Best Practice

Trialling of the Visible Classroom in UK schools

Pedagogy
A funded trial of the new ‘Visible Classroom’ approach to helping teachers see their own impact in the classroom is now open to applications from UK primary schools. Dr Janet Clinton explains more

Harry Potter had a “revealing charm” that forced invisible things to reveal themselves. Imagine a revealing charm to help teachers see themselves as their students see them.

Graham Nuthall famously listened in to teachers for many years and his book The Hidden Lives of Learners documents that most of what happens in a classroom is not seen or heard by the teacher. Given this, a revealing charm would be a particularly powerful tool.

So, how can we help teachers to see themselves through the eyes of students – how can we help teachers to see their impact?

The two most common answers is to video the teacher, or have some expert sit in the class and observe and code. The problem of the first is the time to then review, the cost of video, and that it often happens some time after the teaching such that any chance of remediation or enhancement is lost.

The problem of the second is the biases of the observer, the notorious low reliability of observing, and that most of the coding is typically focused on what the teacher does, not on their impact on the students.

Both methods are costly to make them reliable, there is not a lot of evidence that they lead to improvements in teaching or enhancements in students’ learning, and both are intrusive.

As such, the “Visible Classroom” team, led by myself at the University of Melbourne, with Professor John Hattie and research assistant Kathryn Cairns, and also the CEO of Ai-Media Tony Abrahams, searched for a different form of “revealing charm”.

We started by working in deaf classes to find an alternative way for students to receive instruction and the method we developed was so successful that the inevitable next question was: “Would this work in regular classes?” After many trials, we refined the method and now are working in many schools to evaluate the “Visible Classroom” approach. Last year, we trialled the method in a number classes in England.

How does it work? A teacher simply records their lesson live on a SmartPhone and proceeds to teach the class. Within seven seconds, the students can then see the teacher’s words captioned on their iPads (if required), so they can get a second chance to hear what the teacher has said.

Keep in mind that teachers typically give five to 10 instructions at once, and that many struggling students hear just a few of them – and often not the right few. As the teacher moves around the room talking to various groups, the teacher talk is captioned so all students can listen in and gain the wisdom of the questions other groups ask and the teacher’s answers. Students in this live version also have the opportunity to provide feedback on their learning.

At the end of the lesson, the teacher can immediately access and read the transcript, and get some important coded information from the lesson, such as about their percentage of teacher talk (average 89 per cent per lesson), the speed of talking, and the nature of teacher questions. There are other averages relating to student learning.

After a few lessons a more detailed and deep coding provides the teacher with an overview and patterns of their instructional practice. This is also linked to ways some practices can be enhanced. An example from the Visible Classroom summary dashboard is pictured above showing (from left) questioning, teacher speed of talking, and amount of teacher talk.

We found that there was much support for the claim that provision of explicit, real-time feedback to teachers led to change in instructional practice. The greatest improvements in practice over time, as seen in the transcripts, were in deepening pupil understanding, repeating comments, introducing and explaining new concepts, and posing more open questions.

Participating teachers self-reported that they improved across all rubric items over the course of the trial, but particularly in the aspects of teaching practice that promote critical thinking and conceptual understanding (e.g. reviewing previously learned concepts and repeating comments and questions from pupils) and those that support pupils’ learning progression (e.g. introducing and explaining, and using resources).

So how does it work? At the other end of the recording there is a professional captioner (operated by Ai-Media) who “re-speaks” everything the teacher is saying into their machines, coding the teacher talk, and thus the captions feed this back to students within seconds just like captions at the movies.

Their reliability of coding exceeds 98 per cent, the information is immediate, and teachers can have insight as to what they actually said and did (teachers can now also simply record the lesson on their phone without the need for classroom internet and upload using the newly available Visible Classroom app. This version is just for teachers, and the dashboard will take a few hours before it is available).

The independent evaluation by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found that overall teachers were positive about the Visible Classroom approach, and believed that it had the potential to benefit both themselves and their pupils. Students were not distracted (as some teachers expected), but it provided them with more focus, kept those who otherwise would have been struggling to follow engaged, and indeed class behaviour improved and there was less disruption.

Teachers spoke highly of the effect the dashboard – especially the feedback report – had on their performance. Furthermore, they discussed their analysis with other participants and they were more aware of what they were saying, how they were saying it, and how much they were talking. They were also modifying their behaviour in response to this feedback.

The first UK study was sponsored by the EEF, and now a full efficacy trial is about to start in the UK. The University of Melbourne has teamed up with the SSAT to deliver this project to UK primary schools.
It is a funded project so there will be no cost to schools. There will be an application process for schools to be selected and we are currently accepting expressions of interest. If you express interest with us you will be notified as soon as it opens.

Anne-Marie Duguid, director of education at SSAT, said: “We are excited to be the UK partner of such a pedagogically sound project. As soon as Janet and I started talking, we knew there was great synergy in our work. Every primary head I have spoken to is keen to have the opportunity to be part of this funded project. There is already an extensive list of expressions of interest.”

A chance to work with Professor John Hattie, and build on years of research to change your practice in your classroom in a relatively short space of time – who could resist?

There is more to do to make this a more effective “revealing charm”, but exciting times are ahead.

  • Dr Janet Clinton is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

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