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https://forms.office.com/Pages/ShareFormPage.aspx?id=FgfhBifCK0qqQ-seKHrH9wHYm-xgBntKnU0TmityXVZUMUMxN04zTTI1Rjc4U0dHNzY1QUpFWU0xTC4u&sharetoken=u1LkcxXNBS0jUO0qepGq

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Weston College is excited to be running an Action Research Project on the use of the thinking environment in the classroom. This has great potential for maths and for wider use. The lead for this project is Katheryn Cockerton.

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Website: https://www.southdevon.ac.uk/

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Website: http://www.sgscol.ac.uk/

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South Gloucestershire and Stroud College Logo.PNG

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Website: https://www.hartpury.ac.uk/

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Website: https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/

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https://padlet.com/joss1/Cfemactionresearch

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Katheryn.Cockerton@weston.ac.uk

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Hypothesis:

How can teachers use Thinking Environment processes to improve learners’ ownership of their Maths learning?

Objectives:

To change the Culture in the Classroom to make significantly bigger changes in Maths Performance.

To Engage and Motivate learners to wanting to learn Maths.

To build thinking Spaces to allow learners to feel at ease with their understanding in Maths and of each other.

To share and Collaborate in the Thinking Environment Culture amongst the Network.

Why the Thinking Environment?

Professor Diane Dalby’s  (Nottingham University)  research  has shown that

·         learners anxiety is reduced when experiences and interested are  shared to help overcome negative attitudes.

·         Sharing experiences can close the attainment gap experienced by less advantaged learners by 60%.

·         Writing down and reflecting upon Core Values termly can increase exam passes by 25%

·         Setting Short term goals to help overcome barriers/hurdles

The Thinking Environment is a set of disciplined, practical processes that compel participants to think for themselves. The 10 thinking components will allow teachers and Learners to take a step back and create space in lessons for learning about each other and address the above issues.

The How To (and Why To) of the Thinking Environment:

https://management-ui.excellencegateway.org.uk/sites/default/files/OTLA-AP-guide-CreatingSpaces-Final_30.10.18.pdf

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Thinking and problem solving

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Problem Solving Understanding the problem

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To be sent to Students

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Action Research Participant (student) Information M&E

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How much Maths outside of class did you do this week?

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Microsoft Forms - Easily create surveys, quizzes, and polls.

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Easily create surveys and polls to collect customer feedback, measure employee satisfaction, and organize team events. Quickly create quizzes to measure student knowledge, evaluate class progress, and focus on subjects that need improvement. Microsoft Forms automatically provides charts to visualize your data as you collect responses in real time.

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We would like you to complete this online form at the start of your engagement with the action research project - we'll do it in class :-)

Then we'll send another one at the end of the process.

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These indicators are based on the #CLMH research curation ( www.mhfe.org.uk), in particular the Breaking the Rules affirmative mental health leadership programme, which drew on Thinking Environment and other pro-social approaches to influence culture change*.

Construction of the indicators has been informed by both the Kirkpatrick and Nesta UK (Good Help) impact assessment frameworks, which follow a common pattern in establishing a baseline before measuring a) impact on participants and b) those whom participants impact upon in turn (ie the wider organisation/learning environment including colleagues and students).

*Read more in Lou Mycroft's chapter 'Affirmative Mental Health Leadership in the Classroom' (in Classroom Behaviour Management in Further, Adult and Vocational Education, edited by Denise Robinson and published by Bloomsbury in 2019).

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Thanks for agreeing to complete this survey - we think you'll find it interesting. We will ask you to do it at least twice. Go with your gut instinct - don't think too hard! It should only take a few minutes.

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Generated 5.11.19

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To kick things off there is going to be some CPD training for teachers involved in this project run by Lou Mycroft

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The Thinking Environment CPD

Hosted By: Lou Mycroft & Katheryn Cockerton

Location: The Winter Gardens (sea front Entrance) Parking The Royal,  Weston

Room: Room 131

Time:  11am-4pm

11am Coffee

11.30  Start

Introduction to the Thinking Environment

1 pm Light Lunch

1.30 Practising and applying in the thinking environment

4 pm Finish

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Affirmative Mental Health Leadership in the Classroom

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Affirmative Mental Health Leadership in the Classroom

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Chapter by Lou in Denise Robinson (ed) Classroom Behaviour Management in Further, Adult and Vocational Education (Bloomsbury, 2019) - our sessions together are anchored in this piece.

