Teacher Learning and Leadership: Of, By, and For Teachers [1 ed.] 2016010841, 2016011812, 9781138941878, 9781138941885, 9781315673424

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Teacher Learning and ­Leadership

Teacher Learning and Leadership asserts that teachers should be put at the center of creating, developing, organizing, implementing, and sharing their own ideas for school change rather than being passive recipients of knowledge from the outside. It argues that there is tremendous potential for the good of students and the professionalization of teaching, when teachers work collaboratively to develop their own and their colleagues’ professional knowledge and practices and are supported by school and system leaders, unions and government. The book draws on the groundbreaking work of the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program in Ontario and uses an in-depth case study to illustrate its points. It demonstrates how professional development built around collaboration, teacher leadership, curriculum development, technology and pedagogy can be organized in a way that redistributes control and responsibility to teachers, thereby instilling a genuine sense of pride and accomplishment in their work. This book is a sincere outreach from the authors who advocate for the professional development of, by, and for teachers as individuals and, importantly, as a collective profession. The authors argue that projects like the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (a joint initiative between the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation) can radically, and positively, transform teachers’ knowledge, skills, and practices. The book provides an important model for school change led by teachers, rather than experts, in partnership with school and system leaders, and is a fascinating read for all those concerned with teaching, teacher development, and educational change. Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar, Stanford Centre for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University and Emerita Professor at Teachers College, USA. Carol Campbell, Associate Professor of Leadership and Educational Change and Director of the Knowledge Network for Applied Educational Research, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Anna Yashkina, Senior Researcher, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada.

Teacher Quality and School Development Series Edited by Christopher Day and Ann Lieberman

Self-Study and Inquiry into Practice: Learning to Teach for Equity and Social Justice Linda Kroll The New Lives of Teachers Christopher Day and Qing Gu Teacher Education around the World: Changing Policies and Practices Linda Darling-Hammond and Ann Lieberman The Professional Identity of Teacher Educators: Career on the Cusp? Ronnie Davey Resilient Teachers, Resilient Schools: Building and Sustaining Quality in Testing Times Christopher Day and Qing Gu Promoting Early Career Teacher Resilience: A Socio-Cultural and Critical Guide to Action Bruce Johnson, Barry Down, Rosie LeCornu, Judy Peters, Anna Sullivan, Jane Pearce, and Janet Hunter Teachers and Academic Partners in Urban Schools: Threats to Professional Practice Lori Beckett Teacher Learning and Leadership: Of, By, and For Teachers Ann Lieberman, Carol Campbell, and Anna Yashkina

Teacher Learning and Leadership Of, By, and For Teachers

Ann Lieberman, Carol Campbell, and Anna Yashkina

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Ann Lieberman, Carol Campbell & Anna Yashkina The right of Ann Lieberman, Carol Campbell & Anna Yashkina to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Lieberman, Ann, author. Title: Teacher learning and leadership of, by, and for teachers / Ann Lieberman, Carol Campbell & Anna Yashkina. Description: New York: Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016010841 (print) | LCCN 2016011812 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138941878 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138941885 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315673424 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Teachers—Professional relationships—United States. | Teachers—Training of—United States. | Educational leadership—United States. Classification: LCC LB1775.2 .L443 2017 (print) | LCC LB1775.2 (ebook) | DDC 370.71/1—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016010841 ISBN: 978-1-138-94187-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-94188-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-67342-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

About the Authors Acknowledgments

vii ix

Introduction

1

1 Policies and Practices for Teachers’ Learning and Leadership

5

2 Moving from Chaos to Collaboration: A System Enabling Teachers’ Learning and Leadership

21

3 Teacher Learning in the TLLP

33

4 Teacher Leadership in the TLLP

59

5 Teachers’ Knowledge Exchange and Sharing of Practices through the TLLP

85

6 What We Have Learned So Far

121

References  Index

129 137

About the Authors

Dr. Ann Lieberman is currently a senior scholar at Stanford University. She is an emeritus professor from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is affiliated with two Stanford Centers: SCALE and SCOPE. Her major areas of research are: teacher knowledge, learning, and leadership as well as school/university partnerships. She is internationally known for her work on finding a way to reconcile teacher knowledge with research knowledge. She has written or edited over 18 books, and scores of articles and chapters, all focused on the teacher, teacher leadership, and school reform. She has been on the forefront of arguing for policies that enable teacher learning and leadership that recognize the complexities of teaching and the critical importance of supporting teachers. Dr. Carol Campbell is Associate Professor of Leadership and Educational Change and Director of the Knowledge Network for Applied Educational Research ­(KNAER) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Carol is an appointed Education Advisor to the Premier and the M ­ inister of ­Education in Ontario. She is known for her commitment to combining evidence from professional knowledge and research to develop capacity for educational improvement. Her previous roles include: Executive Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) at Stanford ­University, USA; serving in senior official roles in the Ontario Ministry of Education; and education, academic, and policy roles in the UK. Dr. Anna Yashkina is a Senior Researcher working with the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies ­ in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her professional interests include ­educational leadership, teacher learning and development, and school improvement. Anna teaches graduate courses and provides research expertise for university, school board, teacher federation, and government projects.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP) p­ articipants who have contributed to the ideas and evidence that inform this book—teacher leaders, TLLP project participants, individuals and groups engaged in and with the TLLP in schools, districts and communities, members of the TLLP provincial teams in the Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF) and affiliate unions—L’Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO), the Elementary ­Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Ontario English Catholic ­Teachers’ Association (OECTA), the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation ­(OSSTF), and the TLLP team in the Teaching Policy and Standards Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Education. We wish to acknowledge and thank the Ontario Ministry of Education and OTF for funding and supporting our TLLP research. We thank Margaret ­Brennan, Nathalie Carrier, Olivier Bégin-Caouette, Cameron Hauseman, Sofya Malik, ­Joelle Rodway, and Jacqueline Sohn for providing research assistance. We extend our gratitude and admiration to Carolyn Crosby and Jonathan So who wrote teacher leader vignettes and granted us permission to include them in this book and to Julia Graydon, Kristen Muscat-Fennell, Alison Radley-Walters, Kyle Gleason, and Anita Simpson who contributed significantly to the Provincial Knowledge Exchange case studies included in this book. In particular, we want to extend our sincere thanks to the key individuals ­involved in initiating the TLLP: Lindy Amato, Director of Professional Affairs for OTF, and Paul Anthony, former Director of the Teaching and Policy S­ tandards Branch in the Ontario Ministry of Education. Lindy and Paul came to Stanford University and, for two days, wrote about their views on the ideas behind the TLLP and the context within which it was born. They represented the leadership from the Ministry (policy-making group) and the OTF representing the teachers’

x  Acknowledgments

­ nions. We used their notes for Chapter 1 so that we would capture the i­ mportance u of the context within which TLLP was created and the nuances of how policy makers and practitioners think and are represented. In this way we learned how policies can enable forward-looking practice. Although most educators wish for this, TLLP actually fulfills the promise!

Introduction

Introducing the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program For us, Ontario’s Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP) is so important and special that we feel others all over the world should know about it. At long last, teachers are put in charge of their own professional learning and development and are supported in their effort. Our research indicates that TLLP is powerful professional development for teachers’ learning and leadership of, by, and for teachers with benefits for students’ learning also (Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2013; Campbell et al., 2014, 2015b). We have found TLLP to be a smashing hit! TLLP is unique. One of us has been in education for years, traveled all over the world, and studied and consulted for all kinds of organizations concerning teacher learning and leadership and has never seen anything like it. TLLP is inspiring and empowering. During the closing event (the Sharing the Learning Summit), where teachers share what they have done at the end of their TLLP project, we can see (and feel) the pride and accomplishment of all the teachers sharing and showing each other what they have done through the TLLP project. The TLLP is also ­successful. The teacher participants called the program “a life changing experience,” “an invaluable gift,” and “the best PD [professional development] I have ever had.” All of the above are what we have witnessed, found evidence for, and have participated in for over nine years. We now feel passionately about telling the story of TLLP with the hope that it will inspire educators and policy makers around the world to realize that the professional development of teachers with teachers at the helm may be an important way to finally and significantly transform the professional development of, by, and for teachers.

What Is TLLP? TLLP began in 2007 as a result of a joint initiative between the Ontario Ministry of Education (Ministry) and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF) with shared goals to:

2  Introduction

• • •

support experienced teachers to undertake self-directed advanced professional development; develop teachers’ leadership skills for sharing their professional learning and exemplary practices; and facilitate knowledge exchange for the spread and sustainability of effective and innovative practices.

Each year, experienced teachers—individually or more commonly in teams—can apply to conduct a TLLP project. In response to an annual call for TLLP proposals from the Ministry and OTF, teachers can submit a TLLP project proposal. The TLLP project proposal is to include a description of the proposed project, how the project will contribute to student learning and Ontario’s priorities for educational excellence, equity, well-being, and public confidence, and a rationale for the proposed TLLP team’s professional learning objectives. A plan including specific goals, activities, measures, and budgets for each of the teacher’s professional learning and for sharing is to be submitted. School district committees review applications and submit their priority choices to a provincial committee comprised of teacher union and government representatives, who select projects for funding. In May 2016, the tenth cohort of TLLP began. Successful teacher applicants receive training, support, and funding for their TLLP projects. In the May prior to the school year in which they will embark on their TLLP projects, teacher leaders attend Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers training to support their preparation to take on the professional learning, ­project management, and leadership expectations of a TLLP project. TLLP teacher l­ eaders are expected to develop and implement their projects throughout the following school year. During their TLLP project—and beyond—participants become part of Mentoring Moments, an online community for sharing resources, learning, and discussion. More recently a further online platform, Teach Ontario, has been created and is becoming widely used by, for, and with teachers to share resources. In the November of the next school year, following the end of their TLLP projects, TLLP teams attend the Sharing the Learning Summit to showcase completed projects and to further spread their practices. Typically, a TLLP project spans 18 months from initial training, through implementation, and then to the culminating Summit. TLLP project leaders are required to submit Final Reports at the end of the year for their TLLP project, including information regarding project goals and successes, professional learning, project sharing, ­challenges, and projected learning and impact beyond the TLLP funding. Additionally, to further spread learning from completed TLLP projects, school districts can apply for Provincial Knowledge Exchange (PKE) funding to provide resources for release time and travel to enable former TLLP teacher leaders to share their knowledge and practices with other schools and school districts across Ontario (and potentially beyond). Further details about the TLLP’s goals and processes for applying, conducting, reporting, and sharing TLLP projects’ learning and activities are available on the Ontario Ministry of Education website at www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/teacher/tllp.html

Introduction  3  

and the OTF website at www.otffeo.on.ca/en/learning/teacher-learning-and-leadership-program. In this book, we describe TLLP’s relevance to how teachers learn, lead, and share their professional knowledge when they are supported by government policy working in partnership with teachers’ unions and teachers. This is an innovative model of professional development that others all over the world can emulate.

Introducing Our Research After the second year of the TLLP, we realized that no one would believe that ­professional development led by teachers was an incredible success, so we approached the Ministry of Education with the idea of letting us do some research to collect evidence of what we were seeing. In 2012, we were commissioned by the OTF and the Ministry to conduct a small-scale one-year research project examining the evidence concerning the benefits or challenges of the TLLP. Our overarching research questions were: 1. What is the value of TLLP for teachers? 2. To what extent have the overall goals of TLLP been realized? 3. What lessons have been learned so far? Our research methods involved: analysis of TLLP documents; observations and evaluations of provincial events for TLLP participants; descriptive analysis of all TLLP Participant Final Reports from the first four cohorts (during 2007–2011, 302 TLLP projects were conducted); in-depth content analysis of a representative sample of 20 percent of the Final Reports (60 projects); and interviews with individuals involved in the TLLP (project teacher leaders, teacher union leaders, and government officials). Following completion of our initial final report (Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2013), we were invited to embark on a second five-year longitudinal study to examine in greater depth and breadth the spread and sustainability of the TLLP. In this study, our overarching research questions are: 1. What impact do TLLP projects have on teachers’ professional learning, their skills and practice, and their leadership skills? Moreover, what impact do they have on other adults affected by the TLLP and on student engagement and learning in general? 2. How is learning being shared beyond the TLLP project team? 3. What are the possible longer-term impacts of participating in TLLP projects? Our research involves mixed methods including: •

Continuing descriptive statistical analysis of data for all approved projects (Cohort 5 onwards) from TLLP Project Application Proposals and Final Reports, the purpose of which is to explore the nature and spread of the project topics and sizes.

4  Introduction

• •

•

•

• • •

•

•

Continuing in-depth content analysis of a representative sample of 20 percent of the Final Reports (Cohort 5 onwards). Observations and analyses of participant feedback for TLLP Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers and Sharing the Learning Summit each year to investigate the nature of support offered during the events and their usefulness to program participants. An online survey of all TLLP project leaders in cohorts 1–7 to investigate teachers’ experiences with TLLP, the impact, spread, and sustainability of TLLP projects, and changes in practice provincially. The survey was administered in 2013–14; 243 teachers completed the survey (47 percent response rate). Mini-surveys of TLLP project leaders at the start and end of their projects for each cohort to explore changes in TLLP leaders’ confidence levels in learning, leadership, and practices over the course of the TLLP project year. Analysis of the Final Reports and Logs of all PKE-related sharing activities in the PKE program as part of a wider sharing of TLLP projects. Vignettes written by TLLP teacher leaders about their TLLP experiences and leadership growth. Case studies of former TLLP projects that are currently participating in the PKE to examine the further spread and sustainability of TLLP professional learning and linked practices, including interviews with relevant project leaders, school and district leaders, teachers engaging in the PKE professional learning; observations of PKE professional learning events and activities, and analysis of relevant PKE documents and artifacts. Analysis of TLLP online and social networking activity through the Mentoring Moments NING site to investigate the nature and spread of interactions and exchange of materials among the network members. Focus group interviews with members of the OTF and Ministry TLLP committees/teams to learn about their general thoughts on TLLP-related successes and challenges and plans for the future.

In this book we report on what we have seen, collected, analyzed, and enthusiastically reported so far. We tell the remarkable story of the birth of the TLLP, a program that starts with teachers and empowers them to learn new ideas, learn leadership in the process, and share their learning both inside and outside their school as they earn the trust of those who make policies in education. Read on to find out the details of how teachers organize professional development for themselves and their peers; what they learn; how leadership develops; and how they create a variety of ways to share what they have learned beyond their classrooms and school. We enrich our narrative with examples of diverse TLLP projects, teachers’ written vignettes discussing their learning and leadership journeys, and case studies of two exemplary PKE projects.

1 Policies and Practices for Teachers’ Learning and Leadership

We begin our discussion of teachers’ professional learning and leadership of, by, and for teachers by considering changes in policy approaches intended to improve educational systems and the rising interest in teachers’ practices and leadership. Throughout this book, we bring together evidence, debates, and the latest thinking from research, practice, and policy. As a writing team, we are currently or have previously been students, teachers, leaders, researchers, academics, government officials, and political advisors working in schools, districts, and entire education systems at provincial/state and national levels, as well as engaging in international collaborations and contributions. Genuinely enabling teachers to lead their own learning and practice requires the integration of changes in policies and practice drawing on professional knowledge and research evidence. We begin by tracing developments in policy makers’ interest in improving ­educational practices and approaches to the substance and style of policy-making over time. Approaches to policies for teacher quality have evolved over time and in different contexts. We are now at a time when a new potential for teacherled educational improvement in collaboration with partners throughout the education system is emerging and gaining momentum. We propose that teachers’ learning and leadership requires enabling teachers to be agents at the center of educational changes rather than the subjects or recipients of externally mandated reforms only. Government, district, and school leaders become partners in supporting, co-­learning, and enabling professional practices. This is as much about a new way of developing and implementing policy, as it is about the substance of policy. It requires consideration of the changing nature of teachers’ practices and their opportunities to become and be leaders of educational improvements. It is about educational change and improvement led by and for teachers in partnership with educators throughout the education system—school, district, state/province, nation—and indeed in an increasingly interconnected international network of

6  Policies and Practices for TLL

teachers seeking to be the advocates, experts, and leaders of educational practices and improvements locally and globally.

Policies for Educational Change: Governing Teachers’ ­Practices, School, and System Improvement Since the origins of formal schooling, there has been interest in what policies are required to enable access to, and quality of, educational experiences and outcomes for students. The existence and persistence of inequalities in educational experiences within schooling and in outcomes for students is a long-standing concern. Low levels of educational achievement, not graduating from high school, and/or large gaps in the performance of different student groups have serious consequences for an individual’s life chances and for wider economic, social, and community development. There are compelling arguments about the importance of educational change for moral (Fullan, 2010), social justice (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2009), and economic (OECD, 2010) imperatives. Teachers are, and have always been, key to supporting students’ learning and success and also to wider school and system improvement. However, the governance of education and the content of educational change have evolved over time, including changing attitudes and approaches to developing teachers’ practices. Hargreaves and Shirley (2009, 2012) have proposed that there have been Four Ways of educational change. In brief: • • •

a First Way of state support and professional freedom, of innovation but also inconsistency; a Second Way of market competition and educational standardization in which professional autonomy is lost; and a Third Way that tries to navigate between and beyond the market and the state and balance professional autonomy with accountability (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2009, p. xi).

