S4 Ep7 - The Critical Issue of Teacher Knowledge Building

In this episode, we’ll discuss what you can do to help your teachers build knowledge that leads to improved student outcomes and doesn’t just take up valuable time and money.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:28

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. I'm Jocelyn and today I'm recording on the lands of the Palawa people here in Tasmania. In our last episode of the podcast, I shared five reasons that traditional professional learning probably isn't leading to student outcomes. In that episode I discussed cognitive biases that lead us to believe that we have more knowledge than we do. It turns out that people with less knowledge about a topic are more likely to overestimate how much they know. If you haven't listened to that last episode, I encourage you to do so.

Speaker 1: 2:01

In this episode, we'll discuss what you can do to help your teachers build knowledge that leads to improved student outcomes and doesn't just take up valuable time and money. The first thing to know is that, as with our students, teacher knowledge building is not achieved through a one-and-done undertaking. In fact, this traditional workshop model without targeted focus or follow-up has been identified as a feature of ineffective practice. It's one of the reasons that our professional learning efforts have always been aimed to run over time and provide the opportunity for follow-up support. The ultimate goal of any professional learning undertaking is for teachers to take their new learning and apply it for the benefit of students. Newman and colleagues have written. Individual teacher competence is the foundation for improved classroom practice, but to improve the achievement of all students in a school from one academic year to the next, teachers must exercise their individual knowledge, skills and dispositions in an integrated way to advance the collective work of the school under a set of unique conditions. The collective power of the full staff to improve student achievement school-wide can be summarised as school capacity. In other words, professional learning must involve teachers working in a way that contributes to the collective good of the group and in doing so they need to think for themselves and engage in applying new learning to their own teaching practice.

Speaker 1: 3:31

In their article the Role of Coaching in the Implementation of Innovations, joyce and Showers identified that a barrier to the transfer of knowledge and skills to a teacher's own practice is that the teacher may think that all they need to do is take a process from training and plop it into their classrooms. However, when teachers understood that adopting new teaching methods involved new learning and not just new doing, they were much more likely to be successful. A big part of this was accepting that there would be setbacks and failures and knowing that this was all part of the process. The view of professional learning as something you pick up in training and simply put down in the classroom can lead to bigger problems than just a waste of time. Trying to use a new technique without understanding the when, where and why of it can negatively impact student outcomes. Doing something new doesn't always lead to better outcomes for kids. Joyce and Showers described an example of this.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Teachers attended professional learning about using higher order questioning in the classroom. They learned to discriminate higher order questions from lower order questions, to generate examples of each and to increase their rate of higher order questions used in the classroom. After the training, teachers implemented this new technique with their students. You might say that the training was therefore a success, except that it wasn't. It turns out that the technique of asking higher order questions is only successful in specific circumstances, namely that you have taught foundational skills and understanding first. But teachers weren't doing this. Their questioning efforts actually resulted in worse results for students. The teachers were missing the critical element of knowledge called conditional knowledge, which often relates to the theoretical frameworks that they're applying. All of that is about knowing when, where, how much and under what circumstances a practice is most suitable. So if traditional PL doesn't get the job done, what does?

Speaker 1: 5:32

Joyce and Showers described three conditions for successful teacher learning the study of the theory underlying the skill. The opportunity for multiple demonstrations and practice and feedback either under simulations or in the classroom. Further, they named on-site coaching as a critical factor in transferring that knowledge to the classroom. It's understandable for leaders to, at this point in the podcast episode, be thinking well, we've done all of those things. But I'd like to unpack that a bit more. Joyce and Show has talked about the study of the theory underlining the skill. I'm sorry to tell you that an hour or two of an information session is not study. It's an introduction. As leaders, we often provide information for our teachers, but perhaps we aren't doing the necessary follow-up to make sure that the doing results in learning. Let's unpack this idea of knowing a bit more to really dig down into what it means for us in our schools. To do this, we'll examine a study by Li and Sung from 2022, published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. In this study, li and Sung examined the concept of knowledge. They created a continuum of knowledge, from tacit or implicit knowledge through to theoretical.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Tacit knowledge is what we know but can't really explain. It's practical and highly context dependent. Think about all of the things that you and your team do in the classroom. Think about the lesson that you may have just taught that wasn't from a highly structured program. Would you be able to explain the how and why of it all If someone asked you why you chose to teach at a certain pace, use certain words or stop a lesson at a certain point? Could you provide a deep explanation of your reasoning? Or would you just say it just felt right? Based on what I know of the students, if you couldn't provide that explanation, then that's tacit or implicit knowledge.

Speaker 1: 7:25

This kind of knowledge is difficult to transfer. The next kind of knowledge is explicit knowledge. We could write it down on paper or give someone specific steps. It's straightforward and easily documented. Tacit, implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge combine to form practical knowledge. They're about what we do. Lee and Sung write that while most practical knowledge is implicit and not particularly easy to transfer, some of it is explicit. When we give someone a program to use that has strong guidance for how the lesson should be run, then over time they develop explicit knowledge. They come to know the steps and could document them for others. We then have theoretical knowledge that is accessible, highly transferable and can be used by various people in various contexts.

