Black Box Thinking for Teachers

Black Box Thinking for Teachers

What is “Black Box Thinking”?

Black Box Thinking is a philosophy which allows learning to emerge from mistakes.

The phrase was coined by Matthew Syed in his excellent book of the same title, where he examines performance and critical self-evaluation in sport, aviation, politics and many other fields. He took the term from the “black box” flight recorders fitted to aircraft, which contain vast amounts of data, to be used to inform future improvements. They are used extensively, but especially following poor performances. These could result from human error, failures of systems and procedures and unexpected events.

How does black box thinking apply in education?

In education, just as in aviation, we continually train ourselves and others, ensuring consistently high performance. But despite the time put into this training, students can still underperform in exams. Schools and inspection bodies collect this data, containing a wealth of information to guide current and future performance. But I’m not certain that we use this information effectively.  After all, which information should we act on and how on earth should we act on it?

When teaching doesn’t work…

A few years ago, Steve, a friend of mine working in another school, called me on A Level Results Day. He was in shock. For the last few years, his students had achieved excellent exam results and he was considered by many to be an “outstanding teacher” (I hate that phrase!). This year, however, a number of his students had “failed”. By “failed”, he meant that they had passed, but had significantly dipped below their expected grades.Steve had to account for this dip in his post-results analysis that he had to present to the Headteacher. But only two months earlier he had predicted much higher grades. How could he have got it so wrong?

In essence, he had assumed that because he had always been right about his students in the past, he was able to draw similar conclusions about his current students. Unfortunately, he was looking at the wrong data or at least interpreting it in the wrong way.

Steve’s current students were not in any way “weaker” than in previous years. Nor had his teaching changed much. But he HAD missed one crucial point. The STUDENTS were different. He had forgotten to take this into account. This caused him to infer that the data he had used effectively last year was just as relevant for this year’s students. Steve was wrong.

When the “data” doesn’t add up…

We are all familiar with the use of assessment results to inform our understanding of how students progress towards their targets. However, those results do not “measure progress“. They are a proxy, something which may indicate progress but which is not synonymous with it. Steve believed his assessment procedures to be rigorous. He used a range of assessment questions from the exam board’s past papers. He was a seasoned examiner and was a competent judge of student responses. But he was ignoring something crucial. Steve focused entirely on improving the skills and techniques used in answers to exam questions. It made no difference in the end.

Steve recalled some of the papers from the exam board to see what had gone wrong. He assumed that the students had ignored the techniques he had taught them. How could they have forgotten the special mnemonics they had constructed together? Had they not written using PEE paragraphs? Did they follow up each of their ideas with a brief evaluation of it? Did their conclusions not follow the highly prescribed formula he had repeated time and time again?

The papers showed Steve what had really happened. The students didn’t know the content.

As much as they had tried to structure their writing, they just didn’t have enough subject knowledge. Steve expected a deep evaluation of quotes and he’d even taught the students how to go about discussing multiple interpretations of keywords and phrases.

But the students hadn’t memorised the quotes.

It got worse. The case studies in the exam were supposed to trigger students to consider socio-economic theories, court cases and historical events.

But the students only understood the ones they were tested on in class and so hadn’t read widely enough to answer the questions in the actual exam.

Why do your students fail?

Your students succeed and fail due to many factors. They may lack knowledge and understanding of a theory, method or event. They might not have ‘memorised’ the information they need. Their skills of analysis and evaluation may undermine the depth of their understanding. Steve considered all of these possibilities but was still at a loss to explain the underperformance. The truth was, that these weren’t the only factors that were at play. It’s often more complex.

Let’s look at why three particular students failed:

Student A had recently been dealing with a bereavement of a close family member. This had taken its toll on the student, who had performed well up to that point. In the final run-up to the exam, Steve had believed that this student would cope well with study leave, having demonstrated for almost two years that he could work well independently. However, in this instance he was wrong. The student was unable to focus at home, in the way he could at school, in part because he was constantly surrounded by distractions relating to the passing of his relative. Whilst his bereavement would not be much easier at school, at least he may have found some space to concentrate a little better, or for longer periods, enabling him to perform better than he eventually did on exam day.

