Four Epochs of Education

Dylan Wiliam, Institute of Education, University of London | 13 March 2014

As a first order simplification, Michael Barber’s two by two matrix of four epochs of education is attractive, but on closer examination, the simplicity of the diagram glosses over important issues.

For a start, the diagram suggests that the 1970s to the 1990s were uniformly evidence poor. Now in terms of the kinds of neat evidence that policymakers like about “what works” in education, then that may be defensible (although I am not sure about this). However, in terms of the kinds of knowledge that teachers need to do their jobs, the picture is far more complex. As the work of Hilda Taba in the US or Lawrence Stenhouse in the UK showed clearly, teachers have to be knowledge workers. My sense is that we have got more explicit knowledge about educational processes but we have gone backwards in the kind of tacit knowledge that teachers need to do their job. There is also an implication that the national strategies were informed by evidence. Of course there was some use of research evidence in the development of the national strategies, but from personal experience, I know that those involved in the development of the national strategies were actually dismissive of the research evidence on things like philosophy for children, cognitive acceleration and formative assessment, which have been shown to have a substantial impact on student achievement, and yet were almost completely ignored in the national strategies. As long as our pursuit of teaching as an evidence based profession values the kind of explicit knowledge that researchers create higher than the kinds of implicit knowledge that teachers create every day in their classrooms, I see little prospect of teaching as an evidence-based profession.

Jules Daulby | 20 March 2014

I agree with Dylan William here – are the policy decisions based on research which fits an ideology?

The KS1 phonics test and SPAG test in year 6 are examples where policy has overridden research – there is NO evidence based research to show these tests are efficacious.

Teaching phonics is based on sound research of how we learn to read but the tests are not. Prof Brooks who advised DFE on the phonics programme for schools is vociferously against this phonics test, seeing it as a costly and uneccesary. I would go further and say it is damaging.

Debbie Hepplewhite, Phonics International Ltd | 20 March 2014

The National Literacy Strategy came under a lot of criticism because it put on the map in a fully endorsed way the ‘multi-cueing reading strategies’ which largely amount to children using cues to guess the words on the page.

This was not evidence-based practice, on the contrary – and it took a great deal of effort to challenge this orthodoxy.

To this day, the idea that it is good practice, or acceptable, to teach children to guess their way through their early reading books is still the main understanding of many teachers.

Sheffield Hallam University conducted a review of the practice of the teachers who took part in the pilot for the Year One Phonics Screening Check. Nearly three quarters of them described that they still taught, or used, the multi-cueing reading strategies which research has discredited as being potentially damaging for readers’ reading profiles (habits).

Although these whole language ‘reading strategies’ were no doubt already the practice of many teachers prior to the National Literacy Strategy, nevertheless the NLS further endorsed them and left a worrying legacy.

One of the reasons that government has then had to ‘intervene’ regarding teaching practice for reading instruction moving forwards is to put the record straight. This issue is still too hot a potato for teachers to be free to do their own thing when it comes to reading instruction – it is life-chance stuff for so many children.

In terms of intervention, however, we still have a very worrying situation as the government on the one hand made it clear that reading instruction should be based on the conclusions of research (unwise to teach the multi-cueing reading strategies for lifting the words off the page) – but on the other hand continued to support financially, and promote, Reading Recovery specifically – an approach based on the same multi-cueing reading strategies that the national review conducted by Sir Jim Rose discredited.

This shows clearly that the teaching profession has received very mixed messages from the government – and it also implies that the slower and weaker learners need the very method which science has shown do a disservice to such children.

A study of this field has demonstrated over and again that one cannot hold those in authority to account for such contradictions. The Science and Technology select committee investigated the, then, government’s decision to support and promote Reading Recovery and found the government’s response entirely unsatisfactory. Nothing happened.

So, to this day, the teaching profession continues to get these mixed messages through authoritative auspices and, in effect, could just choose to follow whichever ‘understanding’ they randomly prefer.

