It's not just talking to teachers talking to teachers about academic research and evidence-based practice with continuing professional development at PNA 1977 on Twitter Snapchat. Just talking to teachers. Hello. Welcome to the third in the summer special series of nailers Ngata and this week is a bumper episode where I am speaking with Mark McCourt now listeners will know that markets. Everything education. He's a former teacher and AST head of Department senior leader head teacher often inspector. He's a founder of the teacher development trusts created a v maths and now he is a CEO of LaSalle education and I'm speaking to Mark about his new book teaching for Mastery. So the really in-depth full and Frank discussion about all the things in the teaching for Mastery Book and also a little bit wider in terms of the educational landscape so listeners to Aware that if you are walking your dog or your listen to it in the car that some of the language described as full and Frank, but I think that only adds to your enjoyment of the podcast so sit back relax take the dog for a walk go for a run and enjoy my conversation with Mark McCourt. Okay? Hello Mark and welcome to the podcast. I feel thanks for having me. No problem at all. Okay, so we're It's going to get in with the gentle introduction question, which is just if you could tell listeners a little bit about your career to this point and about your new book Mastery. Okay? I so very briefly. I fell into teaching off to be a mathematician did the usual stuff teacher had a maths and school leadership and then I became a director of a company called tribal group. Most people know tribal group better as ofsted, which is one of our projects. They had lots of large-scale Education projects there in the UK at all around the world including things like education for a new era in the Middle East and National Center for excellence in teaching mathematics in the UK loads and loads of different projects. So that takes me through to about 2011 and then I tried to retire which didn't work very well and they're the group of us. Started a new organization the solid education with the aim of bringing together large numbers of maths teachers on a very regular basis, which is one of the main things that we do that through thing called matter cons. So that's kind of my main work that I do nowadays that I'm also a director of several Charities as well. And yeah the book is is something that came about really from just writing down. On my own thoughts and having conversations with other Educators masteries something I've been banging on about for a really long time and it was increasingly the case that it was obviously being misinterpreted. So I thought I'd try and set the record straight on that. So yeah knocked out a book just came out recently. And so that brings us to today perfect. Perfect. And as I said the beginning your new book Both teaching for Mastery and You Begin it by highlighting those that have influenced your thinking in this book so I could just tell us a little bit about who these early players were and what influence did they have on the Mastery model for schooling? Yeah. There's a bunch of really interesting people involved in Mastery, and actually one of the guys John be caroled who's heavily influential in my street model was also heavily. Eventually we decided to become a teacher. I was reading Cows work. Work long before thinking about becoming a teacher and he's really really really important guy in terms of cognitive science and thinking about how the human mind works yet hardly any Educators know him at all. There's there a kind of superstars in cognitive science, like swellow giri in the bjork's so on but actually John be Carol, I think would be I will time here in that domain. Anyway his work led me. To read other people's stuff including Benjamin Bloom and then it was kind of like a jigsaw coming together of different different pieces of work led me to reading the thing called The Wind that care plan which was written in 1921 by a guy called Carlton Washburn and Carlton. He was a superintendent in this city would occur Illinois called the come up with this different model of working this Mastery model. As an antidote to conveyor belt approaches. It just absolutely fascinated gripped me and then I started looking at the history of it and where it be used at different places around the world, but the impact of it was so really Carlton washburn's and gotten kicked us off. Brother hundred years ago. He formally kicked it off in 1921 that you've been doing stuff in 1914 1915 very warmed Frederick birth at that time. And then what's really lovely as well as that if you dig into Carlton's work, you actually find that he didn't come up with this model and he was just copying model popularized by Aristotle and I love finding that out because I'm a very big fan of Aristotle. So the fact that all of those little Parts ended up leading to Aristotle two and a half thousand years ago. That's pretty neat. So yeah, they are these key players of our story. John be Cal got me into teaching Carlton Washburn kept me in teaching because I think if I had to go down the route of conveyor belt approaches to to education. I think I'd have been switched off in year one with a just left never got anywhere as a teacher but this model of actually maybe we could do something different here where every single child attains very very high outcomes instead of just Whew, that's a considered to be a gifted or whatever subject you're talking about. And that's interesting point to pick up on here Mark in terms of it's a question of going to maybe as late as I can just let it percolate for a little bit but and in terms of this teaching for Mastery and not just being for maths, am I right in thinking that Carlton Washburn was a scientist. Is that is that correct? Yeah. It's not that matters at all. Washburn was an interesting guy. He he was a Belt businessman and failed doctor medical doctor and he really just took a teaching job because he had nothing else he could do. His mother was involved in education at the school. He was able to work at this really deprived school and like weren't California. He was kind of days were teachers, you know, you weren't qualified to be a teacher you do any trading he was just a college graduate and you to all sorts of things soak our turtle. At science, but he did also teach other other subjects as well. He taught bits of sport to bits of home economics. He taught gardening at the school as well. So he had a really broad range of experiences there and that was very helpful for Carlton because well the things he noticed was that maybe childhood be who he had been told. This child's not very bright very good science or mathematics or grammar. He then saw them as a sports teacher. Gardening teacher XLE and that was that was an important thing for him to realize. Oh, hang on a minute. This kid is bright or is talented. It's just something has gone wrong in their mathematics or science or grammar or whatever it was. So yeah you he was he was a generalist really though. He's his graduate degree was using medicine and then he was the first ever His first ever person to take a PhD in education later on. It's quite impressive as well. The new the University of Stanford, which is C gone on to become but important Steps From the at the time was brand-new. So fascinating character cards, I could talk about forever so you should stop me. No, not at all that and I really enjoyed reading the first time we've enjoyed meeting all the book, but the the first chapter particularly in terms of tying up all these names. It maybe I'd heard of but putting them together in like I said going back to Aristotle. And another of the host names was Benjamin Bloom who was was integral to my teacher training at the sort of the you know, the late 90s early 2000s, and I don't think this is fair to say but he may have had a little bit of a mixed reception recently. But last week I was talking to Tom Gus key who said that he actually worked with him and in his early career. So how influential was blooms work in mastering my It'll only enormously Loop have the ability at the reach, you know, if there was a there was a like a chart of important Educators released in the early 1980s and Bloom was always at the top of this as being really really influential important educator. So he had to reach to be able to not only spread the word of Carlton's model but also to test its efficacy in Jurisdictions at different times in history, and there was kind of a I always think of Benjamin Bloom and top Gus Keys work is like it handing over a baton in a relay race you Tom Tom knows more about Mastery than any other person on this planet as far as like, well, he's incredibly insightful into a stream models did hugely important work in the 80s and 90s. But yeah much of that will with an influence by by Blue only the trouble of course would Bloom is is he then also writes this this book on on these taxonomies and actually his book on classification taxonomy has really interesting book and it's a nice piece of work well written and then some I don't think some Charlotte the 80s trying to present the team's work in the presentation presents blooms workers. Is this simplified pyramid? Just you know, some very short bullet points basically, and of course the pyramid is nonsense and what that led to it was a lot of people saying what experiments such complete and utter nonsense the blooms work must be nonsense. Let's just not true. It's just bloody lazy to to write off a man whose work is hugely important decades and Decades of work right off his work because some idiot produced the diagram summarizing his work. But of course when you know, you talked about your own teacher training I You'll teach training involved that Bloody pyramid right picture of that pyramid with just those words on that has very very little to do with blue pyramid. I mean, it's a tough topic that return to over and over again this podcast but yes very much. So pyramids and the idea that a good teacher can teach anything and the idea that the knowledge is in the room and it's just my job to facilitate people to be able to find it. Yes. It was quite a quite