We have been approached by a number of teachers over the past few months to discuss the value of streaming students in ability groupings as a way of improving performance. There is also a big push amongst education unions to lower class sizes as a way of again improving performance of students. The logic behind such requests is that, given the increasing variance of competency that is occurring in classes (can be up to 7 years variance between students) , then reducing class sizes or streaming students in to approximate ability groups would enable a teacher to better be able to provide the point of need teaching for the students.

Rather than entering into what can be quite an emotive debate we thought we would extract what John Hattie uncovered in his synthesis of meta-analyses book Visible Learning. We have created a brief summary of the appropriate meta-analyses followed by the conclusion Hattie drew from studying the research. For more detail see his book. The effect size one would look for to decide whether it is worth pursuing is d > 0.4)

1.  Ability Grouping [14 Meta-analyses, 500 studies, Effect -Low (d = 0.12)]

• Fundamentally about whether classes are heterogeneous or homogeneous in ability of achievement
• Tracking
  • At the Upper School level about undertaking different courses
  • At the Middle School level students normally tracked in some subjects (normally English and Maths) and not in others
  • At Earlier Levels typically students take the same subjects as each other but the orientation or pacing of the instruction is intended to match the differing ability levels of the students
• Essence of the research shows that tracking has minimal effects on learning outcomes and profound negative equity effects
• However, there was also qualitative evidence that low track classes (i.e for lower competency students) were more fragmented, less engaging, and taught by fewer well-trained teachers. This points to the quality of teaching and the nature of the student interactions as the key issues not the compositional structure of the classes.
• Hattie points out that there might be some benefits if the lower tracked classes were taught by well-trained teachers and were more stimulating and challenging.

2.       Multi-Grade / Multi-Age Classes [3 Meta-Analyses, 94 studies, Effect -Low (d = 0.04)]

• Multi-age classes include students from more than one year level who are taught in the same classroom by the same teacher. This is common in small schools, developing nations, and also by some schools to allow for “more flexible grouping and learning styles, and having students work cooperatively and collaboratively”
• Research essentially shows that no significant difference to single-grade results in achievement or affective outcomes
• Part of issue is that teacher rarely capitalise on the multi-grade or multi-age arrangement to promote learning to from peers. Instead they tend to teach distinctly different curricula, maintain grade levels, and deliver separate lessons to each grade-level group

3.       Within-Class Grouping [2 Meta-Analyses, 129 studies, Effect – Low (d = 0.16)]

• Defined as “a teacher’s practice of forming groups of students of similar ability within an individual class”
• Research showed for high ability students (d ~ 0.29) compared to the remaining students (d ~ 0.16)
• It is more beneficial for large class sizes (> 35 students gives d = 0.35) than smaller classes (< 26 students gives d = 0.06 – 0.22)
• The beneficial effects are more associated with small group learning and instruction

4.       Small-Group Learning [2 Meta-Analyses, 78 studies, Effect – Medium (d = 0.49)]

• This differs from within-class grouping in that it typically involves assigning a task to a small group and then expecting them to complete this task (only research done is at tertiary level)
• Small group learning had significantly more positive effects than individual learning when
  • Students had group work experience or instruction
  • Cooperative learning strategies were employed
  • Group size was small
  • Small group learning led to greater self-esteem among undergraduate students

John Hattie’s Summary of the effects of grouping (page 95)

• “… that instructional materials and the nature of instruction must be adapted to these specific groups”
• “Simply placing students in small or homogeneous groups is not enough”
• “For grouping to be maximally effective materials and teaching must be varied and made appropriately challenging to accommodate the needs of students at their differing levels of ability”

Final Note

One note that we must add in to this if your school is going down the path of grouping students in some fashion of form. This is a school structural issue that is not addressed in the research. One of the barriers we have found to make such groupings work is the timetables. If you are going to provide the appropriate teacher resources and skills to this model then schools really need to address their fundamental timetabling structures and how they use teacher resources within a school. This is a particularly thorny issue in secondary schools as teachers are quite often teaching across many year levels and timetables are scheduled to suit this need rather than student learning needs. Most secondary schools would need to explore how they are going to manage their staff structures and budget.

