Learning Journal

Well, it seems that Labour got in. Compared to the Conservatives on issues both educational and otherwise, I would have to opine that this is a good thing.
But what does it mean for education? I can only sum it up as a mixed bag. New Labour's stance on "education, education, education" has been covered extensively from 1997-on, so it's hard to really pick up a connecting theme. But it would be safe to say that in this climate of globalisation and neo-liberal thinking that what will occur is the increasing consumerisation of education and a discourse of learning that privileges 'skills' and 'training'.
Compared to this, my classrooms are little enclaves of peace. Recently I have been affected by illness, and have missed some lessons. On returning, I suddenly remembered the best things about teaching - the students responding to you, enjoying the lesson, and learning. I suspect these are things that are too often forgotten nowadays.
The only thing that really drives me as a teacher is attempting to improve my teaching so that the learners can do well. There's no point teaching if you don't want the learners to be benefitting. Now that this course is finishing, I think that my only aim is to find a job and to continue improving, while finding out more about the education system as we go. It's such an important part of the world - education, in fact, creates the world, by informing citizens about their identity and place in it - that it must not be neglected. I have a tendency to think that education is, in fact, the most important thing possible. All the hazy notions I have of an improved human race come back to the central point of having to improve the education of people so that they can have the chance to take on new positions within the world and transform it.
Foucault wrote memorably of his educational experiences, trespassing through the school years, always being told that the 'truth' lay somewhere ahead - next term, next year, once you get your degree. But he found that he had completed a doctorate thesis and was still ignorant, scared, and without sure basis for thinking. I think that the education must inculcate some sort of feeling of powerlessness for it to be worthwhile. People must leave education without thinking that "this is all I need to know". We can be trained to fulfil a job role, but not a human role. Our education as people and into people never ends. We don't just need a learning society, we need an educated society. Only then will the democratic systems we have in place truly work.

One thing that has been concerning me of late has been EMA payments. Over the past few months, since the first block placement, I have become steadily more and more critical of certain students. Let me explain.
The EMA was an idea brought about by the need to widen participation, and increase student numbers in FE. It is advertised quite widely - I see animated adverts for it with spies in all over the internet, and what more is going to advertise something to a teenager than a cartoon spy? - and I presume it has been successful. Certainly, many students rely on their EMA payments, and many students without it complain that they want one too. It isn't exactly fair that some students get £30 a week, and students who don't get it do not receive £30 a week from their parents, but it would be hard to force parents to do this.
I am not sure, though, if such payments really allow students to join college courses. They seem to, I feel, motivate students to join, for the financial incentive. It is hard to see that £30 a week is going to persuade a student to join college rather than work, even on minimum wages, which would bring in considerably more. Instead, it is an incentive for students to join, and some of them seem to think that, in return for the EMA, they only have to turn up for class.
One case in point is a student who was in my class during observation 5, with my college mentor. I moved around the students to new groups for a discussion task, one that went very well and my mentor was pleased with. I purposefully placed this student in the group that was sat next to where my mentor was, in order that she might be persuaded to do work. Normally, this student sits with her friends, and responds to work by naming her handout and then leaving it. She rarely fills anything in, and when being asked to do work responds with a sigh. She often feigns an illness, a pain, a tiredness, and to start with I was quite considerate. But without some explanation, it is hard to understand that a student can be constantly ill in different ways, and she refuses to talk about her problem. I presume that she might well be working over the weekend. More importantly, though, she has no interest in talking to me, in trying to do the work, and simply files handouts away and listens mutely when I am speaking. She spends most of her time talking to her friends about various goings on and occasionally laughing too loudly.
When sat next to the mentor, she merely stared unpleasantly at the people around her, and upon leaving, my mentor mentioned that I could exclude her from class for her unco-operativeness and belligerence. I happily kept this in mind. I do not like to exclude students, and have only have to do it before for extreme lateness, but a student cannot come to class merely to get their EMA forms signed, doing nothing that could be construed as learning.
So, recently, I have been asking for signs of work in order the EMA forms be signed. This student has taken to turning up, enquiring whether my rules have changed, and then leaving early. I suppose that she doesn't want EMA anymore, or could be forging my signature (my students tell me this is a common practice). I've informed her personal tutor to ask if this is going on, and I log her leaving each week. I don't know what she's going to do when it comes to her exam, but I'm not sure she ever cared.
This sort of example makes me think that EMA, as it is, might not be widening participation as much as making college an easy place to be.

