This blog first appeared on the Pearson School Model blog
The third of the debates hosted by the Teacher Development Trust around CPD took on the hot topic of whether schools should be forced to schedule staff collaboration time? David Weston, their Chief Executive, outlines what the participants discussed:
The majority of teachers, leaders and researchers attending this debate supported the idea that schools should be mandated to schedule collaboration time, although a sizable minority objected to the use of compulsion. Where there was unanimity, however, was accepting that collaboration is a vital part of effective professional development, and that schools often find both cultural and practical obstacles to making it happen.
We were joined by experts from both sides of the Atlantic, with Rebecca Raybould from the UK’s Centre for the Use of Evidence in Education, and MaryAnn Mather from the USA’s TERC Using Data project. MaryAnn drew on a key point from the CPD research and stressed that it is not enough to force schools to follow behaviours, such as scheduling collaboration, without ensuring that the relevant training and support is available to the school leaders to ensure that they understand both the underlying rationale and the do’s and don’ts of making it effective.
Points Raised
During the debate we had several practical ideas about how to overcome the practical difficulties of scheduling time. In one primary school, year teams are regularly freed from their normal teaching time by senior management and special needs teachers who take over the lessons to allow the regular teachers to engage in joint planning and marking sessions.
In a secondary school, older students come in later on a Wednesday and younger students are timetabled with cover teachers or external groups to ensure staff have time to work together. The benefit of this system is that staff remain fresh in the morning and can concentrate on teamwork, rather than leaving it until the end of the day where staff are often tired and unfocused.
Rebecca Raybould cautioned attendees that there was a huge spectrum of collaboration, from the effective practices where staff are genuinely challenged and work through problems together, to the ineffective practices where teams become comfortable talking shops with no drive to change or seriously reflect.
