Teachers Learning: Professional Development and Education (Cambridge Teacher Series)

The Cambridge Teacher series Colleen McLaughlin This book is part of The Cambridge Teacher series, edited by senior colleagues at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, which has a longstanding tradition of involvement in high-quality, innovative teacher education and continuing professional development.

Teachers Learning focuses on teachers’ professional learning through accounts of recent enquiries. They provide evidence and arguments for teachers’ professional learning, supported by school leadership and in collaboration with universities and others, as the key to improving what happens in classrooms for the benefit of pupils and their learning. The messages are not simple because the goals, processes and contexts are complex. However, at a time when policy rushes to find easy solutions, to satisfy political imperatives, this book is a timely reminder that we do have good evidence and experience to share about the crucial importance and effectiveness of teachers learning.

The book includes the following topics:

97811107618695 MCLAUGHLIN TEACHERS LEARNING C M Y K

• teachers learning • the relationship between teachers’ learning and pupil progress • the role of professional learning in determining the profession’s future

Teachers Learning Professional Development and Education Colleen McLaughlin

Teachers Learning Professional Development and Education

Teachers Learning Professional Development and Education The Cambridge Teacher series

• creating reflexive communities of enquiry through partnerships • enquiry-based professional learning across the career course: developments in Scotland • teacher change and changing teachers via professional development • values–practice dissonance in teachers’ professional learning orientations.

Edited by Colleen McLaughlin

Other titles available: Teacher Education and Pedagogy: Theory, Policy and Practice ISBN 978-1-107-62655-3 WORKING WITH

Teachers Learning Professional development and education The Cambridge Teacher series

Edited by Colleen McLaughlin

WORKING WITH

camb rid ge un iv e r sit y pre s s Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107618695 Š Cambridge University Press 2013 Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2013 Printed in the United Kingdom by Printondemand-worldwide, Peterborough A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-107-61869-5 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of contributors Foreword: Mary James (University of Cambridge) Acknowledgements Editor’s introduction: Colleen McLaughlin Chapter 1

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

v vi viii ix 1

John MacBeath (University of Cambridge)

Chapter 2

The role of professional learning in determining the profession’s future

21

Philippa Cordingley (Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education)

Chapter 3

Creating reflexive communities of enquiry: experiences of professional development partnerships between schools, local authorities and a university

32

Richard Byers (University of Cambridge) Angela Scott (Eastern Leadership Centre) Vivien Rosier (Essex Local Authority)

Chapter 4

Developing teachers, schools and systems: partnership approaches

52

David Frost (University of Cambridge)

Chapter 5

Enquiry-based professional learning across the career course: developments in Scotland

70

Moira Hulme (University of Glasgow)

Chapter 6

Teacher change and changing teachers via professional development V. Darleen Opfer (RAND Education) David Pedder (University of Leicester)

iii

93

iv

Chapter 7

Contents

Values–practice dissonance in teachers’ professional learning orientations

119

David Pedder (University of Leicester) V. Darleen Opfer (RAND Education)

Index

143

List of contributors

Richard Byers Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK Philippa Cordingley Chief Executive of the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE), UK David Frost Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK Moira Hulme Lecturer in Education Research, University of Glasgow, UK Mary James Professor of Education, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK John MacBeath Professor of Education, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK Colleen McLaughlin Professor of Education, University of Sussex, UK V. Darleen Opfer Director RAND Education and Distinguished Chair in Education Policy, USA David Pedder Professor of Education, University of Leicester, UK Vivien Rosier Specialist Teacher Lead for Inservice Training, Special and Additional Educational Needs Provider Services, Essex Local Authority, UK Angela Scott Service Leader for Special Educational Needs, Eastern Leadership Centre, UK

v

Foreword

Whatever else they may do, schools exist for the education of children and young people. In England, the aspirations for all schools are set out in Section 78 of the Education Act 2002, which states that schools should promote the ‘spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society’ and prepare pupils at the school for ‘the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life’. This grand ambition, first expressed in 1944, remains the legislative foundation of schooling to this day.

Such goals, though well supported, are very challenging, especially for the teachers and school leaders who are expected to work for their fruition in increasing diverse contexts.

It is undeniable that background factors, such as those associated with the socio-economic status of pupils, continue to have a huge influence on pupil outcomes. However, the quality of teaching can make a difference. Indeed studies in school effectiveness indicate that, since within-school variation tends to be greater than between-school variation, it is important to focus efforts on improving the quality of teaching processes rather than constantly changing the structures of schooling. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that most politicians have failed to learn, probably because it is easier to implement short-term measures with high visibility, such as creating new types of school, than it is to invest in longer-term and less visible provision for the professional development of teachers.

The importance of investing in the professional development of teachers in order to promote better learning by pupils was a hallmark of the work of the Cambridge Institute of Education from the time when Joyce Skinner became its Director in 1974. She had contributed to the 1972 James Report that asserted the importance of close partnerships between practising teachers and teacher educators. In order to foster such partnerships, Joyce Skinner served on the county’s Education Committee and became academic secretary of the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET).

This established a culture and tradition within the Institute that valued and vi

vii

Foreword

developed relationships with local authorities and schools in East Anglia and beyond. This in turn became the fertile soil in which a generation of researchers and teacher educators, working collaboratively with teachers, could innovate and grow the theory and practice of educational change. For many, within and beyond Cambridge, this is what the Cambridge Institute was notable for and became its principal and lasting legacy. When the Institute was incorporated into the University of Cambridge it formed part of the creative mix that now characterises the Faculty of Education.

The chapters in this book, written by academics and researchers associated with this tradition, provide a testament to the enduring importance of the original vision. However, they are neither backward-looking nor fixed in a particular approach. Through accounts of recent enquiries, of various kinds, they provide evidence and argument for teachers’ professional learning, supported by school leadership and in collaboration with universities and others, as the key to improving what happens in classrooms for the benefit of pupils and their learning. The messages are not simple, because the goals, processes and contexts are complex. However, at a time when policy rushes to find easy solutions, to satisfy political imperatives, this book is a timely reminder that we do have good evidence and experience to share about the crucial importance and effectiveness of teachers learning. We need to pay great attention to this if we are genuinely concerned to promote the development of pupils at school and that of society.

Mary James Professor and Associate Director of Research, University of Cambridge Faculty of Education President, British Educational Research Association

Acknowledgements

I would like to give particular thanks to Mary Jane Drummond, who played a major part in reviewing and working as a co-editor with me. This collection would not have been possible without her.

viii

Editor’s introduction Colleen McLaughlin

Teachers’ learning has never been so centre stage in educational policy and practice. Internationally and nationally, politicians, practitioners and researchers are emphasising the importance of teachers and their professional development. An example from the UK is the Schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching : All the evidence from different education systems around the world shows that the most important factor in determining how well children do is the quality of teachers and teaching. The best education systems in the world draw their teachers from among the top graduates and train them rigorously and effectively, focusing on classroom practice. They then make sure that teachers receive effective professional development throughout their career, with opportunities to observe and work with other teachers, and appropriate training for leadership positions.

(DfE 2010: 9)

Another example comes from the report of the second international Teacher Summit, held in the USA in May 2012, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): The kind of education needed today requires teachers to be high-level knowledge workers who constantly advance their own professional knowledge as well as that of their profession. Teachers need to be agents of innovation not least because innovation is critically important for generating new sources of growth through improved efficiency and productivity. (Schleicher 2012: 36)

The language and emphasis are subtly different in these quotations, which is interesting in itself, but there is a consensus that teachers’ learning is necessary for the development of educational practice. This has not always been so. The new – and welcome – policy focus on teachers’ professional development appears to be driven by international comparisons; much of the language used demonstrates a concern with efficiency and performance. There are different understandings of what is meant by professional development in the reports cited above, with an emphasis in the British policy document on ix

x

Colleen McLaughlin

teaching rather than learning, and vice versa in the OECD document. These differences reflect continuing current debates about the nature and processes of teacher learning, and the contexts in which it is most worthwhile – debates that are the substantive themes of the chapters that follow.