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Ch5 Affirmative Mental Health Leadership

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This is the final draft version. This chapter is designed to be iconoclastic, so be warned. Trawling through the 'offcuts' of a national research project around mental health and education as a member of the 'MHFE Crowd' , the author, a former public

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The first place to go, to find what's new and to make useful connections with other maths teachers. These people are waiting to hear from you (and if you use the hashtag #CfEM you'll find others too):

@kathryncocker1
@marsmaths
@mamta_arvind
@CLayall @KatieSh87527188
@marcmaths
@whitehead_maths
@costinaBB
@carolspringett5
@littlemissmath5
@mathscoe (check out their followers)
@charliejamess9
@sarahb1971
@tessmaths
@loumeracy (look at her pinned tweet for more)
@lindykelly8

(Lou is @loumycroft)

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A guideline rather than a rule...

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Weston College CfEM Thinking Environment Action Research Project

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Ignore the browser message, the link is good :-)

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Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software - Canva

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This is your professional judgement as an educator, but as a minimum aim to properly open and close the session with affirmative rounds. Pairs are for when you want to get people thinking, maybe before an activity.

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How can we make it work with large/disruptive groups?

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How can we make it work with large/disruptive groups?

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1. If a group is disruptive, then it's established that culture. Turning a culture around takes time, so believe in the Thinking Environment processes, apply them rigorously and have patience.
2. A large group isn't necessarily a disruptive one, it can be passive. Do single word rounds until people get the hang of being succinct and make the most of pairs, which really save time and warm up people's thinking.

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Please use this version for data collection. 

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Please use this version for data collection. 

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By Neil Gardiner

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How can we fit this into maths to support students and results? Can we use maths content in pairs and dialogue?

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How can we fit this into maths to support students and results? Can we use maths content in pairs and dialogue?

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Yes of course and hopefully some people will have brought ideas to share and discuss - we'll spend the morning on this. Katheryn has!

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How to build a constellation of best practice that is (not?) resource driven?

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How to build a constellation of best practice that is (not?) resource driven?

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Keeping a focus on pedagogy (such as the Thinking Environment but not limited to that) is a good start I think and what we've drifted away from in FE. So you don't discuss a resource without discussing how you'd teach it. Great if this can become part of the culture.

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This is really simple. Stick to the rules and keep the questions open and affirmative. Be tenacious.

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Brilliant piece by Mike Ellicock, introducing the National Numeracy project research, which is totally in line with our approach.

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It's been 20 years since the former chief statistician, Lord Moser, produced the government-commissioned report A Fresh Start, which called for the levels of functional illiteracy and innumeracy to be halved within a decade.

In the following years, strong progress was made on literacy, but adult numeracy levels worsened. Although the numeracy data is hidden by those with a vested interest in doing so, the headline is stark: half of the working-age adult population (around 20 million people) have the everyday maths skills that we expect of primary school children, and three-quarters (around 30 million people) are below the level that we expect of 16-year-olds.
News: Poor maths skills cost the economy £388m per week
Listen: Maths recruitment, retention and resits

Background: Alternative maths GCSE resit curriculum to be tested

Disappointed but determined to do something about his main interest - numeracy - Lord Moser was instrumental in launching National Numeracy in 2012. The charity exists to enable everyone in the UK to become confident and competent with numbers and data so that they can make good decisions in their daily life. We believe that the confidence element is key. You will undoubtedly have heard adults say "I can't do maths" almost as a badge of honour: no one says this about reading and writing, even if they do struggle.

A glaring gap in understanding among leaders

This week, we published a new body of evidence in our Building a numerate nation: confidence, belief and skills report, launched at the Bank of England. The report has two main elements: a survey of perceptions of the issue among MPs and business leaders, and then an analysis of data on the barriers to improving.

