Reflecting on Your Practice

Professor Sonia Blandford and Dr Catherine Knowles provide some practical guidance on how leaders and teachers can hone their performance.

Three teenagers happily working together at a table

Most teachers come into the profession wanting to make a difference in children’s lives; many do and would like to do it better. In reality, teaching can be challenging; and for effective practice and professional development, it is essential that there is commitment, collaboration and communication between teachers, leaders and the school community.

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      string(350) "... blog and my book, Evidence-Based School Leadership and Management: A Practical Guide – on a range of matters relating to evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. Reflecting now on this experience as an edublogger and de facto knowledge broker and mobiliser, the following themes seem relevant: the knowledge broker as ..."
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      string(5636) "This article describes my experiences as a blogger and how I first came to be writing about evidence-based practice. Then a number of key themes around knowledge brokering will be explored – such as sourcing and sharing research evidence, stimulating discussion, and supporting individuals interested in making use of research. In particular there will be a focus on how blogging and knowledge brokering play a sustaining role for the individual blogger. I conclude by reflecting on any impact and success that I may have had in my role as a knowledge broker.Personal journey – the rise of the knowledge brokerI started blogging about education in the spring of 2014 as a result of a ‘professional disappointment’ – which involved not being appointed to a senior position and ultimately to a change in employment status. As such, blogging was designed to provide an outlet for my interest in educational leadership and management as I tried to find a new role. Initially the blog was influenced by my 30 years of experience of working in further education, where I had seen at first hand both the negative consequences of educational innovations being adopted without proper scrutiny of the supporting research evidence or where teachers, managers, headteachers, governing bodies and local government had selfishly prioritised their own narrow interests over and above the interests of pupils, parents and other stakeholders.However, three quite separate events then went to influence the contents of my blog posts. First, in the summer of 2014 I came across an article by Adrian Furnham in The Sunday Times which introduced me to work of Rob Briner, Eric Barends and Denise Rousseau on evidence-based management. Second, in September 2014 I attended the researchED national conference, which got me thinking about evidence-based school leadership as the vast majority of the sessions at the event had a focus on teaching and learning, with little attention seemed to be being paid to the role of research and other sources of evidence in the decision making of senior leaders in schools. Third, in December 2014 I attended a researchED one-day event intended to support school research champions. At this event, it quickly became apparent that there appeared to be a lack of awareness, particularly among school research leaders, of the work being done on evidence-based practice outside of schools. Indeed, most of the presenters at the event thought they were ‘designing the plane whilst flying it’ – whereas they were merely re-inventing the wheel.As a consequence, I’ve ended up writing around 250 blog posts – see www.garyrjones.com/blog and my book, Evidence-Based School Leadership and Management: A Practical Guide – on a range of matters relating to evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. Reflecting now on this experience as an edublogger and de facto knowledge broker and mobiliser, the following themes seem relevant: the knowledge broker as stimulator; the knowledge broker as supporter; the knowledge broker as source and sharer; and knowledge brokering as a form of sustenance for personal value and self-esteem?The knowledge broker as stimulatorFor me, the knowledge broker can act as a stimulator, someone who is trying to provoke or stir up a discussion of some of the issues at hand. That is not to say that the attempt to provoke and stimulate discussion is designed to be deliberately mischievous; rather, what I’m trying to do is get readers to maybe pause for a moment and just challenge some of their assumptions. For example, currently there is a lot of time and effort going into trying to get teachers to make greater use of research. However, at the moment there appears to be very little (if any) evidence that research use by teachers has any positive impact on the outcomes of pupils. So the question needs to be asked as to whether encouraging teachers to make use of research is a good use of their time.Moreover, I’ve also posted about ethics and the research & evidence-informed school and whether there needs to be greater awareness of ethical issues when schools seek to be research informed. If not, the well-intentioned efforts of schools to engage in ‘research’ through school randomised controlled trials lead to some pupils being unnecessarily disadvantaged.Finally, if you are going to try to stimulate debate, you will have to be able to ‘defend’ a position you have taken. For example, I’ve argued that Professor John Hattie’s claim that an effect size of 0.4SD is representative of a year’s worth of progress is an edu-myth. This led to me being asked to take part in a podcast with Professor Hattie, which, at the time of writing, has yet to take place.The knowledge broker as supporterThe knowledge broker can be a supporter of individuals undertaking the hard work of being school research leads. Certainly, in early 2015, I felt that I wanted to support colleagues who were engaged in this task and who didn’t necessarily have the time to access and make sense of some of the resources already available. As a consequence, I wrote a series of blog posts which focused on how school research leads could help colleagues develop well-formulated and answerable questions by using techniques and approaches which have been developed in both medicine and social science. This was followed by a series of posts which looked into how school research leads can go about creating journal clubs within their schools.However, this support element of knowledge broking should not be seen as one"
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Professional Development

