CCT Impact Summer 2020

Teacher recruitment, retention and workload

Professional learning and leadership

Resilience and mental health

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Learning, leadership and teacher expertise Cultivating a powerful school culture COVER_ISSUE 9_Impact 1

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Let’s work together to support achievement and progression

LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

Join a network of like-minded professionals.

UCL’s Access and Widening Participation Office now hosts a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for teachers and school staff working in state schools and colleges. The Network connects teachers, senior leaders and support staff across all educational phases who are interested in engaging with research and sharing practice to support achievement and progression in their school.

PLN members share online resources, attend special events including regular ‘Teacher Takeaway’ twilight CPD sessions, and are also invited to participate in school-based research projects.

Register or find out more about UCL’s activities for teachers at

www.ucl.ac.uk/widening-participation/pln

EDITORIAL BOARD Alex Quigley Senior Associate, Education Endowment Foundation CHARTERED COLLEGE OF TEACHING Pears Pavilion, Coram Campus, 41 Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ Telephone: 020 3433 7624 Email: journal@chartered.college Website: impact.chartered.college

EDITORIAL Guest editorial: Tanya Ovenden-Hope Managing editor: Alice Kirke Editorial assistant: Phoebe Dry Art editor: Nicholas Daley Picture researcher: Akin Falope Sub-editor: Vicki Sennett

Becky Francis Chief Executive Officer, Education Endowment Foundation

COVER ILLUSTRATION Michał Bednarski

PRODUCTION Production manager: Aysha Miah-Edwards

Farah Ahmed Director of Education and Research, Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation

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Gethyn Jones Director of Physics, Harris City Academy Crystal Palace

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ANNUAL PRINT SUBSCRIPTION Published termly ISSN: 2514-6955 UK charity number: 313608 DISCLAIMER ©2020 Impact is the Journal of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Views expressed in Impact are not necessarily those of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Dylan Wiliam Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment, Institute of Education, UCL

Helen Blake Subject Leader Geography, Lead Practitioner for Teaching and Learning, Harris Academy Rainham James Simpson Deputy Headteacher, Sir William Borlase’s Grammar School

Jonnie Noakes English Teacher and Research Lead, Eton Julian Grenier Headteacher, Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre Kristine Black-Hawkins Director of Teaching and Learning, University of Cambridge Nalini Boodhoo Professor of Language Education, University of East Anglia Robert Coe Director of Research and Development, EvidenceBased Education Stuart Kime Director of Education, Evidence-Based Education Sue Sing Research Fellow, UCL Institute of Education Teresa Cremin Professor of Education, Open University

Jonathan Sharples Senior Researcher, Education Endowment Foundation

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TANYA OVENDEN-HOPE PROVOST AND PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, PLYMOUTH MARJON UNIVERSITY AND MARJON UNIVERSITY CORNWALL, UK

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his is, perhaps, not a typical Impact editorial – but we are not in typical times.

School leaders, teachers and school support staff across the country have demonstrated exceptional courage during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, courage which, as Winston Churchill observed, has assured all of the professional qualities inherent in school culture: ‘Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because, … it is the quality which guarantees all others.’ (Churchill, 2005, p. 169) As an educator with 30 years’ experience, I believe

completely in the integrity of the school and college workforce, and am immensely proud of the way in which our leaders, teachers and support staff have behaved during the coronavirus crisis.

I am hopeful that others outside of education, in society at large, will recognise and remember the contribution of teachers in keeping the United Kingdom functioning in a time of extreme social challenge and personal change.

The Teachers’ Standards state that: ‘A teacher is expected to demonstrate consistently high standards of personal and professional conduct.’ (DfE, 2011, p. 14)

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Recognising and respecting the profession of teaching in a time of national crisis

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‘At the end of a difficult week, I would like to say a massive thank you to all the school leaders, teachers and staff who have shown immense dedication as they step up to help this country tackle coronavirus. #StayHomeSaveLives’ Since the coronavirus took hold in the UK in March 2020, the similarities in the vocational commitment of medical workers and school/college workers have been evident. The General Medical Council’s (GMC) Good Medical Practice (GMC, 2019) ethical code and the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) are remarkably alike.

The unwavering dedication of each profession should come as no surprise to the public, as both careers are underpinned by behaviours and attitudes that ‘uphold public trust… and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour’ (DfE, 2011, p.

14), acting ‘with honesty and integrity’ (GMC, 2019, p. 21).

If we consider the preamble in the Teachers’ Standards,

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the response of school leaders and teachers to the government’s directive for schools to remain open for the provision of childcare – whether we agreed with the approach or not – should have been easy to predict. Teachers put pupils first, know their stuff and act with integrity: ‘Teachers make the education of their pupils their first concern, and are accountable for achieving the highest possible standards in work and conduct. Teachers act with honesty and integrity; have strong subject knowledge, keep their knowledge and skills as teachers up-todate and are self-critical; forge positive professional relationships; and work with parents in the best interests of their pupils.’ (DfE, 2011, p. 10) The GMC’s Good Medical Practice guidance for ‘Professionalism in Action’ (GMC, 2019, p. 4) gives strikingly similar instruction to doctors in putting their patients first, knowing their stuff and acting with integrity: ‘Good doctors make the care of their patients their first concern: they are competent, keep their knowledge and skills up to date, establish and maintain good relationships with patients and colleagues, are honest and trustworthy, and act with integrity and within the law.’ (GMC, 2019, p. 4)

The difference is that of public perception of each profession.

We expected doctors to respond as they did, i.e. to support the wellbeing of others, because we know that our lives are in their hands and we have learned to trust that they will protect us if we are in their care. The fact that both doctors and teachers put the interests of those they serve first does feel like something of a revelation in the media. The similarity of these public service professions has never been more obvious than it is now, and it needs to be understood and remembered. A change in any previously less favourable social attitudes towards the value of teaching, and the education workforce, is crucial for any subsequent political change in how teaching, teachers and schools are ‘treated’. The media portrayal of teaching in the UK through the coronavirus pandemic thus far meets the guidelines for a ‘model of cumulative effect’ (Simonson and Maushek, 2001, p. 1010) that should optimise the chance of attitudinal change. Let’s hope so.

In my capacity as a multiacademy trust (MAT) trustee, the following communication (email) from a MAT chief executive officer

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The nation has borne witness to this conduct of our teachers.

We should feel indebted to the schools workforce for the critical support that they have provided in caring for the most vulnerable children and those of key workers, to enable those who need care to receive it and for the supply of resources we all need to be maintained. The Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, articulated this gratitude on Twitter (28 March 2020):

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(CEO) to her school leaders is both representative of the educational professionalism witnessed across the UK and a testament to the embedding of our Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011): ‘Well, how the world has changed in the last fortnight.

We were expecting to break up today for two weeks rest and relaxation. Now, the world has turned upside down and the holiday as we know it has evaporated. Having said that, it is important that you reassure your staff that they will be allocated dedicated R&R time, through the rotas, where they are NOT expected to work.

If you are not explicit on this many, being the conscientious staff that they are, will just continue with “non-stop” working, which will not be good for their well-being.

I’ve always known how dedicated, resilient and innovative staff in schools are. I’ve seen it first-hand throughout my career and particularly in the past two weeks. Even so, over the past few days I’ve been astonished at just how deep this goes as the staff in our schools have responded at speed to the

Government’s call. Through that response, has come a huge selflessness and willingness to go above and beyond knowing that our work is essential at this time of national crisis.

Have you reflected on what we achieved in the last two weeks? Can you count how many decisions

(rising pupil numbers and not enough teachers in an incredibly competitive labour market (DfE, 2019b, p. 10)) should certainly begin to abate. The innovative responses shown by our education leaders to unknown situations may demonstrate the importance of professional learning and teacher expertise. The government

we made and explained last week under pressure? How many children, parents and staff did we calm, reassure and inform? We managed to steer a clear course through confusion, frustration and fear and that requires the highest levels of physical, social and emotional energy.

As public servants central to communities, school staff are a front-line service and should be supported and encouraged like our NHS colleagues.’

(MAT CEO, 27 March 2020)

should want to provide more generous and sustained funding for effective professional development that extends beyond the Early Career Framework (DfE, 2019a) and National Professional Qualifications (DfE, 2019b).

Improving teachers’ self-efficacy, making them feel confident in their ability to do their job effectively, can increase teacher retention (Ovenden-Hope et al., 2018). At 33 per cent attrition for teachers in England (only) leaving teaching by year five (DfE, 2019b, p. 10), something has to be done.

As Chris Baker highlights in his article on pages 30–31, we need CPD that leaves participants both knowing better and doing better.

Laleh Laverick and Emma-Kate Kennedy, in their paper (pages 48–49) on relational supervision, outline an approach that could be used as a way forward for supporting ‘doing better’ CPD. Perhaps the resilience of teachers, which Anna Lise Gordon identifies in her paper on pages 72–75 as a continuum for trainee teachers, will no longer be questioned in the post-pandemic world, and real issues around workload will be fully addressed to support a work–life balance. A new acceptance of school and college leaders’ expertise should be

This email was sent at the end of the first week of school closure and the first week of key worker and vulnerable children care. It recognises her teams’ challenges, their need to be supported, the support they need to give to their staff and their complete dedication in the most difficult of circumstances.

The very public positive school response (and not so well mentioned in the media but equally significant response of colleges) to the coronavirus pandemic should position teaching alongside medicine as a desirable, high-value career. If this change does happen, then the challenges of teacher recruitment

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witnessed, with the government giving them the autonomy that they have earned and the funding that they require to lead their institutions effectively, including access to the pupil mental health support that Adrian Bethune identifies is often missing in schools, on pages 78–80.

There is no doubt that the call to teachers and school leaders to join the frontline in supporting the community effort against the coronavirus pandemic will change education in the future. Their response should see our teachers, school and college leaders upfront, leading the post-pandemic era. They delivered an effective and safeguarded experience for childcare prior to the Department for Education’s guidance on safeguarding being issued on 27 March 2020 (DfE, 2020). Their professionalism was evident and undoubtable. As Andy Downing stated on Twitter in a @HeadsRoundtable discussion on 29 March 2020, headteachers are ‘doing a magnificent job’, and he quite correctly questions the central control and accountability of schools in the future:

‘System leadership is in the hands of headteachers – and they are doing a magnificent job. @educationgovuk and @GavinWilliamson have left the field and this is a good thing.

We must not go back to the previous accountability and centralism.’

The government must remember how teachers and education leaders responded, and how they used their knowledge and expertise and put their pupils first to inform and enable teaching to become a self-governing profession (like medicine). This would give teachers, and schools, the greater autonomy that Jack Worth argues on pages 6–9 is required to provide higher job satisfaction and, by proxy, teacher retention.

The positive representations of teachers on social media, such as on Twitter, with the #TeachersAreHeroes and the following @NHSEngland statement (22 March 2020), should re-establish teaching as a first choice career.

‘Thank you to all teachers and support staff in school on Monday – caring for our children so that NHS, social care and other critical staff can go to work and help in the fight against #coronavirus.’

Public support of schools should provide a window of opportunity, when everything settles, that allows the education concerns discussed within this issue of Impact (teacher recruitment, retention and workload; professional learning and teacher expertise; leadership and learning; and resilience and mental health) to be addressed by education leaders and supported through long-term, non-partypolitical strategic planning and investment that benefits all. Our education workforce has been courageous, and clearly has all the other qualities required for a selfgoverning profession.

The government must remember how teachers and education leaders responded, and how they used their knowledge and expertise and put their pupils first.

REFERENCES Churchill W (1947) Maxims and Reflections. London: Eyre and Spottiswood.

Department for Education (DfE) (2011) Teachers’ Standards. London: DfE. Available at: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/665520/Teachers__Standards.pdf (accessed 31 March 2020).

Teacher Retention and Recruitment Strategy. London: DfE. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/786856/DFE_ Teacher_Retention_Strategy_Report. pdf (accessed 31 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2019a) Early Career Framework. London: DfE. Available at: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/773705/Early-Career_Framework. pdf (accessed 31 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2020) Coronavirus (COVID-19): Safeguarding in schools, colleges and other providers.

London: DfE. Available at: www. gov.uk/government/publications/ covid-19-safeguarding-in-schoolscolleges-and-other-providers/ coronavirus-covid-19-safeguarding-inschools-colleges-and-other-providers (accessed 31 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2019b)

General Medical Council (GMC) (2019)

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Good medical practice. London: GMC. Available at: www.gmc-uk.org/static/ documents/content/Good_medical_ practice_-_English_1215.pdf (accessed 31 March 2020).

Ovenden-Hope T, Blandford S, Cain T et al. (2018) RETAIN early career teacher retention programme: Evaluating the role of research informed continuing professional development for a high quality, sustainable 21st century teaching profession. Journal of Education for Teaching 44(5): 590–607. DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2018.1516349.

Simonson M and Maushak N (2001) Instructional technology and attitude change. In: Jonassen DH (ed) Handbook of Research on Educational

Communications and Technology.

New Jersey, United States: L. Eribaum Associates, pp. 984–1016. @DowningAndy (2020) Tweet, 29 March 2020. Available at: https:// twitter.com/DowningAndy/ status/1244189123268796416 (accessed 29 March 2020). @GavinWilliamson (2020) Tweet, 28 March 2020. Available at: https:// twitter.com/GavinWilliamson/ status/1243876001588936704 (accessed 29 March 2020). @NHSEngland (2020) Tweet, 22 March 2020. Available at: https:// twitter.com/NHSEngland/ status/1241774169055989760 (accessed 29 March 2020).

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making learning stick

Contents Teacher recruitment, retention and workload

Axim volupta voluptatio. Equas postem pos archilit qui quam, odis aliquiant essuscim nam, eos as est est, aut haruntin resto blate et eosam faccate

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How can we make departmental CPD more effective?

Richard McDonald

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Courageous Leaders: Supporting and celebrating LGBT school leaders Catherine Lee

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A whole-school approach to supporting students with LGBTQ+ identities Flora Cantacuzino Levy and Josh Hally-Milne

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School leadership in perspective Andy Buck

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School leadership in lockdown Alma Harris

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Leading the primary curriculum: Developing subject leadership and expertise Robbie Burns

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How does autonomy relate to job satisfaction and retention in teaching?

Jack Worth

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Journal clubs: Promoting a career-long culture of research engagement Beth Greville Giddings

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How reducing teacher workload can improve student outcomes Jemima Rhys Evans

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Teacher Rounds – putting teachers in control of their own learning Kenny Frederick

Collaborative teacher recruitment – cutting through complexity and competition Pollyann Butterfield-Tracey and William Stow

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CPD: From the generic to the specific Andrew Brown

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Developing inclusive pedagogy: Some theoretical insights from research evidence Eddy Li

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Achieving a professional learning culture: Issues, improvements, impact Vivienne Porrit and Kathryn Morgan

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15

19

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Professionally acceptable workload: Learning to act differently towards effective change Julie Greer and Caroline Daly Reclaiming teacher wellbeing through reflective diary-writing Lucy Kelly Rethinking teacher wellbeing Samuel Crome and Rachel Cise

Professional learning and teacher expertise 26

The transfer of training: Improving the effectiveness of CPD Chris Baker PIC CREDIT

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Identifying evidence-based professional development: Programmes, forms and mechanisms Sam Sims and Harry Fletcher-Wood

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48

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Resilience and mental health 67

Engaging parents during school closures Janet Goodall

Leadership and learning

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2020: A new perspective for school leadership?

Jen Barker and Tom Rees

Promoting resilience in trainee teachers Rachel Davis

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Creative approaches to nurturing resilience of trainee teachers Anna Lise Gordon

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Partnership working to develop student teachers’ awareness of mental health and wellbeing in schools Laura Cole and David Ingledew

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Promoting positive mental health and wellbeing in primary schools Adrian Bethune

Critical reflection on the benefits of relational supervision in schools Laleh Laverick and Emma-Kate Kennedy We’re all in this together: Using a peer coaching model to support middle leaders’ development Graham Chisnell and Kerry Jordan-Daus

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teacher recruitment, retention and workload

How does autonomy relate to job satisfaction and retention in teaching?

JACK WORTH SCHOOL WORKFORCE LEAD, NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH (NFER), UK

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etaining more teachers is crucial for the education system, particularly at a time when there are not enough teachers coming into the profession to meet the growing need from rising student numbers. Unmanageable workload and low job satisfaction are significant factors determining teachers’ decisions to stay in the profession or leave. To explore this further, NFER, in partnership with the Teacher Development Trust (TDT), looked at the relationship between professional autonomy and teachers’ job satisfaction and retention.

So, does a greater sense of autonomy relate to higher job satisfaction and retention in teaching? Our new research, the first large-scale quantitative study in England to look at teacher autonomy and retention, suggests that it does (Worth and Van den Brande, 2020).

Teacher surveys show that when teachers have a lot of influence over what they do in their job and how they do it, they are more likely to feel that they have a manageable workload, are more satisfied with their job, and are more likely to say that they intend to stay in teaching. This is an important insight for school leaders and we explore this in detail below.

What does autonomy mean? Moving the debate forward The debate on autonomy tends to be based on rhetorical examples where the ‘right’ amount of autonomy seems self-evident, ranging from ‘why would a school prescribe

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how a teacher lays out their classroom?’ to ‘imagine the chaos if each teacher constructed and taught their own curriculum!’ This kind of polarised debate can mask key practical issues and insights for school leaders.

Our study reveals new and nuanced insights into how teacher autonomy varies between different areas of work, and identifies the areas where more autonomy could most help to motivate teachers. Interestingly, we find that increasing the amount of influence that teachers have over their professional development goals is associated with the largest gains in job satisfaction.

This is an important finding for school leaders when they are considering their school policies and culture around professional development. There is an opportunity to harness the benefits of teachers having greater involvement in their professional development goalsetting and making school-level decisions more widely. A TDT resource for school leaders that accompanies the new research provides guidance for schools on how to improve school systems in this area (Teacher Development Trust, 2020).

Autonomy matters for teachers’ motivation and sense of professionalism

ISTOCK

One of the most important challenges facing any school leader is deciding how best to create working conditions that maximise staff motivation to perform well in their role. This challenge is easier where staff are intrinsically motivated to perform well at what leaders want them to achieve.

However, some degree of direction is always necessary through forms of extrinsic motivation, where direction is enforced through regulation, sanctions and rewards.

Psychologists Deci and Ryan’s (2008) self-determination theory provides a framework for understanding the nature of motivation. This theory of motivation underpins our interest in teacher autonomy as a concept and its relationship with job satisfaction and retention.

The theory says that while intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can drive job performance, they have different implications for staff wellbeing and job satisfaction. Greater reliance on intrinsic motivation is thought to be associated with higher wellbeing and job satisfaction, while more reliance on extrinsic motivation can risk undermining staff members’ sense of feeling trusted and intrinsic motivation itself. Extrinsic motivation can then potentially lead to disengagement, burnout and leaving the profession.

Deci and Ryan (2008) outline three basic psychological needs that underpin intrinsic motivation: competence – skills to perform well in one’s job autonomy – direction over one’s own decisions and actions relatedness – connection with, and support from, colleagues.

The theory suggests that these needs are interdependent. In other words, intrinsic motivation is likely to increase more if you have all three (competence, autonomy and relatedness) at the same time (see Figure 1).

Over which aspects of their practice do teachers feel they have least and most autonomy?

We used data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (understandingsociety.ac.uk) to

Increasing the amount of influence that teachers have over their professional development goals is associated with the largest gains in job satisfaction

compare the self-reported autonomy of 1,243 teachers in England with individuals in other professional occupations. We statistically adjusted the composition of age, gender, region and highest qualification in the group of professionals to ensure that these characteristics were as similar as possible to the group of teachers, allowing us to compare like with like.

The data shows that the average teacher has lower autonomy compared to similar professionals. Teachers report a much lower level of autonomy over their working hours, which is unsurprising given the set term times and school hours when teachers are required to be teaching. However, teachers also report lower autonomy over what tasks they do, the order in which they carry out tasks, the pace at which they work and how they do their job, areas that are particularly relevant for workload manageability.

Data from our representative survey of 1,144 teachers in March 2019 shows that autonomy varies considerably between different areas of teachers’ work. Teachers report higher levels of influence over classroom activities, such as the teaching methods they use and how they plan lessons, and lower levels of autonomy over curriculum, assessment and their professional development goals.

Autonomy is strongly associated with higher teacher job satisfaction and retention Our analysis finds that teacher autonomy is strongly associated with job satisfaction, as Deci and Ryan’s (2008) self-determination theory suggests. Around four in 10 teachers with the lowest autonomy report low job satisfaction, compared to less than one in 10 among those with the highest autonomy.

Job satisfaction is an important factor associated with teachers’ intentions

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FIGURE 1: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS UNDERPINNING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Competence

Relatedness

Autonomy

Intrinsic motivation

Autonomy is associated with workload manageability, but not with working hours

Satisfaction and retention

Job performance

Burnout and stress

Extrinsic motivation

Regulation

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and decisions to stay in the profession (Lynch et al., 2016; Worth et al., 2018).

Autonomy is also strongly correlated with the likelihood of teachers intending to stay in the profession in the next 12 months.

Teachers’ intentions to leave are not the same as their actions, and correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship.

However, these associations do strongly suggest that teacher autonomy is an important influence on job satisfaction and retention.

Rewards

Unmanageable workload is consistently the most-cited reason that ex-teachers give for why they left the profession (Lynch et al., 2016; DfE, 2017). Workload is often conceptualised simply as the number of hours that teachers work, or how much time they spend on different activities, but ‘it is also about teachers feeling in control of their work’ (DfE, 2019, p. 11).

Research by Sims (2017) found a relationship between the extent to which a teacher regards their workload as manageable and job satisfaction, but no relationship between working hours and job satisfaction. Our analysis of teacher autonomy echoes these findings, suggesting that autonomy is a key part of the relationship between unmanageable workload, job satisfaction and retention.

Teacher autonomy is strongly related to the extent to which teachers regard their workload as manageable and teachers’ satisfaction with their amount of leisure time. When teachers feel more in control of what they do and how they work, they tend to experience a better work–life balance.

Does this mean that teachers, once in control, reduce their effort? We found no evidence of this, as teacher autonomy is unrelated to the number of hours that teachers work. Most teachers entered the profession for reasons relating to intrinsic factors such as influencing the

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teacher recruitment, retention and workload

development of children and young people and contributing to society (Jerrim and Sims, 2019). Autonomy can particularly enhance motivation where people are inherently already intrinsically motivated.

Implications for school leaders and teachers A strong association between teacher autonomy and job satisfaction suggests that increasing autonomy is likely to be beneficial for motivating and retaining staff. However, the link with staff retention is only part of the picture for school leaders, for two main reasons.

Firstly, leaders are responsible for ensuring that the school operates with the necessary coherence to deliver good student outcomes. School leaders can and should shape what teachers do to some extent, and this can involve balancing autonomy and alignment. This need not always be a straight trade-off between the two, and effective leadership can combine high alignment with high autonomy. School improvement should be underpinned by a compelling overarching vision and meaningful staff involvement and engagement to ensure their buy-in.

This can maximise the benefits of teachers working both coherently towards shared

School leaders should consider incorporating a teacher autonomy lens into regular reviews of teaching and learning policies organisational goals and with a high degree of professional autonomy.

Secondly, our research explores the nuances behind which areas of teachers’ work are most associated with positive teacher outcomes, to inform school leaders about how they can best harness autonomy to improve teacher satisfaction and retention. We find that teachers’ autonomy over their professional development goals is the factor most associated with higher job satisfaction.

Autonomy over professional development goals does not necessarily mean teachers having total freedom to choose their professional development goals and activities. Indeed, there is mixed evidence about whether complete choice is effective (Kennedy, 2016; Maandag et al., 2017; Cordingley et al., 2015).

Based on this finding, it could be particularly beneficial for school leaders to think about helping teachers to see the relevance of professional development to their individual needs, their students’ needs and the wider organisational goals. It suggests a benefit in involving

teachers in choosing goals, albeit not necessarily giving them total control, and ensuring that teachers can have some autonomy in how they choose to meet these goals. Equally, teachers should consider reflecting on their professional development goals and proactively bringing these into regular conversations with mentors and/or line managers.

More generally, it is likely to be beneficial for school leaders to encourage a culture where open conversations about the optimal balance between alignment and autonomy are welcomed. School leaders should consider incorporating a teacher autonomy lens into regular reviews of teaching and learning policies.

These should cover both the written policies and, importantly, the culture around how they are enacted in practice.

When reviewing a school’s approach to the design and delivery of professional development, exploring the extent to which teachers feel that professional development is relevant and that they have input into the design and content is key.

REFERENCES Cordingley P, Higgins S, Greany T et al.

(2015) Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development.

Available at: http://TDTrust.org/dgt (accessed 18 November 2019).

Deci E and Ryan R (2008) Selfdetermination theory: A macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health. Canadian Psychology 49: 182–185. DOI: 10.1037/a0012801.

Department for Education (DfE) (2017) Teachers analysis compendium 2.

Available at: www.gov.uk/government/ statistics/teachers-analysiscompendium-2 (accessed 18 November 2019).

Department for Education (DfE) (2019) Teacher recruitment and retention

strategy. Available at: www.gov.uk/ government/publications/teacherrecruitment-and-retention-strategy (accessed 18 November 2019).

Jerrim and Sims (2019) TALIS 2018: Research report. Available at: https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/809737/ TALIS_2018_research.pdf (accessed 23 March 2020).

Kennedy M (2016) How does professional development improve teaching?

Review of Educational Research 86 (4). DOI: 10.3102/0034654315626800.

Available at: www.researchgate.net/ publication/292675761_How_Does_ Professional_Development_Improve_ Teaching (accessed 18 November 2019).

Lynch S, Worth J, Bamford S et al. (2016) Engaging teachers: NFER analysis of teacher retention. Available at: www. nfer.ac.uk/engaging-teachers-nferanalysis-of-teacher-retention (accessed 18 November 2019).

Maandag D, Helms-Lorenz M, Lugthart E et al. (2017) Features of effective professional development interventions in different stages of teachers’ careers: NRO report. Available at: www.nro. nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ Effectiveness-of-professionaldevelopment-interventions-in-differentteacher-career-stages.pdf (accessed 18 November 2019).

Sims S (2017) TALIS 2013: Working conditions, teacher job satisfaction and retention. Available at: www.gov.uk/

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government/publications/teachersin-secondary-schools-evidence-fromtalis-2013 (accessed 18 November 2019).

Teacher Development Trust (2020) Guidance on teacher goal-setting: Balancing autonomy and coherence.

Available at: https://tdtrust.org/ autonomy20 (accessed 16 March 2020).

Worth J, Lynch S, Hillary J et al. (2018) Teacher workforce dynamics in England.

Slough: NFER. Available at: www.nfer. ac.uk/teacher-workforce-dynamics-inengland (accessed 18 November 2019).

Worth J and Van den Brande J (2020) Teacher autonomy: How does it relate to job satisfaction and retention?

Slough: NFER. Available at: www.nfer. ac.uk/teacher-autonomy (accessed 16 March 2020).

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How reducing teacher workload can improve student outcomes JEMIMA RHYS-EVANS DEPUTY HEAD (ACADEMIC), CHARLES DICKENS PRIMARY SCHOOL; DIRECTOR, CHARLES DICKENS RESEARCH SCHOOL, UK

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t Charles Dickens Primary School, we have been working for five years to reduce teacher workload. We started with written marking and have subsequently addressed planning, displays, reporting to parents and writing assessment.

During this period, we have seen student outcomes improve in English and maths and, more recently, in foundation subjects.

Teachers report to us that they have the freedom to focus on developing their practice and on actions that have a strong positive impact on the students in their classes. Charles Dickens retained its ‘Outstanding’ judgement following an inspection in September 2019, and the average combined reading, writing and maths outcomes during the past three years are more than 20 percentage points higher than national figures.

Our journey to reduce teacher workload started almost by accident. In 2015, teachers started a Journal Club, in which staff met on a termly basis to explore a piece of educational research. In spring 2016, we discussed the Education Endowment Foundation’s A Marked Improvement – a Review of the Evidence on Written Marking (Elliott et al., 2016). One statement in particular struck a chord: ‘Given… the huge amount of time currently invested in marking, it is essential to ensure that marking is as efficient and impactful as possible.’ (p. 4) Teachers overwhelmingly felt that written marking was taking up a disproportionate amount of their time, without the corresponding effect on student outcomes. Their frustration was less about their workload per se and more about ensuring that this workload was purposeful.

The findings of A Marked Improvement were supported by the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group’s Eliminating Unnecessary Workload Around Marking (2016). This report included some bold and resonant statements, in particular: ‘Marking practice that does not have the desired impact on pupil outcomes is a time-wasting burden for teachers that has to stop.’ (p. 3) The following September, the National College for Teaching and Leadership invited bids from groups of schools to lead research projects into one of the three areas highlighted in the

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Workload Challenge. Following the clarion call from A Marked Improvement that ‘There is an urgent need for more studies so that teachers have better information about the most effective marking approaches’ (2016, p. 5), Charles Dickens submitted a proposal to work with other primary schools in Southwark to investigate the impact on teacher workload and student outcomes of completely removing distance written marking in English and mathematics.

The project schools replaced written marking with: self- and peer-assessment verbal feedback within the lesson conferencing after the lesson.