As we will discuss later, Hargreaves and Shirley (2009, 2012) propose an alternative—a Fourth Way—grounded in professionalism, democratic engagement, and partnerships connected to an inspiring and coherent purpose for public education. Each of the Ways, along with related developments in research, policy, and practice, have signalled changing attitudes, approaches, controversies, and possibilities for teachers’ learning and leadership that is of, by, and for teachers. According to Hargreaves and Shirley (2009), the First Way emerged at the end of World War II and lasted until the mid-1970s. It was a time of investment in the welfare state, human rights movements, trust in public services, and professional autonomy for teachers. The government’s role was to provide overarching legislation and resources to establish or develop the public education systems. Educators had significant freedom and autonomy over the content of education, their professional practices, and day-to-day work. It was a time of both “innovation and

Policies and Practices for TLL  7  

inconsistency” (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2009, p. 3), but with a lack of attention to building capacity and leadership development, there were “huge variations in focus and quality” and “unevenness in implementation” (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2009, p. 5), resulting in parents, politicians, and the public becoming concerned and frustrated. By the 1970s, significant developments in educational research concerning school effectiveness were emerging also. While the origins of studies of school “effects” indicated the larger influence of students’ background characteristics (Coleman et al., 1966) and the limited impact of schools on students’ achievement gains and, in particular, persisting inequalities for students from different racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds ( Jencks et al., 1972), methodological developments and empirical studies since the mid-1970s have drawn more attention to those factors within schools that appear to make a difference in improving student success, regardless of background. As Reynolds and Creemers (1990, p. 1) proposed, School Effectiveness Research (SER) has become: “based around the central idea that schools matter, that schools do have a major effect upon children’s development and that, to put it simply, schools make a difference.” Although this focus on how schools make a difference has been contested (e.g. Thrupp, 1999), there is a considerable body of evidence examining what ­factors appear to contribute to the effectiveness of schools, particularly high achieving schools as compared with low achieving schools with similar student intakes. Although there are many variations in the “characteristics” and/or “processes” of effective schools, the importance of features associated with teachers and teaching are common. For example, Edmonds’s (1979) seminal study of effective schools included a focus on teaching and learning as one of five key characteristics. Later work has built on, expanded, and refined the characteristics of effective schools. For example, Levine and Lezotte (1990) and Lezotte’s (1991) model includes “instructional leadership.” Sammons, Hillman, and Mortimore’s (1995) factors include concentration on teaching and learning and purposeful teaching. In considering not only “What makes a ‘good’ school?,” but also “How do we make more schools ‘good’?” (Reynolds, Sammons, De Fraine, Townsend, and Van Damme, 2011, p. 1), the processes of effective teaching and of developing professional learning and skills have been identified (Teddlie and Reynolds, 2000). Alongside these research developments in school effectiveness, school improvement research has emerged also to emphasize the importance of both committing to and managing the processes towards better schooling so that improvement can be sustained in the long run (Reynolds and Stoll, 1996). Beginning with the Second Way of the 1980s, evidence concerning school effectiveness and the belief that reforming education would make a difference to educational outcomes began to take hold among policy makers. According to ­Hargreaves and Shirley (2009), the Second Way increased government centralization of educational content and operation. Professional autonomy was replaced by prescription of curriculum, assessments and intended outcomes and accountability to parents and the public as consumers of schools. Hargreaves and Shirley (2009)

8  Policies and Practices for TLL

propose that the introduction of a National Curriculum in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland through the 1988 Education Reform Act was a hallmark of the Second Way. While the work of teachers was considered central, teachers were not the owners and developers of these policies; rather, they were the implementers of government-established curriculums, testing, and linked teaching approaches. The limitation of the First Way was that professional autonomy resulted in positive innovation, but also inconsistencies and ineffectiveness. The Second Way solution was for the government to become more centralist and prescriptive; the downside was top-down mandates without attention to engaging and supporting education professionals. Enter the Third Way with policies intended to “combine the security of a reformed welfare state, along with renewed respect for professionals and professionalism, with the entrepreneurial energy of innovative spirits of markets” (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2012, p. 6). Within the Third Way, emerging in the 1990s and continuing to the present, two major developments have informed policy direction concerning educational improvement and teachers’ practices: first, the scale of educational change has expanded to entire systems (states/provinces/countries); and second, the primary foci of change have become teachers and teaching. Hence, the purpose, goals, and scale of educational change have become ­“bigger” (Hargreaves et al., 2009, p. xii) with the rise of Whole System Reform and large-scale educational change (Fullan, 2000, 2009, 2010). In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Educational Change, Fullan (2000) heralded “The Return of Large-Scale Reform” involving: whole school reform, whole district reform, and state/national reform. Almost a decade later, Fullan (2009, p.101) suggested that 2003–09 was the period when “large-scale reform comes of age” with the focus expanding from one of scale to include attention to the system involving the interactions and inter-relationships at all levels of the education system. Indeed, Fullan (2009, p.112) concludes that on entering the second decade of the twenty-first century, “system reform is indeed beginning to come of age.” Fullan’s (2010, p. 4) “Big Ideas for Whole System Reform” are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

All children can learn. Only a small number of key priorities. Resolute leadership/stay on message. Collective capacity. Strategies with precision. Intelligent accountability. All means all.

While all seven ideas are important, the key feature of Whole System Reform is “all means all”: all students and schools plus all people employed and/or engaged with the education system. In large part due to rising interest in international testing and benchmarking (Schleicher, 2009) and research on the educational strategies, practices, and outcomes in different national contexts (e.g. Barber and Mourshed, 2007; Darling-Hammond,

Policies and Practices for TLL  9  

2010; Fullan, 2010; Jensen et al., 2012; Mourshed, Chijioke, and Barber, 2010), there is increasing policy interest in the content and processes of “Whole System” educational change at national and/or state/province levels. Both educational quality (high standards of achievement) and equity (low differences in achievement for different students and schools) are the priority goals. Discussions of Whole System Reform generally combine an overarching theory of action with attention to change processes (Fullan, 2009, 2010). There is no onesize-fits-all approach to educational improvement and there are considerable variations among and within countries. While authors vary in the details (e.g. Barber and Mourshed, 2007; Fullan, 2009, 2010; Jensen et al., 2012; Mourshed, Chijioke, and Barber, 2010), we identify “Whole System” educational improvement as including: •

• • • •

•

•

•

• •

a central focus on improving teaching and learning including supporting c­onditions such as leadership development, attention to equity, curriculum and assessments; a small number of ambitious but relevant and realistic goals, widely communicated, understood, and acted on; effective allocation of resources aligned to the priority goals and strategies; a sustained focus on key goals and linked priority strategies while managing potential distractions from the main reform agenda; capable senior leaders committed to sustained prioritization of educational improvement plus engagement and development of leaders and leadership throughout the education system; high standards and expectations for all students and schools to achieve ­combined with use of data to identify current performance, monitor improvements and target where further improvement is required; a combination of valuing and being transparent about existing professional practice while also holding high expectations for further improvements in ­professional practice and student learning; an emphasis on, and support for, respecting, valuing and developing professional capacity (individual and collective) through a system of recruitment, training, development, recognition, improved working conditions, and career progression for educators; a commitment to continuous improvement and use of evidence to identify and spread effective practices and innovate succeeding ones; strong attention to procedures for delivering strategies and improvements in practices and outcomes (Campbell, 2015a, pp. 73–74).

Central to these international movements has been the phrase “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” (OECD, 2010, p. 3), promoted by reports from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and from international research on educational systems that have improved over time (Barber and Mourshed, 2007; Mourshed, Chijioke, and Barber, 2010). In light of evidence that teachers and teaching are central to school effectiveness

10  Policies and Practices for TLL

and improvement—indeed some evidence suggests that teacher effectiveness is the most important element within a school (National Commission on Teaching and ­America’s Future, 1996; Sanders and Rivers, 1996)—there has been growing attention to teacher quality and to effective instruction internationally. DarlingHammond and Rothman (2011, p. 1) explain: The focus on teacher effectiveness makes sense. While there might be disagreement about the most effective ways to measure and develop effectiveness, educators and policymakers generally agree that ensuring that teachers are capable of improving student learning—and that school leaders are able to help them to do so—is perhaps the most significant step they can take to raise student achievement. This conviction is backed up by research. The evidence is clear that teaching is one of the most important school-level factors in student achievement, and that improving teacher effectiveness can raise overall student achievement levels. Darling-Hammond and Rothman’s (2011, 2015) study of high-performing education systems’ approaches to teacher effectiveness identifies six key lessons: 1. It takes a system: Attention to a system of professional development including recruitment, preparation, induction, continuous learning, and career development. 2. Get it right from the start: Have strong systems for recruiting high-quality candidates and prepare them well to become teachers. 3. Make teaching an attractive profession: Encourage individuals to want to be teachers including the broader respect, recognition and status of teachers plus attractive working conditions, salaries and other aspects of selecting a career. 4. Invest in continual learning: Provide support for ongoing professional development, learning opportunities and collaboration time. 5. Putting sufficient resources where they are most needed: Ensure equitable funding for schools and teachers’ salaries and mitigate the impact of ­varying family incomes on children’s educational opportunities. 6. Proactively recruit and develop high-quality leadership: Recruit, support, and develop leaders with an emphasis on instructional leadership (DarlingHammond and Rothman, 2015, pp. 76–89). Vitally in high-performing education systems that also support teachers’ ­learning and leadership—for example Canada, Finland, and Singapore—an emphasis on valuing public education and respecting the teaching profession is paramount (­ Darling-Hammond and Rothman, 2015a; Lay-Choo and Darling-Hammond, 2015; Pervin and Campbell, 2015; Sahlberg, 2015). Nevertheless, the ideals informing Whole System Reform and the realization in the details of policies and practices are contentious. Both the substance of policies and importantly the style of policy development and delivery have been critiqued.

Policies and Practices for TLL  11  

A main area of debate is the nature and balance of “top-down” reforms from government combined with “bottom-up” professional initiatives and/or lateral collaboration across peers for learning and innovation. Hargreaves and Shirley (2009, 2012) suggest that while the designers and deliverers of Whole System Reform are well intentioned, the approach to implementation has become too autocratic and the detail of implementation is too data-driven. There is a need to enable and value more distributed leadership, shared ownership, and professional judgment in the development and implementation of educational policies and practices. In practice, the emphasis on teachers at the center of educational improvement has proven to be a mixed blessing with divergent views on whether teachers should be the subjects of external changes—for example, with the imposition of teacher performance measurement and evaluations—or the agents of change with opportunities for teachers themselves to develop and exercise their collective professional judgment. As an Education Week article about policy discussions concerning teachers in the USA provocatively asked, “Are Teachers ‘At the Table’ or ‘On the Menu’? Hard to Tell” (Heitin, 2013).

Moving towards a Collaborative Professionalism with ­Educators at the Center We are currently in exciting and important times in educational change. We are at a pivotal moment where there is growing concern about the limitations of ­“top-down” or “bottom-up” educational change—improvement cannot be simply driven down by a system into classrooms, nor cannot it be based on individual practices that are not shared and supported more widely. This book is about how teachers can lead their own practice and their peers’ practices collectively and in collaboration with educators, students, partners, and communities for an authentic professional system of educational improvement of, by, and for teachers. The critiques and calls for a new alternative to educational change with ­educators at the center of action are growing. Currently, however, there are varying possibilities of how shifts in the substance and style of policy development and implementation could occur. Harris (2010), for example, proposes that the future of system improvement requires a new model of change, new capacities, and new ways of working: “To change an entire system undoubtedly requires leadership of a different nature, order, and scale… the importance of developing leadership at all levels in the system in order to be successful” (Harris, 2010, p. 204). Conceptualizations of “system leadership” emphasize the importance of developing and distributing leadership throughout the education system and the need for interaction, linkages, and networks among and between leaders at all levels of the system. Hargreaves and Shirley (2009, p. 71) propose their Fourth Way, which “brings together government policy, professional involvement, and public engagement around an inspiring social and educational vision of prosperity, opportunity, and creativity in a world of greater inclusiveness, security, and humanity.” Hargreaves and Shirley’s (2009, 2012) Fourth Way is expressly a rejection of what Sahlberg

12  Policies and Practices for TLL

(2011, 2016) has referred to as the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM)’s focus on standardization, tests, targets, school choice, and competition. Rather, the Fourth Way prioritizes and values the “professional capital” (Hargreaves and ­Fullan, 2012) of educators’ human (professional knowledge and skills of individuals), social (collective and collaborative knowledge and practices), and decisional (professional judgment and professionalism) capital as central to educational change. Hence: “The Fourth Way makes much more use of the system’s professionals as the dynamos and not just the deliverers of change” (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2012, p. 121). Local educational leaders in schools and districts are central to the Fourth Way in combination with developing (renewed) leadership practices throughout the education system. The concept of “Leading from the Middle” is emerging to examine and a­ dvocate for educators in districts and schools to lead change in new ways. Hargreaves and Braun (2012) coined the phrase of “leading from the middle” in their study of school districts implementing Ontario’s special education policy. Instead of the government mandating how implementation would work in a top-down way, the government provided $25 million (Canadian) to the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE), the organization representing the professional leaders of school districts, to develop and support the implementation of professional development for the new policy. CODE worked with a steering group of educational leaders (recently retired and reputable former school district leaders) and in partnership with districts, as well as the Ministry of Education (government education department), to effectively support professional development and implementation of locally developed district plans and projects to advance support for students identified as having special educational needs. Evolving from evidence connected to school district leaders, “Leading from the Middle” has expanded to encompass district and school networks (Fullan, 2015) and school-to-school and peer-to-peer networks (Ainscow, 2015; Hargreaves, 2015). Fullan (2015) explains: A new strategy, Leadership from the Middle (LftM), is emerging that shows much more promise for achieving greater coherence and impact across the system. LftM involves strengthening districts and networks of schools, working together on specific problems to build pedagogical capacity and collective expertise linked to measurable impact on student engagement… LftM is more suitable to innovation, dissemination, engagement of students and teachers, and to the development of deep learning outcomes such as character education, citizenship, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. In short, LftM is about mobilizing the whole system into new and deeper modes of learning required for the 21st century. Fullan (2015) clarifies that while the “middle” of the governance of education in a whole system approach tends to be a district (or equivalent) or school network, there can and should be many “middles” in educational change, including teachers, students, and families.

Policies and Practices for TLL  13  

The promise of “Leading from the Middle” is for professional collaboration to lead educational change. While not the intent, the pitfall will be if the “Middle” becomes perceived primarily in structural terms with districts (or school networks) assuming the role of directing essentially top-down mandates to be done by and to teachers. Educational improvement can and should flow through professional networks, co-learning, co-development, and collaboration. Leading whole-system educational improvement requires cultivating and valuing leadership from, for, by, and with all involved in influencing and contributing to improvements in practices and outcomes (Campbell, 2015a). Teacher leaders themselves have called for an approach to “flip the system” (Evers and Kneyber, 2015) from top-down governance to a system where teachers have opportunities to exercise collective autonomy, professional judgement, and leadership with respect to educational change. If we move from hierarchical notions of formal governance, it becomes possible to envisage and operationalize a system in which teachers are important leaders working with other school and system leaders for educational improvement (Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2015). We agree that: “The dynamos of educational change can and should be a system’s thousands of teachers and its school leaders” (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2012, p. xiv). Teacher leaders, school leaders, and system leaders working in a new collaborative professionalism of respect and support connected to student learning, family engagement, and community development for educational excellence and equity. Teachers should be “leading from the middle” of action with their professional agency at the center of educational improvement rather than being “in the middle” of externally imposed prescriptions of reform requirements. Such a shift in the style and substance of education policy requires an understanding and valuing of the nature of teachers’ professional practice and an enabling of their potential as leaders of educational improvement.

