Draft – for discussion only

Rethinking improvement: reclaiming professional voice:

A ThinkpieceJohn West-Burnham

Proposition 1 Education policy making is disjointed, incremental and reactive.

The absence of a consensus around the nature and purpose of education inhibits relevant ling-term planning in England.

The focus on improvement has led to an alternative perspective centred on transformation

Short-termism means that policy is informed by the latest perceived crisis or fashion

Proposition 2 Many assumptions underpinning policy making are fundamentally flawed

Current orthodoxy remains in the 19th century with focus on the school rather than the context

There is growing confidence in the impact of scientific research on models of educational practice.

Research into educational practice increasingly indicates those that work and those that are fallacious.

Proposition 3 Incrementalism linked to improvement leads to stasis.

In spite of sustained effort and numerous initiatives the gap has not closed over the past ten years

The school-centric system offers a very limited basis for high impact strategies

Incremental strategies ignore the short term reality in favour of potential future improvement§

Proposition 4 The conceptual map defining educational policy is changing

There is a growing dichotomy between the emerging neo-liberal agenda and the historic assumptions of the welfare state.

Evidence of impact and cost effectiveness will become increasingly significant

Proposition 5 strategies to engage with government

Focusing on performance making closing the gap the priority Building a moral consensus across all stakeholders Becoming evidence based to demonstrate impact and build credibility Much more sophisticated informing and influencing

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Proposition 1 Education policy making is disjointed, incremental and reactive.

The emergence of education policy over recent decades has, in many ways, failed to

follow the path described by Goldacre for medicine( 2013:4):

. . . just a few decades ago, best medical practice was driven by things like eminence, charisma, and personal experience. We needed the help of statisticians, epidemiologists, information librarians, and experts in trial design to move forwards. Many doctors – especially the most senior ones - fought hard against this, regarding “evidence based medicine” as a challenge to their authority.

Medical practice is now, to a very significant degree, based in the scientific method

and the prevailing culture is essentially one of evidence based policy and practice.

What is very clear is that education policy has, to an unusually high degree, been

subject to ‘eminence, charisma and personal experience’. Equally education policy

making has been subject to significant discontinuities and unilateral changes in

direction. Every Child Matters is perhaps the most significant example. It is difficult to

find a coherent trajectory for education policy in England

Disjointed incrementalism is a concept derived from Charles Lindblom's 1959 essay

“The Science of 'Muddling Through’ and might be the most appropriate way of

characterizing educational policy making as a process The assumptions that

underpin disjointed incrementalism might be summarised as follows:

• Change works through relatively small, incremental, marginal steps – the

status quo is not challenged but rather adjusted.

• Policy changes are introduced on a regular, cyclical, basis linked to changes

in administration or economic imperatives – there is a very limited strategic

perspective.

• Policy is essentially retrospective and reactive. Find and fix rather than predict

and prevent and is dogma driven rather than evidence based.

• Ends, outcomes, are changed to fit with means. Decision making is

essentially non-sequential, best described as punctuated equilibrium.

Compare that situation with that in Finland:

A typical feature of teaching and learning in Finland is high confidence in teachers and principals regarding curriculum, assessment,

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organization of teaching, and evaluation of the work of the school. . . What is important is that today’s Finnish education policies are the result of three decades of systematic, mostly intentional development that has created a culture of diversity, trust and respect. (Sahlberg 2015:152)

“systematic, intentional development’ is a very long way from disjointed and

incremental policy making which is further complicated by anecdotally based policies,

political expediency and dogma. Equally 30 years without wide deviations from the

consensual basis provides for confidence and, in direct contradistinction to England

facilitates high performance and innovation. It is probably fair to say that an

overarching orthodoxy of improvement linked to an incremental approach leads to an

essentially reactive policy culture.

Paradoxically a parallel element in educational policy in sharp contradistinction to

incremental approaches is the concept transformation. The iconic image for

transformation is the progression from caterpillar to butterfly – ‘ the purpose of a

caterpillar is to become a butterfly, not a better caterpillar.’ Without pushing the

analogy too far the problem is that in order to become a butterfly the caterpillar has to

become a chrysalis – in effect to die. There seems little appetite for the present

system to die in order to be reborn.

