Teachers: Academies and Free Schools

Baroness Greenfield Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greenfield (CB)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. I enjoyed her speech, wish her well and look forward to her further contributions. I also commend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for the opportunity to debate this important and timely issue. I declare an interest as the recipient of a research grant from what was the Centre for British Teachers and is now the not-for-profit Education Development Trust. Our goal was to explore aspects of evidence-based teaching practice. At the time it was the first large-scale multifactorial controlled trial of an educational intervention, led by a collaboration between teachers and neuroscientists.

My basic point this evening is that evidence-based education theories should be integrated into teacher training, not just in academies and free schools but as part of a teacher’s qualifications wherever they practise their profession. Since 1987, funding has allowed local education authorities to train teachers. College courses have in general been reorganised to focus more on classroom strategies. This apprenticeship model has been positive overall: it stands to reason that a complex function such as teaching can be fully learned only by doing the actual job. However, there have been negative consequences, arguably such as the unintended implication that nothing can be learned from education theory.

It is completely possible nowadays to achieve qualified teacher status while employed in a school that is connected to no university, and with no coverage of learning theory or education research. It is also clear that there is a wide range of curricula on offer. Some courses take a broad view of education theory, which may include the psychology of learning integrated with the sociology of education, while others present an almost exclusively sociological view of schools and schooling. Moreover, education research in the main has been dominated by qualitative methods, with the occasional large-scale quantitative but uncontrolled analysis. To make matters worse, publicly funded education research initially appears in journals that teachers cannot readily access. In addition, little replication in education research takes place to confirm the findings in question—not least due to the tiny budgets available for projects compared to those in, say, my own area of medical research.

These challenges, together with a growth in research related to teacher effectiveness and pupil outcomes, have led to what has been called the evidence movement, or knowledge management movement, the culmination of which is exemplified by the work of the Education Endowment Foundation. It has commissioned more than 100 randomised controlled education trials in England. Then there is the initiative reported on in Closing the Gap: Test and Learn, which has delivered collaborative trials across nearly 1,000 schools in England. To have real value, these data surely need to be passed on to teachers—rookies and veterans alike. Perhaps one day there could be a more sophisticated teacher-training curriculum than at present, where research-informed topics would feature. For example, findings suggest that in-depth collaborations between teachers, schools and neuroscientists could yield substantial benefits in moving towards a more evidence-based culture in schools, as I have witnessed first-hand.

However, to attain this goal, specific techniques will need to be taught to teachers—be they trainees or more experienced—if they are to be effective. Continuous professional development is central to teaching as a profession but surveys suggest that it is unable to prevent a number of myths pervading the education system that are likely to be unhelpful and certainly costly. This is most notable for findings from my own field of neuroscience, as information is lost in the translation to education. For example, almost half of teachers in the UK apparently believe that we use only 10% of our brains. Yet were that to be the case, your Lordships may consider for a moment that we could readily witness up to 90% complete brain damage in individuals with no apparent malfunction. That is clearly not the case. An even greater number of teachers, an astonishing 93%, think that children learn better when taught in their preferred learning style—visual, auditory or kinaesthetic—despite no evidence at all to support this claim. Most important of all here, there needs to be training in scientific method and critical thinking more generally, so that teachers are equipped to evaluate both established and new ideas.

In addition to the content of CPD, there are concerns about the form it takes, namely: periodic inset days; generic workshops with little continuity or opportunity for application; the transfer of knowledge from so-called experts to teachers; and pull-out strategies or add-ons rather than integrated practice. These approaches are focused on fixing problems rather than developing the teacher. This may of course be a direct consequence of the current status of initial teacher training. However, different models of CPD have been proposed which, first, focus on raising the self-awareness of existing strengths and weaknesses; secondly, promote team activity; and, thirdly, encourage and financially support attendance at events and appropriate training for specific individuals. By involving teachers in devising bespoke development plans, it could be expected that they would engage more with the development process. However, where this is in doubt other options have been shown to increase engagement. For example, financial incentives for participating in specific CPD activities, with teachers earning stipends for demonstrating certain levels of competency, have already proved effective in upskilling teachers in core IT skills.

In conclusion, this approach, incorporating in particular evidence-based education theory, could foster engagement in teachers who would in turn have higher job satisfaction and commitment to their school, higher retention, which ultimately prevents skills loss and financial outlay on recruitment, and better individual and team performance, which would in turn enhance student outcomes. Most exciting of all, it would show the highest possible levels of innovation.