Teachers’ Developing and Leading Teachers’ Practices Over the last several decades many proposals and programs have been mounted attempting to create ways for teachers to improve their practice. Staff development changed to professional development which, in turn, changed to professional learning. Different approaches grew up, often independently of other ways of thinking. For starters, we have many opposing views including: • • • • • •

Compliance—Capacity building Bureaucratic—Professional orientation Direct teaching—Growth in practice Individualistic—Collaborative Conscription—Voluntarism High stakes accountability—Building trust in teachers and the system

Each derives from a philosophical stance that includes the idea that knowledge needs to be taught from the outside in, or created by insiders first sometimes

14  Policies and Practices for TLL

c­ ollaborating with outsiders or some other organizational stance. Knowledge, and how it was to be attained, was the focus of many programs of implementation for changing teachers’ practices during the 1980s and 1990s. Fullan (2001) has divided up the three decades preceding 2001 according to what we have learned about educational change in each. The years 1972–82, he labels the Implementation Decade. Here teachers were seen as passive adopters, little took hold and few understood the dynamics of change. He calls 1982–92 the Meaning Decade when the importance of understanding change processes became prioritized and all the people involved including teachers and others gained importance. From 1992 onwards, he labels the Change Capacity Decade. It is here that he and others began to look at collaboration, individualism, contrived collegiality, changing cultures, and building capacity to improve practice. ­Hargreaves and Fullan (1998) wrote What’s Worth Fighting for Out There documenting how teachers need to be central to any changes in the culture of their school and their teaching. Schon (1983) talked earlier about people developing “theories in use” which meant that most people learned “on the job,” calling into question older notions of how people learn. He suggested that experience and the work itself was basically how people learned. Wenger (1998) then added that learning was more social than individual and that community was critical for a society to learn together. The idea of “learning as social participation” introduced by Wenger (1998) made the claim that participation in “communities of practice” shapes not only what we do, but also who we are and how we interpret what we do. His focus on community began a whole new way of thinking about teacher learning and the necessity for organizing communities with learning at the center. Still others began to look at schools as communities and document how to think about this, organize for it, and see leadership in a new way (Sergiovanni, 1999). McLaughlin and Talbert (1993) also talked about the importance of teachers being in a “professional community” and being led by one of their own kind. These ideas coupled with “communities of practice” and the importance of learning as being more collective and social laid the groundwork for the critical importance of teachers as leaders. It was teachers who could speak to practice that was both explicit and tacit and teachers who could respond to the importance of “experience and knowledge as part of community property” (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p. 650). The most compelling description of teachers’ work was written by Lampert (2001) as she described the various complexities of teaching. Her description was another important piece of work supporting the idea that teaching in all its complexity needed to be understood and added to the idea that teachers themselves could be important leaders in their own improvement. A paragraph on the first page of Lampert’s (2001) book reveals what teachers face in teaching no matter what the grade: Teachers face some students who do not want to learn what they want to teach, some who already know it, or think they do, and some who are poorly prepared to study what is taught. They must figure out how to teach each

Policies and Practices for TLL  15  

student, while working with a class of students who are all different from one another. They must respond to the many authorities who tell them what to teach. They have a limited amount of time to teach what needs to be taught, and they are interrupted often. The litany is so familiar. Why is the work teachers must do to address these problems so difficult for others to appreciate? (Lampert, 2001, p. 1) The importance of teachers’ voices in influencing the content and priorities of professional learning became important (Ingvarson, 2014). The idea of embedding professional learning in practice was strengthened by the organization of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). The standards they proposed were spelled out in five propositions: 1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning. 2. Teachers know the subject they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. 3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring students’ learning. 4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. 5. Teachers are members of learning communities (cited in Fullan, 2001, pp. 255–257). By 2000, ideas like “job embedded learning,” “practice based theory,” and “local problem solving” entered the professional development conversation (Fullan, 2001, p. 259). Professional learning that is practical for teachers is personalized to their learning needs, relevant to their instructional and classroom practices, and contributes to valued student outcomes (Campbell, 2015b; CUREE, 2012; DarlingHammond et al., 2009; Timperley, 2008). In the myriad rewards and sanctions that attach to accountability systems, the most powerful incentives derive from face-to-face interactions among people in the organization, not in external systems (Elmore, 2000). Most professional development experiences fail to make a difference in one’s teaching, in part because it is often offered as if the culture of the school didn’t matter; as if there was support (over time) and primarily because professional development is often insensitive to the complexities of teaching. In the last decade, the idea of networks has taken hold, teaching us again that the need for social networks among teachers is critical to the kind of support they need when they are new to the profession and as they experience the isolation that many teachers feel as they become experienced teachers. Much has now been written about the organizational needs of teachers to be involved in communities (Lieberman and Miller, 2008; Baker-Doyle, 2011) as a necessity for continuous learning. Networks, unlike bureaucratic structures, can be flexible, try ideas out, throw them away if they don’t work and, at the same time, provide the support teachers need to learn from one another, to continuously improve their practice, and even to learn leadership skills along the way (Lieberman and Wood, 2003).

16  Policies and Practices for TLL

Furthermore, people in schools needed to understand that as changes were made, they needed to be handled, spoken about, and managed by someone who held the respect of teachers. Lambert (2003) invented the term “constructivist leadership,” in which she posited that leadership was not a role, but a series of actions which needed to be taken by members of the community including: building relationships, creating community, focusing on learning, and relating this to a central purpose. The big idea was to build a trusting environment for all this to happen. Principals could facilitate, but they needed help as teachers could deal with the complexities of classroom life as they lived it. Teachers taking leadership roles seemed like a critical part of improving teaching and learning.

Growth of Teacher Leadership as a Concept Teacher leadership has now begun to earn its place in the professional literature. For example, Fullan (1995) began to write about teacher leadership with its multiple levels and how all members of the school community needed to be involved in re-culturing a school for improvement. He concluded there were six domains of teacher leadership: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

knowledge of teaching and learning; knowledge of collegiality; knowledge about the context; opportunities for continuous learning; management of the change process; and a sense of moral purpose.

The concept of teacher leadership has grown in sophistication and complexity over time. Studies have begun to show interpretations, theories, organizational roles, new conceptions of what is meant by teacher leadership as well as the tensions that arise when different orientations of leadership and development arise (Talbert, 2010). As an example of a long-term professional development network, Lieberman and Wood (2003) studied the National Writing Project (NWP), as it seemed to be a very successful national network. Studying two different sites in the United States, they found that the NWP had learned to create a social context for learning during the Invitational Summer Institute, which was the central organizing unit. Teachers came for three to five weeks during the summer to learn to better their teaching of writing. What the researchers found was that there was a group of social practices that were developed during the summer institute that formed the basis for both teacher leadership as well as a way of learning the cultural conditions for professional learning of teachers. These social practices included: • •

approaching each colleague as a potentially valuable contributor; honoring teacher knowledge;

Policies and Practices for TLL  17  

• • • • • • • •

creating public forums for teacher sharing, dialogue, and critique; turning ownership of learning over to learners; situating human learning in practice and relationships; providing multiple entry points into the community; guiding reflection on teaching through reflection on learning; sharing leadership; promoting a stance of critical inquiry; and encouraging a reconceptualization of professional identity and linking it to professional community.

Several years later, Lieberman and Friedrich (2007) studied teachers who had assumed leadership roles in the NWP by providing professional development in schools the writing project way. They had all participated in summer institutes and had internalized the need for organizing the social practices. At different times teachers had been facilitators, brokers, fundraisers, entrepreneurs, decision makers, proposal writers, organizers, and carriers of the NWP way of working. We found that our sample of 31 teacher leaders added to the initial list of social practices including: • • • • • • •

building the capacity of teachers to engage in improvement; fostering teacher collaboration; advocating teacher-developed curriculums; creating a professional community; learning to share ideas and address problems publicly; celebrating others’ contributions; and creating forums for shared learning.

Groundwork for the idea of teachers taking leadership in their schools became more widely known and practiced. Previously, Smylie and Denny (1990) had written about the tensions between the bureaucratic nature of the school organization and the collaborative strategies needed for the growth and development of teacher leadership. Researchers began to write about how teacher leaders deal with the tensions which added to a deeper understanding of the difficulties of changing school cultures when trying to improve them. Taking on a leadership role requires courage and extra effort on the part of ­teachers. Therefore, lots of support and reassurance is needed. School and district leaders play a vital role in encouraging and facilitating teacher leadership (Leithwood et al., 2009). By developing a culture of openness, trust, and collaboration, principals can create an environment where teachers feel safe and are willing to take on new roles and responsibilities (Louis et al., 2009). Taking on leadership creates extra load for teachers. Thus, attention to the supporting teacher leadership through access to additional resources (such as material and financial resources, and adequate time) is highly beneficial (Camburn et al, 2003; Hammersley-Fletcher and Brundrett, 2005; Wallace, 2002). There are also added incentives such as rewards

18  Policies and Practices for TLL

and recognition. So, by providing teachers with access to appropriate professional development and other resources that can help them to become successful leaders, school and district leaders promote informal teacher leadership (Firestone and Martinez, 2009; Leithwood et al., 2009). While there is growing interest in the practices and possibilities of teacher ­leadership, there remains a range of divergent understandings of what teacher leadership in concept and practice involves. As Harris (2005) suggested in her literature review of teacher leadership, the concept has become an “umbrella phrase” (pp. 204–205), meaning many things to many people in different contexts and different times. For example, the literature on teacher leadership focuses on formal roles and programs that include teachers as leaders (York-Barr and Duke, 2004) and also on teachers as informal leaders of professional, knowledge, learning, and practices. ­(Harris and Jones, 2015). The literature on teacher leadership also includes the writings of teachers who have become leaders (Lieberman and Friedrich, 2010). This “inside writing” documents the process of learning to lead over a period of time. By studying teacher consultants in the NWP, it was clear that the importance of the teacher leaders’ use of classroom practice is the foundation of their leadership learning. They use this knowledge as they learn to build constructive learning environments for the adults with whom they work. They are able to do this with the authenticity of what it means to teach which helps them legitimate their leadership. With this as a central piece of their leadership, they also learn how to utilize the social practices of the summer institute that they have been through in the Writing Project. What we learn about teacher leadership is the ways in which teacher leaders grow as they respond to the challenges of their daily work. They first gain credibility with their fellow teachers through their classroom practice, and then their participation in building communities of practice helps deepen their knowledge of and capacity for leadership.

Lessons Learned These studies of educational change, international policy shifts, governance, professional development and learning, professional communities, implementation, and teacher leadership building give us a foundation for understanding the TLLP that builds on decades of research. While the history of educational reform is paved with pitfalls and critiques, we are optimistic that we are at a pivotal moment for a renewed focus on collaborative professionalism with teachers as agents of their own professional learning and that of their peers, and practice in new forms of policymaking and implementation with government, unions, school and district leaders, students and their families, and communities. The following lessons emerge from our review and discussion of relevant ­literatures. First, developing teachers’ learning and leadership of, by, and for ­teachers requires changes in the substance and the style of policy-making. Second, teachers and teaching are vital to educational improvement for excellence and equity;

Policies and Practices for TLL  19  

­however, teachers need to be enabled as the agents in the middle of the action not solely as subjects of external reform. Third, this is as much about a new way of developing and implementing policy as it is about the content of policies and practices; it requires a new form of collaborative professionalism engaging educators and leaders throughout the education system. Fourth, if the focus is on teachers’ practices, teachers themselves are important in sharing, developing, and increasing understanding of teachers’ work. This requires, fifth, moving from outside professional development to opportunities for communities of professional learning within and across schools linked to teachers’ work, needs, and experiences and their classroom contexts and students’ priorities. Finally, teacher leadership encompasses opportunities for formal leadership and importantly the emergence of informal leadership of professional learning, knowledge, and practices where leadership is learned by doing leadership! We have learned the above lessons from the literature and, even more ­powerfully, from our own experience researching and supporting the TLLP as a leading example of policy and practices for teachers’ professional learning, leadership, and collaboration. We turn now to provide evidence and lessons learned from the TLLP.

Figure 1.1  Lessons Learned: Policies and Practices for ­Teachers’ Learning and Leadership 1. Developing teachers’ learning and leadership that is of, by, and for ­ teachers requires changes in the substance and style of policy-making. 2. Teachers and teaching are vital to educational improvement for excellence and equity; teachers need to be enabled as active agents in the middle of action not passive recipients of external reform. 3. A new way of developing and implementing policy requires a new form of collaborative professionalism that engages educators and leaders throughout the education system. 4. Teachers themselves are important for sharing, developing, and increasing understanding of teachers’ work and practices. 5. Developing teachers’ knowledge, skills, and practices involves moving from external professional development to opportunities for communities of professional learning within and across schools linked to teachers’ work needs, experiences, and for their classroom contexts and students’ priorities. 6. Teacher leadership encompasses opportunities for formal leadership and importantly the emergence of informal leadership of professional learning, knowledge, and practices where leadership is learned by doing leadership.

2 Moving from Chaos to Collaboration: A system ­enabling teachers’ learning and leadership

In this chapter, we trace the policy origins and development of the TLLP in a collaboration between government, teacher unions, education leaders, and teachers.

The Changing Political Context It is rare that we see a political system change from compliance and disparaging ­relationships with schools and teachers, to one of eventual trust, partnership, and collaboration. Just such a situation describes the policies and practices in Ontario, Canada, before and after 2003, as relationships changed between a newly elected government, the Ministry, and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF). Eventually the Ministry and OTF become partners in a new way to organize professional development. In an important way, TLLP provides a powerful alternative to much of professional development that brings in outside experts to change teachers, which has proven to be highly problematic, as it ignores the critical importance of the teacher knowledge of “insiders” (Hargreaves, 2010; Lieberman and Friedrich, 2010) and in so doing makes new ideas often not relevant to different contexts of teaching. What we learn from the TLLP is how policies and practices can be mutually agreed upon and supported by changing who initiates, who leads, who learns, and who shares with an emphasis on partnerships and teacher-led change.

The Educational Context The province of Ontario spans over one million square kilometers and is Canada’s most populous province, with a population of over 13.5 million people (38.5 percent of the total population of Canada). Ontario’s school-age student population is large and diverse. Twenty-seven percent of students in Ontario were born outside

22  Moving from Chaos to Collaboration

Canada; 20 percent self-identify as members of a visible minority and 4.5 percent are French speaking (Pervin and Campbell, 2015). Over two million students (involving 95 percent of school-age children) in Ontario attend the publicly funded education system. Ontario’s publicly funded school system is overseen and funded by the provincial government, through the Ontario Ministry of Education. There are almost 5,000 schools in Ontario; in 2012–13 there were 3,978 elementary and 913 secondary schools. Schools are governed through four publicly funded education systems—English Public, English Catholic, French Public, and French Catholic—encompassing 72 school districts and 11 smaller school authorities. Currently (2012–2013), there are approximately 115,492 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers (73,031 elementary and 42,460 secondary), 7,326 administrators (principals and vice-principals; 5,220 elementary and 2,105 secondary), and 4,390 early childhood educators (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014; Campbell et al., forthcoming).

In the Beginning… In 2003, the Canadian province of Ontario had a school system that was downtrodden and bleak. For eight years the Conservative government had created policies that were uniformly opposed by the teachers and their unions. There were disputes between the provincial government and the teachers’ unions and their members. The tension heightened in 2001. It was then that the government passed legislation that imposed a series of courses for teachers—14 of them—to be taken over five years. If the criteria were not followed and the courses not taken, teachers would lose their teaching certificates. Such an idea of teacher development and evaluation was an outdated way to think about teacher learning and development. These ideas were not well received by the teachers as they seemed like the same courses for everyone regardless of their relevance to the particulars of one’s classroom. In response to these seeming prescriptions, teachers withdrew from all professional learning activities. Professional development ground to a screeching halt. It was clear that nothing would happen unless a radical change of government was elected (Amato and Devlin, 2009).

A New Government: “Teachers Are Professionals!” In 2003, the Ontario Liberal Party unseated the Conservatives in a landslide v­ ictory. The new government spoke immediately to their desire to create labor peace and stability across the province, most particularly with teachers. Almost overnight, the political rhetoric shifted 180 degrees, from one of professional mistrust and denigration to an acknowledgement of teachers as professionally competent and respected. The Ministry announced that they would be key partners who would lead the way forward for improved educational outcomes for the province’s two million students. The government not only spoke of respect for teachers, but took action to prioritize educational improvement.

Moving from Chaos to Collaboration  23  

Over time, five key elements of Ontario’s theory of action for educational improvement have been identified (Campbell, 2015a, pp. 79–81): 1. Focus: identification of key priorities for improvement Three goals have informed the focus of Ontario’s educational improvements for over a decade: increasing student achievement; reducing gaps in performance; and increasing public confidence in publicly funded education. In 2014, these goals were revised and renewed, with the introduction of a fourth priority focus on enhancing well-being. These goals have provided a consistent focus for action throughout the education system. 2. Tri-level reform: system-wide coherence and alignment A vast array of policies, strategies, initiatives, and actions has been undertaken over the past decade. However, all actions are intended to be aligned with the core goals outlined above and have involved coordinated attention at provincial, school district, school, and classroom levels. To support systemic action and coherence, a central feature has been an emphasis on developing professional partnerships, trust and respect between the provincial government, all provincial stakeholders, the teaching profession, and the wider public. 3. Support and positive pressure: capacity building with a focus on results A key element of the Ontario strategies is “capacity building with a focus on results” involving the development of educators’ knowledge, skills, and practices with a particular focus on instructional improvements to support students’ learning and achievements. Where student achievement is identified as being lower, for example for particular groups of students and/or schools, additional attention, resources, and supports are provided to target and improve educational practices. The Ontario approach emphasizes developing the capacity of all people involved through fostering collective commitment and collaborative action for educational improvement. 4. Shared leadership: respect for professional knowledge and practice The Ontario approach to educational change has placed emphasis on developing professional capacity and leadership throughout the education system. Existing professional knowledge is valued and respected. A combination of professional knowledge, identification and sharing of successful or promising practices, plus the use of data and research locally and from international leading practice are combined to inform the Ontario strategies and actions. 5. Professional accountability: results without rancor or ranking Educators are considered to be professionals with responsibility for self- and peerimprovement. The government does not label “failing” schools requiring firing of

24  Moving from Chaos to Collaboration

staff or takeover models. Rather where underperformance in student achievement is identified, the view of the Ministry of Education is the need to develop the “will and skill” of educators to improve programs and instructional practices, plus supporting conditions, to enable students to learn, achieve, and thrive at school and beyond. Central to this theory in principle, policy, and practice has been a commitment to supporting teachers and teaching.

A Seismic Shift: Respect and Trust for Teachers In a series of explicit actions, the newly elected government signaled its respect for teacher professionalism. They announced their intent to cancel the much reviled teacher testing program (among others) and in an unprecedented move, reallocated the equivalent funding to the OTF and four affiliate teacher unions—L’Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO), the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA), and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF)—in Ontario to lead specific professional ­development activities. The impact on the educational system of this incredible shift in working cooperatively with the teachers’ organizations was extremely important. Over more than a decade, there have been changing relationships between the government and each teacher union in Ontario; however, the commitment to a partnership for the TLLP between the Ministry and OTF has been sustained.

The Working Table on Teacher Development: A Collaboration In April 2005, a Working Table on Teacher Development was established. Its purpose was to create collaboration between the Ministry, teachers’ unions, professional associations, and other relevant provincial partners to design and develop new policies for teachers’ professional development. In essence, the policy-making group “the Ministry of Education” was partnering with the “practice” group, the teachers, in an unprecedented move. The Working Table, after creating a New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) for beginning teachers; a provincial Teacher Performance Appraisal System based on professional growth and support; and mechanisms to ensure teacher union involvement in school board committees, was ready to turn its attention to creating a professional development program for experienced teachers (Campbell et al., forthcoming). Consistent with notions of “professional capital” (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012), the Working Table recognized the need to not only attend to the “human capital” of recruiting and developing educators, but also to intentionally create opportunities for the “decisional capital” of enabling experienced teachers to develop and share their professional practices and judgment.