An example of a timetable we saw in a New Zealand school (Years 5 – 10) allowed for groupings (and thus allowed for the placing of teacher experience and resources at the points of need) is shown below. Notice that the day is broken into 3 blocks and the actual time assigned to particular KLA would be up to the team of teachers.

In the previous blog post I shared that we need to develop new measurement and teacher development approaches that would actually lead to improvement in teacher performance rather than destroying it (as standardised test results appear to be doing).

In today’s posting I am going to explore the thinking behind the 3 rubrics I have co-created with one Australian school as an approach to supporting the development of teacher performance. A warning to you however, I am not saying this is THE ANSWER. This is one well-thought out approach. I invite you to learn what you learn from this!

Intention of the Performance Framework

The school had 3 major intentions for developing the teacher performance framework:

1. To promote a culture of learning that considers the needs of the 21^st century learner (our clients)
2. To ensure that all staff are driven by a common pedagogy and pastoral care that is firmly rooted in their values.
3. To provide a performance framework based on the Australian National Standards for Teachers that supports:

• teacher self-evaluation
• clarity around expectations, key work tasks and the necessary capabilities
• the identification, link to resources, and structured supportive coaching for areas requiring improvement
• the acknowledgement of excellence
• the development of a formal policy for managing unsatisfactory performance
• the alignment of employee behaviour with organisational behaviour
• the building of capacity that leads to outstanding performance

The Three Teacher Performance Rubrics

The three rubrics we co-created (and are still in draft form) are as follows:

1. Personal Capacity – Emotional Intelligence Rubric
2. Relationships Capacity – Positive Relationships Rubric
3. Pedagogical Practice – Curriculum Cohesion Rubric

As noted in the previous blog posting, a teacher can have some performance by being strong in one or two of the framework areas but the greatest performance will occur when all 3 are present.

Aspects to note in the Design of the Teacher Performance Rubrics

The rubrics are designed as behavioural rubrics. What they articulate is the behaviour the teacher would be displaying at different levels of development. We are still debating the naming of the differing levels (beginning, developing, capable, and exceptional) but we are clear we will have 4 levels.

The way the rubrics are laid out is in a progression of building behaviour. For example, a teacher at the Beginning Level would display a minimum acceptable level in a particular focus area (e.g. being a team member, etc.). We discussed that in any professional environment there would be minimum expected behaviours that would allow for an educational environment to function. A teacher demonstrating a Developing Level of behaviour in a focus area would demonstrate both the Beginning Level as well as the Developing Level behaviour, and so on.

Whilst the Beginning and Developing Levels are focussed on the individual’s capacity and behaviour, the Capable Level steps teacher behaviour into the sharing of their expertise, modelling, supporting others, etc. Exceptional Level behaviour involves the teacher leading and developing the focus areas in the school. We have deliberately designed it in this form so as to drive a team-oriented value-driven culture within the school. Research performed in a range of fields (including business management areas such as the Tribal Leadership work of David Logan et al, and Jim Collins’ Good to Great) all point to the importance of developing team-oriented value-driven cultures with organisations.

The final column in the rubric articulates the working party thoughts around some specific and measurable forms of evidence that teachers could use to demonstrate that they are at a particular developmental level in the rubric. Some of these proforma don’t exist yet. The idea is that the rubrics can be used in self-evaluation performance processes and the teachers would have to consistently be gathering evidence of their performance.

You will notice that two of the rubrics require two further publications:

• Common Practices for Powerful Learning: This is a curriculum guide that covers the school’s pedagogy focuses at the time (in this case Inquiry Learning, Differentiation, and ICT for Learning). This document would list the range of different practices with detailed examples, guides, and approaches teachers would use at differing expertise levels. This idea stemmed from a Powerful Learning Guide the Victorian Education Department in Australia has produced.
• Common Practices for Building Positive Relationships: The detail and practices of how teachers can go about building positive learning environments and relationships with students.

