Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning

Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning Submission

Mr Graham Parr Dr Joce Nutall Associate Professor Brenton Doecke On behalf of the Professional Learning Research Strength Faculty of Education Monash University

NOTE: The Professional Learning Strength is one of several research strengths within the Faculty of Education, Monash University. It comprises academics with national and international reputations in the field of professional learning. Specific research interests include: reflective practice, practitioner inquiry, professional identity and educational change, professional standards and other standards-based reforms. The professional expertise of researchers within the strength includes early childhood, primary and secondary education, TAFE, adult and workplace learning. All the members of the strength have had extensive experience of working with teachers and other professional groups in education, industry, and community settings. Many are experienced teacher educators who have researched their own professional practice, with a specific focus on the links between preservice education and the needs of early career teachers and their continuing professional learning. Many have also collaborated closely with practising teachers and other educators in research projects and publications.

This submission specifically addresses the following terms of reference: a. the relationship between ongoing professional learning for teachers and teaching expertise b. the factors which will support high quality professional learning for teachers, including learning methods and environments for the development of professional knowledge, and the pedagogy relevant to professional development of teacher d. determining how best practice in ongoing professional learning for teachers can be delivered into schools and learning communities e. examining the potential for greater cross-sectoral links between industry, training institutions and schools in the delivery of ongoing professional learning for teachers

1

1. Introduction and Overview Perhaps more than learning itself, it is our conception of learning that needs urgent attention when we choose to meddle with it on the scale we do today. (Wenger 1998, p. 9) Since the turn of the century, a rare consensus has emerged amongst politicians, policy-makers, researchers, teacher educators and teachers across the Western world about the need to give higher priority to teachers’ professional learning in order to improve students’ learning (eg. DE&T 2004, The Allen Consulting Group 2003, NITL 2005, in Australia; The US Department of Education 2001, in the US; General Teaching Council for England [GTCE] 2004, Bolam, McMahon, Stoll, Thomas, and Wallace 2005, in the UK; Ministry of Education 2006, in New Zealand; see also Cochran-Smith 2006, Ingvarson 2002, Lovat 2003, Reid 2004.) This consensus has quickly evaporated, however, when different stakeholders advocate their preferred models or paradigms of professional learning and their preferred ways to account for teachers’ engagement in this learning. 2. Two contrasting paradigms of research into professional learning The following table presents in schematic fashion the alternative paradigms that currently shape debate and research about professional learning in Australia and internationally. Although this does not do justice to the range of positions available, it serves to identify two broad competing trends within policy and research on professional learning:

Managerial understandings of professional development

Alternative understandings of professional learning

•

Teachers are positioned as “individual professionals” (Caldwell and Hayward 1998).

•

Teaching is considered to be collaborative in nature, a function of the network of relationships in which individual teachers and groups of teachers operate.

•

Professional learning is presumed to be generic in nature, and can be applied to all educational settings regardless of their particular character and transferred from one setting to another. It is presumed to be easily exportable from context to context.

•

Professional learning is anchored in the specific contexts in which teachers operate.

•

Knowledge of teachers and teaching is imported from outside (in the form of the latest research or policy mandates) and ‘delivered’ through professional development programs.

•

Knowledge of teachers and teaching develops from, and involves, sustained inquiry into teaching and learning by teachers themselves, including focused observation of learners.

2

•

Knowledge of teachers and teaching is unproblematically avowed (as though it can be systematised into an uncontested body of knowledge or ‘truths’), and typically delivered as a remedy for deficiencies or gaps in teachers’ existing practices, regardless of the socio-cultural communities in which teachers are operating and the local knowledge those teachers have developed through working in those communities. Teachers are expected to uncritically adopt such findings and apply them to their own settings, regardless of their local knowledge.

•

The findings of research into the knowledge of teachers and teaching are considered provisional and contestable, especially with regard to how those findings might be applied to a range of settings. Such findings provide an invaluable frame of reference for reviewing current practice in any setting, but they are also scrutinized carefully from the point of view of local knowledge and practice. Teachers engage in dialogue with such findings, in a spirit of continuing inquiry and research into their own professional practice.

•

Evidence of the knowledge of teachers and teaching is often demonstrated in large-scale surveys or “scientific, evidence-based research” (eg. NICHD 2000, NITL 2005), that systematically bracket out the specific nature of school communities.