Student B had a poor track record regarding her attendance. But despite this, she still managed to perform well in her assessed essays. As it turned out, she was close friends with a student who had written the same essays in the previous year. She re-worded these essays and in some cases had even memorised them by rote, for closed-book timed assessments in class. By doing so, she evaded the attention of staff who were actively looking for students requiring intervention. Since her grades were good, they didn’t consider her to be at risk of failing. Her problem though, was that in the exam she was not able to adapt those memorised answers when the question changed ever so slightly. She pulled the wool over many eyes, including Steve’s and failed outright.

Student C was a high performer. At GCSE she had achieved all A* and A grades and had done so with little visible effort. Throughout A Level, however, she had not always enjoyed the same level of success. Essay grades ranged from A* to C. Steve had been hot on the case with this student and had accurately identified where marks were being gained and lost. He gave thoroughly detailed feedback to the student, who was able to redraft the essays to an excellent standard, following the advice he gave. But on the day of the exam, her marks were inconsistent across the paper. Why had she performed so well in some areas, but so poorly in others? As it turned out, the detailed feedback had made no difference. Why? The student hadn’t had to think hard enough for herself as to how to improve. In the end, her highest marks came from the topics where Steve’s feedback was much more limited in detail (despite the formative essays being of an equally low quality to others where feedback was detailed). In this instance, the student had performed badly overall because she hadn’t become independent enough. She was still overly reliant on the teacher to help her to improve, even in the final weeks and days before the exam.

Action points for “Black Box” teachers

  • Assess regularly. Balance scheduled tests with unscheduled ones to accurately identify true levels of understanding.
  • Use rigorous assessment methods (past paper questions, etc)
  • Give feedback that strikes the right balance between being too detailed and not detailed enough
  • Create and maintain a ‘culture’ of student independence
  • Reward resilience and genuine effort, rather than high attainment alone
  • Test knowledge and understanding in creative ways, to avoid “scripted” responses
  • Formalise how you will act on the data you collect. Checklists are a time-efficient way of developing set procedures. (More on this in a future post!)

Final thoughts…

Learning from failure is sometimes the only way. I would love to hear your own stories of “Black Box” thinking. In the meantime, you can take a look here at Matthew Syed’s Black Box Thinking (my Amazon affiliate link).

Please leave a comment on this post or send me a tweet (@guruteaching). I’ll get right back to you!

Follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to LIKE and SHARE!

Why Podcasts Improve Learning

Why Podcasts Improve Learning

Why do podcasts improve learning?







  • English Literature
  • English Language
  • History
  • Biology
  • Physics


Is the success of podcasts supported by research evidence?



 How could I use podcasts with my students?




Some free podcasts to get you started…

  • Geography: GCSE Bitesize Podcasts
  • Law: BBC Law In Action
  • Chemistry: A Level Chemistry Revision – Chris Harris
  • Economics/Business: BBC More Or Less
  • Politics: Politics Weekly – The Guardian, The Bugle
  • French: Coffee Break French
  • Spanish: Spanish Obsessed With Rob And Liz
  • General: LSE Podcasts, TED Talks

Final thoughts…


Follow me on Twitter @guruteaching

And don’t forget to LIKE and SHARE!



Giving Effective Feedback

Giving Effective Feedback

Giving effective feedback is a balancing act

My students are about to receive their mock results. For some, this will be a time for them to feel relieved that their efforts so far have paid off. For others, they won’t be happy with their result. Ultimately though, the result itself doesn’t really matter. It’s how my students respond to their result that counts. The hope is that my students will find that balance between fear of failure and over-confidence, to best prepare them for the final exams. In this post, I explain the methods used to ensure that my students respond positively, so that they will achieve their desired result in the future. Giving effective feedback is a tricky business and the stakes are too high for us to do it badly.

