Why teach pupils leadership skills?

I’m writing this on the eve of our trust’s inaugural ‘Pupil Leadership Summit’, where the pupil leadership teams across our primaries and secondaries will come together to develop their knowledge of what effective leadership looks like and start to plan projects that they lead across this year.  Whilst the event is partly to support collaboration across our schools (we’ve done lots of work on facilitating teacher collaboration, but pupils have not have much opportunity to work with other schools), it’s also an important event in starting to give more of a structure to the development of these young leaders- both to develop them and to ensure that the work they do is meaningful, contributing to our trust’s core purpose.

 

The success of pupil leadership in the schools I’ve worked in so far has relied on the support and enthusiasm of the staff who run them and/or the extent to which the pupils themselves have a clear vision for the changes they wish to make and the legacy that they want to leave behind.  One particular cohort of pupil leader springs to mind, as they were focused throughout on making changes that went beyond running one-off events and projects.  They were led by two head pupils who were determined to leave a legacy and long-lasting impact, especially on the sixth form.  This involved a range of projects, from redecorating their own social spaces to introducing extra-curricular cookery classes so that pupils would be able to look after themselves when they left home.

 

More and more, we’re recognising that leadership in schools requires a suite of professional development for those in leadership roles and – to future-proof our schools amidst a recruitment crisis – those who aspire to be leaders themselves.  When it comes to pupil leadership teams, however, their development as leaders is too often left to chance.  For the school, it means that the impact of such groups depends too much on specific staff or pupils; when they leave, the impact of any pupil leadership work then declines- as they take their ideas and drive with them.  Moreover, not developing the leadership skills of pupils also means that it is those who have developed them outside of school (through engagement with DofE, scouts/guides and sporting clubs, for example) who are primed for the top pupil leadership roles and potentially roles in leadership/management after they leave school.  This leaves the pupils who don’t/can’t access these extra-curricular opportunities (often disadvantaged pupils, due to the extra costs that such activities often involve) behind.

 

I’d argue then that a more strategic approach to developing young leaders is needed.  Luckily there are lots of schemes (such as the Young Leaders Award) to help schools facilitate this across whole cohorts of pupils.  Our trust is also lucky to have two pupil voice leads across our primary schools, who are looking at how we can use these resources in conjunction with cross-trust collaboration to develop the next cohort of young leaders.

 

I’m keen that the event I’m running tomorrow goes beyond a ‘nice day out’ and actively plays a part in developing the knowledge and skills that our pupils need to thrive as leaders in their own schools (through specific leadership workshops and working with external speaker Jo Brassington on their knowledge of how to celebrate diversity in schools).  It also marks the start of more collaboration on shared projects across the year, before we bring the pupils back for a celebration event in the summer.  At this point we hope to premiere a short film that showcases their efforts, something that will also be used in schools to further promote the work of our pupil leadership teams going forwards.

Reflecting on Developing LGBT+ Inclusion

Following the recent Pride & Progress Educators Network meeting, I’ve been inspired to shared my own reflections on the past year.

In April 2022, I started at a new school and got asked to prepare a virtual Pride assembly.  Strangely enough this was the first time that I’d been asked to do this, despite being in the classroom for ten years.  That being said, I’d never volunteered myself either.

As an ITT, I’d not really talked about my sexuality with colleagues in school (though this was more to do with me creating a ‘teacher identity’ than actively hiding my sexuality).  As an NQT, I was fortunate enough to be in a school where elements of representation was not in short supply: there were LGBT+ staff at different levels in the school from the headteacher down.  However, nobody really talked about it.  I was openly gay in the staffroom but in my classroom I still adopted a fiercely ‘professional’ identity.  I was honest about my partner if students asked, but it was never information that I volunteered.

 

If I’m honest, I was largely comfortable with this.  I felt that it worked as part of the ‘teacher persona’ I created (I never really spoke with students about other elements of my personal life either).  But just over a year ago, following that Pride assembly, that changed.