The book arises from the longstanding concern and tradition in what is now the Faculty of Education in the University of Cambridge for involvement in high-quality, innovative, initial teacher education and continuing professional development. The focus on initial teacher education is the substance of a companion volume edited by Michael Evans (Evans 2013), whereas the present book focuses on the lifelong, professional learning of teachers. In this chapter some alternative models of teacher learning are examined, as is the history of professional development in the UK, with a particular emphasis on Cambridge and East Anglia.

Changing thinking about teachers’ learning In the 1970s the need for teachers to continue learning beyond their initial preparatory period was not widely accepted or highly valued. There were opportunities for full-time secondments to institutions of higher education, where teachers went, usually for a year, to study for a diploma or master’s degree, chosen to meet their individual interests. When the teachers returned to their schools, they were rarely invited to disseminate their learning beyond their own classrooms, but were simply acknowledged to have benefitted as individuals. In the late 1970s the thinking behind this approach began to change (Morley 1994). In 1978 teacher development programmes began to be seen as meeting needs identified by schools and headteachers, as well as benefitting individual teachers. New forms and structures were established to meet these needs in a time of rapid change in educational policy. New acronyms and structures emerged, such as GRIST (Grant Related In-Service Training), INSET (In-Service Training) and LEATAGS (Local Education Authority Training Grant Schemes). This approach to professional development was often led by local authorities and based in local teachers’ centres.

At the same time Lawrence Stenhouse (1975) was developing and articulating a model of school-based curriculum development and ‘extended professionalism’ that had lifelong teacher learning and research at its heart.

xi

Editor’s introduction

Two people who were part of this tradition at the University of East Anglia, John Elliott and Nigel Norris, explain the thinking thus in their scholarly evaluation of Stenhouse’s important contribution to this field: [B]ecause it was the teacher who held the keys to the laboratory, it was the teacher who could mount educational experiments in the classroom, it was the teacher who would, maybe with the help of others, marshal and interpret the evidence and it was the teacher who had to learn from the experience of classroom action research if genuine and sustainable educational improvement were to be possible. (Elliott and Norris 2012: 3)

In this then radical reconceptualisation, professional development was not an occasional event driven by an individual teacher’s enthusiasm but an essential element of all teachers’ practice, focused on understanding learning and teaching in the classroom through a process of systematic, critical inquiry made public (Stenhouse 1981). Stenhouse argued that ‘we are concerned with the development of a sensitive and self-critical subjective perspective and not with the aspiration to unattainable objectivity’ (1975: 157).

He saw teachers researching their practice as fundamental to educational change; he placed the locus of change in the classroom, not at the periphery of the educational system nor with policy-makers. This is of course the antithesis of the top-down policy drives we have seen in education in the last decade. He argued that ‘the best means of development is not by clarifying ends but by analysing practice’ (Stenhouse 1975: 72).

Stenhouse’s ideas travelled between the University of East Anglia and the Institute of Education (which later became incorporated into the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education). John Elliott, who was responsible for developing the tools with which to implement Stenhouse’s ideas, and other key thinkers worked in both places. The core principles of research as part of teacher learning, focusing on teachers’ own problems and concerns and discussing ideas in groups which would critically examine them became the cornerstones of provision for teachers both within the Faculty and in its outposts. Richard Byers and David Frost weave these principles through their chapters in this book, although clearly the original ideas have since been developed.

In the 1980s there was another major shift in policy: the 1988 Education Reform Act. As a result of this highly controversial and contested Act, school-based in-service training days for teachers became a legal requirement for maintained schools; these days were known as ‘Baker days’ after

xii

Colleen McLaughlin

Kenneth Baker, the then Secretary of State for Education. This new requirement was the beginning of a statutory model of professional development for teachers, which has since become acceptable and institutionalised. It was a long way from the model proposed by Stenhouse, and the language often used to describe it very far from his intentions, but it did introduce a notion that teachers should continue to learn about learning and teaching. It challenged the long-held notion that professional development was something for the young, the novice or the boffin. This emphasis on teachers’ continuing professional development has continued, as can be seen in the quotations at the beginning of this chapter. Now the rhetoric of much educational policy is that teacher professional development is central to high-quality education. The debate about what is meant by that and what form it should take is central to this book. What views are there of teacher development in recent years?

In a review for the Scottish government, Menter et al. (2010) identified four ‘influential paradigms’ of teacher professionalism: ‘the effective teacher, the reflective teacher, the enquiring teacher and the transformative teacher’. The effective teacher model fits well with a nationally prescribed curriculum and a national assessment system. In this model the teacher’s skills, knowledge and competences are tightly prescribed: ‘The emphases are on technical accomplishment and on measurement. It is the model for an age of accountability and performativity’ (p. 21). It can perhaps be seen as close to the current state of education in the UK, particularly in England, where, over the last 30 years, what should be taught to students and teachers, and how, have both been increasingly prescribed by central government.

The reflective teacher model exemplifies a less restricted view of teacher professionalism. It emerged in the UK in the last part of the twentieth century and was based on the work of John Dewey (1897), with his view of teachers as active decision-makers, and more recently Donald Schon (1983). It has also been taken up by Andrew Pollard (2008) in his writing on the reflective teacher. This model has a cycle of learning at its centre, ‘planning, making provision, acting, collecting data, analysing the data, evaluating and reflecting and then planning the next step’ (Menter et al. 2010: 22). A study by Furlong et al. (2000) found that 70 per cent of teacher education programmes based in or led by universities and colleges were informed by some version of this model. The third model, the enquiring teacher, is not dissimilar to the reflective teacher but Menter et al. note that ‘Reflective teaching does not in itself imply a research orientation on the part of the teacher, although the model may be strongly influenced by a set of ideas that do promote just that

xiii

Editor’s introduction

conception’ (Menter et al. 2010: 23). The ideas of Stenhouse (1975) underpin this model, which involves teachers in systematic enquiry into their classroom practice as a form of professional and curriculum development. Menter et al. (2010) describe how these ideas have been taken up by universities working in partnerships with schools and colleges and by government initiatives.

Teacher research features in initial teacher education programmes as well as in approaches to professional development.

The final model is the transformative teacher, which builds on the previous two but has an ‘activist’ element most recently exemplified in the writings of Sachs (2003), who argues that teachers’ responsibilities go beyond pedagogy; they should be contributing to social change and preparing their pupils to contribute to change in society. Those who see teaching as a transformative activity, such as Zeichner (2009) and Cochran-Smith (2004) suggest that challenge to the status quo is not only to be expected but is a necessary part of bringing about a more equitable education system, where inequalities in society begin to be addressed and where progressive social change can be stimulated. It is worth noting that the work of those promoting the enquiring or reflective or researching teacher also shares this emphasis on social justice.

Elliott (1991), for example, has argued that research by teachers should be informed by concerns for increasing democracy and social justice. So there are different emphases and views of what is meant by the two terms ‘professional’ and ‘development’. These different conceptions are mirrored in the chapters that follow.

Important themes The chapters in this book focus on two main themes: first, those describing and interrogating developments in the Cambridge ‘tradition’, as David Frost labels it, in the Scottish context (Moira Hulme’s chapter) and in the global context (John MacBeath’s chapter). The second major theme in this book is research into teacher learning and development. This is a field that has grown a great deal in the last three decades, with a noticeable increase in empirical research. Philippa Cordingley, Darleen Opfer and Dave Pedder report on major reviews of the state of the field, showing how many of these studies have challenged conventional thinking about teachers’ learning; they illustrate a growing sophistication in theorising about how teachers learn. There is also some interesting evidence in these chapters on the most beneficial locations for teachers’ learning and the forms it should take.

xiv

Colleen McLaughlin

The chapters raise questions about the relationship between teachers, their learning and the following: • the conception of the teacher’s role and profession; • knowledge and knowledge creation; • other organisations in the educational landscape; • colleagues and the school; • issues of power, status and development.

The conception of the teacher’s role and profession In her chapter outlining developments in Scotland, Moira Hulme focuses on what an emphasis on teachers’ learning has meant in that country. The developments and dilemmas found there echo similar ones in many other countries around the world. One of these is whether preparation for teaching is seen as a process of training or apprenticeship, or as the development of the ‘extended professional’ that Hoyle (1975) and Stenhouse (1975) proposed. The authors of the studies in this book argue for the latter, a view of teacher development as a scholarly, lifelong study of both theory and practice. This view is only slowly gaining general acceptance, as global competition and international comparisons reinforce the value of teachers undertaking in-depth professional study post-initial qualification. John MacBeath shows that this extended professionalism is also essential for effective pupil learning.