The intention of the 2 publications would be to collect all the appropriate documentation that may be in a range of places to have 2 powerful reference handbooks so teachers are consistent and clear about what the school values and will be focussed upon.

Next Time

In Part 3 of this blog I will explore some of the thinking behind HOW the school is approaching implementing the rubrics. Also I will also address why we don’t include VAM, test scores, or specific student academic scores in the teacher performance framework. Finally I will explore how this performance framework relates to the body of research in other fields.

Feel free to give me feedback!

I have been following with much interest the blogs, news articles and debates about teacher rating occurring in the USA. Part of my interest stems from the discussion that is starting to occur in Australia, driven by our Federal Government, about teacher performance and productivity.

I want to say something upfront here … I actually believe measuring teacher performance is critical to the process of developing quality learning and teaching. However, I think that virtually every government driven approach that uses student value-added data as the key measure is flawed and will drive teacher behaviour that will destroy the great things about education and learning.

I know that I am supported by many others in the opinion about the destructive nature of the current teacher evaluation approaches.

The essence of my belief stems from three points:

1. Teaching and schools are team environments
2. Student mindset, attitudes and learning abilities have an enormous impact on their ability to perform
3. Socio-economic factors have an enormous impact on a student’s ability to perform

So rather than pointing out why this system is destructive without pointing out a possible solution, let us look to where else we could find possible approaches to measuring a teacher’s performance inside the team environment that student learning occurs.

The most highly measured teams in the world occur in sport. Whether the player plays American Football, Soccer, Australian Rules Football, Baseball, etc. a wide range of statistics are gathered. In EVERY SINGLE high performance sporting team in the world, who all have an enormous commitment and reliance on performance, one does not measure the value and performance of individual players in a team sport by the touchdowns or goals scored. You measure the value or performance of a player by their ability to perform their role – normally measured by a range of key performance indicators. The game is won by the cumulative effect and effort of the individuals delivering on their roles within the game (including dealing with the counter-strategies and plays of the opposing team).

Now drawing a link to schools and learning. The game being played is the student demonstrating the skills and understanding required by the educational system for that year level. In the case of schools the measure of success, in many teacher performance approaches, is the value-adding to students of their ability to perform on a single test on a particular day in a particular year. To win that game the team in the school must perform in their role – so that is what we must measure.

So what could we measure that would give a reasonable indication of the ability of a teacher to perform in their role?

A team’s victory is the accumulation of actions that leads to a winning score – the winning score itself is a secondary effect of those actions. In the same way the student performance is a secondary effect of the school team’s accumulated actions.

The measures would have to be based on what the teachers are directly responsible and accountable for. So what are they directly accountable for that would lead to a reasonable set of measures?

I have been inquiring into this with a working party of teachers as I support them in developing a teacher performance framework for their school. We ended up with similar thoughts to teacher performance that Bill Gates (shock horror) discussed in a recent article. After several months of work this is what we ended up with … and it makes complete sense.

A teacher is accountable for three major areas that lead to student performance as an effect:

1. Their capacity to build a professional working culture defined by aspects such as being in positive staff relationships, being a team member, being professional, and being self-reflective.
2. Their capacity to build positive relationships with students and parents defined by aspects such as role modelling, praise and encouragement, creating a safe environment, communication, encouraging risk-taking in learning, etc.
3. Their capacity to deliver the curriculum through appropriate pedagogical practices defined by aspects such as curriculum documentation, unit planning, evidence-based powerful learning practices, etc.

This can be represented by the following Venn diagram. The Venn diagram indicates that the best performance comes from the conjunction of all 3 elements. A Teacher can have some performance by being strong in one or two of the framework areas but the greatest performance will occur when all 3 are present.

If a teacher is challenged in their personal capacity to be a team member, be professional, self-reflect … then of course it would affect their ability to build relationships with students and do their job.