 

At my new school, Year 11 left not long after I started and I barely knew them beyond us greeting each other while I did my duties on the gate and yard.  Despite only having been there a few weeks, I was pleasantly surprised to be given a leaving card from one student, thanking me for sharing my story on the Pride assembly and for being open about who I was, because it made him feel less alone.

 

This made me realise that by enforcing this strict ‘professional’ line, I could be seen to be denying LGBT+ students the opportunity to see others like themselves in the world around them.  In an area where the local council recently voted against displaying a Pride flag during June and transphobic attitudes being rife in the wider world (whether this be on social media, from news outlets or the very people elected to represent us), representation is crucial.

 

This past year, I’ve changed my approach.  Working with other staff on getting the school The Rainbow Flag award has really helped me consider how I want to use my experience (as well as the learning I’m doing myself, thanks to the likes of the ‘Pride & Progress’ community) to improve the LBGT+ inclusion.  We’ve worked on improving the usualisation of LGBT+ representation in the curriculum, as well as improving the CPD offer for staff around understanding how to challenge and prevent homophobia and transphobia (both of which have had a great impact).

 

My proudest moment, however, has come from working with an LGBT+ student group.  It started as an after-school club to feedback about some of the work we were doing for The Rainbow Flag Award but has slowly become an action group.  Over the year, they’ve been doing their own learning about LGBT+ history and experiences and got a lot from attending The Proud Trust’s LGBT+ Youth Summit.  The outcome has been their own action plan for improving inclusion at the school, enlisting the support of various staff stakeholders (they even have their own project management plan).

 

By far my proudest moment was them presenting this to the Headteacher and Personal Development Assistant Headteacher, with our Headteacher going on to stress that he wants to meet them half-termly next year so that they can “hold [me] accountable” (his words) so that LGBT+ inclusion continues to develop and remain a priority.  There were tears (happy ones).

 

Sadly, I’ll be leaving this school and this group of students this summer to return to my old trust, though I’m hoping that this will give me the opportunity to do similar work on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across multiple school communities.  In the meantime, the student group I’m leaving behind have become determined that their action plan for next year result in a lasting legacy.  The support they’ve secured from staff in the school will ensure it happens and I’ll be keeping in contact with the school as I can’t wait to see what they achieve next.

Assessment in English (Part 3- Reliability and Validity)

This is the third instalment of my blog series on assessment in English.  Following on from my last blog on some of the key terms when it comes to curriculum planning, I now want to take a brief look at the terms ‘assessment’ and ‘validity’, in order to consider the questions they raise when it comes to planning and implementing effective assessment.  

Validity

Dylan Wiliam’s statement that ‘there is no such thing as a valid test’ (Wiliam, 2020) really challenged my thinking when it came to considering how we use assessments (for both formative and summative purposes).  Instead, it’s all about considering the purpose of the data we gather and considering the validity (or accuracy) of the inferences we make- whether the data be end of unit test scores, mock results or more qualitative data (such as students’ responses to a mini-whiteboard task).

As English teachers, we are often adept at unpicking underlying meanings within language and assessing their validity; it’s important that we apply the same thought process to the assessment data we gather.

Wiliam explains (in the brilliant ‘ResearchEd Guide to Assessment’- a must-read for anyone evaluating the efficacy of assessment in the classroom) how there are two main threats to this:

• Construct underrepresentation (meaning that the sample of knowledge being assessed is too small to make valid inferences about students’ learning)
• Construct-irrelevant variance (where a lack of knowledge not relevant to the knowledge being assessed prevents students from demonstrating what they have learnt)

Take, for example, this GCSE-style question:

Explore how Shakespeare presents Macduff as virtuous.

