CUREE E-news Summer 2015

The Centre for the use of Research and Evidence in Education

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CUREE E-NEWSLETTER:  Summer 2015 Edition

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The Philippa Blog

Peer Review in Lincolnshire

Who won the Battle of Ideas?

Ofsted Raise the Ante on CPD

Where’s Pippa?      

Rising to the Challenge of the September Training Day

 Beyond CPD to professional learning – making a new and important idea stick

 You can imagine how excited the CUREE team was about the launch in the House of Commons of our new review about continuing professional development and learning (CPDL). Launched on 9th June, the ‘review of reviews’, produced for The Teacher Development Trust in partnership with Durham University and the University College London Institute of Education, came up with some important new findings about the ineffectiveness of generic pedagogic CPDL where it is not contextualised in content knowledge and for groups of pupils. This made worthwhile the commitment and perseverance and ‘extra mile’ involved tightly constrained by budget and timescale. It also highlights useful new findings about the role of AFL for teachers and for their pupils throughout the CPDL process. It provides some useful calibration and reinforcement of evidence from CUREE’s earlier reviews. We also now have evidence that the most rigorous claims featured in this umbrella review are equivalent in strength to medium to large for positive effects in the nomenclature used by What Works Clearinghouse, or the four padlocks used by the Sutton Trust toolkit. But we are also starting to feel troubled, and perversely flattered, by the early outbreak of ‘reinterpretations’ of the work by people and organisations trying to paint their project with our colours.  Though the review is just 16 pages long (and accompanied by an even shorter summary from the research team) three other people have drafted their own summaries – often stressing particular aspects of the report and usually the CPD bits. Dylan Wiliam has remarked on the number of adulterated versions of Assessment for Learning there are out there in the wild and it seems that, in our own small way, we are joining this company. But let me be very clear:  This review is not just about Continuing Professional Development (CPD), it’s about how that connects with teachers’ work based professional learning. The distinction is an important one. For too long we have been focussed on teaching teachers and not on how they learn. CUREE has been campaigning for a focus on both since 2007 so we are pleased to find yet more evidence of the validity of our position.

What’s more, colleagues from across the system are starting to cite the review as proof positive of the perfection of the design of their own CPD offer. This is predictable, of course, and it is a good sign that providers are checking out whether their offer matches up to the evidence. But it does rather miss the point.  If this review were just about CPD it would be setting the bar very high indeed; it would be asking CPD providers (including schools) to design extremely costly CPD support packages that would rarely be affordable without huge public subsidy. Yes, this review tells us we can and should be investing much more seriously in both CPD and CPDL. However, it also tells us that much of the work based professional learning for educators can and should be effectively and efficiently wrapped around the day job in schools and classrooms that are set up as effective professional and pupil learning environments; places where teacher and pupil learning are profoundly connected by collaborative exploration of evidence about how pupils respond when teacher try new approaches. We recognise that it took quite some time for the education system to move from an over focus on teaching that ignored whether or not what was being taught was actually learned by pupils. We are not going to give up on this and will take every opportunity to accelerate the transition from professional development to professional learning. We hope you will come with us and, if you need a further incentive, have a look at the article below about the focus on professional development and learning climate in the new inspection framework.

But that’s for September. For now, have a pleasant, restful summer

Philippa Cordingley 

Peer Review in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire schools, supported by their local authority, are taking the bold step of implementing a county-wide system of peer review as the next stage in their school improvement strategy. Bolder still, the LA has co-ordinated systematic training and commissioned three external providers offering three different approaches which Heads can choose between.

With some days to go before decisions have to be finalised, we’re delighted that dozens of Heads have chosen CUREE’s practical hands-on development approach and some have yet to decide.

CUREE’s programme for Peer Review Training will enable school leaders to develop exceptional schools via peer review, embedded in collaborative, reciprocal enquiry. CUREE's years of experience in developing evidence based school improvement through professional development are being put to use in the design of the programme. We will establish heads' confidence in modelling professional learning. 

Our Programme draws on our success in conducting 60 school reviews, all scaffolded by research-based tools, and our expertise in helping leaders use them. The training will be facilitated by a team who are experienced in evaluation as well as leadership development. Our facilitators are skilled practitioners, researchers and leaders who have broad experience of translating CUREE’s extensive command of international research about effective leadership and practice of teaching and learning into sustained programmes of school-wide, enquiry-based CPD.

If you are a Lincolnshire Head still pondering which option to take, have a look here for some more information about ours.  And if you are local authority, multi-academy trust, teaching school alliance or just a group of schools working collaboratively together, contact Gillian Spence to see how this approach can work for you. 

Who won the Battle of Ideas?

