Visible Learning for Literacy

With the unmissable word IMPACT on the cover, the thesis is really clear. This is an unpacking of what actually makes a difference for students learning and is another reminder of Hattie’s meta-study of effect sizes of different educational practices. Those effect sizes were made a lot more meaningful for me in the context of this book, which convincingly highlights specific instructional practices for literacy learning. The effect sizes needs to be held with a grain of salt – I continue to be cynical about isolating specific practices and applying causation to the complexity of education – but in this context it offers a really strong background and justification for the discussion. Here are some takeaways:

• The use of the effect sizes is a nice way to dispel the idea of any progress is good. I was reflecting on how sometimes we might attribute progress to actions that are better explained by the students just getting older… also known as ‘time’. The effect sizes model is a good disruptor, encouraging thinking about measuring progress, and thinking about enhancing progress beyond more than what a student would naturally make over the course of a year.
• The book really reinforced the approach of explicit instruction on specific skills and knowledge including the development of vocabulary. Skills such as summarising, annotating, note-taking were highlighted. Additionally vocabulary instruction was argued as paramount considering: mnemonics, word cards, modeling word solving, word and concept sorts, and wide reading. This supports the approach I’ve seen in different schools now such as: one word per lesson, explicit vocab instruction and lists, and reading for pleasure.
• Specific to literacy instruction, the book’s argument was most instruction stops at the surface level. Surface learners are “risk adverse” and focus on what needs to be known with curiosity, whereas deep learners “seek to interact with content and ideas and actively link concepts and knowledge across content” (73). My strongest response to this section of the book was the challenge to show students that you value deep learning. The argument was that often teachers indicate they value surface learning through the pace of their content, their questioning and the skills we focus on. This really got me thinking.

Overall, the visible learning series of books feels like something I should spend more time in. Bring it on.

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Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. (2016). Visible learning for literacy, grades K-12: implementing the practices that work best to accelerate student learning. Corwin/ A SAGE Company.

Lean Lesson Planning

Early in Peps Mccrea’s tiny yet highly impactful book Lean Lesson Planning the reader is asked to reflect: “What questions do I ask myself when I plan? How consistent and intentional is my strategy?” (25). The lean framework cuts through this and makes it about four questions:

• Where are your learners starting from?
• Where do you want them to get to?
• How will you know when they’re there?
• How can you best help them get there?

The 6 habits of teacher planning build on this design with a solid scaffold for planning:

• Backwards design – start with the end in mind
• Knowing knowledge – establish your route towards expertise
• Checking understanding – build on what they know, not what they don’t
• Efficient activities – select and streamline for the shortest path
• Lasting learning – build memory that lasts and is easy to recall
• Inter-lesson planning – plan for the past and into the future

In the knowing knowledge chapter, I liked the ping pong model that was used to represent how knowledge functions in a classroom. Firstly conceptual understanding is a combination of:

• Isolated – facts along focusing on recall and describing
• Connected – conceptual understanding linked to other facts through explaining or justifying; building interconnected webs of meaning

And technical proficiency in the use of mental tools is also important:

• Rigid – following instructions and find answers
• Adaptive – using this knowledge to problem solve or create new knowledge

The result is a combination of increasing conceptual understanding and technical proficiency of new knowledge.

And finally the book finishes with three ways to organise your professional learning. The focus here is on growing professionally.

• Building excellence – leverage habits to create lasting change
• Growth teaching – innovate, evaluate and iterate to improve
• Collective improvement – get better together for compound growth

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Mccrea, Peps (2019) Lean Lesson Planning. John Catt Publishing.

Leading an Inclusive School

Richard Villa and Jacqueline Thousand’s book is a great guide for promoting inclusion. There’s lots here on the why, unpacking the vision and value orientated aspects of inclusion, as well as conceptual frameworks for implementing initiatives. While the focus of the book was on disability, I was looking for ways to bring my previous work on rainbow inclusion into a wider framework to make more connections to a more widely understood pedagogical discussion. Here’s a few takeaways I found of value:

The first thing I thought was worth recording was the idea of defining an inclusive space by how it makes the people within it feel. This focus on an intangible might get criticism from some, but it makes total sense in the way that I’ve felt unwelcome or not included in different spaces and it is the way I feel that supports this. It isn’t a particular thing that was said or a action I can point to, it is a feeling. And that is as valid as any piece of evidence. So I’ve taken on board the idea of charting this in future sessions on this topic. It is worth making this intangible as tangible as possible.