Blogging Is Knowledge

28 Mar 2021

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      string(5708) "lack of robustness in much practitioner and school-based research – and its lack of generalisability in terms of informing practice more widely.  Nevertheless, that does not lead all of those commentators to dismiss the value of such activity.  As Furlong and Salisbury (2005) reflected, such activity gives access to the ‘discourse’ of research.  This is about engagement with or in research as, first and foremost, a development activity and as a basis for a more systematic approach to reflecting on practice.    Some of course would respond that teachers’ preference for local action research simply reflects teachers’ failure to understand the potential power of engaging with ‘robust’ research, or their lack of skills and confidence to utilise evidence from trials.  But this debate is not just about methodological concerns; it is also about the implications of different models of research use for understandings of the nature of teacher professionalism, which will also shape teachers’ attitudes and approaches.  The limitations of ‘what works’ for teacher professionalismAs Furlong (2019) reflects, ‘what works’ can sometimes seem to provide expert technical knowledge in a way that reduces the scope for professional judgement and thereby turns teachers into technical functionaries.  This is especially so if it is the only part of a professional’s research diet.  There is then the further question of whether that research diet should be restricted to reflection on immediate issues of classroom practice and, more specifically, raising pupil attainment in line with official indicators.  Even on the broader definitions of research-informed practice outlined above, teacher engagement with research is all contained within a school effectiveness perspective, purely concerned with school improvement in terms of raising test scores.  In this sense, even action research can become an (albeit distant) off-shoot of the ’what works’ agenda.  As we argued in the 2005 BERA presidential address (Whitty, 2006), the professional literacy of teachers surely involves more than such purely instrumental knowledge.  Accordingly, it is appropriate that a research-based profession should also be informed by scholarship that questions prevailing assumptions, and considers such questions as to whether an activity is a worthwhile endeavour in the first place (see also, for example, Biesta, 2006; Hammersley, 2005;  Atkinson, 2000).  Chiming with this perspective, Winch, Oancea and Orchard (2013) emphasise three interconnected and complementary prongs to a richer notion of teacher professionalism: practical wisdom, technical knowledge and critical reflection (see also Leat, Lofthouse and Reid, 2013).The importance of professional criticalityIt seems that educational researchers themselves will need to make the argument for maintaining a broad church of education research in this regard – and make greater effort to show external audiences, not least education practitioners, how their professionalism and practice can grow by engaging with a breadth of material.  Just as some are keen for teachers to be better able to engage with and judge the findings of quantitative research, so there remains a place for critical studies within their reading.  It is this criticality that arguably takes the teacher from being a technician to one degree or another, to being a professional who is able to engage with debates about underpinning values – as well as one who is able to understand the ecosystem within which s/he is practicing and perhaps even act to change it.  That would seem to be an important marker of a contemporary professional, whether of the ‘managerial’, ‘collaborative’ or ‘democratic’ variety (Whitty, 2008).  This would be in keeping with earlier models of the relationship between research and practice within the English schools system, such as that exemplified by the work of Stenhouse (e.g. Stenhouse, 1975).Implications for teacher professional developmentIn this article we have addressed the issues of whether the research evidence that teachers are using should ideally be external to the teacher, and preferably in the form of findings from a trial; whether there is any place for small-scale, teacher-led research in that research use; and whether teacher professionalism requires or benefits from engagement with critical or theoretical work under the banner of research use.  In the process we have shown the slippage between different definitions of research use in practice.  From there we have made the case for an inclusive and pragmatic model of research-informed practice – for the purposes of practice/school improvement, but also in support of a richer model of teacher professionalism.  What this highlights are the issues for education as a field of research and as a field of practice in weaving together different types of knowledge and accommodating different epistemological traditions.A major current debate in the field of education studies centres on what counts as ‘powerful’ knowledge in professional contexts, an issue recently brought to life in discussions of Michael Young’s work with Joe Muller (Guile et al, 2018).  In their view, the ‘problem’ for the field of education research is that the closer to the world of practice one moves, the less ‘rigorous’ and less cumulative become the forms of knowledge that are developed – as our earlier discussion"
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Leading Professional Development

Weaving together the evidence – what really works in research, practice and professional development?

