Teachers’ Learning Matters: Exploring lessons from research and practice

Teachers are responsible for learning; they inspire, teach, support and assess their students on a daily basis while also being subject to numerous expectations from parents, society, employers, government and their students. To engage with these challenges, teachers need to be enabled and motivated to continue to learn while operating within busy workplaces and a culture of performativity, and in the context of politicised and volatile teacher ‘training’ spaces. In this lecture, I will draw on my research in the contexts of both initial and continuing teacher professional learning and practice development, exploring potential lessons for school leaders, training providers, policymakers and teachers themselves. The research that informs my lecture represents a variety of lived experiences of educational practice – either my own or teachers’. My research does not neatly fit into one paradigm or another; sometimes I adopt an interpretive paradigm and at other times an action research paradigm. I will reflect on research-based evidence of teacher learning, both to illustrate and to analyse professional practices from which knowledge can be gained. My research reveals the tensions for teacher educators, mentors, coaches, school leaders and teachers at all stages of their careers. Their professional and personal need for learning and development coincides with a time when schools are dealing with ever-increasing demands to ‘perform’ in relation to pupil attainment, and a growing sense that they are covering cracks in a period of austerity. This backdrop creates new dependencies; for example, raising the demands on those within and joining the teaching profession to create a ‘self-improving school-led system’. It opens up opportunities for professional learning but also creates contradictions as activity systems collide. I can’t do all of these themes full justice in the time that I have but I do hope to help you to engage with them

Engaging in educational research and development through teacher practitioner enquiry; a pragmatic or naïve approach?

Practitioner enquiry is variously associated with school improvement, teachers’ professional development and educational innovation. It can encourage teachers to reflect on their classroom practice, to gather evidence of students’ learning and engagement and to design pedagogical experiments and test their efficacy. For some teachers it is very much a practical approach to practice review or development; in simple terms, it builds on the ‘plan, do, review’ cycle. For others it becomes more of a conceptual stance; becoming more critically reflective and developing a sense of theorised practice. At one extreme it can ensure that CPD is a bespoke offer which puts teachers in the driving seat, encouraging them to engage intelligently with evidence from multiple sources and enabling creative responses to recognised needs. At another extreme it can become part of a managed system of data driven school improvement, or a response to meeting new and emerging agendas of schools as self-improving systems. At its heart, practitioner enquiry rests on the proposition that those in practice are able to take informed intentional actions, explore their effects and form judgements of their value. This paper will outline principles of practitioner enquiry and consider how it can support the development of teaching and relate to constructs of professionalism and professional learning, alongside evidence of its challenge to school systems which are often perceived to demand convergence of practice and narrowly constructed conceptions of school improvement

Re-imagining mentoring as a dynamic hub in the transformation of initial teacher education: The role of mentors and teacher educators

Purpose Teacher education in many countries is under reform with growing differences in its form and function. This is indicative of ongoing negotiations around the place of theory, research and practice in teachers’ professional learning. However, the demand for mentoring of trainee teachers during often-extended and multiple school-based placements is a relative constant. Indeed, with the trend towards greater school-based professional experience, mentoring practices become ever more critical. This is the focus of this paper. Design / Methodology / Approach This is a conceptual paper written from the perspective of an experienced teacher educator in England, drawing on both practical experience and a body of associated research. It can be conceptualised as related to cases of practice, linked to episodes of practitioner research grounded in the ethics of the improvability of practice, the desire to meet the needs of the professional communities and a deep understanding of the demands and cultures of their workplaces. Findings Mentoring can be re-imagined as a dynamic hub within a practice development-led model for individual professional learning and institutional growth. Acting on this conceptualisation would allow mentors, trainees and other supporting teacher educators to contribute to the transformation of professional learning practices and educational contexts. Originality / Value This paper goes beyond offering helpful guidance to participants and stakeholders in mentoring, or stipulating standards to be achieved, to considering what might be described as a hopeful or transformational stance in relation to mentoring. Teacher educators can continue to bring value to the transformation of teacher education through a focus on mentoring as an educative process. Key words: mentoring, teacher education, mode

Creative Partnerships: Creating purpose, permission and passion for outdoor learning in school ground

This review is based on evidence from four primary and first schools in north-east England, each of which has used the opportunities offered by Creative Partnerships to develop learning experiences in their school grounds. The motivations for initiating the work; the nature of learning; the use of the school environment and the relationships have been unique to each school, as have the physical, cognitive and affective outcomes. This publication explores the themes that have emerged across the case studies and illustrates them with evidence from each school. The review was conducted between March and July 2011, during the final Creative Partnerships funding period. The following schools participated in the project and we would like to thank them for their time and the openness with which they engaged with the review. Farne Primary School, Newcastle St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School, Newcastle Stobhillgate First School, Northumberland Tweedmouth West First School, Northumberland The key criteria for inclusion of the four schools in this review was that they had each prioritised the development of learning in the school grounds through the Creative Partnership project. The schools were self-selected through positive responses to introductory requests for engagement. In each school the focus of the review was to understand how and why they had developed their work, what the learning experiences were for pupils and teachers, and what the valued outcomes were. We were interested in how the work related to the wider curriculum and how the key participants had been engaged. We also explored the issues that emerged as the work progressed

Mentoring student teachers; a vulnerable workplace learning practice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of mentoring as a workplace process. The mentees are post-graduate student teachers hosted in placement schools. The research aims to explore the experiences of key participants in a policy context where the role and scale of school-based teacher training is expanding rapidly. Design/methodology/approach – This is an interpretative case study of mentoring practices assigned to a secondary level initial teacher training partnership, with the mentors being subject teachers working in school departments which host post-graduate student teachers. The case study was investigated over two years and included focus groups, interviews, questionnaires and content analysis. Participants were student teachers, their mentors and both school-based and university-based tutors. Findings – Positive experiences of mentoring are not universal. Mentoring interacts with the required processes of monitoring and reporting and in some cases the power structures associated with these processes conflict with the less performative aspects. However, when mentors are offered evidence of student teachers’ perceptions and theoretical constructs of mentoring as practice they can start to recognise that it can be enhanced. Practical implications- The quality of mentoring in initial teacher education will take on even greater significance in jurisdictions, such as England, where the role of workplace learning is strengthened as a result of changes of government policy. Originality/value – The outcomes of this study will be relevant to policy makers, school-based mentors and system leaders for teacher education – whether school or university based

Joining the dots: Using lesson study to develop metacognitive teaching

‘Metacognition and self-regulation’ and ‘collaborative learning’ remain high in the EEF Teachers’ Toolkit of effective teaching approaches, and with good reasons. These reasons can be framed through the following hypotheses. Firstly; that to become metacognitive and self-regulating learners need to experience learning situations, activities and content that can best be resolved, understood and applied through opportunities to engage in dialogue with others. Secondly; that through engaging with collaborative learning learners become more adept at grappling with the complexities and challenges that they encounter through the curriculum and in life. And finally; that to teach for metacognition and self-regulation teachers need to experience both for themselves in their own learning to teach. These three hypotheses form the basis of this case study, focusing on a PGCE module through which student teachers use an adapted lesson study approach to develop a repertoire for teaching thinking skills