Written by Ken Kilpin | 29 May 2019
This is the first in a short series of blogs about the qualities of effective professional learning and development (PLD). They discuss some of the important factors we should consider as we design, contract for, and deliver PLD to audiences in the school sectors.
This first blog investigates how we might order the events, activities and strategies of our programmes that lead to teachers genuinely changing their attitudes and beliefs about their practice. I apply Guskey’s (2002) model of teacher change to understand how the ‘order of events’ of a day’s PLD I facilitated, affected the ‘hearts and minds’ of the participating teachers.
Living in our professional bubbles as we often do, it has frustrated me to see ideas I believe and promote, and are contracted to disseminate to schools, treated lightly with only passing consideration, simply ignored, or contemptuously rejected as academic fluff. I have realised that ideas I thought were essential to quality teacher practice would not, in and of themselves, create the conditions for changes we anticipated of teachers. For this audience, these ideas were not self-evident truths whose time had come, so powerful were they as pedagogical game-changers that would create sustainable change to teachers’ classroom practice, their attitudes and beliefs, and the learning of students.
A few weeks ago, I ran an all-staff full day PLD programme on disciplinary literacy at a mid-decile secondary school (Years 7 – 13). The day came some weeks after beginning a disciplinary literacy PLD project with a smaller core group of teachers. I started the day by asking two core group members to honestly explain to their colleagues what changes they were attempting to make, how those changes challenged their beliefs, and how their students reacted. Their explanations were unrehearsed as I deliberately asked them only a few minutes before the course started. They told great stories.
Teachers were there under instruction (teacher-only day), had an outsider working with them, had been asked to prepare for the day by reading selected materials, and they weren’t too sure if the topic was relevant anyway. But they did have a sense that they might learn something and were prepared to cut me some slack. By the end of an intensive Friday, teachers had read, talked, written and listened with critical insight, and sustained interest and focus. Subsequent feedback, even a week later, showed the day had made a genuine impact on teachers’ thinking and their confidence to change aspects of their classroom practice. And it seems hardly a big idea or ‘overarching concept’ was in sight to introduce, frame and conceptualise the day.
What was the difference? It was the two teachers who gave the opening kōrero that flipped their colleagues’ natural skepticism on its head. So how might we understand this flip? And why should it matter for Tātai Angitu E3’s work? To answer this second question, let’s turn to the work of Thomas Guskey, in particular his modified model of teacher change (Guskey 2002). Firstly, he makes some cogent points about PLD and its effective delivery and implementation. He argues:
- PLD is a systematic effort to create change in classroom practice, and to challenge and change teachers’ existing attitudes and beliefs in ways that improve students’ learning outcomes.
- Teachers, even the more skeptically minded, attend PLD believing that they might/could learn something new which will enhance their effectiveness.
- Through PLD engagement they hope to gain specific, concrete and practical ideas that relate directly to their daily operations in their classrooms.
It is this third point that we need to note: it implies that it is not the attraction of powerful ideas per se, designed to trigger shifts in attitudes and beliefs that capture teachers’ interest, and provide the basis upon which new and revised practices and strategies will be implemented. Rather, Guskey argues that PLD that does change hearts and minds prioritises the consideration of teachers’ evidence of practice and examples of successful implementation. That is, teacher change is experiential. Teachers are more likely to implement what they have seen colleagues do well or have done themselves. Practices that seem to work, with demonstrably good results for students’ learning, are more likely to be introduced, retained, and repeated, rather than any changes invoked by the imagined application of theory front loaded at the beginning. “Experienced teachers seldom become committed to new instructional approaches until they have seen it work in their classrooms with their students.”(pg. 384)
And note too, the inclusive and expansive notion of a learning outcome: Guskey goes beyond the confines of curriculum imperatives, learning area achievement objectives, cognitive and achievement indicators, and NCEA results to bring in attendance, participation, classroom discipline, student motivation and efficacy, and their attitudes to school. In other words, learning outcomes are not just standardised test scores, grades, and credit totals. They can include “whatever kinds of evidence teachers use to judge the effectiveness of their teaching.” (pg. 384).
To return to my PLD day on disciplinary literacy: the two teachers’ narratives with which the day opened were the experiential evidence their colleagues instinctively tuned into that suggested that this work was worth investing in. The two teachers were reporting how changes they had made had improved their students’ biology and social studies work. In turn, this effect was enhanced by other ‘core group’ colleagues relating their own recent classroom experiences throughout the day’s small group work. And, perhaps fortuitously, what they had read beforehand, and then through the day, also skillfully balanced theory work with implementation strategies. Not a global unifying theory in sight – yet!! That will emerge as we gather further experiential evidence over time.
To the third question: why should this matter for Tātai Angitu E3 and our clients? There are a number of implications for what we understand to be quality PLD that can change hearts and minds in sustainably long-term ways.
- Change is not a natural behavior, so changing hearts and minds toward something new and different requires time, effort, and extra energy. Contracts need to provide facilitators and teachers with time to create favourable conditions for the work, in which authentic PLD experiences can be generated, trialled and revised. Change is also destabilizing. It can create anxiety and be threatening. It risks failure as much as it might suggest success. The work we do needs to support that fragile and uncertain practitioner with verifiable evidence that what we are advocating can work. For this, we require time for such evidence to emerge. If Guskey is right, simply reassuring teachers that it’ll work because the ideas are right won’t cut it!!
- There is an inevitable tension between a contract’s pedagogic aspirations and restrictions imposed by funding limits. Promising substantive shifts on an austere budget over a short period of time – however intensively delivered – cannot result in the kinds of PLD experiences we would describe as effective.
- Nurturing sustainable new practices involves teachers receiving feedback in cyclical rather than linear patterns. Regularly delivered, critically thoughtful and strategically planned feedback about experiences can evidence successful and unsuccessful actions, and from there, what practices can be retained and repeated. In addition, receiving feedback on these experiences can increase teachers’ perception of their competency and effectiveness. Guskey’s point is clear: “specific procedures to provide feedback on results are essential to the success of any professional development effort” (pg. 387)
- Continued follow-up and support, after the initial implementation phase, is simply crucial. Follow up can shift learned knowledge into ideas-based natural teaching behaviours and skills. Support can help engaged teachers advance their work, while some associated pressure can prod the resistors into engagement. Together they can provide encouragement, motivation and the ‘occasional nudge’ to keep trying when the going gets a little tough. Our approach to PLD, and the contracts we enter into, need to reflect the value we place on developing enduring longer term relationships with our teachers as they grapple with changing practice, improving student achievement and integrating our big ideas into their pedagogic thinking. When and how should a contract end, if we value support and follow up over time as key features of the work we do?
You may read this and decide that you practise these various points already, but hopefully there will also be material in this and subsequent blogs that might help your thinking, shape your approaches, or address conundrums you’ve encountered along the way.
Reference:
Guskey, T.R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, Vol. 8, No. 3/4, pp 381-391.
Tātai Angitu e3 @ Massey Blog 