Tag Archives: habits

Delivering discernible difference

Posted on by
3

“If something is discernible, you can discern it – you can see it, smell it, taste it, or otherwise tell what it is.” (www.vocabulary.com)

It is probably true… that effective leaders and exceptional teachers have the ability to deliver discernible difference (improvement). It is this ability and awareness to focus in, move to action and deliver a discernible difference that stands these people out as great leaders and teachers. They have the ability to rationalise, prioritise, simplify, see the important, dismiss the clutter and move effortlessly and quickly to…

…secure meaningful improvement in areas that will leverage the most impact and improvement… triggering and delivering change that is both discernible and sticky…maybe even irreversible.

Perhaps… we should seek to tell stories and build narratives of improvement in identified areas or on trails where we deliberately place bets to transform practice and deliver discernible difference.

make_a_difference_sign

Which begs the question… what does it take to deliver discernible difference? How can we be more deliberate and focused on singling out the key levers of improvement; executing these changes, building a story and telling a narrative of improvement around the few things that matter?

What if… achieving discernible difference requires prioritisation of what matters? and that this takes thinking time and a careful consideration of what will leverage the greatest improvement? What if… we considered the following phrase when identifying where to play and achieve the discernible difference that we seek…

“What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” (Gary Keller)

What if… great leaders and teachers understood that what you do not do, what you de-prioitise (the omissions) are as important as what is actioned? …that ability to place bets only on what counts and the mindset that reduces  crippling complexity and workload?

What if… we realised that trails and areas requiring improvement are often obvious and rarely require deep evaluation to be understood?; seek the trails that matter…

Slide4

What if… we spend too much time evaluating and applying QA to the whole population or provision instead of moving more quickly to action on the areas that require improvement; seeking discernible difference?

What if… we also realised that in any population there are outliers, bright spots and positive deviants who have that answer or exhibit behaviours that have the ability transform? …achieving discernible difference and improvement will often be within the population… seek the wisdom and grow it…

Slide3

What if…we were more aware of the fact that we can get over-excited or be prone to complacency when we measure and weigh stuff? That feeling we get when we complete the SEF, a round of observations, work scrutiny, achievement meeting, re-writing our to-do-list etc. – often confuses us into thinking we have achieved impact or improvement?

What if…we are prone to believing that things will just improve, or that if we apply a strategy more, or if we weigh stuff more, that we will achieve a different end point?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Albert Einstein

What if… we only focused on the key trails and moved to action. What if… we are not quick enough to move to action (to start stories) and as a consequence rarely achieve the change that we desire and others need…

d3a6b2aafb7946d0ec5aacd42d4860e2

What if… we do not continue to commit to action during the implementation dip or when it is easier to go off and measure something else or when we can duck the difficult conversation or action?

seth-godin-the-dip

What if… we were in the habit of telling stories; and building a narrative of improvement? … around those areas that we have prioritised, that will have the greatest impact and deliver discernible difference?

Slide2

What if… a self-improving education system or academy or teacher has the ability to understand the brutal truths of the situation and embark on a set of deliberate actions that together tell a story and provide a narrative of improvement?

g2g-confront-facts

What if… these stories always have a start, a middle and an end…

Slide1

blogs.scholastic.com

What if… we are good at opening up stories, but much weaker at building plot and poor at writing great endings (happy or tragic)? What if… we do not stick around long enough on a story or move to action quick enough to realise the twist or truths or barriers to improvement that exist?

…stories motivate people to achieve more. They show what is possible and trigger other unintended improvement.

What if… milestones are a key aspect of delivering discernible difference? That these chart progress, point to the desired destination and importantly provide ongoing motivation to overcome implementation dips and secure discernible difference … perhaps even irreversibility (Barber).

 

gorsel-km-taslari

What if…this ability to place bets on the stuff that matters is born out of an acute awareness and a lack of organisational blindness achieved from beyond our present context (Academy, classroom, MAT, region…)

What if… delivering discernible difference has everything to do with execution, execution, execution… only this delivers transformation… and possibly irreversibility…

Slide2

What if… we…

…ensure that the choice architecture, nudges and culture provokes and rewards individuals and teams to chase their own narratives of improvement, growing the ability to tell stories of discernible difference.