The project was funded from January to July 2017 and covered teacher release time for training and check-in sessions, a formal evaluation from UCL Institute of Education, and dissemination of the findings. Each school had two intervention and two control classes, though these were not randomised. We used the first half-term to train teachers in alternative feedback strategies and for them to teach their students to self- and peer-assess accurately and honestly. The intervention ran from spring term two to summer term one. Teacher workload was measured through entry and exit surveys; student outcomes were measured using entry and exit age-standardised tests (GL Assessment’s Progress Tests in Maths) and through extensive writing moderation. The data analysis and project evaluation were conducted by UCL Institute of Education and published as Reducing Teacher Workload: Southwark Teaching School Alliance Research Report (Featherstone and Seleznyov, 2018).

We invited parents to an information evening to explain the no-marking project, and their children’s books were shared at parents’ evening. At the end of the project, we shared the outcomes in a dissemination event. No concerns were raised by parents.

The key findings for our project were: Teacher workload was reduced by over six hours per week There was no impact on student outcomes: the progress of

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students in the intervention was not measurably different from that of those in the control group.

Four other groups of schools across England received funding to run projects exploring alternatives to written marking. The findings of all five groups were remarkably consistent, as seen in Table 1.

The project evaluations are listed in the References section (Herbert et al., 2018; Kime, 2018; Protsiv and Welch, 2018; Richardson et al., 2018).

Since 2017, we have honed our approaches to feedback and rewritten our feedback policies to remove any requirement for written marking. With the increased focus on the quality of feedback and on the immediacy with which students receive feedback, we have seen student outcomes in writing and maths improve year on year.

One senior leader from a participating school commented, ‘When it first came up, I thought it was the worst idea ever. Now I think it’s brilliant.’

And what do teachers do with that additional time saved from marking? They plan meaningful responses to the students’ work; they leave early to maintain their work–life balance; and they have more time and energy to spend on their professional growth.

Involvement with the project got us thinking more about teachers’ workload. During the past two years, we have made further changes: introducing a commercial scheme of work in maths and home-grown, fully resourced schemes in science and foundation subjects replacing displays with working walls replacing detailed narrative reports to parents with simple reporting of attainment and engagement data across all subjects using comparative judgement (www. nomoremarking.com) for writing assessment.

The impact of this work is monitored through staff workload and wellbeing surveys and, in 2019, through a peer review, in which we asked senior leaders from other schools to evaluate our progress. This found that teachers’ workload has reduced by about 10 hours per week. Data suggests that student outcomes have either remained high or improved.

Teachers’ time is finite. If we want the very best for our students, we need to allow teachers to focus on those activities with the greatest effect on student outcomes. By reducing workload in areas with little

evidence of impact, we can realign teachers’ working lives with their moral purpose and improve both teacher wellbeing and student outcomes.

Jemima Rhys-Evans’s booklet Mark Less, Mark Better: A How-To Guide is available as a free download from https://researchschool.org.uk/public/docs/MarkLess-Mark-Better-Autumn-2019-002.pdf.

TABLE 1: FINDINGS FROM PROJECT SCHOOLS

Project and focus

Impact

Southwark TSA (5 primary schools) Replaced written marking with a range of ‘live’ feedback approaches

Reduced workload No negative impact

Wigan Wows (15 primary schools) Replaced written marking with verbal feedback, marking codes, peer- and self-assessment

Reduced workload No negative impact

Aquinas Trust (3 primary, 2 secondary, 1 special school) Replaced written marking with verbal feedback

Reduced workload No negative impact

Cheshire Vale (3 secondary schools) Replaced written marking with a range of ‘live’ feedback approaches

Reduced workload No negative impact

Flying High (16 nursery and primary schools) Replaced written marking with a range of alternative feedback strategies

Reduced workload No negative impact

REFERENCES Elliott V, Baird J, Hopfenbeck TN et al. (2016) A Marked Improvement? A Review of the Evidence on Written Marking. Oxford: Education Endowment Foundation.

Department for Education.

Featherstone G and Seleznyov S with UCL Institute of Education (2018) Reducing Teacher Workload: Southwark Teaching School Alliance Research Report. London: Department for Education.

Protsiv R and Welch G (2018) Reducing Teacher Workload Through ‘Realtime’ Personalised Feedback Research Report, Aquinas Teaching and Learning Trust. London: Department for Education.

Herbert G, Oates T, Sherriff T et al. (2018) Reducing Teacher Workload: The WOWS Research Project. London: Department for Education.

Rhys-Evans J and Field S (2017) Mark Less, Mark Better: A How-To Guide. London: South Teaching School Alliance.

Independent Teacher Workload Review Group (2016) Eliminating Unnecessary Workload Around Marking: Report of the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group. London:

Kime S (2018) Reducing Teacher Workload: The ‘Rebalancing Feedback’ Trial Research Report.

London: Department for Education.

Richardson R, Goodman O, Flight S et al.

(2018) Reducing Teacher Workload: The Flying High Partnership Research Report. London: Department for Education.

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Collaborative teacher recruitment – cutting through complexity and competition POLLYANN BUTTERFIELD-TRACEY PROJECT DIRECTOR, CONFEDERATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF SOUTH EAST TEACHERS (CESET), FACULTY OF EDUCATION, CANTERBURY CHRIST CHURCH UNIVERSITY, UK; REGIONAL ASSOCIATE, TEACHER DEVELOPMENT TRUST, UK WILLIAM STOW ASSISTANT DEAN, FACULTY OF EDUCATION, CANTERBURY CHRIST CHURCH UNIVERSITY, UK

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n common with many other parts of the world, England is facing increasing challenge in attracting new teachers to the profession.

According to the government’s own data (DfE, 2014, 2019), targets have been missed each year for the past seven.

There are myriad factors influencing this situation, but the growing shortfall in England and its persistence coincide with a period of unprecedented marketisation of initial teacher training (ITT). Trainee teachers report that it is complex and confusing navigating their way through to application and enrolment on training programmes, that they are subject to pressure to accept places offered (and reject others) and that, once they have begun to train, they frequently encounter low morale and negative views of the profession expressed by their teaching colleagues in schools.

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It is our collective responsibility to change the ways in which we talk about teaching, in order to present the profession in a more positive light

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These factors of complexity, competition and culture act as barriers to, not enablers of, recruitment and retention.

We argue that the professional behaviours that create these experiences for applicants and trainees, whether evident in a recruitment, staffroom or classroom context, are a function of the cultural context in which they exist. What if the overriding contexts in which potential teachers navigate their way to the profession were dominated by an enabling and collaborative culture, in which professional colleagues work together to facilitate access to our profession?

In this article, we explore these factors and the ways in which organisational cultures influence behaviours and professional relationships, going on to report on a deliberate attempt, via a DfEfunded innovation project, to subvert the prevailing fragmentation of the ITT sector and work collaboratively to provide an enabling approach to the recruitment of new teachers. In so doing, we reflect on our collective responsibility to change the ways in which we talk about teaching, in order to present the profession in a more positive light.

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The complexity of the ITT market On the face of it, there appear to be two routes into teaching: School Direct and the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). The former is based mainly in school and with school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) providers, and the latter is characterised as university provision. However, this is an extreme oversimplification of the situation, as analysed clearly by Whiting et al. (2016), because within these routes there are many decision points, and potential applicants must choose between funding options (salaried or unsalaried), part-time or full-time provision, phase options (Early Years, primary, 7–14 and secondary) and types of academic award. This means that in reality there are dozens of different possible routes into teaching.

We know from our own research into barriers to application that finding and applying for initial teacher training can be confusing, which, given this level of complexity, is unsurprising. This original research was undertaken with current trainee teachers across five ITT providers to explore barriers and enablers to successful completion of application to and enrolment in ITT. While the findings from this research are yet to be published, emerging themes show that prospective teachers find it challenging to compare the different routes available, in particular

also unable to recruit teachers and are increasingly having to accept teachers outside their subject specialism – or employ unqualified teachers. The South East region is particularly affected by these challenges, with urban coastal schools having among the highest proportions of unqualified teachers.

Trainee and newly qualified teachers frequently report the negative ways in which teaching is spoken about in school staffrooms and in the wider public community. Combined with this is the persistent quality and standards

by location, funding or part-time options.

We have found that the peak frustration point appears at the start of the applicant journey, when potential applicants are overwhelmed by the amount and sources of information available to them. They also show concern around the perception of teaching as being stressful.

Coinciding with the decline in applications to ITT courses during the past five years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of ITT providers, by 70 per cent (DfE, 2014, 2019). While there has been a reduction in the number of higher education institutions (HEIs) offering teacher training, the number of SCITT providers has doubled. These factors have combined to create a more fragmented, competitive and challenging recruitment market for all providers. With providers competing over a shrinking pool of applicants by operating their own events and campaigns, recruitment behaviours are becoming increasingly ruthless, and placing more and more pressure on applicants to accept places regardless of their individual needs.

discourse within policy reform and the national media, which constructs education as failing and inefficient (Ball, 2016). Both the school-based and media-based discourses are heavily influenced by prevailing cultures in education, which emphasise performance and competition over collaboration, and which seek to assign blame for perceived shortcomings. Are we able to present teaching in a positive light in this context?

The impact of competition on school culture The culture of competition is also evident in different ways in schools, and there has been widespread reporting in the mainstream press and the educational media about the challenges facing UK schools. Alongside the challenges in recruiting trainees, many schools are

Challenging the status quo – a collaborative approach Collaborative approaches are in constant tension in a competitive environment: people are more likely to conceal information, knowledge and resources from others, in case revealing them would remove their competitive edge.

Kemmis and colleagues (Kemmis and Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014) propose that organisations (schools, universities and ‘sectors’) are characterised by ‘architectures of practice’, which, in turn, describe a working culture. Professional practices are evident in the actions, relationships and sayings of participants in the organisation. They, in turn, are shaped by the prevailing priorities and drivers (political, economic and social) that determine what is valued or foregrounded. Thus, in the context of ITT recruitment, the priority (shaped by policy and market conditions) is

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to compete with other schools or ITT providers to secure diminishing numbers of applicants to teaching. In this case, the actions, sayings and relationships experienced will reinforce and shape the cultural impression of teaching as a career.

In securing a DfE-funded innovation project, we aimed to work from the start as an organisation where actions, relationships and discourse reinforced an opposing ethos, one of collaboration.

CESET (the Confederation for the Education of South-East Teachers) was established via this funding, as a group of five initial teacher training providers. Its principal aim was to increase the supply of trainee teachers to the region through collaborative approaches to recruitment and training.

Influenced by Kemmis’s theory, we consciously established a particular set of social/political arrangements. We set out deliberately to equalise power relations between partners who came to the collaboration as differently sized (a range of 24–880 trainees per year), experienced (from two to 50 years’ experience) and positioned (university, school-based), so that strategy, decision-making and goalsetting were shared.

These arrangements and ‘orders’ (Kemmis et al., 2014) were an essential precursor to establishing collaborative material/economic arrangements – a shared approach to funding, to devising materials and to gaining economic benefit from increased recruitment. It was known and understood from the start that each partner potentially risked diminishing their own recruitment by devising a shared web portal (ceset.co.uk) to direct applicants to partners, by running shared events and by sharing data about their own recruitment with partners. However, the scale of the recruitment problem in the region was deemed more of a driver to action than these risks, and the potential benefits of collaborative recruitment were deemed to outweigh those risks.

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Finally, we engineered and experienced a shift in discourse, in which competing providers began talking collaboratively and openly about data and about their own materials and approaches to training and recruitment, so as to establish new opportunities to talk to potential recruits in a different way – one in which the focus was on helping the applicant find the right route into teaching for them, regardless of provider. This discourse is also evident in text from the CESET web portal: Our aim is to combine our wealth of experience, knowledge and passion to provide you with the information, tools and resources to help you choose the best route to become a teacher.

(CESET, 2019) The emphasis has also been strongly on simplifying and demystifying the language used to describe options.

A collaborative discourse has also been evident in the language used at shared events such as joint mentor development programmes, which are open to mentors from all five ITT partnerships.

So far, the evidence of change is not systematic, but we aim to research the ongoing development of the architectures

of practice in the partnership and their impact on the teachers and mentors who engage with them.

Conclusion We aim next to extend this collaborative culture and discourse to the day-to-day encounters between beginner teachers and colleagues in schools and universities across the five ITT partnerships and the region. In particular, we will choose to emphasise the support and development that trainee teachers and, increasingly, newly qualified teachers can and should expect as they get to grips with a demanding job. We aim to focus on the way that we talk about teaching in formal and informal settings, from responding to initial enquiries, through recruitment events to interactions between beginner teachers and their fellow class teachers, mentors and senior leaders. We believe that through collaboration, we increase our potential not only to contribute solutions to some of the persistent problems faced in our region, but also to begin to change the way in which teaching is spoken about more widely. We share an individual and collective responsibility to attend to how we present our profession to its future participants.

REFERENCES Ball SJ (2016) Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education 14(8): 1046–1059. DOI: 10.1177/1478210316664259.

CESET (2019) About us. Available at: https://ceset.co.uk/about-us (accessed 10 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2014) Initial teacher training: Trainee number census – 2013 to 2014. Available at:www.gov. uk/government/statistics/initialteacher-training-trainee-numbercensus-2013-to-2014 (accessed 10 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2019) Initial teacher training: Trainee number census – 2019 to 2020. Available at: www.gov. uk/government/statistics/initialteacher-training-trainee-numbercensus-2019-to-2020 (accessed 10 March 2020).

Kemmis S and Grootenboer P (2008) Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice. In: Kemmis S and Smith TJ (eds) Enabling Praxis: Challenges for Education.

Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp.

37–64.

Kemmis S, Heikkinen H, Fransson G et al. (2014) Mentoring of new teachers as a contested practice: Supervision, support and collaborative self-development.

Teaching and Teacher Education 43: 154–164.

Whiting C, Black P, Hordern J et al.

(2016) Towards a new topography of ITT: A profile of initial teacher training in England 2015-16. An occasional paper from the IFE No.1. Bath Spa University, Institute for Education, Bath. Available at: http://researchspace.bathspa. ac.uk/8254 (accessed 31 March 2020).

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Professionally acceptable workload: Learning to act differently towards effective change GETTY

JULIE GREER CHERBOURG PRIMARY SCHOOL, UK CAROLINE DALY INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, UCL, UK

he Department for Education (DfE) has taken steps over recent years to emphasise the importance of addressing excessive teacher workload, in order to reduce the number of teachers leaving the profession and to encourage more entrants to teaching. Advice has been published for providers and practitioners, such as ‘Addressing teacher workload in initial teacher education’ (DfE, 2018a), ‘Reducing workload: Supporting teachers in the early stages of their career’ (DfE, 2019a) and the ‘top tips’ offered in ‘Ways to reduce workload in your school(s)’ (DfE, 2019b). Toolkits for reducing teacher workload have been published, with examples from small-scale research studies in 12 settings (DfE, 2019c).

The guidance is aimed at encouraging institutional and cultural change, which is vital in developing a mentally healthy workforce whose members can engage all children and young people in learning.

However, if this is to become a reality, the workforce has to be central to its own reform; without significant shifts in perceptions of ‘work’ by all members of school communities, nothing can change. Although a great deal needs to be done to reduce the external pressures on schools that have impacted on teachers’ workload for many years, a further aspect needs to be addressed by teachers, teacher

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educators and school leaders together within schools. This is because the culture of extreme workload in pursuit of perpetual improvement is embedded in a whole generation of teachers.

It is almost impossible to think differently about teaching as a profession and about what it means to be an expert teacher.

This article focuses on this particular challenge within the profession itself – to reform views of acceptable workload – while acknowledging that the external conditions that have produced the current situation need to be tackled.

have gained respect and seniority.

Extreme workload has come to be viewed as intrinsic to achieving and maintaining standards – for example, by the collection, management and communication of large quantities of data; by extensive teaching outside the school day; by disproportionate performance management; and by minimal time for meaningful professional learning away from

the ways in which subliminal messages are conveyed within schools, and to which trainees and new entrants are extremely sensitive – ‘it’s just the way it is in my school’. There seems to be no point in having deep discussions that start with ‘but this is not making a fundamental difference to the experience of pupils in my classroom/school’ or ‘this is data production and management that

classroom teaching, which has become viewed as ‘guilty time’, in a perverse reversal of ideas about being a ‘professional’ whose expertise needs to be nurtured (Ball, 2013).

Extreme workload as a proxy for excellence

Teachers’ self-worth and beliefs about long working hours

does not impact on the quality of my teaching/the teaching in my school’. This is just as difficult for school leaders as it is for classroom teachers and mentors – and new entrants learn the talk. It is necessary for school communities to stop and consciously deliberate on this, to make the ‘unspeakable’ become discussable.

Frank talk needs to happen so that more teachers – including new entrants – come to believe that a teaching career is sustainable. This means understanding the complexity of teachers’ feelings about their workload and their identities as excellent, committed professionals – but changing the ways in which we talk, think and act about workload is emotional work.

Drawing on Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992) concept of habitus, we need to understand the ways in which teachers internalise the influences that inform how they operate as social beings. We argue that the unwritten rules of the school community have been seriously underestimated in the workload debate. Working excessive hours has become normalised within the culture of schools – it has become a tacit indicator of teachers who are acknowledged to be dedicated and expert professionals. Trainee and new teachers frequently observe more experienced colleagues managing extreme workloads with great professionalism and resignation. They learn about what is acceptable from them.

This is a dilemma facing the profession. Long, unreasonable working hours are frequently modelled by school leaders and by experienced teachers who

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Try to envisage the response in many staffrooms to a teacher who says, ‘I don’t find my workload unreasonable and I can usually manage everything without my work taking away from family time in the evenings and at weekends.’ How many teachers would dare to speak this if it were true? How would the majority of other staff respond to such a statement? How many would honestly wonder whether the teacher was doing their job properly? Working very long hours has become a proxy for being good at the job. It is so much a part of professional identity that it is difficult to think of behaving differently, even while feeling deeply unhappy about the impact on personal life and mental wellbeing. It has become part of teachers’ emotional investment in their role – part of their sense of worth and efficacy. It affects informal talk among staff and

Emotional change For effective and active learning to take place, at any age, there needs to be a level of intrinsic motivation and a questioning of assumptions that have become ‘normal’ as a basis for altering identities (Mezirow, 1990, 1997).

To change practice and habits successfully, teachers at all stages in their career will need to learn anew – challenging the culturally acceptable practice that currently equates effective practice with

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response to that work, alongside that teacher’s understanding of colleagues’ and parents’/ carers’ feelings and attitudes to that work and the policies and practices that relate to it, as decided by senior managers and governors. All this is balanced by how much the teacher feels that they have agency over this work. The potential for a deficit of emotional capital when people

For effective and active learning to take place, at any age, there needs to be a level of intrinsic motivation

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‘hard work’ or long hours. The school workload reduction toolkit (DfE, 2018b) promotes good practice, but it is still possible for a school to work through the contents at senior level in the spirit of consultation, without class teachers feeling empowered to take part in any reform. It is important, therefore, to consider ways in which teachers can engage in their own decisions about a professionally acceptable workload. In order to reframe personal responsibility within the hierarchical systems of school management, it is important to situate discussions in the context of emotional capital: ‘Emotional capital is a tripartite concept composed of emotion-based knowledge, management skills, and capacities to feel that links self-processes and resources to group membership and social

location.’ (Cottingham, 2016, p. 452) In other words, in the context of schools and colleges, a teacher’s emotional capital is dependent on the ability to understand their feelings, to use those feelings effectively within the workplace as a resource, and to communicate to others how those feelings have been useful. In order to employ emotional capital, it is likely that other forms of capital, such as social capital, will also be in place.

The absence of emotional capital might be a teacher who just does as they are told, feels no sense of ownership of tasks, doesn’t feel able to critique practice and doesn’t feel a probability of success that they will be able to effect change within the organisation.

Any discussion of ‘teacher workload’ is dependent on the relationship between the person working and their emotional

feel that they have no control over work demands also applies if people feel disempowered to make the changes needed to improve working conditions.

It feels important, therefore, to articulate any discussion of workload in vocabulary that emphasises the role of the individual, the framework of a team and the professional responsibility to the learner.

Working towards a professionally acceptable workload The notion of a professionally acceptable workload perhaps offers a greater chance of gaining the cooperation of various stakeholders in making the changes that are needed in our educational organisations.

Archer (2007) holds out hope that individual reflexivity can help to enable things to be done differently. This involves being able to talk deliberately about how to change behaviours. We suggest that a focus on emotional capital can make a valuable contribution to reflexive practices, within altered school discourses about how work is valued. What is professionally acceptable can be a focus of explicit and honest discussion by all stakeholders

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(Kossek and Lambert, 2004), while being a way of capturing the differentiation needed within workload decisions (e.g. by career stage and pay grade), although this does not take away from the clear need to bring wellbeing and workload into better alignment. The UCET companion paper upon which this article is based, available online, offers a number of discussion prompts for open talk among providers and schools.

The role of teacher educators Given all this, what can teacher educators in particular do to encourage and promote professional, acceptable workload practices in trainees?

The prompts below may provide a starting point.

Make professionally acceptable trainee teacher workload an explicit item in ITE partnership agreements, with boundaries that have been discussed with all parties. This goes beyond stipulating teaching hours. It includes the total hours that it is calculated that the trainee should be spending on the training programme. Agree what is reasonable on a weekly basis.

Agree partnership processes for trainee teachers to articulate where their workload becomes unreasonable, without fear of repercussions.

Develop knowledge and understanding of individual trainees’ circumstances – e.g. where childcare needs should be a prime consideration in allocating placements.

Provide clear guidelines to support students with financial pressures.

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Make wellbeing and workload management a standing item in regular mentor meetings.

Train mentors in understanding appropriate workload and how they model professionally acceptable workload management.

Share a position more widely with education partners about the importance of equipping teachers, particularly in their early career, with adaptive expertise.

Encourage reflexive practice – giving trainees the skills to take ownership of their pedagogical thinking and techniques for returning to their reflections and developing them further. This can be a powerful way to hold emotional capital in relation to your practice and workload.

ITE programmes can develop new teachers to be able to articulate the ‘non-negotiables’ within workload issues and why these are so important.

ITE programmes can prepare trainee teachers and school partners to approach workload and wellbeing as major features of induction for newly qualified teachers.

Provide non-taxing ways to keep a dialogue during placements, e.g. reflective weekly journals through a few lines in an email, a vlog or a visual diary.

Act as an advocate for the trainee where necessary, e.g. if a second placement is very different from the first placement and the trainee is finding different expectations difficult.

Encourage discussions between trainees, and between teacher educators, to promote critique on workload practice, not criticism.

Review the protocols for mentors and university tutors to liaise where there are concerns relating to management of workload.

Make wellbeing and workload a standard focus of mentor discussion with the university tutors when they visit.

This article is based on a UCET companion paper to DfE advice on addressing teacher workload. The full companion paper is available at: www.ucet.ac.uk/11213/ professionally-acceptableworkload-a-second-ucetcompanion-october-2019

REFERENCES Archer MS (2007) Making Our Way Through the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ball SJ (2013) Education, Justice and Democracy: The Struggle Over Ignorance and Opportunity.

London: Centre for Labour and Social Studies.

Bourdieu P and Wacquant L (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cottingham M (2016) Theorizing emotional capital. Theory and Society 45(5):451–470.

Department for Education (DfE) (2018a) Addressing teacher workload in initial teacher education (ITE). Available at: https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/753502/Addressing_Workload_ in_ITE.pdf (accessed 25 March 2020).

https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/786178/Advice_for_ECTs_ update.pdf (accessed 25 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2019b) Ways to reduce workload in your school(s). Available at: https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/838687/Tips_for_school_ leaders_.pdf (accessed 25 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2019c) Collection: Reducing school workload. Available at: www.gov.uk/ government/collections/workloadreduction-toolkit (accessed 25 March 2020).

Kossek EE and Lambert SJ (2004) Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis Group.

Department for Education (DfE) (2018b) School workload reduction toolkit. Available at: www.gov. uk/guidance/school-workloadreduction-toolkit (accessed 25 March 2020).

Mezirow J (1990) Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood: A Guide to Transformative and Emancipatory Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Department for Education (DfE) (2019a) Reducing workload: Supporting teachers in the early stages of their career. Available at:

Mezirow J (1997) Transformative learning: Theory to practice.

New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 74: 5–12.

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Reclaiming teacher wellbeing through reflective diary-writing LUCY KELLY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL, UK

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eacher wellbeing – particularly negative teacher wellbeing – is a topic regularly hitting newspaper headlines. The sense of crisis in headlines such as ‘I am getting out before it kills me’ (Busby, 2019a) and ‘Huge rise in teachers welling up at work’ (Speck, 2019), is evidenced in the recent ‘Teacher Wellbeing Index’ (TWI) (Education Support, 2019) report, which found that ‘workrelated stress’ (p. 30) levels have seriously risen during the past year, with workload cited by 74 per cent of teachers ‘as the main reason for considering leaving’ the profession (p. 7).

This was followed by 65 per cent of teachers choosing the option ‘not feeling valued’ – ‘a new category for 2019’ (p. 47). Additionally, 74 per cent of education practitioners found it difficult to ‘switch off and relax’ – ‘a major contributing factor to a negative

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The study The ‘Reimagining the Diary’ (RtD) research project asked a group of 15 participants – mostly secondary teachers at various stages of their career – to keep a diary for a week during termtime, and to reflect on the process and the impact that it had on their wellbeing. As a research team, we were aware of the many pressures facing teachers, as summarised previously, and by one participant: ‘As a teacher, most of my time is “for” other people – if not classes of children, then for parents and emails to other teachers and so on. Even in the evenings, I am preparing for the next day even though I am sluggish by that point.

It means I rarely have real opportunities to think about myself throughout the day.’

(RtD, survey) We wanted to explore whether keeping a diary (plain notebook, kindness jotter or sound journal) gave teachers this ‘opportunity’ (Kelly et al., forthcoming).

Our findings reveal that over 93 per cent of participants perceived an improvement in their wellbeing when keeping a diary, using it as a tool for celebration and catharsis and an opportunity to look at an event or situation from different perspectives. Despite time being the biggest factor to consider, 86.7 per cent of the group would advise other teachers to keep a diary, and 60 per cent said that they would continue this practice.

Discussion As noted, the main barrier facing participants was time – finding it, making it and keeping it – which could be linked to ‘workload’ (TWI, p. 7) and ‘work-related stress’ (TWI, p. 30). One member of the group was aware of the potential anxiety caused by concentrating on their own wellbeing, stating: ‘it’s that constant push–pull against what I wanted to do and what I thought I should be doing’ (RtD, focus group). This tug-of-war between prioritising ourselves and prioritising others is common due to being in a profession where you are continually giving to someone else. Although it could be argued that keeping a diary is another commitment on teachers’ time, it can offer individuals the opportunity to press pause and to give to themselves. For one participant, in a job where

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worklife balance’ (p. 6). Yet, ‘more than a quarter (27%) of respondents would not speak to anybody’ about ‘mental health issues’ they had experienced ‘at work’ (p. 60), which is a worryingly high percentage and, perhaps, suggests that other wellbeing approaches need to be explored.

Indeed, if we want to encourage individuals to join the profession, and to stay in it, then a climate prioritising teacher wellbeing needs to be adopted.

Undoubtedly, this reframing must happen at a policy and school level – and it could be argued that the DfE and Ofsted are making progress in this area – but, for the purposes of this article, I use the TWI findings and the main results from a recent pilot research project (‘Reimagining the Diary: Writing and wellbeing for busy people’, Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol, 2019) to promote diary-writing (i.e. keeping a diary for reflective writing) as a positive tool for individual teacher wellbeing.

It is important to note from the outset that any suggestions made are done so tentatively; the small-scale nature of our research project (including sample size), as well as the relatively small data-collection of the TWI, means that what is proposed next is simply a springboard into further research and future conversations.

Additionally, participants might have perceived an improvement in their wellbeing due to the attention we were giving it.

This is an area to consider in the subsequent phases of our project, where we will be working with a larger sample size.

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positive disruptions. Teachers may be measured and judged, but the process of noticing can be more effective to their sense of professionalism than action research, as they are capable of changing themselves, and their practice. It is possible to make the experience of being a teacher more positive, through noticing tensions and drilling down into the core reason for them, rather than finding a convenient label and dismissing it as a part of the role that is out of their control.’

(2018, p. 177)

‘everything you did was for other people […] whether it be marking, whether it be preparation’, diarywriting gave them the ‘chance to sort of take half an hour, 45 minutes out of that, and talk about myself to myself’ (RtD, focus group). As will be discussed later in the article, diary-writing offers teachers the opportunity to reconnect to their purpose – i.e. their intrinsic motivation – which could lower work-related stress levels and present teachers with a different perspective around workload. Claire Goodley agrees, arguing that reflective writing such as that in a diary can help teachers to develop the art of ‘noticing’. For Goodley, ‘the discipline of noticing their own practice from a professional and personal perspective can allow a teacher to turn negative feelings into

Indeed, this ‘noticing’ (Goodley, 2018, p. 177) through reflective writing might also help to lower the results around insomnia or difficulty sleeping, which was another key finding from the TWI (p. 34). In our study, one of the emerging themes was the cathartic element of diarywriting: it offers teachers the chance to ‘download’ the day from their mind and onto the page – to give ‘concreteness to emotional experience’ (Hayes, 2018, p. 46). One participant echoed this idea, suggesting that writing is ‘almost like a release – it’s kind of somewhere for your thoughts to go, because they don’t normally go anywhere else’ (RtD, focus group). Interestingly, when one individual missed a day’s writing, they felt ‘bereft’ and acknowledged that ‘there were a lot more thoughts charging around in my head that I hadn’t processed’ (RtD, survey). Perhaps this is because reflective writing ‘creates a safe place to explore your world’ (Johnstone, 2018, p. xvii) and, when it isn’t

Diary-writing enabled these teachers to take back control and to rebuild the boundaries between work and home explored or made ‘concrete’ (Hayes, 2018, p. 46), we are left feeling vulnerable. As Johnstone explains: ‘Journaling helps you to slow down enough to notice what is happening, allowing you to transfer your thinking on to paper, and that’s where emotions like fear, anger, resentment and pain lose much of their power once their [sic] written down in black and white’ (2018, p. 9).

