Leading Exceptional CPD
How to create a culture of growth in your school
Susie Fraser
BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain, 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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1 Winning hearts and minds 3
2 Defining culture 11
3 High-challenge, low-risk environments for professional learning 21
4 Securing staff buy-in 35
5 Choosing the content for professional development 47
6 Professional Development that benefits disadvantaged learners 57
7 Cognitive load theory and professional development design 71
8 Knowing the impact of professional development 81
9 Identifying professional development habits 89
10 Common mistakes when designing professional development 101
11 Case studies 117 Bibliography 135 Index 138
Introduction
For anyone who works in schools, the term ‘professional development’ is a common one but also one that can mean many different things from one to school to the next. There is no shortage of literature about what might constitute effective professional development in schools, but the robustness and reliability of any evidence that clearly defines the consistent features of professional development design had been missing until the systematic review and meta-analysis of the characteristics of professional development published in October 2021 (Sims et al., 2021) and the Education Endowment Foundation’s ‘Effective professional development’ guidance report that followed (EEF, 2021a).
At the time of these publications, I was Vice Principal for Quality of Education at Manchester Communication Academy, after having previously been Assistant Principal for Staff Development and Teaching and Learning. I was also Director of Manchester Communication Research School, part of a national network of Research Schools working in partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). One of the main aims of our work as a Research School was to mobilise the evidence of what works in schools and classrooms to leaders and teachers, with the objective of closing the attainment gap between children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and their non-disadvantaged peers. Much of this was achieved through training and professional development with colleagues from several schools across the north-west region. For a number of years, the teams that I have been a part of – within all of these roles – prioritised professional development and knew the impact that it could have when done well. Leaders at Manchester Communication Academy invested in me to complete a Fellowship in Teacher Education with Ambition Institute; they encouraged me to introduce and embed evidence-informed practice in our school and they allowed me the autonomy to design a completely new curriculum for evidence-informed professional development for teachers and leaders. Professional development was central to my work and it was important to me that I got it right. These publications provided the clarity and sometimes confirmation and specific guidance about what leaders of professional development – like me – needed to consider and do to be successful in our roles. However, what struck me through conversations with leaders and teachers was that it was easier for some to interpret and enact this guidance than it was for others. It appeared
to me that the difference in these scenarios was culture and, more importantly, the leadership of culture within schools.
This book is about how to do both: create a culture where it is possible to design effective professional development that can lead to improved outcomes. It is a combination of what the evidence tells us are our best bets for both professional development and effective cultures (not just in schools), along with reflections on my experience of different cultures and different leaders, as well as the knowledge I have developed as a leader of professional development. It also includes real and fictional case studies, which can provide exemplification of the evidence and practical illustrations of what certain features of effective cultures and effective professional development can look like and how they can be recreated.
I have written this book to be used by headteachers, senior leaders, aspiring senior leaders and middle leaders who lead curriculum areas or phases, as well as teachers who are interested in how to maximise their own professional development. It is relevant for all phases and key stages and includes examples across a range of settings.
Each chapter begins with some points to encourage reflection on current beliefs or practices so that the information provided can be considered within your own contexts and alongside your current practices. What we know about the best evidence-informed practice is that it is only when it is considered alongside context and professional knowledge that it can truly be a catalyst for improving outcomes, especially for our most disadvantaged young people.
At the end of each chapter, you will find a practice activity that will allow you to put your knowledge and learning into practice within your own settings. Not all of these will be possible at the time you read the chapter, so you may wish to bookmark them or diarise them to revisit when suitable opportunities arise.
Included are some tools to support with the practical planning necessary to deliver effective professional development. These can be adapted but should make the transfer of knowledge to practice a little easier, lightening the load of school leadership just that little bit.
I hope you enjoy the book but also, most importantly, find it useful. Writing this book has not only allowed me to reflect on my career of over 20 years but has also helped me to rethink what I do now in leadership and to consider the type of leader I hope to continue to be for years to come. Most of all, it has been the most humbling of experiences to be able to share the content of this book with you. Thank you to those who have contributed to this book, either directly through case studies or edits or indirectly through sharing their wisdom and modelling inspirational leadership of effective cultures in schools.
1 Winning hearts and minds
Reflections
How would you describe your school culture?
What difference do you want professional development to make to the students in your school?
If asked these same questions, would all staff in your school respond with the same answers?
