SUPER Conference 2018

This afternoon I was involved in the annual SUPER Conference, held at the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. I've been a part of the Conference for many years now, ever since I did my MEd at Cambridge via the SUPER programme. (For information on SUPER, look here)

This year it was slightly different though, as SUPER has recently joined the Chartered College of Teachers as part of their wider group of networks. As such, we had the pleasure of having Julia Flutter join us. Julia gave a lovely introduction to the event, which I will summarise later, as well as helping to facilitate some of the workshops that took place later in the afternoon.

The afternoon itself kicked off with a welcome from the Head of Faculty, Geoff Hayward. Geoff’s introduction started with an outline of why groups like SUPER are so important to the field of education. First of all, he said that one of the main roles that SUPER serves is to help generate new knowledge - knowledge which is close to everyday teaching practice - which, as he said is 'really, really important.' In his speech, he mentioned how the partnerships aims to provide models of how teachers can put knowledge into practice, suggesting that this is essential if we are ever going to get to what he would call 'an evidence informed version of teaching'.

Geoff then want on to touch on some of the issues that have arisen recently in education. For example, he drew on the concept of knowledge. At this point, he made reference to the medical profession and medical research. As we all know, a huge amount of money is used in health/medicine to translate the work that is done in research in labs into what doctors and nurses perform every day in hospital wards. He then made the comparison between the medical world and teaching, suggesting that teachers (or perhaps educational researchers) are not as good at doing this - in his opinion, this is where SUPER operates. It is one of SUPER's aims to act as the 'bridge' between academic research and everyday teaching.

Finally, he ended with a little anecdote of how research could be used better within the educational world, framing this within his own experience with the University of Cambridge Primary School. Rather fittingly, teachers at the primary were currently in the throes of an Ofsted inspection. He recounted how in the parent survey, a small minority of parents had complained about the homework policy at the school. It should be noted that the homework policy at the school is to not set homework. This is based on research that shows homework has little-to-no impact. However, parents are not aware of this research; all they know is that they had homework when they were children, so they assume that homework should be set. In sharing this anecdote, Geoff suggested that there's an area for future research available there, focusing on the nature of parents knowledge about education. His main point was that there will always be things to research, but what we need to do, what SUPER often tries to do, is find ways to bridge that gap between what researchers are saying in the 'academic' world of education and what happens in the 'practical' world of everyday classrooms.

Geoff then handed over to Ros McLellan, who outlined in more detail the context behind the creation of SUPER and the work that we are currently doing on wellbeing and resilience.

Initially, over twenty years ago, SUPER was created as a collaboration between the Cambridge University Faculty of Education and a series of schools across the area (currently, we have schools across Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire within the group). The concept of SUPER was started with inspiration from Donald McIntyre, whom the Faculty of Education named their home (and the building in which the conference was held) after. The initial aims of the programme were to create useful educational research (for classroom teachers) and to explore the relationship between schools and the University. The main thing was this process should be about working together, not working for. Ultimately, the primary purpose of SUPER was to inform practice - to be relevant to teachers.

What the programme currently consists of is Teacher Research Leaders (TRLs) from each partnership school, work in collaboration with Bethan Morgan, Ros and the University. We meet once a half-term, in various spaces (both at the Faculty of Education and at schools within the network) to plan, discuss, carry out and analyse research. In this way, SUPER acts as the link between schools and the Faculty.

As part of their work, SUPER has had an annual Conference for at least 10 years now, if not longer. The aim of these conferences is to share what we've been doing each year. Usually this is done with SLT and staff from the schools within the network, although we do usually open it up to a wider audience. SUPER also works to disseminate our findings beyond the network itself, such as at other conferences, such as ResearchEd (where I have contributed myself, in at least two occasions!). Ros also drew attention to our use of Twitter (@SUPER_Network) and the SUPER blog.

Ros also mentioned the international work that SUPER has done in the past, such as collaborative work with teachers from Kazakhstan. I've personally been involved in this work, and has lead to some amazing friendships, not to mention the cultural exchange that (for me) is able to take place working with someone who comes from such a different environment.

Summing up the work of SUPER, Ros mentioned that there are always opportunities for other people to get involved. I would highly recommend that, if you're intregued by the ideas mentioned here, you follow SUPER on Twitter and get in contact with either Ros or Bethan.

