A day in the life of a teacher can easily be swarmed with a hundred obligatory activities - writing reports, phoning parents, attending meetings, supervising lunch service, ordering stationery, preparing wall displays… All of which, you will notice, do not involve direct teaching.
While we are often preoccupied with turning these complex cogs that keep a school ticking over, ideally, the art and craft of teaching should remain at the forefront of our thoughts.
Here are some suggestions for schools aiming to support their staff in honing those vital teaching and learning skills:
1. Appoint a lead/promoted post
Several schools in Scotland have now, through the use of Pupil Equity Fund money or other budgeting gymnastics, appointed a principal teacher of pedagogy. The remit for these teachers will vary depending on the context of the school, but essentially they have been promoted to try and help their colleagues teach better lessons more regularly.
Not every school, however, will have the budget for this bespoke position. In its place, a coordinator role might be formed, with a member of staff who wants to improve both their leadership skills and learning and teaching across the school. This position could even be fulfilled on a shifting rota, to encourage shared leadership and CPD opportunities.
Whichever route is taken, it is important to reinforce the message that pedagogy is the nuts and bolts for all of us. Teachers with additional responsibilities are not particular experts; rather, they are in a position to provide support and communication.
2. Establish a working group
A working group of teachers committed to improving pedagogy is an excellent way to generate and evolve new ideas: a school’s teachers are its greatest resource.
Staff in a school come from different parts of the world, with different experiences, social backgrounds and ideals. We have trained at different universities and worked in various departments - our variety is our strength. A formidable working group will be characterised by a spectrum of subject knowledge, specialisms and stages of career.
Identifying some simple targets would be a good starting point. What sort of pedagogies does the school want to focus on? Where are you now, and where do you want to get to? Get the ball rolling with a clear desire to improve, for example, the use of questioning, or retrieval practice across the school.
3. Publish a newsletter
Publishing a regular, in-house newsletter is a great way to bring visibility to a school’s drive to focus on learning and teaching. We have tried different formats for this, sharing a plethora of articles, videos, podcasts and other academic resources with our staff.
Of course, teachers are busy and spare time is a precious commodity, all too often swallowed up by other duties. There is no chance that everyone will be able to engage with every idea. But having reliable and frequent newsletters arriving in the inbox can help to stimulate discussion and reflection.
Newsletters can even become a shared responsibility, with themed issues focusing on topics such as literacy, numeracy and wellbeing, the golden threads of Curriculum for Excellence; this is a useful way to involve a wider circle of staff.
Newsletters can also address school-improvement priorities or fuel dialogue around national conversations and policies, such as the HGIOS 4 (How good is our school?) indicators or the creation of the proposed Centre of Teaching Excellence.
4. Learning walks/observations
Staff want to have a shared understanding of what good pedagogy looks like. Again, this might be specific depending on the context of the school.
I think it’s also vital not to stifle teacher individuality and creativity - we can’t expect every lesson to feature exactly the same elements as the one before. We teachers naturally get our backs up when another professional comes into our lessons. The recalled trauma and stress of “crits” at university are real.
Yet, it is useful for teachers to drop in and out of one another’s lessons, to do a little observation and reflection. That said, encouraging staff to adopt a welcoming, relaxed attitude towards this is undeniably a challenge.
In my school, we have established a traffic lights system, with signs on every classroom door to indicate green (feel free to join us), amber (pop in for a quick moment), and red (come back another day). This gives staff a degree of agency and control over being observed during learning walks.
Alan Gillespie is principal teacher of English at Fernhill School, an independent school near Glasgow. He tweets @afjgillespie
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