Transcript Webinar Title - Welcome to ISFIS | Isfis.net

September 4, 2014 Special Topics
Webinars: School Improvement
Margaret Buckton, Partner
Susie Olesen, School Improvement Enthusiast
Collaboration
© Iowa School Finance Information Services, 2014
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Webinar Reminders
• Update us with your email address [email protected]
• PowerPoint on ISFIS web site at
http://sites.google.com/site/iowaschoolfinance/Home/webinar-recordings
• Power Point on Skills Iowa web site at http://www.skillsiowa.org/?q=PL
• Use question pane to pose questions
• Ask questions. We will find the answer if we don’t know it today. If
we don’t answer during the Webinar, we’ll get back to you.
• This series of 9 webinars pairs with ISFIS conference for one credit
hour (15 hours of content) for administrator license renewal
• This series of 8 webinars pairs with 1 day at the ISFIS office NEXT
WEEK, September 10, for one hour of admin. license renewal
• Watch for invite or check ISFIS web site to register
Dates, Topics and Links to Register
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Thursday, July 17, 2014, 9 AM – What’s happening in school with students?
Thursday July 31, 2014, 9 AM –What’s happening with teachers?
Thursday, August 14, 2014, 9AM – What’s happening with school leaders?
Thursday, August 28, 2014 9 AM – Professional Development
• Thursday, September 4, 2014 9 AM – Collaboration
• Wednesday September 10, 2014 8:30 – day at ISFIS
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Thursday, September 18, 2014, 9 AM – Assessment and Data
Thursday, October 2, 2014, 9 AM – TLC Model
Thursday, October 16, 2014, 9 AM – TLC Model
Thursday, October 30, 2014, 9 AM – What’s next in my school?
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Using Webinar Information Later
• PPT, Recording and related tools posted on the
Webinar Page and also the Skills Iowa professional
leaning page: http://www.skillsiowa.org/?q=PL
• Itemized list of contents is searchable (this week, we
will talk about collaboration, but also core curriculum,
etc.)
• Find what you need when you need it via Google
search box
• Use PPT or information with leadership teams or with
PLCs or data teams to get the conversation going
• Or shoot us an email and we’ll send you what you
need.
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Agenda
• Collaboration
• Assumptions
• Research related to collaboration: changing
teacher practice and student learning
• Policy in Iowa related to collaboration
• Finding time for teachers to work together
• Food for thought to help you get the most out
of the PD going on in your school(s)
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What is collaboration?
Definition – There is a lot of confusion on the
very definition of collaboration. If you ask 20
people, you might get 20 answers.
So let’s test this theory – what do you think of
when you hear the word “collaboration”? Type
a few words in the chat pain. . . .
Webster’s online
col·lab·o·rate
verb \kə-la-bə-rāt\
: to work with another person or group in
order to achieve or do something
: to give help to an enemy who has invaded
your country during a war
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collaborate
Collaboration: What does it really mean?
Carlos Dominguez, Writes in Cisco Blog
• Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, had a very interesting — and sarcastic
— comment on this topic. He said, “When you say collaboration, the
average 45-year-old thinks they know what you’re talking about: teams
sitting down, having a nice conversation with nice objectives and a nice
attitude.” (smile)
• Here’s what Carlos found by searching for collaboration.
– Wikipedia -- “Collaboration refers abstractly to all processes wherein people
work together.”
Oxford Dictionary -- “United labour, co-operation; especially in literary, artistic
or scientific work.”
Webster -- “To work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual
endeavor.”
– All of these seem really outdated so he continued to look. Michael Schrage in
his book No More Teams! defines it this way: “Collaboration describes a
process of value creation that our traditional structures of communication and
teamwork can’t achieve.” I like his introduction of the point that collaboration
requires a process and the purpose is to create value.
Collaboration: What does it really mean?
