Tag Archive for cpd

“Good Practice”

31/01/2012 change, reflection 2 comments

I’m not sure about “good practice”. I haven’t been for sometime now. I used to think sharing good practice was a great idea, but I’ve slowly gone off it. I think this is partly because it rarely had much of an effect on me. In fact, if it had any effect at all it tended to be a negative one…i.e. something along the lines of “I’d never be able to do that”, or even worse “who do they think they are?” Of course, I would never say any of this out loud. I would nod and smile like everyone else and then get back to my own mediocre practice!

This perhaps isn’t surprising. Watching someone else’s practice will do little to change your own as you’re only witnessing the end product. You’re not seeing their context and the many ups & downs and small changes they made along the way in order to get to where they are now. Take the Australian Open Final this Sunday for example. I watched some extremely good tennis practice there…but I doubt I’m any better a tennis player as a result. In order to learn from them I would need to spend time with them and get to know how they got to where they’ve got to and begin at the beginning myself. Much of this relates to the excellent book I’m reading at the minute, Bounce [thanks to @dukkhaboy for the recommendation].

Syed points out that it’s the power of practice which makes people good at what they do. So, tell me about your practice. Tell me about how you ended up where you are. Tell me about the context, educational values and literature which have influenced your approach. Tell me about when it all went wrong and what you did about it. All of this will help me to relate your practice to my own and might just get me thinking, “do you know what, I think they’ve got something there…I’ll give that a try myself.”

Or in other words I suppose, start a blog!

Image by bourgol

ACTS Winter Conference 2011

16/02/2011 acts, cfe, change, MEd, reflection One comment

The timing of this year’s ACTS Winter Conference was very interesting. Given the recent publication of the Donaldson Report, the ongoing negotiations of the SNCT and the launch of the McCormac review there is a lot for Chartered Teachers, and aspiring Chartered Teachers such as myself, to talk about. The ACTS committee had done very well indeed to arrange for Graham Donaldson himself to keynote the conference as well as the ever inspiring (real) David Cameron. I also attended Frank Crawford’s excellent workshop on managing change.

Whilst most of the messages from the day were inspiring and encouraging for someone like myself who is working hard on the route to Chartered Teacher Status, it was frustrating that despite all of these positive messages there is an ever looming gloomy backdrop to the future of the programme. It is clear from the conference that there is a consensus that the attributes outlined in the standard for Chartered Teacher are the right ones for the future of Scotland’s (and indeed the world’s) teaching profession. There was also a common theme of these attributes needing to be espoused by the entire profession, not just a minority who are financially rewarded for doing so. I understand and share this point of view. The big question however for me is, how do we get there?

Could we get there by growing on the successes of the Chartered Teacher programme and developing it for the future? Could McCormac work with the GTCS, Universities and ACTS to develop a long-term programme for transition to this ideal? Could we capture the enhanced capacity of those teachers and lecturers who have undertaken and led the programmes and use them to help spread this enhanced professionalism until it is no longer seen as enhanced?

Or shall we stop those who want to become enhanced practitioners from getting involved? Shall we prevent those who have already invested significant portions of their own time and money from completing what they’ve started? Shall we remove the goodwill and enthusiasm from those who were willing to be pioneers in this laudable movement? Shall we strip out the growing capacity in the schools and the Universities to support the development of a 21st Century teaching profession for Scotland? Shall we limit the professional development of today’s teachers to the detriment of today’s, as well as tomorrow’s, learners?

Unfortunately it would appear that we’ve opted for the latter…

Some thoughts on formative assessment

30/01/2011 active learning, assessment, cfe, change, Featured, learning communities, reflection 2 comments

Are your traffic lights doing anything? What happens after your two stars and a wish? Do your pupils listen to their peers?

