NPQSL Cycle Two Event
Day Two
Leading Culture and Ethos
Session
One
Welcome, programme, process check-in and review
As teachers we have the opportunity to foster positive changes to the everyday experience in our schools. Investing time in improving school culture is worth the effort.
Brad Kuntz
Today’s learning narrative
Feedback/ review
School culture
Social and emotional learning Behaviour
Review learning/ feed forward Professional development
Event programme
Session Timings Activity
Registration and refreshments
Session one 35 minutes Welcome, introductions and review
Session two 65 minutes School culture
15 minutes Break
Session three 75 minutes Behaviour
Session four 25 minutes Social and emotional learning
50 minutes Lunch
Session five 75 minutes Professional development
15 minutes Break
Session five 30 minutes Professional development
Session six
45 minutes Review online content outlines, including practice activities and formative assessment task choices
Refine and review leadership development record to review and refine target areas for development
Session seven 15 minutes Next steps
Close
Event aims and outcomes
▪ To review prior learning from Ethical Principles and Behaviours course
▪ To identify how the three content areas – school culture, behaviour, professional development – are interlinked and effect one another
▪ To introduce research and tools to support the development of practice in context in each of the content areas
Leadership learning and practice
Use your leadership development record review, reflective task and formative assessment task feedback as a prompt to focus individual feedback:
▪ In which areas and for which statements has your understanding developed the most?
▪ How have you applied your understanding and what impact has it had on:
a) your leadership?
b) school practice?
▪ What behaviours have you demonstrated?
▪ What areas do you need to continue to work on and develop? How will you address these?
Use Resource 3 to make notes against these headings.
Session Two School
culture
Today’s learning narrative
School culture Feedback/ review
Social and emotional learning Behaviour
Review learning/ feed forward Professional development
Culture and Ethos
School culture
Behaviour
Professional development
Strategic direction
Relationships
High expectations
Ambitious standards
Social and emotional learning
High-quality teaching
Session statements
School culture
1.1. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
1.2. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential.
1.4. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils.
1.5. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils.
1.7. A culture of mutual trust and respect between colleagues fosters effective relationships and supportive professional environments.
1.8. Building alignment of staff around the intended school culture can create coherence in a school and give direction and purpose to the staff’s work teaching pupils.
Task
Using the pre-event resource and your responses, discuss what your views are about culture and ethos in your schools.
▪ What evidence do you have for your views?
▪ How might it be improved?
4 minutes per person
Culture and ethos
Purpose & direction
Core business
Developing others, improving the organisation, facing outward
Professional learning
Successful school leadership and culture
The IMPACT study was a “national, empirical, mixed-methods, multi-perspective study of the impact of school leaders in effective and more effective English primary and secondary schools.” From the research, Day et al. (2020) identified characteristics of leadership which enabled school effectiveness to be sustained or increased over several years in terms of pupil outcomes. Two characteristics relevant to culture are:
▪ Alignment of structures and cultures with ‘vision’ and ‘direction’.
▪ Building care, learning and achievement cultures: changing expectations and improving the quality of practice. Including a focus on:
▪ nurturing care and trust with collegiality
▪ creating and sustaining cultures of high expectations for themselves and others by staff and students
▪ improving relationships between staff and students
▪ connecting student behaviour with student outcomes
‘Successful school leadership’, Christopher Day, Pam Sammons and Kristine Gorgen, Education Development Trust, 2020
Successful school leadership
Key dimensions of successful leadership are identified as:
▪ defining the vision, values and direction
▪ improving conditions for teaching and learning
▪ redesigning the organisation: aligning roles and responsibilities
▪ enhancing effective teaching and learning
▪ redesigning and enriching the curriculum
▪ enhancing teacher quality (including succession planning)
▪ building relationships inside the school community
▪ building relationships outside the school community
▪ defining and modelling common values
▪ ensuring students’ well-being and providing equitable access to support for all students
‘Successful school leadership’, Christopher Day, Pam Sammons and Kristine Gorgen, Education Development Trust, 2020
The challenges facing school leaders include:
▪ ensuring consistently good teaching and learning
▪ integrating a sound grasp of basic knowledge and skills within a broad and balanced curriculum
▪ managing behaviour and attendance
▪ strategically managing resources and the environment
▪ building the school as a professional learning community
▪ ensuring well-being among staff and students
▪ being or becoming emotionally literate
▪ developing partnerships beyond the school to encourage parental support for learning and new learning opportunities
Task
Using the research from Barrs et al., which identified the characteristics of highperforming schools in relation to their culture, consider your own school.
