S1 E7 - Subject Leaders - Monitoring, Assessing Learning and Assessment in Art with Chris Mann
Updated: Jun 8
In this, the 7th episode of The Subject Leaders Podcast, Chris Mann, an English and Art primary subject leader, answers the following questions:
How can subject leaders ensure that the monitoring activities they carry out are worthwhile?
What is the purpose of assessment and how should learning be assessed?
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Below you can find the transcript for this episode of The Subject Leaders Podcast:
Introduction
Aidan: So, good morning. It could be afternoon, depending, it could be evening whenever people are listening. So tell us a bit about who you are.
Chris: Hi, Aidan. Yes, thanks for having us. So, my name is Chris Man, I'm a primary school teacher, have been for ten years now, and I work in a two form entry primary school, and I wear so many different hats at the minute, as a lot of people do. So currently I am both literacy and art subject lead at my school, but I have been different subject leads as well. Before I've been computing subject lead, I'm an ECT tutor at the minute, several Ects at our school, I'm a cluster leader for our year sixes because I teach year six. So I've got 13 schools in our local area that we meet with and I'm the lead writing moderator for Stockport as well. So many hats.
Aidan: As is the way. As is the way. So, would you consider art to be your subject specialism? If not, what is it and what are your favourite subjects to teach?
Chris: I would say it's not my subject specialism, namely because English language and literature and creative writing is where a lot of my higher education was focused on. So I studied language, literature and creative writing at University of East Anglia and that is where my specialism comes from. So, in my role as literacy leader, and as I said with the other hats that I'm wearing in regards to literacy, writing, grammar, etcetera, that is where I'm passionate about and have the most amount of expertise, I feel. But art has always been a hobby, has always been an area that I've pursued and enjoyed from a very early age, so I feel like it's a great one to have that passion about. It's normally one that when teachers I know have been given art and I'm currently training up our ECT teacher at school to take over the role soon, and their initial reaction, along with others, is, I'm not very good at art, I don't like art. How am I supposed to lead this subject that I know nothing about? So I'm quite privileged to be able to have the hobby aspect of it that I can use to help give that passion to others as well. But, yeah, literacy is my main focus. Art is definitely a hobby, but I'm enjoying leading that and supporting the training of new subject leaders with that as well.
Aidan: Yeah, it's often the case, isn't it, that primary subject leaders aren't necessarily leading a subject that they have expertise in, maybe sometimes even that they don't have any interest in as well. And in that case, as some of my other guests have talked about, there's a bit of work to be done around developing your own subject knowledge. So if the curriculum were being slimmed down, which subject would you fight hard to keep?
Chris: I would really fight hard, and perhaps this is my bias, but with art, actually, it is easily forgotten easily. The first thing that if there isn't a clear curriculum or progression plan within a school can quite easily get kicked to the side. But it's more than just art. It's more than just producing great sculpture, painting or drawing. It's the skills that children need to help them when they're facing anything, any sort of challenges. It's the problem solving aspect. It's being reflective as a learner. It's taking criticism and how to use that to move forwards. There's so many extra elements that allows children to access, rather than just the curriculum areas of art. So I would fight tooth and nail for that to stay as part of a vital part of the curriculum.
Aidan: Yeah, me too. I'm an art specialist, really. I did my degree in art and so on. But I think there's probably another couple of subjects that would probably fight for that title of the one quickly kicked to the curb. I think there's DT is perhaps one of them, maybe even languages. I think RE may have used to have been one, but I think it does pretty well these days. But yeah, there's always one or two that really have to fight hard for their time in the school day. One more question before we move on to your three questions that are very specific to you. What do you love about being a subject leader?