In our research project, 86.7 per cent of participants did use the diary to reflect on their working day, finding it ‘quite a stress buster’ (RtD, survey), as opposed to another job on their ‘to do’ list. Therefore, diarywriting could be a practice that the 74 per cent of education practitioners finding it difficult to ‘switch off and relax’ (TWI, p. 6) could try. One participant discussed the lack of boundaries between work and home, resulting in teachers ‘work[ing] at home so much’ (RtD, survey), and ‘the stress [being] inescapable’. Yet, as this person went on to explain, writing these worries down in a diary ‘helped me to switch off as if they were dealt with and I could forget about them for the weekend or evening’ (RtD, survey). In some way, diary-writing enabled these teachers to take back control and to rebuild the boundaries between work and home.

Indeed, by ‘transfer[ring] [their] thinking on to paper’ (Johnstone, 2018, p. 9), diary-

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writing offered teachers an opportunity to ‘talk’ via the written word. Numerous participants mentioned the ‘therapeutic’ aspect of diarywriting. It was described by some members of the group as a ‘venting tool’ and ‘the vault of all your secrets’ (RtD, focus group).

One individual summarised these aspects: ‘as teachers we listen to students’ issues all the time.

We need an outlet as we are also people with lives and worries.’

(RtD, survey) Taken together, our findings suggest that the diary became a cathartic space where thoughts and feelings could be ‘noticed’ (Goodley, 2018, p. 177) and ‘released’ (RtD, survey), and a connection to the self re-established.

Reflecting on past events, and then using this as a springboard into unpicking current feelings and emotions, is a powerful strategy. As well as offering catharsis, it also gives individuals the opportunity for celebration and to consider episodes and events from different perspectives – further themes emerging from our findings.

As observed in our research, it is undoubtedly important that teachers document positive emotions and experiences too – such as ‘moments […] enjoyed in the classroom’ (RtD, survey) – because this process can act as ‘a veritable multivitamin for our wellbeing’ (Hayes, 2018, p. 24). In ‘The Positive Journaling Study’, Hayes explored the impact that writing about positive emotions might have on individual wellbeing. Like our project’s findings, Hayes’ results reveal that positive journaling helps us to ‘feel directed’, ‘change

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our perspectives’ and ‘do more than react to what happens’ (pp. 28–29).

In relation to diaries offering individuals the opportunity to explore situations from different perspectives, writing a diary in an educational environment, saturated with numbers and spreadsheets, might encourage teachers to find their ‘why’ (Goodley, 2018, p.

169). This could stimulate future conversations, both personal and professional, which, in turn, might stop teachers from ‘not feeling valued’ (TWI, p. 47). As one participant noted: ‘It gave me time to reflect on [my] practice and think about my role at my current school. It made me reflect on the sort of practitioner I aspire to be in terms of my philosophy.’

(RtD, survey) Indeed, ‘When we regularly journal,’ writes Johnstone, ‘we start to realise that many of the beliefs, values, attitudes and what we’ve held to date (and stories we’ve held on to) are no longer serving us.’ (2018, p. xv)

Conclusion As this article has shown, diarywriting could be a small, but important, step towards reducing some of the results published in the TWI and improving the lives of our teachers, both inside and outside the classroom – a step we are excited to explore further in the next stage of our project. Indeed, diary-writing is a reflective space where teachers can reclaim their wellbeing and become the authors of their own personal and professional ‘narratives’ (Carr, 2006, p. 320) because, as summarised by one participant, we need,

‘To give teachers time to be them, and [to] think about themselves for a while during the day. Our role is to constantly think about others, which is an honour. Time flies during the school day, and there is rarely time to stop and rest. A diary gives that focus to stop and think solely about yourself. It showed me the importance of writing and expressing emotions to enable our minds to release thoughts and refresh.’ (RtD, survey)

Reflecting on past events, and then using this as a springboard into unpicking current feelings and emotions, is a powerful strategy REFERENCES Busby E (2019a) ‘I am getting out before it kills me’: Two in five teachers plan to quit within five years, union warns. The Independent, 16 April, 19. Available at: www.independent.co.uk/ news/education/education-news/ teachers-school-quit-nationaleducation-union-workloadrecruitment-shortages-a8871341.html (accessed 10 January 2020).

Busby E (2019b) ‘Alarming’: Government misses teacher-training targets for seventh year in a row despite major staff shortages. The Independent, 28 November, 19.

Available at: www.independent. co.uk/news/education/educationnews/government-teacher-trainingsecondary-school-shortageseducation-a9223861.html (accessed 10 January 2020).

Carr D (2006) Moral education at the movies: On the cinematic treatment of morally significant story and narrative. Journal of Moral Education 35(3): 319–333. DOI: 10.1080/03057240600874448.

Education Support (2019) Teacher Wellbeing Index 2019. London: Education Support. Available at: www.educationsupport.org.uk/sites/ default/files/teacher_wellbeing_

index_2019.pdf (accessed 16 March 2020).

Goodley C (2018) Reflecting on being an effective teacher in an age of measurement. Reflective Practice 19(2): 167–178. DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2018.1437401.

Hayes MC (2018) Write Yourself Happy: The Art of Positive Journalling. London: Octopus Publishing Group Ltd. Johnstone C (2018) Dare to be Happier: An Introduction to the Power of Journaling. Ayrshire: Snowdrop Press.

Kelly L, Huxford G and Kelly C (forthcoming) ‘In our daily struggles’: Diaries as a tool for teacher wellbeing. Life Writing.

Speck D (2019) Huge rise in teachers welling up at work. TES, 10 November, 19. Available at: www. tes.com/news/huge-rise-teacherswelling-work (accessed 10 January 2020).

University of Bristol (April 2019) ‘Reimagining the Diary’ survey. Data available on formal request.

University of Bristol (May 2019) ‘Reimagining the Diary’ focus group.

Data available on formal request.

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Rethinking teacher wellbeing SAMUEL CROME ASSISTANT HEADTEACHER, ST ANDREW’S SCHOOL, UK RACHEL CISE ENGLISH TEACHER, ST ANDREW’S SCHOOL, UK

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ellbeing has many intangible, perhaps ‘fluffy’ connotations, yet it encompasses what we are all trying to achieve, as people and teachers: to be well, to feel well. Many teachers, it seems, do not feel well when they reflect on their role and work–life balance. The 2019 Teacher Wellbeing Index states that 72 per cent of all education professionals would describe themselves as stressed (Education Support, 2019).

This rings true for many of us who work in the classroom. A familiar sight in the October half-term break, just six or seven weeks into the academic year: teachers bed-bound, succumbing to the flu, drowning in a pile of marking that wasn’t finished during the hectic final week.

Why is this the case, and how can it be addressed in schools?

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The Teacher Wellbeing Index also found that 49 per cent practitioners being highly qualified and accruing thousands of teachers considered that their workplace culture had a of hours of teaching and development time within their role. negative effect on their wellbeing. This points towards a need for Teachers would welcome the chance to be given more autonomy substantial change to the culture and organisational structures in to exercise our professional expertise and skills with our own schools. Anecdotally, it seems that many wellbeing programmes discretion. Certainly, the first large-scale quantitative study to in schools centre around well-intentioned added extras to give look at teacher autonomy and its importance for retention in staff a boost: yoga after school, an occasional wellbeing course or England found that teacher autonomy, particularly in relation session, a wellbeing day voucher. But these do not address our to their professional development goals, is ‘strongly correlated fundamental requirements in the workplace, day to day. with job satisfaction, perceptions of workload manageability and To address the root cause, we must explore the genuine needs intention to stay in the profession’ (Worth and Van den Brande, of teachers. The research that we have found the most formative is 2020, p. 3). However, it takes courageous school leaders to break that of Ryan and Deci (2000) and their Self Determination Theory away from established practices in how to run schools to give (SDT), followed by subsequent studies adopting a form of this staff more autonomy. Questions to consider include: Are staff model. SDT is not a recent phenomenon or a fad doing the rounds, given enough flexibility regarding what they teach and how they but a robust model that isn’t widely applied in the education teach? Are schools giving teachers enough say in curriculum development and delivery? Are teachers encouraged to take part sector yet. It proposes that humans have three basic psychological in research and further learning so that they can improve their needs: competence, relatedness and autonomy. In a workplace practice and take control of what they want to develop? Do staff setting, these must be met for staff to thrive. feel that they have a voice within the school to be part of change?

Autonomy encompasses the need to experience choice in our roles and decisions; relatedness is how workers perceive their Relatedness relationships and connection with others within the organisation, In most workplace settings, this would encompass how staff in addition to being part of a group and being supported by interact with their colleagues. However, leadership; and competence involves teachers spend most of their day with feeling challenged, accomplishing and Teachers would students. Although relatedness with performing well, and learning. These three welcome the chance other staff is important, Klassen et al. basic psychological needs have a correlation to be given more found that teachers place more value on with employee wellbeing, motivation and autonomy to exercise their relationships with students, and, in perceptions about contentment at work, and turn, students who had good relatedness also appeal to a common-sense notion that our professional with their teachers had higher intrinsic we need belonging, achievement and freedom expertise and skills motivation (Klassen et al., 2012). Do schools to truly feel fulfilled. with our own take seriously the importance of helping The question we are asking now is: How discretion teachers to build relationships with their are these needs potentially restricted for students? In terms of staff relatedness, key school staff, and what could we do to meet questions include whether or not a culture them? Let’s explore each need in a schoolexists of sharing, collaborating and valuing each other as staff, and based context. whether the building of relationships between staff is facilitated and promoted.

Competence In considering these questions, schools may need to spend Do accountability measures, e.g. SATs, GCSEs, A-levels, more time asking themselves what they define as success. Are league tables, Ofsted, etc., mean that staff only feel a sense of the aims of the school built around exam league tables and Ofsted competence if their students achieve well in standardised tests? ratings, or, alternatively, around thriving staff and students who Are school leaders effective at praising their staff for their efforts enjoy their learning environment and are motivated to keep and commitment, and not just for test performance? Does the learning? Clearly, we need to have a balance; but children can training and development in schools actually upskill teachers receive a robust and diligent education within an environment and staff? Do staff have control over, and engagement with, their that empowers staff needs. development? Do teachers feel like they are achieving what they came into the profession to accomplish?

Teachers do feel a lack of trust as professionals, with Ofsted admitting that this was an ‘emerging theme’ (Ofsted, 2019) in their 2019 review of teacher wellbeing, despite classroom

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An essential way to empower teachers is through their professional development. While the conventional approach to CPD has its merits, often comprising an exploration of the basic principles of the eight teaching standards, the reality is

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that teachers have covered this extensively in their training year. Intuitively, it seems as though there is scope for schools to develop their professional development offer to increase choice, collaboration, research engagement and long-term improvement.

An interesting model is proposed by Dr Kulvarn Atwal, author of The Thinking School (2019). Atwal offers a compelling account of how schools could aid the learning of teachers through research projects. He suggests that giving teachers time, opportunity and choice about their own professional learning empowers them to take ownership over the skills that they are developing.

Establishing partnerships with universities may aid in the accessibility of research. Such projects could be embedded within a part-time Masters course; where possible, this could be partfunded by the school. However, university-level learning is not the only way to approach research. A school could encourage its staff to engage with recent literature on an informal basis: leaving relevant literature in the staffroom or in pigeon holes, enabling staff to have an opportunity to read, discuss and share ideas.

More formally, departments could explore one aspect of topical pedagogy research per half-term. For example, a history department could explore recent research on whole-class feedback, trialling findings within the department and sharing their empirical results with the rest of the staff. If supported thoroughly by school leaders, this evidenced-based approach to CPD would offer more autonomy for teachers, who are normally asked to reflect on the same principles that they may have learned more than a decade previously. Continuous self-improvement should affect self-efficacy and lead teachers to feel trusted and empowered in their workplace.

Returning to Atwal’s school, when asked about their workload, the teachers were proud, almost triumphant: ‘we choose our work; what we do, how much we do’, and therefore they were in control of, and fully believed in, their demanding working lives.

Conclusion The approach that we are developing suggests that teacher empowerment, trust and professional learning will contribute far more to improved wellbeing among the profession than merely treating symptoms. Understanding and meeting the basic psychological needs of teachers is not costly, the timetable doesn’t necessarily need to be adapted and leaders don’t need to bolt on wellbeing strategies to their calendar. Instead, they could reconsider how their school’s success is measured and focus on providing an inspirational and robust education for our children through nurturing teachers and enabling them to thrive.

Workload While we’d all agree to reducing our working hours and tasks in an ideal world, we suggest that ‘workload’ – that is, the amount of work to be done – is not simply solved by reducing the number of tasks. Rather, it is the type of work that causes stress and damages wellbeing. Burdensome marking policies, planning or work scrutiny – the work that removes our autonomy to facilitate brilliant learning for our students is arguably the cause of ill-feeling towards high workload. High workload also reduces time to build relationships with students, which simultaneously impacts perceptions of both relatedness and autonomy (Collie et al., 2015).

High-stakes accountability for leaders can also result in heavy-handed line management, which impacts on workload.

Rather than being nurtured to develop in the long term, teachers are often micromanaged, their value hinging on exam results, attendance figures or the outcome of a moderator visit. Our view is that all leaders should be trained in, and employ, coaching models for staff development and line management. Coaching’s inherent style of asking a colleague to think through solutions and supporting decisions instead of judging them (Ibarra and Scoular, 2019) may allow for greater autonomy and a sense of relatedness.

REFERENCES Atwal K (2019) The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational.

Collie R, Martin A, Shapka J et al. (2015) Teachers’ psychological functioning in the workplace: Exploring the roles of contextual beliefs, need satisfaction and personal characteristics. American Psychological Association Journal of Educational Psychology 108(6): 788–799.

Ofsted (2019) Teacher well-being at work in schools and further education providers. Available at: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/819314/Teacher_well-being_ report_110719F.pdf (accessed 17 January 2020).

Education Support (2019) Teacher Wellbeing Index 2019. Available at: www. educationsupport.org.uk/sites/default/ files/teacher_wellbeing_index_2019.pdf (accessed 17 January 2020).

Ryan R and Deci E (2000) Self Determination Theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and wellbeing. American Psychologist 5(1): 68–78.

Ibarra H and Scoular A (2019) The leader as coach. Harvard Business Review.

Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/11/ the-leader-as-coach (accessed 17 January 2020).

Worth J and Van den Brande J (2020) Teacher autonomy: How does it relate to job satisfaction and retention?

Slough: NFER. Available at: www. nfer.ac.uk/media/3874/teacher_ autonomy_how_does_it_relate_to_ job_satisfaction_and_retention.pdf (accessed 7 April 2020).

Klassen RM, Perry NE and Frenzel AC (2012) Teachers’ relatedness with students: An underemphasized

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component of teachers’ basic psychological needs. Journal of Educational Psychology 104(1): 150–165.

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SAM SIMS RESEARCH FELLOW, CENTRE FOR EDUCATION POLICY AND EQUALISING OPPORTUNITY, UCL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, UK HARRY FLETCHER-WOOD ASSOCIATE DEAN, AMBITION INSTITUTE, UK

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eachers acquire new skills in a number of ways: through experience, through working with other high-quality teachers and through participating in effective professional development (for a summary, see Allen and Sims, 2018). There are several ways in which policymakers and school leaders can try to affect teacher quality through each route. But effective professional development (PD) has the potential to be both scalable and portable, making it a particularly attractive option for improving teaching quality.

The difficulty is in understanding the apparently innocuous ‘effective’. How do we know what is effective, as opposed to just plausible, interesting or enjoyable? How do research funders like the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England know which types of interventions to test? And how do school leaders and teacher trainers know which types of PD to opt for? In this article, we set out three different foci for identifying effective PD: programmes, forms and mechanisms. For each, we provide a definition, give examples and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the approach.

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Programmes PD programmes are specific sets of activities and materials that have their own identity and tend to be located in, or associated with, specific people or institutions. By activities, we mean the actions and tasks that teachers go through, and by materials, we mean the concrete stimuli and curricular resources provided for teachers. In well-established programmes, the activities are sometimes codified in a programme manual and the materials can sometimes be acquired off-the-shelf as part of a resource pack.

These will often be subject to copyright, and are therefore specific to the programme and tend to come under a brand name. The identity of the programme is often intertwined with the team that developed it or the institution in which it is based.

For example, the Dialogic Teaching programme, developed by Robin Alexander at the University of Cambridge, aims to improve the way in which teachers use discussion in the classroom (Alexander, 2017). It consists of a set of activities, including induction training, in-school mentoring, discussion of video and audio recordings of teaching, and planning and review activities. All of this is encapsulated in a 68-page handbook that describes what happens during each week of the course. The programme also provides teachers with materials, including the book on which the programme is based, proformas to support the planning and review sessions, and a laminated sheet summarising the dialogic repertoires that the programme focuses on developing.

The specific and codified nature of PD programmes means that they are often suitable for evaluation using experimental or quasiexperimental methods. This involves providing access to the programme for one ‘treatment’ group and denying it to another ‘control’ group, and then measuring the differences in outcomes between these two groups. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) determine which teachers end up in the treatment or control group by, in essence, the flip of a coin. For the same reason that, over many coin flips, we would expect to get approximately 50 per cent heads and 50 per cent tails, RCTs ensure that teachers allocated to the treatment group have (approximately) identical characteristics to teachers allocated to the control group.

Because the two groups have near-identical characteristics, any differences in outcomes are inferred to be the result of the one remaining difference between the two groups: receipt of the PD programme. The Dialogic Teaching programme has been evaluated using just this method and found to have a positive impact in science (Jay et al., 2017), for example.

While the results of the Dialogic Teaching trial certainly provide support for its use in schools, we might want to hold off declaring it to be effective PD. Several PD programmes have shown positive results in initial RCTs only for larger, follow-up RCTs to find no impact. For example, Thinking, Doing, Talking Science achieved impressive results for an efficacy trial with 41 schools (Hanley

A major advantage of examining the effectiveness of PD programmes (as opposed to forms or mechanisms) is that they are relatively unambiguous et al., 2015), but the impact on student learning disappeared when the same programme was retested in a larger RCT with 200 schools (Kitmitto et al., 2018).

There are at least two reasons why this might happen. One is that when the programme is scaled up, the original developers have less influence and the programme becomes warped. Another is that the randomisation did a poor job at achieving balance.

Although we would always expect many coin tosses to result in approximately 50 per cent heads and 50 per cent tails, every now and then somebody will flip a sizable majority of heads. In trial terms, this might result in more of the motivated teachers, for example, ending up in the treatment group. Better outcomes in the treatment group could now reflect either the impact of the programme or the effect of having more motivated teachers in the treatment group. We just don’t know. For both reasons, replicating the results of trials is very important. Dialogic Teaching is currently undergoing just such a replication attempt.

Other PD programmes that have shown positive evidence of impact in replicated RCTs include Reading Recovery (Sirinides et al., 2018) and My Teaching Partner (Allen et al., 2015).

A major advantage of examining the effectiveness of PD programmes (as opposed to forms or mechanisms) is that they are relatively unambiguous. It is clear what we are talking about when we discuss the Dialogic Teaching programme. Alexander’s book explains the theory of the programme, and the programme manual sets out the precise activities and materials involved.

This is an important advantage given the ambiguity of language in the social sciences and the potential for misunderstanding.

For example, two teachers might both experience ‘coaching’ PD, but in practice one might be experiencing instructional coaching and the other ‘non-directive’ coaching, which bear little resemblance to each other. Despite this advantage, identifying effective PD programmes may not always be much help to school leaders and policymakers. They may not be able to access effective programmes, for example, because they are based in the US and they are not available elsewhere. US programmes may also not translate effectively to schools in other countries (see, for example, Success for All, Miller et al., 2017). Even those that are already based in the same country can only expand so quickly, given the need to maintain fidelity to the programme design.

Forms An alternative approach to trying to identify effective PD is to focus on forms. A form is a type or category of PD that is specified at a higher level of abstraction than a programme. Forms are

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defined by a set of characteristics: typical, identifying features.

Unlike programmes, forms can accommodate variation in the specific materials and activities involved and are not uniquely associated with specific people or institutions.

Instructional coaching, for example, has been defined as: ‘instructional experts work[ing] with teachers to discuss classroom practice in a way that is (a) individualised – coaching sessions are one-on-one; (b) intensive – coaches and teachers interact at least every couple of weeks; (c) sustained – teachers receive coaching over an extended period of time; (d) context specific – teachers are coached on their practices within the context of their own classroom; and (e) focused – coaches work with teachers to engage in deliberate practice of specific skills’ (Kraft et al., 2018, p. 553).

All PD programmes with these characteristics are examples of instructional coaching, regardless of other characteristics, such as the specific materials they employ or whether teachers receive additional training sessions. Examples include the Content Focused Coaching programme (Matsumura et al., 2012).

A form cannot be evaluated in the same way as a programme.

This is because while you can allocate a teacher to receive a set of activities and materials that make up a programme, you cannot allocate them to receive a category of interventions. A more fruitful way to evaluate a form of PD is to look at the evidence across many programmes of a particular form. Meta-analyses of RCTs or good quasi-experimental studies allow us to do this by answering two important questions. Firstly, do examples of the form work on average? Kraft et al. (2018) find that, on average, instructional coaching has a positive impact. Secondly, under what circumstances does it appear to work best? Kraft et al. (2018) show, for example, that combining coaching with group training and instructional resources is associated with a larger impact.

However, the amount of coaching provided is not.

Seeking effective forms of professional development has some advantages over seeking effective programmes. A form is more portable than a programme: it is generally easier to design PD around characteristics than to reproduce a specific programme.

Forms can also be adapted more easily to suit the needs of a particular school. However, knowing that a form of professional development is effective on average does not guarantee that a particular instance will work. For example, some forms of instructional coaching have not had the desired impact on student learning (e.g. Garet et al., 2011). Identifying effective forms also requires many good evaluations, whereas programmes can be established as effective (based on our proposal above) with as few as two studies. For example, instructional coaching is the only form of PD that we know of to have demonstrated a positive effect from a meta-analysis of rigorous studies. Identifying effective forms will therefore take time.

Mechanisms A third approach is to focus on identifying effective mechanisms.

A mechanism is an ‘active ingredient’ – that is, it could not be removed from PD without making that PD less effective.

Susan Michie and colleagues further define a mechanism as an ‘observable, replicable and irreducible component of an intervention designed to alter or redirect causal processes that regulate behaviour’ (Michie et al., 2013, p. 5). ‘Observable’ implies that it is concrete as opposed to abstract. For example, being ‘inspirational’ is not observable. ‘Replicable’ implies that it could also be used in many contexts. Having a single celebrity speaker deliver part of a PD programme is arguably not

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replicable, for example, since they can only be in one place at a time. ‘Irreducible’ implies that it cannot be split into further constituent parts. This is intended to emphasise that mechanisms are basic building blocks. Finally, in the context of teacher PD, ‘altering human behaviour’ should be interpreted as changing teachers’ practice.

Michie and her team have exhaustively identified 93 such mechanisms, organised in 16 clusters. For example, Cluster 9, ‘Goals and planning’, covers nine specific mechanisms, including planning of implementation and planned reviews of whether specific goals were achieved. As well as giving examples of specific mechanisms, we can characterise PD programmes in terms of the interlocking set of mechanisms of which they are made up. For example, Content Focused Coaching (Matsumura et al., 2012) appears to consist of nine mechanisms, including providing an observable example of a technique, providing communication from a credible source in favour of a technique, and prompting rehearsal of a specific technique.

While useful, Michie’s taxonomy only provides a taxonomy of potentially effective mechanisms. The empirical evidence for the efficacy of each mechanism has not yet been established.

Moreover, the value of a specific mechanism depends on the other mechanisms with which it is combined. For example, prompting rehearsal of a technique may not be of any use if the teacher has not been provided with an observable example of a technique. So, how can we identify which will be effective for PD? We have suggested elsewhere that this requires two types of evidence. Firstly, the mechanisms should have empirical evidence of being effective for changing practice across a range of contexts, including outside of education (Clarke et al., 2014).

This increases our confidence that the mechanism is a genuinely reproducible, active ingredient. Secondly, the mechanism should appear in PD programmes or forms that have evidence of being effective. This increases our confidence that the mechanism can be combined with others to improve teachers’ practice in particular.

An important advantage of mechanisms is that they can be deployed and combined in a flexible way. In addition, when the mechanisms behind an effective programme are accurately understood and specified, this can also help to guard against a ‘lethal mutation’ – a variation that is no longer faithful to the underlying principles of the intervention. There are, however, disadvantages of trying to identify effective mechanisms. As with forms, mechanisms leave the content of PD underspecified: they are more or less silent on what teachers should work on.

More importantly, perhaps, they also have very high evidential standards. Understanding whether mechanisms work requires both evaluations of teacher PD programmes and evaluations from other contexts, as well as a good deal of interpretative effort to bring these together. The evidence base is not yet sufficient to

confidently apply this approach in education, though research is developing rapidly.

Conclusion In this article, we have set out three possible foci for identifying effective professional development. While we have presented them separately, there are benefits of considering all three levels of the framework when discussing, designing, commissioning and evaluating CPD. For example, understanding the mechanisms behind a programme can help to ensure that it is implemented faithfully or make clear the scope for adaptation. Similarly, looking to understand when forms appear to be effective can help to identify under what conditions, or in which settings, a specific programme should be applied. Despite their distinctive (dis)advantages, programmes, forms and mechanisms should therefore be considered complementary forms of evidence.

This article is an edited version of a chapter in Teacher CPD: International trends, opportunities and challenges by the Chartered College of Teaching (my.chartered.college/resources/ publications).

REFERENCES Alexander R J (2017) Developing dialogue: Process, trial, outcomes. In: 17th Biennial EARLI Conference, Tampere, Finland.

Allen JP, Hafen CA, Gregory AC et al.

(2015) Enhancing secondary school instruction and student achievement: Replication and extension of the My Teaching Partner-Secondary intervention. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 8(4): 475–489.

Allen R and Sims S (2018) The Teacher Gap. London: Routledge.

Kraft MA, Blazar D and Hogan D (2018) The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A metaanalysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research 88(4): 547–588.

Clarke B, Gillies D, Illari P et al. (2014) Mechanisms and the evidence hierarchy.

Topoi 33(2): 339–360.

Matsumura LC, Garnier HE and Spybrook J (2012) The effect of content-focused coaching on the quality of classroom text discussions. Journal of Teacher Education 63(3): 214–228.

Garet MS, Wayne AJ, Stancavage F et al. (2011) Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Impact Study: Findings After the Second Year of Implementation. NCEE 2011–4024.

Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

Michie S, Richardson M, Johnston M et al. (2013) The behavior change technique taxonomy (v1) of 93 hierarchically clustered techniques: Building an international consensus for the reporting of behavior change interventions. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 46(1): 81–95.

Hanley P, Slavin R and Elliott L (2015) Thinking, Doing, Talking Science: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation.

Miller S, Biggart A, Sloan S et al. (2017) Success for All: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation.

Jay T, Willis B and Thomas P (2017) Dialogic Teaching: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation.

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Kitmitto S, González R and Mezzanote J (2018) Thinking, Doing, Talking Science: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation.

Sirinides P, Gray A and May H (2018) The impacts of Reading Recovery at scale: Results from the 4-year i3 external evaluation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 40(3): 316–335.

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The transfer of training: Improving the effectiveness of CPD CHRIS BAKER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT LEAD, THE CABOT LEARNING FEDERATION, UK

The importance of training It is widely acknowledged that improving the quality of teaching and leadership are two of the key levers for improving educational outcomes (Hattie, 2003; Leithwood et al., 2019). The provision of high-quality professional development is vital to that mission and should be seen as a key driver not only of staff development, but also of recruitment, retention and wellbeing (DfE, 2016).

However, many of our CPD efforts still fail to break through the thresholds of knowledge and understanding and into long-term behavioural change, with CPD initiatives leaving participants knowing more but not changing their practice. So how can we transfer more of the knowledge, understanding and skills that come from professional development into tangible changes in practice? Looking beyond educational research, into wider research on the transfer of training, may lend some insight.

The transfer of training The degree to which individuals effectively apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes gained in training to the job has been termed the ‘transfer of training’ (Wexley and Latham, 1981).

Research into the transfer of training in non-education settings has suggested that the majority of training does not transfer

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into demonstrable improvements in work performance (Grossman and Salas, 2011).

A number of challenges have been raised around measuring training transfer, including how and when to effectively measure training transfer and the generalisability of results from studies. There is also limited literature from within the educational domain specifically. However, common to much of the research about transfer of training (Burke and Hutchins, 2007; Grossman and Salas, 2011; Blume et al., 2019) is the notion that there are factors that precede, exist within and follow training that impact on its effectiveness.

Learner characteristics

It is widely suggested that a variety of learner attributes play a powerful role in the transfer process (Burke and Hutchins, 2007). Readiness for training, including elements such as prior knowledge, skill and aptitude, has been shown to be a strong predictor of transfer outcomes. Perceptions of ability contribute to self-efficacy, which in turn affects confidence to learn.