Progressive time as poor. I spoke to Michael Young about sort of teacher training in the early 2000s was quite a quite interesting time. Yeah. Well, it was the 2000s in particular were the height of the cult of pedagogy at the expense of didactics to focusing on how the teacher acts how they are rather than the technical detail of subjects. The technical details subject really really matters. If you want to teach that subject at this this thing this you know it Harmon to gender that teachers should be free to do whatever they want and everything. The only thing that matters is that you feel happy and comfortable about what you're doing anything. Well surely. The only thing that matters is whether the things you do result in the child learning something if you really care if you're happy and fluffy I care about whether the children that are in front of you learn things so that that Cult of pedagogy that has been around for at least 20 years. Still really strong today. It's incredibly prevalent today, even though people maybe think it it has been alleviated a bit but it hasn't there has been no great Resurgence in the importance of didactics technical detail of subjects. It just isn't happening. If you look at teacher training around the country almost no ite involves any substantial subject knowledge training, you know, even some of the best T institutions in the country so terms it differs from subject to subject but for mathematics nothing would be really really good Institution for ite Cambridge is okay, but even those courses weight even where you get the best courses the number of days spent on subject knowledge and what is then done on those days on subject knowledge is really lacking. No grounding for going into teaching. But yeah, no, I think it's clear that we can't solve just now know as I could definitely go down into that particular Rabbit Hole as I'm the person responsible for ITT and its Myriad of different forms at the school. I work out. So it's probably better if I see a clear offering any opinions on that but moving back to another thing that was very much part of teacher training and the way that we thought about education and when I trained as a teacher is this idea and I think it's something that Talk about in the book about this conveyor belt approach to curriculum so I can remember thinking about lesson planning to make sure that I cover this then that's done. Right? Let's move on to the next thing and cover that and get through the curriculum and make sure I've covered everything and if I do that then everything will be okay. So I guess the question is what is the current the conveyor belt approach and why is it has been so prevalent and maybe continues to be so prevalent. So where it came from I think is Is we never had a national curriculum? Schools been around for about a hundred eighty years and generally schools did whatever they wanted to do a lot of teacher autonomy up until 1989 pretty much teachers were allowed to do what they thought was right for pupils in front of them. And then we have this National curriculum introduced and when the national curriculum has introduced its isolation line. There was the creation of 20 National curriculum levels. Which later became 10 later became eight and then 2010 boo-boo kind of scrapped. But these 20 National curriculum levels were introduced and everyone. Once you introduce 20 National curriculum levels that are supposed to be in some way related to the age of the child and how they will travel through a subject you necessarily introduce a conveyor belt you necessarily introduced the system that says because these children aged five will teach them the age 5 stuff because these Children aged 8 th stuff h13, uh 13 steps rather than saying I have an individual child in front of me. What do they know and what they not though. Let me teach them the things they don't know based on what I do know whether through the ad in the learning of a discipline. So this conveyor belt is is I think a result of the introduction of the national curriculum particularly the introduction of the national curriculum levels though the assessment group fatigue a crew. Up that set up that that resulted in these National prisoners didn't intend it to be used in this way, but it was a result of it. But I think the conveyor belt this idea that because a child has a certain age. You should be presenting certain material at them rather than teaching them is one of the most dangerous things most damaging things that an education system adopt the idea of age-related. Asians it's just utterly utterly Bonkers when you have when you have this conveyor belt because the conveyor moves on it just keeps moving whether you've grip something or not and takes no account of whether you're ready to learn the next thing which is obviously really importantly hierarchical subjects and Mathematics is Iraq subject, but loads of subjects are hierarchical loads of objects do require a coherent specifically sequence journey through them for it to make sense. So yeah conveyor belt is about Using the age of a child to determine what's that child should be having shown to them all presented at them whereas Mastery is about understanding the individual child and then teach them teaching that in individual child the right material for that child such that they can keep building up and building up and building up and give ever there wasn't a great deal that we ask children to learn at school. Anyway, I feel like that times but there really is a great deal. If we go through it carefully and take the right amount of time to teach children each idea properly and that that would get away from this the phrase you use memory go fill that keeping up with the curriculum the number of teachers. I've heard say that's me over the decades. I've been doing this. I have to keep up with the curriculum you just you know, very quick pause of that teach you say is that why you wanted this job? Is that why you signed up to this when you were a young person thinking what will I do for a living? Did you want to spend your career keeping up with the curriculum? I mean, it's just nuts and nobody does want to do that for a living when you actually ask people what you want to do for a living. They then talk about children you talk about learning they talk about helping people they talk about taking you in my case taking a child to the point of being able to be like a mathematician or a musician or an artist. Nectar hold everything is nobody says thing I want to do when I drove into work everyday is for me to keep up the curriculum that is of no use to me anyway now and it was a deliberate choice of words because that's a highlighted and Post-it notes and goodness knows what part of me reading the book was fine have real red. I read that and I just thought yes, I can absolutely relate to having said that numerous times at you know, even up till quite recently. Yeah, give departmental meetings of well. I've got to cover all of this. I've got to get through all of this got to keep up, you know. Yeah. I remember when I was when I was a trainee teacher because I've had a career before so I was a little bit older and you know, I kind of knew what I wanted to do. I remember as a trainee teacher having an observation and it's doing something angle facts, you know, like we do all different bunch of facts or less the guy at the end. Saying more guy. That was my mentor saying what do you think of that? And what are you going to do next lesson and I said, oh next this time. Yeah. I don't I don't think of grip that next lesson. I'm going to I'm going to keep going with this until they grip it and he said to me so that you can't you know that objectives done. You need to move on to the next one. I just thought you're a you're a fucking idiot. It's like what are you talking about? And this guy was bi-metal. I remember thinking if I was still in In Industry if I'm still in the private sector and I had spotted something that wasn't working and then said to my mentor we need to fix that in Industry. Someone go. Yeah, absolutely. That's what you should do. I just couldn't I couldn't believe that this person could be put in the position to be a mentor of a you teach you all. Are you there? You're really really think if this is what you're telling me to do that. Yeah. I see that happening a lot. Where people who are in those positions are just telling you veterans to the profession all sorts of hogwash. So yeah. Anyway, I'll keep no no, but that's another of my favorite part that I might have this court wrong. But obviously I listened to both your podcast feed them with Greg Barton and I think there's a bit quite early on. I think it's the second one where you start talking about the more you got promoted and the more you moved up the more you realize that the person above you didn't actually know any more than you did or knew what you and Simon Cox and I often excited. Really good today and use that quote at various intervals, but about ourselves as well that you know, who are these people will be under don't actually know what any more than you do. Yeah, it's a weird thing and then obviously that's true nor gate all careers right unique every because you have to learn how to be how to do the job. So every head teacher is a really bad head teacher in the first year and that's fine. That's okay. The important thing is that they're they recognize that they're not a good head teacher at that. First year and that they recognize they need to keep getting better. And then you can look at those people who think yeah good on you, you know, you're the kind of personal I'm happy to work with the weird thing is when you come across people your career who you know, it seems that the thing they are in the job for is to tell other people to do things when you know, they aren't bright enough to be telling you to do that. And that teaching is a Lots of different I've worked in lots of different environments and lots of different Industries and I've never experienced a different profession where bullying among amongst adults is so Rife. I've never seen anything like it remember a very unhinged Deputy headteacher. I've worked with I was a new fairly new teacher may be first or second