Carlos Dominguez, Writes in Cisco Blog
• So Carlos continued to search and found this by Evan
Rosen in his book The Culture of Collaboration: “Working
together to create value while sharing virtual and physical
space.” Rosen highlights that technology can bring people
together and that they don’t need to be in the same
location. A very important point since technology,
especially video, plays a key role in enabling collaboration
across the enterprise.
• Another key ingredient in the recipe is the concept of
“wisdom of the crowds” or collective intelligence. Mark
Granovetter in his 1973 paper, The Strength of Weak Ties,
highlights the importance of diversity in the areas of
brainstorming, problem solving and ideation. The more
diverse the group, the better they are at these tasks.
Collaboration: What does it really mean?
Carlos Dominguez, Writes in Cisco Blog
• 2. Value of collaboration – For the most part everyone agrees
collaboration is a good thing to do but many haven’t defined what
value it brings to their company, or why to do it at all.
• 3. How to do it? – “Effective collaboration” requires a major focus
on culture, the deployment and use of technology, the adoption of
process / governance for positive results. Few companies focus on
all three.
• 4. Bad is worse than none – Morten Hansen points out in his
book Collaboration, that bad collaboration is a waste time and
resources and produces no results. Deciding not to collaborate is a
better option than bad collaboration.
http://blogs.cisco.com/news/collaboration-what-does-it-really-mean/
Purpose of Collaboration
(and all other processes through which
educators are developed)
To ensure that EVERY child, not just some
children, have effective instruction and through
that effective instruction learn what they need
to know and develop a thirst for learning more.
Keep in
mind. . ..
Rethinking PD in the
context of effective
Collaboration
• Working together to create value while
sharing physical or virtual space
• Focus on culture, structure and processes for
positive results
• Adding value, working toward a specific end
• Wisdom of the crowds applies with sufficient
diversity and skill level among the participants
And as it necessary for doctors, lawyers, and
merchant chiefs, ongoing learning for teachers is a
must if we are to have great schools…
“Effective teaching is an activity that can be
learned, and the notion that someone is born to
teach is simply inaccurate. Improving the practice of
teaching – learning to teach better – does not
necessarily come from teaching longer. Experience
does not lead directly to better instruction.
Enhancing skills, knowing strategies, and
understanding content and knowing how to unpack
content in ways that students can understand –
these are aspects of teaching that can be learned
and improved upon.”
Center for American Progress
about…
All collaboration isn’t professional development,
just as all professional development isn’t only
collaboration.
Share in the chat pain. . . .Can you think of a recent
example in your school that shows this difference?
Does collaboration change instructional
practice?
Well, that depends…..
- on the purpose
- how it’s structured
Assumptions:
As COLLABORATION is implemented,
• the focus is on developing educator content
knowledge and pedagogical skill in a discipline
where students are struggling.
• the model used (IPDM which includes theory,
demonstration, practice, and coaching) focuses
on and monitors transfer of new instruction into
classroom practice.
• student response to the instruction is monitored,
and if new practice is implemented with fidelity,
students learn more.
Center for Public Education
Teaching the Teachers
The Common Core standards focus on teaching
for critical thinking, but research shows that
most classroom instruction is weak in this area.
Therefore PD, (with embedded collaboration
within the school day) is necessary.
As early as 1909, researchers began to look at
American classrooms and found that teachers
overwhelmingly asked students fact-recall
questions. Countless studies throughout the
20th century repeatedly showed the same thing
(Burstall, 1909; Colvin, 1919; Bloom, 1954;
Bellack et al., 1966; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991;
Nystrand et al., 1999).
The 2012 MET study from the Gates Foundation
confirms that little has changed since 1909
(Kane & Stainger, 2012). The study used trained
observers to watch 7,491 videos of instruction
by 1,333 teachers from six socio-economically
and geographically diverse districts. All of these
observations pointed to one glaring weakness —
the vast majority of teachers were not teaching
for critical thinking.