Construct underrepresentation is easily illustrated through the use of literature mock exams, where they are used to assess students’ knowledge of a set text.  For example, a low mark for an essay that focuses on Macduff could lead a teacher to infer that the student’s knowledge on the play ‘Macbeth’ needs much work.  However, it might be that their knowledge of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and other characters/themes is much stronger: the inference, therefore, wouldn’t be valid.

Likewise, the word ‘virtuous’ might also pose a barrier to valid inferences, since it might generate construct-irrelevant variance.  If students aren’t confident with the meaning of this word, then they are less likely to be able to communicate their knowledge of the text.  Whilst it is important to teach and promote a wide vocabulary, we do need to be aware that the use of it in assessment questions might impact our ability to make accurate inferences of what students do and don’t know.

Reliability

Reliability is the measure of how consistent an assessment result would be if the assessment was repeatedly administered over time. Assuming that no learning took place, you’d expect a completely reliable assessment to generate the same mark for a single student, no matter when they took it or who marked it.

Again, I’m referring to Wiliam (the champion of evidence-informed assessment), who highlights that total reliability of an assessment isn’t logistically possible.  Instead, ‘we need to be aware of the limitations of our assessments so we do not place more weight on the result of an assessment that its reliability would warrant’.

I feel that a specific threat to English assessment is the subject nature of much of the success criteria we use (whether this be on the mark schemes for the KS4 and KS5 exams, or on internal criteria).  You only need to look at the difference in grading after GCSE English re-marks have been submitted to see that even standardised tests cannot be wholly reliable.

Questions for English teachers and leaders

I’m definitely not advocating for exam-style questions to be banned from the English classroom, as they are important to prepare students for the exams they will sit.  This also isn’t where I start to explain my views on exam reform.

That being said, it is clear that any summative use of assessment needs to be planned carefully to maximise the validity of the inferences we make and mitigate for the impact of issues with reliability.

When we design these assessments, we need to consider:

• What do we want to assess?  Does the assessment sample a wide enough range of this knowledge?
• Which inferences do we want to make from the data?  How does the assessment set up these inferences to be valid?
• Are there any barriers (especially gaps in knowledge and vocabulary gaps) that prevent students demonstrating the knowledge they have?  How can these be mitigated?
  
• If the same student completed the assessment on different days, how consistent (or reliable) would their score be, assuming no new learning has taken place?
• If different teachers marked the same assessment, how consistent (or reliable) would their marking be?
• What actions could be taken to mitigate the risks to reliability?

To conclude, when it comes to reliability and validity, Wiliam’s advice at the end of his chapter ‘How to think about assessment’ is rock-solid:

References:

Wiliam, D. (2020) ‘How to think about assessment’ The ResearchEd Guide to Assessment John Catt Educational

Assessment in English (Part 2: Key Terms)

This is part 2 of a series of blogs looking at assessment in English.  For part 1, please click here.

Part 3, focusing on the reliability and validity of assessments can be accessed here.

Last year, I blogged on the importance of a shared understanding of terminology when it comes to discussing great teaching.  Likewise, this shared understanding of key terms is vital when it comes to discussing assessment, especially given the number of disagreements on social media that have arisen from misinterpretation.  Nobody understands this more than us, given our knowledge of how meaning is tied to the reader’s interpretation as much as the writer’s intention.

For this reason, I wanted to start by setting out my own interpretations of some key terms that sit behind a solid understanding of assessment in English.  I accept that some of these might be widely debated, but I’m hoping that these definitions will help when reflecting on an understanding of assessment in later blogs.

Knowledge

Though this may be a controversial statement, I see knowledge as the foundation of teaching and learning.  This is reflected in the Cambridge Dictionary’s definitions of the verbs ‘teach’ (“to give someone knowledge”) and ‘learn’ (“to get knowledge or skill”).  Everything we do is rooted in planning, delivering, applying and knowledge.

One of the reasons many teachers might disagree with this sentiment is the concept that skills are not the same as knowledge.  However, I view this as a false dichotomy and adopt the view that there are different types of knowledge, including declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge (the latter being the knowledge that allows us to demonstrate skills).