13 Feb 2019

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      string(5648) "assessment and teaching practices to maximise their impact on improving student learning (University of Melbourne, 2014).Collaboration in CPD therefore draws on the mutual input of each partner. As Pellerin (2011) reflects from her Canadian research, this does not deny the potential of the university consultant’s contribution to the teacher’s professional learning, but places this alongside the knowledge and expertise that teachers and others within the collaborative also bring to the table. This in turn connects with the concept of school-university partnerships as collaborative research communities and their contribution to improving practice.  Research communities and knowledge buildingOne of the fundamental issues related to teacher education and professional development within school -university partnerships is the stance taken towards research, enquiry and knowledge.  As long ago as the early 1990s there was a move towards regarding the teacher as knowledge generator and “a genuine interest in seeing knowledge production as a shared responsibility of the practitioner and research communities” (Bickel and Hattrup, 1995). There were calls for a radical change in the way in which school-university collaborations operated to nurture a community of enquiry and recognise the knowledge about teaching and learning that practitioners bring. More recently,  in a similar vein, Sharples (2013) observed that ‘Perhaps one of the most significant shifts over the last ten years in relation to practitioners’ use of research has been the realisation that simply passively disseminating research – “packaging and posting” – is unlikely to have a significant impact on people’s behaviours. He argues that network-based approaches, “which support direct engagement and dialogue between researchers and users, are proving to be particularly effective.”. In this consideration of school-university partnerships as research communities, it is helpful to understand that they exist in a number of forms but are enriched when ownership and all aspects of the enquiry process are shared within the whole collaborative of university and schools.  With this perspective, McLaughlin and Black-Hawkins (2004) suggest a range of six models along a continuum ranging from “school bound, individual teachers mentored by university ‘research experts’” to “within and between institutions, all partners are experts, facilitators and critical friends to one another”.   They state that whatever model is adopted it would be hard to engage in a joint research partnership without holding certain key values such as:asking questions about practice;collecting evidence;reflecting on practice and data;considering partnership to be valuable.McLaughlin and Black-Hawkins (2004)There has been much reflection on the need for a mindset shift in schools which fosters learning cultures that are enquiry-oriented and evidence-based, so that schools are able to adapt research evidence to suit their specific contexts and create their local knowledge that informs decision making and improvement in practice (e.g. Petty, 2006; Levin, 2010; Scott and McNeigsh, 2013). School-university partnerships as research communities will have much to offer to this culture shift. However, what has been relatively less emphasised in the literature is the role of school leaders in creating conditions which enable joint research partnerships to develop collective and organisational capacity and to spread and sustain practice change (Campbell and Levin, 2012). Evidence from the school effectiveness and school improvement literature suggests that it is only when school leaders make it a priority that partnerships can be used as external sources of support (Levin, 2010) and that joint research communities can become sustainable.Challenges to fulfil the potential of partnerships: old issues but persistent concernsPower and control: all voices to be heardPerhaps the most persistent features of school-university partnership dynamics are the issues of power and control. This has particularly focused upon who drives the partnership and the continuing perception of this being university dominated. Twenty five years ago this was described in stark, almost caricature terms: “The administrators (school leaders), predominantly male, went to meetings with university peo-ple to learn about new ideas to improve their schools; the teachers, predominantly female, were to receive what knowledge was thought appropriate. While we initially bought into this “trickle-down” theory of change, we soon realized that, if we wanted real reform, teachers would have to be directly involved” (Lieberman, 1992). Many would feel that things have fortunately moved on from this to a certain extent, but unease about where the authority and control lies in the partnership prevail. Mind the gap – cultural differencesThe literature is awash with observation upon the chalk and cheese nature of respective university and school cultures. Richmond (1996) argues that the challenge to achieve a mutually beneficial partnership between the two cultures “is to understand the culture of the various partners and to foster a sense of belonging, regardless of the cultures involved.” In previous reviews of partnership working, particularly related to ITE, the academic and the school teacher were portrayed as having fundamentally different outlooks. Academics’ approach to teaching drew on the four principles of their own classroom experiences in"
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Professional Development

