#edCPDchat Reflections: QA of Teaching and Learning

This week’s discussion was another great one, as many of us tried to get to the bottom of how we can make QA of teaching and learning something that contributes to development, rather than a check for accountability.

Q1: Is there any value in ‘measuring’ the quality of teaching and learning?

Firstly, I have to highlight how the interpretation of ‘measure’ is crucial here, and this caused some initial debate over the meaning in relation to QA.  Perhaps unhelpfully, you can use the word for both quantitative and qualitative purposes (with the example highlighting the topic of our discussion when I checked this definition online).

Quantitative measurements were mostly seen to be lacking in value, with @SaysMiss highlighting how there are too many variables involves in teaching and learning, as well as so much of the quality of teaching being open to interpretation.  Instead, Kat posed that evaluation of teaching should be through conversations, a sentiment shared by many others in the discussion.

@NLad84 highlighted how the purpose of the QA processes needs to be developmental, and this is where I see the conversations mentioned by @SaysMiss playing an important part.  However, I feel that you can still ‘measure’ the quality of teaching (albeit qualitatively) through this process though @robertkelly95’s point that any expectations need to be clear is important to this.  It’s very true that ‘the quality of teaching is subjective’ (@Heimdayl) though if you build a shared understanding of what quality looks like, it provides a form of measure that can then be the basis of developmental conversations.

My own takeaways from this question were mostly focused on the idea of purpose and intent, and I really liked the question from @informed_edu that asked whether measuring quality was aiming to prove something or improve something.  You’d hope the latter, in which case the process should be designed to empower teachers to self-reflect and self-evaluate through supportive feedback.

Q2: What are the pressures on leaders when it comes to QA?

Time (unsurprisingly) was a common theme for this area, whether it was having the time to have the conversations mentioned earlier (@lcgeography) or the time to ‘do something meaningful’ with any information collected (@EnserMark).  For me, this is where school leadership plays a large part (as the main stakeholders capable of giving staff this time are headteachers and SLT).

Others also discussed how a school’s external stakeholders (whether it be Ofsted, the LEA or trust leadership) can also have impact on the pressures, with @greeborunner mentioning that rigid approaches to QA that don’t adapt for a school’s context can lead to ticklists and cutting corners.  @lcgeography linked this back to the earlier concept of the purpose of QA too (I’d certainly argue that there are external bodies out there who are using it as an accountability tool rather than a developmental one).

Overall, I agreed with @SaysMiss’ view in this area, as she bought up the need to balance external accountability with knowing what helps teachers improve, as ‘data doesn’t measure everything’.  In this sense, I feel that it’s important that those who lead on teacher development (whether it be through SLT or as a subject leader) should be trained in what makes effective CPD, and how QA fits into that as a developmental process.  @NikkiSSmith put this really well, seeing QA as needing to be ‘supportive and developmental, not judgemental’.

Q3: What makes effective QA of Teaching & Learning?

After reading responses to the previous questions, it was clear to me that QA needs to be a dialogic and developmental process for it to have the desired impact (improvement of teaching and learning).  @GLT_MAT also sees it as a process that involves both teachers and leaders, stating that QA should involve ‘co-construction of what great looks like’.

Culture was another aspect mentioned by several people in the discussion, which reflected some of what I’ve been fortunate enough to experience in the leadership for my school and MAT (Jonny Uttley’s book, ‘Putting Staff First’ - co-authored with John Tomsett is a great read for this).  @Mr_N_Wood highlighted how a culture of trust can reduce staff anxiety, which means staff are going to be able to develop more.  However, I can also agree with @robertkelly95 that it’s important to be clear about the expectations we - as leaders - have for the classroom so that we can still hold staff accountable and help them develop if standards are not met.

Evaluating My Independent CPD

In the spirit of the advice and tips for NQTs as they start off their first week of teaching, I wanted to write a little about some advice I’ve give to my NQT self and any other ‘pedageeks’ out there.

