Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

The Park School Training and Development Testbed project

 

 

The Park School is an 11-16 special school for pupils with learning difficulties in Woking, Surrey. It has 105 pupils on roll. Pupils are taught in groups of approximately 10 with a teacher and teaching assistant. The school also has a language specialism, with 30 places for pupils with learning difficulties and severe language impairments.

The ability range of the current year 7 group falls within national curriculum levels 1-2. The special needs of the pupils in the school are often complex, with pupils having additional difficulties with hearing, vision, coordination, language, social communication and behaviour. There are currently 22 teaching assistants and 15 teachers employed by the school, with a large number of staff working on a part-time basis. Our continuing professional development (CPD) philosophy, like many schools, is to create a positive learning environment for all stakeholders in the school community. In the General Teaching Council statement of values, it states, ‘Teachers continually reflect on their own practice, improve their skills and deepen their knowledge. They want to adapt their teaching appropriately to take account of new findings, ideas and technologies’ (GTCE 2004).

We recognise that the highest standards of teaching and learning are maintained through staff learning, refreshing and updating their skills and knowledge.

The current leadership team has been established for four years and this has created an environment where all staff feel committed to, and benefit from, their CPD experiences. Using the Surrey CPD audit tool, the leadership team has developed a programme of training and development that is strongly linked to the school improvement cycle and performance management for all staff. CPD is monitored at an individual and whole staff level. Over the last few years, one of the strands of the school’s development plan has been related to staff learning and development. This year the CPD strand was to build learning potential in staff through coaching, mentoring and action learning. There are a wide range of CPD opportunities. CPD is non-threatening but challenging and often takes staff out of their comfort zones. CPD management takes this into consideration and attempts to create enjoyable learning experiences for colleagues.

However, there has been a need to personalise CPD, in the same way that learning is personalised for pupils, where all staff take responsibility for their own learning journey and actively look for development opportunities. As a leadership team, we wanted staff to engage with their own learning. Pollard et al. comment that, ‘The process of reflective teaching supports the development and maintenance of professional expertise’ (Pollard 2005). We also recognised that traditional ways of recording and recognising adult learning in a school are often not successful. Having established the necessary operational procedures, cultural change needed to take place to develop professional learning further.

In January 2006, The Park School was selected as one of the Training and Development Agency (TDA) ‘Testbed’ Schools. Testbed is an 18-month project to research, test and evaluate approaches, interventions and innovations that enable schools to develop a culture of learning, where all staff are committed to, and take responsibility for, their own development and the development of other staff.

The project intention was that:

‘What we learn from the testbeds will be shared with other schools throughout England, so that they can adopt approaches to T&D that have been shown to work well in bringing about lasting change’.
(TDA brief to schools)

The Park School decided to focus its attention on embedding a CPD culture of ownership, participation and responsibility for personal training and development.

In order to further develop this learning culture, the school focused on a number of key areas:

• students needed be given opportunities to see adults learning and to observe how adults take responsibility for their learning journeys
• staff should be able to develop their reflective skills and to capitalise on the momentum and energy generated by key learning events
• staff should enhance their use of coaching skills in lessons
• the school would enhance its use of performance coaching of staff as an integral part of professional development
• staff would personalise professional development records once a new framework was established and ensure that these are maintained as working documents.

The project was planned by the project team in consultation with TDA consultants and researchers from Sheffield Hallam University, over two days in spring 2006. Because we are a small special school, the project team was comprised of the headteacher and two assistant headteachers. Although there is no additional funding for the project, we are supported by the Surrey Schools Workforce Adviser. The project is evaluated by Sheffield Hallam University and the TDA is holding conferences to update the participating schools on the projects progress.

Project strands

There are three strands to the project.

Strand A: Learning Journeys. Staff development meetings have been used to develop ‘professional learning portfolios’. We recognized that a ‘one size fits all’, approach to professional record keeping does not work. Staff have individual systems for keeping professional records and guidelines state that it is the reflective element of them, not the way they are organised, that is important.

We have also made use of Active Learning Sets to develop the use of critical incident analysis in staff development portfolios.

Strand B: Coaching for learning. This strand has used INSET time and staff development meetings to develop the coaching and mentoring skills staff use in their learning and teaching. This has included a particular focus on developing staff listening and questioning skills.

Strand C: Coaching staff. Staff have had the opportunity to participate in coaching sessions as part of their professional development and one member of staff has been trained as a coach. Eight staff have been coached by a trained external coach and one has been trained as a coach

Pupils have been able to observe the learning that staff have been engaging in through the ‘Learning Journeys’ notice board, which is displayed in the reception area of the school and which is regularly updated, as well as through assemblies taken by different staff.

Challenges

The broad scope of the project has presented challenges in terms of managing all the areas it covered. We have been challenged in demonstrating impact. Although the project is being formally evaluated by Sheffield Hallam University, the school has paid particular attention to evaluating the coaching part of the project by creating causation trails to measure impact. It is also always a challenge to engage the small group of staff who remain reluctant learners.

Successes

We have had some initial success with the learning journeys. Staff enjoyed the training and were able to record detailed learning journeys for the previous two years, looking at a wide range of learning that they had engaged in, and the potential impact it could have on pupil learning.  Staff have understood the need to develop more reflective record keeping and many staff were able to demonstrate how they kept their professional records. The next phase is to embed these innovations and ensure that they work with the UK Government’s new performance management structures.

Staff have found the focus on developing coaching skills in teaching and learning very helpful. Staff attending the listening skills training have commented that:

• ‘It has been really helpful learning to really listen not just to interact’
• ‘It was amazing that someone really heard what I said’.

There has been an excellent uptake of the offer of coaching and a very positive impact of the coaching process on staff development and personal growth. As a result, staff have moved on in their careers, taking on additional responsibility, or beginning professional courses, such as Masters level qualifications.

Overall, the Testbed team has found it has been relatively easy to engage staff in the project. It has been an excellent opportunity to create places and times where pupils can see staff learn. Pupils comment that seeing their teachers enjoying their own learning helps them to learn. The team has also been pleased with the inclusivity of the project, in supporting the learning needs of the whole staff.

One of the most valuable lessons and enduring principles to emerge from the project is the sense that tinkering with operational procedures will not necessarily enhance professional learning. It is important to address a person’s beliefs about themselves as a learner and their subsequent actions, and also to create meaningful opportunities for them to engage professional learning experiences. The learning an individual member of staff is engaging in will motivate and inspire them in the classroom.

It is a privilege, as a CPD team, to create development opportunities and to celebrate the successes of adults learning in schools. Giving staff an opportunity to talk about a piece of action research they have engaged in, or celebrating the completion of an NVQ or MA are real highlights of the school year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Paul Walsh is Assistant Headteacher at The Park School, in Woking, Surrey, England. He has been teaching for 18 years, as a science teacher and more recently as a special needs teacher. The Park School is a special school for pupils with learning difficulties. Mr Walsh is responsible for, amongst other things, the professional development of all staff and for the outreach provision to other schools. He has participated in a number of research groups and has delivered papers at the BERA conference in 2005 and at the International Congress of School Improvement and Effectiveness, in Fort Lauderdale, in January 2006. Mr Walsh is currently studying for his doctorate at Roehampton University, in the UK.

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