School-university partnerships – fulfilling the potential

19 Nov 2018

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      string(393) "... growing, much remains to be explored in the relationship.Harris (2004, p. 2) notes that “theorising about distributed leadership … remains a wayof analysing rather than reflecting leadership practice because contemporary studies ofdistributed leadership are in short supply”. Lashway (2003, p. 3) warns that “the  30research base for distributed leadership is ..."
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      string(464) "A Case Study in a Queensland Secondary School. The main thesis of the study is that in the turbulent complexity of modern schooling, effective leadership is more likely to be spread across a network of individuals rather than concentrated in the hands of one or two leaders.  It reveals why distributed school leadership has become prominent in the contemporary international context of school improvement and leadership in the past decade. By Matthew Glen - 2009."
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      string(5638) "this type of collaboration whichhas generated new insights and interpretations into the research base of distributedleadership.2.5 Justification of Need for Further ResearchWhilst the empirical evidence about the potential of distributed leadership to contributeto school improvement is growing, much remains to be explored in the relationship.Harris (2004, p. 2) notes that “theorising about distributed leadership … remains a wayof analysing rather than reflecting leadership practice because contemporary studies ofdistributed leadership are in short supply”. Lashway (2003, p. 3) warns that “the  30research base for distributed leadership is still embryonic. While there is considerabletheory, we have relatively little empirical knowledge about how, or to what extent,principals actually use distributed leadership.” Woods, Bennett, Harvey, and Wise(2004, p. 453) also argue that further research is needed to “encompass the interplayof the structural and agentive dimensions of distributed leadership” and that a soundresearch base is needed to assess the effectiveness of distributed leadershipstrategies in enhancing positive educational outcomes. Hopkins and Jackson (2003, p.17) note:despite more than two decades of writing about organisational development weare still in a position of needing to develop understandings about whatleadership really involves when it is distributed, how schools might function andact differently, and what operational images of distributed leadership in actionmight look like.Bell, Bolan, and Cubillo (2003, p. 4) suggest in their systematic review that “distributedforms of leadership among the wider school staff are likely to have a more significantimpact on the positive achievements of student outcomes than that which is largely orexclusively top-down”. Harris (2004, 2005, 2008) concludes that we need: to understand much more about distributed leadership practice, and how it canbe nurtured, supported and developed;  more empirical studies that elucidate different models, approaches and formsof distributed leadership in practice; to investigate the relationship between distributed leadership and schoolimprovement; and to provide case study exemplars of distributed leadership in action and identifythe conditions under which this form of leadership can flourish and grow.As noted in the previous chapter, Harris (2005, p. 263) has warned that without thisstrong empirical base “distributed leadership faces the danger of becoming yet anotherleadership theory that proves to be misleading”.Given the widening international interest as expressed in the preceding references, afocussed research effort on the role that distributed leadership may play in sustainingchange and improvement appears well justified. It is evident from the precedingdiscussion that a strong need has been demonstrated for “case study exemplars ofdistributed leadership in action” and that a particular focus for this type of research is toexplore the relationship between distributed leadership and school improvement. Doing  31so in a Queensland secondary school provides an opportunity to take up thischallenge.A key theme identified for further research by Bennet et al. (2003, p. 12) in theirextensive NCSL literature review was that of the source of the change. They pose thequestion of whether distributed leadership is created by senior staff as part of a “vision”of the school, or if it represents a harnessing into a school-wide culture of pre-existingforms of leadership practice. Issues around autonomy, control, creation and facilitationas factors in both developing and sustaining distributed leadership should beinvestigated further, according to these authors.In the first half of this chapter, I have reviewed an extensive body of relevant literaturefrom three main continents – UK/Europe, North America and Australia. The keymessages which have come from this review are that: historical factors and contemporary practices have contributed to a wide rangeof definitional confusions and complexities about distributed leadership; there is now universal agreement amongst educators that leadership does notsimply reside in one person and that many may exercise leadership in anorganization; and international interest and research on the topic has begun to broaden in thepast few years with its direction being decided by researchers typically usingone of two main orientations – a descriptive or activity-theory orientationcompared with a normative orientation that seeks to explain distribution from avariety of perspectives associated with school improvement and effectiveness.In the next part of the chapter, I examine the descriptive orientation in more detail,specifically setting out the components of activity theory which underpin themethodological framework of the present study.2.6 Activity Theory and Distributed LeadershipThe distinctive approach to this research on distributed leadership is built aroundspecific versions of activity theory as described by Gronn (2002) earlier in this chapter.Activity theory has a number of versions or generations, all of which focus on theconnections between situated knowing and doing. The version drawn upon in thisstudy, referred to as third generation cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), is basedon extensive research by the Finnish theorist Engeström from the Centre for ActivityTheory and Developmental Work Research at the University of Helsinki. Engeström  32has built on the earlier pioneering work of Russian psychologists"
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Leadership

