During the 2023-24 academic year, I did a lot of thinking, re-thinking and thinking again about effective professional development. In particular, I thought a lot about how to keep change relevant and then how to embed it into school culture because this is something I see as an ultimate measure of the success of a piece of professional development. In the summer term, I worked closely with our maths lead to design and implement a sequence of PD and this blog is an attempt to put the process we followed, both in thinking and action, down on paper.
I am indebted to lots of great thinkers on this subject. In particular, Josh Goodrich, Jim Knight, Shane Leaning, Nick Pointer, Sam Gibbs, Tom Sherrington and Sam Sims. Either through their time or their work, or both, they have all contributed to my understanding. My journey towards chartered status also afforded me some of the best CPD I have ever had and greatly informed my work in this area.
Our maths lead, Danni stopped me on the stairs one afternoon and gave me an incredibly detailed account of a problem she had identified across the school within our teaching of Maths. She felt there was not enough opportunity for guided practice. She had a clear vision for how she wanted the teaching of Maths to change in order to facilitate this and so with the end goal in mind, we designed a sequence of four sessions, along with implementation ideas to get her goal to become a reality.
We started by consulting Sam Sims (2021) excellent paper which proposes a mechanism led approach to professional development. We referred back to it during each stage of our planning to make sure that we were continually leveraging the mechanisms that would improve our chances of success.
Session 1:
This session began with a discussion bout our current practice in Maths. We discussed what it was characterised by, how consistent our approach was across the school and generally how effective we felt it was. We then spent time reading a chapter from Harry Fletcher-Wood’s excellent book, Responsive teaching and another chapter from Kieran Mackle’s equally excellent Thinking deeply about Primary Mathematics, Danni then led a discussion focused on identifying aspects of what we had read that weren’t currently present in our approach to teaching maths. We considered any contextual factors that might make any of the ideas unsuitable and identified some broad things we might try to do in order to put what we had read to good use.
This session pulled on the following mechanisms:
Credible source
Affirm and reinforce
Social support
In between sessions:
We sent round an optional podcast listen and Danni made sure that she kept talking to as many people as possible about what we had discussed.
Session 2:
In this session, we started with a retrieval quiz based on what we had learned from the previous session. Danni then delivered a superb session on the importance of guided practice in Primary Maths and how to do it exceptionally well. She chunked up her explanations with opportunities for the team to practice and reinforce their understanding. She provided live models to exemplify her points and she was clear with the evidence that supported the content she was delivering. At the end of the session, we all co-wrote our whole team implementation goal.
This session pulled on the following mechanisms:
Manage cognitive load
Revisit prior learning
Instruction
Setting goals
Modelling
Rehearsal
In between sessions:
The team had time to practice putting what we had learned into practice in classrooms. There were no drop ins or coaching on the new initiative at this stage. The team had time and space to start applying and could of course, come to Danni or I with any questions they had during the process.
Session 3:
This session started with a retrieval quiz. Then, the session, which took place 2 weeks after session 2, we conducted a lesson study. Danni had been filmed teaching and the team watched the recording and made notes against the agreed objectives and collective aims. This wasn’t about judging Danni – that isn’t something we do. It was about seeing our collective aims applied and using this as a conversation starter. Having watched the recording, Danni led a discussion around what we had seen. From here, each person worked with their coach (we run instructional coaching over a two-week cycle) to set their personal goal that they wanted to aim to meet over the forthcoming 6-week period. The goal had to be linked to our work around developing our Maths teaching. Coaches and coaches then narrowed this goal down to an initial action step. Teachers then had time to plan upcoming lessons in year group teams and to embed within those plans, specific cues that would help them remember their personal goal and action step.
This session pulled on the following mechanisms:
Prompts and cues
Action planning
Social support
Setting goals
Revisiting prior learning
In between sessions:
For the following four weeks, instructional coaching focused on the goals set at the end of session 3. This kept the goals and the changes relevant and enabled everyone to feel that they were making some progress towards them.
Session 4:
This session, as usual, started with a retrieval quiz. Then, the team worked in four groups to rotate round four tables and answer (on post-it notes) four questions.
What has gone well?
What have we got stuck on?
What do we need to go over again?
What do you want me to monitor as the subject leader?
Question 1 enabled us to celebrate success and improvement. Two enabled us to embrace the vulnerability that facilitates growth and development. Question 3 allowed us to think about what we needed to revisit explicitly and re-teach. Question 4, allowed us to frame monitoring as a supportive action rather than something to be done to catch people out. Because the whole team could feed into what Danni should monitor, it was seen in terms of ‘just make sure I’m not forgetting to do X’ this also meant that Danni’s subsequent monitoring time felt, and was, purposeful because she knew that she was getting at the things that the team had told her they were still struggling with.
This session pulled on the following mechanisms:
Revisit prior learning
Setting goals
Affirm and reinforce
Social support
Monitoring and feedback
Self-monitoring
Context specific repetition (through Instructional coaching)
Following session 4:
Danni monitored as she had promised to do and the team reported feeling that this was a supportive measure. At the start of the new academic year, instructional coaching will continue to focus on these goals for the first 2-4 weeks, ensuring that the focus remains tight until the change has truly become just part of what we do.
There will always be challenges with getting professional development to stick but through taking a mechanisms driven approach to PD design and by using Instructional coaching as an implementation tool, I believe we have gotten closer to making it stick. Time will tell.
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