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In my view it's a sad state of affairs that we are a long way down the road towards absolute Data Delusion; where teachers, school leaders and commentators are engaged in discussions about the quality of education provided by a school via a single two digit number that purports to capture a measure of the average progress made by every child. It's not the maths of it - I get the maths; it's very idea of it that bothers me. Averaging every child's achievements into one number is so far removed from what I would consider to be a rounded evaluation of children's education experience, it's hard to fully comprehend that here I am writing about it - and will be for years to come. This is our system. There is no evidence that this raises standards and, for sure, around the world no other nation has felt the need to turn learning into an inter-school zero-sum data contest with such myopic zeal.

Ok... so, having got all that out of the way, what we have to do is try to make the system work for us as best we can. This includes the challenge of making sure P8 pressure does not unduly compromise our values about curriculum choice breadth whilst being pragmatic about matching student choices to the framework. It also includes keeping firmly focused on the curriculum experience, the depth of learning in each subject (I nearly said ' in each bucket' but recovered just in time) and the importance of formative assessment that actually informs teachers' teaching relative to summative assessment that merely feeds the data tracking machine.
Maximising the Macro:
Make sure every learner has a subject in every slot. The simplest way to do this is to make everyone do at least double science. This leaves just one Ebacc slot to fill: language or humanities. If you prioritise P8 over Ebacc %, combined science allows you to release some students from a language (if they do History or Geography) or to do RE/Sociology as a humanities subject (if they do a language) and still fill the bucket. (And who ever does better on single science than double anyway?) How many students do RE/Sociology and no MFL? That's something to keep an eye on. You can ride it out for a few students but not too many.

In the open slot, with one taken up by the second English, and your Ebacc slot sorted, you've got scope for just having two more subjects. Lots of schools are doing this. However, if you are also pushing for Ebacc, you've only got one true open choice in a three option block model. Here's where you have be comfortable with students giving up on arts/DT altogether if they do History and Geography and MFL. Or you could hold on to breadth and keep four options subjects (nine in total) giving more room for a 'best 8' as opposed to 'the only 8' - which is increasingly common.

Next step is to make sure you anticipate and tackle the big hits from negative outliers. These are likely to be students with middle and high prior attainment who have struggled to engage or have health issues. A student dropping from an expected haul of As and Bs (60+points) to a handful of Cs and Ds, (30points?) will cost you 30 points - the same as 30 students gaining a grade elsewhere. Stark realities! Identify these cases early and put a big institutional arm around them to get them through. (Of course you can now tell this story to inspectors but that's no use in the public domain when everyone will only ever see your crude published P8, outliers and all, without any contextual information.)

Finally, use could use the P8 scores internally to prioritise interventions. If you work out estimated P8s for each student and rank them, you can see those students who are furthest away from their trajectories in the big zero-sum bun fight. This will take in high attainers alongside lower PA students. High PA Pupil Premium students would be a sub-group worth special attention, for both tactical and ethical reasons. Top end students getting Bs and Cs will cost you more than students getting Ds and Es instead of Cs. If resources are finite, the P8 ranking helps to see where the priority underachievers lie. Of course, the ethical issue is important here: Grade 4/C is still a 'good pass'. Are you more interested in P8 - which only benefits you- or students getting 'good passes' which actually opens or closes doors for them. I'll leave that dilemma with you.

( An even more tactical P8 driven approach is to just concentrate on the top end students who could get even better. As to A*s. Bs to As. 7s to 8s. Make the rich richer! My view is that if we're using additional intervention resources for this you have to wonder what lessons are for! And then there is the moral question. Who is P8 for - you or them?)
Maximising the Micro
Really, this is where the action is. If you are feeling slightly soiled having sold out your hand-on-heart curriculum design values for some P8 bonus points, this will make you feel better. The curriculum is obviously a lot more than just the names in the buckets. Success in maximizing grades in each subject is a healthier goal - not withstanding the fact that our learner are all prisoners in the bell curve cage.

There's no point trying to write some kind of universal recipe for success but it's going to be based around the following:

Teaching to the top.

Following sound principles of instruction - including some of these strategies teachers can practice

Establishing and communicating knowledge requirements that are absolutely explicit.

Delivering regular retrieval practice and sound revision techniques - see FACE It and this post about GCSE questions.

Developing sound formative assessment practice that actually allows student to improve in low stakes situations, not in endless mock exams.

The truth is that the data tracking system that rules the roost in most schools has virtually zero impact on the micro. Beyond picking up some of the cases for intervention as mentioned above, all those colour codes on SIMS don't penetrate into different actions in the classroom. You can report progress to governors and SLT all you like - but it makes no difference to how much French or Maths anyone knows. Don't kid yourself. You could pull the plug safe in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen.

When it comes out in the wash, remember that P8 doesn't come anywhere near defining your school. You have no idea if your score is good or bad because of issues with the KS2 baseline of whether your cohort of students have been penalised in the bell curve contest, losing out despite everyone's best efforts because other schools in different contexts did slightly better. We can't all be winners. And don't read too much into the scale. There is NO WAY that a P8 or say 0.3 is necessarily a measure of better progress than 0.2 or even 0.1. There is just too much error.. If your score goes down - you did not necessarily deliver an education to your students that was any worse. If your score goes up, you did not necessarily deliver an education to your students that was any better. Obvs.

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Maximising P8: Macro-Micro Thinking - and Ethics.

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In my view it's a sad state of affairs that we are a long way down the road towards absolute Data Delusion; where teachers, school leaders and commentators are engaged in discussions about the quality of education provided by a school via a single two digit number that purports to capture a measure of the...

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Searching for a knowledge organiser in google or even on the TES will bring up a variety of revision guides and other resources that are not true knowledge organisers

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The inspiration for this post came from an article on Joe Kirby's blog, Pragmatic Reform called Knowledge Organisers. I have huge admiration for what Joe and his colleagues are achieving at Michaela Community School by challenging just about every status quo in teaching and learning. They are at the forefront of developing high-impact, sustainable-workload teaching strategies informed by cognitive science research findings.

Joe explains that Knowledge Organisers make very clear to students the specific knowledge you want them to commit to long-term memory. The idea is that learning objectives often are a level detached from the knowledge that you want students to learn. For example, the learning objective, "to be able to apply the special triangle angle facts" does not communicate to the students what the facts actually are. Lesson objectives that don't specify the knowledge you want students to learn in meticulous detail leave that knowledge open to inference which is therefore inherently variable.

I have applied Joe's philosophy to create a Knowledge Organiser for the topic of angle facts. It looks like this:

By giving students the Knowledge Organiser, rather than a list of learning objectives you make it explicitly clear to them the knowledge you want them to learn. Critics would argue that a knowledge-led approach detracts away from deep learning, problem-solving based teaching strategies. I see it as a false dichotomy; students need both- they can't solve problems until they have the prerequisite knowledge required to solve them.

Joe then goes on to show how Knowledge Organisers can be used to get the benefits of the testing effect. You can create frequent low-stakes quizzes by taking any table from the Knowledge Organiser and blanking out a column.

In addition to clarity of what you want students to learn and to the building of retention, Knowledge Organisers can also then be used as revision tools shortly before exams. Altogether they represent a versatile teaching resource that could arguably completely replace the need for schemes of learning. They enable students to efficiently build fluency with core knowledge prior to deep-learning, problem-solving based activities.

Like many other things Joe has spoken about at Michaela, Knowledge Organisers are a research-informed concept that is not only good for learning but also one that reduces teacher workload too (once they are made). In the coming years, I would like to trial the use of Knowledge Organisers in my own practice and will, of course, let you know how they go.

If you like this idea, do have a read of Joe's blog; the work they are doing at Michaela is never less than inspiring.

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Knowledge organisers- more clarity than learning objectives and great for building retention

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The inspiration for this post came from an article on Joe Kirby's blog, Pragmatic Reform called Knowledge Organisers . I have huge admiration for what Joe and his colleagues are achieving at Michaela Community School by challenging just about every status quo in teaching and learning.

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These have been emailed to students and parents, and here there are too. No excuses year 11 - we've helped with the reducing - now it's time for you to get on with the memorising and practising. (ps we know how hard many of you are working. In fact if that's you, stop and have a cup of tea and a laugh with someone!)
KO - A Christmas Carol - LES KO - Conflict Poetry - CLB KO - Jekyll & Hyde - NC KO - Macbeth - UMH KO - Reading Non-fiction FPG-AG KO - Reading Prose - KBL KO - Romeo & Juliet - DJ KO - Unseen Poetry - ABL KO - Writing non-fiction - ABL KO- Inspector Calls - NMC KO - Writing Prose - JFM - ABL
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The knowledge organisers - GCSE Lit & Lang

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These have been emailed to students and parents, and here there are too. No excuses year 11 - we've helped with the reducing - now it's time for you to get on with the memorising and practising. (ps we know how hard many of you are working.