For some time now I’ve been concerned by the frequent utterance of the phrase “AifL is embedded”. There is often a perception that schools and teachers did all that work sharing formative assessment techniques as part of the AifL programme, and now we’re onto CfE so all is fine. I’ve often struggled to articulate my concerns with this point of view…but I’m clear that I have not fully embedded all aspects of the AifL triangle into my practice and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. I’ve also demonstrated in the past that BtC5 raises the bar in terms of expectations of pupil involvement in assessment.

A couple of things recently have really helped clarify my thoughts on this. Firstly, I’m very lucky to be working with Myra Young to develop some Assessment & Moderation Circles with Secondary Teachers in East Lothian. She has a great way of describing the difference between formative assessment and formative assessment techniques. For example, if your pupils peer assess each others work with traffic lights then while this has the potential to be formative it only becomes formative if the recipient of the feedback does something with it. They need to make a change and learn from it. Otherwise you have a multicoloured piece of peer summative assessment. Likewise, if you give the pupils a prelim examination and then provide an opportunity to reflect on this and improve as a result – then this is formative assessment.

I think perhaps we have too often allowed the techniques to become synonymous with ‘formative assessment’ and we’ve forgotten that doing the techniques isn’t enough – the pupils need to learn from them.

This weekend, I’ve also discovered a fantastic Research Briefing from the TLRP programme which addresses this issue also. In it they state:

Assessment for Learning helps teachers promote learning how to learn in ways which are in line with their own values, and reduces excessive performance orientation. But it is difficult to shift from reliance on specific techniques to practices based on deep principles.

Advice on Assessment for Learning techniques is useful to teachers in the short term. But progressive professional development requires teachers to re-evaluate their beliefs about learning, the way they structure tasks, and the nature of their classroom roles and relationships.

From TLRP RB17: Learning how to learn – in classrooms, schools and networks

That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say. AifL provided many of us with the techniques, but CfE is asking us to take the next step to deeper principles. How do we do this? The Research Briefing suggests:

Classroom-focused inquiry by teachers is a key condition for promoting learner autonomy.

Sound familiar?

Can involving pupils in planning learning experiences improve learner engagement in lessons in S1?

09/01/2011 active learning, cfe, Featured, learning communities, MEd 4 comments

I’m pleased to report that I have passed my latest MEd module! This module involved writing a proposal for a collaborative professional enquiry to be carried out in August/September 2011. I don’t feel able to share the whole proposal on here (and I’m not sure you’d want to read it all!), so I thought I would extract a few edited excerpts to give you the drift…

Summary

There is an increasing expectation on teachers that the young people in their classes will be engaged in their own learning. These expectations are set by schools, national policies and increasingly by the young people themselves. For many teachers achieving learner engagement within the confines of a curriculum still poses a major challenge. The aim of this enquiry is to investigate whether involving pupils in the process of planning their learning can provide an opportunity for them to become more engaged. This will be carried out by a group of teachers from different curricular areas working with S1 pupils from August 2011. The teachers will start a topic of learning differently by asking the pupils for their ideas on what and how they will learn.

What’s the rationale?

The aim of this enquiry is to improve pupil engagement in lessons through involving them in planning learning experiences.

My interest in involving pupils in planning learning experiences arose initially from an evaluation of my practice against policies outlined as part of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). Early in 2009 I became increasingly enthusiastic to begin to make changes to my practice as a result of the momentum behind CfE. However, at the time I was struck by the lack of clear support and guidance for teachers as to what it was we were to change.

At this time the most current policy document available was ‘Building the Curriculum 3: A framework for learning and teaching’ (Scottish Government 2008). There were numerous possible areas for development of my practice arising from the text, however there was one in particular which I felt was largely absent from my classroom. This is summarised as:

“all learners should be involved in planning and reflecting on their own learning”
(Scottish Government 2008, p.27)

I felt that this was not common practice in my classroom and so I decided to make this my focus. I had also already noticed that the learners in my classroom, at all stages, had become heavily reliant on me and had little ownership of their own learning and assessment. I realised that although this reliance resulted in efficient coverage of the content it did not ensure that the pupils were developing the understanding or skills one would expect of young people working towards the four capacities which serve as the purpose of CfE (Scottish Government 2008, p.22).

As a result I decided to radically alter my approach to planning for one of my S1 biology classes for the remainder of that session. I tried to involve them in the process by asking them to plan the content, activities, assessment and success criteria for a topic. I shared and reflected upon this process on my blog, which I use as an electronic learning journal (Kelly 2009). I was overwhelmed at the time by the impact this change in approach had with the pupils in the class, and amongst those in the profession who read my blog. I intend to develop and expand this approach through this collaborative professional enquiry.

It is the purpose of this enquiry to investigate the impact involving pupils in planning learning can have on their engagement in the process, and ultimately on their learning. My intention is to carry out this enquiry with a small group of teachers from a variety of curricular areas which I believe will have a substantial benefit to their professional development as well as my own.

What’s the context?

As already stated, CfE clearly sets out the need to involve learners in their learning in ‘Building the Curriculum 3’ (Scottish Government 2008, p.27). This message has since been reinforced by subsequent policy documents (Learning & Teaching Scotland 2009, p.13; Scottish Government 2010, p.19), including an explicit emphasis on engaging and involving learners in approaches to assessment as the top priority in the recent summary of ‘Building the Curriculum 5’ (Learning & Teaching Scotland 2010, p.4). The concept of involving pupils in decisions regarding their learning pre-dates CfE in policy terms given that this was one of the principles underpinning ‘Assessment is for Learning’ (Scottish Executive 2005, p.2). Much of this policy is based upon formative assessment literature, which also identifies the need to take risks and “relinquish control” (Clarke 2005, p.12). However, despite the successes of ‘Assessment is for Learning’ HM Inspectorate of Education in Scotland still stated that one of the areas for improvement for secondary schools as:

“Engaging all young people actively in learning, giving each a sense of personal responsibility for their own learning and encouraging them to think independently and creatively.” (HM Inspectorate of Education 2009, p.46)

This resonates with my own experience also. Whilst many secondary teachers, including myself, have begun to use some of the techniques associated with formative assessment very few have gone so far as to involve learners in the process to the extent that they have genuine responsibility for the learning taking place in classrooms.

In addition to policy encouraging the involvement of pupils in the learning process, there are others who promote this approach also. In fact, this view of pedagogy is not a new one. Paulo Freire explains the need for a shift in education through teachers and students who “become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow” (Freire 1970, p.61). Head (2003) uses a social constructivist view of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development to explain the effectiveness of collaboration in learning. Based on this he argues for the creation of communities of learners where “teacher and pupils agree on areas and themes for research within an overall context” (Head 2003, p.59).

More recently, Guy Claxton (2008) uses what we know about learning to suggest that if we want our pupils to be “powerful learners” we need to provide them with opportunities to be “creative”, have “courage”, “explore and investigate”, “experiment”, have “imagination”, “reason”, be “social” and “reflective” (Claxton 2008, p.122-126) all of which could be provided by giving them greater responsibility for their learning.

Whilst there are many others who also make this case for a greater involvement for learners in their learning (Hopkins 2000; Rudduck 2003; Higgins et al 2008), not everyone agrees. Johnson (2004) thoroughly criticises the concept of “Personalised Learning” as put forward by the UK Government of the time. I feel that he starts with the extreme assumption that personalised learning means that every child is following a completely different curriculum from each other, which I do not envisage being the case. I intend to involve learners in the planning process, but only allow personalisation and choice at the individual level where it is practically possible. Skinner (2010) is critical of another aspect of this pedagogy. He suggests that “constructivism ignores much normal learning, disparages direct teaching and fails to match schooling realities” and goes on to suggest that teachers and learners need to develop the skills required in what he describes as the “four modes” of learning (Skinner 2010, p.23). I think that Skinner has a point when he suggests that we should not rely on one approach to learning due to the complex nature of learning, but also due to the reality of secondary schools in the current context. There is a danger that teachers and pupils may see this proposal as being unrealistic and unsustainable and so I intend to bear these messages in mind when developing this enquiry.

