To many teachers, who have been put through the wringer of a punitive accountability system the word ‘consistency’ may well feel like a swearword. It has taken on negative connotations for many people. The term ‘consistency’ has been used like a club to bash teachers who were not doing things in the way their leaders wanted.
But what is the problem with consistency? Why is it valued so highly by some and feared so much by others?
When I was thinking about writing this piece my first reaction was that the word ‘consistency’ feels constraining to me, it feels like something that holds me back and limits innovation. But I began to think more deeply about it and I’ve decided that there is no easy answer to the value of consistency in schools.
I’m going to look at another profession for a moment and use it as an analogy for teaching. Doctors, medical professionals. Consistency is highly valued in certain aspects of medicine. Doctors train for a long time and do a crucial job, they literally hold people’s lives in their hands. If they weren’t consistent about how they approach certain things it would cost lives. Doctors will learn certain procedures and methods and practise them until they master them so they can apply them consistently and safely. They don’t do whatever they feel like just because they feel like it (I’m not suggesting teacher do either). Their procedures are based on years of knowledge and understanding; they are based on research that is applied in the real world.
However, the human body is an incredibly complex machine, which we don’t fully understand yet so although doctors are very consistent with the method they use for various procedures they are also adaptable and will change their approach or change the procedure they are using to meet the needs of the individual patients.
Doctors also spend a lot of time keeping their knowledge level up to date, looking at research and learning from other doctors who are innovating and finding newer, more effective ways of doing things.
Medicine is a hugely complex field and no two doctors are exactly the same, so even though there is a certain level of consistency, (for instance doctors will probably all administer injections the same established way) there is also a level of variance. This is partly down to different personalities and different knowledge and skill levels; it is also caused by their reaction and adaption to the individual patients.
If I were to apply this analogy to teaching and compare the two professions it might look like this: there are certain procedures and methods in teaching pedagogy that are extremely effective, there is a wealth of research, backed up by practice in real classrooms that shows this. (Doug Lemov’s book Teach like a champion 2.0 is full of methods applied by real teachers that are extremely effective). Does teaching have the same widely accepted knowledge base of methods and procedures that are used? I’m not convinced that the same level of acceptance in a set of procedures exists in teaching, not that are widely accepted and used across the profession.
Why is this?
For years teaching pedagogy and education policy has been steered by pseudo science and often based on anecdotal evidence of what people’s experience of school was themselves. There is a wealth of research out there on learning, some which has been around for many years; it is only in recent years that some of this has started to be regarded more seriously and been applied in schools. But so far, we have no consistency.
There are many schools that are still operating on the view of this is what I ‘feel’ good teaching and learning is, based on my prior experience, not on what the evidence and research tells us.
Why do medicine and education operate so differently?
Can you imagine going to your doctor and getting prescribed leeches nowadays? The idea is ridiculous, we know that this practice doesn’t work and is harmful, but once upon a time it was accepted practice. Why don’t we have the same regard for research in teaching? Why do we still have people staunchly doing things the way they always have even when it has been proven that it is ineffective? (Whisper this quietly but there are still some people out there who talk about learning styles). If teachers want to be seen as a professional in the same regard as a doctor, then they need to start acting more like doctors. Would a patient argue with a doctors treatment or diagnosis because they thought they knew better because they were born in a hospital? Well alright, some might, but not as many as argue with teachers and are happy to give their opinion of how they should teach because they went to school themselves once upon a time.
But if teachers are doing this and doing it well it does open up the possibility of inconsistency between different classes. Let me give you a scenario to illustrate what I mean. At the start of a new topic 2 teachers assess the level of knowledge and understanding in their classes through careful questioning and tasks designed to illicit a response from all children so the teachers can get information about all of the students (let’s assume both teachers do this equally well and can accurately gauge the level of knowledge and understanding in their respective classes). In one class the majority of children know very little about the topic and have a number of misconceptions that need to be addressed, in the other class the children already have a good grasp of the concept other than a small minority. What to do? Should the approach be the same from both teachers? Do we expect consistency here? If both teachers were to progress with the planned lesson in the same way then the only consistency there would be is that the lesson would not meet the needs of some of the children.
Teachers ideally should use methods and procedures that are proven to be effective in enabling learning consistently. Teaching, like medicine is an incredible complex task. No two people are the same. When we are talking about consistency in teaching we need to be focusing on getting consistently good outcomes for children and recognising that different children (like different patients) will have different needs, although some procedures may be applied to all (just maybe not at the same time).
At the moment we do not have consistency in education. We don’t have a clear consensus on what is effective pedagogy. We have tribes of people with polarised views of trad and prog and many people who are somewhere in between. Is it any wonder that everyone in the world seems to have a view on how we should educate children? I know one of the issues is that education is a political issue and it is often used for scoring points by various politicians trying to prove their point. The health service is also a political issue but politicians don’t see fit to comment on how doctors should treat patients, they leave the medical science to the experts. Unfortunately for everyone in education, they don’t extend the same curtesy to teachers.
I think it would be good for the teaching profession to aim for the same sort of standards that doctors have. We should aim to be well informed about what research and practice is telling us is effective. We should listen to the science, even when it is counter intuitive and against the way we have always done it. We should aim to be consistent in the procedures and methods that are proven to have an impact on learning; learn them and master them in the same way doctors learn procedures.
There are many barriers to consistency in schools and it is a complex issue which is mixed up with how society views schools and how we as a profession behave. There is no easy answer. I think a good starting point would be to come to a consensus of what methods and procedures are effective practice in teaching. Consistency is important clearly. Consistently good outcomes for children is something we should all strive for.
One conclusion I have come to though is: consistency is not a swear word.