Knowledge and knowledge creation Another theme running through several chapters is that teacher learning is most worthwhile when teachers are supported in generating knowledge about their own practice, which they share both locally and more widely.

Research and inquiry are embedded in Moira Hulme’s account of Scottish standards and are central to John MacBeath’s and David Frost’s chapters.

The Stenhousian notion of the teacher as researcher, generating knowledge through critical and public examination of classroom and school practice, seems to have become accepted. Donald McIntyre (2008), David Hargreaves (1999) and others argue, as does David Frost, that the generation of knowledge by teachers is an important future goal in our educational systems.

McIntyre and Hargreaves both challenged the nature and use of educational research and argued that instead of treating teachers as passive recipients of others’ research and knowledge, ‘one alternative is to treat practitioners themselves as the main (but not only) source for the creation of professional

xv

Editor’s introduction

knowledge’ (Hargreaves 1999: 125). The task of professional knowledge creation is not a simple one; although it has been pursued in many contexts since Hargreaves first wrote about ‘the knowledge-creating school’, many problems remain. The conditions that support the task are examined and discussed by Darleen Opfer, Dave Pedder and Philippa Cordingley in their chapters. Indeed, the status of teacher-generated knowledge is still the subject of a very necessary debate. Necessary because the integration of knowledge about practice and theoretical knowledge is complex and the warrant for that research needs to be established. This debate will be very important in the future, especially in a context where rather simplistic notions of transferring practice, and knowledge about practice, abound. It will require that we develop our thinking about the relationship between research and practice and the status we give to it. What we see in Richard Byers’s, Philippa Cordingley’s, David Frost’s and John MacBeath’s accounts is the tremendous value for practice and theory of teacher involvement in creating knowledge about teaching and learning.

Other organisations in the educational landscape The relationship between teachers’ learning and other actors in the educational system is another key factor discussed by several contributors. In the past the context for teacher learning was often outside the school, and driven by a variety of external agencies. Early professional development opportunities were often located in teachers’ centres or universities. Inquiry activities were often led by those based in universities or higher education institutes, although they were often ex-teachers. Philippa Cordingley concludes, as did Stenhouse (1975), that promoting professional learning within the school and leading that process are fundamental to effective professional development.

The school is the most suitable location for professional learning, and work on the agenda of teachers as well as on the agenda of schools and policy-makers is also important. The conclusion that Philippa Cordingley reaches about the need for both internal and external specialists is supported by Richard Byers.

They argue for teachers’ learning to be located in partnerships between those involved; in the cases described in their chapters these are universities and local authorities. The fast-changing landscape of the educational system and the demise of local authorities mean that schools and networks of schools are going to be the key actors. The valuable contributions of networks and communities of enquiry are discussed by Richard Byers, David Frost and John MacBeath. All characterise them as central to the development of teachers’

xvi

Colleen McLaughlin

learning. The role of universities has been key to such work in the past and there are signs that universities are struggling to stay involved in teachers’ professional development, other than master’s courses in the UK. What universities can bring in the best of partnerships is an expertise in research; a natural tendency to critically appraise and question; an ability to locate a question in a wider field of knowledge; and a position outside of the policy or school system. Having a model of teacher learning that consists mainly of a focus on what works and that is led only by government organisations would be an unfortunate reduction of professional development. The recent developments in the arena of professional development in England may be the unintended outcomes of a more ‘managerialist’ approach to both school and higher education planning, rather than a conscious decision to separate two partners who have lived well together for a good many years and whose union has been very productive.

The current emphasis in English policy tends towards seeing all professional development as necessarily being school-based and school-led. Effective professional learning needs to meet and address the needs of the school and its teachers – this is self-evident. However, this should not be a reductionist argument. It would be a mistake to ignore the outsider and not listen to the research evidence presented in this book about the necessity of having an external view which is wider than that of a single school. Dave Pedder and Darleen Opfer show how the orientations and value placed on partners and external conditions, as well as learning, are key factors in whether teachers engage in professional learning. They also show the positive power of criticality and creating dissonance in helping teachers to see their classrooms and their practices differently.

Colleagues and the school Collaboration between colleagues in schools is another arena for scrutiny and discussion identified in the chapters that follow. Dave Pedder and Darleen Opfer identify this as a key orientation and argue that the values teachers hold influence their learning greatly. The relationship between school-based inquiry or teachers’ learning and the rest of the school practice is a key theme, too. However, there is still a need to examine further and in more depth the optimum within-school conditions for teachers’ learning. Schools as presently constituted do not make collaboration or wide-ranging openended enquiry easy. Stenhouse argued that ‘the major barriers to teachers

xvii

Editor’s introduction

assuming the role of researchers studying their own teaching in order to improve are psychological and social’ (1975: 175). This is a fruitful area for further research.

Issues of power, status and development David Frost argues in his chapter for teacher leadership of research and the agenda for research in schools. He makes this argument on the grounds of impact, democracy and the location of the locus of change with teachers.

These are essential, he writes, if teachers are to be treated as extended professionals. The relationship between school improvement, teacher development work and control is not a simple one.

The challenges ahead There are many challenges ahead if teachers’ learning is to continue to be rich, purposeful and effective, at classroom, school and network level, but the insights presented in this book suggest some firm foundations for the future. One such challenge is to understand more about how conditions in schools and classrooms can best support teachers’ learning and communities of critical enquiry. There are obvious tensions between the discourses of ‘performativity’ and ‘managerialism’, which characterise current education policy, and the openness that is necessary for teachers to learn, but there are also opportunities in the new emphasis on teaching schools and increasing collaboration between schools. The tradition of democratic and emancipatory conceptualisations of professional development needs to be guarded and continued.

Another challenge is to remind ourselves of the psychological challenge that results from questioning one’s own practice, and, sometimes, finding it wanting. In 1994 Mary Jane Drummond and I wrote about the fourth dimension of teachers’ learning: the emotional dimension. ‘What happens’, asked one of the teachers we worked with in the 1990s, ‘when you wish you’d never started learning?’ (Drummond and McLaughlin 1994: 43). Her question is still relevant for teachers today. The dissonance and disturbance that accompany real learning can be especially painful in a climate of inspection, target-setting, performance management and high-stakes assessment. There is an argument for taking this emotional dimension even more seriously than

xviii

Colleen McLaughlin

in 1994. The tradition of supporting teachers’ learning at Cambridge was a stimulus for this book and I write in the hope that the tradition will develop and grow so that one day, as Stenhouse predicted: ‘It is teachers who in the end will change the world of the school by understanding it’ (Stenhouse 1981).

REFERENCES Cochran-Smith, M. (2004) Walking the Road: Race, Diversity and Social Justice in Teacher Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Department for Education (DfE) (2010) The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper. London: The Stationery Office. Available at www.official-documents.gov.uk.

Dewey, J. (1897) ‘My Pedagogic Creed ’, School Journal 54 (January): 77–80.

Drummond, M. J. and McLaughlin, C. (1994) ‘Teaching and Learning: The Fourth Dimension’, in H. Bradley, C. Conner and G. Southworth (eds.), Developing Teachers, Developing Schools. London: David Fulton.

Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Elliott, J. and Norris, N. (2012) Curriculum, Pedagogy and Educational Research: The Work of Lawrence Stenhouse. Abingdon: Routledge.

Evans, M. (2013) Teacher Education and Pedagogy: Theory, Policy and Practice. Cambridge University Press.

Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S., Whiting, C. and Whitty, G. (2000) Teacher Education in Transition. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Hargreaves, D. (1999) ‘The Knowledge-Creating School ’, British Journal of Educational Studies 47(2): 122– 44.

Hoyle, E. (1975) ‘Professionality, Professionalism and Control in Teaching’, in V. Houghton et al. (eds.), Management in Education: The Management of Organizations and Individuals.

London: Ward Lock Educational in association with Open University Press.