Assuming we do want to give pupils greater responsibility for the learning process, how could this be achieved in practice? Given the title, one would expect that John Loughran’s (2010) recent book might provide some ideas. However, whilst he does make a strong case for giving students responsibility for their own learning (Loughran 2010, p.49) much of the remainder of the book is still very teacher-centred. Surprisingly, when describing the strategies required of learners to develop their metacognitive skills of “planning, monitoring and evaluating” he still discusses the use of these strategies in the context of completing “a set task” (Loughran 2010, p.143). In my experience, supporting pupils to develop these skills within a set task is not new and has limited success. This enquiry is interested in the extent to which young people can become involved in setting the task in the first place.

Chris Watkins (2005) makes the case for developing what he describes as “classrooms as learning communities” and gives some ideas as to how to achieve this in practice. Again, Watkins (2005) develops his case from the standpoint of social constructivism, or as he simplifies it “learning = building knowledge through doing things with others” (Watkins 2005, p.17) but in his book, he goes on to suggest possible approaches to achieving this, including:

“it is possible to consider how pupils might make classroom choices on:

  • what they learn;
  • how they learn;
  • how well they learn;
  • why they learn.

And on each of these dimensions there could be more or less significant choices made.”
(Watkins 2005, p.76-77)

This list bears a striking, and coincidental, similarity to the opportunities I provided with my S1 biology class in 2009 when I asked them to contribute to the planning of “content, activities, assessment and success criteria”. I intend to use these overlapping lists of areas for pupil choice when developing this intervention. The topic will be set by the teacher in each case, but pupils will have opportunities to contribute to these dimensions within the set topic. For the purposes of this proposal, this is what I mean by “planning learning experiences”.

What, however is meant by learner engagement? Harris (2010) provides a very useful account of student engagement. She classifies two types of student engagement: engagement in schooling and engagement in learning (Harris 2010). Harris argues that much of the literature on student engagement, such as the 2003 OECD report (Willms 2003), focuses on behavioural engagement. She goes on to point out that if we are interested in improvements in student learning we should be focusing instead on cognitive engagement. As a result of her work with secondary teachers Harris (2010) has a developed a continuum of engagement with associated approaches to achieving these levels of engagement. I have summarised these in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Continuum of Learner Engagement (What) and how teachers
can achieve these levels of engagement (How). Adapted from Harris (2010).

I have found this continuum to be useful and as such this is what I mean by “Learner Engagement” or the purposes of this proposal.

What will be different?

In order to involve pupils in the planning process, it is necessary for teachers to begin a topic of learning differently. Rather than informing the pupils of the title of the topic and proceeding with their plan, instead pupils are led through a process which supports them to contribute their own ideas. It is envisaged that this planning phase will last for approximately two one-hour lessons with the following structure:

Lesson 1

Setting the scene. Stimulating images and questions are displayed to generate discussion as a class surrounding the area of learning to be covered in the topic.
What do we know already? Pupils work in groups to complete an activity designed to draw out what they already know about this topic.
Homework. Between the two lessons pupils are set the task of listing the questions they would expect to be answered through this topic.

Lesson 2

Explaining the task. Teacher explains to the class that the purpose of the lesson is for each group to draw up a plan for the topic, which will be amalgamated by the teacher. It is crucial that at this point the teacher clarifies that there will only be one plan for the whole class, and the final decision for what takes place rests with the teacher.
Linking to the Curriculum. The teacher shares the chosen experiences and outcomes which this topic should address with the class. The experiences and outcomes can be modified and rewritten to make them accessible to the pupils.
Planning the topic. Each group is given a large sheet of paper and tasked with using what they already know, the questions they wrote for homework and the experiences and outcomes to produce a plan for the topic under the following headings:

  • What is the title of your topic?
  • Why should we learn about this?
  • What do you already know about this topic?
  • Which questions do you intend to explore?
  • How will you go about exploring these questions week by week?
  • What skills do you think you will develop through this topic?
  • How will you share what you have learnt from this topic?
  • What will be the criteria for success?

