Chapter 3.

The role of professional learning in determining the profession’s future

Philippa Cordingley, Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE)

This chapter focuses on the nature and role of teacher professional learning in shaping the future of the profession. It offers insights from six systematic and technical reviews of the evidence about Continuing Professional Learning and Development and extensive research and evaluation focussed on the impact of such activity on teachers and pupils, and the effectiveness of school as learning environments for them both.

It starts with a proposition. Since schools are a microcosm of society, there are as many challenges facing the teaching profession as there are facing society more generally. Papers for a February, 2011 conference exploring The Future of the Teaching Profession organised by the OECD and Education International set out such challenges somewhat tellingly through social, political and economic lenses. But consideration of learning also has a place here. If the profession and its knowledge base lag woefully behind the demands placed on schools, teachers, pupils and society, surely teachers’ own learning is key to their capacity to respond to new demands? Since learning (albeit, the learning of pupils) sits at the core of professional identity and modelling is fundamental to the learning process, logically teachers’ own learning should contribute to progress at two levels; in increasing teachers’ confidence and efficacy and in making the benefits of effortful learning visible to pupils.

A quick scan of the education press, and of international evaluations such as those carried out by OECD (Schuller, 2005) and the EEC (Leney et al,

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2007) shows us that it is teacher performance rather than teacher learning that has been and remains the focus of attention for support for continuing professional learning (CPD). Important as teacher performance is, focussing upon it can only help us raise the base level of professional practice; it is teacher learning, rather than performance, that has the potential to help the profession raise its own ceiling. Yet teachers themselves contribute to the relentless focus on behaviours and performance, emphasising as they do, what they see as “common sense” approaches. The problem here is that in reality, for effective teachers, common sense approaches are really complex and layered ways of responding to needs, based on accumulated and internalised professional expertise. But in the hands of less effective teachers “common sense” approaches often involve unthinking adherence to established routines and resources – and become a defence against questioning and risk taking. At its worst this can result in a “tyranny of common sense”, an intransigent resistance against learning from practices developed and tested elsewhere.

A more significant reason why teacher learning does not yet sit at the heart of professional identity is that support for professional learning and development has been rather limited in conception and execution. In effect we have made the same mistakes about teacher learning we were making 10-15 years ago about pupil learning. We have learned, albeit relatively recently, to focus on quality in the facilitation of CPD. But for many years we gave scant attention to the processes, and content of teachers’ learning post qualification – or to their agency in the process. Masters level study for teachers is one approach to professional development which is oriented towards something other than performance, focussing rather on acquisition and interrogation of a body of knowledge. But even the focus on developing understanding of teaching and learning is not quite the same as a focus on the process of learning about teaching and learning. For teachers, as for pupils, some of the way forward lies in learning how to learn, in teachers taking increasing

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responsibility for their own learning. This calls for two other strategic developments. First, it calls for teachers to develop their own skills and capacities in directing their own professional learning. Second it requires school leaders to develop an understanding of the pedagogy and curriculum of teacher development. Reading across systematic reviews of effective CPD, effective leadership and effective pedagogy (Cordingley et al, 2003, 2005 a & b, 2007, Timperley et al, 2006 , Robinson et al 2009 or, Stoll et al, 2006 ) this calls for

a focus on formative and summative needs analysis

collaboration as a learning strategy

skilled recognition and use of specialist expertise

the use of evidence from teaching and learning exchanges to structure the learning process

active leadership of professional learning including explicit modelling or enquiry oriented approaches to development.

Of all of these key components, perhaps the role of in-depth specialist experience is the one that has most potential for expanding the profession’s sense of itself and for fuelling development into that space. Certainly the welcome (in many ways) increase in school based expertise has frequently been accompanied by a significant reduction in access to specialists for classroom teachers. But a focus on the role of in-depth specialist expertise in professional learning has the potential to establish a virtuous cycle of learning, in which teachers welcome and acknowledge the many forms of specialist expertise needed to prepare themselves and the young people they serve, thereby creating a buffer zone against the more tyrannical models of “professional common sense”. In short, enabling the profession to recognise more explicitly and to welcome the role of specialist expertise has the potential to raise expectations and deepen learning Cordingley (2012). Since the evidence also suggests the

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value of coupling the use of specialist expertise with sustained collaboration between peers who share the vulnerabilities that come with experimenting with new approaches, it seems likely that effective CPD has the capacity to increase ownership of and a desire for such expertise. So this chapter argues that a successful future for teachers individually and collectively depends on focusing anew on a combination of professional learning, specialist expertise and collaboration.

