What educational guff is winding you up the most?

[Justagame]

I could list a few; teach like chump, coaching, sporting analogies, endless acronyms and those motivational quotes with inspiring images just to really help you understand the power of the message. Are there any schools that aren't full of this shite at the moment?

@NewName54321

www.gov.scot/publications/adverse-childhood-experiences/

Piggywaspushed: 'Basically, it's a sticking plaster. Because all the other (better) solutions to social inequality in education cost huge amounts of money and a step change in education.'

Isn't this the 'nail on the head' comment that can be applied to so many of the above initiatives and perspectives?

In and of themselves, most are OK and not unsound.

The problem arises when they are presented piecemeal, as a means to 'solving' issues that would better be addressed by far more expensive measures (& even by measures instituted outside of school), and instituted in an extremely superficial way.

'Cultural capital' is an extremely powerful concept - but, seriously, what can an individual teacher or school do about the fact that social and economic inequality is also pursued and enacted in the area of culture and aesthetics?

Beyond teaching that concept and implementing an awareness of it when choosing teaching artefacts?

And, likewise, the insight that a lot of behaviour issues arise from unmet needs -- well, yes - but, given many of those needs are unmet structurally, how can a CT be held responsible for meeting many of them?

It's beyond frustrating. Like a weird form of gaslighting, in which very serious insights into the web of structural inequalities in which schools operate are - quite bizarrely - turned into measures which appear to hold individual CT responsible for changing structural inequalities.

The big clue is in that word structural. That - generally - points to something that is, in fact, beyond what an individual CT has the power to (miraculously) over-turn.

I think Piggy has nailed why so many of these concepts are doomed to failure - despite some of them being grounded in (or tangentially related to) extremely sound insights.

If I were a massively cynical structuralist, I might argue that this is - in fact - the entire point.

Potentially hegemony-destabilising concepts are embodied in doomed-to-fail practices in order to delegitimise the potentially revolutionary concepts/insights and empty the workforce of the belief in and will to achieve an outside to the present state of an economically and socially eviscerated education system.

I found the restorative justice questions quite hard to answer as it can mean such a lot of different things. We have restorative conversations built into the behaviour management/ sanction policy. It isn’t instead of sanctions it is alongside it, and there is a strong emphasis on the student behaviour not the teacher’s during any conversation.

So my ticking the positives is not a ringing endorsement of Paul Dix but they can have a place.

Now, There's a proper Marxist reading cat!

@piggywaspushed

That's sort of the point. We all know it's important but they're going about it in the wrong way.

It's a slap dash, sticking plaster approach to cover ourselves for Ofsted then it will be forgotten about once they've gone because they're not checking up on us again for a few years. In the meantime other lessons are ignored for the sake of the chosen one.

Reading is important. I've taught many children with SLD who will 'never read' to read, and read fluently. But I taught reading in conjunction with everything else. I didn't waste hours making booklets with tick lists in for someone outside to look at.

My problem is that all the work we're doing has zero actual impact on the students and is purely for an outsider to come in and look at so they can tick a box.

My theory is that a lot of teacher workload is about building a proxy of the learning & teaching done in the classroom for the benefit of Ofsted.

That's why it is acutely demoralising.

It's all about constructing a facsimile that can be audited and resolved to data.

Hours of time are spent on the construction of this facsimile. And sometimes lessons themselves are constructed to produce this facsimile. Not learning and teaching itself, but a para-learning and teaching, which stands alongside the actual learning and teaching but unlike their actual learning and teaching, is available to auditing and data collection and analysis.

Accountability matters.

But the situation at the moment is massively dysfunctional and kind of insane.

But that's probably the subject of another thread.

I realise that, at this point, I should be directing you to my blog on, 'Creating the institutive practices of capitalist realism and data-driven para-education: UK state education in the early C21.'

Sadly, I spend too much time on MN to write it ...

@thecatfromjapan woah the cat I'll get me coat😂 Anyone fancy a pint?(Fast show)...

Seriously though, great point😊

You should probably put all that stuff on Twitter cat. It would proper wind up the Edutwitter mob who think everything they do comes from the highest goals of pure learning!

Edutwatter

Hive Mind.

Urgh hive mind... what utter crap

Potentially hegemony-destabilising concepts are embodied in doomed-to-fail practices in order to delegitimise the potentially revolutionary concepts/insights and empty the workforce of the belief in and will to achieve an outside to the present state of an economically and socially eviscerated education system.

The problem with suggesting that the education system is deliberately crap is that it implies the existence of someone with a master plan.