This lesson concludes with each group attaching their plan to the wall and the teacher beginning to formulate a joint plan through whole class discussion.

How will the enquiry be evaluated?

Through this enquiry I intend to answer three interrelated questions. These enquiry questions are:

  1. Can pupils become more involved in planning their own learning?
  2. Can pupil involvement in planning learning increase engagement in lessons?
  3. Can pupil involvement in planning learning improve learning outcomes?

I hope to carry out a baseline “Learning Survey” in January 2011 electronically with the current S1 pupils at the school, and also amongst the P7 pupils in the cluster primary schools. This survey is adapted from Watkins (2005) and is intended to gauge the extent to which pupils feel in charge of their learning. I intend to use this information for two purposes. Firstly, this will inform the direction of the intervention as the scores will indicate whether pupils currently feel ownership of their learning or not, and should therefore provide some justification for the enquiry and assist in the recruitment of colleagues to the group. However, I also intend to use these results as a baseline to which I can compare the pupils involved in the enquiry. By carrying out this same survey with the pupils in the classes involved at the end of the intervention, I will be to evaluate whether the pupils now feel that they have a greater sense of ownership over their learning compared with their own cohort, and compared to the previous S1 cohort. This will assist in the answering of the first of my enquiry questions.

In addition to the results from this survey, I will also be able to gauge the extent to which pupils can become involved in planning their learning through the items produced as part of the planning process. By comparing the plan which the classes followed to the teacher’s plan from the previous year, and the group work from lesson two, it should be possible to determine the extent to which the learning experiences changed from the previous year and how much of this was a result of the pupils’ ideas. I expect that these changes will also be highlighted by the teachers themselves when we meet to discuss the intervention at it the end of the topic. I also intend to develop a topic evaluation for the pupils to complete in conjunction with the other teachers in the group. This is relatively common practice in the school already, but I will need to ensure that the evaluations used in this topic are relevant to the enquiry questions. For example, most evaluations used in the school currently do not make reference to pupil involvement or engagement, so questions will need to be developed accordingly in conjunction with the other teachers.

Given the complexity of involving learners in planning and evaluating pupil engagement, I also intend to carry out semi-structured interviews with a sample of pupils from each of the classes involved. Burton & Bartlett (2005, p.109) suggest that less structured interviews are useful when the emphasis is on the respondent’s own account which is exactly what I hope to achieve through these interviews. The learning survey described above is heavily structured and quite limiting in terms of allowing pupils the scope to express their own thoughts on the process, which I hope to address through these interviews. I intend to ask the teachers to identify three pupils from their class to be interviewed – the three should represent the range of opinions and involvement in the class where possible. I would welcome the teachers to carry out the interviews themselves, but will offer to do them to reduce the burden on their time. I intend to interview and record the pupils in these groups of three rather than individually. This is based on my own experience of a prior intervention in which I interviewed three pupils separately. I found as a result that the pupils often struggled to communicate their thoughts, particularly on those complex issues which have led me to choose to interview them. I quite often found myself ‘leading’ these interviews much more than I intended. It is hoped that by interviewing them in groups they will stimulate each other to express their thoughts. I intend to use the outcomes from this interview to answer all three of the enquiry questions and will semi-structure the interviews around these very questions.

In order to assess the level of engagement achieved through this intervention I intend to classify the responses from the teachers and pupils involved against Harris’ (2010) continuum of learner engagement.

