CPD Team

Many of you have been in touch following the recent articles in TESS and in Teaching Scotland about the Learning Rounds. It felt like a good time to give you a bit of an update on what’s happening.

 

 

 

Why all the interest in Learning Rounds?

 

 

 

Because it makes a difference.

In a range of schools and in a number of authorities, Learning Rounds has delivered high quality, sustainable improvements in the learning experiences of pupils. It has helped develop collegial practice and a positive ethos.  

Because it’s affordable

Learning Rounds does not require the services of visiting experts. It builds on the learning and experiences of the establishment staff. Teachers learn from teachers, and learning is shared and collegiate. Costs lie in releasing teachers from their classrooms to observe colleagues. Enthusiastic school leaders have found different ways to achieve this.

Because it’s sustainable

Learning Rounds is not an event, but a process that can become embedded in practice. In one school it is now the starting point for the school  improvement plan; in one authority headteachers are being encouraged to use Learning Rounds to develop the quality of provision; a third authority is promoting it as a tool for faculty heads to support their teams

           

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The model continues to attract interest from many educators, schools and authorities. The pilot programme is in its final stages in:

•  North Ayrshire, where the focus has been on learning at headteacher and officer level across schools,
• West Lothian which has taken the learning across clusters as the theme,
• Angus where the Learning Rounds team has been composed of Faculty Leaders and Principal Teachers across the secondary sector
• Dumfries and Galloway where we have been looking at Learning Rounds in the context of candidates on the Flexible Routes to Headship.

In addition, the team has been supporting Learning Rounds in South Ayrshire, in Scottish Borders and in Edinburgh (including work in the special school sector). We have made presentations about our work at headteacher meetings in a number of other authorities, most recently in Perth and Kinross.

In our team plan, we have  identified four tasks remaining to us. We will:

• complete the pilot programmes
• reflect on, evaluate, and share our experience of Learning Rounds to date
• we will continue to explore Learning Rounds, particularly in an inter-agency context
• we will produce and publish a “How to do Learning Rounds Self Help Guide” by the summer.

The last 3 months of 2008 saw the Learning Rounds [LR] programme picking up pace with school visits and a series of training events. The following is a summary of some of our main activities:

1.       Brechin High School.
An LR visit to Brechin took place on 21 October 2008. Brechin has been involved in innovative work around Learning and Teaching and has an influential Learning and Teaching committee which meets most weeks to progress their thinking. This committee featured in a TES feature on Friday 21 November. In discussions with the head teacher and chair of this committee it was agreed that members of the Learning and Teaching would be part of the observation team.

The LR team of 14 was made up of PT representatives from each of Angus’ secondary schools, officers and members of the national LR team as well as representatives from the school’s Learning and Teaching committee. The involvement of school representatives on the observation team was a key piece of learning from LR trials conducted earlier in the session. Separate training sessions for both observers and observees were organised on the 22 September with an opportunity for a shared lunch. This helped break down the barriers between both groups.

During the LR visit on 21 October, which addressed a theme of interest to the school, we ensured a ‘mirror’ approach for observations with teams watching the same class in different time frames e.g. team A watching the first half of a lesson with team B watching the second. Teams C&D were involved in a similar process. There was a school representative on each of the 4 teams. While each of the 4 groups debriefed individually in the ‘descriptive’ voice , the coming together for a further debrief in mirror groups greatly enhanced discussions. It meant that the final session with all 4 groups together, debating ‘what we saw’, was very rich and the inclusion of school representatives meant that there was immediate learning to the school.
The Brechin High school programme will involve us in further visits and the school is keen to progress this. Similarly the PTs from visiting schools were enthusiastic about the process and welcomed the opportunity to be involved in discussions about learning and teaching with other observers following an observation.  The PTs concerned have requested further training and asked that we speed up the LR programme to develop a toolkit of observation approaches that can be used by middle managers for classroom observations of colleagues. They were clear that this would make the classroom observation processes in their own schools much easier and lead to greater impact on Learning and Teaching. We hope to trial materials in different schools involved, designed for use at both peer and management levels.

 2.       North Ayrshire.
This particular aspect of the LR programme has really picked up pace. A briefing to North Ayrshire secondary head teachers was followed by the formation and training of an authority wide observation team of heads, deputes and officers. Visits to management team representatives in both Irvine Royal and Arran High school led to LR visits to both schools on 11 and 12 November respectively. Both schools chose observation themes which were challenging for them and in both cases the visiting LR team was split into 4 groups using the same processes established in Brechin. There were however some differences:

Irvine Royal
The head teacher of Irvine Royal was a member of the LR team. Although this was   challenging, it meant hat he was fully involved in what the group ‘saw’ and this has helped the process of ‘next steps’. The ‘descriptive’ feedback to the school involved two stages. The first was a presentation of findings to the senior management team to which the head teacher contributed. There was also an opportunity for members of the group to add to this and to answer questions from the deputes. The second involved a brief presentation by Graham Thomson [SCSSA] and the head teacher to the assembled observees after the school day. This final session was very successful and the whole process left observees keen for further involvement of the team, something that might be considered in future.

Arran High School
Here each of the 4 teams had representatives from the school, one of which was a depute. Interestingly 2 of the school representatives took time out of the observation schedule for themselves to be observed. While this was worth exploring it is not a process that we will repeat in the current North Ayrshire programme. However it echoes some early work that we have been looking at around Scotland where a group of colleagues, normally a group of three, will observe each other and have learning discussions after the event. The key to these conversations is that the teachers concerned are learning about Learning and Teaching and develop next steps together. We hope to have more information for dissemination shortly.
The observation team reassembled for return visits to both schools the following week. This discussed each of the school’s ‘next steps’ in response to the descriptive data presented the previous week and proved rewarding in terms of deepening our learning of how to implement system wide change. Visits are planned this term to two further North Ayrshire schools, Greenwood Academy and Ardrossan Academy.
We hope you find all the above information useful and would welcome any opportunity you may wish to talk about the early learning from the programme and how it can apply across schools and authorities.

Leave a message below or contact:
Graham Thomson            graham.thomson@ed.ac.uk
Margaret Alcorn                margaret@cosla.gov.uk
Sheila Smith                      sheila@cosla.gov.uk
Margaret Orr                       margareto@cosla.gov.uk

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