Hello, and welcome to
this, the third event
in our series of Cambridge Conversations,
which seeks to bring you,
our distinguished alumni
all over the world, the
latest Cambridge thinking
on COVID-19 and it's implications for us,
our families and communities.
My name is Madeleine Atkins,
I am the president of
Lucy Cavendish College.
And I'm delighted to be moderating
this particular event this afternoon.
I've spent all my
professional life in education
with a particular interest
in new technologies
and how they can affect,
enrich and really enhance
the learning of students and pupils.
I'd like to introduce
our two expert speakers,
Dr. James Biddulph, the headteacher
of the ground-breaking Cambridge
University Primary School,
which is up at Eddington,
or north-west Cambridge
as some of you may remember it.
And also Dr. Ems Lord,
who is a member of the
Faculty of Education
here at the university, is a
research fellow at Clare Hall,
but to the point of the
event this afternoon,
is director of NRICH.
Probably the largest program in the world
for mathematical outreach
education, and certainly the best.
Now, in addition to listening
to our expert speakers,
we very much hope that
we will hear from you.
At the bottom of your
screen, there should be
a rectangular box marked Q and
A, and if you click on that,
you should be able to type a question
that we will then see,
and be able to answer
or to put at least to our expert panel.
We have about 30 minutes of Q and A time.
I hope that we can do justice to
a large number of your questions,
but I'm sure you'll forgive us
if we don't have time for them all.
Just one reminder before we get going,
this event is being
recorded, and will be shown
through YouTube next week,
complete with the presentations.
So, what is schooling for?
COVID-19 has raised a number of questions
about schooling at home, its
benefits and disbenefits,
and also what it is that
the community of a school
can do and achieve in learning,
which perhaps home schooling cannot.
We know that COVID-19 has raised questions
about the purpose and design
of traditional office
workspaces, for example,
is this the moment we
should also be asking
about the physical nature and environment
and design of school?
So, time I think, to
listen to our two speakers.
First, Dr. James Biddulph,
as I said, the headteacher
of our fantastic primary school
in the University of Cambridge.
Just after qualifying, Dr. Biddulph
received the award of the most outstanding
young teacher of the year in London,
but he's also taught in primary
and secondary schools in Nepal and India.
He has been the inaugurating headteacher
of a Hindu-based primary school,
and he's, in his spare time, turned around
a couple of failing
schools in East London.
And we are delighted that
he is the headteacher
of our outstanding primary
school up at Eddington.
And then, Dr. Ems Lord.
She is the immediate past president
of the mathematical association,
and a member of the very prestigious
National Joint Mathematical Council.
As I said at the beginning,
she is the director of NRICH,
and both she and James,
were founding fellows
of the Chartered Institute for Teaching,
which is the professional body
for professional teachers in this country.
So, without further ado, I'd like to turn
to James for his presentation,
James, over to you.
- Thank you, Madeleine.
Good afternoon to you all.
I hope you are all well wherever you are.
As Madeleine said, I'm talking from
my office at school in Cambridge,
and it's very eerily quiet at the moment,
even though we never really shut,
but we have fewer children than normal.
So the question is very
important for us at the moment
and in my short
presentation, I'll touch upon
some of the thoughts gathered
through our experience,
but also through conversations with
educators in my team and children.
Next slide, you'll see
that I'm normally used
to reading stories to young children.
And as I said, a school without children
is an eerie place to be.
This whole period in
our collective history
has prompted many questions about
the purpose of education of life,
of death, of politics, of histories,
of inequalities and social justice.
And this brilliant book by Charles Mackesy
called "The Boy, The Mole,
The Fox and The Horse",
which our children love very much.
It's full of messages to invite us
to rethink, remember and unlearn,
so that we can see the world afresh again.
And we at UCPS, University
of Cambridge Primary School,
have often engaged in
dialogue about such questions,
and at this vital time,
to ask more questions.
Is it the time to do some unlearning,
changing what we thought
we knew about education,
learning to be different,
to think differently?
Maybe to explore new possibilities
that were unshackled by
the often restrictive,
narrow policy definitions of education.
So I wonder now, is
this disruptive pandemic
prompting us to reconsider,
not only what school is,
and what it's not, but
also what education is?
And when is education not
education fit for the time,
and for the people it serves?
It's required us at this moment
to be experimenters and
possibility thinkers.
If you look at the next
slide, the question,
when is a school, this is our school,
it's a beautiful design.
As a noun, if you think of
what is a school as a noun,
the first thought is
it's a physical space.
It becomes a place for learning.
Somewhere where children
go, where educators go,
to engage in teaching and learning.
It's a place where parents
put their trust in us,
teachers, teaching assistants,
school administrators,
to support us to create memorable
experiences for children.
