Thinking about...modelling and mastery

We can’t learn from simply watching experts, if we could we’d all be elite sports performers. We need this performance broken down into chunks that can be carefully examined. Modelling is a strategy that is frequently employed, by teachers, to allow pupils to know ‘what a good one looks like’. Modelling is an effective cognitive support but it is much more than just showing pupils a good piece of work.

I have experienced lessons where teachers have provided an explanation of a concept and modelled what they expected from the pupils before swiftly setting a number of tasks for them to complete independently. It quickly became apparent that the pupils lacked the understanding to complete the work and, as a result, the teacher spent the majority of the lesson racing around the room trying to explain, with little effect, what to do. Similarly, Barak Roshenshine recognises this in his paper on Principles of Effective Instruction. He identifies that the least successful teachers provide very short explanations before passing out worksheets and asking pupils to complete a range of problems. Under these conditions the pupils made too many errors and had to be retaught the lesson. Whereas, in contrast, the most effective teachers guide pupils’ practice by providing more detailed explanations and instructions, giving a wider range of examples and more regularly posing questions and checking understanding

Pupils obviously need time to engage in independent practice if they are to become fluent in a skill or in order to embed essential knowledge. During this time a teacher should only need to interact with a pupil for up to 30 seconds. If teachers need to take any longer, like in the scenario explained above, then they are too dependent on the teacher, indicating that they are not secure enough in their understanding to engage in independent practice.

The diagram below, from Make Every Lesson Count, indicates the process that teachers need to take their pupils through to achieve greater independence. The least successful teachers tend to provide less feedback, pose fewer questions and they often neglect the 'joint practice and construction' phase altogether. Although they may appear to be progressing at a quicker rate their pupils' knowledge is less secure. A successful teacher’s lesson will have pace, but it will be pace in depth rather than breadth. They will provide sufficient instruction, pose questions to probe and clarify, they will connect new information to previously learnt content and provide a range of examples during explanations. Whilst modelling, successful, teachers will deconstruct and simplify work and they will discuss the comparisons between exemplar and non-exemplar work. Their pupils’ will be guided through practice by breaking a task down into simple steps, through interactive modelling and they will probe for understanding with process questions. Throughout the whole process an effective teacher will be continually monitoring their pupils and only when they are confident that they have achieved a high success rate will they progress on to independent practice.

I believe that the processes employed by successful teachers reflect mastery teaching; a pedagogical approach that involves breaking content down into a series of sequential steps. Teaching, in this way, enables teachers to deal with the limitations of working memory more effectively and also ensure that pupils spend more time thinking about content, which in turn makes it more likely that learning will occur.

The two principles discussed within Rosenshine’s paper that resonates most with mastery teaching are ‘spending more time guiding practice of new material’ and ‘obtaining a high success rate’.

Pupils need to spend lots of time rephrasing, elaborating and summarising new material in order to store it within their long-term memory. If this rehearsal time is too short, pupils are less able to store, remember or use the new material. Another finding is that the more time spent guiding students, the better prepared for independent work they are and the fewer mistakes they make. Whereas, if the rate of progression to independence is too quick pupils may end up encoding misconceptions.

Pupils must demonstrate a high level of success on tests, typically at about 80% level, before progressing. This ratio of success to mistake shows that pupils are learning material, yet also challenged by it. If a child is not secure in a topic and they are moved on too quickly, then they will carry gaps in knowledge and misconceptions to the next topic. Previously teachers have moved on too quickly because they feel a need to show progression despite the fact that knowledge is insecure and it is likely that it will need to be retaught again.

We cannot provide limited explanations, model a good piece of work and expect our pupils to make progress in their learning. If our pupils are to acquire important knowledge and skills and have them readily available to apply to a range of problems, we not only need to be aware of the science of learning but we need to be able to carefully craft a process that moves pupils from dependence to independence.