Shotgun Weddings, Arranged Marriages or Love Matches? Looking back and looking forward at partnerships for research and

professional learning

The scope of partnership for this talk Looking back- 1992 and all that Studying with Nellie Stories from school-based teacher

education Standards, Standards, Standards National Partnership Project Looking forward -2010 and all that

2005 paper on an NCSL funded project -An Investigation of Networked Learning Communities and Higher Education Partnerships in England

Partnership, as a requirement for funding, alienated some schools and networks, but prompted others into ‘shotgun marriages’, and the sometimes resultant ‘quickie divorce’. Others took longer ‘arranged marriages’ based on a considered review of benefits and others were lucky enough to strike up ‘love matches’.

Can you characterise any of your partnerships in these ways?

The ITE-CPD- Research continuum in England.

Partnership with schools is not ‘new’ it was an important recommendation of the 1944 McNair Report and a generation later was a central proposal in the 1982 White Paper which later led to the establishment of CATE (the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education). Under the second version of CATE (DES, 1989), all higher education institutions (HEIs) had to be overseen by a regional partnership committee, with an independent chair and a membership representing a wide range of local interests, including schools, Local Education Authorities (LEAs) and industry.

The ‘Brown Book’ (HMI Report on School-Based Initial Training 1992)

The government made it a requirement that the actual delivery of all initial teacher education had to be achieved through formal partnership arrangements between individual HEIs and individual schools. Since that time, ‘partnership’ has been one of the core principles of teacher education in England. Indeed, it could be argued that it is the concept and practice of partnership that is the distinguishing feature of initial teacher education in England today.

Does the funding make a difference to schools’ attitudes to involvement in teacher education? Primary/secondary differential.

Circulars 9/92 and 14/93 and then 10/97 which changed the rules again

Schools in the ‘lead’ Competencies and outcome criteria Mentoring and the role of teachers The formation of the TTA in 1994 Inspection by Ofsted rather than HMI An increase in research into teacher education and

partnership

‘Arguably one consequence of a national system is that initial teacher education has become intimately bound up with changing national politics and policy priorities. National policy reaches down into the finest detail of provision, including partnership.’(Furlong, McNamara, Campbell, Howson and Lewis (2009)

The Modes of Teacher Education (MOTE) project (Furlong et al, 2000) documented the development of partnership in teacher education throughout the 1990s. Although they recorded widespread variation in the practice of partnership, they suggested that it was possible to identify at least three ideal typical models of partnership utilised in practice.

1. Complementary partnerships- separate and complementary responsibilities

2. Collaborative partnerships- theoretical and indirect professional knowledge from universities and knowledge based on direct practical experience from schools

3. HEI-led partnerships- argued by Furlong et al as the most common model

Partnership not just organisational but had epistemological and pedagogical aspects.

There was a creative tension in these partnerships which encouraged reform in teacher education and schools

What model(s) do you operate now?

The student’s story- Mike

Mentors talking

Out of the mouths of babes- children’s views

From Campbell, A. and Kane, I. (1998) School-based Teacher Education: Telling Tales from a Fictional Primary School

Based on data collected for the Mentoring in Schools Project (1993-96) funded by Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust

( Manchester Met, Swansea, Oxford, Sussex, Keele and Leicester Universities)

Everywhere you look, standards are falling around us- comment on New Labour’s policies for education

New Managerialism- 3Rs are best achieved through goals, targets and education becoming a marketplace with accountability gone mad

ITEMS curriculum- national curriculum for teacher education

Hundreds of standards to meet to qualify to teach

Campbell, A. and Kane, I. (1999) Studying Next to Nellie: an exploration of training schools in Graham, J. (ed) (1999) Teacher Professionalism and the Challenge of Change, Stoke: Trentham Books

Concern that schools would ‘ go solo’ and ditch partnerships with HEIs

Some concerns re equality of experience- as in the Professional Development Schools in USA but a focus on professional learning and inquiry for all- students, teachers, tutors. The notion of the field-based tutor.

Suggested that training schools should logically develop from partnership schools to ensure quality

Differences in primary and secondary partnership models.

Have training schools been a success?

Our vision as a Training School is to offer a very inclusive plan of training to all our stakeholders, ITT, unqualified staff, NQTs, EPD and CPD, working in partnership with our university partners, our other local schools, our primary partners, the LEA. We try our best. My vision is we would be like a training hub for the north of (our county).

 What is to happen to training schools in the future?

In the past-Articled Teachers, Licensed Teachers and the Graduate Entry Schemes- some dodgy features?

Now we have Graduate Teacher Programme, School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) and Teach First- an improvement? Some 20% of new entrants come through these routes.

Would we want to see these routes expanded?

Aim Key stakeholders to work collaboratively to support the

development of effective high quality and robust partnerships for teacher training

Objectives Increase capacity Increase quality Increase quantity and quality of training available to

school based mentors

Research team Anne Campbell, Olwen McNamara, John Furlong, John Howson and Sarah Lewis

To evaluate:◦ success of the National Partnership Project; and ◦ illustrate and illuminate good practice in Initial Teacher

Training

Originally the NPP evaluation was to extend over a 2-year period.