•

Evidence of the knowledge of teachers and teaching is often explored in non-canonical forms of inquiry, such as action research, narrative inquiry, and other types of qualitative research that include some focus on the nature of school communities.

•

•

Teachers’ professional practice is judged against pre-existing or traditional outcomes outcomes which are unproblematically measurable, such as their students’ standardised test results - without any interrogation of what those tests purport to measure or whether they really constitute a full account of the range of experiences and opportunities schools offer students.

• Teachers draw on academic and practitioner

Teachers’ work is defined by others according to notions of a ‘performance culture.’ Teachers are rendered accountable through narrowly framed ‘performance’ appraisals which require them to specify targets (for themselves and for their students) and to demonstrate that these targets are achieved.

• Teachers work together to create a ‘culture

Table 1:

research and theory in order to review and critique their existing practices. Standardised testing can provide some insight into the learning of students, but it is combined with the teachers’ professional judgments, developed through their ongoing interactions with students. Educational outcomes are richer than those measured by standardized tests.

of inquiry’ at their school in which everyone – teachers, students, parents – can participate. They are mindful of the managerial systems within which they continue to be accountable, but their accountability is part of a larger professional commitment to the welfare of the students in their care and the school community.

Contrasting understandings of professional development and professional learning (derived from Doecke and Parr 2005, p. 2).

3. Addressing the terms of reference Our aim in this submission is to not to debate the merits of these two paradigms but to highlight key initiatives by members of our Faculty that have explored alternative understandings of professional learning. We shall focus on several school-based initiatives which the Faculty has recently facilitated, where members of our Faculty have worked closely with practising school teachers, and draw out their implications with respect to the terms of reference of this inquiry. We feel that these initiatives have been successful, although we are mindful that the very concept of success varies, depending on the paradigm of professional learning that is being applied. This is important to remember with respect to the first term of reference: 3

a. the relationship between ongoing professional learning for teachers and teaching expertise

Managerial models of professional development often assume that there should be a linear connection between professional development inputs and student learning outcomes, which can be measured by standardized tests.

A teacher’s professional development

Figure 1:

A teacher’s teaching

Students’ learning

Students’ performance in standardised tests

Assumptions in managerial understandings of professional learning: An input-output model of professional learning and student performance (Derived from Supovitz 2001. See also Meiers and Ingvarson 2005, p. 6.)

Such a model typically discounts the professional knowledge and practice which teachers have developed in their local settings, positioning them as lacking the knowledge or skills necessary to bring about educational change. They are treated as though they are ignorant and in desperate need of retraining which usually focuses on a specific set of skills (see, e.g., Rowe 2003, on phonics instruction). Paradoxically, despite the fact that such a model often claims that it is teachers who make the difference to students’ learning, teachers are treated as though they are the problem and in need of fixing. And just as teachers are positioned as the passive recipients of knowledge from above, so this model tends to promote a model of school learning as simply transmission, as a matter of drilling and skilling students in order for them to produce the required results. This is especially the case with many of the standards-based reforms that have recently been applied in the Anglo-phone world, where research is beginning to emerge which questions what has been achieved, pointing to the unintended consequences that many of these reforms have had (see Darling-Hammond 2004).

By contrast, the form of professional learning for which we are arguing is intended to promote richer forms of school learning. These richer forms cannot be captured by a linear model of transmission. Teachers are understood to be engaging in continuing inquiry, even as they interact with students in their classrooms and participate in other aspects of a school’s life. Teachers do not simply get knowledge from elsewhere and mechanically apply it to their teaching. Their knowledge is a living knowledge that is continually being refined in the course of their careers, the product of 4

what Cochran-Smith and Lytle call an ‘inquiry-stance’ (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2001). Such a stance is integral to teachers’ professionalism, as has been highlighted by many researchers and professional groups - see, e.g., Dewey (1916/61), Barnes (1992), Britton (1986), Applebee (1996), and Wells (1998); see also the prominence given to practitioner inquiry in the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Learning in Australia (STELLA) (www.stella.org.au). And matching this understanding of professional learning as continuing inquiry into one’s practice is an equally rich understanding of how students might engage in inquiry learning and meaning-making, and how they might take an active interest in the people and things that constitute their world.

