Tes Podagogy

Dominic Wyse has a challenge for you: “How often does a child in England get to genuinely do a piece of writing that begins with a blank page and is entirely their own ideas because they think those ideas are important?”The professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the University College London (UCL), Institute of Education (IOE), already thinks he knows your answer.

“I know from my own research and experience, it is incredibly rare,” he states.

And he says that because this is not happening, pupils are not really learning what it is like to “be a writer”.

Speaking on the Tes Podagogy podcast, professor Wyse explores several different aspects of teaching the writing process. He explains that it has to begin at the earliest ages of school and that, often, this is hampered by teachers not recognising when the youngest pupils believe they are writing.

“They are naturally curious about writing, and they play with the tools of writing given the opportunity. But in some research a PhD student of mine did recently, they found that adults did not pick up on the fact the children were writing when the children were very clear that they were writing. That is an important pedagogical lesson for us.”

He argues that teachers also need a broader appreciation of what writing is, and of its societal context. That means including examples of writing in different media or getting children to compose in different media, be it text messages, snapchats, formal reports, handwritten diaries - the list should be extensive.

“We have to teach writing as it really is, not base it too much on tests or a romantic notion of what it was,” he says.

That said, he is a firm advocate of a mixed approach to writing: part formal, part informal, so that the conventions are taught but creativity and engagement can also be cultivated.

“A general writing area in an early years setting is vital so children can, in any way they feel comfortable (at tables; on the floor on cushions) be making marks and have children interacting with children about those marks," he explains. "But also there is absolutely a place for more teacher-directed activities where teachers can stimulate with things they would like students to learn. Those things should be based on what the teacher has witnessed in those informal writing periods - that’s how they spot where the challenges are.”

In the podcast, he talks through the different stages of teaching writing and the latest research on how best to do it.

“Systematic phonics is the great equaliser,” states Anne Castles, distinguished professor in the department of cognitive science at Macquarie University. “If the child does not have rich language background, you can teach them phonics then they can go and read and supply themselves with that rich language, which is so key for their ability to access the curriculum later on.”Speaking on this week’s episode of Tes Podagogy, Castles argues the evidence this is the case is now compelling.

“There have been thousands of studies that have looked at phonics in various ways, various forms and using various measures,” she reveals. “We are at a level of confidence now where we can say we have a pretty good understanding that if a phonics programme follows a set of principals then most likely it will be effective, because it would fit with the broader evidence base we have.”

Evidence for phonics

Despite this evidence base, however, she admits to understanding why the topic of phonics remains controversial.

“It is certainly true that is has been more difficult to document evidence of the success of phonics in the long term, but we are starting to see that evidence come through,” she says. “However, we do need more of it.

“And a lot of teachers have used whole language methods for a long time and have experienced success. There are plenty of children who will learn to read regardless of the method being used. So it is very hard for teachers, as they have seen a method bring success, to be told there is a better method.”

She says there has also been a tendency on both sides of the argument to claim phonics should be the totality of reading instruction in the early years - or that this is what people wish to happen - and this has fanned the flames of the debate unnecessarily. It’s an issue she touched on in a co-written article for Tes earlier this year and one she revisits in the podcast.

“There should never be a suggestion that the only reading instruction children should be getting is phonics,” she says. “They should be read to, they should be enmeshed in a reading environment, they should be engaged in all sorts of reading instruction.”

A balanced approach

Another claim she says is unhelpful is that, if well taught, every child will ‘get’ phonics. That is simply not the case, she says, but what phonics can do is help teachers spot those with reading disorders sooner.

“i don’t believe it is true that all children will ‘get’ phonics if they are taught properly,” she explains. “There are some children who are instructional casualties - they have no reading disorder but have not been taught explicitly and have needed the instruction - but there will also be a group who will continue to struggle way past the first few years of schooling [despite good phonics teaching]. What phonics can do, is help us spot those children who do have reading difficulties. By having a phonics check in place, you can pick out the ones who do not seem to be responding well and get some intervention in place. “

In the podcast, she goes on to discuss the evidence base in ore detail, to talk about the commercialisation and politicalisation of phonics and how that influences the debate, and also about the problems with identifying language problems at too early an age.