To this end the rest of this chapter sets out the evidence about content, process and effectiveness of professional learning as a springboard for exploring the ways in which moving professional learning centre stage would increase professional self efficacy whilst equipping the profession to rise to the challenges being posed.

The evidence base

The dramatic increase in access to an online, international, knowledge base has enabled many breakthroughs; one such beneficiary is the identification of a mature evidence base and emerging theory for teacher continuing professional development and, more recently, teacher learning. In the early 21st Century a series of systematic and technical reviews of the evidence about CPD that made a difference to both pupil and teacher learning revealed a surprisingly coherent and challenging picture of what is involved in effective professional development (EPPI 1-4). At the outset the members of the Academic community sitting on our advisory committee and anonymous peer reviewers of our proposed protocol were doubtful about the possibility of connecting teacher and pupil learning and indeed research studies of CPD by and large failed to make this connection. But the power of internet searching made it possible to review not only studies of CPD, but also studies of a wide range of interventions that included CPD and evaluated its contributions to a wide range of educational goals. This cumulative series of reviews

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first identified key characteristics linked to benefits for pupils, then examined features such as the nature of specialist and peer contributions in more depth, and tested the evidence for technical issues such as the effects of researcher involvement in CPD. Meanwhile, Best Evidence Syntheses from New Zealand (Timperley, 2007) used a different methodology to reach very similar conclusions. In unpacking what emerged as one strong and pervasive success factor, the contribution of peer support to professional development, the reviews also began to map, not simply what was being offered to teachers, but also their learning processes and dispositions.

Gradually, partly perhaps in response to systematic reviews, primary studies of interventions and CPD accumulated, creating an increasingly fine-grained picture of the connections between teacher and pupil learning. So that a 2010 review by Bell et al (PURR) of teacher engagement with the research of others and in their own research, which compared the evidence about teachers with evidence about the experiences of health and social care workers, was able to identify not only factors that inhibit teachers from engaging in and with research, but also approaches that help accelerate such learning; it began to explore the ways in which schools and school districts can increase and sustain such engagement.

Key characteristics of effective professional learning

At this point, it seems appropriate to clarify what effective professional learning looks like. Key components of professional learning that is linked with significant benefits to staff and pupils, evidenced in the various reviews listed above, range through:

drawing down targeted, usually external, specialist expertise giving and receiving structured peer support

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professional dialogue rooted directly in evidence from trying out new things,

focusing on why things do and don’t work as well as how they work i.e. defining professional reflection as building theory and practice together

sustained enquiry-oriented learning over (usually) two terms or more;

learning to learn from observing the practice of others ambitious goals set in the context of aspirations for pupils the use of tools and protocols to help create coherence, sustain

learning, ensure depth and make evidence collection and analysis manageable and useful

Specialist expertise is ever present and serves a range of functions. Teachers who are effective professional learners use specialist sources of advice or information to identify high leverage strategies that address their concerns and aspirations for pupils. They look to specialists for help when they don’t know what they don’t know, for illustration of new approaches and phenomena in action and for help in unpacking what did and didn’t work well in their early experiments. They also use specialists to provide the kind of scaffolding that helps them take increasing control over their own learning about new approaches. Such specialist support is usually drawn from colleagues who sit outside day to day routines, the immediate school environment and accountability systems and are thus well placed to provide objective information, challenge orthodoxies and create a sense of planned purpose for experimentation and risk taking.