If a teacher is challenged in their capacity to role model and build relationships with students and parents, then it again would impact performance and delivery of curriculum.

If a teacher is challenged in their ability to apply evidence-based pedagogy, plan authentic learning units, have quality educational learning rituals in classes, this would also affect performance.

What we have done as a working party (which includes teachers, heads of departments, senior management within the school) is to create three formative rubrics that are designed to describe explicitly what the behaviour of teachers would be on key focus areas within these 3 domains.  We are currently identifying a scaffold of structures, habits, and processes that would support the development of teacher performance along the spectrum we have defined.

In my next blog I will go into the formative rubrics we have designed to support teacher development in these 3 key areas and how we are intending to use these both support building teacher capacity and measure their performance. When you see the rubrics you will be quite surprised about how empowering they can be for teachers.

Please feel free to comment on this blog. If you are interested in finding out more about our work please email me at adrian@intuyuconsulting.com.au.

“Can you consistently perform if you are not accountable for your own performance?”

In a discovery session with a group of teachers recently we explored the skills and understandings they saw missing from their year 12 students to enable them to perform well in their end of year exams. Our purpose was to use backward planning to map what would need to be developed in each of the preceding years if we were intending to support student performance at year 12.

At one point, as I was listing the ideas they were bringing up, I had a realisation. I then asked them the question above. We then discussed some of the ways they challenged the students to be accountable for their learning. The main one was as the students entered Year 11 by having the students do an assignment that was at the end of Year 12 level. The intention was to shake the perceptions of the students and have them realise that the road to performing well in the final Year 12 exams was to grow up and be accountable for their own learning journey.

I don’t know how many teachers complain about the lack of ownership of students of their learning. I do hear a lot of comments about spoon feeding and teachers needing to put in a lot of effort to support the students to develop themselves.

What I would like to suggest to you is that we need to develop structures of accountability where we gradually release responsibility for learning from the teachers to student. This is not a new idea as Vygotsky spoke of this idea 50 years ago. More recent research has back this approach for cognitive development. However I want to extend it further than just a classroom pedagogical result. How could we design learning through a student’s years such that they develop being accountable for their own performance. It isn’t our job to make them learn … that is their job.

What sort of structures could we begin to embed into the way we teach and the students learn that will naturally lead them to becoming responsible learners who are accountable for their own performance? Could we possibly plan this gradual release as a natural part of the way they learn? I believe we can but it would need teachers to think from the whole school picture not just their domain and class responsibilities.

More on this at another time, but I do want to say this is one of the tenets that we build our workshops upon.

Cathryn Stephens – Lead Educational Designer, Intuyu Consulting

The start of a new term brings with it new stationery, new ideas and a new countdown to the next school holidays! Many teachers spend the last few, precious days of their break becoming increasingly stressed out – not necessarily about the curriculum to be developed or how they will manage that difficult student/parent/colleague (insert name here) – but about the notion of ‘stress’ itself.

I used to start feeling stressed at about 3pm on the day before school went back; but that was only when I first graduated. Soon after, the stress began creeping in sooner – perhaps on the last Thursday of holidays, when we would often go into school to do some planning or to attempt to peel old labels off subject folders. As I progressed in my career (and built up a network of teacher friends), conversations about the stress of having to ‘go back to school’ and ‘OMG the holidays are almost over’ began to dominate coffee meetings, Facebook updates and phone calls. Then something happened. Something groundbreaking, brilliant and ridiculously simple! I took the time to reflect on my mindset around stress and the fact that I was literally talking myself (and possibly some colleagues) into a state of perpetual angst about having to go to work for 10 weeks at a time.