Ros was then followed by Nick Martin, Principal at Samuel Whitbread Academy. Samuel Whitbread has been in SUPER since the beginning. In his section of the 'welcome', Nick talked about his perspective on SUPER and its importance. For him, the critical friendship that comes from membership in the network is different to anything else out there. Belonging in SUPER enables teachers and schools to meet like-minded individuals, engage with research, and importantly, learn how to discount the 'fads' in education. He then listed some of the 'fads' that have swept the educational world in the past, mentioning things like the Brain Gym, Learning Styles, etc. He questioned why so many teachers 'fall for this stuff, as a profession?' By questioning this, he suggested that the greatest benefit of belonging to a group like SUPER was learning how to spot the fads and become critical thinkers.

Finally, the welcome speeches ended with a contribution from Julia Flutter, who was acting as a representative from the Chartered College of Teachers. Julia made the connection between SUPER and the CCT, giving some background information on what the CCT was created for and its role going forward.

Much like the aims of SUPER, evidence is at the heart of the CCT. But using evidence to inform practice is, according to her, 'a bit of a voyage'. To start off, she asked the question: Why does evidence matter?

She followed this up with an explanation that evidence 'allows us to think about why something happens' or, more specifically, consider 'why is this happening in the classroom?'. Evidence is important because, as a profession, we need to look at what's going on in our classrooms in order to understand and begin to tackle any problems we identify. Evidence is needed here to evaluate practice to see if new ideas work. Essentially, 'evidence helps you to close the circle'.

Julia then referred to Jean Rudduck - a pioneer of student voice - who always said that pupil voice was helpful to gaining new perspectives in education. The idea here is that students can help practitioners challenge the ways of thinking that have become an assumption. Often, when you consult the students, you realise that what you thought was working wasn't working as effectively as you'd have liked. This is where evidence can be used to challenge the assumptions that we've built up over time.

As anyone who has tried to engage in educational research knows, there is a 'huge mass of published work' out there. The CCT offers teachers access to some of this work, through its research database. However, the challenge then becomes how to navigate through such a vast collection of work, especially one that it keeps growing and growing. Julia suggested that this is an area that the CCT is looking to improve. She also suggested that we should begin to make better use of practitioner research - linking to one of the aims of the SUPER Conference itself. Here, she began to make links between the CCT and the work of SUPER, suggesting that the advantage of the kind of research which was to be shared in the workshops later in the day was that it comes from the classroom - and therefore has ecological validity. The work done by SUPER is therefore an example of 'learning in the real world, not a lab', which makes it useful to everyday classroom teachers.

After all the 'welcome' speeches, the Conference then moved on to a look at the work done so far by the SUPER group on our current project linked to wellbeing and resilience. I could run through this in detail, but as it is a work in progress I think I will skip it for now. Instead, I would direct you once again to the SUPER blog, where there are some summaries of the work available for you to read.

Now, unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend two sessions, as most participates were able to for the second half of the Conference. This was because I was presenting one of the workshops myself! However, I will soon do a separate post where I share some of the findings from the very small-scale research project I did, in collaboration with two colleagues, on an intervention programme we used with six Year 10 students who we identified as having low levels of resilience in English Literature. 

That being said, I was able to attend one of the sessions within the first block of workshops. The one I chose to attend was hosted by a collection of teachers from the St. Ivo School (Anne Barratt, Mary Cody, Steven Hall, and Ross Perkins). I was drawn to their workshop because of the title: Promoting Resilience through Data Tracking and Target Setting. I have a bit of a 'bug-bear' about how much we rely on data and was intrigued about the idea of using data to promote resilience. In my experience, the use of data can often be quite a negative experience, for myself and for students.

The session started off with an explanation of why the school had chosen to look at data rather than other aspects linked to resilience and wellbeing. An goal was established at the school to look at how the recording and sharing of progress could be used to promote resilience within students. Some background information was provided, based on an Ofsted four years ago - in which it seemed that much of the criticism was focused on grades. There was a particular concern, at the time, that students did not know their targets and/or current grades.

As such, the school worked to design a sticker (something I think may schools can relate to), which was to be put on every student's workbook in every subject. In essence, this did what Ofsted asked and was therefore completed by all teachers. It did have some benefits, as teachers and students engaged in more conversations regarding the targets and ongoing progress.  As Anne said, 'It was good and it ticked the boxes, but it wasn't perfect'.

