The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Kalvarn Atwal. Dr. Atwal is the executive head teacher of two large primary schools in East London. His research focuses on workplace learning theory and teacher professional learning, and he's the author of the new book, The Thinking School, Developing a Dynamic Learning Community.

[00:35] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:37] SPEAKER_00:

Dr. Atwal, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:39] SPEAKER_01:

I'm very pleased to be with you today.

[00:41] SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you. I'm excited to talk about your work because you have applied workplace learning theory to the question of teacher professional learning. We spend a lot of time and effort and money thinking about student learning in schools. Why has it been so important in your work to focus on teacher learning?

[00:59] SPEAKER_01:

My doctoral research focused on investigating all the factors that impact upon teacher engagement in professional learning. And I come from a very simple premise. The biggest single factor that impacts upon the quality of children's learning experiences in school, and I'm not talking about the home, I'm talking about in school, is the quality of teaching. So as school leaders, if you can create an environment in which teachers you are able to focus on developing teachers to be the best that they can possibly be, that that is the greatest way to impact upon children. And the other argument I'd have is that in the very institutions in which the core business is learning, children's learning, actually in most schools the quality of adult learning is really poor. In terms of looking at workplace learning theories, what I did is I looked at how, for example, when businesses, they create learning organizations where there's continual innovation and growth, and to see how I could transfer some of those workplace learning theories, particularly around communities of practice and situated learning.

[02:05]

into schools so that we can implement a series of formal learning activities with teachers that will then influence the informal learning environment, the amount of learning that takes place through conversation, through social situations between teachers in schools. That was what I was tapping into and that is what I call the dynamic learning community.

[02:24] SPEAKER_00:

I'm excited to talk with you about communities of practice and some of that research that goes back a couple of decades now into how people learn together at work. And I remember reading Etienne Wenger's rather dense book on communities of practice. And I think there's so much there that is just not widely known in the education profession. And it's interesting to realize that other types of organizations outside of K-12 education, are taking workplace learning seriously. Is that right?

[03:00] SPEAKER_01:

That's absolutely right. And Leiv and Wenger, when they first looked at communities of practice in 1991, from a very simple perspective, they're arguing about this concept of legitimate peripheral participation, which is arguing that when a person joins a workplace, they are going to be learning more through situated learning and informal learning than through, for example, formal mentoring. So their argument is if you can create an environment which is supportive to workplace learning and situated learning, then you create a far more dynamic environment in which teachers are constantly engaging in reflection and professional development. Now, what I did is then looked at what strategies we could implement in schools that will enable a more expansive workplace learning environment. And some of the examples in the book in terms of the framework for the dynamic learning community are quite simple and straightforward.

[03:57]

So we encourage teachers to engage in lots of peer learning, peer observation, lesson study, research-based practice, action research, coaching, collaborative planning, so that if you're setting up an environment in which teachers are working in collaboration, then they're far more likely to engage socially in terms of Understanding the learning process and moving on learning. So in other industries in health and social care, I think situated learning, informal learning is more well respected. Whereas in schools, there are very few examples of studies in which they've looked at implementing workplace learning theories into schools.

[04:37] SPEAKER_00:

It is strange that that is the case. I think as educational leaders, we would probably universally agree with what you just said, the importance of professional learning. And yet, I think often teachers would report that rather than professional learning, a lot of what they're asked to do outside of the classroom is just teaching. meetings. So in your research, what is it that distinguishes just, you know, a mandatory meeting, a mandatory training from something that actually produces professional learning?

[05:07] SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So there's a couple of points there. First of all, that most, um, learning environments in schools are very hierarchical so often it's much more about management rather than leadership the head teacher the principal might tell the vice principals what the curriculum needs to be the vice principals then tell the teams and departments what they need to do and check them to do it and what that doesn't do is create a very expansive learning environment and Often the learning activities that teachers engage in are very short term. So you might have a meeting on maths after school one week and then another meeting on a different aspect of the curriculum. What I would argue within the dynamic learning community is the power of learning over time. And if for quality change to take place in schools, teachers need to have the opportunity to reflect over time and to engage in research.

