Leading professional learning with impact

A great deal has been written, promised and delivered in the name of professional learning for teachers. The professional learning terrain is, without question very busy and highly lucrative. Commercial providers, high profile speakers and glossy brochures fill this space with the tantalising promise of school transformation, classroom improvement and increased student performance. ‘International surveys suggest that the average teacher spends 10.5 days per year engaged in courses, workshops, conferences, seminars, observation visits or in-service training for the purposes of continuing professional development’ (Sims and Fletcher Wood, 2018, 1¹). How much of this makes a real, positive and lasting difference to students’ learning is, however, questionable (Harris and Jones 2017). So, what does the evidence say about effective professional learning with impact?

This takes us into contested territory. Several reviews of the literature have suggested that effective professional learning needs to be: sustained, collaborative, subject-specific, practice-based and inquiry orientated (Timperley et al. 2007; Wei et al. 2009). A more recent meta-review² (Cordingley et al. 2015) noted that the careful alignment of CPD activities and experiences with participants’ goals for their pupils was pivotal to effective professional learning³. In contrast, a critique⁴ of this latest review suggests that our understanding of CPD is ‘all wrong’ and that the ‘consensus view’ emerging from various international reviews of the literature may, in fact, be faulty.

Clearly, this is a debate that will continue but for those leading professional learning in schools, the imperative is to engage teachers in meaningful and impactful professional learning. The current discourse about ‘evidence-based practice’ is the latest call for professional learning to make a clear and positive difference to learners. The terms ‘evidence-informed practice’, ‘research-informed teaching’ (Brown 2015, 2017) have also attached themselves to the latest wave of professional learning provision. Using research and evidence as part of professional learning seems both obvious and inherently sensible (Cordingley 2015, 2016) but how does this happens in practice?

The short answer to this question often resides in the phrase ‘collaborative enquiry’ or in other words, engaging teachers in some form of action-research that is linked to their everyday practice. So far, so good it would seem. Exactly how this collaborative work should be organised, however, raises a myriad of issues and questions for those charged with leading professional learning within or across schools.

The first issue is terminology. When talking about professional collaboration there are many different variants on this theme. Joint practice development, research learning communities, collaborative professionalism, spirals of inquiry, professional learning communities, communities of practice, teacher learning communities or learning collaboratives are to name but a few. The many ways in which this collaborative way of working is described, conceptualised and packaged does little, it would appear, to help teachers embarking upon this way of working. There is considerable conceptual overlap and confusion thus, making any delineation between these different types of professional collaboration challenging.

A second issue relates to the fact that some of the writing about professional collaboration confuses collaborative strategies with collaborative models. Collaborative models are comprehensive ways of working, that normally incorporate some form of enquiry or action research into the overall process. Collaborative strategies are those data-gathering activities that are deployed at the enquiry stage to seek specific information about an issue or a topic under collective scrutiny (Hargreaves and O’Connor 2018). As the focus of enquiry changes within the group, different collaborative strategies will be more appropriate or necessary to allow the group to go move on.

Collaborative strategies would include, for example, learning walks (Resnick et al. 2010) lesson study (Wood et al. 2017) instructional rounds (Hopkins, Craig, and Knight 2015) and peer triads. They would be used within an overarching and coherent model of professional collaboration such as professional learning communities (Harris, Jones, and Huffman 2017) but they are not comprehensive models of professional collaboration in and of themselves. When collaborative models and strategies are conflated, then confusion in action and mixed outcomes inevitably results. In addition, the re-labelling or re-naming of existing collaborative models or strategies adds further complication to what is a relatively straightforward concept.

This leads to the third issue, that of impact. In January 2018, the ‘Education Endowment Foundation’ published an evaluation report on the deployment of Research Learning Communities⁵ in schools. This was an intervention specifically aimed at raising teachers’ awareness, understanding, and use of educational research in developing their practice, with the aim of improving pupil outcomes. Evidence Champions from each school attended RLC workshops, led by researchers, in which they discussed research with academic experts and colleagues from other schools.

The evaluators concluded that they ‘did not find any overall improvement in pupils’ reading results’ but suggested a potential relationship between teacher engagement with research, and the attainment of their pupils. There was also some tentative evidence that being in an RLC increased teachers’ disposition towards research.

The question school leaders should ask, therefore, is which forms of professional collaboration impact positively upon learner outcomes and where is the evidence to support this? New collaborative models, interventions and strategies are invented everyday as part of the broad swathe of professional learning approaches, so judging their viability and validity is important.

Many of the models of professional collaboration and enquiry are research based, they emanate from empirical findings concerning organisational effectiveness. These findings underscore how high levels of trust, positive relationships and focused collaboration are the hall marks of high performance (Hargreaves, Boyle, and Harris 2014). The school effectiveness and school improvement research field also reinforces the importance of building strong professional communities within schools, and equipping teachers with collaborative skills and the ability reflect upon their practice in ways that directly benefit learners (Reynolds et al. 2014).

As noted earlier, a wealth of international evidence highlights the importance of professional collaboration as a potential catalyst for changing teachers’ practice for the better (Cordingley 2015; Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina 2016; Chapman et al. 2016; Harris, Jones, and Huffman 2017; Hargreaves and O’Connor 2018). The largest corpus of international research concerning the positive impact of professional collaboration on learners and teachers, however, is still to be found in the extensive evidential base on professional learning communities (Vescio, Ross, and Adams 2008; Harris, Jones, and Huffman 2018).

For leaders in schools what does all this mean? There are three issues for leaders to consider. Firstly, leaders need to ensure that any model of professional collaboration or any collaborative strategies have independent, evidence of a positive impact on learners and teachers. There is a great deal of evidence that collaborative working, if done well, can empower teachers and increase their collective self-efficacy (Donohoo, Hattie, and Eells 2018). Case study upon case study reinforces the positive impact of this collaborative way of working on teachers’ knowledge, understanding and experience. If a change in teachers’ practice does not directly translate directly into better outcomes for learners must surely raise doubts about the purpose of such a collaborative approach.

Secondly, leaders need to check that the model of professional collaborative engagement simultaneously develops and supports the research literacy of those who participate. Relying on outside experts, facilitators or partners may be needed initially but ultimately, any worthwhile collaborative model should ensure that teachers are developing their own independent research capacity and capability.

Finally, and most importantly, leaders need to start with the end in mind. If professional collaboration, in whatever form, is the answer in my school then what is the question? Clarity about the focus of the collaborative work is essential, at the outset, if any impact on learners is to be seriously gauged, assessed and managed (Sharratt and Planche 2016). Retrospective stories or teachers’ self-report can at best, illuminate the collaborative journey but they do not constitute evidence of impact in themselves. Assessing impact on learners comes from a deliberate, systematic and ‘disciplined’ collaborative process that starts and ends with student data (Harris and Jones 2017).

Those working within schools have a wealth of professional learning opportunities to choose from. Those leading professional learning, therefore, should not feel reticent when asking for evidence of impact. Teachers’ time is too precious and valuable, to waste, so if independent evidence of impact on learners, is thin, convoluted or opaque, it might be wise to look elsewhere.

Acknowledgements

As we end 2018, our thanks go to our publishers, producers, contributors, reviewers and readers. We look forward to another successful year for ‘School Leadership and Management’ in 2019.

Notes

1 https://improvingteaching.co.uk/characteristics-cpd/.

2 https://tdtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/DGT-Full-report.pdf.

3 https://www.tes.com/news/what-makes-good-cpd.

4 https://www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/have-we-got-cpd-all-wrong.

5 https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/research-learning-communities/#the-project.