“Powerful Learning”
Being a relentless focus on improving the learning outcomes of
‘every student’ in ‘every school’ across the whole system …
KLA/PLT Secondary Leaders Workshop
Northern Metropolitan Region
Thursday 25th August 2011
Professor David Hopkins
Overview of Workshop
Session One –The Big Picture of School Reform
• Professional Activity – SWOT analysis
• Moral purpose, systemic reform and the four drivers for improvement
• The role of the school improvement team
Session Two – Teaching , Learning and Staff Development
• “Theories of Action”
• Professional learning
• School improvement process
Session Three – Action Planning
• The process of action planning
• Professional Activity – Planning in school gropus
• Networking and poster presentations
Session One
The Big Picture of School Reform
Professional Activity
SWOT Analysis
• What are the preconditions of improvement in a school?
• How does a school organize for improvement?
• What are the key strategies employed to raise
achievement?
• How does professional learning take place?
• How are cultures changed and developed?
• How effective is your own school’s approach to
improvement?
Moral Purpose of Schooling
I know what my
learning objectives are
and feel in control of
my learning
I get to learn lots of
interesting and
different subjects
I can get a level 4 in
English and Maths before
I go to secondary school
I know what good work
looks like and can help
myself to learn
I know if I need extra
help or to be challenged
to do better I will get the
right support
My parents are
involved with the
school and I feel I
belong here
I can work well with and
learn from many others
as well as my teacher
I enjoy using ICT and
know how it can help
my learning
I know how I am being
assessed and what I need
to do to improve my work
I can get the job that I
want
All these …. whatever my background, whatever my abilities,
wherever I start from
Mean task input as percentiles of the 1960 task distribution
How the demand for skills has changed
Economy-wide measures of routine and non-routine task
input in the USA (Levy and Murnane)
65
Routine manual
60
Nonroutine manual
55
Routine cognitive
50
Nonroutine analytic
45
Nonroutine interactive
40
1960
1970
1980
2002of schools:
The1990
dilemma
The skills that are easiest to teach and test
are also the ones that are easiest to digitise,
automate and outsource
In 2013 …
A student finishing primary school will demonstrate:
− individual performance at or above national standards in
literacy and numeracy
− a sharp curiosity for learning.
A student finishing secondary school will have:
− a clear, well-defined pathway to further training and education.
A parent will have:
− a substantive, meaningful engagement with their child’s school
and their child’s teachers
− a clear understanding of their child’s progress against national
standards.
In 2013 …
Teachers will have:
− world class professional skills
− enjoy high regard in their school communities
− continuing access to quality professional learning
opportunities.
The community will have confidence that:
− individual student performance meets national standards
− graduates are capable of making valuable contributions as
citizens and employees.
Our success will be marked by:
− students who are proud of their schools and what they
have achieved
− parents who are confident that sending their child to a
public school is a sound educational decision.
Every School a Great School
Improvement Strategy - 1
Every School a Great School
Improvement Strategy – 2
Every School a Great School School
Improvement Strategy – 3
Every School a Great School School
Improvement Strategy – 4
Every School a Great School School
Improvement Strategy – 5
Every School a Great School School
Improvement Strategy – 6
Towards system wide sustainable reform
Prescription
Building Capacity
Professionalism
National Prescription
Every School a
Great School
Schools Leading Reform
Awfu
System Leadership
Four key drivers to raise achievement and
build capacity for the next stage of reform
i. Personalising Learning
ii. Professionalising Teaching
iii. Building Intelligent Accountability
iv. Networking and Collaboration
(i) Personalising Learning
‘Joined up learning and teaching’
• Learning to Learn
• Curriculum choice &
entitlement
• Assessment for learning
• Student Voice
‘My Tutor’
Interactive web-based
learning resource
enabling students to
tailor support and
challenge to their needs
and interests.