I’ve always been a keen reader (unsurprising for an English teacher) and vividly remember piling up 15 books at a time from the local library to take home and devour during the summer holidays as a child.  Imagine my delight then when, as a trainee, a retiring host teacher gave me her copy of ‘A Teacher’s Toolkit’ by Paul Ginnis.  I’d discovered a whole new genre of books about teaching which was only fuelled by getting myself involved with edutwitter, educational blogs and journals such as those produced by the Chartered College of Teaching, ResearchEd and NATE.

However, I recently came across a list of ideas and strategies that I’d compiled after the ‘Team English National Conference 2019’, which listed lots of things I wanted to trial or develop in my teaching during the following academic year.  Many of them had fallen by the wayside, either after one attempt or completely forgotten by the time I was back in the classroom.  Finding this list has really made me question the way I manage my own CPD and the extent to which I practise what I plan for the CPD of others in my department, school and trust.

In comparison, I have actually managed to develop my understanding and use of dual coding in my teaching after Oliver Caviglioli’s brilliant presentation at the ResearchEd National Conference last year.  The difference is that I actively worked to make it into a habit by deliberately focusing on it as a strategy and, after reflection and feedback from others, continually practising it until it became part of my practice.

What I want to do differently this year is a process I wish I’d considered more in my earlier career, ensuring that I acknowledge:

• The limits of how many new things I can improve at a time
• The importance of the ‘continued’ in CPD (seeing new ideas/concepts as a developing thread rather than a single event)
• Remembering that I need to consciously practice a habit repeatedly before it becomes automatic

Hopefully, the process that I’m introducing my department to (using a version of the ADAPT model from Caviglioli and Sherrington’s ‘Walkthrus’ book) will help me enable my department to do the same (see this previous blog for more details).

#edCPDchat reflections: Components of Coaching

This week’s #edCPDchat was an interesting one for me, as the topic of coaching allowed me to reflect further on recent training on instructional coaching (with Ambition Institute) and reading around the topic to develop a peer coaching model in my department from September, as outlined in this previous blog post.

Throughout the conversation, I was continually asking myself to what extent my plans were actually a form of coaching, as well as considering how I might adapt my plans to make them more effective.

Q1: Can anyone learn to be a coach?

I feel that @EnserMark summed this up concisely when he stated that coaches might struggle to hide it if their ‘personality sucks’.  Unsurprisingly, many others agreed that personality traits were key to a good coach, including being able to ‘believe in capable people’ (@Steven_Berryman) and the need to be ‘kind’ and ‘empathetic’ (@EnserMark).  In a thread later on, @teach_music_ldn also highlighted the importance of a moral purpose, with the coaches needs being the core of the process, not the ‘feather in [the coach’s] cap’.

It also seemed that there was agreement in the need for coaching to be a choice as well, with @MissM0Eng3 stating that there ‘shouldn’t be an expectation that everyone is a coach’ though @HenrySauntson highlighted that a ‘culture of collaboration’ is still a possibility (perhaps with coaching as a part of it, rather than a process everyone follows).

There was also agreement in that learning to be a coach is a process that needs time, with @DrRLofthouse explaining that ‘learning to coach is a developmental process’ with a need for this to be ‘scaffolded’.  This concept, along with the process of ‘focused practice and a reflective feedback loop’ for developing coaches (@Mr_N_Wood), leads to this idea proposed by @Steven_Berryman: coaches should be ‘willing to be coached’ themselves.

Q2: What are the active ingredients of effective coaching?

The consensus for this question involved many agreeing that effective coaching needs active listening, a lack of judgements being made and space (both physical and temporal) for the conversations to happen.  I found this document from CfBT Education Trust (mentioned by @DrRLofthouse in the chat) really useful in outlining what the processes of listening might look like to promote an effective coaching dialogue.  This is vital if we take @informed_edu’s contribution of coaching dialogue being ‘a reflective conversation to stimulate learning and growth’.