Crucially, professional learning according to this model typically takes the form of dialogue, negotiation and conversation, where teachers work together to create and sustain what Reid (2004) calls ‘a culture of inquiry’ in their schools. In this respect it is grounded in a long tradition of research and inquiry into education and learning (Vygotsky 1962, Bakhtin 1986, Dewey 1916/61, Barnes 1992, Britton 1986, Applebee 1996, Wenger 1998, and Wells 1998). Such a model is deeply collaborative, grounded in the social relationships that constitute any institutional setting, and aware of the human obligations and ethical responsibilities that inhere within those settings. Accordingly, the benefits of such a model of professional learning when applied in a school are likely to include a strengthening of the social fabric of the school and support of a range of forms of student engagement in school life, not simply conventional measures of performance.

b. the factors which will support high quality professional learning for teachers, including learning methods and environments for the development of professional knowledge, and the pedagogy relevant to professional development of teacher

Historically, further teacher education has been constructed as an extension of technical-rational approaches to initial teacher education, albeit with larger helpings of formal theories of curriculum, pedagogy, etc. The appropriate environment for such further education was often seen as the university, principally through advanced degree programs. School-based ‘professional development’, by contrast, tended to offer short-term, practice-oriented tips and tricks on tightly distinguished topics, such as ‘behaviour management’, ‘mathematics curriculum’, or ‘educating boys’. Both of these approaches relied on learning methods and environments that are highly abstract and de-contextualised; teacher knowledge was positioned in the mind of the university lecturer or workshop facilitator, transmitted to teachers without reference to their particular situation, and teachers usually participated outside of their own classrooms.

5

More recent approaches privilege site-based and indeed classroom-based inquiry in teacher professional learning, involving some element of partnership with universities, and enacted in tandem with children’s inquiry learning. In this way, teachers and children are seen to be engaged in co-construction of knowledge. This may be around particular natural phenomena, curriculum domains, or social practices, or based on deliberate process of inquiry into curriculum and pedagogy as both content and process; either way, teachers experience directly the construction of knowledge about teaching. Such knowledge may be highly specific, focused on immediate classroom problems and opportunities, or more generic, as teachers explore alternative ways of approaching longstanding educational problems. In a review of teacher professional development programs that demonstrated a reliable link to children’s later literacy and numeracy learning, Mitchell and Cubey (2003) identified key factors as: the ability to source support and advice beyond the institution; teachers having positive dispositions toward their own learning; commitment from institutional management and leadership; instituting a deliberate process of inquiry; and a commitment to extended time frames (see also Comber and Kamler 2005, Grossman, Wineburg and Woolworth 2001, Parr 2007, Wells 2001). As a Faculty, we are paying close attention to the opportunities and challenges posed by delivery of Masters degrees to site-based cohorts of secondary and TAFE teachers in south-east Melbourne. Teachers participate either in coursework degrees, or a combination of coursework and research theses. Crucially, the content and research focus of these degrees is on the educational challenges that face the participants in their immediate educational environment. These degrees afford teachers and TAFE educators the opportunity to situate these challenges within the wider research literature, which describes the experiences of teachers and teacher-researchers elsewhere, assisting them to consider educational problems anew. Furthermore, the rapidly growing field of practitioner inquiry (which is not confined to educational settings) provides a rich source of advice about research methods and assumptions that can be accessed by participants in these cohorts.

A distinctive feature of these initiatives is the way in which, with careful facilitation, site-based groups of teachers can move quickly to a position of trust, allowing them to engage with shared problems and to identify shared solutions. Because learning together in this way is necessarily a collaborative activity, there is clear potential for benefits to accrue to the educational site institutionally as well as to individual teachers or groups of teachers.

6

d. determining how best practice in ongoing professional learning for teachers can be delivered into schools and learning communities e. examining the potential for greater cross-sectoral links between industry, training institutions and schools in the delivery of ongoing professional learning for teachers

A cohort of these teachers with our postgraduate program has typically consisted of a significant number of practitioners in a school who identify a need to research their professional practice. This usually involves the support of the school leadership team (indeed, the active encouragement of the school leadership is an ingredient for success). Teachers formally enroll in a Masters postgraduate course (either research Masters with a coursework component or a coursework degree), and they use their professional experiences as a basis for completing the requirements of each unit. Monash staff deliver workshops at the school site, which are arranged to fit in with the other demands which these teachers face in their busy professional lives, as are the dates for the completion of assessment tasks. One outcome of these initiatives will be that a large number of staff at participating schools will eventually be awarded their Masters degrees.

