Promoting improvement ITE dissemination conference: secondary history Michael Maddison HMI &...

Promoting improvement

ITE dissemination conference: secondary history

Michael Maddison HMI & National Lead for history

Angela Milner HMI & National Lead for ITE including FE

Birmingham, 16 October 2013

Promoting improvement: secondary history

Outline

Promoting improvement: training for secondary history teachers

The evidence base from the thematic inspections

Key strengths

Areas for improvement

Messages from school and subject inspections about history

Next steps and recommendations

How do we best nurture highly effective history trainees?

The evidence base

Evidence base: thematic inspections(Six HEIs and two EBITTs)


Trainees NQTs Course Leaders

School Mentors

Observations

HEIs 14 5

EBITTs 5 1

Total 19 6

Interviews HEIs 27 7 8 18

EBITTs 6 2 3 6

Total 33 9 11 24

Plus: one training session observed (EBITT)Total number of trainees in the eight providers: 82 HEIs and 7 EBITTs

Evidence base: dissemination events

2012–13: 13 history dissemination presentations to trainers, trainees and mentors

5 primary HEIs: Cumbria, Keele, Kingston, Liverpool Hope, and Liverpool John Moores

7 secondary HEIs: Edge Hill, Institute of Education London, Keele, Liverpool Hope, Roehampton, UEA and Worcester

1 Teach First: London


Key strengths

Key strengths: secondary history

Trainees

high-quality trainees recruited – 1st degree commonly 2.1+

high completion and employment rates

highly competent professionals with potential to be outstanding teachers



Trainees

subject knowledge and subject knowledge for teaching

hardworking and committed

enthusiastic and reflective

high expectations

a willingness to try different teaching approaches



Training courses

well structured

well delivered

knowledgeable and enthusiastic course leaders

challenging training courses on which trainees flourish

high attainment: HEIs consistently at least good, EBITTs variable



School support

supportive and dedicated history mentors and history departments


Areas for improvement

Areas for improvement: secondary history

Course leaders

providing greater guidance on how to plug subject knowledge gaps including greater use of subject community resources

focusing more directly on a range of practical strategies to ensure trainees have a greater understanding of how to

enhance students’ historical thinking develop progression in students’ conceptual understanding in history differentiate effectively to meet the needs of all students

ensuring assignments focus on subject-specific teaching practice as well as generic teaching practice



The importance of questioning in developing historical thinking

When you have been teaching for around 14 and a half years, you could be about to ask your 1,000,000th question. Teachers ask up to two questions every minute, up to 400 in a day, around 70,000 a year, or 2 to 3 million over the course of a career (TES, July 2006)

Questioning accounts for up to a third of all teaching time, second only to the time devoted to explanation

Most questions are answered in less than a second – that’s the average time teachers allow between posing a question, accepting an answer, throwing it to someone else or answering it themselves

So, how can we improve trainees’ use of questions? How do teachers present themselves as mentors coaxing out

answers, not as interrogators seeing who cracks first? And how do you get students to ask you questions, so learning

becomes an interactive dialogue rather than an uninterrupted diatribe?

Areas for improvement: secondary history

Subject mentors

give trainees sharply focused subject-specific targets and advice as a matter of routine from the start of the course.

Non-HEI partnerships

focus much more on subject-specific pedagogy

ensure trainees are able to teach effectively in a range of settings.


The mentor training cycle


1. Review of previous week / matters arising / evaluation of previous targets & activities.

2. Issues of the week (day-to-day teaching / school experience etc)

3. Set targets relating to issues of the week.

4. Topic of the week (see handbook).

5. Targets / activities related to topic of the week.

Areas for improvement: secondary historyFuture for all

ensuring trainees are able to create schemes of work which

develop students’ historical knowledge through learning about, and understanding, important aspects of local, national and world events and the histories of cultures other than their own

are distinctive, highly imaginative and underpinned by a clear and coherent rationale

ensure that students understand key historical concepts and can confidently articulate the place history has in their own lives, in society and in the modern world

provide constant opportunities for discovery and challenge, and for pupils to take greater responsibility for their learning.


What are the messages about history from school and subject inspections?

Overview: a mixed picture – a successful subject in school but under pressure and some significant aspects in need of improvement

Primary headlines

Primary strengths

Pupils have better knowledge and make better progress where history is discrete.

Teaching is generally good but variable.

Primary weaknesses

Pupils’ knowledge is episodic.

Pupils’ chronological understanding is variable and their ability to make links across the knowledge they have gained is weak.


Action: ensure trainees know about history in primary schools, especially Years 5 and 6.

Secondary headlines – successes

History is successful in most of the secondary schools visited because it is well taught by very well-qualified and highly

competent teachers well led.

The National Curriculum at Key Stage 3 (11–14) has led to much high-quality teaching and learning in history.

Attainment is high in the secondary schools visited and has continued to rise, particularly at GCSE and A level.

Entries at GCSE and A level are also rising.

Note: See data pack slides for details about entries and attainment in history at GCSE and A level.


Secondary concerns – Key Stage 3

increasing non-specialist teaching – 28% no relevant degree

variability in teaching time – average: 60–90 minutes a week

whole-school curriculum changes in KS3 – two-year KS3; cross- curricular teaching; competencies rather than subjects

misuse of levels of attainment

poor planning for progression in the developments of students’ knowledge, understanding and subject-specific thinking

the failure of some subject leaders to provide a rationale for the curriculum they had put in place

Result

In some schools history is being marginalised.

Standards are too variable and progress is not fast enough.


Some students continue to be restricted in their subject options at GCSE

Lower-ability students are not served well at KS4

Assessment at GCSE: formulaic teaching leading to formulaic responses

The growth of the one-year GCSE

Most students who take history beyond KS3 study modern world topics at GCSE and at A level

Question: Does the current reform of GCSE offer an opportunity?

Action: Focus on ensuring trainees can teach in any setting.

Secondary Concerns – Key Stage 4


Ensure trainees consider two critical questions:

What do I want my students to know, do and understand at the end of their work that they didn’t know, couldn't do and didn't understand at the start?

Why am I teaching what I am teaching; when I am teaching it, how am I teaching it?

The link: excellent subject knowledge

‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’

– Albert Einstein

Secondary Actions


Next steps and recommendations


Recommendations – please consider:

how best to assess teaching potential within the interview process

prescribed pre- and post-training-session reading as well as detailed, yet manageable, lists of subject-specific texts, articles and websites which help trainees to strengthen their subject knowledge and keep up to date with the latest thinking in teaching and learning in history

ensuring that trainees are aware of history in primary schools

training sessions which focus on helping trainees to enhance students’ historical thinking develop progression in students’ conceptual understanding in

history differentiate effectively to meet the needs of all students develop numeracy as well as literacy in history

ensuring assignments focus on subject-specific teaching practice as well as generic teaching practice


a common approach for trainees to map and signpost the evidence in their files for each of the Teachers’ Standards

how best to develop the role of subject mentor so that all mentors know not just what to do but how they might improve at doing it have clear guidance on their roles and responsibilities place greater emphasis on subject-specific comments in lesson

observations and subject-specific targets in weekly meetings ensure that these comments are appropriately recorded

a much more proactive approach to subject action planning by course leaders which not only includes responses to feedback received but also focuses on specific priorities and provides precise guidance to subject mentors on ensuring that future trainees not only meet but also exceed the Teachers’ Standards

Non-HEIs: focusing much more on subject-specific pedagogy and ensuring trainees are able to teach effectively in a range of settings

All: ensuring trainees are able to respond effectively to the revised NC.

National Lead [email protected]

Promoting Improvement: secondary history |

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