year. His teaching and they could not write a timetable and they was just beyond them intellectually Beyond them and normally, you know in a in a profession normally what happens is you say that I can't do this job. So help me out or you know, let's swap roles with doing whatever that's what a normal normal sort of Industry would do but instead what this person did was disguise their incompetence by bullying everyone around them. It's really really weird experience and you know, those little experiences of the second you're my boss and you haven't got a clue what you're doing. They keep happening over and over and over and over this true of everyone. You know, that's it's true of all professions. It's just how you handle it and I really smart head teachers are there are loads of really smart teachers really smart head teachers recognize things. They're not do that and then they sir Drowned themselves with people who are good at those things and you make sure that the group has all the competences that they need. Yeah. It's a it's an odd sensation to realize hanging that you don't know what you're talking about either and that was from like pgce tutor all the way through to you know, the the end of my career in schools. It just kept happening over and over and over there's one of one of the things I like Nowadays one things I do is if people have like two then I'll go and speak to their schools or whatever and that's an old an old world to exist it because it kind of puts you in the world of education consultancy and I'm not an education consultant but it puts you in that world and there's this is so much so much. That's it. Simply snake oil passed around you know, that's that's the epitome of okay, so you've not been able to do any of those things teach train or inspect. What do you do next? Well go often consult. I'll going to get real flight for this snap. Yeah, and don't get me wrong. I'm not in that camp of the only people who can speak about teaching our people that are in the classroom teaching. It's just ridiculous sentiment. I think that really, you know, it is a mark of professions that they will draw from expertise wherever they can they recognize expertise and a lot of people out there have great expertise. They're showing at the schools. That's fantastic. But you know for every one of them for every one of those experts out there who are just being an external other someone to draw Knowledge from for every one of those there are And army is there is an army of pontificating Consultants who Hap's weren't that successful in teaching themselves. So yeah, it is a very fine line, but you know, you can't you can't cut off external expertise. It's a really really important thing. You know, the guys I was talking about earlier has had I not been able to fair enough. He was dead by still Drool on the expertise of Washburn. And had I not been able to do that as a teacher. I would have stayed as a teacher. So yeah that that X that propositional knowledge is really important as well as strategic knowledge you have of actually doing the job day-to-day. Yeah. No absolutely, right. It's pulling it back around to the book again. So if I can just ask a little bit about what do you consider to be the core elements of a Mastery model? So the model is a cyclical model and that cycle should Broken, otherwise the efficacy of it of the model falls apart and within that cycle model, there are lots of tools that you use to work out what's going on with pupils at any given moment. I really liked in the 1980s last three was generally referred in the UK generally referred to as diagnostic teaching and I like that phrase diagnostic teaching. I sometimes use that I sometimes use responsive teaching the kind of synonyms for Mastery for me. So when you're when you're in this cycle the first thing I'll do your back to teach something you idea. So the first thing I'm going to do is work out. Are you ready to learn this new idea? So one of the key elements of Mastery is is diagnostic pre-assessment. Why would you teach someone something new if they didn't have the underpinning knowledge underpinning prerequisites to to learn this new thing. So we do that begin with and then if they're not ready to learn it you you don't live on you sort out those prerequisites. When you are ready to move on that teacher instruction instruction is really important in Mastery. You you are revealing this body of knowledge over over the child's time at school carefully revealing it at the right time and we need to instruct children such that they grip new ideas. They make meaning of new ideas so that the instruction has to be really high quality and by that I mean That the group instruction that you do as a teacher has to pick up every single child. If you watch the teaching of okay speak for mathematics really but if you watch the teaching of mathematics in England nearly all maths teachers are teaching mathematics in the way. They were taught mathematics. Which is not what our job is our jobs not to teach mathematics the way we want to learn mathematics our jobs teach mathematics in such a way that every single child in front of us makes meaning of that mathematics. So high quality group based initial instruction will be highly varied. Lots of different models Metals examples lots of batting to and fro between you and the child to make sure what you're saying is being received the picking up the meaning if one child doesn't understand what metaphor one example or one more. That we show them a different one and the different one different one until they do make meaning of what it is we're talking about and then when they're ready to work you have working on highly very carefully structured tasks constantly assessing the costly speaking to them when I say assessing children. I don't just mean asking questions. So talking to the children looking at their work hearing the conversations interacting with them. So you're trying to to spot any moment where a child needs remediation and then in Mastery what we call that is corrective instruction. So whenever you spot a child there in that in the moment a child needs some help you do this this corrective instruction, which again is about different models metaphors and examples examples mindful of how you taught a previously picking them up and making sure they can move forward at this moment in time. So Assessment in masteries happening in real time. It's all about marketing books were the work was done a couple of weeks ago. And then when you when you've done that activity your you continue to talk to them watch them look at their questions have conversations. So you're continually assessing formatively assessing them and whilst whilst you're helping children who need corrective instruction other children can be working on enrichment. asks, so really that's This will have Mastery models made up of his initial diagnostic group based instruction regular formative assessment corrective instruction and enrichment tasks and all of these things come together in this is cyclical model, you're stuck in until every child grips everything you're trying to get them to learn. There's a there's an element that's not captured in. The cycle itself because all of that is absolutely fine. You can do all this great stuff as a teacher the element that's not captured in that that cycle is pupil effort. None of it works unless the pupils deliberate the expend effort. So inculcated will creating an environment where we're all of your pupils work really hard is super important in the Mastery approach as well. Now absolutely, absolutely and again that was a theme that was touched on in the one that you did with Craig in terms of how important that people effort is, but I probably don't want to go down that road because some of those actors whilst I agreed with a lot of what he said there. I think yeah some of that might be a little bit controversial as well. I never say anything controversial. No absolutely right now. This is gonna be a big question mark and I know that you can't possibly summarize the entire of cognitive science but chapter 3 Does a really good job of doing that and it discusses learning from cognitive science? So if you had to come up with you know, what are the key lessons? Maybe we should take from that field if I had to summarize the whole chapter 3, which is a review of cognitive Science Education. I think it would be teach for memory. And really that's that's what all of chapter 3 is about is about when you're doing these things in the classroom with his children what things can we do that will ensure the stuff they're encountering today can be used in the future and I often use the phrase far transfer. Memories really interesting it teach for memories not necessarily saying that you'll be able to remember something because we have these aspects of can you store it in the memory, but also can you get it back out of the memory storage and retrieval but then retrievals not good enough for me either. So a lot of people are interested in can you retrieve a piece of information so you can cite that again in the future as a mathematician? That's really crucially do that by less that's less interested in. Can you bring to the fore the piece of information again, and I'm more interesting this far transfer, which is can you take a mathematical idea that you learnt about whatever in the past some time in the past. Can he take that idea and use it today in any way you want to use it and I often talk about this as being like so these mathematical ideas become like tools that you can just use use you can pull out the correct tool for the correct job and apply it to the job. So this this idea of something I was taught in the past where I might have been using a source types of examples, but now in the future I can use it on a whole range of completely different things so that the problems aren't isomorphic. So yeah, I think the photo summarizing chapter 3 is teacher memory and make sure that those memories Be used in any way that is appropriate at any time in the future, which is a pretty big guy asked to do that. But so much of what we do in schools is not designed to do that at all. So much of what we do in schools is designed for in the