Author Archives: Learning is the Work

Matthew’s Blog⤴

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MatthewIt has been a little while since I updated you on where we are with the work of the Professional Learning/Workforce development team. I thought a brief summary of what has been happening recently and a little more on our intended direction would be helpful.

Starting with our development rooms at ERS (Education Resource Centre) in Faifley, we have finished most of the “snagging” repairs and both rooms are looking good. Most people who have attended have made positive comments about the more spacious, bright and flexible environment. Both rooms now have a mixture of conference/training seating as well as some softer semi-formal seating for more relaxed meetings or breakout. The Clyde room has retained its large Promethean board for training in its use as well as the new corner LCD screens. We are shortly installing a new Smart “Light Raise” whiteboard in the Leven room to ensure we have flexibility with all the major presentation systems.  The other thing that will strike anyone who hasn’t attended ERS for a while is the space around the edges of the rooms. The perimeter desks and their aging desktop PC’s are gone. Replacing these, are a set of 20 Lenovo 15 inch laptops which are in secure charging cabinets. These can be used for training events when required without committing so much space to them when not in use. We are working on a wireless access point for these to increase their flexibility.

In terms of leadership development, we have held day 1 of our leadership core skills course for two cohorts of around 34 people. They covered such leadership basics as:

  • What do leaders actually do?
  • What can leaders change and what can they not?
  • Knowing yourself as a leader including personality assessments.
  • How successful teams are built through talent management.
  • Leadership styles.
  • Values and integrity in leadership

The days were very much enhanced by a personal exploration of the principles of leadership from Head Teacher Julie McGrogan. This was well received and put across with honesty and stacks of practical advice. Thanks very much to Julie for this. Cohort 2 participants benefited from an excellent session on their personality differences in action as measured by the Myers-Briggs system. This session was delivered very engagingly by Shona Crawford, our Principal Psychologist. Feedback on this was excellent and participants would have gained a little more insight into the challenge of leading others when their own personalities will make them see the world in very particular ways.

Our primary school Depute Heads have been regularly meeting through our Primary Deputes’ network. They have been exploring a mixture of leadership techniques and theory as well as doing a lot of networking to share practice, remits and challenges. This network has been meeting monthly and has a really steady attendance. I have certainly been enjoying the chance to get to know the Deputes a little better; there is no doubt that Head Teachers find it easier to get out and about the council and their networking opportunities are consequently a little bit richer. This is why networks like this are so important.

Professional Update continues to occupy us of course. The participants in the pilot phase of this have almost all completed their online recording of the PRD meeting and the planning that arises from this. This will roll out for everyone next school year across the country, and we are sure that our experience as a phase-two pilot Authority will ensure that someone in every school will be able to support others in recording their professional learning online. The main challenge for us all in making this effective and worthwhile is not in ensuring that we get the recording right, but in getting the experience right for people. Professional Update is simply and essentially about learning as a teacher. Our learning is what drives change and development in classrooms. The PRD meeting is a great opportunity to talk about what you are learning and how it is helping with your approach in classrooms. That is why we are continuing to sample participants from the pilot phase of Professional Update, and asking them to report on the quality of the experience that they have had. At the end of the year, we will collate this into an anonymous summary of what is going well and what still needs work in PRD interviews. This will be discussed with HT’s and Professional Learning co-ordinators to improve next year’s experiences. We know that perfect PRD for all is a distant goal, but we want to make it as good is it can be.

In terms of the Donaldson Agenda, we have been working on the challenge set by the report to develop more Masters level learning in the profession. Following our successful bids for funding for two partnerships, one with the Open University and the other with the University of the West of Scotland, we are actively looking for teachers who would like to be funded to undertake some further learning. We have already advertised for 2 teacher-researchers as part of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) related bid for Open University Masters work. These teacher-researchers will work on the use of online learning approaches to enrich our STEM provision for interested young people. These teacher researchers will be appointed on the 10th of June after an interview process. Later this week we will advertise for 12 teacher researchers to be part of our much larger partnership with UWS. These researchers will cover a wider sample of our work from generating better communities of practice to improving Nurture provision. Overall we are really excited about generating so much learning that will directly influence our curriculum and organisation.

We are shortly going to appoint a PT to work for a year on secondment to our team to support probationers and supply teachers.  This role will extend the work which has been ably undertaken this year by Karen Scott with our probationers, as well as developing a better support network for our supply staff. This PT will be able to design some training and networking events for supply staff to ensure that they get better information flow, support in understanding new initiatives and PRD support as part of our new arrangements for Professional Update.

