Managers as learning leaders: some practical activities for team meetings

Curriculum managers and programme leaders in the FE sector are evolving into learning leaders and finding that they are expected to take a greater role in improving T&L in their areas. For many, it is a great challenge to find time with their team to share practice and stimulate ideas about how to improve the learning experience and performance of the students. For a wider exploration of this role and some practical tools, you could book in for my training day on May 23^rd 2013. See below for booking information:

http://www.sectortraining.com/events/207

I’ve listed below 7 activities that last between 15 and 20 minutes, so that they can be fitted into short curriculum or programme team meeting slots, if CPD sessions are in short supply

1. A quick good practice slot with teachers in groups discussing one thing that has worked well in a lesson recently or one good approach for doing induction etc. Ideas can be captured on flipcharts and added to an online good practice bank. This works best if the slot is focused on one small thing as the time slot may be short
2. Someone who has attended a training session recently disseminates key ideas from it and adds resources to an online area or folder of shared resources
3. A teacher gives a 10 minute micro teach slot showing a great piece of practice from an observed lesson. Teachers can then discuss how this might be useful for them or how they address that aspect of T&L in different ways
4. A visitor from another team shares their approaches to a given topic, e.g. assessment, marking work etc
5. Show the team one useful online resource that they may want to try out and agree to report back on it by a certain date
6. Peer coaching slot with prompt questions; teachers work in pairs to discuss a couple of pertinent questions and collate ideas on flipcharts/ post it notes, e.g. Which approaches worked last year for getting students’ work in on time? How can we embed those approaches into this course?
7. Build in regular reflective discussion of teaching and learning issues. Tell them beforehand to bring along ideas, to give them chance for reflection e.g. How can we push up achievement in that level? How can we support learners with difficulties/disabilities more effectively?
8. If you have more time available, dedicate one full meeting to a theme, e.g. a workshop on assessment methods or how people do induction or how they mark written work. Some colleges fit this into the meeting schedule once very half term as a minimum

Peer observation: a case study from a London college

Joanne Miles met Deborah Eagle from Southgate College in 2010 when Deborah attended Joanne’s training day on using project management skills to deliver Supported Experiments action research projects. Since then, Joanne has been supporting Deborah with training and project planning related to developing the coaching capacity at the college.

Deborah Eagle was the Professional Development Centre (PDC) coordinator at Southgate College at this time and was involved from the project outset, ensuring that the initial planning stages of the peer observation were thorough and underpinned with project management tools and techniques.

Peer observation at Southgate College by Deborah Eagle: a case study

Context: Cross-College peer observation was centrally organised by the PDC in our pilot year 09/10. For years, staff had been calling for greater communication and collaboration across teams. Lecturers were feeling ‘judged’ and ‘isolated’ in their work; those stuck on a grade 3 didn’t know why, and didn’t know how to make the necessary changes. The College observation profile was static: a ‘satisfactory’ 69% of lessons were graded good or better at the project outset.

Project set-up: 30 lecturers had achieved an outstanding grade in 08/09. As an incentive to participate in the pilot, Senior Management agreed to an observation holiday for grade 1 lecturers, who were then assigned to teaching triangles. The ten groups of three, as far as possible, comprised an ESOL/ Basic Skills lecturer partnered with colleagues from vocational areas. This was a successful strategy to promote greater linkage between SfL and vocational delivery, and led naturally to the development of embedded resources at the end of the project.

Design rationale: why the focus on grade 1 lecturers?

