Beyond Good

Today Femi and Matt discuss their career changes, both recent (in Matt's case) and forthcoming (in Femi's) and how they are thinking about teaching and learning, and education going forward. This context should throw some light onto some of the conversations they have had recently or that are coming up.

The discussion today was prompted by a listener question about students being late to lessons, so Matt and Femi each give their take on that. They discuss what they think the relevant psychology is and how they each handle this situation. They talk about whole-school policies and dealing with a culture of lateness as middle and senior leaders – and different ways that schools approach the starts and ends of lessons, as well as transitions. Femi and Matt also muse on some of the interesting situations they’ve faced in which the more effective approach contradicted school policy.

The topic of today’s discussion is Matt's visit to Ark Soane Academy, and in particular the impressive whole-school culture and the remarkable impact of that on student behaviours, attitudes and learning. Femi and Matt talk about the best science lesson Matt has ever seen, and wider discussion about starting and running schools and embedding shared routines across the school. As always, all questions or comments welcome: @beyondgoodpod on X.

The topic of discussion this week is warning systems – so very much a behaviour-based episode rather than a maths one. Matt and Femi cover a fair bit of ground: from classrooms with names written on the board and hundreds of warnings being issued each day through to classrooms with no warnings and students absorbed in their work. And from supporting colleagues with behaviour issues through to the prospect of creating a school-wide culture around behaviour that leaves deleterious learning behaviours at the school gates.

This week Femi and Matt debate the pros and cons of homework - a particularly slippery beast to nail down. They get into some general principles and challenges of setting good homework, and what they have tried and each do now, among other things. By all means let us know if you think you have this one cracked: @beyondgoodpod on X.

In this episode Femi and Matt talk about modelling - in all it’s various forms from leading on behaviour through to explicit teaching strategies. In particular they discuss pre-made teacher models and explanations vs modelling live, in real time, and explore some really interesting nooks and crannies of that facet. X: @BeyondGoodPod

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss setting, the term ‘bottom set’, attitudes towards, and working with students who have low prior attainment. As you’ll hear both advocates of ensuring that those students get the highest possible quality education, that we meet them where they are, and that we work hard, carefully and mindfully as a community to ensure that we divorce that honest recognition of differing starting points from any judgements of value or personal worth. Contact us @BeyondGoodPod on X.

In this episode Matt and Femi talk about Adam Boxer’s Book: How to Teach Secondary Science. In particular, they discuss Adam’s concept of ‘Directions of travel’, which provides a nice framework for characterising the way that we move through explanations. Both feel that many teachers could spend more time thinking about and planning explanations than they tend to, so Adam's conceptualisation is useful because it enables us to expand our vocabulary and add nuance to our discussions and reflections on explanations.

Today’s topic is Year 11 mock examinations. Matt and Femi discuss: - Holding 2 or 3 sets of mocks vs just 1. - That mocks should not be the main means by which we discover what students can and cannot do. - Conditions for students to learn and improve on knowledge gaps exposed by tests, the implications for ‘going through’ the test in lessons, and why that is rarely effective - Best practice for giving feedback from mocks, and some examples of poor practice. - Issues with question level analysis - How Mocks can crystallise classroom culture, and setting up and capitalising on their success - What happens when mock results are not so good or students are not prepared for them - Giving scores back - Turning around the marking of papers - Postcards, emails or letters home praising effort - Running mocks well - Lending equipment As always you can get in touch with Matt or Femi through @BeyondGoodPod on X.

Femi and Matt speak to Dave Taylor on the topic of the maths curriculum. Dave is a maths specialist and lead practioner, well known in maths circles for his ‘increasingly difficult questions’ and ‘backward faded maths’. Dave has thought long and hard about curriculum issues such as sequencing and mastery, and has experience of creating maths curricula, so the trio go deep on the considerations, nuances and complexities of developing and implementing an effective maths curriculum. Topics covered include: -The value of having schemes of work -The fact that students don’t come into Y7 all at the same starting point, and the implications of this -Streaming and Pathways -Mastering material that is prerequisite to moving on -Setting, setting philosophy and setting conversations -Resources, and issues with centrally prepared lessons -Space and flexibility in the scheme work to do retrieval work, fill gaps, or push ahead -Designing a scheme of work that maximises students’ opportunity to succeed by accounting for their starting points -Importance of testing students on what they have been taught and the stupidity and cruelty of giving students summative assessments that contain topics that they have not yet covered. -The domain-specificity of teacher expertise, why it is hard to develop and some possibilities for doing that better -And Increasingly difficult questions, amongst other topics You can follow Dave on X @taylorda01, and listen to his own podcast here: https://taylorda01.weebly.com/podcast.html