That’s enough of an update from me for now I think, but watch this space for the Masters Level Learning information later this week.

 

Matthew

Secondment Opportunity – Recharge?⤴

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LindaHaving recently moved from a lengthy career in Human Resources with the Council, to Education I can confirm that the old saying “a change is as good as a rest” is true.  Believe me, there is nothing more effective if you want to recharge your batteries than taking on a new challenge which gives you an opportunity to work in a new area and enhance your skills and experience.

So, if you are a primary teacher, and interested in using your classroom experience to underpin our strong commitment to developing and supporting probationers and supply teachers, our latest secondment opportunity might be the battery charge you are looking for!!

This is an exciting opportunity to undertake the Principal Teacher – Probation and Supply Support role for a year on a secondment basis.  As part of the Workforce Development and CPD and Team you will have an opportunity to shape future teaching staff, support them through new challenges such a professional update. Enhance your own experience and your CV!

 Further information on the post can be accessed here.

Linda McAlister

ESO Staffing

Learning Schools are still our main aim⤴

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Matthew

Which document does the following statement come from?

How well aligned are priorities for career-long professional learning to priorities in the school improvement plan and do they lead to positive impact on outcomes for learners?

I’ll bet that those of you who aren’t professional documentation “anoraks” might suspect this to be about Professional Update or good Professional Review processes in school. The actual source is the Self Evaluation section of How Good is Our School. (Section 5.9 Anoraks!)

I draw it your attention simply because I believe that powerful Professional Learning is in fact the main route to meeting HMIE’s new raised expectations of Self Evaluation. That may seem an odd claim, but it is one endorsed by many Inspectors.

You see, schools have so many things to do and are so busy that there is a danger of important areas of development becoming systems. I have suggested in this blog that CPD had become a system and a set of requirements, Self-Evaluation can suffer the same problem; schools have become good at the processes of Self Evaluation:

  • Doing a “broad audit” to identify strengths and development needs
  • Using some “student voices” in school development
  • Talking to a wide range of stakeholdes
  • Development planning
  • etc.

These processes are done to some extent in all schools, however, HMI expect us to go deeper than this. An illustration of the kind of practices that would evidence a highly Self Evaluative school, shared by HMI in a training session which I attended, included “Action Research”. Think about this for a moment, you can run all the systems perfectly, but not be designated excellent in Self Evaluation! As ever in education, what makes excellence is cultural embedding of the principles and habits, not completion of the systems and routines alone. Action Research indicates that a school has identified challenges, and that they consider it appropriate to allocate staff time to do some deeper learning and research to improve practice. That same session saw the Inspector agree that a truly Self Evaluative school would be equally well described as a “Learning School”.

The point of Self Evaluation is to improve our schools. The point of staff learning is to improve our schools; these things are synonymous! Self Evaluation processes are essential to know yourself and to identify the areas which most need development and to identify underpinning reasons why. Learning is the process that leaves the school better able to apply new understanding and new thinking to complex challenges. School learning includes:

  • Learning what we do well and what we don’t
  • Learning what works elsewhere
  • Learning what research and theory can add to our understanding
  • Learning how to be a more flexible and exciting organisation

So a true learning organisation will have a lot of activity like:

  • Looking at learners’ needs
  • Looking at community needs and rethinking practice to address them
  • Sharing interesting practice internally
  • Looking at international practice and comparisons
  • Developing staff skills and theory
  • Running action research programmes

So in short, evaluating the gap between “what is” and “what could be”, driven by the learning and skills-development of a group of learning teachers, is exactly what a school that really understands Self Evaluation would do!

The world is increasingly complex, and having identified, for example, that you have an issue with the under-attainment of boys, you will realise that the causes of this are complex and often located in the culture of a local community as well as national trends. The danger for a school without a really strong learning disposition, is that they will look for standard good-practice from successful schools, but often find that it either doesn’t exist, or it doesn’t translate in practice to a different community. It is a real advantage to understand some theory, to have involved community stakeholders in conducting an analysis of the local challenge and to have encouraged a culture of managed experimentation. With these skills and foundations in place schools can construct their own solutions, reflect intelligently on how to respond when they need tweaking or changing, and understand better why an approach has worked.

So to embrace highly effective Self-Evaluation, embrace Professional Learning.