Chris: I love seeing the impact that your subject has on the children and how you can, if you lead a subject well and support teachers in delivering that subject in their own year groups, in their own context, it's a very tangible feel of change around school. You can do drop ins, you can look at book flicks, but actually, if you speak to the children about that subject, it's just such a joy to see them showing that passion, them showing that enthusiasm, the motivation. And at the end of the day, what we're here for is that reaction from the children, allowing them to see, wow, this is maybe something that was never my strongest subject. Perhaps it was a subject that I didn't enjoy or I tried to keep my head down a bit, or maybe I acted out a little bit when I did this subject. But some of those children, the most powerful things throughout my career, no matter what subject I've led, that has always been the biggest, the best, most powerful thing as a subject leader is just seeing the impact of changes that you're making within that subject with the children.
Aidan: Great. Yeah, we're going to get into that a bit more now, I think, because we're going to talk in this episode about subject leadership and assessment particularly. And I think it's nice that you've been able to talk about talking to children outside of assessment as well, because we will talk to them for assessment purposes, but just for that getting that sense of joy that you talked about hearing all those positive things from them. That just give you a sense that you're doing a good job as a subject leader.
How can subject leaders ensure that the monitoring activities they carry out are worthwhile?
Aidan : So let's get into your questions. So for listeners who haven't tuned in before, we ask a couple of questions that are really relevant to all subject leaders. And then we have a third question which is more specific to the particular subject that the guest leads. So the first question for today is how can subject leaders ensure that monitoring activities are actually worthwhile - the ones that they carry out?
Chris: Yeah, it's one of the biggest things I felt as a new subject lead when I first started teaching that was very difficult, was the sheer amount of monitoring that you know you have to do, but there is very rarely any additional time to do that monitoring. It has to be really purposeful and it has to be part of your whole action plan. It can't just be, I think I need to monitor something. So I've got half an hour here, let's speak to some children about the subject, let's grab a couple of books and sort of tick a few boxes because you're never really going to see any of that change I described earlier through that method. And actually you'll end up just going in a constant loop of I haven't got enough time to really properly lead my subject. And that pressure will inevitably build. In terms of making sure it's purposeful, monitoring needs to start with an action plan for your subject. What are you actually monitoring for? Are you monitoring for something to do with consistency in outcomes for children?
In art, we introduced sketchbooks throughout all of school, year one, all the way up to year six, and that's not something we've done before. So monitoring how that's being used, if it's being used, can be more of an end of the journey monitoring. I'm just checking for consistency and now I know it's consistent, I'm going to move on. But the best type of monitoring is when you've got something on your action plan that says, I need to really see this pedagogical approach, how it's coming through. And I think we talked there earlier about you can get this kind of tangible feeling around school positively when things are going well for your subject. But subject leads I think one of the best things you can do is walk around. If you don't know what your aims are for your subject, if no one's guiding you in terms of your action plan or your school development plan for that subject, then you need to actually see what that subject is like walking around school. And you will get a hunch, you'll get a vibe as to okay, motivation doesn't seem to be there with this subject or some of the teacher subject knowledge isn't quite there.
And then from your initial kind of hunch, if there isn't a guiding principle from your school development plan, is then focusing on that pupil voice and trying to get a real range. If you've got predetermined questions that you know you're going to ask to children within a cross section of school, again, it's about managing time, then you're going to get better outcomes from that conversation and then from your pupil voice, you can then decide, okay, my hunch was right. I've spoken to the children. They backed this up a little bit. They're saying, I don't really enjoy this subject, I don't really enjoy it. As hard as that is for a subject leader to sometimes hear it's really purposeful then and then, you know, you're going into perhaps some books, some sketchbooks for instance with art and you're trying to see do the pupil map outcomes match what the children are saying to you and what the teachers are saying as well.
And monitoring, it's a triangulation of your own sort of hunch, what the teachers are saying. Teachers will often tell you what they are really strong at and what they need more support with. Pupils will be very brutally honest when you're giving them questions to talk about their subject. And you need to combine all of that to decide on those next steps. One of the best things that I found early on as a subject lead was how do you fit that time in to do some of these things if you're teaching? I'm a year six teacher. I teach full time. I do a lot of other things time to do. Monitoring has got to be one of the biggest things speaking to teachers is where do you fit all that in? It's great to triangulate it all. And I know I need to get some pupil voice, I know I need to get some book flicks, I know I need to study my action plan, but how am I actually going to get all of this done and teach full time and then assimilate my information in some way that's meaningful?