1. We needed to build confidence as well as capacity in the College. A high proportion of participants did go on to become Teaching and Learning Coaches and mentors as we’d hoped.
2. We also wanted to draw on the expertise and experience in that pool to enhance our bank of best practice resources. A co-produced resource (Good Practice Guides, video demonstrations, Staff Development sessions, posters, readable assignments/ worksheets etc.) was the stated outcome of the project.
3. Additionally, the triangles were committed to observe and be observed by colleagues graded 3 and 4 i.e. they became teaching squares. This gave our best practitioners an opportunity to develop their own feedback and observation skills, and grade 3 and 4 lecturers had easy access to modelling and support. I was mindful to attach grade 3/4s to a triangle that had at least one grade 1 lecturer teaching the same or a similar subject. Feedback from grade 3/4 participants was unanimously positive: their progression to a grade 2 on re-observation was 63% in 09/10 and 91% in 10/11.

Guidance and monitoring:The triangles were largely self-monitoring and the entire project relied heavily on the professionalism and collegiality of participants. Mandatory paperwork was kept to a minimum. All participants were required to complete a brief Record of Observation at the end of the process for tracking and feedback purposes.

The initial briefing pack contained guidance on giving solution focused feedback, as well as structuring proformas that encouraged reflection and developed observation skills. These were used as the basis for professional conversation and were exchanged between participants only.

Results, and the impact of the collaborations, were evidenced by the high quality and usefulness of the resources that were finally produced and, of course, by the College lesson observation profile: 73% good or better in 09/10 and 84% in 10/11.

Benefits: Great resources – uploaded to the College VLE and broadcasted at an end-of-year ‘Cheese and Wine Showcase’. The event also served to welcome and positively orientate the next year’s participants. The risk of removing grade 1 lecturers from formal observation systems for a period has been rewarded by an improved grade profile, the development of our coaching and mentoring capacity and of productive cross-college relationships, as the comments below indicate:

‘This was an excellent opportunity to observe exceptional teaching, create cross-college links and be exposed to a variety of new approaches and ideas ‘

‘Very useful to observe and be observed in a much less judgemental way, without the grading pressure which normally affects both observer and observed.’

‘The process treated lecturing staff like professionals and trusted us to coordinate, meet and assess.’

Challenges: The second year of the scheme ran smoothly as a result of lessons learned in the pilot. The biggest challenge in the first year was around attitudes. ‘Imposter syndrome’ – a fear of being found out and revealed as useless – is a very real thing, and apparently common amongst perfectionist teachers! In the initial briefing, reservations manifested as a lack of trust in the confidentiality of the process and as resistance at times when peer observation seemed to be involved. By the mid-point meeting, the critical mass was positive and any issues raised were operational and easily dealt with. The end-of-year cheese and wine event was a celebratory affair; the very small number of lecturers who had remained negative throughout the process didn’t attend.

There will always be some resistance to new ways of doing things, but the following tips may help to mitigate this in the planning:

• Emphasise at the outset the gains to be had for individuals, teams and the wider College. It helps to be able to link project aims to what staff need and value, as well as to strategic priorities.
• Decide whether you want to involve grade 1 Curriculum Managers / HoDs in the scheme. We included HoDs in the pilot, but decided against it the following year as it was intimidating for some.
• Refer to participants’ timetables when allocating pairs/ triangles/ squares to reduce the risk of mismatch.
• Blind copy the group before first meeting. Staff in the pilot were touchy about being ‘named’, even in invitation.
• Allow an early opt-out opportunity for staff that are not keen to participate. Whilst I am in two minds about this (it was important and exciting to see attitudes change over the course of the year), a determinedly negative individual can affect productivity and professionalism with consequences for others. In the second year of the scheme, staff could opt-out and return to the formal observation system if preferred. No one chose to do this, which helped to set a positive and committed tone from the start.

Conclusion: Peer observation is part and parcel of the way we do things at Southgate now. Alongside the centrally organised scheme, it is occurring informally at team level and through voluntary access to the coaching service, which offers peer observation and developmental feedback prior to formal graded observation. To work with our Supported Experiments this year, we will utilise the peer observation windows (red sign/ green sign) model Joanne described in the previous article to involve all lecturing staff in short spurts of observing activity. Teachers want and need to talk about teaching and learning. Peer observation stimulates real, uncensored conversations, and is a powerful way to reinvigorate tired classroom practices. I’ll leave the last word to a participant:

‘The process was stress-free and productive. I felt that I was observed teaching 3 very real lessons, without the artifice of straining for perfection. It was refreshing to be observed by a Grade 1 teacher from outside my area of the College, and whose ideas I had not previously heard.’

