School Improvement Unit
Term 1 SIU School Reviews: Emerging Trends
2015
At a glance
• 64 schools reviewed, 5.1 per cent of all state schools
Queensland’s strengths:
• Observation and feedback to teachers
• Schools’ use of data
Areas for continuing focus:
• Refining schools’ explicit improvement agendas
• Continuous professional learning and development for staff
• Clarifying the ‘what’ and ‘how’ to teach
• Differentiated teaching for personalised learning
Care needs to be taken when interpreting the findings as they are preliminary only and based on a small sample size.
Introduction
By the end of Term 1 2015, the newly established School Improvement Unit (SIU) had completed 64 of the 367 school reviews scheduled for 2015. These included 54 school reviews which were scheduled following the annual performance assessment process (which suggests review type) and State Schools Division’s quadrennial school review process (which suggests timing of the review). Another 10 school reviews were undertaken during the trial and training stages. These reports were also considered as part of the total sample group.
Of the 64 reviews conducted by the end of Term 1, 43 were full school reviews and 21 were priority support reviews. No self-determined reviews were conducted in Term 1. Seven state high schools were reviewed in Term 1, along with 15 combined (P-9/10/12) schools. The remaining 42 school reviews were conducted in primary schools.
The Term 1 sample represents only 14.7 per cent of school reviews to be conducted in 2015 and only 5.1 per cent of all Queensland state schools. The following analysis of emerging trends is offered for discussion only, owing to the small size of the sample and its non-random nature.
This report is divided into two parts: the first part, Queensland’s strengths, is an analysis of what is currently occurring in state schools; the second part, areas for continuing focus, is an analysis of what is yet to be fully embedded in our schools.
Queensland’s strengths
Observation and feedback to teachers
• Reviewers found that many schools use classroom observation and feedback to build staff capability
• Other schools are using informal approaches, have plans to introduce more formal programs or teachers would like such a program
Brookhart and Moss (2015) explain that:
The purpose for giving formative feedback to teachers is to support their development as effective educators. This only makes sense in schools in which a climate of learning and continual improvement holds sway.1
Reviewers found that in many of the schools reviewed, staff are engaged in a process of classroom observations and feedback to teachers which enables them to gain meaningful feedback on their teaching within a set of agreed practices.
In other schools, staff report clear plans to introduce a program of observation and feedback to teachers or they have an ad hoc process already within their school.
In schools which lacked such a program, some teachers report a desire for feedback from colleagues or leadership teams.
The 2011 joint statement2 on collegial engagement in classrooms between the Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) and the Department of Education and Training (DET) provides school leaders and teachers with a platform of common understanding regarding the processes and purposes of an observation and feedback regime.
Specifically:
The process is not intended for the purpose of assessing teacher performance. The involvement of school leaders is intended to ensure that they maintain a positive presence in the school’s teaching and learning, they are informed about classroom practice and pedagogy and they are actively involved in teachers’ development.
This joint statement provides school leaders and teachers with the confidence to engage in such teacher capability development processes.
While the review process identified a number of schools which have a regime of observation and feedback to teachers, at this initial stage the SIU is unable to identify whether the observation and feedback processes are tied to a wider teacher capability process or the school’s improvement agenda.
Ongoing investigation of review reports in subsequent school terms may elicit this information.
Schools’ use of data
• Many review schools are using data in a sophisticated way to inform teaching and learning
• While many staff display advanced data skills, building such skills remain a focus for many schools
Review reports indicated that many schools make well-informed use of student and school data.
The consideration of data sets is linked to teaching and learning in a number of ways: determining
the school’s explicit improvement agenda, planning for year level/subject instruction, and for differentiation purposes. This finding is consistent with the results of the 2014 School Opinion Survey in which nearly all teachers reported feeling confident in using student assessment data to improve student achievement at their school.
School teams are using a range of tools which are significantly broader than the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and, in many cases, involve tracking student progress against a large range of local measures. Data collection instruments used by schools include: Curriculum into the Classroom (C2C) assessments tools, unit assessments, PM Benchmarks, PROBE assessments, PAT-R and PAT-M, Comprehensive Assessment of Reading Strategies, Fountas and Pinnell benchmark assessments, practice NAPLAN assessments, and Words their Way.
The use of these instruments and data collection timetables was generally documented in a school- wide schedule.
Data walls, R6 ladders and the use of applications (such as OP analyser and TraQCEr) were some of the tools schools use to set goals and help students take stronger ownership of their learning.