Inclusion is a value and a belief system, not just a set of strategies

This links back to the line I’ve used countless times, that creating a inclusive environment isn’t as simple as putting a poster on the wall – it’s about what is woven into the fabric of everything you do. The book suggests there is two layers to this journey. The first asks questions like “why inclusion?” and “does this child belong here?” to the second where the questions are “what can our school do differently to successfully include all students?” and “how might I differentiate my instruction so that all students are learning?”

As Nel Noddings has said, “We should move away from the question, ‘Has Johnny learned X?’ to the far more pertinent question, “What has Johnny learned?'”

This reframing takes us away from assuming the same narrative of two students achieving the same result. Achieving the same mark can represent two vastly different learning experiences. Therefore the question Noddings proposes takes a performance based approach to assessment, rather than a fixed standards based mindset. There is a place for both, but I think the shift in my thinking from this book is around making the assessment of performance or attainment a deliberate and aware practice.

Finally, this table summed up an excellent section of the book thinking about a retrofitting approach to differentiation (which I suspect is most teachers default) is some distance away from a Universal Design for Learning approach. Universal Design for Learning is more than a framework, it is a way of being. I think that is overall the value of engaging with a book like this – it is an opportunity to reflect deeply about our practice and nudge us towards a holistically more inclusive way.

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Villa, Richard A & Thousand, Jacqueline S. (2017) Leading an Inclusive School: Access and Success for All Students. ASCD.

Colouring in the White Spaces

My recent dive into Russell Bishop triggered a memory of an extended set of notes I made back in the day while reading Anne Milne’s “Colouring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools”. I read this book in the lead up to Milne’s keynote in uLearn 2017. Curiously, I never blogged about this. My memory was the keynote was a masterclass in sustained rage, and I struggled to process the presentation as it was inextricably tied up with accepting my own culpability in a system that was systematically failing Māori learners. It was a relief to find these notes; I’m glad to revisit and publish them here.

1. The Whitestream

Colouring in metaphor: when young the lines don’t matter, but as we grow going outside the line is not approved. There is a space for white and a space for colour. 

“I find the term “mainstream” in New Zealand schools to be a euphemism for an education system which normalizes practice that damages Māori and Pasifika learners and has “consistently treated [Māori learners] paternalistically, watching them to see whether they were capable of being as good as Pakeha” (Penetito, 2010, p. 51)

Sir Mason Durie’s framework: “three broad goals for Māori in our education system to live as Māori, to participate as citizens of the world, and to enjoy good health and high standard of living” (7)

Questions fundamental to critical, culturally responsive practice and pedagogy:

1. Can a school create the conditions that empower a student to follow their cultural norms throughout the school day?
2. Why is this important?
3. How can a school ensure all students have this strength in their own cultural identity?
4. What are the specific cultural ways of knowing that young people are developing these skills?
5. How can schools recognise, and address, the barriers that exist in their practice to the development of a student’s secure cultural identity?  (8)

Critique of tomorrow’s school: neoliberal approach. Schools may be self governing, but find it hard to break away from the colonial model. 

National standards critique: intensified staff workloads, curriculum narrowing, reinforcement of two tier curriculum, labelling of children. 

Teaching to the North-East: In Practice

I’ve already addressed Russell Bishop’s book Teaching to the North-East in a previous post summarising the theory of the first three chapters. This, part two post, will give an overview of the Relationship-Based Leaders of Learning Profile (RBLP).

