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Getting more bang for your buck – the education interventions that really work Robert CoeCentre for Evaluation & Monitoring, Durham UniversitySchools North East Summit, 14 Oct 2011

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Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning

Why we wrote it Best buys Worst buys Learning How might we use

this?

www.suttontrust.com

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The pupil premium

Aims: o to reduce the attainment gap between the

highest and lowest achieving pupils nationallyo to increase social mobilityo to enable more pupils from disadvantaged

backgrounds to get to the top Universitieso to provide additional resource to schools to do

this Estimates of £430/ pupil on fsm in 2011-12;

rising to £1750 in 2014-15?

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The question

How should a school spend any ‘discretionary’

budget to achieve maximum benefits in

learning?

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Advice to schools: Up to you to decide… Initial suggestions:

o Smaller classeso One to one tuition

Does spending improve attainment?o Mixed & complex findings from researcho The Bananarama Principle: It ain’t what you do it’s the

way that you do it… Do we know some things that do work? Why have we failed to increase attainment over

30 years?

Before we started

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Summarise the evidence from meta-analysis about the impact of different strategies on learning (attainment).o As found in research studieso These are averages

Apply quality criteria to evaluations: rigorous designs only

Estimate the size of the effecto Standardised Mean Difference = ‘Months of gain’

Estimate the costs of adoptingo Information not always available

What we tried to do

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In the Toolkit

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Summaries

What is it?How effective is it?How secure is the evidence?What are the costs?How applicable is it?Further information

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Overview of value for money

Cost per pupil

Effe

ct S

ize

(mon

ths

gain

)

£00

10

£1000

Feedback

Meta-cognitive

Peer tutoring Pre-school

1-1 tutoringHomework

ICT

AfL Parental involvement

Sports

Summer schools

After school

Individualised learning

Learning styles

Arts Performance pay

Teaching assistants

Smaller classes

Ability grouping

Promising

May be worth it

Notworth it

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Some things that are popular or widely thought to be effective are probably not worth doingo Ability grouping (setting); After-school clubs;

Teaching assistants; Smaller classes; Performance pay

Some things look ‘promising’o Effective feedback; Meta- cognitive and self

regulation strategies; Peer tutoring/peer‐assisted learning strategies; Homework

Key messages

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Focus on learning

Does your ‘theory of learning’ explain why

o ability grouping (setting)o after-school clubs o teaching assistantso smaller classes o performance pay

do not work (or are not cost effective)?

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Do we care about learning?

Which of the following are evidence of learning?o Students are busy: lots of work is doneo Students are engaged, interested, motivatedo Classroom is ordered, calm, under control

What do school students value most?o Social interactions & status with peerso Keeping out of troubleo Pleasing teachers: good marks, neat writing, politeo Thinking hard about really challenging problems

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Learning is invisible. – How can you know what your students are

learning?– What tools do you use to make learning

visible?– What kind of tools do you need?

How often do students need to think hard?Do teachers in your school really prioritise

learning? Do students?

Questions about learning

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“… we have each been asked several times by teachers, ‘What makes for good feedback?’—a question to which, at first, we had no good answer. Over the course of two or three years, we have evolved a simple answer—good feedback causes thinking.”

(Black & Wiliam, 2003)

Feedback

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If you want your students to learn something difficult …

You need to know how many of them have ‘got it’

They need to know whether they have ‘got it’

If they haven’t, you need to be able to do something about it

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Teaching approaches which make learners’ thinking about learning more explicit in the classroom.

Eg teaching pupils strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning.

It is usually more effective in small groups so learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion.

Self-regulation refers to managing one’s own motivation towards learning as well as the more cognitive aspects of thinking and reasoning.

Meta- cognitive and self regulation strategies

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Learners work in pairs or small groups to provide each other with explicit teaching support. The learners take on responsibility for aspects of teaching and for evaluating the success of their peers.o Cross-Age Tutoring an older learner usually takes the

tutoring role and is paired with a younger tutee or tutees. o Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) is a structured

approach for mathematics and reading requiring set periods of time for implementation of about 25-35 minutes 2 or 3 times a week.

o Reciprocal Peer Tutoring: learners alternate between the role of tutor and tutee.

Peer tutoring/ peer-assisted learning strategies

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Is that it?

Have we solved the problem of how

to improve attainment?

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These strategies have been shown to be cost-effective in research studies

But when we have tried to implement evidence-based strategies we have not seen system-wide improvement

We don’t know how to get schools/teachers who are not currently doing them to do so in ways that areo True to the key principleso Feasible in real classrooms – with all their constraintso Scalable & replicableo Sustainable

Implementation

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Peer tutoring (seems to be hard to implement badly)

Do proper professional development Teacher Learning Communities Comprehensive School Reform Constant evaluation (with feedback) Feedback to teachers that is targeted,

intensive & supported

Some things we could try

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Let’s not flat-line for another 30 years Let’s develop strategies that

o Are aligned with evidence about likely cost-effectiveness and learning theory

o Are feasible, scalable, sustainableo Can (& will) be robustly evaluated, so we will

know whether they have worked, and can optimise

Rob.Coe@cem.dur.ac.uk