Declarative knowledge

Declarative knowledge can be seen as the factual knowledge we teach students )“knowing that- facts” (Raichura, 2018).  Examples of this within English could be:

• Knowing that Shakespeare believed James I to be a descendent of the real-life Banquo
• Knowing that inferences are guesses based on evidence
• Knowing that semi-colons are used to separate two independent clauses

Procedural knowledge

Whereas declarative knowledge is factual, such as in the examples above, procedural knowledge is can be used as a term for skills-based knowledge (“knowing how” (Raichura, 2018)).  In this sense, knowing how to do something is classed as a type of knowledge in itself.  Examples within English could include:

• Knowing how to analyse a simile
• Knowing how to accurately use semi-colons
• Knowing how to interpret a character

Procedural knowledge is based on a foundation of declarative knowledge (you’d be hard-pressed to use a semi-colon if you didn’t have knowledge of the conventions of their use or what they look like) but I believe it shouldn’t be seen as a hierarchy.  Though the relationship between declarative and procedural knowledge will impact the sequence of teaching, it doesn’t mean that declarative knowledge is any less complex or powerful.

Curriculum

The Cambridge Dictionary definition focuses on curriculum as ‘what is studied’ (whether it be subjects across a school or the specific knowledge within a subject).  However, it’s also important to consider the ‘how’ (curriculum implementation, including sequencing) and the symbiotic relationship between curriculum and assessment.  In short, the findings from assessment processes should inform the curriculum choices as much as the curriculum choices inform the decisions around how and what to assess.

Assessment

When I began teaching, I would have seen ‘assessment’ as a synonym for the task a student does that is then marked by me, the teacher.  I think that teacher John Dabell would probably see the government-driven APP (Assessing Pupils’ Progress) and the levels that went alongside this as the cause, given that he  explains how it “led to merging formative and summative into one big stinking pot of damaging sub-levels and labels which politicians stirred and cackled over.”

Either way, the view that ‘assessment’ is a task completed by students is a problematic one.  Instead, it’s better to take Dylan Wiliam’s lead and focus on its root word: to assess.  If we do this, then the focus shifts to the process the teacher undertakes instead.  The tasks are just the input that allow us to ‘assess’.  In defining this, I’ve also followed up on Wiliam’s interpretation by focusing on Lee J. Cronbach’s (1971) definition of assessment as ‘a procedure for drawing inferences’ (Wiliam, 2020).

Our purposes for those inferences and the subsequent actions then lead us to the definitions of formative and summative assessment.

Formative assessment

Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam’s seminal work Inside the Black Box (1998) is well known for exploring formative assessment as a process.  Wiliam even went so far to reflect on the coinage of the term in a 2013 tweet, by considering that it should have been named ‘something like “responsive teaching”’ (Wiliam, 2013).

So how we we define this?  Let’s go back to the root word again: form (from the Latin ‘formare’ - to form).  Formative assessment helps us make inferences that allow us to form the next steps of the learning process.  Essentially:

What do they know?

What do they not know?

What next?  How does this impact our teaching and students’ learning?

In this sense, formative inferences form part of a cycle of learning where the inferences from assessment constantly feed into teaching on an ongoing basis.  Great teachers make and act on formative inferences constantly, both within and between lessons.

Harry Fletcher-Wood explores this effectively in his blogs and also his book on the subject (Fletcher-Wood, 2018), which look at responsive teaching across different subjects.  In later blogs, I intend to set out how we can utilise effective formative assessment in the English classroom.

Summative assessment

Whereas formative assessment forms part of a ‘cycle’ of learning, summative assessment focuses more on the end goals by representing the sum of a student’s learning.  The most ubiquitous example of a summative inference is the grades students are awarded at the end of a course (students’ knowledge of the course content is assessed through a sample in an exam paper and/or non-exam assessment and the summative inference is made about their attainment in that subject).

