The Fishbowl - how did it go?

Overall the main motive for holding the fishbowl was increased use of appropriate ICT in schools. However if approached from an ICT perspective this seems to trigger, in perhaps the majority of teachers I meet, a range of emotions: insecurity; anxiety, guilt and sometimes aggression. The fishbowl was approached from the perspective of developing planning skills – all teachers can buy into this – they perceive this is what we do; we can be a part of this.

How did the Fishbowl go?

The main success was that there was a significant amount of quality discussion focused on the overall nature, structure and approach to planning. We got a little into some of the influences and information sources people use, we discussed how monitoring can impact choice of outcomes and we certainly discussed how it is important for school leaders to be part of the planning process.

An original aim was to develop better insight into how planning progresses from stage to stage. We got some sense of this but didn’t really get to produce any formed plans. The discussions tended to veer off onto general planning issues (these are valuable – just different to what I expected). I think I know why it was hard to get more detail.

When planning the fishbowl, I forgot the considerable conscious and sub-conscious ‘research’ time when contemplating a new topic. Most of this is unrecorded – apart I guess from a few scribbled notes or post-it notes. In the fishbowl I presented a topic – the ‘fish’ paused, looked for clarification, dried up a little and then sought more clarification about context, monitoring and other general issues. So next time I think that if I want detailed planning I need to present topic / theme scenarios to teachers before they come – this will give contemplation time and when they get together to plan we should see very different results.

I think that it is possible to have different types of fishbowl approaches – one could be for discussing overall planning approaches – another could be looking at the processes of detailed planning. There was some discussion of fishbowls for different audiences – such as trainee teachers, school leadership or local authority consultant. Certainly each audience would need quite different facilitation and support.

For me a striking feature of the discussion was the range of approaches people take when planning – I think I identified three main approaches (my guess many others):

• Outcome led – focus on identifying multimodal outcomes – the processes of the unit of work are fitted to achieve these outcomes
• Requirement led – start with NC or strategies to know what we need to do – then bolt on ICT / interaction afterwards
• Stimulus led – identify engaging stimulus for unit of work (book, film, audio, computer game) – have general planning overview - let learning develop – enable discovery and then have retrospective planning

I think what became most evident during the evening was something that I have been mulling over for some time. As a teacher I was used to a template driven, requirement led approach to planning. Overall I now think that it doesn’t matter at all what planning approach you have as long as the learning and teaching is engaging, interactive and achieves positive outcomes. To me teachers as planners are as different as pupils as learners. We often discuss how pupils learn differently – we haven’t really accepted that teachers as learners are very different and need to plan in a range of ways.

Template driven approaches have often homogenised planning – this has made monitoring easier for school leaders. However I think it has greatly stifled creativity. I am now seeing a few schools where the leaders allow a free approach to planning – they then use a range of monitoring approaches. Leon Cych mentioned a ‘viva style’ approach to monitoring – this sound great! Instead of school leaders taking away and discussing written plans behind closed doors – they could discuss approaches, celebrate success and develop trusting relationships to fully reveal impact of planning.

A variety of approaches will lead to what Mark Berthelemy identified as continually reinventing the wheel. He’s right – we need to find ways of sharing our planning – somehow including our thoughts and reflections. Tom Barrett’s on the case – see his blog post about a Curriculum Catalyst.


How can we develop the technique?

I think I am now better prepared for any future fishbowls. I have a stock of scenarios, challenge statements and questions I could throw in to redirect the discussion.

I think it is worthwhile seeing how a range of groups could use the technique – it would also be very interesting to see how a mixed group of different practitioners (teacher, school leaders, primary / secondary and LA) would react!

Overall I think I have found the technique interesting because it is the first time I have experience an adult learning (andragogical) approach taken within teacher CPD. I’m not sure why this hasn’t occurred to me before – especially when considering my former career as an adult educator in the NHS. As a teacher I think I have largely experienced transmission of knowledge, some scance attempts at encouraging discussion but no real approaches aimed at engaging reflection and open, honest discussion.