McIntyre, D. (2008) ‘Researching Schools’, in C. McLaughlin, K. Black-Hawkins and D. McIntyre, with A. Townsend, Networking Practitioner Research. Abingdon: Routledge.

Menter, I., Hulme, M., Elliott, D. and Lewin, J. (2010) Literature Review on Teacher Education in the 21st Century. Edinburgh: The Scottish Government.

Morley, G. (1994) ‘Recent Developments in In-service Education and Training for Teachers: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?’, in H. Bradley, C. Conner and G. Southworth (eds.), Developing Teachers, Developing Schools. London: David Fulton.

Pollard, A. (2008) Reflective Teaching: Evidence-Informed Professional Practice, 3rd edn.

London: Continuum.

Sachs, J. (2003) The Activist Teaching Profession. Buckingham: Open University Press.

xix

Editor’s introduction

Schleicher, A. (ed.) (2012) Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons from around the World. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Schon, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. London: Temple Smith.

Stenhouse, L . (1975) Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development. London: Heinemann.

(1981) ‘What Counts as Research?’, British Journal of Educational Studies 29(2): 103–14.

Zeichner, K. (2009) Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice. Abingdon: Routledge.

1

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

John MacBeath, University of Cambridge

Teachers teach and children learn. It is as simple as that. This statement from a previous Chief Inspector in England is undoubtedly true, as long as one does not infer a causal connection. A more interesting statement would be the corollary – teachers learn and children teach, which, although not necessarily a causal relationship either, is also true in many circumstances.

Children, particularly the very young, frequently engage in teaching their peers or younger siblings, often their teddy bears or dolls, and sometimes even their parents. Older children may teach their peers, in classrooms in which teachers encourage such collaboration, and senior students may also be enlisted in tutoring their junior colleagues, as teaching someone else proves to be one of the best ways of learning yourself.

As teachers learn more, they see increased opportunities for pupils to teach one another and for teachers to learn from the power of peer interactions.

Teachers may also acquire skills and gain knowledge in areas where children or young people are more informed or expert than they are.

It requires a measure of self-confidence, and a degree of humility, for teachers to be able to say that they learn from their pupils. Historically, before the information revolution, this was not an issue. Teachers were the repositories of knowledge, some of which they transmitted or ‘delivered’ to children who knew nothing or very little. School learning was a relatively simple process of those who know telling those who don’t know.

In this model, the knowledge which a teacher will one day impart to others starts with his or her initiation into a subject domain and over time, perhaps over ten years or more, the essential building blocks lead ‘ruthlessly cumulatively’ (Pinker 2002) towards what is known as ‘higher’ education. This further induction into knowing may perhaps last for a further five to ten years of study of the discipline before the erstwhile student returns to ‘pass on’ his or her laboriously acquired knowledge to the next generation. This is known as the ‘cannibalistic’ function of education, a system avariciously consuming 1

2

John MacBeath

its own products. The most highly qualified expert teachers may have lived most of their lives in classrooms, in a world of ‘virtual’ reality.

One perennial problem is that these neophyte teachers are ‘insiders’ (Hoy and Murphy 2001), their views of teaching shaped by their own experience, so that they return to the places of their past, complete with memories and preconceptions often unaffected by their higher education or training college experience. They may feel they have no need to ‘discover’ the classroom or to see it with new eyes, because they are already too familiar with the territory – having spent the last dozen or so years of their lives in similar places (Pajares 1993).

Nor, argues O’Connell Rust (1994), is pre-service education effective in disturbing those inert ideas. He claims that neophyte teachers ‘most probably leave our programmes with their deeply held beliefs intact, ready to teach as they learned during their apprenticeships of observation’ (p. 215).

In an age in which there were few if any alternative sources of knowledge for children, teachers’ specialised knowledge was a rare and valued commodity, largely defining their professional status. Combined with a view of ‘what knowledge is of most worth’ (Spencer 1919), science, mathematics, language and literature, enshrined in a ‘curriculum’, have remained substantially unchallenged since the trivium and quadrivium of the Middle Ages.

The main problem is that in the second decade of the third millennium not only is pride of place for the sacrosanct school ‘subjects’ less and less self-evident, but also in the interim we have found far more effective ways of acquiring knowledge than the long-drawn-out transmission model – a painfully slow apprenticeship, costly and inefficient. For example, studying French for four periods a week for five years leads, for many, to a low level of competence and facility with language, allowing someone to say ‘I “did” it for five years at school but I’m not very good at it.’ The commercial promise to teach a language within two weeks may be somewhat exaggerated, but it does point to the inefficiency of protracted timetabled learning, each episodic 45 minutes disconnected not only from what happens next but from the psychological and emotional life of children and young people.

Does the same systemic longevity apply to mathematics or history? As some unschooled adults have found when applying to a higher education institution, an intensive two or three weeks immersion in mathematics can ‘cover’ the curriculum more effectively than the long-drawn-out, fragmented school experience, given the motivation to engage in study. If mathematics were not a compulsory subject in secondary school and a student ‘dropped’ maths

3

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

only to discover at age 17 that it was important or desirable, it could at that point be engaged with greater commitment, relevance and understanding.

‘Doing school’ is an apt description of what many children and young people experience in their classrooms. When there are opportunities to ‘escape from the classroom’, as Robert Mackenzie entitled his seminal book in 1965, travelling insightfully in different natural and social milieux can extend not only children’s horizons but also those of their teachers. In less defended territory – away from the school – teachers are often able to listen to young people without the impatient curriculum continually tugging at their coat sleeves. Here too, teachers may learn more about themselves, as well as about their pupils: they may find these unfamiliar contexts both personally and professionally enhancing.

As children become more knowledgeable than their teachers, and discover alternative pathways to knowing, there is an inevitable shift in the power balance in the relationship between those who know and those who don’t know. ‘Who dares to teach must never cease to learn’, wrote J. C. Dana over a century ago (quoted in Vanderbilt and Mumford 1957). Where children know more about some things (perhaps a lot of things) than their teachers, the latter require a measure of humility and willingness to learn from those younger, smaller and less powerful than themselves. As the information explosion accelerates and paths of entry to it become more and more accessible, the role of the teacher shifts from knowledge (or information) provider to mediator and learner. Mayer et al. (2012) write that in Australia: Challenging curriculum expectations and more diverse learners mean that teachers have to be more sophisticated in their understanding of the effects of context and learner variability on teaching and learning. Instead of implementing set routines, teachers need to become ever more skilful in their ability to evaluate teaching situations and develop teaching responses that can be effective under different circumstances. (p. 115)

Teachers can learn a lot more from their students than simply things that children know. The classroom is a living laboratory of human behaviour.

Classrooms have provided psychologists and sociologists with a field of study for decades. These privileged observers are afforded the luxury of detachment, allowed to watch, analyse and document the emotional life of classrooms, the rivalries, collusion, power struggles, strategic task avoidance, subversive ploys as well as learning moments, flashes of insight, congratulation and reward. Much of this is known intuitively to teachers, but it can also

4

John MacBeath

pass teachers by, too ‘on task’ to see the microcosm of human life which they struggle to manage and keep herding in the same direction. Writing about leaders, Hesselbein (1996) argues that their distinguishing strength is the ability to ‘push themselves’ out of their comfort zone into risky territory: The most notable trait of great leaders, certainly of great change leaders, is their quest for learning. They show an exceptional willingness to push themselves out of their own comfort zones, even after they have achieved a great deal. They continue to take risks, even when there is no obvious reason for them to do so. And they are open to people and ideas even at a time in life when they might reasonably think – because of their success – that they know everything. (p. 78)

5Ws plus H The 5Ws plus H – the why, what, when, where, who and how – may be applied both to teachers’ teaching and to teachers’ learning. The why of teaching would be generally regarded as unproblematic, but the why of learning less so. Why, after a long professional induction period and the acquisition of a licence to teach, should teachers not put away childish things, act as authoritative, informed adults and allow their own intellectual faculties a well-earned sabbatical? The answer ought to be self-evident, but historically teachers have been allowed to retire into their classrooms and to do, year after year, what they have always done, sometimes with sustained apparent success. ‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’ is one of the most well-rehearsed and most misleading of nostrums.