But somebody once spoke to me and said, if you map that out for your, for your half term, so I need to get this done, I need to get this done. It needs to be focused on this. This is not a magic wand of making more time. It's just being more useful with the time that you do have and that sometimes means one thing I did at our school was saying to staff, right, this is the Art Action Plan. This is where this subject is. This is where we feel like it needs to go in order to make sure we're doing the right things. We're bringing the right CPD in, we're giving training and support for staff that is meaningful, purposeful. I'm going to need to talk with children. I need to see what's currently going on, and I'm going to be doing this over the course of the next three weeks. Please make sure that your sketchbooks are out and open. Please make sure you've got a list of children that I can see. So I was trying to streamline the job.
So basically my 1st 15 minutes of lunch was I would walk from one corridor down to the other corridor on one day, and I would pick those books up and I would have a clear focus of what I'm looking at so it's not random. I would know children that have been suggested for me based on my criteria that I've asked for, and I would be able to get a book flick done within school that had a clear focus. And in 10 to 15 minutes I could look at four year groups and then do the next the next day. And it's just about when I started doing that, I thought, this isn't going to work, this can't possibly work. But it's when you've got that real clear focus of what you are actually looking out for, and that can be especially for new teachers or ECTs, when you don't know what you're looking out for because you have just been given a subject, then that's where you need to go back to your school development plan. Where does your subject fit into that? What's your whole school agenda? And how can you drive your subject or change your subjectso it becomes a driving force of that moving on.
So monitoring is hard, it's a challenge. And I felt with going through two big changes that I've done at our school recently, which is both on writing and on art, which are talking whole school curriculum changes that I've led. The monitoring has been the most important part because if you don't know what you're doing is actually having an impact, then you'll just go on and will start having a negative impact. It'll have no impact at all. And you've just given all of that valuable time for something that you have no check on at all. With those large curriculum changes, it's so easy as well.
I think as schools, as well as individual teachers, we have that "there's not much time, so I've followed all this through. I've done everything I need to do. I've done my monitoring. I know exactly where the next steps are. Things look okay. Teachers look like they're, they're following everything that needs to be done. Children are talking well, about the subject books look good. I'll tick that off. Now I can get on with my other 99 other jobs that are not being a subject leader." And they will drift. These changes that have been implemented, even if they're positive at the start, they will drift. And it needs to be planned in carefully. I'm going to monitor those changes at the initial instance and then we're going to see over the course of this whole year, not just a term, where am I going to kind of space my - almost teacher retrieval - and how am I going to make sure that teachers still understand what was the purpose of this change. Because as a teacher educator myself, it's so easy to see when if teachers aren't fully confident on something or if their working memory is completely overloaded with all of this new stuff. Their go to is just habitually do what they've done before. And if you don't factor that in into your monitoring, you'll have this delusion in your head that everything's fine because you checked it three months ago. And if you were to walk into those classrooms then after and show people and say, look how good my subject is, and you haven't checked it for three months, you'll probably be disappointed and you'll probably end up seeing things that teachers and children used to do before.
And it's about structuring that monitoring over the course of the year. Where are you coming back to it? How are you reminding teachers and children what's important with these changes that you're making? And it's only really, when you come back to it over and over again over the year that you can really fully assess that at the end and say, I'm going to come back to this again next year. I need to it needs to be on the agenda, but I'll fade it away a little bit. I'll perhaps just monitor it once this particular aspect, once a half term, a couple of times a half term, because we know that habits are really hard to break for teachers, for children, and the monitoring is vital in checking and supporting people. When those habits kind of kick in to take over the new teaching, the new methods, the new philosophy, and the new why, it's integral to the whole process.