So perhaps as a rudimentary response,
"When is a school not a school?"
A school is not a school when
the people who go there for this purpose
are no longer going there
as it is at the moment.
There seems a loss, increasing
feeling of disconnection,
despite the efforts educators are making
to provide learning opportunities at home.
If we consider it as a
verb, to be schooled,
or the notion of children's schooling,
the whole notion of
schooling seems to have
a limited view about the engagement
between educator and learner
as one about instruction,
or passing on information,
or delivery of a curriculum,
a more didactic conceptualization
of what happens in a school.
So the next, you'll see
a picture of our school.
This is what it normally looks
like for us, full of children.
We have about 500 children
here at the moment.
We engage in habits of
mind to helping children
become independent learners,
the ability to think,
and consider ideas by
developing oracy and dialogue.
And importantly to develop opportunities
to play and inquire
and imagine and create.
But what school looks
like is in the next slide.
Our teachers are in boxes on a screen
trying to create the same meaning.
A sense of community and challenge
and support that we can do
when the children are with us.
And at this time of lockdown,
it's left the parents
to navigate and translate
for us, for their children,
and this huge pressure and anxiety
and the sheer overwhelming
feeling of inadequacy has arisen.
And even teachers at home are saying
that it's a struggle to
teach their own children.
And they have a pedagogic knowledge
that many parents wouldn't have.
It raises questions about what parents
in wider society think about
what happens in school.
It's not just a transaction of knowledge,
it's something much more.
We don't know the answers yet,
but, you know, we're asking the questions.
You may have heard of the
Cambridge Primary Review
in the next slide.
The biggest piece of academic research
into primary education since the '60s.
And there are three recurring
concerns that they identify.
This notion of childhood being in crisis,
how do we understand childhood better?
Whether society and the wider world
is an anxiety and disempowerment,
and how do we empower that in schools?
And whether policy makers are
providing solutions or problems,
and this seems most relevant now.
In slide seven, we're living through
a monumental moment in history.
Then if you go to the next slide, please,
you know, in 1665,
social distancing orders
were made in Cambridge because
of the bubonic plague
killing 100,000 people.
Isaac Newton had to leave Cambridge at 24,
and forced to live in his childhood home.
But he said that freed from the limits
of the Cambridge curriculum,
Newton found that he
had the breathing space
to reflect and develop on the theories
that he then eventually
created in optics and calculus,
the laws of motion and gravity.
He described this as the most
productive time of his life.
So when is a school a school in COVID-19,
and a post COVID-19 world?
A school is a source,
a fountain of expertise
to facilitate exploration and learning.
And how in this moment, when homes
are now the space for that learning,
can parents be supported by teachers
to facilitate the learning as
well as doing their own work
and trying to manage their own lives?
It's an enormous task, but
I think we'll look back
and understand the rich
learning that we're having
because at home, they haven't
got the same structures
and routines and expectations or dynamics
that we have in school.
Nor do they have the pedagogic
knowledge and understanding.
So this global pandemic seems
to have forced change in school.
Such a dramatic shock
has left parents reeling,
as well as teachers
trying to do their best
if they have resources, and
unable to if they don't.
But there are inequalities
that are growing
and as a headteacher, I'm
increasingly concerned.
And of course we must remember
there are 100,000s of children
who don't even know what a school is,
let alone have a sense of
loss about not going there.
So like Newton, has COVID-19
provided the catalyst
to consider what a wholesome education is
for the most valuable source
in our world, our children,
for all our children, everywhere.
Is this our gravity moment?
I asked one of our children in our school,
his name is Shane, he's
an advocate speaker
and a visionary, he's only nine years old.
And he said, "We shouldn't ask school,
"'When is a school not a school',
"we should ask, 'When is a
school more than a school?'"
And then my last slide, more than a school
is the question that
we've taken from Shane.
This is what our future
thinking looks like.
It's a school that is
a center of research,
a possibility thinking place.
It's a place for children to develop
their environmental
literacy, digital literacies,
and a notion of democratic literacies.
We think these are vital new knowledges,
sustainable for the future
in a post COVID-19 world.
And also, the next time children are faced
with a catastrophic moment in history,
children could be empowered to see
the environment and the health
of the planet differently,
to be agents of change
through digital literacies,
and to develop new technologies.
And also to develop understanding
and the responsibility,
the democracy that they can be part of
and have their voice heard.
So a future COVID-19 world
needs us all to explore
what is more than a school?
But for now, parents
can help their children
make sense of this moment
through stories and discussions.
They can help their children
feel a sense of connected
with a global community, that
we're all struggling together,
and we can all find ways to solve
the challenges that we come across.
That learning at home is
different from learning in school,
and it can't be the
same, though we're trying
to make, kind of a merged version.