The state schools with which we have been working have been especially concerned to meet the challenges of catering for the needs of students from ethnically diverse communities (including refugee families) as well as the question of student engagement. With respect to the influx of refugee children in state schools in this region, the teachers recognize that they need to develop an understanding of the languages and experiences these children bring with them into the school, and how to provide them with opportunities to engage successfully in the Australian school system. Given the complexity of such issues, they have recognized the need to draw on the knowledge and expertise of academics at Monash who have done extensive research on these questions. The focus, however, is not simply on accessing expert advice, but on developing the teachers’ capabilities and capacities to understand and act on the challenges with which they are faced. This means building their capacity to engage in practitioner research - one of the units they complete is a research methodology unit in which they explore methodological and ethical issues related to practitioner inquiry in local settings – as well as providing them with units that address substantive issues, e.g. the role of language in learning, whole school curriculum and whole school reform. The key ingredient is partnership between teachers and academics in a joint inquiry into some of the most challenging educational issues of our time.

7

This partnership opens up the possibility of transcending many of the binaries that have traditionally characterized educational research: between theory and practice, between academic knowledge and professional knowledge, between the world of research (involving refereed academic journals and the discursive practices associated with academic work) and practitioner inquiry, between schools and universities. The teachers are inducted into the world of academic journals and the conventions of academic writing, when they conduct a literature search on their chosen topic (using search techniques that Faculty staff have introduced to them). Busy classroom teachers find the time to find out how researchers have inquired into the issues of concern to them, and to devise their own research projects in order to investigate those issues within their local settings. At one school, staff themselves commented on the quality of the professional conversations they were enjoying through their involvement in the cohort. On one evening they presented posters about their research to each other, inviting their colleagues to comment on the way they had conceptualized their research designs and issues that were likely to emerge when they implemented them.

It should also be noted that partnerships of this kind also prompt the academics involved to reflect critically about their habitual approaches towards teaching postgraduate students. Academics need to be flexible as they work with teachers in their local settings. It is a matter of gladly teaching and gladly learning. Such initiatives prompt academics to review the traditional ways in which they have delivered postgraduate courses, and to devise courses which enable dialogue between academics and teachers on an equal footing. 4. Conclusion Much literature speaks of the positive correlation between a lively culture of inquiry in teachers’ professional learning in schools and the outcomes of the students’ learning in those schools (eg. Grossman 2001, Cochran-Smith and Little 2001, Sawyer et al. 2007). A thriving culture of inquiry in schools is underpinned and animated by sustained learning and inquiry by the teachers, in collaboration with each other, with their students and with universities. Teachers can be seen meaningfully engaged as they construct knowledge in and for their particular context; this knowledge informs their practice, and their very practices are a powerful model for student learning in that learning community. The model we have been enacting in our professional learning programs, as described in this submission, facilitates and encourages the development of such a culture.

There exists a rich literature of teachers accounting for the value of this and similar models of professional learning. Such literature often leaves data from students’ test results (on their own) 8

appearing insubstantial and lacking in authenticity. We trust that any future policy making with respect to teacher professional learning in Australian schools recognizes the rich evidence of teacher professional learning partnerships with universities, and acts to facilitate, sponsor and extend such programs in future. As teachers experience the benefits so too will Australian student learning benefit.

We would be happy to speak further to the Inquiry about some of these accounts, practices and models of successful teacher professional learning. We can be contacted at the following email addresses:

Mr Graham Parr: [email protected] Dr Joce Nuttall: [email protected] Assoc. Prof. Brenton.Doecke: [email protected]

