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Writer's pictureChris Eyre

'But I won't do that...' (3 things I don't do!)


The late Mr Loaf famously said he would do anything for love but not that, I was never totally sure what ‘that’ was. My new freelance existence has some similarities (really stretching the metaphor now..), I am happy to do most things that I am asked but occasionally I find myself saying ‘I can’t or won’t do that’.

So here are 3 things that I won’t do because either I don’t think they are possible or I don’t think they are helpful. They are things that we are often asked to do by students and in turn they are things that are then asked by teachers.


Can you send me a lesson...?

This request commonly made by absent students, and on occasions by stressed teachers teaching a new topic is problematic. Yes, I can send a powerpoint, the resource sheets and can let you know what activities we did. But this is not the lesson. I can't send a lesson as I don't know your lesson length, which order your students have done things in, the range of abilities, the things students didn't understand last time. Then there will be that interesting discussion point that Tom raised which those who were there wrote down. As a teacher, it is tempting to try to break learning down into neat lesson sized boxes (I’ve often done it!) but real teaching and learning is often messy. Groups have different dynamics and the lesson-by-lesson scheme that broadly worked last year doesn't work this year - this cohort can't hack the pace. There are the smaller everyday issues. Jill was absent last lesson, Wasim did not finish an activity last time and got confused. Even the idea that the lesson starts with a brief recap quiz may throw open a can or worms: you find you have to spend 30 minutes more going back over Aquinas' argument, so you are only halfway through 'the lesson' on Hume when the bell goes. The danger (at least in my teaching) of lesson by lesson thinking is that I am more prone to tick that piece of content off and move on after the lesson without double checking understanding.

 

Can you give me a model answer…?

This is again something that students press teachers for and perhaps leads teachers to feel that this is something they need to provide in order to fully prepare their students. Indeed some well-meaning websites or tutors may sometimes fill this gap. Here I would urge caution. The phrase ‘model answer’ might imply that this is THE way to answer the question. (the word model may carry the implication ‘copy this’) The model answer is in fact one possible answer to one specific question, it is very unlikely that the question you have a model answer for will be the exact same question that appears in the exam. It is also worth noting that RS and Philosophy questions are broad and open, there is never just one way to answer it.

Perhaps the problem isn’t model answers as such but how they are understood, or in fact not understood, by the reader. It may be very helpful to read ‘model’ answers and try to understand why this particular answer is a good approach to the question that it addresses, but it loses that value the moment students start to commit it to memory with a view to using the content to answer a slightly different question that may appear in the exam. So I tend not to give (or sell!) any model answers as the potential to mislead or offer false hope is too great

 

Can you tell me what grade this essay will get…?

The high achieving student wants to know if what they have written would get an A if written under timed conditions. Their anxious teacher might then offer the essay for online moderation. What grade is this? In my later teaching years I became very reluctant to put grades on individual student essays – doing one essay, particularly if done at home, is very different from a full longer exam, and in any case grade boundaries can move slightly each year. If students pressed me I might suggest a rough grade but I would launch into a long explanation of grade boundary variations and multiple caveats that would lead to them rolling their eyes.

Outside the examining community, it is not always realised that the process of marking and grading are different things. An examining team first have to agree how to apply the markscheme on each question (no two questions are exactly the same), then carry out the marking. Only when this is done are grade boundaries considered which involves looking at boundary scripts and a whole load of statistical considerations that I won’t bore you with. If a student does a full exam in timed conditions with no advance notice of questions and an experienced marker marks the paper with the grade boundaries next to them, perhaps they can suggest a grade, but the further we get from those conditions the harder it becomes to be confident about what grades an individual essay might receive. It isn't that straightforward

 

The idea that things should be 'as simple as possible but not any simpler' is a quote attributed to Einstein who, without wishing to offend any 80s rock fans, was probably wiser than Mr Loaf. I suspect the desire in each of the questions above is a desire for simplicity. Those of you who know me, will know that I too like simplicity but there comes a point where we can oversimplify something that is inherently complex. Perhaps there are people who are more knowledgeable and wiser than myself who are able and willing to do some of the above things. But for me, because of the various caveats I would have to give in each case, 'No, I won’t do that.'

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