moment performance because schools have been Schools have fallen into the Trap of thinking that everything has to be measured and the part once you fall into that trap. You start saying, okay. So that means that progress in the lesson has to be measured that means that teacher performance in the lesson has to be measured and you can quantify these things in some way and you know, it's just my numbing that belief you can't do either of those. It's impossible to quantify if learning has happened dinner in an hour. It's impossible to quantify is a teacher effective because you've watched them for an hour and because of trying to quantify those things trying to you know, give them grades and schools and make judgments of those that reduces the whole thing you get this reductive view reductionist view of education and teaching as being about a List of things that you can do in the lesson and the one that's easy to measure his performance. So everything comes down to Performance. Did they get something right in this lesson? Could they do load of questions? Did they put their thumbs up? Did they have smiley faces yet performance has these really really bad indicator of whether learning has happened. So no near we sometimes avoiding things that lead to this this file transfer. We've also built an accountability. system in this country that penalizes teaching for file transfer, which is You know really weird thing when we're in the business. Our entire business is about learning about becoming learned about intellectuals about knowledge. That's our entire business yet. We do these really really dumb things, which just now it strikes me as very odd in a business about learning we do something so thick as to say, let's measure progress 20 minutes if you're on Earth ever for thought that that would be Good idea. It's just bizarre. Anyway, I am shall not rant. No nobody when it is. Yeah, and it's still it's still there, isn't it lurking in particularly? And again, it might be a controversial viewpoint but particularly within initial teacher training that this idea of you know, 20 minutes observations and monitoring progress in 20 minutes still seems to be alive and well along with learning styles and goodness knows what else with it. Yeah, some parts of initial teacher training, but you know, it's very liberating. Ting aye fight that if there are any trainee teachers listening take it as a very liberal liberating experience because if someone says to you, I'm going to observe you for 20 minutes. I've got make a judgment of you, you know that they are intellectually simple, you know, there are absolute idiot. So you don't have to care about what they think so let them do their thing. Let them come and watch you go off and have their weird life that they have then just get on with yours being happy. You don't have to place any kind of importance on their beliefs. So once you know that once you know, oh this person's idiot, then you don't have any stress. You don't have any worry you'd have to care too much about it. I think it's really liberating thing now. It is liberating thing for me Mark as well because the host makes note drop 20 minutes and Q3 observations from next year's plan. There we go. So you see it's CPD for me as well during this project. That is fantastic right now previous guests and we have got the option to ask questions. Now. I know that you're familiar with Ben Gordon. So he would like to ask a question and he wanted me to discuss with you and mixed ability versus mixed attainment versus setting so I know that your touch on this in the book as well. So if listeners are thinking of a change in what should they be aware of? Oh, why does this topic haunt me. Why does everyone ask me about this? Right. Okay. All right. So I'm a proponent of a Mastery approach. So that's that's where I should start. I should start from the positive last three approaches have really significant impact on pupil attainment and also engagement goes up and people enjoying runs as well. So I think it's a really good model. If you are also interested in our street model for teaching for schooling, then you cannot have a mixed ability or mix the tank model at the same time. And if you do have a Mastery approach and you implement it from day one, you don't have to worry about the debate anyway, because the whole thing disappears, so that's where I'll start off with that people then interpret that as me so, Well, that means he doesn't like mixed ability mixed attainment teaching. Well, I'm just saying it doesn't work with Mastery and it doesn't but Mastery has this wonderful result of modernizing everyone lifting everyone up to the top so that everyone becomes learned and this idea of groupings disappeared the think that I think that the aiming and there are lots of schools more schools than ever this year are aiming NG to move to mixed ability aiming to move to mixed attainment they generally don't understand the difference between those words with a home. So there's loads of schools are making that their goal to move to mixed ability, but I'm going to suggest that is a really really bad goal to have because if your goal is to move to mixed ability or if your goal is to move to setted classes or grouped classes if your goal is any of those Is things what you are doing is you are saying that we believe children have some kind of magical flare or gift that was given to them that make good Learners and not-so-good learns and I just reject that. I don't believe that that's the case at all and I believe that if your goal is to move to set it classes or your goal is to move to mixability what you're saying is we think it's the children. I think it's something about them that will have mixed ability because there is mixed ability will have set in classes because there are different tiers of children rather than seriously stepping back and saying maybe it's us maybe it's our profession. Maybe it's our schooling. Maybe it's the teachers maybe it's the quality of the education because I think every child can learn everything and the reason we end up with enormous attainment range at aged 11. So that's seven years 10 range that age Evan and that attainment range just gets worse and worse was the reason for that is not because some children are somehow naturally gifted or have some great flare that they've been bestowed upon them. It's because some children were lucky enough to encounter really good education and some children weren't and that's what we should look at should step back and say why the hell is it that we have 11 year olds who can't count to 10 that is not because of that 11 year old it's not because of some innate ability or inability is because their education is crap and if someone didn't sort out the fact that a child can't count to 10 by the time the Aged eleven. That's what we should look at. Let's go back and fix that. Let's go back and fix it from day one. So that by the time we have arrived aged 11 all of those children, I'll mathematically literate and able to cope with the secondary. action, so one of the there's a there's a kind of misconception about me. So because people will rant on that me if I just type the words mixed ability into Twitter. It's like letting off a little bomb and then my DMs go crazy with people sending me all sorts of abuse because people are thinking what I'm saying is that teaching children of Xfinity classes is the wrong thing to do. I'm not saying I'm saying that the assumption that children are differently capable that there are good Learners bad learns that there are those who can learn well when those two cannot learn well that assumption is fundamentally flawed and is abhorrent and when you asked me about Bloom earlier, you know, what was blooms great influence on last three other things that bloom did with washburn's work during the early 1960s. Along with John B, Carol, they wrote about the fact that all children can learn well given the right conditions. So that's kind of fundamental to Mastery. So the reason that people think I'm against mix glasses or Saturday classes or whatever it is is because they miss hearing the message. It's the assumption that children can't learn. Well, that's what I hate. I find that just disgusting any educator could hold that view. So there we go little rat that that I should also say that because I've Very pragmatic kind of guy I should also say that right now as we sit here today. The Gap is massive the attainment Gap is massive. They aged 11, so I can't just pontificate and say we should get every child to learn everything because they're a bunch of 11 year olds who haven't what should we do about it? Right? Well, you can set the classes go off in the Mastery cycle so you can modernize them as close as you possibly can go for the Mastery cycle start where every single child is stuff from the true point. At those children were at them build them up. So there's a model that you could you could adopt that. I think is a really good models. What it's what I would suppose or what you could do is you could say well, you know, we might have a really small school. We haven't got if you've got to have the kids. It's pretty easy to collage analyze the classes it really is and if someone tells you it is is because your Deputy head can't timetable which probably go off and do something else with their life, but maybe your school is really small and you can't imagine The classes and you could still end up with a four-year attainment Gap or whatever it is. Or maybe you just think we don't want to do that is loads of reasons why you get white people won't want to set their classes. So what we're going to do is we're going to have mixed classes. Okay, fine have mixed classes, but you've got to do it properly. So so in setting the proper way of doing it the right most effective way of doing is to do this Mastery Cyclone talking about in mixed classes. You've got to do that properties. Well, you can't just say we're going to do miss classes and we're still going to have a conveyor belt because that's disastrous. The reason there's a seven-year attainment Gap is because that's what's been going on. So then you need a really good mixed ability will make stamen bottle and there are loads of those