(ii) Professionalising Teaching
‘Teachers as researchers,
schools as learning communities’
• Enhanced repertoire of
learning & teaching strategies
• Evidence based practice with
time for collective inquiry
• Collegial & coaching
relationships
• Tackle within school variation
‘The Edu-Lancet’
A peer-reviewed
journal published for
practitioners by
practitioners & regularly
read by the profession
to keep abreast of R&D.
(iii) Building Intelligent Accountability
‘Balancing internal and external accountability and
assessment’
• Moderated teacher assessment
and AfL at all levels
• ‘Bottom-up’ targets for every
child and use of pupil
performance data
• Value added data to help
identify strengths / weaknesses
• Rigorous self-evaluation linked
to improvement strategies and
school profile to demonstrate
success
‘Chartered
examiners’
Experienced teachers
gain certification to
oversee rigorous internal
assessment as a basis
for externally awarded
qualifications.
(iv) Networking and Collaboration
‘Disciplined innovation, collaboration and building
social capital’
• Best practice captured and
highly specified
• Capacity built to transfer and
sustain innovation across
system
• Keeping the focus on the
core purposes of schooling
by sustaining a discourse on
teaching and learning
• Inclusion and Extended
Schooling
‘Leading Edge
Practice
Partnerships’
Schools develop
exemplary curriculum
and pedagogic practices
and share with others
4 drivers mould to context through
system leadership
Personalised
Learning
Professional
Teaching
SYSTEM
LEADERSHIP
Networks &
Collaboration
Intelligent
Accountability
System Leadership: A Proposition
‘System leaders’ care about and work for the
success of other schools as well as their own. They
measure their success in terms of improving
student learning and increasing achievement, and
strive to both raise the bar and narrow the gap(s).
Crucially they are willing to shoulder system
leadership roles in the belief that in order to change
the larger system you have to engage with it in a
meaningful way.’
System leaders share five striking
characteristics, they:
• measure their success in terms of improving student
•
•
•
•
learning and strive to both raise the bar and narrow the
gap(s).
are fundamentally committed to the improvement of
teaching and learning.
develop their schools as personal and professional learning
communities.
strive for equity and inclusion through acting on context and
culture.
understand that in order to change the larger system you
have to engage with it in a meaningful way.
These Twelve Secondary Schools …
Are in the highest category of deprivation (35% or
more FSM, yet, they all:
• Achieve over 80% good GCSE passes at 16, with a
consistent trajectory of improvement
• Have at least two recent inspection reports judged as
‘outstanding’
• Received outstanding grades for teaching and
learning, leadership and the school overall
• Record a pattern of high contextual value added
scores from Key Stage 2 (age 11) to Key Stage 4 (age
16)
They defy the association of
poverty with outcomes
Yet the scale of challenge faced by these schools is
considerable:
• Higher than average proportion come form poor or
disturbed family backgrounds where support for learning
and expectation of achievement are low
• Many students are subject to emotional and psychological
tension and regular attendance is a problem
• They are open to a range of ‘urban ills’ that often
characterise poorer communities – drugs and alcohol,
peer pressure of gangs and fashion and overt racism
which tend to attract behaviour which ranges from antisocial to violent.
• Getting these students ready and willing to learn is a
constant challenge, which the schools strive to meet by
providing a better daytime alternative to being at home
or on the streets.
21st Century Schools succeed for the
following reasons:
•
•
•
•
•
They excel at what they do not
just occasionally but for a high
proportion of the time
They prove constantly that
disadvantage need not be a
barrier to achievement
They put their students first,
invest in their staff and nurture
their communities
They have strong values and
high expectations that are
applied consistently and are
never relaxed
They fulfil individual potential
through providing outstanding
teaching, rich opportunities for
learning and encouragement and
support for each student
•
•
•
•
•
They are highly inclusive, having
complete regard for the
educational progress, personal
development and well being of
every student
Their achievements do not
happen by chance, but by highly
reflective, carefully planned and
implemented strategies
They operate with a very high
degree of internal consistency
They are constantly looking for
ways to improve further
They have outstanding and well
distributed leadership
At the heart of this is outstanding leadership
practice
The Heads of these
schools are not by and
large iconic – they have
taken on challenging
schools out of a deep
commitment to improving
the lot of their students
and communities. Moral
purpose may be at the
heart of it but successful
Heads need a range of
attributes and skills if they
are to succeed in dealing
with the challenges
presented by turbulent
and complex
communities.