I also felt that @jillberry102’s tweet about coaching taking a ‘how can we?’ rather than a ‘why can’t we?’ approach relevant here, especially with the links back to the positive personality traits that were mentioned in the first part of the discussion.

The discussion at this point also turned to a comparison between coaching and mentoring, which becomes trickier in a sense (given that there are different forms of coaching).  I agreed with @Steven_Berryman that coaching should be a ‘meeting of equals’ whereas mentoring implies a hierarchical relationship.  Other contributions highlighted that the coach is there to ‘support [the coachee] in reaching their own conclusions’ through ‘open questioning and reflection’ (@bibliogeordie).  This clashed a little with my understanding of instructional coaching in particular, with Steve Farndon seeing a need for ‘direct, explicit instruction’ for instructional coaching to be ‘efficient’, with this form of coaching assuming ‘that there are some areas where [the coachee] is more novice’ (2019).  That being said, instructional coaching can still seen as a dialogical model, with Caviglioli and Sherrington seeing it as a process where ‘teacher and coaches work together as partners’ (2020) as well as the dialogical process being highlighted in both the CfBT document shared by @DrRLofthouse and ‘Leading Coaching in Schools’ from NCSL.

Q3: How can a coaching culture be grown across a school?

I feel that the main component in the final section of the chat can be summed up in a single word: trust.  @EnserMark stated how a ‘them and us’ culture prevents this and, therefore will prevent the growth of a coaching culture.  @DrRLofthouse also mentioned how successful coaching is ‘harder to achieve in a performative culture’, which gives more reason to decouple it from any performance management process (better still: remove the performance management ‘objectives’ entirely).

Time was another factor cited by people in the discussion, as we all felt that a coaching culture isn’t something that can be generated overnight.  I found @robertkelly95’s reflection really useful here, as he explained how his school changed from the initial plan of all staff being coaches due to the time needed for training (‘better to have a small group of well-trained coaches doing it well’).

My Plans

Overall, it’s difficult for me to justify my initial plans for ‘peer coaching pairs’ as actual coaching.  I think that the element of choice was an important one, as well as the fact that it would be difficult to balance developing my department as effective coaching with other CPD needs, much as @robertkelly95 found in his school.  However, I still feel that pairing staff up for reflection and structuring some of this reflection (in our department meetings) with coaching-style scaffolds will be beneficial.  In the meantime, perhaps I need to consider whether staff might opt-in to a coaching programme across the school.

Thanks again to everyone who joined in this week’s chat for your contributions and expertise.  I hope that anyone who was back at school this week also has a restful weekend, though don’t forget to vote for our next topic on Sunday!

#edCPDchat runs every Wednesday at 7:30pm.  Details of upcoming topics can be found at the @edCPDchat account.

References

Caviglioli O and Sherrington T (2020) Teaching Walkthrus: Five-step guides for instructional coaching. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational Ltd.

Creasey and Paterson (2005) NCSL Leading Coaching in Schools. Available at: http://www.lcll.org.uk/uploads/3/0/9/3/3093873/leading_coaching_in_schools.pdf

Farndon, S (2019) What is instructional coaching? Available at: https://www.ambition.org.uk/blog/what-instructional-coaching/ 

Lofthouse, Leat and Towler (2010) CfBT Coaching for teaching and learning: a practical guide for schools. Available at: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwnclacuk/cflat/files/coaching-for-teaching.pdf

#edCPDchat reflections: CPD after lockdown

 

It’s been amazing to see how the concept of an online community talking about quality CPD has grown so quickly from a thread started by @greeborunner and developed into the first #edCPDchat last week.  I’m really proud to have been a part of this alongside Zoe and also colleagues at the Teacher Development Trust (David Weston, Kathryn Morgan, Maria Cunningham and Michelle Barker).

That there was so much engagement in last week’s chat is a testament to those who care about the development of their staff and are actively reflecting on how to give staff the best deal in CPD going forwards.  Below is a summary of some of the key ideas from last week’s chat.

