What’s the point of learning walks?

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Classroom displays, tables in rows, fronted adverbials; there are some things in education sure to promote lively debate. David Didau refers to these as educational dog whistles and discusses the issues associated with such polarised debates here. To be added to the list, I think, is the topic of learning walks. I think that we, as a profession, seem to have unnecessarily got our knickers in a twist over learning walks. The term itself is confusing, with different meanings for different people, and arguments abound over the extent to which they are or aren’t, can or can’t be judgemental abound (see this tweet from Dawn Cox and associated thread). Some may want to differentiate between observations, learning walks, lesson drop-ins or visits, but I don’t think what we’re calling them really matters as much as a shared understanding, for a given context, of what they are being used for and why. 

I don’t know when the term learning walk was first coined, but I first encountered the experience in around 2010. It seemed innocuous enough (to me) – the headteacher and deputy told us they wanted a better understanding of what was actually happening ‘at the chalkface’ and so, once a week, would be wandering around school and dropping into classrooms to see for themselves. We knew when it was so you could, if so inclined, ensure that you were doing something ‘whizzy’ on that day (it was 2010, after all!), or perhaps schedule a test so they would move swiftly on. As far as I can recall no feedback was given, and, frankly, I really didn’t mind. I didn’t feel I had anything to hide, and had got so used to being observed during my training and NQT years that I wasn’t really phased by it. But it seemed to get a lot of people’s backs up. Clearly this was checking up on us, those senior managers who couldn’t just let us get on with our jobs. This thread on Twitter highlights those views pretty well, with some fairly damning responses. Maybe I was lucky, maybe others did receive feedback and it wasn’t good. In another school I knew a colleague who refused to let SMT members into their classroom, unless by prior agreement, citing union regulations (apparently even their Head of Department was denied access). Talk about the antithesis of the open-door culture. Don’t get me wrong, the blame for this lies mostly at the door of SMT; they’ve created, maintained, or at least contributed to, the culture in which this occurs. But I don’t think it benefits anyone if teachers start to close up shop and adopt some kind of trench warfare mentality. If we want the culture to change then we need clear lines of dialogue, not sniping from behind barricades.

Recently Ben Newmark published this excellent blogpost on the topic, which argues that learning walks (‘lesson visits’ are his preferred term) should only ever be supportive, and that nothing meaningful about learning can be gleaned from them. I agree with Ben’s position, and particularly like his view that learning walks can tell you something about the culture of a classroom, and the extent to which this is a very necessary precursor for learning.

I would add that while we may not be able to ‘see’ learning, we do know quite a lot about the sorts of conditions under which learning is more likely to take place. Classroom culture is part of that, but, as we become an increasingly evidence-informed profession, we also have a good sense of some ‘best bets’ of teaching – the sorts of things teachers do that are more likely to result in good learning. Take questioning for example. We know that many teachers don’t necessarily give much time between posing a question and expecting a response – some research has shown that the average wait time is less than a second, and other studies have shown that increasing wait time improves participation and engagement (a good summary of lots of research in this area, albeit a little dated, here). Of course, context is important here, but I’d contend that, in an awful number of teaching episodes, giving such little time to think about a response is unlikely to engender the sort of meaningful cognitive activity in our students that we want to happen. They’re not going to think deeply about a question if you expect them to answer almost immediately. So visiting a lesson and seeing that happen might raise questions about the extent to which students are being challenged by the teacher’s questioning. This doesn’t mean you need to go in guns blazing with some critical feedback, a damning report to the HoD or senior leadership, or a hastily thrown-together whole-school training session. But it should start a meaningful conversation about the use of effective questioning in the classroom.

Sampling and scale are also important considerations here. You can’t make generalizations about teaching from seeing one  teacher on one day with one portion of one lesson with one class. But if multiple observers see the same thing happening with different teachers in different classes across different subjects and at different times then perhaps there might be something worth considering further. That still doesn’t mean jumping to sweeping judgements, but shouldn’t be ignored either. As with so much in teaching, this is clearly not a simple black and white issue, much as some people seem to want to reduce it down to a simplistic binary debate on which they can take sides. Those who are entirely dismissive (or wholly embracing), whether they are the person conducting or a potential ‘host’, should perhaps pause to consider an important question: What is the purpose of the learning walk? 

