5 lessons for teaching in 2021

Nurture Scepticism

As the grips of social media tighten ever firmer around our daily lives, the avenues for spreading misinformation and raising concern in an already anxious population have never been more open. A study by the University of Glasgow reported that the average teenager spends 3 hours a day on social media, with one fifth of 13-15 year olds spending 5 or more hours a day. During this often unsupervised time, unprecedented journeys lie at the fingertips of our youth powered by the fuel of curiosity and wireless connectivity. With countless apps competing for push notification space without the rigorous requirement of peer review, it is no surprise to see the development of outrageous and dangerous news articles.

Mis/disinformation spread via WhatsApp in 2019 triggered attacks on aid workers and led to the suspension of polio vaccinations in Pakistan, whilst the humanitarian work of the White Helmets in the Syrian civil war was attacked in 2020 through similar processes. If the spread of false information can lead to irrational actions in adults, I believe it is imperative to teach our children how to judge the credibility of different new stories, websites, and opinion pieces. This is emphasised by the development of algorithms which expose people to similar content they have previously read, leading to the confirmation bias - seeking facts only to support a currently held opinion and ignoring those which disagree with it. Translating the skills pupils develop in subjects such as history to modern day online platforms will hopefully increase pupil awareness to the cancerous growth of misinformation which is permeating the internet.

As well as scepticism to qualitative information, I believe we have to develop a sense of scepticism to statistics. Statistics is a concept which we as humans often failed to grasp, and it is this lack of understanding which the media can prey on to sell stories and raise fear. In 2007, The Sun newspaper reported that ‘Careless pork costs lives’, stating that a daily bacon sandwich raises the chances of developing bowel cancer by 20%. Whilst this may be correct, the odds of developing bowel cancer at some point during a lifetime is around 5% - so a 20% increase would make it 6% - a risk a lot of people would be happy to take to enjoy their bacon.

Let’s take another example. You have just received a positive test which is 99% accurate for a rare disease that affects 1 in 10,000 people, how worried are you? Well if 1% of the time the test fails then out of 10,000 people who take the test 100 (1% of 10,000) will receive positive results even though they don’t have the disease. As a result there is only a 1 in 100 chance that if you received a positive test you actually have the disease - a much more positive outcome. It is this appreciation of relative risk and baseline statistics which will help the future generations in critically scrutinising both qualitative and quantitative information to reduce the spread of fear and confusion that fuels the growth of these stories in a twisted positive feedback loop.

Teach tolerance

A worrying trend I have noticed in the last few years is the lack of tolerance people often display to those with varying ideas. Now as a disclaimer, I completely agree with intolerance to ideals which are racist, sexist, xenophobic etc or are wild and harmful conspiracy theories based on no evidence. However, I am concerned that the process of debating topics with people from a different school of thought is evolving into a shouting match where each person is deafened to the other by the sound of their own outrage. This is further amplified by the in-group bias effect. This is where people group themselves with others based on a shared feature/interest such as political identity, sports team supported, religion, and then essentially hold a different set of standards for those in the group compared to those outside it. An example of this would include how men may see another man who is pushy, forthright, and demanding as a model leader, whereas a woman displaying these characteristics may be identified as bossy or having a ‘power complex’.

I can’t help but feel we are all too willing to assign a whole plethora of characteristics to an individual just because they associate with a particular group and this is no more prevalent in the world of politics where we are seeing a greater disparity between those on the ‘left’ and ‘right’. A YouGov poll in 2019 reported that a third of respondents who identified themselves as a Labour supporter would be upset to a degree if their child married a Conservative, with a tenth upgrading this statement to be very upset. On the other side of the pond data a 2016 Pew Research Centre survey has shown the percentage of people ‘hating’ the other political party (Republican vs Democrat) has risen from just over 10% in 1980 to 50% in 2016. In the melting pot environment of a school where the adults of the future are learning to socialise and collaborate with people from a range of backgrounds and experiences, where better to foster an environment where people listen attentively to others, appreciate values and ideals which may not directly align with their own and find constructive ways to discuss these differences?

