Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Leading Effective Learning Communities

Considerations when Leading Effective Learning Communities

Leading effective learning communities is a worthwhile and attainable goal for leaders of learning organizations. There are a number of different small adjustments that a leader can make to move their team along the continuum of learning. First and foremost for school leaders is focusing your organization on the goal of effective teaching practices. There are three resources which I would like to highlight that allow you to centre these conversations. Additionally, teachers must be given time to reflect on their teaching practice. How will they know if they are being effective? Hattie (2012) in Visible Learning for Teachers emphasizes the fact that teachers must make a significant impact on the learning outcomes of their students to be effective. What are some resources and ways to organize that can help us achieve our greatest potential?

Resources that Help Teachers Focus on the Learning of Students

The first resource is from Sharon Freisen (2009) at the Werklund School of Education from the University of Calgary. She has given us a window into effective teaching through the Teaching Effectiveness Framework. Found within this framework are five overarching principles: teachers as designers of learning, teachers designing worthwhile work, teachers weaving assessment throughout their designs, teachers designing in the company of their peers and teachers fostering the development of relationships between students and their work. To unpack these ideas a thoughtful and intentional design on the part of school leadership regarding professional learning is required. Leaders need to think carefully of how they can organize opportunities to dig deep into these principles such that teachers learn and reflect on their own practice. One such approach is the use of case studies. There is a wealth of these found at galileo.org in their classroom examples. Reviewing each these principles in action, provides insights that are much greater than simply discussing them.

The second resource is from Dylan Wiliam’s five principles of formative assessment found in his book, Embedded Formative Assessment. Friesen (2009) recognizes this as one of the five principles of teaching effectiveness and Wiliam contends, supported by extensive research, that this teaching practice is the one that has the most significant impact on student outcomes. His five principles include: clearly communicating learning intentions and success criteria, facilitating effective classroom discussions to gather information on what students understand, providing feedback that moves the learning forward, activating students as learning resources for one another and activating learners as owners of their own learning. Each one of these principles requires a deep of study and reflection, which is more successful in the company of others. They form the foundation of a common language for teachers about moving learning forward and most importantly are grounded in current research.

The final resource that I would like to highlight comes from the Galileo Educational Network at the University of Calgary. The DisciplineBased Inquiry Rubric contains 8 dimensions for consideration. Each one could be reframed into a question to promote teacher reflection on the design of a lesson or series of lessons that they have designed on a particular topic. For example: How does your design mirror the ways of knowing inherent in the discipline?, How does your lesson provide opportunities for students to develop competencies such as team work and perseverance?, What technologies could you use that would be junior versions of what is commonly used in the discipline?,  What forms of communications will they use that are inherent to the discipline? Have you considered having an expert help to inform your design or to move students learning forward? Each one of these questions highlights the core ideas of discipline based inquiry by design. Using questions like these can sponsor teacher reflection on the things that matter when it comes to designing worthwhile work.

Structures to Support Teacher Learning

Dylan Wiliam (2015) also gives us some insight through his work on leading teacher learning on how to promote these conversations from a structural view. Firstly, he highlights the importance of structuring time and space for what he refers to as the signature pedagogy of teacher learning. There must be an expectation on the part of school leadership that teachers will work collaboratively. Teachers must have a common understanding of what it means to be professional, to centre their work on student learning and how to work within a collaborative community. Having groups of teachers get together in an ongoing and thoughtful way, centering their conversations on artifacts of student learning or on the design of their lesson, where they can receive feedback on their designs and make sound decisions about their next steps is central to teacher learning.

He advocates for the formation of two learning communities with whom staff should connect. One of the groups will include members of staff who share a common content area. Discipline based inquiry that is designed by teachers must be ground in a sound understanding of the discipline and the content for which the teachers are expected to teach. Within this group, teachers can ask for clarification, and share in the expertise of the individuals who are teaching the same content information.

The second learning community would be composed of individuals who are of different faculties or grade level groupings. The conversations within these groups would be on sound pedagogy. Exploring and probing each other for big ideas in effective teaching like: What are your learning intentions?, How is this authentic to your discipline?, How are you planning to assess these students prior to their summative evaluations?, How could you make this task more rigorous? These types of probes, promoting teacher reflection on their designs for learning would help the individual teacher move their teaching practices along the continuum of effective teaching.  Additionally these groups could focus on student work. Using the looking at the work protocol (LAST) from visible thinking, teachers could uncover what students are able to do, where they need to go next and then plan for that.

Although time to meet is often offered as a barrier to undertaking this structural shift, leaders of learning organizations should consider how to find the time, giving the professional learning of their staff priority. As Vivian Robinson (2011) highlights, there is no greater impact a leader can have on the outcomes of students other than through the thoughtful and intentional design of professional learning within a building on the part of school leadership.

References

Friesen, S. (2009). What did you do in school today? Teaching Effectiveness: A Framework and Rubric. Toronto: Canadian Education Association.

Galileo Educational Network Association (2008). Discipline Based Rubric for Inquiry Studies. Retrieved from http://galileo.org/rubric.pdf on October 20, 2015

Harvard Project Zero. Visible Thinking (n.d.). Looking At Student Thinking (LAST) Protocol. Retrieved from: http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/05_SchoolWideCultureOfThinking/05c_StudyGroupMaterials/02_LASTRoutine.html on October 20, 2015

Hattie, J.  (2012). Visible learning for Teachers. Routledge (New York & London).

Robinson, V.M.J. (2011). Student- Centred Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

Wiliam, D. (2011b). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Wiliam, D. (2015). Sustaining classroom Formative Assessment with TLCs. Presentation at NCSM, Boston, MA, April. Retrieved from: http://www.dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Presentations_files/2015-04-15%20NCSM.pptx on October 20, 2015.