| How might we go about embedding changes to classroom practice? |
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Research taster
If you have leadership responsibility in your school for a subject or department, you may find leading by example (modelling behaviour and encouraging ideas to permeate through developing and shared understandings) helps to embed changes in practice amongst your colleagues  . Changing existing cultures or mind-sets takes time. Co-ordinators have used metaphors such as ‘bubbling away’, ‘slow simmering’ and ‘a little beat pulsing away’ to describe a process which involves intermittent or regular reinforcement of key messages. One co-ordinator commented how the concept of ‘learning how to learn’ was embedded through lodging ‘it in the back of their minds’. Another, by contrast, commented how it was embedded through keeping the notion of learning constantly in the foreground.
Your evidence
One activity you might like to carry out with your colleagues to keep new ideas in the foreground could be to ask them to think about changes they have been experimenting with and what they think would help them to embed the changes in a successful and sustainable way. Using a chart with three columns headed: CHANGE, BARRIER, SUPPORT, you could discuss together and record:
You could use your own and your colleagues’ reflections to draw up development plans to revisit the changes or bring about other changes to practice. Moving forward Making substantial changes to practice calls for a mix of ingredients and, in particular, a mix of peer, specialist and leadership support. Would you find it helpful to work with your colleagues to identify the conditions in your school that would help you to make and sustain more changes of this kind?
Find out more
 You can find out more about bringing about change in teachers’ practices on the TLRP Learning how to learn project website at: http://www.tlrp.org/proj/phase11/phase2f.htmlYou can find out more about how working collaboratively with colleagues can help you to change your practice on the GTC’s Research of the Month website at: http://www.gtce.org.uk/policyandresearch/research/ROMtopics/cpdrom/ You can find out more further reading suggestions on the theme of CPD at: http://www.rtweb.info/ch17/nfr17.html |
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