CUREE Easter Enews

Contents

• Philippa’s Easter Blog
• Route Maps – a key element in the CPD journey from primary to HE
• Frederick Bird School
• The new OfSTED Data Dashboard
• Using Support Staff to make a difference
• BERA SAGE practitioner award
• Quis custodiet..?
• Bad Science – Good Education?
• Evidence for Professional learning
• Accessing the evidence – the CUREE guarantee
• Links

Philippa’s Easter Blog

Brrrr -  this snow and cold weather is not what we were all looking forward to in March. But the days are getting longer and we saw lots of lambs in cosy barns and or closely hugging their mums at the weekend. And when the sun does come out there is real warmth in it! So what other bright spots can we discern on an otherwise challenging horizon?

The focus on ensuring pupils who don’t reach level 4 in year 6 seems important and right to us. We have been really excited to work towards an ambitious set of goals about what we can help them achieve by September in partnership with Achievement for All Champions and Coaches. We are all using funding from The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to trial Response to Intervention (RtI), an approach to targeting and layering support through three waves of intensity and practical, research based planning and delivery tools, and inspiring materials and experiences for young learners focussed on transition.

The funds to secondary schools to provide support for those who don’t succeed at level 4 before arriving is targeted to hit the same, very important spot. The funding for sport in year 7 is interesting too. The wonderful Willenhall Community Primary School in an extremely deprived part of Coventry is hugely successful across the piece but its sporting prowess has been established for a long time- with significant thanks to the sports coach in residence who has such in-depth knowledge of the skills he is targeting for different sports and the progression routes pupils need to follow to excel.

I really enjoyed the recent launch of Ben Goldacre’s review of the use of research and evidence in education. He is one of the doctors turned uomo universale who hit the headlines some years ago who has done a brilliant job of combining science, evidence, humour and fearlessness to challenge “Bad Science”, the title of his bestselling book. I really believe that teachers and schools will be interested in the results of the increasing emphasis on carrying out trials of new interventions. They are even keener on the bottom line evidence about whether things work than most people. But I don’t agree with everything he says such as his criticism of teacher action research.  Many teachers engage with research (their own and other people’s) not to prove something, but to develop their own understanding and self awareness. Some take base lines and track progress, although others simply evaluate outcomes. Whether or not that is good research, it is certainly good, and infectious professional learning and practice and should be encouraged, not belittled as Ben did at the launch in an otherwise inspiring presentation. The work of EEF in significantly increasing the number of trials to ensure that the effectiveness of new interventions are evaluated is important. So too now is the National College with the new Closing the Gap: Test and Learn programme. What we all need is to work out how to make participating in trials a meaningful experience for all concerned including pupils, teachers and schools in control groups. So we are absolutely delighted to be working in partnership with Durham University to manage the consultation and design phase of the new Closing the Gap trials initiative to that end. Do drop us a line if you are interested in knowing more or being involved in the consultation.

Philippa Cordingley - Chief Executive

Route Maps – a key element in the CPD journey from primary to HE

 Route Maps are proving to be a valuable resource for practitioners working with students aged from 5 through to 18.  Our ‘using evidence to improve staff and student learning’ workshop brought together over 50 colleagues from primary, secondary and FE settings, and a range of organisations, to explore practical, evidence-based tools and resources. Click here to see the presentation. During the session, Gilbertstone Primary School and Birmingham Metropolitan College (BMET) shared how they have used hyper-linked Route Maps a way of developing evidence informed practice. Many thanks to Karen Manuel at BMET for hosting the event.  

Our Route Maps are not only commissioned by schools and colleges but also by a range of other organisations. We are delighted to be working with the Learning Skills and Improvement Service (LSIS) to develop an interactive Route Map that highlights Joint Practice Development within the FE sector and the practitioner research evidence this has generated. We are also finalising plans with a university to develop a Route Map for initial teacher training and masters students.  

To see a working Route Map visit http://www.curee.co.uk/block-content/route-maps-sample. For further information please contact Rebecca Raybould at rebecca.raybould@curee.co.uk

Frederick Bird School

We are delighted to be working with Frederick Bird School in Coventry to build research and development into the core work of their teaching school alliance.  The innovative project will include supporting schools in using videos of practice captured through Iris Connect as a springboard for professional learning. CUREE will be working with staff to develop a research-based language to analyse and reflect on the videos. We look forward to sharing the emerging learning as this project unfolds.

The new OfSTED Data Dashboard

If you haven’t caught up with this yet, you might want to look at the new ‘infographics’ approach OfSTED are taking to presenting schools’ performance data.

 To look at your own Dashboard – or anyone elses – go to

http://dashboard.ofsted.gov.uk/

Using Support Staff to make a difference

Many of you will be aware of the Sutton Trust’s Pupil Premium Toolkit which is a summary of educational research which provides guidance for teachers and schools on how to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. One of the more controversial findings was that… “overall, research shows that students in a class with a teaching assistant present do not on average outperform those in one where only a teacher is present. This average finding covers a range of recorded impacts; in some cases teachers and teaching assistants have worked together effectively leading to increases in attainment, while in others pupils (particularly those who are lower attaining) have performed worse in classes with teaching assistants present compared to those without.”

