The model and process for teacher licensing needs to address a tension that runs through the profession. Most good things that happen in education are the result of efforts of groups of colleagues. But in most schools routine teacher activity and accountability systems are organised around how teachers work as individuals. Furthermore, a teachers’ first opportunity to work closely with others in a team context is frequently within a management role, when accountability issues create a strong undertow. A creatively designed and oriented licensing system that encompasses collaborative professional development and learning in particular, could act as an important counter pull.
Starting points
In the late 1990s and early 21st century Continuing Professional Development (CPD) was not an English policy priority. Investment and reform focused on school improvement, and direct interventions such as the tightly specified National Curriculum and National Strategies. In 2014 the spotlight has moved on. Mckinsey’s (2010) analysis which asserts that the “quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its workforce”, is one of the most widely quoted springboards for policy reform by both policy makers and teacher organisations. It is a short step from this realisation to the recognition that teacher education deserves a similar policy focus.
The contribution of research
In the years during which the policy spotlight has tracked towards CPD successive systematic reviews about CPD that works for pupils as well as teachers, including CUREE’s systematic reviews, reveal a surprisingly consistent evidence base about what makes a difference. This evidence suggests that we have focussed too much on CPD “done to” teachers and overlooked the importance of work-based, continuing professional learning and development (CPLD) experiences. The OFSTED logical chain thematic reviews of CPD (2006) reinforce concerns that practice does not yet reflect the evidence about what works; they reveal low expectations about CPD and the thinking and systems required to ensure it is effective.
Collaboration and licensing?
Running through all the evidence about CPLD is a thread of increasingly strong evidence about the importance of collaboration. The opening of a debate about the nature and operation of teacher licensing creates an opportunity to think clearly and in an evidence-based way about the contribution of professional learning to teachers’ effectiveness individually, and, more importantly, collectively.
The systematic reviews show that structured collaboration matters for a number of reasons. Planning, trying out and reviewing new approaches systematically with other teachers:
- expands teachers’ view of possibilities, and helps them grasp the essentials of different approaches
- involves teachers taking risks together, speeding up the development of trust, increasing confidence and creating a meaningful purpose;
- prompts teachers naturally to identify and question dialled in, tacit assumptions, skills and activities , making it easy to clarify and analyse current approaches without being defensive
- deepens commitment to persisting in the face of external obstacles and distractions and the temporary setbacks that inevitably accompany changing complex combinations of activities, - not least because teachers working together don’t want to let each other down.
When done well, structured collaboration means sharing evidence about both teachers’ and pupils’ learning, making it more visible and open to review. Indeed, reviews have shown (Cordingley et al 2005) that CPD is only linked with benefits for pupils when professional learning conversations are rooted in both trying out new approaches and exploring evidence from those experiments. It is developing and interrogating practice, not just describing it, that makes a difference.
Sadly, even though many teachers and schools recognise the importance of collaborative working, few, as yet, take the extra step of debriefing and analysing evidence about the process as well as the outcomes. Wrapping tools such as learning logs or peer coaching conversations around shared development of schemes of work, for example, prompts and sustains such analysis and can propel teachers beyond simply understanding that something works to develop a practical underpinning theory for why it does so. Is there a reason why the process of applying for an advanced license couldn’t prompt teachers to do just that?
Research about how leaders relate to CPLD, suggests another important building block for a licensing system that is formative. The extent to which teachers are offered and take or even create opportunities for professional learning is self-evidently shaped by the effectiveness of the professional learning environment within their schools. Two implications follow from this evidence about leaders’ contributions to professional learning for the development of an attractive and generative licensing system:
- First, a licensing system for teachers would be greatly enhanced – morally and practically - by an explicitly connected licensing system for school leaders. It is what school leaders do as much as what they say about professional learning and CPD that shapes how teachers themselves develop.
- Second, School Leader licensing should explicitly include exploration of how well they encourage, facilitate and evaluate collaborative professional learning as part of their leadership practice.
Sadly, our current standards for school leaders make only passing mention of CPD and are silent about leaders either doing or modelling their own continuing learning.
Better together
We need to recognise the practical and physical limit of what even our most amazing teachers can do on their own. Planning lessons and schemes of work, adjusting them in the moment and using that experience to design even better ones is hugely time consuming. It is also a key determinant of quality. Doing it, and reviewing it, together reduces the work whilst expanding learning opportunities. Taking the evidence about collaboration as a cue, perhaps we should offer groups of teachers the opportunity to opt for a collective ‘license’ for, for example, a phase, department or subject?
Cordingley, P. (2008) Sauce for the Goose: learning entitlements that work for teachers as well as for their pupils, CUREE
Cordingley, P. and Buckler, N. 2014. ‘Who You Gonna Call? – using specialists effectively. Professional Development Today, 16.2, pp. 62-67.
