Three heads are better than one: Data teams in collaborative spaces

Teachers are surrounded by data, whether it’s collected formatively, or summatively, whether anecdotal, through observation and dialogue or through more formalised assessment situations - it’s a very familiar feature of the teaching landscape. How we engage with the data is critical to the decisions we make about children’s learning and the next steps for us as teachers.

In the past I’ve been used to analysing my own class data, using it to inform and to help shape the next learning steps. I’ve been able to share the data with colleagues and often used it as the base of discussion. And it’s also been collected to add to a picture of whole school progress and achievement. But generally my engagement with data has been a solo pursuit. It’s been very much about the children in my class and it’s been reliant on my view of them. What happens therefore, when there are three teachers sharing a larger cohort of learners, with a collective ownership of all the students? It's a question I asked some of our teachers this week.

It’s part of a strategic drive this year to deepen our understanding of how the space, or more accurately how three teachers working within the space, can impact on student achievement - what are some of the opportunities presented when we can work more flexibly in more flexible environments? In this instance, data and its analysis makes for a valuable conversation.

What struck me when talking to teachers was the dialogic approach to understanding progress, achievement and next steps of any individual learner. In the context of writing for example when discussing a group of children there were three heads instead of one, all able to contribute, each bringing their own knowledge of the students, across a wide range of curriculum contexts. “We all know all the kids…”, one commented- “…it’s not like having a conversation about a child in another class that you’ve never worked alongside.”

Certainly the process of making overall teacher judgments (OTJ) with three teachers seems to add to the reliability and dependability of the outcome. If “Triangulation of information increases the dependability of the OTJ” (Mitchell & Poskitt, 2010) in terms of referencing multiple sources of assessment evidence, then triangulating it further through different lenses has the potential to increase this level of dependability.

Teachers also spoke of how they would dedicate a meeting time each fortnight to talking specifically about data, about the shift they were seeing, and to draw attention to individual children. They collate the information in a shared file system, or on Google docs and use this to inform teaching, to set targets and to regroup children. This frame for evidence driven conversations has a strong element of the ‘data teams’ approach that Hattie (2012) refers to:

 “a small team meets a minimum of every two or three weeks and uses an explicit, data drive structure to disaggregate data, analyse student performance, set incremental goals, engage in dialogue around explicit and deliberate instruction, and create a plan to monitor student learning and teacher instruction” (p. 60)

It’s about making the data visible, developing professional trust and working towards improvement. It’s about prioritising and setting goals, about understanding what is or isn’t working for each student, and about monitoring the impact that as teachers, we’re having. Ultimately it is a marriage, as Allison et al (2010) puts it, between “professional collaboration and data-driven decision making” (p. 2)

The data team approach is a particularly relevant one when considering collaborative teaching in a shared space. There is already a shared focus, there is already a shared culture and already a shared responsibility for the learners. Many of the foundations on which to lay the dialogue and conversations around learning are already present. And this collaboration is critical:

“Schools cannot help all students to learn if educators work in isolation. Schools must create the structures and cultures that foster effective educator collaboration” (Hattie, 2012, p. 62).

As we further explore opportunities that are arising from collaborative teaching in open learning spaces I can’t help but feel that this is an area that can only gather momentum. Data led conversations are already happening in ways that wouldn’t be so easy for teachers in more traditional settings and a data team approach has already, if somewhat organically emerged. It’s one that over time I see will be refined and redesigned, but the focus will always be one talking about learning and critical reflection in the light of evidence.

References

Allison, E., et al. (2010). Data Teams: The Big Picture. Englewood: Lead and Learn Press.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers. Abingdon: Routledge.

Mitchell, K., & Poskitt, J. (2010). How do teachers make overall teacher judgments (OTJs) and how are they supported to make sound and accurate OTJs? Paper presented at the meeting of the NZARE Conference.

EdTalk

Here's my first go at an Edtalk. What a powerful space for self-assessment! Note to self - look at the camera! Thanks to Jane, Jedd and the team at CORE

Funky School

The videos accompany an article that cropped up in The Australian recently. It describes the so called ‘renaissance’ in Australian education resulting from the massive investment in facilities, in every school, as part of the Government’s Building the Education Revolution (BER) strategy.

Many schools have opted to spend their money creating flexible or open learning spaces, housing between 80 and 200 children and four to six teachers, and author Caroline Overington raises the question as to whether this is money well spent. She suggests that despite all the rhetoric spoken in praise of the new buildings there’s little evidence to suggest that a child learning in an agile learning space is going to do any better than in a traditional classroom. And she’s got a point. This is a common argument in the field of modern learning environments.