I think parents can
stop judging themselves
or one another, and they
can use social media
for sharing positive stories,
and acknowledge the struggles,
because no one really has
an answer at this time.
And I think they can be comfortable
that they're not replicating school,
but instead they can help their children
explore, play and inquire,
and most importantly,
to speak and question and discuss,
to develop a love of
reading, to be independent.
They can listen to Maya Angelou,
who says do your best
until you know better,
and when you know better,
make that your new best.
And yet in all this, there
remains a really real challenge
that there are vulnerable people
and people from disadvantaged backgrounds,
who the inequalities and gaps will widen
as schools are shut down.
And that, it plays on my
mind as a headteacher,
and it does for my team.
But there really has been a shift for us,
an unlearning in many cases about
how we can educate
children in this new world,
and I think there is a
reimagining taking place,
a hopeful opportunity
making, about the meaning
of relationships in education,
the centrality of community
in learning and teaching,
and a reemphasis on the
interconnectivity of humans.
So that's kinda my reflection
on "When is a school not a school?"
I'll hand you over to Ems.
- Thank you, James.
So, as James was saying, one
thing that is really important
that the school are focusing on,
is developing habits of
minds for young learners.
And that's very much what
we're about at NRICH.
So I'd like to explain a little bit
about what university's
NRICH program is doing,
to support both teachers
and families at this time.
In fact, joining us this week, it's been a
very hectic week for NRICH
working with teachers.
We announced a few days
ago, that we were going
to do our very first teacher webinars,
because we can't go in to work
with teachers face-to-face in schools,
we thought we'd have a go online.
We advertised them, and within 10 minutes,
we were over-subscribed.
So it's been a fantastic week
working with those teachers,
people we'd normal see
in their classrooms,
but we're reaching out and
working in different ways.
Just to show how busy we are right now,
soon as we realized the school
closures were inevitable,
we set up a special area to
NRICH called Maths at Home.
It's advertised on our homepage
and it does include what
it says in the title.
It's repurposing NRICH resources families.
And the graph that you can see there
shows the number of people visiting NRICH
this time last year, and then this year.
Now as Madeleine kindly said, NRICH
are world leaders in
maths education support.
And this time last year, on
the third Monday in March,
over 130,000 people were
looking at our resources,
which is fantastic, that is a huge figure.
Forward wind a year, to the
first day of the lockdowns here,
and that figure doubled.
Overnight, we welcomed a
quarter of a million people
to our resources, teachers and parents.
So our decision to go with Maths at Home,
and organize our resources seemed
to be a really good decision.
And that audience is worldwide,
so wherever you're
watching this broadcast,
there'll be people near you
accessing NRICH resources.
Maybe even in your own household.
We have huge audiences in Kenya,
Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India.
NRICH is a worldwide phenomenon.
So we talked about habits of mind,
and James has mentioned those as well,
so what does it look like?
So if I show you this diagram,
which has a rope model
on it on our next slide,
there are five strands to the rope,
because a rope with just single strands,
has no strength in it at all.
And it's the same if
the children only have
one aspect of their mathematical skills,
then they struggle later
on with problem solving.
So our rope model
highlights the five areas
the habits we want to develop.
So we want them to know their facts,
we also want them to understand
their work, two key aspects.
But to become mathematicians, to develop
habits which are
transferable to other areas
of the curriculum in their own lives,
we want them to be able to
explain their ideas to others.
We also want them to be flexible.
When they hit a problem,
sometimes try, try and try again
can be a great way to approach a problem,
but if you haven't quite got
the right strategy to begin with,
then that can become very frustrating.
So we encourage the children to think
about different strategies
and to work flexibly.
And then the fifth strand
that brings it all together,
I think is really important
for my subject of maths,
it's to enjoy what they're doing,
and to be enjoying it so much they
want to keep coming back to it.
So that's what we look
for with NRICH resources.
We aim to design resources that
every child can get started on,
and that will stretch them,
so we call it a low threshold
so they can get started,
then a high ceiling,
to extend their learning.
And that's what we've been
doing with Maths at Home.
And to recognize some of the challenges
that families are facing
accessing resources,
not everybody has a
tablet or can go online.
We've organized them for
each year group in four ways.
The first way, is we've
identified resources
that can be done with pencil and paper.
So many schools are printing those off
and sending them home,
and some families are using the time
that they've got on their
laptops and computers
to prepare them for later in the day,
because as James was saying,
school life, home life,
they're very different,
and we need to be able to work flexibly.
So the resources we
provide need to be able
to be used at whatever
time of day suits families.
So there's pencil and paper resources.
We also have an area for each age group
called Homemade Maths.
And that's taking ideas and activities
that we would normally
do in the classroom,
but identifying ways
they could do it at home
with the resources that are to hand.
So hopefully that makes
it very family friendly.
We've put some extended tasks in there.
Families are telling us that they're
dipping in and out of
teaching during the day,
so what we've done, is
we've put activities
that children can get started on,
come back to later and maybe
work on over several days.
Again, family friendly approach.
And then there's the our inter-activities,
which NRICH is really well known for,
and some recent research we did
actually showed they have a significant
impact on family engagement.
So with our inter-activities,
let's have a look at one of them.
So the next slide shows a screenshot
of I think my favorite activity on NRICH,
it's called Got It.
It's a game I used to play as a child,
and many of you probably know it well.
It's a target game.
Start at zero, take it in
turns to add a small number,
and then the winner is the one
who adds the number to get to 23.
It's low threshold.
Most children can get started on it.
But the high ceiling is thinking
about a strategy to win,
and then when they've worked that out,
what the children can then do,
is go on the settings tab,
and they can start thinking,
"I wonder what'd happen if I
went second instead of first.
"I wonder what would happen if
I changed the target number,
"and I wonder what would happen if I
"changed the totals that
are being added on."
So we're developing those habits
of being curious, of being creative.
Those transferable skills that
the children can use
across the curriculum.
And Got It is a lovely example
of an activity you can
do on pencil and paper,
that the children can do
using inter-activities.
And our researches show
that this is an activity,
just like many of the others on NRICH,
where the children keep coming back to it.
I've been told by some
of the we've spoken to
that they love teaching it to
older brothers and sisters,
because they can beat them at it
once they've figured out the strategy.
They love teaching it to older
members of their families too.
One child told me he taught it to his mom,
and then he went and
taught it to his grandad.
So the children are
engaging with mathematics
for an extended period of time,
and that's really important,
to nurture these habits or skills
that we value at NRICH, and are valued
by the University Primary School as well.
So, what we're doing at NRICH then?
We've got the Maths at Home website,
we're looking to continue that website
during the school term,
over the school holidays,
and we realize that things will
be very different next term,
and we'll be supporting that as well.
And we're also supporting the
BBC's Bitesize initiative,
so that children, wherever they are,
can access a daily maths lesson.
And we're working closely to
identify activities on NRICH
that the BBC can use in
that initiative as well.
So, I suppose the best thing to summarize,
is just to say it's a very
exciting time to be at NRICH,
and I'm very proud to be
the director of a project
that is making such a difference
to so many children's lives.
They may not be able to take
their exams at the moment,
but what they can do, is
learn those habits of mind,
those transferable skills,
that will hopefully put them
in a very strong position when
they can go back to school
and continue their normal lives.
Thank you, Madeleine, over to you.
- So thank you both very much indeed
for those presentations.
Some really thought provoking insights
and some really useful
and practical suggestions
as to how to improve the homeschooling,
particularly around mathematics.
Now we've been getting in a series
of questions from all over the world,
and I'm going to start putting
those questions to our two panelists.
Garth, who is an alumnus of Jesus,
and Sam, a fellow Girtonian,
both asking about educational inequalities
that have widened, potentially,
during this period,
and what we do to combat that.
Whether it is in terms of a
school taking back pupils,
or indeed universities
seeking to make good
any deficit over these last few months.
I wonder whether, James, you'd
like to start us off on that.
- Well, because safety is the most
important consideration at the moment,
we're considering how the most
vulnerable children in our school,
the most disadvantaged,
will be returning to school,
and how looking at the
bespoke interventions
that are research informed, so we know
that they would work, and could,
through identification of what the need is
for those individual children,
to be providing coaching and tuition
that would happen as
part of the school day,
but also after the school day.
So I think there is definitely
a requirement for additional support.
Obviously there are funding
implications in that,
and we would be challenging government,
to say that they need to support schools
in being able to do those things.
But for us really, as a school
that aspires to be research informed,
is to go to the university, and find out
from my colleagues, the academics,
and from, you know, Ems Lord and others,
how do we best support the
most vulnerable children
because of what we know works?
Because often in schools,
we just try our best,
and we don't always know
if it's the right strategy
for the needs of those individuals.
To say that they all need the same thing,
is also a kind of
tokenistic and simple way
of trying to understand the inequalities
that are definitely arising
during this period of time.
Ems, I don't know if you...
- Ems, do you have a view?
- I think one project we've
done with NRICH recently
has been working with hospital schools.
And there's an interesting parallel here,
because at the moment, we've
got all the children off,
but as James knows and I
found when I've been teaching,
there's always one or two
children in your class
who are missing extended
period of education.
It could be due to
family reasons, illness,
and we've been working very
closely with the hospitals
to think what it is we can
do to support those children
firstly with gaps in their education,
but also, they're missing
out on those opportunities
to collaborate with others and
learn those personal skills.