Create a family-like context for learning by;

• Rejecting deficit explanations for learners’ learning, which means that:
  • deficit explanations are not used to explain learners’ difficulties
  • agentic talk is clearly articulated, and learners are encouraged as they succeed
  • errors and mistakes are seen as being opportunities to learn, not insurmountable problems
  • learners’ language, culture, and heritage are seen as assets to build upon and not as hindrances to learning.
• Caring for and nurturing the learner, including their language and culture, which means that:
  • culturally appropriate and responsive learning contexts are provided for an created
  • learners can bring their own cultural experiences, knowledge, language/s, and understandings to the learning interaction or conversation
  • learners’ prior learning is utilised
• Voicing and demonstrating high expectations, which means that:
  • what is expected of learners is clearly identified, as is what learning involves
  • activities are cognitively challenging
  • interactions include talk about learner capability to set and reach short and long term goals.
• Ensuring that all learners can learn in a well-managed environment so as to promote learning, which means that:
  • lesson and interactions are well organised with clear routines for learners to interact and learn individually, in a pair, or in a group
  • management and learning interactions are implemented in a non-confrontational manner.
• Knowing what learners need to learn, which means that:
  • competency in subject / process knowledge is clearly displayed
  • models and exemplars are provided to support learners to know what success looks like.

One additional thing in this chapter was the mention of Celia Haig-Brown’s concept of ‘interviews as chat’. It is an opportunity to draw out detail or information in a casual context without formality or a set agenda. It is spontaneous and circumstantial, offering the teacher information about the “sense the learner is making” (57).

Interact within this family-like context in ways we know promotes learning by;

• Drawing on learners’ prior learning, which means that:
  • activities are provided that enable learners to activate what they know already, to see that their cultural (sense-making) knowledge is acceptable and legitimate, what they may need help with and what they need to learn
  • this information and other assessment data are used to inform the learning intentions and the pace of the learning.
• Using formative assessment in the form of feedback, which means that:
  • a range of feedback (including task and process feedback) is provided on learning efforts. (These are precise responses to the learners’ previous and current steps in the task and comment on learning progression and processes so far)
  • learners are able to practise their learning and request feedback as they learn – they can articulate where the need support.
• Using formative assessment in the form of feed-forward, which means that:
  • a range of feed-forward is provided on learning efforts including self-regulation. (These are precise responses that guide the learner to their next steps in the task, to make learning progression and processes clear, and indicate what might help them to check they have been successful)
  • learners are able to practise their learning and request feed-forward as they learn – they can articulate where they need support
  • AREA (Attendance, Retention, Engagement and Achievement) assessment data are used to inform the learning intentions and the pace of the learning.
• Using co-construction processes, which means that:
  • models and exemplars of successful learning are provided to support learners to deconstruct tasks and to co-construct success criteria
  • learning tasks enable the learner to bring their understandings and persoectives to the learning in order for them to make their own sense
  • learners are able to be co-enquirers; that is, to be raisers of questions and evaluators of questions and answers
  • learning is reciprocal – knowledge is co-created
• Using power-sharing strategies, which means that:
  • a range of power-sharing strategies are used including co-operative learning, narrative pedagogy, and student-generated questions to facilitate learning interactions such as using learners’ prior knowledge, feedback, feed-forward, and co-construction
  • a range of power-sharing strategies are used to deliberately promote learning by allowing learners to work co-operatively
  • opportunities are provided for learners to learn with and from each other in order to create non-dominating learning relationships.

Monitor learners’ progress and the impact of the processes of learning by assessing how well learners are able to; (Using the GPILSEO model);

• set goals for their learning, (Goals)
  • learners clearly demonstrate that they understand what they are learning and know when they are successful
  • learners set specific, measurable goals for improving AREA measures.
• articulate how they prefer to learn, (Pedagogy)
  • learners demonstrate their understanding of the underlying theoretical principles of how and why they are learning so that they can use their learning flexibly when new situations and challenges arise.
• explain how they prefer to organise/be organised in their learning/learning relationships and Interactions, (Institutions)
  • learners demonstrate how they organise ways of relating and interacting in learning settings
  • learners demonstrate understanding of the role and function of institutional structures and modes of organisation that support learning
  • learners demonstrate their ability to be engaged in individual and collaborative evidence-based, problem solving activities
• participate in leadership roles and functions, (Leadership)
  • learners explain how they are able to work with others and how they can take on leadership roles and functions
  • learners are able to be initiators of, and take responsibility for, their own learning and the learning of others
• include others in the learning context and interactions, (Spread)
  • learners are able to include others in individual and collaborative evidence-based, problem-solving activities
  • learners are able to describe who they learn with best and explain why
  • learners are able to describe who else needs to be involved in their learning
• provide evidence of how well they are progressing and what progress they are making, (Evidence)
  • AREA data are used to inform learners about where to take their learning (evidence informing their practice) and the learning of others for whom they are responsible
  • AREA data are used in a cumulative manner to indicate progress over time
• take ownership of their own learning. (Ownership)
  • learners are able to explain what they need to learn next in order to reach their goals
  • learners are seen to be responsible for their own learning and for the learning of others
  • learning needs are based on analysis of patterns of learning of one’s self and of others