The headline of the perceptions survey is that business leaders underestimate the cost of poor numeracy by a factor of 50 (they gave an average estimate of £7 million per week versus the actual cost of £388 million per week - as calculated by Pro Bono Economics). In comparison, MPs were remarkably accurate (£213 million average estimate).

As we say in the first line of the report, to begin to solve a problem you need to understand where you are starting from - and there is a glaring gap in understanding among business leaders that we would argue relates directly to the productivity puzzle.

The good news from the survey is that once the scale and cost of the issue are understood, 90 per cent of both business leaders and MPs agreed that there needs to be a renewed focus on adult numeracy. But the key thing is what form that renewed focus takes; how do we learn from the lessons of past failure and build a numerate nation successfully this time around?

'I can't do maths...yet'

To answer this, we analysed the data from more than 50,000 people who have taken our National Numeracy Challenge and cross-mapped this against a YouGov survey of a representative sample of the UK population. We found that the factor that most closely correlated with numeracy score was confidence with numbers, and the factor that most closely correlated with people improving was having a growth mindset - so enabling people to at least shift from "I can't do maths" to "I can't do maths yet". There is a lot more in the report but the two other things to flag here are that confidence is lowest among those who have most recently left the education system and that confidence is consistently lower on average among women than men across the age range.

We believe that to address these issues, the system needs fundamental change. We recently gathered evidence from within a Department for Education-funded Flexible Learning Fund project that showed adults can be reached and encouraged to engage with flexible online learning in a different way to formal courses. We managed to persuade over 20,000 adults who had not planned to improve their everyday maths to do so by using an approach that focused on building confidence alongside skills.

We think that the best parallel to guide us in combatting the innumeracy issue in the UK is not literacy, but instead the battle to combat obesity. Here, positivity and confidence has been at the heart of inspirational campaigns such as This Girl Can and the Couch to 5K app, and we have the nascent parallels of both in place already.

In the report, we are therefore calling on:

Policymakers to initiate something similar to the outstanding This Girl Can.

Business leaders to recognise this issue and enable their staff to work towards getting the Essentials of Numeracy - and perhaps support National Numeracy Day on 13 May 2020.

Everyone to think about being good with numbers, not as something genetic but instead as something akin to fitness - everyone can improve but it does take work to do so.

Mike Ellicock is the CEO of National Numeracy
And if you want to get started, here is the link to the National Numeracy Challenge, where you can do so for free, in your own time and in confidence.

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It's been 20 years since the former chief statistician, Lord Moser, produced the government-commissioned report A Fresh Start , which called for the levels of functional illiteracy and innumeracy to be halved within a decade. In the following years, strong progress was made on literacy, but adult numeracy levels worsened.

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Nancy Kline's 10 Components of Thinking Environments

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After we have listened, how do we stop our natural need to react/take action?

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After we have listened, how do we stop our natural need to react/take action?

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Stop thinking of it as natural - it isn't. It's conditioned. Nowhere in our job description does it say we should rescue, fix or spoon-feed people - and if we regularly do any of these things, their agency won't grow.

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How do we encourage reluctant/unconfident staff to use this?

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How do we encourage reluctant/unconfident staff to use this?

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1. Reluctant staff. The folded arms brigade! Just do it, keep on doing it and people will warm up. If they continue to hate it, their behaviour will be evident (you can sabotage but you can't subvert) so that's the time to have a quiet word...or rather listen. Ask them what they are assuming that's stopping them giving it a go.
2. Unconfident staff. This is a facilitated process and I think you'll see it's a safe space for unconfident staff to open up - because they won't be interrupted. They may need a little help learning succinctness but let them find their voice first.

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How can we create the language of the thinking environment as common currency with all staff?

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How can we create the language of the thinking environment as common currency with all staff?

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Like any language you have to practice and develop fluency. Make sure people know the first principles of a thinking environment, experience it from the start (rather than be told it) and understand the purpose why you're introducing it. Then practice, practice, practice, write speak and talk about it, give people the chance to become fluent - and amplify the successes and impact of it.