With teacher and leader development more important than ever before, there are so many options for continual professional development that it can be difficult to identify which is the most suitable (and which will have the most impact). With the newly relaunched National Professional Qualifications targeted less at roles and now being held online throughout the country (and changes to the way in which they are assessed), many are gravitating towards them.
Additionally, with changes to Apprenticeship funding, many teachers are completing higher qualifications in educational leadership and management. However, with funding across the country having to stretch further than ever before and staff workload continuing to challenge teachers (as Covid continues to impact education), is there another way?
More and more schools and colleges are looking within to find solutions to teaching, learning and assessment CPD. In using collaborative practice, leaders can begin to support staff to develop much more efficiently and effectively through making small changes to school and college processes. And this doesn’t just help teachers to reduce workload, but staff too.
With many leaders and managers tasked with completing observations on all teachers within their area (or throughout settings for senior leaders), the preparation and time needed for an observation also require time for feedback (both written and oral). This can take away significant amounts of time from already packed schedules. A solution? Peer observation. In putting staff into pairs or ‘triangles’, teachers can observe peers and identify elements of best practice from sessions which they can almost immediately begin to embed into their own practice, with observations remaining relatively low stakes.
Additionally, with minimal training, teachers can give much more honest and meaningful feedback which supports peer development. With each teacher identifying a theme they wish to improve; they can then share this with those in their ‘teaching triangle’ and receive feedback from colleagues with the possibility of additional observation within a relatively short period (which helps teachers to experiment and evaluate strategies much more effectively).
Another traditional manager/leader evaluative task, which can also easily be completed as a collaborative activity, work scrutiny, is easily amended. In either asking or placing teachers into small groups (3-4), a randomised sample of student names is then identified by leaders (e.g., 3 students per teacher). Teachers then bring examples of work from these students to an agreed area (a classroom, vocational workshop setting, a meeting room) and evaluate the student work and teacher feedback which is evident according to a series of short discussion points:
- Have students received sufficient feedback? Why?
- Are students making relevant progress relative to starting points? How do you know?
- Are students given relative next steps? Are these completed?
- What could be done to develop the effectiveness of feedback?
- What support is needed to achieve this?
- Any other comments on feedback
By discussing and answering these simple questions about the work of their peers, this activity becomes part sharing best practice, part CPD activity. Also, teachers can easily collate this information using a Microsoft Form (or other online tool), and leaders are then able to download and analyse work scrutiny information. This can mean that instead of spending several hours looking at the books of a small group of staff, senior leaders can analyse work scrutiny information from all teachers (and all completed within an hour or two).
Obviously, there can be question marks about the reliability or standardisation of these activities. If this is a concern, a degree of training before activities are completed is easily achievable. Additionally, senior leaders, managers and middle leaders can ‘float’ and join different groups as work scrutiny is completed, moderating and standardising discussion and feedback as it occurs.
Again, this level of assurance represents a significant cut in workload and yields very similar results (and provides a rich data source for analysis so that training and support needs can be quickly identified). In being able to quickly identify training needs for all (or a majority or groups of) staff, needs can be met much more quickly, and the effectiveness of feedback should improve within a similar timeframe.
In short, collaborative activity (with relevant training, support, and some caveats) can significantly decrease manager and leader workload, as well as supporting teachers to develop and support each other’s development. What’s not to like?
About the author
Jonathan Kay
Jonny Kay is Head of Teaching, Learning and Assessment at a college in the North East. He has previously worked as Head of English and maths in FE and as an English teacher and Head of English in Secondary schools. He tweets @jonnykayteacher and his book, 'Improving Maths and English in Further Education: A Practical Guide', is available now.