While almost all of the participating teachers
managed well-behaved, on task classes, the
following practices were rarely seen: students
participating in meaning making and reasoning,
investigation and problem-based approaches,
questioning strategies, and student generation
of ideas and questions—the exact kind of
teaching the Common Core calls for (Kane &
Stainger, 2012).
Describe in the chat pane if you are confident
your school is addressing higher order learning,
how you’re doing it, how you know it’s being
implemented.
An earlier study of the various models of
professional development found if the training
merely described a skill to teachers, as
traditional workshops do, only 10 percent of
teachers could transfer the skill to practice. The
majority of the teachers simply left the training
completely unchanged (Bush, 1984).
What it takes to impact
classroom instruction - review
Training Components and Attainment of Outcomes
( Percent of Participants)
Outcomes
Components
Knowledge
Skill
Transfer
Study of Theory
Demonstrations
Practice
Peer Coaching
10
30
60
95
(Strong)
(Strong Classroom
Implementation)
5
20
60
95
0
0
5
95
Joyce, Bruce and Showers, Beverly. Student Achievement Through Staff Development. 3
Edition.ASCD. 2002.
rd
Hence, the area of greatest struggle is not in
learning a new skill but in implementing it,
something referred to as the “implementation
dip” (Fuller, 2001). This is true with any new
skill—learning about writing isn’t as difficult as
actually writing, learning about bicycling isn’t as
difficult as actually riding a bike, and learning
about a teaching method isn’t as difficult as
actually implementing it.
Center for Public Education Teaching the Teachers continues:
Most professional development today is ineffective. It neither
changes teacher practice nor improves student learning.
However, research suggests that effective professional
development abides by the following principles:
The duration of professional development must be
significant and ongoing to allow time for teachers to
learn a new strategy and grapple with the
implementation problem.
• In nine different experimental research studies of teacher
professional development, all found that programs of greater
duration were positively associated with teacher change and
improvements in student learning (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree,
Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). In fact, in a study analyzing the
impact of a science professional development program on teacher’s
practice, researchers found that teachers with 80 hours or more of
professional development were significantly more likely to use the
teaching practice they learned than teachers who had less than 80
hours of training (Corcoran, McVay & Riordan, 2003).
• French (1997) concluded that teachers may need as many as 50
hours of instruction, practice and coaching before a new teaching
strategy is mastered and implemented in class.
There must be support for a teacher during the
implementation stage that addresses the specific
challenges of changing classroom practice.
• Simply increasing the amount of time teachers spend
in professional development alone, however, is not
enough. The time has to be spent wisely, with a
significant portion dedicated to supporting teachers
during the implementation stage. Support at this stage
helps teachers navigate the frustration that comes
from using a new instructional method.
• Studies have found that when teachers are supported
during this phase, they change their teaching practices.
Two studies (Truesdell 2003 and Knight and Cornet
2009) demonstrated the connection between support
and implementation.
Teachers’ initial exposure to a
concept should not be passive, but
rather should engage teachers
through varied approaches so they
can participate actively making sense
of a new practice.
• Just like students, teachers learn better when they are
able to actively participate and make sense of the
information being presented (French, 1997).
• Active participation can include: readings, role playing
techniques, open-ended discussion of what is presented,
live modeling, and visits to classrooms to observe and
discuss the teaching methodology (Roy, 2005; Goldberg,
2002; Rice, 2001; Black, 1998; Licklider, 1997).
Modeling has been found to be a highly effective way
to introduce a new concept and help teachers
understand a new practice.
• Modeling — when an expert demonstrates the
new practice — has been shown to be
particularly successful in helping teachers
understand and apply a concept and remain open
to adopting it (Snow-Renner & Lauer, 2005;
Carpenter et al., 1989; Cohen & Hill, 2001; Garet
et al., 2001; Desimone et al., 2002; Penuel,
Fishman, Yamaguchi, & Gallagher, 2007; Saxe,
Gearhart, & Nasir, 2001; Supovitz, Mauyer, &
Kahle, 2000).