Moving from Chaos to Collaboration  25  

Creating a Collaborative Professional Development Program After reviewing and discussing the literature on professional learning and development programs, the group found that the “most effective professional learning activities are those that are personalized and responsive to the complex and unique needs of teachers and those that involve collaboration and sharing from and with peers” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007). The Working Table concluded that there should be no one-size-fits-all approach to professional learning in recognition of the variety of needs, experiences, interests, contexts, and career stages of teachers and the variety of their students, classrooms, and practices. After much discussion and review of relevant research literatures, the Working Table decided upon five key characteristics of effective professional learning including: 1. Coherent Teacher professional learning is ultimately about best practices for student learning and development and occurs in the context of the Ministry/board/school and parent/community/classroom continuum. Coherence is also built on the “three R’s” of respect, responsibility, and results, recognizing teacher professionalism and the complexity of teacher learning. 2. Attentive to adult learning styles Teachers come to each professional learning experience with a wide variety of skills, knowledge, education, teaching, and training background. As a result, when planning professional learning, adult learning principles should be addressed by: • • • •

•

considering the role of choice. Research supports the importance of choice and self-direction in personalizing the learning; providing programming that is viewed as meaningful, relevant, and substantive; providing differentiation in the content and delivery models; considering “best fit” within a culture of collaborative learning. The “onesize-fits-all” approach may prove problematic in many circumstances. Effective learning must recognize and include the participants’ understanding and perspective in order to bring about a culture of reflection and ­transformation; providing appropriate recognition for the successful completion of professional learning.

3. Goal-oriented Professional learning is enhanced when it is goal oriented and is clearly: • •

connected to improved student learning and achievement; connected to daily practice ( job embedded), both directly and indirectly;

26  Moving from Chaos to Collaboration

•

situated within and respectful of varied contexts (i.e. relevant to Ministry, board, school/community, classroom).

4. Sustainable Professional learning that will have impact in the classroom must: • • • • •

be planned and progress over time (i.e. it is a process); be supported by appropriate resources focused on its success; involve the learners and allow time for practice (job embedded); include time for self-assessment through reflection (construct/de-construct/ re-construct thinking about practice) within its processes; include, wherever possible, congruency in professional learning for other staff who support student learning.

5. Evidence-informed Professional learning should be considered and be built upon current research as well as both formal and informal data (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007, pp. 4–5). Two further considerations emerged from the Working Table’s deliberations. First, building on the conclusions that there is no one-size-fits-all professional learning model; there is also no single pathway or career trajectory for teachers. Therefore, there is a need for a variety of professional learning opportunities differentiated for individual teachers’ needs. Second, those teachers whose professional needs may have been least supported—at that time—were “excellent experienced teachers for who their choice of career is the classroom… yet who seek a peer leadership role in areas such as curriculum, instructional practice or supporting other teachers” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 5). The Working Table stressed the importance of enabling experienced teachers to develop as leaders within the context of their classroom work and to provide them with opportunities to share their expertise with their colleagues. There was constant discussion about what would work and what the goals should look like. As important as the new policies was the development of a new way of collaboratively making and implementing policy through partnership working. As one government official commented: “It’s worth mentioning that it wasn’t just a change in policy, but it was also change in how we do policy” (quoted in Campbell et al., forthcoming). In 2007, the Teacher Learning and Leadership (TLLP), collaboratively created and led by both the Ministry and the OTF as partners, began its first year. As the years have gone by, sitting together at the various TLLP conferences, the partnership has grown deeper to support collaboration for experienced teachers’ learning and leadership.

Establishing Structures for the TLLP Having worked so hard on their agreement of the core values of professional development, the Working Table was determined to create structures that were

Moving from Chaos to Collaboration  27  

c­ onsonant with their beliefs. They wanted to create structures that would support their shared vision of: meaningful professional learning for experienced teachers; opportunities that would encourage teacher leadership; and sharing the knowledge that they would create with others both inside and outside their school. They were hopeful that they were creating the right conditions for teachers’ learning and leadership.

Writing a Professional Development Proposal After a number of meetings between the OTF and Ministry of Education, the TLLP was announced to the public. Teachers would apply for funding to undertake professional development somehow connected to provincial goals and would be supported in the process. There was a suggestion that teachers could work with another person or a team. Applications would be vetted by a committee of local school district and teacher union representatives. Each district would have two proposals selected each year. At the provincial level, a Teacher Professional Learning Committee with representatives from the teachers’ federations and the Ministry would select the successful applications. Approved projects were initially from $1,000 to $10,000 (Canadian). Project funds became larger as the program grew and teachers created professional development ideas that reached out to other school districts. Currently, the per project budget ranges from under $2,000 to over $100,000; and an “average” TLLP project would have a budget of $14,000.

Providing the Support for a TLLP Project The Working Table realized that teachers would need assistance with project ­management skills. Teachers needed to manage budgets, navigate timelines, collect data, and report on key findings. So the “Project Management for Classroom Teachers Training Session” was initially created to support the teachers’ understandings of how to run a year-long project. This led to an agreement to run an initial conference where the successful applicants would come in the May prior to the school year in which they would be conducting their TLLP projects. The training session became known as “Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers.” The conference brought together all those whose proposals were accepted, including members of a team or another teacher as suggested. Various supports at the conference were organized, including a few speakers who energized and expanded the idea of teachers’ knowledge about leadership. Both the Ministry and OTF explained the nature of their support and involvement to TLLP participants. Also there were a variety of workshops for teachers to choose from that supported their work. For example, the agenda for the 2015 Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers conference included sessions on: TLLP fundamentals, questions, and support; research on teacher leadership and the TLLP; project management and development skills; the TLLP online networking site; sharing learning from previous TLLP participants’ experiences; and preparing for the TLLP final report, including methods for researching and reporting on outcomes achieved. Teachers coming together in the

28  Moving from Chaos to Collaboration

TLLP ­community began to feel like they were into something big and important in nature and that they were about to engage in a new and important adventure. During the conduct of their TLLP projects, over a school year, TLLP ­participants are expected to engage with an online TLLP community to continue to share and spread their learning. Over time, the online networking site has evolved and improved. Currently, each TLLP project is required to post at least two artifacts from their work on the online Mentoring Moments NING (http://mentoringmoments.ning.com). TLLP members engaged with colleagues through interest groups, discussion forums, blog posts, and a Twitter feed. Eighteen months after the initial Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers conference, following completion of their TLLP project over a school year, another conference, entitled “Sharing the Learning Summit,” was held for teachers to display what they had accomplished during the year and for sharing with their colleagues. This too helped the teachers see that the work that had been accomplished was extraordinary and that, perhaps for the first time, teachers were organizing professional development, learning how to lead teams or colleagues, and spreading their learning and accomplishments to others outside their school. Many teachers reported that they were learning how to articulate their new knowledge to others and in the process were becoming teachers who could lead with their newfound expertise (Campbell et al., 2014). Applications, workshops, two conferences, and an online networking site became the structures known to be associated with TLLP—all supported by both the Ministry and OTF. As the years have gone by, the collaboration has deepened and solidified. Trust for teachers to develop teacher leadership and learning by and for teachers has become ubiquitous.

The Underlying Core Principles of TLLP On the face of it, TLLP seems like an effort that could be done anywhere in the world. Underlying the description of teachers organizing professional development from the “inside” rather than being taught new ideas from the “outside” literally turns the responsibilities for improvement upside down (Lieberman, Campbell, and Yashkina, 2015a). It supports a different view of leadership from both the teachers and other instructional leaders. And it means that there is a change process that must be understood from the beginning as the traditional bureaucratic structures are turned on their head as both teachers and administrators learn and lead differently. The first principle is that the governing body and the school district (in whatever form it takes) must believe that the best educational experience for students can be found in their teachers. Most places in the world say that teachers know best what they need to learn and they are key to the improvement of practice and student learning. It has become a “truism” in education. However it is stated, it is the rare place that actually commits and admits that teachers may know best what their students need. Most, if not all, professional development is organized outside the school and

Moving from Chaos to Collaboration  29  

“delivered” to teachers inside, regardless of their culture or context. Teachers the world over often admit that much of the professional development delivered in this way makes little difference to their practice (Lieberman and Friedrich, 2010). The second principle is that principals are not the only instructional leaders in schools. And teachers who hold the oft-spoken phrase “I’m just a teacher” must begin to accept their role as co-leaders and learners. Both teachers and principals must change their view of where the “expertise” that encourages new ideas, new development, and new ways of working with students comes from. In TLLP, we see teachers sharing their successful strategies with other teachers and, thus, becoming the source of expertise and teacher learning. Principals become facilitators for teacher learning and teacher expertise. Leadership becomes a shared responsibility as does the type of “expertise” needed to develop new ideas for learning and support for taking risks, developing new ideas, and creating new strategies for learning (Lambert et al., 1995). Fundamental structural changes are needed for both principals and teachers. In the process, the idea of one expert in a particular leadership role is changed to include the expertise of many as teachers learn to deepen their understanding of particular development efforts about a broad range of instructional ideas. Teachers are learning so that their students can benefit from their professional development projects. Principals are learning to facilitate the growing expertise of teachers across subject areas and expanding methodologies. Both are expanding the pool of expertise. Teacher leadership in the TLLP is not about traditional leadership, but rather teachers “sharing their expertise” and adding to their own bank of knowledge and skills by learning from each other. Leadership ends up creating a vast pool of expertise rather than a minority of experts. So one should see leaders as TLLP considers them—as excellent teachers who choose to remain in the classroom and who are willing (and able) to share specific expertise that will enhance the educational experience of students—beyond their own classroom. Principals and other administrators must reinvent their roles. As teachers begin to see themselves as having expertise, principals can begin to see how they can organize support for an enlarged view of expertise (including theirs). TLLP requires the re-envisioning of the traditional education hierarchy and the roles that go with it. The third principle is the importance and power of working as a team. It is about organizing partnerships rather than solo performers, teachers supporting each other in the improvement of their craft; principals and supervisors redefining a part of their role as supporters. It is about leadership to support student performance and all educators bringing expertise to the table. These three big ideas are the foundation of the TLLP born with a collaboration between the policy-making group and those who practice, opening up avenues for teachers to take responsibility to grow and learn, while principals and other administrators learn different methods of organizing supportive structures for ­learning and leading.

30  Moving from Chaos to Collaboration

The Essential Partnership and Its Results As it has grown and deepened, TLLP has come to mean a serious, deep, and important partnership between teachers (and their federations) and the Ministry of Education. TLLP has come to model a non-hierarchical structure. It has become a group of professionals, regardless of their role, who have learned to develop and share human and physical resources—both working to improve the instructional experience of students as they are all learning to collaborate with their newly acquired “expertise.”

Lessons Learned The following big ideas suggested in this chapter can be helpful for anyone ­attempting to create a successful professional development program for teachers. First, when policy makers create a teacher development program and collaborate with the organized teaching profession, it is likely to produce important learning (on both sides). Rather than externally designed or imposed “professional development programs,” partnerships between policy makers and educators enable a collaborative professional learning approach connected to teachers’ professional needs and contexts. Second, to do so, the policy makers and teachers’ federations need to agree on key characteristics of professional development that matter to both parties (such as attentive to adult learning needs, sustainable, evidence informed). Third, to be effective, a professional development program needs some specific structures that drive and deepen the work, for example, a required project proposal template, the design of appropriate conferences and workshops to support teacher leaders, and a requirement to produce a final report. Fourth, the professional development program should design and provide an appropriate online platform space where teachers can both build community and share their learning. Fifth, as well as the support of the policy makers and the teachers’ federations, district and school leaders must also believe that supporting teachers is the key to improvement of student’s learning and well-being. Relatedly, a sixth lesson is that teachers must accept the idea that they can lead in areas where they develop “expertise.” This differs from having a particular teacher leader role. This is also not about individual experts working behind closed doors; rather the final lesson is that teachers need to believe or grow into the idea that working as a team (or with another person) rather than being a solo performer can eventually change the school culture.

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Figure 2.1  Lessons Learned: A System Enabling Teachers’ Learning and Leadership 1. When policy makers create a teacher development program and collaborate with the organized teaching profession, it is likely to produce important learning (on both sides). 2. The policy makers and teachers’ federations need to agree on key characteristics of professional development that matter to both parties. 3. A professional development program needs some specific structures that drive and deepen the work. 4. The professional development program should design and provide an ­appropriate online platform space where teachers can both build community and share their learning. 5. District and school leaders must also believe that supporting teachers is the key to improvement of student’s learning and well-being. 6. Teachers must accept the idea that they can lead in areas where they ­develop “expertise.” 7. Teachers need to believe or grow into the idea that working as a team (or with another person) rather than being a solo performer can eventually change the school culture.

3 Teacher Learning in the TLLP

“Professionally engaging, and professionally rejuvenating,” “truly transforming,” “best PD (professional development) ever,” “incredible gift to both my professional learning and our school community” are a few of the comments about the TLLP that we heard when speaking to TLLP participants or read when analyzing their projects’ final reports. So what is it that makes TLLP so successful? How is it ­different from other teacher professional development programs? According to Amato, Anthony, and Strachan (2014), the OTF and Ministry TLLP leaders, TLLP differs substantially from traditional professional development programs. They propose that traditional approaches have involved “outsidein reform,” “top-down planning,” “system-centered,” “goals for learning are determined by others,” and “knowledge consumption by individuals”; whereas the TLLP involves “inside-out transformation,” “collegial involvement in planning,” “student-centered,” “teachers determine their own learning goals,” and “knowledge construction by collaborative teams” (Amato, Anthony, and Strachan, 2014, p. 48). We examine the professional learning principles and practices enabled through the TLLP in this chapter.

Principles and Practices of Professional Development and Learning TLLP embodies a number of principles and practices that are deemed to be the most effective in teacher professional learning currently, including: teacher voice, ongoing job-embedded learning, collaborative learning, and necessary supports.

Teacher Voice This best practice is concerned with ensuring that programs deliver the “right” content that is relevant to the particular needs, contexts, and priorities of each

34  Teacher Learning in the TLLP

teacher, their students, and school community. Who else if not a teacher is the one who knows the best what she/he and her/his students need? Ingvarson (2014) recommends that “professional development should involve teachers in the identification of what they need to learn and in the development of learning experiences in which they will be involved” (p. 389). Allowing teachers to be the leaders of their own professional development not only makes the content of the professional development more relevant, it also motivates and engages teachers by providing them with a sense of ownership (Timperly et al., 2007; Youngs and Lane, 2014). Giving teachers’ voices in their professional learning is what TLLP is all about. The TLLP Program Guideline states: TLLP will foster teacher learning and facilitate knowledge production by funding proposals from teachers for innovative, self-chosen learning activities that they undertake individually or as part of a community of practice. The proposals will occur in the context of ministry/board/school goals to enhance student learning. (Ontario Ministry of Education, n.d., p. 3) This teacher-led, self-directed nature of the TLLP’s approach to professional development is considered to be unique and vital by TLLP participants, as one teacher interviewee explained: The fact that the program itself seemed to be designed to empower… instead of the teachers being told what to do by perhaps other research or other consultants or whatever, that this project empowered me and my team to drive what we were doing; we had control of it. I think that was huge, that in this day and age… In the twenty-first century, professional development needs to be customized and driven by the people who want to learn, or hopefully, we’re assuming they want to learn, rather than sitting in a room and being directed to or being instructed at. So, I think that this program was able to customize our leadership, customize our learning as we went along.

Ongoing Job-Embedded Learning Current research suggests that teacher professional development should be “jobembedded, ongoing and directly related to the challenges teachers face in daily classroom instruction” (Griffith et al., 2014, p. 190). Indeed, it appears that sporadic lectures or workshops are unlikely to change practice (Desimone and Stuckey, 2014) and that “professional development that is disconnected from classroom practice has little impact” (Dagen and Bean, 2014, p. 45). In the case of the TLLP, most of the projects are rooted in knowledge and skills for daily classroom practices and the participants are provided with necessary time and resources to reflect on and to improve their practices throughout the year. TLLP participants appreciate this extra time to focus on the area of their interest,

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to collaborate with other teachers, and to learn and try something new. As one TLLP teacher leader explained: The project allowed us to maintain a focus for our work over the year. It was refreshing to be able to concentrate on what we felt was most urgent for our students, and then have time to do the work that we need to meet those needs.

Collaborative Learning A large research literature indicates the need for teacher professional development programs to offer participants opportunities for collaboration and the potential to develop a community of practice (Desimone and Stuckey, 2014). Recent research concludes that “teacher leaders… learn much from dialogue and problem solving with other teachers” (Gordon et al., 2014, p. 51) and that collaboration and communities of practice can be a mediating factor in changing teacher practice and improving student learning, while supporting participants in processing new understandings and their implications for the classroom (Avalos, 2011). However, the existing literature contends that the creation of focused collaborative cultures has not become commonplace “despite the abundance of evidence regarding the benefits of collaborative cultures and the virtual absence of the contrary, it is the norm for public school teachers in North America to work in isolation” (Dufour, 2004, p. 16). The TLLP facilitates teacher collaboration by encouraging team projects (and, in fact, most of the projects are team projects), and supporting collaborative learning and idea sharing throughout the course of the project and during the training session and the sharing summit. This opportunity for genuine teacher collaboration that the program provides is highly valued by TLLP participants: Another successful aspect of this TLLP was the opportunity it provided the teachers to collaborate and to share ideas. In a busy school setting, there is often limited time for teachers to get together to discuss best practices, so having monthly feedback sessions provided each teacher with valuable information and even validation that their programs were effective.