• Clear and unshakeable principles and
sense of purpose
• Vigilance and visibility
• Courage and conviction
• Predisposition to immediate action,
letting nothing slip
• Insistence on Consistency of approach,
individually and across the organisation
• Drive and determination
• Belief in people
• Ability to communicate
• leadership by example
• Emotional intelligence
• Tireless energy
It is not surprising …
• … that a number of themes emerged which were
common to most or all of the schools. These included, for
example, attention to the quality of teaching and
learning; the assessment and tracking of student’s
progress; target-setting, support and intervention;
attracting teachers and growing leaders.
• It is important to stress that the success of these schools
is due not simply to what they do but the fact that it is
rigorously distilled and applied good practice, cleverly
selected and modified to fit the needs of the school. The
schools do not value innovation for its own sake, but only
when it adds something extra. The practices described
here are not ‘off the peg’ tricks; they mesh together and
work synchronously.
The School Improvement Group
• The school improvement group is essentially a
temporary membership system focused specifically
upon enquiry and development. This temporary
membership system brings together teachers (and
support staff) from a variety of departments within the
school, with a range of ages or experience and from a
cross-section of roles to work together in a status-free
collaborative learning context. The establishment of a
school improvement group creates the research and
development capacity, whilst retaining the existing
structures required also for organisational stability and
efficiency.
School Improvement Group Development
Phase 1 - Uncertainty about focus
• What is School Improvement?
• What is the role of the SIG group?
• Where is it all going? It’s hard to make things happen.
Phase 2 - Clearer about focus
• Using existing structures in new ways, e.g. department meetings with
single item research agendas.
• New ways of working.
• Beginning to shift from staff development mode to school improvement
mode.
Phase 3 - Change/renewal of the SIG group
• Establishment of research culture within the school
• Involvement of students as researchers
• The school generates its own theory
In addition, SIG members are involved in:
• Out of school training sessions on capacity building
•
•
•
•
•
and teaching and learning;
The pursuit of their own knowledge in support of their
role – about leadership, the management and
implementation of change, the design of professional
development activities etc.;
Planning meetings in school;
Consultancy to school working groups;
Observation and in-classroom support;
Study visits to other schools within the network.
Session Two
Teaching , Learning and Staff
Development
“All our students will be
literate, numerate and curious … “
I wrote (with Bruce Joyce) some time ago
that:
Learning experiences are composed of
content, process and social climate. As
teachers we create for and with our
children opportunities to explore and
build important areas of knowledge,
develop powerful tools for learning, and
live in humanizing social conditions.
Powerful Learning …
Is the ability of learners to respond successfully to the tasks
they are set, as well as the task they set themselves In
particular, to:
• Integrate prior and new knowledge
• Acquire and use a range of learning skills
• Solve problems individually and in groups
• Think carefully about their successes and failures
• Accept that learning involves uncertainty and difficulty
All this has been termed “meta-cognition” – it is the
learners’ ability to take control over their own learning
processes.
Focus on the Instructional Core
CURRICULUM
POWERFUL
LEARNING
TEACHING and
LEARNING
STRATEGIES
STUDENT
ENGAGEMENT
What is ‘Professional Practice’?
• By
practice
we
mean
something
quite
specific.
We mean a set of protocols and
processes
for
observing,
analyzing,
discussing and understanding instruction that can be
used to improve student learning at scale. The
practice works because it creates a common
discipline and focus among practitioners with a
common purpose and set of problems.
