In Focus 3: Effective Professional Learning

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

IN FOCUS

OCCASIONAL PAPER NUMBER 3 | SEPTEMBER 2017

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

CASE STUDY: EUROPE

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

THE CHANGING FACE OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING: ONE SCHOOL’S STORY Recently, an international school within Western Europe recognised that diversity of teaching experiences among teaching staff was both a strength and liability, meaning that the school needed agreed-upon expectations and coherence, insofar as the curriculum and teaching were concerned. The school needed an expert, a master in the field, who also brought considerable professional gravitas in helping teaching professionals to find common ground. The challenge was to take dissonant voices across the teaching staff and ensure professional discourse, whilst drawing on external practice and research to inform thinking and actions for updating a written curriculum with the hallmark of ensuring deep understanding. At the 35,000-foot level, the strategic intent of the school was to build a new curriculum as a function of thoughtful design.

The school hired Dr Grant Wiggins as a visiting scholar, bringing worldwide credibility and a knack for listening to doubters, and possessing the skills to nurture – over time – increased awareness and knowledge. At the same time, he worked with teaching staff to consider positive consequences for making a change to the Understanding

by Design curriculum-building format. Working with small groups of department and grade level teachers over the course of almost three years, Dr Wiggins provided ongoing feedback and quality control. When present on campus, there was an intensity of experience, wherein insight was shared, differing opinions and perspectives were weighed, and trial and error were reviewed – at times in a rather blunt fashion – all respectful of the change process and adult learning needs. Today, the school has a well-codified and reliable written curriculum, with a large majority of teachers proud of the effort and outcome. The written curriculum is also proving dynamic, with teachers committed to ongoing innovation with content, attendant teaching practices, and assessments.

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

FRAMING THE ISSUE Effective professional learning in schools is that which helps students to succeed and educators to thrive, contributing to a school that creates long-lasting, powerful impact in the lives of children within and across years/grade levels.

What does effective professional learning look like, however? What are its approaches and characteristics? What are the dimensions of the chasm between current and leading practice, and how best might we build a bridge between them? The opening story is meant to help frame that narrative, but let us examine it in greater detail.

THE COMMON EXPERIENCE: RESEARCH TO PRACTICE For many years, the oft-experienced didactic approach to professional learning has been what we might term “professional development by inoculation.” One scenario would be to invite an expert into a school to deliver a threehour lecture on the thème du jour; another would be to send teachers (either voluntarily or in conscripted fashion) to a conference built around a ballroom professional development model, whereby teachers attend a series of 60-minute (or similar) lectures, being told how they can improve their instruction.1

WHAT RESEARCH TELLS US Though perhaps the two most frequently-experienced scenarios (relatively straightforward, from a planning perspective), the evidence from all the reviews included in a comprehensive 2015 international review of professional learning shows that this “didactic model in which facilitators simply tell teachers what to do, or provide materials without giving participants opportunities to develop skills and inquire into their impact on pupil learning” does not lead to positive outcomes for teachers or their students. (See “Developing Great Teaching” in For Further Reading, below).2 Research underscores that effective professional learning is intentionally designed and aligned around student outcomes, and that such design results in impact on student achievement. It also highlights a number of powerful design components that contribute to solid professional learning programming: 1. duration and rhythm of effective support 2. the needs of participants 1. We recognise that shared understanding around emergency procedures, compliance issues, and the like may be handled in a straightforward fashion, such as stand-and-deliver, with information packets shared with all participants, to be referenced or consulted as and when needed.

2. The rigorous methodology applied to this international review is defined on pages 3 to 4.

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

3. alignment of professional development processes, content, and activities 4. leadership of professional learning Duration and Rhythm of Effective Support To create impactful, lasting change through professional learning, it is critical that the learning opportunity be prolonged in nature. Simultaneously, how time is utilised within the scope of the longer-term opportunity is absolutely key. Additionally, opportunities should exhibit a rhythm that includes follow-up, consolidation, and support activities.

Such a structure has been shown to help teachers to grasp the rationale underpinning the strategy being explored; furthermore, teachers can use this understanding to refine their classroom practices, culminating in more successful implementation.

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

The Needs of Participants

CASE STUDY: NORTH AMERICA

Put simply, there needs to be opportunity to generate buy-in by teachers. The content of the learning opportunity must be relevant to participants; it must coincide with their daily classroom experiences and their hopes and dreams for their students. Of particular importance is that learning opportunities provide for differentiation, relative to the varied starting points of teachers (where they are in their professional lives as educators, in terms of experience, etc.).

A final element is the inclusion of opportunity for teachers to engage in peer learning and support (taking advantage of a ‘community of practitioners’).