Necessary Supports Frost (2012) comments, “teachers can lead innovation, build professional knowledge, develop their leadership capacity and influence colleagues and practice in their schools, provided they have the appropriate support structures and strategies” (p. 223). Effective professional learning opportunities for teachers should include a component designed to support teachers throughout this process. The TLLP does not just provide teachers with the money but allows them to focus on their identified project; it also supports them throughout their journey: first, by preparing

36  Teacher Learning in the TLLP

them to manage the project, lead a team, conduct research, and share the knowledge during the Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers training session; then, by making individual and direct mentoring and support available during the course of the project online and in person; and finally, by helping teachers celebrate their successes during the culminating Sharing the Learning Summit at the end of each TLLP cohort. Extremely high satisfaction rates (over 95 percent) for the training session and the sharing summit, multiple comments on the helpfulness of the TLLP contacts at the Ministry and the OTF, and most importantly the success stories of the participants are a great testament that those supports work. Indeed, TLLP embodies all of the elements of the most effective professional development programs mentioned above, and that is one of the factors that make it so successful (Campbell et al., 2015). The passion and commitment of the TLLP leaders at the provincial level, which we emphasized in the previous chapter, and the program’s focus on teacher leadership development and knowledge sharing (in addition to professional learning), which we will describe in the following chapters, are contributing factors as well. For us, TLLP is not just a compilation of effective features; the program has its own character and rich story, which we believe is worth telling. In this chapter, we focus on the professional learning aspect of TLLP and suggest lessons and implications for other jurisdictions seeking to develop a similar approach. We will describe the projects and goals that teachers set for their professional learning, discuss the activities they chose to participate in to reach those goals, and provide evidence to demonstrate enormous value of the program for teachers’ and their students’ learning. At the end of this chapter, we include summaries of a selection of ten TLLP projects illustrating the nature and diversity of TLLP professional learning foci and activities.

TLLP Projects Overall, TLLP funds about 100 projects per year. Over 300 teachers per year ­participate in these projects directly (with many more educators, students, and community members being involved indirectly). Over a million dollars is distributed in project funds every year. Consistent with the TLLP’s philosophy of there is “no one size fits all” professional development approach or teacher professional learning and career trajectory, TLLP projects vary considerably in scale, focus, and activities. The projects also range greatly in size, in terms of the number of people directly involved in the project (from one to over 60) as well as the size of the project budget (from under $2,000 to over $100,000 (Canadian)). An “average” TLLP project would have a budget of $14,000 and a core team of two to four people. Thus, TLLP supports all variety of sizes and scope of projects, from a single teacher filming her students over the course of a school year to document kindergarten students’ inquiry, to a group of four teachers working on building a stronger link between students and the disenfranchised of their local community through interactive projects and field trips, to a group of schools working together to develop

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common formative assessment tools and identify best teaching strategies to improve student reading.

Teachers’ Professional Learning In this section, we discuss the professional development goals, activities, benefits, and sustainability associated with TLLP projects.

Professional Development Goals A key goal of TLLP is to support experienced teachers to undertake self-directed advanced professional development for improving their practices and supporting students’ learning. This means that teachers can learn, invent, or experiment with whatever particular topic or priority they are interested in, as long as it is consistent with the Ontario government’s goals and priorities of increasing student achievement, reducing gaps in student achievement/ensuring equity, increasing public confidence in publicly funded education and—more recently—promoting well-being (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014). According to our research, the top three goals for the majority of the projects were to develop and improve knowledge, strategies, and skills. These goals were mostly focused on improving teaching and learning—such as learning about a new approach and developing strategies for its implementation, or developing a brand new program, or improving particular instructional, assessment, or technological skills. Developing professional collaborations within and across divisions and panels within and/or across schools was a goal of almost half of the projects. Examples of goals for collaboration included professionals working together to develop particular common effective instructional strategies or to support transitions from elementary to secondary schools. Some projects also planned to develop resources for use in classrooms, professional training sessions, or by parents. Other projects aimed to raise awareness of issues such as mental health or Aboriginal education among staff, students, and local community. Still others wanted to establish community relationships by connecting with Aboriginal communities, engaging parents, or developing school-community projects. TLLP projects focus on a diversity of topics, such as initiating new teaching practices in math, literacy, arts, or other subject areas; giving attention to specific student groups, for example those identified as having special educational needs or students struggling in school; helping students transition to a high school or college; focusing on student character development and well-being; engaging parents and community; and developing an inclusive school culture, among other things. One of our interviewees considered TLLP an enabler of authentic professional learning: I think there’s a lot in the TLLP that enables teachers who ordinarily would not be able to exactly carry out their brilliant ideas, and so they are given

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some supports—both in terms of time and in terms of some of the technology that normally would not be available to them—and so it does really allow them to have a learning experience that maybe would have been harder for them to have without it. While they are teacher-initiated and led, TLLP projects generally are also aligned with school, district, and Ministry priorities, so it is to be expected and encouraged that there will be evolving priority needs for innovation as the larger education system’s priorities change over time. Technology, for example, has become a more prevalent theme, with twice as many projects focusing on it now than when the TLLP was launched in 2007. Having recognized the growing interest in technology among TLLP applicants and members, the TLLP provincial committee decided to fund technological hardware and software necessary for the approved projects’ success, upon request, provided the main purpose was educational rather than technical and that the cost of purchasing technology would be less than 50 percent of the overall budget. This evolution in the TLLP demonstrated again the provincial TLLP leaders in OTF and the Ministry’s commitment to support teacher-driven professional learning by adapting to new realities and emerging needs. TLLP participants use technology in different ways and for various purposes. Some try to improve student motivation and engagement by researching the best educational apps for iPads and integrating them into their classrooms; others want to enhance learning experience for students with special needs and introduce SMART Boards™ and other assistive technology; still others use technology as an assessment and feedback tool to improve their teaching and student learning. Here is an example of one such TLLP project: Five teachers in one high school decided to try using iPads and Apple TV to improve their student engagement in Math and Science. As a result of participating in TLLP, each of them received an iPad and each of their classrooms was set with Apple TV. In addition, a class set of iPads and charge cart were purchased. First, the TLLP team spent time to become familiar with the iPads, apps, and Apple TV. Then they engaged in collaborative learning sessions to observe each other’s classes, share their learning, and problem solve together. According to the pre- and post-student surveys that the team developed, their students’ attitude towards learning and engagement level increased. By the end of the project the teachers realized that the technology did not only supplement what they were already doing, it started to redefine their classrooms by creating an increasingly inquiry based and studentcentered environment. As TLLP projects focus on priority needs and generate teacher expertise for professional learning and practice, they provide a potentially fertile source of leading edge innovation for the wider province of Ontario (and beyond) to learn with and from.

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Professional Learning Activities TLLP believes that teachers are the leaders of their own professional learning and development. These beliefs are reflected in the types of professional learning activities that TLLP members engage in. Our research showed that most of TLLP participants chose to take professional learning into their own hands and engage in collaborative learning, planning, and teaching, critically look at their own teaching as well as student learning, review research conducted by others as well as conduct their own research.

Teacher Collaborative Learning By far, the most common professional learning activity initiated and undertaken by TLLP participants was teacher collaborative learning. In over 70 percent of the TLLP projects, professional learning communities were created among TLLP members and some others to learn together by analyzing student data, reflecting on practice, creating resources, discussing strategies, and teaching together. For example, one project on teaching measurement in the elementary panel involved a 15-person TLLP team and undertook a range of activities to develop learning communities: We created a PLC [professional learning community] for teachers on d­ ifferent levels: Full staff—big ideas, three part lesson, student data, strengths, and needs in teaching measurement; Division—identified areas of learning difficulty for the students… used measurement continuum based on Ministry expectations for each grade; Teacher Math Quest Planning Teams—work with teachers from other divisions to develop rich tasks designed for the whole school…; Teacher Math Buddies—teachers had an opportunity to observe and work with students at different grade levels. We also created a PLC for students. We paired Junior classes with Primary classes. Students had the opportunity to experience and investigate a wide variety of activities with a peer. They had the opportunity to work with each other, either as a student expert, articulating their thinking, or as the less experienced learner, observing and learning from their buddies in a variety of ways. Creating a true collaborative learning environment requires time, effort, and skill. When it became evident that a number of TLLP teacher leaders experienced difficulties while trying to engage their team members in open professional dialogue, the TLLP provincial team in OTF and the Ministry responded quickly by introducing workshops on conflict resolution and adult learning during the Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers initial training session for future TLLP cohorts. Advanced training and support did not make the professional collaboration building process effortless for TLLP teacher leaders but it helped the project leaders be more prepared to face the challenges. Despite all the possible challenges,

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TLLP participants believed that collaborative learning and professional dialogue helped them better understand their teaching practice and, consequently, improve it. Indeed, various studies have determined that there is a relationship between schools with collaborative cultures and structures in place and enhanced teaching and learning (Hattie, 2009). Collaborations have extended beyond schools also when TLLP participants engaged in professional networking either in person (e.g. field trips, meetings) or online (via blogs, webcasts, WIKI spaces). It is worth pointing out the importance of technology in supporting already existing communities of practice and extending educators’ professional networks (Whitaker, Zoul, and Casas, 2015). Online collaboration and networking proved to be an effective learning tool. For example, in one of the projects an online learning environment was used as a reflective journal: Our online collaborative environment… serves as a reflective journal for each of our team members, as we share our classroom successes and challenges relating to iPad use. When we respond to one another to support colleagues’ further learning and/or to share our expertise, we add a new dimension to the reflection journal. While leaders of a professional development program with a more traditional and top-down delivery approach would decide on what is important and provide recommendations and resources in that area, TLLP encourages its members to look critically at their own classroom practices and experiment with their own professional inquiries and/or engage with existing research. More than half of the TLLP projects referred to literature and research to improve their knowledge and understanding of their priority topic. Furthermore, almost half of the projects reported engaging in action research or using research methods to gather data and act on it. Examples include using surveys to identify the interest and gap in knowledge about Aboriginal education and then addressing that gap, using pre and post surveys to measure student and teacher learning, analyzing student data to adjust instructional strategies, and testing new strategies. Approaches which emphasize action research can help unlock authentic changes in instructional practice by allowing teachers to direct their own professional learning and identify the focus of their own learning (Hunzicker, 2012). Activities associated with more traditional forms of professional development—such as attending workshops and conferences, enrolling in courses, and working with external experts—were also present but to a much lesser extent. And again, TLLP leaders were the ones who decided which workshops or conferences to attend and which experts to work with.

Teacher Learning Benefits The evidence that we have gathered and analyzed in our research ­(Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2013; Campbell et al., 2014, 2015) confirms that TLLP has a profound positive effect on teachers and their practice. For example, in

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our survey of TLLP project leaders for TLLP Cohorts 1–7, all of the 243 survey respondents (a 47 percent response rate) reported improvements in their knowledge, skills, and/or practice as a result of TLLP-related professional learning activities that they developed and engaged in (see Campbell et al., 2015). In addition, about three quarters of the respondents reported improvements in both their knowledge and understanding as well as instructional practice. This tells us that teachers not only acquired new knowledge but they also successfully incorporated that knowledge into their teaching. For example, the Final Report for a project on inquiry-based learning in a secondary panel stated: The team of teachers on this project learned to work together to reflect on current teaching practices, research new strategies, and to put research into practice. Teaching is a profession that changes over time. As a group of teachers, we were able to support each other as we continued to re-evaluate our own instructional strategies and to make small changes to our practices to improve student learning. TLLP teacher leaders reported improvements in other areas related to teaching and learning such as assessment skills, technological skills, facilitation and presentation skills, research skills, classroom management skills, and management and leadership skills. Improved communication and/or collaboration among and between educators, students, and community members were also mentioned by numerous TLLP members. For example, in a cross-panel project on math literacy, the Final Report described the development of a deep professional relationship among teachers: Our TLLP project dramatically increased the level of collaboration among the intermediate and senior Math teachers within our family of schools. By joining one another in a team-teaching environment on a regular basis, we developed a level of professional ease rarely experienced across panels. We coached one another and developed deeper professional relationships rooted in trust and a common goal to improve our teaching practice. While we did learn much from one another during these sessions, we continue to learn and support one another outside of these sessions. In another project, more meaningful teacher-student connections were developed: I deepened my connection to my First Nations’ students and became more effective in my direct student-learner interactions through being immersed in the collaborative sharing and learning of Aboriginal values and culture. I was able to apply sound pedagogical practice and the principle of Universal Design for Learning through the application of collaborative and communicative technologies within the framework of living cultural and value-laden meaning-making.

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Furthermore, TLLP members felt more inspired to teach and try new things and more confident about their new practices. For example, as TLLP teacher leaders explained: Our comfort level with the practice has increased dramatically and is now incorporated into the day to day functioning of the classroom… As a team, we are much more comfortable using restorative practices and have also been able to look to the future identifying areas we can improve on our use of the practice. The greater lessons that I learned this year are more about who I am and what I can now accomplish. I feel an incredible sense of pride about how far we have come in our work and I know that the skills I gained will transfer into my teaching and collaboration with colleagues for years to come. As a result of their participation in TLLP-related learning, TLLP members reported growing professionally in multiple ways. Probably, the leaders of a project on technology integration described outcomes of TLLP-related professional learning the best: The professional learning that we acquired as a result to our project has been three-fold between our role as facilitators, teachers, and learners. Below are descriptions for each piece of our puzzle. Facilitator: We have developed our facilitation skills by understanding the big picture of what goes into creating an effective workshop. Such components include: setting up a PD session from start to finish (i.e. budgeting, facility, applications, presenting, debriefing), and incorporating effective presentation techniques (i.e. time management, audience engagement, room positioning). Teacher: We have really learned how to incorporate iPads into everyday learning both as a teacher tool and student resource. Additionally, we now know how to manage iPads in the classroom community; including how to tether iPads, and sync Apple accounts. We also learned to take risks and let kids lead the way being technology experts; more about indirect discovery learning. Learner: We know now the benefit of reaching out to experts (Apple Consultants, Board Itinerants, Board Directors) and how to prioritize the need to maximize time each week to applying strategies learned and not just “putting them on the shelf.”

Student Learning Benefits While the TLLP is primarily focused on teachers’ learning and leadership, the intended improvements in professional knowledge, skills, and practice are anticipated to also benefit students: either the entire population of students, which was

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the case in the majority of projects, or a particular group of students identified as foci for the TLLP project (i.e. students with special needs, Aboriginal students). It is recognized that TLLP is one of many factors affecting students’ learning and development and establishing a direct relationship is problematic. Nevertheless, almost all of the survey respondents in our research reported that their TLLP projects affected their students in some positive way. For example, one teacher commented on the role of a TLLP project in supporting a transformation in her students: Because they [the students] lead their own guided reading groups, they’ve learned to be responsible, use accountable talk, and dig deeper into text. We feel they are more engaged and confident readers. While there are many variables for reading achievement, we feel our TLLP is one of the reasons they have improved comprehension (by our measures) and also success on EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) [Ontario’s standard provincial tests of achievement in reading, writing and mathematics]. Measuring the relationship between TLLP project activities and outcomes for ­student learning is complex. While many of the projects involve changes in instruction, assessment, or other strategies within classrooms for students’ learning, not all of the projects are directly focused on achievement measures such as test scores. The TLLP provincial partners in the Ministry and OTF have been careful to caution against teachers attempting to make direct causal claims about changed practice and increases in standard provincial assessment scores. They also provide initial advice and support for developing appropriate monitoring strategies during the Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers training session. Remarkably, but not surprisingly, 80 percent of the survey respondents reported using formal methods of data collection to monitor changes in student learning and development. Examples of these formal methods included student assessment, student surveys, formal observations, formal interviews, course enrollment numbers, suspension data, and parent and teacher surveys. TLLP participants rely on informal evidence as well, such as observations, conversations, and interactions with students, teachers, and parents. Overall, the majority of TLLP projects do report improvements for students’ learning and related outcomes. The top reported student outcome was improved student engagement and attitude towards learning, as reported by 73 percent of TLLP project leaders. Here is an example of one project’s successful attempt at introducing Math Fairs in an elementary school: My own students’ attitude toward math problems and math in general has drastically changed since September; from a class that sighed when math was mentioned to a class that ask first thing in the morning “When are we doing math?” and “Can we do math problems today?” Enhanced learning experiences, improved academic achievement, and increased student motivation were reported by the majority of TLLP teacher leaders

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r­ esponding to our survey about the impact of their projects (Campbell et al., 2015). For example, a project on the use of SMART Board™ technology with students with ­learning difficulties concluded: This project had an awesome impact on the students and their learning. Students that had difficulties focusing, writing test answers and interacting with their peers were showing positive results in their learning and ­assessments. In addition, improvements in students’ development as learners and as leaders were also identified in some TLLP project reports: Students entered the year as “dependent learners” wanting answers, but not willing or capable of seeking answers independently. At the end of the year, students asked questions, sought answers independently, critically analyzed the answers they found with their peers and shared their learning with each other readily. Where projects focused on particular areas of skills’ or behavior development, for example technological skills, innovation skills, learning skills or character development, related improvements for students were identified. Changes happening in students’ attitude, learning, skills, and leadership were a good sign that teachers were doing something right and helped “validate their efforts,” as one of the TLLP project leaders stated. The fact that TLLP projects, which were teacher-led and focused on teachers’ learning, also had a central focus on s­tudents’ learning with tangible benefits for student outcomes is vital (Timperley, 2008).