Why target setting is priority number 2

As teachers, we constantly set targets, whether short or long-term, aspirational or realistic. Target setting is absolutely necessary, but it must be well-informed and fully explained. Otherwise, your students may not understand those targets immediately.

In many cases, my own students have seen their own targets as too high, too low, or completely arbitrary, before the targets are explained. If I didn’t explain the targets to them, then they risk putting insufficient effort in, to achieve their target. The explanation, though, must contain the ‘bigger picture’; this is priority number 1. More on that in a moment.

Students’ lack of engagement with targets also seems to be caused by their own perceptions of themselves as learners. They often see themselves as an “A grade” student, for example. This makes it harder for them to come to terms with any grade that doesn’t fit with that label. Following a positive result, they can then become lazy, thinking it’s in the bag. A negative result can leave students thinking it can’t be done. It’s vital then, that we spend time, before giving feedback, to help students understand what they should be looking to achieve, both in the short and long-term. They need to know and be constantly reminded that ‘progress‘ is not linear and that their path to success will not be a straight one.

Students need to see the bigger picture

One exam result can seem like the entire picture to some students. So, in order for targets to be meaningful to your students, they need to understand their own situation. By this, I mean that your students need to be able to see what their current level of achievement looks like, compared to their past achievements. Have they dipped? Plateaued? Accelerated? Where is it going?

They should also be made aware of how far a student like them should be expected to achieve by the end of the course. I often cite examples of students from previous years, who have achieved similar mock results, but have then gone on to have even greater success when they have followed a specific plan. I then share that plan, breaking it down into practical steps, which when followed, led to my previous student achieving the desired result.

By making the steps simple, my current students are able to see further progress as realistic. This provides them with the motivation required to increase performance in preparation for the exam. Because the feedback conversation is focused on future achievement, rather than past failure, my students’ mindset is far more receptive and they tend to react more positively.

Students need to feel supported

Many students will know that a poor result is their ‘fault’, but guilt and remorse will only make them dwell on negatives. This distracts from the positives and creates a barrier to forming a solution-focused mindset. So, ensure you are giving effective feedback by using as many comments as possible about what your students have achieved. By beginning the feedback conversation in this way (and feedback must be a conversation, not just one-way) your students will be encouraged to feel as though they have a platform to build upon for future success. They will also see you as being on their side, rather than just being there to find fault.

Many successful schools use the “What Went Well / Even Better If” structure to ensure positive feedback. Here, students are left in no doubt that their successes, no matter how limited, have been recognised and rewarded on some level.

Top Tip: A good way to enhance the WWW/EBI system is to share with the whole class a range of WWW comments that you have given to the group. This then provides students with concrete, achievable examples that they can strive to emulate in future assessments.

Preparing students to receive feedback

This week I’ll be giving my students a brief questionnaire to fill out before they are able to access their results. The purpose of the questionnaire is twofold. Firstly, I aim to prime the students with as much positive-mindset thinking as possible, so that their result will be seen as just one step on the way to future success. I want to build resilient learners. Secondly, I want the students to be able to see what practical steps they can put into place, to get them from where they are to where they need to be.

Here are the questions I’ll be asking:

  1. What do you stand to gain from success in this subject?
  2. What is your end-of-course target?
  3. What practical steps did you take to move towards your mock exam target?
  4. Which of those practical steps paid off?
  5. What was your target for the mock exam?
  6. If your two targets are different, then explain why.
  7. Which practical steps would you change or not use again? Explain your reasons.
  8. How close do you think you will be to your target?
  9. If you achieve your mock target, how will you react? Why?
  10. If you don’t achieve your mock target, how will you react? Why?
  11. If you could go back in time and give advice to yourself three months ago, what advice would you give?

I may change the wording of the questions, or even add/remove some of them. However, what I want to do is to create a dialogue with each student about their own journey. The questions are really just conversation-starters.

