“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

Whenever we aim to embark on any new journey, we do not rush headlong into the unknown. Sure, the thrill seekers out there may enjoy a series of unpredictable twists and turns, but as far as teaching and learning are concerned, a modicum of planning can go a long way. The question we’re often confronted with is, “Where do I start?”

The right answer through the right question 

Research is so much more than just finding information. It can be quite an intense (and sometimes overwhelming), very human activity; it requires us to engage with the learning process on more than just an intellectual level. Even with the most rudimentary of fact-finding missions, it is crucial that we aim our efforts at more than just discovery ‒ we need to determine our line 

of questioning and the reason for said questioning in order to structure our research optimally. We need to start by asking ourselves

the right questions.

 

 

When determining where to start, our questions should be aimed at qualitative answers, rather than quantitative ones. This can help educators, learners and other role-players prioritise interests, fields of focus, and goals. When determining which goals to prioritise, one should aim at breaking them up into short-term, long-term, and interim goals, all of which can branch out into subsidiary and ancillary steps. This is done in order to place emphasis on long-term success over temporary gain or quantifiable improvements in assessments or learner achievement.

When one has been in the education game for a number of years, one tends to get stuck in a rut, whether subconsciously or intentionally. Though there is comfort to be found in the familiar, the reliable, there is always much to learn through a little introspection, starting with a critical reflection on and evaluation of one’s own teaching. Which aspects of our own pedagogical approaches need to be researched and questioned?

Once available skills & resources have been identified and questions have been aligned to the teaching goal, organisation and​ structure of those elements become key. Let’s assume the aim in all teaching and learning is quality, in the educator, the content and skills being taught, as well as the learning experience on the whole. Generally speaking, the quality of the teaching and learning experience is determined by the quality of the teacher and that which he or she values. An educator who values professional growth, and is willing to undertake the voyage of discovery regarding their own pedagogical philosophy, will achieve excellence in their school setting and inspire their learners to strive for competence and personal excellence, regardless of abilities and circumstances.

When designing and structuring an approach to teaching, one must align one’s findings in an efficient, effective, and fair way, in order for all stakeholders to benefit. There needs to be a clear link between the identified shortcomings or areas that can be improved, and the points that one plans to implement in order to achieve this. One needs to determine whether one first needs to address areas that are lacking; alternatively, one can decide to focus on that which has already been mastered or comprehended, in order to use that as a solid foundation. Each of these has its merits and it is up to the educator to determine, and re-evaluate where necessary, which areas to attend to first. In this way, we alter and adjust our approach to education in order to accommodate learners and other stakeholders in a multitude of settings and contexts.

To a great extent, the long-term vision of the educator embarking on this journey of discovery determines the way in which success will be measured and to what extent it will be achieved. Not all success is necessarily quantifiable in the traditional way of being able to check a list or obtain a high score. Where research in the RIDE approach is concerned, success is often determined by the quality of the starting point that the process is being undertaken from. The approach is a series of processes that loops back on itself, determining new starting points when new obstacles or challenges are identified.

When researching any given topic or context, one needs to progress from the supposition that something new will be garnered, created or questioned, though the solutions may not necessarily yet be evident. During the research process, we query what we know, gather material, collect data, and otherwise engage with existing facts or the status quo. In essence, it is determining which questions to ask in order to find the most useful and insightful answers. Research is done in order to determine a starting point for our journeys of discovery. When speaking in The Republic, Plato said it best, “The beginning is the most important of the work.”

We need to learn to fail, in order to learn to succeed. As teachers, we are often under the impression that we need to know all, be all, and master all; we must succeed and we somehow feel threatened when we are questioned or opposed. We fear failure, instead of welcoming it as an opportunity that invites progress, rekindled passion and improved purpose in our professional lives. In order to internalise the quest for improvement, I propose the RIDE approach (Potgieter, 2021): Research; Investigate; Discuss; Evaluate. A good question an educator can ask is, “Where do I start?”