Maybe then… leaders would have pride in telling their narrative of improvement – their motivating stories of the difference that they have made. Maybe then… leaders and teachers can point to examples of  discernible difference as evidence of impact on others and students.

Maybe then… leaders and teachers would move to action more quickly on the few things that matter – placing bets on the one thing(s) that make a discernible difference. Maybe this… level of focused action has the ability to add far greater value than blunt, catch-all, self-evalution.

What are your trails? where is your discernible difference? what stories of improvement can you tell – where have you achieved irreversibility? Has this become the lens through which you seek future improvement?

After all… the measure of our own impact should be judged through the stories of discernible difference that we can tell.

Dan Nicholls @DrDanNicholls

November 2015

To grade or not to grade… is probably not the question?

Posted on by
1

obs in time

“Whether we grade observations or not, we need to ensure teaching is increasingly progress-orientated and outcome-orientated – concentrating the strategies that provoke progress and secure outcomes for students.”

It is probably true that we should not determine the quality of teaching based on short lesson observations, but use a triangulation of evidence that identifies the typical quality of teaching; evaluating the effectiveness of teaching for securing progress-over-time and its success in securing strong outcomes for students. (outcomes in a broad sense as well as”attainment”) 

It is also true that we need to ensure and support teachers to find their way to great progress/outcome-orientated teaching that has a deep impact on students life chances. It is this autonomy that secures the motivation and ownership to reflect and stretch toward mastery.

We should, however, explore the assumption that grading teaching denies formative development; understanding that it perhaps provides the framework for improvement. Without a descriptive continuum of effective practices there is a danger of mediocrity. Particularly as…

“Not all approaches aimed at securing progress over time are equally effective or equally well delivered”

So this begs the question how do we develop a deep understanding of what secures progress, how do we measure the quality of teaching and how do we ensure that feedback to teachers is precise, owned and liberating, such that it sparks deliberate improvement, debate and improvement? It is difficult to see how we do this without a  descriptive continuum of what matters. We can rename the continuum, but when we consider progress-over-time and outcome-orientated teaching not everything is equal…or equally well delivered. Slide1

What if we fully understood how we move from this…Slide8To this… (where teaching is progress and outcome-orientated?… and that it is this that is rewarded and developed?)

Slide16

What if we understood that measuring quality of teaching through observation alone only measures a teacher’s ability to perform a lesson by tumbling and jumping between different teaching and learning strategies to tick enough of the criteria to get them over the Good line? What if we understand the limited sample that a lesson observation provides?…(shown as the vertical line below)

jumpy progress What if we firmly framed any episode of learning or scrutiny in the context of student progress, in the past and into to the future as the measure of the typicality of teaching?… such that it becomes a measure of how:

  1. Progress-orientated the teaching has been, such that students have made good progress over time.
  2. Outcome-orientated the teaching is, such that students achieve in the future.

What if we viewed the window of observation as an opportunity to measure progress over time and future progress?… obs in time

What if we examine, reward and measure the conditions, teaching habits and approaches in lessons that give us evidence that students are making progress over time and are aimed at achieving worthwhile outcomes?

What if this involved us recognising and identifying poor proxies for learning and being smarter at evaluating what we see? (from Robert Coe)… Slide21

“every child a powerful learner” (Steve Mundy, 2015)

So given that not all approaches/strategies are equally able to leverage progress over time and that some proxies are compelling, even blinding, what should be valued to ensure that every child is a powerful learner? What if progress-orientated and outcome-orientated teaching was revealed in…

  • The quality of teacher subject knowledge, concept (and misconception) understanding as well as pedagogy understanding.
  • and that this was revealed in the quality of direct instruction and the ability to impart knowledge and to understand how students learn and make progress in their subject
  • and that this was expertly revealed in the quality of questioning that accelerates learning and unlocks understanding (perhaps the most efficacious part of the learning for progress?)
  • and that this has had the impact of increasing the quality of students answers and oracy that is beyond age-related expectation and directly improving writing.
  • and that through embedded formative assessment (within not after) – teaching plans, differentiates and intervenes to enable all abilities to make progress.
  • and that there is real clarity on the end point – students are well set to perform unusually well in assessment or exams as a result of outcome-orientated teaching.
  • and that teaching shows ambition, warmth and drive to secure progress for all; setting ambitious expectations for all students.
  • and that this is also revealed in the quality of work in books.
  • and that these highlight an appropriate amount and depth of learning as a consequence of time spent in lessons focused on writing and demonstrating learning.
  • and that teaching dwells and goes to depth at the expense of skimming content.
  • and that is informed by on-going feedback that is within and not bolt-on in lessons. And that time is committed in lessons to respond to feedback and make progress. What if we rewarded and looked for actual improvement in books from the front to back as evidence of ongoing feedback … and much less impressed by regularity of feedback sheet or dialogue that does little to improve the work?

