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- Herausgeber: Independent Thinking Press
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Serie: Perfect series
- Sprache: Englisch
All successful schools have one thing in common - they are full of brilliant teachers. This doesn't happen by chance. If schools are to develop their teachers into first rate reflective and high performing practitioners, they need a varied and personalised CPD programme - based on collaboration and sharing best practice. This book looks at how schools can move away from the 'one size fits all' approach to CPD that still exists in a number of schools, to a CPD programme that will appeal to a range of teachers, unlocking the potential that exists within the staffroom. It's about excellence from within.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Contents
Acknowledgements
I have been fortunate enough to work with a number of excellent school leaders and teachers over the years, many of whom have influenced what I have written about in this book – so thank you all. I would like to thank two people in particular who have influenced, supported and encouraged me in recent years.
Firstly, Sue Marooney, my current head teacher at Durrington High School and friend. Sue is an inspiration to all, with the most remarkable vision, drive and ambition for school improvement. Her commitment to excellence for every young person is unswerving. Secondly, my deputy head colleague and friend, Jane Squires. Jane is brilliant. She just gets it! Everything! Sue and Jane have been a huge support to me and I cannot thank them enough. I am incredibly fortunate to have them as friends and colleagues.
My gorgeous wife, Lianne, and my four wonderful children, May, Finn, Eve and Jude, continue to inspire me and make me smile every day. Lastly, of course, a huge thank you to my lovely mother, Joyce Allison, who always told me that school was important!
Shaun Allison @shaun_allison
Foreword
A school is only as good as its teachers. With the relentless focus in recent years on teaching and learning, as well as outcomes, this has never been more true. It has led us all to think in new ways about how to improve the classroom experience for children – and teachers. It is teachers who make the difference to children’s life chances, so the quest to get more good and outstanding teachers in front of children is a key challenge for all school leaders.
One of the most crucial – and most rewarding – jobs in a school is to be in charge of teacher training and development, encouraging individuals to continue to learn and grow. This book has been written by someone who has been doing that very job with flair, enthusiasm and passion, and it seeps through every page. It is full of very practical ideas to create a culture in your school where every member of staff becomes continuously curious about learning and engaged in action research about what works best to help our learners. After all, putting teachers in charge of their own development is at the heart of great school leadership.
Continuing professional development has changed radically in the last ten years. Genuine collaborative learning is taking place via TeachMeets (where teachers from various schools share real classroom experiences), learning visits to other schools, learning forums, research projects and peer coaching, all of which are becoming increasingly integral to staff development. School leaders are also taking performance management procedures from being an over-formal paper exercise to being a live, ongoing process that really contributes to continuous improvement. CPD has started to become an essential part of the staffroom culture.
As teachers, we often breathe a metaphorical sigh of relief after the first few tough years of teaching. Suddenly we don’t have to submit all our lesson plans, get regular observation assessments or write that research piece to gain accreditation. However, we sometimes need to be reminded that the real challenges in our careers often come just when we think the students know us well, when we’ve finally got the schemes of work cracked and so begin to believe that we don’t have to work quite so hard. Shaun highlights research evidence which shows that, after the first three years of intense development, improvement can plateau. He argues that this is exactly when training and development, as part of a whole-school culture, will make the difference between a school that ‘requires improvement’ and one that is continually improving.
Many schools would benefit from a comprehensive guide to making CPD really deliver staff improvement – and this is exactly what Shaun has produced. He describes a mix-and-match approach that offers real, individualised development, which is actually owned by the teachers and anchored firmly in the values and vision of the school. It couldn’t be more relevant, at a time when teachers are leaving the profession because of the pressures of a constantly changing agenda and what feels like relentless political interference.
Schools have the chance to seize the day and take control of their own journey towards improvement. Whatever your school type, phase or location, there are gems here that will inspire you to create CPD that works.
Good luck!
Jackie Beere, Tiffield
Introduction
Schools are enigmatic. They are complex communities that are both unique and similar. Mission statements will vary from school to school but ultimately they all have the same aim: to produce happy, confident and successful young people. So, the key question has to be, why are some schools better at doing this than others? School cohorts, local communities and buildings may differ, as may resources, the use of innovative technologies, class sizes and a whole range of other factors. However, the very best schools all have two things in common: great leadership and a large number of great teachers. The very best schools, then, have a relentless focus on making sure that even more of their teachers become great.
[T]he main reason that most system-wide educational reforms have failed is that they have ignored (1) the importance of teacher quality for student progress; (2) the fact that it is highly variable; and (3) that teacher quality has differential impact on different students.
Wiliam (2010: 1)
There is much research evidence to back up this assertion, but anyone who has worked in schools for any length of time will know that there is a direct correlation between the success of a particular school and the number of talented teachers in the staffroom. What do these great teachers look like? Well, while preparing a leaving speech for a very well-respected colleague recently, I asked Andrew, a Year 8 student, what made my colleague such a great teacher. His response summed it up brilliantly:
He likes us, makes it fun, but still makes us work really hard and expects us to do well. He’s much cleverer than some of the other science teachers, but still makes it easy to learn. He lets us know how we’re doing.