We therefore have a prevailing culture from national to institutional level that

essentially reinforces the status quo and inhibits innovation

Proposition 2 The assumptions underpinning policy making are fundamentally flawed

Of course there are many aspects of policy making that are broadly consensual e.g.

the curriculum being subject based and some that have the potential to bring about

significant change e.g. the pupil premium. However there are many such

assumptions that are based on dogma or are simply wrong:

Change is best accomplished through incremental stages.

Achievement is not influenced by social factors

Children’s progress is chronological – on an annual basis

Even large cohorts of children are homogeneous to a significant degree.

Children learn different things in the same way

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Subjects are more important than skills

Memorisation is the basis for assessment

There is an emerging evidence based approach to teaching and learning that calls

into question and challenges a range of assumptions such as:

Our evidence makes it crystal clear that treating children as blank slates or empty vessels, using a factory model of schooling, and arbitrarily imposing the same targets for everyone are approaches that work against, rather than with natural child development. Our schools and our educational policies will be improved if they are designed to respond to naturally occurring individual differences in ability and development. (Asbury and Plomin 2014: 12)

Asbury and Plomin are generic scientists. Sarah-Jane Blakemore is professor of

cognitive neuroscience at UCL with a particular interest in the neurological

development of adolescents.

One of the contributions to education that neuroscience is capable of making is illuminating the nature of learning itself. It is unlikely that there is one single all-purpose type of learning for everything. In terms of brain structures involved learning mathematics differs from learning to read, which differs from learning to play the piano. Each memory system relies on a different brain system and develops at a slightly different time. (Blakemore and Frith 2005: 139)

Although research scientists are appropriately cautious about the direct transfer of

their research into classrooms it does seem to be the case that there is a very strong

body of evidence that offers an authoritative alternative perspective. It has been well

understood for some years that there are factors that have a significant impact on

educational outcomes but only very rarely are these elements recognised in public

policy

Three broad conclusions seem to emerge from the research analysing the factors influencing student learning. First, student background characteristics emerge as the most important source of variation. . . Second, school-related factors, which are more open to policy influence, explain a smaller part of the variations in student learning than student characteristics. Third, among school level variables, the factors that are closest to student learning, such as teacher quality and classroom practices, tend to have the strongest impact on student achievement. (Pont et al 2008:33)

Most school effectiveness studies show that 80% or more of student achievement can be explained by student background rather than schools. (Silins and Mulford 2002: 561)

One fundamental implication of this evidence base is that the school, in its present

format may simply not be appropriate to the demands that are being imposed on

what is essentially a school-centric system:

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At present, the tragedy of school change is that only about 30 per cent of the explanation for variations in school achievement appears to be attributable to factors in the school . . . Perhaps it is now time for leaders to lead their schools and exert their influence far beyond the school walls . . . (Moreno et al 2007:5)

Drawing on a wide range of sources it becomes possible to offer a hypothetical

model that might serve as an appropriate basis for policy and practice.

Desforges and Abouchaar (2003) make the implications of this way of thinking very clear:

The most important finding from the point of view of this review is that parental involvement in the form of ‘at-home good parenting’ has a significant positive effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation. In the primary age range the impact caused by different levels of parental involvement is much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools. The scale of the impact is evident across all social classes and all ethnic groups.

In essence it would have been a better use of resources to focus on improving

families rather than improving schools.

Proposition 3 Incrementalism linked to improvement leads to stasis.

School improvement has been the prevailing and dominant social imaginary in

education for a generation. Improvement is the conceptual framework that influences

Genetic Factors - 50%

School factors -

20%

Social factors -

30%

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most educational policy at national level and strategic thinking at local and

institutional level. It also provides the key conceptual frameworks for most models of

school leadership in that they work on a limited time frame and operate within a

consensual equilibrium.

What is very clear is that developing alternative structural models does little if

anything to impact on the actual level of performance of the education system.

Consider firstly the number of structural changes that have taken place over the last

10 years in English education. Then consider the impact they have had on school

performance from the following perspectives:

Although four out of five children now achieve the expected standards at primary school, one in five still does not, and around two in five young people leave secondary school without five or more A*-C GCSEs or equivalents including English and maths. Poor children still have worse educational outcomes at every stage and we have a long tail of low attainment.

Educational Excellence Everywhere – White Paper 2016

The attainment gap between FSM and non-FSM secondary students hasn’t budged in a decade. It was 28 percentage points 10 years ago and it is still 28 percentage points today. Thousands of poor children who are in the top 10% nationally at age 11 do not make it into the top 25% five years later.