Planning your next steps

After giving feedback on the mock exams, it’s crucial that you put a plan in place to ensure that every single student can be monitored and so that their performance on exam day is not left to chance. The plan should be specific, realistic and time-bound if it is to work. But most importantly, the onus should be on the students to solve the problem. All you are doing is giving them a blueprint to follow and dates by which you will measure their success on agreed criteria. Your role is an advisory one. You certainly shouldn’t be expected to re-teach content, especially if your students are perfectly capable of independent learning!

Steps you can put in place:

  • Students should respond to feedback as early as possible – create improved answers or redo the mock exam from scratch.
  • Set aside specific times for on-to-one conversations with each student (if logistically possible). This should happen as soon as possible.
  • Share results with colleagues in other departments and the Head of Year to see if there is an issue beyond your subject.
  • Students create an action plan for the final exams: exam dates, when they will begin revising, successful revision methods, when they will be assessed throughout the revision period to see if it’s working.
  • Book another one-to-one for 6 weeks time to see how students have got on individually. Did they bother to stick to the plan? Where’s the evidence? Did it work? How do they know? What do they now need to focus on? Is parental involvement necessary at this point?


Don’t judge yourself as a teacher, according to the exam results in front of you. There’s a good chance that you weren’t in control of more than half of the factors that affected your students’ performances on the day.

Besides, by now giving effective feedback, you will make a huge difference to your students.

You can be proud of that.

Follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to click on the SHARE buttons below!

Measuring Progress: A Pointless Exercise?

Measuring Progress

Why measuring progress is overrated


What does ‘progress’ even mean?





So, what’s wrong with measuring progress?


  1. What is the purpose of education?
  2. What role should teachers play in education?
  3. What role should students play in their own education?
  4. What else matters?

1. What is the purpose of education?





2. What role should teachers play in education?



3. What role should students play in their own education?




4. What else matters?







Recommended Reading




You can follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to click on the share buttons!

Marking: Why It Doesn’t Work


Marking used to fill me with dread…

It consumed every evening and at least one day of the weekend. The workload was unbearable. I had no life and the cycle repeated itself every week until the summer holidays. I hated marking.

Oh, and by the way, it made no difference!

I was ticking and flicking, leaving comments that were far too generic and the marking often went unnoticed or unacknowledged by the students. So, I’ve stopped. Or at least, I’ve stopped doing what I was doing. Now, my marking is less frequent but makes a much greater difference to the progress of my students.

I’ve trialled a few different methods of marking and feedback (they aren’t always the same thing!) to a wide range of classes from KS3 to KS5. I’ve settled, for now, on the one that appears to make the biggest difference, whilst taking the least amount of time to implement. My classes are making better progress and I have my life back!

How to mark and still have a life

Decide why you are marking in the first place

It isn’t agreed by all educators what the purpose of marking is. Some argue it is to point out where the student is going wrong and guiding them back to where they should be going. Some argue it is to build up a relationship between the teacher and the students so that the teacher can understand better how to support them in class. Others think that marking is a way of showing to parents and school inspectors that teachers are paying attention to the work produced by students. Recently, Ofsted has begun using evidence from marked books and folders as a better judgement of progress than lesson observations.

My view is that marking is one method  we can use to cause an improvement in student performance. It isn’t the only method; forms of feedback other than traditional marking can be much more effective, e.g. immediate verbal feedback (one of the most significant drivers of improvement in my experience). It is the ‘causal’ relationship between the marking and the improvement which is the key point here.

If marking doesn’t ’cause’ improvement, then either change it or abandon it entirely.

As teachers, we are sometimes slow to abandon practices that don’t yield fruit immediately. We see value in playing the long game. However, we can also fall into the trap of mistaking the ‘long game’ for plain old-fashioned ‘laziness’.

Question: Are we really assessing our methods over time, or are we just unwilling to change our method and hoping that things will improve?

Only mark work that will significantly help your students achieve their goal

Some work should be marked and other work shouldn’t. We should get students to do both types of work, as they serve different purposes. However, we also need to distinguish between both types of work when planning our lessons. Otherwise, our lessons risk becoming too formulaic, may lack creativity and will fail to engage at least some of the students.

