Learning & Innovation Coach, English Schools Foundation Kennedy
After 5 years teaching in East London, Rory moved to Hong Kong to begin his career in the International Baccalaureate. Now 10 years into his profession, he works a Learning & Innovation Coach at ESF. His role involves coaching and co-teaching to find the best tools for classrooms. In recent years, further reading around pedagogy and the teaching profession in general have led him to set up the Kennedy Professional Learning Community to approach classroom changes more scientifically, while remembering that much of our profession is still an art.
For many years, a range of scientific disciplines have sought to "bridge the gap" between academic evidence and classroom practice. There are teachers with masters degrees and PhDs. There are the curriculum writers. There are consultants. Countless books have been written but most teachers still in the classroom will tell you that there is simply not enough time for research in modern learning environments.
Meanwhile, those same scientific disciplines are facing a more recent challenge: the reproducibility crisis. As Artistotle so aptly put: The more you know, the more you realise you don't know. Modern efforts to reproduce results from even heavily cited papers are coming up short.
With each classroom being affected by many different external variables, some of which greatly impact learning, why are we looking outside the classroom for answers to be handed down?
The questions this presentation hopes to raise are: where are the experts located when we consider each classroom as it's own vessel, who is responsible for ensuring change is meaningful and effective and what sort of standards of evidence do we need in order to make informed decisions about teaching and learning?
We invite you to a discussion about what could be next.