The output of collective teacher action

 I've already written about what it looks like when teachers get together and share practice. I was sitting in a staff PLD session this week and our leaders of learning referred staff to the collective output of two terms of 'Teacher Summits', of two terms of teacher sharing.

I clicked on the link to the web page on which we have accumulated the outputs of these two terms of sharing. (Notice that I use the word 'output', because this is what our teachers from across Uru Mānuka have produced. To use the word 'outcome' would mean to talk about the impact on student learning.)

I was profoundly struck by what I was seeing: the distillation of just a little bit of the teacher wisdom, experience, and skill, just a little of the net result of years of that wisdom and experience in how to be more effective in. causing learning. A bit like 'creative commons' on the web.

This is ABSOLUTE GOLD. It is a resource of immeasurable value. It captures what I suspect almost every teacher in training might hope for: a direct statement of what good teaching practice might look like. Of course you don't need to be a teacher in training to see the value of this resource. All of us can find something here that we could apply almost immediately in our daily practice - the holy grail of teacher PLD, the thing that leaves every teacher feeling that their time has been well spent.

And this web page shares the output of just two Teacher Summits, of just one year's work in sharing practice. Wow!!!

This output is one of the many results of our participation in The Manaiakalani Programme in which we have clarity over our pedagogy, an agreement about what we believe matters, about what we believe works, in causing learning. It is the net result of our overt commitment to the pedagogy 'Learn Create Share', our commitment to ubiquity, visibility, and equity, in education. It reflects shared beliefs about what works, supported by strong positive achievement data. That is the Collective Teacher Efficacy I have discussed previously.

And it's deeper, even, than that. These resources are the collective wisdom of teachers cross all age groups. They represent the cross pollination of ideas and strategies across the primary/secondary divide. I hope that this mahi might well mean that we are on the way to eliminating that divide. Because we are all teachers of children.

The power of teachers sharing beliefs, practice, and data

That the Manaiakalani kaupapa works is hard to dispute. The data keeps accumulating: writing progress at twice national averages. As we also know, reading and maths less so (only 1.5x national averages).

Look at the fluency of writing from Jordan, of Year 7. The visual expression of Sofia in Year 10. The list goes on.

I tend to overthink things (too often) and often therefore wonder why this stuff works. I ask the question 'what is it about Leaner Create Share' that creates this acceleration? Is it the pedagogy itself, or is it the fact that we have a clear visible pedagogy that we promote, that is clear to all staff across the kura engaged with this Manaiakalani kaupapa? We should not assume that this is universally so. I have seen many (I suggest most?) schools that do not have a clear pedagogy, and far too many teachers who do not know what they stand for, nor how they will achieve it.

I settled on the view that it doesn't much matter, because it works, and that is the most important thing. I tend to use a phrase that a former colleague would often use, and I say of myself 'I'm not over bright, you know'. 

It was a comment by colleague Gary Roberts (Principal, Hornby Primary School) that generated another of those 'aha' moments for me as we talked about our Teacher Summits run across our Uru Mānuka kāhui ako. He said this is what Hattie calls 'Collective Teacher Efficacy'. Some will no doubt say 'what the ** is that?'

Easy:

The concept of Collective Teacher Efficacy itself is much older. It was introduced in the 1990s by Albert Bandura and is rooted in his concept of self-efficacy, Bandura (1993, 1997). He defines collective efficacy as “a group’s shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment.” Bandura found that the positive effects of CTE on student academic performance more than outweigh the negative effects of low socioeconomic status.

(Ref: https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/ )

In a video interview clip on the same page Hattie (https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/) makes the point that collective teacher efficacy is not only a matter of believing that students can achieve, that what we do makes a difference, but it is also a matter of backing it up with the data to show that it works. The 'effect size' of CTE is 1.57, the highest of any of the potential impacts that the Visible Learning team has investigated. As a point of reference the effect size of simply leaving learners to do their own thing is 0.2 i,e. that would be natural age related improvement.

We have the shared view of a consistent pedagogy, we are building this collective view that all learners are capable of being successful in their learning, we have the data to show that what we do works. We share practice across our kāhui ako, and across Manaiakalani's 100+ schools, practice that we have established works.

Collective Teacher Efficacy? Yup!!!