Culture and Collaboration: researching and developing

professional practice

23 May 2014

Welcome and IntroductionLSRN event planning group

Yvonne HillierAndrew Morris

Anne Thompson

The event is hosted by Pearson and supported by the Education & Training Foundation. Organisation was by NIACE in liaison with Pearson.

Research and enquiry and the Professional Standards for Further Education Teachers and Trainers in England

Patricia Odell, Interim Advisor for the Review, Education and Training Foundation

Note: the pertinent standards are set out on the back of the programme

Launch of the 2014 Professional Standards for teachers and trainers

in England

1. Review of the 2007 standards was a key aim of the Foundation

2. Over 1000 sector professionals have been involved in the consultation

3. Result is a set of standards wholly owned by the sector

Introducing the 2014 Professional Standards

What is the sector saying about the 2014 Standards?

“These Standards give the sector and the practitioners who work in it a voice. They clarify the standards that we strive to achieve for our learners every day and provide guidance where we feel we can improve.

I feel very proud to work in a sector where the standards of professionalism are so high.”

Curriculum and Quality Manager, Adult and Community Learning Organisation and member of the Review of Professional Standards Practitioner Group

Available documents on the Foundation website

• Professional Standards• Guidance• PowerPoint presentation and animation

http://www.et-foundation.co.uk/supporting/programmes/professional-standards

Next steps

• Case studies illustrating how the standards are being embedded in a range of contexts

• Updated Guidance• Published Spring 2015

Reflecting, evaluating, creating, innovating, collaborating Maintain and update knowledge of educational research to develop evidence based practice How do we foster the culture of making and using educational research?

How can we best develop evidence based practice?

How can we work together to achieve these particular professional standards?

Stakeholder perspectives

Culture and Collaboration: researching and developing professional practice

Maggie Gregson, Professor of Vocational Education, University of Sunderland

Norman Crowther, National Official Post 16 Education, ATL

Culture and Collaboration Researching and Developing

Professional Practice Friday 23rdMay 2014

Professor Maggie GregsonUniversity of Sunderland Centre for Excellence in Teacher

Training (SUNCETT)

Becoming a Good Teacher and a Good Researcher

• Becoming a good teacher and a good educational researcher involves us in engaging in a particular way of life and a set of educational practices - particular ways of working, thinking and going about what we do.

• The work we do as teachers and educational researchers in a wide variety of vocational contexts plays an important part in carrying forward the ideas and crafts of those who have gone before us.

• It also critically examines old ways of thinking and working to create new thinking and new practices.

• In this way our work both sustains and transforms communities, societies and the regional and national economies in which we live.

Internal Goods of Vocational Educational Research and Practice and Desired Outcomes

• No matter what they teach, good teachers and good educational researchers come to care about the practice of education.

• When we ignite the first spark of interest in our students, when we fire their imagination, when we watch them develop a sense of belonging, when we see them realise the possibilities offered by the subject or craft they have chosen to pursue, when we observe how they have developed a passion for and pride in their work, when we watch them grow in confidence, when we see them recognise the virtue of doing something well for its own sake, when we know how we have contributed to all of this …we begin to become good teachers and good educational researchers .

Internal Goods of Educational Research and Practice and Desired

Outcomes • As teachers and researchers we participate in vocational educational

practices together with our students by engaging in partnerships based upon co-operation and in traditions and vocational practices which not only transcend us as individuals but are also deeply alive in the present, stretch back to the past and, through our combined efforts can be extended into the future (Dunne 2005).

• In doing so we discover the rewards that come from mutual engagement and the embodiment of the practices that each of us come to pursue, including the practice of leading a fulfilled life,

“…In looking at education into a practice…, I would of course want to see it as being in itself in a very strong sense a

moral education in so far as properly conducted it involves …the learning not only of skills but of virtues”

(Dunne , 2005, p.155)

Good Educational Practice and Good Educational Research

• In pursuing the ‘goods’ of educational practice, including those outlined above, we need to develop virtues and qualities to guide the sometimes difficult and often wonderful decisions we need to make in our practice as education leaders, teachers and researchers.