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Michaela Community School Brent

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Posted on April 10, 2015 by

Two weeks ago, our illustrious Assistant Head Joe Kirby wrote a blog on the the most valuable content that subject leaders at Michaela want all pupils to remember for ten years and beyond. Although Mr Kirby and my more disciplined colleagues distil that knowledge onto a single page, I, the reprobate Head of Science, do not always manage this. Mr Kirby, the most pragmatic reformer of us all, sums up the advantages of knowledge organisers here:

"When a new teacher starts in a school, one of the first questions they have is ' what do I teach?' At a single glance, knowledge organisers answer that. Everything our pupils need to know for the year is set out clearly in advance."

Today on Twitter, Nick Wells asked for me to share my Science knowledge organisers. I am not one to deny the people what they want. What can I say? I am basically a modern day Jesus. So here they are, my friends. Enjoy them. Relish them.

If you are not of the knowledge persuasion, you may choose to print them out, Pritt Stick them together and use them as a blanket for those balmy, but unpredictable spring evenings. At least then they would not go to waste.
Science Knowledge Organisers
Let me take this opportunity to plug an upcoming debate on 'Science: knowledge versus skills' on 30/04/15 (evening). The venue is TBC, but in London somewhere. Jip ahoy!

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Michaela Community School | Science - 10.04.2015 - Science Knowledge Organisers

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Posted on April 10, 2015 by Two weeks ago, our illustrious Assistant Head Joe Kirby wrote a blog on the the most valuable content that subject leaders at Michaela want all pupils to remember for ten years and beyond.

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Blog and some links

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A few weeks ago I read this post by Joe Kirby on Knowledge Organisers. It made a great deal of sense to me for 3 main reasons:

1. It reminded me of how I learnt to spell - I'd learn the words, cover them up, write them out and then check my spellings. This process was then repeated - and it worked.

2. Students having to think about and recall knowledge, is going to make them remember it. To quote Daniel Willingham:

3. I teach science - a subject that requires students to be able to recall a great deal of knowledge. What's the point of teaching them how to structure a 6 mark extended writing answer, if they haven't got the knowledge in the first place? It's like asking a builder to build a wall, without any bricks.

Knowledge organisers seemed to address all three of these points. My Y10 students are currently getting ready for end of year exams. So, in order to support them with this, I put together a knowledge organiser for their chemistry unit (AQA Science A, C1). Here's a section of it:
How have I used them?
Very simply! Students are asked to learn a section at a time e.g. the 'fundamental ideas' section above, either for homework or at the start of the lesson. I then project up the words and they have to recall and write down the correct definition. They then self-check and mark their work. Pam McCulloch, a fantastic science teacher, who used to teach at Durrington, but has now retired, swore by this kind of regular, low-stakes testing at the start of her lessons - read more about Pam's wisdom here.

It was very interesting to see how the students did this checking. I simply asked them to check their own definitions, but they used various techniques whilst doing so - all unprompted. For example:

They awarded themselves a full mark if they got the definition exactly right and half a mark if it was nearly there.

If they got the definition wrong, they rewrote the correct definition underneath.

They put a star by the ones they couldn't remember.

We then discussed how they could use them further. A number of them said that they would take them home and ask their parents to 'test them' on the words. This was great - the more recall the better.

It was also interesting to see them using them during the lesson, after we had used them for this exercise. As they were answering other questions, they were using the knowledge organiser as a reference, to make sure they were using appropriate terminology.
Next year
I've come to the idea of knowledge organisers late, but already I've been thinking about how I'll use them from September onwards:

Hand them out in September to give students an idea of what they are going to be covering, over the course of the year (supporting the idea of long term learning goals).

Encouraging students to be using them during lessons as a reference - to make sure they are using correct subject specific language.

Getting students to use them as a checklist, to tick off work as we go through the course.

For homework - getting students to learn the definitions, ready for a test at the start of the lesson, that they then check. This can be evidenced by them writing out the definitions as they test themselves at home, in their books (signed by their parents?)

Alternatively, as a 'knowledge check' at the end of a lesson.

Stressing to them that doing this learn, cover, write, check strategy just once won't work - it needs to be repeated.

For me (or them) to highlight ideas that they are struggling with and need to focus on.

