How to Improve the Teacher Training
I have posted several articles in this blog where I analyse, with the outside perspective of someone who was not educated in England, different aspects of the PGCE training and the English education system. I want here to summarise my critics on the PGCE training in a constructive way, as I deeply believe that improving the teacher training is a first step towards improving our education system.
The first school placement during the PGCE starts at the end of September. During the first weeks, teacher trainees merely observe lessons and familiarise themselves with the school and their future classes. During my training, only the eager ones taught a part of one or several lessons before half-term at the end of October. Most of us started teaching full lessons after half-term. From that moment on, we spent one day per week at university and four days teaching at our school. When we all turned up at university after our first week of teaching, I think any external observer would have noticed that almost all of us looked tense and tired. We taught only a couple of hours in our first week, but it required a huge preparatory work due to our inexperience and the associated doubts about any choice we had to make. And, above all, we experienced the immense stress of not only having to face a class of 30 kids, but also to do it while at the back of the classroom a teacher scrutinises every single one of our actions. In a nutshell: we had just got a flavour of the infernal working rhythm of a teacher and of the stress of a PGCE student. The latter would last for what we felt were the longest seven months of our life — for those of us who would hold on. Because, indeed, many PGCE students drop out of the course — our university teachers told us that roughly 10% drop out during the PGCE year.
The PGCE training is famously tough. I have wondered a lot during the training what it is that makes it so hard. I have given part of the answer in my previous article about the “big confusions” both in terms of expectations and instructions. But there are other aspects that I want to discuss here.
Starting to teach in October or November is difficult because we are not regarded as real teachers by our students. They feel we are not really in charge, and they treat us like supply teachers. As teenagers have quite a short-term view of things, they quite quickly see our lessons as an opportunity to have a good time, or at least some challenging kids will see it that way. The fact is that we are not equipped at the start of the training to deal with challenging students properly. One key element of behaviour management is to gain respect from the class and set up some clear rules of what is expected from them. This is particularly difficult, if not impossible, when you “borrow” a class from another teacher in the middle of the term and only for a few weeks. And this becomes even more challenging when you primarily focus on pedagogy and try to stick to your lesson plan.
I also believe that there is a real issue with mentors and PGCE students observers in schools. PGCE students can learn a lot from them and make the most of the practical part of their training thanks to their feedbacks. These feedbacks however lack both consistency and focus.
Let me take a simple example from my own experience with my first lesson with one of my classes. I did not know the names of the students yet; I did not have a seating plan because the teacher forgot to give it to me (even if I asked for it several times); I knew what I had to teach but I didn’t appreciate yet my students’ level and where they might struggle; I had no clue of behaviour management yet (except the wonderful tip I got from university, namely that if a lesson is engaging, one shouldn’t encounter any behaviour issues) — and I was quite nervous because I was being observed. After the lesson, which was certainly not the most fantastic lesson the students had seen so far, but was on balance not a catastrophe either, I got the following feedback from the teacher, who went over almost every minute of the lesson. 1) I like your way of asking questions, but you stood in the front of the class for far too long. Let the students do it on their own, don’t explain. 2) You should regularly check for learning and adapt your lesson to your students’ needs. 3) You spent 25 minutes on this activity, while you had planned 15 minutes for it. Look at the clock! 4) Some students were chatting while you were talking. Tell them off! And know your students’ names!
In this feedback, a first clash is obvious between different constructivist ideas (see here), namely between dialogic teaching where understanding is assessed and sought via questions to and discussion with the students, and the idea that a teacher should not talk from the front of the classroom — as prescribed by Ofsted. (But the same teachers who tell you not to explain do explain a lot of stuff during their lessons, and you know because you sit in them as part of your training.) The second clash is between being flexible enough in order to adapt to our students’ needs as they arise (for instance they struggle with a particular point, so we spend more time on it than expected) and follow our lesson plan tightly. The key for a good teacher is certainly to find the right balance between both. But is it helpful to give the contradictory instructions “follow your plan” and “assess your students’ learning and adapt your lesson accordingly” to a starting PGCE student? It would make much more sense to explain that it takes time until one is able to draft realistic lesson plans, but that one should keep in mind that some flexibility is allowed so that one can adapt to students’ needs. And, to this latter point, it would be also helpful to insist that it is not easy at first to adapt one’s teaching during the lesson, but one can always consider one’s learning’s assessment when planning the next lesson. Finally, it is ludicrous to expect that a starting PGCE student knows the 30 students’ names at their first lesson, especially if the teacher forgot to give them the class’ seating plan. So, in the whole, although the level of details in this feedback clearly suggests that the observer put a lot of efforts in producing it, its lack of focus eventually makes it of little help.