Peer support is also omnipresent. It is linked with embedding new practices introduced by others, in day to day contexts and providing emotional support through reciprocal vulnerability. The studies are replete with accounts of teachers tackling major challenges and persisting through difficulties ‘because they don’t want to let each other down’. Teachers who share the risk of looking silly as they abandon familiar

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routines to try something new find they trust each other more quickly and deeply than specialists, however skilful they may be. Interestingly such CPD works as well for conscripts as for natural enthusiasts. (Timperley, 2007; Cordingley et al, 2007 and Bell et al, 2010) The process of working out with a partner how to tackle new approaches on the ground and coming together regularly to offer each other a listening ear and moral support, is an effective catalyst for ownership of professional learning, however it is initiated. There are one or two studies of CPD with benefits for pupils and staff without extensive use of peer support. But here the specialist contributors are in fact so embedded in school life (for example, working in school for a full day every week for two years) and working in such close partnership with teachers as co-enquirers, that they have become, in effect, rather costly peer supporters.

Such professional learning and support for it is variously labelled, but at its best it tends to be configured as a combination of specialist and collaborative or peer coaching, collaborative enquiry and, more recently (Hargreaves, 2010), joint practice development. The English National Framework for Effective Mentoring and Coaching developed for the English national government in 2005 operationalises this evidence in a set of principles, skills and core concepts underpinning effectiveness. Importantly and unusually, this framework identifies the skills of the teachers being coached and mentored, as well as those of the people who support them. This emphasis on the skills of learners is rare. For example, although different national agencies started to use the framework to provide evidence informed CPD through, for example, the National College Guidance on leadership and coaching and on the work of the National Strategies, it was the skills of the coaches rather than the skills of those benefitting from coaching that took centre stage.

The development of this early example of an emphasis by government on the skills and processes of professional learning illustrates the need for such symbolic reinforcement from a teacher perspective too. In research

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interviews conducted as part of the development of the Framework and the later development of tools to support its use, teachers were asked about their contributions to coaching and mentoring based development as professional learners. Most were more conscious of their coach’s and mentor’s contributions than their own. Some did cite their own planning or the stresses involved in reviewing videos of their practice. Not one identified questions they had asked of their coaches or mentors as a professional learning strategy or activity. When the absence of teacher questioning as a learning strategy was probed, teachers tended to reply in a very similar vein. Asking questions of a coach or mentor would either make it “difficult to get a word in edgeways” or result in a focus on the coach’s or mentor’s agenda rather than on the teachers’ own aspirations or concerns. This finding illustrates clearly the extent to which teachers in the middle of the first decade if the 21st century in England were experiencing even the most effective forms of CPD as something done to them, rather than as a learning journey in which they had a proactive professional role and responsibility.

Focussing on building teachers’ skills in making good use of mentoring, coaching and enquiry opportunities is an important step in shifting the balance of attention away from what CPD providers do to and for teachers to the professional learning contributions of the teachers themselves and the way they draw down support in the process. In the right context this is an empowering focus. But it represents a considerable move away from traditional approaches to CPD. In-school approaches tend to focus on revealing deficits or on school priorities rather than on personal professional agendas. Beyond-school interventions from universities, consultants or Local Authorities/school districts tend to start from either a focus on a particular issue, or on an external body of knowledge. In both cases it is easy for the needs and agency of individuals to be overlooked. In this context, tools, protocols and resources can be particularly effective ways of helping teachers resist the pull of the status quo and a sense of “being done to”. Tools such as learning agreements or questioning

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frameworks can help teachers to structure their own learning; they also help differentiate sustained and significant professional learning from the unreflective exchange of practical tips and solutions that characterises too much CPD, whether facilitated by external providers or by schools. For example, formal learning agreements that set out aspirational goals and the respective learning contributions of both a specialist coach and teacher can even up the power disequilibrium that results from specialists having greater knowledge and expertise in new practices. Properly structured learning agreements also make clear the contribution that the teacher’s knowledge of the specific needs of their pupils makes to rendering external, specialist contributions meaningful and useful. Similarly, questioning frameworks that teachers can use to focus the attention of coaches and signal their readiness to take charge of their own learning help coaches recognise teachers’ increasing control over their learning and step back from a desire to intervene. They also prompt teachers to consider when they don’t know what they don’t know, and to ask both closed questions (to focus attention, for example on particular pupils) and open questions (to explore new possibilities and challenge orthodoxies) of specialists. Used in combination each of these tools can help teachers take charge of the process of inviting skilled others into their learning journey.