Now more than ever, with the move back towards terminal exams, students need to be able to recall knowledge. This is true in all subjects, but is really important for content heavy subjects like science. I'm pretty convinced that knowledge organisers, used in this way, can support this process and I look forward to developing my use of them next year.

Here are the ones I have produced so far - feel free to download, use and let me know how you get on with them
Chemistry C1
James Theobald has set up a google drive folder for teachers to share their knowledge organisers - get sharing:
Knowledge Organiser Google Drive Folder

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A few weeks ago I read this post by Joe Kirby on Knowledge Organisers. It made a great deal of sense to me for 3 main reasons: 1. It reminded me of how I learnt to spell - I'd learn t...

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Blog on how to use a knowledge organiser

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Blog on how to use a knowledge organiser

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There's been quite a bit written about knowledge organisers of late. Heather Fearn wrote here about the purpose; Michael Tidd and Jon Brunskill have explained their use in primary; Debra Kidd expressed her misgivings here. I want to explain how I use them in history lessons, and how we use them as a school.

Many of us have been using some form of organiser for ages. It makes sense to, right? To have all the key stuff on one sheet, all neat and easily emailable and stickable and readable. My first school used to have 'The Germany 25', whilst at my second I made a Cold War chronology which we tested every lesson. But it wasn't until I read and saw Joe Kirby's explanation of Michaela's usage that I really thought about how the humble KO's organisation might be more than just a reference point. There's no point me re-explaining their purpose: that's been done, and done well, before. But here's what I did, what I do, and what we do.
The pilot
I introduced a KO to history in October 2015. I was writing a new SoW and wanted to ensure a consistent body of knowledge was delivered by the non-specialists.

The three constants I wanted in every KO were chronology, that format in which historical knowledge essentially appears, key people and key ideas, events and actions. My first attempt, for an origin-of-WWI unit with Y8, had two maps: Europe in 1914 and again in 1918. I quickly recognised what I'd change next time: number each piece of information, embolden, each time, the absolutely vital repeating key words, and reduce the amount of information; no more than ten key people, for example.

At first we only used these in lessons: I'd test, every lesson, a particular strand, at least three times. Their ability to recall key knowledge improved, obviously, but so did the attitude of those less previously enamoured towards the subject. Why? Because suddenly they were getting 10/10.

Susie Nash, a geography teacher who I shared a history class with, took up the challenge and began to write versions for her subject. We continued for all years, all the way up to Y13. In the summer the school recognised the success we were having and so moved to introduce these across the whole school, starting with KS3 in September, and moving to all years by Christmas.
The lesson
Pretty much every history lesson I teach, bar the odd A-level class, begins with a KO test. I say what to revise, they study for a moment and then have a couple of minutes to recall in the backs of their books: "One-to-ten, key events ... Go!" It's quick, aids their recall for the lesson, and starts every hour positively, simply because they do it all the time. My mantra is this: if you really don't know then think for 20 seconds; if it doesn't come to you then look at your own KO, then go back and try again; once you've finished you can self mark and do it again.

We'll sometimes return to this four or five times in a lesson. The record is twelve, by which point Y11 said, "Sir, this is boring now." I asked why. "Because we know it. We keep getting 100%."

EXACTLY.

As the KO is essentially the SoW, everything that we teach will come from it. Therefore, Y9 might not study Hjalmar Schacht's New Plan until we're three quarters through the course, but they'll have heard of it, and that makes learning about it much easier as it saves them from adding something new to their working memory. I can say "And therefore Schacht introduced his 'New Plan'" and they don't freak out - they've already heard of it, and they know who he was because he's a key person.

The chronology is the really important bit for me. It doesn't tell the story, no. Of course not. But it does help with the if it hadn't been for x ... bit of history. That knowledge is there, consistently: they don't need to strain to remember when the Civil War was, and instead can focus on what it meant - and they can use the KO for that too.

The KO isn't the be-all, but it isn't meant to be: it's the foundation and the map; it isn't everything in between, of course - that's the job of the teacher. But it's so much easier to get to that in-between when the land has already been mapped.

When writing it should become redundant, if the knowledge has been remembered. I want them to use their KOs when putting arguments together to start with, and I want them to be revisiting it as much possible when we're stepping back, but I also want them to remember, and so that means using it tactically: revise at home, use when planning, but it's away when we write. The better we get, the less we should need the KO.