  This week, I might be expected to talk about my observation six, or my experiences at the interview on Friday.  But these really weren't the most striking events.  Passing the observation was an excellent experience, but I did put quite a bit of work into it - albeit less than any previous observation, as I think I have become much better at planning good lessons.  But passing wasn't really a definitive event, as I believe that there is still a long way to go to becoming a very good teacher.
  The interview was also not definitive.  It was good experience for such events, and I'm glad I was not offered the job, as what I saw of the school was in some ways quite unpleasant and I don't think I could have fitted there.  The best thing about it was wearing my nifty new interview gear, with a nice suit and shoes and a bag and everything.  Very 'britpop'!  (Yes, I know, I don't know what I mean either).
  From this last week's events, the most formative experience happened in class.  While facilitating the smooth running of a nicely planned worksheet with questions and tasks and activities and so on, I noticed that the general air of activity was swirling round the class and somehow missing one corner.  Why, a student isn't working! I thought, and immediately leapt into action.  The student in question looked up at me with kindly, triumphant eyes, as I had interrupted him in doing a different kind of work.  He was writing his rap lyrics.
  Well, being a sensitive soul, I was unable to merely tell him off and ask him to do his worksheet instead.  So I entered concerned, nurturant, supportive mode.  I read his lyrics and empathised with his message.  He was writing about how he grew up in the West Midlands, in 'the projects', and how if anybody tried to 'beef on him' (start a fight) only they would get hurt because he's too strong.  Through the lyrics I got the sense of this young man - albeit not much younger than me - attempting to prove himself to the world in his own way.  Although they weren't at Eminem standard (not enough references to being the best rapper in the world, for a start) they were still very important to my student.  They were part of his identity.  So I talked with him, about his plans, about why he wrote, about what it was like to be a student and a rapper at the same time.  I think I left him feeling as if he'd had some approval, as if he could both pass his A-levels and write lyrics, and have his own identity in class.
  Obviously, I still told him to get on with his work.
  It's episodes like this that bring home the importance of the learner.  Not as merely a quantified unit of 'learning styles' or a personality based on an ILP.  The learner is a real person, doing real things, who is capable of going out into the world and failing, or succeeding, or improving something, or breaking something.  How are we supposed to understand and deal with this?  I don't think that I have enough time to teach learners - I have time to teach the class, and talk to a few people.  But so much of each person that I meet each week passes me by, hidden and unnoticed.  So much is assumed that very few aspects of each person are reached by me as a teacher.  So little learning or education really goes on.  We concentrate too hard on certain aspects of interaction, and a lot is being lost.  Why don't we admit that the classroom is really a much more complex place than we are assuming?  And what can we do about it?
  I suppose that I don't really know.  It seems that I'll have to keep figuring it out as I go along.

The FE sector is quite disorganised, in my opinion, on Tuesday evening a headmaster from a south Birmingham school rang me up to tell me that I had an interview on Friday, and please could I prepare a 20 minute lesson on key assumptions in psychology for a class of 'twelve to fifteen students'. How thorough.
Anyhow, I've done my best with it, and a Magnum Opus of 'What do you think about Freud' has resulted. It's better than the deal my mom got - she is going down to London tomorrow for an interview she's only known about for a week, to teach 50 minutes of physics. The amount she has to teach she'll usually cover over a number of weeks, so she's panicking.
Compared to her, I'm more picnicking.
A problem with this course, I feel, is that just as we need the chance to wind down from teaching, with our hours mostly done and our projects all due in, the college ramps up its final blitz towards the exam. With the revision classes now being taught, I'm up to 8 hours a week of teaching, with 7 hours of this original lesson that I have to plan for painstakingly. And then I have to go home and attempt to write 2,500 word essays. Hurrah!