Project and the evaluation were terminated one year early in March 2005 due to:◦ changes in the prevailing political climate, ◦ other reform agendas climbed higher in government

priorities, and◦ teacher recruitment crises of recent years were deemed to

be no longer acute.

Regional needs v. National solutions Cooperation v. Competition Complementary v. Collaborative

partnerships Ownership v. Accountability Innovation v. Sustainability

Nevertheless, there was plenty of evidence that, across the country, teachers individually and schools as a whole were embracing their role in teacher education in a much more robust way than in the past. The underlying model of partnership may not have changed fundamentally since 1992 but, as we saw, more and more teachers and schools are now taking their role seriously; and they are recognising the benefits for themselves individually, for their schools and for the profession as a whole from doing that.

Partnership should be about how to get thinking into the system. Where it is done badly in my experience, and that is where some GTP programmes failed, is that they did not do that thinking about what it means to learn to be a teacher…. Part of the problem – a severe problem - is that there are those of us who have spent many years thinking about the processes of learning to be a teacher whereas teachers may be extremely good at teaching but don’t know why; they have not done the meta-cognition to think about that and trainees need access to that meta-cognition.

All the really good things that I’ve done in partnership with the university, that have benefited our staff, the trainee teachers, the school, the universities, none of them have been through the NPP, all of them have been through personal relations and contacts that I’ve got anyway. Lots of the things that I’d really like to do, just don’t fit – they wouldn’t go through, they don’t fit the tick box – so I think if you let the universities and schools have a much freer hand, if you let us say what would be good for our region and let us write our own brief rather than make a ‘one size fits all’, then I think that you might get some really interesting stuff going on here.

  From Furlong et al (2006)

Despite their very different perspectives and institutional commitments, what these two teacher educators share is their opposition to the technical rationalist model of training currently being promoted by the Government.; their commitment to confronting the complexities of pupil learning and of professional education; their opposition to being reduced to ‘lead agents’. From our national evaluation, however, we conclude that there is a clear sense of them swimming against the tide.

 

Workplace learning- schools as sites for experimentation and peer coaching

Mentoring- the best professional learning? Hustler et al (2003) Teachers’ Perceptions of

CPD- one size does not fit all; planning and serendipity required; tailored, bespoke activities beneficial; need for balanced and flexible evaluation and accountability; promote lifelong learning; and finally the importance of collaboration – a balanced diet.

The role of higher education tutors- reconceptualise roles to span ITE-CPD and Research?

Some examples TTA funded Consortia for School-based research 1999-2002 Best Practice Research Scholarships 2000-04 SUPER- Cambridge 1998- Side by Side Learning- Leeds 2008-09 Teaching, Learning Research Programme 2000-08 Many research based Masters programmes In my inaugural lecture, Crossing Boundaries: building partnerships for research

and professional learning with schools at Leeds Met October 2007, I advocated  Peering into the future while looking over our shoulders to learn from

the past. Having a vision for the future that entails passion for inquiry, criticality

and challenge for improvement. Crossing Boundaries to enable boundless opportunities for research

partnerships between universities and schools.  

I would like to quote Debbie Meier (2002) on trust. She is an American ‘activist ‘, a friend and colleague whom I have visited in her ‘alternative’ state schools in New York and Boston and a veteran boundary crosser in school university partnerships. She is also a vocal opponent of ‘high stakes‘ testing in the USA.

  Her book ‘In Schools We Trust’ advocates the following in crossing boundaries:   Becoming critical colleagues Getting into each others’ spaces Weighing the evidence: what to make of it? Expecting messy differences of opinions Experiencing ‘The Pay Off’: the educative value of teachers struggling with

trusting each other   Meier (2002)   The key word is trust. These are key messages not just for schools but for tutors

in universities too.

What’s ‘out’ by the new coalition- GTCe; QCDA; Rose Review and new primary curriculum

‘Under review’- EYPS: BSF; teacher education to be reformed to become more based in schools; concerns about teacher quality- ‘recycling’ poor teachers

What’s ‘in’- Teach First and Teach Now; more academies, more teacher ‘freedoms’ and less bureaucracy; more opportunities for teachers to undertake Masters and doctoral work. I hope, in my more cynical moments, that these will not include a ring binder of how to do action research or be clones of the troubled MTL.

Teacher education will become more technicist if more based in schools. The theory practice interface (praxis) is a crucial element in developing thinking teachers

Diversity can sometimes increase inequalities in schools and routes into teaching

Inquiry- based professional learning is a powerful tool but requires rigour, criticality, collaboration and external support

John Elliott (1999) warns that new teachers often experience ‘ a rapid socialisation into an obsolete culture’ when they start teaching- sitting by Nellie again?

The HE –NLC links and partnerships were ‘mandated’ as part of the criteria for funding NLCs ( similar to partnership in ITE) so in a sense some of them were ‘shotgun weddings’ and ‘arranged marriages’ forged solely for that purpose. Some examples:

An NLC that wanted help to write up research but only got offered courses

A NLC who formed a partnership with a university they had never met and still haven’t met but then found another partner. Yet despite success, the lead head said ‘that higher education had its own agenda concerned with research and ownership – an agenda with which schools found it difficult to connect.’

And the Love Match-The NLC who saw university support as fundamental to success.

Partnership, Partnership, Partnership. How many partners can one institution have without getting a bad reputation?