My background is in teacher learning and I am fascinated by all the factors that influence teacher engagement in professional learning activities in schools. 

I have spent years studying teacher learning and comparing the learning that takes place in schools with learning that takes place in other workplaces, such as construction sites, steel factories, and hairdressing salons. 

My findings have been both controversial and disappointing. In schools,  the very workplaces where the core business is learning, the quality of teacher learning experiences is poor.

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Too often, teachers are working in isolation and their professional learning is restricted to a one-hour meeting after school each week and five training days over the course of a year.

The hierarchies of schools can also be restrictive to teacher learning.

This isn’t unique to schools, of course; hairdressing salons are hierarchical environments, with hairdressers with different levels of experience and qualifications and titles. 

However, they work in an open-plan environment in which potentially every person is capable and skilled in cutting hair; colleagues are continually observing and watching each other in a developmental and non-judgemental way; colleagues will cut hair together (team teaching); all are engaging in latest research on hairstyles through magazines; and all are engaging in informal professional dialogue about hairdressing. 

It may seem a crude example but consider how much the learning environment in your school enables opportunities for elements such as distributed leadership in which all teachers, including the headteacher, remain capable and skilled in teaching; peer learning observations and lesson studies; team teaching; engagement in practitioner research; informal professional dialogue about teaching and learning. 

Expansive learning environments

The education community has much to learn from other workplaces around how to support formal opportunities for development, such as staff training sessions or apprenticeships, as well as creating an expansive learning environment that promotes informal learning opportunities.

I would argue that the potential value of informal learning will far supersede the formal directed opportunities for teacher learning.

Think of formal learning as the one-hour staff meetings after school - how much creative collective energy will teachers have at this time after a day in the classroom? 

Compare this to the various other opportunities during a working week where teachers may potentially be learning informally:

• Conversing with year group colleagues in partner classrooms about specific teaching strategies or individual children.

• Conversing with colleagues across the school during the day or over lunch.

• Reading magazine articles/websites/blogs about education.

• Seeking out advice from colleagues.

• Informal observations.

• Team planning.

• Team teaching.

• Pupil progress meetings.

My argument is that there is significant additional potential for teachers to interact and learn socially in schools, and we should purposefully create an environment that encourages it.

It is a useful exercise to consider your learning environment and the extent to which it encourages and enables a climate of collaborative peer learning, team teaching, engagement in research and where all members of the team see themselves as learners.

It is not the people in a school that make the difference, it is the relationships between them that matter most.

We can deliberately create an environment that builds effective working relationships to enhance collaborative informal learning.

Kulvarn Atwal is executive headteacher of two large primary schools in the London Borough of Redbridge and author of  The Thinking School: developing a dynamic learning community