Performance Related Pay - a good thing right?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

especially the bit about being able to keep the better teachers in the classroom.

day to day data gathering

Or however it was phrased - I thought that was what I did when I marked th work I set for that day? I keep tick lists for each subject and tick if the pupil understood and cross if they need further help. I then address that in my planning. Occasionally during a lesson I will have to change tack because the class don't understand and I try something new.

Is this what you mean or do you not think it sufficient?

I'm afraid my posts probably related mostly to primary, as that is what I know about both professionally and as a client.

Bach, I suppose I mean data on how you KNOW that they understood, other than your professional opinion that they did iyswim.

Crikey, Starlight, perhaps you're overestimating what can be achieved by a teacher in a given day with 30 students. If they stopped to write down how they knew that every child had, or had not understood a particular point, they wouldn't actually have any time to teach.

I think your expectations of what a nursery can do are a bit high too.

I am a primary teacher.

Surely, though, in maths, for example, if I teach a child to partition three digit numbers, then set them questions, which they get all right, that I tick for being correct, that is how I know they understood? If they don't understand, I don't tick the question, which is how I know they don't, surely? IMO, it's easier to show how in primary - once you get to secondary it must be harder!

Also, with regards to your DD in nursery, is there any possibility that the fact this is her third school might r impacting on her progress in her learning journal? I'm not trying to be snide, I'm genuinely asking!

Getting questions right in one exercise does not demonstrate understanding, even if it is the whole exercise.

Anyone revisiting a mathematical concept even after a holiday must experience that?

Teaching is not an industry.

Maths is easier to collect data on, but the answers themselves don't tell you that the child is calculating them in the way you need them to for your next lesson to build on it. They coukd be lost in lesson 2 and you wouldn't know why.

It's a fair point you make about dd, but she's fine. She attended a full year of school preschool with the 2 year old funding, then a year in an independent preschool with 3 year old funding and now she is in a state school nursery. It seems the teachers each year like to ignore evidence of prior learning and start with a blank EYFS photocopy to tick off.

I had her looked at by an EP before she started her 3rd placement as I had concerns wrt the circumstances that caused us to need to move twice in her early years but was reassured that she was highly adaptive and as a Sept birthday appears to be way ahead, at least to me.

Learning cannot be quantified and progress cannot be measured in the micromanaged way that you appear to want it to be, Star.
Even if children know how to do something one lesson, that is no guarantee that they will remember how to do it the next lesson.

Absolutely, but your data will show you who are the remembering ones and who are not, and which ones have remembering problems due to the WAY it was taught.

"Does this make me a better teacher than I was 14 years ago? Not sure it does."

Is this the right question though? Surely the more pertinent one would be "Does this ensure that teachers aren't slipping?" thus enabling support and before there's a major issue.

When exactly do you expect teachers to be making all these notes and getting the time to look at them? With 30 children? And what would you expect them to do with the data? The class isn't going to stop following the curriculum and go back two weeks because little Johnny has forgotten some concept learned in Science.

Teachers have at least 5 hours a day contact time. Why not then. If data gathering is incorporated in the teaching. Technology is a very helpful tool. I take it you've come across Khan Academy and ABA?

Er, because in that 5 hour contact time they're teaching? What do you think they're doing??

The thing is, whether they are teaching or not is highly irrelevant. What IS relevant is whether anyone is LEARNING and whether they are doing it optimally.

I'll tell you right now that there would be far less learning going on if the teacher is spending all their time doing paperwork.

Who said anything about spending all their time doing paperwork?

But for arguments sake, if learning coukd be increased by 50% but reducing 'teaching' by 10% in favour of data collection, woukdn't that be a good outcome?

Have you tried it? Have you found the optimal relationship? Does it vary by class? Or is it just your professional opinion that it wouldn't work?

Did you just pluck those figures out of thin air, perchance?

When I am teaching I am on. I am constantly looking around, questioning students, talking to them, keeping an eye on behaviour, responding to questions, on my feet scanning, assessing, teaching.
You'd prefer to interrupt that to have me go around students asking individuals if they remember what we did yesterday then filling out some sort of spreadsheet? When I am looking at that spreadsheet, my mind and my focus is not on my class. Which is bad.

Is teaching a science? A vocation? A counselling service? Childcare?

No, it's not a science, it's an art. Although there are methods which can improve learning, obviously, different classes respond differently to different things and a good teacher adapts their teaching methods accordingly, as they get to know the class.

I have never taught exactly the same lesson twice.

And that, by the way, is why the Khan Academy can never replace a good teacher.

Khan academy is a tool, not a teacher. The same way as an interactive whiteboard. The teacher's job IMO is to keep on too of latest research and technology and harness it for the benefit of his/her students, recording progress and adapting interventions in as close to real-time as possible, objectively, not subjectively.

Which is why IMO, teaching is a science to be measured objectively, not an art to be measured aesthetically.

What do you mean by data?

Of course it's going to vary. Some lessons I do practicals. They can take most of the lesson (SLT very twitchy with regards to 20 minute Ofsted observations and practicals, especially ones where the students find out what's going on once they have collected and analysed the data...). So, in those lessons, the data I collect with regards to students' progress might be questioning as I go around. But I might not get to interrogate all 30 students. I might then mark their homework on the practical, but the quality of that might vary with not only their understanding of the topic, and their proficiency at graph drawing, but also how much time they spent on it, whether they actually tried to work out the answers or just dashed something off to meet the hand in date. And that is where professional judgement comes into play. That and talking to students. Which is more qualitative than quantitative, and therefore dodgy evidence. Apparently.

Right, I adapt interventions in as close to real time as possible (in fact in real time). What I don't do while I'm teaching is record progress. Because I am too busy intervening. Any time I am creating a written record of something in a lesson is time not spent actually helping a kid understand something.

You seem to want to reduce teaching to a set of prescriptive tick-boxes. It doesn't work like that. Children are all different. Teachers are all different too. Personality isn't something that can be measured and quantified, yet it's very important in teaching.

Personality? Or motivations?

I am familiar with Khan academy and ABA. Like many teachers, I'm a behaviourist at heart. We measure, we reinforce, we modify and shape. It's what we do, have always done really, and now do explicitly.

We also (I hope - most of us) inspire. Sometimes my students have lots of questions. I answer them. I illustrate the answers (using technology - God bless the internet). I give them examples they hadn't even thought to ask about.

Is there any measurable outcome in progress in these episodes? Not really, and I wouldn't do it if Ofsted were in the room. But mostly, my students love Science, and those who don't love it themselves love that I love it, and that pays dividends in terms of long term aspirations and achievement. That's the art bit.