However, making such inferences can be problematic, as they are often reported to external stakeholders (whether it’s parents, the press or politicians) and can be based on a narrow sampling of students’ learning.  Even where these are well-designed, Daisy Christodoulou highlights how despite the ‘accurate shared meaning’, they provide us with ‘relatively little information that will change [our] teaching’ (Christodoulou, 2016).  I would argue that this is especially true for English that other subjects for formal qualifications, due to a combination of subjective criteria and other variables that impact students’ ability to hit the criteria in place.

As the focus of summative inferences is to make judgements of students’ learning and attainment across a longer span of time, we encounter summative assessment less frequently and it doesn’t impact our teaching directly.  That being said, the fact that - since the removal of levels - English schools are now freer to make their own decisions about how to assess summatively makes it worth considering effective approaches to this (which I discuss in the final section of this book).

Reliability and Validity

The final two terms that I feel are vital to the design and use of effective assessment are reliability and validity.  In part 3 of these series, I’ll explore what these terms mean in terms of assessment in the classroom and how they impact the design and use of assessment.

Reflection Questions

To what extent do these definitions chime with your existing understanding of the terms?

Where do you currently make formative inferences as part of assessment processes?

How do these impact the next steps for teaching and learning?

What summative inferences do you currently make in your school?

How useful do you find these summative inferences in your practice?

References

Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/teach

Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/learn 

Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/curriculum 

Christodoulou, D. (2016) Making Good Progress? The future of Assessment for Learning, Oxford University Press

Fletcher-Wood, H. (2018) Responsive Teaching: Cognitive Science and Formative Assessment in Practice, Routledge

Raichura, P. (2018), https://bunsenblue.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/procedural-declarative-knowledge-my-cogscisci-talk/ 

Wiliam, D. (2013), https://twitter.com/dylanwiliam/status/393045049337847808

Wiliam, D. (2020), ‘How to think about assessment’, The ResearchEd Guide to Assessment, John Catt Educational

Assessment in English (Part 1: An Introduction)

After looking at assessment in my own practice and across the English curriculum as a trust English lead, I’ve decided to sum up some ideas and approaches in a series of blogs to kick-start 2022.  For part 2 in the series, please click here.

Assessment can be particularly problematic for English teachers, due to the subjective nature of most of what we teach- something that often leads to a sea of remark requests when exam results are issued.  Though I’d be wary of any argument that assessing English is ‘harder’ than other subjects (such comparisons are rarely useful and often only serve to divide teachers), we cannot ignore the fact that many of the processes we look to assess are inherently complex.

For experienced practitioners, who have had repeated exposure to what good does (and doesn’t) look like, it’s possible to trust initial impressions to make inferences of students’ knowledge, based on what they produce.  However, criteria such as GCSE mark schemes can be an unhelpful support, leading many of us to question what makes an explanation ‘clear’ or how you decide that a student’s work is ‘perceptive’ rather than ‘thoughtful’.

The definitions of some key terms in assessment can also be confusing.  As a trainee and NQT, I remember getting muddled about what constituted formative and summative assessments, as well as how to make them effective.  Luckily, with the growth of edutwitter and the range of books and blogs on the subject, there is more on offer to demystify assessment and its role in teaching.  I’m hoping that these blogs will serve as a welcome support for English teachers - from trainees to those with decades of experience in the classroom- who are looking for clear views of assessment in English, an understanding of where the challenges lie and advice on how to overcome these.

I’ll be taking a tour of the different elements of assessment in English, firstly clarifying some key definitions of terms linked to assessment in the classroom before then taking a detailed look at different approaches to formative assessment and the tools that we will need for our day-to-day practice.  Later, I’ll move on to address the questions surrounding summative assessment, considering the systems we cannot control (such as GCSE and A level exams) and also evaluating different approaches to assessment that have arisen since the removal of levels from the English National Curriculum.

