Tracing the Footprints of Practice
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Symposium: Endings and beginnings: the National College of School Leadership’s Networked Learning Communities Initiative
Dr.Jane McGregor Education Researcher
Dr.Carol Robinson Sussex University
Professor Michael Fielding Sussex University
This paper is in draft form: the authors would welcome dialogue around it
Corresponding author
J. McGregor
12 Bishop’s Road
Trumpington
Cambridge
CB22NH
,uk
Tracing the Footprints of Practice
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, Warwick University Sept 6th-9th 2006
Dr.Jane McGregor Education Researcher
Dr.Carol Robinson Sussex University
Professor Michael Fielding Sussex University
Abstract
A recent MORI poll (2004) highlights the significance of collaborative work in its finding that ‘Teachers are overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of school-to-school collaboration in terms of gaining access to new teaching ideas, improving the motivation of teaching staff, improving their own teaching practice and improving children’s learning’. Whether this translates into improved learning environments in schools and outcomes for the young people ‘in’ them is the subject of the last phase of research in the Networked Learning Communities (NLC) programme.
This paper explores the sites and processes of professional learning and joint practice development reported in NLCs, focusing on the ‘key points of dynamic learning with potential for wider resonance’ (Warren Little, 2003). These locations are particularly identified as joint work groups e.g. collaborative enquiry, collective planning, mutual problem-solving and shared professional development opportunities.
The research draws on systematic reviews on networking and Continuous Professional Development, NLC programme-level enquiries and three in-depth case studies. It built on an important study for the DfES on ‘Factors Influencing the Transfer of Good Practice (Fielding et al, 2004) . The paper raises issues around terms and concepts such as ‘dissemination’ and ‘transfer of practice’ which are suggested to be inadequate to describe the knowledge exchange and joint practice development processes which may better describe the learning processes specific to network contexts.
1.0 Introduction
Within the teaching profession, despite what one researcher has eloquently and insightfully called ‘the persistence of privacy’ (Little 1990), there has always been a strand of collaborative and collegial work that exemplifies and delights in the importance of sharing what we do. There are, of course, many different kinds of reason for this. These include a desire to understand and develop our own and each other’s practices so that our students might benefit from our own personal and professional learning; and a collegial desire to contribute towards a common pool of professional knowledge. There is no doubt that the work of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) largely, though not solely, through its four year Networked Learning Communities (NLC) programme, has played a key role in the current flowering of collaborative professional activity across the country. Partly through a desire to build on its burgeoning knowledge of what is involved in the collaborative professional learning it has so presciently championed and partly through a wider commitment to developing a shared knowledge base of the practical realities and theoretical underpinnings of such work the College commissioned a number of research projects and reviews. These were intended to consolidate and clarify our understanding for what collaborative professional work between institutions seeks to do, what is involved in that work, and what we can learn about its capacity to change educational practice for the better in systemic and sustainable ways.
The purpose of this paper is to explore a range of questions about how teachers and other professionals involved in the formal learning of young people in schools collaborate with a view to improving and extending good educational practices between institutions. It builds on the earlier work of the University of Sussex / Demos work on Factors Influencing the Transfer of Good Practice commissioned by the DfES (Fielding et al., 2004) and takes into account the very substantial data emerging from the regular internal evaluations of the Networked Learning Communities programme, and the recent systematic reviews on collaborative CPD (Cordingley , 2003, 2005,200 6) and the impact of networks in education (Bell et al., 2006). It also draws on an extensive external evaluation of the NLC project (Earl et. al., 2006) and on the in depth case studies derived from the annual enquiry and the case studies of networks commissioned by NCSL from the University of Sussex (Fielding and Robinson, 2005). This paper also draws on the increasing range of work, much of it commissioned by the NCSL, on what we now know from around the world about networking and its capacity to change practices in schools for the better.
Within this paper we will seek to address the following question:
How do teachers and other professionals collaborate with a view to improving and extending good educational practices between institutions?
We will also seek to discuss findings relating to the following questions addressed in the case studies of networks carried out as part of the University of Sussex project:
· How are NLCs developing new forms of dissemination and knowledge transfer?
· What are the different kinds of knowledge involved and how do they influence innovation respectively?
· How are advances I pedagogy hared in NLCs?
· How is classroom practice transferred between teachers in different schools?
· Are there particular kinds of learning processes that are more likely to occur through school-school connections?
For the purpose of this paper we discuss our findings under the following sections:
1 – Spaces for learning and practice development;
2 – New forms of dissemination;
3 – New forms of knowledge or practice transfer / joint practice development;
4 – Learning and organisational structures in network learning communities;
5– Change in classroom practice;
6–Puzzles, tentative conclusions and consequent recommendations.
Section 1 is concerned with the spaces needed for joint work and engagement in dialogue. In Section 2 we discuss the effectiveness or otherwise of new kinds of dissemination activities utilised by those involved in the NLC programme and in section 3 we seek to explore how those developing good work within the remit of their NLC engaged with other professional in such a way as to bring about desirable changes in classrooms and other places of learning in schools. Section 4 is concerned with the kinds of organisational structures that seem to be necessary to encourage and sustain collaborative learning processes across institutions and in Section 5 we consider what evidence there currently is that illustrates changes in classroom practices that have come about as a result of collaborative activity enabled by the NLC programme. Finally, in Section 6, we highlight some of the key issues suggested by the review, we offer a small number of recommendations and lastly, we ask a further set of conceptual and theoretical questions which probe some of the assumptions on which the current wave of collaborative work in England seems to rest.
Section 1
Spaces for learning and practice development?