Pete Boyd , University of Cumbria | 21 March 2014

Lawrence Stenhouse published a key text in 1975 that indicates how at least some teachers were leading change through practitioner research. Over the last 40 years many school teachers have completed their part-time Masters programmes or participated in collaborative research projects and become more research-informed through those experiences. The well-intentioned but often flawed antics of political policy-makers over the decades has clearly influenced the practice of teachers. However it is important to acknowledge that many teachers and schools do their best to mediate, as best they can, the pernicious impact of national policy frameworks. I am optimistic about the ability of teachers to take more assertive control of the profession and to adopt more research-informed practice as teaching becomes a Masters level profession. I believe it will help if the education community abandons the ‘theory-practice gap’ metaphor and adopts a new sociocultural metaphor for teachers’ professional knowing as ‘interplay’ between the situated practical wisdom of teachers and public, published, knowledge. There are tensions within that interplay around the value placed on different kinds of ‘knowledge’ but these tensions can be a driver for learning and change. The metaphor of interplay helps to capture the value of practical wisdom and of published research and guidance. On their own, neither of these two domains of knowledge can create and sustain excellent schools.

Response from Lee Elliot Major, Sutton Trust | 24 March 2014

I wouldn’t disagree with these comments.

The matrix which I have updated here was originally constructed through an idealised ‘New Labour’ lens – positioning the national strategies as ‘evidence led’ in contrast to previous eras. Clearly the reality was more nuanced than this. But I still think the simplified picture is useful in understanding today’s debate about developing an evidence based profession of teachers.

The Sutton Trust/EEF toolkit (and indeed the subsequent work of the EEF) is an attempt to empower teachers to take on some of the broad insights from explicit research evidence to inform their own tacit thinking in the classroom ( and then crucially evaluate impact for themselves).

This remains the key challenge. Whitehall’s current interest in ‘What works’ worries me for these reasons! If teachers are to develop into an evidence based profession it will need to come from the bottom up, not the top down.

The most enlightening discussions I have had is working alongside teachers to digest the toolkit’s research findings to think about their own practice in their own context. The next exciting phase of the EEF’s work meanwhile will be to shed light on the best ways for research to be used by teachers.

Of course this debate is not new in education or elsewhere. here are some interesting links:

http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/no4_miller.pdf

http://www.bmj.com/content/329/7473/1013

http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/538415/Clive-Dimmock_workshop.pdf

Lorna Sibbett | 27 March 2014

A core matter to address is the barriers put in place by those in the business of educational research – a business which runs on charitable and government funding, but makes money from privileging access to research outputs. Schools and teachers cannot afford journal and research database access. They instead find themselves relying upon digests of the evidence base – a regurgitated mass passed through authors, journalists, commentators, hearsay etc. The Sutton Trust/EEF toolkit is a truly helpful initiative, providing some initial signposting to the landscape of evidence. However, to really effect teacher empowerment and evidence-based practice requires opening access to the evidence base.

Dr Marion Long, Rhythm for Reading | 8 April 2014

Equity in education, professional judgement and appropriate regard for evidence based practice

The professional judgement of teachers and head teachers is held in high regard and steps must be taken to ensure that the value placed on professional judgement (a distillation of insight, experience, sensitivity and wisdom) is not eroded.

Evidence based practice relies on data and therefore on testing.
1. Tests do not generate a definitive score, but simply provide a snapshot of a child’s performance on a particular day. This matters if pupils are to be regarded as persons rather than data points.
2. Tests are developed to be convenient, objective and efficient – but their administration and interpretation requires professional judgement.
3. Test materials effectively assess children performing at age expectation. If a child’s attainment level is substantially lower than expected for their chronological age, that child is less able to access the test material and their score provides a less reliable measure of their progress – so evidence-based practice is likely to systematically contribute to a widening equity gap in education in England.

Vikki Prosser | 3 May 2014

A teacher for 30 years I have much less time for even looking at the results of research now. Sutton Trust, iNet and TES articles are my limit. I feel guilty that I do not keep up with research in my subject also (A fact that is often forgotten when we consider the importance of an informed profession) I therefore need my goverment to organise the review of evidence, use current learning to inform curriculum and organisation changes and introduce change properly. Oh dear.