Motivation emerges as another significant contributor to the transfer process, as it directs levels of intensity, direction and persistence (Blume et al., 2010). The final characteristic is the learner’s perceived utility of training. Learning and retention is rarely successful without first attaching value to the content and seeing a use for it.

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Key questions for learners: 1. Do you have the required knowledge and skills to access the training?

2. How confident are you that you can successfully access and transfer the training?

3. What is your motivation for completing the training?

4. How will you sustain motivation so that training is applied and maintained?

5. Are you clear about the use and impact of the training?

Training design

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Training that is purposefully designed and expertly delivered has a dramatic impact on the success of training transfer.

Studies have shown content relevance to be important to the transfer process, with successful training accurately replicating behaviours, challenges and scenarios. The effective use of learning principles such as direct instruction, modelling, practice and feedback has particular importance in successful training delivery (Grossman and Salas, 2011). The use of error management activities during training supports transfer by enabling individuals to anticipate what can go wrong and providing them with problem-solving strategies. Finally, trainer characteristics such as their professional expertise have also been shown to impact directly on levels of learning and retention (Burke and Hutchins, 2007).

Key questions for CPD designers: 1. Who should be involved in the training design?

2. Have we included all of the required content and ensured its relevance?

3. Do the planned activities accurately replicate job requirements and scenarios?

4. How are we leveraging learning principles during training design?

5. How are we preparing individuals to deal with expected challenges?

culture of an organisation has an impact through normative messages around expectations, recognition and remediation of training outputs (Grossman and Salas, 2011). Support from both managers and peers has been shown to influence the process, through encouragement, goal-setting and feedback. Organisations also need to provide individuals with opportunities to practise and perform. These opportunities should be sufficiently resourced (time, equipment, people) and occur with minimal delay after training completion. The final factor in successful transfer is post-training follow-up, where outcomes are reflected on and transfer is evaluated. The use of job aids such as manuals, scripts and checklists, as well as coaching, has also been shown to support transfer.

Key questions for school leaders: 1. Does our culture expect and support the transfer of training?

2. How will we track, measure and evaluate training transfer?

3. How will we support individuals after they have completed training?

4. Are there opportunities for individuals to practise and perform what they have learned?

5. What additional resources can be provided to support application and maintenance?

Conclusion So what does successful training transfer look like? Our hypothetical learner is ready for this particular piece of training.

They are confident in their ability to complete it and transfer the new knowledge, understanding and skills to the workplace. They understand the importance and usefulness of the training, and motivation levels are high. The training has been intelligently designed to ensure that the content is relevant, and the activities authentically match real-life scenarios. The trainer has high levels of credibility, due to their role, subject expertise and understanding of the learning process. Training activities leverage learning principles by appropriately balancing instruction, modelling, practice and feedback.

After the training, our individual returns to their workplace, where it is a cultural norm to now put their learning into practice. Their completion of training is recognised by managers and peers and they are provided with explicit opportunities to reflect on, share and practise their learning.

Systems are put in place to monitor the success of the transfer and job aids are available for further support. Practice, reflection and feedback continue until successful training transfer has occurred and learning has evolved into sustained changes in behaviour and performance.

REFERENCES Baldwin TT and Ford JK (1988) Transfer of training: A review and directions for future research.

Personnel Psychology 41: 63–105.

Blume B, Ford KJ, Surface E et al. (2019) A dynamic model of training transfer. Human Resource Management Review 29(2): 270–283.

Department for Education (DfE) (2016) Standard for teachers’ professional development.

Available at: www.gov.uk/ government/publications/ standard-for-teachers-professionaldevelopment (accessed 6 March 2020).

Work environment

Blume B, Ford KJ, Baldwin T et al. (2010) Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management 39: 1065–1105.

Grossman R and Salas E (2011) The transfer of training: What really matters. International Journal of Training and Development 15(2): 103–120.

An often-underestimated element of training transfer is the individual’s work environment. The transfer

Burke L and Hutchins H (2007) Training transfer: An integrative literature review. Human Resource Development Review 6: 263–296.

Hattie J (2003) Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? In: Building teacher quality: What does the research

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tell us? ACER Research Conference, Melbourne, Australia, October 2003. Available at: http:// research.acer.edu.au/research_ conference_2003/4 (accessed 6 March 2020).

Leithwood K, Day C, Harris A et al. (2019) Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. School Leadership & Management 40(1) DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2019.1596077.

Wexley K and Latham G (1981) Developing and Training Human Resources in Organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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How can we make departmental CPD more effective?

My research Across my career, I have experienced different formats of CPD. Some of these have been successful, where they have given staff the opportunity to discuss the impact of strategies on their practice, but others have been less so.

In considering how to lead change in my department, I have been greatly influenced by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and their ‘A school’s guide to implementation’. This guide led me to reflect on how implementation

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of change and training needs to be an ‘ongoing process’ over time (EEF, 2019, p. 31). It also made me realise that the CPD of my staff would be a pivotal part of the overall improvement process, due to the potential for impact on the learning across a whole department.

The Behavioural Insights Team’s work (BI Team) has also been beneficial in developing effective CPD sessions.

The BI team uses the acronym ‘EAST’ to summarise how, when changing behaviours, the process should be:

Easy, through ‘simplified messages’ and reducing ‘the hassle factor’ Attractive, in terms of ‘attracting attention’ and making the behavioural change desirable Social, through a collaborative approach where people are encouraged to engage as ‘most [other] people do’ Timely, by considering when staff will be most ‘receptive’ to the training you have planned. (BI Team, 2014, pp. 4–6)

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RICHARD MCDONALD DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH, DRIFFIELD SCHOOL AND SIXTH FORM, UK; ENGLISH CPD LEAD, THE EDUCATION ALLIANCE, UK

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I felt that engaging with this evidence was logical, in combination with the EEF guidance: by asking teachers to change their practice, we are essentially asking them to change behaviours in the classroom.

Giving staff the time to complete reading and the opportunity to discuss and evaluate it led to more engagement with evidence for the whole team

Long-term planning When I started as Director of English, I did not really consider how to make CPD effective; instead, I was more reactive to issues as they arose. However, this often led to short-lived periods of a new strategy being trialled. For example, a session on feedback and how to ensure that students engaged with it still resulted in some staff reverting to strategies that supported neither student progress nor reduction in staff workload.

After engaging with evidence around effective CPD, I adapted my approach.

This involved three main areas: The specific content to focus on How to match the needs of different staff How the training aligns with wholeschool priorities.

I then looked at how best to break down this content throughout the year (to support the ‘ongoing process’).

Considering the ‘threads’ that CPD will follow through a year is also useful in providing opportunities for staff to reflect on their practice and share these reflections. In this sense, the CPD programme becomes more cohesive, versus the reactive, one-off sessions that I had delivered previously, which could be seen as a ‘bombardment of new ideas’ (EEF, 2019, p. 4). Therefore, staff have more opportunity to reflect on the impact of strategies and are more likely to continue using them.

A recent training session Recently, the CPD programme for my department has followed the ‘thread’ of cognitive science. A recent session focused on how cognitive load theory (CLT) affects the teaching of writing, so we started with a quiz on prior knowledge of CLT. The subsequent discussion facilitated a ‘social’ means of self-reflection. Staff found this useful because it challenged some misconceptions that had arisen, leading to increased confidence in applying CLT. I followed this up with how CLT impacted my teaching through some ‘non-examples’ from my own practice – that is to say, examples of where things had not worked because I had not taken CLT into account. Here I felt it was important to highlight my own reflection process in order to model the application of research and to generate a ‘low-threat’ environment (EEF, 2019, p. 19).

We then read an article on CLT and writing, divided into extracts (each member of a group would read their extract and summarise the findings).

This made the reading section of the training more of a social activity, as the summaries led to discussion, contrasting with an alternative model I have trialled, where staff were emailed a ‘blog of the week’, which (due to workload) was only accessed by one or two teachers each week. Therefore, giving staff the time to complete reading and the opportunity to discuss and evaluate it led to more engagement with evidence for the whole team.

We concluded with staff committing to an idea that they would trial before the next meeting; the reflection on this next time would support the ‘ongoing process’ of CPD that I aimed for.

Impact As a subject leader, I have noticed how this approach has helped me to build a team that is more evidence-informed and evaluative.

This has meant that we have a culture where the team has the ‘opportunity to reflect and challenge’ their practice within a ‘lowthreat’ environment (EEF, 2019, p. 29).

Staff have highlighted their appreciation of the time given to read and discuss research, bearing in mind the workload pressures of teaching. The focus on CPD as an ‘ongoing process’ has also been beneficial, as teachers felt it’s given them more time to develop detailed knowledge of educational research (such as how memory works) because they get to cover the depth of this knowledge over time.

Top tips for evidence-informed CPD Develop a long-term plan, so that the CPD programme is cohesive Allocate time for staff to read and discuss research Allocate time for staff to discuss and evaluate their practice in a low-threat environment.

REFERENCES Education Endowment Foundation (2019) Putting evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation, Guidance report, 2nd ed. Available at: https:// educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/ Publications/Implementation/EEF_Implementation_ Guidance_Report_2019.pdf (accessed 2 January 2020).

The Behaviour Insights Team (2014) EAST: Four simple ways to apply behavioural insights. Available at: www. bi.team/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BIT-PublicationEAST_FA_WEB.pdf (accessed 2 January 2020).

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Journal clubs: Promoting a career-long culture of research engagement BETH GREVILLE-GIDDINGS LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT LEAD, RALEIGH LEARNING TRUST, UK

From medical beginnings Since the end of the 19th century, journal clubs have been used in medicine as a social way to read and discuss new research. By the 1980s, many medical training programmes included mandatory journal clubs, with a focus on the development of critical reading skills as a way of promoting critical appraisal in evidencebased medicine (Linzer, 1987).

Critical appraisal is a subset of critical thinking, ‘an essential life skill’ that involves using research evidence to inform clinical decisions (Sharples et al., 2017).

While it is difficult to teach critical thinking in an abstract way, the explicit teaching of critical evaluation skills can be supported by journal clubs (Deenadayalan et al., 2008).

A typical journal club meeting involves a facilitator or group leader presenting a summary of one or more pre-read academic papers, and a group discussion and analysis of the paper, including the validity of the claims and potential for use in practice.

Despite a shift in focus towards training programmes and critical appraisal, the goals of journal clubs have stayed close to those of

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the initial meetings, including: keep up to date with developments develop critical appraisal skills impact on clinical practice knowledge of key research provide a social space for discussion combat isolation potentially felt by practitioners.

(Alguire, 1998; Denehy, 2004; Deenadayalan et al., 2008) While there is evidence that journal clubs can increase knowledge, improve reading behaviours and develop certain skills in medical settings (Coomarasamy and Khan, 2004), there is a mixed view as to their effectiveness in increasing critical appraisal.

Studies evaluating journal clubs often have small numbers of participants, rely on selfreporting and are not always backed up by quantitative data (Alguire, 1998; Coomarasamy and Khan, 2004). Despite these limitations, there appears to be a consensus that journal clubs have a role in developing knowledge by introducing research.

Journal clubs in education There are growing examples of journal clubs being adapted for use in disciplines other than medicine, including education.

Brill et al. (2003) describe the use of journal clubs to help keep biology teachers up to date as part of a collaborative process, with results including the production of up-to-date activities for students. Golde (2007) describes adapting ‘signature pedagogies’ from different disciplines to prepare educational researchers at a doctoral level. They explore journal clubs as used in neuroscience, highlighting the way in which journal clubs include ‘multigenerational’ practitioners as equals and a flexible process that can be topic-focused or used as an introduction to research of historical importance. Sims et al.

(2017) report using journal clubs to promote behavioural change in a programme of professional development. While they were not able to report on whether teacher journal clubs affected student outcomes, there was evidence that teachers increased their use of evidence to inform their practice, and they conclude that teacher

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journal clubs are a feasible form of professional development.

Career-long research engagement for teachers

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For early career teachers and those new to a particular area, journal clubs are suitable for the introduction of key pieces of classic research

Journal clubs apply many of the principles of adult education, including relating the task to personal goals and working environment, presenting objectives as ‘real-life’ situations, problem-solving, active participation and provision of feedback (Swift, 2004). I have found that the social learning environment of a journal club offers a way to combat the feelings of isolation that teachers, including training teachers, may experience (Denehy, 2004).

I believe that as teachers progress throughout their career, there is potential for participation in journal clubs to remain a relevant and effective form of professional development.

For early career teachers and those new to a particular area, journal clubs are suitable for the introduction of key pieces of classic research (Swift, 2004; Golde, 2007) and, when used to follow up an introduction presented via another method, can provide increased exposure to knowledge (Struck, 2005, in Deenadayalan et al., 2008).

More experienced teachers and those more familiar with topics may use journal clubs to facilitate collaboration with colleagues.

Recommendations frequently include the need to integrate learning into practice rather than hold standalone journal club sessions (Alguire, 1998; Coomarasamy and Khan, 2004; Deenadayalan et al., 2008; Hatala et al., 2006). One suggestion involves combining journal clubs with other learning methods,

including lectures or seminars (Coomarasamy and Khan, 2004; Hatala et al., 2006), and while there are limitations to journal clubs as a way to transfer evidence to practice, research indicates that journal clubs are appropriate for deeper study and consolidation of previously learnt material (Deenadayalan et al., 2008; Barak and Dori, 2009), providing an opportunity to relate to ‘real-life’ situations, which is more likely to lead to an increase in evidence-based practice (Swift, 2004).

Potential for integration in teacher training Journal clubs are an established feature of medical training; however, I have found no evidence that journal clubs have been used during the training of teachers. Many of the purposes and features of journal clubs are appropriate for this group, with benefits including: positive attitudes towards evidence-informed practice increased use of evidence to inform practice increased knowledge of research design increased subject knowledge/ professional growth increased motivation increased morale increased confidence reduced feelings of isolation formation of professional relationships with experienced practitioners on a more level playing field.

(Hutchinson, 1970; Mazuryk et al., 2002; Coomarasamy and Khan, 2004; Denehy, 2004; Barak and Dori, 2009) Regarding the development of critical evaluation, many

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medical students have low scores on tests of critical thinking skills (Sharples et al., 2017), and it may be reasonable to presume that students in education-related fields, with a similar level of education, will also have low scores of critical thinking skills. By participating in journal clubs at the start of their career, there may be a greater chance that new teachers will become familiar with key research, more willing to accept evidence-informed practice as a way of working, and more likely to be able to critically question theories and practices that they encounter throughout their career. Journal clubs are a way of integrating research awareness in practice while reinforcing and consolidating knowledge – whether as a tool to support and embed learning through other methods or as an introduction to key ideas and viewpoints.

Swift (2004) suggests that one approach to article selection in journal clubs during training might be to review classic papers and allow students to make up their own minds about the research. This is supported by

Golde (2007), who suggests that as education is not a ‘fast science’ discipline with rapidly changing research findings, it is appropriate to use journal clubs in education to focus on key classic research of ‘historical importance’.

Attendance of journal clubs could offer training teachers the opportunity to explore themes in more detail and relate these to their practice. The literature shows that journal clubs provide an opportunity to gain insights that may have been overlooked during individual study (Kuppersmith et al., 1997) and that linking learning to ‘real’ situations is a feature of adult learning theory that will increase the likelihood that evidence will be used to inform practice (Green and Ellis, 1997; Swift, 2004).

Critical thinking skills are an important factor in engaging with research in both medicine and education. In medicine, there is a focus on the explicit teaching of critical appraisal during training in order to make evidenceinformed decisions based on research. As a profession, teaching is increasingly encouraged to

Linking learning to ‘real’ situations is a feature of adult learning theory that will increase the likelihood that evidence will be used to inform practice become research-informed.

While organisations such as researchED, the Education Endowment Foundation and the Chartered College of Teaching are supporting schools and teachers to achieve this, many teachers have spent their careers without engaging in research, and programmes of initial teacher training (ITT) require varying amounts of research engagement.

As journal clubs are used during training and throughout a career in medicine, I think that they have the potential to be used in education, from ITT and through continuing professional development, as a sustainable way to introduce key pieces of research and teach critical thinking skills across teachers’ careers in a way that will encourage them to engage with research and use it throughout their practice.

REFERENCES Alguire PC (1998) A review of journal clubs in postgraduate medical education.

Journal of General Internal Medicine 13(5): 347–353.

Barak M and Dori YJ (2009) Enhancing higher order thinking skills among inservice science teachers via embedded assessment. Journal of Science Teacher Education 20(5): 459–474.

Brill G, Falk H and Yarden A (2003) Teachers’ journal club: Bridging between the dynamics of biological discoveries and biology teachers. Journal of Biological Education 37: 168–170.

Coomarasamy A and Khan KS (2004) What is the evidence that postgraduate teaching in evidence based medicine

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changes anything? A systematic review.

British Medical Journal 329: 1017.

Deenadayalan Y, Grimmer-Somers K, Prior M et al. (2008) How to run an effective journal club: A systematic review. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 14: 898–911.

Denehy J (2004) Starting a journal club.

The Journal of School Nursing 20(4): 187–188.

Golde CM (2007) Signature pedagogies in doctoral education: Are they adaptable for the preparation of education researchers? Educational Researcher 36(6): 344–351.

Green ML and Ellis PJ (1997) Impact of an evidence-based medicine curriculum

based on adult learning theory. Journal of General Internal Medicine 12(12): 742–750.

Postgraduate Medical Journal 63: 475–478.

Hatala R, Keitz SA, Wilson MC et al.

(2006) Beyond journal clubs. Journal of General Internal Medicine 21(5): 538–541.

Mazuryk M, Daeninck P, Neumann CM et al. (2002) Daily journal club: An educational tool in palliative care.

Palliative Medicine 16: 57–61.

Hutchinson RA (1970) Journal club – a method of inservice clinical education for pharmacists. Annals of Pharmacotherapy 4(11): 322–326.

Sharples JM, Oliver S, Oxman AD et al.

(2017) Critical thinking: A core skill within education and healthcare. Impact 1: 76–80.

Kuppersmith B, Stewart MG, Ohlms LA et al. (1997) Use of an internet-based journal club. Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery 116(4): 497–498.

Sims S, Moss G and Marshall E (2017) Teacher journal clubs: How do they work and can they increase evidencebased practice? Impact 1: 72–75.

Linzer M (1987) The journal club and medical education: Over one hundred years of unrecorded history.

Swift G (2004) How to make journal clubs interesting. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 10: 67–72.

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Teacher Rounds – putting teachers in control of their own learning KENNY FREDERICK EDUCATION CONSULTANT/ FORMER SECONDARY HEAD, UK

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n a climate where teachers’ response to traditional continuous professional development (CPD) and feedback from formal observations is often ‘passive’ (Danielson, 2009), Teacher Rounds (Del Prete, 2013) are an innovative form of professional learning, which take place in the context of the classroom.

The Teacher Round protocols ensure a safe environment for teachers to work together in a collaborative way. Teachers participate as equals and there are no experts, allowing professional learning to take place in the ‘authentic world’ (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 2011) of the classroom.

After retiring from 17 years as head of an inner-city secondary school, I was lucky to be given the opportunity to complete my PhD at Brunel University.

My research topic, ‘what happens when teachers participate in Teacher Rounds’, involved working alongside 16 teachers across two secondary schools and one primary school for more than a year as they participated in Teacher Rounds.

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What are Teacher Rounds?

The Teacher Round protocols First is a group training session (about an hour), where the groups agree a Contract for Working Together and where they learn about the protocols.

The host teacher (everyone takes a turn to host a lesson) decides on their

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Teacher rounds are done with teachers and not done to teachers – this is an important principle and puts teachers in charge of their own learning own problem of practice and what they particularly want feedback on.

They prepare a Round Sheet, outlining the context of the lesson, the lesson objectives and their problem of practice.

This is used as a guide for the Round Group, who will visit the lesson.

A short pre-Round meeting is held on the morning (usually before school) of the Round, where the host teacher goes through the Round Sheet with the group and together they decide where they will place themselves in the classroom.

The host teacher tells them whether she wants them to interact with the pupils, and they discuss any particular pupils or groups that the teacher wants them to observe more closely.

The teacher prepares the class for the influx of teachers and they turn up on time and stay for the whole lesson.

Teachers are asked to describe what they see, hear and feel but must not interpret it. They are asked not to use jargon or ‘Ofsted’ speak.

Following the lesson – usually at the end of the day – the group meet for a post-

Round meeting. This is where they talk through the lesson and what they have seen and heard. Everybody feeds back to the host teacher, particularly around the problem of practice.

Once everyone has fed back, they pull the discussion together by asking probing questions in the form of ‘wonderings’. I wonder what might have happened if… This should be something that the teacher asking the question does not know the answer to but is designed to get the group to reflect on what they have seen and heard.

They end by identifying their own ‘learnings’ and what they will try in their own classrooms.

The Round discussion needs to be facilitated or chaired. Ideally, this is done by one of the participants and they should not be a senior manager. The role of the facilitator is to chair the discussion and to stop the conversation if teachers drift into evaluation mode.

I acted as facilitator for all the Rounds groups involved in my research and

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Teacher Rounds are based on the work of Del Prete (2013). There are many variations but I chose to concentrate on Teacher Rounds that are a more intimate experience for teachers in one school and do not involve an ‘expert’ or ‘consultant’ teacher.

Rounds operate with strict protocols that ensure authentic professional conversations happen, and teachers are able to reflect on their own practice and make changes as they see fit. It is important to note that Rounds are not about ‘best practice’ but are about learning from all ‘practice’. A Teacher Round occurs in a real, everyday context in the classroom.

A Teacher Round is a collaborative process – a way to bring extra eyes and ears to the task of learning what students are thinking and doing, and what is engaging them and to what end. Teacher Rounds are done with teachers and not done to teachers – this is an important principle and puts teachers in charge of their own learning.

Introducing Teacher Rounds into your school is easy (but will have cover implications) and it is important to note that teachers must volunteer to participate – they cannot be coerced. Once the process and protocols are explained, teachers are (in my experience) keen to get involved. Once they know that confidentiality is agreed and no judgments are made, they volunteer in droves! A Rounds group is made up of between three and seven teachers of various experience and subject specialisms. The groups I facilitated were between five and seven teachers. Teaching experience will be varied but an important point is that everybody comes together as equals.

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searching questions proved an effective way of exploring different approaches (that might otherwise be seen as critical) – but in a positive way.

Conclusion

subsequently in Rounds groups that I run in different schools. However, those who have been through the Rounds process now facilitate Rounds in their schools and help to create new groups of teachers to continue the learning process.

For Teacher Rounds to be successfully introduced, teachers will need the full support of the headteacher and senior leadership team.

Professional conversations All Round members are expected to learn from the post-Round discussion and to reflect on what is being said and apply it to their own practice. The language used in this discussion is very important. The difference is due mostly to the fact that there is no power dynamic or judgment at play. Timperley (2010) says that teachers find it difficult to talk about teaching and I found this to be true. As facilitator, I had to work hard to get teachers to avoid jargon and to get them to be explicit in describing what they had seen and heard and not attempt to evaluate the lesson or the teacher. Professional conversations started to flow and it was difficult to get teachers to stop talking once they started. While the discussions were overwhelmingly positive, the protocol of using ‘wonderings’ to ask

The clear protocols and lack of judgment associated with Teacher Rounds allowed teachers to be open and honest with each other. The trust (Bryk and Schneider, 2002) that group members had in each other allowed them to express their innermost thoughts and doubts, and many said that they felt they ‘would never be good enough’. Teachers (even the most experienced) were full of self-doubt and full of guilt about not doing enough for their students. Teacher Rounds provided positive feedback without any judgment.

The impact of participating in Teacher Rounds on individual teachers was impossible to measure in terms of pupil achievement or even in terms of improvement to the quality of teaching, because to do this would have involved making arbitrary judgments and evaluations of teachers before and after participation in Teacher Rounds.

This was a qualitative research project involving 16 teachers in three schools.

I attended every pre-Round meeting, participated in every Round (32), and transcribed and analysed every postRound and focus group discussion (at the end of the research), to track what individual teachers were saying, and collected and analysed a vast amount of data.

All 16 teachers reported greater confidence in their teaching, and moreover, they reported that the support and trust they had developed in their Rounds groups made them less afraid of formal observations. I saw for myself that they started to take risks when they were hosting a Round. They were able to have detailed discussions about the teaching and learning process without fear of being seen as ‘difficult’ or ‘resistant to change’.

The extra eyes and ears in the classroom meant that they had a better handle on

what individuals and groups of children were doing during the lesson and were able to identify barriers to their learning.

Teachers were open and respected the feedback from their colleagues, who did the same job as they did on a daily basis.

Trust (or lack of it) Lack of trust in schools emerges as a major factor in the way in which teachers engage in their work. Surveillance, constant monitoring and checking on teachers need to be urgently addressed, and accountability measures need to be rationalised and made more humane. The compliance culture is about control, and heads seem to be afraid of what will happen if they let go of this control. Giving teachers a voice in what and how they teach will help them to take ownership of the teaching and learning process and allow them to develop their own agency and professionalism (Biesta et al., 2015). This might help to keep them in the profession.

Everybody is looking for the ‘silver bullet’ to bring about change and to improve pupil standards. Yet standards will only improve if the quality of teaching continues to improve. We must invest in teachers, and leaders must question why they are imposing structures and policies that do not bring about long-term improvement.

REFERENCES Biesta G, Priestly M and Robinson S (2015) The role of beliefs in teacher agency. Teachers and Teaching 21(6): 624–640.

Bryk A and Schneider B (2002) Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Danielson C (2009) Talk About Teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Darling-Hammond L and McLoughlin MW (2011) Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi Delta Kappan 92(6): 82.

Del Prete T (2013) Teacher Rounds: A Guide to Collaborative Learning in and from Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Timperley H (2010) Using evidence in the classroom for professional learning. Paper presented to the Ontario Research Symposium. Toronto, Canada.

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CPD: From the generic to the specific

2020 suggests that high-quality CPD for teachers has a significant effect on pupils’ learning outcomes. It therefore appears logical to develop the quality of the CPD provision in schools and to further our understanding of what ‘high quality’ looks like.

What have we changed?

ANDREW BROWN ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL OF TEACHING AND LEARNING, NISHKAM HIGH SCHOOL, UK

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Why focus on continuous professional development?

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Wiliam suggests that ‘teacher quality is the most important ingredient of an effective education system’ (2014, p.

4). A key measurement of the effectiveness of an education is the outcomes of students in the school. Research conducted by Fletcher-Wood and Zuccollo in

Impact

Our previous model was dominated by whole-school CPD, covering the core priorities of the school, with very similar training provided to all staff. Statutory training is an essential example of whole-school CPD; however, such an approach cannot always support the distinctiveness of specific subjects and the nuances in delivery of these subjects.

The new approach has split CPD into three strands: one for whole-school CPD, the second for department-level CPD and the third for individual CPD. This maintained the ability to drive forward whole-school improvement while, at the

same time, providing space for teachers and departments to take ownership of their own development in ways that relate to their own subject knowledge and pedagogical practices.

Why increase the amount of subjectspecific professional development?

The Wellcome Trust’s ‘Developing great subject teaching’ report (Cordingley et al., 2018) found that schools that have the poorest academic or inspection results are the least likely to prioritise subject-specific professional development, while the Teacher Development Trust’s (TDT) 2015 report articulates that ‘subjectspecific Continuous Professional Development (CPD) – by which we mean programmes that enhance teachers’ subject knowledge and/or their ability to teach in specific subjects – has a greater impact on student outcomes than generic pedagogic

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CPD’ (Cordingley et al., 2015, p. 2). Christine Counsell (2018) summarised this nicely when she argued, ‘Where SLTs have tried to reach into pedagogy with generic strategies that fail to attend to subject distinctiveness, all manner of distortions have occurred.’

Improving teachers’ knowledge of their subjects and respecting the individual nature of these subjects through our CPD delivery will lead to better-quality lessons delivered to students in the classroom.

What does it look like?

Department level

Department-level CPD has been increased from one hour fortnightly to two hours each week, by changing the school day and drastically reducing the number of unnecessary meetings scheduled after school.

This released the time and, importantly, the trust for subject leaders to control the CPD within their own area. Consequently, administrative meetings have been transformed into regular subject-specific sessions.

Blogs have been presented to departments, speakers have been invited in to share knowledge on a specific area, chapters from subject-specific books have been shared, common errors have been discussed, and degree specialism has been shared before a related topic is taught – it has brought relevance to meetings and more meaningful teacher development.

Individual level

Staff do not attend school for two out of five inset days – all staff stay at home rather than attending the school, giving that time ‘back’ to reallocate.

This provides the opportunity to select a conference, school visit or twilight session during the course

of the year that matches their own CPD target. Last year, we had staff attend an array of Saturday conferences, from researchED’s National Conference to the UCL’s ‘Unpacking the Holocaust’.

Teachers engaged with their national subject associations’ knowledge-enhancement webinars; for example, our geographers gained an insight into ‘Marine debris and the impact on Iceland’. Staff also immersed themselves in educational research, and titles from the staff library increasingly found their way to staff desks. Developing a culture where teachers seek information ‘beyond the school gates’ provides the opportunity to develop understanding of teaching beyond the limitations of a single school.

What is the outcome so far?