[06:04]

So when I first went into a school that was downgraded by Ofsted, I took a very different model of professional development and I told teachers that we were going to have one theme that we would be investigating over a single term. So each week we would build on our understanding and we would engage in research, simple research, trial changes in our classroom, engage in professional dialogue about those changes, go into each other's classrooms and watch teachers' trialling practices. What that then does is then that empowers each professional to reflect upon their practice in a way they wouldn't otherwise do with their formal professional meetings. And if we want quality change, teachers need to lead that change. It can't be driven from the top. um and in a way in which innovation is encouraged in business and you have to continually improve i don't think we do that enough in schools and it's also very top driven rather than from the practitioners engaging in deep reflection and research and working together to improve outcomes for children that's where that's where the dynamic effect is

[07:11] SPEAKER_00:

And you said a word there that's easy to gloss over, but the word deep. And speaking of change efforts or learning efforts being driven from the top down too often, I think one of the things that we're guilty of as senior leaders is trying to drive too much at once so that that deep learning becomes impossible again. And it's interesting as I've spoken with a number of people who lead schools similar to yours in terms of context, the presence of deep learning to me is so closely associated with patience and with protecting the time for that deep work. Why do we need that time for depth, that time for thinking? Because I think in so many, especially in public schools, especially in more urban schools, it's just initiative after initiative after initiative.

[08:03]

We've got constant, we're booked wall to wall with new professional development, and there's never time set aside for that deeper thinking. What's going on in our profession that has created this

[08:15] SPEAKER_01:

I think, Jasmin, you hit it absolutely spot on because it is, certainly in schools in this country, we have the pressures of an inspection regime and it leads to pressure on leadership and absolute initiative overload. And what we're not doing is firstly not giving our practitioners time and space to breathe. and they in turn are not then giving their children time and space to breathe. Now we work on the mantra that creativity comes from successive failures. And if you're prepared to fail, you need to be able to take risks. And we need to free our teachers to consider learning over time.

[08:54]

And that includes making mistakes. When I first went into a school under pressure, I was discouraged from doing that. But what I would understand, when practitioners engage in research, they gain a key skill that you can't buy off the shelf, and that's confidence. not enough time is given for teachers to engage in deep reflection upon their practice so they actually begin to understand what works in the classroom and why it works less than two percent of teachers in the uk have a master's degree Every teacher in the thinking school is supported to do a master's. Why? Because when you become a master of education, you've engaged in a range of research in the classroom, you have a clearer confidence and understanding of what works for you in that classroom with that context of children, rather than being told, right, this is a new initiative and it's worked somewhere else in the world and we're all going to do it and we're all going to follow it like sheep and I don't want anyone to question it.

[09:52]

By creating thinking practitioners, They are not relying on leaders to tell them what to do. They are bringing their brain to work every day. They are questioning. They are challenging. So a very different environment. We operate a completely distributed leadership model in which my job is to encourage every member of staff to see themselves as a leader.

[10:11]

Because even if you're a teaching assistant and you're working with one child, At that moment, you are leading their learning and you need to be leading their learning in a way in which you are making decisions, not just completing something because someone's asked you to do it.

[10:26] SPEAKER_00:

I love that focus on decision making and on the recognition that as practitioners, teachers are making tons and tons and tons of decisions every day. even about how to implement the somewhat top-down reforms that might be in place. And I think senior leaders, sometimes we get a little bit arrogant about our ability to actually make decisions on everyone else's behalf, and we forget that no decision really reaches students without teachers making decisions about whether to and how to implement even the most top-down kind of reform effort. I'm so impressed with the professional respect, the level of respect shown for teachers by seeing them as professionals and as key decision makers. What do you think has happened in our profession that has taken away that view that teachers are professionals who do make important decisions?

[11:23]

Why have we skewed the decision making so sharply toward administrators? And what do we need to do to get back to that vision that you're describing?

[11:30] SPEAKER_01:

Well, first of all, I think that schools are often very well managed. But management is about creating a structure. Now, leadership is very different. And I think there's definitely issues around the professionalism of teachers and the empowerment of teachers. Now, an interesting statistic which I hadn't thought about before is every person who's in a leadership position in our school was in the classroom when the school was told it was requiring improvement, when the school was told it wasn't good enough by Ofsted. And we lose too many professionals because we think that we are not creating an environment in which they have the time and space to grow and develop.

