Effective Teacher Development

Bob Burstow

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781474231886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

The responsibility for facilitating effective continuing professional development (CPD) is based firmly in schools. Frequently, decisions are based on gut feeling, advertisements received or prior experiences. Effective Teacher Development encourages readers to move beyond this and to enhance their strategic decision making in order to effectively develop CPD programmes within their school, partner schools, federations or school chains. The theory behind CPD is explored, drawing on research and evidence from recent practice, including a 10-year international longitudinal study of the effectiveness of professional development to teachers. Readers are supported to develop their understanding of the whole life cycle of a CPD programme, from setting up a new programme to evaluating the effectiveness of existing provision. Chapter summaries and navigational tools support readers looking for guidance on particular issues and questions encourage readers to reflect on the impact of suggestions in their own particular context.
Effective Teacher Development is essential reading for all involved in designing, implementing and developing effective CPD programmes.

1

Positioning Teacher Development: Changing Needs within Variable Educational Contexts

How attitudes to professional learning developed

The importance of evaluation

The importance of a regular programme of Mentoring/Coaching

The significance of location

Collaboration

Impact

Working towards a model of professional learning

Needs/Benefits

Source/Origin

Aspect/Status

Concluding thoughts

In this chapter, we discuss:

– How attitudes to professional learning developed

– The importance of evaluation

Development of the reference model

– The importance of a regular programme of mentoring/coaching

– The significance of location

– The significance of collaboration

– The significance of impact

– Working towards a model of professional learning

Detailing and exploring the model including:

Unpacking Needs/Benefits

Changing needs of and demands on teachers; teachers – craftsmen or technicians; the distinguishing features of teaching as profession

Unpacking source/origin

Who are the ‘top’ in ‘top-down’ categories

Unpacking aspect/status

The variety and range of organizations that affect teachers and their development

‘To begin at the beginning’ (Thomas, 1954) sounds obvious and inevitable, but is actually extremely difficult. It is very hard to see where a genuine origin or starting point is positioned in a series of real-life events that inter-link and wrap around each other. Instead, I intend to start at the heart of things and to introduce you to one idea of how we might unpick one part of the messiness and complexity

I am doing this, to provide you as a reader with a hook on which to hang the detail, expansion and exploration that will take up the middle section of the book. I am doing this so that, when we return to the idea in the final chapter you will receive it again as a friend and not as a stranger. I am doing this as a model for the planning process which is at the core of the book – to develop the ideas in a cyclical manner, which demonstrates development and will open the way for your own work.

So … ‘to begin in the middle’ …

How attitudes to professional learning developed

In working towards a fully informed strategic approach to teacher professional learning, it is important to develop and agree a picture of the landscape or context in which the processes of learning take place.

The importance of post-qualification professional development of teachers has long been acknowledged – the James Report (1972) dealt with nothing else – and has been subjected to successive waves of government initiatives. This section does not pretend to be a full literature review, but is intended only to give a very small sample of relevant writing in the field. Nonetheless, it is interesting to consider some of the research over the period, since the James Report was published. (You should understand that this (Figure 1.1) represents my own record, started in 1996, at the commencement of my Masters studies and continuing into my doctoral research and a further period as lecturer and researcher at King’s College London. My interest has always been broadly in the field of in-service work and professional development, together with an interest in the development of the field – so I hope that this is not too skewed a sample.)

Figure 1.1 Research about teaching since the James Report

One important caveat here is that in the early years (through the 1970s and 1980s), any search for writing on in-service work would have been almost entirely focused on the improvement of teaching in subject specific areas. Journals were devoted to Maths or Science teaching for example. A very few of the articles printed had any traction or interest beyond that area. The account that follows is for generic articles dealing with broader aspects of teaching and specific only in their focus on pedagogy – or in their focus on the meta-subject of effective in-service work. This was a world which was very much bottom-up and ‘tips for teachers’ in origin and content (see Figures 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9 later in this chapter for a fuller discussion).

In the decade following the publication of the James Report, I found fourteen articles and books dealing specifically with the professional development of teachers. Notably, for those whose memory of teaching goes that far back, is a discussion about Teachers’ Centres (Adams, 1975), which have now disappeared from our town landscapes. There are, however, early discussions about school-based in-service education (Golby and Fish, 1980; Morant, 1981; Warwick, 1975) and consultancy (Eraut, 1977) which are still very much live subjects.

The next decade – from 1982 – saw some twenty items published. Of these, eight concerned themselves with school-focused in-service work. Four bring up the subject of coaching, reflection and action research (Goodson, 1991; Gore and Zeichner, 1991; Hargreaves and Dawe, 1989; Kinchloe, 1991). There is also mention of the effects of the government funding stream – TRIST (TVEI Related in-Service Training) – and its consultant team (Williams and England, 1988).

In the five years from 1992 to 1997, there were thirty-three articles of interest, a considerable increase in article production – although the reasons for this are not clear. It could be increasing engagement by universities, more interested publishers or a gradual gathering of involvement in and reaction to the changing professional development world – with the advent of the TTA (Teacher Training Agency) and the state funded GTP (Graduate Teacher Programme). There is a change in subject matter, however: concerns of professionality (Bridges and Kerry, 1993; Wright, 1993; Eraut, 1994), diminution of in-service provision (Gilroy and Day, 1993; Harland et al., 1993), policy interventions (Sidgwick et al., 1993; Bradley et al., 1994) and coaching (Showers and Joyce, 1996)

From 1997 to 2002, I noted down sixty-four articles and books. The most popular topics covered were: nine papers concerned with the evaluation and impact of professional development, nine with the design of these programmes and seven with the relationship between state and development programmes (including a Department for Education guidance paper on effective professional development course design). Of lesser interest: four were, for the first time, looking at the issue of teacher voice and teacher needs in professional development. This gave me pause for thought when I recorded this. The first of these articles was published some twenty-six years after the James Report (Glover and Law, 1996). Does this mean that, until this point, (allegedly) wiser heads were deciding what professional development would be best for teachers? My memory of teaching at that time chimes with this, courses were offered and teachers could opt in. The waves of action research and teacher inquiry had passed us by, or not yet arrived.

Other topics covered, by more than one author, in this five-year period include: three articles on professionalism and two each on teacher resilience, in-school management of teacher development, coaching and mentoring and finally the relationship between universities and practising teachers.

The final decade that I will mention showed a further increase in output, from the ninety-seven of the previous decade to 375. The subject that is most frequently represented is still ‘Impact and Evaluation’ with thirty-six articles. Design issues still ranked high, with twenty-three. Teacher voice and reflective practices both had twenty contributions. Issues surrounding the position of universities and accreditation of development had increased in coverage to twenty articles (a reflection of the combination of the decline of funding for the PPD programmes and the New Labour inspired Masters in Teaching and Learning perhaps). There was increased interest too in the picture beyond the English context (twenty-nine articles) and meta-articles in the field (eleven articles).

At first sight, there is less concern with policy issues (only seven articles over the ten years) but against this there is the increasing trend for government departments and related non-government organizations (Ofsted and the Teacher Development Authority (TDA) for example) to publish their own findings – there were twenty-seven reports during this period relating to professional development issues.

As is so often the case, the writing in the field reflects the fashion and preoccupations of the time. Yet concerns about professionalism run through the whole period, as does an extended and very loose debate about the relative positioning or site for the teacher education programme, and where the responsibility for its delivery – and by implication the content of the programme itself – should lie.

Let us turn then to a more detailed look at a couple of accounts. I am concerned here to see if there is some justification for working towards a general picture of professional development, which may assist theorists and those involved in the practicalities of design.

Kennedy (2005) working within a dataset from Scotland identified nine types of teacher learning:

Training, Award bearing, Deficit, Cascade, Standards based, Coaching/mentoring, Community of practice, Action research and Transformative. This list is, at first sight, solely a list, bearing little in the way of internal relationships or ranking. In addition, the different labels deal with different aspects of a programme:

– The function – the practicalities of a limited training programme with the (implied) theoretical and more generalized content of the award bearing, perhaps)

– The reason for a programme – to fill an identified gap (the deficit) or to ensure compliance (the standards based)

– The method of delivery – coaching and mentoring or action research

– The outcome – transformative

Beyond this, it might be possible to discern an increasing ambition or vision as you read down the list – ‘community’ and ‘transformative’ are more elevated and ambitious than ‘training’ and ‘deficit’ surely?

Dymoke and Harrison (2006) reported on a small sample investigation into performance review as a means of realizing professional learning. The key factors for success included:

– Preparation before the interview

– Opportunities for observation and critical feedback

– The place of writing and written evidence

– Collaborative working

– Teacher autonomy and choice of professional-learning activities

– Relative influence of collaboration and teacher autonomy

While being content to limit ‘success’ measures to the progress of the review process itself, there were implications in the findings for the whole of the operation of the teacher education programmes in the participating schools. It is noteworthy that the research here gives high value to the autonomy of the teacher in the process – a ‘doing it with’ as opposed to ‘doing it to’ approach is (unsurprisingly) what pays off. Preparation too is important, and this is also readily extrapolated into the whole of the teacher education design process. Preparation or thinking ahead – especially in terms of success criteria and sensible and valid evaluation measures being decided at the start of the process, rather than as an afterthought or as an expedient aspect – was also noted here.

A wider and larger analysis has been attempted since, notably as part of the BERA/RSA 2013 research into teacher learning (Furlong e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Positioning Teacher Development: Changing Needs within Variable Educational Contexts
• 2. Professional Learning Development from the Top-Down: Identifying the Need
• 3. Professional Learning Development from the Bottom-Up: The Value of the Home Grown
• 4. The Trouble with the Home Grown: Issues Surrounding Teacher Inquiry
• 5. Assessing Impact: But What Is It All For?
• 6. Developing Professional Learning Strategically: Taking Control of Intent and Design
• 7. Concluding Thoughts
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint