Saturday 14 March 2009

Lecturing, Teaching, Performing. Learning?

Back in the early 90's I was watching Luke Abbot deliver some Drama work with young students.
There were about 20 or so observers.
Returning from the break early, I mentioned to a colleague [we were the only two adults present] that we had caught the youngsters playing together and not performing. When Luke returned with the other observers, the children settled to restart their performance.
Luke was trying to demonstrate an approach to teaching.
Because of the adult audience presence the youngsters were always performing/ aware of the audience.
In the classroom, alone with the teacher [their only audience] this doesn't happen.
Dorothy, bless her, has had children performing to audiences[ teachers, students] most of her career. The evidence is clear.
Children will behave differently, learn differently, in front of observers/audience. The situation is different to a classroom situation. They are not comparable.
In addition to which they are being filmed!
This doesn't exactly create false outcomes that cannot be replicated in the classroom...or does it?

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Four steps back - one step forward

With some reluctance you sometimes have to move away from the idea to move forward with the idea.

This can occur for many reasons, often outside the control of the teacher.
Again the adaptability of colleagues in recognising the signs is really important if MoE is to have the intended impact on student learning.
Personalisation and independence of student learning is surely at the heart of current educational thinking? The boundaries of teacher expectations is bound to be challenged.