Sir Michael Wilshaw HMCI, 2016

The average science, mathematics and reading scores of pupils in England have not changed since 2006. The average science score in England has remained consistent since 2006 and is higher than the average score of 15-year-olds in 52 countries. The average mathematics score for England has remained stable since 2006. As is the case with science and mathematics, there is no evidence of a significant change in average reading scores in England since 2006.

Jerrim J and Shure N (2016) Achievement of 15-Year- Olds in England: PISA 2015 National Report Department for Education

The key issue in most aspects of educational policy making in England is the issue of

the gap. English education is characterised by an OECD as being high performance

but low equity and therein lies the problem. Although performance by a range of

criteria has improved in some respects the gap between children living in poverty and

those who do not remains stubbornly wide.

Over this period the number of schools that are either good or excellent according to

Ofsted criteria has risen to 70 per cent and performance at Key Stage 2 and Key

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Stage 4 have both improved. But the gap has not closed. In fact, it has widened, And

the gap is actually wider in outstanding secondary schools than in schools requiring

improvement.

Proposition 4 The assumptions defining educational policy are changing

The political New Right represents a coalition of neo-liberal and neo-conservative thinking. The former promotes the virtue of a free market economy as a more effective mechanism for the distribution of social resources, competition, privatisation and individual liberty, while the latter privileges tradition, hierarchy and social order. Neo-conservatism is committed to the regeneration of traditional moral values, authority, the virtues of a strong state and intervention by the state to achieve these. (Garratt and Forrester 2012:10) (40)

Underpinning any such analysis are the fundamental assumptions, the prevailing

social imaginary that sets the context for a range of assumptions. Much of the debate

as to the changing nature of the development of education policy is based on certain

key assumptions about the nature of a public service such as education:

It serves the interests of all relevant members of the public, irrespective of

background;

It serves the interests of the community as a whole, not just those in receipt of

the services;

Professional decisions are made on the basis of what is good for the learner

and the community, not on the basis of profit for the provider or of social

privilege;

It is openly accountable to the public which it serves, by whatever democratic

processes this might be achieved (Pring 2013:154).

In the decades following the 1944 Education Act education policy in England was

largely directed by a social democratic, one nation perspective with a very significant

consensus around the core purpose of education – to reduce social inequality and

create equality of opportunity. The education system was run by a sometimes tense

relationship between central government, local government and schools, with a fairly

clear and consistent division of labour. In essence, national government set strategic

policy that was interpreted and applied by local government, with schools and

teachers having significant influence over core matters of pedagogy and curriculum.

The balance was broadly successful for a minority of pupils – disadvantaged pupils

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did not thrive or succeed and the advent of comprehensive schools had only limited

effect on their potential success.

The dilemma facing successive Secretaries of State has been to find the magic wand

that secures the optimum outcomes of sustained improvement and closing the gap.

Apart from a brief foray under New Labour manifested in the various elements of

‘Every Child Matters’, the reform interventions have been almost exclusively focused

on the school, in essence school improvement in various guises. The various

strategies have been school-centric rather than focused on the development of social

justice across society, in spite of the messages from high performing education

systems that improving educational performance is a function of social well-being

and economic security.

Educational policy making has shown a steady drift since the advent of the Blair

Government in 1997 towards essentially neo-liberal policies which might be defined

and compared using the following table.

Focus Neo-liberal/ neo-conservative perspectives

Social Democrat Perspectives

Resulting tensions

The nature of society

Competition is the norm in personal, social and economic relationships.The state should not interfere in the free market.

The state has a duty to intervene to secure equity and social justice

Devolution vs. centralisation

The nature of an education system

To develop a culture of performativity and accountability.To compete for pupils but to collaborate in order to improve.

To facilitate a self -improving school system (TSAs).

Independence vs. collaboration

The role of government

To hold schools to account (Ofsted) and intervene (RSCs).

To initiate intervention strategies (Every Child Matters).To support schools through the provision of services and agencies (NCSL)

Professionalism vs accountability

The role of schools

To provide cost-effective education.

To help secure equity (pupil premium).

Doing more with less

The purpose of To reinforce Combining Measurement

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education prevailing social norms and values.To educate the future workforce.To embed social conventions.

academic success with personal development and well-being

and value

A model like this inevitable creates artificial boundaries and over simple definitions.