As experienced teachers, we are often under the incorrect impression that we know what’s best for our kids, for ourselves, for our colleagues. As novice teachers, we don’t yet know what we do not know. The remedy to each of these shortfalls is creating a feedback loop that enables us to identify that which can be improved, either by asking those around us, or engaging in some much-needed introspection.

Traditionally, feedback loops in education focus on learners’ work and assessments and how these very same learners can improve the quality of the work they deliver in order to progress and learn. That’s all for nought if educators are not willing to place themselves at the receiving end of the same kind of feedback in order to improve the quality of their own work. The concept of a feedback loop is neither new, nor complicated: it can be distilled down to a process in which the outputs of a system feed back into that very same system as inputs.

For feedback loops to be effective, we must first determine their purpose. Simply saying, “I want to be a better teacher,” is too vague and can be a very overwhelming starting point for the process that is based on self-evaluation at its core. Once we have determined what kind of information we are seeking, we can determine how to include self-reflection into this series of interconnected processes. If we optimally engage with this process, we should be willing and able to accept correction, as well as self-correct in order to progress through the loops. We tend to see feedback as final, instead of formative; if we are able to identify areas that can be improved, developed, diversified or otherwise enriched, we can start making changes, the smallest of which can often have a huge impact on our own learning and growth, as well as those around us. Libba Bray, the author of A Great and Terrible Beauty, wrote, “In every end, there is also a beginning.” Let us risk failure so that we may learn.

The rest of this blog series will focus on the four separate aspects of the RIDE approach: Research; Investigate; Discuss; Evaluate. Research will focus on the types of questioning that can be used to determine a starting point for the process of ascertaining where one can begin to adjust one’s view on teaching. Investigation will delve into finding and making meaning, expanding on questions and identifying new areas that can be improved. Discussion will explore the part that collaboration and other role players have in our approach to teaching, as well as what kind of feedback to expect and what to do with said feedback in order to build insights and questions into the process of the RIDE approach. Evaluation centres around drawing conclusions and identifying new starting points for future cycles of the RIDE approach and how we stand to improve our own teaching and the efficacy of the learning experience. In each of these instalments, I will unpack the elements of these aspects and elaborate on each as a whole, and how it can be incorporated into one’s own teaching strategy and philosophy. 

I love teaching literature; focusing on the different figures of speech, the expressive ways in which a poet can describe something ordinary and the meaningful discussions I get to have with my children about life. Whenever I prepare for a poetry lesson, I put in extra time to plan strategies that will ensure I captivate the class.

It was while teaching the poem Leather Jackets, Bikes and Birds by Robert Davies that I had an epiphany.

I remember printing pictures to help my class visualise the gangs; we discussed every single figure of speech; and dissected every word (even “snogging” - which caused an eruption of laughter). It was a lively discussion with maximum student engagement. The epitome of a successful lesson.

The following day, I confidently started my Grade 9 English class with, “The poem speaks about the need for acceptance, where the need to belong is so strong that teenagers would go to extreme measures in order to be accepted, loved and acknowledged for who they think they must be.” Passionately I looked at my class, in anticipation of an eruption of rich conversation.

Instead, they stared at me. Blank.

One boy raised his hand. “But Ma’am, they were clearly accepted because they were snogging in the spotlight.”

My heart sank while the teenagers continued to think about snogging.

How did I get it so wrong?

I am assuming teachers across our country can relate to the above-described scenario. Teaching your heart out for an entire period, only to find out later that no knowledge remained.

Down the rabbit hole

That day I started down a rabbit hole to find a solution to my problem: Why, if I prepare and share the lesson in a creative, interactive way, are they not learning? 

I found my answer in the research of two writers: Dan Willingham and Anders Ericson.

