Lesson Plans and Schemes of Work (17th Nov 2011)
Heavenly spheres were the way the ancient Greeks explained how the planets moved. Ptolemy theorised that the planets revolved on spheres and that caused their movement in the sky. Whilst this gave approximate predictions for the way they progressed, it became obvious that this way not give accurate predictions. So to keep the theory intact, a bright spark suggested that the sphere had spheres on which they rotated. Whilst this improved the predictions (which therefore "proved" that they were working towards a correct solution), it became necessary to add more and more spheres. It was only when those well known resident of south London, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, said, "Eer, mate, I fink it's like this, init, cos we can do away wiv all them spheres if we use gravi'ee. Much simpler, like." Obviously, they could not be right because that was not the done thing.
The lesson to be learnt from this and other branches of science and mathematics was that the simpler the theory, the more likely it is to be correct. If the theory needs more and more "spheres", it may be time to start looking for a new theory.
I came into teaching in the late 70's and this was not a job. Lecturers would come in a few minutes before class, write stuff on the board and leave. This may be an exaggeration and not applicable to many dedicated educators, but it certainly seemed true. Then someone had the insight that if we could do what we wanted, then we might not be delivering all the syllabus! A plan was needed, a cunning plan.
What we'll do is make them create schemes of work and give these out to the students. Excellent. However, it was soon discovered that there was a problem because there were good reasons why the schemes of work may change. For example, no two groups work in exactly the same way. Some are faster here, but slower there. Sometimes something happened in the world which caused useful and genuine debate, but this was not in The Plan. So schemes of work became guides rather than rules. And the quality of teaching improved.
The next problem was that even if you had a plan, you could not control what happened in the classroom. Some of us were awful teachers. You could still turn up with little preparation and deliver drivel on a topic because it was on the scheme of work for that week. What was needed was more control. So the format of the schemes of work became more and more complex. And the quality of teaching improved.
Well, the next step was to insist on lesson plans, so that it was possible to control the quality of the experience in the classroom. This proscribed, in increasing detail, what was to happen in each time block in the classroom. And the quality of teaching improved.
However, this suffered from similar problems to the scheme of work; the timings had to be relaxed because the content had to adapt to the situation in the classroom. On top of this some in the class will go faster and get bored, whilst some will go slower and become demotivated because they cannot keep up. So another good idea evolved - differentiation. The lesson plan would now be aimed at the weakest in the class. There would then be a range of other activities which those travelling faster could do. And the quality of teaching improved.
But now, another problem comes to the fore. The slower students notice that they are being treated differently to the others. They are not getting what the others have and either become demotivated or peeved because they feel that they are not worthy.
Does this sound like spheres within spheres to you? It certainly does to me.
The problem stems from the fact that quality is measured by what the lecturers do. You may have noticed that I have not needed to use the word "student" or "learner" once in the piece above. This is because the emphasis has been on the lecturer rather than the student. The effect of this is to make students feel that they are dependent on us. This is bad for them because they are hindered from becoming independent learners.
Maybe the solution is to turn the system on its head. Let's give the students materials (this is the age of the Internet and the Cloud), a schedule which shows what grade they can expect and lots of TLC. A student who has a stake in their education is more likely to achieve. Students then work through the materials at their own pace (with "encouragement" where necessary) and see the lecturer for marking and assistance.
One-to-one tuition ensures that the questions on the mind of that learner can be answered. This engages the student more than being an anonymous entity in a class. The students can gravitate towards their futures via the path of least resistance for them without a surfeit of spherical objects.