1. Schooling Improvement: What do we know?
Helen Timperley
Professor of Education
The University of Auckland
New Zealand

2. Teachers Make the Difference –
but they can’t do it on their own

3. Source: OECD (2010). PISA 2009 Results (Vol. II), Figure II. 3
Source: OECD (2010). PISA 2009 Results (Vol. II), Figure II.3.3, page 58

4. Source: OECD (2010). PISA 2009 Results (Vol. II), Figure II. 3
Source: OECD (2010). PISA 2009 Results (Vol. II), Figure II.3.4, page 59

6. Today’s Focus Teachers make the difference
Teacher learning as developing adaptive expertise
Inquiry and knowledge-building as formative assessment
What this means / doesn’t mean
- but they can’t do it on their own
Weaving evidence, inquiry and standards to build better schools

7. Adaptive and Routine Experts
Adaptive experts:
Routine experts:
Flexibly retrieve, organise and apply professional knowledge
Recognise when old problems persist or new problems arise and seek new information
Apply a core set of skills with increasing fluency and efficiency
Based on notions of novice to experts
The Challenge:
Shift from thinking about routine to adaptive expertise

8. Teacher inquiry and knowledge-building cycle
to promote valued student outcomes
What knowledge and skills do our students need?
What knowledge and skills do we as teachers need?
What has been the impact of our changed actions?
Deepen professional knowledge and refine skills
Engage students in new learning experiences

9. Framing some Formative Assessment Questions
Where am I going
How am I going
Where to next

10. Where am I going For teachers this means: For their students
What vision of what they should know, do and be?
Specifics of that context e.g. Numeracy
For themselves
As a professional
In that context e.g. An effective numeracy teacher

11. The Challenge
How explicit are these kinds of vision for your students and yourselves
E.g. If you use the inquiry cycle – do you relate it to a bigger picture vision of the kind of professional you want to be?
Do you refer to students as underachieving or those whose learning needs are not being met?
What problems might arise from leaving these bigger picture ideas under the surface?

13. How am I going Teachers two levels in a formative assessment framework
Themselves Their students

14. Teacher inquiry and knowledge-building cycle
to promote valued student outcomes
What knowledge and skills do our students need?
What knowledge and skills do we as teachers need?
What has been the impact of our changed actions?
Deepen professional knowledge and refine skills
Engage students in new learning experiences

15. Some Challenges Beliefs about the purposes of assessment
Students’ capabilities or teaching effectiveness?
Current levels of satisfaction with how well students are learning
Difficulty of assessing teachers’ knowledge and skills
self-perception unreliable
It’s an emotional exercise

16. Principal and two teachers’ talking about a group of Samoan Year 4 students [meeting in May]
Principal: When you saw the writing results for the group what was your first reaction? How did you interpret that data?
Teacher: It reinforces what I had seen in their first writing assessment - there was little structure in the surface features … so it was in my opinion very low but predictable.
What is the teacher’s theory of action?
How could the principal/facilitator challenge it?

17. Linking the Ideas Routine experts Adaptive experts
Assessment is about the effectiveness of teaching
Investigating teaching effectiveness is essential to improvement
The inquiry cycle provides a framework
Emotionally exciting – sometimes uncomfortable
Assessment is about how well students learn
Investigating teaching effectiveness undermines professionalism
Inquiry cycle is a series of steps to endure
Emotionally threatening

18. How do you deal with the emotional stuff in your school?
Work with the willing and leave the unwilling alone?
Skip the bits that might push someone’s buttons?
Don’t push the boundaries too hard?
OR SYSTEMATICALLY DEVELOP ADAPTIVE EXPERTISE
Unpack the level at which your ideas are in competition with theirs and why they are feeling threatened?
Debate the competing ideas?

19. Where to Next Students Teachers Impact Deepen knowledge
Learning experiences

20. Where to Next Based on analysis of first two parts of cycle
Driven by teachers “need to know”, not someone else’s “desire to tell” you
Grounded in evidence about teaching and learning in the particular situation
Systematically builds theoretically informed knowledge and practice
Parr & Timperley (2010) r=.685, p<.01
Fundamental difference from reflective practice

21. What it means and doesn’t mean
What it doesn’t mean
Start with student outcomes
Integrate assessment, curriculum and how to teach it
Integrate theory (why) and practice
Assessment is about teaching effectiveness
Start with a new idea about teaching
Have separate courses on the three areas
Just focus on the practice
Assessment is about students’ capabilities

22. What it means and doesn’t mean
What is doesn’t mean
You need multiple opportunities to learn and apply new knowledge
Approaches are responsive to your learning needs
Those who work with you have expertise and understand you as a learner
Going to one-off workshops and forgetting it all the next day
Approaches based on the “one size fits all” principle
Those who work with you expect you to immediately understand and get it right

23. Where to Next Students Teachers Impact Deepen knowledge
Learning experiences

26. If we are to make a difference
The national problem becomes a school problem and a focus in your classrooms
Your schooling improvement focus is to teach those students under-served in our schools in a supportive school environment that develops your adaptive expertise
Then your “need to know” drives the learning agenda to meet the needs of all the students in your schools