• The real insight here is that you can maintain all the
values and commitments that make you a person
and still give yourself permission to change your
practice.
Your practice is an instrument for
expressing who you are as a professional; it is not
who you are.
Whole School Theories of Action
1. When schools and teachers set high expectations and develop authentic
relationships then student confidence, curiosity and commitment to
education increases and the school’s ethos and culture deepens and
curiosity can flourish.
2. When teacher directed instruction becomes more inquiry focused the level
of student engagement and achievement increases. This is the foundation
stone for high quality teaching and the development of curiosity. A greater
emphasis on inquiry leads to improved achievement and curiosity is
enhanced.
3. By consistently adopting protocols for teaching student behaviour and
engagement is enhanced.
4. Learning protocols enhance student capacity to learn, develop skills,
confidence and curiosity, and ensure that this happens in all classes.
Theories of Action for Teacher - 1
• Learning intentions, pace and narrative lead to students
being more secure about their learning (and more willing to take
risks); and achievement and understanding is increased, and
curiosity enhanced.
• Teachers systematically using higher order questioning leads
to the level of student understanding deepening and the level of
achievement increasing. Students who are regularly required to
analyse, synthesise and evaluate are more likely to be curious.
• When cooperative group structures / techniques are used to
mediate between whole class instruction and students carrying
out tasks, then the academic performance of the whole class
will increase as well as the spirit of collaboration and mutual
responsibility. Curiosity will be developed as students learn
from each other in a structured manner.
Theories of Action for Teacher - 2
• When teachers consistently use feedback and data on
students’ actions and performance, then behavior
becomes more positive, progress accelerates and
curiosity is enhanced.
• When peer assessment and assessment for learning
are consistently utilised student engagement, learning
and achievement accelerates. Curiosity will be
enhanced as the depth of student understanding
increases.
• When learning tasks are purposeful, clearly defined,
differentiated and challenging, (according to the student’s
Zone of Proximal Development), then the more powerful,
progressive and precise the learning for all students.
Curiosity will be enhanced as students work at a level
appropriate to their understanding.
Number of students
Reaching for the “Double Sigma Effect”
Achievement of students
Three ways of thinking about Teaching
Teaching
Skills
Teaching
Models
Reflection
Teaching
Relationships
Effect Size of Teaching Strategies
• Information Processing – a mean effect size over
1.0 for higher order outcomes
• Cooperative Learning – a mean effect between
0.3 to 0.7
• Personal Models – a mean effect of 0.3 or more
for cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes
• Behavioural Models – a mean effect between 0.5
to 1.0. Best representatives are for short term
treatments looking at behavioural or knowledge of
content outcomes
Leadership as Adaptive Work
Technical Solutions
Adaptive Work
System Leadership
Technical problems can be solved through applying existing know how - adaptive
challenges create a gap between a desired state and reality that cannot be closed
using existing approaches alone
The Nature of Adaptive Work
An adaptive challenge is a problem situation for which solutions
lie outside current ways of operating.
• Adaptive challenges demand learning, because ‘people are the
problem’ and progress requires new ways of thinking & operating.
• Mobilising people to meet adaptive challenges, then, is at the heart
of leadership practice.
• Ultimately, adaptive work requires us to reflect on the moral
purpose by which we seek to thrive and demands diagnostic
enquiry into the realities we face that threaten the realisation of
those purposes.
From Ron Heifetz – ‘Adaptive Work’ (in Bentley and Wilsdon 2003)
The Ring of Confidence
Circles of Competence
The Experience of Educational Change
 change takes place over time;
 change initially involves anxiety




and
uncertainty;
technical and psychological support is crucial;
the learning of new skills is incremental and
developmental;
successful change involves pressure and
support within a collaborative setting;
organisational conditions within and in
relation to the school make it more or less
likely that the school improvement will occur.
