Joint Practice Development:how to combine CPD with innovation

Professor David Hargreaves

(Wolfson College, Cambridge)

Challenge Partners 9 July 2013

Part One

The problem:

knowledge transfer

...from one person to another

...from one situation to another

...from one school to another

...from one country to another

SHARING GOOD PRACTICE

JOINT PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT

= haphazard scattering of pre-defined and well-honed practice to possible adopters

= teachers working closely together to improve their practice beyond present quality,all within a far better distribution system

versus

What causes many attempts at knowledge transfer to fail?

✤ Too little account it taken of the culture in which the practice is embedded, often quite deeply

✤ The practice has to be learned afresh

✤ It is often not a transfer but a transplant or graft

Teachers’ learning a new practice...

is slow

requires trial & errer

needs

needs

so no quick fixes!

so a partner/coach/mentor

so opportunity to fail

so a partner/coach/mentor

Is this built into your school’s CPD?

error

feedback

support

Under what conditions is SGP most likely to work?

✤ When the innovation is easily added to existing practice rather than being a replacement of it

✤ When acceptance of the innovation demands little abandonment of an existing practice

✤ When the introduction of the innovation is supported by mentoring and/or coaching

SGP - largely unilateral, rarely interactiveJPD - always interactive, often bilateral

SGP - rarely innovative for both partiesJPD - always innovative for both parties

Sharing Good Practice versus Joint Practice Development

SGP - supposedly runs down from successJPD - builds up from what is not working

Discontent is the first necessity of progress

I have not failed: I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work

You must learn to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails forward towards success.

In the words of the great innovator, Thomas Edison:

The plan for teaching and learning

Monitor and improvise where the plan doesn't work

Personal tinkering

Tinkering with partners

Systematic innovation with partners

Distributed innovation to partner schools

From common practice to full JPD

A self-improving school system?

...for the rest of one's career

on a systematic basis

Remember...

Being presented with the ‘best practice’ of another teacher or school can easily intimidate and provoke defensiveness

A group of teachers facing up to where they would like to be better practitioners can fire their imagination and empower

What can I offer to someone else?

What do I want to learn from someone else?

Establish pairs/trios for common pursuits/interests or for complementary skills/expertise

How do you initiate and then embed JPD?

Build on reciprocity, not deficit

Conduct audits for JPD matching

What can our school offer to a partner school?

What do I want to learn from a partner school?

What aspect of teaching/learning am I not content with?

What aspect of teaching/learning are we not content with?

In England, for more than two decades, teachers have been required to participate in five in-service training days per year. The research evidence demonstrates that these are rarely well organised, are seen as of little use by participating teachers, and represent a wasted resource.

Brighouse & Moon, 2013

1. Joint professional training day

3. Complementary reciprocal closure

2. Unbundle the day for twilights

Implications for Professional Development Days?

In what ways do you think you need to change how you use CPD or training days?

How do you initiate and then embed JPD?

★ Work with the natural grain - build on individual tinkering and gossip

★ Research Lesson Study - Pete Dudleywww.lessonstudy.co.uk www.lessonresearch.net

★ Slide from SGP to JPD - by coaching!

★ Build a culture of everybody learning

Suggested process for JPD

Select a priority area for development

Select an aspect that is NOT working well

Brainstorm possible repair work

Consult students and recruit to the work

Fail until some breakthrough reached

Challenge to push to further innovation

Transfer through new JPD pods

Create an innovation network

Joint Practice Development:how to combine CPD with innovation

Professor David Hargreaves

(Wolfson College, Cambridge)

Challenge Partners 9 July 2013

Part Two

The nature of innovation

Close to existing practice

Far from existing practice

Minor change Major change

Incremental change

Radical change

How do you initiate and then embed JPDat student level?

Students as co-constructors and co-innovatorsfor better learning and teaching?

Have you developed student voice?

Students as Web 2.0 innovators?

Students as digital mentors and coaches?

Wikipedia

Fanfiction

Web 2.0

User-created content

Harry Potter (635,353)Twilight (207,939)Lord of the Rings (48,276)Percy Jackson and the Olympians (36,519)Hunger Games (30,081)Maximum Ride (17,274)Warriors (15,230)Phantom of the Opera (10,645)Chronicles of Narnia (10,275)Gossip Girl (9,821)Song of the Lioness (8,111)Outsiders (7,642)Mortal Instruments (6,979)Vampire Academy (6,790)Inheritance Cycle (5,442)Artemis Fowl (5,084)Animorphs (4,984)Fairy Tales (4,707)Gallagher Girls (3,766)Clique (3,651)Vampires (3,623)

What will happen when they all have constant access to the internet?