Emphasise problem solving

How long can you hold a friendly dispute with a friend before someone resorts to the ‘Google it’? This often leads to the contemplation of what people did ‘back in the day’ when their sources of knowledge were printed on paper, stacked on the shelves of libraries nationwide. With such knowledge accessible at our fingertips in the matter of seconds, how much time do we dedicate to encouraging children to memorise certain facts such as battle dates, the names of hormones, or the names of the rivers in England? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the scrapping of subject specific content as I still deem it important but looking to shift the emphasis away from short-term rote learning to longer-term problem solving skills. As important as we think our roles are in inspiring students to develop an interest in our subjects, the reality is that a very small percentage of the knowledge we impart in our lessons will be used by the student out of lesson time, never mind once they leave. What can we teach then that is transmissible and transferable?

Providing scenarios where pupils can work independently or in a group to creatively solve problems, manipulate facts and figures and apply their current knowledge to novel contexts will foster a learning environment which focuses on the skills rather than the content. An example from my own subject is how we plan, carry out, and interpret the results of scientific investigations. The theory behind the practical has already been long established and the experiment itself will have been carried out and results collected millions of times by students all over the world. So what is there to be gained from it? Well when we switch the focus on the skills such as planning an investigation, ensuring accuracy, reliability and precision, carrying out work in a methodical and careful manner, critically analysing the results and being able to evaluate any flaws in the experiment, it is these skills themselves than can be repeated and utilised in a whole field of work once the pupils have left school. These are the scissors, blades, and nail clippers in the cognitive Swiss-army knife we want our pupils to develop to help them succeed in many walks of life.

Unfortunately, it is all well and good for me to advocate this stance, and many schools pride themselves on character development rather being a results factory but until there are sufficient measures in place to reward the teaching of skills then all too frequently teachers will feel the need to teach to the syllabus where pupils can make quick short term gains in time for exams, knowledge which will inevitably be forgotten in a much quicker time than it took to learn.

Look after your own health

A 2019 investigation by the National Education Union reported that over 32,000 teachers left the school system since 2015 with an additional quarter declaring their intent to leave in the next five. According to the teacher well-being index 2018, ¾ of all education staff have experienced work-related physical or mental health difficulties in the last two years. If you comb through the literature of self-help books they often highlight the principle of ‘sorting your own home out’ first and I think it definitely translates to the teaching profession. For me the most impact a teacher can make is the time spent in the classroom, delivering the material, answering questions, and providing support to those who need it. This is where a teacher needs to be at their most dynamic and they should do what is necessary to put themselves in this position. Differentiating worksheets for every level ability on a continuous scale and spending more time providing feedback on a task than the pupil actually spent completing it are going to be both very time and energy consuming. That internal pressure day-in, day-out is going to weigh heavy on the head and lead to some of the physical and mental issues I have previously mentioned. We are constantly vigilant in detecting potential problems with our pupils and providing advice on how to cope with the stresses of school life but we should not forget to tend to our own garden as well.

Be human

One of my gripes with the teacher training programme is the huge contradiction between the teacher-pupil relationship and a pupil-teacher relationship. We are constantly told, ‘show interest in what they do outside the classroom’, ‘ask them questions to show you care about them’,’if you know the pupil truly, you will know what works for them and they will learn more’. Then on the flip side of the coin we are told - ‘do not reveal any personal details about yourself to the pupils’, ‘always be completely consistent’, ‘do not share any of your own values with the pupils’. We are human beings, so are they, why is it so paramount to pretend otherwise? Emotional instability is a part of life and we should be able to normalise this for our students; you can feel anxious without having anxiety, you can feel depressed without having depression. Robots in films can often be quite unnerving to watch and for me this is partly due to their inability to express any range of emotion regardless of the content they are sharing. Recently, I had a package most likely stolen by a particularly unreliable courier service named after the Greek god of travel. I was quite clearly distressed by the whole situation and the interest and care my class had in the situation was really quite refreshing and provided us with an experience which knit us closer together.