“If a teacher takes a moment to think about what they actually do in their own classroom, there is tonnes of experimentation. You try a lesson plan one way and you realise at the end of that class that it’s really not going as well as you would have liked and then maybe your new class files in and you tweak it a little bit,” says Angela Duckworth, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Duckworth, best known for her work on the science of ‘grit’ – the combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals that she says sets high achievers apart from the rest of the population – is currently conducting research more broadly into character education through her non-profit organisation Character Lab, with the aim of providing a robust, scientific basis for teaching the ‘soft’ skills that are viewed with scepticism by some.

To do this, she explains in this week’s episode of Tes Podagogy, she is relying on classroom teachers conducting experiments with their classes. This is a task that they are more than equipped for, she believes.

“I know that in the UK there is a really robust and reasonably recent, but really robust and admirable tradition of doing research in schools,” Duckworth says. “So, the idea of experimentation isn’t really new [for teachers]...I think that idea of really closing the loop and doing it systematically with measures and statistics is of course new.”

The Character Lab Research Network conducted its first large-scale experiment in January, with 14,000 high school students, who participated in a variety of different activities designed to increase positive character traits.

“It was a coin-flip which activity they would get. This enables us to see if any of the activities were helpful, which of the activities were more helpful than others,” Duckworth says.

'Innovation and experimentation'

The random nature of the experiment was the best way to ensure fair results, but it also required the teachers taking part to take a leap of faith and accept the uncertainty of the scientific method, she adds.

“Generally, teachers like to try to give the best thing to their students and just give it to all of them. When I was a classroom teacher I never did anything with half my kids that I didn’t do with the other half of the kids and so that is a bit of a paradigm shift for some teachers.”

So, what has Character Lab uncovered about character education so far? In the podcast, Duckworth shares her findings and explains why she is hopeful for taking this research further, working in collaboration with teachers and helping them to become "psychologically wise".

“Innovation and experimentation is what every teacher has to do. We’re just hoping to do it in a more cumulative way.

“So many things that teachers figure out work for them, they never really get to tell other teachers what it is that they did and why it might have worked, because teachers tend to not have that medium. But scientists, that’s kind of what they do: they have hypothesis, they test it, and whether it works or not, hopefully you write it up and you tell the world so that the insight can be shared,” says Duckworth.

“EAL is a problematic category,” states Victoria Murphy, professor of applied linguistics at the University of Oxford.Murphy is a long-time researcher into English as an additional language (EAL) and on this week’s Tes Podagogy podcast she explains that use of the term brings multiple problems.

“The way it is defined is so general, it really just highlights children who have another language in the home,” she explains. “It does not speak to whether and to what extent the child is exposed to English since birth or any other context, and it doesn’t say anything about their proficiency in English, and importantly it does not say anything about their knowledge of their home language or proficiency in that language.

“It is a group that is massively diverse. So any time we talk about EAL in general terms, we are really being a bit reckless.”

She goes on to say that another issue she has with the term is that it is seen as a negative attribute.

“It is used as a deficit term - we assume there is a problem. It really doesn’t have to be a problem,” she argues.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Murphy talks about the problem with interpreting the performance data of EAL children too simplistically, the issues with ‘immersion’ programmes and the lack of support for schools in helping EAL children in the classroom.

“I don’t think there is enough financial support for children with linguistic challenges and I don’t think teachers have historically had enough support in supporting EAL students,” she says

There is recent research that suggests that teachers generally feel unprepared to support students with EAL.”

Murphy also offers some insights to the research going on around the best pedagogy for EAL students, including translanguaging.

“Translanguaging is a little bit of a tricky construct - essentially it means drawing from the child’s other languages within the English classroom, so they can use those other languages as support while they are carrying out work,” she explains. “This approach recognises that the child comes to school with knowledge of another language, that it is a huge resource not just for that child but for the other children in that class if teachers were equipped to use that pedagogical strategy. The teacher would not need to know that home language, it is about a multi-lingual pedagogy.

“I hope to see more studies that will look at when this should be used or if it should be used, the research is in its infancy.”

In this week’s podagogy, Professor Patrick Leman and Dr Harriet Tenanbaum explain the research behind peer learning, and offer advice on how to embed it in your classroom