Poor proxies for learning and what to replace them with

^{A bi-weekly teaching and learning bulletin for staff at Community Schools Trust}

At Community Schools Trust, we’ve worked really hard on establishing consistent routines across our schools. It means our students are in good habits of entering and exiting our classrooms quickly, being engaged in lessons and producing lots of work.

When visiting each other in lessons, generally, I know you will notice the following things:

1. Students are busy: lots of work is done (especially written work)
2. Students are engaged, interested, motivated
3. Students are getting attention: feedback, explanations
4. Classroom is ordered, calm, under control
5. Curriculum has been ‘covered’ (ie presented to students in some form)
6. (At least some) students have supplied correct answers

For those of you who have read Professor Coe’s ‘What Makes Great Teaching, you will recognise the above list as what he argued to be ‘poor proxies for learning’. Coe argues that these examples are easily observed – in fact, many of you may look for these things when you drop into a colleague’s lesson – but according to Coe, they are not really about learning.

Poor proxies for learning

They are all related to learning but they’re not learning. Sure, lots of writing might mean students are learning – but not if what they have written is not reflective of their ability.

I recall a particularly engaging science lesson when I was at school, but what I remember about it was the bunsen burner setting my classmate’s scarf alight. Engagement doesn’t necessarily mean learning.

Live marking at CST means our students get a lot of attention: lots of feedback for example. But what if the feedback does not stretch them? What if our explanations are not clear or broken down? Learning would certainly be affected.

Our strong routines means our classrooms are indeed orderly, calm and under control. It is certainly an antecedent for learning. But calmness and order doesn’t mean our students are thinking hard and therefore not a good proxy for learning.

Time pressures mean we often fall into the trap of ‘content coverage’. We need to ‘get through the curriculum’ before the end of a term. They may even be able to answer questions correctly in lessons at the time of teaching. The problem of course is their ability to retrieve this knowledge later on. Just because we’ve taught it, doesn’t mean they’ve learnt it.

In Ofsted’s latest Science research review, this very thing was a key finding:

‘In some schools, there was an over-reliance on pupils catching up when the content was repeated later in the curriculum, rather than ensuring it was learned first time. Often this happened when teachers were expected to teach too much content in a short time. This was more common in secondary schools.’

(Finding the optimum: the science subject report, Ofsted science research review, Feb 2023)

Ofsted tells us our students should know more and remember more. Sweller et al. 2011 says ‘‘If nothing has altered in long-term memory, nothing has been learned’ and Daniel Willingham tells us we remember what we think about. 

That’s all well and good but the problem is, learning is invisible. It is no wonder why we gravitate towards those observable but poor proxies for learning.

Better proxies for learning

Coe argues, to combat these poor proxies, we need to make our students think hard. To make this more tangible, we need to ask ourselves the question: ‘where in this lesson will students have to think hard?’

There are numerous ways to make students think hard but here are 3 high leverage ones (that we think we do well, but probably don’t do consistently well):

1 Check for understanding

• Decide on the ‘learning milestones’ in your lesson
• Plan in a checking for understanding (CFU) question to ascertain if they have reached this learning milestone
• Plan how you will CFU. It could be a whole class response system like the use of mini whiteboards, followed by Cold Call.

2 Cold Call properly

• Increase Ratio by asking a well worded question first, allowing thinking time before picking a student
• Picking a student first and then asking a question will make the rest of your class clock out. Ratio will plummet 
• Standardise the format so your students expect the routine of question – pause – pick a student.

3 Pitch to the top

• Plan your lessons so that they are aimed at your highest ability learner and scaffold down
• Teach the content in small steps, point out the assessment threshold standards as you go and check for understanding after each step
• Make explicit links to prior learning as you explain.

In fact, this was one of the ‘pedagogy and assessment’ recommendations from the science research review from Ofsted that applies to all subjects:

‘Ensure that, during explanations, teachers regularly connect new learning to what pupils have already learned. This includes showing pupils how knowledge from different areas of the curriculum connects.’

This week then, when you are intellectually preparing for your lessons, plan in the above 3 strategies to make your students think hard.

Have a great week.