From Raising the Floor to Raising the Ceiling

Whole Education 6th Annual Conference

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Establishing a shared vision for school improvement

Seizing the Agenda

Seizing the agenda: moving teaching from good to great

Whole Education workshop

Professor Toby Greany

November 2015

“There is nothing a politician likes so little as to be well-informed.

It makes decision making so complex and difficult.”

(John Maynard Keynes)

“For me, politics shouldn’t be some mind-bending exercise. It’s about what you feel in your gut”

(David Cameron, April 2011)

4

Dr Ben Goldacre report for DfE(2013)

Education should be more like medicine in the way it designs and uses research

We need an ‘information architecture’ and more Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs)

Evidence-based (or informed) teaching is high on the agenda

Schools in the driving seat:

• Quangos closed / stripped back

• Local Authorities – minimal resources and capacity

• Academies – autonomous and accountable

• Schools driving Initial Teacher Education through School Direct

• Teaching Schools define and disseminate effective practice through R&D and CPD roles

The onus is on schools to develop evidence-informed practice

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Good to Great - adapted

Reflective Practice - Evidence informed practice - What works

In threes:

1) share an aspect of your own practice that ‘works’?

2) what's the absolute best practice in your school?

How do you know – what’s your evidence for your claims?

Research evidence

Professional expertise

and judgement

Classroom context

and learner needs

Management and pupil

data

EIP

Durbin, B. and Nelson, J. (2014). Why Effective use of Evidence in the Classroom Needs System-wide Change , NFER

Evidence-informed practice aligns internal & external knowledge

• Use praise lavishly

• Allow learners to discover key ideas for themselves

• Group learners by ability

• Encourage re-reading and highlighting to memorise key

ideas

• Address issues of confidence and low aspirations before you

try to teach content

• Present information in learners’ preferred learning style

• Ensure learners are always active, rather than listening

passively, if you want them to remember

Examples of ineffective practices …

What makes great teaching?, Coe, R., Aloisi, C., Higgins S., & Elliot Major L., 2014

The kind of teaching needed today requires teachers to be high-level knowledge workers who constantly advance their own professional knowledge as well as that of their profession… (But) knowledge workers are not attracted by schools organized like an assembly line... To attract and develop knowledge workers… (schools must offer) the status, pay, professional autonomy, and the high quality education that go with professional work, with effective systems of teacher evaluation, with differentiated career paths and career diversity for teachers.

Schleicher, A (2011) Building a High-Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from around the world

Teachers as knowledge workers

Knowledge of what is to be taught and of the craft of teaching

An aptitude for connecting with young people and supporting them

Able quickly to figure out when students are not learning, what they need to learn next, and to draw on a wide range of knowledge and skills

to find the right solution or combination of solutions.

Teaching: The ability to give meaning to new experiences.

Concept/skill builder: Combines pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of

the learner, knowledge of educational ends, and knowledge of the subject.

Task manager Crude knowledge of educational context and purposes. Classrooms should look busy and orderly, pupils should complete assigned tasks, the teacher should be in control.

Curriculum delivererStrong curriculum knowledge, knowledge of educational context and purposes. Learning is prescribed; the curriculum itself provides the reason why learning is important.

Source: Twistleton, 2012

“Teachers are more likely to be a task manager or a curriculum deliverer if they sustain very busy environments with no built-in developmental programme, and if they are part of an unreflective culture, with an unarticulated pedagogy…. On the other hand, the teacher is more likely to be a concept/skill builder if teaching contexts are conducive to articulation and debate about knowledge, beliefs and values; if they are able to compare/contrast/critique different approaches; and if they are helped to get on the inside of teachable moments in a way that is developmental and scaffolded”.

Prof Sam Twistleton, UCET Annual Conference Report, 2012

Developing concept/skill builders

Imagine a school in which you taught better simply by virtue of teaching in

that school. What would such a school be like?

Judith Warren Little

Developing great teachers: the school as a learning environment

“The conclusions from.. research, in both

education and nursing, confirm that the main barriers to knowledge

use… are not at the level of individual resistance but

originate in an institutional culture that does not foster learning.”

Hemsley-Brown, 2004

By design?

Through a planned sequence?

How can schools enable teachers to question, understand and enrich their practice?