Q1: Planning for 2020-21

The first question asked us to consider the contingencies we’d likely need to consider for the coming academic year, so several responses inevitably centred around the possibility of local lockdowns and blended/remote learning.  @EnserMark highlighted how we need to ensure we’re not ‘caught by surprise’ this time by training staff on what makes effective remote teaching and learning.  We then discussed how this might overlap with classroom pedagogy (so the CPD had a life beyond a lockdown scenario), though Mark highlighted that we need to ensure that staff don’t just replicate classroom teaching on a remote platform (possibly by highlighting the differences between classroom learning and remote learning).

The impact of social distancing on the delivery of CPD was brought up by @robertkelly95, as he shared how his school are moving to CPD delivery in small teams rather than all staff training together.  He explained how this could mean CPD is more tailored to these groups.  I can definitely see this, as it would enable more subject-specific CPD if in subject groups- something we’re pursuing in my school by having a whole-school virtual T&L briefing that’s followed by a subject-specific session in department groups.

The ways in which technology enable us to share and celebrate expertise was also mentioned by Robert, as he mentioned how it could be used to celebrate expertise across the whole school.  Others also shared how they’d done this last year through formats such as a T&L newsletter (@PearceMrs) and a ‘Team’ on Microsoft Teams that had different channels for different strands of CPD (@CeriBoyle).

The content we choose for CPD was also a factor for next year’s planning that @steven_berryman mentioned, in both supporting the bespoke needs of our staff and also not overwhelming them (a sentiment shared by @teacherhead and @greeborunner in tweets they posted as schools returned this week).

Q2: Learnings from Lockdown

Unsurprisingly, many of us again shared how learning more about online learning (both in terms of pedagogy and technology) will impact CPD for the coming months, so that we are prepared for the potential of blended/remote learning.

However, the growth of remote CPD options for teachers was also flagged as an opportunity to exploit by @EnserMark, who mentioned the high quality of online learning available to staff during lockdown (a view I share after attending various webinars, watching the ResearchEdHome videos and attending the Team English online conference).  Mark also noted how it meant teachers were interacting more on virtual platforms, opening up international discussions and CPD.

The benefit of remote CPD is not lost on me, as living in the bucolic East Riding of Yorkshire means that attending conferences/CPD in most major cities can be tricky; I’m definitely hoping for some movement of training online to support with this.  Part-time staff would also find this more useful, as @CeriBoyle noted how on-demand CPD means that it’s more flexible around part-timers and those with other commitments.

Q3: Current CPD Priorities

When it comes to the current priorities, the reoccurring theme of remote learning was prominent again, as many of us shared the need to train staff on effective remote learning.  I particularly liked the idea from @teach_music_ldn, who is using ‘teaching trios’ for peer observations from September and plans on using these groups to support remote learning CPD (with the potential for moving the peer observations to drop-ins on online sessions if remote CPD is used).  I think this would be a great way of ensuring that staff still get to benefit from feedback on their teaching if we do have a local lockdown (though it will be important to have the right culture in place so that it does not get perceived as a process for ‘checking up’ on staff).

There were also contributions from those who are planning to mitigate the impact of students having been away from school for so long, with @lcgeography mentioning the importance of metacognitive strategies and @robertkelly95 highlighting how giving staff clear CPD on behaviour management/expectations will be important as we return.

My Plans

Although it was a hectic 30 minutes keeping up with so many responses, I feel that last Wednesday definitely gave me a lot of important thoughts for the CPD I plan.  It’s certainly made me consider how I can make the most of online tools to build CPD across the different English teachers in my trust, as well as the potential for peer observation to continue if we move to remote learning (as this is a key feature of my department’s CPD that I mentioned in my last blog).

Thanks to all of the contributors to last week’s chat, and sorry if I didn’t mention you directly- there were so many brilliant tweets to choose from!

#edCPDchat runs every Wednesday at 7:30pm.  Details of upcoming topics can be found at the @edCPDchat account.