Let us enter into Bloom's affective domain for this week's 'Learning Journal with Tom'.
In my final lesson before packing up for the end of term break, a group of students came over and we got chatting. One of their friends has, sadly, left the course because he got an E in his exam and didn't like the subject anyway. Otherwise, they were all very happy and enthused, and felt as if they could do better next time, even though their own grades had been quite bad. I sympathised with them and supported them when they said that they felt as if they knew much more now, because the more of the syllabus they covered the more it made sense. But, most happily, one of the things they mentioned was what a good teacher they thought I was.
Haha! Phew!
I would not be on the course if I did not think that I could be a satisfactory teacher - not just up to FENTO standards, but also up to the standards of students. I myself have had too many unpleasant teachers to want to be one of them. It's something of a combination of assumed authority, qualities of a dictator, and ignorance of students that makes a truly despisable teacher. Teachers need, to be found pleasant, to be in touch with their students and give them some respect. And it was undeniably heartening that my strategy of respecting my pupils has paid off. Although I don't feel that I can take responsibility for the leaving of the most awfully inattentive students, because they jacked it in all on their own.
Respect is certainly something that I feel for my students, and I give them all the help I can, while also explaining to them how much I expect them to be able to do; simultaneously supporting, praising, and pushing. If they need a few words of advice, such as 'yes', 'no', or 'humperdinck', then they get it. If they need to understand a tricky concept, such as reliability in psychological experiments, I give them a textbook and read it through with them. And if they want me to write their whole report for them, as one student did... well, you do your best to convince them that it is better done under their own steam.
Yet, respect is one thing, and 'unconditional positive regard' another. I see UPR as a covert form of abuse. Can it be really meant, or is it just an acted facade of facilitatoriness? Is it merely a form of permissive, laissez-faire management that makes it easier for yourself as the teacher? I think respect must engender an unlimited amount of positive regard for positive things, but not unconditional regard. To go down the UPR route is to deny people volition, or so I believe - a million forms of "whatever you do I accept, because I don't think it's your fault". I don't think I could ever say that to my students, unless something really wasn't their fault. In learning, you have to be ready to engage with your flaws, whatever they are. In teaching, you have to be ready to negotiate those flaws and talk them through. And some flaws just don't deserve positive regard, because some things should not be permitted, for as a psychologist, I reckon that people are massively complex. We present so many aspects of ourselves in different situations. It is not harmful to point out one aspect and let your student know that you cannot endorse it. UPR is merely a tactic of delaying change and enforcing conformity to an attitude of uneasy, unmeant compromise, where problems don't have to be addressed, just covered up.
Respect is acknowledging your students as they are, allowing them to talk and act for themselves, and doing your best to help them through whatever trials and tribulations they come across. UPR is smothering them with a blanket form of dismissive uncaring. And perhaps that's the root of my respect, I value each of my students and want them to value themselves. But value, to be positive, has to allow a negative. I'm afraid that I am committed to wanting to inspire some form of growth, even if it means registering an unhappiness, rather than blindly believing that everyone will go along fine in the end and nothing needs to be acted on, just because it allows you to sit back and say everything is A-OK. This is why I didn't do a counselling masters and came on this course instead.
So, hurrah for respect!

A main issue on my course, one that often comes up within my peer group of practising trainee teachers, is that of transmission teaching. The teacher as a beacon emitting morse code, telegraph wires of communication tentacling out to caress each learner, learners receiving electronically. Or, as is more often the case, beeping an SOS and falling down the stairs like toy robot.
Is this what teaching has been reduced to? Everything we seem to do, every single task, appears to relate to either the tranmission of or testing for a chunk of knowledge. A group discussion might seem to be perfectly educational, but really it is a form of assessment, rather than something designed to improve the learner. All sorts of tasks might seem clever and pretty, but really not be all that educational. It all comes down to lecturing, questioning, consolidating. Perhaps we need to inspire a critical pedagogy, something radically different, to counter this.

I dearly wish that it were different. That there was the scope within the syllabus to allow for true differentiation - the addressing of each individual students' interests and needs. What about being able to choose three topics to be examined on, say out of a dozen or so, and then being able to find resources to complete coursework on the issues and learn through doing and intrinsic motivation? What if we gave the students that power? "Ah," some might argue, "but then the students won't know what they are supposed to." Supposed to? What is a psychology student supposed to know? Methods are evidently important, but the two sides of Quantitative and Qualitative are pitted against each other in a political imbroglio, making a technicist assumption of what should be most important not at all value free. There are general debates within the field, sure, but currently these are taught as somehow floating above and free of course content! The nature/nurture debate, problems of ethics, the question of whether psychology is a science... embed them in the work, ask the students to consider these as they pursue areas of interest, and I believe they will be learned.

