Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence should be required reading on every Teacher Training course in the country;it synthesises the craft of teaching and inspires it in equal measure.A year after reading it,I am still learning from it and still reflecting on its power,honesty and potential. It’s a true game changer.
The ideas are the equivalent of a teaching Trojan Horse.Once its inside a classroom your enemies to learning are corralled, vulnerable and easier to overrun.Excellence,Ron argues , is transformational.It redefines us as learners, changing us forever.It’s the moment when the Superhero/heroine of the future sense their power.It’s thrilling;it’s viral.
One way of harnessing that power is to use Ron’s Learning Critiques.These can be employed in any subject,in any sector.How do they work? Like endlessly,benevolent critical friends.Like the X Factor or Strictly judges urged to focus on marginal gains. I am going to describe a typical critique lesson to try to give you a moorish flavour of the approach.In the book Ron explores this in greater detail on pages 92-98.
Let’s say your class is coming to a lesson preparing to hand in some work.Or, halfway through a lesson, are underway with some work.Or, that you want to start them off on some work using a model of success or one that could be described as work in progress.Whatever stage you are at, you are now almost ready to critique. But one key element remains. You have to discuss or re-discuss your success criteria.The dialogue over these is essential to the quality of the commentary that the critique produces. As Berger himself says: ‘I use whole class critiques as a primary context for sharing knowledge and skills’. I would argue they function as your learning objectives,your what are we looking for;co-constructing success criteria functions as the engine room for empowering expertise. As such,they have to be co-constructed. Let’s say we are exploring for instance what makes a good spooky story possibly employing the learning wheels popularised by @huntingenglish. Here’s an example of one I used recently.Some of these criteria came from suggestions from the front,some were formed from Ant & Dec pupil feedback. Berger suggests this is a core approach to ‘refining our criteria and vision of what constitutes excellence’ Once you have these in place,agreeing what success in this piece of work looks like, then you iterate or reiterate the ground rules for critique.
Preparing the class for critique
These have been highlighted by many other Berger acolytes before me,but they are always worth repeating.This is because Berger wants them to become ‘a habit of mind that suffuses the classroom in all subjects’.
He has three key rules:
Be Kind – the environment for critique has to be safe for it to engage pupils’ trust and respect.Sarcasm and silliness are taboo.
Be Specific – avoid empty praise.Why is it good? Why do you like it? Name the areas of success.Return the trust of the writer by emphasising the impact of their work on you as a reader.
Be Helpful – ask yourself, how will my comments develop the work of the writer and that of the class? What are the most important ways in which this work can evolve? Be better? Write for your reader,not for yourself.Helpful critique is selfless.Begin your helpful comments with ‘To develop your work further you could..’
I have been using these ground rules for a year and they are such a great investment.You cannot get interest rates like these anywhere else. Pupil’s begin to understand these three simple statements as their classroom rules.They suffuse and change the atmosphere.If a pupil misbehaves, you remind them of this agreed way of working and they almost always get the critique of their behaviour immediately. They know they have betrayed the agreed ethics of their classroom.An Ethic of Excellence,as a set of critique principles, plays its part in creating outstanding standards for behaviour.
Once the class have been reminded of the expectations,then decide on the type of critique you wish to employ.Berger suggests there are two key types.
Gallery Critiques
In a gallery critique the work of every pupil is available for critique.The gallery might be their desks or it might be the classroom’s walls. Berger suggests this begins in silence,pupils explore what they like about their fellow student’s work and the class discuss why.They then move onto being specific and helpful suggesting marginal gains for improvement. I have found these critiques can be both oral or written via peer marking,pupils writing their critiques.Afterwards the recipient of the critique might ask in a feedback session,’what did you mean when you said,had I considered trying to write a more enigmatic ending?’ The resulting dialogue can then produce whole class suggestions for the enigma creation.Gallery critiques emphasise the responsibility a class possesses for each other’s development.Another hidden jewel within Berger’s approach is the ‘in’ it gives teachers to the shaping power of peer dialogues.
Individual in depth Critique
In an in depth critique the class look at the work of one child or group and spend time critiquing it thoroughly. This allows for the teaching of key vocabulary and the concepts behind the discipline of the work to emerge from modelling and exploring improvements suggested by the whole class as the work is critiqued.
Four or five years ago I began to explore these ideas with @dalebanham at the schools history conference when we looked at taking the two stars and a wish concept into what we called X Factor Peer Assessment.History and English students performing speeches which were critiqued by a Cheryl/Louis combination ( two stars) who praised kindly using agreed success criteria and a Simon Cowell/Gary Barlow character who critiqued for development.X factor peer assessment was great fun and allowed for critique role playing (It may even be a good way to introduce the concept of critique as it is now so ever present as an entertainment concept from The Great British Bake Off to Strictly Come Dancing) but it was limited to three voices,whole class critiques bring in so many other voices and experts.
An Ethic of Excellence is visible learning in full flight.It is not a lightening bolt but it is a great conductor for learning,which produces real music.Embed it,over a year,and your class will emerge from their cocooned roles into new thinkers,open,receptive and reflective.It’s all about a creative dialogue that builds excellence.
Please see Appendix E when clicking the link above for a full PowerPoint presentation on Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence.
A fabulous example of the power of critique to shape beautiful work is the celebrated conclusion to Black Adder Goes Forth.This emphasises how creativity is a shaping process,an evolutionary dialogue on the road to beautiful work.