The role of effective professional learning at system level

What might the system look like if taking control of professional learning in the service of pupil learning were seen as the central priority for teachers and those who support and lead them?

At the level of the school, leaders would be acting in accordance with the findings of Vivianne Robinson’s best evidence synthesis (Robinson et al, 2009) about leadership contributions to pupil effectiveness. She identified

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five key leadership activities that correlate with effective outcomes for pupils and school leaders’. Promoting and participating in professional learning had the biggest effect of all, with a large effect size of .84, which is twice the effect of the next most effective contribution, planning, coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum (0.42). This is challenging evidence and not widely expected or understood in the English context. In the three years since the research was published I have explored this evidence with more than 2000 school leaders, only a handful of whom were able to identify which one of the factors that correlate with benefits for pupils has the greatest effect. What this evidence suggests to me is that the school determines the learning environment for staff as well as pupils, and needs to apply many of the same principles and expertise in creating a learning environment for teachers. Where this is not the case, both staff and pupils may sense the inconsistencies and question the validity of the approach used with and for them, or at least the depth of commitment to it. Where the two align they will establish a virtuous circle of development, reinforcing the status of planned, purposeful and effortful learning in depth. Extrapolating from the above reviews and a study of effective school based learning carried out in preparation for the creation of a new National Masters programme in teaching and learning initiated by the Labour government in England in 2009 (CUREE, 2009), CUREE has identified five key dimensions of effective staff learning environments, set out briefly at the start of this chapter:

attending to the use of collaboration as a sustained learning strategy at every level

enabling the collection and use of evidence about processes as well as outcomes to link staff and pupil learning

identifying learning starting points and needs formatively as well as summatively,

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identifying, respecting, evaluating and making accessible specialist expertise from within and beyond the school in a range of forms, to all colleagues

investing in professional learning financially, through modelling it, through the use of tools and by exploring how it connects with and impacts on pupil learning.

So there is a lot that school leaders can and should be doing to promote professional learning, both as a motor for improvement and for securing the future for the profession.

Beyond individual schools, there is less evidence to hand about what makes a difference to young people. So exploration of what school districts, national agencies, higher education institutions and professional associations might contribute is necessarily more speculative. Here are some reflections on the extension of the logical argument:

For school districts or authorities, making professional learning a key priority and a central plank of professional identity, requires agencies to analyse their contribution and to identify the ways in which they both enable and inhibit professional learning. What might be the effect, for example, of considering the extent to which CPD is organised as something done to teachers to remedy deficits or co-constructed with them as a demanding and ongoing aspect of professional formation? What might be the effect of selecting school leaders for their skills in recognising, participating in and enabling professional learning and their track record in making skilled use of specialist expertise, tools and resources, to secure depth in the process? Whilst, no doubt many interview panels touch on this, making it a key priority would mean developing reliable assessment measures.

For Professional Associations, making professional learning a key priority might prompt the commissioning and promotion of research

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into its effectiveness, the modelling of state of the art approaches or the use of their formidable press skills to celebrate successes. For example, Professional Associations could take part in encouraging and supporting peer review of teacher research and synthesising the outcomes. Perhaps it might lead to their defending opportunities for professional learning, including, for example, peer observation, as fiercely as they defend pension rights. Or it might generate informed and constructive challenges to school leaders and school districts about the nature and quality of the school as a learning environment for staff and pupils.

For higher education institutions (HEIs) making professional learning a key priority, instead of CPD, might involve attending to the processes and outcomes of professional learning as much as to the relatively narrow range of written outputs on which accreditation at masters and PhD level currently depends. . Perhaps a focus on professional learning as a central plank of professional identity and on professional learning environments as a key condition for success might also help HEIs to connect up their own programmes more effectively with ongoing, day to day development work in schools. Such a focus might help to configure initial teacher education, continuing professional learning and education research as a dynamic continuum brought together under the umbrella of long term partnerships with schools, rather than the business of separate departments. .

