Blended Learning and Attendance in Schools

Over the recent summer period we saw a number of algorithmically based moderations by the UK Government which lead to learners being graded based on a calculated aptitude for their subject rather than on teachers appraisals. Whilst teachers are often those that know their students best it can be useful to include some measurements of performance based on figures such as those from attendance. Following a summer of pitfalls and disputed gradings the UK governments has decided not to use algorithms to assess learner performance. 

One of the foremost issues being encountered in the new term with the introduction of blended or distance learning (that is incorporating both face to face and distance learning components) which has become acutely clear to me is the importance of attendance and its link to attainment. I am a firm believer in the power and flexibility of home working and learning but it can be seen that there are flaws with this new system including a lack of preparedness for the new method of learning. At the start of the new term it is clear to me and many colleagues which of the new crop of learners engage regularly with the content we are providing for them and which ones have changed their habits or developed a more diverse way of working. Speck (2020) observes that many learners who were provided a clear structure and guidance over lockdown were more engaged and focused on their studies when re-entering traditional teaching. There is a great diversity across learners from different socioeconomic backgrounds which have not engaged with recommended learning but otherwise have positive home environments which were not adversely affected. However many who have had or have negative home environments are often those facing the greatest challenge when returning to the school. With many learners engaged in some form of blended learning assessing their engagement with lessons is essential to assess their performance. Doing this when the learners are at a distance is a challenge for teachers, Speck (2020) based on 3000 teachers’ opinions of the attainment gap following Covid lockdown disruption argues that this problem would increase if the learners are engaged in sessions but not actively learning. 

What is the problem with attendance and attainment in schools and colleges?. When a learner is physically in a classroom, the teacher can record them both being present and regularly assess their engagement with direct questioning. One area that can be enhanced in distance learning is regularly asking the learner questions and checking for responses. This allows for both assessing engagement and attainment of their progress. This is essential when constructing a blended lesson where some learners are physically present and others are not. The learner needs to be engaged - not simply listening. Concerns around safeguarding and GDPR must be reconciled with the use of video recording as it is imperative that teachers have some way of monitoring engagement and progress. This is also of increased concern for OFSTED as if learners are not being taught the appropriate level of content for all modules this will disadvantage a generation (Gibbons, 2020). This also ties in with worrying reports from teachers and parents that are facing anxiety with students being back in the classroom. This has resulted in more parents wanting to keep their children at home but not due to rising problems with a school's Covid status but because of articles that outline problems with secure status. Schools are working hard to manage the learners on a rota system to limit the impact to a students mental and physical health but by problem articles causing greater concern attendance of physical lessons can and have decline in some cases (Roberts, 2020). We need a solution to keep learners actively engaged and learning both when in the classroom and away from it. Otherwise we will face an environment which disadvantages our learners as they face challenges of both dealing with the effects of Covid as well as engaging with assessments which they may not understand. Just what the impact is will not be known until research has been conducted around the long term effects on cohorts of learners progressing through college and university.  The full picture of the impact may not be noticed until several years in the future but it is essential that we proactively address concerns as we become aware of them and do not become complacent. Ensuring learners are engaged in virtual and physical sessions is crucial as we navigate the “new normal” as well as looking towards future models. 2020 has been a year when we were not prepared for the effects of Covid on learning and assessments but awarding bodies will be looking to avoid making that mistake again in the future. 

