Garnering Teacher Commitment to Quality Teaching

• In Event: Effective Implementation of Pedagogical Reform Through Professional Development: The Quality Teaching Rounds Approach

Abstract

Over recent decades, there has been a substantial shift in how teacher professional learning is approached. Instead of traditional inservice top-down transmission of new ideas and policy, the emphasis has shifted to teacher co-learning. However, as Avalos (2011)concludes in her comprehensive review of literature on teacher professional learning, “in many places classroom teaching continues to be a solitary activity. … to move from co-learning through talk to co-learning through observation and feedback is necessary as well as effective” (p.18). In this paper, we explore the ‘Quality Teaching Rounds’ approach to teacher co-learning for its impact on teachers’ commitment to quality teaching and explore the mechanisms by which this approach works.
Using questionnaire data, we compare the views of the 28 teachers (from 4 schools) who participated in Quality Teaching Rounds with the views of around 300 teachers who did not participate in Rounds (some from the same schools and many from the 12 other schools in the same system that were also engaging with the Quality Teaching framework but not participating in Rounds). Using t-tests and Cohen’s d, statistically significant differences (p<0.05) with moderate to large effects (d= 0.55-1.28) were found for seven of the eleven scales that were embedded in the questionnaire. Three of these scales related specifically to teachers’ commitment to the reform: Quality Teaching Support, Quality Teaching Reception, and Quality Teaching Importance. Three scales related to teachers’ perceptions of their professional learning: Professional Learning Satisfaction, Quality Teaching Coherency, and Professional Learning Coherency. The final scale, Teacher Responsibility, addresses the level of responsibility teachers purport to take for student learning, a variable closely linked in prior studies with higher quality teaching (Griffiths, Gore, & Ladwig, 2006) and stronger professional community (Louis, Kruse, & Marks, 1996).
The significant differences between teachers participating in Rounds and those who were not, across this range of scales, indicate the potential of Quality Teaching Rounds to substantially impact on teacher professional learning. Supplementing the questionnaire data with teacher interviews (n= 154) and journals (n=90), we demonstrate that teachers in the QT Rounds felt significantly better supported than non-participating teachers by the system, the school, and their colleagues to engage with the pedagogical reform. Symbolic, structural, practical and social supports were all part of the conditions in which Rounds took place. In particular, we posit that it is the combination of a clear conceptual framework for guiding teachers’ lesson observations and analysis (the Quality Teaching model) with effective processes and structures for co-learning (the rounds and PLC features) that accounts for the strength of the differences between the participating and non-participating teachers over a relatively short timeframe.
On the basis of this analysis, we caution against approaches to professional learning that emphasise co-learning without also providing substantive input to ensure that the co-learning moves beyond idiosyncratic, trivial and local concerns. Instead, we argue for approaches, like Quality Teaching Rounds, that support teachers in powerful forms of experiencing, noticing and articulating practice within an agreed framework.

Authors

• Jennifer M. Gore, The University of Newcastle

• Julie Maree Bowe, The University of Newcastle