CPD Team

This a guest post from Stirling Mackie, Head Teacher of Irvine Royal Academy

 “The secret of management is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided”

(Casey Stengel, former manager of the New York Yankees. All other quotes are from Yogi Berra, former player with the New York Yankees)

One thing about learning rounds is that it delivers the exact opposite of Casey Stengel’s advice. In fact it positively rejoices in doing the opposite and mixing everyone up!

I was fortunate enough to attend the conference addressed by Professor Richard Elmore at Hampden Park in Glasgow in 2007(?). It was being able to hear first hand from Elmore which really inspired me to look more closely at this way of aiding school improvement.

My next step was to buy his book ‘School Reform from the Inside Out’. It is a surprisingly ‘easy’ read and confirmed my initial thoughts that there was something in this. However, like so many other ‘good ideas’ other things got in the way of taking it forward (like an HMIe inspection).

However in 2008, North Ayrshire decided to volunteer to be part of the national learning rounds pilot. The journey of everyone involved in that part of the journey is recorded elsewhere. What I want to share is Irvine Royal Academy’s individual journey, which has already taken a somewhat different, or quicker, route (perhaps Virgin Express rather than …well a slower train company).

We were first to welcome the mixed group of headteachers, deputes, authority staff, academics etc etc into our school to observe learning and teaching. It was on a volunteer basis, and for a variety of historical reasons, we had more than enough volunteers.

This brings me to point 1.

 Irvine Royal Academy was a school at a stage in its development where staff were anxious to invite ‘outsiders’ into their classrooms. Two years earlier I think I would have struggled to get more than a handful of ‘guinea pigs’. In other words much preparatory work had been done (‘inadvertently’ and for other reasons) to create an ‘ethos of openness’ in the school. So in asking yourself, will learning rounds work in my school, the first requirement is, “how open is the school culture currently?” In my opinion learning rounds can considerably help the further development of a culture of openness, but to implement it without it, could potentially lead to conflict and have the opposite effect.

‘You can observe a lot by watching’

I was committed to the learning rounds model and wanted to pilot it. I decided to approach Principal Teachers, on the basis that they already had experience of classroom observation as part of the school’s quality assurance procedures. Only two declined the opportunity.

We put them into groups of two/three and set up observations for them in departments that were not their own. A member of the SMT was also attached to each group, and in one case Margaret Orr of the National CPD team joined one of the groups.

Point 2

Principal Teachers adapted to the learning rounds model quicker than the HT/DHT group. They adopted the descriptive voice, and came up with an impressive list of observations, which can easily be turned into an agenda for action.

They thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and interestingly, their observations also caused them to reflect on their own practice, and lead to immediate changes in their own pedagogy and methodology. Is this powerful CPD or what?

‘If you don’t know where you are going you will end up somewhere else’

We always had a clear idea of where we were going. I wanted to involve ALL staff in the learning rounds model. Would staff want to be involved? Overwhelmingly yes. Approximately 80% of unpromoted staff have volunteered to join a learning rounds group. They may not express it exactly as I do, in the big picture of school improvement, but they have real clarity about two things.

1. That this is powerful CPD.
2. That the object is to improve learning and teaching and thereby more fully engage students and raise attainment.

We have planned to set up the next round of observations by unpromoted staff during ‘SQA time’.

‘The future ain’t what it used to be’

Thank goodness! The future used to be a ‘done to’ model. This is a ‘done together’ model. It works for us because of the climate which had been built over the last two years. It might not work in other places. However;

• I have no doubt as to the advantages that this model can bring to the process of school improvement.
• I have no doubt that staff are correct. This is powerful CPD
• I have no doubt that the impact is immediate.
• I have no doubt that this is real collegiality.
• I have no doubt that we will continue to develop the model further.

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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