We have seen a significant increase in the amount of CPD requested and, therefore, attended. We trust our staff to know best what our students need and to match up their CPD accordingly. Staff feel valued and supported both within subject areas and across the school. The results from a staff questionnaire based on the

TDT’s ‘Developing great teaching’ (Cordingley et al., 2015) stated that the new model had ‘increased the quality of CPD received’ for all, and everyone preferred ‘the new model to the previous one’. CPD provision has increased exponentially, while costs, due to the reduction in cover requirements and pricing of teacher-led events, have remained stable. Finally, student outcomes at GCSE were our best ever, in terms of both progress and attainment.

While this cannot be solely attributed to the new model, we believe that it has contributed to the outcomes we have achieved.

Final thoughts To use a phrase from the Educational Endowment Foundation (n.d.), we are often making decisions about education by using ‘best bets’ based on the evidence that we have. The evidence points towards effective CPD being specific and closely related to the subject domain you teach; our ‘best bet’ has been placed, and we are excited to see how this model continues to grow.

We trust our staff to know best what our students need and to match up their CPD accordingly

REFERENCES Cordingley P, Greany T, Crisp B et al. (2018) Developing great subject teaching: Rapid evidence review of subject-specific continuing professional development in the UK. Wellcome Trust. Available at: https:// wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ developing-great-subject-teaching.pdf (accessed 26 March 2020).

Cordingley P, Higgins S, Greany T et al. (2015) Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development. Teacher Development Trust. Available at: https://tdtrust.

org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ DGT-Full-report.pdf (accessed 26 March 2020).

Counsell C (2018) Senior curriculum leadership 1: The indirect manifestation of knowledge. In: The Dignity of the Thing. Available at: https:// thedignityofthethingblog.wordpress. com/author/christinecounsell (accessed January 2020).

Education Endowment Foundation (n.d.) Using the Toolkits. Available at: https:// educationendowmentfoundation.org. uk/evidence-summaries/about-the-

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toolkits/using-the-toolkits (accessed 26 March 2020).

Fletcher-Wood H and Zuccollo J (2020) The effects of high-quality professional development on teachers and students: A rapid review and metaanalysis. Wellcome Trust. Available at: www.stem.org.uk/resources/elibrary/ resource/465564/effects-high-qualityprofessional-development-teachersand (accessed 26 March 2020).

Wiliam D (2014) The Formative Evaluation of Teaching Performance.

East Melbourne, Victoria: Centre for Strategic Education.

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Developing inclusive pedagogy: Some theoretical insights from research evidence

W

EDDY LI FACULTY OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK

Inclusive pedagogy ought to focus on extending what is ordinarily available for everybody in the rich learning community of the classroom

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hile working as a newly qualified teacher in Hong Kong, I often reflected upon, and explored with my colleagues, which classroom strategies might help to support the learning of all children. From time to time we felt uncertain about our own capacity to develop more inclusive practices. This was despite our recognition of the transformability of children’s learning capacity (Swann et al., 2012) – that there is always the potential for change as a result of what both teachers and learners do in the present. One of our key pedagogical challenges was how to teach the increasing diversity of learners, many of whom were categorised by our local authority as having ‘special educational needs’ (for example, ‘children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder’, ‘children with specific learning difficulties in reading and writing’ and ‘children with speech and language impairment’). Among other things, these ‘labels of defectiveness’ (Slee, 2011, p. ix) seem to imply that difficulties in learning are deficits in learners (Florian and BlackHawkins, 2011), rather than manageable professional challenges for all teachers. To what extent are we able to create learning without limits?

Research evidence has consistently suggested that there are close parallels between inclusive pedagogy and our ‘everyday pedagogy of teaching’ (Rix and Sheehy, 2014, p. 459). For example, Norwich and Lewis (2001) reviewed the strategies most used for teaching students identified with having special educational needs and disabilities. They put forward a view that what works with some categorically distinct groups of learners

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(such as using varied approaches to maintain attention, employing strategies that are focused and visually explicit, and teaching in small and explicit steps) also works with all children. Similarly, Kershner (2009) argues that ‘teaching approaches which seem intrinsic to inclusive learning are already represented in many classrooms where emphasis is placed on pupils’ dialogue, collaboration, choice, exploration and learning to learn, and where it is assumed that all pupils are capable of learning’ (p. 54).

According to Black-Hawkins (2017), inclusive pedagogy ought to focus on extending what is ordinarily available for everybody in the rich learning community of the classroom, rather than offering those who experience difficulties in learning something additional to, or different from, the provision for most children. This theoretical assumption about developing more inclusive practices supports the observation by Ellis et al.

(2008) that guidance on inclusion through the National Strategies in England tended to emphasise the strengthening of generic teaching vis-à-vis specialist approaches.

Indeed, in settings where teachers were encouraged to try out a range of ways to support the learning of all children, most reported that they knew more than they had previously thought (Rouse, 2008).

This is contrary to the commonly held belief that many teachers do not have the knowledge essential to teaching a diversity of learners (see, for example, Sharma et al., 2013).

So, what is it about the everyday pedagogy of teaching that we need to know if we are to support the learning of all children? Empirical evidence has offered us some very helpful guidance about what works: the indicators for inclusion (Education Bureau, 2008), the 10 principles for effective pedagogy (James and Pollard, 2011), the six components of great teaching (Coe et al., 2014) and the SEND code of practice (Department for Education and Department of Health, 2015), to name but a few. Yet, while drawing upon any ‘fragment knowledge

about effective teaching’ (Florian and Kershner, 2009, p. 173), not least that which is largely conveyed by a prescriptive checklist approach, we shall not undermine the complexity and ecology (Rao and Chan, 2009) of developing inclusive pedagogy in context. As pointed out by Hagger and McIntyre (2006), any one principled way of achieving a given goal in teaching, albeit generalised from across variations, is likely to be best only within a particular range of circumstances.

This supports Alexander’s (2009) notion of pedagogy as involving ‘the observable act of teaching together with its attendant discourse of educational theories, values, evidence and justification’ (p. 5).

Developing inclusive pedagogy requires

teachers not only to draw upon their context-independent knowledge, but also to engage with ideas within the multidimensional realities of their own classrooms and schools (for example, the cultural frameworks of expectations, values and beliefs about what constitutes good teaching and learning). It also requires an inclusive mindset that celebrates differences in what all teachers do – through their everyday pedagogy – to increase the learning and participation of all children. The milliondollar question is: Amid our research and pedagogical efforts, to what extent have we considered differences as resources to facilitate greater inclusion (see also Li, 2020)?

REFERENCES Alexander R (2009) Towards a comparative pedagogy.

In: Cowen R and Kazamias AM (eds) International Handbook of Comparative Education. New York: Springer, pp. 923–942.

Black-Hawkins K (2017) Understanding inclusive pedagogy: Learning with and from teachers. In: Plows V and Whitburn B (eds) Inclusive Education: Making Sense of Everyday Practice. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp.

13–28.

Coe R, Aloisi C, Higgins S et al. (2014) What makes great teaching? Review of the underpinning research.

Available at: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/13747/1/13747. pdf?DDD45+DDD29+DDO128+ded4ss+d700tmt (accessed 16 March 2020).

Department for Education and Department of Health (2015) Special educational needs and disability code of practice : 0 to 25 years. Available at: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/398815/SEND_Code_of_ Practice_January_2015.pdf (accessed 16 March 2020).

Education Bureau (2008) Catering for student differences: Indicators for inclusion. Available at: www. edb.gov.hk/attachment/en/edu-system/special/ overview/indicators-082008_e.pdf (accessed 3 April 2020).

Ellis S, Tod J and Graham-Matheson L (2008) Special educational needs and inclusion: Reflection and renewal.

Available at: www.nasuwt.org.uk/uploads/assets/ uploaded/ddacdcb2-3cba-4791-850f32216246966e.pdf (accessed 16 March 2020).

Florian L and Black-Hawkins K (2011) Exploring inclusive pedagogy. British Educational Research Journal 37(5): 813–828. DOI: 10.1080/01411926.2010.501096.

Florian L and Kershner R (2009) Inclusive pedagogy. In: Daniels H, Lauder H and Porter J (eds) Knowledge, Values and Educational Policy. London: Routledge, pp. 173–182.

Hagger H and McIntyre D (2006) Learning Teaching from Teachers: Realising the Potential of School-Based

Teaching Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

James M and Pollard A (2011) TLRP’s ten principles for effective pedagogy: Rationale, development, evidence, argument and impact. Research Papers in Education 26(3): 275–328. DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2011.590007.

Kershner R (2009) Learning in inclusive classrooms. In: Hick P, Kershner R and Farrell PT (eds) Psychology for Inclusive Education: New Directions in Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, pp. 52–65.

Li E (2020) Celebrating differences: What’s in a name?

In: BERA Blog. Available at: www.bera.ac.uk/blog/ celebrating-differences-whats-in-a-name (accessed 16 March 2020).

Norwich B and Lewis A (2001) Mapping a pedagogy for special educational needs. British Educational Research Journal 27(3): 313–329. DOI: 10.1080/01411920120048322.

Rao N and Chan CKK (2009) Moving beyond paradoxes: Understanding Chinese learners and their teachers.

In: Chan CKK and Rao N (eds) Revisiting the Chinese Learner: Changing Contexts, Changing Education. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, pp. 3–32.

Rix J and Sheehy K (2014) Nothing special: The everyday pedagogy of teaching. In: Florian L (ed) The SAGE Handbook of Special Education, 2nd ed. London: SAGE, pp. 459–474.

Rouse M (2008) Developing inclusive practice: A role for teachers and teacher education? Education in the North 16: 1–20.

Sharma U, Forlin C, Deppeler J et al. (2013) Reforming teacher education for inclusion in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Asian Journal of Inclusive Education 1(1): 3–16.

Slee R (2011) The Irregular School: Exclusion, Schooling, and Inclusive Education. London: Routledge.

Swann M, Peacock A, Hart S et al. (2012) Creating learning without limits. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

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Achieving a professional learning culture: Issues, improvements, impact VIVIENNE PORRIT DIRECTOR, VIVIENNE PORRITT ASSOCIATES, UK KATHRYN MORGAN ASSOCIATE DEAN, LEARNING DESIGN AT AMBITION INSTITUTE; FORMERLY DIRECTOR OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT, PRINCE ALBERT COMMUNITY TRUST (PACT), UK

Issues The Head of School initially described development for all staff as ‘generic, irrespective of their role, phase in school or individual development needs’. He believed that a fundamental shift in approach was needed. Interrupting behaviour to achieve improvements in practice and outcomes requires an understanding of the values and beliefs underpinning teachers’ practice (Robinson, 2017). Moving from a

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prescriptive approach to professional learning to one of purposeful collaboration requires careful consideration.

How could we: move away from superficial consultation to conversations grounded in trust? achieve buy-in from leaders and staff? plan for systematic improvement and impact?

To answer these questions, the authors worked together to test an approach based on Guskey (2000), as adapted by Earley and Porritt (2009, 2013). Building on work with London schools, it was clear that establishing teachers’ professional needs and students’ learning needs (the baseline) before designing specific PLD was invaluable. Our focus was on intended impact as ‘an integral part of discussions during the earliest stages of professional development planning when… goals are defined’ (Guskey, 2000, p. 250).

This is a simple concept to agree, yet it requires a shift in an organisation’s understanding of what constitutes PLD: a move from a knowledge

transmission model (teachers as passive receivers of isolated learning) to one in which acquired knowledge can be applied, trialled and evaluated against baseline and impact indicators.

The focus becomes PLD with ‘overt relevance of content to its participants and their day-to-day experiences and aspirations for pupils’ (Cordingley et al., 2015, p. 5).

Improvements Our trust-wide approach became an impact model: 1. enquire: needs analysis, baseline/impact evidence 2. research and programme design: learning opportunities designed from evidence-informed practice and for impact 3. learn: expert input (internal/external) 4. develop: experimentation, practice 5. improve practice: formative assessment of knowledge, behaviour, skills and learning 6. impact evaluation: assess to what extent intended difference is achieved 7. iterate and repeat.

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his reflection describes the development of a trust-wide professional learning culture where ‘professionals [are] continually developing and supporting each other so that students benefit from the best possible teaching’ (DfE, 2016), at Prince Albert Community Trust (PACT), a group of five primary schools in Birmingham. Specifically, it captures the impact of professional learning and development (PLD) at Highfield Junior and Infant School (one of PACT’s schools), which moved from ‘special measures’ to ‘good’ in three years.

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Rather than a model based on inputs (a menu of learning activities), the intended impact on learning and practice became the design tool, offering ‘a powerful method to raise both the quality of learning – for adults and students – and student outcomes’ (Earley and Porritt, 2013, p. 1).

This required a forensic needs analysis to gain clarity on the desired improvements to student outcomes, classroom practice, teacher efficacy and job satisfaction. To assess the extent to which a change in a PLD process has made the intended difference (impact), we needed to know what usual practice looked like beforehand (baseline). We also needed to know what success might look like: robust indicators of impact so that teachers have clear and tangible goals.

Applying Guskey (2000) further, once clear on the desired improvement, we asked: what are the practices, strategies, techniques and bodies of knowledge needed to implement those improvements? From there, it was important to consider how to implement this, along with the support that the organisation needed to give to ensure that it took place. For Highfield, the desired impact was ensuring that colleagues had quality and protected time to learn, develop and improve.

What did this look like in practice?

At Highfield, whole-school data analysis had identified writing as a significant area of need. Subsequently, their PLD baseline involved surveys for students and staff, followed by professional conversations exploring theories of practice. To add further clarity to the process, examples of student work were collated, and collaborative peer observations were carried out by teachers, teaching assistants and leaders.

The baseline process took place over several weeks, ensuring sufficient evidence to identify a specific area of need, which, in Highfield’s case, was to close the vocabulary gap. Once co-constructed

The desired impact was ensuring that colleagues had quality and protected time to learn, develop and improve plans were put in place, implementation teams consisting of teachers, TAs and leaders embarked on their programme of development over a term and a half.

Two of the biggest challenges that emerged were confronting individual and collective barriers to change, and expectations from the usual input model of professional learning. Articulating baseline and impact evidence requires respect; it is a process of deep reflection

individual and collective need informs the direction of provision (Ofsted, 2019).

Highfield shifted to a genuine professional learning culture, one that ‘improves the quality of both the CPD activity and the outcomes achieved’ (Earley and Porritt, 2009, p. 147). The headteacher stated that ‘PLD is now multilayered, driven by need and sustainability rather than top-down decisions.’

Such a change has implications for

requiring a significant commitment to teachers’ development (Robinson, 2011).

Teachers needed time to learn about their practice, develop insights, test these and reflect on evidence of impact. Leaders had to resist simplistic solutions to address complex problems. We resolved to focus on what we could improve, rather than prove (Porritt, 2010).

organisational processes due to the significant impact on staff buy-in, development of expertise and school culture. At the close of the project, colleagues at Highfield felt satisfied and empowered. The Head of School commented that ‘all staff are involved… leaders, teachers, teaching assistants and inclusion support workers’.

Colleagues at Highfield believed that their learning and development would impact directly upon their students, which will be the next stage of this project. Their ownership and investment in developing their expertise became something that they sought within the new culture for professional learning and improvement.

Impact When Ofsted visited in January 2019, they commented on ‘the very strong and focused professional development’ (p. 1). Highfield is now a school where on-going discussions with staff about their own classrooms and students feed into the strategic planning of PLD, where

REFERENCES Cordingley P, Higgins S, Greany T et al. (2015) Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development. Teacher Development Trust. Available at: https://tdtrust.org/about/dgt (accessed 27 March 2020).

Department for Education (DfE) (2016) Standard for teachers’ professional development.

Available at: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/ file/537030/160712_-_PD_standard. pdf (accessed 27 March 2020).

Earley P and Porritt V (eds) (2009) Effective Practices in Continuing

Professional Development: Lessons from Schools. London: Institute of Education and TDA, Bedford Way series.

Earley P and Porritt V (2013) Evaluating the impact of professional development: The need for a studentfocused approach. Professional Development in Education 40: 1.

Guskey T (2000) Evaluating Professional Development. New York: Corwin.

Ofsted (2019) School report, Highfield Infant and Junior School.

Available at: https://files.ofsted. gov.uk/v1/file/50058680 (accessed 30 March 2020).

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Porritt V (2010) How do we know we are making a difference: Evaluating the impact of professional development? London: National Union of Teachers conference.

Robinson V (2011) Student-Centered Leadership. San Francisco: JosseyBass.

Robinson V (2017) Capabilities required for leading improvement: Challenges for researchers and developers. Research conference keynote. Available at: https://research.acer. edu.au/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1306&context=research_ conference (accessed 27 March 2020).

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2020: A new perspective for school leadership?

JEN BARKER DEAN OF LEARNING DESIGN – SCHOOL LEADERSHIP, AMBITION INSTITUTE, UK TOM REES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR – SCHOOL LEADERSHIP, AMBITION INSTITUTE, UK

1. Complexity The main purpose of leaders is to enable effective teaching to take place. This sounds simple and yet, in any classroom, we’re attempting to change 30 or so brains belonging to young, immature humans with varying levels of motivation, who are often distracted by a plethora of other things. Considering the work of school leaders through this lens, where leaders’ behaviour and decisions influence multiple classrooms or schools, the relationship between our actions/decisions and their impact is often messy and inconclusive.

While searching the evidence base for answers can draw us into long and

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winding rabbit holes, it does suggest that a number of previously accepted ideas deserve more scrutiny and scepticism. We learn, for example, that judging the quality of teachers by their progress data or by an observation rubric is flawed. We suspect that bold and pithy statements such as ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ might not be true, and that jokes about leaders having a dream while managers have a plan may romanticise ‘leadership’ at the expense of getting important and hard work done.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the more we learn about leadership, the more we can feel ignorant – unsure of what it is we do as school leaders that makes a difference. For those more familiar with research, however, this is no surprise. As Becky Allen and Ben White said in their recent ResearchED talk: ‘Recognising ahead of time our own limitations and/or that of education as a lever to effect social change may be helpful in itself. It can be cathartic to recognise that the system itself likely induces many to feel a vague sense of not being good enough without granting clarity on what, exactly, to do about it.’ (Allen and White, 2019) In accepting complexity and the limits

of both our knowledge and potential impact, there’s a risk that we might feel our efforts are futile. This exposes the challenge – that we’re a long way from the ‘final word’ on school leadership and that there’s more for us to do as a system in understanding the work that school leaders do.

2. Domain-specific expertise In thinking about the work of school leaders, there are two conflicting approaches that we can take: 1. Generic leadership: the skills, knowledge and attributes that are assigned to leadership as its own domain.

An implication of generic leadership is that school leaders should learn about concepts from the field of leadership and how these can be applied to schools because, broadly, leadership is just leadership – regardless of sector.

2. Domain-specific leadership: the skills, knowledge and attributes linked to the leadership/management of a specific field. An implication of domain-specific leadership is that school leaders should develop deep educational expertise in areas such as curriculum or teacher development, because leading a school is very different from leading a hospital or a library.

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t Ambition Institute, we have come to hold what we see as a different perspective on school leadership from the orthodoxy – one with an increased focus on the specific educational work of school leaders and the expertise that they need to do it well, and a reduced focus on generic leadership concepts.

In this article, we set out four key ideas within this perspective: key idea 1: complexity key idea 2: domain-specific expertise key idea 3: knowledge key idea 4: persistent problems.

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(Adapted from Gilbride, 2018) Few argue against the importance of domain-specific expertise, yet the concept has been notable by its absence in the school leadership narrative until recently. Instead, it’s far more common to read about leaders’ traits, values and behaviours; the current orthodox view of school leadership is dominated by the influence of transformational leadership, generic leadership approaches or the ‘hero paradigm’ (Gronn, 2003).

Our new perspective, however, has more emphasis on what educational leaders know and are able to do. An appreciation of the importance of domain-specific knowledge, along with an understanding of how expertise is developed – it doesn’t come through experience alone – leads us to the issues of school leaders’ development and the substance of school leadership. We need to look beyond the surface level of leaders’ actions and behaviours to better understand the vast expanse of tacit knowledge that governs the decisions and moves that they make.

3. Knowledge It seems an unfashionable idea that leadership might mainly be a matter of knowledge when there are far more romantic and emotive interpretations available. Bereiter and Scardamalia note that ‘most people we talk to do not want to believe that research shows expert performance is mainly a matter of knowledge. They do not necessarily have an alternative explanation ready, but they feel there has to be more to expertise that that.’ (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 43) But knowledge is foundational to expertise in all fields, and the work of school leaders is no different. Professor Viviane Robinson suggests that leaders need to use content knowledge to solve complex school-based problems, while building relational trust with staff, parents, and students (Robinson, 2010).

Further, Professor Amanda Goodall’s

Expertise arises when educators have a clear understanding of the problems of their role work on the proposition of the ‘Expert Leader’ suggests that leaders with strong domainspecific knowledge are more likely to lead happier and more successful organisations, with benefits to individual performance and retention (Goodall, 2012).

We believe that expertise arises when educators have a clear understanding of the problems of their role, as well as knowledge to address these and guide their behaviour appropriately. Think about the teacher who appears to have eyes in the back of her head, the head of department who deals with complex challenges serenely and the headteacher who knows what to do, however challenging the circumstances. Their expertise and experience allow them to solve problems effectively and efficiently.

Accepting that knowledge is foundational to developing expertise as a school leader leads us to another big question: what knowledge? To answer this, we first need to better define the problems that school leaders are trying to solve.

4. Persistent problems Seeing school leadership as largely a problem-solving activity is not a new concept (see, for example, Leithwood et al., 1994) but one that we think is helpful and should be more prominent.

Too often, we believe that leaders can be drawn into creating solutions, initiatives or interventions without thinking enough about what problem it is that they are trying to solve.

In her 2016 paper ‘Parsing the practice of teaching’, Mary Kennedy represents teaching through five ‘persistent problems’, using this term to represent an understanding of not just the moves that teachers carry out, but also the purpose behind these.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve applied a similar approach to school leadership, and have carried out significant work to understand more about the persistent problems that school leaders face.

Through this work, we’ve identified seven ‘persistent problems of school leadership’.

You can read more about these at: www. ambition.org.uk/blog/persistentproblems-expert-school-leadership.

This an edited version of an article that was first published on Ambition Institute’s website on 3 January 2020, entitled ‘2020: A new perspective for school leadership?’ www.ambition.org.uk/blog/2020-newperspective-school-leadership

REFERENCES Allen B and White B (2019) Careering towards a curriculum crash? Talk at researchEd Kent, 30 November 2019. Available at: https://rebeccaallen. co.uk/2019/12/04/careeringtowards-a-curriculum-crash (accessed 6 April 2020).

Bereiter C and Scardamalia M (1993) Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.

Gilbride N (2018) The relevance of

domain-general and domainspecific skills for educational leadership. Unpublished paper.

Kennedy M (2016) Parsing the practice of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education 67(1): 6–17.

Goodall AH (2012) A theory of expert leadership. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6566.

Available at: https://ssrn.com/ abstract=2066989 (accessed 7 April 2020).

Leithwood K, Begley P and Cousins J (1994) Developing Expert Leadership for Future Schools.

London: Falmer Press.

Gronn P (2003) The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London: P Chapman.

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Robinson VMJ (2010) From instructional leadership to leadership capabilities: Empirical findings and methodological challenges. Leadership and Policy in Schools 9(1): 1–26. DOI: 10.1080/15700760903026748.

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Critical reflection on the benefits of relational supervision in schools LALEH LAVERICK EXECUTIVE HEAD, GIPSY HILL FEDERATION, LONDON, UK

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upervision has a long and illustrious history as a professional practice across multiple disciplines that are concerned with positive outcomes for children, young people and their families. Defined as a work-based learning relationship, it is a reflective space where those involved – either in relational dyads or in small groups – commit to purposefully engaging in learning from experience (Kennedy et al., 2018; Kennedy and Laverick, 2019). It places particular emphasis on how our feelings, thoughts, values and attitudes – our selves-in-role as practitioners – influence what we do at work. While practitioners in other fields, such as medicine, social work, psychology, psychotherapy, counselling and so on, typically conceive of supervision as a core and fundamental component of continuing professional development (CPD) across a career, supervision has received far less attention in education.

Coaching and supervision: Complementary and yet different Coaching is more commonplace and embedded in schools (Lofthouse et al., 2010). Indeed, there are obvious similarities between coaching and supervision (Kennedy et al., 2017), in that both are learning-oriented and involve relationships between practitioners. There are, however,

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unique features of each. For example, there is often an emphasis in coaching on the development of specific skills to improve practice. Supervision does attend to this learning/developmental function, and also holds in mind how such learning and development is situated in a wider professional, ethical and cultural context.

A further and defining distinctive feature of supervision, especially relational models, is the central significance of the containment provided by the supervisor in facilitating professional connection and challenge. This paper explores how one particular model of supervision, implemented in schools for headteachers, informed practice and the potential impact on student outcomes.

The supervisory experience Professional supervision was organised and provided for two senior leaders of a medium-sized organisation, both of whom were appointed and tasked with providing leadership to six schools during a hugely complex period of transition.

All of the schools were undergoing major changes in management, curriculum provision and relationships with the wider community, at a time of wider local and national turmoil in the education sector generally. Regular fortnightly supervision sessions were scheduled, where each senior leader met individually with the supervisor, and every third session was a joint one. The supervision was

contracted for as essentially a supportive measure to ensure that both leaders were provided with a reflective space to ‘park’ emotionally stressful work issues. In addition, a further aim was to facilitate reflection on challenges faced in a work context and ultimately to work together more effectively to achieve common goals (Hulse-Killacky and Page, 1994).

The supervision sessions acted as ‘protected time’ for thinking together about experiences in work and reflecting on the way forward. These experiences ranged from strategic HR issues to difficulties with a parent whose mental health needs affected their relationships with school staff. They also included experiences of working together with staff teams in each of the schools, the governing body and various local authorities, and interactions with other stakeholders (e.g.

Ofsted). Both senior leaders used the time to work ‘through’ complexity, reflecting on actions taken and not taken and what some of the underpinning drivers and motivations may have been. Adopting a systemic perspective in terms of how each experience may have been taken up by the various children, families, staff and other colleagues involved – and thinking about the ways in which patterns of interpersonal relating impacted on workplace dynamics – supported the senior leaders in resolving some of the dilemmas faced.

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EMMA-KATE KENNEDY EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, TAVISTOCK AND PORTMAN NHS FOUNDATION TRUST, LONDON, UK

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Reflections on success: Relationships matter Senior leaders must have positive interpersonal relationships at work and display high levels of emotional intelligence. They also carry the ultimate responsibility for the majority of the most difficult conversations with staff, parents and other professionals. To do both with any degree of effectiveness, senior leaders have to manage their own anxieties, frustrations, anger and stresses without such understandable feelings ‘leaking’ out.

They often do so with limited support, and headship can be a lonely and isolating place. Having an experienced supervisor who understood the operational aspects of working in schools was helpful, in that senior leaders could talk about what had been happening in the organisation as a whole, and their associated role and task, without having to constantly clarify or explain the ordinary workings of schools.

The most important contributory factor to the success of supervision was the trusting relationship that existed between the two senior leader colleagues, as well as between them and the supervisor. Such trust required a high level of openness and honesty, and a willingness to take risks in adopting different positions and holding different views while still respecting the other. After two terms of regular supervision, it became evident that not only did these sessions contribute to strategic work during turbulent change-management, but they also provided an emotionally containing function. Supervision was an outlet to air emotions in a safe and confidential way, allowing space and time for worries to be acknowledged and stressful situations to be reframed. It is not therefore surprising that in the case of this organisation, supervision has continued to feature as part of the leaders’ work calendar. Far from it being viewed as a selfish thing to do, the integral value of supervision sessions for senior leaders has become increasingly evident.

The schools’ family liaison and inclusion teams now benefit from workplace

supervision, and the organisational culture overall is one committed to professionally reflective practice and learning relationships. Feedback from ‘team’ and individual supervisions has been positive and, more importantly, focused on how school staff have looked at the same experience differently, considering ideas about new ways of working with particular pupils and parents going forward.

Conclusions School leaders are often referred to as system leaders, operating in profoundly challenging financial and political times.

Although there have been studies of what makes a school leader effective (and therefore capable of driving standards in schools), less has been written about how to ensure that they have time to think, and to think systematically and systemically. Professional supervision

offers a confidential space where school leaders can be heard in an empathic way, can discuss emotional responses to demanding work situations and, ultimately, can reflect on how best to improve pupils’ school experience.

In conclusion, mechanisms to support recruitment and retention for headteachers are much needed.

Damian Hinds argued recently that teachers should view themselves alongside their medical colleagues, a profession where practitioners are routinely offered supervision by their employers as part of their CPD (DfE, 2019). If there is to be greater parity, a question for reflection is whether it is reasonable to expect school leaders to continue wrestling with the onerous requirements of their jobs without the connecting, containing and challenging spaces they need.

REFERENCES Department for Education (DfE) (2019) Damian Hinds’ speech at the 2019 NAHT conference. Available at: www.gov.uk/government/speeches/damian-hindsspeech-at-the-2019-naht-conference (accessed 24 March 2019).

Hulse-Killacky D and Page BJ (1994) Development of the corrective feedback instrument: A tool for use in counselor training groups. Journal for Specialists in Group Work 19: 197–210.

Kennedy E, Dunsmuir S and Cameron RJ (2017) Professional training and development in consultation: From knowledge to competence and capability in educational and child psychology practice in

the UK. In: Hatzichristou C and Rosenfield S (eds) The International Handbook of Consultation in Educational Settings. London: Routledge, pp. 312–331 .

