Improvement is for everyone
Helping every teacher to be even better than they already are should be the number one priority in every school and college. Teachers improving their knowledge, skill and judgement about learning and teaching is the single most powerful investment we could make in the generations of learners in our schools and colleges today, tomorrow, next year and on. Improvement is for every teacher, not just for those ‘on a plan’.
If teachers getting better at the day job is likely to deliver the best outcomes for teachers themselves and the learners they teach, what should school leaders do to create the best environment for professional flourishing? My answer: deflate your performance management systems, and inflate your CPD.
Accountability vs autonomy?
Performance management is a jingly-jangly, poorly-defined term that strikes fear into the hearts of many in education. Behind those two words are so many others: anxiety, stress, control (loss of it), playing the game. Commonly-used methods of teacher performance management often fall short of their desired aims because they tend to be overly-focused on compliance / box-ticking rather than fostering genuine professional development. Moreover, they tend to present ‘improvement’ as something that you do when you’re not good enough, rather than something that everyone does, irrespective of how good they currently are in their role.
Let’s take a moment to contrast two distinct ‘paths’ to take in Performance Management.
Path 1: The Accountability Path
On this path, the focus is tight compliance to a set of centrally-agreed criteria. Static goals are set with / for teachers, boxes are ticked. As a teacher, it’s a process that feels ‘done to’ rather than ‘in collaboration with’. The path is pre-determined, and progress along is evaluated through annual or bi-annual reviews. It’s a top-down, manager-driven approach that uses lagging indicators (like GCSE result percentages) as outcomes. It can often feel remedial, focusing on weaknesses and the meeting of minimum standards. Stress and anxiety can arise from trying to achieve goals over which the teacher has limited control, and the feeling of judgement that looms.
Path 2: The Autonomy Path
On this path, the focus is on teachers choosing where to focus their time and efforts. Goals are optional, and there are no boxes to tick. The specific things on which teachers spend their time are as many and varied as the teachers themselves. Teachers are trusted to ‘do the right thing’, and managers’ involvement is very limited. For some, this approach can feel like being cast adrift at sea with no compass. Stress and anxiety can arise from trying to define clear goals and work on something that is likely to be valuable, as well as feeling a lack of support from colleagues.
Path 3: The Middle Path
On this path, the focus is on a combination of supportive accountability within an environment of managed autonomy. Teachers get actionable feedback to help them set their goals within a framework of things that are worth getting better at. They use actionable feedback to monitor in real time their progress towards achieving their goals, using a range of relevant, triangulated data. Goals are not static, but are dynamic, they evolve based on real-time information. On this path, professional performance monitoring places emphasis on teachers’ engagement with and ownership of their goals, and the process of achieving them. Feedback is frequent, informal, constructive, informative. Instead of simply complying and meeting minimum standards, outcomes are about continuous growth through learning, innovating and problem-solving.
The Great Teaching Toolkit is the Middle Path. Here’s how it works:
Goals: every teacher is accountable for setting a learner-focused, actionable goal, but has autonomy to select their it from within the Model for Great Teaching. A lot of teachers use the GTT’s learner voice surveys to see their classrooms more clearly; others use the GTT Video Feedback tool to hold a mirror up to their classroom.
Understanding: with a valuable, learner-focused goal defined, teachers build the knowledge they need to understand how to achieve the goal. Everything from a 4-minute read to a podcast, video or a whole book is on offer in the GTT Resources section, and there are asynchronous courses (written by me and my team, as well as brilliant authors like Efrat Furst) available 24/7.
Skills: a goal and increased knowledge get you so far, but teaching is a performance art, so practical strategies and techniques need to be learned, practiced, practiced some more and refined through feedback. Video Feedback and learner voice surveys provide real-time insights.
Habits: teachers who get better at the day job embed their new learning in long-term memory. They are fundamentally changed by setting a goal, building understanding, developing new skills, and embedding habits through deliberate practice with plentiful feedback. The GTT provides lots of prompts and cues to help you stay on track as habits form, and the social support of Great Teaching Teams (another feature of the GTT) can be super powerful when things are hard.
If you’d like to learn how the Great Teaching Toolkit can support teachers in setting goals, building understanding, developing skills and embedding habits, we’d love to hear from you!
Simply fill out this form and we will be in touch.
