Developing School – University Relationships through the Oxford Education Deanery Anne Edwards OUDE

Overview

• The Oxford Education Deanery • The theoretical underpinning: demand and experience • Increasing demands • Implications for ITE, CPD and Research

Models of Teacher Education

1.

Application of knowledge

(transfer of knowledge from university to their work in school) 2.

Participation in practices

(apprenticeship into local knowledge) 3.

Cultural historical approaches

(transition – between practices; connecting everyday concepts with more powerful ways of thinking )

Responding to the Cultural Historical Challenge

‘Implementing a Vygotskian perspective on teacher education will put demands on the environment in which trainees will be training and teaching…..

and with a view to implementation, the theoretical approach in this paper will need elaboration into a research programme centred on

the relation between a pedagogy supporting the professional development of trainee teachers and the institutional conditions that have to be fulfilled for realizing such a pedagogy

.’ (Van Huizen et al., 2005: 285)

The Oxford Education Deanery

The Deanery is a framework within which university –school partnerships in research, CPD and ITE can be formed and sustained. These partnerships see teacher development as a continuum.

Student teachers enter school practices where what teachers do is research-informed.

Informed by Vygotskian cultural historical theory

Step 1: Setting up a Multi-level System of Distributed Expertise (2010)

Research CPD ITE • Student Hub; other Depts in the University; OFFA implications; Teaching Schools etc. etc.

Distributed Expertise

A resourceful use of the expertise available in a system We are setting up a system in which that expertise can be made visible and drawn on by everyone

Principles

Bringing together practice and research in ways which are underpinned by the following principles: 1.

investment in the future of the teaching profession; 2.

doing high quality research that is relevant to the future of the profession; 3.

developing the best subject pedagogy; 4.

working with young people to sustain their engagement in learning; 5.

creating strong learning environments; 6.

adopting a constructive and critical approach to curriculum development and assessment; 7.

drawing on and contributing to the pool of expertise across all participants.

Step 2: Implications for the Student Teachers’ Learning

How is their learning enhanced by the Deanery?

A Vygotskian – cultural historical argument – with a focus on practices Practitioners inhabit discrete practices, such as teaching in a particular school. These practices are historically formed, imbued with knowledge freighted with emotion, shaped by the purposes of the institution and oriented towards what matters for the professionals within the institutional setting

The Social Situation of Development

Vygotsky worked on the idea of the social situation of development in order to explain the developing child’s changing relationship with his or her environment over time. These changes are marked by new structures of ‘consciousness’ (Vygotsky, 1998, p. 199) which in turn alter the child’s relationships with their experienced reality. It is these relationships which make up the social situation of development; therefore as new structures of consciousness emerge, defunct relationships fade away and new ones are formed so that children become repositioned as agents within the practices they inhabit.

There is a dialectical relationship between the agency and unmet needs of the child and the demands of the practices.

Promoting learning through increasing demands

Hedegaard has argued that we should shift our attention from a primary focus on how development arises from a child’s needs, and recognise more fundamentally the importance of the

demands that practices make on learners

(Hedegaard, 2012). From this perspective the demands and affordances of practices, as recognised by the learner, become central to learning

The Challenge for ITE

The dynamic tension between the agency of the student teacher and the demands and affordances of the practice - is where learning occurs. In order to increase the demands on student teachers and provoke and promote their learning, we need to attend to the demands that within-school practices make on them as teachers who are also learners.

Increasing Demands in School Practices

The Cherwell Science Project

Oxford City Learning

Action Research Fellows MFL and Physics initiatives through research projects Others in the pipeline

The Science Project

Six science students in one science department Research project involving student teachers, teachers and university tutors Builds on work under-taken over the previous five years by OUDE science team – identifying the features of science departments which are particularly conducive to student teacher learning

Key Features of Learning Departments

Analysis of the (inter)actions in the behind-the-scenes activities of lesson planning revealed that a discursive structure, where the expertise of others was recognised as a resource to be drawn on to help children learn science (McNicholl and Childs,2010).

Everyone — technicians, pre-service teachers, senior staff — was expected to contribute to this distributed expertise by asking questions and giving answers.

Bridget

Asks what order she should teach the concepts interference,

Nick

diffraction and standing waves.

Says it doesn’t matter they all come under the heading of interference and then outlines some experiments on interference.