Six Approaches to Staff Development
•
•
•
•
•
•
Achieving Consistency
Specific Observation Schedules
Japanese ‘Lesson Study’
Coaching
Instructional Rounds
Peer Coaching
Achieving Conisistency –
The Robert Clack “good lesson”
• In terms of teaching and learning, three residential
courses were held for teachers in the first term
of Paul’s headship, out of which emerged the
staff-created model of the Robert Clack Good Lesson. Regardless
of subject, all departments explain the objective, content and
process of each lesson, followed by a summary and a review.
• A modular curriculum was also introduced, whereby all pupils
are tested to National Curriculum standards at each half and end
of term in every subject. Not only do teachers know exactly
where each pupil stands, but parents get a short and long report
each term, which charts their children’s progress and behaviour.
Specific Observation Schedules
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Higher order questions
Dealing with low level disruption
Wait time
Differentiation
Level of task
Pace
etc
Japanese “Lesson Study”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Choose a research theme
Focus the research
Create the lesson
Teach and observe the lesson
Discuss the lesson
Revise the lesson
Repeat the process with another teacher
Disseminate and share the lesson
Structuring Staff Development
Workshop
• Understanding of Key Ideas and Principles
• Modelling and Demonstration
• Practice in Non-threatening Situations
Workplace
• Immediate and Sustained Practice
• Collaboration and Peer Coaching
• Reflection and Action Research
With thanks to Bruce Joyce
The Instructional Rounds Process
•
•
•
•
The network convenes in a school for a rounds visit hosted by a member or
members of the network. The focus of the visit is a problem of practice related
to teaching and learning that the school is currently wrestling with.
The network divides into smaller group that visit a rotation of four or five
classrooms for approximately thirty minutes. In each classroom network
participants collect descriptive evidence related to the focus of the problem of
practice.
After completing the classroom observations, the entire group assembles in a
common location to work through a process description, analysis and
prediction. The group analyses the evidence for patterns and look at how what
they have seen explains or not the observable student performance in the
school.
Finally the network develops a series of ‘theory of action’ principles from the
analysis of the observations and discusses the next level of work
recommendations for the school and system to make progress on the problem
of practice.
Peer Coaching
• Peer coaching teams of two or three are much more
effective than larger groups.
• These groups are more effective when the entire staff is
engaged in school improvement.
• Peer coaching works better when Heads and Deputies
participate in training and practice.
• The effects are greater when formative study of student
learning is embedded in the process.
Elmore’s Principles for Large Scale
Improvement
• Maintain a tight instructional focus sustained over
time
• Routinise accountability for practice and
performance in face-to-face relationships
• Reduce isolation and open practice up to direct
observation, analysis, and criticism
• Exercise differential treatment based on
performance and capacity, not on volunteerism
• Devolve increased discretion based on practice
and performance
A Three Phase Strategy for School
Improvement
• Phase One: Establishing the Process
• Phase Two: Going Whole School
• Phase Three: Sustaining Momentum
Phase One: Establishing the Process
• Commitment to the School Improvement Approach
• Selection of Learning Leaders and School
Improvement Group
• Enquiring into the Strengths and Weaknesses of
the School
• Designing the Whole School Programme
• Seeding the Whole School Approach
Preparing for School Improvement
Pre-conditions
 Commitment to
School
Improvement
 General
consensus on
values
 Understanding
of key
principles
School Level
Preparations
 Shared values
 A mandate from
staff
 Leadership
potential
 Identification of
change agents
 Willingness to
make structural
changes
 Capacity for
improvement
Unifying Focus
Improvement
Theme
An enquiry into
Teaching and
Learning
Means
School
Improvement
Strategy
Phase Two: Going Whole School
• The Initial Whole School PD Day(s)
• Establishing the Curriculum and Teaching Focus
• Establishing the Learning Teams:
− Curriculum groupings
− Peer coaching or ‘buddy’ groups
• The Initial Cycle of Enquiry
• Sharing Initial Success on the Curriculum Tour
Curriculum Tour
WHOLE SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY
An Enquiry into Teaching and Learning
Stage
I
Dept. A
(Inductive
Teaching)
Dept C
(Inductive
Teaching)
‘Curriculum Tour’
Stage
II
Stage
III
Dept. B
(Inductive
Teaching)
Group Work
Memory
Synectics
WHOLE SCHOOL WORKING TOWARDS REPERTOIRE OF
TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES
Phase Three: Sustaining Momentum
• Establishing Further Cycles of Enquiry
• Building Teacher Learning into the Process
• Sharpening the Focus on Student Learning
• Finding Ways of Sharing Success and Building
Networks
• Reflecting on the Culture of the School and
Department
Processes of School Improvement
The journey of school improvement
• A clear reform narrative is created, and seen by staff to be consistently applied, with: a
vision and urgency that translates into clear principles for action.