I know the teacher that Andrew describes very well and this is spot on. His lessons are always a joy to observe and he consistently secures very strong outcomes for his students. We know that teachers like this make a positive difference to students and that the more teachers there are like this in a school, the better the school. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that after two or three years of teaching, most teachers start to plateau in terms of their classroom performance. Why? Well, being a new teacher is difficult and you have to sharpen your classroom skills very quickly if you are going to survive. Once you have mastered the basic skills to ‘get by’ in the classroom, the temptation is to sit back a bit. Alongside this, most new teachers have a mentor working with them, giving feedback on their performance and helping them to improve. In most schools, this support is not available beyond the first year of teaching. However, without feedback, performance is unlikely to improve.
Teaching has become a very pressured and much-scrutinised profession. However, I still believe very strongly that it is one of the best jobs in the world. Nothing gives me greater professional satisfaction than a teacher coming to talk to me about a new teaching strategy they have tried out in their classroom that has gone well, and which they want to develop further and share with colleagues. To me, this is what the job of school leadership is about – creating a spark that lights little individual fires of great pedagogy around the school, which then gather momentum and become an inferno of excellence! In order to do this, the continuing professional development (CPD) leader needs to:
Get teachers excited about teaching.
Get teachers talking about teaching.
Get teachers planning and evaluating their teaching together.
Get teachers observing and learning from each other.
Get teachers sharing what works with each other.
I love a challenge, and there are few things better than celebrating others overcoming challenges.
Richard Branson, @richardbranson (15 August 2013)
In their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (2011), Chip and Dan Heath describe what successful institutions do: they find what is working and do more of it. They refer to this as ‘finding the bright spots’. This simple but very important idea is the principle behind this book – find the bright spots in your school, that is the great teachers, and share what they are doing. Furthermore, find the bright spots from outside your school and bring them into your school.
This book aims to give you some ideas about how a range of CPD opportunities can be set up within your school to light your own fires of great pedagogy.
Chapter 1
Why Teachers Matter – Why CPD Matters
In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an ‘expert’ at a particular skill. For teachers, this amounts to about ten years of classroom practice. Now, the accuracy of the 10,000 hours as a definitive timeline for achieving expertise in teaching is open for discussion. However, very few of us would argue against the fact that the very best teachers refine their skills over a number of years, and certainly beyond the second or third year of their careers. However, as discussed in the Introduction, most will plateau at this point and just stick with ‘what they’ve always done’ in the classroom. This presents us with a problem. If most teachers stop getting better after two or three years, whereas in fact they should be developing their skills over ten years in order to reach an ‘expert’ level, what should we be doing as school leaders to address this ‘professional development deficit’?
The answer to this problem is relatively straightforward. We need to give staff a range of CPD opportunities that will engage, enthuse and motivate them. By this, I don’t just mean the traditional model of courses and INSET days – sat in a hall and listening to an ‘expert’ who hasn’t stepped inside a school for years. I mean a rich and varied ongoing programme of activities that staff can engage with on a number of levels and which will support them to reflect upon and develop their own practice. Teachers are the most important asset in a school, so they should be professionally developed and nurtured in a way that interests and inspires them.
As well as providing CPD opportunities, we also need to develop a culture within schools of ‘continuous improvement’. This means a school where teachers want to take risks (and feel safe in doing so), seek and try out new ideas and strategies, and discuss their work openly. It’s a school where teachers are happy and positively thrive on collaborating with and learning from each other. Providing CPD opportunities to facilitate this collaboration is the starting point. The best indicator that you’re on the right path is when it’s happening informally and frequently – at breaktime, in the corridors and by the kettle in the staffroom.
School leaders need to think about how they will achieve this within their schools. A successful CPD model uses a layered approach in which three distinct strands of CPD are operating.
BLANKET
Important development work that all teachers need to be involved in and which aligns with whole-school improvement priorities
Delivered through: INSET days, staff meetings, appraisal, etc.
OPTIONAL
A range of developmental activities that teachers can opt into, with a view to personalising their CPD and so allowing them to follow their own interests
Delivered through: 15 minute forums, IRIS observations, lesson study, peer observations, action research, coaching, school visits, etc.
DIRECTED
When staff are underperforming they are directed to engage in specific developmental, support work
Delivered through: mentoring and coaching
This approach ensures that everyone experiences the same CPD and aligns their practice with the whole-school vision, while also providing opportunities for those who want to engage at a deeper level. It also addresses the issue of underperformance. The school leadership team then needs to be committed to putting in place a range of creative activities to fill in the layers using the expertise that exists within the school. The CPD needs of any school can be met by the good practice that is already present within it. It’s just a case of seeking it out and using a variety of mechanisms to share it – and, in doing so, inspiring others.
In order to do this effectively, school leaders need to ask themselves a number of key questions:
Does your school have a shared understanding of what great teaching looks like?
Do you actively encourage all teachers to engage in an ongoing cycle of reflection and improvement?
Do leaders within the school (at all levels) discuss teaching and learning and how to make it better?
Do you know who your best teachers are? Do you know why they are so good?
Do you know who your weakest teachers are? Are you supporting them to get better?
Do you provide opportunities for other teachers to learn from these expert teachers?
Do you have a range of CPD opportunities that staff can engage with and that allow them to learn from each other?
Do you encourage your teachers to seek best practice from other schools and then bring those ideas into your school?
Do you provide opportunities for teachers to follow their own professional development priorities?
Do you provide the opportunities for your teachers to engage in action research?
Do you expect all of your teachers to strive for excellence in the classroom?