How One School Put Participants’ Needs First In 2014 the lower school section of an international school in North America implemented a goal setting process for teachers guided by the best practices of professional development: focusing on teachers’ real work, providing opportunities for choice in learning, allowing for longer duration, and enveloping it in a culture of collaborative learning. Teachers chose an instructional goal (individual or collective), identifying something they wished to improve in their teaching practice. By outlining a process for achieving the goal, teachers explored research applicable to their topics, and identified peers and other collaborators essential to their process, creating rich opportunities for reflection and feedback. Supporting teachers in the process were mentors, administrators, and supervisors, who normally interacted in a top down manner, but who, with support, evolved to engage in coachlike conversations, meeting with teachers three times throughout the year to listen, ask powerful questions, and provide meaningful feedback. All those participating in the goal setting process for a given year met twice as a group over lunch to share goals and give and receive feedback. The response to the goal setting process has been met with enthusiasm and has gone a long way in establishing the desired collaborative learning culture. Next steps include providing explicit training for mentors in having coaching conversations, and expanding the goal setting process to the other sections of the school.

Alignment of Processes, Content, and Activities Alignment is aided by a sense of purpose, first and foremost. Building a sense of purpose in professional learning would include the use of peer support, the use of evidence gained from experimenting with new approaches, and examining why things work (or do not work). Working outward from this sense of purpose, then, it is necessary to incorporate variety and diversity of activities in a professional learning opportunity. There is no prescription here; so long as the various components of an opportunity exhibit logical connections, the result is positive. Moreover, providing purposefullylinked opportunities for teachers’ professional learning aligns to the notion of variety of activities for student learning.

Insofar as content is concerned, the reviews point to the equal importance of professional learning opportunities that focus on subject knowledge as well as pedagogical knowledge. For instance, the notion of differentiated instructional strategies is not germane for special needs students only; all students have different needs, and no matter the subject involved, a pedagogical knowledge of such instructional strategies will be beneficial for all kinds of students. Finally, activities need to include focused time for analysis and reflection, taking into account the rationale for activities, the evidence gathered as part of the professional learning opportunity, and the consideration of any assessment data that may be part of the opportunity (i.e. data from the classroom, during implementation).

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

Leadership of Professional Learning The literature makes plain that, when it comes to effective professional learning, school leaders themselves exhibit personal involvement in specific ways: • • •

CASE STUDY: ASIA

•

Developing vision – helping teachers understand why professional learning is important to the school, in terms of how it (the learning) aligns with the school’s priorities Managing and organising – identifying the school’s priorities, helping to resolve competing demands, and ensuring that the right opportunities to learn are available (see earlier remarks on duration and rhythm, for example) Leading learning – promulgating a strong learning culture that embraces challenge, being abreast of different learning opportunities available to individuals and schools, and identifying ways in which evidence (of changes to pedagogical practice, as well as student achievement data) can be helpful in informing and strengthening school programming Developing leadership of others – encouraging teachers to lead activities, programmes, or facets of the school’s curriculum, either formally or informally

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

At an international school in Bangkok, school leadership is developing teachers to take ownership of their learning.

An example of this was the school’s inaugural “Day of Play”, a fully participant-driven event in which elementary (primary) teachers shared their expertise with one another through in-depth sessions, complemented by shorter snapshot sessions. Over 30 educators volunteered to lead sessions for their peers across a broad range of topics, including the Philosophy for Children framework, trans-languaging, mindfulness, social-emotional wellbeing, playbased learning, MinecraftEDU, and many more. Whilst the longer sessions allowed for in-depth exploration of topics, the frequent social breaks and snapshot sessions facilitated further conversation. The use of the school’s hashtag served to aggregate the content on Twitter, enabling teachers to extend their shared learning online and engage with content in sessions they did not attend. By supporting and promoting this peer learning model, the school is ensuring that its teachers can participate in professional learning that both interests them and directly impacts their practice, tenets supported here in Effective Professional Learning.

CRUCIAL QUESTIONS FOR TEACHERS, SCHOOL LEADERS, AND ECIS 1. How might we (schools and ECIS) provide the sustained resources and commitment required for effective professional learning?

Time itself is not the answer; a quality opportunity appropriately designed is a key player. School leaders, when considering professional development programming, would do well to support an approach that would see staff encouraged to focus strategically on designated areas, over time. With few exceptions, such as focused interventions designed to change specific learning tasks, ECIS must consider how to design professional learning that represents a sustained programme of support and engagement. Our recent redesign of the traditional November conference into such a programme, InspirED, is an overt move in this direction. Likewise, our first deep dive course (Primary Mathematics) is designed with this perspective in mind, as is our certificate programme for middle leaders and our re-launched international teacher certificate.

