to employ good pedagogy.

This is the very best of sharing practice. Again at the risk of being highly repetitive, none of us individually knows all the answers, but between us all we quite possibly know most of them. I have seen a number of attempts to do this in the past, at least one sponsored by the Ministry, and one sponsored by my former subject association, but I am not aware of any that have lasted the distance. This is revolutionary. This is a game changer. In our hands we have (in my opinion) the means to liberate teachers and learners. This approach offers teachers the 'what it looks like' answers they crave, it offers the ability to create more consistent and coherent approaches to teaching reading in a more systematic way. It offers a level of creativity to teachers and learners while also supporting that more systematic approach to teaching reading.

It won't be the whole answer, and of course it won't be any answer at all unless Principals show strong leadership and encourage, support, and nurture, staff as we attempt to embrace the resources and the opportunity that this represents. Effective change always requires strong, positive, moral, leadership.

What would happen if we did the same with maths?

That's not a bad piece of thinking from a day at the Manaiakalani Cluster convenors' day .. a true tāonga!!

References:

Gilbert, J "Catching the knowledge wave",  2005

Hattie, J  "Teachers make a difference, What is the research evidence?', 2003

McNaughton, S  "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise",2020