The Role, Requisite Knowledge and Skills, and Impact of Expert Literacy Facilitators in School Improvement

• In Event: Addressing Educational Inequality Through School-Based Learning Designs

Abstract

This paper considers both the impact and the nature of support for teacher and leader professional learning in a national Literacy Professional Development project of three cohorts of elementary and middle schools (N = 300), each cohort of two years. Visiting experts (termed facilitators, min N = 23) who formed regionally based teams each worked collaboratively with a small number of schools to bring about enhanced student achievement in literacy through a project-wide inquiry focus to inform needs-based learning and evidence-based practice. All levels of the project from the Ministry to the teachers in school engaged in learning through inquiry into practice. The authors’ participation (as researchers and critical friends) in the ongoing learning of the facilitators provided a lens to explore the key tasks of the role and the knowledge and skills needed to engage in the type of whole school change that characterised the project. Data were obtained from reports of facilitators and the leaders in schools in which they worked. Research data also allow exploration over time of the characteristics of learning conversations these facilitators had with teachers and leaders whose practice they observed. Using a theorised framework, analysis identified where these conversations became more principled and effective. In part these changes were a function of researcher-supported, detailed analysis of their own practice by facilitators.

The impact of the project design principles, and the accompanying acts of facilitation were explored through several studies; accelerated student progress was the major yardstick. Few studies show the impact of the work of facilitation on teacher knowledge and practice but, more significantly, that measure the effect on student learning that is the ultimate aim of professional development (Timperley et al, 2007). Research data from the project permit some inferences to be drawn about specific changes in teacher knowledge and practice (particularly practices associated with success for underachieving students). More significantly, analyses of student progress clearly demonstrated (results replicated over three cohorts) raised achievement (in all cases mean level of achievement met national expectations) and an accelerated rate of progress, particularly for lower achieving students. In writing effect size gains over expectation for each of the three cohorts were 0.79, 0.62, and 0.88, respectively; for the lowest 20 per cent of students, 1.81, 1.93 and 2.07. In reading the effect size gains were 0.28, 0.28 and 0.44 for the three cohorts; for students in the lowest 20 per cent around two to three times the expected gain. Data from the HLM analyses show the effects of facilitation and of individual facilitators. The latter effects were relatively small as might be expected given the considerable amount of personal professional learning these facilitators engaged in over the six year period of the project. Significantly, HLM analyses show that there was, by region, a reduction in variation in achievement amongst schools by around 20 percent.

Authors

• Judy M. Parr, University of Auckland

• Helen S. Timperley, University of Auckland

• Kane Meissel, The University of Auckland