To decide which work to mark, ask this question: “What does the student need to be able to do by the end of the course?

The work should (only?)* be marked if it shows:

  • the student adding to or improving a skill that they need to be able to master
  • the student’s understanding of a concept, story, method, etc that they need to be able to explain
  • the student’s detailed analysis, application or evaluation of a theory that they need to be able to argue

The work (perhaps?)* shouldn’t be marked if it shows:

  • Repetition of previously marked work (with nothing added or amended)
  • Basic consolidation of understanding and which may be below the student’s ‘true potential’ (I hate this phrase but we all use it)
  • skills, knowledge, etc that doesn’t help students in their pursuit of the goals of the course (why would you be doing these tasks anyway?)

*In teaching, nuance is everything – you know when an exception can be made here!

You must give feedback quickly

Students who receive marked work long after they handed it in are less likely to engage with the feedback comments. Make sure that you return their work in a timely manner, so that they can still remember the topic clearly. Immediate feedback has been shown to make the biggest difference to students. The longer you leave it, the less difference your marking will make.

Only make comments that will significantly help students achieve their goal

Generic comments like ‘great effort’ and ‘more detail needed’ are only useful up to a point. They tell the student in a vague way how you feel about their work. However, they do not give any specifics about what to do to rectify any mistakes or omissions. There are different schools of thought on this. We can either go the ‘spoon-feeding’ way and tell our students exactly what they should have done differently. This can include re-writing sentences or adding content that students failed to include, for example. However, this can be time-consuming. For an easier way, read this post on how to implement a marking code, to reduce marking time.

Alternatively, we can encourage more independence in our students by giving them some indication of what they should do, but without the specifics of how to do it or what it should look like. I use a mixture of both but tend towards the latter. Over the years, I’ve found with my classes that if they come to rely on specifics from me, then over time they lose the ability to solve problems for themselves further down the line.

Ensure that students respond to the marking

When students respond to marking it accelerates their progress. When students don’t respond to marking, their progress will be limited. Responding to feedback also leads to higher levels of confidence over time. But not only that, it helps you see more easily what a fantastic difference your interventions are making in their education. Since we are all here to make a difference, maybe this will be why you would move to the marking system I’ve adopted. Another benefit: you’ll have more time for a social life (remember that?). But that’s not all.

You may even learn to love marking. Really.


My personal marking policy may be controversial, it might already be in use by you and your team, or it may seem arbitrary and confusing. Either way, I always appreciate constructive feedback.

Follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to click on the share buttons below!

Motivating Students

motivating students

Motivating students after Results Day

As a teacher, motivating students is one of the biggest challenges we face. There are probably a number of reasons, other than the quality of teaching, to explain why some students didn’t make as much progress as they could have done. Lack of motivation, distraction, tiredness, ineffective study techniques, porr homework record, the list goes on.

But no matter what the reason was for their underperformance, we, as their teachers or Heads of Departments, will have to quickly deal with the areas that have held those students back from achieving their potential. Otherwise, we fail too.

Take action

In your first lesson back after the summer holidays, take some time to explain to students the context of their results: why the results matter, but also why students are not defined by their exam results. They are people, not data. This may offer little comfort to some who think that they’ve wasted a year or two, but at least they will see you as being on their side and being willing to look for solutions. This will help later on when things get tough again.

However, most importantly, it’s true. Students are people, not little marks on a chart, or a step towards achieving an acceptable percentage for the cohort. Teachers can lose sight of this when schools are increasingly measured by exam data. If this thought isn’t central to our thinking, then we will lose sight of the entire purpose of education – to help people achieve their full potential and contribute positively to the world.

Below I’ve outlined a few solutions, as a way to begin helping your students to the next level after their exams. It’s a starting point, not a complete solution. So if I’ve missed something obvious, or you would do things differently, then good! You know your students better than I do!