Proposition 5 Developing evidence-based practice is key to initiating a change in the making of policy

According to Waters, in education:

. . . many studies have little impact. They are small scale and serve to ensure an individual’s or group’s profile within a research community which largely debates its own research activity, usually without any ground breaking findings which could influence practice on a large scale . . . If an academic writes a book aimed at enlightening teachers or students there is no credit in it . . . so what’s the point in writing it? Teachers don’t tend to read academic journals. There they sit, on the shelf, read only by other academics. So there is no incentive to create a body of evidence that aims to improve teaching and learning as a whole. (Waters 2013:229)

In spite of Waters’ pessimism there would seem to be a case for working towards an

evidence based approach in education. Two issues need to be addressed with

regard to the nature of educational research – the validity and reliability of that

research and the relationship between theory and practice.

Validity and reliability are the cornerstones of the scientific method and need to be

applied to educational policy making and practice. Trustworthiness is perhaps the

single most significant factor in determining the appropriateness and applicability of

the outcomes of research although the spectrum of alternative models of

trustworthiness

This spectrum covers the range of evidence from the hard science of DNA testing

that is virtually incontrovertible and the scientifically rigorous randomised trial to the

intuitive, anecdotal, hearsay and gossip. It is important to respect experience,

wisdom and insight and achieve a balance of approaches appropriate to the topic

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under review. At the same time it is important not to defer to the tyranny of

experience or the attraction of the anecdotal.

Validity and reliability are concepts that are essentially derived from quantitative

models of research in that they are manifestations of certain aspects of scientific

method, in particular the extent to which a piece of research is consistent over time

(reliability) and is transferable between different contexts (validity). Thus a set of

bathroom scales are trustworthy and so useful to the extent that they are consistent

over time (reliable), and their performance is consistent with other scales (valid) e.g.

the scales in the doctor’s surgery. Joy and despair when weighing oneself need to

be based on confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the scales.

Guba and Lincoln (2005) posit that trustworthiness of a research study is important to

evaluating its worth.  Trustworthiness involves establishing:

Credibility - confidence in the 'truth' of the findings

Transferability - showing that the findings have applicability in other contexts

Dependability - showing that the findings are consistent and could be

repeated

Confirmability - a degree of neutrality or the extent to which the findings of a

study are shaped by the respondents and not researcher bias, motivation, or

interest.

Every professional practitioner builds up a worldview based on their reflections on

their practice. There are numerous variables that will inform and influence how any

teacher or leader perceives their role and the strategies that they adopt in support of

that role. Gender, ethnicity and personal influences such as family life and personal

educational experiences are very real and powerful factors.

Running parallel with recognising and analysing all of the complex variables that

inform personal decisions about how to teach or lead are the processes by which

leaders make sense of and apply their chosen approach. This alerts us to the fact

that professional practice is essentially a personal construct, a mental map or a

mindscape that helps us make sense of the world and determines our choices and

behaviour. Sergiovanni (2005:24) talks of mindscapes that are:

...implicit mental frames through which reality... and our place in this reality are envisioned. Mindscapes provide us with intellectual and psychological images of the real world and boundaries and parameters of rationality that help us to make sense of this world...mindscapes are intellectual security blankets...and road maps through an uncertain world...

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Effective teachers and leaders work to enhance and deepen their personal

mindscape through a variety of strategies of which reflection on practice is probably

the most significant. However there are numerous sources that help to create and

develop our mindscapes and so inform our practice. In essence in building our own

mindscapes we give higher or lower status to different types of evidence. For

example a committed smoker might well deny the validity and relevance of the

research to them but will be influenced by a family member.

Evidence based practice requires a balance between the theoretical and the practical

with each reinforcing the other:

The unity of a critical theory and a critical practice is not, therefore, the unity of a theory of education on the one side and a practice of criticism on the other. It is the unity of an educational theory with an educational practice . . . The nature of educational values must be debated . . . not only as a theoretical question but as a practical question of finding forms of life that express them. (Carr and Kemmis 2006: 208-209)

Heck and Hallinger (2005:232) identified:

..... the need to shift inquiry from descriptions of educational mangers’ work and explorations of the antecedents of their behaviour to the effects and impact of what they do in managing and leading schools.