 

Coaching teachers after a grade 3 or 4 observation: challenges and tips

There is a widespread perception that the new Common Inspection Framework (2012) has raised the bar for standards in T&L. Colleagues in the FE sector are mentioning the fact that in many cases, an old framework grade 2 lesson will now be graded 3, due to the greater attention to the learner and learning and the more robust focus on whether improvement work is having an impact on achievement. Consequently, in some colleges there are higher numbers of teachers being graded 3 or 4 this year.

Mentoring or coaching staff in this position can be a challenging process, due to the attitudes and opinions below. It is sensitive work and requires a wide-ranging skill set and thoughtful, sensitive approach from the coach/mentor.

Attitudes and opinions

• Teachers can feel that they should not have been given the grade 3 or 4 because they dispute the comments from the observer and their judgment on what happened in the lesson
• Some people feel the person who observed them was not an appropriate observer as they did not have a related teaching background
• Teachers who have previously gained a grade 2 or 1 react to the implication that somehow they have somehow “deteriorated” as a practitioner since their last observation
• Some people dispute the validity of the whole observation process, feeling it cannot accurately represent their practice
• Others feel that the standard expected was just unreasonably high and that it was not realistic to demand this from teachers

The situation is an emotive one and it is easy to empathise with the teachers’ reaction, when you consider the complexities of graded observation cycles. Coaches and mentors often note these reactions and behaviours:

Reactions and Behaviours

• Teachers are resentful, angry or outraged and want to get it out of their systems: ” It wasn’t fair… I don’t accept the feedback…..that observer wasn’t able to judge me fairly as he had no idea about my subject area“
• Teachers can be demoralised and deflated and show a low level of confidence in their own teaching “I did really badly in that lesson…. I think I just messed up all my questioning as I felt so distracted and stressed”
• Teachers can be quietly resistant to the whole development process after observation: “Yes, that does sound like a good idea to try” while secretly having no engagement with the conversation and no intention of changing anything
• Teachers can be open to the process and see it as a developmental opportunity: “Actually, that has been an issue for me and I’d like to work on it…”

Pointers and tips for coaches and mentors

For coaches and mentors who are supporting staff in these difficult situations, it can be helpful to:

• Stay focused on the fact that you are supporting the teacher and trying to develop their practice, be it in relation to the points on the feedback form but also more broadly and deeply. Don’t reduce your work to a tick box exercise on the areas for development that are written down; try to engage the teacher in an honest discussion about areas that challenge them and their learners. Make this a real opportunity for reflective dialogue and growth for the teacher and respect them as a professional, with resources and skills to bring to this process.
• Stay away from judging the observer and getting involved with the teacher’s (possibly justified!) rants about the unfairness of the feedback. You weren’t there and so you can’t judge what happened in the lesson. If the written feedback report is very vague or too general, you may need more info from the observer and it is useful to be clear on whether you need to go through the Quality Manager or to the observer directly for this. If the teacher totally disputes the grade, signpost the process of challenging it formally as this is not your role
• Give the teacher space to let off steam as when a teacher feels furious about the grade, it can take several meetings for them to be able to focus on a developmental conversation. Sometimes the coach needs to just listen, show empathy without stoking the fire, and then re-iterate their role in the process. Watch for the energy change or language shift that shows it might be a good time to re-direct the conversation onto developmental topics.
• Be careful about wanting to solve it all for them and flooding them with suggestions and materials, because you feel sympathetic and want to help! Your role is to encourage reflection, extend thinking and application, encourage experimentation, reduce blocks and enable the teacher to think their way through the process in their own way. If you clone yourself by providing lesson plans and handouts, there is a real danger of little development for that teacher and the risk of them performing unnaturally in the re-observation, as it is not their stuff or their style! When you prepare for your coaching session, spend some time on thinking up some meaty questions to help them think deeply. Plan the wording, to get them really clear before the session.
• Try to find real areas of interest for that teacher early on so they can own the sessions and start to feel more invested in the process. Sometimes a quick peer observation (i.e. you watch them teach and they watch you teach) is a good way to build trust and start a real conversation about learning.
• Ensure you are clear on what you should be noting down in your coaching sessions and where and who will see these written minutes as confidentiality is key to trust building. Check this with your leader.
• Realise that in some cases people are not ready or willing to engage in this process with you or anyone. This can mean they are evasive, miss meetings, block communication with you. If this happens, talk quickly to your coaching leader for confidential advice, as it often needs to be addressed by the coaching leader or manager instead of the coach.
• Watch other more experienced coaches leading a session with a coachee. You can learn a lot from their choices within the situation, in terms of what to say and what to ask and what they choose to ignore.

