Evidence Informed Learning Opportunities

To ensure that the learning potential of all students is maximised the College encourages an evidence informed approach to all professional learning opportunities.  These focus on developing all areas of school life from leadership, wellbeing, pastoral, teaching, learning and leading research groups.

“In a school where research engagement and evidence-informed enquiry is well established, the process produces powerful insights that support positive measurable change.”    (McAleavy, 2016 p34)

There are now a wide range of perspectives on research in schools – how research is used and carried out and for what purposes.  Research engagement is defined as both engagement in and engagement with research (DfE, 2011):

Engagement in research – school-based research/practitioner enquiry/action research to interrogate and improve practice.

Engagement with research – schools’ and practitioners’ use of external research to inform pedagogy and drive school improvement.

This is encouraged through a diverse and cutting-edge professional learning menu where teachers can choose specific training that is relevant to them or for areas they would like to further develop. The College has published a series of evidence informed research compendiums in partnership with the Oxford University Education Deanery and Hughes Hall at Cambridge University.

Collaborative Learning Groups: Lesson Study

Staff are asked to reflect on an objective and are requested to focus their professional review on one of the five pedagogical areas of focus.  The learning and teaching opportunities are mainly supported by the Specialist Leaders in Education and the Deputy Head: Learning and Teaching.  They help to support the development of understanding in their specialist areas and explore these pedagogies through lesson study (joint practice development).

Teachers work with collaborative groups to share ideas and plan lessons collaboratively, joint observations are shared and ideas are brought to the groups.  The Specialist Leaders in Education offer specialist advice, relevant research reading and coaching to all triads within their groups.  The guiding principles of these collaborative groups are built on the foundation of the three Rs:

Respect: respect is an attitude.  It entails taking seriously and valuing what someone else or multiple others bring to an encounter.  It demands openness and receptivity, it calls for willingness to consider experiences or perspectives that are different from our own, and it often requires a withholding of judgment.

Reciprocity: respect and reciprocity are closely connected and while respect is an attitude, reciprocity is a way of interacting.  It is a process of balanced give-and-take; there is equity in what is exchanged and how it is exchanged.

Responsibility: when everyone within the learning community takes more responsibility for the educational project, teaching and learning become “community property”, with all members recognised as active members of that community and collaborative partners equally invested in the common effort to engage in, and support, learning.

Drawn from Cook-Sather, Bovill, & Felten (2014) Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty, Jossey-Bass.

To ensure that the learning and teaching philosophy is fully embedded the development of the core pedagogical areas are further supported by the following professional learning opportunities:

• Lunch time Pedagoos: Lunch and learn focusing on short research informed CPD
• SPARKS: A range of staff deliver short 10 minute sparks to share best practice and evaluate its impact
• Professional Learning Days
• Leadership Training NPQs
• Oxford Educational Deanery Partnership supporting the work of the Collaborative Learning Groups
• Lesson Study: Collaborative Enquiry
• ResearchEd and Innovation Conference
• Part funded Masters Funding

Staff are asked to reflect on an objective and are requested to focus their professional review on one of the five pedagogical areas of focus.  The learning and teaching opportunities are mainly supported by the Specialist Leaders in Education and the Deputy Head: Learning and Teaching.  They help to support the development of understanding in their specialist areas and explore these pedagogies through lesson study (joint practice development).