So one thing that we've looked at
is developing collaborative
learning skills.
I know the University Primary School's
been looking at this as well,
so when they're teaching,
it's very much thinking about the dialogue
and the communication.
So we encourage the children
to do tasks that are collaborative.
We will encourage those skills
whilst also covering the curriculum.
Now we've done that as a pilot project,
and we've done that with hospital schools.
One thing that we're
looking at going forward,
is thinking, how can that work,
and how can that research then inform
supporting children going
back from working at home,
where they're by and large by themselves,
to going back into school,
and working again with others?
So I think what we've learnt
for the hospital schools,
will be very good going back
into schools when everyone returns.
But hopefully there's
also a project there,
to continue helping those children
who are ill or otherwise unwell
and unable to go to school now.
So maybe that'll be one of the
benefits to come out of this,
that we'll have a national bank
of resources to support those children.
- That's a really interesting crossover
from a very particular situation
to something that may have
much wider implications.
And along that line, we're
getting a number of questions in
from our alumni, including from Wei Xin
who is an alum from Jesus,
and is in Singapore at the moment,
and putting his question from Singapore.
And that's really about the use
of technologies in learning now,
and whether we have a different view
of that as a result of COVID-19,
and particularly about blended learning.
Is this a transition we
are on the cusp of making?
Are we ready for it as teachers,
are we ready for it as
parents and educators?
Ems, would you like to
start us off on that one?
- I think, Wei Xin, by the response
to our webinars this week,
the teachers and the schools
are very ready for it,
and they've made huge efforts
to make sure the lessons continue.
What we have a huge issue with,
is insuring that everybody
at home has access
to the resources they need
to do the online lessons.
So an example is, I know a local school
was very proactive, and
got in touch with families
before the closures, and said, "Okay,
"what have you got,
have you got broadband,
"do you have a laptop?"
And they found out the
numbers who have those.
But then of course, now we realize
there may be more than
one child in the family,
and if there is a laptop, there
could be two or three adults
trying to use them to work from home,
and the children trying to use them.
And there's issues with the bandwidth,
so I think looking at that
aspect is another way forward
to support children
and make sure everybody
has access to high quality education.
- Yeah, I agree.
- To you.
- I agree, Ems, one of our parents
said they have three
children, they have an iPhone
and a laptop that they have to work on.
So the children are trying
to work on the iPhone
with the things we're doing.
But in terms of, "Is this a way forward?"
I think there is a transition
period of blended learning
where, you know, our intention
as we move into the next term,
is to have children returning to school,
but maybe as a part time
and having blended digital
resources for them to do at home.
But what is consistent
with the messages coming from
parents and from my team,
is that this sense of disconnection
and lack of relationship
and community making,
is causing more hurt and loss,
than whether they've
done an English lesson
or a maths lesson on a certain day.
And, you know, parents are kind of
yearning for that to come back,
and I know the children are as well.
- So while we're on that, to that point,
we've got a question here, forgive me,
I just need to flick the screen on this,
about how can we measure those
more intangible aspects
of in-person interaction
in the classroom, outside the classroom,
but still within the school setting?
Which instinctively, many people feel
are missing in the home
schooling environment,
but are important to the development
of the pupil or student.
Do we have any research on that?
Do we have any ways of measuring that?
And it's Tess who asked this question.
She's an alumnus from Clare.
James.
- In our school, we have five
values that guide our work
of empathy, respect, trust,
courage and gratitude.
And there's the old adage
that you test what you value,
you assess what you most value,
so we're constantly exploring,
how do we value somebody's
empathy skills, or their
ability to be courageous?
It's very challenging, I think,
because they are sometimes not as tangible
as whether they've got the
answers right or wrong,
or they can write a narrative.
So, you know, we're
looking at kind of research
from the Jubilee Centre in
Birmingham, for example.
And working, who look
at character education
and value and kind of
moral, ethical education
to see whether our frameworks do indeed
assess those kinds of things.
But, you know, in terms of our own team,
we created a people strategy
that looks at how the adults
are being an examples and
models of those values,
so that children can learn from that.
But how we assess it is complex,
because you can't do a test above it
whether you're courageous or not.
- (laughs) Certainly not
normally within the regulations
of a national government,
probably not, no.
Ems, do you have any view on that?
- It's been an area that
we've been actively exploring,
so I was really pleased that
Tess asked this question.
Yep, we've encouraged children
to be creative, to be curious,
but how do you go about managing that?
How do you know they're improving,
and what does it look like?
So we've done some projects where
we've worked with the schools on this
and actually explored,
if you're being curious,
what needs to be happening first?