Organisational structures can get in the way

By chance? By design?

Through structures?

Culture

A shared R&D approach can structure the learning

Harris and Jones, 2012

Talking about your knowledge on a given issue

Looking at research on a given issue

and then how this can be used to

produce approaches to teaching and

learning

Trialling and embedding

these within your school

Making them a way of life

R&D – a collaborative professional learning process

Leadership as influence – whole school change and social processes

There was an agenda but not outcome defined, so that I felt like I was really involved… It did feel like a kind of negotiating, a chipping away, a kind of sculpting it from what everyone’s experiences were. (Teacher participant)

(R&D is) absolutely fundamental to school improvement for us – the most important thing probably. (Senior Leader)

Maxwell and Greany, NCTL, 2015

Structured R&D can impact on individuals and schools

That’s the real challenge. The people who are involved and committed are hooked in through the research and development bit. Then, when it spreads out, if they have not been involved in that first wave, they haven’t therefore (shared) in the action learning. They hear it and say that’s a good idea but they don’t do it in the same way that embeds it as deeply in their psyche or in their pedagogy really. (Alliance R&D lead)

Maxwell and Greany, NCTL, 2015

But mobilising knowledge and evidence remains a challenge

Teacher

CPD facilitator

School leaders

Peers

Pupils

Carefully designed/aligned

teacher CPDL with a strong focus on pupil

outcomes has a significant impact on student achievement

Consistent finding across all reviews

Mobilising evidence depends on effective CPD

1. Substantive development has to be sustained over

time - 2 terms plus (but one-offs can work for very

specific practices)

2. Multiple, iterative activities and opportunities

following initial instruction to refine/adapt

practice in multiple contexts in light of pupils’

responses

3. Time alone isn’t enough - Banarama principle!

Time

Cordingley, Higgins, Greany et al, Teacher Development Trust, 2015

4 Need:

• individual starting points to be recognised and develop a collective sense of purpose

• to focus on aspirations for pupils and how they learn/ progress in response to teachers’ learning

• to explore existing theories, beliefs and practices, but often challenge these

5 Relevance matters - but that and volunteers vs conscripts matter less than environment / time /peer learning/ focus on pupils

Cordingley, Higgins, Greany et al, Teacher Development Trust, 2015

Participants

6 Formative assessment is key – for modelling approaches, refining support, contextualising for subjects/ pupil groups and evaluating impact

7 Need for external input, to challenge orthodoxies supportively - sometimes complemented by internal specialists.

8 Facilitators as subject, evaluation and process experts

9 Peer support - learning together with peers; reciprocal vulnerability speeds up risk taking

Approaches

Cordingley, Higgins, Greany et al, Teacher Development Trust, 2015

10. Setting out deliberately to develop meta-cognitive control eg by:

– Analysing and evaluating CPD content and evidence re pupils’ responses and interpreting them; and

– Iterative opportunities to encounter, understand, respond to and reflect on new approaches as part of the day job

11. School leaders must create the conditions for this -resources, modelling and challenge

12 No single element or process works – crucial to combine them, align them with goals – effectively!

Approaches

Cordingley, Higgins, Greany et al, Teacher Development Trust, 2015

• Generic pedagogic CPD – contextualisation for subjects and pupils is crucial

• Telling teachers what to do or providing materials without chance to develop skills and explore impacts

• Failing to provide a strong focus on aspirations for pupils or assessing links between teacher and pupil learning

• Providing time and or frequent support without structured opportunities to engage with, understand and reflect on the implications of new approaches/ practices

What doesn’t work?

Cordingley, Higgins, Greany et al, Teacher Development Trust, 2015

Individual

evidence

champions

within

teams

Systems &

processes that

make research,

data and evidence

available and

encourage use

Partnerships with

HEIs and

external experts

School leaders

understand and

promote

evidence-

informed practice,

via R&D and

CPDLSchool or partnership

Culture that

expects continual

and rigorous

evaluation and

review

Putting it all together

In threes:

• Who are the ‘evidence champions’ in your school?

• Draw a diagram of how knowledge and evidence of effective practice moves around your school? Does it reach everyone? Does it change practice and, if so, how?

• How robust is your CPD provision when compared to the evidence?

• What more could you do to build an evidence-informed culture?

Any

questions?