New Ofsted guidance clearly states that inspectors must not favour a particular teaching style.
At the end of December last year Ofsted published new guidance on what inspectors should be looking for when observing lessons.
Some of the changes to the handbook for inspectors were hailed by teacher Andrew Old as a “Christmas miracle”. In a post on his blog Scenes From The Battleground he said he was excited by the strong and abundantly clear message that inspectors “must not favour a particular teaching style”. And he celebrated how Ofsted backed this up with specific examples of what teachers could not be criticised for – from talking for too long to not having a wide enough variety of activities in a lesson.
Andrew believes that the new guidance is an important move towards ensuring that teachers are not penalised for their teaching style and we’ll be discussing what this means for teachers in our live chat.
The changes to the handbook have also added fuel to the already heavy debate on how Ofsted operates. One of the key issues currently being discussed is what the future holds for the inspection body.
Recently Mike Cladingbowl, the organisation’s national director for schools, wrote a piece on this for our network. He said: “We all know that when it comes to education, there is nothing permanent except change. That’s why over the last few months, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what the future of inspection might look like.
“It’s not about shifting the goalposts again. It’s about evolution. It’s about asking some fundamental questions about the direction we should be taking in this new world.”
How then might lesson observations change in the future? And, if the organisation truly doesn’t favour a particular teaching style, what opportunities does this open up for teachers?
In his post, Andrew Old talks about how teachers have been forced to move away from a traditional style of teaching, because Ofsted was against the approach. Do the changes mean that we will now see an increase in the number of teachers adopting more traditional methods? And what other teaching styles might become more popular?
We’ll be discussing all of these questions in our live chat on lesson observations. Join us on Thursday 13 February, 5.30pm to 7.30pm, to debate what Ofsted’s new guidance for inspectors means for teaching and learning in schools.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Looking for your next role? Take a look at Guardian jobs for schools for thousands of the latest teaching, leadership and support jobs.
View the original article here
No comments:
Post a Comment