It seems I would only be happy with a radically different form of psychology teaching, one that would be more difficult for the examining board and for the teaching centre to cope with, one that would require interested and engaged and differentiating teachers who keep up to date with outside events and their students. Yes: one that would create high standards. My problem is not that I find the standards of today too high and demanding, "all that paperwork, all the assessment". I find them irrelevant and, if anything, far too low. One does not prove the ability to be educatable / have been educated through passing A-Level psychology. The qualification is not valid as a signifier for anything but regurgitation. It does not even help one to have it if one wants to do a psychology degree - those on my degree who had done a psych A-Level found stepping beyond the meagre boundaries of their knowledge quite demanding, and had to be repeatedly told that would have to submit to being retaught.

Yes. That's it. A-Levels need to follow onto the degree as well as be generally useful and cause the learning of 'transferable skills'. We need a genuine progression of learning and education, rather than what we have now, which is more a long system of grading students. And for what? Why must we divide young people into so many different groups, of fail and pass, of A B C D E and U, of A-Level and GNVQ? Why not just educate them?

How have I developed my planning and teaching over the course?
Forgive me, of course, my learning journal, for not addressing these concerns all that thoroughly. I suppose that the essence of my reflection is not really at all of myself and my practice within my placement – perhaps an obvious flaw and error – but for me my main interest is to catalogue my own thoughts regarding the system of education itself, the placement of my students within it, and how staff react to all this. This belies my own interests in education, not just as an educator but also as taking a wider view. It should not be surprising that I aim to, one day, do a PhD on poverty and disengagement, inclusion and ‘class consciousness’.
Regarding my lessons, then, to look back I certainly feel as if I have made some progress. In terms of content, I am trying to loose the balloon teaching from the anchors of the syllabus, and fly above it by considering the articles of knowledge more deeply and connectedly. This, of course, becomes harder and harder as strikes and others delays reduce remaining teaching weeks, causing grand ideas to stumble due to simple lack of time. My activities are improving – a movement away from the frankly useless gapped handout, to sets of group and individual activities such as discussions, debates, presentations, roleplays, question sheets, narrative-writings, various tasks, jigsaws, and etc. I am finding more and more ways of relating course content to activities, in an attempt to defeat the ills of teaching by transmission, and its flipside, learning by consuming fact nuggets (and its evil twin sibling, drop-out through absolute boredom).
The bestly improved item is my planning. Previous plans have been three sheets of printed paper – my first observation of this second semester was six. I found more things to say in differentiation, more ways of differentiating in planning and in lesson, and it all comes down to understanding more about the individuals in the group and what they want from a lesson.
I feel as if I am doing all these things, but I am not really interested in writing about them. I am more interested in writing about what my classroom practices reveal about the state of education generally. For example: why is it so hard to unbuckle lessons from overviews of course content through lecture-handout-questions, and develop and facilitate the opportunities educational experiences? What is it about the system that makes it seem rational for the teacher to do a bare minimum and just provide pedagogical materials that condense fact and ask the students to do little more than acknowledge they have read it by answering questions? I would say that it is never enough to give out a piece of textbook writing and ask the students to consider an essay question on these issues. Yet, frankly, the course seems designed to encourage this. Remember the facts, write them down properly, and you’ve passed. The spectre of assessment chases away noble thoughts of improvement and makes the students scared of ‘unnecessary learning’. This is a problem many of my colleagues have; student interest is focussed on passing and not learning.
I find I have to bring in education under the cover of darkness, like a Guantanamo detainee being bundled up in a hood and forced along barbed-wire corridors. And EdExcel don’t help, because they ask for such specific and uninspiring and unrelated things, as if they don’t want the students to be learning about psychology, just demonstrating a willingness to conform to a system. Am I merely testing my students for acquiescence?
What I want to consider is whether it should be like this, how it got like this, how to make it something else. I suppose I do not write about my classroom practice very often in this learning journal, but then again, so little is really asked of me when it comes to teaching. The real task of any teacher, I would contest, is to challenge the students, the staff, the college, those who set the curriculum, the educational system, the government, and anybody else in hearing range to find ways to make teaching and learning better. What happens in the classroom is placed under such an unbelievable set of limits, and these limits must be contested. That is when true reflection about teaching could take place – when the resources and rules allow for all sorts of methods that can do more than just meet limited content outcomes, and the teacher can teach and the learners can learn all in their own ways and time and fulfil their own interests and abilities. I am sure that I can teach functionally, mechanically, taking part in an assembly line of knowledge. What comes next is breaking free of this.