The content presented to teachers shouldn’t be
generic, but instead grounded in the teacher’s
discipline (for middle school and high school teachers)
or grade-level (for elementary school teachers)
• Several studies, for instance, have shown that professional development
that addresses discipline-specific concepts and skills has been shown to
both improve teacher practice, as well as student learning (Blank, de las
Alas & Smith, 2007; Carpenter et al., 1989; Cohen & Hill, 2001; Lieberman
& Wood, 2001; Merek & Methven, 1991; Saxe, Gearhart, & Nasir, 2001;
Wenglinsky, 200; McGill-Franzen et al., 1999).
• Teachers themselves report their top priority for professional
development is learning more about the content they teach, giving high
marks to training that is content specific (Darling-Hammond et.al. 2009)
Collectively these principles present a Catch-22: to
internalize a practice and change their beliefs, teachers
must see success with their students, but student
success is very hard to come by initially, as learning new
skills takes several attempts to master. Crafting
effective professional development means confronting
this reality and building a significant amount of support
for teachers during the critical implementation phase in
one’s actual classroom.
COMMITMENT FOLLOWS
COMPETENCE.
Researcher Judith Little describes …two different
functions..1) the teacher as a technician and 2)
the teacher as an intellectual (Little, 1993). An
effective professional development program,
therefore, needs to address both functions,
understanding that there are differences in the
ways each should be supported.
Teacher as Technician
Technical Skills Training
Teacher’s role: To implement particular skills or
strategies which are backed by research
Focus: Explaining the skill and strategy and
research base behind it with support for the
teacher as he/she tries to transfer the skill or
strategy to the classroom
Structure: Workshop and Coaching
Teacher as Intellectual
An inquiry process where teachers innovate
Teacher’s role: An intellectual examining broad
research on learning and developing innovative
classroom strategies to achieve goals
Focus: Exposing teachers to pedagogical research in
teacher’s content area and provides support for
innovation and implementation through a local
teacher community
Structure: Professional Learning Communities
BIG IDEA
Commitment follows
competence.
Professional development is
considered an essential mechanism for
deepening teachers’ content
knowledge and developing their
teaching practices. As a result,
professional development could be a
cornerstone of systemic reform efforts
designed to increase teachers’ capacity
to teach high standards.
Smith and O’Day, 1991
PD programs must be
14 hours
One comprehensive study analyzed 1,300 studies
representing the entire landscape of professional
development research (Yoon et al., 2007). The
researchers found the only professional
development programs that impacted student
achievement were lengthy, intensive programs.
Programs that were less than 14 hours (like the
one-shot workshops commonly held in schools) had
no effect on student achievement. Not only did
these workshop programs fail to increase student
learning, they didn’t even change teaching
practices.
Describe in the chat pane something you’ve
heard today about the research on effective PD
that you’d like to confirm is happening in your
district. What can you do to find out?
POLICY IN IOWA RELATED TO PD
TQ Committee Law 284.4(3)
(3) Determine, following the adoption of the
IPDM by the state board of education, the
use and distribution of the PD funds
calculated and paid to the school district or
agency as provided in section 257.9,
subsection 10, or section 257.10, subsection
10, based upon school district or agency,
attendance center, and individual teacher and
professional development plans. PD Supplement
per pupil
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Allowable PD supplement
Expenditures: Iowa Code 284.6 (8)
• Use is limited to
– providing PD to teachers, including additional salaries for time
beyond the normal negotiated agreement;
– pay for substitute teachers,
– PD materials, speakers, and PD content; and costs associated
with implementing individual PD plans.
– Ed reform law added another use – PD provisions of the TLC
career paths and leadership roles
– A portion is for core curriculum implementation
• The use of the funds shall be balanced between school district,
attendance center, and individual PD plans, making every
reasonable effort to provide equal access to all teachers.