Organizing the key strategies
• Improvement activities are selected and linked together strategically; supported by robust
and highly reliable school systems with clear SMT roles in key areas.
Professional learning at the heart of the process
• Improvement strategy informs CPD; knowledge is gained, verified & refined by staff to
underpin improvement; networking is used to manage risk and discipline practice.
Cultures are changed and developed
• Professional ethos and values that supports capacity building are initiated, implemented
and institutionalized, so that a culture of disciplined action replaces excessive control.
Moving to Scale
Cohorts of 6 - 8 Schools
6 - 8 Members of School Improvement Group
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
PLAN
Cohort A
Cohort B
Cohort C
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The Logic of System Leadership
Learning Potential of all Students
Repertoire of Learning Skills
Models of Learning - Tools for Teaching
Embedded in Curriculum Context and Schemes of Work
Whole School Emphasis on High Expectations and
Pedagogic Consistency
Sharing Schemes of Work and Curriculum Across and
Between Schools, Clusters, Districts, LEAs and Nationally
Session Three
Action Planning
The Planning Process
Whole school development and classroom practice
An action plan for student achievement will
need to include the following:
• Specific targets and success criteria related to pupils’ learning,
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
progress and achievement that are clear and unambiguous;
Teaching and learning strategies related to the ‘Theories of Action’
that are designed to meet the targets;
Professional learning that develops those teacher behaviours
associated with the ‘Theories of Action’
Evidence to be gathered to judge success;
Modifications to management arrangements, particularly the ‘Whole
School Theories of Action’ to enable targets to be met;
Tasks to be done to achieve the targets set and who is responsible
for doing them;
Time it will take;
How much it will cost in terms of the budget, staff time, staff
development and other resources;
Responsibility for monitoring the implementation of the plan –
progress checks;
Evaluating its impact over time – success check.
The relationship between progress and success checks in development
Paulo Freire once said…
“No one educates anyone else
Nor do we educate ourselves
We educate one another in
communion
In the context of living in this world”
Professor David Hopkins
David Hopkins is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Education, University of London,
where until recently, he held the inaugural HSBC iNet Chair in International Leadership.
He is a Trustee of Outward Bound and is Executive Director of the new charity
‘Adventure Learning Schools’. David holds visiting professorships at the Catholic
University of Santiago, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Universities of
Edinburgh, Melbourne and Wales and consults internationally on school reform.
Between 2002 and 2005 he served three Secretary of States as the Chief Adviser on
School Standards at the Department for Education and Skills. Previously, he was Chair of
the Leicester City Partnership Board and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the
University of Nottingham. Before that again he was a Tutor at the University of
Cambridge Institute of Education, a Secondary School teacher and Outward Bound
Instructor. David is also an International Mountain Guide who still climbs regularly in
the Alps and Himalayas. His recent books Every School a Great School and System
Leadership in Practice are published by The Open University Press.
Website: www.davidhopkins.co.uk