Are graded lesson observations fit for purpose?

I am becoming more and more convinced that the role of graded lesson observations in the FE sector should be re-considered. In many colleges, they are the main measure of teacher performance and a key catalyst for staff development. Yet the process of graded observation itself is riddled with weaknesses and the process of assessing and developing teachers is more complex one than graded cycles suggest.

My niggling suspicion is that colleges are attached to it because it can create reams of data and trackable steps that feed the auditing monsters of the sector. It allows quality teams to show that they are “taking action towards improvement.” Yet how confident are we that the graded observation model is the appropriate tool for assessing the quality of T&L? What evidence do we have that the use of this model leads to sound and lasting improvements?Here are just a few of the many concerns I have about this model.

The snapshot: Teaching is a complex, rich craft, more art than science. The one-off snapshot nature of the graded observation means that there is very limited evidence to form a valid judgment about a teacher’s skills and approach. Too often teachers are labelled as “grade 3 practitioners” off the back of a one-hour observation and action planned within an inch of their lives as a result. This may be entirely inappropriate for them, plus a waste of valuable development resources, as the issues arising in that single lesson may not be the most significant ones for developing that teacher’s practice. And that is to say nothing of the problems created by observers with poor skills in the role.

We need a much broader review of a teacher’s practice before forming any judgment of their strengths and areas for development. A combination of short regular learning walks, 121s with teachers, feedback from learners, a look at achievement data over time, videoed lessons with reflections from the teacher, lesson plan, SoW and course file reviews would tell us much more than a graded observation alone.

If we are to make this commitment to a more thorough and thoughtful approach to graded observation, it might mean adopting a more differentiated approach with our resources:
1. A cycle of graded observation for each team followed by a year of other development work on experimental, innovative work and sharing good practice, so that there is space for growth and enough observers to go round

2. Targeting graded observation on the basis of need, e.g. prioritizing graded observations early in the year for teams or individuals whose performance is a concern due to student achievement etc; waiting till later in the year to do the areas with a strong profile or even choosing to omit them for a year while other dissemination activities are focused on in those areas. People can still be developed without being measured.

Hoop jumping: it is widely known that many teachers find graded lesson observations stressful, time-consuming and a distraction from the main business of working with learners. As graded observations have become a key part of performance management, there is the feeling of being judged, the fear of failing the test, the awareness of a great power imbalance in this interaction. In the new Gove universe, this pressure is likely to increase.

There can be a range of negative effects of the graded process, such as teachers trying to second guess how to get the magic grade 2, taking a checklist approach to bringing in the “hot” methods of the moment in order to get through the assessment and therefore not delivering the kind of lesson they generally give. It is all about hoop jumping and not about reflection and genuine professional review.