I've designed knowledge assessments so that 80% is directly from the KO: if you've learned it then you'll get at least 80%. The rest is the everything-else; the not-so-vital but really great, the rephrased and nuanced.
The school
All KS3-4 now have homework where they spend twenty-minutes on a particular subject's KO. They have homework booklets in which they practise, and these are checked every morning by tutors. I know that on a Friday morning my Y7 tutor group should have been self-quizzing their history, and if I think they've not spent that time correctly then they win a lunchtime revision session. The teacher doesn't have to worry about checking it, and the tutor just has to use common sense.

And even if we're being fooled, well, it'll come out in the wash. I tell my Y7s that if they're not getting at least 80% on their history assessment then they haven't done their history homework for the term. After all, on top of their homework we're constantly revisiting this in class and the whole course is built on it.

In history we've certainly found that pupils' knowledge is greater, and they're clearly aware of what's coming up next. My Y9s are always preempting me: "Is that why he introduced the Enabling Act in March? Because it was on our KO."

And what's really telling, I think, is that Y9 to Y13 all asked for KOs to study from before they became a whole-school technique. Y13 actually ask me when the next one is coming out!

If you'd like some examples then please let me know at tfrench@tqacademy.co.uk.

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There's been quite a bit written about knowledge organisers of late. Heather Fearn wrote here about the purpose; Michael Tidd and Jon Brunskill have explained their use in primary; Debra Kidd expressed her misgivings here. I want to explain how I use them in history lessons, and how we use them as a school.

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References

(1) Benjamin, A. S., & Tullis, J. (2010). What makes distributed practice effective? Cognitive Psychology, 61, 228-247.

(2) Roediger, H. L., Putnam, A. L., & Smith, M. A. (2011). Ten benefits of testing and their applications to educational practic e. In J. Mestre & B. Ross (Eds.), Psychology of learning and motivation: Cognition in education, (pp. 1-36). Oxford: Elsevier.

(3) McDaniel, M. A., & Donnelly, C. M. (1996). Learning with analogy and elaborative interrogation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 508-519.

(4) Rohrer, D. (2012). Interleaving helps students distinguish among similar concepts. Educational Psychology Review, 24, 355-367.

(5) Rawson, K. A., Thomas, R. C., & Jacoby, L. L. (2014). The power of examples: Illustrative examples enhance conceptual learning of declarative concepts. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 483-504.

(6) Mayer, R. E., & Anderson, R. B. (1992). The instructive animation: Helping students build connections between words and pictures in multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 4, 444-452.

(7) Pomerance, L., Greenberg, J., & Walsh, K. (2016, January). Learning about learning: What every teacher needs to know. Retrieved from http://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Learning_About_Learning_Report

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Researchers have learned a great deal about how students learn on their own and in the classroom, and much of this research can be applied to educational settings. One of our primary goals is to make this research on learning more accessible and create free ...

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Cooperative learning

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Kagan’s FREE Articles - Articles by Dr. Spencer Kagan and Research & Rationale

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Free Educational Articles for Teachers and Administrators. Research Studies and data collected by Dr. Spencer Kagan, practicing schools and teachers.

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This post follows the huge interest in my last, How to use a knowledge organiser. It is deliberately generic, and so I will write a further post on how I began to create KOs for history. At Torquay Academy we're now looking at how to improve our KOs after introducing them school-wide in September. The advice below is what I have suggested to our staff. Making a knowledge organiser
The KO is like a scheme of work, but simpler and more effective. It doesn't need 'Do Nows' and chunked activities; it doesn't need to be differentiated; it doesn't need lots of detail. It is a whole course and a two-minute quiz, a revision timetable and a cover lesson.

It is not a bolt-on. The only thing that should come before it is what we want children to learn. It should underpin every single thing we do in every single lesson at every single moment. If we're teaching a lesson and nothing on the KO appears then one of two mistakes has happened: either we've not planned a coherent curriculum, or we've just made the KO because we have to, in which case the whole thing is pointless.

A KO is the curriculum map, driven by the requirements of the assessment, but that itself rests on what we want students to learn.
Why a knowledge organiser?
The fundamental point of a KO is to reduce cognitive load.

Our long-term memory is virtually infinite, and we can expand this over time through repetition and experience. Our short-term memory is extremely finite: most of us can work with between 3-9 new pieces of information at any one time. This is affected by our environment. Remember learning to drive? We'd finally worked out the gears, only to be told to indicate at a junction in the dark, in the rain: we panic and stall. This is cognitive load.

The goal of the KO is to expand students' long-term memory so they are better able to deal with new information, whether in terms of acquisition or procedure.

