Mastering Pedagogy
The Alternative Provision Initiative - Quality of Teaching
Alternative provision within the education system is frequently treated as a taboo, pushed to the sidelines and stigmatized, commonly perceived as a place exclusively for poorly behaved students. However, all young individuals are entitled to receive a top-quality education, and unfortunately, many are not getting the education they deserve.
Alternative provision encompasses a wide variety of options designed to cater to the diverse needs of young people, often dealing with complex challenges and vulnerabilities.
Phimfinch advocates that Alternative Education should genuinely serve as an alternative, offering something distinct for those who require a different approach.
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While some excel in providing excellent education, unfortunately, there are others that fall short. We firmly believe that teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the educational journey of these young individuals, and their calibre can make all the difference. We aim to ensure that every child receives guidance from highly skilled teachers, but we also understand that even the best educators may require further training and development to enhance the support they provide.
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To maximize the impact on young people's lives, it is crucial to foster greater collaboration between mainstream schools and alternative provision settings.
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Supporting High-Quality Teaching
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The key to enhancing pupil outcomes and narrowing the disadvantage gap lies in supporting high-quality teaching (EEF, 2021). However, achieving such excellence cannot happen overnight; it demands a continuous process of development throughout a teacher's career.
When considering teachers' continuing professional development (CPD), we often think of one-off training courses as the primary solution. While these courses may provide a snapshot of specific theories, they can sometimes feel generic and lack practical guidance for implementing the new knowledge effectively in the classroom.
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To maximize children's chances of success, we must focus on fostering deep and lasting understanding of procedures and concepts. Mastering Pedagogy offers a comprehensive rationale for this approach and provides valuable planning and assessment resources, along with case studies and interviews from schools engaged in mastery projects. By collaborating with the maths hub and embracing their 'Teaching for Mastery' program, we aim to develop a profound understanding of mastering pedagogy across all subjects.
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Teaching for Mastery
- the offer
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1. A mastery approach: a set of principles and beliefs:
This includes a belief that all pupils are capable of understanding and demonstrating learning
2. A mastery curriculum:
A set of concepts and big ideas for all. All pupils need access to these concepts and ideas and to the rich connections between them. There is no such thing as ‘special needs topics' or ‘gifted and talented topics'. The key ideas and building blocks are important for everyone. More time is spent on teaching topics to allow fr the development of depth.
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3. Teaching for mastery:
a set of pedagogic practices that keep the class working together on the same topic, whilst at the same time addressing the need for all pupils to master the curriculum. Challenge is provided through depth rather than acceleration into new content. Carefully crafted lesson design provides a scaffolded, conceptual journey through the mathematics, engaging pupils in reasoning and the development of mathematical thinking.
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4. Achieving mastery of particular topics and areas:
Mastery is not just being able to memorise key facts and procedures and answer test questions accurately and quickly. It involves knowing ‘why’ as well as knowing ‘that’ and knowing ‘how.’ It means being able to use one’s knowledge appropriately, flexibly and creatively and to apply it in new and unfamiliar situations.
This initiative will lead to a deeper understanding of the mastery pedagogy in relation to maths and how this can transfer to other curriculum areas.
WE NEED YOU
We need between 8 and 20 teachers to come and be part of this new initiative to master pedagogy.
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You will be required to attend 2 training days in Newham
28th Feb 2024
&
18th June 2024
1pm - 4pm
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FREE LUNCH
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Work with us to raise standards and give our young people the very best education, providing the skills and confidence to achieve success.
- A starting point for
Based on The Five Big Ideas published by the NCETM in 2017
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Coherence
Teaching is designed to enable a coherent learning progression through the curriculum, providing access for all pupils to develop a deep and connected understanding of all subjects that they can apply in a range of contexts.
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Representation and Structure
Teachers carefully select representations to expose the structure. The intention is to support pupils in ‘seeing’ the skills, rather than using the representation as a tool to ‘do’ the task. These representations become mental images that students can use to think about tasks, supporting them to achieve a deep understanding of structures and connections.
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Thinking
Thinking is central to how pupils learn and includes looking for patterns and relationships, making connections, conjecturing, reasoning, and generalising. Pupils should actively engage in thinking in all lessons, communicating their ideas using precise language relevant to the subject.
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Fluency
Efficient, accurate recall of key facts and procedures is essential for fluency, freeing pupils’ minds to think deeply about concepts and problems, but fluency demands more than this. It requires pupils to have the flexibility to move between different contexts and representations, to recognise relationships and make connections, and to choose appropriate methods and strategies to solve problems.
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Variation
The purpose of variation is to draw closer attention to a key feature of a concept or structure through varying some elements while keeping others constant.
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Developed using The Five Big Ideas were first published by the NCETM in 2017.
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Be part of the programme development
We are looking for volenteers to be part of the pilot programme