Sustaining Teacher Learning and Innovation Participating in a TLLP project can yield significant benefits for teachers and their students. But what happens when the TLLP project is over and there is no more funding? Even though it is not a requirement for participating in the TLLP program, there is an expectation, or at least a hope, that the learning and innovative practice happening during the course of the project will continue beyond the TLLP project implementation period. And this expectation is not without merit. 98 percent of the former TLLP project leaders who responded to our survey indicated that the activities initiated during the course of their project were sustained in some form. To continue the project’s activities, some TLLP leaders managed to secure funding and/or support from the school district or school, received some grant, or successfully applied for another TLLP project or other Ministry or union funded activities. While funding and support are important in sustaining the project’s activities, teachers’ passion about the matter, and their love for teaching is what keeps ideas and practices resulting from a TLLP project alive and thriving.

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The top aspect of TLLP projects that were sustained beyond the initial ­project was the further implementation of the learning strategies or tools developed through the initial TLLP project. According to 82 percent of our survey respondents, the practices and tools that were developed during the TLLP funding period have been implemented and sustained at an individual, school, and/or district level. For example, a TLLP project leader described the impact of the TLLP experience on his/her TLLP team members’ teaching practice: Our TLLP experience impacted the practice of each teacher participant. TLLP group members took on new roles in their schools, including formal and informal leadership roles. Some teachers began graduate work in education following their participation in the TLLP project. I believe that all teachers who participated in the project changed their teaching practice as a result of their participation. Another example of sustained practice/tool implementation is a successful districtwide adoption of a Learning Management System (LMS) platform: We introduced Moodle LMS to our district and it is used in every ­secondary school by thousands of students and hundreds of teachers to this day. We have a strong base of users. We have conducted many workshops both within our school and throughout our district on Moodle. Students entering classes have an expectation that they will be learning in a blended learning environment. Parents appreciate the ability to monitor their child’s progress throughout the course of the semester. TLLP-initiated practices were also sustained by being incorporated into a classroom routine or a new school tradition. Others got modified to better suit new schools, student groups, or technology advancements. Still others survived the departure of the project team members and impacted new educators through the resources and artifacts that remained. Three quarters of the TLLP teacher leaders reported continuing learning in the same area by exploring the same topic at a deeper level, looking into the ways to implement the same ideas in a different subject area or with another group of learners, or searching for new ideas in the same area. Collaboration that was developed during the project was reported to be sustained in 70 percent of the projects. The TLLP helped improve and sustain collaboration and communication for many TLLP members and in many schools by encouraging teachers to be “more open to sharing expertise and knowledge in a collaborative learning community,” providing them with an opportunity to build new connections, and getting them into the habit of engaging in collaborative learning and professional dialogue by showing the value of it and providing the conditions. To sum up, the TLLP’s effects on teaching and learning are transformative, long-lasting, and far-reaching. A project leader of three TLLP projects explains:

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Each of our projects have yielded more than expected positive results and each has a lingering effect on both our learning and our sharing as well as our professional practice. We look forward to future TLLP projects.

Lessons Learned There is long-standing interest in the power and potential of teacher-led ­professional learning, collaboration, and improvement practices (e.g. Little, 1995; Lambert, 1998) as central to school improvement (e.g. Harris and Mujis, 2004). Furthermore, alongside an acceleration of interest in teacher leadership, there has been an expansion in the scope and scale of educational change as part of Whole System Reform (Fullan, 2009, 2010) and a Global Education Reform Movement ­(Sahlberg, 2011) involving considerations of how teachers’ professional learning can contribute to larger system improvement to support all students to succeed. With the clarion call that teachers and teaching matters (Mourshed, Chijioke, and Barber, 2010; OECD, 2010), whether teachers are the subjects of external reforms or the agents of collective, professionally-led change has become a crucial issue (Evers and Kneyber, 2015; Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012; Hargreaves and Shirley, 2009). Our evidence from TLLP indicates that it is possible and desirable for system leaders (governments, unions, district, and school leaders) and teacher leaders to work together to enable teacher-led professional learning and collaboration to inform the (co-)development of new professional knowledge and sharing of innovative improvement practices that extend beyond classroom walls. Teacher professional development programs need to view teachers, “as selfregulating professionals, who,” according to Timperly et al. (2007), “if given sufficient time and resources, are able to construct their own learning experiences and develop a more effective reality for their students through their collective expertise” (p. xxv). Ontario’s TLLP does precisely that. The program and the people behind it truly believe that teachers are the experts who can provide the best educational experience for their students. Thus, TLLP recognizes teachers as leaders of their own professional development and allows them to set their own goals and experiment with their own ideas (as long as those ideas are potentially beneficial to students, of course). TLLP encourages and provides opportunities for teachers to critically look at their own practice, research, and/or develop the most appropriate and effective solutions, and learn in collaboration with their colleagues, students, and communities. TLLP supports its participants throughout their journey by providing them with necessary time and resources to focus on their projects, preparing them with a series of workshops, inspiring them with presentations from key-note speakers and success stories from previous cohorts’ participants, offering continuous one-on-one mentoring and consulting, and helping them celebrate the projects’ successes by sharing in person and online. As a result of participating in the TLLP, teachers become better and more ­confident educators by gaining new knowledge and skills and applying them to their classroom or school practice, and better learners by getting into a habit of

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r­eflecting on their practice, engaging in open professional dialogues, and learning collaboratively. Their students benefit too. They become more engaged, have better learning experiences, and get higher scores. At the end of the day, teachers who are inspired by the new learning, and further motivated by empowerment, respond with increased enthusiasm and commitment to their efforts (Sergiovanni, 1999). Thus, for many TLLP participants the learning, reflecting, experimenting, and collaborating that started during the project does not stop with the end of the project but goes on and takes on new forms, making TLLP’s impact even more significant and longer lasting. This chapter emphasised three main conditions behind an effective teacher professional learning. First, teachers should be provided with an opportunity to ­ learn and innovate in the area of their choice, provided it can also benefit their students. Second, teachers should be encouraged to engage in critical inquiry, professional dialogue, and collaborative learning. And, third, teachers should be supported in their professional learning with necessary time, resources, training, and access to appropriate expertise as needed.

TLLP Project Examples TLLP Project Summaries The Ontario Ministry of Education develops summaries of all TLLP projects based on information available in the original TLLP Project Proposal applications and from the Final Reports that are submitted by TLLP teams after the completion of their projects. These summaries are used in several ways. First, they are available online at http://mentoringmoments.ning.com/group/tllp-palpe/page/tllp-projectarchive for the public and teachers interested in the TLLP to see what kind of projects get funded and completed through the program. Second, these summaries are printed in the postcard format for each project. TLLP teams attending Sharing the Learning Summit exchange the postcards with other teams and thus share their learning and build connections. We have selected 10 project summaries that represent a range of topics, project sizes, project goals, methods of learning and sharing, as well as challenges. We hope this selection will provide a reader with a better understanding of the diversity and the nature of TLLP projects.

Project 1: The teaching and learning of measurement Project Year: 2008–2009 Number of Team Members: 15 Project Themes: Student Assessment, Mathematical Literacy Project Description: The school staff, as a learning community, investigated how students think about measurement and what teachers can do to support the development

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of students’ understanding of measurement. Through the pairing of learning buddies, students experienced and explored various measurement activities. Project Goals: (a) To investigate and deepen our understanding of students’ thinking as it relates to measurement and measurement relationships; (b) To develop a resource of rich instructional problems that focus on measurement; (c) To create effective electronic teaching resources. Lessons Learned: We have learned that through collaboration teachers gain a better understanding of student’s thinking as it relates to measurement. In creating instructional problems, the collaborative thinking of teachers produces a more cohesive measurement instruction. Questions Remained: Now that we have created learning communities for both teachers and students and the enthusiasm for the project, how do we proceed? For example, do we continue looking at the strand of measurement or do we focus on another strand of mathematics?

Project 2: Parents as partners—Volunteer Literacy Program Project Year: 2009–2010 Number of Team Members: 1 Project Themes: Literacy, Student Success, Local Community Engagement Project Description: Family support is a critical part of the educational success of ­children and of our schools. The Volunteers Supporting Literacy Learning program trains, supports, and mentors parent volunteers who work with students in need of extra literacy support. The program increases parental capacity and, in turn, increases student capacity as well. Parents are encouraged to act as liaisons with our school community to spread key messages about literacy learning to other families and community members. Project Goals: (a) To learn how to support and attract parental volunteerism within our school community; (b) To develop in-depth and cohesive training sessions and materials for volunteers; (c) To create and develop resource kits of manipulatives and materials for volunteer use within the program; (d) To research and implement the use of “parent liaisons” at school-based family literacy events. Lessons Learned: (a) Parents are key in helping to support our goals in literacy instruction within our school community; (b) Increased parental involvement and increased parental capacity in our school community can increase student success and capacity in its own right. Questions Remained: How can we support parental involvement and increase parental capacity? How can we measure an increase in volunteers’ confidence, commitment, and individual capacity?

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Project 3: Linking boys’ literacy achievement and interactive white board technology Project Year: 2010–2011 Number of Team Members: 4 Project Themes: Literacy, Media Literacy, Technology Project Description: This project was the result of research and our own classroom experience, which shows that, typically, girls perform better than boys on reading and writing assessments. To help prevent boys from growing into non-readers and to promote the growth of reading and writing skills in boys, our team investigated the impact of using interactive white board technology (specifically SMART™ Boards) on boys’ literacy skill achievement. The team was to develop competency in the use of SMART™ Boards and knowledge of how to integrate technology into the literacy program. Project Goals: (a) To become more efficient and increase teachers’ use of Interactive White Board (IWB) Technology in their practice; (b) To integrate use of IWB technology into language programs as a means to engage boys and improve overall achievement; (c) To share knowledge with colleagues. Lessons Learned: (a) The regular use of SMART™ Boards in our classrooms enhanced the learning environment for all students; (b) Overall, students are engaged and interested when they have an opportunity to interact with material presented on a SMART™ Board. One grade six student claimed, “When we use the chalk board instead of the SMART™ Board work is less interesting. Using the SMART™ Board helps me get engaged and stay more focused”; (c) A greater percentage of boys claimed to better understand what they learned in reading and writing lessons when presented on the SMART™ Board; (d) Learning how to be an efficient/ effective user of SMART™ Board technology can change your ­teaching practice! Questions Remained: How can educators continue to bridge the age gap (between teacher and student) in information technology? What other forms of technology are essential for our twenty-first century learners?

Project 4: Career cruising and the use of the educational portfolio Project Year: 2010–2011 Number of Team Members: 1 Project Themes: Student Success/Transition Years, Technology Project Description: To supplement the Electronic Annual Education Plan that we have within our school board my project concentrated on having Grade 7 and 8 students use Career Cruising to complete a number of prescribed activities. The activities had the students complete the following: (1) self-assessment tests which

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gave them an idea of their strengths, learning styles, and a list of possible careers that might be suitable for them; (2) research into a number of different careers and possible pathways; and (3) create and add to an electronic educational/career portfolio that they will hopefully continue to use right through secondary school. Project Goals: (a) To create activities using Career Cruising that would have elementary students examine themselves, do career research, and create their very own portfolio; (b) To have 100 percent of the students taking part complete 100 percent of the activities and create and maintain their portfolio to a minimum standard; (c) To communicate to students, parents, teachers, and administrators the importance of creating and maintaining a portfolio and doing some career research at the elementary level and continuing on right through secondary school; (d) To encourage the students to continue to use and share their portfolio even after the project activities have been completed. Lessons Learned: (a) The impact that technology can have on the motivation of students to complete a task; (b) How impactful elementary school teachers (particularly Grade 7 and 8 who I worked with) can be on student’s achievement and motivation right through secondary school; (c) Career research and portfolio development in elementary school is very important and will have a positive impact on student motivation, goal setting, and achievement; (d) The project was very well received by students (enthusiastically). Part of that reason is the activities were technology-based and relevant. Questions Remained: The main question I have about my project is that I would love to extend the activities and the project to the secondary school grades; however, I struggle with how and when (by whom) the activities would be delivered? Also, who would monitor the delivery and completion by the students? At the elementary level it is manageable for the classroom teacher to deliver and monitor the program, not sure if it is possible to do the same at the secondary level?

Project 5: Do you know who I am? I Matter U Matter Project Year: 2011–2012 Number of Team Members: 4 Project Themes: Student Success, Students with Special Needs, Social Justice Project Description: This project focused on mental illness/health education to decrease the stigma of mental illness, as well as to develop strategies to increase mental wellness. Those strategies included staff education, classroom teacher training, lesson development, and peer leader training. Project Goals: (a) Identify and describe symptoms and characteristics of mental illnesses; (b) Educate the whole staff to enable them to be empathetic and to develop accommodations for students with mental health concerns; (c) Identify, using Student Voice, concerns that the staff and students have surrounding mental health stigma.

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Lessons Learned: (a) SafeTALK: Suicide alertness for everyone; (b) ASIST: Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training; (c) Canadian Mental Health Association High School Curriculum; (d) Mental Health Fair: Participants from all community partners (Royal Ottawa Hospital, Youth Services Bureau, CHEO, and many more); (e) Michael Baine: an educational consultant whose clients include the Ministry of Education, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, the Ottawa Network for Education and the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation. Questions Remained: (a) How can we include the mental health lessons that our team created with all HRE10 classes in our board? (b) How can we continue to provide information about stress, suicide, anxiety, and resources to our whole school community? (c) How can we capitalize upon mental health resources available in our community to strengthen our program or to create community partners?

Project 6: Using the arts to address issues of social justice, equity, and inclusive education Project Year: 2011–2012 Number of Team Members: 4 Project Themes: Arts, Literacy, Differentiated Instruction, Social Justice Project Description: Teachers integrated the arts (drama, dance, visual arts, music, and creative writing) into a variety of subject areas to explore issues of social justice, equity, and inclusive education. The arts were used to differentiate instruction and tasks. Literary sources were used to introduce topics including socioeconomic ­status/class, gender, race, and identity. Students shared emotional responses through art, used art to share their learning, and created art to make statements to broader communities. Through these practices, students became better able to identify inequity, to effect change, developed self-efficacy and agency, and were able to situate themselves within solutions. Project Goals: (a) Participate in the lesson study process; (b) Develop a bank of artsbased lessons/activities/topics to address issues of social justice, equity, and inclusive education; (c) Long-term goal: Develop a teacher resource. Lessons Learned: The professional learning that occurred during this project was outstanding. We read a variety of professional articles and completed extensive research including scholarly articles, books, and current websites. One of our team members attended training sessions on creating identity safe classrooms. Through workshops and divisional sharing, we heightened our presentation skills and we focused on tailoring our presentation to the experience level of participants. Students were actively engaged because they were given choice in all writing activities and the culminating task was differentiated according to student need and interest. We learned that student-to-student conversation is valid assessment for learning and that shortened consolidation assessments yielded more evidence of learning

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than any other assessment short of the culminating task. As teachers, we learned to slow down and allow students to dictate the direction of our planning. It was necessary to branch away from our linear plans to explore points of student interest along the way. However, it is just as important to keep the end in mind so that one does not lose sight of the learning goal. Another key learning was the arts remove the barriers for special education students and English Language Learners by differentiating according to specific needs. Another of the most important things we learned was that the 4C model of collaboration works best; it provided multiple opportunities for creative problem solving and sharing of ideas. Questions Remained: (a) How can we access funds to enhance our programs with guest artists and speakers? (b) How do we deal with the issues of time constraints? (c) What strategies can we employ to address entrenched traditional teaching ­philosophies? (d) How will we continue to share our passion with other teachers and students?

Project 7: Family of schools collaborates to make problem-solving visible in transitional math classrooms Project Year: 2012–2013 Number of Team Members: 8 Project Themes: Technology, Professional Learning Communities, Mathematical Literacy Project Description: To address the diverse learning needs and preferences of the students within our family of schools, and to remove barriers to success encountered by some students, we used iPads in our transitional math classrooms. Students used iPads to gather and manipulate data, solve inquiry-based problems, formulate problem solutions, and present their solutions to others. In addition to addressing the learning and communication challenges faced by some of our students, iPads allowed for a differentiated product from all of our students and an increased focus on oracy in the transitional math classroom. Linking to a virtual classroom, students were able to share their solutions and provide feedback to one another via reflection on co-created success criteria. Likewise, teachers used this technology to learn from and support one another in our professional development. Student iPads and wireless links to virtual classrooms helped us to showcase student learning and make learning more visible to parents, guardians, and other colleagues. Project Goals: (a) To develop skills required to use iPad technology to create CORE tasks that engage students and promote development of critical thinking skills; (b) To develop expertise concerning pedagogical issues surrounding implementation of these tasks; (c) To model the facilitation of tasks that use iPad technology to develop, analyze, and present rich CORE tasks, embedded in technology; (d) To learn how iPad capabilities can minimize barriers to success encountered by students

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with learning exceptionalities; (e) To create a Family of Schools online collaborative environment to share and reflect on tasks used in transitional math classrooms. Lessons Learned: First of all, we learned how to manage the Apple Configurator software that supports iPad use in a classroom. This was a particular challenge for the secondary school teachers in our group, who were required to do this very quickly so that the class set of iPads could be available to different teachers in the learning team for different periods throughout the day. We also learned how the iPads could be used to support the delivery, completion and reflection upon rich tasks in the Math classroom. While we did find several apps that supported the development of students’ inquiry skills, we discovered that not all Math apps supported the pedagogical direction taken by our department. We did find several education-based apps, however, that permitted us to maintain the integrity of our direction, and support the implementation of open and parallel tasks. We focused on learning how to modify and enhance our current tasks so as to open them up to promote dialogue and greater differentiation of instruction and product. The iPads made videotaping of student work and thinking easy to do, for both the students and the teacher. In addition to supporting the students’ development of metacognitive processes, the videos afforded insight into student thinking for teachers and resulted in a responsive change in teaching practice. Questions Remained: (a) It is our finding that open tasks presented and explored using iPad technology, increased the level of engagement of students in the Math classroom. Presenting tasks in a technological context responded to our students’ learning preferences. However, not all members of our learning team had access to a class set of iPads. As a result, they were not able to use iPads to support student learning in the same way. As a group, we are still trying to determine how and if the positive level of student engagement and inquiry found in the full iPad classroom can be effected in a classroom that has a limited number of iPads for student use. Consequently, we are prompted to consider how personal electronic devices could be used to facilitate student learning. (b)During our sharing, we did encounter teaching colleagues that were reluctant to consider using iPad technology in a Math classroom. Through our in-class sharing sessions, we were able to show these colleagues how we were able to use this technology, with positive results. Going forward, we wonder how we will be able to continue to help colleagues to overcome their reluctance to use technology in the classroom when opportunities to invite others to share in our learning end with the conclusion of this TLLP project.