Staff Development: the top priority for gained time this summer

Since starting as a head of department, my main priority each summer has been curriculum review.  By using the time to evaluate and plan for the following year, we’ve been able to make some great improvements to what we teach.  However, this year will be different.

The plans we made last summer did not, due to the impact of Covid-19, get fully implemented.  This means that to a large degree the first rollout of many of those changes will take place in 2021-22 (with a few tweaks to mitigate the impact of this year’s remote learning on student attainment).

Though other priorities (such as Y6 and Y11 transition, and small group interventions) remain, the fact that we do not need as much time for curriculum review means that the time for another priority is available.  In my mind, the most obvious contender is CPD.

Why prioritise CPD this summer?

It’s widely acknowledged that staff development is important to improving the offer for students, given that high-quality teaching is ‘the most important lever schools have to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils’ (EEF, 2019).  It’s only logical that if developing teaching works to narrow the disadvantaged gap, then it will also be a priority to narrow that so-called ‘gaps’ that have been impacted by Covid-19. Add to this the fact that many secondary teachers will have lost out on meaningful CPD because of TAGs.  Then add the possibility that improving CPD may improve teacher wellbeing and retention (Zucollo and Van den Brande, 2021).  It’s a no-brainer, surely?

However, flexibility and teacher autonomy will still be important if we want the CPD, especially given that the autonomy is an important factor in professionalism (Booth, Perry and Boylan, 2019) and teacher motivation (Teacher Development Trust, 2020).

What will this look like for my department?

For the teachers I lead in my school, we’re taking a two-pronged approach to this.  The first addresses subject-knowledge, by providing teachers with a list of resources that could help with specific topics that we teach (MASSOlit and Litdrive are a great starting point for English teachers, though we’ve also bought in various books over the past few years).  Staff can then use their gained time to access their choice of resources for subject knowledge before sharing this informally in our subject meetings.

The main bulk of the gained time, though, will be dedicated to collaborative CPD.  For this, teachers have the choice of accessing a peer coaching programme, team-teaching or collaborative planning (with the latter two being a possibility for those without gained time, as time is freed up for others to work with them in their existing lessons).

The majority of the department have opted for the peer coaching, which will serve to introduce them to the principles of coaching (an approach which will be a central facet of our CPD offer from September) as well as improving our teaching.  Through this, we’re going to use our gained time to:

• Access CPD sessions on coaching, including practise of coaching skills (Jim Knight’s book on ‘The Impact Cycle’ has proven invaluable for this)
• Observe each other teaching, using the coaching to set goals and give feedback

Through this, I hope to take my department’s CPD in a direction that means teachers get more of a chance to focus on their individual goals and needs, both this summer and in our CPD time next year.  Through this, we can then aim to continue to support our students in overcoming the impact of remote learning and absence that the past 18 months has generated.

References:

Booth J, Perry E and Boylan M (2019) Understanding Teaching as a Profession. Teacher CPD: International trends, opportunities and challenges. P35-41. Available at: https://chartered.college/download-international-teacher-cpd-report/

EEF (2019) The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Publications/Pupil_Premium_Guidance_iPDF.pdf 

Teacher Development Trust (2020) Guidance on Teacher Goal-Setting. Available at: https://tdtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guidance-on-Teacher-Goal-Setting-1.pdf 

Zucollo and Van den Brande (2021) Why better CPD could be the answer to teacher retention. Available at: https://www.tes.com/news/why-better-cpd-could-be-answer-teacher-retention 

Do we need a dictionary of teacher terms?

Developing and maintaining a shared knowledge of what great teaching looks like (whether it be in an individual school or on a wider level) is often referred to as a priority in educational leadership books/blogs.  On this note, I’m really excited for Mark and Zoe Enser’s upcoming book on the concept of a ‘CPD curriculum’, which is bound to generate thoughtful discussion around the topic.