Willingham explains how learners learn very effectively in his book, Why Don’t Students Like School? Students tend to dislike school because variant stakeholders in education do not fully understand some of the critical cognitive principles involved in learning. Willingham describes two types of memories that are involved in the learning process, namely: long-term and working memory. Some of the best strategies for learning involves pattern recognition and “chunking” information for the long-term memory.

The simple answer, therefore, is that the information that we share with our kids rarely transfers to their long-term memory. It remains in the short-term memory, for a while, and the following day, or in a week’s time the information has disappeared.

The above led to my A-HA moment: We learn what we actively think about.

In that lesson, I was doing all the thinking and the kids were not actively engaged in the process of learning.

We started implementing a technique referred to as the gradual release of information. In our school, it’s also known as the I Do, We Do, You Do. After implementing this method in my own class, my students’ marks increased drastically. What makes this more exciting is that it is a rather simple technique!

When taking a closer look at the concept of a gradual release of information, you will notice that it correlates with how we learn most new things.

Take, for example, teaching someone how to ride a bicycle: First you get on the bike and show them how it looks. Then, you put the child on the saddle, but hold on and walk with them. This builds confidence and gives the child the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the process while feeling safe, with your support. After walking with them for a while, you let go and just like that another cyclist is in the making.

The same applies for learning how to cook. We first watch our parents cook, after a while we might start helping with the small tasks. Years later, we find ourselves in the kitchen cooking family recipes without even looking at a book.

Gradual release of information in the classroom setting follows the same principles.

• The ‘I Do’ phase is led by the teacher. During this phase the teacher will share new knowledge, introduce a new concept, or teach the class how to do something unfamiliar to them. As the learner obtains the new information and skills, the responsibility of learning moves from teacher-directed instruction to student-processing activities.
• In the ‘We Do’ phase of learning, the teacher continues to question, prompt, model and cue learners. The We Do phase allows for a deeper level of learning. Learners are now actively engaged in the content - they are thinking.
• Lastly, the ‘You Do’ phase of the lesson is a complete release of responsibility to the learner, as they work independently - also referred to as independent practice.  During this time, the teacher provides additional support, as needed, but student learning is self-directed.

The final part of the lesson is where the magic happens, as Doug Lemov emphasises,

 “Independent practice is really where our work as teachers comes to life. It’s the moment when we stop talking and stop doing the work and allow students to test out their own understanding, to make mistakes and to ultimately understand more deeply by learning from those mistakes.”

That brings us to the work of the second writer that changed my understanding of teaching and learning: Anders Ericson.

Anders Ericsson focuses on the concept of “deliberate practice”. This process involves immediate feedback, goals, and a focus on a specific technique. He states that a lack of deliberate practice can be the reason why so many people reach only basic proficiency at something, whether it be a sport, profession, or academics.

In his book, Peak, he argues that the right kind of practice carried out over a sufficient period, leads to improvement. Nothing else. According to him, there is no such thing as natural talent.

“If you teach a student fact, concepts, and rules, those things go into long-term memory as individual pieces, and if a student then wishes to do something with them—use them to solve a problem, reason with them to answer a question, or organise and analyse them to come up with a theme or a hypothesis—the limitations of attention and short-term memory kick in.”

“The student must keep all of these different, unconnected pieces in mind while working with them toward a solution. However, if this information is assimilated as part of building mental representations aimed at doing something, the individual pieces become part of an interconnected pattern that provides context and meaning to the information, making it easier to work with. […] you don’t build mental representations by thinking about something; you build them by trying to do something, failing, revising, and trying again, over and over. When you’re done, not only have you developed an effective mental representation for the skill you were developing, but you have also absorbed a great deal of information connected with that skill.”

As teachers, our purpose is to do just that…teach.

Teaching includes understanding how we learn to be able to choose a method that will optimise the learning experience. Changing the way I teach shifted my focus away from what I am teaching to what my students are learning. And its evidence in their results.