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SF 2284: 36 Hours of Collaboration
Time for Practitioners
• Collaborate with each other to:
– deliver educational programs and assess student learning
– engage in peer review
– during PD time, but not during prep time – proceed with
caution if you move to 1,080 hours and not 180 days.
• In Code Section 284: references the Iowa Professional
Development Model (TQ Committee has some say)
• Collaboration must be outside the minimum school
instructional day - defined in Iowa law to be at least 6
hours, but most districts exceed that threshold. Law
doesn’t say collaboration must be outside of minimum
contract day.
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Peer Review Requirements
• Peer Review – in years 1 and 2 of a 3-year cycle.
• Peer group reviews all of the peer group members.
• Peer reviews are formative, informal, collaborative and
focused on each teacher meeting individual PD plan
goals.
• Peer group reviews are prohibited from an employment
consequence (intensive assistance, compensation,
promotion, layoff, termination or any other.)
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Collaborative Peer Review
• Working together to create value while
sharing physical or virtual space
• Focus on culture, structure and processes for
positive results
FINDING TIME FOR TEACHERS TO
WORK TOGETHER
Finding Time
• Fund additional days – PD supplement per student, Categorical funds (DoP,
Title I, Title II, TLC, ISL)
• Early outs and Late starts (remember to tell parents that this is learning time
for teachers)
• Consider Hours rather than days calendar – make instructional days a little
longer to create full days for just teachers
• Use Substitutes or have administrators or teacher leaders cover some class
time so teachers can observe each other
• Use video – great for demonstration and opportunity for feedback
• Common planning time
• Digital learning time for students, double up noncore classes with Paras or
extra help
• Merge classes for assemblies/common activities with fewer adults supervising
• Engage TQ committee to create time and involve teachers in creating time
• Assign reading, prepare PD agendas, have data gathered prior to collaborative
time so you make the most of what time you have
• Find local or business support to provide stipend or sponsor a learning day
• Don’t forget about students
https://www.educateiowa.gov/sites/files/ed/documents/IPDM_Tools_5-2.pdf
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN YOUR
SCHOOL?
Questions to consider related to your
school district’s professional development:
• Are teachers learning new instructional skills
in your school district?
• What are they? Can you describe the moves of
the new instruction?
• Are teachers implementing the new
instruction into classroom practice? How do
you know?
• How are students responding? How do you
know?
FOOD FOR THOUGHT IN MAKING THE
MOST OF PD IN YOUR DISTRICT TO
MATTER FOR IMPROVED STUDENT
OUTCOMES . . .
Questions for School Districts to Consider
• What existing professional development does the district
provide?
• Does the district’s current professional development
programming align with research about teacher learning?
• Is professional development producing an impact on student
learning?
• What current in-house staff can be used to provide coaching
and professional learning communities?
• What external resources can be used to staff coaching and
professional learning communities?
• Is an in-house or consulting model of staffing more cost
efficient and effective for the goals of the professional
development, or is it better to have a combination of the
two?
- See more at:
http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/teachingtheteachers#sthash.H3kw
JTMt.dpuf
Assignment Details for Recertification
Credit – Building on Last Week!
• Review the Professional Development Self Assessment
Checklist again (http://www.skillsiowa.org/?q=PL or check
your email)
• Rethink your PD in terms of effective collaboration –
processes in place, structure, working together in virtual and
physical space, toward an end, adding value.
• Either ask your staff to provide the self analysis and report to
us on what they told you or review it yourself.
• Identify 3 areas of strength and 3 areas that could use work.
• Send your write up to Susie [email protected]
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Questions or Comments?
Margaret Buckton , ISFIS – Partner
Cell: 515-201-3755
[email protected]
Susie Olesen, ISFIS School
Improvement Enthusiast
Cell: 641-745-5284
[email protected]
Iowa School Finance Information Services
1201 63rd Street
Des Moines, IA 50311
Office: 515-251-5970
www.isfis.net
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