In addition to the pupil evaluations and interviews already discussed, further evidence will be required in order to address the third enquiry question. In order to assess whether the pupils’ learning outcomes have been improved through the intervention it will be necessary to gather the assessment items from the topic and compare them to the previous year. I do not intend to ask the teachers to administer the same assessment which they used the previous year as this would not be appropriate given that the pupils need to have a say in how they are to be assessed. A comparison between the two years will therefore naturally be limited. I will therefore be reliant on the professional judgements of the teachers to assess any improvements in learning outcomes which they feel have resulted through the intervention. I intend to gather these judgements when we meet as a group at the end of the enquiry.

References

Burton, D. and Bartlett, S. (2005) Practitioner Research for Teachers. London, Paul Chapman Publishing

Clarke, S. (2005) Formative Assessment in the Secondary Classroom. London, Hodder Murray

Claxton, G. (2008) What’s the Point of School: Rediscovering the heart of education. Oxford, Oneworld

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 2nd ed. London, Penguin

Harris, L. (2010) Secondary teachers’ conceptions of student engagement: Engagement
in learning or in schooling? Teaching and Teacher Education, doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.09.006

Head, G. (2003) Effective collaboration: deep collaboration as an essential element of the learning process. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 4 (2) pp. 47-62

HM Inspectorate of Education (2009) Improving Scottish Education 2005-2008. www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/ise09.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Higgins, S., Sebba, J., Robinson, C. and Mackrill, D. (2008) Personalising learning: the learner perspective and their influence on demand. http://research.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=14551 [accessed 28 November 2010]

Hopkins, D. (2000) Powerful Learning, Powerful Teaching and Powerful Schools. Journal of Educational Change, 1 pp. 135–154

Johnson, M. (2004) Personalised Learning – an Emperor’s Outfit? London, Institute for Public Policy Research

Kelly, F. (2009) Having a bash at a Curriculum for Excellence. Blog entry. www.fkelly.co.uk/2009/04/having-a-bash-at-a-curriculum-for-excellence/ [accessed 28 November 2010]

Learning and Teaching Scotland (2009) Building the Curriculum 4: Skills for learning, skills for life
and skills for work. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/BtC4_Skills_tcm4-569141.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Learning and Teaching Scotland (2010) A Summary of Building the Curriculum 5: A framework for assessment. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/btc5_tcm4-605259.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Loughran, J. (2010) What Expert Teachers Do: Enhancing professional knowledge for classroom practice. Abingdon, Routledge

Rudduck, J. (2003) Research Briefing 5: Consulting Pupils About Teaching and Learning. London, TLRP

Scottish Executive (2005) Assessment is for Learning Information Sheet. www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/09/20105413/54164 [accessed 28 November 2010]

Scottish Government (2008) Building the Curriculum 3: A framework for learning and teaching. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/building_the_curriculum_3_jms3_tcm4-489454.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Scottish Government (2010) Building the Curriculum 5: A framework for assessment. www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/BtC5_assess_tcm4-582215.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

Skinner, D. (2010) Let the Four Modes Lead Our Way Forward. Times Educational Supplement Scotland. 26 November, p.23

Watkins, C. (2005) Classrooms as Learning Communities: What’s in it for schools? Abingdon, Routledge

Willms, J. D. (2003) Student Engagement at School: A Sense of Belonging and Participation, Results from PISA 2000. www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/35/33689437.pdf [accessed 28 November 2010]

ePLC

26/09/2010 cfe, change, learning communities, reflection, TeachMeet 6 comments

I’ve had this idea growing since TeachMeet the other night when I facilitated one of the World Cafe discussions around the following question.

How do we genuinely involve pupils in their learning and assessment?

You can see the outcomes of the discussion here.

The reason I asked this question is that I think that developing this aspect of our practice as teachers, particularly in the Secondary context, is a major challenge and the key to successfully implementing Curriculum for Excellence. I was very struck by the animated and rich discussion which occurred at TeachMeet…it would appear that I am not alone in pondering this question. In fact, I know of many others from twitter & blogs who have been not only considering this – but trying out ways to address this issue.