We also know that the more we test (low-stakes!) and practise retrieval the greater our long-term memory. And the more we test that which we've nearly forgotten the more likely we are to remember it in the future.
What is the question?
What do we want children to learn? Only once we are totally clear on this (which is essentially the assessment) can we decide on the precise knowledge. In history KS3 moves from the power of ideas in Y7 to the power of people in Y8, and every cycle has an enquiry question which feeds into this. Thus the knowledge organiser is tied precisely to the question.
What is the knowledge?
This sounds obvious, but too often it isn't thought through. Historians, for example, use dates which appear in chronological order. The dates, tied to events, on their own have value, but they have more value when placed together: this is causation, long and sort-term. Together these tell the story of history, and this varies according to the events we choose to include. We might feel as though what we've chosen is collectively sufficient, but we do need to be wary of becoming teleological.

The question I keep in my head is whether, as a historian, the knowledge I choose can be tied through stories, sometimes across thousands of years. We need to all ensure that the knowledge we choose makes sense together, and is not thrown together incoherently. Coherence allows our students to make sense of the world.

Whatever format is relevant to your subject, this knowledge has to appear in every lesson and be essential threshold material to be successful: if it doesn't then the curriculum is not coherent. For example, each history cycle is based around twenty dates, ten key people and ten key words. Whilst I might mention something in a lesson which is not on the KO, only that which is on the KO is assessed in a knowledge assessment. Nothing else.

This means that generic 'skills' such as 'analyse' and 'evaluate' must not appear on the KO. Why? Because these are neither domain specific nor forms of knowledge in themselves: they are generic, catch-all proxies which are entirely dependent on both the knowledge and its procedural format.

Instead, focus on what students need to know, not what they need to do: the doing comes after the knowing, not before. And since knowledge breeds knowledge, the more they know the more they can do, since knowledge becomes procedural with repeated practice and exposure.
What is the format?
The key is to not have too much. In history we have the same format throughout KS3. This changes at KS4 and KS5 because of the various exam specifications - again, the overarching assessment drives the curriculum needs.

Whilst your subject will have its own requirements there are some key things to remember:

Number each item in each category.

Embolden the absolute key words repeatedly (and do the same whenever you produce a resource - be consistent).

Do not write too much - if you have to write more than one sentence, consider your phrasing. This will make your own explanations clearer.

Don't have too many categories - three or four are probably sufficient.

If including images ensure these repeat throughout actual lessons.

Spellcheck!

No questions, generic skills or 'thoughts to consider'. If it isn't essential it shouldn't be there.

Again, if you would like some examples please do email me at tfrench@tqacademy.co.uk.

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This post follows the huge interest in my last, How to use a knowledge organiser. It is deliberately generic, and so I will write a further post on how I began to create KOs for history. At Torquay Academy we're now looking at how to improve our KOs after introducing them school-wide in September.

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Research based teaching strategies

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Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the best understood principles of cognitive psychology is that novices learn and think differently to experts. These labels are domain-specific, not person-specific; I can be an expert at particle physics whilst still being a novice at evolutionary biology. Or skateboarding. Similarly, you could be an expert skateboarder whilst knowing little of nothing about theatre design or ancient Tibetan languages. What this means is that we're all novices at something, and many of us will be experts in at least one domain.

To demonstrate how you think differently as an expert to how you think as a novice, let's try a brief thought experiment. Pick something you consider yourself to be something of an authority on. Expertise is relative, so don't be shy. If you're a teacher you'll be fairly expert at many of the things you teach. For instance, I know a heck of a lot about Macbeth. I've seen four different theatre productions and at least five different film adaptations. On top of that, I must have taught it to perhaps 20 different classes, several times as an A level text (although I've never actually studied it as a student.) I've also read several books of literary criticism. As a consequence, I'm steeped in the bloody thing! Not only do I know the characters and plot inside out, I can quote sizeable chunks of it. I know a fair bit about the context in which it was first written and performed and also about how its critical reception has varied over the centuries. Whilst I'd never have the hubris to describe myself as an expert - there's always someone who knows a lot more - I'm not too shabby. In comparison, despite my grounding in literature as an academic study, I know practically nothing about French dramatist, Nicolas de Montreux's 1601 tragedy, Sophonisbe beyond the fact that it's about a Carthaginian woman who lived during the Second Punic War with Rome.