Aidan: Yeah, so monitoring is vital. We must do it. It needs to be tight against your action plan and against the whole school's action plan as well. And when you've carried out those monitoring activities, they should be used to inform what you do next so that you have that kind of adaptive approach, that responsive approach.
What is the purpose of assessment and how should learning be assessed?
Aidan: Moving on to assessment now, which I think is linked to monitoring, but is distinct from it as well. So what is the purpose of assessment? This is super broad. What is the purpose of assessment and how should learning be assessed? So, thinking generally about any subject and any subject leadership role, what's the purpose of assessment and how should learning be assessed?
Chris: I mean, it is very broad and in my experience of three very different subjects as being a leader of computing, art and writing, literacy, grammar, each of those has a different way of assessing or a different purpose of assessment. And the purpose of assessment generally is to ensure and assess that whatever is being taught, the way it's being taught is having a positive impact on children for that subject. So that is completely dependent on what you want children to take away from that subject.
So, for instance, with art, assessment should noi be all about the outcome, the sculpture, how good a sculptor are you, how good a painter are you? Is not what assessment is for that subject. It's about those more fundamental learning skills of being a problem solver. How are you assessing that? How are children able to assess themselves on that as well? So assessment does need to show that positive outcomes for children are at the forefront of everything. And assessment needs to empower children as well. Assessment needs to give children the ability to talk confidently about them as learners. How are they able to see what they can do, what their strengths are, how are they then highlighting targets themselves and how are they going to work towards achieving those targets?
Which is more of a philosophy of assessment, really, of primary school rather than something very specific to a subject. With our assessment, one of the key areas that we've looked at and something I've implemented at our school and supported a couple of other schools with that journey of is looking at moving beyond a pink and green pen, which teachers are just so used to doing, even on a formative level, is just pink and green. And I've seen sketchbooks which have been pink and greened and it's going on to that philosophy. How can children understand what they are being successful at within that art and what they need to work on towards when they're coming to those paradigms of art again, they're not going to be able to do that without supportive feedback.
And with art, it's a perfect situation to bring in self peer assessment as a huge part of this. So we've looked at how to create exhibitions. So you will have your learning skills, your outcome, original piece of artwork that children will be creative. And this is whole school, so from year one all the way to year six. And then they will be displayed within classrooms or in an area of school where the children will some children have access to and some children do not. Is that cultural capital to go around and look at art in a museum, in a gallery, and think about it, think about how it makes them feel, think about how the artist has achieved certain things. So we will do that in the space of our primary school and we will select with the children will select what they're looking at.
So, for instance, with painting, they'll select and say, if we wanted to produce something that we felt was really good for this particular type of surrealist painting, then what would be able to spot? And we'd be looking at those examples of the artwork from different artists that we've studied and they'd extrapolate that they'd need to show different types of mark making, they'd need to show different colour mixing and colour matching. They'd need to try and create a mood based on their colour palette. And then we kind of naturally create this almost success criteria of what we're looking for when we are viewing our artwork. And then we'll say, well, if somebody is doing more than just three or four different types of mark making, well, what would we say? Is that greater depth element of that skill? And the children would then be able to pull out themselves. Well, actually, if they're mixing several colours together, then that's great. But if they're moving beyond that, if they're getting different tones within a palette and they're using these really well to harmonise different colours, well, actually, that's definitely a greater depth skill within that one area. And similarly, well, if they weren't able to quite get all of those, what would really be doing if they were working towards that aspect?
So the idea is that children self select and are able to talk using the language of the art that they're studying, what sums up the painting or whatever it is they're doing, as sort of a meeting element. Where will artists go further and where will artists be if they're not quite at that stage? And having children create that is just incredibly powerful. Because going back to what I said about the purpose of assessment for them, they're seeing it as well. Actually, this isn't a critique against me. I've been part of this process. I understand where my strengths are, I understand that I need to be reflective on where I can improve.