So getting the children engaged,
asking questions, talking
about what they noticed.
We've worked with schools on this,
and we've developed some curiosity scales,
we've looked at resilience,
because we can say to them,
"Try, try, try again",
but actually getting them
to understand the problem
in the first place,
have a first attempt, know
what to do when they get stuck.
We've developed scales
working with schools,
and children are sticking
them in their books,
teachers have been
using them with classes.
So the children can see
where they're up to,
how resilient they're being,
and identify next steps.
And with collaborative learning,
we've also run some focus groups,
where we've been asking the
children after one of the tasks,
"How do you think you got on with that?"
And I'm sure James will know,
there will be some children
who would put their hands up straight away
and say they're five out of
five at collaborative learning,
and as a teacher you might think,
"Hmm, they might have one or
two more things to learn yet".
And there's others who will say,
"I think I'd give myself a
three or a four out of five",
and they'll explain why.
Maybe they didn't listen to their friend,
or they could have tried another
approach that someone said.
So we try to get the children involved
in reflecting on their learning,
and by developing some scales,
that helps the children identify
their next steps as well,
and also recognize the
progress that they're making,
'cause I think that's
very important as well,
just to stop and think about
how well they're doing.
And this week with the teacher webinars,
the rope model I showed
during the presentation,
the team have developed
our own version of it,
a child-friendly one, that
children can start to fill in
and think how resilient they've been,
how many times they're working flexibly.
So getting the children involved
as much as possible with that,
I think, is really important.
- And Madeleine--
- Yes, sorry, we have
a follow-up question,
which I think is very pertinent
to that last point from Ems,
which is on this
collaboration and dialogue
between pupils or students.
Have either of you seen really
outstanding and compelling examples
of how to do that online and remotely?
Or is this really only possible
in the in-person situation
in the classroom?
This is from Lucy, an
alumna from Christ's.
- So to answer Lucy, our university
and the Faculty of Education,
has contributed groundbreaking research.
Neil Mercer, Professor Neil Mercer's work,
Rupert Wegerif's work,
and others, Louis Major,
they've contributed a huge
Routledge international guide
about oracy and dialogue,
and how digital literacies
and digital oracy and
dialogue can be developed.
So I'd really recommend you
to search for, you know,
Mercer and Wegerif and Major's
work at this university.
So there is lots out there.
What we're trying to do in our school,
is how do we translate
that robust research
into the practicalities
of a primary school.
And a bit like Newton,
again, having this space
is giving us, although
we're doing online learning,
and all the other things
that are trying to engage
with young people in their
living rooms and homes.
We're trying to really develop our
kind of understanding of that
kind of evidence and research.
- So thank you for those answers.
Now we've been looking at some really
positive aspects potentially
of online learning,
remote collaboration and so on.
But we've got a question here from Becky
who is a graduate from
Homerton here in the UK.
Looking at the other side of the coin,
what do we do in the home with
our children, whatever age,
who are not engaging
with the remote learning
or the online learning that is being set,
and how do we get them motivated
to complete these tasks
without this turning into
something that's very negative
and sets up a, no doubt, a very bad vibe
in the family relationships?
Ems, you're excellent
at motivating children
to learn mathematics, which is probably
one of the hardest of all the tasks.
Perhaps you'd like to
go first on this one.
- Well I think at NRICH,
we're incredibly lucky
with the team of educators
who work on the project.
And what they've done, is
they've started recording videos,
just short two or three minute
video clips of some of our activities,
so that parents, carers, grandparents
can watch those videos, see
how to do the activities,
and then sit down with youngsters at home
and enjoy them together.
So it doesn't even have to be
introduced as a maths activity.
In fact it's fair to say, a lot of people
can look at an NRICH
activity and initially
not even see where the maths is
because we designed
very engaging activities
which use the mathematical skills,
but it might not be apparent.
So we've got a lovely
example called Frogs.
And you can imagine frogs on
lily pads facing each other,
and you're trying to get them
from one side to the other.
It's a lovely problem solving activity.
It can be set up as a family game,
and the video that we've
put online for parents
models different approaches,
how to go about it,
what to look for, and there's
some guidance notes as well.
So sometimes, I mean I love my subject,
but sometimes mentioning
maths straight off
might not be the way in.
But having an engaging game,
and understanding how to
bring the mathematics out,
maybe that would be a nice way
forward to consider as well.
- It reminds me, Ems, of a story
that somebody told me yesterday, actually
that their neighbor has
a six year old child,
and she's very independent,
and she says things like,
I'm gonna go upstairs now.
And the parents say, "How many steps
"do you think that will take,
how many jumps would it take?
"You have a guess, go and work it out,
"and then come back and tell us."
So they are constantly
asking very small questions
that are building a sense of
spatial awareness and understanding.