Today’s discussion is prompted by the Bill Rogers interview that recently appeared in the TES titled: ‘Bill Rogers: Where we are going wrong on behaviour’. Matt and Femi discuss: - The problem of COVID and re-victimising students - Teacher’s being inclined to appease students rather than lead on behaviour. - If you’re not in control it’s not a safe environment - Relationships and how to respond and relate to students - How do things change when you know the causative pathology for the a student’s antisocial behaviour - Curriculum for behaviour, and the problem of differing conceptions of what teachers mean by poor behaviour - Restorative conversations - The power of behaviour routines (and the risk that they become performative) - And the unhelpful contributions of commentators who do not understand schools and classrooms

‘Passive passengers!’ - students who are not especially engaged in lessons. Matt and Femi discuss some of the indicators and consequences of passive behaviours, how we might think about that as teachers in terms of tackling it vs accepting it, some causes of passivity, and how we might tackle it.

Today's guest is American Educator, Coach and Podcast host Dr Zach Groshell for a fascinating discussion about his work in US government funded schools and his drive for an increasingly evidence-based pedagogy. Matt and Femi talk to Zach about his role as an instructional coach, more and less directive coaching methodologies, the configuration of coaching within US public schools, characteristics of more effective teachers, implementing whole-school changes, high expectations, and structural impediments to raising standards in US schools. They discuss professional development, and some common misconceptions that are still being promoted, the adoption of pedagogical advances in the science of reading in contrast to more regressive approaches in mathematics. Accountability, ideologues, ego-protection, the consequences of confusing ‘means with ends’ when designing teaching approaches, and Zach’s hopes and optimism for the future. Zach is active on X under the handle @MrZachG, has his own blog: www.EducationRickshaw.com and hosts the The Progressively Incorrect podcast.

Today’s episode is prompted by a recent post on X which posed the following question: “What do you do with your mathematics teachers while you do your whole school professional learning on literacy, reading or writing?” Femi and Matt discuss the two main failure modes for students on ‘worded’ maths questions – noting that the more common and critical failure mode is one that won’t be addressed in a whole-school context. They talk about the rarely considered element of ‘opportunity cost’, optimum ways of developing student ability on worded maths questions, what the maths department could actually be doing on literacy PD, the role of subject leaders in setting the tone to make this PD a success, and the implications for taking ‘literacy is everyone’s responsibility’ forward seriously. Also discussed are the EEF guide to improving literacy in secondary schools, how we have to view the use of training time through the lens of impact, alternative and possibly more effective approaches to professional learning, the importance of identifying needs within a department and prioritising training to address those needs, and leaders having the strength and courage to take a differentiated and subject-specific approach to professional development. Finally the conversation moves on to the importance of airing conflict, different ways of handling conflict, learning from our mistakes, getting feedback on how well our approaches have worked, the importance carefully of defining success criteria and afterwards evaluating the impact of training. Please do join in and further the conversation - @beyondgoodpod on X

In today’s episode, Femi and Matt discuss differentiation! They talk about adaptive learning, differentiation as an advanced teaching skill that relies on solid foundations of strong learning behaviour and pedagogical subject knowledge and the botheredness to actually go and do it (especially when classes are compliant.) They talk about prioritising differentiating to support weaker students first, priority learners, and really knowing who needs your help. The amount of one to one interactions in lessons as a marker of teacher skill. Some of the mistakes we can make when trying to ‘extend’ more able students, share some examples of approaches to differentiation that are not especially effective.

In this episode Matt and Femi discuss culture - particularly from the perspective of heads of department trying to shape the culture of teaching staff in their corner of the school. This one is not maths-specific – the discussion is relevent to colleagues from any subject area or team. They consider the fact that culture exists – whether you actively seek to shape it, or not, the characteristics of good culture, shaping and maintaining culture, so called toxic environments: and how incongruence, unfairness and wilful blindness from leaders can play a role there. They talk about failing to listen for fear of endorsing the other person’s view, some challenges of open lines of communication, establishing and reinforcing norms, Tuckman’s stages of group development, being visible, engineering and celebrating success, and delegating and giving responsibility (while guiding and supporting appropriately), amongst other things.