What brought this subject to mind was the status update made by a hard-working, passionate and skilled former colleague on the aforementioned social medium last night. Her declaration in anticipation of the next lot of holidays: ’Only 10 more weeks…’ led me to think that, as teachers, we perhaps need to learn to be more present, both at work and at play, and to develop our awareness of the powerful impact of the language we use and the mindset we allow ourselves to ritualise. The vast majority of teachers with whom I’ve worked have LOVED the job. They are passionate, organised, caring and highly focused. Overwhelmingly, though, they are also frequently ‘stressed’, ‘exhausted’, ‘flat-out’ and anxious. They are also dreaming of end of term drinks and permission to mentally (if not physically) capitulate in 50 working days’ time.

Our passion is supporting teachers to build, not just their pedagogical expertise, but their metacognitive skills in the service of making the lives of teachers easier, more productive – and here’s a radical notion – more enjoyable! We work with teachers to explore what motivates us – and seemingly subtle changes of habit, language and thinking that can lead to the creation of ways of being and acting that are truly transformative. To put it simply: when I made a conscious, disciplined effort to stop dialoguing with myself (and others) about ‘my stress’ and ‘my exhaustion’, I began to get some perspective on it. To see it for what it really was – a story that I was telling myself about my work and my ability, not just to ‘cope’ with it, but to actually enjoy it.

Now, none of this is to say that teachers do not experience the unique and variable stressors of a demanding, accountable profession – of course we do. My argument here is that we add unnecessarily layers of burden to our load by constantly emphasising the stress rather than developing habits and discourses to help alleviate it. Here are some leading questions to ask yourself:

• How often do you think about/discuss your level of work-related stress?
   
• What is your language like around stress? Keep a notepad handy with you for a week or two in order to track both your internal thoughts and conversations; both positive and negative. See how they balance!
   
• Who is with you when you are articulating your stress levels (the same people might indicate a pattern)
   
• What specific steps do you take on a daily/weekly/term-long basis to help manage stress?
   
• Do you set SMART goals for each term? These can help you stay on track and stay positive, even when work is at its busiest. Also, being able to track your achievements is very important to your sense of development and self-efficacy as a practitioner
   
• Is the underlying cause of your stress something other than your work? As humans, we have a tendency to ‘pile up’ those things that cause stress and anxiety; rather than clearly categorising them and creating mental boundaries between them. The discipline to do this comes when you build the ‘muscle’ of self-awareness.

These questions are designed to get you thinking about how much POWER the concept of stress currently has in your life, and to help enable you to decide if you want to adjust the ‘stress settings’. These days, I have a much healthier outlook on work and life – we work in a dynamic, challenging and richly rewarding field – but if we don’t make the time to examine our thoughts and habits, the inspiring becomes the overwhelming and you’ll just have spent another term dreaming of holidays and reaching for the fundraising
choccies in a staffroom near you. Let this term be the term you try something different – and reap the rewards.

Most of the teachers I work with, in schools all over Australia, have for some time included Learning Goals or Learning Intentions in their planning and use these with their students. Some teachers use WALT (What Are we Learning Today?) or simply begin with the phrase ‘Today I am learning to…’ In some learning spaces, the Learning Goal has a designated space on a whiteboard or noticeboard so that the students can refer to it as they work. If the learning community is further along on their journey, the teacher will make more explicit use of it – asking students to share how they’re going, having students set their own learning goals with support from the teacher and peers and making time for students to purposefully compare their learning against their learning goal and consider ‘where to next?’
What fewer learning communities are doing is breaking down the Learning Goal into chunks of skill and understanding, so that the students can step through the process in a much more explicit way. Success Criteria can provide highly effective ‘road maps’ for student learning as they unpack the Learning Goal in such a way that each skill or piece of knowledge required to fulfil it, is made clear to the student. Success Criteria are a series of ‘I can’ or ‘I am able to’ statements that allow the learner and the teacher to see how the learning of a new skill or concept breaks down from beginning to completion.

Success Criteria should form the backbone of our assessment because they allow the student to demonstrate their understanding according to very clear and specific indicators. This means a more efficient pathway from between learning and assessment for the teacher – the student is assessed against the Success Criteria that is appropriate for their point of need – and a clearer, shared understanding of what is required for success.

