Adam Robbins Education

I’m on the train home after another amazing research ED national and here are a few of my personal reflections based on a couple of talks I saw.

This one was big. Like insanely BIG. So many speakers and so many people. The sheer scale of it put me in awe of the hard work Helene, Tom and their team have put in. 

As someone that nearly has a meltdown organising a conference for 100 people, having over 10 times more than that and pulling off a day as flawlessly as they did is incredible. Thanks to all the organisers, hosts and helpers. 

Talk 1. Peps Mccrea The (unintuitive) power of attention, routines, norms and alignment. 

This talk was a masterclass in explanation. Ideas were introduced in small steps, with strong concrete examples and effective analogies. The talk focused on the areas that are often underappreciated by teachers. First up was distractions and the scary idea that in disruption, through poor behaviour, environmental design and poor instruction could be robbing our students of significant learning. 

Of particular note to me was the idea of a disruption’s wake. The delay it takes from a disruptions occurrence to the students attention returning to the difficult task of learning is much longer than the few seconds the disruption took. This was particularly well illustrated by the cleaner coming in half way through with a hoover on! I think I will aim to avoid entering rooms to run errands, deliver books and do other important, but not urgent things if I can so as not to leave a wake. He also gave a really great explanation of Ratio and I was pleased at how he framed it in terms of equity, safety and belonging. These things are often underrepresented in discussion of the technique, but are a valid reason for choosing the technique. 

The explanation of routines did something for me that doesn’t happen very often. It changed my mind. I have recently been discussing introducing a common call for attention. I have been on team ‘principles over practice’ that was thinking, as long as it was good it doesn’t need to be the same. I think Pep’s argument of the economies of scale and the supercharging of common routines has made me more in favour of a common routine. The problem is now, which routine and how to communicate this to the staff?

The other part that really stuck with me is the role of social norms. This might be a slight paraphrase but the idea that “norms are the reason schools can function, in some ways they are more important than rules and policy” was really useful and reassuring to me. My own second talk featured these ideas so it was nice to have the validation. He finished on the idea that staff norms can interact and if they are different then they will interfere and if they are the same they will amplify. This has made me reflect on the norms of the teachers in my school and the problems their beliefs around students can cause. Do we do enough work on alignment? Do we go beyond just delivering a powerpoint of values and policy?

Talk 2 Dr Briony Banks: Recomposition: The missing ingredient of effective PD?

This talk fronted by Briony and discussing her work with colleagues at Ambition Institute was a great insight into the challenges of educational research. The aim was to find out if recomposition, the process of applying a decomposed routine to a novel situation, was more effective for novice teachers and their adaptive transfer of knowledge. 

Decomposition is a term for breaking behaviours into small steps. This is something that we often do in teacher training. They managed to produce some evidence that suggests following this up by getting the trainee to attempt to use that information in a similar but different situation is helpful. This was reassuring as it is often something I do in my CPD sessions, but until now it was working on the assumption that it works for students, so must work for adults. It is good to see there are some emerging threads that future research can build upon. 

I was fortunate enough to deliver two talks and pleased with how they went. They were well attended and for a first attempt were miraculously on time! I get a chance to do them again at researchED surrey in October. Tickets available here. 

Overall it was a great day. Lots of conversations with people who share the same passion for teaching was inspiring and having a drink with friends was good for the soul. I go home with some new things to think about and try.