▪ Use resource 4 and RAG rate each aspect.
▪ What are the implications for practice for your school?
Discuss your findings with a partner.
10 mins individual completion of resource, 15 mins discussion
‘School cultures and practices: Supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils; A qualitative comparison of London and non-London schools’. Research report, May 2018, Sam Baars, Bart Shaw, Ellie Mulcahy and Loic Menzies. LKMcoBarr.
Session Three Behaviour
Today’s learning narrative
Feedback/ review
School culture
Social and emotional learning Behaviour
Review learning/ feed forward Professional development
Session statements
Behaviour
4.1. While classroom-level strategies have a big impact on pupil behaviour, consistency and coherence at a whole school level are paramount.
4.2. Whole school changes usually take longer to embed than individually tailored or single-classroom approaches however, behaviour programmes are more likely to have an impact on attainment outcomes if implemented at a whole school level.
Support the development of a positive, predictable and safe environment for pupils, including by:
4.a. Contributing to the creation and consistent implementation of a whole school approach to recognition, rules and sanctions that is predictable and built on good relationships between pupils and staff, complements the intended school culture and includes a clear approach to escalation of behaviour incidents.
Improving behaviour in schools
Summary of recommendations:
Recommendation 1: Know and understand your pupils and their influences.
Recommendation 2: Teach learning behaviours alongside managing misbehaviour.
Recommendation 3: Use classroom management strategies to support good classroom behaviour.
Recommendation 4: Use simple approaches as part of your regular routine.
Recommendation 5: Use targeted approaches to meet the needs of individuals in your school.
Recommendation 6: Consistency is key.
Improving behaviour in schools, EEF March 2020
Improving behaviour in schools
Using Resource 6, Checklist (appendix 1)
▪ How consistent is your approach to behaviour as a senior leader?
▪ How consistent are the teachers?
▪ Where are the inconsistencies?
Individually for 10 minutes
Improving behaviour in schools
Using the recommendations and outcomes from the checklist agree as a group the top 5 problems you have identified and why they are problems
Using the Behaviour implementation model (appendix 2) (resource 7) agree the
▪ what (intervention description)
▪ how (implementation activities) for each problem
Record the why, what and how on a sheet of flip chart paper.
Session
Four Relationships and social and emotional learning
Today’s learning narrative
Feedback/ review
School culture
Behaviour
Social and emotional learning
Review learning/ feed forward Professional development
Session statements
Behaviour
4.11. The ability to self-regulate one’s emotions affects pupils’ ability to learn, success in school and future lives.
4.12. Building effective relationships is easier when pupils believe that their feelings will be considered and understood.
4.13. Pupils are motivated by intrinsic factors (related to their identity and values) and extrinsic factors (related to reward).
4.14. Pupils’ investment in learning is also driven by their prior experiences and perceptions of success and failure.
Do teacher-student relations affect students’ well-being at school?
▪ Four out of five students in OECD countries agree or strongly agree that they feel happy at school or that they feel like they belong at school.
▪ Teacher-student relations are strongly associated with both performance in mathematics and students’ happiness and sense of belonging at school.
▪ On average across OECD countries, 71% of students attend schools whose principals reported that teachers value the social and emotional development of their students as much as their students’ academic proficiency.
The bottom line: Academic achievement that comes at the expense of students’ well-being is not a full accomplishment. PISA finds that most teachers and principals acknowledge that the socio-emotional development of their students is as important as mastery of school subjects. Good teacher-student relations play an important role in that development – and in students’ attitudes towards learning. When students have good relations with their teachers, both their performance and their sense of belonging at school benefit.
