Modelling best teaching practise in Ealing - working with African Caribbean pupils
Ealing Education Authority engaged Training Attention to elicit a model for successfully motivating African Caribbean students to learn who were otherwise in danger of underachievement. The two schools involved in the project nominated three teachers who they deemed to be successful at motivating this student group to learn.
What the children said about these teachers
During the interviews with the students one would think the students were describing very similar individuals. The students spoke in glowing terms of how these teachers:
• Never make us look stupid
• Explain things so that I understand what is going on
• Give us hope and confidence
• Talk to me with respect
• Listen to us properly
• Let us relax as long as we get on with our work.
• Let us know who is boss.
• Are helpful all round and not just in lessons
However, in observation and interview the teachers were very different in style, rules, boundaries and expectations. The next stage was to model the teachers through interview and observation.
The teacher’s metaphors - Motivating these children is like what?
Teacher 1
‘It’s like dragging them kicking and screaming through an eye of an needle, you reach through you grab them by the lapels, you keep eye contact with them to let them know you’re with them all the way and you don’t let go until they’re on the side of learning with you.’
In the classroom she demanded incredibly strict discipline, a child murmured one word while another was presenting and she shouted in his face that he was disgracing himself and the class and sent him out of the classroom. The observers were shocked, however as soon as the child returned to the classroom they immediately engaged with the class and answered questions as if nothing had happened.
Teacher 2
‘It’s like sculling a boat slowly and gently through clear water, the children need the tiniest nudges to keep their oars in time with one another so they are all pulling in the same direction and it’s a lovely gentle ride.’
In the classroom if someone wasn’t concentrating she would glide gently over to them and lightly touch their shoulder to bring their attention back into the class.
Teacher 3
‘ It’s like a big smiling mouth and a pound sign. These kids are motivated by noise and money. You need to get them to think about what it is they want and then to express themselves towards that, whether it’s writing rap lyrics or becoming an office worker or a business mogul.’
In the classroom he played rap music to start, the topic observed was Ted Hughes’s poetry, he had kids standing on tables and chairs reciting poetry at him. He’d shout, ‘I can’t hear you, how do I know you’re thinking?’ The very clear message was that expressing yourself was good above all else.
We concluded at this stage of the modelling process that their internal models and behaviour and teaching style and values were completely different and yet the pupils descriptions of these teachers is that they experienced the teachers in the same way.
What was the ‘difference that made the difference’ in these teachers?
The breakthrough came almost by accident in the second round of observations. The teacher who insisted on absolute silence was at the board when one child whispered something to another at the back of the class of 30 students. Without turning round from the board the teacher sent the correct pupil out of the class. The observer noted she must have extraordinary hearing. On mentioning it to the teacher she said, ‘oh yes, I’ve got to have absolute silence to think clearly’, the modeller then asked
‘When you’re teaching at your best you’re classroom is like what’
‘It’s clear, calm with only the right information appearing at the right time, like a careful experiment with just the right compound being introduced at the right time and in the right order.’
‘When there is noise in your classroom it’s like what?’
‘I can’t think, I get stressed, it’s like all the compounds are being added together and you can’t tell what you’ve got, what’s happened or why’.
We re-interviewed the other teachers to get metaphors; for them to teach at their best what was the ideal environment?
We found that each of them had created a classroom that kept them in a good learning/teaching state. So they were in the best state possible to accommodate the diversity of their students. Because the classroom environment and teacher’s behaviour and the teacher’s teaching style were all congruent it meant that a) the pupils could learn the rules very quickly and b) because the teacher’s were in a good learning state themselves they were more able to learn about and accommodate the diversity amongst their students.