that exist. My favorite ever was game stands for graded assessment in mathematics. It's just a lovely project Margaret Browns behind. Loggers just towering intellect really really lovely project really well-designed and there's a model where if your group is truly mixed and it can span years years of attainment. There's a model where you can have really effective mixed attainment teaching because the design of the model is really carefully put together very well thought out very well supported so you can't do it you take a Mastery level and have setting you can have game to make There are others as well, of course, but what tends to happen is instead of either of those things instead of people doing setting really well or mixed ability really. Well, what people do is they set or they have mixed mixed availability and still do a conveyor belt and you think well, you're kind of missing the point here. You can't just say what we'll do is do this approach, but do it badly and that's one of the That the research around the difference between setting grouping streaming week's assignment with stability. That's why the research is so dodgy because it takes no account of the quality of teaching that's going on. Absolutely. No account takes no account of the subject whether they're hierarchical or not and takes no account of teacher quality and if you've got to study on grouping types in athletics that takes no account and teacher quality. It's not worth. Paper it's written on and it was a waste of the grant money. So, you know, they're really really good ways of doing both set it I'd say Mastery and really good ways of doing this to make stability. I'd say game and then a really bad ways of doing both of those things as well. The worst being age-related expectations on conveyor belt model. Yeah. So anyway, that's okay. That's perfect. Well, I can't speak for them, but he's perfectly segue hopefully into the next question. So one of my Topics as less as well know is implementation and you've touched on I think he used the word dodgy there to say that, you know, sometimes people take a particular idea, you know implementing it quite quickly without consideration of exactly why they're doing it or how to do it. So I guess the question I'm going to round 2 is you talk about implementation and you talk about embedding the Master model for schools that want to change their current model. So what advice would you have for leaders looking to begin this and and you've used the words long and complex process and I think that's quite important. Yeah. Yeah, it is it is law. So the first bit of advice is just take your time, you know, this knee-jerk reaction thing that happens in educational times. We although it's really harmful initiatives don't help knee-jerk reactions to them don't help. So take your time. Think about your school your pupils the makeup of your staff and their competences. What skills do they have? What abilities do they have lost the demographic of it of your staff what their past experience? See those if you've got stuff that be teaching highly illogical marginalised classes for 20 years. Well, surely, you know that switching them on to not Hodgins classes just with no preparation will be disastrous. So take a really long period of time thinking very carefully about the makeup of your your staff and also think about what your community wants as well School communities have a lot to say and schools of rather they should have so think about what the parents Of those children want and why they're selling those children their children to your school. And then when you've made a decision, so if your decision is I would like it to be your decision would be let's move over to it must recycle and astral way of working fine. So yield one. What are we going to do? Well yield one should be let's not change anything. So everything stays exactly the same but so the pupils experience is going to be the same but whilst that's Because that creates the additional workload for the staff, they're doing something they're used to they rolling out the same model that working in a very comfortable way whilst that's going on, but will then ask the stuff to do start engaging in professional development about this cycle of what we want to move towards. So learning about it learning about the pedagogical choices the the way in which the bottle of the cycle works. It was also as we would need the way which classes we need to be group doing all of that learning. Give and then in the second year taking some of those elements and starting to try some of those elements carefully slowly and and observing what happens when you do start to introduce some of those elements. So for example, it might be you want the second year to start introducing the idea of diagnostic testing before moving on to a topic if you're not already doing that. Okay. Well what impact did that have? How did it change our preparation? Arms, was there something additional that the teachers had to learn to do that was there additional work that came out of doing it? So on so and you could you can move a model of schooling over a course of several years. So Carlton started the Winnetka plan in 1921 and it was at full length implementation by 1927. So, you know six years when Singapore voted its model of Education in 1980s again, they were thinking okay ten year process. Yeah, and they're still in that tent they do this 10-year cycle of reviewing their system. So you can move it over a long period of time the course will their needs is that means is you need a head teacher and and also other senior people in schools with long-term vision and and head teachers and managers who are not afraid of being out of fashion. Because if you want to plan for the long term thing you can guarantee as you will you will be out of fashion when you're doing it. So it's it's about being brave enough to do that. There are plenty of prepare teachers that brave enough to do that Lance. You've had teachers. Who do you think the only thing that matters is what works let's do the thing that works. Let's not worry about crazy initiatives dictates that come out every single year. We'll just stick to doing these very slow careful. So yeah, I recognize that recognizing how difficult and complex and processes and taking the right amount of time to do it making sure all the teachers that work for you buy into it. It's another reason why I should take a long time to do it. You need to recognize that if you're running a school today the staff that make up that school right now at this minute they work there for a reason. So if you're about to fundamentally move to some some different approach, maybe maybe you're currently maybe you're currently doing lots of mixed ability and you want to move to highly homogenized classes announcing that taking staff with you trying to get them to buy into the reasons for doing it. But also giving room and space for staff to say actually, I don't agree with that. We're we're at odds here and what I'm going to do during this implementation phase over the next couple of years is reverse myself out into a career where a school ranked happy with my career and that Gives the school plenty of time to plan for human resourcing and bringing in people that do subscribe to that way of working try and trying to implement a model where the the staff don't agree with. It is always disastrous seeing loads of schools this year that I know loads of schools that front September. So in a couple of weeks time, I'm going to say to all the staff without mixed ability for example, and the staff just fundamentally disagree with that move. Well that leads to a bunch of Staff who who don't want to do it you feel bad about their job aren't up for working in that way. And then you you just guarantee lowering standards for years and years of children. Once the changes happen. Whereas if we plan for it and you're honest you're going completely up front with the people that go to work there do work the what we're going to do at your respectful of the fact that they are a professional as well and if they want to reverse themselves, Look somewhere else that fits with their values their goals, you know giving them space time to do that. It's rare to see that happening in schools. But I think it's really important to do that. No, I'm sorry. I think it's great advice for any kind of implementation all the steps that you've talked about there and and for listeners, you know, obviously we are coming up to when a few weeks the beginning of term again, and it's worth pointing out that you are allowed to have a start of a term without a new initiative. Yeah, indeed, you know, I mean we It seems to be de rigueur now to have at least one or maybe two inset days. So you find discussions around senior leadership tables of what we have to have something to launch because otherwise what are we going to do with these two days? Yeah, wouldn't it be great if the insert date and start the year was the head teacher every other set of the whole head teacher comes up and stand at the podium the start claps. The hand goes right. We all know what we're doing don't we have a good day guys, that would be brilliant if the amazing for some reason people think they have to say you school year you reproach you whatever. But yeah, it would be nice if there was some continuity and consistency. There's that's that's why it's nice when we get Secretary of State for Education who you know do nothing at all. There's nothing better than a completely incompetent Secretary of State for Education who just doesn't touch the system that's brilliant if you get that for a few years, it's great. So we have some stability. I'll get flak for that as well. Well, we'll move on. Nice, they to part 5. So we're looking at the chapter on phase in learning. And again, one of the things that was fascinated with your previous podcast was around we talked about learning episodes. So could you explain to listeners what you mean by a learning episode? Yeah. So I just mean whatever period of time it takes to move from encountering a an entirely novel idea that you know, nothing about to being able to fully understand that idea. So I just count that as a learning episode. They all