And often when we do the next activity, children will find that they are more brutal about themselves than others are about them. Which I think is probably sums up as adults and children, doesn't it? But we will then, once we've got our criteria, we know exactly what we're looking for. We will do an exhibition, we'll walk around, we'll look at other pieces of art, we'll study them, we'll add postits, we'll talk about what we like. But it's got a real focus. It's not just I like this picture, it's all about I like this because it's used three or four different types of marks that I can see. I like this because I like the palette that they've chosen, the tones that they've used and they're constantly using the language and developing their language of art throughout their activity. And then they will leave their critique with the artist's work. The artists will then go back to their work. And that has been the most powerful aspect of changing the way we've assessed art is when the artist goes back and they actually see this huge range of overwhelming positivity towards their artwork, of which they put it down and said, this is rubbish, I'll move on. And it's a massive change within themselves. Actually, maybe this isn't the vision of what I wanted to do, but look at all of these really specific areas that people have said I have been really successful at and that is the purpose of assessment self empowering and making people believe in themselves that they didn't think they would be able to achieve. And then they go back and they self evaluate and they reflect themselves as artists as well. So it's a huge process that is so much more than, well, I'll pink this bit and I'll green that bit and then we'll move on and do some other painting.
So within art, I often talk to the subject leads at different schools and they always say, well, how do you assess it? How do you assess it without going away? And children saying I'm rubbish at art, which is the challenge and the challenge that we think we've got something that overcomes some of those barriers. It's not by any but stretch of the imagine perfect, but children when we are then going back to as we talked about in monitoring the children after that talk so powerfully, a lot of the children on our last monitoring visit said they actually love the evaluation and reflection stage. And when asked why it's well, I really like sharing and seeing and talking about other people's artwork and I like when I come back to mine and I see what everyone says they like about mine and that is so, so powerful for those learners and that will drive them on when they are struggling in other subjects as well. When they take in that attitude of this is a weaker subject, this is a subject I'm struggling at that go to of I'm not going to look at any of the strengths I've got in it. I'm just going to see myself as a failure and I'm going to voice that as well. I'm going to say to my teacher, I'm going to say to my friends, I'm rubbish at maths, I don't like maths.
So I think in in doing this and kind of getting that real fundamental understanding of what the purpose of assessment is for this subject, helps children identify where they might not like the outcome, but they can see all of the strengths. They've shown that actually no, I'm not rubbish mathematician. I'm not rubbish writer. I'm not rubbish at art. I'm actually a great problem solver. I'm really reflective. I can understand my strengths. I can work together as a team. I can see all of these individual things that are successful because I think we are at a stage, I know with our school and I know speaking to other schools where perhaps the impact of still seeing the impact of COVID in this self deprecating view of themselves with certain subjects, well, I could do this by myself. That's okay, I'm stronger at that. I could never really do this when I had to do it away from the classroom. And parents at home have also said, oh, don't do that one because I was rubbish at that at school. I feel like children have been exposed to so much more of that, that they need more of this style of assessment to help them, to help them overcome that.
And similarly, that approach is sort of where we're up to with computing as well. It's a little bit more objective based. And then we know literacy in terms of writing and the struggles we have with assessing that in particular. And I say that as a lead moderator within my local area too. It is an ongoing struggle. It's an ongoing issue, and there's not a perfect fit for that right now. So assessment, no matter what subject you're in, has its pitfall. And one of the biggest things, I think, for new subject leads is to find out from experienced members of staff, from experienced subject leaders within that subject, is have they got the right understanding of assessment in that subject? Because otherwise, how are you ever going to see that the things you're changing in school, the way that you teach that subject has those positive outcomes on students? If you don't know what you're assessing or why you're assessing it, everything else is sort of a waste of time.