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Bishop, Russell (2019) Teaching to the North-East: Relationship-Based Learning in Practice. NZCER Press.

Teaching to the North-East: Theory

This is the second time I’ve dipped into Russell Bishop’s work on relationships, initiated this time by my school’s interest in bringing this framework into our school-wide teaching and learning strategies. The premise is based on the centrality of relationships in teaching and learning. The driver of this approach is to improve the outcomes for marginalised students (indigenous students, migrants, refugees, students with learning difficulties, students of difference etc.) “What these students have in common is that they are marginalised educationally by what they bring to the learning settings being seen as deficiencies rather than these qualities being seen as positive attributes that can be built upon to promote their learning” (xi). Here I’ll summarise and respond to the theory present in the first half of Bishop’s book Teaching to the North-East: Relationship-Based Learning in Practice. In a later blogpost I’ll address the second half to focus on the teaching practice promoted in the book.

In chapter one, Bishop shares the origins of his research and catalogues his early proposal (2007) of what culturally responsive pedagogy of relations might look like:

• classrooms based on extended family-like relationships
• power is shared (self-determination)
• student knowledges being “acceptable” and “legitimite” (culture counts)
• interactive and dialogic learning
• learning is active, problem-based, integrated and holistic
• learning positions are reciprocal and knowledge is co-created (ako)
• assessment practices culturally constructed

In effect “classrooms would be places where young people’s (culturally located) sense-making processes and knowledge would be validated and developed in collaboration with others”. Bishop speaks of culture as having visible and invisible elements. Visible elements include signs, images, and iconography while invisible elements include values, morals, modes of communication and decision-making and problem solving processes along with worldviews and knowledge producing processes (7).

Bishop also clarified through the research process how “the discursive positions that teachers take are key to understanding the causes of Māori student achievement difficulties in our schools” (13). He showed that teachers drawing from deficit theorising tended to point to matter beyond their control – like socio-economic status and structural issues. But the findings are clear that the issue of inequitable educational outcomes is in “the theorising of teachers: the ways they explain their experiences of relating to a interacting with Māori students, and their subsequent actions” (14). This recalled for me a blogpost from the early days of this blog about reflective vs refractive practice.

Chapter two dug into the data and clarified for me the metaphor of the North East. It is best captures by this figure:

Moving to the east is when teachers develop their creation of a family-like context in their classrooms. Moving to the north is when they develop their use of pedagogic interactions that make a difference to student learning. Together they form a practice that has a high level of relationship skills and a high level of teaching skills.

The paradigm shift Bishop is advocating for involves “teachers shifting to a broad understanding about how culturally diverse learners construct knowledge in association or collaboration with others” (43). This means a shift a dialogic, interaction pedagogies supported by formative assessment (44). The challenge of this addressed in chapter three is how to sustain the implementation of this change. A key theme that emerged beyond the discussion of funding, capacity, turnover, and role confusion, was the need for teachers to understand the theoretical principles underlying the initiative. It reinforced the clear need for the why. I was reflecting here on how teaching in a school with such a low percentage of Māori often limits the discussion for addressing Māori achievement. What I like about Bishop’s research is he expands on the mantra I heard a lot in teacher’s college “what works for Māori, works for all” to a more nuanced yet broader discussion of the impact of marginalisation in various forms and how practice can address this. The ‘why’ here feels easier now to articulate impactfully.

This section finished for a relationship-based learning profile (RBLP) model (51). The subsequent chapters (and my next blogpost) will unpack this.