Renate Van Der Westhuizen 

Principal 

Apex High School

Sometimes, teaching reminds me of the legend of Sisyphus.

In Greek mythology, we learn about Sisyphus, the king of Corinth. He was known for his trickery, but it was his cheating of death that infuriated the gods most. Zeus punished Sisyphus for his death-defying tricks by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only - naturally - for it to roll back down every time it neared the top. He was doomed to repeat this action for eternity.

Teaching can sometimes feel the same.     

We start at the bottom of the hill, paving the way to the top with meticulously designed lesson plans, supporting resources, and formal assessments of high quality. We put all our effort in, to push that massive boulder of knowledge up the hill.     

Along the way, we ensure our learners are still on track, with questions like: “Do you all understand?” and “Are you with me?” In response, we see heads nodding. The top of the hill takes the form of a formal assessment. But once we start marking, the boulder rolls right back down to the bottom. Defeated, we capture disappointing results, and come next term: We start pushing up that boulder again…

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein.

Unlike Sisyphus, we are not doomed to repeat the same task for eternity. We can change our course to get that boulder right to the top. It’s called Data Driven Education.

Heather Morlock boldly and accurately stated, "If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn." But how do I know whether learners are learning the way I teach? Should I wait for June examinations or end-of-the-year finals? The reality is that by the time we are done marking and completing question analyses, it is already too late.

If we only measure whether students have learned what has been taught on a monthly or termly basis, we are solely relying on our opinion or the nodding of heads to predict their success. In a country where quality teaching is desperately needed, it is too risky and too important to make estimated guesses. We need proof; evidence; we need data. We need to be driven by data.

“Data” might seem intimidating and like another “to do” on the already too long list, so what does it entail? 

A teacher refers to the CAPS or Annual Teaching Plan to determine what needs to be taught, which becomes the objective of their lesson. Using a data-orientated approach begins during the planning phase: Instead of identifying what will be taught, we should also determine what learners should be able to master by the end of the lesson. Once we have identified that, each skill can be further unpacked to map out a detailed plan.

For example, while teaching a new piece of content in a maths class: To reduce a fraction to its simplest form by canceling.

• During the first lap, the teacher will ensure that their learners can find the highest common factor of both a numerator and a denominator.
• The second lap will be used to monitor that all learners can divide the numerator and denominator by the highest common factor.
• The last lap will monitor that all scholars wrote the answer in its simplest form.
• After teaching the content and identified skills, learners will have time to apply the newly gained knowledge during independent practice, providing the teacher with the ideal opportunity to track responses. 
• The teacher circulates with a class list and the teacher exemplar, capturing whether scholars show mastery or not.
• From this, we have evidence; a narrative of where our students are on the hill. We can make a plan for the boulder, we can reroute and thus, there is more than one possible turnoff; more than one push to get them to the top of the hill!
• If a number of learners are making the same error, the teacher can provide batch feedback to the class by briefly interrupting the independent practice and explaining the common error the teacher has noticed and how they can go about fixing the misconception.
• If it is only a few students, individual feedback will be most impactful: It is vital that we do not give our scholars the answer but rather ask guiding questions so that they, themselves, can reach the correct conclusion.
• Should the majority of the class be struggling, the question to ask is, “Where did the misconception come from?” This will determine how a teacher will reteach: Do the learners need to see a model of the thought process? Will guided discourse be more impactful where the class can work through additional examples to deepen their understanding?

If we welcome data into our classrooms, we are far from running out of options and aren’t aimlessly and endlessly pushing the boulder up the hill, fingers crossed that it won’t come tumbling down this time.

For learner results to truly improve, our teaching needs to be responsive. We need to stop rolling the boulder in exactly the same way, day after day. The most effective teachers and leaders know when teaching is working, and when it isn’t, they fix it. Let’s fix it. 

Renate Van der Westhuizen 

Winner, Excellence in Secondary School Leadership, National Teaching Awards 

Principal: Apex High School