Is Twitter your best source of CPD? →

In my former life as a teacher, I all too often experienced the following: I would do what I hoped was a really interesting lesson which explored deeply profound truths,  mixed in with the odd ‘throw away’ comment to lighten the mood.  Unfortunately, my pupils would completely forget the profound truths but remember the glib, throw away comment. Despite my best efforts to learn from my experience so as to not make the same mistake in my new role as occasional speaker and blogger, similar experiences seem to be following me around. 

Recently I was delivering a keynote on the principles of evidence-based practice and I made an off-the cuff remark along the lines of ‘if Twitter is your best CPD, get help.’ This comment was soon ‘out-there’ on social media and the Twittersphere and was being retweeted with some commentators taking offence at the tone of my comment. Now, given that I normally go out of my way to try and avoid making inflammatory comments on Twitter, but more importantly I like to try and support whatever comments I make with some form of evidence, I felt I had let myself down.  So I welcomed with open-arms the recent publication of a systematic review on formally organised and informally developed professional learning groups by Lantz-Andersson, Lundin, et al. (2018), which I hope will now allow me to make some informed comment on the use of Twitter and teacher CPD. 

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This blog was first published on the TDT website on Tuesday 25 September, 2018

Evidence-based practice and instructional coaching - why the research evidence is not enough.

Just this week, @DrSamSims wrote a very well-argued blogpost giving four reasons why  instructional coaching is the most well-evidenced form of CPD,  and which concludes that All schools that aspire to be evidence-based should be giving it (instructional coaching ) a go.  Unfortunately - Sam’s last sentence is a tad over-enthusiastic and for three reasons mars what would be an excellent post.   First, it’s not for researchers to tell school leaders and teachers what they should or should not be doing in their schools and classrooms .  What school leaders and teachers prioritise in their schools and classroom is down to their professional judgment.  Indeed, the last sentence of Sam’s blogpost is grist to the mill for the opponents of evidence-based education.  Second, the role of research evidence in evidence-based practice is to provide the backing for warrants.  As such, research evidence plays an indirect role in developing an arguments supporting the use of the intervention - Kvernbekk (2016).  Third, even if you think that instructional coaching meets an obvious priority for  your school i.e. supporting the improvement of teaching learning – that does not mean your school should automatically do it.  Ideally, school leaders would use a disciplined process to work out whether what worked ‘there’ is going to work ‘here’.

So in the rest of this post I am, once again, going to lean on the work of Kvernbekk (2016)  to examine the process you might wish to undertaken before adopting even the ‘most evidenced’ intervention.

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The school research lead and piling up statistical significance

Last weekend saw the annual education evidence fest – aka- ResearchED  2018 take place in St John’s Wood, London.  Unfortunately, one of the inevitable disappointments of attending #rED 18 is that you are unable to see all the speakers that you would like to see.  As such, you are often have to do with other people’s summaries of speakers.  So I was particularly pleased to see Schools Week come up with a headline and article ResearchED 2018 Five interesting things we learned and was even more pleased when I saw it contained a short summary of Dr Sam Sims presentation on the positive impact of instructional coaching.  However, my excitement was short-lived as when I came to read the article, and especially references to the statistically significant positive effect of instructional coaching being was found in 10 out of 15 studies, which was then used to infer that “probably the best-evidenced form of CPD currently known to mankind”

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The school research lead and understanding evidence-informed practice

The start of this week will have seen most schools have at least one-day of INSET/CPD – call it what you will – to start off the new academic year.

No doubt many colleagues will have played ‘bullsh.t bingo’ – ticking off the number of times terms such as -research, evidence, evidence-informed practice, best-practice, the evidence says – are used by members of the senior leadership team.

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