Chapter summary
● Proactively shaping and leading a coherent school culture is essential if professional development is going to lead to sustainable change.
● The ‘why’ that underpins professional development is about winning hearts and minds, and needs to go beyond a school improvement plan.
● Motivation to participate in and respond to professional development can be attained through an achievable shared goal.
The connection of professional development to culture
Many leaders from across different industries will be familiar with Simon Sinek and his books or TED Talks (Sinek, 2011) that explore the philosophy of starting with the ‘why’. His review and evaluation of high-profile, successful businesses and organisations inspired many leaders to consider how they galvanise a workforce and catalyse sales or customer engagement. For many organisations, the concept can appear fairly simple: communicate your purpose before explaining your product and, through that, tap into an aspiration for better.
Sinek’s premise is centred around the Golden Circle, which depicts the ‘why’ at the centre of the circle, surrounded by the ‘how’ and finally the ‘what’. This illustrates the importance of putting the reason or purpose of your company/ idea/product at the heart of all strategic thinking and action, which then leads to a clear understanding of the necessity of the final product – essentially winning hearts and minds to maximise buy-in to the product.
For leaders of professional development, finding ways to win the hearts and minds of teachers, who may feel that being in a training session is taking away valuable time that they could be using to plan or mark, can feel like a challenge. This isn’t just about motivating them to engage in the training session itself. For professional development to be successful in improving teacher strategies so that students learn more effectively, teachers also need to be motivated to enact new strategies in their classroom, routinely and with fidelity. This motivation is achieved in a number of different ways – many of which we will explore in this book – but, succinctly, this is about winning hearts and minds. To align with Sinek, this is about finding our ‘why’.
This means that it is important that messages communicated with the intention of winning hearts and minds sing with the wider school culture, so that this is amplified frequently through the daily experience of being in that particular school. The reasons – the ‘why’ – are palpable and concrete.
To go a step further, the foundations necessary to enable professional development to take root are embedded in wider school culture. This can often be overlooked. Whilst this is not an intentional oversight, being clear on school culture in a way that allows leaders to align their priorities and practices – in this case, the priorities and practices for professional development – is challenging. The first step for any leader of professional development is to establish some clarity on the ingredients of their school culture.
The relationship between professional development and school culture is also mutually dependent. Effective professional development relies on a school culture that nurtures the opportunities and drivers to embed effective strategies. Deciding on what these effective strategies are can also be a challenge but, since 2011, there has been an exciting surge in the use of evidence in education, largely down to the work of the EEF. As a result, we can make judicious and evidence-informed choices about effective strategies. Chapter 5, on choosing the content for professional development, will explore this further. Effective professional development is an opportunity to demonstrate an investment in the people who shape the ethos of the organisation. It is a regular opportunity to model and demonstrate school priorities and values. An effective school culture is not without effective professional development, and effective
professional development relies on an effective school culture. Together, these are the most powerful agents for change and school improvement.
Frequently, professional development can be seen as an activity that forms part of the cycle of school improvement, rather than a driver. By flipping this, leaders can consider how the culture of a school can nurture the possibility of professional development being transferred out of a training room and into classrooms. More significantly, this allows us to see how school culture can transform professional development objectives into teacher and pupil habits.
Misconceptions around motivation
Professional development leads will rightly consider how to motivate staff to engage in professional development but also how to take the perceived or real risk of attempting to embed a new strategy or idea. Attempts to motivate staff can include:
● inviting an inspirational teacher to speak at an INSET
● asking teachers what they would like INSET to cover and offering that
● allowing teachers to build up credits for attending training, which can be cashed in for a range of ‘gifts’
● providing a fancy lunch or other refreshments during training.
None of these are wrong and all have their value. However, if motivation for change is the aim, then there are better approaches to consider.
Motivation is more likely to develop once we feel a sense of success or achievement in the goal we are striving towards, and this is different to being persuaded by incentives. The strategies listed above could be considered as incentives. As already mentioned, incentives should not necessarily be dismissed in their own right; incentives are useful for short-term gains and impact. In the context of professional development, if we want to encourage people to attend more training sessions or a session that is outside of the normal working hours, then an incentive may tempt them to do so. If we want to nudge a teacher to try something once so that we can see it in action, then an incentive may persuade them to do so. However, if we are to consider professional development as being truly effective when it changes behaviours – those of both teachers and students – that lead to improved outcomes, then short-term gains such as these are likely to be tokenistic.