John Bald/language and literacy

Katharine Birbalsingh - the Guardian Knot...

Ms Birbalsingh's interview with The Guardian, here, ties that worthy journal in a knot. On the one hand, she is the classic Black victim of a bullying White headteacher. On the other, the truth she told at the Conservative conference, and keeps on telling, is an outright and very effective attack on the educational politics of the previous government, on curriculum, on behaviour, and even on their sacred cow of "child protection", in this case the perfectly legitimate use of photographs.  An interesting question is on the impact on her friends. Ms Birbalsingh says she's kept her Black friends and her teaching friends, but lost a few White liberals. Guardian readers, no doubt.

How little can we know? Geography and history...

The pupil is 14, and asks, Is a Nazi a German soldier?  Not always, I reply, and explain about the Nazi party and Hitler. He knows that Hitler was a Nazi. Why were we fighting Hitler? To explain the origins of hostility with Germany, I go back to Trafalgar, and the effect of the victory on British dominance over large stretches of the world, leading to an explanation of German frustration at not getting its share, the first world war, reparations - which were finally paid off this September - and then the second. Does he know about Nelson? Nelson Mandela? He replies. I tell him a little about Nelson. What about Napoleon? I've heard the name...To illustrate British colonialism, I call up the famous Canadian stamp of 1898, with much of the world coloured red, and then call up a better map of the world (still Mercator). I point to Africa - What continent is that? - I'm not very good on continents.  I point to Australia. Is it Spain? 

There's nothing new in this picture - George Orwell's fictional teachers found the same thing. What is second nature to an educated person might as well not exist for those whose experience is limited to their immediate surroundings. But what of progress to the 21st century, and the national curriculum? Should we still have young people who can't pick out something as big as Africa, and who think Australia is Spain?

Languages - a great debate?

After the priority given to the academies bill, it is likely that the government will begin to pay more detailed attention to the curriculum, including the languages curriculum. It is no secret from my postings on this weblog and my presentations to Lord Dearing, that I think that grave errors have been made in languages teaching and that these need to be reversed. On the evidence that I’ve seen as an inspector, consultant and teacher, the biggest error remains the idea that exposing children to language will result in learning. When the language is presented at near native speed, which is faster than the learner’s brain can process it, the result is confusion and frustration. The key is the question of how fast the brain can process the information, and it is this focus on the operation of the brain that needs to be the basis of a new approach to language teaching.

 

As we learn our first language, we build up networks among brain cells that are complex and, until old age at least, permanent. As we learn a new language, we extend and adapt these networks. We do not create new ones from scratch – look at patterns of error in people learning new languages, and it becomes clear that they are using the language they have as part of learning the new one. In effect, they are grafting the new language onto the language they already have, extending what Saussure usefully called the “capacité de langage” as they do so. If this model of learning is accurate, then we should teach languages by gradually building up children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, beginning with what is easiest for them, and only speed up as they become confident. This is Michel Thomas’s approach with adults, which has now been successfully extended to languages whose structures and vocabulary are far removed from those modern English, including Arabic, Mandarin and Greek. Thomas did not teach writing, but his approach can easily be duplicated in writing – as I have said in previous postings, he was enthusiastic about this when I showed it to him in French.

 

An approach designed to build up people’s knowledge, skills and understanding is not holistic. It guides the learner on ways of moving from words and phrases to constructing sentences – the key to Thomas’s work. Thomas did this partly by using pronouns rather than nouns, so that he could concentrate on sentence structure rather than learning vocabulary. It does not introduce elements such as the imperfect tense or present participles in the first couple of units, and does not bypass understanding. The point I made to Lord Dearing, in correspondence and in my one face to face meeting with him, was that children need to understand their work at all stages. By the time the report came out, this had somehow become garbled into “they should understand what they are learning and why”, which is not the same thing at all.

 

To make a new approach work, we need more precise understanding of exactly where children are finding problems. Going too fast is now accepted in most places as an error, and I have had some success in persuading Spanish language schools that they need to go slowly if British teachers are to learn effectively. Thomas’s relaxed pace is a key factor in his success. But a pupil I was working with yesterday, who has a statement, found it very hard to make sense of pronouns beyond je. He had successfully written a series of sentences about himself and his family, with good understanding (though he began to make errors when the school made him copy from the board instead of writing for himself). Few of Thomas’s students seem to have had the same difficulty. For this pupil, I made some simple matching games with pronouns, unpacking and explaining everything as we went along, and will know how well it has worked next week. He may not be typical, but I am arguing that the approach is right – find the root of any misunderstandings and errors, and build up the pupil’s understanding so that this can be tackled.

 

There are so many hidden factors, that the “elephant in the room” analogy is too simple – you can’t get a herd of elephants into a room. But mixed ability teaching remains a crucial issue.  I’ve seen languages taught well in special schools by teachers who have been able to match work closely to pupils’ learning needs, and I’ve seen pupils with less sever difficulties totally lost in mixed ability classrooms because they haven’t understood what is going on. There has been no research into the correlation between achievement, in the broadest sense, and grouping according to learning needs in languages, and there has been covert and sometimes overt promotion of mixed ability work in languages on the part of national and local officials. This information needs to be obtained and made public. We know that is the lower attaining pupils who are opting out in the greatest numbers – despite problems with some higher attainers dropping out, the pattern of entries and results shows this. So, the system is not meeting the needs of lower attaining pupils by giving them a path to success and satisfaction. This needs to be changed.

 

We are, I believe, about to have a major debate on languages teaching in which the power structures that have developed and sustained the present national curriculum will be stripped of their authority. As this authority was based on politics rather than teaching and languages skills, this will be a good thing. The authorities are not responsible for all of the decline in languages, but at the very best they have made no impact on it, and have contributed to it by cumbersome and ineffective guidance to teachers.  The new approach will be based on evidence – which means we must have better evidence than we have at present. This evidence must come from direct observation in schools, and from developments in brain research. Its success will be also be measured in terms of evidence, broadly defined to include participation, personal satisfaction (which includes, but is more than, enjoyment) and achievement.

Jane Austen and Spelling

Telegraph, here has an article comparing Jane Austen's manuscript of Persuasion with the published version. Original is full of spelling, punctuation and paragraphing errors - irregularities? - that were edited out. So Jane Austen couldn't spell!

The MS indicates that this is a bit of an exaggeration, but her punctuation is interesting, including very extensive use of the dash, and even semicolon-dash, which I've never seen before. Maybe she was just using a dash in addition to punctuation in order to indicate extra space, but it's certainly an eye-opener. The MS is here.

Fingers and thumbs - the new digital maths? Technical paper

The phenomenon of below average pupils not knowing number facts and tables and having to resort to counting on their fingers is, alas,  well known[i].  Gray and Tall also say that it is “virtually impossible” for pupils to learn multiplication until they are sure of addition. The National Strategies have made no impact on tables – (unpublished Leverhulme research.) BBC TV news last week showed a secondary pupil being encouraged to use fingers; my work with pupils from across the UK tells me that this is far too common.

We need a clear idea of what children do and do not understand, and at what ages – Gray and Tall’s approach was a little crude, in dividing children between below average and above average – so they tell us nothing about the average pupil. Their basic approach could be adapted and extended quite quickly, using the standard Ofsted technique of analysing the work of a sample of pupils of above, average and below average attainment in a range of classes, and asking very specific questions. Ofsted could be asked to report on specific aspects of arithmetic either in each inspection, or in a sample of inspections. This would require very careful definition in the request.  

We could also ask for access to the unpublished Leverhulme data and SAT analysis, though SATs do not address the issue in sufficient detail.  I do not recommend a lilterature analysis because I don’t have confidence on the quality of the available studies (see below for reasons).

Gold standard research in education is virtually impossible – you can’t blind people, you can’t match control groups accurately, you can’t control for quality of teaching (esp with a huge randomised sample), and if you do randomise you can’t pinpoint benefits to particular groups of pupils, including the poor souls using fingers and thumbs. You also need follow up years later to detect washout of benefits and catchup from groups not receiving teaching. (Any research study should have a minimum of 64 participants in study and any control groups – this is Torgerson’s most valid point, as it goes some way to ensuring that an educationally significant benefit will also be statistically significant).  All of these points have affected reading research, and will affect research in arithmetic.   

 Policy and Priorities

Moving pupils off fingers should be priority 1.  We should aim to have all pupils off fingers and thumbs by the age of 8, and nearly all by the age of 7. Moving people off fingers and thumbs should be the first priority of all remedial work in mathematics.

Advice on the teaching of multiplication tables needs to be detailed and soundly based. It should include fine detail such as problems with co-ordination and with the order of learning. It should be based on enabling each and every child to learn, and so must not be formulaic.

To allow teachers to focus clearly on number work, attainment targets in primary mathematics should be slimmed to two - arithmetic, and using and applying mathematics. The scope of the second would be unlimited.

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[i] Gray, E and Tall, D (1994) Duality, Ambiguity and Flexibility; a “Proceptual” view of simple arithmetic. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education  25 (2) pp116-140.