Yet there is a well-known curve of engagement that shows a rising enthusiasm and commitment during the first three or four years of teaching, flattening out over the next three or four years, then going into a steep decline as the joy of teaching and learning gradually dissipates. It is clearly important for the well-being of all humans that they experience satisfaction and reward for their endeavours, that they experience an enhancement of their agency and relish the challenge of new opportunities to make a difference. Is this not particularly crucial for teachers? But where do they find the new stimulus, challenge or source of excitement? Where and when do they encounter what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) terms the ‘flow’ experience, when new challenges and new skills meet?

Csikszentmihalyi’s conception of ‘flow’ is of a quite different order from the more common-sense meaning of teachers ‘in full flow’, which describes an expository style that allows pupils to drift off mentally and emotionally

5

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

to another place. For Csikszentmihalyi, the flow experience is defined by the union, the happy combination, of the teacher’s experience and that of his or her pupils. To test this he invented a spot-check instrument, which, at any given moment, could be filled out by pupils and the teacher. Its dozen or so items offer a semantic differential between boredom and engagement, passive versus active, time passing quickly versus time passing slowly, thinking about what is being taught versus thinking about other things.

When a teacher compares his or her judgements with those of his or her pupils, it can be a rude awakening to confront the disconnect between the teacher’s teaching and children’s learning. There is a definition of classrooms – 30 children watching an adult at work – which may be too uncomfortably close to the mark. But data from a spot check can, more constructively, offer a significant learning opportunity. A primary school teacher in a Cambridgeshire school takes time out at periodic intervals to reflect on and discuss what and how children are learning and how it connects with her own judgements as to their flow experiences. She set aside a three-hour reflective space, the whole of a school morning, for discussing the nature of learning and teaching and the meeting point between them. These 10- and 11-year-old children discussed the high and low points of their classroom experiences, and fed back to the teacher what was helping and hindering their learning, with suggestions as to ways in which she could adapt her teaching strategies. They discussed who they found it most helpful to learn with (not always their friends), often different classmates depending on the subject. Despite 15 years of ‘doing school’, the opportunity to do teaching and learning at the same time, alongside her pupils, was, she said, a profoundly affecting experience.

These occasions for reflection led to a developmental sequence in her classroom, which progressed through the following stages: • the teacher delivering the curriculum; • the teacher and pupils discussing the purposes and objectives of learning; • pupils devising their own criteria for achievement; • pupils assessing their own and others’ work; • pupils determining the next steps in their learning; • pupils acting as learning partners.

Teachers have been described as ‘ambassadors from the world of knowledge to the kingdom of the child’, but what are they ambassadors for, we may ask, in a situation where the nature of the skills they bring to that role is continuously being recast and will continue to be reshaped over the next decades. Applying the framework of the 5Ws plus H may take us nearer to understanding the need for a reappraisal of teaching, learning and teacher leadership.

6

John MacBeath

The what The what of teaching has, in the past, been the defining characteristic of the teacher. Maths teachers do maths and French teachers do French. What the expert teacher might have been inclined to learn, if anything, would have been in terms of developing knowledge within his or her own subject. In some secluded havens teachers may happily continue year after year passing on their acquired knowledge to generation after generation of receptive children. In less privileged contexts, however, teachers have found themselves having to learn a great deal more about pedagogy, about child development, about the roots of behaviour, special and complex needs, sanctions and motivation, the nature of ‘family’ and neighbourhood life, social contexts, the world of other social agencies, the world of policy-making and politics.

Sharing and discussing students’ work within and across subjects is a powerful form of teacher learning. With a focus on quality, and criteria for judgements of quality, it brings to light unspoken assumptions about what makes a good piece of work, about the challenges inherent in assessment, raising deeper questions about the rationale for marks out of ten, percentages, grades, comment-only marking and the nature of teacher comments that demotivate or inspire.

As Shulman wrote in a review of research literature in 1999, research knowledge of subject matter and even pedagogical knowledge are but parts of the knowledge base needed by teachers in the schools of today and the future. Work with a range of stakeholders, including parents, families and other social agencies, presupposes a more than nodding acquaintance with the broader social and moral purposes of education and the scope and limitations of information and technology.

The where and the when As the where and the when of children’s learning extend beyond the classroom walls to a range of ‘construction sites’ (Weiss and Fine 2001), it is time to pay attention to the where and when of teachers’ learning, providing and organising the environments most conducive to the growth of professional understanding and expertise.

In his 1987 critique of pre-service education for teachers, Schon pointed to the deficiencies in the prevalent model of knowledge acquisition, focusing his objections on the traditional forms of professional preparatory programmes. He argued that this emphasis on building academic knowledge,

7

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

in the academy, for later application in the workplace, does not reflect the processes he observed in the learning of skilled, reflective practitioners.

In Scotland the introduction of the Chartered Teacher programme was designed to create a pedagogic career pathway which did not take teachers out of the classroom and into more administrative or managerial activities (for which they were often ill-suited), while at the same time depriving children of some of the most gifted of teachers. Continuing professional learning was at the epicentre of the rationale for this policy: In every sphere of his or her work the Chartered Teacher will be reviewing practice, searching for improvements, turning to reading and research for fresh insights and relating these to the classroom and the school. He or she will bring to his or her work more sophisticated forms of critical scrutiny, demonstrate a heightened capacity for self-evaluation and a marked disposition to be innovative and to improvise (Scottish Executive 2002: 5).

‘More sophisticated forms of critical scrutiny’ here define the Chartered Teacher, but in an occupation that strives to be regarded as ‘professional’ it should arguably be the defining characteristic of all who aspire to be ambassadors to the changing world of childhood. What is inherent in such a scenario is belief in one’s own efficacy. A teacher with strong beliefs in his or her own efficacy will be resilient, able to solve problems and, most importantly, able and willing to learn from experience and to review that experience within a broader research-informed frame. The concept of self-efficacy is linked to the concept of agency, a fundamental human capacity which can either be enhanced or diminished by experience, depending on how one frames and reframes it (Frost 2006).

In England, the Conservative Secretary of State Kenneth Baker is credited with the invention of days set aside during the school year for teachers to engage with their colleagues in reviewing and rethinking their practice.

These ‘Baker days’ can be professionally fulfi lling or deeply frustrating. What has become increasingly apparent in evaluations of teacher education programmes is that teachers develop competences in different ways and in different settings. Teacher learning is a process of participation in sociocultural practices, of which formal teacher education is but one, and not always the best, example (Huizen et al. 2005). In a two-year study in Singapore it was found that ongoing and sustained professional development in designing and implementing authentic assessment practices was more effective than ad hoc, one- or two-day workshops (Tan 2011). This study showed that building teachers’ capacity to improve the quality of classroom assessment, through engaging in assessment tasks in English, science and mathematics classrooms, brought about enhanced appreciation and fresh insights. Furthermore, there

8

John MacBeath

were also significant improvements in the quality of student work, in response to the higher intellectual demands of the assessment tasks.

Teachers also learn informally and change their thinking through sharing with other people in contexts in which they are confronted with diversities of culture, beliefs and experiences. Research suggests that teacher education needs to provide structured opportunities for such encounters, for example through discussion and interactions with families and through critical reflection on, and challenges to, traditional conceptions of teacher and learner roles, subject matter and pedagogy (Kidd et al. 2008; OECD 2010; Tatto 1999).

Moreover, the professional development of teachers needs to extend to the community they serve. Novice teachers, given opportunities for some forms of community field experience, develop the kinds of knowledge, skills and dispositions they need to be successful in contexts of diversity (Zeichner 2006).

Extra-curricular activities, field trips, exchanges with other countries and escapes from the classroom provide opportunities for children and their teachers to discuss learning in a new light and to recognise that it is not something that simply occurs in classrooms or as a consequence of being taught. The Children’s University in England and Wales (CU) exemplifies this principle, as children and teachers together gain new insights into the nature and compass of learning. Many of the CU activities take place in ‘learning destinations’ outside of schools, in museums, art galleries, exhibitions, stately homes, theatres, airports, docks or commercial enterprises.

For teachers it has proved energising to witness children’s engagement with learning in informal sites when offered the freedom to explore without the constraints of tests and targets. For teachers there have been opportunities to reflect on children’s learning and their own teaching, expanding the boundaries of their understanding and pedagogy.