Relationship-based Leaders of Learning

Create a family-like context for learning by;

• Rejecting deficit explanations for learners’ learning,
• Caring for and nurturing the learner, including their language and culture,
• Voicing and demonstrating high expectations,
• Ensuring that all learners can learn in a well-managed environment so as to promote learning,
• Knowing what learners need to learn.

Interact within this family-like context in ways we know promotes learning by;

• Drawing on learners’ prior learning,
• Using Formative assessment: Feedback,
• Using Formative assessment: Feed-forward,
• Using Co-construction processes,
• Using Power-sharing strategies,

Monitor learners’ progress and the impact of the processes of learning by assessing how well learners are able to; (Using the GPILSEO model);

• set goals for their learning, (GOALS)
• articulate how they prefer to learn, (PEDAGOGY)
• explain how they prefer to organise/be organised in their learning/learning relationships and Interactions, (INSTITUTIONS)
• participate in leadership roles and functions, (LEADERSHIP)
• include others in the learning context and interactions, (SPREAD)
• provide evidence of how well they are progressing and what progress they are making, (EVIDENCE)
• take ownership of their own learning. (OWNERSHIP)

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Bishop, Russell (2019) Teaching to the North-East: Relationship-Based Learning in Practice. NZCER Press.

Peer Coaching

Pam Robbins book (full title: Peer Coaching: To Enrich Professional Practice, School Culture, and Student Learning) is a guide to creating a culture of teachers supporting teachers in a structure collaborative way. The book takes an holistic approach and talks about how to create this culture from zero, but the real gold is in the three chapters that unpack the pre-observation meeting, observation and post-observation meeting. I’ll unpack what I found useful from these chapters in this blogpost.

Creating the Effective Pre-Conference

“Successful conferencing requires both relationship skills, including the ability to build trust, and technical expertise, such as knowing how to develop and post appropriate questions and how to listen effectively” (77).

Judith Warrren Little suggests six principles for effective conferencing:

• Technical: common language (shared understanding), focus (narrow the frame) and hard evidence (objective data)
• Social: interaction (two way), predictability (actions that are consistent with expectations), and reciprocity (build trust)

There is no recipe for a coaching conference, instead this chart is useful for tracking how to respond.

Robbins also emphasises communication skills such as:

• wait time – providing time for both partners to think and reflect
• paraphrasing – checking for mutual understanding and
• clarifying – checking that messages are received as intended
• pressing for specificity – invite elaboration and more precise information and details
• avoid negative embedded in messages – avoid judgements
• reframing – shift the point of view and consider from different perspectives

The key point is that it is not just questioning skills, it is the manner in which the questions are asked that is vital for a successful conference.

Ensuring a Skillful Observation

“The primary purpose of the observation process is to provide data for discussion during the post-conference” (92).

The focus of the observation can be supported by the following graphic which emphasises the interconnected nature of classroom practice.

In terms of data collection, student work and student voice is useful. Furthermore, using digital devices to record evidence, visual and sound for reflection in the post conference.

Inviting Reflection Through the Post-Conference

“The post conference provides an opportunity for the inviting teacher and the coach to share their reflections on the lesson that was observed, to examine the data collected, and to analyse the results” (104).

The advice in this chapter goes hand in hand with Robyn Jackson and Michael Bungay Stanier.

Growth-oriented feedback that is “timely, specific, nonjudgmental, non-evaluative, directed toward behaviour that can be changed, reciprocal, and meaningful” (104). Robbins is clear in this chapter and the rest of the book that effective one-on-one coaching is dependent on creating a culture that supports teachers supporting teachers.

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Robbins, Pam (2015) Peer Coaching to Enrich Professional Practice, School Culture, and Student Learning. ASCD.

Habits of Success: Getting Every Student Learning

I found myself more connected to the umbrella philosophy of Harry Fletcher-Wood’s book than the suggestions for action within it. The principle of getting every student learning through building positive learning habits is a great framework to think about school culture – but the actual unpacking of this felt both too vague and too simplistic. The big ideas here are best captured by the checklist summaries at the end of each chapter. I’ve put the final one here below (that holistically summarises the whole book) with the intention of popping back to the book to expand on any of these areas.