As well as giving some thought to this, I’m also currently doing a lot of reading around the notion of Collaborative Professional Enquiry / Collaborative Professional Learning / Professional Learning Communities / Group Action Research. This is primarily to aid me in my work towards my CTeach MEd which I’ve recently returned to after a year out.

So the idea that has arisen from these thought processes is –

Can we create an ePLC [electronic Professional Learning Community] to work together to develop our knowledge of this key issue?

I’m sure many would argue that many informal professional learning communities of sorts already exist through twitter and the blogosphere. But what I’m talking about here is setting up a much more formal group of 5/6 teachers to carry out a piece of collaborative professional enquiry. This could be around something like the following question?

What impact does involving pupils in planning their learning and assessment have?

I have a bit of a problem at the minute in that I don’t have a class just now, but I would be happy to facilitate the community – i.e. arrange meetings, share readings, administer file sharing, contribute to discussions etc.

What do you think? This may well be happening already elsewhere, but if so I haven’t encountered it. It could take our electronic professional interactions to a new level…? Can you imagine a more exciting form of CPD?

Catch Up with CPDMeet11

13/09/2010 cfe, change, learning communities No comments

Did you miss my CPDMeet? Not to worry, you can catch it above!

Subject Learning Communities

28/10/2009 learning communities 15 comments

Image from lumaxart

Although Curriculum for Excellence requires us as secondary teachers to make greater efforts to offer our students more interdisciplinary experiences and to place a greater emphasis on the development of their skills, there will still always be a role for subject specialists in the secondary school. It is important to remember that the changes under CfE should be a shift. A correction in balance. A movement towards. It should not be a pendulum swing. We need to find the right balance between subject content knowledge and interdisciplinary learning & skill development, not jump from one extreme to the other.

With this in mind, how can subject specialist teachers be supported to implement and develop Curriculum for Excellence in their subject? More than changing the content of the curriculum, Curriculum for Excellence is about changing teachers’ approach to learning in their classrooms. It is about returning some of the freedom and autonomy which teachers need if they are to operate as professionals. With this in mind, we need a new approach to the way we as teachers are supported through curricular change. Rather than attending courses/seminars/conferences which are led by ‘experts’ and taking away the materials produced by these so called ‘experts’, we need to begin to see ourselves as the experts and work together to implement the changes we feel need to be implemented in the way we know they should be implemented. This was true before the financial crisis, but now we have no choice as the old model is unaffordable.

How could this work? We could group ourselves into small ‘learning communities’ of no more than about eight teachers from various schools. We would share a common interest, which we would most likely already be working on either on our own or in our departments. This shared interest could be something like using formative assessment to improve learning, using the web in our subject, effective use of homeworks, transition from P7 to S1 in our subject, delivering literacy experiences and outcomes, using active learning in Higher, using outdoor learning in S1/2…the list is endless. We would come together in our community to evaluate our current progress, possibly even sharing evidence such as pupils work/photos/video/record of observations. From this the community would come up with ideas for improvement and decide who will try which idea and how we will know which ideas have been successful. The community could meet regularly, either in person or online, to discuss and support. When evidence has been gathered this can be shared and discussed to decide whether the intervention has been successful. Outcomes from the community could be shared more widely online. The community could continue looking at the same area into the future, or could migrate onto another focus, or could even break apart and the members could move onto form other communities. The communities would be fluid and owned by the teachers in them, not the Local Authority.

When would we meet? In East Lothian, there are already two Friday afternoons allocated to subject support meetings. I would like to see these allocated to the learning communities instead to allow them at least two two-hour meetings per year. However, given that the learning community could become one of the most substantial forms of CPD available to teachers, this could easily take up much of the 35 hours of CPD time allocated to teachers. Assuming an active community met for an hour each month and for every meeting each teacher was doing an hour of work, such as reading/preparing activities/gathering evidence/reflecting on progress (which is likely to take more than hour per month), then that’s 20 of the 35 hours gone!