completely fluid they take those learning episodes will take as long as they take which is something that's missing in conveyor belt approaches to education key to Mom Austria's when people say how long should you teach the children idea X the answer to that is always the right amount of time. So learning episodes are just how long it takes you go from being a novice to being able to understand that idea and they might be five minutes. They might be three weeks. They might be 10 years. As they might never end. So I think that ideas mature take a period of maturation. Coulson instance at the moment what most people consider to be a loading episode is a type of lesson they take that as the unit of learning which you know is is absurd for every idea to precisely one hour to learn that would be extremely lucky and everyone knows that's absurd. And everyone knows that learning happens over time not not only in a moment in time. But this like this whole conveyor belt thing at and this trying to measure progress 20 minutes think has led to the unit of time being walked into a lesson instead of alerting episode. So yeah, that's what I mean by that friends and it's interesting as well in terms of the cognitive science stuff that you talked about before that. There is a danger of that becoming a bit of a checklist that almost every lesson must start with Practice, for example, whereas I know you've talked previously about well, yes, we're still practice is useful but perhaps at the end of a learning episode which is not constrained or defined by the parameters of a lesson. Yeah. Yeah. I mean this is what always happens and it's exactly it's really funny that the people who some of the people who are the most critical Benjamin Bloom, you know says workers complete bollocks that pyramids are nonsense. Just taking sound bites. So some of those people are the same people who are producing really complex ideas to bullet points or PowerPoint slides and then using the meticulous as well. I get I get asked all the time. Can you tell me in a nutshell what your book says as I know I can't that's the point of the book. It is difficult is complex. It's a big idea. You can't make them into little pithy ideas and people are doing this with all sorts of stuff. So you see it with retrieval practice happening. That's the eyes are really really bad example retrieval practice and you see it with all aspects of what would be covered in part three of my book and then I've also visited schools recently in the last 12 months. I visited schools where they've created new lesson observation for and they've been very proud triumphant of saying hey, we've we've I've not got on here learning styles. So there's no there's no box that says visual auditory kinesthetic but the replace them with boxes that say retrieval practice and interleaving practice thinking Bloody idiots, you're doing saying thing you're taking this complex thing reducing it to the tick list trying to shoehorn someone into a pedagogue into a way of being in every single lesson. So yeah that happens all the time. And I guess this is a complex. Question mark but why do you think that happens? Is it a lack of understanding is it a lack of time is it the pressures of cuz I mean they know that these ideas are now being mentioned in the research commentary behind the new inspection framework. So it's a little bit of pressure to make sure that they're included. What do you think is driving people to be able to put those checklists in there a lot. There are lots of elements to do that people that know me know I talked about this 30 year cycle of Education. Trends a lot. So there's something that is fashion. It really is a sad as that. It's really depressing but a lot of it is just fashion, you know, there are big hitters on social media or on you know that are very well known and education. They'll say something and a lot of people think. Okay. Well, I'll say that as well. So that's really depressing. So the teachers have come to fashion and then you've got rhetorical curriculum scene if you do If you know Wilson's work on 10 types of curriculum and rhetorical trick in that she talks about years. So what policy makers say things that they write documents. So it's very very hard to be the regulator being the education Regulators an impossible task really obstacle such a rock and a hard place there between because they have to say things but of course as soon as they then say things they are instantly misinterpreted. Bastardizing to all sorts of things. So you've got that kind of people taking Snippets of policy documents writing them down. And then you've got another quite depressing thing. Is that some people who are in charge of teaching and learning in schools or Maps or clusters They're not and I mean this with with great affection, of course, but they're not the brightest Sparks and you know, they're all just not bother reading books and there's a lot of that that goes on as a lot of the number of people I meet who tell me what mastering means thing God you just you just heard a sound bite somewhere now, just just just to put myself in that camp. I mean when unless there's a problem. This when we started the research school and I applied to be involved in that. I hadn't really had any great experience of educational research or reading any particular books other than you know how to produce an outstanding lesson books in 20 minutes. I became very I can very Adept at doing that and became an AST off the back of it. So it's quite interesting but that's a different conversation. So yeah, that's why external experts matter, right it is there are people the out I mentioned people earlier was weather and Gary the bjork's bloom and Gus scale. There are people who their time is able to be spent on finding out really important things but we then need to read that stuff. We need to consider it. We need to think does it have an impact has it got Beyond propolis propositional knowledge can have a real impact in real classrooms. That's a very education is very very guilty of that by taking the piece of research that has only been Replicated in very specific laboratory conditions has never got Beyond propositional knowledge education is really guilty of that saying will make the school policy, even though there's no evidence of Works in real classrooms with real children. So again, that's part of that is a fashion thing that wanting to to grip onto things and say we're ahead of the game here. So yeah, it's all very bloody else. It sounded a really depressing conversation. Ation there and I don't know actually that one is happy because I can relate to both sides of that in the sense that you know, when I started off doing the research school and I was an absolute novice and and it showed and I put out blogs just because now I'll now I'm an assistant director of research skills or people are bound to listen to me and remember the feedback. I got originally from people at the EF and they won't mind me saying this it was just this this is you know absolute nonsense and you can't be writing things like this. You need to actually invest the time and effort to read these before you Something out to people just because you've read and to think of an example cognitive load Theory. Let's say for example, you can't just then pontificate about how you think they should be applied because you've read, you know an abstract of one paper and suddenly you're putting this out there. So there is an amount of you know, professional development and repression ization of teachers to make sure that you actually understand what it is you're talking about before you start to one implement it yourself or to even think about talking about it helps her to do it. Yeah, do you Think also like when I was a young teacher part of it is structural. There's a structural problem that's causing this like don't you think as a young teacher you did first of all that wasn't an expectation on you to read research evidence. But also there was it wasn't a part of your job. There was no time on your body or working week that was researching education reading about education. I also thought that was very odd when I come into teaching. I remember having nearly getting sacked as I quite often. Did I remember having a really Fierce rare with my boss the head of maths because I didn't mark books and he just went like a tip about the fact you don't Mark any of your books is why I prefer to spend my time reading about education and learning about this profession than learning what I'm supposed to be doing the marking books. And yeah it was It's a very old thing where the amount of time that teachers have ignored the whole 1265 hours box mean nobody works that if you do take the real amount of time that teachers are using on their jobs. The last thales report said the teachers are using around about 24 hours per week on non teaching activities. But then when you drill into those non teaching activities, they're all just superficial crap, you know, it's not about theirs. Teachers don't report back to you. There's five hours of my working week where I am required to read books and learn about my profession. And that's a that's an odd thing in a profession not be expected to to continue to learn all the way through. So there's there are structural things there as well. And you know, I don't see I don't know why schools don't put on their timetables chunks of time that says teacher researcher. Read some books called. Damn it. This is this the rabbit's on there where you could do that and then of course you have to have the conversation. Okay. Well, we're quite tired at the moment a lot going on what things you want us to drop in those five hours a week where we are reading research. What does loads you could drop stop marking books for a start stop stop putting meaningless data into computers that's never used for anything and you know, there's just tons and tons and tons of completely pointless activity. Eva tease the teachers are asked to do and most of it you could drop if if your time was spent on what's the average teacher to features like 22 hours per week. So there's 22 hours if you just work adorable 40 hour week and your other half of your week was spent on thinking