Self Evaluation

1. Self Evaluation • School Development Planning/School Improvement • Complementary to ‘other-evaluation’ • Variety of levels/foci System - Site Whole School - Department/Classroom Teacher - Team Group - Pupil

2. Supportive Frameworks (some examples) • Halton (Characteristics of Effective Schools genre) • European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM) • Investors in People (IiP) • Education and Training Inspectorate’s (ETI) - Evaluating Schools (Teaching & Learning; Ethos, Management & Organisation) - Evaluating Subjects/Better Science etc. - Together Towards Improvement (Teaching & Learning)

3. Team Effectiveness (Belbin) • E confident School • Emotionally intelligent school • Coasting; Stuck; Moving; Sinking School Typologies (Fink & Harris) • Frames(s) - Cultural - Passion - Organisational Learning - Political etc. (Harris & Fink)

4. Key Issues • Why • What • How • Who/whom • When

5. Why Self Evaluate? • Establish a clear vision and future direction of the school • Improve the quality of learning and teaching • Identify and address areas for improvement • Promote consistent standards of practice • Engage in personal and professional development • Prepare for innovation • Prepare for inspection

6. Why Self Evaluate? • Improve the experience of learners • Raise standards which learners attain • Assist the principal, staff and governors to plan, implement and sustain aspects of the school development plan • Change the school’s culture • Understand the school as an organisation • Promote school effectiveness

7. What? Considerations of • Time • Maintenance & Development • Impact • Skills/Training • “Sticking close to the Knitting”

8. A Learning Organisation • Pathway to/Hallmark of Organisations where: • People continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire • New and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured • Collective aspiration is set free • People are continually learning how to learn together. (Senge) “It is when a school becomes a ‘Learning Community’ that transformation becomes possible”. (Mitchell and Sackney)

9. What? • Whole School – Use of DATA • Individual – Reflective Practitioner

10. “Preparing for the Future by examining the Past: Looking in-Not Out” (Max DuPree)

11. A vital theme “Systematic data collation/analysis and USE … can lead to the improvement of education as has no other educational innovation of the last century”. McLean 1995

12. A challenging theme “By emphasising the sheer quality of information, the technocrats have it exactly wrong: if only we can provide greater access to more and more information for more and more individuals, we have it made. Instead what you get is information glut”. M Fullan

13. A complex theme Data Information Knowledge Practitioner wisdom grounded on a mix of intuition and empirical evidence.

14. No limit can be set to the power of a teacher … Yet no career can so nearly approach zero in its effects! • It is good because we’ve been doing it for a long time or is it good because we have tangible evidence that it works. • Demythogising – identify the real problem

16. “The collective capacity of Principal and teachers to examine student performance data, make critical sense of it in the disaggregate, develop action plans based on the data and to take action which is monitored.” M Fullan

17. “The technical quality of knowledge and its usability will be superficial unless it is accompanied by social and moral depth.” M Fullan

18. School Self Evaluation: The critical area “The focal concerns of most practitioners – the curriculum and their instructional practices within classroom – are not areas that most school effectiveness researchers have been much interested in”. (Reynolds)

19. “Here lies the heart of the problem as far as SER is concerned. It is not that the findings of such research make no reference to the curriculum or instructional processes, but they treat them as manifestations of the operation of systems variables. They assume that the major determinants of the quality of pupils curriculum and pedagogical experiences are systems, rather that teachers” (Elliott) … “The quality of education depends on the quality of teachers’ deliberation and judgement in classrooms”. (Elliott)

20. The Key challenge for management “The key to school improvement is what teachers do and think; it is as simple and as complex at this.” (Fullan) “Substantial changes in pedagogy and in the way teachers work together on instructional matters is stubbornly elusive”. (Fullan) “The hardest core to crack – is the learning core – changes in instructional practices and in the culture of teaching towards greater collaborative partnerships.” (Fullan)

21. Internal Variability “One of the most powerful conclusions arising from recent research is that it is at the class rather than the school level that the greater variations (in achievement) exist.” “To be effective, school improvement efforts must be directed towards what happens inside classrooms”. “Quantum improvements in student learning can be achieved if the performance of students in all classes is brought up to the level of students in those classes in which students make the greatest progress”. (Hill)

22. “If the teacher could be more certain what learning looked like, in some of its many guises, he/she might find it easier to monitor his/her own teaching” (James Britton) “A need to know more and how and why learning happens” “Observe not with our eyes alone but with our Hypotheses” (Douglas Barnes)

23. “The priority for school improvement at the level of management is how to encourage a process of deliberative reflection, on the part of teachers at the classroom level.” (Elliot)

24. Activity 3 “Educational reforms, in which teachers change practice cannot succeed unless teachers become collaborative professionals. The capacity of the staff working collectively to learn, defines the limit to which the school can support ambitious reform. Therefore, school leaders must adopt collective learning as a central role”. (NCSL 2003)

25. Activity 4 “When I go into a classroom where the quality of learning is high, I see…”

26. Authoritarian Democratic Teacher-centred classroom learner-centred classroom High teacher dominance less teacher dominance Formal class teaching pupil participation in decisions and group structures Convergent thinking valued stress on pupil’s ideas and divergent thinking Competitiveness greater cooperation emphasised Relatively high punitiveness cooperation emphasised Low pupil verbal and physical high pupil verbal and physical activity activity Teacher-directed communication more open teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil communication

27. Learning for Replication (Surface Knowledge) Learning for Understanding (Scholastic Knowledge) Learning for Meaning (Perceptual Knowledge)

28. Modes of Learning Shallow Deep Profound Replication Understanding Meaning Information Knowledge Wisdom Experience Reflection Intuition Extrinsic Intrinsic Moral Compliance Application Challenge Dependence Independence Interdependence

29. Recent research on the brain. We: • Do not have a fixed single I.Q. • Have a range of at least seven or eight different forms of intelligences. • Will tend to develop some of these intelligences more than others and prefer to use them. • Have preferences which help to account for our personal learning style. • Learn according to whether a learning experience is geared toward our particular style of learning rather than whether or not we are ‘clever’ in an academic sense. • Can become more effective and receptive learners if we strive to develop a balance in our learning styles.

30. Organizational Learning Frame • Are there regular opportunities to examine and reflect on classroom practice and student learning together? • Do we engage in dialogue about program and practice across departments and grades? • Is there a common understanding about what counts as progress across grades and subjects • From the students perspective, is there some consistency in expectations about their learning experience across grades and departments? • Do we evaluate?

31. Do we gather and share data about the student’s learning experience? • Are there opportunities to read about, examine and share “best practices”? • Are there opportunities to network (with colleges and universities) with others about classroom practice and procedures? • Do we try to learn from our students about how we are doing as a school? How can we learn this better? What methods and processes could we use? • Is our relationship with parents a learning relationship (where we learn from them, as well as them from us). How do we do this? How can we do it better? Hargreaves, Shaw and Fink (1997)

32. A Quality Audit Framework • Agree the Criteria • Identify the sources of evidence • Develop Instruments • Interpret the Data • Share the findings • Action and development planning

33. A Creative Approach to Change Vision Skills Incentives Resources Action Plan Outcome      Change X Confusion X Anxiety X Resistance X Frustration X Treadmill Knoster, T. (1991)