Collaborative investment in evidence-informed professional development
The Chestnut CE Learning Federation represents a family of three small Church Infant Schools based Hampshire who all work closely together under the leadership of the federation Headteacher and Governing Body. One of the federation’s improvement plan objectives his for it to become an evidence-informed federation where the schools collaborate to:
- rigorously evaluate the quality of the education they offer
- understand what they need to do to improve
- take appropriate evidence-informed action
- evaluate the impact of their actions, enabling them to increasingly achieve together.
To meet this objective, the executive headteacher of the federation devised a model of professional learning where (as of 2016) four of the statutory staff professional development (inset) days allocated to schools in England were dedicated solely to evidence-informed professional development. Using a cycle of enquiry approach, the aim of the model has been to enable teachers to:
- engage collaboratively with research
- identify new practices and to trial these practices
- measure their impact
- roll out the most successful within and across schools in the federation.
Theory of Action
Vitally the approach has also drawn on the concept of theories of action (ToA) (Brown and Graydon, 2017; Hubers, 2016) to help teachers consider how to develop effective evidence-informed teaching practices. Theories of action are perhaps best thought of as a journey guide for impact – ToAs provide the route map that steers educators towards their intended long term outcomes, or the difference an innovation is designed to make for a given group or set of stakeholders. Correspondingly, to help educators reach this long-term vision, ToAs provide the steps that need to occur along the way. Crucially they are a way in which all those involved in research improvement projects can articulate the essence or sequential core elements of what the research initiative is all about and aims to achieve, and in doing so are also able to convey this to others within and beyond the school communities.
The ToA used by the Chestnut Federation comes from Brown and Graydon (2017). Synthesising seminal impact measurement literature (e.g. Earl and Timperley, 2015; Earley and Porritt, 2013; Guskey, 2000; Wenger et al., 2011), Brown and Graydon (2017) suggest that interventions can be conceived as being informed by and affecting change across a number of ‘domains’. These domains are identified as:
- The context in which the school or setting is situated.
- The problem or driver for the intervention.
- Detail on the intervention and how it was intended to result in change.
- Activities and interactions related to the introduction and roll-out of the intervention.
- The learning that results from teachers engaging in these activities/results from these interactions.
- Changes in teachers’ behaviour, and the extent to which something is being used.
- The difference behavioural changes have made to student outcomes.
Along with the Chestnut model, Brown and Graydon’s (2017) model was used to help teachers think about how and why their evidence-informed interventions were likely to lead to improved outcomes for teachers and pupils.