Developing Your Department

Andy Colley

MrAColley@bsky.social

Who?

HOF Technology & HOD Computing @ Laurus Cheadle Hulme

AST/Lead Practitioner/CAS Master Teacher

LearningDust host

'Department'

Deciding on a Priority

Data analysis

Whole school priorities

My vision for the dept

Staffing/

recruitment constraints

SLT have been on a course

Advances in technology

New course/

curriculum

Subject knowledge

“Because OFSTED”

The biggest impact you can have as a HOD is to improve the quality of teaching in every classroom …..

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….. so that all students get the best experience in their lessons.

Slide 5

One priority

What practical problems do we consistently face as teachers of Computing?

Parsing the Practice of Teaching

• Portraying the curriculum
• Enlisting pupil participation
• Exposing student thinking
• Addressing student behaviour

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Mary Kennedy (2015)

What practical problem(s) do you want to focus your priority on?

1. Behaviour
2. Curriculum (portraying)
1. Content
2. Sequence
3. T&L (portraying, exposing thinking & participation)
• Explanations/Subject knowledge
• Questioning
• Modelling
• Check for understanding
• Student participation
• …..

Portraying the curriculum:

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• The curriculum content is not alive. It is written down in books, schemes of work and curriculum plans.

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• If students could and would learn from these materials, there would be no need for teachers.

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• Teachers seek to bring this otherwise inert content to life by (amongst other things):
• Demonstrations, pictures, examples, hypothetical problems, questions (posed and received), writing, reading etc.

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Why is this so challenging?

• Are some topics harder to portray than others?

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• Is it harder to portray the curriculum with some groups rather than others?

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• What factors can influence how we choose to portray the curriculum?

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• Does everyone in the department portray the curriculum in the same way?

Enlisting pupil participation

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Education is mandatory but learning is not!

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To retain what they are learning, students need to actually understand it, and to understand it, they need to actively think about it.

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Students are a captive audience but they may respond to captivity by:

• Engaging, or
• Actively resisting, or
• Cooperating

Why is this so challenging?

• Do some students participate more willingly than others?

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• Do some of your staff participate more willingly than others?

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• Do you have any particular classes who participate more consistently than others?

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• Do students always think about the things we want them to think about?

Exposing student thinking

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Teachers can never be certain what students understand, don’t understand or misunderstand.

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This is challenging because:

• Interpreting student understanding becomes harder as social distance grows
• Prior knowledge affects how we integrate new knowledge and we all have different prior knowledge

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Why is this so challenging?

• Do you have any classes/students where you feel there is a greater distance between them and you, the teacher?

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• Do you have any classes where there is a particularly wide range of starting points and pre-existing knowledge?

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• Are there any parts of the curriculum you find it hard to assess?

Addressing student behaviour:

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Containing 20-30 students in one room for any period of time also necessitates containing their behaviour.

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Why is this so challenging?

• Are there any students whose behaviour you find particularly challenging?

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• Are there any classes who need greater reinforcement of behaviour expectations?

So, what do teachers do?

1. They portray curriculum content in a way that makes it comprehensible to naïve minds;

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• For students who are not necessarily interested in learning;

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• And whose grasp of the content is not readily visible to the teacher;

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• And who are restless and easily distracted

What's your thing?

The SLT Link

Managing up – tip #1 – deciding on priorities

SLT links love it when…..

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• You arrive with a clear idea of what you want to achieve
• Linked this back to a whole school priority
• You help them to understand what to look for in your subject
• Give them something to read
• You have a plan for a schedule of CPD that trains, monitors & reviews
• You know what you want from them

Subject Translation Tool

Subject Translation Tool

Your priority - Plan the translation tool

Running a Session

Department meeting != CPD session

Managing up – tip #2 – running CPD sessions

SLT links love it when…..

• The sessions are focused
• It's part of a process, not an event
• Detailed subject nerdery
• They get a clear idea of what you want from them (translation tool)
• They know what to look for afterwards (active ingredients)

Before

• What are people preparing/reading/bringing?
• Is there a community you are engaging with?
• Is expert input needed? Who is best to provide it (in/out of dept)?
• What are the ‘active ingredients’ that you want to see from your staff afterwards?
• What does the evidence look like?

"Detailed Subject Nerdery"

Sustained subject engagement

1. The macro choices a department must make require continuous conversation with culture

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• What substantive knowledge?

(technical knowledge; factual content; practical skill)

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• What disciplinary thinking?

(computational thinking; maths skills; analysis; problem-solving)

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• What kinds of creativity?

(what is the relationship between the above in making each possible?)

Sustained subject engagement

2. The micro choices a department must make require continuous reflection on the efficacy of content positioning

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• How do we ensure this element here makes possible that element there?

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• How do we ensure that forward-projecting foundational components are adding up to make later access possible?

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We could call this the proximal role of knowledge.

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Sustained subject engagement

3. Teaching needs to be enlivened by passion and enthusiasm. The teacher needs a relationship to the content being taught.

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1. How good is our sequencing rationale for the following elements:
• Units of data, memory & storage
• Computer hardware, networks and data

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2. What are the core knowledge, concepts and vocabulary at KS3 for computer hardware:

• What are the key parts of our explanations? Who does it best?
• How will students practice this? Written? Verbally?

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3. A couple of staff are suggesting that we should deliver an AI ethics unit in Y9 instead of e-safety:

• What might be the advantages and disadvantages in such a switch in terms of the skills you would want pupils to access later (at GCSE, A Level)?
• What earlier topics might show their impact on pupils more readily in this unit than they would in e-safety?
• How might this consolidate and provide new reflection on topics typically covered in GCSE & A Level computing?

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Plan it.......

Where do we end up without this?

• A lack of thoroughness in teaching, resulting in low expectations for in-lesson formative assessment
• Moving on just because some students have displayed some attribute once, instead of over-learning to fluency.
• Practicing the skill of analysis, answering the 8 markers, rather than the range of rich knowledge encounters or wider reference points that sit underneath this accomplishment
• A ‘what can we get away with culture’ “They don’t need to do that in GCSE answers, so don’t bother teaching it…”
• A fear of, or failure to, nurture robust curriculum debate within departments
• Running a department meeting like a checklist, rather than valuing the subject/curricular discussion itself and the new shared meanings that result
• A deficit model of engagement. Engagement is imported rather than a property of the content itself

During

• Get your SLT link there
• Feed back good stuff that you’ve seen
• Modelling
• Practicing – yes really!
• Working on/refining/collaborative planning - question banks, subject knowledge, explanations.......
• Really, really good discussions

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During

• What are the active ingredients?
• Observable on learning walks?
• Work in books?
• Lesson resources
• Impact on test scores
• Take away actions – ALWAYS the last 5 – 10 minutes
• New technique – have they practiced this?
• Who to observe? Which classes to focus on? What parts of lessons?
• By when?

After – Gather Evidence

What?

• Active Ingredients
• Fidelity – are people doing it?
• Are they doing it well?

When?

• Best time to observe?
• Teaching? Deploy the SLT link

Revisit

• How does this feed into next session?

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After

After

Next Steps

What are you going to do/try in relation to your problem this week?

• Portraying the curriculum?
• Enlisting pupil participation?
• Exposing student thinking?
• Addressing student behaviour?

• Fine detail on your priority
• Meet with SLT link
• Arrange time with non-specialists
• Complete translation tool
• Plan a CPD session
• Plan when/what/who to monitor