Cordingley, P. Bell, M. Isham, C. Evans, D. and Firth, A . (2007) ‘What do specialists do in CPD programmes for which there is evidence of positive outcomes for pupils and teachers? Report, in Research Evidence in Education Library, EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
Fleischman, H.L., Hopstock, P.J., Pelczar, M.P., and Shelley, B.E. (2010) How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top. New York (McKinsey)
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The model and process for
The model and process for teacher licensing needs to address a tension that runs through the profession. Most good things that happen in education are the result of efforts of groups of colleagues. But in most schools routine teacher activity and accountability systems are organised around how teachers work as individuals. Furthermore, a teachers’ first opportunity to work closely with others in a team context is frequently within a management role, when accountability issues create a strong undertow. A creatively designed and oriented licensing system that encompasses collaborative professional development and learning in particular, could act as an important counter pull.
Starting points
In the late 1990s and early 21st century Continuing Professional Development (CPD) was not an English policy priority. Investment and reform focused on school improvement, and direct interventions such as the tightly specified National Curriculum and National Strategies. In 2014 the spotlight has moved on. Mckinsey’s (2010) analysis which asserts that the “quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its workforce”, is one of the most widely quoted springboards for policy reform by both policy makers and teacher organisations. It is a short step from this realisation to the recognition that teacher education deserves a similar policy focus.
The contribution of research
In the years during which the policy spotlight has tracked towards CPD successive systematic reviews about CPD that works for pupils as well as teachers, including CUREE’s systematic reviews, reveal a surprisingly consistent evidence base about what makes a difference. This evidence suggests that we have focussed too much on CPD “done to” teachers and overlooked the importance of work-based, continuing professional learning and development (CPLD) experiences. The OFSTED logical chain thematic reviews of CPD (2006) reinforce concerns that practice does not yet reflect the evidence about what works; they reveal low expectations about CPD and the thinking and systems required to ensure it is effective.
Collaboration and licensing?
Running through all the evidence about CPLD is a thread of increasingly strong evidence about the importance of collaboration. The opening of a debate about the nature and operation of teacher licensing creates an opportunity to think clearly and in an evidence-based way about the contribution of professional learning to teachers’ effectiveness individually, and, more importantly, collectively.
The systematic reviews show that structured collaboration matters for a number of reasons. Planning, trying out and reviewing new approaches systematically with other teachers:
When done well, structured collaboration means sharing evidence about both teachers’ and pupils’ learning, making it more visible and open to review. Indeed, reviews have shown (Cordingley et al 2005) that CPD is only linked with benefits for pupils when professional learning conversations are rooted in both trying out new approaches and exploring evidence from those experiments. It is developing and interrogating practice, not just describing it, that makes a difference.
Sadly, even though many teachers and schools recognise the importance of collaborative working, few, as yet, take the extra step of debriefing and analysing evidence about the process as well as the outcomes. Wrapping tools such as learning logs or peer coaching conversations around shared development of schemes of work, for example, prompts and sustains such analysis and can propel teachers beyond simply understanding that something works to develop a practical underpinning theory for why it does so. Is there a reason why the process of applying for an advanced license couldn’t prompt teachers to do just that?
Research about how leaders relate to CPLD, suggests another important building block fora licensing system that is formative. . The extent to which teachers are offered and take or even create opportunities for professional learning is self-evidently shaped by the effectiveness of the professional learning environment within their schools. Two implications follow from this evidence about leaders’ contributions to professional learning for the development of an attractive and generative licensing system:
Sadly, our current standards for school leaders make only passing mention of CPD and are silent about leaders either doing or modelling their own continuing learning.
Better together
We need to recognise the practical and physical limit of what even our most amazing teachers can do on their own. Planning lessons and schemes of work, adjusting them in the moment and using that experience to design even better ones is hugely time consuming. It is also a key determinant of quality. Doing it, and reviewing it, together reduces the work whilst expanding learning opportunities. Taking the evidence about collaboration as a cue, perhaps we should offer groups of teachers the opportunity to opt for a collective ‘license’ for, for example, a phase, department or subject?
Cordingley, P. (2008) Sauce for the Goose: learning entitlements that work for teachers as well as for their pupils, CUREE
Cordingley, P. and Buckler, N. 2014. ‘Who You Gonna Call? – using specialists effectively. Professional Development Today, 16.2, pp. 62-67.
Cordingley, P. Bell, M. Isham, C. Evans, D. and Firth, A . (2007) ‘What do specialists do in CPD programmes for which there is evidence of positive outcomes for pupils and teachers? Report, in Research Evidence in Education Library, EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
Fleischman, H.L., Hopstock, P.J., Pelczar, M.P., and Shelley, B.E. (2010) How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top. New York (McKinsey)