Kennedy E, Keaney C, Shaldon C et al. (2018) A relational model of supervision for applied psychology practice: Professional growth through relating and reflecting.

Educational Psychology in Practice 34(3): 282–299.

Kennedy E and Laverick L (2019) Inclusion in complex systems contexts: Can relational supervision for head teachers help? Support for Learning 34(4): 443–459.

Lofthouse R, Leat D and Towler C (2010) Coaching for Teaching and Learning: A Practice Guide For Schools.

Reading, Berkshire: CfBT Education Trust.

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We’re all in this together: Using a peer coaching model to support middle leaders’ development GRAHAM CHISNELL CEO, VERITAS MULTI ACADEMY TRUST, UK

PIC CREDIT

KERRY JORDAN-DAUS PRINCIPAL LECTURER, CANTERBURY CHRIST CHURCH UNIVERSITY, UK

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I

n this perspective piece, we examine the key drivers in a model of peer coaching that is being trialled at the Veritas Multi Academy Trust (MAT) to support the development of a middle leadership team (Lofthouse and Hall, 2014).

Vision and values Coaching has been recognised as highly effective professional development practice (Cordingley et al., 2015), but what does it look like in a highperforming education system? In our busy professional lives, it might be too easy to include coaching in a MAT or schoolwide plan for improvement without fully engaging in what staff and governors collectively understand by coaching.

Investing in building a secure and shared understanding of what coaching is, and the vision of what a coaching culture looks like across the MAT, is imperative.

In considering how coaching can be embedded in an organisation’s culture, it is important to be mindful of the research highlighting the challenges of developing coaching (Lofthouse, 2016), specifically in the performative environments of educational settings (Ball, 2003).

Coaching is not something that can be taken from a toolkit training manual page and simply applied in a school. It takes time, training and compassion, as well as trust and honesty from the leaders about their context. Used well, we believe that coaching creates a can-do culture where staff look to their colleagues for help to think through unresolved issues. Coaching, and specifically peer coaching, challenges individualism and puts a collective and distributed model of leadership and professional development practice at the core of an organisation’s vision and values. We believe that coaching can help with problem-solving, but this requires the kind of trust where it is okay to be vulnerable and say ‘I need help with this one’ (Lencioni, 2012). It is important to avoid the slippage into using coaching as a vehicle for performance management.

For us, openness in terms of laying out

for scrutiny the core principles of an organisation should be the starting point for all coaching partnerships, followed by a discussion of what is meant by coaching and what it might look like in context.

Reality So, how did we develop a peer coaching model across Veritas Multi Academy Trust, a small two-school MAT? It’s helpful at this point to describe our respective roles and aims. For Graham, CEO of the MAT, coaching underpins high-quality teaching and learning and the ongoing cycle of school improvement. It helps staff to become increasingly reflective practitioners and helps to build trust and engagement in deep developmental conversations across the organisation. In ongoing work with leaders and middle leaders as a coach, Kerry, Principal Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, has invested in her own professional development to support colleagues through coaching, and has worked with more than a dozen senior and middle leaders during the past five years. Our coaching conversation evolved from a BrewEd and TeachMeet presentation that Kerry gave in the summer of 2019 (Jordan-Daus, 2019) – BrewEd and TeachMeet are both organised informal meetings for educators to discuss pedagogy and classroom practice.

One of the key questions that we grappled with is ‘How much time can be invested in getting middle leaders to a place where they can be honest with each other, with their line managers and with themselves?’ As Whiteside (2017) points out, for line managers, there can be tensions around accountability, performance management and improving outcomes on the one hand, and an

Leaders must build a sense of self-leadership in all, deepen an openness to self-reflection, and commit to developing a culture of evidence-informed practice

approach to coaching that expresses that it’s okay to admit that you’re struggling on the other. Our goal was to move from a culture where middle leaders might not feel empowered to question the systems in place to one where they have the courage and support to challenge existing systems, based on evidence-informed practice.

The peer coaching project has involved working with a group of six middle leaders who have protected time to meet with Kerry to focus on how they are engaging with a school improvement plan (SIP) priority through formal peer group coaching conversations. As an external coach, Kerry does not have any line-management responsibilities. The MAT senior leaders are not included in any of the discussions and there is no reporting back on the specific content of any meetings outside of the group.

This is about building and maintaining trust – among the coachees and from the CEO/senior leaders that these coaching conversations are confidential.

The first cycle of meetings began in September 2019. We meet every school term – we met as one group initially before breaking into smaller groups/triads. The initial session was a three hour workshop, and each thereafter has lasted two hours.

Early discussions with the group examined their ownership of the SIP priority, what this meant for them, and how they feel that peer coaching might support both their growth as middle leaders and how they work together as a team to support each other. Time has also been devoted to discussing and challenging the tenets of the MAT’s coaching vision and how it was being put into practice.

Approaching the mid-point of this peer coaching cycle, there is evidence that colleagues have valued the time to talk about teaching, both in the formal protected time given to them and in conversations that are continuing outside of this space. Some tentative first steps of challenge and critique are also evident, as the middle leaders act upon the conversations. The peer coaching conversations have tended towards

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questioning why they are doing certain things if they do not believe that, or do not know how, they are supporting pupils’ learning. Coaching conversations have sought to encourage and legitimise these conversations through creating a safe, confidential space for honesty and exploration, facilitating the capacity to question and support each other.

From the start, Kerry sought to move the conversations on to action and then subsequent review through implementing a GROW coaching conversation model (Whitmore, 2002; also see Warwick Centre for Lifelong Learning, 2019).

across the organisation. This helps to embed the practice and normalise the use of coaching as a solution to complex issues. It helps staff to understand that they have the capacity to solve issues through the support of a coach. We suggest that in engaging in peer coaching, staff become increasingly conversant with the skills of asking helpful questions of one another and of their students. Building a culture where it is everyone’s role to ask a ‘Socratic question’ (Pask and Joy, 2007) helps the organisation to becomes a place where peer-to peer relationships are built

Building and developing a sustainable model of peer coaching practice

Conclusion

The values of coaching can easily be undermined or lost if there is not consistency in approach and integrity to the process; the focus of peer coaching can unconsciously become highjacked because of competing agendas (Lofthouse and Hall, 2014). Our experience has shown us that leaders must build a sense of selfleadership in all, deepen an openness to self-reflection, and commit to developing a culture of evidence-informed practice.

This is a culture that requires consistent attention – it takes commitment and time before the results begin to show.

It is important to share the commitment to coaching with all staff and governors

by finding solutions together.

As we continue our journey at Veritas MAT, we offer three principles that may help others to get started or move forward.

Trust

Be clear about building coaching ground rules so that all staff and governors in the organisation understand what coaching is (and is not) Ensure that leaders accept that coaching may lead to their leadership being questioned by staff, and that this is enriching to the growth of the organisation Provide a safe space (this might be offsite) for coaching to take place, where conversations cannot be overheard Ensure that the peer coaching

conversations are facilitated by a trained coach Be honest in your conversations as coach and coachee – this builds relationships Understand and recognise people’s fears.

Time

Give time to peer coaching, ensuring that staff are valued and that coaching conversations allow ideas to grow Give time to building a culture of coaching in your organisation; don’t be worried if this does not happen quickly, and don’t give up, as the culture is worthy of growth Understand that success takes time and is more than a one-off – this is an investment in longitudinal development Give time to build, and openness to be allowed to experiment, to be creative and to nurture this.

Growth

Believe in coaching as a tool for improvement Allow coaching to help staff to think things through and understand that the solution is already within their reach Grow a belief in the agency and empowerment of staff Deepen the growth of a culture where professional critique is normalised.

REFERENCES Ball S (2003) The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy 18(2): 215–228.

Cordingley P, Higgins S, Greany T et al. (2015) Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development. Teacher Development Trust. Available at: https://tdtrust.org/about/dgt (accessed 2 April 2020).

Jordan-Daus K (2019) When I say coaching, I don’t mean performance review. CollectivED Working Papers 9: 74–76.

Lencioni P (2012) The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business. USA: Jossey Bass.

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Lofthouse R (2016) Power to the people; can teacher coaching be viewed as a form of transformational leadership? In: BERA Blog. Available at: www.bera.ac.uk/ blog/power-to-the-people-can-teacher-coachingbe-viewed-as-a-form-of-transactional-leadership (accessed November 2019).

Open University Press.

Lofthouse R and Hall E (2014) Developing practices in teachers’ professional dialogue in England: Using Coaching Dimensions as an epistemic tool.

Professional Development in Education 40(5): 758–778. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/ pdf/10.1080/19415257.2014.886283?needAccess=true (accessed November 2019).

Whitmore J (2002) Coaching for Performance: GROWING people, performance and purpose.

London: Nichols Brealey Publishing.

Pask R and Joy B (2007) Mentoring-Coaching: A Guide for Educational Professionals. Maidenhead, Berkshire:

Warwick Centre for Lifelong Learning (2019) The GROW model. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/ study/cll/courses/professionaldevelopment/wmcett/ resources/practitionerarea/mentoring/planning/grow (accessed December 2019).

Whiteside R (2017) Is coaching for transformation possible in a culture of performativity? CollectivED 1. Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University. Available at: www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/-/ media/files/research/collectived-dec-2017-issue. pdf?la=en (accessed November 2019).

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Courageous Leaders: Supporting and celebrating LGBT school leaders

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CATHERINE LEE ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY, UK

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t is estimated that there are 50,000 LGBT teachers in UK schools, yet very few openly LGBT teachers achieve school leadership roles (Lee, 2019a). This article draws on the work of Courageous Leaders, the UK’s only LGBT school leadership programme, and posits that the skills that LGBT teachers need to navigate the complexities of their hetero- and cis-normative school workplaces equip them with a distinct set of attributes that ideally place them to become excellent school leaders.

Despite advances in equalities legislation, many LGBT teachers do not yet feel adequately protected in their school workplaces (Lee, 2019b). Schools are entrenched in the predetermined categorisations of male and female. In pupils, this manifests in the toys in the Reception class home corner, right through

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Leaders is a DfE-funded programme aiming to support LGBT teachers to apply for school leadership roles. Since 2016, the programme has helped 58 LGBT teachers to gain promotion. Courageous Leaders encourages LGBT teachers to be their authentic selves in the workplace, to be role models to their students and school stakeholders, and to gain the courage to apply for leadership roles. Throughout the year-long programme, LGBT teachers, within a safe and inclusive space and with an LGBT mentor, are empowered to critically reflect on the intersection of their personal and professional identities, challenge heteronormative school practices, and recognise their leadership potential. The work with participants and their mentors on the programme has shown that some of the strategies LGBT teachers deploy to navigate the complexities of the heteronormative and cis-normative school workplace equip them with attributes that are conducive to excellent school leadership.

There are five key leadership attributes that LGBT teachers may have in abundance.

These are: emotional intelligence sensitivity to the inclusion of others connecting with others and building teams managing uncertainty and stressful situations courage and risk-taking.

LGBT teachers will likely have a heightened awareness of those on the margins of their school community, and will seek ways to ensure that they feel included discerning, making them ideally placed to make careful decisions when recruiting employees and interacting with a wideranging school community.

Emotional intelligence

Sensitivity to inclusion

Although LGBT people are far from a homogeneous group, shared experiences linked to their sexual and/or gender identities mean that they often develop excellent emotional intelligence (Mediana and Hassan, 2015). This is because they often have highly developed instincts from years of proceeding cautiously with new acquaintances, as a means of protecting themselves from exposure to prejudice.

LGBT teachers are, then, potentially very

LGBT teachers usually have extensive experience of feeling marginalised in the workplace, sometimes within their families of origin, and often within their educational experience (Subhrajit, 2014).

They tend, therefore, to be more likely to be sensitive to inclusive practice, both in their classrooms and among colleagues (DePalma and Jennett, 2010). LGBT teachers will likely have a heightened awareness of those on the margins of their

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to the expectations of school leavers at their prom (Robinson, 2002). In school staff, the rigid binaries of male or female are evident in the expectation for pupils to address them as Mr, Mrs or Miss, and the way in which pupils are grouped for activities according to gender.

The mention or presentation of identities that transgress the heterosexual and cisgender norm has, then, always had the potential to create moral panic in schools (Piper and Sikes, 2010), as these identities threaten the discourses of power in the school and wider community (Gray, 2010; Rudoe, 2010). Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988–2003) was a state-sanctioned example of such panic when local authorities, to which state schools belonged, were prohibited from the promotion of ‘the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. For 15 years, Section 28 left LGBT teachers believing that they would lose their jobs should their LGBT identity be revealed in the workplace.

Throughout much of 2019, there were school gate parental and faith group protests in Birmingham against the introduction of compulsory relationships, sex and health education, inclusive of LGBT relationships. Anderton Park School was forced to go to the High Court, seeking an injunction creating an exclusion zone around the school to prevent further protests, such was the effect on pupils and staff. Schools can, then, still feel like a hostile work environment for some LGBT teachers, with the recent school gate protests reminding many of Section 28.

For LGBT teachers, vigilance is required to navigate the heteronormative school community. It is not surprising that LGBT teachers often report trying not to draw attention to themselves, a strategy not conducive to job promotion (Rudoe, 2010).

LGBT teachers often avoid opportunities for promotion to school leadership, as to do so would elevate their visibility and interest in their personal life. Courageous

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school community, and will seek ways to ensure that they feel included. This is likely to equip them with a strong sense of social justice and an abundance of empathy with pupils, parents and colleagues who may be marginalised on the basis of race, faith, social class or other characteristics (McAllister and Irvine, 2002).

Connecting with others LGBT people spend the majority of their time in heteronormative spaces. This can help them over time to become skilful in identifying where it is possible to connect with others with whom they may not naturally have much in common (Smith et al., 2008). Such skills are invaluable for school leaders when developing teams and building trust across the school community. Where teachers are able to come out to colleagues, they report closer working relationships and greater levels of trust from their colleagues.

Managing uncertainty LGBT teachers are used to tolerating a good deal of ambiguity. They often must suppress the uncertainty of not knowing what the views are of school stakeholders regarding LGBT people. School leaders must sometimes protect their school communities from uncertainty, adversity or bad news, and LGBT teachers often have

extensive experience of operating under personal stress while betraying nothing in their professional demeanour (Fassinger et al., 2010).

to personally thank the Courageous Leaders team for how the course changed my perspective about how I can use my diversity to my advantage.

Courage and risk-taking When LGBT teachers apply for new positions, they must calculate whether or not their new school will provide the space for them to speak their authentic selves into existence. It takes courage for an LGBT teacher to present themselves authentically within a new school workplace. Those teaching during the Section 28 era in particular know all too well the risks of personal and professional identities colliding, and have experience of navigating potentially risky working environments (Lee, 2019a).

The five attributes described here form the basis of the work of Courageous Leaders, and teach participants to value and celebrate their differences. A recent email (anonymised and used with permission) is typical of several that Courageous Leaders receives each year: Today I was offered and accepted a role as deputy head here at [XXX].

This was completely unexpected and represents me moving not one but two steps upward from my teaching role into senior management. I would like

Few would disagree that, in order to flourish educationally, young people need access to diverse role models, committed teachers and authentic school leaders. Visible LGBT leaders within schools embody a distinct type of leadership through the application of the five attributes identified in this article. When LGBT teachers become school leaders, their visibility upsets institutional heteronormative and heterosexist practices, and encourages children, parents and staff to participate authentically and without fear in their school communities.

Courageous Leaders has been able to work with 0.01 per cent of the LGBT teacher population. At a time when the average length of service of a headteacher is just three years, it is crucial that investment into effective and distinct school leadership programmes (see also WomenEd and BAMEed) continues, so that we attract, recruit and keep talented school leaders who reflect the full diversity of British society.

REFERENCES DePalma R and Jennett M (2010) Homophobia, transphobia and culture: Deconstructing heteronormativity in English primary schools. Intercultural Education 21(1): 15–26.

Lancaster University, UK.

Fassinger RE, Shullman SL and Stevenson MR (2010) Toward an affirmative lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender leadership paradigm. American Psychologist 65(3): 201.

Lee C (2019b) Courageous Leaders: Promoting and supporting diversity in school leadership.

Management in Education. DOI: 10.1177/0892020619878828.

Gray EM (2010) ‘Miss, are you bisexual?’: The (re)production of heteronormativity within schools and the negotiation of lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers’ private and professional worlds. PhD Dissertation,

Local Government Act (1988) Section 28. Available at: www.legislation.gov. uk/ukpga/1988/9/contents (accessed 17 March 2020).

Lee C (2019a) Fifteen years on: The legacy of Section 28 for LGBT+ teachers in English schools. Sex Education 8(1): 1–16 DOI: 10.1080/14681811.2019.1585800.

McAllister G and Irvine JJ (2002) The role of empathy in teaching culturally diverse

students: A qualitative study of teachers’ beliefs. Journal of Teacher Education 53(5): 433–443.

Mediana PA and Hassan SA (2015) A review on emotional intelligence among homosexual of LGBT community. Asian Journal of Scientific Research 8(1): 14.

Piper H and Sikes P (2010) All teachers are vulnerable but especially gay teachers: Using composite fictions to protect research participants in pupil–teacher sex-related research. Qualitative Inquiry 16(7): 566–574.

Robinson KH (2002) Making the invisible visible: Gay and lesbian issues in early childhood education. Contemporary

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Issues in Early Childhood 3(3): 415–434.

Rudoe N (2010) Lesbian teachers’ identity, power and the public/private boundary. Sex Education 10(1): 23–36.

Smith NJ, Wright T, Reilly C et al. (2008) A national study of LGBT educators’ perceptions of their workplace climate.

Online submission. In: Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, USA, 24–28 March 2008.

Subhrajit C (2014) Problems faced by LGBT people in the mainstream society: Some recommendations. International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies 1(5): 317–331.

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FLORA CANTACUZINO LEVY TEACHER DEVELOPMENT DESIGN MANAGER, CHARTERED COLLEGE OF TEACHING, UK JOSHUA HALLY-MILNE DATA QUALITY OFFICER (AUDIOLOGY), GUY’S AND ST THOMAS’ NHS FOUNDATION TRUST, UK

I

n this case study we explore a wholeschool approach to addressing concerns about homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying in an inner-city London secondary school, where we worked as teachers. We discuss the use of a schoolbased survey and student-led society to inform changes to staff training, school policy and practice related to students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGTBQ+). (Note: the + is used in the LGBTQ+ acronym to be inclusive of other marginal gender, sex and sexual identities – for example, nonbinary, intersex and pansexual.)

The context An initial conversation with LGBTQ+ students told us that they could feel isolated and unsupported. For example, one student said: ‘There are no provisions for LGBTQ+ students; I feel alone.’ We also engaged with existing research to better understand the wider context:

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Negative perceptions of educating around LGBTQ+ issues and prejudice experienced by LGBTQ+ teachers and students prevail (Lee, 2019; Greenland and Nunney, 2008). A Stonewall study (2017) showed that 45 per cent of LGB and 64 per cent of T students continue to be bullied simply for being ‘out’ at school, and over half of all LGBT students hear homophobic language ‘frequently’ or ‘often’ at school.

There is a higher occurrence of mental health disorders in young LGBTQ+ people (34.9 per cent) compared with their peers (13.2 per cent) (NHS, 2018).

Based on this research, we identified the following key needs: safe spaces and advocacy for LGBTQ+ pupils greater consistency among staff in how HBT is monitored and responded to greater visibility in the curriculum around LGBTQ+ issues.

We presented the findings to school leaders, who enabled us to develop a plan for implementing a series of interventions to address the needs of students affected

by HBT.

Gathering school-specific data We knew that safe spaces are essential for marginalised groups (Ratts et al., 2013).

The creation of a student-led LGBTQ+ society addressed the need for safer spaces and advocacy, and provided a focus group for gathering qualitative data about the experiences of students affected by HBT. Our group met weekly and quickly became a cherished community, where LGBTQ+ students shared experiences and built supportive relationships with members of staff.

To gather data about the wider school’s attitudes towards and experiences of HBT, we devised a survey, asking how often pupils had both heard and used homophobic, biphobic or transphobic language (answered using a five-point Likert scale) and whether they had any ideas about what could be done to combat any homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in school.

More than 70 per cent of students heard HBT language ‘sometimes’ or more, yet 80 per cent claimed to have ‘never’ used HBT language. It could have been the case that a relatively small number of pupils were using HBT language frequently, but this finding also raised the question of whether our students understood the implications of the language that they used.

Implementing changes We collected suggestions from colleagues on a suitable protocol for responding to HBT and worked with school leaders to develop it. The protocol included: adhering to the zero-tolerance policy, which was already in place, at all times

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A whole-school approach to supporting students with LGBTQ+ identities

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providing sessions with a member of staff who felt comfortable discussing issues around HBT language and its impact if the incident was thought to require a more targeted intervention reporting all HBT incidents with a specific tag on our informationmanagement system, allowing SLT to track them.

School leaders adapted policy to be inclusive of HBT bullying and abuse, which can lead to LGBTQ+ students feeling safer and experiencing less bullying (Heck et al., 2016).

The need for greater visibility in the curriculum and for education on LGBTQ+ issues was achieved on several levels: We expanded on the February LGBTQ+ History Month programme; research showed that representation of LGBTQ+ people can lead to greater acceptance from peers (Hackford-Peer, 2009) We organised student-led assemblies for all year groups Subject areas committed to reflecting on curricula, and diversifying imagery, texts and examples Sex education schemes of work for all year groups evolved to include nonbinary and transgender identities and a spectrum of sexual orientation Posters were used to present student artwork, publicise events, promote the wearing of LGTBQ+ solidarity badges, advertise competitions and educate the whole school community We, as teachers, were visible and accessible as advocates for LGBTQ+ students, and as organisers of wholeschool events such as Pride Day in July.

The most powerful tool to combat resistance was the commitment of the school’s leadership

Evaluating the impact

Some remained uncomfortable

Changes had a direct impact on LGBTQ+

discussing topics of LGBTQ+ inclusion

students

With permission from students, we collected data from interviews and LGBTQ+ society discussions. A sixth former told us: ‘I would not be the person I am today; this group helped me find my power and my confidence.’ Another student told us that they felt ‘less isolated and more included’. This sentiment was reflected in the significant increase of openly transgender and non-binary students, and the increase in openly LGBTQ+ students seeking and receiving support from the school.

Some members of staff, as well as a minority of students and parents, resisted the changes being made. Some members of staff openly discussed their reservations, while others refused to engage. We ensured that sufficient pastoral support was available to those students who opted into leading schoolwide activities such as assemblies. The most powerful tool to combat resistance was the commitment of the school’s leadership, who continued to advocate for change and offer their support and guidance.

The school’s response to HBT became

Conclusion

more consistent

Despite challenges, we are encouraged by our findings and know that culture shifts take time and persistence. The approach that we have taken has had a visible impact in our context and may provide useful guidance for addressing HBT in others. Most importantly, we learned that working with our students and enabling them to take the lead was essential in building a school culture where all young people feel safe and can thrive.

Staff interviews demonstrated the impact of training, with one member of staff describing feeling ‘more able to identify and challenge HBT’. A trans student reported feeling ‘much safer to tell teachers when I experience transphobia because I feel like something will actually be done about it’. The Safeguarding and SEN Administrator told us that ‘the recording of HBT abuse has become part of safeguarding practice and is therefore dealt with more effectively’.

REFERENCES Greenland K and Nunney R (2008) The repeal of Section 28: It ain’t over ’til it’s over. Pastoral Care in Education 26(4): 243–251.

Hackford-Peer K (2009) Queer and trivial tidbits: History’s role in projects of self-recognition for LGBT/queer youth. Third Space 8(2). Available at: http://journals.sfu. ca/thirdspace/index.php/journal/ article/view/hackford-Peer/246 (accessed 21 March 2020).

Heck N, Poteat V and Goodenow C (2016) Advances in research with LGBTQ youth in schools.

Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 3(4): 381–385.

Lee C (2019) Fifteen years on: The legacy of Section 28 for LGBT+ teachers in English schools. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 19(6): 675–690.

NHS (2018) Mental health of children and young people in England, 2017. Available at: https:// files.digital.nhs.uk/A6/EA7D58/

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MHCYP%202017%20Summary.pdf (accessed 18 January 2020).

Ratts MJ, Kaloper M, McReady C et al. (2013) Safe space programs in K-12 schools: Creating a visible presence of LGBTQ allies. Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling 7(4): 387–404.

Stonewall (2017) School report: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bi and trans young people in Britain’s schools in 2017. Available at: www. stonewall.org.uk/system/files/the_ school_report_2017.pdf (accessed 18 January 2020).

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School leadership in perspective ANDY BUCK FOUNDER, LEADERSHIP MATTERS, UK

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FIGURE 1: SIX KEY ARE AS FOR LE ADERSHIP ACTION (PENDLETON AND FURNHAM , 2012)

W

e seem to love a false dichotomy in education. Whether it be the battle for supremacy between knowledge and skills or the tussle between adopting a zero-tolerance strategy on behaviour versus taking a more child-centred approach, we just don’t seem to be able to resist polarising issues in a way that isn’t often helpful. In this article I will argue that we are at risk of creating another false dichotomy when it comes to how we codify effective school leadership.

On the one hand, we have what is often referred to as transformational leadership, which focuses on the personal qualities and universal leadership skills that underpin a leader’s ability to create a powerful vision and to inspire others to join them on a shared journey to help create a better future for all the students they serve.

On the other hand, as some are increasingly arguing, what really matters is leadership knowledge and role-specific expertise that ensure that leaders are able to make good decisions, embark on effective courses of action and implement them really well.

With its strong focus on classroom practice, this approach is often referred to as instructional leadership.

My view is that rather than see these approaches as a choice or dichotomy, we need to consider both perspectives as essential for effective school leadership, tailored to suit the context of the school or team.

Leadership practices

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More than 10 years ago, Kenneth Leithwood et al. (2008), in their seminal work ‘Seven strong claims about successful school leadership’ included the assertion in their second claim that ‘almost all successful leaders draw on the same repertoire of basic leadership practices’ (p. 27). Last year, the same team revisited its work (2019) in the light of more recent research and evidence.

Their second claim has remained unchanged, although there are a number of additions to the list that describe these actions in more detail. The revised list of leadership practices relates to four domains of practice. The domains and some examples of specific leadership practices associated with them include: Setting directions, involving practices such as building a shared vision; identifying specific, shared, short-term goals; creating high-performance expectations and communicating the vision and goals

Engaging colleagues is a fundamental part of a leader’s role

Strategic Domain

Setting strategic direction

Planning and organising

Creatingg alignment Leading

Building and sustaining relationships

Delivering results Team working

Operational Domain

Image from: Pendleton D and Furnham A (2012) Leadership: All You Need to Know.

Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan. Reproduced with permission of SNCSC .

Building relationships and developing people, by providing support and demonstrating consideration for individual staff members, modelling the school’s values and practices and building trusting relationships with and among staff, students and parents Redesigning the organisation to support desired practices, including building collaborative culture and distributing leadership, maintaining a safe and healthy school environment and allocating resources in support of the school’s vision and goals Improving the instructional programme, by staffing the instructional programme, providing instructional support and monitoring student learning and school improvement progress.

(Leithwood et al., 2019) These have been particularly influenced by the work of Viviane Robinson et al. (2009), which stresses the importance of school leaders participating with teachers in their professional learning activities.

What is striking about this list of leadership actions is how the four key domains fit with the well-respected organisational leadership model proposed by David Pendleton and Adrian

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Interpersonal Domain

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Furnham (2012) in their brilliantly intuitive Leadership: All You Need to Know. Based on a literature review of more than 100 years of key research, they have synthesised leadership into three key domains, each of which overlap to give a total of six areas, as set out in Figure 1.

As well as noting how the two domains that relate to (i) direction-setting and (ii) relationship-building are mirrored almost exactly in both models, it’s interesting to note that key elements of each also relate to both generic and role-specific knowledge and skills. For example, if we examine three of the five most powerful dimensions identified in Viviane Robinson et al.’s work (promoting and participating in teacher learning and development; planning, coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum and establishing goals and expectations), we can see the importance of leaders knowing how to support teachers to improve their practice, knowing how to create a positive climate for learning and being able to plan and evaluate teaching and curricular effectiveness. These

all require in-depth knowledge and expertise about teaching and learning if leaders are to have impact.

Equally, there are key elements within both models that relate to more generic leadership actions, such as building relationships, planning or creating buy-in. Engaging colleagues is a fundamental part of a leader’s role. You can be pursuing a great strategy but will not be having the desired impact if your team don’t understand the approach or care about what you are trying to improve.

Personal qualities But when it comes to the potential false dichotomy, this is only half the story. In its seventh claim, the Leithwood report also states that ‘a small handful of personal traits explains a high proportion of the variation in leadership effectiveness’ (Leithwood et al., 2008, p. 28). In other words, there are some key personal qualities, knowledge and skills that appear to underpin what effective leaders do. These are grouped into three key domains – cognitive resources, social resources and

FIGURE 2: LE ADERSHIP RE ALMS

Realm One

Realm Two

Leadership knowledge and role-related expertise

Personal qualities and universal leadership skills

Teacher

Middle leader

Senior leader

Headteacher

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Leaders at all levels need to demonstrate a set of personal qualities and be able to use a range of generic leadership skills psychological resources. What is once again striking about this list of personal attributes is how it relates to both expert knowledge, such as the elements of domain-specific knowledge and problemsolving expertise, and more generic personal qualities, such as resilience, self-efficacy and proactivity (Leithwood et al., 2019).