The first criticism to come out of the sticker system was that some students were stressed by their grade being on front of book. They felt like it was daunting, and often made comparisons with their peers. Students stated that the stickers were seen as a judgement. As such, the next step the school took was to move the sticker to inside of book. This meant that the same sticker was used, it was just in a different place. Not much difference, really.

Then, as I'm sure many of us remember, the National Curriculum levels were removed. This resulted in schools having to completing change their progress-tracking systems (at least, in theory). We were told that the Ivo spent four months researching alternative models to levels; they talked to parents, students, and staff and eventually used information from a 2015 government report to help them reach a new system. Their new system was a move away from collecting data in the form of numbers, as it was not achieving a purpose. It was mostly about testing students, which wasn't what they were intended to be used for.

The new system used by the Ivo consists of what they call 'Flight Pathways' (for use in KS3) and the '5 R' reports. Ultimately, the goal was to develop skills for success at KS4, beginning in KS3. Again, this end goal seems very familiar to me, as I am sure it is for many teachers in the secondary sector.

The 'Flight Pathway' system consists of five different flight paths, which are set in Year 7 the flight paths are based on KS2 data (FFT). The rationale behind this was that the school wanted to allow students to move up (or down) flight paths, setting individual challenge pathways along the way. At the end of each term, students are given a challenge pathway instead of a grade or a number. The school now uses a more holistic approach to data, based on attitude, effort, class work, home work, and any summative assessments.

The language used within the various 'levels' of the Pathway is much like that used in the primary sector currently: Emerging, Developing, Securing, Excelling, Mastering.

Students will have different challenge pathways for different subjects, much like they previously would have had different target grades in different subjects. To facilitate this, each department has a Flight Pathways Progression Grid, bespoke for each unit of each subject.

The '5 R' reports consist of ranking students (from 4-1) in areas that include: responsible, resourceful, reflective, resilient, respectful. However, some questions have already arisen whilst using this new reporting system. For example, it is not clear that students aware of what they need to do to achieve success within these 5 areas. It is also unclear whether parents aware of what is required of students to hit these criteria.

It is also important to note that only students in Year 7-9 are given a 'Flight Pathway'. Once students reach GCSE, in Year 10 and 11, the system is transferred into a GCSE grade. However, this grade is no longer placed in students' workbooka - it is now online, using Go 4 Schools. As such, students and parents are able to see grades, but they are not visible to other students like the stickers were.

We were then given time to reflect on, and discuss, the system in use at the Ivo. My own interpretation, after a lengthy discussion with other teachers from various schools, is as follows:

While it is all good using these 'fluffy' terms to try and encourage students to develop a positive mindset towards their progress, these terms will always (eventually) turn into grades at GCSE, so what's the point? The end result is still a grade. Students will still be judged and make comparisons between each other. Teachers will always be held to account for the progress students made from Year 7 to Year 10.

My other question was, while using these progress terms in KS3, can you have two students on different flight paths who are both working at a 'mastering' level? If so, this implies that 'mastering' means different things, at different levels of difficulty/challenge. I wonder if this distinction is made clear to students. Do they know which flight path they are on, or is it something only teachers know. Do parents know?  Will these two students view each other as 'equal', when in actual fact they are not?

I suppose this could be beneficial, in terms of creating a less competitive, high-stakes environment, but it builds a false sense of security. These two hypothetical students will then go to Year 10 and suddenly it will become very clear that they are working at very different levels. In my view, this could potentially have a huge negative effect on wellbeing and resilience. Imagine being the 'weaker' student, who spent three years thinking they were working at the same level as their friend, only to be told 'Actually, no. You're now a Grade 4, but your friend, who was also 'mastering' is actually a 7.'

Anyways, I found the workshop and interesting one, as it made me question (once again) the validity of using target grades. Personally, I wish we didn't have to share target grades with students. I find they are de-motivating in most cases, and often they aren't helpful. I find it better to provide students with comments, not grades, to help them improve specific aspects of their work. The only people who should look at grades are Ofsted, and frankly I wish they wouldn't either. Progress should not be measured against a grade, it should be measured on the growth of a student's ability and confidence. In my opinion, great teaching (excellent pedagogy, etc.) will always lead to good progress, irrespective of target grades.

The day ended with a coming-together of Conference attendees, with TRLs sat in a panel at the front of the room. At this point, general questions were asked of the TRLs and SUPER members, which I think was a nice way to tie everything together and ensure that people attending the Conference left with a clear idea of the work we do, how they could get involved themselves, and ways to ensure research is used within the wider education community.

Overall, a great success.