2. How might we (schools and ECIS) support teachers’ skills in identifying and understanding needs?

Together, how can we develop teachers’ capacity to reflect on their own practice, their students’ learning, and consider how to identify areas of professional development related to that intersection? These questions are especially important, when it comes to cross-curricular or interdisciplinary work in schools. As such, schools and ECIS might consider collaboration around opportunities to help teachers identify and understand their own needs and the needs of their students. This combination of needs, then, would be reflected in professional learning opportunities.

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

3. How are schools’ processes reflecting and supporting the notion of alignment across activities, following from a shared sense of purpose?

Are schools supporting staff in ways that allow them to develop strategic approaches to professional learning that look for alignment across activities, as a central design principle? How might ECIS best reflect and model this aligned approach when it comes to our professional learning opportunities? How might we engage in preparing facilitators of professional learning, especially in terms of acting as coaches and/or mentors? What models of providing modelling, observation, and/or feedback would be useful to schools and participants?

4. How do school leaders, as leaders of complex systems, find the time and support to develop their own understanding and skills that will permit them to promote, manage, and model effective professional learning?

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING How would one differentiate, for example, between learning opportunities around operational and procedural knowledge

and the kind of opportunities that build on teachers’ starting points, helping them to impact student learning in meaningful ways? How might school leaders and ECIS work collaboratively on this shared perspective, so that all benefit?

TOWARD LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS In order to accomplish all the above, we propose the importance of systems thinking. We subscribe to the importance of schools as ‘learning ecosystems’ or ‘learning environments,’ and we believe that the time is upon us to become more serious about professional learning as a key building block of learning environments, which are true ‘systems.’ In a system, it is unhelpful to tinker with just one piece, whilst ignoring the others. We must pay attention to the whole.

In their recently-published work, Bold Moves for Schools, Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Marie Hubley Alcock identify eight considerations for schools (pp. 115-120): 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Set up a question to be explored by your organisation Set up fluid, innovative planning teams Establish a working pedagogy and mission Create a proactive, visual planning tool Invite educators from other local, national, or global organisations to provide feedback and perspectives Include students in the process Begin drafting innovative scenarios that match your mission Move to an implementation plan, knowing that this will require patience, flexibility, and feedback

What is striking about these elements is how well aligned they are to effective professional learning. Indeed, their publication appeared just after we at ECIS identified our redesigned November conference – instead of just a two-day gathering, it is now a longer-term learning engagement (approximately six months), aligned to what evidence shows to be effective professional learning. The structure of that opportunity takes into account almost all of what the coauthors of Bold Moves advocate.

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL In this paper we underscore the importance of ensuring that teachers around the world have the essential competencies they require in order to be effective in raising student achievement. Schools and ECIS have a shared responsibility to provide teachers with opportunities to develop and extend their competencies, so that together we might maintain a high standard of teaching, as well as contribute to the development of a high-quality teacher workforce, much of which is mobile.

This InFocus paper confirms our understanding of effective professional learning from rigorously examined research and successful practice, and reflects our bedrock commitment to improving professional learning opportunities

EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

for all current and future ECIS members. Our shared expertise within ECIS member schools and the depth of our relationships around the world will enliven this commitment to learning for all.

FOR FURTHER READING Avalos, B. (2011) Teacher professional development in Teaching and Teacher Education over ten years. Teaching and Teacher Education 27, 10-20.

Blank, R.K. & de las Alas, N. (2009) Effects of Teacher Professional Development on Gains in Student Achievement. How Meta Analysis Provides Scientific Evidence Useful to Education Leaders. Washington: Council of Chief State School Officers.

EFFECTIVE PROFESCordingley, P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Buckler, N., Coles-Jordan, D., Crisp, B., Saunders, L., Coe, R. “Developing Great SIONAL LEARNING

Teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development” (Teacher Development Trust: London, 2015).

Cordingley, P., Bell, M., Rundell, B. & Evans, D. (2003) “The impact of collaborative CPD on classroom teaching and learning” London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.

Jacobs, Heidi Hayes and Alock, Marie, Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments (ASCD: Alexandria, Virgina, 2017).

“How Can Professional Development Enhance Teachers’ Classroom Practices?” Teaching in Focus 16 (OECD: Paris, 2017).

Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H. & Fung, I. (2007) Teacher professional learning and development. Best evidence synthesis iteration (BES). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.

Vescio, V., Ross, D. & Adams, A. (2008) “A review of research on the impact of professional learning communities on teaching practice and student learning” Teaching and Teacher Education 24, 80-91.

Yoon, K.S., Duncan, T., Lee, S.W-Y., Scarloss, B. & Shapley, K. (2007) Reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement [Issues & Answers Report, REL 2007-No. 033]. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Educational Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest.

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