There is one additional section of the book which ties in nicely with Robyn Jackson’s work on coaching teachers. In this chapter, Fletcher-Wood unpacks how to encourage teacher’s to change using many of the same principles explored with students earlier in the book. There were some good reminders here:

• Habits make teaching easier, but make change harder
• Teachers will welcome autonomy – but we must also remain faithful to the strategy
• To make change worthwhile, minimise the cost of the change

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Fletcher-Wood, Harry (2022) Habits of Success: Getting Every Student Learning. Routledge.

Why Don’t Students Like School?

Daniel T Willingham’s seminal education book applies cognitive theory to the classroom to understand learning in new and meaningful ways. Each chapter takes a rich question as a starting point and then delves into the cognitive science behind it. There are challenges to education norms and thorough explanations to ensure learning is at the heart of teaching. Each chapter is summarised here with the rich question and key quote, and then a list of all the implications of the classroom that bookend each section.

Why don’t students like school?

“People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking” (3)

• Be sure that there are problems to be solved (avoid long strings of teacher explanations)
• Respect students’ cognitive limits (ensure they have the appropriate background knowledge)
• Clarifying the problems to be solved (plan around the questions to be asked)
• Reconsider when to puzzle students (sometimes it is better to teach the students the concepts first)
• Accept and act on variation in student preparation (it is self defeating to give all students the same work)
• Change the pace (change grabs attention)
• Keep a diary (remember your success for when you return to teaching that lesson again)

How can I teach students the skills they need when standardised tests require only facts?

“Factual knowledge must precede skill” (25)

• How to evaluate which knowledge to instill (limit the concepts in order to teach in depth)
• Be sure that the knowledge base is mostly in place when you require critical thinking (background knowledge is required for critical thinking)
• Shallow knowledge is better than no knowledge
• Do whatever you can to get kids to read (reading for pleasure results in cognitive benefits throughout life)
• Knowledge acquisition can be incidental (exposure can sometime be enough to learn)
• Start early (cognitive science is clear about how factual knowledge needs to be built and without intervention students not getting this at home will fall behind)
• Knowledge must be meaningful (lists of facts to learn do not work – knowledge pays off when it is conceptual and the facts relate to each other)

Why do students remember everything that’s on television and forget everything I say?

“Memory is the residue of thought” (54)

• Review each plesson plan in terms of what the student is likely to think about (there is corolation between what they think about during the school day and their later memory)
• Think carefully about attention grabbers (the beginning of the lesson has the attention of the students anyway, and the grab might make the students think about the wrong thing)
• Use discovery learning with care (what the students think about is less predictable)
• Design assignments so that students will unavoidably think about meaning (thinking about the meaning of words – rating/ranking/using them – will help to remember them)
• Don’t be afraid to use mnemonics
• Try organising a lesson plan around the conflict

Why is it so hard for students to understand abstract ideas?

“We understand new things in context of things we already know, and most of what we know is concrete” (88)

• To help student comprehension, provide examples and ask students to compare them (comparing diverse examples can help students think about deep structural connections)
• Make deep knowledge the spoken and unspoken emphasis (low-level facts are important but if that is all you ask about it sends a message that that is all there is)
• Make your expectations for deep knowledge realistic (deep knowledge is hard-won and is the product of much practice)

Is drilling worth it?

“It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice” (107)

• What should be practiced? (ask which processes need to be automatic – the building blocks of the subject area)
• Space out the practice (memory is more enduring when practice is spaced out)
• Fold practice into more advanced skills (distribute practice not only across time but also across activities)

What’s the secret to getting students to think like real scientists, mathematicians and historians?

“Cognition early in training is fundamentally different from cognition late in training” (125)

• Students are ready to comprehend but not to create knowledge (draw a distinction between knowledge understanding and knowledge creation – a more realistic goal is knowledge comprehension)
• Activities that are appropriate for experts may at times be appropriate for students, but not because they will do much for students cognitively (keep in mind what the student is or not getting out of tasks that demand them to create something new)
• Don’t expect novices to learn by doing what experts do (“every artist was first an amateur”)

How should I adjust my teaching for different types of learners?

“Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn” (147)

• Think in terms of content, not in terms of students (learning styles theories not helpful for students, but can be useful when applied to content)
• Change promotes attention (transitions create opportunities to refocus attention)
• There is value in every child, even if he or she is not “smart in some way” (every child is unique and valuable, whether or not they are intelligent or have much in the way of mental ability – we should interrogate what we define as intelligences)

How can I help slow learners?

“Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work”

• Praise effort, not ability (encourage students to think of their intelligence as under their control)
• Tell them that hard work pays off
• Treat failure as a normal part of learning (create a classroom where failure is not desirable but is neither embarrassing nor wholly negative)
• Don’t take study skills for granted (skills of self-discipline, time-management, and resourcefulness need explicit instruction to develop)
• Catching up is the long-term goal (set interim goals that are achievable and concrete – and enlist parents)
• Show students that you have confidence in them (teachers that make a difference set high standards and believe that students can meet those standards)

What about my mind?

“Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved”

Pride & Progress

The Pride & Progress podcast was a gem of a find and has been a very valued presence in my podcast feed for the last three years. The book published this year which attempts to synthesise the learnings from the podcast guests is a really wonderful addition. Lots of the content I’ve encountered before, but the emphasise on stories and reflective questioning is really inspiring. For this post, I’ve extracted and adapted in minor ways the reflective questions that come at the end of each chapter. I think they’ll be really useful to revisit.

Introduction: Setting the Scene

• What did LGBT+ inclusion, or exclusion, look like in your schooling?
• Do you have certain views about what educational spaces should be like?
• What do you feel you can or can’t say about LGBT+ lives in your school? What knowledge and skills do you need to develop further to become more confident with LGBT+ inclusion?

Heteronormativity

• How do you see heteronormativity within the educational spaces that you occupy?
• How might the language you hear in these spaces promote heteronormativity?
• What small changes could begin to disrupt heteronormativity in your educational spaces?

Cisnormativity

• How do you see cisnormativity within the educational spaces that you occupy?
• In what ways might the language used in these spaces binary and how might this exclude some people?
• What small changes could begin to disrupt cisnormativity in your educational spaces? How do students learn about gender in your school, and do your physical spaces make room for all people?

Language

• How could you adapt the goal “Every person in our school community should be free to be themselves, to feel safe, to feel seen, and to feel like they belong” to create a common inclusion goal for your setting?
• What new vocabulary might need to be introduced and understood by your team? How could you co-create an inclusive common language with your team?
• What language do you need to challenge, and how can you best do this?

Curriculum, Representation, and Visibility

• Who is clearly and visibly represented in your school space?
• What small changes could you make to your daily curriculum to utilise LGBTQ+ identities within your school?
• How does your curriculum represent the diversity of society, and where are the gaps that need filling?

Community and Connection

• How would an LGBT+ colleague feel supported and connected in your community?
• How would LGBT+ young people feel supported and connected in your community?
• Are you clearly consulting and communicating your common inclusion goal with the wider school community?

Intersectionality

• In which areas of your identity do you have power and privilege, and are there areas in which you might experience marginalisation?
• How can you further help students to develop schemas for a broad and diverse range of identities?
• How can you celebrate intersectional identities, and recognise the many benefits and strengths that come from having a diverse and intersectional school community?

Leadership

• What skills might your experiences have given you which could help you in your role, or in future roles you aspire to one day be in?
• How could you show allyship in your leadership, and help to create a more inclusive space?
• How can creating and leading a school culture or inclusion benefit everybody in your school community?

Identity

• Consider Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy:
  • Are you able to be authentic in your role as an educator?
  • Are you employing clothes, props and scripts which feel authentic to you?
  • Have you consciously constructed professional boundaries which feel right for you?
• Have you created an environment in which students feel comfortable to explore, develop and share their identities?
• How can you empower students and colleagues from minority groups t see their differences as a source of strength and opportunity?

Allyship and Advocacy

• Where do you feel your allyship lies on Brown’s ally continuum (apathetic, aware, active, advocate)? Where would you like to be?
• What have you learnt? What unlearning have you had to do? Have you experienced any discomfort in the process?
• How will you actively reimagine your educational space as more LGBT+ inclusive? What further support do you need to make this happen?

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Brett, Dr. Adam & Brassington, Jo (2023) Pride & Progress: Making Schools LGBT+ Inclusive Spaces. SAGE Publications Ltd.