Distributed Leadership

6 Jul 2017

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      string(4623) "support.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Developing Teachers and School Leaders ■■■■■10From 2014 we have also seen the emergence of aninclusive ‘hub’ approach for cross-phase and inter-institutional partnership development. For example,the Hallam TSA, in collaboration with four other localTeaching School Alliances, two university partners andthe South Yorkshire Local Authorities, successfullylaunched the South Yorkshire Maths Hub in 2014.Their vision was to build ‘a collaborative mathematicseducator community to help colleagues to achieve thebest for our students’ (South Yorkshire Maths Hubwebsite). This was to be achieved through ‘reflecting onbest practice strategies both locally & worldwide andconducting school based action research to measureimpact of these practices’ (South Yorkshire MathsHub website).Within Teaching School Alliances joint practicedevelopment (JPD) across partner schools was rated bythe majority of the TSA leaders in the national surveyas being beneficial to the improvement of teaching andlearning in their schools. Perceived benefits includedsignificant changes in relation to ‘improved expertiseamongst teachers to design, implement and monitorinnovative practices across the alliance’ and ‘increasedcollaborative planning of JPD projects across partnerschools.’ For example, the experiences of the TransformTeaching School Alliance (a cohort 2 alliance led bySneinton St Stephen’s Church of England PrimarySchool) provide a detailed account of how the values andvisions of the TSA and the maturity of the partnershiphave enabled the sharing of practice, enhanced sharedcommitment to quality, and increased collective capacityfor school improvement across schools in the alliance(see Box 2).Box 2: Mature partnerships: sharing of values and visionsA collective moral purpose is a key principlefor Transform which drives the developmentof an ‘inspirational’ partnership. Because ofthe shared values, openness and sharingof vulnerabilities, a healthy transition fromcompetition to collaboration between schoolsbecame possible in the earlier developmentof the TSA. As an SLE from a partner schoolmaintains, ‘we are genuinely trying to be better.’It is felt that ‘the values that underpin thespirit on which the partnership is built’ hasenabled the alliance to ‘manage the hard edgeof challenge’ (Strategic Partner).There is a shared view that the infrastructureof the partnership is ‘very professionallyorganised’: ‘Transform has the capacity tosupport, challenge and allow schools to makea contribution.’ (Strategic Partner) A schoolthat has been receiving support from theAlliance remains a member of the StrategicDevelopment Board and its headteachercommented, ‘we work very collaboratively. I feelpart of a team. It is not done to you. … You feelyou are not on your own and you are valued forwhat you bring.’As trust develops and embeds in the TSA overtime, there is a sense of greater maturity inthe partnerships. The alliance is developing aculture of annual peer health checks which isseen by partner schools as an opportunity to‘act as critical friends in triads’ (Director of TSA).This ‘development opportunity’ will not be ‘justdata related’ but will involve developing anunderstanding of the context, beginning witha tour of the school. A strategic partner regardsthe support of the TSA for one supportedschool as ‘Transform’s Midas Touch’ which has‘raised levels of attainment and outcomes forvulnerable groups’.Leading professional developmentThe opportunity to develop senior and middleleaders in the TSA was perceived to have been ‘themost impactful’ development. The majority of thePolicy andpractice11……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………TSA leaders reported in the survey that they had seensignificant changes in their ability to diagnose and makedecisions about changes"
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Professional Development

Developing Teachers and School Leaders: how Teaching School Alliances make a difference

12 Sep 2016