Drama Tuesday - Asking the hard question
/Mia, a Year 12 Media student is making a documentary and has invited me to a ZOOM interview. Her questions are thoughtful and require thought in answering them.
It’s interesting to engage in dialogue with people in school now –such a long time since I was in her shoes. But it set my mind thinking about the importance of young people asking good questions.
What would be your answers to her questions?
1. John Hattie argued that for about 60-70% of students the current education system is working well but for the other 30-40% students are more or less struggling. Do you think a personalised or more specific schooling curriculum could work for these students to have a better chance for learning?
One of the AITSL Standards for Teaching( AITSL Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership) - another project that Hattie is connected with - that I find really important is know your students and how they learn. The question then that Hattie’s research prompts is about whether the reasons why a significant number of students are struggling lie in knowing better the students we teach.
Do we as teachers know and understand the life circumstances of all our students or only of the students that are most like us? Do we understand what enables and what disables the learning of all our students? Do we have empathy for all of our students? Are we bringing our unspoken assumptions, prejudices and judgments into our interactions?
Underlying these questions is an important understanding of the nature of learning?
What does it mean when we say I learn?
Students will have better learning when there is a sense of personalization and differentiation. One size does not fit all.
2. John Hattie said that assessments in school should be a test for how teachers teach rather than students’ knowledge. What are your thoughts on this?
Make no mistake about it, all assessment is to some extent a test of how well we teach. While there is a responsibility for every learner to construct their own learning, it is also a measure of how well we teach when our students learn – or don’t learn.
That’s not a popular position amongst teachers.
But every teacher should be reflecting on the effectiveness of their teaching in helping students learn.
There are dangers of simply assessing how well teachers teach because that can lead to distortions of practice – such as teaching to the test and, worse, coercive or bullying teaching approaches.
And there is the problem in that the true measure of how well students learn lies not in passing an ATAR test at Year 12, but in how they live their lives. Rarely as teachers do we have the opportunity of following up on lives longitudinally.
But having made those caveats, I still come back to thinking that the test of teaching is: have students learnt? Can they independently, without prompting authentically show their learning? And when teachers teach well, students learn.
3. Do you believe that the High Impact Teaching strategies and the concept of Visible Learning developed by John Hattie would benefit the students learning and overall improve their chances of success in the real world outside of school?
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about education and schooling. Politicians politicise it and make slogans about it; our community posts on social media all sorts of opinions, misinformation and prejudices; students in the midst of schooling offer their perspectives. It’s no wonder that we have seen flip flopping approaches – and Western Australia has not been immune to this trend. Everyone is looking for the magic bullet that will solve what are identified as problems in schooling. Too many people want simple answers to complex problems.
Therefore, it is important that we should look at the research evidence and this is where Hattie is valuable. But even his work is being reduced to simple formulae (see, for example, Department of Education and Training, 2017).
Having said that, I recognise from my own teaching that the High Impact Strategies make good sense – what my mother would have called common sense. Telling students what you intend them to learn; providing structure, signposts and guidance; working in teams; good questioning; explicitly understanding how learning happens; all of these strategies should be in every teacher’s repertoire.
Figure 1 From High Impact Teaching Strategies page 6
In Western Australia the Primary Principals Association has promoted a systematic approach called iSTAR – Inform/Inspire; Show/Share; Try/Transfer; Apply/Action; Review/Revise.(see https://www.campbellprimaryschool.wa.edu.au/teaching-learning/learning-areas/literacy/istar-pedagogical-framework/ for an example in use)
There is no shortage of approaches to teaching purposefully.
The interesting question then is not about these or any strategies, but why aren’t they evident in the day to day classroom?
There are a dazzling array of theories of learning (see for example, Bates (2019) that we also need to consider. The differences between a theory and evidence are also part of the debate.
In short, there are no simple answers to the complex question of learning. But it must be more than haphazard and hit and miss.
An interesting drama challenge
This sort of conversation while a dialogue is not intrinsically dramatic. There is no sense of tension or conflict. As a playwright, how could you construct this as a scene with dramatic action and tension?
Explore and extend the ideas but write this as a dramatic dialogue.
Who are the characters speaking? What are their relationships?
What is their situation?
What is the tension?
Does the dialogue have a sense of structure and shape – rising tension/climax/resolution?
Note: John Hattie is a Professor of Education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, since March 2011. He was appointed Chair of the AITSL Board on 1 July 2014.
Bates, B. (2019). Learning theories simplified : ....and how to apply them to teaching (2nd Edition). London: Sage.
Department of Education and Training. (2017). High Impact Teaching Strategies Excellence in teaching and learning. East Melbourne, Victoria, 3002: Department of Education and Training
