I’ve been talking a great deal recently with leaders, teachers and TAs in schools about employing the collective intelligence of all staff in the school, more efficiently, to improve the quality of teaching for everyone. It is a big departure from traditional models of how to improve teaching in a school, which is SLT-led and not teacher-led. Why should someone else be in charge of a teacher employing whatever they can to improve their own teaching and learning? This blog, my website and Twitter means my audience is out of my hands (great! A lack of control can be excellent!), but throughout this blog post, I’m wanting to talk to classroom teachers and TAs to encourage you to take charge of improving your own teaching. I hope leaders will find it interesting, however, as this approach will be very “hands off” and control-free. It will involve you in seriously trusting your staff and letting go.
I’ll list some of the more “traditional” methods, that have been used to try to improve the quality of teaching, first and many will recognise them as the various training models they still find in their school, though I recognise that schools are already moving on. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but you’ll get the idea. I’ll ask two questions about each technique and leave most of those questions for you to answer.
I’m not talking about, say, @ClevedonLHub and @ZoeElder here, or the excellent work done by say @ChrisMoyse at Bridgwater College, or other schools, where the amazing SLT twitter people have invested significant time and money into transferring the imperative to teachers to improve their own learning. I’m talking about many, often RI/SM schools, or smaller schools and often primary schools, where capacity to do such wonderful things as these schools and people do, simply doesn’t exist. I’ll instead propose that the collective intelligence, already in the school, can be used to excellent effect.
1. Consultant-led training.
Someone (say, a consultant, or other professional), is brought in because of their expertise, to deliver training to staff on a particular issue. The consultant is usually highly knowledgeable in their field (I usually avoid the word “expert”; “experienced magpie” is usually far better, though experts do exist) and bring enormous knowledge with them. Some consultants have been a dreadful waste of money, because for one reason, or another, they don’t engage staff. Staff are organised in the hall, in groups, around tables and have a variable reaction to the training. Usually staff will listen politely and only a small number will offer challenge, or questions. Animated and very useful discussions may well take place around the tables, but even here, not everyone is engaged and some go to the loo; often.
As a result of the training, staff are expected to use the techniques they have heard about (not learned, note, learning is a very different kettle of fish) in lessons to be able to teach better. TAs may be involved, but may be elsewhere with their own meeting/training session. The consultant may well cost £1000+ for prep and delivery, but how much gets used by staff.
Recognisable? SLT book the trainer. SLT set the agenda, often with the very best of intentions, SLT expect the results, but, crucially usually don’t set the criteria by which those results will be measured. Think of consultant-led training you and your school have received.
1. How far does the training permeate into school culture?
2. How much has the quality of teaching in your school improved over the last few years, as a result of all measures taken?
2. Conference training.
One, (better two, or more) staff go out of school for a day, to a conference, often led by some excellent people of whom some may be acknowledged experts because the content of their presentation includes the results of their own academic, or action-research. Workshops may follow, or the work continues in the same, anodyne, conference room all day, usually with other speakers. A conference can be hugely enjoyable for the participants, who may get a great deal out of the training on offer, use it in their teaching, improve and become evangelists for what they have heard. In addition, a small degree of networking may happen and some, often unexpected, links to another school may result, which may result in a collaboration.
On return to the school, the participants are encouraged to write up their conference experience for the VLE and may well lead sessions on INSET, or after school, relaying what they have seen to all staff. Again, TAs may, or may not, be present. Working groups may continue to promote that style of teaching in the school and some practice may change, especially if the HT/senior leaders have planned to introduce the conference theme beforehand.
Conferences vary in cost, but typically, an LA organised conference may cost £100-200 and a city-based conference, organised by a large, national organisation, may cost £250-400 per delegate. Travel and even sometimes a hotel are extra for the school. In a year, only a small number of teachers from a typical school get to attend conferences, but they are almost always memorable. We all remember conferences we’ve attended. Some have been memorable to me, because mid-way through the morning, I’ve decided it is totally crap, gone to the loo with my briefcase and coat and thence to the train, as working somewhere else would be much more profitable!
