Diary of an NQT The great stress debate


MY GIRLFRIEND will tell you I am a very relaxed and care-free person. When it comes to housework and organising holidays I embody a laissez faire attitude. I am known for being laid back to the point of horizontal. However at the moment I


am not sleeping well, I wake up at 3am most nights and my weekends are filled with marking ahead of fun. I make no complaint about this. It was me that made the decision to become a teacher, me that made the decision to take six exam classes this year. But, please don’t have the temerity


to tell me that this isn’t stressful. Stress is a subjective concept; different people deal with life, work and problems differently. My girlfriend’s job is infi- nitely more stressful than mine and she works in more of a high pressure environment, but it is the prospect of rain making her hair frizzy which really pushes her over the edge. Stress is not rational, it is natural.


Stress is a coping mechanism. Some of the best teachers in my school moan about their jobs, precisely because they love their jobs and are good at them. Having said this, I have found myself agree-


ing with Sir Michael Wilshaw, whose comments on stress caused so much controversy this week. Poor teaching and poor performance do too often go unchallenged. There are not many jobs in life where you can repeatedly fail and remain in your position. There are also not many jobs where you are open to whinge and gripe and it is so openly accepted. We don’t have to do customer service, unless you


include parents’ evenings, and bad results harm your reputation but not your bank balance. Teachers do need to become accountable for their performance and be responsible for their failures but they also need


to be respected for the emotional, physical and intel- lectual stresses that pushing someone else’s children through exams places upon them. Their stress becomes your stress and you do your best to calm and reassure, encourage and drive, hiding your own anxiety. I agree with what Sir Michael


is saying, but not with how he said it. It shows a lack of understanding and also a misinterpretation of why teachers are stressed. Ironically the teachers that aren’t stressed are more


likely to be the bad teachers. My stress is not workload but pres-


sure and a desire to achieve results that reflect well on myself and the students I teach. I am losing sleep because of the enormity of my task, not the size of my to-do list. I won’t even go into his com-


parisons of what stress really is (his father’s and his own stories are all a bit subjective) or his putting the fate of a generation of unemployed youth down to poor teaching and not poor economic and political management. I wonder who


is paying his wages? However, I can understand that Sir Michael has come in and he needs to make improvements and shake up the system – just as he did with his own school in London


that changed dramatically. In principle I agree with some of his ideas


but not his approach. To raise standards by insisting performance and learning must improve is one thing but this is the same man that says our teaching ability should be judged by whether we wear a tie or not. I think he needs to loosen that tie and destress


a little.


• Tomas Duckling is a history NQT at Queens’ School in Hertfordshire. He returns next week.


Challenging Scottish education Once a teacher…


JOHN MACBEATH, Cambridge’s Emeritus Professor of Education Leadership and formerly director of Strathclyde University’s Quality in Education Centre, has written a challenging piece on Scottish school effectiveness. In Challenging the Orthodoxy, his chapter in


School Effectiveness and Improvement (Routledge), Prof MacBeath warns against idealising Scottish education. He also reminds us that


Scotland’s education is different from England’s – 97 per cent of children attend an entirely comprehensive system, no governors but advisory Parent Councils, no Ofsted, no national curriculum – although Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) takes us towards one – the local authorities directly employing all state teachers, and a political culture hostile to the Tories and their educational ideals. He might have added a highly unionised teaching profession and a long-established General Teaching Council. There has never been the


willingness here to reduce school experience to “quantitative measures” and make consequent invidious comparisons. None the less, differences between schools exist and are as apparent as elsewhere. Prof MacBeath points out that private tutoring plays a significant role in raising middle class attainment. The corollary, especially at adolescence, is


the negative impact of “the peer effect”. The weaker the social and intellectual capacity in the family, the stronger is the influence of peers. “In disadvantaged neighbourhoods lack of navigational know-how by parents can have disastrous consequences for their children.” Prof MacBeath suggests that highly structured


study support becomes crucial for the most able but poorest of our young people. They also however require serious support to “find the hero inside themselves”, to believe in their own capacity and to learn the skills to unlock that potential. Praising the Kelvingrove Museum and Art


Gallery’s dedicated learning space, The Centre for the New Enlightenment, Prof MacBeath lauds its commitment to supporting young people to become the architects of their own success, to jettison the too


typically defeatist belief that they were victims of circumstance. Prof MacBeath asks big questions. What purposes


do schools serve today? What purposes are served by comparing schools’ effectiveness? After four decades of quantitative (and frequently meaningless) analysis of effectiveness, he suggests we have reached “saturation point”. We require a challenge to that orthodoxy but also to the orthodoxy of teaching as we have always taught. Modern Scotland is a web of


paradoxes: radical but conservative; egalitarian but authoritarian. What Prof MacBeath has unearthed is that most attempts at analysing effectiveness in Scotland have followed a discredited, conservative model. In a country where vast inequalities, despite the best intentions of schools and teachers, are reinforced by education, a


radical review is required. The CfE provides an opportunity:


engaging, interactive learning; a curriculum geared to relevance and the wider world; listening to young people’s views. That opportunity however is being squandered. A major reform is being pushed despite dramatic flaws in its central core. The architects of the CfE gave insufficient thought to the reconciliation of skills and knowledge, as well as to Prof MacBeath’s big question about purpose. They did not identify how teachers, if freed from the tyranny of the inspectorate and league tables, might build better teaching by


mutual co-operation. Nor have our politicians seriously questioned the connection between inequality and poor educational outputs.


Despite the near absence of Tories in our Parliament, no Scottish government has made any serious efforts to tackle poverty, certainly no successful efforts. Prof MacBeath has posed serious challenges both


to those who control, and to those who teach in, Scotland’s schools. Can either cohort rise to the challenge?


• Alex Wood has been a teacher for 38 years. Prior to his recent retirement he was head of Wester Hailes Education Centre in Edinburgh. He is an associate with the Scottish Centre for Studies in School Administration at Edinburgh University. He returns in June.


The middle


Emily Porter looks at research into the brain development of


students in the middle years of their education which shows why they behave as they do and what the implications are for schools


W The research


The research identified a number of crucial changes in the human brain during adolescence. In particular, studies into the development of the pre-frontal cortex in adolescents have helped to identify why they act like they do; not like primary children nor like adults. These significant alterations make this period the


greatest reorganisation in the brain during a human’s life, producing a brain ready for adulthood. The following findings were, we believed, the most


significant: 8


e have all encountered inspired primary children who move to key stage 3 and quickly lose the enthusiasm they have for learning. Hormones are frequent explanations. But these


adolescents are behaving in exactly the way their brains are telling them in order to secure their future. It is just that the traditional expectations of school at this stage do not complement that; in fact in many ways they flat out contradict the needs of an adolescent’s brain. Five years ago, when I led the research behind the


development of a middle years curriculum, we knew we needed to begin with the needs of teenagers. In addition to our experiences, we had many exceptional teachers who provided anecdotal research. However, crucially, we were in a period of extensive scientific research into the teenage brain. It taught us a lot about what 11 to 14-year-olds need and, more importantly, why.


Making connections, making meaning


Much recent research has proved that there are significant changes happening in the thinking part of the adolescent brain; it is no longer growing, rather it is beginning a stage of fine-tuning. The frontal lobe, which is the thinking part of the


brain, is almost adult-size by the age of six. From age six to 12, this frontal lobe develops as more and more connections are made during learning (this is why making relevant links in learning is so important). Then comes a thinning or fine-tuning stage,


beginning in early adolescence and continuing into adulthood, when any excess connections are eliminated in a “use it or lose it” fashion. This fine-tuning is sculpting the brain into what


many neurologists refer to as “lean, mean machines”. Several researchers believe that it is what teenagers do during their adolescent years that affects this fine- tuning process. Dr Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist at the National


Institute of Mental Health in Maryland, America, explains this process as the pruning of the grey matter. He said: “In the teen years, this part of the brain that


is helping organisation, planning and strategising is not done being built yet. It is not that the teens are stupid or incapable of things. It is unfair to expect them to have adult levels of organisational skills or decision-making before their brain is finished being built.” Dr Harry Chugani, a neurologist at Wayne State


University in Detroit, agrees: “Adolescence is a time when brains are absorbing a huge amount, but also undergoing so many alterations that many things can go wrong. The teenage years rival the terrible twos as a time of general brain discombobulation (confusion, embarrassment).” Because of these changes, teenagers need help to


organise their thinking, to make sense of who they are, and to support the decisions they are making. Our conclusion to this research: A curriculum for


11 to 14-year-olds needs to help them make sense and provide meaning for their learning; they can’t do it alone.


Active involvement


Research is discovering that an adolescent’s brain has a desire to take action and a willingness to face significant risks as a result, in order to achieve a goal. This desire is more powerful at adolescence than at any other stage of human life. In his National Geographic article Beautiful


Brains, author of science and medicine David Dobbs explained: “Teens take more risks, not because they don’t understand the dangers but because they weigh


SecEd • May 17 2012


RESEARCH


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