1. Embedding formative assessment Disc 2 presentation The role of teacher learning communities

2. Overview: science and design
We need to improve student achievement
This requires improving teacher quality
Improving the quality of entrants takes too long
So we have to make the teachers we have better
We can change teachers in a range of ways
Some will benefit students, and some will not
Those that do involve changes in teacher practice
Changing practice requires new kinds of teacher learning
And new models of professional development
Design

3. Why research hasn’t changed teaching
The nature of expertise in teaching
Aristotle’s main intellectual virtues
Episteme: knowledge of universal truths
Techne: ability to make things
Phronesis: practical wisdom
What works is not the right question
Everything works somewhere
Nothing works everywhere
What’s interesting is ‘under what conditions’ does this work?
Teaching is mainly a matter of phronesis, not episteme

4. A model for teacher learning
Content, then process
Content (what we want teachers to change)
Evidence
Ideas (strategies and techniques)
Process (how to go about change)
Choice
Flexibility
Small steps
Accountability
Support

5. Choice

6. A strengths-based approach to change
Belbin Inventory (Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail)
Eight team roles (defined as ‘a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way)
Company worker, innovator, shaper, chair person, resource investigator, monitor/evaluator, completer/finisher, team worker
Key ideas
Each role has strengths and allowable weaknesses
People rarely sustain ‘out of role’ behaviour, especially under stress
Each teacher’s personal approach to teaching is similar
Some teachers’ weaknesses require immediate attention
For most, however, students benefit more by developing teachers’ strengths

7. Flexibility

8. Tight, but loose Two opposing factors in any school development plan
Need for flexibility to adapt to local conditions, resources, etc
implies there is appropriate flexibility built into the reform
Need to maintain fidelity to core principles, or theory of action of the reform, to minimise ‘lethal mutations’
implies you have a well thought out theory of action
Different innovations have different approaches to flexibility
Some reforms are too loose (e.g. the ‘effective schools’ movement)
Others are too tight (e.g. Montessori schools)
The ‘tight but loose’ formulation
…combines an obsessive adherence to central design principles (the ‘tight’ part) with accommodations to the needs, resources, constraints and affordances that occur in any school or district (the ‘loose’ part), but only where these do not conflict with the theory of action of the intervention.

9. Strategies and techniques
Distinction between strategies and techniques
Strategies define the territory of formative assessment (no brainers)
Teachers are responsible for choice of techniques
allows for customisation/caters for local context
creates ownership
shares responsibility
Key requirements of techniques
Embodiment of deep cognitive/affective principles
Relevance
Feasibility
Acceptability

10. Design and intervention
set of
components
cognitive/
affective insights
synergy/
comprehensiveness
Our design process
Teachers’ implementation process

11. Small steps

12. Expertise According to Berliner (1994), experts
excel mainly in their own domain
often develop automaticity for the repetitive operations that are needed to accomplish their goals
are more sensitive to the task demands and social situation when solving problems
are more opportunistic and flexible in their teaching than novices
represent problems in qualitatively different ways than novices
have fast and accurate pattern recognition capabilities. Novices cannot always make sense of what they experience
perceive meaningful patterns in the domain in which they are experienced
begin to solve problems slower but bring richer and more personal sources of information to bear on the problem that they are trying to solve

13. Countdown
Target number: 127 25 3 9 4 1

14. Expertise in chess 3.5 3 4 18 16 4 Actual position Random positioning
Low
Positioning
Level of expertise
High
Middle
3.5 3 4 18 16 4
(Chase & Simon, 1973)

15. Knowing more than we can say…
Klein and Klein (1981)
Six video extracts of a person delivering cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
5 of the video extracts are students
1 of the video extracts is an expert
Videos shown to three groups: students, experts, instructors
Success rate in identifying the expert
Experts 90%
Students 50%
Instructors 30%

16. Looking at the wrong knowledge
The most powerful teacher knowledge is not explicit
That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work
What we know is more than we can say
And that is why most professional development has been relatively ineffective
Improving practice involves changing habits, not adding knowledge
That’s why it’s hard
And the hardest bit is not getting new ideas into people’s heads
It’s getting the old ones out
That’s why it takes time
But it doesn’t happen naturally
If it did, the most experienced teachers would be the best, and we know that’s not so (Hanushek et al, 2005)

17. People need to reflect on their experiences in systematic ways and learn from mistakes, etc
Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999
‘Always make new mistakes’
Esther Dyson
‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

18. Sensory capacity (Nørretranders, 1998)
Sensory system
Total bandwidth
(in bits/second)
Conscious bandwidth
Eyes
10,000,000 40
Ears
100,000 30
Skin
1,000,000 5
Taste
1,000 1
Smell

19. Support

20. Teacher learning
Teacher learning is just like any other learning in a highly complex area
In the same way that teachers cannot do the learning for their learners, leaders cannot do the learning for their teachers
Two extreme responses
‘It’s hopeless’
Let a thousand flowers bloom…
Neither will work
What leaders can do is engineer effective learning environments for teachers
‘Servant’ leadership