Some examples (at middle primary and middle secondary level):
Learning Goal: ‘To Understand how trees breathe’
Success Criteria:
• I can describe how trees breathe
• I can show how trees breathe in a drawing or diagram
• I can share one interesting fact about how trees breathe

Learning Goal: ‘To compare democracy to dictatorship using a suitable graphic organiser.’
Success Criteria:
• The graphic organiser I have chosen fits my purpose
• I am able to explain democracy and dictatorship clearly
• I have generated at least five points of comparison’
• I have supported my comparison with a combination of reliable print and e-texts

Note how the Success Criteria is written in student-friendly language, which reflects the process of co-construction of the Criteria by the student and the teacher. Developing and using Success Criteria in this way also empowers the student and they work using indicators that make sense to them, towards a Learning Goal that they have genuinely processed at a meta-cognitive level. In every school I have worked in, teachers and students who have embedded Learning goals AND Success Criteria into their routine experience higher engagement, a strong sense of empowerment and have helped create the opportunity for each student to experience success, through using a learning roadmap that is appropriate to them.

For more on using Learning goals and Success Criteria as discussed by Visible Learning guru, Professor John Hattie, read his latest book ‘Visible Learning for Teachers’ and sign up for our term 3 Visible Learning Workshops – dynamic, informative and highly practical sessions designed with real teachers in mind!

Cathryn Stephens

One of the clear facets of the Australian Curriculum is the requirement for teachers to explicitly develop skills in the students. These skills include both the subject specific skills as well as what are now termed the general capabilities (another name for interdisciplinary skills).

The challenge for teachers is figuring out HOW they are going to be more explicit about developing the required skills. Part of the challenge is that, for the most part, teachers have operated with the HOPE that students will develop the required skills by practicing or participating in activities. Well … to a certain extent this does develop the skills but in a world of performance this is insufficient.

K. Anders Ericsson has pioneered the research into deliberate practice. One of Ericsson’s core findings is that skill expertise has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times.  An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback. Another important feature of deliberate practice lies in continually practicing a skill at more challenging levels with the intention of mastering it.

One of the structures that we use as we facilitate teacher’s Australian Curriculum planning is the formative rubric. We use the structure of a formative rubric (see the Rubric Student Version and the Rubric Teacher Version) to support the teachers to unpack not only what the skill chunks are at different stages of skill development, but to provide a structure for teachers to articulate the explicit approaches they will use to develop and challenge the students. Our experience is that teachers have a ‘light bulb’ moment and suddenly it all becomes clear.

The thinking behind the formative rubric is this. Expert teachers generally know what level of skill a student is displaying in the way they are demonstrating in their work. However, this is an instinctual thing with teachers which they address when they see it. If we are going to actually support the students in developing a mastery approach we have to move this from an anecdotal ‘on-sight’ approach to explicitly articulating what it is we are looking for, the evidence that we require them to produce to demonstrate that they are at a level, and the strategies we will be using to develop their skill. Once we have captured this information suddenly the process of developing visible feedback mechanisms that the students drive becomes much easier. The result is that performance increases, the more competent students have a structure that can extend them, teacher’s have more time to support the struggling students, and the students begin to have tools that allow them to become independent learners.

It does take time to articulate it well as it challenges the teachers to get really clear about WHAT demonstrable behaviour it is they are looking for. I have attached a sample rubric for research so you can get an idea of how we unpacked one skill at a year 8 level.

Another benefit of going through the process is that the teachers suddenly realise their mastery of a particular area and can coach and give away their understandings and mastery to others. Win-Win really!

Any thoughts or comments?

The most challenging, rewarding work we do in schools happens when we have the opportunity to build a partnership with the school over time. We really love this aspect of our work. Through these partnerships we gain a deep understanding of the school’s culture and priorities, develop meaningful relationships with teachers and often we act as a consistent, driving force for change.