about pedagogy of choice thinking about the didactics of your subject and reading about how to be a better teacher if that's all the other stuff you did. Everything would be fine. Stop writing reports. Stop barking books. Stop doing admin. None of it matters. None of it impacts on teachers in anywhere near the way that becoming alerted teacher could so, you know, this was quite as quite harsh amount ago about saying if you'd let wrote read books, but I want to backtrack slightly on that and give the give that reason for it that it's not an expectation. So Harley is that people don't read books, but partly it's because the system doesn't expect it others and it should and it should make time for it. And there's no reason why you can't make time for it. No, I don't mean my point was really that it wasn't an expectation certainly in the early years of of my career and I think back to times when you know the school. I was working out. It's no longer a school. So I'm not going to I'm not kidding anybody in trouble for saying this, but I was put in charge. I was the head of ICT now, I mean the sort of job description for Being head of ICT was that well, it's pretty pretty good teacher mostly will be a from Sid be okay is the head of ICT. She can teach ICT and be in charge and I've never I mean those poor children being taught by me a variety of how to design programs. I mean, I barely knew where the on button was. So there wasn't an expectation to try and develop in that sense because it was well if you're a good teacher and like I said at the outset if your pedagogy is right, then it won't really matter whether you have any knowledge and and if you want to turn into a positive, I've seen such a massive development. In terms of the re professionalisation of teachers. I said a moment ago that a lot of teachers that I know are actively going out and reading are involved in you know conferences or going to listen to people they are less involved in social media for the good reasons of trying to get to you know, improving their subject knowledge for example and subject associations and chartered colleges and all this sort of thing. So I am seein signs of that but I did I can hear I mean my science department don't listen to this Mark so, you know, they get here enough of me as it is. I don't listen to me at the weekends or after school. But their argument is usually with me is usually well. It's all right for you because you want to teach three days a week. So you've got loads of time to do that. And my answer to that is always well. Yeah, but I did teach a full timetable for the best part of 18 years. So I do I do have some idea of what that's like. Yeah, and if you are doing a full times over your teaching 22 hours a week, you've still got another load of hours left, right the real argument isn't that there isn't enough time because we're doing a full teaching timetable. It's because in the rest of the time where I'm not in front of children teaching I'm required to do nonsense. So that's just stop asking teachers to do not has if it doesn't have an impact on the people learning your discipline stop doing it and spend that time doing something more interesting instead spend that time becoming a better teacher and that truly will have an impact on children. I don't think there is a single ingredient that has a greater impact than teacher quality. So the higher you can raise your expertise as a teacher. The better for everyone involved and no one's really going to suffer because you didn't do something this piece of evidence. No, definitely definitely know and I mean, I'm just gonna say a positive thing about the school that I currently work at we do have and we're very lucky to have a hundred minutes which one of our periods of enhanced CPD town where we can do exactly that so we have a CPD does involve reading around the subject or developing subject knowledge or do a professional qualification whatever it is, so we are extremely fortunate that we have that I know that some of the schools do as well markets conscious of your time. So I'm looking if I can do it a couple more if that's okay. Yeah, so back to the chapters or part 4 part 5 so we are facing learning. So this was the question is how do you go about phasing learning in a Mastery approach? So you've got this cycle and then in each of the is teaching episodes. I also propose that we think about the journey from novice to expert and I've got this structure that I haven't booked and I use a lot this teach to practice behave structure. And the reason I have those phases because I want to want teachers to really notice that On the journey from novice to expert you do pass through phases of Enlightenment. It's not all just one thing. They're different things going on, which means you have to do different activities. So the way in which I phase these episodes is to start off with at each phase where you've got this instruction got stuff. I was talking about earlier since such that every child makes meaning you have a do phase where the children replicate and that's about you picking up. Did they make meaning that they understand what I was saying that And we do lots of that lots of interactions between teaching and doing to make sure we're tweaking our models Metals examples. Make sure we tweak tweaking our instruction to pick up every child and we do that for a period of time and the children are doing lots of problems tasks in those phases those two phases and my experience of being a young teacher was that's where teaching kind of ended that you did teaching and doing teacher taught something kids did it? The Woods Performance performances as well. I was sharing on my teacher training make the children before but it was really obvious that it doesn't lead to anything. You know, you'd hear the Year Ted teacher saying I'm teaching children how to add fractions this week. You think well, you told about your dying and you're right and you're 17, you're 16, you're 5 and your fall. So what the hell's that all about? Why are you still teaching of that exact same thing? And of course it's because they weren't caught it. They would just performing that thing at that time. So then will they introduced this phasing one is teaching and doing is not enough getting the children to be able to form is not about so then I introduced this practice phase. These words are just words I chose teach to practice behave. I think they kind of work some people hate them. I don't really care. So if you had to choose forward, so I chose forwards the practice phase is about Okay, now that they can do now that they have technique throat do something technical. Let's that do interesting things with those techniques. Let's use them in their full range the full range of ways such as such that what we're doing is going to lead to file transfer. So the practice phase is I've gotten to be able to perform now I need to do a load of interesting things that we No lead to first time first of all long-term memory and the ability to transfer onto non isomorphic problems. So we go through this practice phase. If you can do all of that if you can get them technical, so to be able to do the the work and you can get them to the point in the practice phase where they are fluent and they're able to use these problems like like tools on these ice. Also problems in time at you're concentrating on teaching for memory. Well that leads to I think is that later down the line with that idea you were teaching and a bunch of other ideas that have come a long subsequently is that you'll then be able to behave with those ideas. So in my subject is behave by phonetically behave like a mathematician so you'll be able to pull together lots and lots of different mathematical ideas from the past and use them like a toolkit. It on problems that you're trying to address now at this point of the future so that phasing of teach to practice behaviors is what I talked about in the final section of the book and how you might structure that those phases in a very practical way. I think why I had hoped that part 5 of the book was very practical part of saying this is how you could structure this. High-level idea of the must recycle. That's what I want to try to achieve that in that part. Maybe I've been successfully some aspects of that may be having in others. The feedback from teachers is it makes a lot of sense that phasing it's a way of pulling yourself up as a teacher to say look you're not done yet. Just because you told them something that doesn't mean they know it just because they can regurgitate in front of you right now. That still doesn't mean they know it there's more to do. That's why I wanted to popularize that idea of phasing learning episodes. So you get to the point of expertise and it's a hard thing to describe but I'm going to say it is a hard thing to describe and explain you described it brilliantly as you do but what's even better in the book when listeners by the book and listeners probably at some of those things already have the book is that you've got a very interactive diagram with it as well in terms of its color coded and how it looks and I found that really useful. Yeah, I might not when I'm giving talks about phasing of learning that's having that cue the graphical way of looking at it. A lot of people fight that that really helpful. So that's why I included that in there also having it as a graphic means that you can completely if the whole I definitely notice this in those Graphics by completely ignore scale. So what it allows you to do is say look at learning episode. Is just as long as it is so I don't put on any of these bars. This is one hour three weeks. I'm just lucky that it now I haven't but that's probably the biologists just you know, we we just look at things like that and it's easy to it's roughly that that will do if I'd been a physicist or a mathematician. I might have been a bit more accurate. I thought it was it's a helpful way of getting away from it being misinterpreted as a lesson. Yes either. It's not 60 Minutes 30 minutes as this 20 minutes. It's just This is as long as it takes these are broadly the proportions of time that all of the full learning episode you'd spent on each of these. So yeah, that's