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what strategies work in which situations and
why that would be. That’s teacher practice
evidence. It’s not focusing on the teacher
but on the teaching.
The third type of evidence in evidence-
based practice is research evidence. That’s
where we draw research evidence from
work that researchers have done and
published in peer review journals.
One of the things about teaching is
the adaptability and that ability to weave
together those different forms of evidence
and ask: ‘What’s happening here and how
is it having an effect?’
These sorts of things are really hard to
do. One of my suggestions around this is
for schools to be linked more closely to
universities and to educational researchers.
Many teachers don’t have time to go and
look for the research evidence and then
think about, ‘How does this apply to my
practice?’ We’re the ones who can curate
the research evidence for teachers.
But there’s also the point for teachers
to have an ‘inquiry stance’. When
teachers and schools take an evidence-
based approach, I would call it having
an inquiry stance; some of the schools
I work with call it puzzles of practice.
They ask: ‘What’s something we really
want to improve here in my classroom,
in my school? What are the different
types of evidence I need to collect here
to try to negotiate this puzzle I’ve got
about my practice? Why is it that these
students don’t seem to be engaging
when I do this particular activity? Why
is it that some children aren’t learning
in that space?’ They draw together
those different forms of evidence.
The reason that this has developed
is really because teachers are very busy
people. Traditionally, they’re in their own
classroom, they’re just kind of doing
their own thing. They might chat at
breaks, but even then, they might be off
doing other things like playground duty.
While this is changing, they don’t always
engage in that full, holistic collaborative
kind of professional learning culture.
Do you feel professional learning often
doesn’t emanate from the teachers and
their needs, that it comes from external
organisations?
That’s right. Teachers should be responsible
for maintaining standards in the profession.
We always have bodies that mandate
certain things, and it’s about accountability.
You can see why some of these top-down
approaches happen, but if it’s only ever
a top-down approach, where things are
mandated, then you never get the level
of buy-in that you need to develop these
professional learning communities.
There have to be bottom-up strategies
that happen. Teachers have university
degrees, they’ve got experience in
classrooms, and they understand the way
children learn. We need to draw on that
practice and professional expertise and
judgment. We need to be trusting them to
lead more in professional learning.
It’s even better if this is not done at an
individual level but as a collective. It’s most
powerful when you’ve got a whole school
or a whole department working together as
a collective and learning from each other,
but also drawing in those other forms of
evidence that I talked about.
Using those university links for your
research evidence sounds essential.
Absolutely. And there needs to be more
teaching exchanges across universities
and schools. Having teachers come in
and teach into our university programs.
Having university lecturers going out
into schools and teaching alongside
teachers. We can facilitate more of that,
where we have those partnerships.
We already have schools engaged in
research projects that we run, but we’re
trying to move more towards research
projects that are instigated by the school.
So it’s not just a researcher coming in
saying, ‘This is what we want to do’, but we
also have research that is instigated by the
school, where the questions are: ‘This is
what [teachers] want to research, this is what
they want to improve, this is their puzzle
of practice, and can you help us do that?’
That’s where those partnerships can be
really strong. If policies and funding can
support that work, then it makes it so much
easier, because teachers need release time
to be able to engage in it.
Can documenting professional learning
be simplified? Why is it important to have
this documented?
I can’t generalise across the board. You
need a certain number of professional
learning hours to be registered in most
states, to get your teacher accreditation.
Sometimes you need to have some top
down strategies, because that signals the
importance and ensures accountability.
In any mass profession, you’re going to
have people that need more professional
learning than others in certain areas – you
don’t want any one slipping under the radar
where they’re not doing any professional
learning. You need to have that signal from
above that this is important and that this is
something that you need to do.
In some cases it does become a tick box.
One of the issues is that, unfortunately,
there is some low-level professional learning
that’s available. But not all professional
learning needs to be accredited. Teachers
can choose some that doesn’t have to be
accredited through NESA [NSW Education
Standards Authority].
There’s not a lot of accountability at the
moment around the quality professional
learning that’s offered. So sometimes
teachers think ‘This is great, some provider
has got this professional learning session
that I might go to’. They go along, it might
be a two-hour session or it might be a
day session.
Then they come back and it doesn’t
always get shared with anybody; it’s not
always put into place, or any evidence
collected about what the impact of it was.
That’s where professional learning, in my
view, needs to be iterative. If it’s some basic
technology that you want to learn to use,
a one-off session is fine. But then if you
then want to use it in your teaching and see
what the effects of that are, that then needs
to turn in to iterative professional learning.
That needs to be ongoing.
You need to be trying things, you need to
be talking to others, bringing in those forms
of evidence I talked about earlier. What
does the research say about this kind of
technology? How do we look at how each
of us is using it? What’s the effect on our
student data?
That’s when it needs to become this
ongoing process of professional learning.
Successful schools are doing this already,
aren't they?
Exactly. We work with a number of schools
that do exactly this. They work as a staff or
as a department in the big schools and they
go through these processes.
Teachers are working together, they’re
identifying those key areas and then
they’re engaging in these processes. And
most times, they engage with a university
to come in and bring in that research
expertise and to guide them through
those processes. ■
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