Now, imagine I had to write an essay about each of these plays. If you gave me any essay question on Macbeth I'd feel pretty confident that I'd have something interesting - although perhaps not original - to say. But faced with writing about Sophonisbe, even if I had a translated copy in front of me, would be tough. Why might this be? Although I'm pretty good at essay writing and know how a literature essay is supposed to sound, I'd struggle to write much worth reading about Sophonisbe because I don't know anything about it. I'd have to rely on guesswork, half-formed thoughts and trite stabs at close analysis. No doubt I'd do better than many other people who've never studied or taught literature, but I'm pretty sure that any literature undergraduate who'd actually read and seen the play would be able to outclass me. Basically, in literature - as in every other domain - specific knowledge trumps general ability. Now think about how poorly I'd be likely to do if I was assessed on organic chemistry, or tightrope walking.

Our ability to pay attention is limited to about four 'chunks'. These chunks can be very small - like the tiny smattering of Japanese vocabulary I possess - or pretty big like my knowledge of Macbeth. Experts 'hack' the limits of working memory by being able to draw on huge reserves of inter-related chunks of knowledge, allowing them to free up cognitive resources to enable them to think about the novel aspects of whatever they're thinking about. Think of it this way: a novice struggles to see the wood for the trees. If trying to navigate through a forest they'd head in and hope for the best but would quickly become confused and lost. An expert would take time to survey possible routes through the forest; they'd think about other occasions on which they'd undertaken similar journeys. They'd plan their path and, if they did get sidetracked, would have a range of strategies both for noticing the detour and for getting back on track. The novice's experience of walking through the forest would be completely different to the expert's.

So, how can we move from novice to expert? Broadly, I think there are two main hallmarks of expertise:

1. Automaticity of foundational procedures

2. Ability to see 'deep' structure within domains of expertise

We need to master various procedural knowledge to the point where we no longer have to think about it so that it doesn't take up space in working memory. These automatised procedures are often so well embedded that experts are not even aware of them. Although we might not actively think about these things, we most certainly think with them. This lack of insight into the source of expertise is sometimes called the curse of knowledge, and can lead us into neglecting the teaching of the vital nuts and bolts on which expertise depends. When you learn to drive, concentrating on your feet, hands, mirrors and the environment outside the car requires enormous cognitive resources: you have to pay attention to everything. When you've been driving for a few years, the basic operations for changing gear and and taking a right hand turn have been automatised. Your working memory is free to attend to road conditions and make predictions about what is likely to happen in the next few seconds. Likewise, when writing an essay, a novice will have to pay attention to such minutiae as punctuation, capital letters, sentence structure and academic tone. With practice, these things can be automatised allowing much greater availability of working memory to think about the content of the essay. This is equally true of any domain of expertise: the less attention we have to give to the basics, the more we can think about what matters.

The second area - the ability to see 'deep' structures - comes with the experience of thinking about domain-specific knowledge. The more we know and the more practice we have at identifying and solving problems within in a domain, the more likely we are to see through the superficial trappings of a problem to the underlying structures beneath. When we become aware of these structures we become increasingly able to transfer our ideas between contexts. The more I know about the domain of literature, the easier I find it to see connections between different texts. For instance, when I first watched Reservoir Dogs, with all its all long monologues and blood-thirsty revenge, and especially the set-piece stand-off in the final scene where everyone shoots everyone else, my immediate thought was, Oh, it's a Senecan tragedy! How was I able to see past all the silly names and ear slicing to see this underlying structure? Well, I took Classical Studies at A level and had read a couple of the Roman dramatist, Seneca's plays, then, as part of my English literature degree I'd been shown Seneca's influence on Hamlet, as well as writing an essay comparing Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus. You could say I understood some essential dramatic principle but that would add an unnecessary layer of obfuscation - I simply knew more than lots of other people who saw the film and arrived at very different conclusions.

All this is to make the point that expertise, changes how we think. Here are a few of the essential differences:

Little relevant background knowledge

Lots of relevant background knowledge

Relies on working memory

Relies on long-memory

Lacks effective mental representations of successful performance

Has a clear mental representation of successful performance within a domain

Has not automatised necessary procedural knowledge

Necessary procedural knowledge has been automatised.