OECD (2015). Do teacher-student relations affect students' well-being at school? PISA in Focus, 50.
Why do social and emotional skills matter?
Numerous large evidence reviews indicate that, when well implemented, social and emotional learning can have positive impacts on a range of outcomes, including:
▪ improved social and emotional skills;
▪ improved academic performance;
▪ improved attitudes, behaviour and relationships with peers;
▪ reduced emotional distress (student depression, anxiety, stress and social withdrawal);
▪ reduced levels of bullying;
▪ reduced conduct problems; and
▪ improved school connection.
Improving social and emotional learning in primary schools, EEF 2018
Improving social and emotional learning
Summary of recommendations
Recommendation 1: Teach SEL skills explicitly.
Recommendation 2: Integrate and model skills through everyday teaching.
Recommendation 3: Plan carefully for adopting a SEL programme.
Recommendation 4: Use a ‘SAFE’ curriculum: Sequential, Active, Focused and Explicit.
Recommendation 5: Reinforce SEL skills through whole-school ethos and activities.
Recommendation 6: Plan, support, and monitor SEL implementation.
Use resource 8 to consider the detail of the recommendations.
Discuss these as a table of four for 10 minutes.
Give feedback on what you feel are the implications for schools, 10 minutes.
Session Five Professional
development
Today’s learning narrative
Feedback/ review
School culture
Behaviour
Social and emotional learning
Review learning/ feed forward Professional development
Session statements
Professional development
6.1. Helping teachers improve through evidence-based professional development that is explicitly focused on improving classroom teaching can be a cost-effective way to improve pupils’ academic outcomes when compared with other interventions, and can narrow the disadvantage attainment gap.
6.6. The content of professional development programmes should be based on the best available evidence on effective pedagogies and classroom interventions, and aim to enhance capabilities and understanding in order to improve pupil outcomes.
6.9. Teaching quality is a crucial factor in raising pupil attainment.
6.11. Teacher developers should choose approaches that suit the aims and context of their professional development programme. Successful models have included regular, expert-led conversations about classroom practice, teacher development groups, and structured interventions. However, these activities do not work in all circumstances and the model should fit the educational aims, content and context of the programme.
Ensure colleagues take part in effective professional development, including by:
6.a. Supporting school leaders to align professional development with wider school improvement priorities.
6.c. Supporting teachers across the school to plan, test and implement new, evidence-informed ideas.
6.f. Supporting school leaders to identify teachers needs and make reasonable adjustments to professional development (e.g. to content, resources and venue).
Effective leadership of CPDL in school
“Systematic research reviews … are starting to build a newly detailed textured picture of the kinds of support school leaders need to provide to secure and maximise the benefit of high quality CPDL and link it effectively with school improvement. This evidence suggests several priorities and activities and two core CPDL principles for effective school leadership. The principles are that school leaders should:
▪ model and orientate CPDL systems and activities towards building shared accountability for pupil achievement and well-being; and
▪ model and use openness to professional and leadership learning as a way of securing this and ensuring that CPDL, similarly focuses on teacher development and well-being.”
Cordingley, P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Crisp, B., Araviaki, E., Coe, R., & Johns, P. (2020). Developing great leadership of continuing professional development and learning.
“Not all CPDL that is similarly designed leads to improved learner outcomes. There are more factors at work than simply choosing specific types of CPDL activities. What matters is how CPDL activities are designed and aligned to support active professional learning focussed on aspirations for pupils.”
Cordingley,
P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Crisp, B., Araviaki, E., Coe, R., & Johns, P. (2020). Developing Great leadership of continuing professional development and learning.
