If you are like me, you are fascinated by the patterns that you see in your students’ learning.

Many years ago, as a young teacher noticing these patterns I saw that children who had struggled in school were suddenly making accelerated progress. They’d say,

"My reading’s got better since I started these lessons with you”.

“My Dad says to tell you, my reading’s really changed. It’s amazing.”

The thing is - I was not teaching reading - I was teaching them to play the cello. Today I’m sharing how I went from noticing patterns to researching them.

Teachers would tell me their lower attaining pupils, who had had behaviour issues had caught up and were working quietly.

“I never have a problem with them.”

And then there was this from one teacher, about a group of children in her class:

“They’ve transformed, but it was maturation. Nothing to do with what you’ve been doing.”

My musician colleagues advised me to drop the idea. Rhythm was about counting not reading. I mulled all of this over. Eventually, someone else said,

“That’s a research project. That’s why people do research.”

This was the last thing I needed to hear. I wondered how I’d meet a researcher and persuade them to answer my questions. I was reading everything I could find on ‘my topic’, but still had no answers.

Realising that the only way to tackle this problem was to do the research, I saw myself as an unlikely ‘fit’. As a musician, trained at the Royal Academy of Music, I’d no academic background and trembled as I walked up the steps of UCL’s Institute for Education, my crafted case studies ready for inspection. Two hours later, I walked down the same steps ready to join the MA in Music Education, and with the option of later applying for a PhD.

People often asked me how I managed to fit this in around working full-time and also raising children. I set and met reading goals every day, writing the assignments at night. If a student arrived 5 minutes late for their (individual) music lesson with me, I’d have read ten pages of a book in that time. These intense short burst of reading supercharged my teaching because the texts were so relevant. When principles and practice meet, inspiration follows. So, reading and teaching were symbiotic and the MA led to the PhD.

'Credible research' and 'real change'?

When I began the doctoral training, I was surprised to meet so many people with no idea about their ‘topic’ but detailed knowledge of the ‘isms’ and the ‘ologies’ of researching, whereas I knew exactly what I wanted to investigate. Some people worried that I was ‘too close’ to my topic and said that I needed to be more detached. It seemed inevitable that ‘researcher effects’ would derail me. All research has limitations and of course that is why rigor and scrutiny are priorities.

How can educational researchers address limitations? There are many powerful approaches that strengthen research so that it is as objective as possible. One is to ‘triangulate’ the research. I invited teachers to rate a child’s progress and make any comments. Another is to do this repeatedly so that class teachers have an opportunity to observe patterns in progress over three or more years, testing whether any effects are reliable rather than a ‘one off’ of a coincidence.

Can 'triangulation' strengthen the 'credibility' of research?

Triangulating the data means that the voices of children and teachers are collected and presented as data that complements standardized reading assessment scores. The extent to which these different sources of information intersect helps to put flesh on the bones of the reading assessments by including data representing the children’s progress in class.

Professional judgment in a 'real' setting

All teachers bring professional judgment to this process as well as their own preconceptions about ‘strategies’ and ‘interventions’, ranging from open-mindedness to caution to reluctance. If teachers participated in a project over several years, their professional judgments could become more nuanced. Sometimes I'd see a rapid change in teachers’ responses after only one iteration of the project. For others, it might take longer.

Specificity and transparency

In educational research it’s important to narrow down as many variables as possible and to conduct the research in a realistic way. For example, it is realistic to control for group size in an intervention because this impacts children’s engagement and might also provide useful data about their learning day-to-day. It is not realistic to control for the school being inspected during the research, because although this would impact the setting and the delivery of the intervention, an inspection is something of a rarity. However, that said, almost all of the schools I worked with in a centrally-funded project were inspected within the same half term, while I was delivering the intervention.

Being specific is key. Rhythm, for example helps children with weak phonological awareness, weak working memory, weak comprehension and weak attention. It does not resolve acuity issues - if for example, children need glasses or hearing aids, or do not yet speak English.

Rhythm, reading, rewards and executive functions

Rhythm for Reading does help with confidence. When children become disaffected because phonics drills have not worked for them, reading musical notation (instead of letters and words) offers a fast and alternative way to build attention, sharpen decoding skills and cultivate fluency that complements the traditional methods of teaching early reading.

The idea that an alternative, simpler symbol system can make a difference in only ten minutes a week may be regarded as implausible. There are, however many deeper reasons why lower attaining children respond quickly to the approach. To appreciate these I warmly invite you to join (by clicking the links) one of my Thursday evening webinars on the (i) Reward System or (ii) Executive Functions. Even though our modern minds might immediately respond with caution to the idea of a fast-acting process, these practices were known and documented by civilizations such as the Macedonians and those who followed their example and continue to do so in formal 'training' today.

'Credible research' in practice

‘Credible’ means believable. If research becomes a creed then it logically follows that it will be shaped subjectively by professional preconceptions, perceptions and unconscious bias. Different settings shape people’s perceptions to such extent that some will see things differently depending on the person they are speaking with.

In a room where everyone ‘agrees’ with a charismatic leader, it’s unlikely that anyone will voice their personal views, unless they have calculated that their words would be approved. This can shut down healthy debate.

In a room where there are two sides to a vibrant debate, each person will add their perspective, only to strengthen the case for the side they support, but no one in the room will argue for a compromise because the goal is to ‘win’ the argument. Winners continue to win and in education they tend to be the more privileged whether they represent regions, cities, neighborhoods, families or of course children.

Rhythm for Reading offers that compromise - an alternative fast-acting approach that lifts reading scores and confidence, without using letters and words. It's designed for those who need a boost.