Principles of Professional Learning

In this post, I'll describe the ways in which my current school (a large comprehensive in Oxford) has tried to use three key principles to underpin and strengthen a culture of professional learning. These interlocking principles were first proposed in a staff meeting in July 2012. Teachers were asked consider the extent to which they reflected their current experience as teachers in the school, at a whole school, faculty, and individual teacher level. Since then, we've used them to guide our approach to organising professional learning, referring to them frequently when planning and delivering INSET, CPD, procedures and policies. Nearly two years later, this post is an attempt to reflect on the thinking behind the principles, informed by the experience we've gained in attempting to put them into practice.

The principles in question are:

1 - as teachers, we are also learners
2 - we focus learning on aspects of practice which make the most difference
3 - we value autonomy and respect individuality

As teachers, we are also learners
To discuss these in turn, the first is valued on the basis that teaching is understood to be a learned skill which can always be improved. The unavoidable complexities of the job mean that it can never be mastered, and an important component of professionalism is a recognition that we can all improve what we do in the classroom. It's essential that this principle is understood and enacted in the context of a trusting and compassionate culture, however, underpinned by the belief that teachers do want to learn and improve, without losing sight of the fact that learning as teachers is often difficult. Many factors contribute to this, including the constraints of time and workload, the emotional demands of the job, and the individual circumstances of each of us at any given time - we all have periods in our lives when we will be more open to and enthused by learning, and times when we are less so. It's therefore important that this principle is rooted in genuine belief and commitment - if applied crudely, it could appear punitive, as a stick to force and demand change irrespective of context.The aim is to foster a culture in which expectations and opportunities for teacher learning are high, but which is also emotionally-intelligent in recognising the complex reality of underlying factors which influence our behaviours as individuals.

We focus learning on aspects of practice which make the most difference
This second principle is largely motivated by the view that a limitation of attempts to foster teacher-learning in the past has been the tendency to bombard ourselves with initiatives, with the result that focus is not sustained and genuine depth of engagement is thin. Again, this relates to the challenges of managing the inevitable complexity of the job - it's true that there are many things that we could learn about which would make some positive difference to our teaching, but in attempting to invest in each new or different idea or approach that is available, we can spread ourselves too thinly and lose
coherence. Of course the notion of 'what makes the most difference' is inevitably contentious - who decides, and how do we know? And isn't it the case that different teachers have different priorities, needs and interests? To answer the first of these questions, I suppose we drew on two main sources - one is those is the research which appeared to us to have most merit, and the second is the learning that we gained from visiting lessons, through observations and learning walks.

- clarity and quality of intent
- relevant and successful activities
- skilful use of modelling and success criteria
- provision of quality, effective feedback

These 4 elements of then made up the bulk of our two page Learning and Teaching policy, and for the last two years we have based all INSET and CPD work around them. It's essentially Assessment for Learning, although we increasingly avoid using the language of AFL explicitly; much confusion seems to be removed by talking about 'how do they do this well?' and avoiding the term 'Success Criteria', I think because of the latter's association with mark schemes etc; similarly 'what are you teaching them' as an alternative to 'what are the learning intentions' often seems to lead to a more authentic discussion of practice.

The potential limitations of sustaining focus on such a few areas are fairly obvious: there's a danger that we are missing or neglecting other areas which are also of benefit; there may be a perceived lack of creativity, excitement or growth; we may be wrong in the emphases that have been selected. However, the intention is to help teachers to develop deep expertise, and that takes time. Developing expert modelling, for example, requires sustained attention over a period of years, with plenty of deliberate practice, failure, exploration and experimentation. Flitting quickly between approaches and initiatives does not allow this sort of development of expertise to take place.