• We find ourselves faced with many complex dilemmas and issues in the course of our careers as teachers, education leaders and researchers (including the notion that education can and should be a commercial practice rather than a moral one).

Developing Good Judgment and Good Practice Together

• The quality of the judgments we make in these situations plays a significant part in our professional lives and in the lives of our students.

• We need to keep up to date with research and developments in the vocational or academic practices that we teach.

• Equally and arguably even more importantly we will need to ensure that we also keep up to date with research and developments in the discipline and practice of education.

• One without the other is simply not enough !• To do this we need to keep the internal goods of vocational education

and research at the forefront of our thinking and our practice. In the face of the many commercial imperatives we have to confront - that requires considerable courage and a strong commitment to educational values.

Case Study: The Education and Training Foundation’s Research Development

Fellowship (RDF)

• Routine practice for leaders of education to use CPD budgets to update the subject and pedagogical knowledge of staff.

• Often this involves FE staff attending events where someone who is considered (or considers themselves to be) an ‘expert’ tells everyone else in attendance what to do.

Eraut (2004) Metaphor of the Iceberg

The Education and Training Foundation’s Research Development Fellowship (RDF)

• ETF Research Development Fellowships – based on principles and values of Joint Practice Development (JPD) (Fielding et. al 2005).

• Changing and improving practice together involves more than the simple transfer of information.

• Change and improvement takes time. • JPD takes the realities of the process of putting ideas from

research into practice seriously. • JPD places important demands upon relationships of those

involved in the processes of research and those responsible for the practices of improvement.

What is Joint Practice Development? (JPD)

• Teacher-led approach to improving teaching, learning through research which,

‘takes account of the existing practice of teachers who are trying to learn new ways of working and acknowledges the effort of those who are trying to support them. It also underscores the necessity of mutual engagement, which lies at the heart of the complex task of opening up and sharing practices with others’.

Fielding et al (2005:72)

Guiding Principles of JPD• Not a ‘toolkit’ or a ‘recipe for success’. • Set of principles which can be used to guide good

educational research and practice. • Accepts the power of knowledge gained from educational

research to improve educational practice.• Seeks to balance that knowledge with local knowledge and

insight.• When students, teachers, educational leaders and

researchers learn form one another as they experiment with putting research findings into practice - real and sustainable educational change can happen.

Developing Professionalism

From Heroes and Heroines to Communities of Practice

Norman CrowtherATL National Official for Post 16 Education

Heroes and Heroines?

• ‘We have not been interested in a heroic teacher here or there, or a great school or district, hit or miss. What’s worth fighting for in teaching is to change every classroom...’ Fullan and Hargreaves 21 (2012)

Community of Practice?

An Established Community of Practice

Identity

Shared vocabulary and ConcernsResources

9

Elements for an analytic framework for CoP?

• Goals and relationships for learning • Mode and quality of knowledge transfer

• Degree of formalization– Informal – formal relationships (tacit/explicit)

• Strength of coupling– Cohesiveness/Nodes/Fragmentation

(Koliba and Gaida (2009))

IfL: Dual Professionalism

Model of Teacher Standards

Descriptor Assumes Condition of Success

Skills ICVET Professional progression

Knowledge and UnderstandingWorkplace Ethos

Values and Attributes

Proto-Community COP

Levels of Agency: Conditions of Success

Individual ‘Can do’

COP ‘Can sustain’

Workforce ‘Can enable’

Leader ‘Can shape’

Ti

me

Thank you for listening.

Discussion group one: 11.45 – 12.45

Group Ared dot, conference room

Group B blue dot, conference room

Group Cgreen dot, glass room

12.45 Lunch in the foyerReconvene 13.30

A Principal’s perspective

Sally DickettsPrincipal and Chief Executive, Activate Learning

Discussion group two: 13.45 – 14.45

Group Ared dot, conference room

Group B blue dot, conference room

Group Cgreen dot, glass room

14.45 Refreshments in foyer15.00 Plenary in conference room

LSRN purpose is – “to help people engage with research and

development”

Workshops aim to influence practice by– debating the evidence– developing messages– actively communicating them

http://lsrn.wordpress.com/