But one of the things I was gonna add is,
my own PhD research was about
looking at learning in the family home.
And what I found and others found,
like Mandy Swann from
the Faculty of Education,
is that we don't really know
what it looks like at home,
because there's no real
definition of home,
because they're all so different.
And so the version I came up with,
diverse creativities in the home,
indicated that as teachers and educators,
we need to help children
bring their home into school,
rather than always trying
to put school into the home.
So we all know that in primary education,
homework, there's not huge evidence
that says it raises standards.
It actually, Sunday nights is where
the tension in the family arises,
because everyone has to do
their homework before Monday.
And so this is like an extended
version of Sunday nights,
and it's very difficult.
So I learnt so much more from
visiting children's homes
and sitting with them
and seeing what they did.
It was much richer what they were doing
with LEGO and woodwork,
than I would ever imagine
a worksheet from school
would ever provide.
- So thank you for that--
- So my answer would be,
find out what goes on in children's homes
and help bring it into school
eventually when we can.
- (laughs) That sounds really exciting.
Now we've spoken quite a bit so far
about parents and the
homeschooling environment.
But we have a question
here also from Helen,
who's a graduate from Clare College,
and she's put this
question to us in the USA.
And that is, "How can
teachers be better supported
"to work with primary students
"in these online learning situations?"
Both of you founding fellows of
the Chartered College of Teaching,
I wonder what your response
is to that question.
Perhaps, Ems, would you like to go first?
- Again, it's an excellent question.
And NRICH, our main role has
always been supporting teachers.
So, from the point of
view of our activities,
we always provide teacher notes
to give an idea of how maybe to start
the activity and key questions,
and we collect solutions from students
which will be useful for modeling in class
or a starting point, or for
if the children get stuck.
But with moving to online, certainly
it's a very different approach is needed,
a lot more flexibility is needed.
I think the other at the moment
is when the schools go back,
it's not going to be easy for teachers
to go out and get extra support
and attend the normal PD.
So I think part of the responsibility
we have at NRICH supporting teachers,
is to think again about our support
and offering webinars,
offering newsletters
that are sent out electronically,
so the teachers can get
them in their homes.
Making sure that we have opportunities
for teachers to talk
to us and reaching out,
so using social media to see what it is
they're using, and how it's going.
I think it's very much that two-way
discussion with the teachers.
James, what do you think?
- You know, I think, I have been astounded
by the creativity and the imagination
of the teachers in my team.
But I know people like
Dame Alison Peacock,
who's the CEO of the
Chartered College of Teaching,
who has a much broader understanding
of colleagues around the
UK and further afield,
saying that this time, teachers
and teaching assistants
and everyone who works in schools
have really embraced opportunities
to find ways through for
every child using technology.
But I think what may have arisen
is that despite the kind of roll
your sleeves up and get on with it,
we haven't attended enough to providing
the right kind of professional
development in schools
for this kind of blended approach.
Because I think there could
be some really exciting things
that come forward out of this.
And I think, as Ems said, you know,
finding opportunities
for professional learning
that really kind of as foundations
to the creativity that
has arisen from teachers,
would be really beneficial.
- So how do we take the positive changes,
the positive creative developments
that we've seen in this period
and make sure that they
continue into the future?
We have a number of questions around that.
Are we gonna go back to the
narrow constraints of the curriculum,
which, James, you very eloquently said
you were trying to escape
from within your school,
or is there a way that we
can seize these improvements
and embed them, what do you think?
James.
- Sorry Madeleine, I missed
that last bit of your question.
- So, do you think, and
if so, how, should we take
these positive changes that we've seen,
this creative burst of
blended learning and so on?
Are we going to be able to
see some of those things
and embed them into school
and schooling into the future,
or are we going to revert
to the rather narrow
and standardized curriculum
that we had in the past?
- I mean I think we have to be bold
and take the initiative in a context
where governments are trying to work out
the best approach for the
countries that we all live in.
And, you know, there's critique
about all those decisions.
But in that space where governments
are trying to work out that.
You know, the people on the
ground, the professionals,
and that's why the Chartered
College of Teaching
is now here in the UK, is for us to say
we have a professional
capital as teachers,
we understand young people, we understand
how to engage young people,
and to motivate them,
and we need accountability, but we need
the right kind of accountability
that actually unleashes the possibilities
rather than an accountability
system which in the UK,
tends to oppress people to be creative.
And that's what, you know, I
think we have an opportunity
to be bold and state what is
important for us as a profession,
because we want, you know, we all want
the very best for children.
And it's unfortunate that headlines
say things like, "There's a
lost generation of children",
or, you know, "Take the
rest of the year off".
