Talk:Teach First

Marilyn Leask (talk) 09:56, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

There are many questions to be asked about this initiative.

Why might governments in wealthy countries such as the USA, Israel and the UK put inexperienced young people with no long term interest in teaching into classrooms in the most deprived areas? A case can be made for Teach First being seen by those with no understanding of teaching as a 'quick fix' to a problem governments can't easily solve - the shortage of experienced teachers in schools in communities where children, being from a different socio-economic class to most teachers, are seen as difficult to reach and to teach. The Teach First initiative undertakes aggressive political lobbying to win funds from governments. In fact the evidence of effectiveness of the programme on retention and impact on learners is not published. The UK government funded a detailed study of the characteristics of effective teachers (DFEE 2000 Research Report 216 Research into Teacher Effectiveness. DFEE/Hay McBer ) which not surprisingly found "pupil progress outcomes are affected more by a teacher's skills and professional characteristics than by factors such as their sex, qualifications or experience" i.e. being a 'top graduate' is not an indicator of successful teaching. Anyone who has been a teacher educator and supervised the training of teachers knows this is the case as teaching requires, as this research shows, professional skills and attributes beyond the possession of a degree. Attachment theory suggests that children who have had difficult life experiences should be allocated teachers who stay the course guiding the children through the adolescence into adult life. For the benefit of society it can be argued they need the best qualified teachers in terms of professional skills of motivation, explanation, delivery of lessons relevant to the learners as well as subject knowledge and so on. They need teachers who can act as role models and mentors not teachers who, as the Teach First model suggests, drop into classrooms for two years in order to get a kudos for a job in the business sector: "The training takes two years but the benefits will last your whole career. The transferable skills you pick up in the classroom will set you apart, whatever career you choose." .

To improve the status and to show the efficacy of Teach First, independent research needs to be undertaken and openly published to include feedback from those young people who have entered the scheme in good faith only to find they are expected to succeed with minimal experience in a job that experienced teachers would find difficult.

Drive-by NPOV tag

NPOV tag added 18 October 2015, I would be grateful for input as to the reason to add this tag.Lacunae (talk) 18:25, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The underlying problem is the overwhelming relianace on primary sources, particularly in the lede, also there is no reflection of the mixed reception in the lede. Stuartyeates (talk) 18:37, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response. Do you think perhaps the lede would be more neutral if the second paragraph were put into the main body of the article? And yes, I think I agree that there are definite sources which have named the scheme as controversial for a mention of this to be made.Lacunae (talk) 18:51, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm thinking the thing to do is remove everything without an appropriate source. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:25, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• this edit is just bizarre: (a) it uses a press release when it should use the full report and (b) it makes it clear that Teach First is unrelated to the London Effect. There are billions of things which are unrelated to Teach First and mentioning them all is not the role of an encyclopedic article. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:34, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
• This edit is inappropriate. It's a political opinion piece and can only be used for the current claims of the author and certainly not for the positions of their opponents. In also doesn't use the loaded word 'praised.' Stuartyeates (talk) 19:37, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
• This ref is not independent, if you read the second half of the article it's clearly a PR piece from Teach First. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:43, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Removal of all uncited material was tried before, and I think it really rather made the page seem restricted, if not partisan anti-Teach First. While secondary, rather than primary sources should be preferred, most of what I re-added of the unsourced material can be found in Wigdortz's book. see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Teach_First&oldid=665238431 for such a version, I think in the absence of good sources for everything, a position of seeing the page as a work in progress should be maintained. As for my recent edits, I apologise if they don't meet your criteria for what should constitute an edit. For (a/b) the article to me does make a clear link that Teach First has been cited as a reason for the "London effect", whether it uses a press release rather than full article quite frankly means it's a Sunday evening and I'm not especially into looking very deeply into it. Secondly I was merely looking for a citation to remove a citation needed template, feel free to polish it as you see fit. Thirdly, clearly you have much more stringent ideas of what should be used as source material, and in what capacity than I (In this case, I don't really see why independence matters in this instance).Lacunae (talk) 20:00, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

If most of the secondary sources are largely negative, then the article is going to be largely negative, as per WP:WEIGHT. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:26, 18 October 2015 (UTC)