Aged 12-15: 43% have internet access in the bedroom Aged 8-11: 14% have internet access in the bedroom

Cloud computingUniversal handhelds with Net access

tv versus the internet

Aged 4-15 weekly time spent watching TV

15 Hours 37 Minutes - 200717 Hours 34 Minutes - 2011

Aged 5-15 - 91% have home access to the internet

22

Increase in computer and video gaming among 8-11s

While 12-15s are using the internet for social networking sites, 8-11s are more likely to use it for gaming, with 51 per cent saying they play games online on a weekly basis, up from 44 per cent in 2010.

8-11s are also spending more time playing on games players/ consoles compared with 2010 (9 hours 48 minutes – an increase of nearly 2 hours).

Taking computer and video games together, seven in ten (68 per cent) 8-11s say they play games almost every day, up from 59 per cent in 2010.

Computer games Conventional classroom

Activity is usually chosen by learner Activity is rarely chosen by learner

Learner is usually highly active Learner is usually relatively passive

Learner is highly motivated to engage

Collaboration among learners usual

Learner motivation is variable

Increasing level of difficulty sought

Feedback is regular and impersonal

Learner is emotionally involved

Failure is a spur to renewed effort

Competition with others is enjoyable

Collaboration among learners is rare

Increasing level of difficulty avoided

Feedback is irregular and personal

Learner is emotionally uninvolved

Failure is dreaded as demotivating

Competition enjoyed only by winners

Consequential decision making vital Student decision making rarely vital

Can you make classroom activity more like a computer game?

Students as co-constructors and co-innovatorsfor better learning and teaching?

Would the development of pupil voice, and the use of the new

technologies, and the recruitment of pupils as co-innovators affect how

you establish and sustain JPD groups within your school

and then across partner schools?

Jean Rudduck et al (eds) School Improvement: what can pupils tell us, Fulton, 1988

Michael Fielding & Sara Bragg, Students as Researchers, Pearson, 2003

John MacBeath et al, Consulting Pupils, Pearson, 2003

What is the state of the foundations of JPD in your school/department at present?What steps do you need to take to improve JPD within your school/department?What steps do you need to take to improve JPD across partner schools?Do you know how to re-culture your school so that every teacher sees JPD as a naturalway in which to exercise their profession?

JPD built into a teacher’s DNA?JPD teams for school leaders?

Evidence-based practice

Evidence-informed practice

Evidence-generating practice

Three possibilities

In obstetrics… if a new strategy seemed worth trying, doctors did not wait for research trials to tell them if it was all right. They just went ahead and tried it, then looked to see if results improved. Obstetrics went about improving the same way Toyota and General Electric went about improving on the fly, but always paying attention to the results and trying to better them. And that approach worked. Whether all the adjustments and innovation of the obstetrics package are necessary and beneficial may remain unclear… But the package as a whole has made child delivery demonstrably safer and it has done so despite the increasing age, obesity and consequent health problems of pregnant mothers

Atul Gawande, Better: a surgeon’s note on performance, 2007

JPD checklist

1. How many JPD pairs, trios etc now established, and how?

5. How are JPD teams being monitored and evaluated?

6. How do professional training days support JPD teams?

9. How innovative have the JPD teams become?

2. How were JPD topics/themes decided?

4. How were JPD success criteria devised?

8. Is evaluation and challenge an element of JPD work?

10. Are innovation processes and outcomes distributed among partners?

3. Are you building from what is not working/needs to be better?

7. Are pupils contributing to the work of JPD teams?

Dynamic governments remain porous. Renewal rarely comes from within. One of the optical illusions of government is that those inside of it think of themselves as the drivers of change…Yet most far-reaching ideas and changes come from outside… Governments are more often vehicles than initiators. They play a role in embedding these changes but typically they get involved only at a late stage…

Geoff Mulgan

The smarter governments around the world realise that they need to build innovation into their everyday working: through experimental zones and pilots, competitive funds and rewards for promising ideas. And new ideas need time to evolve - preferably away from the spotlight… Most radical change has to start outside government, usually from the bottom rather than the top.

Most innovations are not disruptive. Many ofthe most important…are sustaining innovations that take a good product or service and make it better. Clayton Christensen

Failures should not be confused with mistakes. Stefan Thomke

Management practices that work for incremental innovation often deter radical innovation. Wolfgang Grulke

The challenge is not to avoid taking risks,but to get much, much smarter about how to de-risk grand aspirations.

Gary HamelAll processes designed to generate newideas begin with information from users.

Eric von Hippel

Most radical projects were driven byinspired and determined people who often had to swim against a tide of corporateindifference. Richard Leifer