This takes us back to the key issue in translating theory into practice – it is not

enough just to act, action has to be morally consistent and translate aspiration into

actuality. This has to be seen as a learning process, one of growth and development

and engaging with the interaction of beliefs and practice. For Dewey the pivotal

component of this learning process is reflection which is an:

Active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and further conclusions to which it leads . . . it includes a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of evidence and rationality. (Dewey 1933: 23)

Proposition 5 strategies to engage with government

One of the many distinctive attributes of Finland is the high degree of consensus on

key social issues, not least education. In many ways education in Britain has long

been adversarial. Finland is relatively homogeneous and cohesive and this is

sometimes described as ‘egalitarian conformity’ and ‘consensual authoritarianism’

and therein lies the difference – high levels of social homogeneity, moral consensus

and embedded social norms indicate limited government intervention. Polarised

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societies, communities and organisations with low levels of social capital find

collaborative working almost impossible.

Possible strategies to secure greater professional engagement in educational policy

making might include:

1. Developing trust in the profession by focusing on performance – there is

enough evidence from Hattie, The Sutton Trust and the Educational

Endowment Foundation to allow for the emergence of a professional

consensus on the nature of effective teaching and learning and thereby the

adoption of consistent models of professional practice. Consistency is one of

the key characteristics of high performance teams, businesses, systems and

countries. In many ways it is the often wide variation in the performance both

between schools and within schools that inhibits calls to trust the profession.

2. Building a moral consensus – just as there are multiple views of what

constitutes appropriate models of teaching and learning so there is still a

significant degree of ambiguity about the core purpose of education. Although

there are numerous permutations surely it might be possible for most

educationalists to agree that, in the final analysis, education is about social

justice. Quite irrespective of the differing priorities of wide range of

stakeholders in education the issue of equity does seem paramount. We

achieved equality in education some years ago, every child goes to school

but we are some way from achieving equity – every child goes to a good

school. The pupil premium is a powerful model of policy designed to secure

increased equity but given the issues discussed above it will need a family

premium and a community premium to really secure the potential to transform

the lives of all those for whom society is fundamentally unfair.

This means that such educators are not merely concerned with forms of empowerment that promote individual achievement and traditional forms of academic success. Instead, they are also concerned in their teaching with linking empowerment – the ability to think and act critically – to the concept of social transformation. (Giroux 1997:103)

3. Evidence based practice is one of the defining characteristics of high trust

and high performance systems. There are a number of areas where teachers

as researchers has the potential to enhance practice and so credibility and

outcomes:

More accurate diagnosis of special needs and specific learning needs.

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Review and analysis of teaching and learning strategies (e.g. Sutton Trust

What makes Great Teaching? 2014))

Evaluation and review of school policy initiatives (e.g. P4C)

Cost benefit analysis of new resources (e.g. EEF Toolkit for teaching and

learning)

Synthesis of research (e.g. Hattie Visible Learning)

Challenging pseudo-science (e.g. Omega 3, brain gym, learning styles)

Improving practice through action research (e.g. Lesson study)

Testing and proving innovation and application of research ( e.g.

Blakemore and Plomin)

4. Less naïve more sophisticated in informing and influencing

In what is essentially a market economy educationalists can appear to be somewhat

naïve in assuming the rightness of their cause ignoring the demands of the rest of the

public sector. The use of a range of media, skilful management of relations with

the press and the ability to project an image that inspires trust and confidence.

Many schools do this almost intuitively but there is often a weakness at

national level that needs to be addressed by a range of co-ordinated

approaches involving skilled PR and sophisticated networking and credibility

building.

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References

Blakemore S-J and Frith U (2005) The Learning Brain Oxford Blackwell

Publishing

Carr W and Kemmis S (2006) Becoming Critical Abingdon Routledge

Dewey J (1933) How We Think

Giroux, H. A. (1997) Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope New York, Westview Press

Goldacre B (2013) Building evidence into education London DfE

Habermas J (1971) Knowledge and Human Interests London Heinemann

Hattie, J. (2009) Visible Learning, London Routledge

Heck R H and Hallinger P (2005) ‘The Study of Educational Leadership and

Management: Where does the field stand today?’ Educational Management,

Administration and Leadership Vol 33 No 2 April 2005 (229-244)

Robinson V (2011) Student-Centered Leadership San Francisco Jossey-Bass

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