The advantages of having a relative outsider come into the school community are many – but one in-particular stands out to me. At a number of schools, I have reached an optimum level of integration into the landscape of the place. That is to say, I am known and familiar but am still objective enough to see the ‘big picture’ of the school. Because of this, I am able to ‘connect the dots’ of its people and culture in order to design suitable curriculum, engage teaching teams in effective planning and map the actions that will lead to culture shift over time. When speaking about this to a fellow coach recently, I referred to it as ‘standing across the street, looking into the school.’ Close enough to see everything, but with a wide enough perspective to see the whole picture. I strongly believe that there is not enough perspective in our schools – and that there is an urgent need for it. No matter how competent and skilled the internal personnel of an organisation may be, the fact remains that schools are like bubbles encasing small, intense communities that can become all-consuming to those inside them.

Our role as consultants who are practical and passionate about learning and teaching is clear in this scenario:

• Bring perspective and clarity to the development of school-wide initiatives
• Model positive, effective relationships with both leadership and teaching staff
• Bring global education experts and initiatives into the school’s sphere for discussion and application in relevant areas
• Promote a shared language of learning throughout the school community that reflects a highly consistent approach to culture and pedagogy
• Facilitate substantive conversations about developing evolving practice
• Skill the teaching team to provide progressive, differentiated challenges to students across a range of disciplines
• Support and facilitate exploration and application of teaching strategies that align with the general capabilities of the National Curriculum in order to promote deep, practical understanding of these transferable concepts
• View ourselves as lifelong learners who have as much to discover from working within a school community as we have to impart.

By modelling these practices, reinforcing the pedagogical beliefs and language that the school wants to build and nurturing real relationships with teachers, we are able to make a definitive difference. The relational aspect of teaching is often emphasised by classroom teachers and educational experts alike – and trusting relationships are undoubtedly at the core of education. But trust must also mean challenge, measured risk-taking and a strong sense of shared responsibility. This is vital when building a high performance school culture – both in terms of teacher-student relationships, and teacher-teacher relationships. As facilitators and coaches on this journey, we need to be deeply empathic towards those who are finding change confronting, but also to send high-expectation messages about accountability, openness to change and developing resilience in the process of dynamic culture shift. We are able to play this critical role because we occupy the space between school and society – and it is this ‘big picture’ view that can sustain schools through transition from what Sir Ken Robinson refers to as ‘industrial-age education’ to a twenty-first century learning community.

The final, critical piece of the coaching for change puzzle is to develop classroom teachers as coaches. One of my colleagues refers to this process as ‘doing ourselves out of a job’ and this is the ultimate indicator of our effectiveness. As we know, the best teaching is that which achieves genuine transfer of the skills we want students to build so that they can apply them to a range of real-world situations. To do as this a coach means being skilled in assisting teachers to develop the skills of meta-cognitive reflection so that they can monitor their mindsets and stay vigilant in evaluating the conscious and unconscious habits and practices that they bring to the learning space. Additionally, it requires us to be able to teach the critical skill of design to teachers so that they become strategic, innovative planners of curriculum.

At present, this seems to be the ‘missing link’ between organised professional learning and implementation of new teaching strategies. The professional conversation often ends after a ‘one off’ session and the ideas discussed remain ideas, nothing more. We must change the way we offer and access professional development so that we see consultancy as a partnership in moving the school forward and give teachers the real, ongoing support they need to be able learn, trial and reflect on their practice. If we can do this, the ‘bubble’ will burst and schools will become empowered places where people can not only see the possibility of change, but with supported, consistent effort, can embrace it with enthusiasm.