Project 8: The use of Apple iPads and iPod Touches to enhance the ­learning of autistic students Project Year: 2012–2013 Number of Team Members: 3 Project Themes: Differentiated Instruction, Students with Special Needs, Technology

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Project Description: Recognizing that students with Autism tend to be visual learners that have difficulties communicating their thoughts/ideas, our project seeks to use iPod Touches and iPads to provide Autistic students with technology that will meet their learning needs and facilitate their demonstration of knowledge and skills. We have chosen to use iPod Touch and iPad technology for two main reasons. First, both the iPad and iPod Touch are part of research trials around the world that are studying the use of new technologies for developmentally challenged individuals, which are showing positive results. Second, these devices are fast, versatile, user-friendly, and portable. There are already many applications that are specifically targeted towards users with special needs and with each day that passes more are made available to use. Project Goals: (a) To research and learn about using the iPod Touch and iPad to ­support the learning of Autistic students; (b) To develop expertise in teaching Autistic students using up-to-date touch technology; (c) To promote professional learning by implementing knowledge exchange opportunities for fellow staff members. Lessons Learned: In terms of professional learning, this project allowed us to really examine the characteristics of our students and how to best use the iPads to enhance their learning. As we learned more about the common characteristics of Autism, we also discovered the personalities of our students, which sparked more of an interest in learning how to better serve them. We also felt that our understanding of the IEP improved throughout this project. The IEP (which was the main force behind the apps we would choose for our students to engage with) became a rich and dynamic document that was used daily rather than weekly or monthly. This project led to strong teacher-student-EA interaction which helped inform the creation and maintenance of the IEP. Questions Remained: The main question about our learning experience comes from the classroom teachers about how the applications are actually loaded on to the iPads. Some members of the team have noted that they are not tech savvy and that they wished they could understand the technology better. They still seem to be puzzled about what they referred to as the “abstractness” of the technology and how apps are found and loaded on to the iPad. They expressed concern in not understanding how all the “abstract” stuff comes together and ends up on the device. The question that still exists is more about the technology rather than the teaching.

Project 9: Let’s hear about it and talk about it—oral language and ­phonological awareness in French immersion early years Project Year: 2013–2014 Project Themes: French Immersion, Literacy Project Description: As a result of a large increase in student enrollment at our primary French Immersion school, we recognized an urgent student and teacher

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need. We worked to develop a common understanding of the importance of oral ­language and phonological awareness in the early years of French Immersion. Project Goals: (a) Develop common understanding of the importance of oral ­language and phonological awareness in French Immersion; (b) Research successful intervention strategies and tools to support struggling students in French Immersion; (c) Implementation of assessment tool, classroom strategies, and intervention focus group support. Lessons Learned: (a) While creating a bank of French songs, we both worked with technology in a new way. We learned about using Audacity to record. We learned to use Survey Monkey to conduct a survey of teachers at the beginning of the project. With the guidance of the ADSB Program Lead for Technology, we had a SharePoint site created to be accessed by teachers and updated regularly; (b) The process of researching, purchasing and testing phonological awareness resources in French has led to a greater personal awareness of what is currently available in Canada for French Immersion; (c) The opportunity to work with various groups of teachers within our school has contributed to our understanding of the need to be flexible, adaptable, and cognizant of the variety of views, personalities, and years of teaching experience with our own staff of 30. We successfully highlighted and celebrated this and gave everyone a voice. Questions Remained: As a result of this project, we have gained a new understanding of the complexity and the importance of communication within a large staff with multiple classrooms of every grade (11 ELKP, 7 Grade 1 classes, 6 Grade 2 classes and 5 Grade 3 classes). The consistency of teaching practices and resources between all classes within a cohort can only be achieved through ongoing group planning, PLC’s, and collaborative inquiry. Communication between cohorts must also be promoted and embedded within our professional learning models. Team members are currently Literacy Success Leaders but will both be returning to the classroom in September 2014. Our student population continues to grow and so do our cohorts. Our next challenge will be to maintain the level of communication which we have been able to achieve through this project and find new ways to effectively include all members of our growing staff.

Project 10: iPads for success—integrating iPads and SAMR into secondary classrooms to engage aboriginal students and applied-level boys Project Year: 2013–2014 Number of Team Members: 10 Project Themes: Differentiated Instruction, Technology, Student Assessment Project Description: With many teachers struggling to find ways to engage students that disengaged from learning long before they reach our classroom, the iPads for Success team used tablet technology and exciting apps to redefine our instructional,

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collaborative, and assessment practices. From “flipping” classrooms, to applying Dr. Puentedura’s SAMR model, we explored new twenty-first century educational paradigms and current research, challenged our own belief systems, and learned from each other and some of our highest risk students that technology really does make a positive difference in their educational experience. Project Goals: We had to change our learning goals this year as the project lead changed schools and the TLLP team expanded to ten members and crossed two schools. The revised goals that we submitted to the TLLP team were as follows: (1) By September 2013, the team of teachers will understand and have team planned teaching, learning, and assessment activities relating to second language, literacy, and numeracy development utilizing the SAMR model: Redefinition, Modification, Substitution, and Augmentation for integrating the iPad into the classroom environment. (2) By September 2013, iPads will be purchased and loaded with Applications that support and augment the SAMR model for integrating technology into classrooms. (3) By May 2014 the project’s success and areas for improvement will be assessed by the project team and recommendations put into place for the following year. (4) By June 2014, a teacher’s toolkit of practical strategies will be created to assist other teacher’s engage and assist rural and urban aboriginal students with a focus on six key topics. (5) By June 2014, teachers involved in the project will improve their professional instructional strategies in the areas of providing detailed feedback using iPad technology, assessment for learning, improving digital citizenship and safety, integrating technology into the classroom, instruction using the LMS, and integrating aboriginal content. Lessons Learned: The professional learning acquired as a result of this project has been incredible. Technically, we have learned about networking, how to program iPads and manage them for classes. Professionally, we have significantly improved our ability to assess our students using the iPads and applications like Google Drive, Goodnotes, Easy Assessment, and, in particular the D2L Grader application. We have learned how to be more collaborative with our students using technology and focusing on video conferencing, providing detailed feedback in Assessment FOR Learning, and student self-assessment. And lastly, we have learned how to teach and engage higher-risk “Twenty-First Century Learners” using instructional practices that interest the Millennial generation. Questions Remained: The professional development from this TLLP has been career-altering for all members of this project, particularly in the areas of student engagement and assessment. We have been improving our Assessment for Learning using the iPads to video conference with students, allow shy students to record their presentations privately, and use apps to assess students more effectively and learn how to provide detailed feedback using technology. We have also learned how to reduce photocopy costs and implement a BYOD policy in our classrooms. Lastly, the iPads have allowed for us to “flip” some of our classrooms, use D2L Blended Learning classrooms more effectively, accommodate students with special needs more effectively, and strengthen inquiry learning instructional practices

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using SAMR as a theoretical framework. We would like to continue to grow in the above areas professionally. This year was a steep learning curve just learning what worked and what did not. Next year, we will be fully implementing what we have learned from the first day of the semester with regard to inquiry-learning, rich assessment tasks, and providing detailed feedback as Assessment for Learning, SAMR, a BYOD policy, and student engagement using the iPads as a support. Next year, I would like to share our learnings widely to develop the capacity of other teaching professionals as the iPads become part of every school through the Lakehead District School Boards new technology infusion this year. Lastly, I would like to learn how to blog these results effectively to other teaching professionals and further develop my instructional and assessment practices.

Figure 3.1  Lessons Learned: Teacher Learning in the TLLP 1. An effective professional learning program recognizes teachers as leaders of their own learning and provides them with an opportunity to learn and innovate in the area of their choice, provided it can also benefit their students. 2. Encouraging teachers to engage in critical inquiry, professional dialogue, and collaborative learning helps them become better and more confident learners and educators and, as a result, benefits their students as well. 3. It is vital to support teachers in their professional learning with necessary time, resources, training, and access to appropriate expertise as needed.

4 Teacher Leadership in the TLLP

One of the reasons for the success of the TLLP is that both the OTF and the ­Ministry created the program to include policies that will support the practices of the program and they have improved the program with each cohort of t­eachers. This kind of congruence has been difficult to find almost anywhere in the world. The questions that serve at the heart of the professional development program are: What did you learn? What did you learn about leadership? How do you share your learning with others? These powerful questions have been unchanged even though, by 2016, the program has existed for nine years and involved ten TLLP cohorts with almost 1,000 projects. These seemingly simple, yet deep questions, have yielded a tremendous amount of data informing us about how teachers learn and most particularly how they learn to lead in the process of ­making their TLLP proposals for professional development take shape as they are implemented (­Campbell et al., 2014, 2015; Lieberman, Campbell, and Yashkina, 2015a, 2015b). The learning about leadership was particularly striking and important as ­teachers who had written successful proposals now had money and support for organizing professional development in their school and/or in other schools. There was little precedent for this as professional development is usually provided by experts hired by districts and leadership was clearly assumed to be linked to formal administrative responsibilities, mainly in the hands of principals within schools (Leithwood, 2012). The continued press for understanding the culture of schools (Sarason, 1971) and how teachers teach and what it takes to improve practice have been two ­consistent themes for the last several decades (Lieberman and Miller, 2000; Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999; Hargreaves, 1994; Wei, Darling-Hammond, and Adamson, 2010). While there is growing interest in the practices and possibilities of teacher ­leadership, there remains a range of divergent understandings of what teacher l­eadership in

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concept and practice involves. While conceptions of distributed leadership have become strongly associated with teacher leadership (Harris, 2003), there is a distinction when leadership is effectively delegated by formal leaders to ­distribute responsibilities contrasted with teacher-led opportunities for more democratic ­leadership within and among professional communities (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2012), involving professional expertise, judgment, and wisdom (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012). Recently, teacher leaders themselves have called for an approach to “flip the system” (Evers and Kneyber, 2015) from top-down governance to a system where teachers have opportunities to exercise collective autonomy, professional judgment, and leadership of educational change. While research about teacher leaders encourages teachers to support learning through professional networks and contribute to school improvement (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012; Little, 1990, 2000; Rosenholz, 1989), few large-scale approaches to professional development have tried putting teachers in positions where they organize the development of ideas, lead, implement, and share their findings and get money and support to organize the development of the work. Crowther (2015, p. 6) has recently argued that “teacher leaders and expert teachers” are “equally important but not to be confused,” suggesting that the former are involved in school organizational leadership and development and the latter are experts in classroom pedagogy. However, TLLP takes a different perspective—yes, t­eachers are “expert” in pedagogy, but their leadership is not about formalized organi­ zational authority and responsibilities, rather their teacher leadership is influencing, co-developing, and sharing professional knowledge. As a member of the OTF provincial interviewee explained, TLLP teachers are asked to go beyond being “expert teachers” to being “expert” leaders of professional learning: Your application’s here because we know you’re good with your students; what is your learning going to be? How are you going to push it?… how do you transfer that learning to other adults? And that’s where the training comes in as well, because a lot of them would be so focused on their kids and their class that they’d say, “I can do a way better job!” Well that’s great, but we’re asking you how you’re going to transfer that to other adults. That’s a different thing. This is consistent with Harris and Jones’s (2015) definition of teacher leadership where: Teachers are viewed as the architects of their own professional learning and take chief responsibility for guiding the professional learning of others. So far so good, but for many teachers the word “leadership” gets in the way as it implies certain formal roles or responsibilities. On a daily basis, teachers tend not to see themselves as “leaders” in the formal sense, even though they are leading in their classrooms. Therefore, it is important to clarify that the idea of “teacher leadership” is not associated with role or position but

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rather it is about the practice of innovating and influencing others so that learning improves. The TLLP kind of a professional development program literally breaks new ground and has few, if any, precedents. The program provides the conditions for learning leadership but does not specify how teachers do it. And throughout the year, both the Ministry and the OTF support the work of the teachers as well as provide any other kinds of support the teachers need. As an OTF provincial leader explained, the purpose of TLLP is to enable teachers to grow and evolve as informal leaders, perhaps in unanticipated ways: The people you might have identified at the front end as having been eventually becoming part of this elite group [of TLLP teacher leaders], they’re not the ones that you might have anticipated. So if you don’t open it out to those teachers who are not automatically leaders in their area, you actually undermine the program… If you pre-select teacher leaders, you miss the opportunity to grow leadership, and the whole point of this… the most exciting part is when a teacher says, “I couldn’t present to a group before, only to my students. I never would have seen myself doing this, and now I’m flying across to here and there to give…” I think that that is so beautiful in this project. (OTF interviewee) Enabling teacher leaders to emerge and learn leadership through their own ­experiences requires flexibility and space for a diversity of teacher-led learning: The image I always use is if you took a chrysalis and you put it in a matchbox… what happens if you put a chrysalis into a matchbox, and the size of the chrysalis is exactly the size of the matchbox? What happens when the butterfly is ready to emerge? There’s no space for it to open its wings. And that’s a really good image for us to keep in our heads… These are not teachers who start out necessarily as pre-recognized or pre-packaged leaders. They grow into leaders, and so if we confine too closely what they are allowed to work on… and even for the fabric of what makes up the TLLP, if all of the projects are about math or all about numeracy or all about… it’s so less interesting than when you get somebody who is looking at a specific aspect of what makes a difference in kindergarten or what about transitions. (OTF interviewee) Through the TLLP, we get an opportunity to see how teachers work to change the school culture by organizing their colleagues to join with them in an area of mutual improvement of practice. In the process, instead of the principal being the only leader, teachers are the focal leaders and participants in heading up an improvement effort. The opportunity is there for teachers to learn leadership by doing it, by organizing their colleagues, by learning how to collaborate to make good on the promises of their proposal.

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Getting Leadership Information: Introducing the Vignette To get a better insight into teacher leadership experiences, we decided to ask teachers to volunteer to write a short vignette about their experience throughout the year of their TLLP project. The vignettes were to be 5–10 page narratives about the process of their TLLP project and the learning they acquired. To help the teachers bound their stories, we provided a set of prompts. They were: • • • • • •

What did you do? Who did you do it with? What happened as a result? How are you sharing your knowledge? What did you learn? What did you learn about leadership?

Of 39 TLLP teacher leaders who initially volunteered, 19 actually ended up writing a vignette and submitting it to us. We provide examples of two vignettes written by teacher leaders at the end of this chapter. The highest number of vignettes was written about technology and math. Four were written about integrating iPads into teaching, specifically projects to support students identified with special educational needs, early childhood education, and web-based technology. Teachers were not initially experts in the technologies they selected for their TLLP projects, but were interested in how to use technology in their classrooms. It was important to the TLLP teacher leaders that they could find suitable Apps or other technological tools, experiment with them, use them with their students, and learn how to make these useful in a curriculum. Needless to say, students were extremely enthusiastic. And so were teachers: We feel very successful in accumulating knowledge about the many Apps for Special Needs students and applying technological resources to best assist our students. The iPads became an integral part of our planning for differentiated learning.

On Leadership in the TLLP In all the vignettes, teachers articulated exactly what they were learning about ­leadership. Their themes were: learning to collaborate, building relationships, creating a vision, and sharing the leadership, learning technology, and providing leadership in its use, implementing their project, and going public with their teaching. Teachers also were articulate about the challenges they faced and often solved in the process of implementing their project: Time restraints and the geographical realities of our board presented problems. When faced with challenges such as these I realized how effective it is to brainstorm with my colleagues for solutions rather than mandating what I thought would be best.