Wellington College in Berkshire again provided the beautiful setting for the 2015 Festival of Education on 18-19th June. The sun shone, celebrities glittered and in the Old Gym, great minds engaged with knotty questions.  The panellists, David Weston, Toby Young, Philippa Cordingley and Kevin Rooney addressed the core question “do you need a teacher qualification to be a good teacher?” David argued that a deep knowledge of and passion about a subject might carry the day with already motivated pupils but, except in that happy circumstance, teachers needed command of the techniques and approaches for effective teaching and learning. Teacher training (with or without the qualification) was currently the best method of providing that. Toby wasn’t arguing against the value of teacher qualifications per se but he felt strongly that headteachers should be trusted to select the people he (or she) thought best suited for the job regardless of qualification. Philippa stressed the evidence that good teachers need to be expert in their subject/content, teaching and learning strategies and their students. Keeping all these plates spinning at once was pretty challenging which is why teachers needed good initial training and then further professional development over their careers. Kevin offered the perspective of a serving teacher for whom ‘professional development’ had not been useful. His focus was definitely on his subject expertise which had not been supported by CPD. He argued for teachers teaching teachers in a kind of community of scholarship.

The topic of discussion quickly mutated away from a pure debate over whether or not Qualified Teacher Status should be preserved or eliminated, and towards a conversation about the challenges facing providers, users and beneficiaries (i.e. heads, governors and students) of Initial Teacher Education. Toby Young’s initial point, that headteachers should be afforded the leeway to pick and choose who they hire without restrictions regarding QTS/a PGCSE, and Philippa’s, that QTS can be (even if it is not quite yet) a marker for teaching excellence, both altered subtly in accordance with this to become more focused on what the stresses on ITE are and how the system can best tackle them.

In summing up, the Toadmeister demonstrated an insouciant disregard of the protocols of debate by introducing a completely new line of argument relying on Robert Plomin’s reported view that 80% of children’s intelligence is heritable (though Plomin himself denies this simplistic interpretation of his work).

Who won? Well Philippa obviously!

Ofsted raises the ante on professional development

The education press and many bloggers have generated thousands of words on what’s in the new Common Inspection Framework (CIF),  a fair number of whom seem to have rewritten the documents from their own imaginations. Here at CUREE, we like to stick to the facts (man) and it is a fact that both the  Framework and the Handbook contain significant new expectations about teacher development.

The Leadership and Management section of the new CIF, to come into force from September, has moved subtly from ‘Chastising Parent’  (‘rigorous use of performance management’) to Nurturing Parent (‘...and appropriate professional development’). As you’d expect, this is set out in more detail in the Handbook. In Outstanding schools:

n  Leaders and governors use incisive performance management that leads to professional development that encourages, challenges and supports teachers’ improvement.....

n  Staff reflect on and debate the way they teach. They feel deeply involved in their own professional development. Leaders have created a climate in which teachers are motivated and trusted to take risks and innovate in ways that are right for their pupils.

And in Good schools:

n  Leaders and governors use performance management effectively to improve teaching. They use accurate monitoring to identify and spread good practice across the school.

n  Teachers value the continuing professional development provided by the school. It is having a positive impact on their teaching and pupils’ learning...

We are particularly pleased to see the Ofsted criteria accurately reflect the research evidence – to get to Outstanding your school needs to provide an environment in which staff are not just ‘developed’ they engage in structured professional dialogue and are involved in and take ownership of their own professional development. And (listen folks, it’s Ofsted saying this) the climate encourages teachers to take risks and innovate.

All well and good, you might say, but how do I know I’ve created this climate? By happy coincidence Ofsted and CUREE seem to be working from the same evidence base. So we have anticipated the Ofsted expectations in our SKEIN review process. Let us help you review the maturity of your school (or group of schools) against standards based in the international evidence. Our ‘non-invasive’ process will tell you how close to the Outstanding grade you are and offer practical advice on what you need to do to get there. Contact Rebecca.raybould@curee.co.uk for more information or have a look at www.skein.org.uk

Where’s Pippa?

Just because you can – here’s a little map of many of the places our Chief Executive has made presentations this year

Last year we could have had fewer pins but would have needed a larger map! 

Rising to the challenge of the September training day

I know it’s only July but that start of term inset day is only a few days away in school years. Worried about how you are going to offer your colleagues something valuable, interesting and differentiated to do? How about trying one of our Route Maps? This offers a range of research based development activities organised around a theme. The one featured here is ‘Challenge’ – a visually engaging set of activities suitable for groups of teacher or whole school development days. If challenge is not your thing, how about Feedback or Metacognition? Most are available in primary or secondary ‘flavours’ (and an FE focus is also available).