Local Learning Landscapes for Teacher Professional Development in England

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Transforming Educational Systems to Support Organizational Learning and Improvement: A Cross-National Comparison of Opportunities and Obstacles (Table 36)

Abstract

Objectives:
Ensuring that all teachers engage in high-quality Continuing Professional Development and Learning (CPDL) is a priority in school systems worldwide, given this is associated with improved pupil outcomes (Cordingley, 2015). Meanwhile, in many systems, school leaders have been granted increased autonomy, including responsibility for CPDL. In these contexts, traditional place-based providers of CPDL, such as local authorities/districts, have been rolled back, while schools draw on a wider marketplace of provision (Lubienski, 2014). This more fractured landscape raises important questions around how to ensure quality, equity and coherence across local landscapes for teacher CPDL.
England’s system of 21,000 schools is experiencing fragmentation and partial reformation - evolving from place-based oversight by 152 Local Authorities (LAs), to non-place-based oversight by around 1200 Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs). In terms of CPDL, the shift is from a patchwork of school-led and commercial provision to a national network of government-designated curriculum hub schools. This paper considers how these policy changes are shaping CPDL for primary schools/teachers across ‘local learning landscapes’, with a focus on mathematics.

Theoretical framework:
The conceptual framework is informed by socio-spatial, complexity and organizational learning theories. A preliminary framework identified eight theoretically-salient features of a ‘local learning landscape’ that informed the study design.

Methods:
A thorough literature review informed a preliminary conceptual framework that structured sampling, data collection, and coding choices. In regard to sampling, three broadly representative localities were selected – City, Town, Shire. Within each locality, 6-7 primary schools were selected to represent a range of contexts, school types, performance profiles and Maths Hub engagement. Data collected in each locality consisted of interviews of 6-7 local Math Hub leaders and school-level interviews that included the Headteacher, math subject lead, and classroom teachers. Analytic procedures began with transcription and first-round coding of interviews. Analytic themes were identified which contributed to a revised conceptual framework, which was subsequently validated through additional interviews in each locality.

Findings and conclusions:
The CPDL offered across localities was experienced as fragmented - or incoherent - by a majority of practitioners, but the level and nature of this incoherence differed widely.
The three localities developed differently in how providers of CPDL, schools, and MATs collaborate, thereby generating more and less tightly coupled local landscapes. More specifically:
· City - adaptive: collaboration among a core group of local system leaders enabled integration of different policy initiatives and a city-wide approach.
· Shire - networked: local leaders operate an independent, subscription-based headteacher network which connects schools to CPDL providers.
· Town - balkanized: the rollback of a previously dominant LA and the absence of any strong local partnership led to a weakly-coupled system.

Significance:
In high-performing systems globally, arrangements for CPDL are coherent. In contrast, England’s CPDL marketplace contains limited mechanisms for securing local coherence, quality and equity. However, the research identified a group of local system leaders - landscape gardeners - who were influential in shaping networks and bridging organizational and knowledge boundaries. These findings, together with the study’s innovative conceptual framework, inform policy and practice in decentralized systems.

Authors

• Toby M. Greany, University of Nottingham

• Andy Noyes, University of Nottingham

• Cath Gripton, University of Nottingham

• Georgina Hudson, University of Nottingham