Next time I will be  focusing on: Assessments for the Future.

https://www.tes.com/news/watch-teachers-worst-covid-gap-fears-confirmed 

https://www.tes.com/news/ofsted-coronavirus-schools-remote-learning-lessons-not-aligned-curriculum 

https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-schools-ofsted-13-schools-see-covid-led-home-education-rise 

AUTOMATED PLANNING SYSTEMS A METHOD TO INNOVATE THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Rationale for the Research

This report aims to examine whether automated planning procedures and systems can address the education systems in efficiencies using solutions that use management theory as well as document automation to generate a more effective model. The report will conduct a qualitative review of teacher time management evaluating how teachers spend their none student facing time, using data collected from management of different further education colleges as well as responses from teachers. The project will use this data to address time management in schools identifying area's for improvement which will improve teacher performance and their impact on students. The college group in question is looking at areas to innovate the sector to allow the students to achieve better results and by addressing teacher time management solutions in the field this report can outline innovative management systems. Wang and Lin, (2019) attempt to address matters of planning from an organisational point of view on how to gauge the experience and development of young teachers. However although the likes of this study looks out how to assess the development and management of staff members as well as how they grow in the role but also noting overall changes for those entering the field this not address ways to support or enhance teachers more record and review employees. What this report is aiming to look at is teachers efficiency and planning from alternative views not solely on their delivery of content as whilst this is important and is routinely reviewed this is always reflective and not proactive instead the report aims to look at methods of improving the structure of how teachers plan and develop their content. Telles Quezada, Inostroza Araos and Rosas-Maldonado, (2019) looked heavily at how reflective practice can point towards best attainment for the learner comparing common techniques which are used to build on lesson planning. Whilst they also suggest that effective planning allows for differentiation between the learner the paper does not address the different teaching ethos’ which if planning tools were more uniformed a combination of effective differentiation for learners and teacher individuality could be present alongside management uniformity needs (Anon, 2009). Research by Kersten and Israel, (2005) examined how the leaders of the educational sector evaluate the teachers and their progress. Yet their research also points to the fact that many of the business leaders tools to evaluate actually negates a lot of the benefits by putting extra constraints and burdens on teaching staff (Holmes, 2017). By referencing time and performance in this way the research will be of a great benefit to the educational training and ongoing development for the teachers as it will allow management to redistribute their time more effectively (Sahito et al., 2016; Holmes, 2017).

Research Focus

Research Rationale

The project aims to address whether elements from the business industry would make for effective tools to enable development of better planning infrastructure for key documentation used in education.

The report will conduct a survey of staff members to identify area's that staff find generate inefficiencies in their day and delay them from more direct learner engagement.

A separate survey will look at management pressures and demands of their staff and address how systems can observe teachers, generate meaningful actions then tracking improvement.

The final objective will be to look at policies which can be enacted across the education sector which can generate better results for students and resources for teachers.

The Formulation of the Papers?

The reports research focus is to address planning imbalances in the education sector addressing teacher and lecturer time management and efficiency.  Tamaki, Yamada, Kuwabara and Nakamura, (1998) looked at addressing efficiencies by allowing teachers to deliver lessons which allow for blended and flipped learning by encouraging learners to self-teach. This format allows teachers to provide guided direction and then focused supplementary documents to support a varied learner ability. Whilst management practices have developed extensively as have teaching delivery and learner management the synergy between both of these area's is largely unexplored (Holmes, 2017). Al-Shareef and Al-Qarni, (2016) looked at partially addressing the time constraints of planning by addressing the workload of teachers by offering a collaborative space for teachers to share best practice around their subject area to address areas of the delivery that learners responded well to. This allowed for effective review of progress of learners and feedback to teachers alongside reducing planning time with a shared by in from teachers. Similarly, the subject of the dissertation will address teacher efficiency and satisfaction through surveying staff across the college to distinguish what staff are perceiving a pressure and what management goals are for their team to address what area's for efficiency and improvement are necessary for improvement. The project will apply an inductive approach using the premise provided by Al-Shareef, and Al-Qarni, (2016) where teachers with better time management had better in class performance than those who did not. The aim will be to assess whether those using planning software or techniques to more effectively spend their time had greater success in their delivery over those using standard college planning tools. Planning software that looks at applying best practice for the user and uniformity to the institution should elevate student performance and teacher effectiveness. De Neve, (1991) now whilst the reports primary data will come from this survey it will also look at wider Human Resource data such as student and staff satisfaction considering that both of these quantitative measures reflect satisfaction, wellbeing and achievement. There are issues with data collection using both a new survey and existing collection methods the information may have validity issues if the surveys are filled in a rushed way and this is difficult to prevent occurring or even identifying where this occurs. To try to prevent this access to the raw data would be favourable and any surveys which are largely uniform with no discernible expression of opinion will be omitted from the sample. Teachers using the software will largely be from individuals who are in early training programs “new starters” or individuals who are aiming to further develop their skills so the data set will be unable to account for burnout, fatigue or other general problems common in the profession. Therefore the project aims to identify the common problems or challenges of the sample set using a pilot software program through interview feedback compared with general feedback from wider college survey data compared to the studies own survey of the wider institutions to address area's for improvement for teachers and develop a system to solve the problem. The software to address this area of research will be developed over the remaining summer months of 2020 and then implemented over the first term in a college which follows an academy style setup with multiple colleges under the brand. This allows for a less varied sample but with some variance in approach to delivering teaching content which will allow for a wider assessment of the problem whether its endemic to teams or schools or the wider education system. Initial surveys will be conducted with individuals carrying out the pilot compared with the wider college group by utilising this data to focus the report on recurring themes for various types of lecturing staff it will help to shape a solution for the planning problem which can be built upon and implemented. The long-term outcome of which would be to review the system at regular intervals throughout the academic year 2020/21 to conclude whether a system can be developed to resolve planning concerns.