Learning walks can serve many purposes:

• To ‘take the temperature’ of what’s going on in classrooms
• To check if specific school policies are being enacted (eg behaviour systems, uniform, marking)
• To see if certain teaching strategies are being implemented (eg cold-calling or wait time for questioning) – presuming these are in some way expected as part of a whole-school strategy, or to identify training needs
• To perform work scrutiny (‘book looks’) without needing to collect in piles of books from teachers
• To access student voice, perhaps having a few brief conversations with students during a lesson
• To observe a teacher demonstrating a particular area of their practice eg questioning or  modelling worked examples
• To observe particular students in order to, for example, look at their learning or behaviour

There are more I’m sure, and some people probably wouldn’t use the term learning walk for all of them. I think transparency is the most important principle here. If it’s communicated clearly why that specific person is doing their walk, this should mitigate some of the concerns people have provided that a) teachers feel the purpose is a reasonable one and b) teachers trust the integrity of the person doing it not to have a hidden agenda. It’s worth noting here that for many people a learning walk is perceived as a top-down endeavour, an exercise in power by SLT when in reality, and in many schools, learning walks can be carried out by anyone who has the time or inclination. Part of our new staff induction process is being taken on a learning walk around the school with one of our learning coaches. This gives new staff an opportunity to get a feel for the culture of the school in a way that is much harder to do on an interview day, and is generally seen as a valuable experience. As a Psychology teacher my own experience in school was confined to A-level classes, and I had few opportunities to see what happens in lessons outside my subject and across the whole age-range. It is, therefore, a privilege to be allowed to wander freely into others’ classrooms for which I am grateful. And, as far as I know, those teachers whose lessons are visited don’t seem to mind.

Can learning walks be conducted ‘non-judgementally’? Well, yes and no. We certainly shouldn’t be giving grades for anything and avoiding language too strongly associated with grading regimes is important too. I think it’s polite to make the offer of feedback, if wanted, and this means there will inevitably some sort of judgement made about things that were seen as strengths or could be improved. In the right context that sort of feedback will be welcomed, and not really viewed as judgemental. But I think it’s human nature to make judgements and it would be disingenuous to pretend you can observe someone’s lesson without making some form of judgement about something. What matters more is what you do with that judgement. Do you question it, considering whether it’s a fair judgement, informed by objective evidence or perhaps too many of your own biases? Do you record it somewhere, or just mentally file it away? Do you keep it private, or share with others (who?!)? Do you acknowledge that you’ve only seen a tiny snapshot of teaching or start to make unwarranted overgeneralizations about what kind of teacher/teaching you’ve seen?

Looking at that list of reasons for carrying out learning walks given above, they are mostly about looking at teaching and learning – finding out what’s going in classrooms to see what the students experience and using this to inform an understanding of what teaching and learning looks like around school. But learning walks can have other purposes too, where the focus is on the learning of the observer, not the students.

Let’s take an example of a teacher, Jon, who struggles to maintain order in their classroom, especially with those pesky year 9s. Despite feedback on this from observations, Jon hasn’t really improved much in this regard, and specific strategies to keep control haven’t been implemented successfully. Behaviour at Jon’s school is deemed generally ‘ok’ and the pupils mostly pretty diligent so Jon essentially gets away with it. Jon doesn’t truly see that this is a real problem because he can’t fully recognise the gap between his own experience and what is being asked of him. Part of the problem is that Jon has always taught like this, and may have experienced this in his own school days. Jon doesn’t have a mental model for what this looks like that is rooted in reality. So the Head of Department arranges cover for them so they can spend time watching Year 9 being taught by three other members of the department at the same time. They get to see a variety of teaching styles, with a variety of class dynamics, but the striking thing Jon observes is the calm, ordered sense of purpose in every classroom. “That’s what it can look like!” realises Jon. This, to my mind, is still a learning walk but I doubt that any of the participants would feel unduly challenged or threatened by the experience. 

So, whether we call them learning walks, observations, lesson visits or drop-ins I think misses the point. We could come up with slightly different terms to refer to each of the different purposes but that would only lead to more confusion and misunderstanding. Teachers don’t need more jargon to learn! They all share the same fundamental process that someone not teaching a class walks into the room of a teacher who is. Maybe the term learning walk has become too laden with unhelpful baggage that we should use something else but I don’t think coming up with a different term is going to make any difference.

All that needs to happen is that the person who wants to visit a lesson communicates clearly exactly both their purpose and process, and is open to discuss that with any interested parties. The person they want to visit has every right to question and challenge, and they have the right to refuse to engage in the process if they aren’t happy with the answers to their questions. But they should also remain open to the idea that the person who wants to watch them may have very good intentions, and may even find the process supportive. Both parties need to engage in the process with mutual professional respect and understanding, and leave their egos at the door. Let’s stop responding to the phrase like it’s a dog whistle, and start engaging in some professional conversations instead.