The Australian federal Government have recently launched their first ever set of national Professional Standards for the profession. The standards themselves link performance management with an entitlement to professional learning thus embedding a link between formative evaluation, CPD and capacity building.
CUREE has been helping AITSL, the Australian equivalent of the TDA, to develop an evaluation strategy and a specification for Evaluation that is innovative and focussed on developing capacity across the system and at all levels. We wait with bated breath to hear who has been allocated the contract and to see how far the work really can contribute to capacity building in a complex federal system.
We think that using standards as a lens for collecting formative evidence of staff learning (similar to assessment for learning for pupils) has an important role to play in recognising teachers’ progression and can help move colleagues on from an assumption that an individual lesson – or 20 minute excerpt from it – is an adequate unit of analysis for understanding or supporting professional growth. In our Skein evaluation visits to schools we see lots of examples of schools using data about pupil starting points and outcomes to shape CPDL but, as yet, too little emphasis on teachers accessing evidence about their own and their pupils’ learning processes as part of their learning journey; as a way of breaking big professional strides into smaller steps. Perhaps the finer grained Australian standards and the linked professional learning charter will help schools introduce “assessment for learning” for staff?
You can learn more about AITSL and the standards on their website here. You can see some of their interesting approaches to communications via animation here, video here and even via an iPhone app!.