William

(head of physics) brings in a speaker.

Nick

Explains how you can use an IT package with Excel to show the wave equation (Audacity). He draws three graphs to show Bridget.

Bridget Nick

Says she finds the practical aspects of teaching Y12 more tricky. Talks about Y13 work and explains about practical work and four experiments and explains what pupils have to do before the practical work.

Bridget

Explains what she will do on Thursday – she will go over interference and then do experiments.

Nick

Shows Bridget the Audacity Excel programme.

William

now has signal generator working and speakers and we (Nick, Bridget, William and Ann) go into Bridget’s lab to actually try things out and to show her how to set things up. In the lab the signal generator and the two speakers are set up.

Nancy

(chemistry specialist) and Julia (biology specialist) join us to view the demonstration and we all walk across the classroom and lay down bits of paper to indicate the loud and soft areas to show patterns of interference.

But

This is an exceptional school How do we help other schools establish similar discursive structures? (i.e asking for and giving reasons so knowledge is made visible) How do we ensure that all student teachers have equal access to the high levels of intellectual demand shown here?

How the Deanery Science Project Helps – a head of dept perspective “I want a more research-informed perspective on key development challenges for the department and see working in partnership with [the university department] and drawing on their research expertise is a good way to work. It means that their visits to schools, rather than rushing in and out observing interns, can be for longer and more sustained periods working with the department and the interns on all of their key development priorities.”

What it means for Teacher Education We build capacity in schools for making knowledge visible and open to scrutiny Teachers increase the ‘demands’ on the student teachers we jointly prepare as teachers Learning through experience in school is not a question of being inducted into the local practices of the school There is a sharing of the knowledge that matters in being a teacher We are researching topics that matter for the profession

OCL Action Research Fellows Groups of teachers in four schools Meet separately and as a large group funded through OCL Also meet with heads of T&L in the schools so they can share their practice Builds on work with individual schools in previous years – but now more systematic through OCL Topics: AfL; student engagement; metacognition; self-regulation; the affective inhibitors to learning

① Conceptual inputs Open Collective Cycle of Development Experience sharing Internal leads Observations Application/ab andon Technical consultations Observations, demonstrations Experimentation ② Conceptual inputs Exchanges Developing new methods Analysis ①

Data collection

Experimentation ②

Data collection

Help with analysis (Source : Huberman, 1995)

Constructing Independence

A journey towards emancipated learning Patrick Garton: The Cherwell School & Anne Edwards OUDE [email protected]

Rewards

Genuine personalised learning and teaching More aware and reflective learners Teachers as learners, alongside learners Improved results (GCSE Philosophy and Ethics 2012 – 90 candidates 68% A*-A) On-going renewal, of curriculum and pedagogy

Building Common Understandings in the Space of Reasons Jan Derry has looked at how those who teach can elicit learners’ everyday understandings and rachet up their conceptual strength Her argument is that we need to create

a space of reasons-

so it is legitimate to ask for and give reasons and make knowledge visible and open to scrutiny In that way we can help learners connect their ideas with strong conceptual systems In the Deanery we are attempting to enrich the system of inferences experienced by student teachers by working with the teachers and building a shared system of inferences e.g. what AfL; self-regulation; motivation etc. mean

The Importance of a Label

Our work is not hidden - in the city or in the University We have been doing a lot of these things for a while – but now can overtly link them to OCL; ITE; school improvement etc. and build them into our strategic planning What is new is the clear focus on intervening at the level of the dept or group of teachers to enrich the system of inferences and the demands in the practices Other things stick to it –student volunteers; other departments; widening participation and access; stimulating thinking in continuing education; working with teaching schools and school direct…… A danger – we are moving slowly by starting with a few schools – we need to keep our other partner schools involved too

Developments within the University The draft strategic plan Para 62: “The University’s engagement with local schools is wide-ranging, including Initial Teacher Training, collaborative research projects, action learning sets, and a leadership development programme. Tutoring of local school children is among the large portfolio of community volunteering activities coordinated by the student-run Oxford Hub. The creation of a ‘Deanery’ structure by the University’s Department of Education aims to strengthen and coordinate links between Oxford schools, the department and the wider University; this will in turn facilitate the OSP’s aim, expressed in its Economic Growth Strategy, to coordinate these activities with other volunteering programmes and business initiatives.”