For those of you in the wider world who don’t get a chance to catch all of our newsletters I thought I would include this quick blog post to capture some of the resources that have dropped off our web page which might be useful for you. We are consistently researching and developing ideas, resources, thinking, viewpoints, templates, workshops as we work with schools. We rarely have the time to make them available to everyone (although you can buy our Resource CD from the shop which make life easier for you!). The following is a small selection of some of the materials and links you may have missed

Development of Worked Example Units

Some iPAD Learning Games

Power of Feedback Article

Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning

Four Differentiated Instruction Mistakes

The Five-by-Five Approach to Differentiation Success

Improving Teacher Practice – 6 Strategies to Improve Formative Assessment

A Culture of Leadership Jan 30 2012

Building an Exceptional Team Environment Jan 23 2012

Rubric Student Version

Rubric Teacher Version

Learning for a world of constant change revisited

What Great Teachers Do Differently

Teachers Make a Difference – Hattie

Five characteristics of an effective 21st-C Educator

5 Things to Practice in the Classroom

A Naturalistic Study of Insight

2012 Workshops and Other Offerings

For those of you who are new to this blog, we spend a lot of time working with teachers and schools at  the fore-front of shifting their school learning culture and their pedagogy. This week we had an revealing experience with one of the schools we are working with. It is early days in this school and the individual is receiving push back by internal (students, certain staff, etc) and external forces (e.g. parents). By the way this is normal as schools’ shift their practice and habits. I thought I’d post the reply by one of our consultants to the individual who is responsible for being the beacon of change within the school.

—-

Hi X,

I experienced the same reactions (the whole range!) at the two schools at which I worked to implement Inquiry programs. Some of the students were very threatened by having to move outside their comfort zones – they had been very comfortable and used to the idea of the teacher doing all the work (in terms of the thinking) and them being positioned as recipients of information in the traditional classroom. They were very concerned about potential impact of ‘taking time’ away from traditional, discipline-based learning to develop the skills and competencies of inquiry. At one stage (I think I may have shared this story with you early in our planning last year) we invited parents and students to an evening meeting at the school to give us feedback about the Project – and it was very mixed, with strong opinions on both sides (and of course many who kept quiet on the issue). The bottom line was that, whilst we in no way minimised the students’ fears, we understood that we were the ones who had developed the understanding of the pedagogical principles underpinning the program – the students believed they knew what would serve them best in the ‘real’ world because that was their dominant experience of learning up until that point. You could say the same of many of the parents. We know what the research, the data and the experts say. Introducing Inquiry IS challenging, and I know, first-hand the feelings of stress, pressure and concern that teachers can feel during the process (particularly in the early stages of implementation).

The fact that some students are feeling uncomfortable is a good sign – it means that we have created something that is genuinely different and that there is obviously a need for, as the students must develop their awareness and competency in the skills needed for the twenty-first century world – skills and competencies that the VCE alone cannot provide. My understanding of the structure of the curriculum at your school was that the Inquiry Projects run separately from key disciplines like English and Maths so the students can be reassured that they will get their discipline-based, traditional preparation for the VCE in those subjects. What inquiry will do for them is develop the independent learning and coping skills that they will need to effectively deal with the stressors of experiences like VCE, university, living independently and later, to navigate the unpredictable and ever-changing jobs-market that they’ll be entering.

Without question, as part of my learning curve as I developed Inquiry in schools, the most important skill that I developed (out of absolute necessity!) was resilience. I had to look to collegiate support – particularly through those who shared my beliefs and an excellent mentor – to the research, to the work the students began to produce over time and to my own conviction that the work we were doing to transform learning into an active, thinking partnership was not only valid, but critical. On the odd evening, I would even watch video clips in the mould of Sir Ken Robinson’s ‘Changing Education Paradigms’ to remind me of our purpose and reasons for working to transform the student experience.

Rest assured that what you are all experiencing is very ‘normal’ and I have been there myself. We are already experiencing success because we are challenging staff and students.

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If you are a teacher or in the leadership team at a school who is out to shift the learning culture at your school – then expect the push back! You ARE pushing people out of their comfort zones and challenging their thinking. Unless the school  is aiming for excellence and being extraordinary then the school will naturally devolve into mediocrity. It is your job to keep the vision alive.  It is also the making of you as a leader of developing exceptional learning. It is not easy. It is not simple. You have to have the determination and the vision to be the one causing the shift. The results and difference for everyone  is profound in the end.

Until next time!