Designing effective CPDL processes
The research reviews highlight the importance for designing effective CPDL by:
▪ Ensuring that CPDL is understood as a process for supporting pupil progress and well-being
▪ Creating time within activities designed to introduce new approaches – to enable teachers to plan to incorporate them within day-to-day school routines
▪ Focussing CPDL by:
▪ Working from a nuanced understanding of what teachers do, what motivates them, and how they learn and grow to help them develop new practices and practical theories side by side
▪ Engaging with and building upon teachers’ aspirations for their pupils
▪ Recognising the importance of identifying teachers’ knowledge, skills and beliefs or assumptions, and building on them formatively
▪ Working carefully with teachers’ knowledge, ideas and skills rather than setting goals or using routines which attempt to treat teachers as a blank canvas or roll new approaches over them
▪ Ensuring that collaboration, professional learning conversations and peer support:
▪ Are focussed on ambitious goals for pupil achievement and well-being
▪ Spring from experimenting with new approaches to expand ideas about what is possible and enable review of assumptions and beliefs
▪ Centre around evidence about pupils’ responses to the changes teachers are exploring
▪ Ensuring that CPDL processes, together with tools and protocols for translating what has been learned into day-to-day practices, draw on specialist expertise, including subject expertise and deep knowledge about the pupils and their community
▪ Ensuring that CPDL activities help teachers consider how new ideas, knowledge and approaches relate to their school’s professional learning environment and its goals, systems and priorities
Planning professional development: Considering a balanced design
“The review underpinning this guidance found early, tentative evidence that effective PD programmes are more likely to include a mechanism from all of the above four groups:
▪ Building knowledge;
▪ Motivating teachers;
▪ Developing teacher techniques, and;
▪ Embedding practice.
The authors suggest that a programme that features a mechanism from each of these areas represents a ‘balanced design’.”
If one or more group is missing, the programme may fail for a particular reason, as summarised in the table on resource 11.
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/effective-professional-development
Effective professional development: The mechanisms of professional development
Using resource 12, think about a professional development programme that you have designed, selected, or participated in.
▪ Can you identify whether any of the 14 mechanisms were present?
▪ Can you identify where a mechanism could have been used to improve the professional development?
Individually 10 mins Groups 15 mins
Planning
professional development: Considering a balanced design – worksheet
Using your outcomes from the previous task, consider a professional development need in your school and complete resource 13.
10 minutes
Share your considerations of a balanced design for the identified professional development with a partner.
10 minutes
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/effective-professional-development
School culture
Culture and Ethos
Strategic direction
Behaviour Relationships
Professional development
High expectations
Ambitious standards
Social and emotional learning
High-quality teaching
Reflection
Individually reflect on the learning from the task.
▪ What have you learned?
▪ How will you apply this in school?
▪ What are your next steps in developing your practice?
5 minutes
Session Six
Review of learning, pathway for online study, practice activities and formative assessment tasks
Today’s learning narrative
Feedback/ review
School culture
Behaviour
Social and emotional learning
Review learning/ feed forward Professional development
Review and preview
Individually, consider what your focus and target statement areas for learning will be for the ‘Culture and Ethos’ online course. Which practice activities and formative assessment task will you need to complete?
15 minutes
▪ Use your leadership development record and the information in your participant packs
▪ Resource 15 – online course summary
▪ Practice activities option pack
▪ Formative assessment task options pack
Peer coaching conversation
In pairs (10 minutes each), have a coaching conversation about your proposed pathway.
Outline your rationale for choosing the module units to be studied, practice activity and formative assessment task.
Partner to challenge rationale, seek clarification and support confirmation and/or realignment of study and practice pathway targets.
Session Seven
Next steps
Gradebook check
Canvas \ log in \ Grades \ Assignment Group
1. Log in to Canvas
2. Go to ‘Grades’ and select ‘Assignment Group’
3. Check that you have completed the tasks at the top of the gradebook (tick or 1 in score column)
4. Scroll down until you reach today’s date and check that all tasks to that point have a tick or 1 next to them
5. If there are any incomplete/missing, make a note of them and prioritise for completion after the event
Evaluation
Next steps
▪ Review your pathway choices (content for online course, practice activities and formative assessment task) with your in-school sponsor.
▪ Complete the online course ‘Culture and ethos’, three practice activities and one reflective task.
▪ Complete your formative assessment task (select one from three).
▪ Upload the response to the formative assessment task and your review of the leadership development record to your performance coach by the date specified on the syllabus page on Canvas.
▪ Confirm performance coaching appointments.
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