Recognisable? SLT decide who gets to go on the conferences, usually because of an agenda/priorities set by SLT, again and often with the best of intentions.
1. How far does the training permeate into school culture?
2. How much has the quality of teaching in your school improved over the last few years, as a result of all measures taken?
More effective, but usually not teacher-led approaches.
Working parties.
Established by SLT to try to embed an approach they feel would be useful for all teachers to use. Working party members are often tasked to present to INSET days, or members work with their own departments/areas of responsibility to effect changes around the focus of the group. Effectiveness begins to increase here, but ownership of the process is limited, as the working party member is still effectively, cascading to the department and crucially, the focus may not be one that really engages everyone. In addition, the working party members have their own, other and more important, focuses, as well as this interest which has attracted them, or caused them to be nominated for, the working party. Basically, the process is still SLT-led and is a laudable means of embedding a policy decision.
1. How far does the training permeate into school culture?
2. How much has the quality of teaching in your school improved over the last few years, as a result of all measures taken?
Coaching.
In its best form, as good as any other method of improving the quality of teaching. Where teachers have the freedom to work with whom they choose, with their own (or no) agenda and SLT support them by stepping back and allowing the coaching to happen, it can be terrific. In its worst form, a teacher needing support is placed with an outstanding teacher to help them improve. What an *awful* situation for the “weaker” teacher, who knows full well why he/she is there and also knows that they won’t be able to do what the “outstanding” teacher can do in a lifetime’s teaching. I have lots of time for egalitarian coaching models, which involve teacher choice, but again, I deal in outcomes:
1. How far does the training permeate into school culture?
2. How much has the quality of teaching in your school improved over the last few years, as a result of all measures taken?
Encouraging struggling teachers to leave the profession.
It’s awful for SLT and a teacher’s colleagues to watch a teacher struggling day after day, term after term and year after year. It’s not fair on anyone, especially the pupils and it’s not fair on the teacher. Things are changing rapidly here with younger teachers. No longer is teaching always viewed as a life career, as it was only 15-20 years ago. It is viewed, by many, as a stepping stone to other things, which can allow a person to accumulate a fantastic range of skills. There’s the key. Every single teacher, especially those with 10 years+ experience, has that range of fantastic skills that the private sector would kill for. It’s just that few realise what skills that have and few ,more experienced teachers (OK euphemism for “older”) know where to look. Some sensitive, but straight talking from SLT/HT can do such teachers a life-favour. often the entrepreneur kicks in at these times and the teacher ends up much happier doing something else, other than teaching.
1. How far does the training permeate into school culture?
2. How much has the quality of teaching in your school improved over the last few years, as a result of all measures taken?
In this case, as HT’s and SLT will recognise, if you are still with me, it has often been the most effective method of improving the overall quality of teaching in a school………but, in my opinion, it doesn’t have to be the best way.
Use the Collective Intelligence of Staff.
Sitting in a filing cabinet, or more likely in a computer file, is all the qualifications staff have, all the previous jobs they have had, all the courses they have been on and many (though not all) of the information that makes a teacher what they are. In every teacher’s head there is every lesson they have ever taught, every class they have come across and the thousands of individuals (mainstream secondary, less in Primary and special schools, of course) who have occupied the chairs in their classes (we can’t remember them all, but they are there). At 21/22 periods a week teaching, a typical teacher (OK, There isn’t one, that’s the point I’m coming to!) also has the experience of teaching up to 800 lessons per year, or approaching 8000 lessons in 10 years…………. What an incredible amount of educational intelligence is that???? Multiply that by 10ish teachers for a 1 form entry primary and by 100+ teachers for a large secondary. Add in all the fantastic experience of TAs and support staff and the collective intelligence of a school becomes apparent – and I haven’t included pupils, whose voice should be massive and hugely important when we talk about collective intelligence, as they see more lessons than anyone else.
