Becoming A Research-Informed Department

By Divisha Patel

More often than not, a school’s core purpose is focused on the learning and achievement of its students. However, as the literature around professional learning communities grows, an emphasis is now placed on the importance of the learning and development of adults as well as students (Handscomb 2019). It is widely argued that teachers become more accomplished professionals through continuing to develop their pedagogy; reflecting upon their lesson delivery and honing their practice in the classroom (Bubb and Earley 2016). That being said, if you were to ask any teacher what’s stopping them from learning more, the answer is likely to be time. Humanities is now a department of seven subjects, therefore improving teaching and learning, and delivering an outstanding student experience, is what grounds and unites us. My motivation as DoL was to ensure that we built a vision that encompassed everyone, regardless of subject, qualification or key stage. Having merged Humanities and Enterprise, it is important to spend time learning about each other’s subjects whilst deciding our team vision or ‘non-negotiables’, as suggested by Jaya, for students to understand the expectations of a Humanities lesson. The main two ways that we’ve incorporated research into our practice is through the use of INSET time and our Wednesday department meetings. INSET For our Humanities INSET time, we do a range of activities such as having the subject coordinators deliver a masterclass about a topic within the T&L goals and/or vision building for our new and improved Humanities team. During T1, we spent some time thinking and discussing our visions as individual teachers, and how we could bring our ideas together through a coaching-style approach. In T2, Charlotte, Lucy and Helen each delivered a 20-min masterclass on an area of development that we’d identified through T1 learning walks and the work scrutiny. This approach was informed by EEF’s report on ‘Putting Evidence to Work’ which recommends the importance of identifying ‘a problem to solve’ (2019).

Lucy Taylor (Geography Coordinator) said “Having CPD in department meetings is such a valuable resource. It allows us time to reflect on our practice and discuss how we may implement new ideas into our classroom practice. The great thing about Humanities is the range of subjects taught - this means we get such a range of CPD from multiple perspectives and encourages us to consider different approaches and strategies we wouldn’t get from our individual subjects.” Here is an example of Lucy’s explicit instruction masterclass:

Department meetings Our Humanities department is organised as follows, with 15 minutes used for each activity:

• Addressing the habitual ‘to-do’ items and logistics
• DoL-led CPD
• Peer-led T&L showcase
• Informal conversations about curriculum, teaching and learning and behaviour

DoL-led CPD: The DoL-led CPD is something that has been introduced for T2 following learning walks and the work scrutiny. It is a way of addressing the areas for development in Humanities, by engaging with research, whilst allowing for an informal discussion around the topic to share ideas. Topics include effective marking; the use of retrieval practice and the importance of student voice, to name a few. The reason for introducing this element of department meetings was to create an implementation plan for the areas we need and want to address, whilst also developing my own leadership capacity, considering half of the team were new to either Humanities and/or the school. The format of the DoL-led CPD follows the same structure, whereby each session starts with a short discussion as a ‘hook’, leading on to research, and then ending with deliberate practice. Here is an overview of the slides for ‘Retrieval Practice’: Nazik Ahmed (ECT2 for Citizenship) said “Personally, I love (and get a kick out of) research and reading around topics (be it on teaching and learning or other aspects of our role) so this has really just enabled me to regularly read around different topics and engage with other perspectives on my areas of interest. It's also played quite a significant role in me developing my teacher persona because I've either been able to engage with authors that share my views/philosophy on education and teaching or challenged me because I've engaged with other perspectives” Peer-led T&L showcase Each week, we have a peer-led showcase delivered by our Humanities colleagues on rotation. At the beginning of the term, I allocate slots to each staff member, ensuring that everyone delivers an equal number of sessions, resulting in approximately 3 CPD sessions for the academic year. Each Humanities member is given the autonomy to do the showcase on anything they would like, such as:

• A form of AfL/questioning
• A piece of work
• An online resource
• A teaching strategy
• Academic reading/research

During the T&L showcase, the teacher tells us a little bit about why they have chosen the topic; the reasoning behind the focus and how they implemented/plan to implement the focus in the classroom. As a team, we then discuss how we could be flexible with the focus and its use for specific key groups such as SEND, EAL or different attainer groups. See here for examples from members of the Humanities team: Michael Paulus- Questioning Charlotte Nicholas- Object Analysis Nazik Ahmed- Thoughts from an ECT William Glydon (ECT1 for History) said “I am really enjoying the variety in CPDs this year. Last year, Nazik delivered a very memorable CPD on staff wellbeing and this couldn't be any further from the 'Dynamic Lesson' CPD offered by Brian, which was fun, organised chaos! The Humanities team is incredibly strong, and has had some fantastic new additions this year. The merge with Enterprise has meant that we can be more cohesive and collaborative in sharing a larger variety of ideas as a team” Further Reading:

Bubb, S; Earley, P; (2016) Schools as learning communities: effective professional development. In: Falus, I and Orgovanyi-Gajdos, J, (eds.) New Aspects in European Teacher Education. EEF (2019) Putting Evidence to Work. Accessed: Putting Evidence to Work - A School’s Guide to Implementation Handscomb, G; (2019) Evidence use, research-engaged schools and the concept of an ecosystem. In: Godfrey, D and Brown, C, (eds.) An Ecosystem for Research-Engaged Schools: Reforming Education Through Research.