Slide2

  • and that there is clear evidence of an ethic of excellence where students re-do and redraft work, so that they produce their very best work that they have ever done more often – something that diminishes as they progress from 3-19. Primary children often produce their best ever piece of work.

B3NFRJOCEAAQsMO.jpg-large

  • and that leads to students attitudes and approaches that demonstrate a thirst for knowledge, enquiring and knowledgeable questions.
  • …and because teaching has imparted inspiring knowledge and achieved progress over time – learning takes on its own momentum.

What if we also realised that the greatest teachers have these as habits…consistent approaches and abilities to teach with purpose, precision and consistency.

20130201-191828

What if the importance of progress over time and having the end in mind was rewarded and that observation is seen as just one part of evaluating whether the conditions are present to secure progress? What if we triangulated with data, outcomes, planning, student voice, books and other evidence? Perhaps then we would measure the quality of teaching in this way…(apologies for the grading – but not everything is equal or equally well delivered)

Slide2 …by ignoring observed performance, we reward teaching habits and approaches that have created and secured the conditions for progress and outcomes. if there is no evidence of progress over time, historic good outcomes and/or evidence of outcome-orientated teaching then teaching cannot be typically good.

What if this meant that evidence over time led to a view of the typicality of teaching and that this is stickier than when judgements are based on one-off observations? Any observed episode then simply adds to what is already known about the typical quality of teaching to secure progress and outcomes.

What if we ensured that ownership for improvement was located with individual teachers – understanding that there is also an element of earned autonomy to this freedom… Not least because you…

“Prescribe adequacy, (but) unleash greatness…”

What if this empowered teachers who then have greater freedom to explore progress-orientated and outcome-orientated approaches to teaching…

  • Purpose (secure student progress to give them a better chance in life)
  • Autonomy (you decide how you secure student progress)
  • Mastery (it is a craft not a science, be creative and innovative – seek mastery in teaching to drive progress and secure outcomes) (Dan Pink)
“We know we are in a good school when the four following things happen: Teachers talk about teaching and learning; Teachers observe each other’s practice; Teachers plan, organise, deliver, monitor and evaluate their work together; Teachers teach each other” Judith Warren, Little The Power of Organisational Setting (1981)
What if we applied our understanding of deliberate practice to support teachers to improve…deliberate practice occurs when teachers…

1. …are motivated and exert effort to improve their performance.

2. …engage in tasks that take into account their pre-existing knowledge.

3. …receive immediate informative feedback and knowledge of the results of their performance.

4. …repeatedly perform the same or similar tasks.

So that…

“practice (is) intentional, aimed at improving performance, designed for (a student’s) current skill level, (aimed at excellence), combined with immediate feedback and repetitious.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

What if observers engaged with teachers in real time, so that observers support improvement, reflection and learning during lessons?

Maybe then we would…

  • …ensure that teaching is progress-orientated and outcome-orientated.
  • ….not use short observations alone to assess quality of teaching and instead triangulate observation that evaluates progress over time and the effectiveness of the teaching to deliver outcomes.
  • …tread carefully when considering removing grades as this may reduce our ability to understand what makes the difference and to show direction of travel for teaching improvement…even without grading a descriptive continuum is required – probably divided four ways… (beginning, embedding, effective, transferrable)(or 4,3,2,1)
  • …understand that not all strategies and approaches are equal or equally well delivered.
  • …understand that the efficiency and efficacy of teaching for progress and outcomes is what matters.
  • ..release teachers to own their improvement and to consider what we know about deliberate practice as a framework/continuum to enable teachers to receive immediate feedback that informs focused, repetitious improvement.
  • …realise that what maybe considered as traditional teaching is often the most effective at securing progress over time.

March, 2015