Ethical Implications?

The main ethical implications of the report are how handle user data from the surveys as well as the using the data to identify demographic trends. Majority of the data will be sourced through the colleges HR and Research teams as this is the pathway that both the data is sourced for the colleges productivity measures as well as ensuring it is compliant with ethical and legal content. By using these pathways, it ensures that the data collected is both effective for the report, secure and disseminated through the college. Although there will be aspects which could make the staff members and personnel identifiable, but this will be limited to where necessary.

References:

Al-Shareef, S. and Al-Qarni, R., 2016. The Effectiveness of Using Teacher-Teacher Wikis in Collaborative Lesson Planning and Its impact on Teacher’s Classroom Performance. English Language Teaching, 9(4), p.186. 

Anon, 2009. AFT puts teacher voice in 'Race to the Top' planning. American Teacher, 94(2).

De Neve, H., 1991. University teachers' thinking about lecturing: student evaluation of lecturing as an improvement perspective for the lecturer. Higher Education, 22(1), pp.63-89.

Grissom, J., Loeb, S. and Nakashima, N., 2013. Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), pp.112-140.

Hafiz Muhammad, A.K., Muhammad Tahir, K.F., Khalil, A. & Faisal, I. 2016, Exploring Relationship of Time Management with Teachers' Performance Research, Bulletin of Education and Research, 38, 2

Holmes, B., 2017. The management of teachers’ non-directed time in a secondary school. Management in Education, 31(1), pp.39-42.

Kersten, T. and Israel, M., 2005. TEACHER EVALUATION: PRINCIPALS' INSIGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT. Planning and Changing, 36(1), pp.47-61.

Sahito, Z., Khawaja, M., Panhwar, U., Siddiqui, A. and Saeed, H., 2016. Teachers’ Time Management and the Performance of Students: A Comparison of Government and Private Schools of Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan. World Journal of Education, 6(6).

Tamaki, M., Yamada, K., Kuwabara, T. and Nakamura, Y., 1998. Network-based education system designed to allow individual student progress and improve teacher efficiency. Proceedings. 3rd Asia Pacific Computer Human Interaction.

Telles Quezada, N., Inostroza Araos, M. and Rosas-Maldonado, M., 2019. Points of Improvement: Reflective Strategy to Support Chilean EFL Pre-Service Teachers’ Lesson Planning. HOW, 26(2), pp.88-105.

Wang, T. and Lin, J., 2019. Research on Young Teachers’ Planning and Teaching Ability Improvement in Independent Colleges. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1325, p.012052.