As with leadership actions, it is the powerful combination of both that this evidence suggests leads to the greatest impact of leadership on outcomes for pupils. To think of this as an either/or choice is unhelpful.

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A synthesised model Drawing both perspectives together, I would like to suggest that there are therefore two key realms for school leadership at all levels: (i) role-related leadership knowledge, skills and expertise, and (ii) personal qualities and universal leadership skills. As Figure 2 illustrates, there is a set of specific leadership knowledge and role-related expertise that a teacher needs in order to be able to lead an effective lesson, which requires effective curriculum and pedagogical expertise. This knowledge is represented by the box in the first row in Realm One. As teachers take on more formal leadership responsibilities, there is a cumulative requirement for additional expert knowledge and skills to carry out each role effectively. These are shown by the additional shapes for increasingly senior roles. For example, headteachers need specific knowledge in relation to budgetary or HR issues that a middle leader does not usually require.

But leaders at all levels also need to demonstrate a set of personal qualities and be able to use a range of generic leadership skills that are shown in Realm Two (represented by the grid). For teachers, this includes generic skills such as building and sustaining relationships with students or planning and prioritising time effectively. As the scale and scope of a leadership role increases (shown by the spheres), unlike with Realm One, there are no new personal qualities or skills. Rather, individual leaders need to apply the very same traits but in an increasingly broader context, adapting their approach to suit their wider context or situation.

This is where David Pendleton’s model from earlier is so helpful, and why at Leadership Matters we have placed his ‘primary colours’ model at the heart of our thinking about school leadership. Whether we are talking about teachers leading a lesson or heads running a school (and everything in between),

what matters is having the right balance between the six key elements in the model, which combine both expert, role-specific knowledge and the personal qualities and generic leadership skills needed for success.

Typically, leadership development in the UK has tended to focus on the second realm, often at the expense of the former. But this is changing. A number of national organisations are successfully revisiting the balance between these two realms and giving greater emphasis to the role-specific expertise required for successful school leadership. This is a positive development. But we need to proceed with care. Programmes that shift too far in this direction run the risk of creating a cadre of leaders that know exactly what they want to achieve and who have the precise evidence-informed expertise and approaches to get there but nonetheless fail to deliver the outcomes they are seeking. Unless leaders recognise that this is not a binary choice and also continue to pay attention to developing the generic leadership skills and personal qualities of the second realm, they run the risk of becoming the leader who, rather than creating fellow leaders who lead alongside them, is leading from the front with all the right strategies but turns around only to wonder where everyone is.

REFERENCES Leithwood K, Harris A and Hopkins D (2019) Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited.

School Leadership and Management.

DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2019.1596077.

Leithwood K, Hopkins D and Harris A (2008) Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. School Leadership and Management 28(1): 27–42.

Robinson V, Lloyd C and Rowe K (2009) School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why. Summary of the Best Evidence Synthesis (BES). Available at: www.curee. co.uk/files/publication/1260453707/ Robinson%20Summary%20Extended%20 Version.pdf (accessed 18 March 2020).

FURTHER READING Buck A (2018) Leadership Matters 3.0. Woodbridge, UK: John Catt Educational.

Collins J (2001) Level 5 leadership – the triumph of humility and fierce resolve. Harvard Business Review 79(1): 67–76.

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Pendleton D and Furnham A (2012) Leadership: All You Need to Know.

Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.

Covey SMR and Merrill RR (2006) The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything. New York, NY: Free Press.

Hattie J (2008) Visible Learning.

Abington: Routledge.

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School leadership in lockdown

Introduction Leading in difficult, challenging or worrying times requires a different type of leader, a different type of leadership, a different form of leadership practice.

Without question, we are in such times.

COVID-19 is shaking up everything we know, everything we take for granted and everything we hold most dear.

In this global lockdown, education has been rebooted as a home-based, technology-enabled, remote activity with zero physical contact. What we know about good teaching has suddenly been redefined and repositioned into screen time, apps, Google Classroom and lessons online. School leadership has also been radically remodelled through lockdown.

We know that the best school leaders develop other leaders and build positive cultures where the professional talent, capability and knowledge of all educators can be fully expressed, enhanced and extended (Leithwood et al., 2020). Leading in a virtual world is not impossible, but it will require extra effort to remain connected with others in meaningful ways that sustain relationships with colleagues and keep things moving forward.

These challenging times demand what Steve Munby (2019) has termed ‘imperfect

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leadership’ – messy, trial-and-error, butterflies-in-the-stomach leadership in unprecedented times where there is no predictability, no certainty and potentially no end in sight. For those working and learning in schools, all the familiar reference points just vanished overnight to be replaced by a ‘new normal’, which may be new but is anything but normal.

With most schools now deserted and virtual learning the order of the day, the leadership terrain has also shifted. Some schools have morphed into places where children and young people, of varying ages, now play, learn and work together side by side during long days. School leaders, teachers and teaching assistants are keeping everyone going in these settings with the usual high standards of care, professionalism and respect, but this is far from business as usual.

Leadership practice For those responsible for leading virtual schools and classrooms today, the education landscape is still emerging, and the leadership practice is still evolving. Yet school leadership remains a critical and positive force in shaping the value base of an education system that has shifted so far from its axis.

School leadership, of course, is not just confined to those in the leadership team. If leadership is influence, then teachers and teaching assistants exercise leadership every day. In times of crisis, leadership at all levels or distributed leadership, is needed to address the complexity of the challenges and to carry the burden of leading in uncertain times (Harris, 2013). At present, school leaders, teachers and teaching assistants, cleaners and caretakers are now the new front-line of leadership. Each person counts, each person is a leader, and the collective work is now the most important catalyst for change and action.

Of course, there must be formal leadership guidance, direction, coordination and advice, to ensure that we get through these times of global insecurity, panic and concern. There is no neat blueprint for leadership in such times, however – no predetermined roadmap, no simple leadership checklist of things to tick off. There are only highly skilled, compassionate and dedicated education professionals trying to do the very best that they can and to be the very best that they can be.

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ALMA HARRIS DEPUTY HEAD, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF SWANSEA, UK

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School leadership in lockdown While the evidence base on school leadership practices within a pandemic is non-existent, drawing upon the general leadership literature and the evidence about effective online collaboration offers some pointers, some ideas and some reflections for those currently leading in schools and classrooms. In summary, these are: Setting your leadership vision over the next weeks and months will be critical for those working with you or for you, i.e. establishing what matters most and identifying what is of marginal importance will be an important task.

Localised, contextualised leadership will be needed more than ever to shape decision-making and to establish future priorities. In other words, school leaders will now be dealing with matters arising from an unfolding and unpredictable set of situations.

Community leadership will be pivotally important, as community/parental/ guardian needs will vary according to context and setting. Those leading schools will have to connect with community expertise and support to harness the capacity to deal with complex and challenging issues.

Forging stronger links with parent/ community groups to support families, young people and children is therefore a leadership-in-lockdown imperative.

Cross-agency and collaborative leadership practices are important, as the issues/problems that arise will be multi-faceted and will require input from a range of specialists.

Leading others online will remain a dominant feature of education in the foreseeable future, so establishing clear protocols of engagement around online communication and collaboration will ensure that the experience is positive for all participants.

Each person counts, each person is a leader, and the collective work is now the most important catalyst for change and action Leaders need to create boundaries around online communication with colleagues and schedule dedicated time slots for discussion. These boundaries need to be adhered to and respected, to give work colleagues the time and space to do other things and to meet other needs – family, friends, etc.

Not everyone is technologically confident or competent so, where possible, leaders should communicate through one channel only so that there is some predictability and pattern to the ongoing dialogue. This will lower stress levels for others and ensure that there are not multiple or competing channels of communication open.

While technology can provide some ready-made technical solutions, the pedagogical demands of this medium need careful thought and planning.

Hence, leaders need to continuously focus conversations around learning and teaching, as they would usually.

Technology also highlights sharp equity issues, particularly for vulnerable young people who experience the challenges that poverty brings, and for those young people who are at risk.

Not every child has access to the new tools of learning and teaching, so this is an ongoing leadership challenge and consideration.

All leaders need to consider that every single person (including them) will be facing their own battles, both large and small, so kindness, gratitude and empathy will be the leadership currency to get things done.

Not everything on the leader’s list will get ticked off in the time-frame expected. This is the reality. Making reasonable demands on staff and having

patience for others and self are therefore imperative.

Emotional responses to reasonable demands should not surprise or challenge those leading others. These are highly fraught and stressful times.

Monitoring emotional states, including your own, is important.

Self-care and consideration must be the central concern for all leaders to ensure that they remain healthy and well enough to help others. Self-care and good health is at the core of leadership in lockdown.

More than 20 years ago, Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan published their seminal book What’s Worth Fighting for Out There? This is a question that school leaders, at all levels, now need to ask themselves.

Feeling safe, secure and sure again, as a leader, is possible within this new set of circumstances but it will require both belief and hope – belief in those around you and belief in yourself. For leaders, hope is not the same thing as blind optimism.

Hope is the fundamental faith that good will prevail, that better days will come and that light will overcome darkness.

REFERENCES Hargreaves A and Fullan M (1998) What’s Worth Fighting for Out There? New York: Teachers’ College Press.

Harris A (2013) Distributed Leadership Matters: Perspectives, Practicalities, and Potential. Thousand Oakes, United States: Corwin Press.

Leithwood K, Harris A and Hopkins D (2020) Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. School Leadership & Management 40(1): 5–22.

Munby S (2019) Imperfect Leadership: A Book for Leaders Who Know They Don’t Know It All. Carmarthen, UK: Crown House Publishing.

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Leading the primary curriculum: Developing subject leadership and expertise ROBBIE BURNS YEAR 6 TEACHER AND HUMANITIES LEADER, RAYNVILLE PRIMARY SCHOOL, UK

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ow might primary school leaders ensure that all of their pupils have access to an excellent curriculum experience while also developing the leadership potential and expertise of their staff? Here I argue that distributed leadership that facilitates subject leadership and expertise can promote curriculum development.

Drawing on educational research and my own experience, I suggest three practical principles for strong subject leadership.

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The primary curriculum: An opportunity and a problem The curriculum of the primary school presents an opportunity for both staff and pupils. The daily observations of the primary teacher will conďŹ rm that children are naturally curious about the world; some would even argue that a core aim of the curriculum, pedagogically enacted by the teacher, is to help them ďŹ nd knowledge, skills and understanding that channel their curiosity and take them beyond their everyday experiences (Young et al., 2014). But the curriculum is not only an opportunity for the pupils of our schools. With its vast array of subjects, the curriculum provides an opportunity for staff of all experience and leadership levels to collaboratively engage in curriculum development.

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Therefore, the ‘opportunity’ of the primary curriculum is twofold: it can give pupils the chance to be immersed and initiated into the rich traditions of history, geography, music and other subjects, and it can provide the chance for staff (of all levels of experience within the school) to contribute to a common, collaborative goal and, in turn, develop their own expertise.

However, within a staff body of primary teachers, there is no guarantee that there will be a balance of teachers with passion and drive to lead every subject, or of those who have enough expertise to do so. This is evident in my own experience, and the Carter Review (DfE, 2015) reported that teachers newly entering the profession may not necessarily have the same knowledge base (due in part to differences in teacher training). This presents problems for subject leaders, who may lack expertise in a particular curriculum area and have never had the opportunity to develop themselves further. It follows that if there is a lack of expertise among subject leaders in the primary school, it might be very difficult for the curriculum of that subject to be developed effectively.

So, leaders should consider how they will ensure that the curriculum is developed effectively in a way that provides for their pupils’ needs while also growing the subject knowledge and expertise of their staff.

Distributing the leadership of the primary curriculum What can be done? The first part of my answer is seeing the leadership of the curriculum as a collaborative task, where all who teach are empowered to be part of the development process.

An important distinction ought to be made between formal leadership positions and the distribution of leadership within the primary school. Senior leadership (which is synonymous with formal leadership) has a large but indirect effect on

student outcomes in schools (Rhodes and Brundrett, 2010). Although senior leaders are integral to the success of their pupils, it is class teachers who have the most contact with them. Senior leaders may set strategic vision and craft goals for their staff to deliver high-quality instruction but it is the teacher who delivers the curriculum, makes sense of it pedagogically and inspires students to take up the opportunities offered to them, and who therefore ought to have the agency to make it their own (Hargreaves and O’Connor, 2018).

Therefore, it is integral that senior leaders, if they want to ensure that the curriculum is collaboratively developed, distribute their leadership to ensure that all of their staff are being developed to reach their full potential. As Harris (2004) notes, ‘the job of those in formal leadership positions is to hold the pieces of the organisation together in a productive relationship… distributing leadership equates with maximising the human capacity within the organisation’ (p. 14). The core premise of this claim is that leadership is not bound in formal responsibilities or management structures; leadership ought to be dispersed, collective, collaborative and shared. Therefore, everyone who teaches the curriculum is responsible for the development of it, so everyone can make a meaningful contribution.

When the leadership of the curriculum is distributed, those who hold formal senior leadership positions ought to take on the role of empowering, coaching and developing leaders of subjects, who become the designated expert on their curriculum area in their school.

A formal senior leadership position that distributes leadership may set an overarching vision and goals but, ultimately, if their leadership is distributed, they will expect teachers and other leaders to cultivate their own expertise and collaborate with colleagues.

Subject leadership for expertise: Three principles If senior leaders empower subject leaders to become experts in their area, even if they would not consider themselves ‘experts’ before taking on their role, they ought to understand how this might be done and what effective subject leadership might look like. Here are three principles, supported by research but drawn from my own experience, that I would recommend that all senior leaders should be aware of and all subject leaders should adopt.

Principle 1: A deep understanding of the school context and community

There are two types of data that subject leaders need: data that helps to understand deficits and data that helps to understand the school community. Both are equally important. The curriculum is a tool to foster equality of opportunity; if it is to be used to its full potential, it must be rooted in knowledge of the pupils who attend the school. Whether this be a high proportion of SEN, Pupil Premium or low literacy rates, all of these should be accounted for and considered in the development of the curriculum of the subject. Where there is a need, each subject should consider how it meets this and takes pupils beyond their everyday experiences. In addition to this, it is important that subject leaders celebrate what is great about the school community in their subjects, while also offering alternative perspectives to deepen the learning of pupils.

Action: Subject leaders should begin with an understanding of their school community by creating subject audits and staff, pupil, parent and governor surveys related to their subjects, in order to gather as much ‘data’ as possible.

Principle 2: A commitment to ongoing professional development in the subject within a supportive network

Subject leaders should be engaged in developing understanding of best practice

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in their subject across the nation. There are some aspects of good practice that every subject shares; however, there are important distinctions between each that must be considered.

Within every subject there are concepts, knowledge and skills. Subject leaders need to know what these look like in every year group for their subject. In addition, they need to be able to help teachers in the school articulate how they work together, which ones should be taught first and how these three aspects of the subject fit together pedagogically. Once the concepts, knowledge and skills of the subject have been understood by a subject leader, it is important to then map this out into a clear progression of knowledge and skills. There are several ways that this can be done. It is not the document itself that is important, but the understanding that teachers have. In our context, we use knowledge organisers for knowledge progression, which we have checked among year groups to make sure that all of the vocabulary and facts are fully progressive, and the skills document is embedded within an understanding of what makes a good geographer/historian for that particular year group.

Action: There are excellent subject associations that subject leaders should join, such as the Historical Association, the Geographical Association and the D&T Association, which provide training and support for primary practitioners.

their subject better should be a core aim. If senior leaders distribute their leadership of the curriculum, they should see themselves as those who develop leaders at all levels in their school: subject leadership provides an excellent opportunity to do this.

Action: Subject associations offer excellent training courses that might further bolster the development of subject leadership.

Conclusion It is important to consider the implications of distributed leadership and these principles on a school, trust or local

authority. Within a collaborative framework, the possibilities for curriculum development and subject expertise in the primary phase become possible, and this is especially pertinent within multi-academy trusts or local authority meetings of subject leaders.

Curriculum development then becomes a shared endeavour of primary practitioners who are committed to improving the teaching of their subject. The opportunity that the distribution of curriculum leadership presents for primary teachers to develop themselves as specialists in curriculum areas is the first step on the road to primary subject expertise.

Principle 3: Commitment to the development of a strong subject leadership

REFERENCES

and management skill set

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Department for Education (DfE) (2015) The Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT). London: Department for Education.

Hargreaves A and O’Connor MT (2018) Collaborative Professionalism: When Teaching Together Means Learning For All. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Harris A (2004) Distributed leadership and school improvement. Leading or misleading? Educational Management Administration and Leadership 32(1): 11–24.

Ofsted (2019) The education inspection framework.

Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/801429/Education_inspection_framework.pdf (accessed 23 March 2020).

Rhodes CP and Brundrett M (2010) Leadership for learning. In: Bell T, Bell L and Middleton D (eds) The Principles of Educational Leadership and Management.

London: SAGE, pp. 153–175.

Young M, Lambert D, Roberts C et al. (2014) Knowledge and the Future School: Curriculum and Social Justice.

London: Bloomsbury.

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Subject leaders ought to be willing to develop and enact models of change, facilitation of skills and coaching techniques. If they have been adequately empowered to be fully responsible for their curriculum area and they are met with trust and respect, the subject leader sharing their understanding with their colleagues and helping others to teach

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Engaging parents during school closures JANET GOODALL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, SWANSEA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UK

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eachers and other school staff face new challenges during this extraordinary time, as they support families at home. This article aims to provide some support and advice around these unique challenges, drawing on a range of research about parental engagement, but should also provide insight for work in schools far beyond the present circumstances.

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The first thing to say is that these are extraordinary times, and we shouldn’t be trying to recreate classrooms at home, or recreate the same style of learning at home that would generally happen in the classroom – first, because it’s simply impossible, and second, because it wouldn’t work.

Homes are, in general, not classrooms and rarely contain the numbers of children that inhabit most classrooms. School settings have evolved to be efficient (more or less) in providing education to groups of children – groups who are gathered together by age, rather than by being members of the same family. Although a good many teachers are parents, most parents are not classroom teachers, and we’re not going to turn them into classroom teachers overnight – and we shouldn’t be trying to. That’s not what their children and young people need at the moment.

In teaching, writing and presenting during the past 10 years or so, I’ve often asked school leaders to consider what’s really important in schooling – to think about what schools are for, and to concentrate on that. Schools were originally set up to enable groups of children to learn the things that society deemed were important for them to know (Goodall, 2017), and have come a very long way in being able to do that, mainly through the dedication and professionalism of the staff within the school walls. Now, though, we need to get back to those basics, to become radical, if you like (the word means ‘root’) – what’s really important for our children to learn?

To do, to be, to become?

And how can we help families support that learning? Now, more than ever, we

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need to see growing partnerships between school staff and other families – and I say ‘other’ because one facet of the whole debate that seems to be ignored is just how many school staff are themselves parents or carers…

The value of parental engagement Research has shown the value of parental engagement for many years – the more parents are involved with learning, the more children attend school, the more homework is done, the more behaviour improves and the more children achieve; there’s more than enough evidence to show this (Fan and Chen, 2001; Fan and Williams, 2010; Hornby, 2011; Jeynes, 2012, 2014, 2018).

But it’s important to understand what ‘parental engagement with learning’ actually means – it doesn’t mean coming into school, and it doesn’t necessarily mean checking on homework (and it never has); effective parental engagement with learning means the attitude towards and support for learning in the home (Goodall and Montgomery, 2014). So supporting parental engagement isn’t about just giving young people more homework or worksheets; it’s about ensuring that young people have the best opportunities for learning that we – as a society – can provide. (And I would argue that that should always have been the point of homework, anyway (Goodall, 2020)).

Parents (those who are not teachers already) are not going to turn into professional teachers overnight (consider how much training you had before you stepped into the classroom and how much you’ve continued to learn since that first day!). We need to stop thinking about ‘what we would have done if they were still in school’ and start thinking about ‘how we can support learning now that they’re not in school’.

Supporting families to support learning We also need to realise that not all families will have everything we might like them to have, and not taking account of that could further disadvantage vulnerable students.

Many families won’t have enough devices for all children and adults in a family to work at the same time – asynchronous support for learning, where possible, is a good option. Not all families will have a ready store of Playdough, Lego or paper plates… we need to think creatively about supporting learning in different situations. For many of us, this was one of the reasons why we wanted to be in education in the first place, to facilitate learning wherever and whenever we could – if we can, this is a time to recapture that creativity.

Many parents are very concerned about being able to support their children’s learning, particularly for older children; parental lack of self-confidence was a barrier to engagement in learning long before COVID-19. Early on in your communication with families, it would be useful to let parents know your stock answers to ‘Miss/Sir, I can’t do this!’ You know the answers: ‘You can’t do it yet!’, ‘Okay, how do you think you can find out how to do it?’, etc. Share these with parents – let parents know that it’s okay not to know the answers, as long as the search continues.

This is not, as I’ve said, a normal time.

Many families will be experiencing grief

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Homes, not classrooms

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teachers: you’re hoping that they will support (not necessarily even lead) their children’s learning, with your help.

The past, the present and the future

and loss; most of us are worried about loved ones, particularly when separated.

Trying to carry on as though nothing is different is simply not going to work. We need to acknowledge the fear, the grief and the lack of time, equipment, training and resources facing families as they try to support learning.

I’ve said that we need to start from the basics, from the root, and the basics here are that everyone involved wants what’s best for the child: you, the parents, other family members. We need to be working with families to provide that ‘best’.

‘Best’ is not synonymous with ‘everything’ – not everything can be the best. Think about what’s really important – what do your students really need to know, to be able to do?

What can be left aside for now? Approach creating materials for family learning as you would any other teaching material: start from the endpoint and work backwards, to how to arrive there. And please, let parents know that you’re not expecting them to be professional

Teachers, parents, local authorities and government bodies are all trying to make this work for children. No one knows what the long-term effects will be. I’m hoping that one outcome will be that many parents are far more connected with their children’s learning than they had been in the past, and that the partnerships between teachers and families that are being created and strengthened now will continue.

We won’t walk back into the same classrooms, with the same young people, as the same teachers: we’re all being changed by the pandemic. But it’s not about the classroom or the school – but then, it never was. It’s always, fundamentally, been about the learning.

In summary: Things to consider Remember to ‘put your own oxygen mask on first’ – many teachers are parents themselves, so they are working to support pupils at a distance as well as to support the learning of their own children, or to care for other family members; this is a very difficult time for everyone. It’s far better to do fewer things that have impact than many things that don’t.

Taking into account what’s already been said, don’t produce so much work that parents are going to feel that they are failing their children if they can’t get through it all. This is really not a time for busy work, or for homework that has any aim other than supporting learning (Goodall, 2020).

Concentrate on what’s really important – what do pupils really need to be able to do or need to know? What can be left aside?

Treat creating materials for home learning as you would creating learning experiences in the classroom – look at the outcome first.

Remember that not all families will have access to lots of materials; as far as possible, suggest ideas for learning that don’t put a burden on families in terms of money or excessive time.

Just as you try to make learning in your classroom an enjoyable experience, try to help parents recreate that for their children.

Note: This article was written with help from a 3D octopus. If you have a smart phone, Google octopus, giant panda, wolf, etc. Click on the ‘See in 3D’ that appears under the Wiki article; after a short while, you’ll find a virtual animal appearing. This is an obvious conversation starter with young people of all ages, but it’s also amusing and oddly comforting for isolating academics…

REFERENCES Fan W and Williams CM (2010) The effects of parental involvement on students’ academic self-efficacy, engagement and intrinsic motivation. Educational Psychology: An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology 30(1): 53–74.

Fan X and Chen M (2001) Parental involvement and students’ academic achievement: A meta-analysis.

Educational Psychology Review 13(1): 1–22.

Goodall J (2017) Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Parental Engagement with Children’s Learning. London:

Routledge.

Goodall J (2020) Scaffolding homework for mastery: Engaging parents. Educational Review: 1–21. DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2019.1695106.

Goodall J and Montgomery C (2014) Parental involvement to parental engagement: A continuum.

Educational Review 66(4): 399–410.

Hornby G (2011) Parental Involvement in Childhood Education: Building Effective School–Family Partnerships. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.

Jeynes W (2012) A meta-analysis of the efficacy of different types of parental involvement programs for urban students. Urban Education 47(4): 706–742.

Jeynes WH (2014) Parental Involvement that works… because it’s age-appropriate. Kappa Delta Pi Record 50(2): 85–88.

Jeynes WH (2018) A practical model for school leaders to encourage parental involvement and parental engagement. School Leadership & Management 38(2): 147–163.

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Motivation Teach SouthEast is a school-centred initial teacher training provider (SCITT). In the secondary SCITT, we currently work with 20 partner schools to provide training to 75 trainees in the South East. As the member of staff who has responsibility for pastoral care, I wanted to explore ways in which we could prepare trainees mentally for the training year and for their future teaching careers.

In the academic year 2017–2018, we had a high percentage of trainees who did not complete the course (17.6 per cent). The main reasons cited were ‘mental health’ (42 per cent) and ‘personal circumstances’ (33 per cent). This led to a review of our pastoral care and the introduction of strategies to support trainees to successfully complete the course despite personal difficulties.

Approach

Promoting resilience in trainee teachers RACHEL DAVIS TEACH SOUTHEAST, UK

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After analysis of research into the management of stress (Kobasa and Puccetti’s ‘hardy personality’ (1979), Rotter’s ‘locus of control’ (April et al., 2012) and studies such as that of Baqutayan (2011) on social support), we identified strategies to promote resilience: increase the feeling of control: - provide communication - involve in decision-making - talk about resilience and stressmanagement - model healthy behaviours promote commitment: - focus on the goal - celebrate success - show trainees they are valued promote challenge rather than fear or stress: - admit and review mistakes - promote reflection -focus on the learning from challenging experiences provide social support.

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Approach We fed the findings of our research into every area of our provision.

We began at interview by introducing a task where candidates prepared responses to a tailored ‘resilience scenario’, which they discussed at panel. Before they even began training, we talked to them about resilience and prepared them for the fact that this would be a challenging year.

We provided trainees with a pastoral booklet that contained strategies for managing stress and workload and information on where support was available. We provided social support through a pastoral coach and we also intentionally paired trainees so that they had a pastoral buddy and built time into the programme for them to talk.

Centralised training developments included introducing sessions with specific foci on resilience, mindfulness and stressmanagement. We invited experienced teachers to give talks on ‘why I love being a teacher’ (focus on the goal), including tips on stress-management. We tried to give trainees control over their training by introducing carousels so that they could select sessions that they felt were pertinent, and by running intervention sessions with small numbers of trainees who expressed an interest in extra input.

We also sought to give trainees a sense of control by developing communication.

We provided a weekly bulletin so that they knew what was coming up. Within our bulletin and through our social media, we communicated messages that were in line with the ‘commitment’ goal: inspirational quotes and motivational messages to remind them of how far they had come and of the importance of self-belief.

We involved our trainees in decisionmaking, providing the opportunity to give their opinion in written evaluations and through a ‘trainee voice’ panel. We explicitly told trainees where we had made changes based on their feedback.

In addition, we developed our schoolbased training. Our mentors have been

trained in giving feedback, including responding to any less effective aspects of lessons with learning points. The first question on the mentor meeting record is a wellbeing question – trainees reflect on their wellbeing every week.

We constantly strive to create a collaborative culture where trainees feel nurtured, valued and fulfilled, and we regularly assess our provision and refine it to try to minimise workload.

Outcomes Trainee feedback (via a pastoral review questionnaire, trainee voice and evaluations of training sessions) indicated that they felt the pastoral support had a ‘positive impact on their transition into teacher training’ (97 per cent strongly agreed or agreed).

Our January 2019 Ofsted report (Ofsted, 2019a) stated that ‘Systems to ensure high-quality pastoral care for trainees and the promotion of their well-being are first class’ (p. 3), and that ‘Very professional, resilient and self-reflective trainees are well prepared for life in their employing school.’ (p. 4) The measures we have taken appear to have had an impact on our completion rate. Last academic year (2018–2019) four per cent of trainees withdrew, and so far this year, two per cent have withdrawn; this is an improvement from the 17.6 per cent that withdrew the year before we implemented the changes.

The changes to our pastoral provision have been welcomed by trainees and are often cited in our trainee voice panel as strengths of our course. The main difficulty we have moving forward is maintaining the personalised support as our numbers of trainees increase – our central team is growing to cater for this.

Future We continue to focus on supporting the wellbeing of our trainees, both in their training year and into their early teaching career – this has been built into our improvement plan and we will be exploring how we can develop our provision to ensure retention within the profession.

In line with the DfE teacher recruitment and retention strategy (2019), we will continue to support our trainee teachers through the early career framework. For example, we will provide them with access to high-quality curriculum and planning resources. Our hope is that as well as creating resilient trainees, they will also be able to support their students in becoming resilient learners.

This ties in with the Ofsted school inspection handbook, which refers to ‘developing pupils’ confidence, resilience and knowledge so that they can keep themselves mentally healthy’ (2019b, p. 59).

REFERENCES April K, Dharani B and Peters K (2012) Impact of locus of control expectancy on level of well-being.

Review of European Studies 4(2).

DOI: 10.5539/res.v4n2p124.

gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/786856/DFE_Teacher_ Retention_Strategy_Report.pdf (accessed 17 March 2020).

Baqutayan S (2011) Stress and social support. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine 33(1): 29–34.

Kobasa SC and Puccetti MC (1979) Personality and resistance to illness.