In Hong Kong, where 15 per cent of the curriculum must now be devoted to ‘Other Learning Experience’ (OLE), teachers attest to a profound impact on their knowledge and professional expertise when they work with young people in unfamiliar or less tightly structured and prescriptive contexts than the classroom, such as in trips to Macau or Singapore or mainland China. It is, as in other examples, a liberating experience not to be cast in the teacher/teller role but to be free not to know, not to be the expert or the ultimate authority.

I suddenly felt I wasn’t the teacher any more. Here we were travelling and learning together, sharing our thinking and constantly surprising each other with what we knew and didn’t know. It was embarrassing at first not to know the answers and for children to explain to me when I didn’t understand but I soon became comfortable with it because I got so much from how much it empowered them to know more than their teacher. (Unpublished evaluation of Other Learning Experiences)

9

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

This testimony from a Chinese teacher has close parallels with an anecdote from a Scottish headteacher, invited into a first-year secondary class which had been studying French for only a month or so. Dick Lynas, the head, was a towering figure, six and a half feet of awe-inspiring authority, casting a long shadow wherever he ventured around the school. In reply to the French teacher’s invitation for Dick to visit the class and talk to the pupils in their new-found language, his response was, ‘But I know no French. Can’t speak a word of it.’ ‘That’s why I want you to come’, the teacher replied, ‘so these kids can see that they are more able than their big powerful headteacher.’ To his credit Dick Lynas accepted the invitation and was, in his own words, ‘shown up’ and ‘embarrassed’. It not only gained him new respect, but proved to be a powerful learning experience for that group of 12-year-olds.

One of the key factors in the power differential between students and their teachers is in respect of the teacher’s subject expertise. As David Frost writes, drawing on experience in the International Teacher Leadership study, ‘There is a change in the dynamic when the differential in subject-related expertise is taken out of the equation’ (2011). Relationships between teachers and students become more respectful and collaborative when the subject dimension is removed, or in contexts other than the classroom.

The who The who question is a vital determinant of teachers’ motivation and engagement. There is, again, common ground with pupils, whose engagement and achievement rely heavily on who they go to school (Gray et al. 1996).

Professional learning is also a social activity, a principle observed in the practice of peer collaboration.

When teachers are asked to prioritise among potential sources of learning, studies in Scotland and Hong Kong show remarkable similarities (MacBeath et al. 2009). In both contexts teachers were most likely to cite colleagues, middle managers, senior managers, pupils and external providers or advisers, in that order. Teachers learn most from other teachers. This is because they can identify with others who share the reality of classroom life and who do not embody any authority threat. This is most likely to occur when there are no hidden agendas, no differential power bases, and when the premise is improvement, rather than accountability (Swaffield 2007).

‘One becomes human only in the midst of others’ (Asante 1998: 200) or, as a teacher once remarked during an international workshop, ‘the shortest route towards our own selves takes the long way round – through others’.

10

John MacBeath

This teacher was implicitly referring not only to the self-reflecting images she had captured in her encounter with colleagues from other countries but also to ways in which her self-efficacy had been enhanced by perceiving dormant qualities of knowing and being. International partnerships, writes Bhabha (2006) ‘dwell in’ spaces of mutual inter-est, reminding us of the etymological roots of that word – ‘betweenness’.

From an intercultural perspective, finding self through others occurs when teachers enter into a dialogic encounter with new partners on their grounds and they on teachers’ home ground. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the three-year, seven-country Carpe Vitam study, in which teachers and senior school leaders travelled, physically, intellectually and emotionally, to Cambridge, Copenhagen, Innsbruck and Athens, at each stage of the journey seeing things anew, challenging long-held preconceptions, reframing their world-view. These border crossings took teachers not only beyond the borderlands of their own subject, but beyond their own classrooms and their own schools. At each stage in their international journey teachers were confronted with different ways of seeing and talking about learning. At a recent conference in Poland, the conference organiser, Grzegorz Ma, described a journey from Krakow to Ohio, which he said ‘changed my life’. He could not return to what he had done before because he was now seeing himself, his practice, his school and his students with new eyes. In Iceland there is a saying which translates as the ‘visitor’s-eye view’. In your own home you may not see what the visitor sees, but when you return from a long absence you are able to enjoy that external perspective, seeing things, as it were, for the first time.

‘Our sight is so suff used with knowing’, writes Abraham Heschel, ‘we do not know what we see. We have to learn to know what we see rather than seeing what we already know’ (1962: 19). How to make the familiar unfamiliar requires some form of intellectual travel, but it also implies an ability to confront and supersede some of the psychological, cultural and structural barriers which stand in the way of these kinds of seeing and learning.

Inhibitions in seeing and learning What are the barriers that inhibit this intellectual awakening of thinking and feeling? Geert Hofstede (1991) identifies five potential constraints that may also serve as stimuli for changing minds and institutional practices. The first of these, power distance, is perhaps the most debilitating, and yet potentially liberating, of influences on teacher learning. Comparing different cultures,

11

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

Hofstede contrasts the openness and ‘flatarchy’ of Nordic countries with some Eastern countries, for example Japan, where a senior member would lose face if questioned or corrected by a junior member of the organisation.

The unequal distribution of power may be simply accepted as endemic in some cultures and religious traditions, but its inevitability may also be open to challenge as it becomes understood as inhibiting children’s and teachers’ learning. In Peter Senge’s (1990) treatise on organisational learning disabilities, pre-eminent place is given to the inhibiting posture: ‘I am my position.’

As people define themselves by their status, they deny themselves and others opportunities for boundary crossing: ‘I am the director’, ‘I am the principal’, ‘I am a basic-rank teacher’ (as they are called in Hong Kong), ‘I am [only] a pupil’.

The second of Hofstede’s dimensions is individualism versus collectivism. To what extent does the emphasis on the individual constrain learning, growth and influence? In this respect, greater constraints on pupil and teacher learning are found in countries of the West, where the cult of the individual increases competitiveness and exclusivity rather than collegiality and collaboration. There is a Chinese saying, ‘all of us is better than one of us’ – a principle so often breached in organisational structures, conventions, assumptions, assessment and evaluation.

This touches on Hofstede’s third dimension, masculinity versus femininity, as collegiality and collaboration are more equated with a feminine view of the world while competition and aggressive success are more characteristic of the masculine, or even ‘macho’, personality trait. While we are all combinations of masculine and feminine traits in differing degrees, Hofstede’s reference is to national or institutional cultures that endorse or promote the values of one gender archetype or the other.

Hofstede’s fourth dimension – avoidance versus embracing uncertainty – is particularly pertinent in relation to teaching and learning. Authority and dogmatism leave no space for learning. What is worth learning if there is no inquiry, debate or problem-solving? How do you engage with learning when the answer is already known and your intellectual task is simply to remember and reproduce it – what Paolo Freire (1968) termed the banking concept of education?

The final dimension – long-term versus short-term orientation – offers its own challenge to school education and to teacher learning. Targets, coverage, ‘final’ exams, performance (or ‘league’) tables, all work together to underline the short-term orientation of much of school learning.

12

John MacBeath

Learning in learning communities All five of Hofstede’s dimensions can be seen at work in what have come to be described as ‘learning communities’ – groups of people who share common aims and some beliefs, who explore, share and contest their values through active engagement in learning together, with and from one another, reducing professional and social isolation (Stoll and Louis 2007). As Bridges writes, it cannot be assumed that any group of school staff will easily come to a common understanding and untroubled consensus.

‘Understanding’ needs always to be replaced by ‘understandings’. Members of the same community will, notwithstanding this identity, have different understandings of the community’s experience. Not only that, but any one individual will, at different times and places and for different purposes construct different understandings of the same experience or social situation. Any attempt to understand the other, therefore, has to be interpreted in terms of a collection of understandings engaging with another collection of understandings. (Bridges 2008: 1)

Further, Bridges argues, there is another encounter, that which occurs between insider and outsider understandings. He warns against the assumption that insider understanding is necessarily superior, arguing rather that understandings become richer and fuller by virtue of the extent of the insider’s engagement with an outsider perspective. The catalyst of the outsider view is described by Ann Lieberman in her work with teachers in US schools. She found that, in addition to (or as a concomitant of) pressure from above, strong teacher norms of egalitarianism in the teacher culture inhibited teachers from ‘sticking their neck out too far’, unwilling to exercise agency without formal invitation or sanction – caught between their own agency and the bureaucratic norms of their schools. With the support of an external critical friend the dormant qualities of leadership suddenly found expression.

Lieberman and Friedrich (2009) give an account of teachers who discovered a long-buried passion. They describe two teachers, Austen and Liz, who reignited their desire to do something to address issues of gender and race respectively, their ‘burning passion’ for the cause leading them to devise a number of strategies in their own classrooms and to build alliances that became the impetus for change within their schools. Austen first established a girls’ after-school writing club and then worked behind the scenes to establish single-gender classrooms inside her school. Liz engaged her students in studying the history of their own school; this led to broader political activism, using writing to improve the physical condition of their own school as well as that of other schools in the region.

13

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

These opportunities for shared discussion brought with them a heightened awareness of mutual accountability. When Elmore (2005) refers to ‘internal accountability’, he refers to the conditions in a school that precede and shape its response to pressures originating in policies outside the organisation.

Rather than making a compliant or defensive response to external demands, teachers are able to account for their work to peers, communities of authorities, because they have the strength and resilience to tell their own stories.

As a strong sense of internal accountability is forged, it brings with it a confidence to revisit the demands of external accountability and to view these through a more informed and critical lens.

Writing about accountability in a Canadian context, Ben Jaafar (2006) describes a hybrid model of economic bureaucratic accountability and ethical professional accountability living side by side. The apparent disjunction, she argues, could be resolved by teachers engaging in ‘inquiry-based accountability’ which treats all forms of external mandate, evaluation or inspection as entry points for professional discussions about learning experiences, not only of children but of teachers.

The how When teachers shut their classroom doors and deny entry to their colleagues they close themselves off from their own learning, from their fellow learners and from their professional enrichment. They close themselves off from sources and opportunities that have been found to be powerful in contexts as diverse as Japan, New Zealand, England and Singapore. Teachers’ learning occurs through opportunities to ‘frame’ and ‘reframe’ their practice. When teachers frame their practice they provide a descriptive account of what they currently do, requiring them to adopt a critical distance on their own habitual behaviour. This may lead to a process of reframing, seeing oneself from a new perspective, drawing a different set of parameters around the nature of teaching and learning.

An example of the reframing process is the practice-focused workshop, a protocol used to considerable effect in a seven-country international project (MacBeath and Dempster 2009). It follows a procedure in which a teacher volunteers to occupy the ‘hot seat’ with colleagues seated in a circle around her. She describes an issue she is currently struggling with. Her colleagues listen with intent to understand. They are not allowed to offer advice but have to try to grasp the nature of the problem within that teacher’s frame

14

John MacBeath

of reference, raising questions that lead them progressively towards deeper understanding. Through this process the teacher comes to reframe the issue and begins herself to invent ways of dealing with it.

It is, however, a tall order for teachers to reinvent themselves without some form of external stimulus and support. From country to country it is possible to identify a growing range of ways in which teachers may be helped to challenge their thinking and practice: • peer observation; • lesson study; • co-teaching; • mentoring, coaching and critical friendship; • learning from and with students; • collaborative lesson planning; • learning conversations; • sharing and discussing students’ work; • structured, practice-focused meetings.

Peer observation and lesson study Peer observation is a form of reciprocal learning that offers both support and challenge but only when there is a conducive climate, quality time, a clear sense of purpose and clarity of focus. It is most likely to be productive when there is peer discussion before and after the event, with the promise of change to follow. Peer observation is closely related to lesson study (kenkyu jugyo), a technique that originated in Japan and involves a highly focused observation of a singular lesson sequence following a strict protocol. In this case observation is not by a colleague but by a group of people, often including parents and other interested parties.

Mentoring, coaching and critical friendship It is increasingly common for teachers in a number of countries to benefit from a mentor who helps them to reflect on their practice, normally in a face-to-face situation removed from the immediate pressures of the classroom or school. Definitions of what constitutes mentoring as compared to other forms of collegial support emphasise the asymmetry of the relationship – between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less – often described as a mentee or protégé. Mentors may be people internal

15

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

to the school or external consultants from other schools, local authorities or universities. In a Scottish study (Davidson et al. 2008) headteachers emphasised the value of the neutral space outside a school or in parts of a school that were off limits to others.

The terms ‘mentoring’ and ‘coaching’ are often used synonymously. Their focus is characteristically on work, career and professional development.

With a common element being a service to the client, they are a vehicle for analysis, reflection and action that ultimately enable the client to become more effective in one or more areas of their life or work. If there is a distinction to be made it would be in respect of the directive nature of the relationship. In the wider sense of coaching as applied in sporting contexts the coach is more likely to have a specific set of skills in mind than in a more person-centred approach. Key to the relationship, whether coaching or mentoring, is the precondition of trust.

The Scottish study found that while at home headteachers could ‘let off steam’ and talk without inhibition to their partners; the distinctive contribution of the coaching relationship was in offering a context and a form of interaction essentially different from talking things through with a partner or letting off steam. It was an interchange marked by empathic listening and affirming but also probing and challenging. While the domestic conversation was expressed more as an emotional release and a need for unconditional acceptance, the coach was valued because of the challenge that accompanied the emotional support: [The coach was] brutally honest and I really appreciate that looking back now. It’s what I needed. It’s not somebody to tell me I’m great. It’s somebody to tell me and advise me and to make me reflect on where I am.

Trust in the coaching relationship was consistently emphasised as the key ingredient because it permitted a deeper form of sharing without risk or judgement. The neutrality of the coach, with little or no knowledge of the headteacher’s school, was described as bringing unfettered insights to accounts of events free from prior history. In interviews and focus groups there were many comments about the coach ‘being there for you’. Such was the quality and intensity of the interaction with their coaches that many headteachers spoke of being able to forget the demands and pressures of the job for two hours to focus on the here and now.

Similar themes emerge from a study of distributed leadership, conducted for the National College for School Leadership in England (MacBeath et al.

2004). Here the complex process of engendering trust was portrayed as a

16

John MacBeath

‘force field’, a push–pull of factors, volatile and shifting, pushing leaders back to more coercive styles when trust was betrayed or when risk-taking proved too dangerous. Conversations in interviews and workshops depicted a continually shifting balance in relationships, in which confidence and trust were in constant and precarious balance, with policy pressures an ever constant and corrosive threat.

Teachers need friends more than they need critics. However, when these two elements are conjoined, as in critical friendship, teachers can be open to challenge as well as support. While colleagues from universities or other agencies can play this role, teachers within the same school, or from other partnership schools, can also offer such a service. Critical friendship brings to the relationship between two colleagues a sensitive balance of ‘support’ and ‘challenge’, support that is not simply cosy reassurance, and challenge that is constructive, realistic and non-judgmental. The role of critical friend is not, however, one that is simply slipped into. Its subtle and complex nature assumes a process through which the apparently contradictory processes of confirmation and disequilibrium become articulated and integral (Swaffield 2011).

Other forms of collaboration Collaborative lesson planning is described by the Education Bureau in Hong Kong as a process in which teachers cooperate, share and reflect on teaching and learning. During their regular meetings, teachers examine student performance and feedback, discuss students’ learning difficulties, identify learning objectives in different key learning areas, talk about learning experiences and, based on their reflections, plan and design lessons and activities together.

Taking teachers beyond the conventions and assumptions of their own subject and classroom occurs through the protocol of inter-departmental pairing, an activity which takes teachers out of their immediate frame of reference, both exposing their own practice to their colleagues in different disciplines and at the same time learning from them. So, for example, the English department may be paired with the mathematics department, music with PE, science with history. This may take the form of a weak–strong pairing, an asymmetrical relationship in which one department has more to learn from another, or it may be construed as a more equal relationship in which the learning exchange takes place on a reciprocal basis.

