Dylan Wiliam dylanwiliam

1. What difference does teacher quality make to social class inequalities?LERN/IoE/DEBRe Conference:Socio-economic status, social class and education; London, UK: May 2009 Dylan Wiliam www.dylanwiliam.net

2. Science Design Overview: science and design • We need to improve average student achievement • We need to narrow achievement gaps • Both require improving teacher quality • Improving the quality of entrants takes too long • So we have to make the teachers we have better • We can change teachers in a range of ways • Some will benefit students, and some will not. • Those that do tend to involve changes in teacher practice • Changing practice requires new kinds of teacher learning • And new models of professional development.

3. Looking for answers in the wrong place… • Three generations of school effectiveness research • Raw results approaches • Different schools get different results • Conclusion: Schools make a difference • Demographic-based approaches • Demographic factors account for most of the variation • Conclusion: Schools don’t make a difference • Value-added approaches • School-level differences in value-added are relatively small • Classroom-level differences in value-added are large • Conclusion: An effective school is a school full of effective classrooms

4. Within schools Between schools OECD PISA data from McGaw, 2008

6. Teachers matter… • In many countries, classroom variability is at least 4 times school level variability • It’s not class size or the between- or within-class grouping strategy • It’s the teacher • The commodification of teachers has received widespread support: • From teacher unions (who understandably resist performance-related pay) • From politicians (so the focus is on teacher supply, rather than teacher quality) • Having a good rather than weak teacher (±1sd) increases performance by more than one GCSE grade • Being taught by the best teacher from a group of 50 means that a student will learn at four times the rate of a student taught by the worst teacher in that group • And the gains for the lowest attainers are greater than for average students • So that in the classrooms of the best teachers • Students with behavioural difficulties learn as much as those without • Students from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those from advantaged backgrounds (Hamre & Pianta, 2005)

7. … more for some than others Impact of teacher quality on student outcomes (Hamre & Pianta, 2005))

8. Two ways to make teachers better… • Replace existing teachers with better ones • Important, but very slow, and of limited impact • Teach for America/Teach First (at most 1% of teaching force) • Raising the bar for entry to teaching • Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers • Not because they are not good enough, but because they can be better • (so ‘good enough’ is not good enough) • The “love the one you’re with” strategy • It can be done • Provided we focus rigorously on the things that matter to students • Even when they’re hard to do

9. 1000 1000 800 800 600 600 400 400 200 200 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Teacher quality Teacher quality Raising the bar for entry to teaching… Mean: 50 Mean: 55 (0.5 sd increase) Lowest 30% removed

10. …is too slow… • The correlation between teacher quality and student progress is around 0.2 • This means that raising teacher quality by one standard deviation will increase student progress by 0.2 standard deviations • Raising the bar for entry into the profession so that we no longer recruit the lowest performing 30% of teachers would over twenty to thirty years, increase average teacher quality by 0.5 standard deviations. • This would increase student achievement by 0.1 standard deviations • an increase of the speed of student learning of 25-30%, or, put another way • an increase in the average score on a typical test of one point (e.g. from 50 to 51) • A small, but valuable effect (annual value of £8bn)

11. Advanced content matter knowledge <5% Pedagogical content knowledge 10-15% Further professional qualifications (MA, NBPTS) <5% Total “explained” difference 20-25% So our policies need to be more specific • The dark matter of teacher quality • Teachers make a difference • But what makes the difference in teachers?

12. Cost/effect comparisons

13. The formative assessment hi-jack… • Long-cycle • Span: across units, terms • Length: four weeks to one year • Impact: Student monitoring; curriculum alignment • Medium-cycle • Span: within and between teaching units • Length: one to four weeks • Impact: Improved, student-involved, assessment; teacher cognition about learning • Short-cycle • Span: within and between lessons • Length: • day-by-day: 24 to 48 hours • minute-by-minute: 5 seconds to 2 hours • Impact: classroom practice; student engagement

14. Unpacking formative assessment • Key processes • Establishing where the learners are in their learning • Establishing where they are going • Working out how to get there • Participants • Teachers • Peers • Learners

15. …and one big idea • Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs

16. Aspects of formative assessment

17. Keeping Learning on Track (KLT) • A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination by taking constant readings and making careful adjustments in response to wind, currents, weather, etc. • A good teacher does the same: • Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in essence building the track) • Takes readings along the way • Changes course as conditions dictate

18. Looking at the wrong knowledge… • The most powerful teacher knowledge is not explicit • That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work • What we know is more than we can say • And that is why most professional development has been relatively ineffective • Improving practice involves changing habits, not adding knowledge • That’s why it’s hard • And the hardest bit is not getting new ideas into people’s heads • It’s getting the old one’s out • That’s why it takes time • But it doesn’t happen naturally • If it did, the most experienced teachers would be the best, and we know that’s not so (Hanushek, 2005) • We need to create systematic approaches to, and spaces for, teacher learning

19. Two competing drivers in design • Some reforms are too loose • e.g., the ‘Effective schools’ movement • Allows customization to the local context • But can suffer from ‘lethal mutations’ • Some reforms are too tight • e.g., Montessori Schools • Undoubtedly effective • Not possible to implement everywhere • Fails to capitalize on affordances in the local context

20. Designing for scale: tight but loose • “In-principle” scalability requires • A single model for the whole school • But which honours the specifities of each subject and age-range • Understanding what it means to scale (Coburn, 2003) • Depth • Sustainability • Spread • Shift in reform ownership • Consideration of the diversity of contexts of application • Clarity about components, and the theory of action

21. The “tight but loose” formulation … combines an obsessive adherence to central design principles (the “tight” part) with accommodations to the needs, resources, constraints, and particularities that occur in any school or district (the “loose” part), butonly where these do not conflict with the theory of action of the intervention.

22. So what do we need? • What is needed from teachers • A commitment to: • the continuous improvement of practice • focus on those things that make a difference to student outcomes • What is needed from leaders • A commitment to: • creating expectations for the continuous improvement of practice • ensuring that the the focus stays on those things that make a difference to student outcomes • providing the time, space, dispensation and support for innovation • supporting risk-taking • What is needed from the system • A “signature pedagogy” for teacher learning

23. Signature pedagogies

24. In Law

25. In Medicine

26. A “signature pedagogy” for teacher learning? Monthly meetings of ‘teacher learning communities’ (TLCs) of 8-10 teachers that follow the same structure and sequence Activity 1: Introduction & Housekeeping (5 minutes) Activity 2: How’s It Going (35 minutes) Activity 3: New Learning about formative assessment (20 minutes) Activity 4: Personal Action Planning (10 minutes) Activity 5: Summary of Learning (5 minutes) Peer observations between TLC meetings Run to the agenda of the observed, not the observer

27. Summary • Raising achievement is important • Raising achievement requires improving teacher quality • Improving teacher quality requires teacher professional development • To be effective, teacher professional development must address • What teachers do in the classroom • How teachers change what they do in the classroom • Formative assessment + Teacher learning communities • A point of (uniquely?) high leverage • A “Trojan Horse” into wider issues of pedagogy, psychology, and curriculum