Adam Robbins Education

Consider the following snippet of a lesson:

Mr R is teaching year 7. The students have just finished their do now quiz.

Mr R: Ok year 7 its now time to mark your work in green pen.

Like a shot, 5 students lift their green pens in the air. Mr R pauses for a beat

Mr R: That’s good, can everyone show me their green pen please. 

The rest of the class then lift their green pens into the air.

Mr R: Thank you. Now what did you write for question 1……Steven. 

Mr R works in a school that asks teachers to get students to show their green pen before using it. They have a system like this for justifiable reasons. For now let’s’ park the validity of the technique to one side. I’ve been blogging long enough to know that some of you reading this will have very strong opinions on the idea of getting students to physically show you their equipment and frankly I don’t have time to outline the pros and cons right now. let’s look at what happened. Mr R did not follow the school policy initially. He had been trained but it was not habitual, instead he was using his old phrase. However he was queued to do the right thing by the students behaviour. They knew the expectations and by responding accordingly they nudged Mr R into the preferred behaviour. 

This is an example of upstream accountability, a term I have just made up. 

We are used to using downstream accountability in schools. It can get a bad rep, but accountability is a hugely important tool for motivation and discretionary effort. When used at the appropriate level and in a suitable manner it helps people adapt their behaviour for the common good. It is used in all aspects of society. 

When we introduce a new technique to our teachers we invest a lot of time in training and building in downstream accountability. We might adapt resources to nudge teachers into making the right decisions, emphasise new behaviours in meetings and focus our quality assurance systems on it. We then expect the teacher to train the students in their lessons. This is a missed opportunity.

If we take time to train the students in a centralised fashion we achieve a number of things:

1. The profile of the change is much higher. Teachers know this is a big deal because everyone knows about it and the time that is being spent on it is valuable.
2. Students are given the best instruction in what to expect and why. The message is not diluted by the teacher’s enthusiasm or understanding.
3. The levels of social support are huge. All students know that all students will be expected to do this new thing correctly when asked. 

This rapidly accelerates the adoption of the new techniques and provides this upsteam accountability. Within a class of 30 some students will automatically behave as expected and nudge the teachers into adopting the correct behaviour. Mr R was not keen on the idea of getting the students to raise their pens. To him it felt condescending. But seeing the students voluntarily do it helps change his attitude and ensure that he is on board with the new idea. 

The induction of the students is best done in a collective fashion, like an assembly, but when logistics make that impossible videos for tutors to play on the same day work quite well.

When trying to get the school to adopt a new technique make sure you cross the streams. Induct the students and staff in a highly visible way to maximise your impact.