Priorities for improving student achievement:


Sometimes it’s important to refer back to the big picture. Ask the students why they are here, studying your subject. Get them to see both the intrinsic and extrinsic value of performing well your subject. Will high performance in the subject lead to Higher Education, a career, further vocational training? Will proficiency in the subject develop skills relevant to a wide variety of industries? Will the skills increase enjoyment, or be useful in everyday life? So long as you can find a “yes” for each of your students, you will be able to do something to improve their motivation.

Unsurprisingly, students will be very emotional. Surprisingly, though, many teachers do not tap into this to see if there is some way to get students to focus on positive emotions. I find that visualisation can help here. Tip for motivating students: Have the students close their eyes and talk them through what the upcoming year will look like, leading through various stages, all the way up to results day when they will open their results envelope, discovering the grades they are hoping for. By giving students the time and by creating the conditions for them to imagine the simple stages leading to success, they will see the end result as attainable. This will help prevent the familiar “I can’t do that” mindset that can emerge after a poor performance in an exam. Resilience is key. You can read more on developing resilience here.


Focus is crucial. Distraction is the enemy of focus. If there are distractions, then identify them. Remove the distractions when the revision is supposed to take place. Once temptation to procrastinate is removed, focus will be easier to achieve. Popular distractions for my students include:

  • social media
  • computer games
  • nights out
  • part-time employment
  • an infinite number ways to procrastinate online

By far the biggest distraction for my students is social media. I tell my students that when revising, turn off your mobile and put it in another room. Try to revise using offline methods wherever possible. Anecdotally, it works. Try it – it might work for your students too!

Motivting students


Studies suggest a wide range in the number of hours that we need, but they generally all agree that students need even more! Remind students to get to bed early more often than not and over time it will have a huge impact on their attention spans and ability to retain information. Revising whilst tired is a poor substitute for revising whilst alert.

Effective vs ineffective study techniques

Get the students to mind-map their revision methods (if they used more than one – hopefully they did). Then get them to list the most effective and least effective methods they used – NOT the ones they enjoy or prefer. A discussion of the results will help groups of students to see what ‘busy work’ they should avoid next time, leaving time to complete effective revision. There’s nothing worse than finding out that you’ve worked hard and been busy in the lead up to an exam, only to find that your revision didn’t actually work!

Motivating students is a much simpler task if you can clearly show them the best ways to achieve success.

Follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to click on the share buttons below!

Marginal Gains to Raise Achievement

apply marginal gains to raise achievement

Marginal Gains: Achieve Olympic Success in the Classroom!




A question to my students at the start of this year:



  • Go to bed earlier
  • Drink more water
  • Eat less junk food
  • Eat more healthy food
  • Turn screens off for an hour before bed
  • Spend some time improving your physical fitness
  • Spend 5 minutes organising your files each week
  • Read a book for fun to stimulate your imagination
  • Listen to a podcast on a topic related to your subjects
  • Read a broadsheet newspaper
  • Follow some academically useful Twitter accounts


What About Us Teachers?


As usual, let me know of your success stories!



Follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to share!

Behaviour Management Made Simple

Simple Behaviour Management

[Updated 19 February 2019]

Why is behaviour management so important?



Behaviour Management: Prevention or Cure?



So, before the game…





Then, during the game…

Easy Behaviour Management Strategies

1. Be consistent


2. Fairness, or ‘perceived’ fairness at least


3. Making an example vs setting an example



4. Greet students as they arrive at your door


5. Actively build relationships


6. Only one person speaks at any one time


More Behaviour Management Tips


Top Behaviour Management Books




Final Thoughts…


You can follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to share!

Immersive Learning: Deeper Teaching


Immersive Learning

How can we maximise the learning in our lessons?









Immersive Learning

Here are three Immersive Learning strategies to get you started…

1. CSI-style problem-solving activity



2. Simulate a celebration event


3. Contribute to a real-life campaign


Two more tips!

Parental engagement


Make the common theme in a lesson sequence more obvious to students


Ok, so what now?


As usual, let me know how it goes!

Follow me on Twitter and now on Pinterest too. 

And don’t forget to click on the share buttons below!

%d bloggers like this: