RESEARCHEARCH


We are at a time in our educational history where there is a dominant culture of top-down reform, and instrumental approaches to curriculum, testing and external accountability. The real challenge is to raise


standards into the medium and long term and, at the same time, enhance our students’ learning skills and their spirit of enquiry or curiosity. For me, the elephant in the room, and resident for some time, is the lack of a professional practice that provides a language and a set of behaviours or processes to connect teaching to learning. There are two key problems here: the


first is the individualised and atomised nature of teaching as a profession; the second is that teaching is a profession without a practice. These tendencies intertwine in intricate and resilient ways. In resolving this tension, it is important


to realise you can maintain all the values and commitments that make you a person, and still give yourself permission to change your practice. Your practice is an instrument for expressing who you are as a professional, not who you are. How practice is defined is critical.


Richard Elmore and his colleagues (City et al. 2009, p. 3) posit something quite specific: “We mean a set of protocols and processes for observing, analysing, discussing and understanding instruction that can be used to


REFERENCES


• City, EA, Elmore, RF, Fiarman, SE & Teitel, L 2009, Instructional rounds in education: a network approach to improving teaching and learning, Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.


• Hattie, J 2009, Visible learning: a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement, Routledge, Oxon.


• Hopkins, D 2015, Curiosity and Powerful Learning, Education Today, Vol. 65, No.2, Summer, p4-11. • Hopkins, D, Craig, W and Knight O, 2015/17 Curiosity and Powerful Learning, Melbourne: McREL International / Cambridge: Pearson Publishing.


18 ISSUE 27 • SPRING 2017 INTUITION


David Hopkins is professor emeritus at the UCL Institute of Education and holds the chair of educational leadership at the University of Bolton. This article was written exclusively for inTuition. For a more detailed discussion, including whole-school/college Theories of Action, see Hopkins (2015) and Hopkins, Craig and Knight (2015/17).


Connecting teaching to learning – a quest to satisfy student curiosity


In the bid to raise standards and enhance learning skills and a spirit of enquiry, there are two


key problems: teaching is atomised and it’s a profession without a practice. What’s the answer? By David Hopkins


improve student learning at scale. The practice works because it creates a common discipline and focus among practitioners with a common purpose and set of problems.” We need to move beyond superficial curriculum change to a more profound understanding of how teacher behaviour connects to learning and, in doing so, build a common language of instructional practice. I have recently been doing this in a number of contexts by refining the generic instructional rounds strategy recently popularised by Elmore and his colleagues (City et al. 2009). Our approach works iteratively,


but systematically, from descriptive (i.e. non-judgemental) observations of teaching practice in a school, college or training provider, to the development of ‘theories of action’ that describe the common practice in that setting. A theory of action is a hypothesis


or proposition about teaching that connects the actions of teachers with the consequences of their actions – students’ learning and achievement. Five important lessons have been


learned. They are: • First, that despite the phase or context of education, the theories of action are, in most cases, very similar;


• Second, this is not a ‘pick and mix’ approach – all the theories of action


have to be integrated into the teacher’s professional repertoire if they are to impact in a sustained way on student learning;


• Third, and most importantly, all the theories of action are characterised by an approach to teaching that has enquiry at its centre;


• Fourth, some of the theories of action relate to the school, college or training provider and some to the practice of individual teachers;


• Fifth, all of the theories of action have a high level of empirical support in the educational research literature (Hattie 2009). The six Theories of Action for


Teachers that have emerged are: • When teachers set learning intentions and use appropriate pace, and have a clear and strong narrative about their teaching and curriculum, then students are more secure about their learning, and achievement and understanding is increased;


• When learning tasks are purposeful, clearly defined, differentiated and challenging, then the learning is more powerful, progressive and precise for all students;


• When teachers systematically use higher order questioning, then the level of student understanding is deepened and their achievement is increased; • When teachers consistently use


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