Strand 3 of our study includes qualitative work using school case studies. We are interviewing headteachers, professional development leads and teachers to delve deeper into what makes professional development effective in their school from their different perspectives. At this stage of analysis, we are finding some interesting patterns emerging.
Vision and strategic priorities
The case studies suggest that a ‘vision-led’ strategy, as opposed to a ‘reactive’ or ad-hoc response to professional learning, is important. Schools emphasise that they need to see the ‘relevance’ of professional development interventions and activities to their context, departments, teachers’ and pupils’ needs.
While all our cases show that schools do support isolated ‘one-off’ professional development on occasion, if requested and justified as part of teachers’ individual performance management targets, all schools also identify whole-school professional development to meet their strategic priorities.
These priorities can be externally driven – for example, through engagement with research evidence, or anticipating/following an Ofsted inspection. They can also be internally driven – for example, through classroom observations of teacher quality, pupil progress data, and feedback from staff and pupil voice. In some schools, governors have input into professional development direction. In others, a Multi-Academy Trust offers significant professional development provision and support.
The importance of leadership
In schools, leadership emerges as a crucial factor in shaping the way priorities are transformed into professional development action.
However, the approaches of head teachers, Multi-Academy Trust leaders and school-level professional development leads vary considerably. We are exploring different kinds of professional leadership orientation with regard to professional development. Aligned with the literature, we’re finding in particular that an ‘enabling leadership’ approach tends to foster a supportive and collaborative environment that values and encourages professional development.
In most of our case studies, distributed leadership also seems to be an important aspect of effective professional development — where staff are empowered to engage actively with the ‘big picture’ of whole-school professional development programmes, as well as their own professional development targets.
It appears to be important to have one or two senior leaders taking overall strategic and operational responsibility for professional development in school. Working alongside the head and other SLT, these professional development leads are instrumental in mobilising schools’ use of research evidence, by:
- choosing which interventions and approaches best meet school priorities
- communicating a rationale to staff
- coordinating professional development delivery and staff collaboration
- ensuring that changes to practice are embedded and sustained through monitoring and evaluation.
Distributed leadership is emerging as another aspect of effective professional development structures. In other words, middle leaders and other staff are encouraged to contribute to professional development decisions and to take on particular responsibilities in professional development roll-out to ensure sustained change in classroom practice.
Communities
Another theme emerging from our findings is that coaching groups, teaching and learning communities and professional learning communities are important ways to trial, deliver and embed new practices.
These communities, together with an enabling leadership approach, help to develop a culture of trust between staff. This in turn enables effective collaboration, peer support, and constructive risk-taking when trying new things, without fear of failure.
Getting ‘buy in’
An interesting recurring theme coming out of our data is staff ‘buy-in’. All the participants we interviewed mentioned how critical it is to get staff on board with the overall professional development vision and approach, as well as the identified professional development priorities. If staff can’t see the relevance of the priorities or interventions and/or they feel isolated from the strategic decision-making processes, it’s much harder for professional development leads to inspire commitment and motivation.
School leaders recognise the importance of this and have put in play a variety of strategies to tackle the issue. Leaders will often emphasise the research evidence – as well as internal data – in order to justify a new initiative and gain traction with staff. In the words of one head, ‘We try not to use “I think”. It’s “the evidence shows…”.’ Other strategies are grounded in the empowering staff and letting them know they are valued and supported.
We are continuing our analysis and will follow up with further insights as we progress.