Aidan: Yeah, I was talking to a secondary Art teacher the other day whose whole school marking policy, feedback policy, assessment policy was based around the pink and the green and using pen to kind of mark with. And they were saying to me, it just doesn't fit. I have to adapt that policy for my subject. And hearing you speaking, I'm just thinking, what do we learn from a subject like Art about what assessment actually should be about and how to go about doing it? And actually, if we created a policy that worked for Art, what would it then look like going back to our other subjects, our writing, our maths, our reading and so on. And I wonder, I think there's some things you've said there about the purpose, about it being empowering, about it being something which moves them towards being autonomous in that self reflection and that self marking. If we want to kind of use that terminology, that actually is going to be the thing that moves them on in their learning more than. Well, have you responded to my green comment with your pink comment, or vice versa, depending on which colours you have, for which I think that's been a really interesting exploration of what assessment could be, and especially coming from an art perspective, it could really help us to rethink assessment and why we do it and how we do it in other subjects as well. So we'll finish there.
Closing comments
Aidan: Would you like to add anything else before we go? The thing I would like you to add is if you have like a Twitter handle or anything like that, so people can get in touch with you, maybe contact you about some of your experience and ideas.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So I am on Twitter, fairly active on Twitter, although just had a newborn, so less active recently, but I am @ChrisMann755. Nice and catchy. So, yeah, I share a lot of things on writing. I have written some articles on writing and editing for different magazines and I've showcased some of the work we've been doing on our ongoing journey for art through there as well. So you can see sometimes some of the evaluation work that we've done, some of that exhibition work I discussed earlier. So, no, it's been a real pleasure and it is something I'm very passionate about. Sometimes I think you can as role of year six teacher, I have to do the SATS and go through the rigmarole of that. And when you said just before, Aidan, about this idea that if we can start to better understand assessment, almost like from a starting point, taking away any of the things that already built into that subject, like something like maths or writing, and we look at what's important within that subject. What do we want children to gain? Not just the knowledge necessarily from that subject, where do we want them to use that going forwards as well? Then it does really make you rethink the purpose of current assessment. You look at the things like the math exams that the children will be sitting in, not that long, and is that really a reflection of children's ability within math and all those skills that they need to be mathematicians? Arguably not, but it's still something that we are set with. And are there other ways within that subject that you can also assess as well as these tried and tested methods? But I think it's definitely something that I'm always out there trying to see what other places are doing and I think as a subject lead, especially for new subject leads, which we we were talking about earlier, there is so much training given to new teachers for how to teach and how to run a room. But being a subject leader is a huge part of being a teacher and that involves leadership elements which for new teachers is daunting if they haven't got prior experience like that. How do you develop change within your subject and impart that to not just children, but the almost the worst kinds of people, which is teachers themselves and how do you support teachers in that subject? One of the biggest takeaways I'll give to any new subject lead is you're unlikely to see what you need to see in your own school and about arranging to see within your area of schools. Go out, see experienced members of staff with their subject, speak to them about their action plan, speak to them about their monitoring, because it's a fundamental part of the training element of being a subject lead. And sometimes I think experienced teachers will swap subjects regularly and they'll just have to take on this new subject that they know nothing about. They haven't got the subject knowledge, they haven't got that passion as well, but they know how to lead it, they know how to develop the plan, they know how to monitor it effectively. And it's sometimes those that are the biggest impact that have the biggest impact within schools. Not necessarily. I'm quite blessed because I do enjoy art, so I am passionate about it, I do it my own time. But equally, sometimes I think that holds me back and I'd almost rather be leading a subject I have no knowledge of at all. And it will just really help you focus on what's important for teachers and children to get from that.
Aidan: Great. Thank you so much. I think having a podcast like this as well is going to be really useful. Hearing people such as yourself speaking about your experiences can be a really great part of that training, particularly for new Subject leaders. So thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas around monitoring an assessment, and it's been great to have you. So thank you so much for coming on.
Chris: Thank you so much, Aidan. Real pleasure.