In preparing for the lesson, there is often too much focus on paperwork and not enough thought about delivery to those learners for that specific lesson because of the sense of surveillance involved. The graded process can throw the teacher off their stroke and lead to behaviour that is not representative of their practice. How many of us have had an observed lesson where we honestly felt we didn’t react to learners in natural ways, due to the presence in the corner?

So what exactly are we observing here? I think we are rarely seeing an authentic example of classroom practice for the practitioner. Yet we form a serious professional judgment with ramifications in this way.  We need to look at ways of getting a more authentic and sophisticated view of how teachers interact with learners and plan their learning. This is a delicate operation if we are to get enough information to form a more accurate picture of the teacher without them feeling harrassed and policed. If we are truly committed to getting a more rounded and accurate view of T&L in our colleges, we need to take this challenge seriously. This would involve a dialogue in colleges about how best to do this with resources redirected to service the enhanced model and staff opinions canvased at all levels. In my view, we should be actually asking if graded cycles are what we need or whether dispensing with them could offer some very positive benefits and better deployment of resources. More of this heretical view in a later blog….!

The follow up: I am involved in training observers in developmental feedback skills and it is apparent that many lack the skills needed to write useful, clear, insightful reports and carry out a professional dialogue in which there is reflection and teacher-led development. It appears to me that this is not their fault as in general, they have been trained by Ofsted trainers to focus attention on assessing the standard of the lesson instead of communicating about how to develop and improve it.

I often see a “grade and run” approach, where assessment and measuring is the primary focus, as if the written report with nice, comfortable numbers all over it, will ” improve ” the teacher almost by magic. From my friends in Quality teams, I am hearing that this process often doesn’t deliver.

I see many colleges providing scant follow-up after an observed lesson, which I am afraid shows a lack of professional respect for the notion of quality improvement and the individual involved.

There is nothing sound about this. At best it is dubious; at worst I think we are wasting valuable time and effort on a process that is not fit for purpose.  Some colleagues from the sector have told me they feel the action plan is a bureaucratic form of lip service to the process, rarely followed up with time and effort spent with the teacher.

On a much more encouraging note, I see positive development happening in colleges where coaching conversations are enabled and resourced through time and roles. They can happen at peer level with trained T&L coaches and through management interactions when curriculum managers are trained to use coaching approaches in meetings and 121s.  OCVC have shared their experiences of the benefits of coaching within the graded process through a video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz73Q14cJRk&feature=youtu.be

Encouraging teachers to reflect, think differently and embrace new approaches should be part of an appropriate follow-up process, and coaching approaches can create depth and momentum in these conversations. After any observation, especially one where different sources of info have been triangulated, the appropriate actions may involve peer observation, lesson plan reviews, visits to another college, action research or reflection after videoing your own lessons. All of these activities can be enhanced by a skilled coach.

In conclusion, I think we should have some robust conversations to interrogate our graded observation processes and stop swallowing the model whole. We need to seek out reflections from a range of stakeholders about how well they work and reflect on ways to enhance them. We need to integrate them with a richer and more sophisticated approach to action planning and weave in powerful coaching approaches. We could also do well to question whether we need them at all.

Putting the focus on teaching and learning: training day in May

There are still some places available on my next training day on May 23rd in London. It  will give managers, coaches and other CPD staff a practical set of approaches and activities to accelerate improvement in teaching and learning.

Here is the link:

http://www.sectortraining.com/events/207

It’s an engaging, interactive day with plenty of chances to network as well….. this is what previous delegates thought about it:

Practical on the spot advice from an approachable and knowledgeable facilitator

Ideas for moving CPD/improvement on, research base for ideas/strategies… and activities and discussions were focused, short and stimulated thinking

Clear, relevant and well paced delivery with a well organised content

It was an opportunity to network/gain new ideas about embedding T&L further through coaching

I valued being able to reflect on current practice, being able to share practice with other delegates

The challenges of performance management in the FE sector

Performance management is the latest hot topic in the FE sector. The new Common Inspection Framework (June 2012) seems to have been a catalyst for this, with its consistent mention of the need to measure and improve the performance of staff. To be graded outstanding in leadership and management:

“Leaders and managers take actions that focus relentlessly on improving teaching, learning and assessment, which are likely to be outstanding and at least consistently good.  Professional development is underpinned by highly rigorous performance management that encourages, challenges and supports staff to improve” (p.59)

For lots of practical ideas and some thought-provoking discussion on this topic, I hope you will attend my training event in April 2013.