that's that's my approach to phasing those four different ways. Brilliant brilliant. Right Mark. So it's the last the last bit now so into part 6, so and he said before the people of ask you to some of the book in a pithy sentence and you can't necessarily do that, but perhaps you could just share with listeners what conclusions you drew from the process of writing the book and from Italy what feedback you've had about it so far. Yeah. I'm definitely not going to some the book up but I've you know, I've written stuff for a long time. I write just to talk to myself. Basically, you know sounds a bit odd, but that is the reason I writers reason this book exists is just me having a conversation with myself trying to test some of the things that I'm thinking. King and I find that articulation is really important human beings articulating telling their stories out loud or on paper brings about you Revelation. So the reason I write was that you might think you think something but once you articulated verbally or in writing it's very often very different to what you thought so I was trying to test Are my beliefs really what I feel they are and and by writing this I realized that some of those influences that I had on me genuinely were important in keeping me in this in this domain in the education to Maine. I realized that I always I always sort of felt pity because I kept from industry and teaching. I always felt that one of the Is things about being an educator being a teacher is that you we don't make sprockets as Rocket Factory. Our job is is working with real human beings and it's you know, it's a suit of improving humanity is what we do and I'd like that emotional side of it and I like that it's values-based and I like that the reason we do the reason we are teachers is is fundamentally emotion. Oil and this writing this reminded me that there that I absolutely adore education and teaching and the process of learning. I'm I'm just in love with the whole thing. And you do feel that another other jobs other Industries. So writing this remind me of that which I thought was really really nice thing to do. It made me think as well that it's never over which I love How's that whole point of Mastery is you don't Master things in master? You just become more and more expertise. You can always become more expertise and looking at the work that if you look at the stuff that Ward Burke wrote in the 1910s and Canton wrote in the 1920s and their aspirations of things. They were trying to find out and then you see stuff like John be Carol in the 60s and 70s finding those things out but he still had aspirations of I wish we could find these things out. And then you see biak finding stuff and then you see swell of finding things out so on and so on. I like that the Canon that is all of the knowledge we have about how to make someone learn it out how to educate I love that canon' continues to grow as is being contributed to and that I liked. I liked reading rather than right, because when I write I write really really quickly so I don't really take it while I'm writing as I'm doing it but I liked reading this book and realizing. Oh man. I used to be really thick some of the things I thought 20 years ago. So that must mean that I'm really thick now that that has to be the conclusion of it, right? It's got to be that Twenty years of looking back down stuff from 20 years ago and thinking ecology with naive that it must be if all goes. Well, it must be that 20 years old look back on me of today and think oh you are so naive there. That's a lot of new stuff to come along and I love that. I love the idea that there's still loads and loads and loads to learn and you know feedback from from the book as has been very kind and lots of people so very kind things about At it but I've also had some people write to me and say how you've got this wrong. You're this is this is wrong you're being stupid on this have been naive on that. I love that. I really do as yeah in a professional way got some people are writing and say you're a dick but you say well, I don't really care about you, you know, criticize everything that you want to criticize but bringing some intellect to the table when you're doing it and there's been several people people. I respect people who are a lot older than Average being said I get why you think that but what you're going to find out is I like that because then it's like an adventure right? It's it's at some point there's going to be some stuff for I realized why I'm wrong these things. So yeah, that's That's what I like. I think reaffirming my love of learning. It's like well, that's a fantastic place. It's to finish that part of the conversation and just a last little bit Mark. So in terms of obviously the books available at the moment. Is it are you doing any about speaking about this or are you just working the individual schools? Where can listeners see you next? So yeah, I might talk about this a lot 29th of you sir. Actually 9th of September. I'm doing five our talk on Monster. If anyone's got a lot to that. It's going to be in London this free to come along to you occasionally. Do these Mastery talks around the country. We've got a load of those lined up for the coming year by don't know the dates and that's like an introduction to last three or four that means laying out the case for lost three, but then immediately after the week after so the first week of October I'm touring the country so I will be every governmental region. In line governmental regions at some point and I will be doing a thing called Mastery in depth, I think called it because one of the things that people have asked me about after this book or after hearing me talk about Mastery is to go really in depth into a into a bunch of individual lessons. So I'm going to talk about for actual lessons of what they would look like for for learning episodes outline. What the hole It would look like so that's really for people that have either read the book or have heard the first last three talk because it's a much more detailed exploration of Mastery. So that's happening start of October and then we so the soil we've got a hundred and sixty dates planned for the new Academic Year many of them. Are we talking some of them are Johnny you and Chris at they're talking as well and then I'm doing a load of research Ed events as well though, too many of them for me to remember which ones are doing. I appear to be doing a heck of a lot of research add events in the coming Academic Year as well. So yeah, I'm out and about if people listen to me, no absolutely well and I'll put links to all of that on the show notes. Again, so it just remains to say I really really enjoyed speaking to - afternoon. So thank you for your time. It's been absolute privilege to speak to you and hopefully one of those research and events is a researcher Blackpool. I think it's in the diary. Yeah, I think so. I'll be returning whatever they certainly an arse. So let's go. So if it's in yours now, thanks again, Mark, really really appreciate it very well. Well, what an interview there with Mark and such a privilege as I said in the podcast to speak to Mark and his insights a fantastic. I learn something every single time. I don't listen to him or in this case speak to him to thank you again Mark much appreciated moving into the Shameless plug section and coming up on the podcast. We have to absolutely fantastic summer specials. So we have Emma Turner on new Ed and Bucks Fizz interestingly for listeners. So the certain demographic of you will understand the reference there. I've also got cat Howard and she's talking about her new book, which is stop talking about well-being which will be out in January next year. I've also got to have a conversation tomorrow with rust Morrison McGill about his book just great teaching and the continued success of teacher toolkit. So in the last bit of the Shameless plug section, it just remains to say that you can still become a patron of the podcast if you're interested. So if you head on over to my website, which is www.hyken.com dot U k-- Okay, and follow the links to the patreon page on there. So once again, thank you very much for listening. And if anybody would be interested in either send in a question or coming up to the podcast then contact me via Twitter, which is at PNA 1977 or through the website, which I mentioned earlier. Once again, thank you for listening and see you next time. Just talking to teachers talking to teachers about academic research and evidence-based practice with Ewing professional development at PNA 1977 on Twitter just talking to teachers
This week I am discussing Mark's new book 'Teaching for Mastery' , which is now available as a kindle edition. This is a full and frank discussion (with some language to match) which takes in all aspects of the book and more besides including:   Could you tell listeners about your career to this point and what you are working on at the moment? Your new books is called ‘teaching for mastery’ and you begin it by highlighting those that have influenced your thinking in this book. Who were these early players and what influence did they have on the mastery model for a schooling ? Follow up : Bloom has had a mixed reception recently but you highlight his work here , I also talked with Tom Guskey earlier this week , how influential has his work been ? What are the core elements of a mastery model? What is the conveyer belt approach to curriculum and why is it so prevalent in England? Is this model applicable outside of the teaching of mathematics? Chapter 3 discusses learning from cognitive science , what are the key lessons we should take from that field? Ben Gordon wanted to discuss mixed ability vs mixed attainment vs setting , so if listeners are thinking of changing what should they be aware of ? In the chapter on implementation, you talk about embedding the mastery model for schools that want to change their current model . What advice would you have for leaders looking to begin this long and complex process? What do you mean by a learning episode ? How do you phase learning in a mastery approach ? What conclusions did you draw from writing this book? Get the book here- now available on Kindle too! 