Who would coordinate this? The underlying principle of the communities is that there is no appointed leader or expert. Each member is an equal participant. However, we all know that it is much more likely for something to happen if there is someone to encourage and motivate the others. I would therefore like to propose the training of facilitators for the communities. A community could have more than one person who had attended the facilitator training – which might in fact be beneficial. The facilitator’s main role would be to ensure the community maintains its focus in working together to develop and evaluate solutions. They should not be expected to organise/chair all of the meetings or upload everything to whatever web tool the community is using. Their training would involve exploring the principles of learning communities, models of reflective practice, roles of a facilitator and how the web could be used to support the community. Initially, this training will need to be delivered by the local authority. Perhaps in the long-term some facilitators could take on this role?

Who would want to be a facilitator? Facilitators would not be paid any extra, so why would they want to do it? Some may want the opportunity of attending the training. Some may feel that learning communities are a good idea and wish to support them. There are very few leadership opportunities in schools these days, this would provide an experience which could be used towards career development. It could also be a great opportunity for Chartered Teachers and those on the Chartered Teacher programme to use and share their knowledge and skills with colleagues. I would hope that Principal Teachers would join communities but would not become facilitators – this should be an opportunity for others.

If this sort of work will be happening in other local authorities, won’t we all just be reinventing the wheel? This term ‘reinventing the wheel’ is being used more and more frequently just now – I’m hearing it a lot. I really dislike it. It is used to suggest that rather than all of us working to develop solutions, we should do nothing and allow someone else to solve it for us. For me, this approach is not in keeping with an empowered and autonomous profession. If we develop our own solutions we will have ownership over these solutions and they are much more likely to be appropriate to our own schools. We certainly should not be working in isolation, we should be looking for ideas from our colleagues. These colleagues could be in our school, our local authority, other local authorities, National bodies (such as LTS, HMIE, SSERC etc), colleagues in other countries, books and research journals. And in return, we could be sharing our own ideas, and their success, with these colleagues. However, we should not be sitting back and waiting to be given the answers.

These ideas aren’t new. Much of this stems from Dylan Wiliam’s ideas for implementing AifL and there are many examples in the literature of these communities being used in the USA & Canada. What do you think? Will it work here? Will it work for CfE implementation?

Training

15/01/2009 cfe 2 comments

Ewan recently highlighted the news that we are to receive “one additional day’s training a year over the next three years to help introduce the new school curriculum.” He rightly points out that this doesn’t seem like a lot for what we will be attempting to do – especially on tight budgets.

However, I suppose an extra day is better than none. Given that we must accept what we’re offered, I think we also need to turn our thoughts to the nature of the training. As we have limited time available, it’s crucial that it is used to the best effect. I would like to see some strategic plans being developed now for how we’re to implement this curriculum reform – including the use of these extra training days.

Even if the decision taken centrally was “it’s up to teachers/departments/faculties to decide how to implement CfE and what they’d like to do with the available training time”, then at least we could get stuck in.

My major concern that this time next year, someone will be tasked at the last minute to deliver something on CfE to fill these extra days, and we’ll all be sat in assembly halls watching powerpoints emblazoned with those lovely sounding four capacities…

Back to blogging

10/01/2009 reflection No comments

I’ve had a bit of an unplanned break from posting here for a little while. Do to a variety of reasons, I wasn’t able to spend as much time on my assignment for my Chartered Teacher module as I would’ve liked to last term. As a result, I spent much of the holidays chained to my desk. I was therefore relieved to submit it on Sunday night, before the new term started. Unfortunately, the blogging slipped during this big push – I hope I haven’t lost you all?

Last time I submitted, I said that I would try to post my work online before submission in future. As you’ll notice, I still haven’t done this. It seems to be step I’m struggling to make – sharing my work publicly before I’ve actually passed. Not sure how to get around this one…?

Anyway, Happy New Year to you, and I’m looking forward to more communicative 2009.