Overington presents a fairly critical piece, particularly on the subject of how the new schools have been rolled out. She reminds us once again that the walls have been down before, that there’s not much evidence supporting agile spaces and that some teachers and parents simply don’t like them. Overington has done her research, quoting John Hattie, Jillian Blackmore, Greg Whitby and Elizabeth Hartnell-Young in the piece.

The videos here tell part of the story and the article is worth a read too. The concerns that Overington voices are no doubt ones shared by parents and teachers and it's as well for teachers working in these spaces to be aware of them.  It is perhaps a timely reminder too that we need to start gathering research on the subject. 

What makes the difference: The teacher or the space?

Having my head stuck into John Hattie’s Visible Learning has given me time to consider what we do in our open learning spaces in a slightly different way. In looking through Hattie’s highest ranking effect sizes, there are none related to how classrooms are set out or the architecture of the school. In fact Hattie argues that the school effects that he analyses, whilst still being important, don’t actually define the differences in student achievement. It’s very much what happens inside the classrooms that makes the key difference.

His big message is that “what teachers do matters” (Hattie, 2009, p.22). So it’s factors like formative assessment, feedback, clarity of teaching, teacher-student relationships and meta-cognitive strategies that actually make the difference to student achievement. It’s also factors from the student themselves such as prior achievement and self-reported grades. It’s about learners knowing, “Where am I going?”, “How am I going?”, and “Where to next?”.

None of Hattie's top ranking meta-analyses in fact are space dependent, They could happen in any classroom setting, whether open or more traditional. So does the space matter?

Good design clearly will never replace good teaching in terms of student outcomes but the question remains as to whether design can enhance learning? Can teachers working collaboratively in a space to design and cause learning, where there is open access to e-learning tools and furniture that is fit for purpose, promote learning for children? Can the environment really be the third teacher?

Reference

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge

Open Learning Spaces: Where's the evidence?

Underlying the whole purpose or this blog is really to ascertain the evidence that supports and challenges the use of open learning spaces.

The challenges of teaching in open learning spaces raised during the recent PLG related to factors such as parental expectations of what a classroom should look like; to ensuring that students don’t slip through the gap; and to maintaining rigour in teaching and learning.

The biggest challenge though came down to evidence. We’re used to working with evidence to support approaches to learning in our schools when it comes to curriculum delivery and we strive to be working at a level of best practice. But what evidence can we collect that will ascertain whether or not working in an open learning space with, for example, two teachers and 60 learners, is any better than learning in a single cell classroom? Are the differences actually measurable and in which case, what should we be looking for?

One of the schools present was taking part in an NZCER engagement survey this year so will be able to compare data from learners in a shared space with those from more traditional classroom set ups. The comparison will be interesting. But what other sources of evidence are there?

A good place to begin looking for measurable outcomes is John Hattie’s Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. But it returns very little by way of studies related specifically to open learning spaces and what is there is somewhat dated.

The closest match is where Hattie pulls together reviews of the open education programs of the 1970s and 80s, where open learning spaces were considered at the time an essential, if only one feature of good practice. Other features included a greater emphasis on the child guiding their own learning, diagnostic evaluation to guide instruction, the use of manipulative materials to stimulate student exploration, individualized instruction, multi-age grouping and team teaching.

Giaconia and Hedges (1982) study found “that open education programs can aid in producing greater self-concept, creativity and a positive attitude towards school.” (Hattie, p. 89) They also found that multi-age grouping, open space and team teaching were not factors that distinguished the effective open learning programs from the less effective. These later factors Giacania and Hedges termed administrative or organisational features, and suggested that any effect was purely indirect. “Open space may be conducive to the child's self-initiation of activities and learning. But the effects of open space per se are probably less direct in this regard than the effects of an open education program where the role of the child as self-initiator of learning is an explicit part of the program” (Giaccania & Hedges, 1982, p. 599). The space itself wasn’t so much as a factor as what was happening in it.

According to this evidence therefore the open nature of the space in these situations didn’t make a huge difference. It’s an interesting starting place in a search for evidence. With Hattie’s book open at the moment though I’m intrigued to view his high ranking interventions and practices and see which if any are space dependent.


References

Giaconia, R.M., and Hedges, L.V. (1982) Identifying features of effective open education. Review of Educational Research, 52(4), 579-602

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge