“Are my pupils doing or learning? Am I asking the right questions? Am I modelling this correctly?”. These are examples of just a few of the types of questions teachers may ask themselves when evaluating the effectiveness of their teaching. Paul Reeves, Assistant Principal for Learning and Teaching at Surbiton High School believes that excellent teaching is “not just about outcomes, it’s about what’s happening in the moment between the adult in the room and the young people in the room”.
For pupils, that looks like the sense that there is a clear “direction of travel” in the lessons where all of them are fully engaged in often very complex ideas. In terms of standards, there are minimum professional requirements that the government wants schools to meet. Still, Surbiton High School is focused on how far above those teaching standards we can go focusing instead on “how high can we fly?” and “the altitude at which the pupils are flying themselves”.
At the foundations of these aspirations are tangible realities in place. “The strongest variable to any pupil outcome,” asserts Paul Reeves, “is the quality of the teaching”. Surbiton High School teachers employ a lot of different models to challenge pupils to maximise their learning. This is achieved because Surbiton High School teachers are fully trained in, and aware of, the science of learning. They understand educational theories and know how to employ them in real-life scenarios whether that is using teaching strategies “in certain scenarios to certain year groups at certain times” or an awareness of “cognitive overload”. The overriding priority is how pupils can absorb all the information they find themselves in receipt of, often across five periods of lessons a day. The teacher is a hugely important facilitator in “controlling the pitch, the pace, the flow, and the rhythm of the information that needs to be absorbed”.
For Paul Reeves, who observes a wide range of different teaching styles across hundreds of lessons a year through learning walks within the School, the proof of effective teaching and learning is “fizz”. It is the feeling that young people have a “positive energy” fuelled by an intellectual spark that has been created within the learning space. On these learning walks, Paul Reeves would see that “young people were engaged. They were concentrating in the moment”.
Meeting the needs of individual learners is paramount and increasingly this also extends to the different personality types within a classroom. The ideal learning environment is one where all pupils feel comfortable participating; introverts and extroverts alike should have opportunities to learn and build confidence. The technique of ‘warm-calling’ is an example of a strategy to help build an introvert’s confidence in participating during class.
Tools like warm-calling can be supported with more traditional methods such as written marking, to ensure that teachers can verify and check the progress of all pupils under their care. At Surbiton High School, we place great emphasis on the development of strong, positive relationships between staff and pupils, as it is from properly knowing pupils that teachers will know which strategies will work best for each individual pupil.
As a practitioner leading on the quality of teaching and learning at Surbiton High School, Paul Reeves finds himself at the forefront of assessing the benefits of emerging AI technology and its place within education. Whilst “fascinating,” Paul Reeves makes the point that the human connection and the ability to assess and respond to individual pupil needs remain irreplaceable. While AI tools can offer valuable support, the human element remains central to the educational process.
AI is a great tool for acting as a springboard for accessing knowledge, although verifying the accuracy of the knowledge remains important. There is a strong case for integration within the classroom and AI needs to be “tactically introduced at the right time for the right reasons”. Paul Reeves is hesitant of the idea of rejecting AI because “it is something new”.
What AI will not be able to replace is the elevation that comes from the nuances and nudges that can be given to a pupil by a highly skilled and highly trained human practitioner.
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Categories: Blog EdTech/AI in Education Leading, Teaching and Learning