Building sustainable learning communities

Building sustainablelearning communities Dylan Wiliam Institute of Education 30 November 2006

Overview of presentation • Why raising achievement is important • Why investing in teachers is the answer • Why assessment for learning should be the focus • How we can put this into practice

Raising achievement matters • For individuals • Increased lifetime salary • Improved health • For society • Lower criminal justice costs • Lower health-care costs • Increased economic growth

Where’s the solution? • Structure • Small schools • Big schools • Alignment • Curriculum reform • Textbook replacement • Governance • Specialist schools • Vouchers • Technology

It’s the classroom • Variability at the classroom level is up to 4 times greater than at school level • It’s not class size • It’s not the between-class grouping strategy • It’s not the within-class grouping strategy • It’s the teacher

Teacher quality: • A labour force issue with 2 solutions • Replace existing teachers with better ones? • No evidence that more pay brings in better teachers • No evidence that there are better teachers out there deterred by certification requirements • Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers • The “love the one you’re with” strategy • It can be done • We know how to do it, but at scale? Quickly? Sustainably?

Cost/effect comparisons

Five key strategies… • Clarifying and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success • Engineering effective classroom discussions that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as learning resources for each other • Activating students as the owners of their own learning

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

Putting it into practice

Why research hasn’t changed teaching • The nature of expertise in teaching • Aristotle’s main intellectual virtues • Episteme: knowledge of universal truths • Techne: ability to make things • Phronesis: practical wisdom • What works is not the right question • Everything works somewhere • Nothing works everywhere • What’s interesting is “under what conditions” does this work? • Teaching is mainly a matter of phronesis, not episteme

Teacher knowledge After Nonaka & Tageuchi, 1995

How do you grow expertise? • NOT by telling people what to do. • Expertise grows over time, with experience and lots of opportunities to think about those experiences • But experience alone is not enough—if it were, then the most experienced teachers would be the best teachers—we know that’s not true (Hanushek, 2005; Day et al., 2006) • People need to reflect on their experiences in systematic ways that build their accessible knowledge base, learn from mistakes, etc. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999)

That’s what TLCs are for: • They grow expertise by providing a regular space, time, and structure for that kind of systematic reflecting on practice • They facilitate sharing of untapped expertise residing in individual teachers • They build the collective knowledge base in a school • TLCs contradict teacher isolation, a major cause of teacher turnover • TLCs reprofessionalize teaching by valuing teacher expertise • TLCs deprivatize teaching so that teachers’ strengths and struggles become known • TLCs offer a steady source of support for struggling teachers

Teacher learning takes time • To put new knowledge to work, to make it meaningful and accessible when you need it, requires practice. • A teacher doesn’t come at this as a blank slate. • Not only do teachers have their current habits and ways of teaching—they’ve lived inside the old culture of classrooms all their lives: every teacher started out as a student! • New knowledge doesn’t just have to get learned and practiced, it has to go up against long-established, familiar, comfortable ways of doing things that may not be as effective, but fit within everyone’s expectations of how a classroom should work. • It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones. Thus… • TLCs must be sustained over time

How to set up a TLC • Plan for two years • Identify 8 to 10 interested colleagues • Should have similar assignments (e.g. early years, math/sci) • Secure institutional support for: • Monthly meetings (2 hrs each, inside or outside school time) • Time between meetings (2 hrs per month in school time) • Collaborative planning • Peer observation • Any necessary waivers from school policies

A structure for TLC meetings Every monthly TLC meeting should follows the same structure and sequence of activities Activity 1: Introduction & Housekeeping (5 mins) Activity 2: How’s It Going (50 minutes) Activity 3: New Learning about AfL (50 minutes) Activity 4: Personal Action Planning (10 minutes) Activity 5: Summary of Learning (5 minutes)

Activities 1-2 & 4-5 (‘Bookends’) • The process for these activitiesis the same at each TLC meeting. • The content of these activities changes as assessment for learning is established and integrated into teachers’ daily routines. • These activities are critical to teachers actually changing their practice to embrace assessment for learning.

Introduction & housekeeping • Time for participants to get their minds to the meeting • The TLC leader presents the learning intentions for the meeting

How’s It Going? Every teacher gives a brief, informal report on his or her latest AfL efforts, while colleagues listen and respond appropriately, followinga structured protocol.

What does this mean for TLCs? • Routines need to be established, expectations shared, and structure maintained. • Similar expectations regarding preparation and engagement. • Come to the meeting knowing you will be sharing your own AfL experiences. • Be prepared to offer constructive, thoughtfully conceived feedback to colleagues. • Be prepared to challenge ideas that may be good classroom practice but are not necessarily tightly related to formative assessment.

Supporting Each Other Questions to guide the routine: Thinking about what you’ve tried • If you tried a technique from your action plan: • How did it go? • Was it successful or unsuccessful? Why? • If there is a technique that you planned to try, but have not: • Why haven’t you tried it yet? • What modifications to the technique might make it more appealing for you to try out? • What support would you need in order to try out this technique?

Supporting Each Other Questions to guide the routine: Thinking about what’s working • If you tried a technique from your action plan: • How did it go? • Was it successful or unsuccessful? Why? • If there is a technique that you planned to try, but have not: • Why haven’t you tried it yet? • What modifications to the technique might make it more appealing for you to try out? • What support would you need in order to try out this technique?

Supporting Each Other Questions to guide the routine: Thinking about difficulties • If you or a colleague tried a technique, and it didn’t seem to work, OR • If you or a colleague have been reluctant to try a particular technique: • What do you think is getting in the way? • What help do you need to make this work? • How could this technique be modified to work for you?

How does “How’s It Going?” improve teaching and learning? • Repetition • Supportive structure for getting better together • While the structure is constant, the “case studies” will vary--meetings not tedious or stale • Time to problem solve • Accountability • Keeps the Focus

New learning about AfL • Magazine/journal articles • Book study • Official publications • Personal experiences • Video extracts

Personal Action Planning • Each teacher updates his or her personal Action Plan and arranges to get needed support from colleagues • Make ideas more concrete • Provide a reference for future work • Create accountability for trying new things • Focus attention on a couple of areas • Provide a reminder to give up some things

Summary of Learning • The group checks to see where they are with regard to the learning intentions for the meeting • If yes, great! • If no, plan for addressing any gaps

The TLC leader’s role • To ensure the TLC meets regularly • To ensure all needed materials are at meetings • To ensure that each meeting is focused on AfL • To create and maintain a productive and non-judgmental tone during meetings • To ensure that every participant shares with regard to their implementation of AfL • To encourage teachers to provide their colleagues with constructive and thoughtful feedback • To encourage teachers to think about and discuss the implementation of new AfL learning and skills • To ensure that every teacher has an action plan to guide their next steps • But not to be the AfL “expert”

Peer observation • Run to the agenda of the observee, not the observer • Observee specifies focus of observation • Observee specifies what counts as evidence • e.g., teacher wants to increase wait-time • provides observer with a stop-watch to log wait-times

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 • AfL + TLCs • A point of (uniquely?) high leverage • A “Trojan Horse” into wider issues of pedagogy, psychology, and curriculum

Building sustainable learning communities