Reflections on pedagogy

Dylan Wiliam

Pedagogy, Space, Place Conference

November 2010

www.dylanwiliam.net

Overview

Some simple analytics of school quality• The two most important numbers in education

Three perspectives on pedagogy

Impact of background on development

(Feinstein, 2003)

Meaningful differences

Hour-long samples of family talk in 42 US families Number of words spoken to children by adults by the

age of 36 months• In professional families: 35 million• In other working-class families: 20 million• In families on welfare:10 million

Kinds of reinforcements:positive negative

• professional 500,000 50,000• working-class 200,000 100,000• welfare 100,000 200,000

(Hart & Risley, 1995)

5

How much do students learn in a year?

Source: Leverhulme Numeracy Research Programme

860+570=?

CSMS (Hart, 1981)

Important number #1

One year’s average growth in achievement• NAEP (US): 0.25 standard deviations per year• TIMSS (US, UK): 0.36 standard deviations per year• NC (UK) 0.40 standard deviations per year

The precise value depends on the nature of the assessment being used (and specifically its sensitivity to instruction) but, for all but the youngest students, it is almost certainly less than 0.5.

So the overlap between cohorts is large…

8

The spread of achievement within each cohort is greater than generally assumed

…and differences between schools are small

Proportion of 16-year olds gaining 5 GCSE grades at grade C or higher

• 7% of the variability in the proportion achieving this is attributable to the school, so

• 93% of the variability in the proportion achieving this is nothing to do with the school

So, if 15 students in a class get 5 A*-C in the average school:• 17 students will do so at a “good” school (1sd above mean)• 13 students will do so at a “bad” school (1sd below mean)

LuxembourgJapan

ItalySwitzerland

FinlandDenmark

Czech RepublicSwedenHungary

AustriaPortugal

United StatesNetherlands

Slovak RepublicKorea

IrelandSpain

CanadaMexico

New ZealandGermany

OECD averageUnited Kingdom

0 20 40 60 80 100

Government schoolsGovernment dependent privateGovernment independent private

-150 -100 -50 0 50 100

Private schools perform better

Public schools perform better

%

█ Raw scores█ Controlling for social class

The school effect is really a teacher effect

One standard deviation of school quality equates to one-third of a grade per subject

One standard deviation of teacher quality equates to one-third of a grade per subject

So school quality appears to be simply teacher quality

Differences between teachers are large

Barber & Mourshed, 2007

Important number #2

Correlation between teacher quality and student progress• Woodhead: 0*• Hanushek et al 0.1 (at least)• Rockoff 0.2 (Reading)• Rockoff 0.25 (Mathematics)

Differences in teacher quality have a substantial impact on how much students learn.

Teachers make the difference

The commodification of teachers has received widespread support:• From teacher unions (who understandably resist performance-

related pay)• From politicians (who are happy that the focus is on teacher

supply, rather than teacher quality) But has resulted in the pursuit of policies with poor benefit

to cost (e.g., class size reduction) To see how big the difference is, take a group of 50 teachers

• Students taught by the best teacher learn twice as fast as average• Students taught by the worst teacher learn half as fast as average

And in the classrooms of the best teachers• Students with behavioral difficulties learn as much as those

without• Students from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those

from advantaged backgrounds

Class size reduction

Reducing class sizes by 30% (from 30 to 20) results in an extra 4 months of learning per year• At a cost of £20,000 per classroom per year• Plus the cost of building 150,000 new classrooms• And only if the teachers are on average as good as the

teachers we have Adding 150,000 weak teachers to the system will

reduce student learning by 5 months a year. So we could spend an extra £5bn and lower student

achievement…

…so we have two choices…

A classic labour force issue with 2 (non-exclusive) solutions• Replace existing teachers with better ones• Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers

Impact on achievement

If every TeachFirst teacher is as good as the average Finnish teacher, the net impact on GCSE would be one-four-hundredth of a grade in each subject.

If we could replace the least effective 15,000 teachers with average teachers, the net impact on student achievement at GCSE would be an increase of one-fortieth of a grade in each subject.

Raising the bar for entry into the profession so that we no longer recruit the lowest performing 30% of teachers would increase achievement at GCSE by one grade—by 2030.

Or make the teachers we have better…

Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers• The “love the one you’re with” strategy• It can be doneo Provided we focus rigorously on the things that mattero Even when they’re hard to do

Effective learning environments

Key concept:• Teachers do not create learning• Learners create learning

Teaching as engineering learning environments Key features:

• Create student engagement (pedagogies of engagement)• Well-regulated (pedagogies of contingency)• Develops habits of mind (pedagogies of formation)

Why pedagogies of engagement?

Intelligence is partly inherited• So what?

Intelligence is partly environmental• Environment creates intelligence• Intelligence creates environment

Learning environments• High cognitive demand• Inclusive• Obligatory

Motivation: cause or effect?

competence

challenge

Flow

apathyboredom

relaxation

arousal

anxiety

worry control

high

low

low high(Csikszentmihalyi,

1990)

Why pedagogies of contingency?

Contingencies in educationA. LA science adviser using test results to plan professional

development workshops for teachersB. Teachers doing item-by-item analysis of key stage 2 maths

tests to review their Y6 curriculumC. A school tests students every 10 weeks to predict which

students are “on course” for GCSE CsD. Three quarters of the way through a unit testE. Exit pass question: “What is the difference between mass

and weight?”F. “Sketch the graph of y equals one over one plus x squared

on your mini-white boards.”

Wilson & Draney, 2004

Why pedagogies of formation?

The ball sitting on the table is not moving. It is not moving because:

A. no forces are pushing or pulling on the ball.

B. gravity is pulling down, but the table is in the way.C. the table pushes up with the same force that gravity pulls downD. gravity is holding it onto the table. E. there is a force inside the ball keeping it from rolling off the table

Comments?

Questions?