Current work in education around the conjunction of collaboration, learning and leadership is informed by a strong body of research on learning which is, ironically, only beginning to be widely applied to teachers’ practice. Metaphors of acquisition or building knowledge are being replaced by those of participation, where knowledge resides in practice rather than being something to be passed on (Desforges, 2000). Learning as situated cognition is thus located in the same way that power can be interpreted as a constellation of relations. Like power, learning may be visible in a changing web of interconnecting relationships, rather than as ‘chunks of information’ or’ knowledge’ parcelled up and passed on.
Networked Learning Communities were developed and supported by the Networked Learning Group to create new structures and processes to bring people together in learning relationships (within and across networks of individuals and groups from schools). For the NLG, committed to working collaboratively to improve learning opportunities, the question of locating generative and sustainable forms of interaction was a central one- ‘scattered opportunities for creative learning in our schools. Where are they? What are they? How do we know?’ (Bentley, 2002,p.6). The need to identify learning spaces for joint work and engagement in dialogue is increasingly acknowledged by educational researchers (Lieberman, 2002; Fielding, 2002, Stoll et al 2006). This may go some way to separate the metaphorical and practical use of the term ‘learning spaces’ currently in use and also indicate where future in-depth studies might be focused to identify ‘the footprints of practice’ Warren-Little (2002) tracing where learning from collaboration may be transferred beyond the location where it is generated. The actual ‘location’ of the learning in space and time is of course far more problematic and beyond the scope of this piece.
The purpose and voluntary nature of the NLG programme were reflected in the guidelines for applying to become an NLC and in subsequent review processes. It is not, therefore, surprising that 68 out of 76 networks in the first cohort, which began in September 2002, listed some form of communication and knowledge sharing as an achievement in the first year (Hadfied et al, 2005). Interestingly school-to-school communication was seen overall as the area of greatest activity (see figure 1). However, without an interrogation of what is meant by both ‘communication’ and ‘sharing’ it is not possible to differentiate between sharing objects - resources, enquiry reports and videotapes etc (dissemination) - and meeting to share and further develop practice .
An analysis of the data suggests that the communication and knowledge sharing achievements noted were often much more than reporting and cascading. While there was some mention of raising awareness of being in a network, communication and knowledge sharing was typically reported as focusing on sharing teaching strategies, expertise or good practice. It also involved either face-to-face discussion and more commonly, visits to other schools to observe teaching in action. Networks consistently reported teachers meeting in network events to share practice but also, bringing their experiences in the network back to school staff meetings.
Figure 1. Communication and knowledge sharing: year 1 achievement & year 2 plans
The data does not suggest that sharing processes in networks were unstructured or ad hoc but involved regular meetings, progress reports, presentations on classroom practice and joint learning activities (e.g. reports from classroom observations or teacher enquiry). It suggests that the NLG programme has taken advantage of developments in applied learning practices to create a new form of space- between ‘dissemination’ and ‘joint practice development’, which for the present we will call ‘generative interaction’ which resonates with the term coined by Earl et al (2006) ‘joint work which challenges thinking and practice’. They describe this as where / when people come together voluntarily to explore issues of joint concern which are rooted in practice and then replicate these situations in their networks or schools to provoke reflection, interrogation and joint action.
Some networks reported achievements around conditions for such sharing (as variously understood) – a supportive emotional climate, trust, confidentiality protocols, shared vocabularies, group “bonding,” or coaching in presentation. Some networks mentioned the use of the internet to disseminate practice, share newsletters and reports. However, a survey conducted by Kubiak (2004b) of online activity within networks revealed relatively low levels of online activity in most.
Resources such as videotapes of teaching practice, units of work or lesson plans were in many cases distributed beyond the network by advocates, network administrators or reearch assistants where they existed. Sometimes this was through dissemination routes such as publication in the NLG magazine Nexus or NLG conferences where presenters/participants were able to engage with others more generatively , for example through semi-structured ‘learning conversations’ rather than simply presenting an exhibition or providing handouts. Such interactions were intended to go beyond ‘show and tell’ so individuals from different contexts were interrogating ideas and practices together, notionally ‘on behalf of’ their respective constituencies.
Section 2
Forms of dissemination new for the NLCs
The NLC programme aimed to transform schools into what are known as ‘learning organisations’, capable of generating a capacity for continuous innovation and adaptation. NLCs have been promoted as a means of enhancing practice by creating and exchanging the knowledge of those in schools, both adults and students, to support improvements in teaching and learning and organisational restructuring. It is posited that this occurs effectively through networked learning;
‘Networked learning’ describes how newly acquired knowledge (learning as a noun) and learning activities and processes (learning as a verb) travel from one context and are applied and adapted in another. Within Networked Learning Communities the primary purpose of the programme is to facilitate the movement of learning (in both senses) from one school to another. Successful networked learning in networked learning communities requires both effective learning in the originating school and adaptive work to enable that learning to be applied in the partner school. (Dudley & Horne, 2004)
In discriminating between different forms of collaboration it is thus critically important to distinguish the difference between dissemination – as primarily the sharing of information - and knowledge creation or joint practice development. Throughout this section we will look at ways in which staff and students go about the process of sharing what they do with interested others, looking particularly at what, for those staff involved, are new forms of dissemination.
NLCs Network conferences
Information from the year one review that all cohort one networks participated in, corroborated by responses to the spring enquiry which asked about the most powerful networked adult learning, shows that conferences, training and workshops were a major peak of activity in the network life and particularly operated ‘beyond’ the school. Such conferences often brought together previously disparate schools in an area, and sometimes included representatives of the whole community.
Figure 2 Conferences, training and workshops: number of networks by level of learning. (n=76 cohort one networks)