The third issue with mentors and observers arises from the fact that PGCE students need their feedbacks as pieces of evidence for their professional development file, and their mentor writes a professional practice report (3 reports in the year for 2 school placements), which forms a basis for the final PGCE grade. In short, PGCE students are in the hands of their mentor and further observers. And some of them may be frustrated, for whatever reason, and/or just enjoy abusing their power. It can go from simply patronising you to jeopardising your training completion. I had to experience some very patronising attitudes. For instance, one of my observers criticised the fact that I dared to use the extremely complicated word ‘vacuum’ to a bottom Year 9 set, while I explained during the lesson the meaning of vacuum in science. He went on with other examples and finished with “the last straw that made him so angry” — his own words — when I said, “light propagates”. Was it a real, constructive critic, I wondered, or was it to make me feel uneasy as I am not an English native speaker? And was it necessary to be angry? Of course, I agree that complex words in science is a barrier to many students, and that it is true that I do not necessarily always know the corresponding plain English word, because in French we do say for instance “la lumière se propage”. Does it deserve an angry feedback? Besides, I do believe that it is the role of teachers to teach their subject’s terminology; so, explaining the meaning and using the proper scientific terms.
Every PGCE student has many of such stories to tell. If they are limited to some patronising feedbacks, as it was the case for me, they are lucky. But sometimes it escalates, and the PGCE student is suddenly deemed to be unfit for becoming a teacher. It happened to some of my university colleagues who did not formally fail their PGCE but were forced to either drop out of the course or defer their training. It started with the mentor and maybe other observing teachers being unsatisfied by the performance of their PGCE student. This is when the role of the university tutor becomes essential. They usually intervene and defend the student who is, in most cases, just a scape goat for all frustrations these teachers experience in their job. I was struck by the fact that some PGCE students’ evaluations would be reversed — in either direction — when they changed school. At the very least, it shows how subjective — and thus arduous — it is to evaluate a teacher. It also demonstrates the flaw in the system, and thus the importance of having a university tutor ready to step in for you, if you happen to get in this troublesome situation with a frustrated mentor. If a PGCE’s university tutor does not feel it is their problem, like it was the case for the tutor of my PGCE colleagues who had to drop out of the course (remarkably, they all had the same tutor), then there is nothing to stop mentors from jeopardising your training.
Finally, a PGCE training is hard because of the overload of work and under such stress conditions of being observed and evaluated every single day. As for the work overload, we were equals with full-time teachers. I know there are still many people out there who believe that teachers have an easy life, with so many holidays!! But they are so obviously totally wrong… According to some OECD statistics[1], English teachers teach about 10% more hours per year (around 720) than the OECD average (around 650). Teaching hours are of course only the visible part of the iceberg. Increase the number of teaching hours and you increase not only the corresponding preparation time, but also most likely the number of students and, as a result, both the marking time and the data monitoring time. The working time of teachers is regularly estimated, and the figures are around 55 hours per week (see for instance an estimate here[2]).
A PGCE student teaches much less than a full-time teacher, but it takes infinitely more time for them to prepare lessons. Preparing lessons not only means understanding what you have to teach, find activities for your students and prepare some PowerPoint slides, but also writing a detailed lesson plan — it took me between 45 and 60 minutes to complete a lesson plan at the level of details my observers wanted to have. And PGCE students must do their university work on top of that: reading papers, conducting interviews, observing lessons, writing essays…
I am convinced that some issues of the PGCE training that I have described here could be solved by structuring the PGCE training. That is, there should be a clear planned progression throughout the academic year in terms of key skills. These skills are clearly identified and described in the teacher standards. A planned progression implies that the sessions at university should not be given at random but follow this plan. And, in the same way, the lessons we give in school should allow us to develop only one or two key skills at a time. Sequential learning approaches are widely used in the training world. A driving instructor would never ask their students to drive the car on the motorway and use the five gears during the first lesson. I do not see why it should be different in a teacher training.
For instance, we could imagine that the focus at the start would be on behaviour management, and PGCE students could use lesson plans and resources given by the class teacher instead of doing everything from scratch. This would also relieve the workload and allow for more time to think of and experiment efficient behaviour management techniques. In a second period of the training, the focus could be on planning lessons, that is, how to structure a lesson following some teaching and learning theories, how to use different types of activities to support students’ learning and engagement, how to adapt activities to students with special educational needs, etc. Finally, the focus could be on assessing students’ learning and being ready to adjust the lesson if necessary, marking tests and giving feedback, etc.
I suspect that training providers would argue that every trainee is unique, and so each of them will take a unique progression path. I do not believe it is a valid argument that allows them to overlook the need of an overarching structure of the PGCE course. If the course is designed in a smart way, there can still be room for fast progression in the stages where a trainee is having no difficulties, and slower progression if necessary. Teacher training providers are supposed to be educational experts after all.
[1] http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48631419.pdf
[2] https://www.tes.com/news/teachers-work-54-hour-week-dfe-survey-finds
