Dewi Lloyd

Education Consultant

IRIS Connect

Our challenge:Michael Fullan notes in his recent paper "Learning is the Work":

"It may seem strange to say that professional development - educators going to workshops and conferences, and taking courses - bears little relationship to classroom and school improvement. Similarly teachers toiling away as individuals do not add up to school or system success. What really counts is what happens 'in between workshops' or what I call learning is the work”

Learning on the job, day after day, is the work. My colleague Richard Elmore(2004) nailed the problem of superficial school reform when he notes that "improvement is more a function of learning to do the right thing in the setting in which you work" (p73). He elaborates "The problem (is that) there is almost no opportunity for teachers to engage in continuous and substantial learning about their practice...observing and being observed by their colleagues in their own classrooms and classrooms of other teachers in schools confronting similar problems of practice" (p127).”

Lets explore…

• Barriers,

• Rewards

• Possible solutions

Organisational learning opportunities

Teaching

Experiencing

Discussing with others

Seeing & hearing

Reading

Lectures

70%

80%

95%

50%

10%

5% WeEnact

•Being a coach or mentor•Sharing best practice•Communities of Practice•Peer Mentoring•Iterative mentoring•Self Review•Observing Best Practice

What interactions are effective?

Contextualised, Personalised, Iterative

• Modelling

• Observation Lesson ObservationWithin a community of practice

• Dialogue

Lesson Observation Challenges:

• Obtrusiveness (disturbing the dynamic)

• Subjective

• Expensive / hard to scale

• Debrief issues

• Dual purposed

The key…

• Moving the practice of observation from QA monitoring, through to mentoring, coaching and collaboration.

QA Mentoring Coaching

What we find..

• Video is a very powerful (but emotive) tool.

– Staff confidence is the most important factor

– We need to make it technically easy to capture practice

– We need to make it easy to add context (edit)

– We need to make it easy to manage

• What tools do I need to add rich layers of context?

• How can we share and collaborate?

What else is important?

Empowerment:

in high performing education systems ... teachers embrace and lead reform, taking responsibility as professionals…

OECD, March,2011

What else is important?

Developing Social Capital:

If a teacher’s social capital is just one standard deviation higher than the average students’ maths scores increase by 5.7%

OECD, March,2011

What it is..

• IRIS Connect can be an effective vehicle for change if you have a clear direction.

• The culture will not change by itself in most cases…

Developing a high quality teaching professionA systems model

•Staff collaborating within and across schools

•Staff establishing a cycle of self review and reflection

•Action research

•Developing and sharing best practice

•High skill staff coaching and mentoring others

Professionalism at the front line

•Coaching – both internal and external

•Mentoring

•Modelling best practice

•Schools collaborating

Schools developing high quality staff

•School self review identifying areas for growth

•Identifying and celebrating best practice

•Performance management

•Quality assurance

Schools identifying areas for

development

External review for monitoring standards, identifying and disseminating national best practice and quality assurance

Empowerment

Development

Control

A process model

IRIS Connect

IRIS Connect is a CPD system that enables colleges to harness their collective capacity. It allows all teachers to access brilliant teaching, reflect purposefully on their own practice and share practice with peers, embedding a peer-led mentoring and coaching culture with ease.

Some of the innovative uses of IRIS Connect at FE colleges include:

• supported experimentation• promoting a self reflective culture• action research• linking ITT and longer term CPD

www.irisconnect.co.uk