Only has explicit knowledge

Possesses huge reserves of tacit knowledge

Problem solving requires following clear steps

Problem solving is intuitive

Sees superficial details

Sees underlying structures

Learns little when exposed to new information

Learns a lot when exposed to information about which they are already knowledgeable

Learns best through explicit instruction and worked examples

Learns best through discovery approaches

Is more likely to experience cognitive overload as attention is swamped by new information

Is unlikely to experience cognitive overload as attention is buttressed by memorised 'chunks' of knowledge

Struggles to transfer principles to new contents

Is able to transfer principles between related domains

These strongly suggests that the continuum from novice to expert is what we most need to understand when designing instructional sequences for students. While our aim will be for them to become increasingly expert, we need to acknowledge that they will be novices for the greater part of their time in school.

This graphic (adapted from something Greg Ashman came up with back in his Harry Webb incarnation) is a neat shorthand of some of the points above:

As a way forward, we might do well to implement the strategies Hattie & Donoghue suggest for surface acquisition with novices, and then, as students become increasingly expert, we might think about cautiously moving to the 'deep' strategies. I suggest that the 'transfer' strategies be reserved for the very end of an extended teaching sequence.

And for those of you who like your models to be a little more complex, the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition may be more to your taste. The Dreyfus brothers proposed that expertise develops in five stages: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert. I'm not sure we need all these categories, but if you like them then I can't see as they do any harm.

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Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson One of the best understood principles of cognitive psychology is that novices learn and think differently to experts. These labels are domain-specific, not person-specific; I can be an expert at particle physics whilst still being a novice at evolutionary biology. Or skateboarding.

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In writing about vocabulary learning in the most recent issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Dictionary of Cultural Literacy author E.D. Hirsch assembles statistics about vocabulary learning which are always worth revisiting.

Vocabulary doesn't just help children do well on verbal exams. Studies have solidly established the correlation between vocabulary and real-world ability. Many of these studies examine the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), which the military devised in 1950 as an entrance requirement and a job-allocating device. The exam consists of two verbal sections (on vocabulary size and paragraph comprehension) and two math sections. The military has determined that the test predicts real-world job performance most accurately when you double the verbal score and add it to the math score. Once you perform that adjustment, according to a 1999 study by Christopher Winship and Sanders Korenman, a gain of one standard deviation on the AFQT raises one's annual income by nearly $10,000 (in 2012 dollars). Other studies show that much of the disparity in the black-white wage gap disappears when you take AFQT scores-again, weighted toward the verbal side-into account.

Such correlations between vocabulary size and life chances are as firm as any correlations in educational research. Of course, vocabulary isn't perfectly correlated with knowledge. People with similar vocabulary sizes may vary significantly in their talent and in the depth of their understanding. Nonetheless, there's no better index to accumulated knowledge and general competence than the size of a person's vocabulary. Simply put: knowing more words makes you smarter. And between 1962 and the present, a big segment of the American population began knowing fewer words, getting less smart, and becoming demonstrably less able to earn a high income.

Hirsch goes on to explain why vocabulary knowledge so closely correlates with problem-solving success.

Why should vocabulary size be related to achieved intelligence and real-world competence? Though the intricate details of cognitive abilities are under constant study and refinement, it's possible to give a rough answer. The space where we solve our problems is called "working memory." For everyone, even geniuses, it's a small space that can hold only a few items in suspension for only a few seconds. If one doesn't make the right connections within that space, one has to start over again. Hence, one method for coping and problem solving is to reduce the number of items that one has to make sense of at any moment. The psychologist George A. Miller called that process "chunking." Telephone numbers and Social Security numbers are good examples. The number (212) 374-5278, written in three chunks, is a lot easier to cope with than 2123745278.

Words are fantastically effective chunking devices. Suppose you put a single item into your working memory-say, "Pasteur." So long as you hold in your long-term memory a lot of associations with that name, you don't need to dredge them up and try to cram them into your working memory. The name serves as a brief proxy for whatever aspects will turn out to be needed to cope with your problem. The more readily available such proxies are for you, the better you will be at dealing with various problems. Extend this example to whole spheres of knowledge and experience, and you'll realize that a large vocabulary is a powerful coping device that enhances one's general cognitive ability.

What do you think? Does learning vocabulary make you think and speak more clearly and efficiently? If you're a teacher, do you see how students with larger vocabularies are more likely to "get it" in your classroom?

Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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"Knowing More Words Makes You Smarter." (And Richer.)

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In writing about vocabulary learning in the most recent issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Dictionary of Cultural Literacy author E.D. Hirsch assembles statistics about vocabulary learning which are always worth revisiting. Vocabulary doesn't just help children do well on verbal exams. Studies have solidly established the correlation between vocabulary and real-world ability.