I think the main problem with the education system is the complete lack of anyone with a master plan. Turnover of political parties, education secretaries, Ofsted chiefs, Heads, and at the bottom of the pile teachers means that short-termism is the perpetual state of play. New people in charge are always seeking to make their mark before sodding off elsewhere; new people at the bottom don’t have the experience to be wary.

Fads come and go because quick fixes are all anyone seeks to implement. Poorly researched changes are made, unintended consequences are suffered and we lurch onto the next thing.

‘New Ofsted Framework seeks to reduce teacher workload!’ we are promised by new chief Amanda Spielman becomes ‘Deep dives are massively increasing teacher workload’, as if no one could have possibly anticipated that if given time to properly think things through.

Gove is the ultimate in poorly considered massively rushed-through changes. I genuinely think he cared about social justice and opening access to a decent education to the socially disadvantaged rather than maintaining an elite/pleb divide, he just didn’t understand what he was doing.

It's all about constructing a facsimile that can be audited and resolved to data.

The ultimate example of this is the ‘verbal feedback given’ stamp. If a teacher doesn’t stamp a book to say that they’ve talked to the kid, then the conversation never happened.

It stems from a total lack of trust in teachers to do their job.

Anything done in a different colour pen - it’s purely so that an auditor flicking through a book can see that a task has been completed without having to understand what has actually happened in a lesson.

Oh yeah as someone said. Quality First teaching. Because otherwise I’d just give my usual third rate effort. Of course.
Nope, just an excuse to leave children with Send with little support.
Deep dives. Oh just fuck off with that. Teachers who are paid nothing to lead a subject and given no time to lead it have to know exactly how it’s taught. In a curriculum that’s packed tighter than tight. Suddenly we have to find time for French and art again - but still got to get the sats results!!

I inwardly roll my eyes when the phrase "first class quality first teaching" comes up in meetings - because without that label obviously all the staff would just be doing a really fucking half-arsed job (the staff are superb and I think it's bloody insulting toward them to have to clarify that "yes they're doing the job well now" - I've not worked my ticket on that one yet but it's coming).

And on a family-level... the eldest's school's obsession with (coming from a deputy head desperately climbing the pole to his headship who latches onto anything new, electronic and with flashing lights and gimmicks) encouraging the kids to "make their own flipped learning videos to be hosted on the school's youtube channel." I've already heavily had to come down on DD's planned career as a youtuber doing hairstyle videos (she only knows how to do a really crap ponytail) and then school announced this one without consulting with the parents which caused the anticipated tweenage temper detonation when evil mummy said no.

I'm also sick of being expected to do online family learning tasks where the bloody website doesn't work and school refuse to believe it hasn't! (Again all comes from smarmy ladder climbing deputy head who is a right one for being young, trendy, letting the kids get away with murder and I could see being chief "but he behaves perfectly fine for me" merchant in the staffroom)

Kuponut, that made laugh. Why on earth would you encourage students to make YouTube videos???!

If I hear one more thing about what x or x or x said (x or x being the same two or three edu-celebrities who seem to have taken over), I might scream.

All CPD mentions them, a third year teacher in my school mentioning them in every second breath as if I'm a total fucknut for not knowing everything they've ever said. Retrieval, Rosenshine's Principals of Instruction, knowledge organisers, lots of different 'ninjas', blah.

I looked up one of these educelebrities - a third year teacher who has only ever worked in one school. Thank god he's here to save us all from 30 years of totally dreadful teaching where none of us managed to get any information into a child. Praise be...

Oh, and 'X teacher needs to be on an action plan, how many times should we have to tell them how to do it??"' being said by a third year teacher about someone on UPS3. Just wind your neck in.

Well, that's now Newmark , Enser or Old.

It all makes me want to run away.

I’d rather a teacher trainer talking about Rosenshine than yet another bloody Paul Dix podcast.

Oh god which reminds me, someone seriously mentioned that bloody Ken Robinson Creativity video from years ago (you know, the one that says that schools are oppressive sausage factories) recently. I thought that was long gone.

Is Paul Dix the 'fantaaaaastic walking' bloke?

Rosenshine is fine, I just don't need to have it quoted at me all the flippin' time!

Oh, and I went to look at a job at the school of one of these edutwitter celebrities. We also lived in catchment for it. I was home by 9.30am, first thing I said to partner was 'we need to move'. We now live 20 miles away. Every time I see this person being lauded for something I just think about the shit storm going on in their school.