Point evidence explain – Why we can do better than this approach
When it comes to teaching students how to write essays, we can do better than the ‘PEE’ approach…
- by Aaron Swan
- English teacher since 2007 and writer
The period between the end of my education and the start of my teaching career saw the emergence of ‘point, evidence, explain’ (PEE) paragraphs.
As early as 1998, SEND and ITT specialist Margaret Mulholland highlighted the “Danger that pupils will use [writing scaffolds] without recognizing that it is merely a technique to develop extended writing which, with practice, they will develop for themselves.”
Yet despite this prescient warning, ‘point, evidence, explain’ scaffolds have spread like ground elder.
What does ‘point, evidence, explain’ mean?
As every English teacher is sure to know, PEE paragraphing is a scaffold for framing students’ analysis. It ‘steps’ their objective into a series of short, easily replicable phrases.
This analysis might be one that students can perform verbally through back-and-forth dialogue with a subject specialist.
However, for them to do the same in their written responses, teachers will need to (re)acquaint them with some basics. What is a paragraph and what shape is it? What purpose does it serve?
Mulholland’s early work on PEE paragraphing (then called the ‘evidence sandwich’) sought to help students, “Recognise for themselves where they have slipped into narrative [writing],” and out of the analytical style they’ll have spent time developing collaboratively in class.
Variations of ‘point, evidence, explain’
The PEE scaffold directs students to first make a ‘point’, supported with ‘evidence’ (or a quotation). Depending on the practice you’re following, that final E may require students to explore, explain, evaluate or analyse the point in question.
Teachers have adapted and modified the PEE scaffold in various ways over time. Attempts at incorporating ‘link’ into the scaffold has previously given us ‘PEAL’.
Other variants have included PEGEX (point, example, explain). There’s also been a different spin on the original ‘evidence sandwich’ concept via Dale Banham’s HAMBURGER visualisation.
To that we can add Claire Riley’s work on the concept of ‘inference layering’. More recently, HarperCollins adopted the ‘statement, quote, inference’ technique for its Reimagine series of KS3 teaching materials. I’d bet there’s even more lurking out there…
Why use PEE?
On the surface, at least, the ‘point, evidence, explain’ scaffold and its ilk give off the appearance of good pedagogical practice. They tick many of Rosenshine’s educational principles.
They can be a useful aide-mémoire for students. This is because they essentially remove the cognitive load associated with transcoding internal and abstract thinking into concrete written statements.
This has the potential to lower the germane load of a given writing activity. Some teachers now believe that without such detailed guidance, students will end up lacking awareness of the nature and requirements of argumentative, analytical writing. They’ll become unable to generate genuine causal arguments.
Shortcomings
There is, however, some literature on the shortcomings of ‘point, evidence, explain’ paragraphs from teachers who have found them limiting. See Foster (2013), Teo (2015) and Evans (2007). To these detractors, I would add my own voice.
I believe that paragraph structuring acronyms are ineffective at producing analytical essays. By focusing only on the tripartite line level of student responses, we never consider the wider logic and sequence of essay writing.
Writing in the NATE journal Teaching English, Louisa Enstone remarked that, “As an examiner, I was disheartened by the lack of knowledge and understanding demonstrated by these… meaningless ‘PEE paragraphs’.”
Enstone went on to observe how “PEE formula prevent convincing and sophisticated written expression, and limit opportunities for the creation of individual, detailed and powerful arguments.”
This is a point history teachers Jennifer Evans and Gemma Pat have also made. They argued the effect of these mechanical responses is that ultimately, “Students atomise things, and lose a sense of what was being examined.”
Scaffolding the scaffold
This poor essay writing performance prompted by the ‘point, evidence, explain’ formula has, though, encouraged some teachers to undertake their own grassroots classroom research and attempt to develop some alternatives to the PEE model.
How many of us have had to ‘scaffold the scaffold’ through dramatic expression, interpretive dance or fancy PowerPoint visualisations? The moment your scaffold itself needs scaffolding is the moment that PEE’s failure should be obvious.
Reading back through the literature, I worry that the true intent behind ‘point, evidence, explain’ scaffolding was never to help students develop analytical skills, but rather to get them to write something passable.
Margaret Mulholland has described how she tried, “Persuading pupils to reason for themselves, and to develop independent argument.”
Personally, however, I feel we’d be better off exchanging Mulholland’s investigative prompts for questions such as ‘What is an argument?’ and ‘What constitutes analysis?’. We need students to carefully consider the key ingredients of evaluative work.
Writing in the journal Teaching History, Rachel Foster and Sarah Gadd acknowledge that analytical objectives ought to involve more than simply creating paragraphs.
The challenge should be centred on helping students with their “Organisation, construction, methods, and extended analysis”.
Foster and Gadd go on to argue that students need “Criteria by which to select information in order to deploy it as evidence, or to judge its strength”.
‘Judgement and strengths’ thus become part of the analytical process, with the objective being to, “Appreciate the disciplinary distinctiveness of history as a form of knowledge.”
Yet this ‘disciplinary distinctiveness’ that forms the analytical process isn’t stemmed within any of the various ‘point, evidence, explain’ strategies.
It’s established afterwards, through dialogue with the teacher. It’s a kind of ‘post-game debate’ learning experience that falls outside of the scaffolded game.
Disciplinary dialogue
We know from meta-analysis how important the learning environment is for academic success. ‘Point, evidence, explain’ strategies might sometimes correlate with high grades. However, it’s surely teachers’ broader disciplinary dialogue that produces this added value.
PEE strategies don’t even seem compatible with what exam boards are looking for. Can they encourage students to, as required by OCR in 2023, “Develop independent and critical thinking?” Or, as OCR previously wanted in 2022, help to underpin a “skills-based approach, building confidence in developing and articulating a fresh, individual response”?
Do these scaffolds, “Inspire, challenge and motivate every student, no matter what their level of ability”?
Because that’s what AQA was calling for in 2022. As Louisa Enstone observed, by training students to follow a mapped writing stem, we are failing to help them navigate a form that requires “Expert thought, understanding, processing”.
We can see for ourselves how examiners feel about PEE scaffolds in AQA’s 2022 ‘English Literature Modern Prose and Drama’ examiner’s report:
“Some students, who potentially might have worked at a higher level, were rather limited and constrained by overly formulaic [PEE / PETALtype] approaches. While there may be some virtue in such methods for students looking to move into level 3, for those aiming higher, these approaches tend to militate against the extended development of ideas, which is necessary for access to the higher reaches of the mark scheme.”
Is ‘point, evidence, explain’ a reductive approach?
Learners often lack sufficient prior knowledge or cognitive structures to effectively discover new knowledge on their own.
Analysis has to be explicitly taught. However, many teachers don’t possess the experience or subject knowledge needed to effectively teach ‘analytical domain’ writing.
The onus is therefore on departments to formulate discipline-specific models showing what good analysis looks like.
On their own, command words like ‘explain’, ‘analyse’, ‘evaluate’ and ‘link’ are insufficient to cover the different disciplinary routines often grouped together under ‘analysis’.
Good analytical writing demands a holistic approach, but ‘the PEE paragraph’ method is reductive. The one element isn’t indicative of the whole.
It’s akin to defining ‘flowers’ by their final intended objective. We overlook the root, stem and leaves that must exist before that objective can be reached.
So how do we define, describe and set out, formally and accurately, what the analytical process actually is, for teachers still needing such instruction?
In teaching circles, there’s still almost no referent for this analytical skill. There remains a pedagogical need that outlines exactly what is expected when we are asking students to analyse.
Aaron Swan is an English teacher, Language For Learning expert, and has been a head of department.