For event information click here

S438 Managing Performance letter & booking form 2

I would say that there is a need for us to put more attention on performance management to support wider work on T&L improvement. As professional educators we need to keep learning, keep improving, to benefit the students. We need to be engaged with and committed to improving our performance as teachers and managers. Professional development isn’t a dirty word….But we also need to be cautious about a knee jerk reaction to the CIF, leading to the wholesale adoption of punitive, inappropriate frameworks from outside FE, as performance management in our sector must take on board the specific challenges and realities in our context.

In my experience, and from conversations with the 30 colleges I’m currently supporting, many institutions are a world away from having an effective performance management framework in place. Here are some of the issues I’m referring to:

1. HR and Professional Development functions have no clear, consistent definition of what performance management is and how it works in context. Managers have not received adequate briefing and training on how to do this effectively, yet it is a key part of their line management role and it is assumed they know how to do it. We don’t seem to have looked at the commercial world to pick up good practice, learn from what they have tried and formulate our own model of performance management in education.

2. Managers are managing performance or not, in vastly different ways, which can lead to staff not being supported and developed equally. In the worst case scenarios, it can lead to staff being bullied. It can also leave managers open to claims of discrimination or bullying that may be unfounded.

3. Some colleges have an appraisal process involving performance indicators and targets. Many people have told me that this can become over bureaucratic, with little relevance to everyday life in work, with targets only being reviewed a year after the initial appraisal.

4. Few colleges have competency frameworks in place against which performance in a role can be measured. Job and role descriptions are often too broad to be useful and can get out of date with no revision process in place. Is this something we need to develop or are there more appropriate ways to talk about and assess performance?

5. Consistent poor performance isn’t tackled quickly or thoroughly enough. Many managers have spoken to me about teachers whose students under achieve year after year, whose observation grades are consistently poor and whose de-motivated mindset has a negative impact on teams. As a development professional I know these issues can have complex, varied causes and solutions. I think all teachers should be entitled to agile, flexible support and development within a framework that makes clear what is expected of them as a professional. The framework should be fair and reasonable for a teacher in their context.

6. Many colleges do not have a standardised process for developing and supporting teachers who get a grade 3 or 4 on observation or who have other issues at work. Since grade 3 is Requires Improvement in the new Ofsted universe, this needs a swift shift of approach for colleges from the old grade 3, framed as Satisfactory.

7. Some colleges are realising that managing performance shouldn’t just be a deficit model focused on pushing up “poor performers.”  Motivating, engaging and developing strong performers should be a key part of the wider vision for improvement otherwise we are losing all the potential benefits for staff and learners.

So, I think there is much to do in this area and many meaty discussions needed, to help us create a fair, practical, workable framework for performance management in our colleges. For ideas on how to do this plus the chance to discuss with colleagues in the sector, I hope you will join me for a training event on April 25th 2013. Click here for information:

S438 Managing Performance letter & booking form 2

I’ll end with some questions to ponder and discuss in your context:

• How do you know what good performance looks like in each role in your college?
• How are expectations and targets communicated to staff and discussed with them in practical, reflective ways as part of an ongoing, fair and professional dialogue about their performance?
• How effectively do your systems and processes capture useful evidence of performance management?

 

Managing Performance to Improve Teaching & Learning – a Toolkit of Activities and Strategies for Managers and Coaches Thursday 25th April 2013 – Central London

Click S438 Managing Performance letter & booking form 2 for information