Rationale

Prior to the project, a significant number of recently-qualified teachers did not register for QTLS following achievement of their DET (PG/Cert Ed programmes) and were not building on the significant personal progress they had made when following their initial teaching qualifications.

Local institutional research (Mattinson, 2018) had indicated that some staff were not benefiting from the generic CPD on offer (Scales 2012) which did not address issues that they identified as personal priorities. Also LSAs were not expected to engage in CPD activities.

Through this project, both new and established teachers, trainers and Learning Support Assistants engaged in a college-wide approach to improvements which practitioners had identified as personally important.

Project Activities and Outputs

This action research project encouraged teachers, trainers and support assistants across three sites and nine vocational and subject areas to trial improvements to their classroom and workshop practices. Staff identified their personal improvement priorities and then met in Action Learning Sets to implement and evaluate their chosen improvements.

A series of twilight CPD sessions were arranged to:

• Introduce the idea of staff doing their own research into important local challenges.
• Establish Action Learning Sets (ALS) and agree “change activities”.
• Identify what evidence might be needed to demonstrate the impact of their changes to teaching.
• Write up their individual research experiments for others to share.

Recently-qualified teachers drew upon personal development points from their initial training programmes to inform their chosen “change activities”, whilst experienced teachers reflected upon feedback from supportive walk-through observations.  The participants from FE College, community learning and training backgrounds critically compared new strategies and approaches to uses of ICT, peer-assessment, setting high expectations and recording learners’ planning activities.   Documentary evidence of their professional learning and changes in practice can be found in their individual reports. (See Appendix 1).

The teams of participants met at fortnightly intervals to plan and evaluate progress through their action research activities, and were also supported through regional practitioner research events.

The project leader encouraged accessible one-side research planning and reporting sheets, using headings of “Background issues”, “Planned changes”, “Findings”, Next Steps” and “Research Consulted”. (See Appendix 1 for a collection of 13 Reports which outlined participants’ action research activities.

The project was led by a teacher-educator (confident with both teaching strategies and inspection requirements) who enjoyed a good working knowledge of participating teachers’ practice.  The supportive relationship was important for encouraging staff to write-up research and to persevere when planned changes met fresh challenges.

The project leader invested time assisting the first-time researchers to produce accessible reports of change that contained meaningful evidence of their learners’ progress. These reports then became valuable for inspiring other participants on the project to write their own reports.

In an extension to the initial project, 11 LSAs working with higher needs learners shared their interests regarding the support they were offering to groups and individual learners.  Working in pairs or threes they identified resources, strategies and activities to meet the needs of individual learners.  The project lead and project mentor met with the LSA cohort every three weeks and additional support was offered during lunch time “drop in” meetings.

Professional Learning

Evidence of changes in teaching, learning and assessment practices.

The participants from FE College, community learning and training backgrounds critically compared new strategies and approaches to uses of ICT, peer-assessment, setting high expectations and recording learners’ planning activities.

Narratives of their professional learning and changes in practice are detailed in the reports of individual and collaborative research. (Appendix 1)

Documentary evidence was gathered from revised lesson planning and Schemes of Work; re-designed resources together with evidence of learners’ planning, work and learners’ achievement outcomes; minutes from CPD and departmental meetings, departmental SARs for 2016-2017, and attendance and contributions to OTLA CPD events.

Key changes included:

• vocational practitioners from five areas developed student-centred strategies and resources to promote learner mastery of the assessment process;
• teachers using digital media to improve learners’ proactive engagement with British Values;
• learners confidently addressing their British Values’ responsibilities.

21 participants contributed to 13 reports.  Practitioners systematically evidenced their developing research practice by providing samples of revised documents, together with targeted plans to “roll-out” their initiatives for both lower and higher-level learners.

In the extension to the initial project, 11 Higher Needs LSAs planned, implemented and evaluated resources, strategies and activities to meet the individual needs of learners against their Educational Health Care Plans (ECHP) and Vocational qualifications in a supportive environment that was all-embracing in an action research based CPD model.  LSAs and teachers were able to reflect critically on their practice to ensure that sustained improvements were evident for their individual learners.

In this extension project, LSAs described how engaging in introductory action research activities had encouraged them to be more proactive with learners rather than wait to act upon managing teachers’ directions.

Evidence of improved collaboration and changes in organisational practices

Vocational specialists from across the organisation planned, implemented and evaluated practical improvements which were often tested and validated in their colleagues’ classrooms and workshops.

Most importantly for organisational development, the separate practitioners’ initiatives were supportively evaluated in the regular twilight CPD sessions which provided a forum for new and experienced teachers to share fresh thinking and to evaluate proposed practical solutions to use in their classrooms.

Following this OTLA pilot, College management has noted the transformational impact on the culture of the college of this collaborative activity and introduced the following enhancements to CPD:

• A revised CPD model has been “rolled out” across the college based upon the practitioner-led research initiative.
• There will be an annual bursary to support 6 teachers towards completion of QTLS.

The extension project has given the LSAs a sense of worth, permission to engage in researching their own practice to meet the individual needs of the learners and helped build trusting, professional relationships between themselves and the teachers.