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There's no such thing as 'best practice'

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 24 April 2014

Frank Coffield
For over 30 years a central plank in the reform programme for education of all governments has been the strategy of identifying and disseminating ‘best practice’. There’s only one thing wrong with this approach: there’s no such thing, but the FE and Skills sector is saturated with the term.
I first began to doubt the strategy when watching with student teachers a video of an ‘outstanding’ teacher working with a small group of well motivated and impeccably behaved pupils in a sun-lit classroom. Were the students inspired by the ‘best practice’ of Miss Newly Qualified Teacher of the Year? On the contrary, they either pointed out that they were teaching not 12 middle-class but 32 working-class students from a sink estate, some of whom were refugees with next to no English. Or they worried that they would never be able to match the smooth, practised performance of the more experienced teacher.
In other words, the two contexts were so different that little learning was transferred or the expertise of the “outstanding” teacher was so far above their current level of performance that they felt intimidated. My attempt to spread ‘best practice’ was more like a con-trick played by the unimaginative on the unsuspecting, particularly because the students were left to work out for themselves how to transfer the ‘best practice’ of the video to their own classrooms.
Further reflection led me to the central weakness with the strategy: it builds up psychological resistance in those at the receiving end, because they are being told implicitly that their practice is poor or inadequate. If their practice was thought good or outstanding, why are they being expected to adopt someone else’s ‘best practice’? Almost certainly they think their practice is pretty effective; that’s why they are using it.
Besides, there are questions that need to be asked of all those pushing ‘best practice’. Who says it is? On what grounds? Based on what criteria? Would another observer looking at the same teaching episode agree that it was the best? Is this ‘best practice’ equally effective with all age groups and all subject areas? What are the distinctions between ‘good’, ‘best’ and ‘excellent’ practice, terms which are used interchangeably? These questions are not answered; we‘re expected to take ‘best practice’ on authority, without evidence. There are no sure-fire, student-proof recipes for the complex, ambiguous and varied problems in teaching.
Luckily, there is a well tested alternative – JPD – where tutors jointly (J) share their practice (P) in order to develop (D) it. In an atmosphere of mutual trust and joint exploration, they explain to each other their successes and struggles in teaching their subject. They then move on to observing and evaluating each other’s classroom practices in a supportive atmosphere which encourages the creativity of both partners.
JPD restores trust in the professional judgement of teachers because it does not undercut their current practice, as happens with the strategy of ‘best practice’, but rather it seeks to enhance it by opening it up to discussion with supportive colleagues. Both partners in the exchange play the roles of observer and observed, of being the originator and receiver of practical advice; and both roles are accorded equal status. This equality in the relationships between tutors in JPD goes a long way to explain why it is proving to be far more effective than ‘best practice’.
This is one of the main themes that I explore in my new book – Beyond Bulimic Learning: Improving teaching in FE – which is published this month by the Institute of Education Press. The rest of the book is devoted to showing how some FE and sixth form colleges are responding to Ofsted making teaching and learning the number one priority by introducing what the research claims are the most effective interventions, while dropping the least effective.
I shall explore here in a little detail two examples. First, I show how to harness the potential power of feedback; I say ‘potential’ because too often feedback has negative effects and some types of feedback are more powerful than others. Many students are dissatisfied with the quality of the feedback they receive – eg what is meant by “Be more analytic”? Tutors too are frustrated by students who prefer to receive praise rather than being challenged to think more deeply. The research emphatically suggests that tutors use the strong definition of feedback, namely, if it doesn’t change students’ behaviour or thinking, it isn’t feedback.
Another chapter shows how Socratic questioning can change the culture of learning in classrooms and workshops. It’s a means of challenging students’ thinking in a non-threatening way; and it treats challenges from students as constructive contributions to dialogue.
Other chapters show how social media can motivate students; combine psychological and economic factors to explain students’ motivation; and they assess the impact of ‘flipped’ learning, peer teaching and peer assessment.
The final chapter addresses the question: “can we transform classrooms and colleges without first transforming the role of the state?” My answer is that we can improve the quality of teaching and learning and make our colleges more like learning communities even within the current constraints of government policy and declining resources.
 

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6 Responses to “There's no such thing as 'best practice'”

  • 1
    John Quicke wrote on 25 April 2014:

    Joint Practice Development is fine as long as it means what it says on the tin, and not the exact opposite! As a school governor, I’ve seen a wide variety of practices under this heading- some are really about imposing senior management diktats ( nothing ‘joint’ about them), others seem to reflect genuine collaboration between teachers, usually members of the same department. However, I don’t see why you can’t think of one teacher’s pedagogical practice being, if not ‘best’, at least better than another’s in relation to the realisation of specific curricular aims. Of course, there are many factors contributing to pupil achievement, contexts differ and most decisions in education are judgement calls, but most teachers themselves recognise their own practice can always be improved and teaching goals they are struggling with may have already been achieved by a colleague teaching in a similar situation. And so whilst JPD is ideally a negotiative, two way traffic model it is often the case there is more traffic going one way than the other!

  • 2
    teachingbattleground wrote on 26 April 2014:

    Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.

  • 3
    How England’s emetic testing regime is causing new academic diseases | IOE London blog wrote on 6 May 2014:

    […] the research literature for (and tried out in practice) the most effective interventions; and I discuss the results. Even within the tightening parameters set by government, we can still work at transforming our […]

  • 4
    There’s no such thing as ‘best practice’ | The BB2 Collaborative wrote on 6 May 2014:

    […] There's no such thing as 'best practice'. […]

  • 5
    Tudor Morgan wrote on 1 October 2015:

    In response to John Quickie, April 14, yes I have just seen this, one persons best practice is anothers nightmare. Who decides what is best practice. From experience and again as a School Governer, best practice seems to be whatever the new fad is. It usually involves more paperwork, more training, more discussion groups, another non productive management post and less time actually imparting knowledge and undestanding which is what I thought teaching was about. Teachers talking and discussing their work meathods and ideas with collegues and with out preassure from above or specified criteria to meet must be the way forward. My experience of so called best practice is of a group with a grade one teacher following all the ‘best practice’ meathods having a 38% pass rate while another group on the same course with the same initial assessments but with a grade 3 teacher had a 90% pass rate for the group. I know as a parent which one I would prefer to be looking after my child.

  • 6
    Dr Andrew Boocock wrote on 21 November 2015:

    Best practice is meaningless. Best practice for whom and for what? Reflective practice linked to research on teaching and learning is the way to improve teaching and learning, and a supportive rather than a punitive education culture. From a critical theory perspective best practice may be viewed as a regime of truth, a social construction or as a myth created by reductionist positivist research (steeped in neo liberal values and individualised notions of teaching rather than learning cultures). The result of this is observation of teaching and learning which is stressful for teachers, judgemental rather than developmental, and ineffective