EXPLORE > EXPERIMENT > IMPROVE > SHARE & CELEBRATE > EMBED MAKING IT HAPPEN: FIVE STEPS TO IMPROVE TEACHING….


SHARE AND CELEBRATE SUCCESS Teachers report on their experiments and share their strategies. Sharing is both within and between teams. Learning Fairs are useful here.


IMPROVE AND ‘COACH-IN’ STRATEGIES Teachers experiment with the methods and improve their use of them. They receive support from a peer coaching team of other experimenters in regular democratic meetings. Teachers carry out their ‘Supported Experiments’ for the team, not just for themselves.


MONITORING. Implementation is monitored to ensure the changes are supported and are sufficient to make a difference to students.


EMBED PRACTICE New and improved strategies are agreed and then put into schemes of work, assignments, worksheets, lesson plans etc. The whole team now has access to the improvements.


START


• Teaching has more effect on achievement than any other factor • To raise achievement we must change how we teach • Only teachers can change teaching • Changing teaching is itself a learning process • Learning requires support, practice, with checking and correcting • This is hard, we need to do it together, and learn from each other


PLAN EXPERIMENTATION AND IMPLEMENTATION Decide as individuals and as a team what experiments would be worth trying, and who will experiment with what.


repeatedly, adapting as they learn the outcomes of using this new approach. Joyce and Showers say it takes five trials to find out if a method is going to work, and a further 20 trials before the method is used about 80 per cent effectively. Why? Because teaching requires a great deal of skill, which comes from trial and error, and a lot of creative adaptation of the method to the teacher’s unique context. Alarmingly, the research on CPD shows that even


what we’ve discussed so far is not enough to change a teacher’s practice. Teachers also need regular meetings with a community of colleagues to support them. This is variously called the peer coaching group, a teacher learning community, or a community of practice.


This democratic group of, perhaps, six colleagues meets about every four to six weeks to discuss the experiments the teachers have been carrying out. This encourages staff to experiment as it’s embarrassing to have nothing to say at the meeting. But, more importantly, lots of learning is created, and a huge positive buzz. In these meetings each teacher takes it in turn to describe how their experiment is going. They might


REFERENCES


• Helen Timperley et al (2007). Teacher Professional Learning and Development. Available free online http://www.oecd.org/education/school/48727127.pdf


• Joyce and Showers (2002). Student Achievement through Staff Development. 3rd ed. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. • Viviane Robinson et al (2009). School Leadership and student outcomes: identifying what works and why. Summary of the best Evidence Synthesis. Available free online: http://www.curee.co.uk/files/publication/1260453707/Robinson Summary Extended Version.pdf


inTUITION ISSUE 37 • AUTUMN 2019 35


EXPLORE THE CONTEXT What are the key problems students have with their learning, and that teachers have with their teaching?


EXPLORE THE PEDAGOGY What learning and teaching strategies could we use to solve these problems? CPD training on these methods would help.


bring along evidence such as student work to illustrate this. They give an honest, warts-and-all description of the experiment. Then the group discusses how the teacher could overcome any difficulties to proceed with the method. The teacher then tries it that way and the reflective active learning cycle repeats: Do, Review, Learn, Apply. At the end of the year teachers report to others outside their mutual coaching team so that teachers can all learn from each other. A Supported Experiments Exhibition is a great approach, where teams exhibit to each other what they have tried and achieved. The best methods are made available to all teachers and appear on ‘Active’ schemes of work so that benefits are shared. I can hear you! “Really?”, “What a palaver!”, “Is it worth it?” Emphatically yes. First, it is practically the only way to improve teaching that has been found to work (Timperley 2007).


The leaders of the most successful institutions set their highest priority as ‘Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development’ – that is how their institution got to be successful (Viviane Robinson 2009). Oh, and it creates a tremendous buzz – both staff and students love it.


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