American Journal of Community Psychology 7(4): 839–850.

Department for Education (DfE) (2019) Teacher recruitment and retention strategy. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.

Ofsted (2019a) Teach SouthEast ITE Partnership: Initial teacher education inspection report.

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Available at: https://files.ofsted. gov.uk/v1/file/50049408 (accessed 19 March 2020).

Ofsted (2019b) School inspection handbook, November 2019, No. 190017. Available at: https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/ file/843108/School_inspection_ handbook_-_section_5.pdf (accessed 17 March 2020).

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Creative approaches to nurturing resilience of trainee teachers ANNA LISE GORDON DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY, TWICKENHAM, UK

During 2019, the Department for Education (DfE) published a number of policy documents: ‘Teacher recruitment and retention strategy’, ‘Early career framework’ and ‘ITT core content framework’. Rigorous attention on early career development is welcome (Allen and Sims, 2018), particularly with continued high levels of stress leading to issues of retention in the profession (Teacher Wellbeing Index (Education Support, 2019)).

This research-informed article focuses on how the resilience of trainee teachers is challenged and eroded, but also sustained and nurtured. Chandler (2014, p. 46) describes resilience as ‘an increasingly ubiquitous concept’ and Neenan (2009, p. 3) refers to resilience as an ‘intriguing yet elusive concept’.

Through my own research inquiry, I have come to view trainee teacher resilience as a continuum, with grit and determination at one end and openness and vulnerability at the other. Both aspects are important in the professional learning journey and demand the support of a positive mentoring relationship (Lofthouse, 2018). The honesty of the trainee teachers in this research inquiry is a powerful reminder of the need to listen

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to their voices as we respond to recent government policy documents.

Methodology My research, exploring the resilience of more than 100 secondary trainee teachers at St Mary’s University in Twickenham, was undertaken over a three-year period. I chose to explore their experiences through a variety of lenses, using bricolage as my methodological approach. Wibberley (2012, p. 1) suggests that ‘the emergent nature of bricolage allows for bite-sized chunks of research to be carried out that have individual meaning for practice, but which can then be pieced together to create a meaningful whole’.

Bricolage does not lead to a ‘magic answer’, but rather allows different and complementary understandings of a phenomenon to emerge through a variety of research activities, only ever as a basis for further reflection and investigation.

Although some limited quantitative analysis was used for the research (see below), it was mainly thematic analysis of the extensive qualitative data that led to rich and informative insights.

A range of approaches were used to explore the experiences and perspectives of trainee teachers:

Resilience test

Drawing on four key components to maintain and build resilience – confidence, adaptability, purposefulness and social support – a free online test (www. robertsoncooper.com/iresilience) was used to generate a personalised report, providing awareness of an individual’s resilience and examples of how this might impact on responses to challenging situations at work. Although the test is not aimed at teachers specifically, the report identifies an individual’s strengths and areas for development, including an action plan, and this seems entirely consonant with the formative approach to professional development in initial teacher training (ITT).

Questionnaires

Trainee teachers completed a short questionnaire at four key points in the ITT year, designed to capture experiences at significant moments of transition: at the end of the first phase of universitybased training, prior to starting the first school placement in the period between first and second school placements at the mid-point in the second school placement in the final week of the ITT course.

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Introduction

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Each questionnaire followed a similar format, as trainees identified a particular situation where resilience had been needed and how they had felt challenged, but also how they had coped with the experience to grow as trainees.

Creative writing

Four creative writing activities were also completed at the same time as the questionnaires: free writing for five minutes to capture initial emotions and reflections metaphor writing to describe first school placement experience haiku poem to capture significant experiences in the first half of the second school placement experience short story to describe the ITT period as a whole.

The creative writing activities offered rich and complementary insights into the questionnaire responses and proved ‘a valuable method for getting in touch with [the] inner life’ (Hunt and Sampson, 1998, p. 12) of the trainee teachers.

Key findings and analysis Carter (2015, p. 44) notes that ‘important competencies such as resilience can be difficult to assess’; although the responses to the online resilience test were analysed in relation to gender and subject specialism, there were no statistically significant differences, and I remain unconvinced about the value of collating aggregated quantitative data. However, the resilience reports were effective at an individual level for trainee teachers to reflect with their tutors and mentors on what might hinder or support their resilience. As one trainee commented:

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‘The report highlighted things that I had not really thought about myself before.

Let the reflection begin!’

‘It is refreshing to be with a real mix of people, different ages, interests, backgrounds, but all with a common goal…’

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The range of adjectives used was overwhelmingly positive, with words like ‘excitement’, ‘stimulating’ and ‘thrilling’; this is in stark contrast to the words that were used in the final questionnaire at the end of the course, which included ‘rewarding’, but also ‘challenging’, ‘overwhelming’ and ‘exhausting’.

Initial positivity was subsequently challenged through the ITT programme, as illustrated in the metaphors and haiku that trainees shared at key transition points.

When ideas or emotions are difficult to express, metaphor may be a useful form of language to better understand a situation, and the trainees’ metaphors gave a clear insight into how their resilience was both challenged and supported while on school placement. The majority of the metaphors fell into three distinct categories: journeys, extreme sport and creative activities.

Considering the importance of the mentor in particular, this metaphor serves as a good example: ‘The observation period is like your way up to the [bungee] jump where you feel like you can do it, but the higher you go the more the doubts creep in about your ability to jump. Then you

jump and it’s exciting and dangerous.

Then near the end of the jump you feel the tug of the safety cord, you know you are going to survive and, even though there are still more ups and downs, confidence is higher and you can really start to just enjoy the jump.’

Similarly, these haiku poems, written by different trainee teachers, illustrate the significance of the mentor–trainee relationship: Tired, tears and doubt.

‘You can do it’, mentor said.

Self-belief, vital.

Rollercoaster ride, Mentor worries, strain and stress, Through the tunnel light.

The compressed haiku poetry form prompted trainee teachers to highlight their main focus at the mid-point of the second school placement, and workload was a recurring theme: A train on a track Can’t go back, can I go on?

I’ll do it, but how?

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Analysis of the questionnaires revealed a recurring theme of coping and surviving in challenging situations, rather than the thriving developmental process leading to personal and professional growth that would be expected at different stages during the ITT period. This highlights a need for more time and space for the trainee teacher, particularly in the areas that were identified as challenging: managing workload, working with a difficult mentor or colleague, coping with negative (and sometimes contradictory) feedback, and managing the behaviour of pupils.

It is the complexity of teaching that makes it both a challenging and a rewarding profession, with reflective practice at its core. All those involved in ITT have a part to play in instilling in new teachers ‘a sense of confidence, resilience, and self-efficacy’ (Waddell, 2007, p. 125). The questionnaire responses highlighted ways in which trainees managed challenging situations, and the support of a skilled mentor was frequently cited, echoing other research on the importance of mentoring (Hobson and Malderez, 2013; Lofthouse and Thomas, 2014). Effective time-management and target-setting to identify priorities were also essential as part of a broader approach to reflective practice.

The creative writing from the trainee teachers allowed for an alternative response to the more typical standardsdriven, technical-rational approach to reflection. The initial free writing activities, completed early in the ITT course, revealed significant enthusiasm and a strong sense of purpose:

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Analysing the short stories, written at the end of the ITT period, proved challenging. As Bolton (2014, p. 126) comments: ‘All stories are perspectival; no story has only one meaning. They are essentially ambiguous and resist singular interpretation.’ However, the short stories highlighted previously expressed themes. For example, related to mentoring, there were tales of ‘mentorfilled snowstorms’, meeting ogres, and being rescued by fairy godmothers and wise wizards! The short stories also highlighted some of the challenges with managing behaviour, which had dominated the ITT experiences for some trainees, reinforcing the notions that ‘conditions count’ (Gu and Day, 2013, p. 22).

When ideas or emotions are difficult to express, metaphor may be a useful form of language to better understand a situation wellbeing through lectures and tutorial activities, as well as a workshop at the end of the ITT programme on thriving in the transition to NQT. This structured approach has led to positive feedback from trainees: ‘It has helped me to refer to activities from our resilience lecture when things have got tough during placements.’

A number of key actions arise from the research that are relevant for discussion in any ITT context:

Implications for practice This research inquiry led to changes in practice at St Mary’s University, which has, in turn, contributed to the national debate in various ways, including a case study in ‘Addressing workload in initial teacher education’ (DfE, 2018).

Clear attention is given to an integrated approach to teacher resilience and

A stronger focus is needed on the emotional and affective aspects of teacher training to complement subject knowledge and pedagogical development. How might we ensure that trainees experience the rewarding aspects of the profession without approaching exhaustion?

More creative approaches to reflective practice would offer alternative insights into an individual’s experiences. Might creative writing be useful for some trainees and mentors to explore needs through a different lens?

Closer collaboration, including sharing creative approaches with mentors, could ensure a more integrated and personalised approach for trainees. How might mentors work together, within and across schools and ITT providers, to better support trainees?

Many of these actions are implicit in the recent DfE documents; continued commitment from schools and ITT providers, working in close partnership, is needed to meet the bespoke needs of new entrants to the profession. Above all, whatever policy documents and well-structured ITT provision are in place, there remains an ongoing need for the varied experiences and voices of early career teachers to be heard clearly as part of expanding the debate.

REFERENCES Allen R and Sims S (2018) The Teacher Gap. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bolton G (2014) Reflective Practice, 4th ed. London: Sage.

Carter A (2015) Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT). London: Department for Education.

Chandler D (2014) Resilience – The Governance of Complexity. London: Routledge.

Department for Education (2018) Addressing teacher workload in initial teacher education. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/753502/ Addressing_Workload_in_ITE.pdf (accessed 3 March 2020).

Department for Education (2019) Teacher recruitment and retention strategy.

Available at: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/786856/DFE_Teacher_Retention_ Strategy_Report.pdf (accessed 3 March 2020).

Department for Education (2019) Early career framework. Available at: https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/773705/EarlyCareer_Framework.pdf (accessed 3 March 2020).

Department for Education (2019) Initial teacher training (ITT): Core content framework. Available at: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/843676/Initial_teacher_ training_core_content_framework.pdf (accessed 3 March 2020).

Education Support (2019) Teacher Wellbeing Index 2019. Available at: www. educationsupport.org.uk/resources/ research-reports/teacher-wellbeingindex-2019 (accessed 3 March 2020).

Gu Q and Day C (2013) Challenges to teacher resilience: Conditions count.

British Educational Research Journal 39(1): 22–44.

Hobson A and Malderez A (2013) Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of schoolbased mentoring in teacher education.

International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education 2(2): 89–108.

Hunt C and Sampson F (eds) (1998) The Self on the Page – Theory and Practice of Creative Writing in Personal Development. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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Lofthouse R (2018) A virtuous circle: Making the most of mentoring. The Profession 2018/19: 109–111.

Lofthouse R and Thomas U (2014) Mentoring student teachers: A vulnerable workplace learning practice.

International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education 3(3): 201–218.

Neenan M (2009) Developing Resilience: A Cognitive Behavioural Approach.

Hove: Routledge.

Waddell J (2007) The time is now. In: Davies D (ed) Resiliency Reconsidered: Deconstructing the Policy Implications of the Resiliency Movement. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing, pp. 123–145.

Wibberley C (2012) Getting to grips with bricolage: A personal account. The Qualitative Report 17(50): 1–8.

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LAURA COLE MENTAL HEALTH LEAD AND SLE FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING, HITCHIN GIRLS SCHOOL, UK DAVID INGLEDEW PRINCIPAL LECTURER IN EDUCATION, SECONDARY ITE LEAD, UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE, UK

T

he extent and growing problem of mental health issues faced by pupils of all ages in our schools during the past decade is well documented (Weale, 2019).

Recent research indicates that one in 10 children are experiencing significant mental health problems, with two in five young people scoring above thresholds for emotional problems, conduct issues or hyperactivity. For some particularly vulnerable groups, such as pupils with additional learning needs or those from deprived backgrounds, the scale of mental health problems may be even higher, estimated at one in eight pupils affected (Deighton et al., 2019).

The increasing scale and severity of mental health problems faced by pupils in our schools has highlighted a number of key related issues. The first is the inadequate funding and resources for existing services faced with growing demand – only six per cent of the NHS

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budget is spent on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) – and in the past two years these services have become a key government health priority, although it has been argued that this still does not address the urgency of the problems faced (Weale, 2019).

Second is the need for national policy guidelines, better access to existing services – as well as the development of new ones – and improved checks on the appropriateness and quality of the services and support offered. Recent policy issued by the DfE and DHSC has sought to address all these areas, most notably the requirement to have a designated mental health lead in every school (Glazzard and Stones, 2019). Third is the pivotal role played by schools in supporting pupils with mental health issues and in the wider promotion of mental health and wellbeing. Research indicates that staff–pupil and pupil–pupil relationships, a curriculum focused on social and emotional health, and the promotion of mental health literacy and awareness are key for promoting a mentally healthy environment (Glazzard and Stones, 2019).

However, at the same time, it is reported that there is a wide variation in the mental health support offered by schools for their pupils (Weale, 2019).

The above illustrates the challenges faced by student teachers undergoing initial teacher education (ITE) in recognising their professional

responsibilities and developing their professional practice with regard to mental health and wellbeing in schools.

It is a particularly daunting area, both professionally and personally, for student teachers who are already learning to get to grips with the complexity of teaching and working in schools. In particular, it can be difficult for student teachers to appreciate the whole-school approach to the promotion of mental health and wellbeing for all pupils, while at the same time navigating their responsibilities, but also their limitations, in supporting pupils with specific mental health issues in their classes. Furthermore, with such a wide variation in approaches by schools towards mental health, as highlighted above, how can student teachers be made aware of and learn about the wide diversity of support, services and curricula available in schools (Brown, 2018)?

These are the challenges that the University of Hertfordshire and partnership schools aim to address for the students on its primary and secondary ITE courses, working in more than 300 schools across Hertfordshire. First, all our student teachers are made fully aware, both at university and in school placements, of their responsibilities with regard to mental health and wellbeing.

Second, we raise our student teachers’ awareness of mental health and wellbeing for their pupils through university and school-based sessions. Both these steps are

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Partnership working to develop student teachers’ awareness of mental health and wellbeing in schools

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introduced early and revisited throughout, and then consolidated by a mental health and wellbeing in schools conference held towards the end of the ITE courses. The conference is a flagship event, hosted by the university and involving a wide range of partnership schools and other agencies, offering a mix of keynote speeches and workshops. The conference is also an opportunity for the agencies involved to network, share good practice and develop partnership working, highlighting the excellent practice and support being offered to young people in our schools.

New policy initiatives and guidance, creation of new roles and services, and additional health and education funding are very welcome and very necessary for helping schools to develop effective services and support for mental health and wellbeing for their pupils (Deighton et al., 2019). However, essential to the success of these is the development of collaborative partnerships between mental health leads, their schools and other agencies at a local level, as outlined above, in order to develop high-quality support and services (Thorley, 2016).

Developing the role of a school mental health lead My role as a mental health lead initially developed organically at Hitchin Girls’ School, significantly before the implementation of the formal role in the government green paper, from a desire to support students who were struggling with anxiety and self-harm in school.

On a daily basis, staff are required to support a wide range of emotional needs among our pupils, and this has been a shift since many of us trained as teachers.

We have recognised that while our key business is delivering the curriculum, it isn’t possible to help students to achieve the best outcomes if we don’t meet their needs beyond the academic. Key staff have been upskilled to develop their knowledge around mental health, and it has been necessary to implement a regular whole-school training programme to

It isn’t possible to help students to achieve the best outcomes if we don’t meet their needs beyond the academic address the impact of mental health on learning and to offer ideas for how to overcome the barriers that poor mental health can create. We have developed bespoke resources for our school setting, but also encourage the use of MindEd online training. As a school, we have also tried to change the conversation from ill health to wellness by piloting a range of programmes designed to improve everyone’s knowledge of self-help wellbeing strategies. As this is an aspect of the teaching role that can be timeconsuming and, at times, overwhelming,

we have been delighted to work with PGCE students in order to help them understand some of the challenges that they might face linked to wellbeing and the teenage brain, so that they are more prepared for life as an NQT. Hitchin Girls’ School was proud to be the first Hertfordshire school to achieve the CAMHS kitemark for good practice in mental health and wellbeing, and we are keen to share best practice locally and nationally through collaborative working.

REFERENCES Brown R (2018) Mental health and wellbeing provision in schools: Review of published policies and information.

Department for Education. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/747709/Mental_health_and_wellbeing_provision_in_schools.pdf (accessed 12 January 2020).

Deighton J, Lereya ST, Casey P et al. (2019) Prevalence of mental health problems in schools: Poverty and other risk factors among 28,000 adolescents in England. British Journal of Psychiatry 215: 565–567.

Glazzard B and Stones S (2019) Children and young people’s health: The role of schools. In: BERA blog. Available at: www.bera.ac.uk/blog/children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-the-role-of-schools (accessed 12 January 2020).

Thorley C (2016) Education, education, mental health: Supporting secondary schools to play a central role in early intervention mental health services. Available at: www.ippr.org/publications/education-education-mental-health (accessed 12 January 2020).

Weale S (2019) Mental health of pupils is ‘at crisis point’, teachers warn. The Guardian, 17 April, 2019.

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Promoting positive mental health and wellbeing in primary schools ADRIAN BETHUNE TEACHER, BROUGHTON JUNIOR SCHOOL, UK

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Current state of children’s mental health Children’s mental health and emotional wellbeing in schools has become a much talked-about topic for very good reason. Half of all mental ill health manifests by the age of 14, and 75 per cent by the age of 24 (Kessler et al., 2005). In the UK, the mental health of children does appear to be worsening, with more children experiencing clinically impairing anxiety or depression than ever before (NHS Digital, 2018).

The data doesn’t tell us exactly why children appear to be experiencing increasingly poor mental health. The rise in mental health issues may be because, as a society, we are better at talking about and assessing mental health problems. It may also be because of other factors, such as increased usage of social media, school and exam pressure, or the effects of austerity. What is certain, however, is that there is a greater need to understand children’s mental health over time to get a better feel for what may be behind the causes of mental health issues and, just as importantly, what promotes good mental health in children.

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The link between wellbeing and learning The increase in mental health issues in children is also concerning because of its potential impact on their learning. Children with emotional and behavioural difficulties are more likely to be excluded from school or leave without any qualifications (Parry-Langdon, 2008). Conversely, children with higher levels of wellbeing do generally appear to achieve better academically (Gutman and Vorhaus, 2012). Although there are many factors outside of a school’s control that affect the wellbeing of the children they teach, they can still have an impact on improving their pupils’ wellbeing (Public Health England, 2014).

We should also not forget that learning and being engaged in their studies are innately good for children’s wellbeing. Learning new things is one of the ‘Five ways to wellbeing’ (Government Office for Science, 2008) and plays an important role in developing good mental health.

The link between emotional health in childhood and future happiness Promoting pupil wellbeing is more than just helping children to achieve better academically. A child’s wellbeing could be the key to their future happiness. Longitudinal research suggests that a child’s emotional health at the age of 16 is the strongest predictor of adult life satisfaction, and that primary school teachers can have an effect on the emotional wellbeing of their pupils that can last five years or more (Clark et al., 2018).

Given that good mental health and wellbeing are linked to better learning outcomes and future happiness, there is a strong case for primary schools to prioritise the promotion of wellbeing as a key strategy.

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Criticisms of a focus on wellbeing in schools Of course, any approach to education that deviates from a traditional model is not without criticism. Some critics see specific programmes and interventions to foster pupil wellbeing as a problem, and claim that this type of ‘therapeutic education’ is dangerous and anti-educational (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008).

Furthermore, a recent report (Centre for Education Economics, 2018) cites an American study that asked students to carry around a pager and record their happiness levels when it beeped. The study found that students were least happy at school and while doing homework, and happiest the rest of the time. Because other studies show that attending school and doing homework raises attainment, the study concludes, ‘There appears to be an achievement–wellbeing trade-off at a very general level in the education system: if pupils do not attend school, or do any work, they are unlikely to learn anything – but they may be happier.’

However, there do not appear to be many supporters of wellbeing-focused education, if any, who argue that a pupil’s happiness should be prioritised to the detriment of their studies.

Supporters would argue that when children are healthier and happier in schools, they tend to focus more, get on with their peers better and learn well.

Emotionally literate schools The schools that most effectively promote good mental health and wellbeing do so by adopting a whole-school approach (Weare, 2006). These schools are sometimes referred to as being ‘emotionally literate’ and they are typically strong in four keys areas: 1. Positive relationships are the heart of the school and they have an inclusive and supportive culture 2. There is a strong sense of purpose and shared values and ethos; everyone in the school community is pulling in the same direction 3. There is a sense of autonomy and independence so that members of the school community feel that they are in control of, or can influence, important aspects of their lives 4. They have high expectations of all children and there are clear boundaries and rules.

Emotionally literate schools recognise that the complete experience of school life contributes to the emotional wellbeing of everyone who learns and works there (Weare, 2006).

Whole-school approaches to developing wellbeing Below is a list (not exhaustive) of some of the approaches that primary schools are adopting to promote pupil wellbeing: Physical activity: Regular physical activity is a core part of developing and maintaining good physical and mental health.

But the vast majority of children in England do not get the recommended minimum of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity every day (Townsend et al., 2015). Therefore, in addition to providing two hours a week of high-quality PE lessons, lots of primaries take part in the ‘Daily Mile’, where all children jog or run for up to 15 minutes every day. This can improve children’s mood and attention (BBC Teach, 2018), as well as increasing children’s fitness (Chesham et al., 2018).

Mindfulness: Mindfulness is a type of mind training that helps children to develop their awareness, in the present moment, of what’s happening inside of themselves and externally, with an attitude of kindness and curiosity. One recent meta-analysis of mindfulness-based interventions with young people showed significant positive effects, relative to controls, for the outcome categories of mindfulness, executive functioning, attention, depression, anxiety/stress and negative behaviours (Dunning et al., 2018). However, more research is needed in this area and any benefits should not be oversold.

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Not only can schools have a major impact on children’s emotional health and wellbeing, but this can also lead to better educational outcomes Training in resilience: Some programmes in schools aim to develop children’s (and teachers’) levels of psychological wellbeing by teaching them the skills of resilience and accurate thinking. For example, Bounce Together run a programme for primary schools aimed at 9- to 11-year-olds, based on the Penn Resilience Programme, an evidence-based intervention originating from the University of Pennsylvania in America.

An impact review of the programme showed significant improvements in children’s anxiety and depressive symptoms, along with improvements in behaviour (Challen et al., 2011).

The benefits only lasted in the short term, so it’s likely that these interventions need to be re-taught and the skills practised regularly for longer-term benefits to be maintained.

PSHE: Personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) is a non-statutory curriculum subject that develops the knowledge, skills and attributes that pupils need in order to keep healthy and safe in modern Britain. Well-delivered PSHE programmes have an impact on both academic attainment and non-academic outcomes for pupils, particularly the most vulnerable and disadvantaged (PSHE Association, 2017).

Mental health lessons: The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF) have created a ‘Schools In

Mind’ network (annafreud.org/what-we-do/ schools-in-mind), and mental health charity Heads Together have created a website hub at www. mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk. Both websites contain a bank of resources with lesson plans and animations that help teachers and children to talk about mental health.

Conclusion The growing mental health problems among young people in the UK, coupled with the lack of access to specialist treatment, mean that the focus is turning to schools for solutions. This approach has its critics, who argue that it risks ever-greater scope creep in the role of teachers and schools, with them becoming responsible for support that should be provided elsewhere. However, there is good evidence that shows that not only can schools have a major impact on children’s emotional health and wellbeing, but that this can also lead to better educational outcomes, as well as an increased chance of these children growing up to be adults leading happy and satisfied lives. More schools are seizing this opportunity to positively impact their pupils’ lives in more than just traditional outcomes, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run in terms of levels of mental health, wellbeing and attainment.

REFERENCES BBC Teach (2018) Exercise map. Available at: www.bbc.com/teach/terrificscientific/KS2/zf7qscw (accessed 13 March 2020).

Centre for Education Economics (2018) The achievement–wellbeing trade-off in education. Available at: https://cfee. org.uk/sites/default/files/CfEE_Tradeoffs_finalwebproof.pdf Challen A, Noden P, West A et al. (2011) UK Resilience Programme evaluation: Final report. London: Department for Education. Available at: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/182419/DFE-RR097.pdf (accessed 13 March 2020).

Chesham RA, Booth JN, Sweeney EL et al. (2018) The daily mile makes primary school children more active, less sedentary and improves their fitness and body composition: A quasiexperimental pilot study. BMC Medicine 16(64). DOI: 10.1186/s12916-018-1049-z.

The Origins of Happiness: The Science Of Well-being Over the Life Course.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/219638/DFERR253.pdf (accessed 13 March 2020).

Dunning DL, Griffiths K, Kuyken W et al.

(2018) The effects of mindfulness-based interventions on cognition and mental health in children and adolescents – a meta-analysis of randomised control trials. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12980.

Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O et al. (2005) Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry 62(6): 593–602.

Ecclestone K and Hayes D (2008) The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education. Abingdon: Routledge.

Government Office for Science (2008) Five ways to mental wellbeing.

Available at: https://issuu.com/ neweconomicsfoundation/ docs/five_ways_to_wellbeing?viewMode=presentation (accessed 13 March 2020).

Clark AE, Flèche S, Layard R et al. (2018)

Gutman LM and Vorhaus J (2012) The impact of pupil behaviour and wellbeing on educational outcomes. Department for Education (DfE). Available at: https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/

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NHS Digital (2018) Mental health of children and young people in England.

Available at: https://digital.nhs.uk/ data-and-information/publications/ statistical/mental-health-of-childrenand-young-people-in-england/2017/2017 (accessed 20 January 2020).

Parry-Langdon N (ed) (2008) Three years on: Survey of the development and emotional wellbeing of children and young people. London: Office for National Statistics. Available at: https://lx.iriss.org.uk/sites/default/files/ resources/child_development_mental_ health.pdf (accessed 13 March 2020).

life. Available at: www.pshe-association. org.uk/curriculum-and-resources/ resources/curriculum-life-casestatutory-pshe-education (accessed 20 January 2020).

Public Health England (2014) The link between pupil health and wellbeing and attainment: A briefing for headteachers, governors and staff in education settings. Available at: www.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/ file/ 370686/HT_ briefing_layoutvFINALvii.pdf (accessed 20 January 2020).

Townsend N, Wickramasinghe K, Williams J et al. (2015) Physical Activity Statistics 2015. London: British Heart Foundation.

Weare K (2006) Developing the Emotionally Literate School. London: Sage.

PSHE Association (2017) A curriculum for

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Supporting student wellbeing by encouraging them to use the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ (while staying at home!)

technology to support teaching and learning

Shelly Masters, Associate Lecturer, Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools, Leeds Beckett University and Minds Ahead Learning and Development Manager

What’s the idea?

‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ offers five evidence-based actions to help your students feel better.

also ask your class to write a letter, story or draw a picture to send to a care home – this could be sent by email if post is not possible.

What does the research say?

There has been a huge amount of research into the Five Ways to Wellbeing across many different countries. They were developed in 2008 based on a Government Office for Science report. They are: • connect with other people • be physically active • keep learning • give to others • take notice/pay attention to the present moment.

Take notice/pay attention to the present moment.

While being sensitive to the challenges many pupils are facing, think about how you can encourage them to focus on the present moment. This could be by asking them to note down three things they are grateful for before bed or at lunchtime.

How does it work in practice?

Listed below are some ideas for encouraging pupils to engage with the Five Ways to Wellbeing while learning at home.

Want to know more?

Government Office for Science (2008) Mental Capital and Wellbeing: Making the most of ourselves in the 21st century. Available at: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/292450/mental-capitalwellbeing-report.pdf (accessed 26 March 2020). wel

Connect with other people. Encourage your pupils to take time to video or voice call with their friends, as well as doing learning activities. Social friendships are key for everyone’s development and wellbeing.

Be physically active. There are lots of activities pupils can do indoors, without needing much space. For example, Joe Wicks’ ‘PE with Joe’ daily class at 9am is a live activity, and lots of other home workout activities can be found online.

Keep learning. As well as any specific learning activities you may be asking them to do, you could also encourage pupils to choose some learning of their own, such as a FutureLearn MOOC for older children.

Give to others. We are seeing amazing examples of this in many ways at the moment, but there are simple actions we can encourage children to do too, such as helping to make a meal at home. You could

MyCollege, your member-only area, offers a range of resources to support your practice, including Compact Guides – practical, downloadable summaries of key teaching topics. We have developed a range of Compact Guides to support you during school closures, including the example here on promoting student wellbeing in the home learning environment. For guides on assessment and feedback, retrieval practice and groupwork in an online context, visit: my.chartered.college special issue | 2019

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The online version of this issue is packed full of useful research s. articles, perspective pieces, case studies and teacher reflections.

Titles include: Expert ‘teacher moves’ that impact student learning Challenging the status quo: A coherent approach to teacher development Shattering the subject silos: Learning about big questions and d epistemic insight Restorative practice as community-building support for child d mental health in primary schools

Access these articles and more, plus us additional articles for all past issues at: impact.chartered.college hartered.college

COVID-19 support We’ve developed a range of resources to support you during school closures, including: video logs on school leadership, teacher wellbeing and remote learning education reading groups – tips, guidance and article collections Connect Blog – a platform to share advice and support links to selected reading on online, distance and home learning

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