Sunday, 9 September 2018

In house CPD: Drawing different approaches of great teaching together

What makes great teaching?

This is a discourse question; a brilliant way to start a discussion and generate helpful talk about teaching, but the aim should never be a single answer, because...


Leading a whole evening of CPD where teachers generate their own ideas and provoke interesting discussion based on their existing knowledge and experience of teaching could be an enjoyable CPD event.  It could even provoke some heated moments, however, the pedagogical rigour of a CPD session will be lacking if the session does not move beyond the vernacular of current experience and knowledge in the room.


There currently seems to be a debate on twitter between the need for subject specific CPD versus pedagogy CPD: if you are talking great teaching in whole staff T&L session, the focus needs to be on consensus across departments of the core values for the school in teaching and learning - WHat makes teaching great here?  This consensus can then drive the quality assurance work of the T&L team - see earlier blog here.

To build pedagogical understanding across the CPD session, I'd be tempted to explore some models from other schools and bloggers.  These models should provoke deep thinking and clarify what each teacher knows about the best of their existing practice, whilst probing into how to take it further.

I think I'd start with a whole group introduction of the teacher standards, which give us these headings as the basics of great teaching:
Before giving out the models, I'd be tempted to split into working groups for discussions to ensure that every voice within the session is heard and every teaching mind stretched.  You could even set up the models at different tables within the room and have the groups circulate between them as in a carousel lesson.  The choice of the models is going to be key to what is discussed, I'd promote these:
    • At Huntington school, their model of 'great teaching' has these headings;
    • Inclusive teaching strategies promoted by Mary Meredith to support social and emotional might cover;
      • Consistent routines
      • Clear rules
      • Relationship building
      • Meet and greet
      • Modelling empathy and understanding
      • Personal connections
        (See twitter account @marymered)
    • Ruth Swailes shared these ideas at #BrewEdChezzy (with thanks to Helen P for sharing) for further ways of being an inclusive teacher:


    • From Tom Sherrington's 'Great Teaching: The power of...' we have:
      1. Probing
      2. Rigour
      3. Challenge
      4. Differentation
      5. Joruneys
      6. Explaining
      7. Agility
      8. Awe
      9. Possibilities
      10. Joy
        (https://teacherhead.com/2015/05/29/ideas-for-teaching-better-all-in-one-place/)
    • From Mark Enser this weekend at ResearchED's national conference we have:
      1. Recap
      2. Input
      3. Application
      4. Test
Prior to asking each of the groups to present their list of what makes teaching great in our school I think you have to consider two other areas of our work:

  • Current Initiatives and how these should impact on the classroom:
    Our #Oracy initiative would suggest that great teaching includes and promotes great talking by:
      • Meeting and greeting - get them talking before they cross the threshold
      • Discussion Guidelines
      • Time to think alone and in pairs before sharing
      • Planned talking activities
      • Strong recording practices such as talk detectives or note takers
      • Scaffolded talking activities
      • Both higher level techniques such as Harkness as well as the basic techniques like referring to the 6 types of talk
      • A chance for every voice to be heard
      • Little use of 'hands up'
      • Links between the talking and writing activities that are exploited for greater gains
  • Literacy and Numeracy - how should these be witnessed within the classroom:
    As the literacy lead for our school, I'd be looking for the support and development of literacy through:
      • Clear use and promotion of the Literacy Ladder to build vocabulary knowledge (Listening/Talking/Reading/Writing)
      • Highlighting the etymology of new words to build understanding and retrieval
      • Removable scaffolds that push the student towards independence in talking, reading and writing
      • Reading strategies including: skimming, scanning and zooming, teacher reading aloud, students reading aloud, discussions deconstructing the reading, support for students who will struggle such as specific highlighted sections of accessibly readable text or coaching/reflection/praise after the reading task.
      • Writing strategies including: group writing, modelled writing, using a WAGOL (What A Good One Looks Like), Deconstruction and construction activities, talking the task before writing the task and links beyond the current task to high/academic literature.
Each Group should report back to the whole staff, but I would save analysis and the final selection of ideas for the middle leaders at a later meeting, where I would push them to really consider data.  Middle Leaders would be asked to attend the meeting with a prepared strengths/weaknesses audit in the teaching and learning in their subject disciplines, which they should have developed within department meetings.  These need to be consolidated together at the start of the meeting and combined to give the team of middle leaders a 'hit list' of practices that need to be targeted in the coming year across departments - ideas for changes in expectations of teachers and learners/students.

The middle leaders should then consolidate the ideas of the whole staff meeting into a single list; the process of doing this should be led by the democratic principles of what was most referenced by staff as well as by the professional judgements of those involved.

The resulting list should then by compared to the 'strengths and weaknesses' audit and adjusted as necessary, practical and reasonable.  At this point middle leaders need to consider how the feedback sheets for observations are designed and tweak them to meet these ends so that all notes, reflections and discussions are targeted towards the agreed 'great teaching' structures.  CPD and line management coaching sessions also need to be tweaked (by paper work if necessary again) to ensure that these agreed skills are subject to training through post observations reflections, coaching and development.

Let me be very clear the intention of this joined up thinking is to support and coach staff into better practice.  This work needs to be about how we raise every professional up towards a challenging and aspirational model of great teaching that has been tailored specifically to the school's context and needs.  Here's a reminder from John Tomsett:


Love over fear, always wins.  By committing to support and train teachers through the quality and quantity of training they receive, the school's outcomes will improve. 


I have never met a teacher, who didn't want to improve and do better for the students in their class, but I have met plenty of teachers who struggle to know where to start and which strategies and ideas to prioritise.  In house CPD is key in every teachers' ability to develop and improve.  Managing CPD effectively is key to reducing the variability of teacher performance - we can talk about attainment gap all we like, what has impact is the teaching every student receives.


Great teaching changes lives.
Great CPD drives it.



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