[12:12]

By empowering teachers, we involve them in decision making at the whole school level. by giving them opportunities to engage in research and deep professional learning activities, by developing them as coaches, by enabling them to do peer learning, by working in a distributed leadership model, those teachers have to make decisions they are having to bring their brains to work and because of that you are going to get more innovation you are going to get more collaboration and you are going to get practitioners who have greater confidence and understanding of the practices that that actually work you talked about teachers making thousands of decisions every day Even the most well-meaning teachers are making those decisions based on their tacit knowledge of what they think works and what may be worked. The difference is, are they getting opportunities to engage in research

[13:05]

to consider why something works. What happens when you become research informed? You become more confident and you are able to self-coach yourself to continually improve. And you're talking about a very, very different learning environment. When people visit our school, the word they tend to use is unique. However, it doesn't have to be unique because the reason I wrote the book was that people can pick this up and they can run with it.

[13:33]

But it's leaders who make the decisions that impact upon the professional learning experiences in schools. And what we're not doing is we're not developing leaders with expertise in leading professional learning. The term I use in the book is learning focused leadership, where leaders are focused on A, their own continual learning and development, not just doing what they've been doing for 20 years. And B, they judge the quality of their leadership directly from the learning outcomes of the children. Obviously, we talked about peer learning, we talked about lesson study, we talked about engagement in action research, collaborative planning, they're fairly straightforward. One of the big ones is that we have a focus on coaching.

[14:15]

So we develop every member of staff even if they're working in the office, as a coach. And what that then does is that builds capacity across the school so that we believe that the collective wisdom of everybody working together as coaches is going to be far more powerful than people working individually. So that's a big one that we focus on.

[14:37] SPEAKER_00:

Dr. Outwell, in the book, you talk about the importance of teacher action research, which was a term that anyone who's been around the profession a while has probably heard over the years. But I think there's this perception in our profession that researchers are important people who work at universities. And as educators who work in schools, we should just be the ones who read that research and apply it. You describe a model for teacher-driven action research that I think is very powerful, but a lot of people might be suspicious of teacher-driven research in the sense that maybe it's just people's opinion, or maybe it's just a matter of trying something once and then deciding that it doesn't work, right? We've all seen that happen where people reject research and just kind of use their own personal experience as a way to kind of resist change.

[15:31]

But you see enormous potential in teacher action research. Tell us what that means and what you found.

[15:36] SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so from our perspective, teachers' engagement in action research is both essential for growth and learning and development and impact upon the children, and secondly, extremely powerful. And everything that you have said is absolutely spot on, because as an academic researcher, as a doctoral researcher for eight years, I would argue that there is a lot of snobbery in the research fraternity regarding practitioner research. Now the distinction is the difference between traditional academic research which is focusing on gaining new knowledge and gaining new understandings and practitioner action research which is not focused on developing new knowledge it's focused on developing practice and that is the key distinction so um if if we want if you want quality change to take place in a classroom and i'm not talking about on off the shelf take a strategy do that and i want to see you doing it every day if you want teachers to engage in

[16:46]

thinking deeply about their practice then you have to give them certain ingredients and one of those is enabling them to understand the action research process which is at its very simplest engaging with a piece of reading even if it's a summary report or three four pages making the decision to trial something in your classroom trialing it over a period of weeks taking the time to reflect in a number of different ways and using that as a cyclical process implement sustained change. Now, if you are surrounded by a group of teachers who are all engaging in collaborative action research related to the context of their children, the job of leaders is to make it as easy as possible for them to do that. After a while, they develop skills.

[17:36]

My research showed that engagement in action research develop personal skills and develop the skills of reflection, which enable teachers to constantly be growing and developing. So you've got two strands to that. It changes your your personality and your reflective lens in the classroom. And B, you are trying things which are making a difference, even if you're trying things which don't go right or how you expected them to. It all leads to learning. And that is essential to creating a powerful learning community.