Today Femi and Matt are speaking about lesson observations and related activities such as lesson visits, coaching and feedback. They talk about being clear on why the observation is happening; good and less good reasons for doing lesson observations and some of the issues around lesson observations as part of the performance management process. On lesson visits i.e. ‘walking the shop floor’, they discuss culture, feedback and follow up and then get into coaching observations and feedback: 3 common mistakes, models for structuring feedback, initial identification of the big ticket items and subsequent follow up staying with that focus. Jim Knight’s ‘Impact cycle’, teaching strategies, modelling and feedback. The attitude of the person being observed. Trust. How potential typically outweighs competence and the implications for ‘attitude’ when recruiting teachers. What makes for effective teams. What Matt has been working on to be trust-worthy on his end of the relationship, and how one’s behaviour can reveal underlying motivations and insecurities. What is a necessary professional conversation, and what isn’t, and what can be learnt from those encounters, and lesson observation etiquette, among other things!

Today's episode is about mistakes, disappointment and failure – with the discussion ranging from 'recognising that my last lesson didn’t go as well as I wanted', through to acknowledging and responding to under-performance at the level of the whole school. Matt and Femi discuss the importance of recognising and admitting when things aren’t good enough and taking responsibility for the outcomes, how to identify when outcomes haven’t been good enough, and also reflecting on when and why things went well. The pair share examples from their own experiences of failure; what it means to be able to hold your head up high, look the kids in the eye at the end of the year and say “Hand on heart, I did my best”; Using evidence to identify what it is that you need to work on to improve outcomes – and trying to focus in on a small number of things that will have the biggest impact; and the common trap of focussing on 'what I should have done in that situation' rather than 'how to avoid getting into the situation in the first place'. They debate some of the problems with having performance management linked to class results; A developmental paradigm vs judgemental paradigm; focussing on outcomes vs focussing on culture; and the value of having the space to make mistakes.

Today’s episode is about 'hit and run' CPD, which Femi and Matt approach with an attitude of constructive criticism and attempting to offer a vision of positive alternatives. 'Hit and run' CPD is really just any so called ‘training’ which is a singular, stand-alone event, with no follow up. All too often these sessions will involve all staff in the hall, with no attempt to evaluate prior knowledge, and no differentiation for the widely varying contexts and levels of expertise. The duo discuss what is meant by the term; what the problems are with singular standalone training sessions; what would constitute valid goals for the inset presentation and what does it look like when it’s being done well. They talk about the importance of follow-up to any training , get into the challenges for heads and SLTs around narrowing priorities enough to give them the time through the year to achieve and sustain real change and the importance of approaching inset and training strategically and with long and medium term plans. They also discuss cultivating a developmental culture vs a judgemental one, and how the behaviour of leaders is crucial to shape that; The challenges of utilising expertise within school; The proper way to reflect on training sessions and the importance of reflecting and evaluating the impact of training and inset; How energising it can be to be involved in the long term project of improvement – especially with a skilled facilitator and a clear path forward; and The economics of professional development and false economy of the hit and run CPD, amongst other things. This episode should be of interest to teachers of all subjects, and as always we'd love to hear your thoughts - @BeyondGoodPod on X.

Today's episode starts with Matt and Femi chatting about Femi’s observations of coaches at his 6 year old's summer tennis camp, which turns out to be a fascinating lens through which to discuss the characteristics of great teachers as it is all about the ‘how’ of what is being done, and not the ‘what’ – which is so often the focus of discussions in teaching. They discuss the critical importance of enthusiasm and passion; Steven Kotler’s model of motivation for flow; the ability to differentiate; flexibility to deviate from the plan; use of names, and subject knowledge. The conversation gets into teachers identifying other experts, learning from them and actively seeking coaching and feedback; Coaching and the inner game of tennis; and the ways in which motivation and engagement are a precursor to skill development. They discuss the power of the word ‘differently’ in coaching; how achieving mastery in teaching makes the job a pleasure and not a drag; How much 1:1 interaction each child gets with the teacher during the session or lesson, and the power and beauty of curiosity, among other topics. Lots to enjoy today and truly none of it is maths-specific, so we hope this is of interest once again to all colleagues.