I am delighted to invite interest from teachers across WDC in undertaking some postgraduate learning opportunities. As a result of our successful bid to the Scottish Government for money to encourage new masters level learning activity, we have formed a partnership with the University of the West of Scotland to deliver an innovative approach to growing and harnessing new learning. UWS have a flexible distance learning model that will really appeal to teachers who want to get themselves onto the postgraduate learning ladder while teaching.

We have grouped our work in the education service into the four areas of Educational Development, Improvement and Performance, Professional Learning and Workforce Development and Childrens’ Services. We plan to allocate three teacher researchers to each of these areas resulting in a community of 12 teacher researchers. In each area, one person will be funded to full Masters level, while two will be funded to complete a Postgraduate Certificate. All researchers will be backed by a pool of cover days to allow the conducting of research activities as well as the attendance of meetings with the teams based in the Education Offices. Our intention is that our community of teacher researchers will directly help influence and advise policy development across the service through undertaking relevant learning on the behalf of the service.

The criteria for elligibility are simply that you are a permanent teacher employee of the council, and that you are not already in a programme of postgraduate study.

What follows is a list of suggested  project areas supplied by the Service Managers to give some idea of the kinds of activities that we would find useful in taking the service forward. Please be clear that these are suggestions and any applicant who wants to explore a different research area is welcome to discuss this with us.

If you are interested, please email fiona.archer@west-dunbarton.gov.uk by Friday the 13th June. We intend to make our selection of teacher researchers in partnership with UWS on the 23d and 24th June. I believe this is a golden opportunity for any teachers who want to develop some deeper learning and work with colleagues at the centre.

Matthew Boyle

Project suggestions follow:

Educational Development

1.       ‘Promoting the ‘B’ team’ – Employability is a key aspect of the Senior Phase. Research in this area could examine the progression routes for various modes of study, completion rates of courses and eventual career destinations of our young people. How closely linked are career destinations with subjects offered in the Senior Phase? How reflective of the modern world of employment are our progression routes? How do we break the notion of an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ team in terms of Senior Phase choices?

2.       ‘School knows best’– ask parents to help out with fundraising, or social events and you are inundated. Ask them to get involved in curriculum and you’re met with silence. What strategies have been successful around the world in breaking the parental involvement logjam?

3.       ‘Brand of me’ – pupils in WDC will shortly start to develop their own electronic ‘learner journal’ – effectively building up an online profile of their latest and best to support the development of their skills. How well does this project overtake the seemingly conflicting priorities of e-portfolio, profiles and parental reporting? What are the barriers to adoption? What does success look like?

Professional Learning and Workforce Development

1.   ‘Critical mass’ – We have spent time and resources on developing skills like interpersonal coaching and cooperative learning in large groups of our staff. Most people agree that these are worthwhile skills and yet sustaining activity in these areas is challenging. What are the ingredients that are most likely to lead to the right choices of initiatives in the first place? How do we most effectively move these initiatives to become self sustaining, or at least to have them owned more by the teaching community and practised more routinely?

2.  ‘The critical phase’ – WDC has a well organised and very thorough induction programme for new teachers. In common with other education authorities we are concerned that the ‘critical phase’ of teacher development from years 2 to 5 is not centrally supported. Do we devote too much resource in the induction year, leaving too little for support programmes for the next years of teacher development? What support do early-phase teachers need? What does the research tell us about the influences on early teacher development? Could we implement a better early phase programme based on an analysis of the literature combined with some local research?

3.  ‘Local learning leadership’ – As central support teams have shrunk, the old model of central training courses has rightly progressed to a more school led leadership model. Do schools operate learning plans best on their own, or in partnership with their partner schools in area clusters? If clusters of schools are the best model for targeted learning and the economies of scale that can be gained, how is that learning best led? There has been a large body of learning developed on this by the Networked Learning Communities initiative in England among other sources; could we learn more about what is an effective devolved learning leadership? Could we develop our own model of learning leadership owned and run by local school communities?

Improvement and Performance

1.  ‘Every day and in every way’ – School development and improvement is clearly important to all of us, however, certainty about the best models for improving schools has proved elusive. We know that a balance of support and challenge is necessary for the best school growth, but in what proportions? How much can schools improve their own practice without regular staff interaction with other effective schools? How do we ensure that we have learned from the School Effectiveness and School Improvement research of the last three decades? Could there be better models to maximise school staff leadership of their own improvement? This is a complex area and we may be able to develop our models through a combination of literature review and local research?

2.  ‘Transparency rules’ –  In Ontario’s successful improvement programme in Canada, Michael Fullan has identified data sharing as one of the key drivers of improvement. Teachers need data to create feedback loops for improvement. The challenge is that data is difficult to present in useful in accessible ways. Data can also become associated with status in the organisation and therefore can become punitive rather than a shared resource for discussion about progress. Could we develop formats of data sharing that would be friendly, honest about progress and universally shared with all staff? Do all teachers in WDC know our key targets? Do they know our current trends? Do primary colleagues take an interest in secondary attainment trends, do secondary colleagues know our key primary attainment trends. Is wider achievement reported and shared in any meaningful ways. Could we develop a data sharing model based on local research about what teachers would find most useful? This is not about collecting new data, but about getting what we have into teachers’ hands in forms they can use.

3.  ‘learner voice’ – We have all come a long way from the days when learner voice was about the school toilets or the siting of playground bins. We are also a long way from having young people extensively and helpfully involved in co-running the learning and teaching in schools. Successful initiatives like the London Challenge were built around learner leadership; what are we learning about young peoples’ involvement in school planning and how are we using our learners to co-lead our school development?

Childrens’ Services

1.   ‘Don’t hold me back’ – We know that our able learners need to be stretched and developed to help them excel in their future lives. We are interested in how teachers ‘view’ high ability and how this impacts on outcomes. It would be interesting to use GL test results for example to see if teacher expectations matched results. What other approaches are proving effective locally or in the literature around high ability?

2.  ‘Getting rights right’ – How do we know what is making a difference in the ‘rights based learning’ movement that is becoming embedded in so many WDC schools? An exploration of the deeper purpose of this learning leading to a sharper focus on its effect on learners would be beneficial.

3.  ‘Exclusive!’ – Could we analyse the patterns of exclusions across WDC and the reasons for them? Is there consistency across schools in terms of length of exclusion/reasons for exclusion etc? What is achieved by them in general and are there improvements that we can make to our systems for longer term outcomes?