Continuing mutual exchange among teachers, as for example in lesson study, collaborative lesson planning and peer review, lays a foundation for self-evaluation and is a precondition for sustained improvement. Where this

17

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

is accompanied by analysing and commenting on examples of pupils’ work, it can offer a sharp focus on how teachers perceive and assess quality. It can be exceptionally powerful in confronting deeply held assumptions about what constitutes ‘good’ work in different subject areas, how it is measured and how it may be made more formative.

Putting professional learning to work: moving into self-evaluation ‘How many evaluation decisions do teachers make in the course of a day?’, asked Ted Wragg. By sitting in classrooms and painstakingly counting evaluation episodes, he found that typically a teacher made over 1,000 on-the-spot evaluations and evaluative decisions in the course of a day. In those minute-by-minute evaluations a collegial critical friend observing classroom interaction might ask, ‘What is the teacher doing? What is s/he learning?’ For the teacher, questions such as ‘What do I need to do differently?’ or ‘What will I do next?’ tend to be implicit forms of self-evaluation, neither written down nor codified. Teachers are often unable to explain what they do or why they do it but they can, by their own admission, do it better and are professionally inclined to do it better. When what they do is discussed, raised to consciousness and shared collegially, they lay the groundwork for systematic self-evaluation and improvement.

Among David Perkins’s repertoire of reflective, self-evaluative protocols is the economic but powerful MYST principle (Perkins 2008): Me: How do I model thinking? How do I make my own thinking visible?

You: How do I make my students’ thinking visible?

Space: How is the environment of the classroom organised to help facilitate thinking?

Time: How can I give thinking more time in my classroom? How does thinking change over time?

Making one’s own thinking visible, reflecting openly with students on how it evolves and reshapes, offers every teacher a valuable tool for thinking, and for thinking about this thinking.

At the core of all these strategies is the deprivatising of practice: opening it up to colleagues and to children, watching and thinking about classroom practice in real time, problem-solving together about how the practice would look in a real lesson sequence. It has been consistently found (for example, Joyce and Showers 2002) that it is easy for teachers to know what they should

18

John MacBeath

do, harder for them to be able to do it and most difficult of all for them to embed it into their daily practice. Embedding effective practice into daily routines is a desired result of all professional learning, but this kind of successful result is not always sustained.

Beyond the use of these strategies lies a deeper purpose, the need to put one’s professional learning to good use. In the process, teachers reconsider what is worth learning and teaching, rethinking and reframing their goals; monitoring their progress towards these goals may suggest a different course of action and stimulate a readiness for surprise and unexpected outcomes.

Without surprise, learning and teaching can become predictable, as teachers simply follow well-trodden paths. The moments when teachers are ‘surprised into learning’, as Tim Brighouse puts it, are when teachers become revitalised and gain a new sense of purpose and professionalism.

REFERENCES Asante, M. K. (1998) The Afrocentric Idea, rev. edn. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Ben Jaafar, S. (2006) ‘From Performance-Based to Inquiry-Based Accountability’, Brock Education 16(2): 62–77.

Bhabha, H. K. (2006) Without Boundary. Seventeen Ways of Looking. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Bridges, D. (2008) ‘Education and the Possibility of Outsider Understanding’. The Terry McLaughlin Memorial Lecture, International Network of Philosophers of Education biennial conference, University of Kyoto.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Davidson, J., Forde, C., Gronn, P., MacBeath, J., Martin, M. and McMahon, M. (2008) ‘Towards a “Mixed Economy” of Head Teacher Development: Evaluation Report to the Scottish Government on the Flexible Routes to Headship Pilot’. Edinburgh: The Scottish Government. Available at www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/09/30142043/0.

Elmore, R. (2005) Agency, Reciprocity, and Accountability in Democratic Education. Boston, M A: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Freire, P. (1968) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Frost, D. (2006) ‘The Concept of “Agency” in Leadership for Learning’, Leading and Managing, special issue on the Carpe Vitam Leadership for Learning project, 12(2): 19–28.

(2011) Supporting Teacher Leadership in 15 Countries: The International Teacher Leadership Project. Phase 1: A Report. Leadership for Learning, University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

Gray, J., Reynolds, D., Fitz-Gibbon, C. and Jesson, D. (eds.) (1996) Merging Traditions: The Future of Research on School Effectiveness and School Improvement. London: Cassell.

Heschel, A. J. (1962) The Prophets, New York: HarperCollins.

19

Learning and teaching: are they by any chance related?

Hesselbein, F. (1996) ‘Managing in a World That Is Round’, Leader to Leader 2: 6 –8.

Hofstede, G. (1991) Culture and Organizations. London: McGraw Hill.

Hoy, A. and Murphy, P. (2001) ‘Teaching Educational Psychology to the Implicit Mind’, in B. Torff and R. Sternberg (eds.), Understanding and Teaching the Intuitive Mind: Student and Teacher Learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Huizen, P., Oers, B. and Wubbels, T. (2005) ‘A Vygotskian Perspective on Teacher Education’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 37(3): 267–90.

Joyce, B. and Showers, B. (2002) Student Achievement through Staff Development, 3rd edn.

Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Kidd, J. K., Sanchez, S. Y. and Thorp, E. K. (2008) ‘Defining Moments: Developing Culturally Responsive Dispositions and Teaching Practices in Early Childhood Pre-service Teachers’, Teaching and Teacher Education 24: 316 –29.

Lieberman, A. and Friedrich, L. (2009) ‘Changing Teachers from Within: Teachers as Leaders’, in J. MacBeath and Y. C. Cheng (eds.), Leadership for Learning: International Perspectives. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

MacBeath, J. and Dempster, N. (2009) Connecting Leadership and Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.

MacBeath, J., Oduro, G. and Waterhouse, J. (2004) Leadership as Distributed. Nottingham: National College of School Leadership.

MacBeath, J., Gronn, P., Opfer, D., Lowden, K., Forde, C., Cowie, M. and O’Brien, J. (2009) The Recruitment and Retention of Headteachers in Scotland: Report to the Scottish Government. Edinburgh: Scottish Government Social Research.

Mackenzie, R. F. (1965) Escape from the Classroom. London: Collins.

Mayer, D., Pecheone, R. and Merino, N. (2012) ‘Rethinking Teacher Education in Australia: The Teacher Quality Reforms’, in L. Darling Hammond and A. Lieberman (eds.), Teacher Education around the World: Changing Policies and Practices. Teacher Quality and School Development. Abingdon: Routledge.

O’Connell Rust, F. (1994) ‘The First Year of Teaching: It’s Not What They Expected’, Teaching and Teacher Education 10(2): 205 –17.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010) Educating Teachers for Diversity: Meeting the Challenge. Paris: OECD. Pajares, F. (1993) ‘Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs: A Focus for Teacher Education’, Action in Education 25(2): 45 –54.

Perkins, D. (2008) Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Pinker, S. (2002) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Penguin Books.

Schon, D. A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Scottish Executive (2002) Standard for the Chartered Teacher. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Senge, P. M. (1990/2006) The Fifth Discipline. London: Random House.

Shulman, L. S. (1999) ‘Taking Learning Seriously’, Change 31(4): 10 –17.

Spencer, H. (1919) Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger.

20

John MacBeath

Stoll, L. and Louis, K. S. (2007) ‘Professional Learning Communities: Elaborating New Approaches’, in L. Stoll and K. S. Louis (eds.), Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth, and Dilemmas. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Swaffield, S. (2007) ‘What is Distinctive about Critical Friendship?’, paper presented at the 20th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Portoroz, Slovenia, 3–6 January.

(2011) ‘School Improvement and the Role of the Critical Friend’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.

Tan, C. (2011) ‘Creating Thinking Schools through Authentic Assessment: The Case in Singapore’, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 24(2): 135– 49.

Tatto, M. T. (1999) ‘The Socializing Influence of Normative Cohesive Teacher Education on Teachers’ Beliefs about Instructional Choice’, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 5(1): 95 –118.

Vanderbilt, A. T. and Mumford, L. Q. (1957) John Cotton Dana: The Centennial Convocation.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Weiss, L. and Fine, M. (2001) Construction Sites: Excavating Race, Class and Gender among Urban Youth. New York: Teachers College Press.

Zeichner, K. M. (2006) ‘Reflections of a University-Based Teacher Educator on the Future of College- and University-Based Teacher Education’, Journal of Teacher Education 57(3): 326 – 40.