Michael Merrick's blog posting features the debate between didactic and progressive teaching - relevant to the pedagogy discussions highlighted via some top education blogs currently - particularly Andrew Old's blog.
Top teachers don't teach
http://michaeltmerrick.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... teach.html
There is no more pernicious idea in education than the idea that teachers should not teach.
Of course, it is never stated as explicitly as this, and there will be those who will reject outright that this is where their ideas and methods lead, convinced that their own particular variant of this noxious ideology is not actually all that noxious nor really an ideology.
Most commonly, we hear it expressed in the benign sounding context of empowerment, a romantic liberation of the constricted child from the chains of the didact – no mere brick in the wall shall they be - free to spread their wings and work out for themselves the intricacies of the Trinity, or the photosynthetic process; teacher talk is bad, oppressive, a cruelty inflicted on blossoming flowers not created for the passivity necessary in the act of listening to someone else speak for a bit; it is student-led learning, the independent and the free, that is Good.
I dish out my fair share of stick to the NewTraddie herd for blithely indulging in their own sloganeering and tilting at their own windmills, but one response that cannot really be denied is this: that beyond the realms of the digital NewTraddie Wonderland, the Blob reigns supreme.
And it’s still telling teachers they shouldn’t teach. And I’m not really sure what our kids have got to gain from that.
I think that at the heart of inspection going wrong is the failure to use plain-speaking - such as the failure to distinguish between the common Ofsted criticism of 'too much teacher-talk' and 'boring teacher waffle'.
Teachers may well seem to talk overly long - but what are the teachers actually saying? Is it high-quality teaching input which could be very good, effective teaching or just droning on and on with weak teaching?
So what we really need is more plain, transparent feedback perhaps - preferably within school and not through public-humiliation reporting methods.
This is my reader's comment in response to the above blog posting:
This idea starts very early in the teaching/caring profession. I've seen curriculum content written for the early years by local authorities without a single mention of the word 'teach'.
And yet why are schools advantaged in 'green leafy suburb' areas - perhaps because many parents in such areas actually 'teach' quite a lot.
Children, for example, may attend pre-schools and schools already competent with pencil skills, language, knowledge and understanding of the world around them.
Early years settings should at least match these language-rich homes where children are taught in a wide range of ideas and skills - or better such homes.
Schools serving rather impoverished areas should look to see what education-rich homes provide - lots of teaching by parents.
I have been fighting to put the word 'teach' back into the education system for a long time - as, it seems, have many others.
Ofsted are beyond the pale however. Their current reports and video footage linked to settings described as ''outstanding' do not necessarily show outstanding practice at all. They do show considerable 'pink and fluffy' bias as has been doggedly revealed by Andrew Old and others on their excellent blogs.
There are instances of 'too much teacher talk' however - but this is where a teacher is not providing quality, content-rich teacher talk - but simply waffling on inadequately.
If there was a bit more plain-speaking in the observation and feedback domain in place of standard jargon, inspectors should surely distinguish between quality teacher-talk and boring, unnecessary, protracted waffle.
Perhaps we need a few more northern plain-speakers around to make this point.
I feel that I must add here, however (with reference to my phonics specialism), that I witness a great
lack of fit-for-purpose pupil-practice - so I'm not advocating lots of teacher-talk regardless of the circumstances -but I do witness an Ofsted bias towards promoting novel activities in classrooms.
But perhaps if Ofsted inspectors were prepared to say that there are too many teachers providing weak or truly boring lessons with too little pupil-practice and activity, that is another matter.
It is important in my view, for example, that regardless of which 'subject' learners are being taught, they should not be sedentary lesson after lesson.
It is essential that the school-day provides lots of variety and alternates more focused, perhaps sedentary lessons with more active, lively, creative lessons/opportunities.