Because it implies that
teachers are sitting at home
in their hammocks waiting
for the government
to let us go back to school again.
You know, my school has never shut.
No schools I know have shut,
they've remained open for key workers.
So I think we need to
be bold and articulate.
We need to articulate
better why it's important
that we have professional knowledge,
we have professional capital.
We can seize this opportunity.
It's not easy though,
Madeleine, that's for sure.
- I think that's right.
Ems, what was your view on that?
- Well James is touching
on the assessment system,
and I think that's a very
good point to look at.
We have an assessment system that focuses
on one aspect of those five
strands I was talking about.
It focuses very heavily
on procedural knowledge,
but we know from the worldwide
global trends in education,
that what the children need
going forward to thrive
will be problem solving skills
and collaborative skills.
So maybe this is the
opportunity that we need
to go back and look at how
we're assessing the children
and are we assessing the
skills that they need?
So yes they need some facts, they need
that basic knowledge so they can apply it.
But how much are we actually considering
things like how well they
work with one another,
what their attitudes are,
how resilient they are,
and how well they collaborate,
because those are the skills
they're going to need.
Because the world is adapting and changing
so quickly right now, that
having some knowledge is good,
but having those habits of
mind, that'll make them thrive.
And if we have an assessment
system that values,
just as much as James, his team, NRICH,
as much as we value them, I think then,
we're in a really good
position to go forwards.
But I think it's the assessment system
that we need to look at.
- I agree, Ems, I mean,
you know in the UK,
we have a times table test
that happens in year four,
and Ems will know, the rich evidence
that maths anxiety actually
can cripple young people
from continuing their maths education.
When you have an assessment tool
that gives children 10
seconds or whatever it may be,
to answer a rapid fire
question and navigate
the digital iPad to be able
to answer that question,
it's not really helping us as teachers
assess whether children have
the times table knowledge,
which we can do that in many other ways,
and still be held to account and robust
and all those other things.
But the way governments often do it
is not attending to the research
that Ems will know fully about.
- So, I'd like to end with
a question from Carlos,
who is an alum from Churchill,
and sends us this question from Mexico.
So would you say, either
of you or both of you,
that the most important lessons
that we learn in school,
is not actually about skills and skilling,
but about how to be and
become as an individual?
- Well, I think I would agree
with Carlos in many ways.
I think schools, you
know, we teach knowledge
and we teach skills, but we
also teach, in our school,
how to be a compassionate citizen.
So how do we interact in a community
that can support one another, that can
challenge one another in, you know,
respectful, polite ways,
can disagree together.
And, you know, in a school that
we'll eventually have 600 children here,
in a school that's a big
community where there's
lots of conflict of ideas
and conflicts of opinion.
So I would agree, Ems, with Carlos
that schools, as Shane, the
child in my school says,
"What's more than a school?"
It's not just a place for, you know,
teaching English and maths,
which is vital and important,
it's also much more
complex and about being.
- Ems, would you agree with that,
or would you still think that there is
a very important role
for skills and skilling?
- I think I would agree with James.
When you're in school,
it's an opportunity to
build your strengths, but also
to address your weaknesses.
And that means it's very
much about the individual
because we all have different skills
and different areas to develop.
But once we've developed those,
and we've learnt to use
them well with others,
then we can make a really great
contribution to our society.
So I think the individual
is incredibly important,
and that comes back to
the assessment system.
Looking at how we consider
those and we value them
is very important, and we
don't want to lose that,
because at the moment,
individuals are coming out
so strongly with this
blended learning that we have
with the schools and the home, so Carlos
thank you very much for
such a fascinating question.
- And I'm afraid that that completes
the time that we have for questions.
I'd like to thank all of our alumni
for putting those questions through to us
and I apologize for those of you
we haven't had time actually to take
the questions into the panel discussion.
But thank you all very much indeed
for participating and engaging today.
I would like, once again,
to thank our two speakers,
and to invite you to
join us on June the 18th
for the fourth Cambridge Conversation,
which is at three p.m.
at British Summer Time.
And the topic for that will be COVID-19
and its impact on mental health.
In particularly the mental
health of young people.
One final point, if I may before I go,
and that's another thank you.
That's a thank you to
all of you, our alumni,
who have so generously donated
to the university's COVID-19 research fund
or indeed to the student hardship funds
either in the university
or in your colleges.
If I may say so as a head of house,
we are enormously grateful
for those donations,
and they are making a great difference
to the lives and indeed to
the sense of performance
and the sense of calm of our students.
So thank you very much indeed for that.
That completes today's
Cambridge Conversation
and it remains for me to wish you all
our very best here from Cambridge.
Keep safe and well until
this time next week.
Not only, of course yourselves,
but also your friends and families.
So that's goodbye.
(soft upbeat music)