[18:10]

And I wouldn't be in every school that I've gone in in the first term. I've got teachers to engage in collaborative action research and made it as easy as possible for them. So as much as I understand the snobbery out there, I think it's a fantastic way of developing teaching practice, knowledge and understanding. Absolutely.

[18:29] SPEAKER_00:

And what would you say it is that distinguishes action research that leads to professional learning from just implementing everything we're expecting to implement and seeing what sticks, hoping that things work? What is it that really generates that learning? What are teachers doing to step back and take that researcher's lens on their own work and on their own practice and actually learn from it? Because I can certainly remember times in my career when I was doing lots of stuff, I was staying busy, I was trying new things, but I would be hard pressed to argue that I was actually learning from it. What is it that creates those conditions for a teacher learning from their own action research?

[19:13] SPEAKER_01:

I think it's very clear that with action research the reflective cycle firstly gives greater opportunities to step back and look at different ways of the impact of what you've implemented. Now we go through initiatives and are we really taking the time to think what has been the impact of that initiative? What difference is it making? uh what we do with the the research cycle is we take opportunities to see and evaluate the impact of that change upon children learning me we may ask someone else to come in and observe and have a look at aspects of that in through a peer learning process we may undertake a lesson study which essentially is a is a collaboratively designed research lesson but the key ingredient is time and reflection and trialing and changes to practice

[20:07]

and working that through a cycle of time over 10 weeks, 12 weeks, which will then enable practitioners to be very clear on why something is successful and why it makes a difference. I don't think teachers are given time. I think they are told to do things and they are told to stick with it even if they're not working. That leads to resentment, discontent, and a lack of awareness and understanding of why something is making a difference. The other thing that the action research will give is the discipline. that you're not trialing too many changes at any given time.

[20:41]

You're also engaging with piece of reading and reflecting on what research is telling us. You're also collaborating with colleagues who may be doing similar things in their classroom. Put all those ingredients together and you're far more likely to get to a point in which teachers are able to decide what makes a difference and implement quality change. You then would then be in a position to decide on aspects like the curriculum or teaching and learning, rather than waiting for leaders to make those decisions for you. So my job is to create an environment in which, let's imagine if you're leading a school where you've got all your teachers are masters level researchers, Imagine the impact that the collective impact that is going to have on your children. And so the perspective is the more I can enable my staff team to grow, learn and develop, the greater that the learning outcomes will be for our children over time.

[21:36]

It was actually during my doctoral research that for the first two years, all I was doing was recycling my understanding of professional development activities that have been commonplace in school. So only in my third year, when I was introduced to to the workplace learning theories by people like venga it just blew my mind um so even looking at like hairdressing salons and how they are far more effective learning environments than schools Because in the hairdressers, they are watching each other cut hair. Everybody is engaged in creative research through the latest styles and magazines. They can cut hair together. They engage in dialogue. They have a passion.

[22:16]

They have an energy. And yet in schools, what we most often see is teachers working in isolation behind closed doors. muddling through with perhaps the strategies they were taught on their training course or what they think works without any reflection or deeper professional learning and that to me is fundamental in us reconceptualizing what a we think the role of the teacher should be which should be part teacher part researcher right throughout their career and i think you're more likely to see that with surgeons and consultants we wouldn't expect the surgeon to be using the same strategy that they learned on their medical course 30 years ago And the other one is we need to reconceptualise the role of leaders in schools and that the greatest priority beyond obviously keeping the children safe should be leading the professional learning of staff at the school.

[23:08]

So I would look at my staff team in the same way I want the teachers to look at their children. Where is each person in their professional development, in their learning? And how can I enable them to be challenged in such a way that takes into account what they already know, but gives them creative opportunities to continue to learn so that they're even better?

[23:28] SPEAKER_00:

Dr. Atwell, if people want to connect with you online, where's the best place for them to find you?

[23:32] SPEAKER_01:

I do tend to go on Twitter. So my Twitter handle is at Thinking School 2.

[23:37] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is The Thinking School, Developing a Dynamic Learning Community. Dr. Atwell, thank you so much for joining us on Principal Center Radio.

[23:45] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Justin. Thanks for inviting me.

[23:47] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.