So why do main grade teachers see the fewest teachers teaching?
A question which I only began to ask when I left the classroom after 22 years and then spent 8 years as a Foundation subjects consultant and nearly 4 years running my own company. I’ve inspected around 100 schools (I think) and led a fair few of those inspections. I’d never even considered the question above before I left the classroom – an almost unbelievable thing to me now. Since 2002, I’ve had the unbelievable privilege of being in perhaps >4000 lessons. During that time and before 2 years ago, I’d only done joint observations with a handful of main grade teachers. Almost all my observations (and observations they were, notes, feedback and grades included, for good measure) were either on my own, or with HTs/Principals and SLT………..who teach less and thus affect less pupils in the classroom than anyone else in the school.
SLT get to see lessons and teaching on a regular basis; classroom teachers, who need to do this the most, don’t.
Still I get answers like: “a few”; more recently” (better); “I could add them up on the fingers of two hands since teacher training college” (a teacher of 25+ years experience), to the question, “how many lessons have you seen taught by other teachers?” To the question; “how many times have you had the opportunity to talk with someone else in someone else’s lesson and with the teacher” the answer is usually, “never – until I took part in Talk for Teaching.”
Now this is not the case for cutting edge CPD, which recognises the collective intelligence of staff, though the explicit term may not have been used (I lay claim, though nothing in education is new and it’s probably been coined a hundred times before!). Neither is it true of NQTs and other new entrants, as they are often completely used to doing such things. However, it is often true of teachers who have been teaching a long time and have middle leader-level responsibilities in school.
So let’s change things. Talk for Teaching involves staff at all levels, teachers with TAs going into other teachers’ lessons, the “sparks”, who ignite discussion with their teaching. 15 minutes is enough. discussions between all parties (and sometimes pupils too) take place in the lesson and at any time afterwards. There are no notes. There is no focus. Everyone takes from the process what they get from the process. Understanding between staff at different Key Stages improves. The kudos of leaders in the school improves through giving staff this freedom. The learning done by all is *huge*. The collective intelligence of staff becomes truly shared.
Collective intelligence across schools
For Federations, MATs, co-operative trusts, learning communities, teaching schools and any collaborative arrangement, this approach of Talk for Teaching is just *fantastic* for building trust and furthering relationships. For improving cross-phase/cross Key Stage links and understanding, it can be nothing short of (the old word, but truly) transformational.
Monitoring and Outcomes
1. Teachers are given clear expectations of where their teaching skills need to be better, with the emphasis that is up to them to effect that improvement over an agreed timescale (see below). This is clearly written into PM and if the teacher isn’t seen to improve, against school criteria, or Ofsted grade criteria, they do not progress along the pay scale. (The second SLT bit, after providing the ethos and structures for Talk for Teaching to happen.)
2. SLT create the environment for this to happen, allowing staff to choose when, where and with whom they reflect for 15 minutes. It is written into PM that this must happen, say, 10 times per term (30 times in a year, imagine what you’d see!!) and this is the only record kept of the process.
3. If the quality of teaching overall in the school and for the vast majority of staff does not clearly improve in, say, 18 months, the process is abandoned. (It will improve; teachers are brilliant and tremendously professional individuals. Give them clear goals and support and they *will* achieve those goals).
4. Money is targeted at freeing staff up for this process and a corollary is that less staff will be going out of school the “money-saving” bit. Access to expertise to help the process would be limited to consultant support to kick-start Talk for teaching and set protocols and apposite support for the process along the way. The Internet and especially, blogs and social media will give plenty of advice and support from people that individuals want to follow and listen to.
4. *All*, or at least almost all – you could ride with a couple of recalcitrants, by through convincing them by and during, the process – of staff need to agree (who would not want to do this??).
A different way? Using collective intelligence through Talk for Teaching. Not top-down, centralised SLT and policy-led, directed training.
@paulgarvey4 1st May 2014