It is clear that schools need to think carefully about how TAs are deployed and trained to ensure positive impacts in terms of attainment. Our workshop Accessing the evidence: Using support staff to make a difference focuses on practical ways in which you can help your teaching assistants develop some key skills to support pupil learning and enable them to maximise the learning opportunities they receive in school through:

• exploring approaches to effective questioning to support learning
• how to promote independent learning through group work
• identifying suitable teaching and learning foci for experimentation
• use a variety of tools to scaffold their own professional learning and plan to implement new practice in the classroom

Click here to find out more or contact us at lisa.bradbury@curee.co.uk

BERA SAGE practitioner award

The British Educational Research Association are providing BERA SAGE practitioner awards to encourage excellence in the applications of research in practice and to help practitioners to improve their work by example.

Bad Science – Good Education?

Ben Goldacre, doctor, scientist, pundit and scourge of snake oil merchants, has produced a report on generating and using high quality research in education.  Evidence based practice is very close to our hearts so we were pleased to be consulted during the preparation of his paper which you can access from here. 

Quis custodiet..?

Our work to support school success through evidence based leadership and practice extends also to governance. The growth of academies (and the like) has put even greater responsibilities on governing bodies and this is reflected in the treatment of governors in recent OfSTED inspections. In this short article, I have attempted to offer a snapshot of the governance picture and to outline some of the support arrangements available from us and from others.

Governors under scrutiny

If you’ve been inspected in the current cycle you have probably noticed how much more interested in the governance arrangements the inspectors now are. In the ‘good old days’ governance was a sub-theme of Leadership and Management where the Chair of governors (CoG) would have a ‘bit of a chat’ with an inspector. Contrast that with the last few months where CoGs need counselling (OK, I exaggerate!) after the interrogation they get about their knowledge of the school’s performance, including staff performance, how they drive the mission, improvement and development agendas, what they know about pupil premium etc. In the last year the two Michaels (Gove and Willshaw) have been talking up the significance of governance and governors. Gove opened up with some inflammatory remarks about ‘local worthies’ (see my blog here) and Willshaw has been on the Telly (Newsnight) and in print (most recently TES) highlighting the challenge role of governors. The Education Select Committee is also taking an interest through a still running Inquiry. The most specific evidence of OfSTED’s rising expectations of governors can be found in the latest (February 2013) subsidiary guidance to inspectors (references to governance on page 20)

Click here for more>>

Evidence for Professional learning

All 27 of the schools and colleges who have participated in the SKEIN service for identifying strengths to build on and next steps in creating and effective and efficient professional learning environment, make use of pupil outcome data in identifying priorities for CPD. But only four so far make widespread, systematic use of complementary evidence about learning exchanges and processes. The most obvious candidate is the use of observation data to bring classroom exchanges to life and to anchor professional learning conversations in classroom realities. The international evidence tells us that having the opportunity to learn from looking at experiments with teaching and learning is crucial. Professional learning conversations that don’t feature evidence about what happens when we try new things don’t feed through into benefits for pupils (EPPI 2). But in practice on the ground, observation features mostly diagnostically - arising from monitoring activities. Feedback from coaches and line managers certainly features too but, according to the vast majority of teachers, usually only once a year during performance review discussions.

We are probably still concentrating too much on assessment of teachers' learning and not enough on observation for teachers’ learning. Teachers are ready to tackle this – they tell us they would be interested in working formatively with the very wide range of evidence that they see being collected on a day to day basis in schools. For example teachers in focus groups in the most recent SKEIN visits expressed an interest in using work scrutiny as the focus of professional learning conversations and many of them are so keen to experiment with peer teaching and review that they are carving out time to make room for this.  Using video is still probably the most efficient and effective way of achieving this – but it is surprising how very few schools have managed to harness the use of video as a widespread, formative part of professional learning. Watch this space for some pioneering examples from a local Teaching School…

Accessing the evidence – the CUREE guarantee

If you are spending your scarce resources on CPD and professional learning, you want to be confident that your activities are rooted in evidence - not only should the content or focus of CPD be based on research to ensure that high impact strategies, tools and resources are explored, but the design of the training should reflect what we know about effective learning approaches for adults which connect their learning with the outcomes of students. This is reflected in our CUREE guarantee:

Our facilitators will:

• Make research and evidence accessible and useful focusing on high leverage strategies
• Provide tools to sustain learning and help staff refine strategies in the light of pupil responses
• Introduce learning in a way that is active, engaging and helps with the collection of evidence about staff learning to support the evaluation of impact

Our Summer term programme of workshops introduces some new evidence based learning for schools and colleges, in particular reflecting the growth of interest in more focused and targeted professional learning such as Research lesson Study and Response to Intervention approaches. Take a look at our latest offer for schools and colleges to see how we can support you. 

Links

Interview with Helen Timperley: In this video, Philippa talks to Helen Timperley from the University of Auckland in New Zealand about the use of research and evidence in informing educational practice.

Philippa contributed to the Evidence Informed Policy and Practice: Progress and Future Visions 2013 Conference in Frankfurt. Click here to see her presentation. She explored the key dimensions of effectiveness in linking teacher and pupil learning through an effective professional learning environment, drawing on systematic and technical reviews of research focusing on CPD, on leadership, on work based professional learning in schools and on use of research to improve teaching. Click here to visit the EIPPEE website.

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