But, as an English teacher especially, I can’t help but wonder if we are clear enough about the terms that we include within this.  Do we need to work on developing a shared understanding of educational terminology, as well as what these concepts look like in practice?

I know that some colleagues dismiss terms like ‘schemata’ or ‘dual-coding’ as ‘buzz words’.  There are also others who see some educational terminology as off-putting or overly pretentious, especially when it comes to the word ‘pedagogy’.  However, I’d argue that for many (though, admittedly, not all) terms, they can be used as a valuable shorthand to discuss, evaluate and improve teaching.

Those of us who teach (or have studied) A level English language will be familiar with some of these ideas, as linguist John Swales (2011) explains how specialised terminology is used and shared by members of an occupational group to help them achieve shared goals.  That being said, there are some barriers we need to be aware of if we are are to avoid some of these terms becoming meaningless ‘buzz words’ or representative of a meaning that is contradictory.

Potential Problem 1: Lethal Mutations

This issue is summarised well in this Ambition Institute post from Nick Rose, who explains and illustrates how ideas/strategies from educational research can be misinterpreted, leading to them no longer being effective (or even having a negative impact on learning).

These issues can arise from a misunderstanding of the terms we use.  For example, I have worked with a teacher who shared an example of retrieval practice as students completing a quiz at the start of each lesson on previous content by referring to their notes.  Though this does have the benefit of elevating the importance of note-taking, most of us will be aware that retrieval practice happens when knowledge is (correctly or incorrectly) retrieved from memory.  For this reason, it’s unlikely that tasks that allow students to refer to notes will achieve the same benefits of retrieval from memory.

Potential Problem 2: Scary Terminology

As I’ve mentioned before, some teachers can see educational terminology as unnecessary, pretentious or even intimidating.  Though there are some terms that could definitely fit into each of these categories, I’d also argue that some of these reactions are a result of teachers who lack an understanding (or confidence) with their definitions.

I can see how this might then lead to a dismissal of some of these terms (as by dismissing the term, they can also dismiss their own anxieties around it).  I’ve noticed this in particular with terms like ‘metacognition’, where the meaning is often miscommunicated (some refer to it as synonymous with cognitive science overall), leading to an understandable confusion when a teacher encounters contrasting interpretations.  Like before, this can result in teachers not feeling confident in applying some of the findings from this area of study, as the term itself puts them off the idea.

Potential Problem 3: Changes Over Time

Another area English language teachers will be aware of is the common, perhaps even ‘normal’, process of the meanings of words/terms changing over time.  This is easy for us to see in words like ‘literally’ or ‘sick’, though it’s occurred constantly throughout time (‘girl’, for example, was originally used to refer to any child, regardless of gender).

In educational terminology, we know that sometimes meanings/terms can shift over time, usually due to the ways in which the term has been applied.  An example can be seen in the term ‘formative assessment’ (popularised by Black and Wiliam’s ‘Inside the Black Box’), which Wiliam tweeted about in 2013 to say that not calling it ‘responsive teaching’ was a mistake before explaining in 2018 that referring to it as ‘responsive teaching’ wouldn’t have worked, since ‘it would have given many people the idea that it was all about the teacher’s role’.

Where we all sit on the ‘formative assessment vs responsive teaching’ argument aside, it’s clear that we need to be conscious of when and how educational terms shift over time if we are to have a consistent interpretation of our shared vocabulary.

A Possible Solution?

It’s clear to me that the shared understanding of these terms needs to be clear within an organisation if we want to communicate a shared vision to our teams of what great teaching looks like for that specific community.  However, the problems involved make this no small task - linguists will also be aware of the problems with trying to effect language change from a position of authority (‘change from above’ in linguistic circles).

Perhaps, for these reasons, there should be wider consensus on our shared language: is it time for an international ‘glossary of educational terms’?  And, if so, how can we ensure that it overcomes the issues I’ve discussed without the teaching community losing ownership of our shared language?