In my last two articles, I have attempted to lay the groundwork for challenge through the analogy of the architecture of a multi-storey house, as a mental map for teaching that can be used in all aspects of classroom learning.
The foundations of this curriculum “house” are the key concepts of each subject (see article one), the ground floor is the progressively sequenced knowledge and the first floor is the development of understanding through retrieval, application and transfer of knowledge into new contexts over time (see article two).
I argue that without these elements carefully planned before the lesson begins, the concept of “challenge” in the classroom is always likely to be a slave to the next Big Thing in educational policy. In short, I argue that challenge begins through careful, thoughtful curriculum design on multiple levels.
But what of the final stage – the second floor in our metaphor? When we walk into the classrooms of our colleagues as leaders, how do we know challenge when we see it? That’s what I will now turn to in this article.
In Making Every Primary Lesson Count (2017), Jo Payne and Mel Scott state: “Challenge gives every pupil the opportunity to stretch themselves and encourages them to believe that hard work and perseverance will lead to progress.”
This draws on the ideas of Dr Carol Dweck in her infamous work Mindset (2016) – that classrooms which put challenge at their heart make sure that students recognise that learning is never “about immediate perfection”. Instead: “It’s about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.”
So it is right to desire for our students to struggle in lesson time – but how much? Too little, and work is too easy; too much and students become disengaged, cognitively overloaded, and lose any desire to try.
That is where the idea of “productive struggle” comes in. In Making Every Lesson Count (2015) Allison and Tharby state: “The skill of the teacher is in pushing pupils just far enough so that they are engaging with worthwhile and productive struggle.”
In short, challenge is defined here as when lessons are pitched just right for students, so they are thinking hard and learning effectively. They illustrate striking this “careful balance” with the following grid:
Just right: Productive struggle is the goal of every teacher (source: Allison & Tharby, 2015)
This way of understanding challenge is commendable, but if we only see challenge in this way, as simply pitching lessons right, we are not seeing the full scale of the architecture of challenge needed to really grasp its essence. We need to look at the whole design to get to the source of challenge, to really grasp its essence.
What Allison and Tharby describe above is not in my view challenge in its fullest sense – it might be better if their concept is defined as “pitch” of lessons. The problem with only seeing challenge as “productive struggle” is that it only tells us what goes on in a single period of time: students thinking hard, low stress and effective learning. It provides no way of discerning challenge over a sequence of lessons, or more importantly challenge applied to students knowing and remembering more and fundamentally changing their cognitive architecture.
It might be thought as you read this that all we have to do is make sure the content is challenging over time and that there is “productive struggle” every lesson. But this begs a further question: how do we define challenging content?
The answer, I think, is that we can’t, and we should not try to either. Instead, it is important to think not of challenge being inherent within knowledge itself, but within the development, comparison, contrasting, categorisation, and systemisation of schema in long-term memory over time.
Challenge then is more about sequencing knowledge progressively across units of work and designing curriculum so that students do not simply retrieve and recall discrete facts but are able to make deep connections between them, using conceptual understanding that is baked into the curriculum.
This helps us to look at the table in a new way, one which places development of long-term memory and flexible knowledge across a range of subjects and domains at its heart.
Going deeper: Developing the grid proposed by Allison & Tharby, marrying the idea of productive struggle to knowledge learning and retention
You will notice that I have relabelled the titles of each of the headings of the grid proposed by Tharby and Allison. I have titled the left-hand side “too-little” zone to encapsulate the issues with the approaches taken in the classroom.
The environment is one of lacking in motivation, largely due to the weak task design and objectives built on a poorly sequenced curriculum. If tasks are too simplistic and not cognitively demanding enough, it is unlikely that student learning will be sufficient for it to be transferred and applied to other contexts.
The “too-much” zone environment, meanwhile, will show a lack of independence from students to take responsibility for their own learning; they will be hugely dependent on the teacher’s input and feedback for them to know where they are in their learning and where they will need to go next.
The curriculum task design will likely be focused on performance in lesson time. Student work may look “good” in terms of the quality of its completion but on further investigation and discussion, it is clear that the tasks have been over-scaffolded.
Teaching praises this and this leads learners to develop habits of mind that mean they feel successful when they have “performed” in lesson time, rather than learned and grown in their understanding.
A classroom that showcases challenge is first and foremost rooted in high-quality curriculum design. The teacher fosters a learning environment that leads to self-regulated learners who are able to work as independently as possible at all times, correcting mistakes, evaluating their work, and even peer-assessing.
Task design over time showcases a clear progression of knowledge from basic retrieval to application to transfer of knowledge to a range of contexts over time. Because of the quality of architectural plans for challenge that have gone on before the classroom is live, teaching can be free to stretch learning in a range of ways and provide scaffolding as and where it is needed to learners who are struggling.
Challenge in practice: Examples from a range of subjects
- English: Evaluation of completed piece of writing against a set of success criteria with a peer, leading to setting next steps for one another.
- Maths: Mapping out the steps to complete a problem of some kind. Going back when complete and then considering alternative methods or misconceptions someone may have.
- History: Considering the causes and consequences of the actions of significant people being studied in a range of time periods.
- Geography: Shifting perspectives between human and physical geographical issues. Asking questions like: what impact have humans had on this place?
- Science: Creating hypothesis using concept cartoons and revisiting them at the end of the lesson, testing original thinking based on evidence.
- Design technology/engineering: Evaluating the quality of planning before a project and considering alternative materials that could be used.
- Music: Comparing the use of strings in two pieces of music and the impact it has on the listener.
- PE: Contrasting tactics in hockey and football and whether there are similarities between each game.
- RE: Discussing the idea of “salvation” in a range of religions and considering what this will mean for the way that those who practise will live their lives
- Computing: Debugging problematic code and developing ways to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again.
The list could go on but notice a few things about the examples provided as we close.
First, it is highly unlikely that any of the tasks described here will be able to be completed successfully by all students if knowledge has not been learned progressively over time and teachers have not aided their students to retrieve, recall, apply and transfer their knowledge to new contexts. The architecture of the challenge here stems far deeper than simply the design of the single moment outlined above.
The second observation is just like it: each of the tasks above can be traced right back to the foundations – the key concepts of the subject being studied. Music draws on the concept of listening to inform the work there. English draws on the concept of writing for purpose; RE draws on the concept of worldview and the sub-concept of salvation; science draws on the “tentative” nature of the knowledge in the subject and asks them to think like a scientist as they work.
Final thoughts
What I hope I have achieved across these three articles is a more holistic, fuller picture of challenge that goes well beyond simply some classroom observations or tips and tricks. What has been described that can be seen in a classroom rich in challenge begins long before students enter the room, and it spans over an extended period of time.
And, importantly, it is the detailed, thorough architectural drawings of challenge forming the mental map teachers have as they teach that will ensure that every student experiences deep learning in every subject.
Robbie Burns is a teacher and assistant vice-principal for teaching and learning at Bede Academy in Northumberland. He has written for a range of publications on primary education and curriculum. Read his blog via www.howthenshouldweteach.wordpress.com and follow him on X (Twitter) @MrRRBurns. Read his previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/robbie-burns
Further information & resources
- Allison & Tharby: Making Every Lesson Count: Six principles to support great teaching and learning, Crown House Publishing, 2015.
- Dweck: Mindset: The new psychology of success, Ballantine Books, 2016.
- Payne & Scott: Making Every Primary Lesson Count: Six principles to support great teaching and learning, Crown House Publishing, 2017.