1. Creating a culture of professional learning: the role of metaphor, teacher narrative and improvisation in school-based CPD
Dr Steven Coombs
Bath Spa University
Nick Sorensen

2. Whither CPD? Managerialism? League tables Testing / examinations
Controlling
Performance orientation
Critical professionalism?
Collaboration
Action research
Empowerment

3. What if learning was our first priority? (Coffield 2008)
Recognizing that the principle aim of education in the 21st century should be “to help young people to develop this generic capacity to learn”.
Claxton (2006)

4. A learning culture QCA Key Stage 3 and 14-19 Diplomas
Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills
Global perspective on learning

5. The learner centred-classroom
Doing things differently?
Doing different things?

6. 4 phase model of teacher development
Teacher centred classroom – students perceived as imitative learners
Developing the relationship through AFL, questioning, differentiation.
Students supported to develop a meta cognitive perspective
Learner centred classroom – student knowledge conjoined with cultural view of knowledge

7. Phase four Teacher perception of learners:
The learner centred classroom
Teaching creatively and teaching creativity
Developing creativity in students
Teaching “outstanding” lessons
Teacher perception of learners:
Students as knowledgable: the management of “objective” knowledge
Teachers help students to grasp the distinction between personal knowledge and “what is to taken to be known” by the culture

8. What form of CPD is appropriate for phase 4?
Experience to date mainly of phases 1 to 3
Do teachers have to progressively work through all the phases?
What forms of CPD are appropriate?

9. Creating creative teachers
You can’t tell people to be creative
Importance of a culture of professional learning
Creating this culture is a shared and co-constructed enterprise
Development of team-based learning and ethics

10. Three examples Teacher narrative Metaphors
An improvisation based pedagogy

11. Two principles - 1
If we accept that what is good pedagogy in the teacher-learner setting of a school or college leads to good learning and good performance, then surely this must apply in the teachers’ CPD context.
Pickering (2005, p5)

12. Two principles - 2 Critical professional learning
it provides an opportunity for teachers to understand their professional values, attitudes and beliefs and make sense of how they impact upon their conceptual understanding and knowledge of learners and pedagogy. It also enables teachers to research and validate their practice so that development is informed and so that the rationale for practice can be clearly articulated to a range of stakeholder audiences.
(Clark, 2007, p8)

13. Common aim
At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind – from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something “out there” to seeing how our actions create the problems that we experience.
Senge (2006, p12)

14. Teacher narrative Clear rationale (Rogers, Fink, Goleman, Covey)
Challenges of task
Scaffolded support
M-level thinking – relating personal experience to theory

15. Metaphor Powerful way to gain insights into complex phenomenon
Gareth Morgan (1986)

16. The jazz ensemble
The metaphor that most accurately describes a learning organisation
(Stoll et al 2003)
Also Hatch (1997) and Eagleton (2008)

17. What does the jazz ensemble metaphor tell us?
Each person (pupil) is individually respected.
In turn, individual talents are featured.
Experimentation and improvisation are encouraged as part of the learning process.
Outline plans (musical scores) exist and guide the learning.
Participants are not limited by the outline plans.
The teacher (band leader) creates an environment of safety, encouragement and trust.

18. Focus on pedagogy
Pedagogy as expression of the way we conceptualise learning, our values and beliefs

19. Teachers narrative – articulation of values and beliefs
Jazz ensemble as metaphor of learning organisation (learner centred classroom)
View of learning “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do”

20. An improvisation based pedagogy
Developing a learning culture
Responsive to learning needs of pupils
Shared enterprise between teacher and pupils
Learner-centred in a social setting

21. Conclusions
Way forward - combine all three approaches in a coherent CPD programme design
Activities provide the means by which a culture of professional learning is created
Correlation between professional vulnerability and passivity / conservatism in teaching
Keltchermanns (1996)
Creative approaches to CPD essential if we want creative teachers operating in learning organizations.