Staff members in review schools often exhibited considerable competence in collecting and interrogating student data with a view to developing teaching or learning programs that build on student performance. In some schools, however, the building of teacher confidence in the use of student performance data remains an ongoing focus.
Areas for continuing focus
Refining schools’ explicit improvement agendas
• Reviewers found that most schools have an improvement agenda in place
• Reviewers recommended some schools refine their improvement agendas further
Narrowing and sharpening school improvement agendas continues to be a priority for a number of schools. While most schools reviewed have a documented improvement agenda for the current year, a number require further refinement.
At review these schools presented with wide- ranging improvement agendas, sometimes with more than five major improvement items. Items varied but included: attendance, reading, writing, spelling, numeracy, teaching of higher order thinking, quality of teaching, student behaviour, oral language, attainment in the upper two bands of NAPLAN, attainment of C or better levels of achievement, and inclusive practices.
Many schools, with the best of intentions, target too many disparate items in their improvement agenda. In the pursuit of improvements across a range of areas, school leadership teams run the risk of confusing teachers and the wider school community, and losing focus.
In line with the research3, the reviews show that schools with an explicit improvement agenda tend to have very few improvement agenda items; a school-wide understanding of – and steadfast commitment to – these improvement items; and teachers who can demonstrate how their practice continually contributes to improvement in targeted areas. In such schools, leaders and teachers identified the improvement agenda as the clear focus for their work, and principals work to ensure the agenda is not clouded by other internal and external factors.
Continue to provide ongoing professional learning and development to staff
• The need for continuous professional development of staff remains a priority for schools
• Greater clarity around expert teacher roles is also required in some schools
Reviewers recommended continuing school engagement in professional learning and development of teachers and other school staff.
It is acknowledged that each school and every teacher is at a different stage in their learning journeys. So it is difficult, even within such a small sample, to identify common themes in relation to the type of professional development required. The need for schools to make better use of coaching, mentoring and feedback to teachers, however, was a theme across a number of reviews.
The Great Results Guarantee initiative has enabled the engagement of more coaches across schools in Queensland; however, in a number of review schools, a lack of clarity was evident in relation to the roles and responsibilities of these additional positions. In some schools, members of the leadership team also appeared unsure about their roles and responsibilities.
This lack of clarity has the potential to lead to teacher confusion around the professional learning support available and alignment of the work of expert teachers, such as coaches and master teachers, and their school’s explicit improvement agenda.
Continue to clarify the ‘what’ and ‘how’ to teach
• Greater clarity and more support around teaching practice was another key finding
• Quality and consistency of school practices varied
In a number of schools reviewed, it was recommended they develop more consistent whole-school approaches to pedagogy and/or curriculum.
A number of schools are developing curriculum plans which reflect both the school context, and the Australian and Queensland curriculums. It was not uncommon to find schools that are moving away from the wholesale delivery of C2C units to more contextualised and responsive approaches.
Continue to differentiate teaching for personalised learning
• Greater differentiation recommended in a number of schools reviewed
• This reflects the School Improvement Hierarchy
The need for a greater focus on differentiated teaching and learning was identified in a number of schools reviewed. However, the advice to other schools was to establish a clear, explicit improvement agenda before further exploring differentiated teaching and learning.
This supports the department’s School Improvement Hierarchy (see Figure 3) which suggests that for schools to be highly effective in some domains, they must have well-established, successful practices in others.
Risks identified included where the development of localised curriculum plans lacked appropriate quality assurance, where there was no clear alignment to the Australian Curriculum, and where the enacted curriculum was not regularly audited against curriculum plans.
In many review schools, elements of explicit instruction or teaching were found. Some schools have developed research-informed and contextualised teacher handbooks. These resources detail the expected pedagogical practices to be enacted in classrooms, which are rigorously monitored and supported.
Conclusion
This information is likely to be of general interest to the system, and may be useful for regional officers, such as assistant regional directors, as they support schools in their improvement journeys. The findings, however, should be used with caution: they should not be regarded as the basis for the realignment of resourcing or school effort.
The SIU will continue to undertake an analysis of review findings, and share this analysis, each term. As the SIU builds the evidence base we can have more confidence in the findings presented.
Footnotes
1 Brookhart, SM and Moss, CM. (2015) How to give professional feedback. Educational Leadership, 72(7), 24-30.
2 DET and QTU (2011) Joint Statement of Collegial Engagement in Classrooms.
3 Fullan, M 2009, ‘Large-scale reform come of age’ Journal of Educational Change, vol. 10, pp. 101-113.