The conception of expertise which underlies our thinking is that an expert is someone who displays the capacity to see and comprehend, with clarity and fluency, the underlying structures of a discipline. An expert in baroque music, for example, will have a very clear understanding of the unifying and defining structures of the style, and this will allow them to listen in such a way as to be conscious of minute and precise variations. Our focus tries to develop expertise in the same way. We believe four elements above are a fairly accurate version of the basic fundamentals of teaching (at least in a technical sense as related to lesson design); continued attention and reflection in these areas is therefore helpful. Another influential concept here is 'thin-slicing' - an idea that came from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which essentially suggests that, when trying to develop complex practices, restricting attention to a very few areas can be effective:

Our approach shares some features with this case-study, through the concept of restricting focus, with significant attention being paid to only a few areas of what is undeniably a complex activity. The advantages are that by maintaining focus on a few key areas, overall quality is likely to rise. It helps us with coherence - policies and forms become simpler, professional discussion is rooted in mutually understood and predictable topics, and the sharing of practice across the school becomes less hopeful and more helpful. Try to address to many things explicitly, and overall progress is limited.

We value autonomy and respect individuality
This principle is rooted in a recognition of the reality that teachers are different and have different styles. It's a challenge to the view that 'consistency' is one of the holy grails of school leadership, an approach

which is frequently seen in schools, manifested in such horrors as planning forms which insist on a particular lesson structure, the expectation for learning intentions on the board at the start of every lesson, for every lesson to have a starter or plenary, a literacy / numeracy element, or a particular feedback system to be used across the school. The idea behind this craving for consistency, I suppose, is that students will 'get used to it', and consequently morph into more successful and eager learners. There's probably some value in this thinking, but the risk of de-professionalising and disempowering individual teachers is considerable, leading to disengagement, a strong sense of being told what to do and how to do it, and tokenistic adherence to policies (albeit probably only in observed lessons). If the unintended outcome of coveting consistency of practice is a lack of authentic engagement from teachers, then the benefits are utterly dwarfed. Therefore, we try hard to encourage flexibility and choice in the ways that teachers teach, rejecting the 'one size fits all' approach in favour of a view that, whilst we believe that some core elements of practice are important enough to merit sustained attention, decisions on style, form and approach in the classroom are best left to individual teachers and faculties.

There's a tension evident between our principles here - does not the sustained whole school focus on the areas from our second principle undermine the third? What if modelling, for example, isn't part of an individual teacher's style or approach? Well - maybe. But this reveals another advantage of the focus on such a few areas - because we aren't trying to be 'right' about many things, we are able to be confident in the value of those key areas. To pursue the modelling example, essentially, this means showing students how to do things, in a way which is clear and accessible to all, and which gives students insight into how to independently apply the skill or knowledge themselves. It's an essential part of teaching, and developing teacher skill in this area makes a fundamental and profound difference. From a social justice perspective, expert modelling gives access to all students, overcoming tendencies to assume knowledge or literacy skills that some students don't bring to the classroom; modelling is just good teaching, and we'd apply the same judgement to the other areas of focus. The key here then becomes one of style and approach - whilst modelling, or giving feedback are essentially non-negotiable, teachers are encouraged to innovate develop their take on these skills, at individual or faculty level.


So - there's the theory - what about the practice? Of course evaluating the strength or state of a culture is notoriously difficult to achieve, to the extent that any formal attempts to do so risk superficiality and can lack credibility. Equally obviously, in all that I've written here, I am incapable of avoiding the limitations of my own perception - my own views will be highly influenced by the biases and prejudices which I bring to the exercise (for more on why all of this is probably wrong, refer to David Didau's stimulating blog on the subject here). But, getting on for three years in, and whilst recognising that there's much about the way we work with these principles that is inconsistent, ripe for improvement  and open to question, to me they still feel like a useful, practical lens through which to approach the design of professional learning in schools. I'd be interested in feedback from others of course - what are we missing? Any responses would be received with interest, either by commenting here or on twitter @tomboulter.

Next time, I'll expand on this further by blogging about how we've tried to apply these principles to lesson observation processes, including the options we are currently considering for evolving this process further.