For some National Governments, making professional learning a key priority might involve some significant shifts in the focus of accountability measures. It might involve, for example, moving accountability on from a focus on the surface features of performance in 20 minutes episodes within observed lessons, embedded within and growing out from the Inspection regime current at the time of writing in England, towards evaluating

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schools’ ability to identify and evaluate high leverage strategies, make informed adaptations to them and demonstrate an underpinning rationale or practical theory. Progress against professional standards might be evaluated against evidence about developing abilities to take charge of one’s own learning and support that of others, as well as - or even instead of - evidence from snapshots of performance. There might also be strategic investment in an infrastructure of providing effective access to research, frameworks for identifying specialist knowledge and ways of involving serving professionals in the development of all national policies.

What this chapter argues, in effect, is that making professional learning a key priority for the future of the profession has the capacity both to respond to the challenges posed and to model the approaches to learning that we also seek for young people. It requires a significant shift in focus but one that is well within the system’s zone of proximal development – because it simply requires us to match deeds and words at different levels. There is a well known saying in English that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Hattie demonstrates convincingly that we should make pupil learning visible1. By making teacher professional learning equally visible at structural, operational and practical levels, how much more easily might the profession rise to the challenges it faces?

References

Bell, M., Cordingley, P., Isham., C. & Davis., R. (2010) Report of Professional Practitioner Use of Research Review: Practitioner engagement in and/or with research. Coventry: CUREE, GTCE, LSIS & NTRP. Available at: http://www.curee-paccts.com/node/2303.

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Cordingley, P., Bell, M., Rundell, B., Evans, D. (2003) The impact of collaborative CPD on classroom teaching and learning. In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. Available at: http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=395&language=en-US

Cordingley, P., Bell, M., Evans, D., Firth, A. (2005a) The impact of collaborative CPD on classroom teaching and learning. Review: What do teacher impact data tell us about collaborative CPD? In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London

Cordingley, P., Bell, M., Thomason, S., Firth, A. (2005b) The impact of collaborative continuing professional development (CPD) on classroom teaching and learning. Review: How do collaborative and sustained CPD and sustained but not collaborative CPD affect teaching and learning? In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. Available at: http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=392&language=en-US

Cordingley, P., Bell, M., Isham, C., Evans, D., and Firth, A. (2007) What do specialists do in CPD programmes for which there is evidence of positive outcomes for pupils and teachers? Report. In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=2275

Cordingley, P. (2012) The Role of the Professional Learner in sustainable school-based CPD. In CPD Update, February, 2012. Available at http://www.teachingexpertise.com/topic/cpd-provision

CUREE (2009) Professional Learning and the Role of the Coach in the new Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). Coventry: CUREE. Available

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at: http://www.curee-paccts.com/resources/publications/curee-mtl-summaries

CUREE (2011) TDA evaluation of CPD providers in England 2010-2011. Coventry: CUREE

Hattie, J. (2008) Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Abingdon: Routledge.

Hargreaves, D. H. (2010) Creating a self-improving school system Nottingham: National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services

Leney, T. Niemi, H. & Rickinson, M. (2007) The Relationship between Research, Policy and Practice in Education and Training: A Working Paper for the European Commission 4 May 2007. London: European Commission.

Ofsted (2010) Good professional development in schools. Ofsted research report No. 080254. Manchester: Ofsted

Robinson, V. Hohepa, M & Lloyd, C. (2009) School leadership and student outcomes: identifying what works and why. Wellington: University of Auckland, New Zealand

Schuller, T. (2005) Constructing International Policy Research: the role of CERI/OECD European Educational Research Journal 4 (3)

Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Wallace, M. and Thomas, S. (2006) Professional learning communities: a review of the literature, Journal of Educational Change, 7 (4): 221-258.

Timperley, H., Fung, L., Wilson, A. & Barrar, H. (2006) Professional learning and development: A Best Evidence Synthesis of impact on students’ outcomes. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, April 7-11

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Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H. & Fung, I. (2007) Teacher professional learning and development: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.

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