2. The Plan…
In pairs or trios, teachers lead an enquiry
on an aspect of pedagogy they want to
develop.
Focus on a specific cohort.
Focus on gathering evidence of the
impact of our practice on pupils’ learning.
Collaborative planning, observing,
recording, reflecting, tweaking,
reviewing, evaluating…
EMBEDDING what works.
Sharing and DISSEMINATING.
3. The Plan
Making use of the Monday CPD
sessions for this purpose.
Working in clusters with a mentor –
regular input and discussion &
planning time.
4. “Every teacher needs to
improve, not because they are
not good enough, but because
they can be even better.”
Dylan Wiliam
Research suggests that the impact of
teachers on students’ outcomes plateaus
after a few years. We need to challenge
ourselves to deliberately seek
improvements in our practice.
5. Why are we doing this?
Effect of teaching on students in years of
progress
Average
student
Poor
teaching
Disadvantaged
student
Highly
effective
teaching
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
Source: Sutton Trust
(2011)
Better teachers improve the life chances of
students.
7. The problem with continuous
professional development is that the
continuous bit is too often missing.
Research shows that only 1% of CPD
has a transformative impact on
classroom practice.
But teachers can lead a
transformation themselves through
deliberate practice and collaboration.
9. Ends…as much as means
Start by identifying a specific group of
pupils who are supposed to benefit
and pick an area of learning to
develop and then choose an
approach.
Think of ways of evaluating impact
from the start.
11. Evaluating the impact of our
practice
Range of evaluation
FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE
ASSESSMENT
OTHER STATS
eg attendance figures, number
of comments/detentions/merits
in contact book
TEACHER’S OWN OBSERVATIONS
– NOTES, PHOTOS OF WORK
PRODUCED, USE OF STAR
CAMERA
QUALITY OF HOMEWORK
AND
CLASSWORK, INCLUDING
PARTICIPATION /
CONTRIBUTIONS
TEAM MEMBERS’
OBSERVATIONS AND
COMMENTS
POST LESSON INTERVIEWS
WITH FOCUS PUPILS
GETTING A BASELINE FIRST?
12. THE PROCESS
Choose an Enquiry question / goal
Set up
Design your evaluation
Investigate the issue, get a baseline
Enquiry,
through
Lesson Study
Complete
your
evaluation
Plan and try an intervention
Interim review & expert input/research
Refine your intervention
Finish evaluation
Write a summary
Dissemination & Sharing
Guidance
Framework
13. Example: Lesson Study
1. Plan
•
•
•
Plan a lesson together.
Address each activity to your
Learning Goal and predict how
pupils will react and how you will
assess this.
Pick 3 case pupils.
2. Observe
•
•
•
Teach the lesson with your
colleagues observing.
Pay particular attention to the
case pupils
Conduct any assessments and/or
interviews during & after.
3. Reflect & Plan
•
As soon after the lesson as
possible, reflect how each activity
elicited the sought-after change.
Were your predictions correct?
Why?
FOCUS ON THE
STUDENTS, NOT
THE TEACHER
17. Next steps…
Next Monday CPD session: 2nd
December
Enquiry should have started in order
to fuel the next discussion / planning /
reflection session.
18. Further reading and guidance
Please feel free to ask for specific
reading on your chosen topic.
If you would like to find out about
strategies used by colleagues from
other schools, let me know.
Notas del editor
This is, frankly, bizarre…There is now plenty of research to show that every student gains a significant benefit from really good teaching but that students from disadvantaged backgrounds stand to benefit even more – they are generally much more sensitive to the quality of teaching. So why would we concentrate so much policy attention and resource on the first year of teaching only and neglect the following years? The research evidence is crystal clear – this is wrong.
What sort of change do we want? How to we connect it to the current demand for evidence-informed practice?Teacher learning could be likened to a student learning a new language, or a politician’s understanding of a policy area.If someone is not given time to properly learn a new skill or understand a new domain of knowledge before they are interrogated or observed then they will simply adopt a superficial approach. Where students are not properly prepared for an oral exam they will regurgitate pre-prepared phrases. The politician who has just picked up a new brief can do little but offer soundbites and platitudes.Our current systems of observations and inspections reinforces this shallow learning. There is now strong research evidence from the US to suggest that, no matter how competent an observer thinks they are, they are an unreliable judge of the quality of teaching taking place. Over in the UK we’ve taken it further to attempt to use a 30 minute observation to judge the quality of ‘learning’ of 30 different young people. There is little evidence to suggest that this is any more feasible or reliable and I would hazard a guess that it is significantly worse. What is the result? Teachers are learning superficial techniques that are easy to see, rather than engaging deeply with teaching techniques and ensuring that both they and their students genuinely master ideas.Similarly it is also clear that all of the one-off courses, advice guides and tips and tricks style professional development is nigh-on useless for improving teacher skill. Would you expect a surgeon to go on a one day course to learn a new surgical procedure? Would you be happy if your teacher thought all the CPD they needed was from twitter or from medic-meets giving 3 minute presentations?
We need a range of different types of evaluation rather than just one type.
This is an example of the enquiry approach we use in our National Teacher Enquiry Network. Teachers pick ideas they want to implement and cycle through an implementation approach.
In NTEN we use Lesson Study to help them refine and explore the ideas.