The Psychology of #ukedchat

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I have been thinking. (Steady...)

I was inspired by the #ukedchat this evening. Hence the blog post about "Having Fun". Why was I so inspired? Well, it had something to do with having a dialogue (at a hell of a pace) about a topic that is important to me. It also had something to do with the obvious passion and committment of the other Twitterers. Another reason was simply connecting with a new network of people.

I said that I had been thinking though...

I once listened to Andy Cope at a conference earlier this year. Andy Cope is a motivational speaker, but he also a serious scientist. Cope has been studying the science of happiness - which sounds like a cliched headline from the Daily Mail. One of his major findings/theorie is about "Two percenters and Mood Hoovers".

Let me explain...

A two percenter is that person who always finds the positive in a situation, who is always prepared to say something encouraging even when delivering difficult news, who is the person who others look to for ideas. As the title suggests, these eternally happy and positive people form about 2% of the general population.

A Mood Hoover is the person who sits in the corner and says little, but when they do say somehting it is the sort of comment that sucks the enthusiasm out even the most positive conversation. I think of them as like the Dementors in Harry Potter. The Mood Hoovers make up the bottom 5% of the population.

Everyone else has the capacity to behave like the Two Percenter or like the Mood Hoover. Our behaviours can be directly influenced by the behaviours of other people in the room, and can be determined very quickly because of the other person's behaviour.

Back to #ukedchat...

I think that everyone participating in #ukedchat is a self-selecting Two Percenter. The people are motivated to develop a Personal Learning Network that stretches beyond their school. Why? Because it makes a difference to the learners they are involved with. By the very nature of social networking it would appear to me that this is not restricted to the learners in their schools or classes, but to each and every learner associated with each and every member of the PLN. The committment to be involved in a PLN and something like #ukedchat is an intrinsically positive action.

Thank you to everyone who is involved. I have been invigorated by the discussion, and I'm delighted to be surrounded by Two Percenters. It's a great place to be. If you haven't joined in yet, what are you waiting for?

Having Fun

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Wow! I've just taken part in my first #ukedchat on Twitter. If you don't yet know what that is, I have attached a link to Ian Addison's blog which explains the concept very succinctly. The topic for this evening's discussion centred around making learning fun.

The discussion spent a lot of time focussing on a definition of 'fun' and it seemed to be agreed that 'fun' should not be used in the flippant sense of larking around, but more in terms of being engaged, motivated, stimulated and energised to use but a few words. Personally I am a big advocate of 'fun'. I don't think there can be enough 'fun' in the classroom, or in any learning - and in defining 'fun' I would agree with  the words used earlier in the paragraph.

Many of our children bring baggage to school with them. This ranges from a minor dispute with a sibling or parent, to the rabbit dying, to far worse things that we all know happen in the lives of the children we work with. School should be a haven, where the baggage can be left at the door, a place of trust and balance. Each individual needs this - and I include staff in this thought.

So, assuming emotional stability is achieved what is fun? In developing our curriculum at my previous school my one requirement of staff was that they had fun planning and teaching it. (well, apart from covering the curriculum, and being at least good in quality of teaching and learning, and ...). Why? It comes from my own experiences. I know that the best teaching I have ever done has been when I have really enjoyed the content and topic. I know that these made for the lessons that pupils described as their most memorable, and that they remembered what we had been learning.

It's a lofty ambition. However, through collaboration, commitment and consistency we were able to arrive at a curriculum that our pupils regularly called fun. Were they larking about all the time? No. They most definitely weren't. Standards in the school improved dramatically in two years (both measurable through data and softer measures such as behaviour and attendance).

One of the most significant factors in developing fun was to change our pedagogy. We worked very hard to develop strategies that allowed us to act as a Guide On The Side (GOTS) more often than we acted as Sage On The Stage (SOTS). When acting as a SOTS teacher there is a danger that we act as the fountain of all knowledge, and that our voice and thoughts dominate the learning time. Where SOTS teaching takes place more frequently than GOTS I have noticed that there is less involvement in the learning from the pupils. That is not to say that they were unmotivated or unenthusiastic. They weren't. They just weren't committed to participating in the learning. As the ratio of GOTS teaching increased, so too did the enthusiastic involvement of the learner. The GOTS teacher provides prompts, facilitates discussion and intervenes at well judged and carefully planned moments. However, the learners feel more in control, and at the same time more challenged.

As time passed, our learners became more enthusiastic in and out of the classroom. They became more involved with decision making in the school, and their pride in our school increased dramatically. As a result the school became an even more exciting place to be, and the enthusiasm and passion became an ever increasing circle. Parental engagement with the curriculum increased dramatically, and the parents also took on greater shared repsonibility for the learning. Partnership started to be a true description of the teacher-pupil-parent partnership.

This is a very simplistic description of four years of hard work. There were many stumbling blocks and several near disasters. But reaffirming the work was the desire for everyone to have 'fun' - but not just in the sense of larking around!

Ian Addison's explanation of #ukedchat - click here.

The Curriculum

In the "What is the curriculum?" blog the author raises four hypotheses about what the curriculum is. I have an entirely personal perspective on this, which has been developed through thirteen years in the teaching profession. I have been very lucky to work for some inspirational headteachers who continued to have faith in a creative curriculum during a period of increased prescription that followed the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1989. I don't blame the NC for the prescription that has shackled teachers and schools in the last 20 years. My two criminals guilty of this crime are an invasive inspection system and the publishing of league tables based on a seemingly flawed assessment system - but that is something for another post which I will write soon enough.

Back to the curriculum. As an advanced skills teacher I worked with loads of schools that were teaching a creative curriculum. I often reflected on the curriculum in each of the schools that I worked in, including those that I was teaching in and was often disappointed to discover that in the majority of cases what was being described as creative was actually a set of false links being made between a series of medium term subject plans that were written by someone external to the school and were delivered with very little adaptation for the learners.

Where "off the shelf" plans are used without any adaptation they lose their sparkle. This is because the teacher using the plan has no connection with the progression that the author intended. There must be an intellectual engagement with the materials to ensure that it matches the needs of the learners. This seems rather obvious, but I know through experience that this doesn't always happen. My other issue with "off the shelf" stuff is that we don't all find the same things inspiring, and I believe passionately that in order to inspire we need to feel inspired. One of the key skills that a talented teacher brings to the classroom  is the ability to take something that is inspiring and develop real and relevant learning from the material that fits in with an builds on a defined curriculum.

As my career has progressed I have developed my understanding of curriculum. In answering the hypotheses in the blog referenced above I feel that the most successful schools believe in a curriculum that encompasses every planned interaction with the children, from the minute they enter the grounds to the minute they leave (and actually beyond the school as well).

A bit of a ramble, but these are some themes that I want to develop further through this blog. Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.