21. Creating the right conditions
What is needed from teachers
A commitment to:
the continuous improvement of practice
focus on those things that make a difference to student outcomes
What is needed from leaders
create expectations for the continuous improvement of practice
ensure that the focus stays on those things that make a difference to student outcomes
provide the time, space, dispensation and support for innovation
support risk-taking

22. A case study in risk Transposition of the great arteries (TGA)
A rare, but extremely serious, congenital condition in newborn babies (-25 per 100,000 live births) in which
the aorta emerges from the right ventricle and so receives oxygen-poor blood, which is carried back to the body without receiving more oxygen
the pulmonary artery emerges from the left ventricle and so receives the oxygen-rich blood, which is carried back to the lungs
Traditional treatment: the ‘Senning’ procedure which involves
the creation of a ‘tunnel’ between the ventricles, and
the insertion of a ‘baffle’ to divert oxygen-rich blood from the left ventricle (where it shouldn’t be) to the right ventricle (where it should)
Prognosis
early death rate (first 30 days) 12%
life expectancy years

23. The introduction of the ‘switch’ procedure
Senning
Transitional
Switch
Early death rate
Senning 12%
Transitional 25%
Bull, et al (2000). BMJ, 320,

24. Impact on life expectancy
Senning 46.6 years
Switch years

25. Accountability

26. Accountability can be helpful
‘I think specifically what was helpful was the ridiculous NCR forms. I thought that was the dumbest thing, but I’m sitting with my friends and on the NCR form I write down what I am going to do next month.
Well, it turns out to be a sort of ‘I’m telling my friends I’m going to do this’, and I really actually did it and it was because of that. It was because I wrote it down.
I was surprised at how strong an incentive that was to actually do something different…that idea of writing down what you are going to do and then because when they come by the next month you better take out that piece of paper and say ‘did I do that?’… just the idea of sitting in a group, working out something, and making a commitment… I was impressed about how that actually made me do stuff.’
(Tim, Spruce Central High School)

27. Teacher learning communities

28. Knowledge transfer to Tacit knowledge Explicit knowledge
Socialisation
sympathised knowledge
Internalization
operational knowledge
Combination
systemic knowledge
Externalisation
conceptual knowledge
Dialogue
Learning by doing
Sharing experience
Networking
Tacit knowledge
Explicit knowledge
from to
After Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995

29. Designing teacher learning at scale
A single model for the whole school
Scalable
Enables a ‘single conversation’ with students
A model that honours the specificities of subject and age range
A model that acknowledges the realities
Affordable
Feasible (e.g. in the context of ‘rarely cover’)

30. Teacher learning communities
Plan that the TLC will run for two years
Identify eight to ten interested colleagues
Composition
similar assignments (e.g. early years, maths/science)
mixed subject/mixed phase
hybrid
Secure institutional support for
Monthly meetings (75 – 120 minutes each, inside or outside school time)
Time between meetings (two hours per month in school time)
collaborative planning
peer observation
Any necessary waivers from school policies

31. A ‘signature pedagogy’ for teacher learning
Every monthly TLC meeting should follow the same structure and sequence of activities
Activity 1 Introduction (5 minutes)
Activity 2 Starter activity (5 minutes)
Activity 3 Feedback (25-50 minutes)
Activity 4 New learning about formative assessment (20-40 minutes)
Activity 5 Personal action planning (15 minutes)
Activity 6 Summary of learning (5 minutes)

32. Comments? Questions?

33. Force-field analysis (Lewin, 1954)
What are the forces that will support or drive the adoption of formative assessment practices in your school/district?
What are the forces that will constrain or prevent the adoption of formative assessment practices in your school/district? - +

34. Sources cited in Dylan Wiliam’s presentation
Aristotle. (2000). The Nicomachean ethics (R.Crisp, Trans). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Belbin, R.M. (1981). Management teams: why they succeed or fail. Oxford, UK: Heinemann.
Berliner, D.C. (1994). Expertise: the wonder of exemplary performances. In J.N. Mangieri & C.C. Block (Eds), Creating powerful thinking in teachers and students: diverse perspectives (pp ). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College.
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (Eds). (1999). How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Bull, C., Yates, R., Sarkar, D., Deanfield, J., & de Leval, M. (2000). Scientific, ethical and logistical considerations in introducing a new operation: a retrospective cohort study from paediatric cardiac surgery. British Medical Journal, 320,
Chase, W.G., & Simon, H.A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4,

35. © Dylan Wiliam and SSAT, 2011 www.dylanwiliam.net www.ssatuk.co.uk
Hanushek, E.A., Kain, J.F., O’Brien, D.M., & Rivkin, S.G. (2005). The market for teacher quality (Vol.11154). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Klein, H.A., & Klein, G.A. (1981). Perceptive/cognitive analysis of proficient cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) performance. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association held at Chicago, IL.
Lewin, K. (1954). Field theory in social science. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Nørretranders, T. (1998). The user illusion: cutting consciousness down to size (J.Sydenham, Trans.). London, UK: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.
Thompson, M., & Wiliam, D. (2008). Tight but loose: a conceptual framework for scaling up school reforms. In E.C. Wylie (Ed.), Tight but loose: scaling up teacher professional development in diverse contexts (Vol. RR-08-29, pp.1-44). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
© Dylan Wiliam and SSAT, 2011