9

List of references Applebee, A. (1996). Curriculum as conversation: Transforming traditions of teaching and learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) & Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) (2002). Standards for the Teaching of English Language and Literacy in Australia (STELLA). Retrieved December 2006, from www.stella.org.au Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), V. McGee (Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press. Barnes, D. (1992). From communication to curriculum (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Stoll, L., Thomas, S., & Wallace, M. (with Greenwood, A. et al.) (2005). Creating and sustaining effective professional learning communities. DfES Research Report RR637. University of Bristol. Retrieved November 2006, from www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR637.pdfBritton (1986) Britton, J. (1986). Talking to learn. In D. Barnes, J. Britton & M. Torbe (Eds.), Language, the learner and the school (3rd ed.). Ringwood, VIC: Penguin. Caldwell, B., & Hayward, D. (1998). The future of schools: Lessons from the reform of public education. London: Falmer Press. Cochran-Smith, M. (2006). Taking stock in 2006: Evidence, evidence everywhere [Editorial]. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(1), 6-12. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (2001). Beyond certainty: Taking an inquiry stance on practice. In A. Liebermann & L. Miller (Eds.), Teachers caught in the action: Professional development that matters (pp. 45-58). New York: Teachers’ College Press. Comber, B., & Kamler, B. (Eds.). (2005). Turn-around pedagogies: Literacy interventions for atrisk students. Sydney: Primary English Teachers’ Association (PETA). Darling-Hammond, L. (2004). Standards, Accountability, and School Reform. Teachers College Record 106 (6), 1047–1085. Department of Education & Training (DE&T) (2004). The professional learning of teachers. Melbourne. Retrieved November 2006, from http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/blueprint/pdfs/The_Professional_Learning_of_Teachers.pdf Dewey, J. (1916/1961). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan. Doecke, B., & Parr, G. (Eds.). (2005b). Writing=Learning. Kent Town & Kensington Gardens, SA: AATE & Wakefield Press.

10

General Teaching Council of England (GTCE). (2004). Teachers’ professional learning framework. London: General Teaching Council for England. Retrieved September 2006, from http://www.gtce.org.uk/shared/contentlibs/126802/CPD/120235/tplf.pdf Grossman, P., Wineburg, S., & Woolworth, S. (2001). Toward a theory of community, Teachers’ College Record, 103(6), 942-1012. Ingvarson, L. (2002). Building a learning profession. Deakin West, ACT: Australian College of Educators (ACE). Lovat, T. (with Mackenzie, C.) (2003). The role of the ‘teacher’: Coming of age? Discussion paper. Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE). Retrieved December 2006, from http://acde.edu.au/ssets/pdf/role%20of%20eds%20-%2024%20june.pdf Meiers, M., & Ingvarson, L. (2005a). Investigating the links between teacher professional development and student learning outcomes, Vol. 1. Barton, ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved December 2006, from http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/publications_resources/profiles/teacher_pro f_development_student_learning_outcomes.htm Ministry of Education (NZ). (2006). Professional learning: Focus and priorities. Website of Ministry of Education. Retrieved September 2006, from http://www.tki.org.nz/r/governance/prof_learn/focus_e.php Mitchell, L., & Cubey, P. (2003). Best evidence synthesis: Characteristics of professional development linked to enhanced pedagogy and children's learning in early childhood settings. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Retrieved December 2006, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/smallbook.htm National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (NITL) (2005a). Teaching reading: Report and recommendations, national inquiry into the teaching of literacy. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, December 2005. Retrieved November 2006, from http://www.dest.gov.au/nitl/documents/report_recommendations.pdf Parr, G. (2007). Inquiry-based professional learning of English-literature teachers: Negotiating dialogic potential. Unpublished PhD thesis. Melbourne University. Reid, A. (2004). Towards a culture of inquiry in DECS. Occasional Paper No. 1. Department of Education & Children’s Services: Government of South Australia. Retrieved December 2004,

11

from http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/corporate/files/links/OP_01.pdf Rowe, K. (2003). The importance of teacher quality as a key determinant of students’ experiences and outcomes of schooling, Discussion paper prepared on behalf of the Interim Committee for a NSW Institute of Teaching, ACER. Retrieved June 2006, from http://www.acer.edu.au/research/programs/documents/Rowe_ACER_Research_Conf_2003_P aper.pdfSupovitz 2001 Sawyer, W., Brock, P. and Baxter, D. (forthcoming 2007). Exceptional outcomes in English: Findings from AESOP. Brisbane: Post-Pressed.

The Allen Consulting Group (2003, December). Establishing the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership (NIQTSL): Issues paper. A paper written for Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). Canberra, ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved December 2006, from http://www.allenconsult.com.au/NIQTASL/downloads/Issues_Paper_Final.pdf The US Department of Education (2001). No Child Left Behind Policy in 2001. Executive summary. Retrieved Jan. 2007, from http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm.html Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. In E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar (Eds & Trans.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wells, G. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text: Learning and teaching through inquiry. New York & London: Teachers’ College Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12