Speaker 1: 8:14

When you undertake professional learning that shares the reading rope or a visual of cognitive load theory, you're dealing with theoretical knowledge. We could all evaluate the professional learning efforts in our schools and say we are, in fact, addressing these types of knowledge. However, what's going on when we've been doing this work for a considerable period of time and our teachers still can't answer questions about that reading rope or apply the principles of cognitive load theory to their planning and classroom practice? In their paper, lee and Sung talk about a transformation of knowledge from one part of the knowledge continuum to another. It's not about just addressing these different types of knowledge, but about connecting them. In considering 36 separate studies that were eligible for inclusion in their 2022 study and paper, li and Sung were looking for common threads between these studies.

Speaker 1: 9:07

Teacher knowledge has been written about extensively, but there still isn't consensus about what it is, why it matters and how to build it. Lee and Sung identified several conditions in the literature that facilitate the transformation and building of teacher knowledge. These include high-quality collaboration in and between teams. Supportive leadership not just being nice to people, but ensuring alignment between the big picture goals of the school and the knowledge being built. At a minimum, sufficient time needs to be allocated to the work. A quick information session doesn't get it done. It has been identified that professional guidance from an external person can be highly effective if the external guide or expert uses the principles of effective professional experiences. Those are intensive duration, a focus on content, coherence. The learning has to be active, it has to be practice-based and there needs to be collective participation. The external guide also needs to provide a framework for the team to think about teaching and learning. The fourth condition is that technological environments were used effectively, so online learning can be a part of the mix. Next is the provision of tools, frameworks, documents and pathways of learning to give team members a way to conceptualize the knowledge being built and provide a shared point of reference for discussions and reflection.

Speaker 1: 10:35

I'd like to end this episode by coming back to Joyce and Showers. Their work was concerned with how we support teachers to transfer new learning to the classroom in a way that leads to substantial learning outcomes for students. Critical in this desire is that the teacher can not just replicate something from a training session in their classroom, but can use that new learning to deepen and expand their existing practice. Let me read what they had to say all the way back in 1981. The positive cumulative transfer of learned teaching skills and strategies to classroom practice is enormously complex. Newly acquired skills must be integrated into an existing repertoire of skills and knowledge. Curricula must be re-examined for appropriate uses of new skills and goals must be reviewed in relation to new strategies. Thus, learning to perform a new skill or strategy is only the first step toward affecting student outcomes. Transfer of training to the learning environment requires skillful decision making by the classroom teacher and redirection of behavior until the new skill is operating comfortably within the flow of activities in the classroom.

Speaker 1: 11:48

We all know how long this takes and how much effort is required. We all know that there is never enough time to do all the things we want to do in a school. We all also know how it feels to be working so hard and just not see the results we're hoping for. Maybe it's time to slow down and do less. Maybe it's time for a slow learning movement for teachers where we focus on practices and principles of instruction that give bang for the buck instead of focusing exclusively on programs. Don't get me wrong. We need guides, tools and programs to help us know what to do. That was identified by Lee and Sung through their review of research. But it seems to me that we're in a time here, in 2024, when programs are being thrown at people with a bit of light touch. Training and schools are expected to just take it from there. This work is complex, it's long term and it's all about people. Here's a bit more from Joyce and Showers.

Speaker 1: 12:43

We believe that a major problem in teacher training designs has been the assumption that a skill, once learned, can be popped into place in the classroom or transferred laterally. The situation is rather that transfer of teaching skill involves much new learning, when to use the skills, how to modulate them to the students, etc. Learning which has to take place in the process of transfer. This paper was written in 1981, over 40 years ago, and we are still seeing the same issues. It is time for that to change. We don't need an inquiry or a report to tell us that we're seeing the results in front of our eyes.

Speaker 1: 13:26

So what's the answer to this issue of transformation and transfer of teaching knowledge? Well, there isn't one simple thing, but I'll add to the suggestions in this episode by saying that coaching has been consistently identified as a key factor in helping teachers build all types of knowledge, including pedagogical practices. But this work is about more than just having a supportive ear and someone to run ideas by. Coaching isn't an exact science, but it is important. This episode won't give you everything you need to know about building teacher knowledge, but if you're going to take something away from it, let it be this Think beyond programs. They're just the starting point for growth. Be specific about what you want your teachers to grow knowledge in and make sure that it aligns with your school's strategic vision. Allocate time for learning, but don't let it be random. Having teachers go and observe their teaching bestie to pick up some tips isn't going to get the work done. If you can, when you are setting staffing budgets, allocate a sufficient amount of money for a coach and then make sure they are well trained and supported, you won't have enough budget to do this in the exact way that you want, but do the best you can with what you have.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Knowledge building and teacher growth can't be add-ons that distract from the work of the classroom. They are the work of the classroom. Remember real learning isn't about the classroom. Remember real learning isn't about ticking PO boxes in the strategic plan. It's about helping teachers integrate new learning with existing schemas of practice and then working alongside them as they test and try and evaluate their efforts. That's the coaching. It's the most important bit, but it's also the bit that's least often done well. Do less, do it better and be in it for the long haul. You'll find the references for this episode at the bottom of the show notes at jocelynsemaeducationcom. This work isn't easy, but it is achievable. However, we can rarely find success in it on our own. But don't worry, you don't have to. Until next time, happy teaching everyone. Bye.