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On Collaboration Of the 19 teachers who wrote vignettes: eight worked in a team; seven worked with one other person; and four worked alone. This is in keeping with what we found in the larger research study where 85 percent of projects involved working in pairs or in a team. Moving from working alone to working with others in the development of a project was a huge part of the participants’ leadership learning. All vignette ­writers who worked with someone else wrote that part of their learning was gaining an ability to work with others and keeping everyone involved in contributing (as well as learning). Learning how to do this was an important part of the work. Teachers needed to learn how to keep people involved; how to use other ­people’s strengths; and how to build ideas together so that people would stay interested, committed, and stick with the project for the year and more. But at the same time, they needed to feel trusted and respected for their contributions. Most of them had never had this kind of experience before; this was a new idea for the majority of teachers who wrote vignettes and it was complicated. For most, learning to collaborate with others was the most important thing they learned about leadership. And they needed to learn this process to move ahead with their professional development idea. Leading a TLLP project involved confronting many things that the teacher leaders had never thought about before and the teachers needed to be open to thinking differently about their teaching. Whose idea is this anyway? How do you share an idea? What encourages teachers to think together, to strategize, to try new ideas, to take people out of their comfort zones? Some of the greatest teacher and student learning that came from our TLLP collaboration were unexpected. As a direct result of our TLLP learning and collaboration, we pooled our expertise and created a program that combines all of our best learning as teachers. The collaboration that developed within our science department as a result of focusing on a common goal has helped to instill a level of confidence within our department that was not present before this project began. The connection between leadership and community has been a totally surprising aspect and hugely rewarding in the TLLP. Being surrounded by people who are brave and willing to try new things infuses us with greater confidence to move forward. The TLLP enabled teachers to come to understand that they were gaining leadership experiences in the process of helping organize professional development. Through these experiences, they were given the opportunity to change the culture of their schools as well as the content and pedagogy of theirs and their colleagues’ teaching: As team leader, I learned a great deal about leadership and working with other adults. I learned the value of collaborative goal setting and planning and the importance of ensuring that all team members feel like valued ­contributors.

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The opportunity to participate in the TLLP was an amazing experience that has forever changed our practice and how we function as a team. Our daily conversations are immediately deep and meaningful, and come from a shared commitment to students.

On Sharing Leadership Half of the teacher vignette writers wrote about how they had to learn to let go of the controls so they could build a team. This meant giving up the idea that their idea was “it” and that other people could and should weigh in to help shape the idea so that it was exciting (and acceptable) to all. Many wrote about how they reached out to colleagues and sometimes other groups outside the school to do the work involved in their TLLP projects. In all these instances, teachers learned to facilitate for others as their projects developed. For some, learning leadership was having a vision of what they wanted to do, learning how to make it real, planning it, encouraging others to share in the vision and helping shape it and even fight for it when conflict arose. Learning to share with others and encouraging them to help shape the ideas was an important part of their leadership experience: The team is significant. By enlisting team members who know their input is valued, one creates the great potential for ideas to grow exponentially. This is what happened in our team. A brilliant idea grew brighter and brighter. Team members were acknowledged for their individual strengths. We are extremely grateful for the partnerships we have created with the Elders and Community leaders. We have transferred all of their teachings into experiential learning in our classrooms. In terms of leadership, we needed to look inside the project and outside. We developed a shared responsibility. We found that at times one of us would take the lead, and then others who may have essential expertise would assume a leadership role.

On Gaining Leadership “Know How” Learning to collaborate, develop a team, and share leadership were important ­leadership skills that vignette writers learned; but they were only a part of the story. Many also learned to speak in front of large groups as they got invited to other school districts and, in some cases, provincial, national, or international events to speak about their projects. Some learned to use social media as they began to enlarge their networks. Networking for three-quarters of the people was an experience. Developing networking skills through the TLLP taught people to reach beyond their team and also participate in professional dialogue about their project and its contributions to both student and teacher learning. For almost all the vignette ­writers, this was a first—and one that excited them. They were learning how to teach other teachers as well as learn from them.

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Facilitating learning of adults was a different skill than teaching students! As facilitator, I saw the success of the project as being an opportunity to push teachers into considering their own expertise. Educators are often quick to identify their deficits. This self-deprecating mentality robs teachers of ­celebrating all the wonderful things they do on a daily basis. A fifth of the vignette writers used the learning of technology as their project including the use of iPads, Apps, or other online or technological approaches to interacting and learning. This became an important part of their leadership as it allowed them to communicate learning in new ways. It meant looking at the research, starting as a novice again, making mistakes, learning from them, and often taking risks and persisting in the struggle to understand the powerful tools they were learning to use. For these writers, this learning helped them facilitate their ideas to others: We used technology to share our learning, creating a blog highlighting our TLLP journey, our experiences, pitfalls, obstacles, and successes. We used Twitter to connect to educators across the board, province, and internationally.

The Benefits of Learning Leadership by Doing Leadership One of the top three benefits of teacher learning in the final reports written by TLLP project leaders was learning about leadership. In addition, 97 percent of our survey respondents indicated that the TLLP had supported development of their leadership skills. Specific skills that improved were: • • • • •

facilitation/presentation skills for 74 percent of respondents; project management skills for 70 percent of respondents; communication/listening skills for 54 percent of respondents; interpersonal skills/relationship building for 53 percent of respondents; trouble shooting/problem solving skills for 47 percent of respondents.

Teachers also wrote in their vignettes that they gained a higher level of confidence in being a teacher leader as they were confronted by a number of organizational realities like how to deal with teachers who are disinterested in your idea, how to share the leadership, how to make use of expertise, and how to keep people excited and engaged. In our interviews with TLLP participants, they explained that TLLP was “grassroots leadership at its finest… This has been some of the best and most rewarding work in my career” (TLLP teacher leader). Importantly, participants became experts with influence: The teachers had been really given wings, or have found their wings. That’s the leadership, when they become recognized as leaders in areas of teaching … they become experts in teaching—they’re teacher experts. That’s what a teacher

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leader is, they’re recognized in their schools, by their peers, and then in other schools, and in other boards, and by companies and by other jurisdictions, as being leaders from the point of view that they are the experts in their area, and their area is, “How do you really teach numeracy? What really makes the difference?” “Guess what? I tried this, and this part didn’t work and this part worked fantastically well. I’m going to show you how you can do the same miraculous thing in your class.” That’s what we think teacher leadership really is. (OTF provincial TLLP team interviewee) The power of learning leadership by doing leadership is highly beneficial in challenging and changing notions of being “just” a teacher to developing as an informal leader with influence and impact: Professionally, I don’t have a leadership position within my school community. I’m not a chairperson; I’m not a vice principal; I’m a teacher. I felt that it was a way for me to become a specialist in a particular area in a short period of time… It was rewarding, enriching, inspiring, invigorating, captivating, so that the three of us on the core team would just sort of feed off one another and just dream big thoughts that normally we would never have the time to do, nor be offered the opportunity. (TLLP teacher leader interviewee) TLLP demonstrates and delivers many of the important benefits of teacher leadership identified, or advocated for, in previous research, such as gaining knowledge (O’Connor and Boles, 1992) and improving practice (Smylie, 1997), development of leadership skills, and practices and improvements in self-esteem, attitude, motivation, and work satisfaction (Katzenmey and Moller, 2001; Lieberman, Saxl, and Miles, 2000; Ovando, 1996). Teacher leaders experiences in the TLLP are consistent with Harris’s conclusion that: “The most discernible and powerful effect of teacher leadership is on teacher leaders themselves” (Harris, 2005, p. 206).

The Challenges of TLLP Sometimes it is difficult to make connections without dictating or overstepping from “facilitating” to “directing.” It is hard sometimes to leave people to their own devices or to even know when it is OK to interject with your ideas. Sometimes it is hard to remember that people need to feel heard. These quotes from TLLP vignette writers begin to show the tensions of organizing teachers (by teachers). Teachers struggled with the right tone and way of moving the work forward and had to learn the nuances of what it means to deepen the work, give peers a way into the group, and still get the work accomplished. Teachers who receive TLLP project funding are, for the most part, also teaching full time. So it is not surprising that there would be challenges for them to handle

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and hopefully overcome. These challenges included finding the time to plan and execute the project and to balance their workload and the additional responsibilities coming with the project. There were people problems too, such as gaining the full commitment of team members to stick with the project over the year’s time frame. There were some teachers in the wider school or community who resisted starting anything new. For all the TLLP project leaders there were challenges of how to keep within the budget, how to manage it (or get additional money) and keep the dynamics of the team positive and moving forward. Dealing with these challenges was considered a valuable leadership experience by many TLLP leaders: I have experienced how to manage conflict of opinions, budgeting, release time, and how to navigate issues within the changing school context. I learned that working with your colleagues, your friends, can be challenging to keep the focus. Initially I lacked a lot of confidence. I asked two teacher leaders to be on my team. They had great ideas and I thought they would continue to assume those roles; however, I quickly learned that they viewed this as “my project.” I learned that if you are passionate about something, you need to fight to get the project the recognition and share the great things you are learning. It is challenging to organize a large group of teachers. But leadership comes more easily when we are all open to learning. In most cases, TLLP participants find ways to solve the issues. Indeed, part of l­earning leadership is that teachers do find a way to lead through and overcome challenges. Teachers have learned to share their leadership, build collaboration amongst their team, celebrate learning together, and figure out how to manage the dynamics of a team as it produces new strategies and new materials for their colleagues. To better support TLLP project leaders and anticipate potential challenges and help teachers deal with them, project and conflict management as well as attention to leadership development have been added to the Leadership Skills for Teachers training session. This may account for the fact that issues associated with managing team dynamics have been less pronounced as time has gone by.

Providing the Conditions for Learning Leadership Providing the opportunities to learn leadership turned out to be an interesting ­strategy and one that yielded numerous opportunities to learn how to manage, keep the work going, share leadership responsibilities, shape the idea and the strategies for implementing it. At the same time, teachers learned to articulate what they had done, speak to other teachers outside their school, and feel that they were growing expertise in a given area. This approach to providing the conditions for learning leadership is the opposite of the traditional professional development that is offered for most teachers. This is an important example of learning from the inside and giving teachers experience in how to lead a professional development effort with all that it takes.

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We began to understand that TLLP “creates the conditions for learning leadership” and the evidence shows that experiencing a chance to create professional development with a team (for most of the teachers) gave them numerous opportunities to learn leadership, learn how to facilitate leadership in others, and learn their own strengths and weaknesses in working with others. What we learn through the TLLP experience is that teachers can volunteer to lead a project; it is suggested that they work with others, manage money and time, and implement some kind of professional development. They immediately find themselves in a situation where they must learn to share their leadership, include other people’s ideas, go public with their own teaching, try out new ways of thinking about teaching and learning, deal with money, manage a project over a year, deal with tension and conflict when problems arise, and keep everyone moving, learning, and engaged as the work moves forward. This is not about getting a new role or title, but learning about new ideas, working with one’s colleagues (as well as their students), learning to communicate with others, and becoming articulate about how to share one’s newfound ideas. Leadership is learned by dealing with all the above conditions and helping develop a certain “expertise” to be shared. This is leadership earned and learned! As teachers we learned that we all have different strengths. When we learn to work together, we can be a tremendous force for change. We learned that you don’t need to be a lone wolf. When peers are willing to take a risk together, we all move forward and learn… You get “buy in” by involvement and coming together and breaking the isolation that many teachers feel.

Lessons Learned The following big ideas suggested in this chapter can be helpful for anyone attempting to create a successful professional development program for teachers. First, with government and teachers’ unions’ support, teachers can be enabled to lead professional development efforts. Second, to develop as teacher leaders, learning to collaborate appears to be critical in learning teacher leadership whether formally or informally. As well as leading collaborating, teachers learned to share leadership in the process of developing professional development for others. Finally, as well as in person collaboration and connections, technology helps teachers learn how to communicate and develop professional learning and student learning in new ways.

TLLP Project Examples TLLP Project Leader Vignettes Creating the Conditions for Learning: Writing a Vignette What follows are two vignettes, one by Jonathan So and another by Carolyn Crosby. Each writer used the prompts to guide them in writing their narrative.

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J­onathan worked in an elementary school and realized that the school needed to work on problem-based approaches to math. The vignette shows the ways he learned to organize the faculty, how they learned together to eventually make changes. And how he learned about how to lead and how the faculty learned to collaborate. Carolyn was also concerned with math, but her school helped students prepare for the workplace. Her concern was Grade 9 and she wanted to help students be successful in whatever trade for which they would be preparing. Carolyn and her team started by consulting with higher education faculty and then building a math course that would help their students be successful in post-secondary programs. She learned leadership skills by literally building a program with her team.

Vignette One Our teaching learning and leadership program (TLLP) project: A school-wide approach for teaching mathematics Written by Jonathan So

Context School mathematics programs have undergone significant changes over the last 20 years and, more importantly, the role of the teacher has begun to shift from a dispenser of knowledge to a facilitator of knowledge, one who orchestrates learning through effective questions, contexts, and discussion (Stein, Engle, Smith, and Hughes, 2008) prodding the learner to construct their own understanding. This new role is central to the instructional practice known colloquially as reform. Stein, Engle, Smith, and Hughes (2008) contend that over the last 20 years of reform instruction development there have been two waves of implementation: the first generation and the second generation. Their idea of first and second generation does not refer to the chronological age of the teachers, but rather to a philosophy or stage in the progression of understanding effective reform instruction. They observed that in the first generation of reform the roles of the teacher and of the students were not well defined. The emphasis was placed on encouraging the students to think through problems, and then praising students for their unique strategies. The congress, or whole group discussion time, was used as an opportunity to practice listening skills; teachers’ questions tended to focus on having students explain why they used a particular strategy or asking students to explain their strategies further. Many teachers felt that in order for discussion to be focused on student thinking, teacher thoughts or interjections were to be avoided; both teaching and learning needed to come from the students (Stein et al., 2008, p. 316). Stein et al. added that in the first reform generation, students’ strategies often became inefficient; students and teachers would remain stuck on how to move towards more efficient strategies or how to move towards connecting the strategy to a bigger mathematical idea.

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With this current research on our minds we wanted to focus on mentoring our teaching staff, at our school, in implementing a problem-based approach to teaching mathematics. Being a brand new balanced calendar school, we felt that this project would allow us to build deeper mathematical capacity in our teachers and our students. The team felt that by following a co-planning, co-teaching, and co-debriefing, teachers would develop a better understanding of the three-part lesson and an understanding of the progression of our students in math. The team also felt that this project would also help build a cohesiveness among our staff and allow us, as a school, to have a consistency in math language and expectations on a grade level and school level.

The Project The initial plan for the project was to focus on researching teacher questions in a mathematics setting so that teachers might reflect on, and assess, how their questions were impacting the learning of their students. However, this changed when we brought the project back to the school. It was always our intention to incorporate the whole school in the project. The reason for this was that it was our school’s second year since opening and we felt that this would build capacity in our teachers and bring more cohesiveness to the climate of the school. Our first step was to conduct a staff survey examining what their views on math were; the survey results revealed that most teachers didn’t regard themselves as mathematicians and had a somewhat low self-esteem about their ability to teach math. Though this was expected we felt that, combined with their thoughts on how often they used open-ended problems in the classroom, our project’s direction should be focused more on building capacity in a school-wide approach to teaching mathematics rather than continue with the initial focus on teacher questioning. For the project, the team brought the proposal forward to our teaching and learning committee to discuss how best to implement it in our school. It was decided that three Professional Development (PD) sessions would be used to talk about math and that staff would be introduced to Instructional Rounds (City, Elmore, Fairman, and Teitel, 2009) as a model for conducting co-planning, co-teaching, and co-debriefing. According to City et al. (2010), the purpose of Instructional Rounds is to allow teachers to enter into a deep and meaningful conversation about their practices. They noticed that the greatest barrier to school improvement was the lack of definition concerning what standards the school wished to participate in. The committee felt that for the project to be meaningful to our school we had to go beyond traditional PD, and move into a realm where teachers felt comfortable discussing their practice and teaching in front of others. The committee and team set three learning goals: 1. make teaching mathematics through problem solving a school-wide goal; 2. engage our staff in a growth mindset that everyone is and can be a mathematician; 3. improve our students’ learning of mathematics through a problem solving approach to both teaching and learning.

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We also made an “if–then” statement: If, as a team, we engage in a balanced approach following targeted practices (e.g. practice of math facts and processes, use of rich, open-ended problems, accountable talk, probing questions, strategy-building, co-constructed ­criteria and descriptive feedback) to improve numeracy and problem solving, student engagement, confidence, and communication strategies, then our students will become more successful critical thinkers and problem solvers, and more aware of the world and their role in it. The project started with our first PD session1 focusing on the following questions: what is reform mathematics and why teach through problem solving? We introduced the staff to the team’s definition of Problem Solving and provided them with opportunities to dive into authentic problem solving and open discussion about what problem solving is. During this PD session, teachers solved a fraction problem, observed students working, and thought about assessment. We also facilitated dialogue about our own teaching practices and if this was the best approach to teaching mathematics. Our second PD session,2 which was less formal and contained a variety of hands-on components, examined planning lessons, and using them in the classroom. The teaching and learning team created two templates for the staff to use. The first was a template for a three-part lesson3 and the second template was a unit planner. There was much good discussion about how mathematics has changed, what is best for our students, and what each classroom should look like, sound like, and act like. We also talked about our core beliefs and values as mathematics educators. During this PD session, teachers were able to co-plan a lesson that they would also be co-teaching together. This started trial number one,4 which we would debrief at our next staff meeting. For this trial, and all subsequent trials, the project was given release time for a co-teaching, co-planning, and co-debriefing model. This model included a half day release to co-plan with members of the team, a full day to teach a lesson in both classrooms and then debrief the learning. During the planning session the teams used the help of our Resource Teacher (RT), the teacher Librarian, and the TLLP team. Our administration team was able to attend all of the sessions and contributed in the debriefing. The total amount of days equaled to 50. At the next staff meeting the teachers shared their thinking on how their l­essons went. As a staff we noted the similarities and differences with each lesson, and participated in an honest conversation about how to make them better. Some of the observations included: 1. Teachers were amazed at the abilities of their students. 2. They were surprised at the diversity of strategies and what this brought out in their math groups. 3. Many struggled with how to assess this type of talk and how to communicate this learning to parents.

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4. Out of this conversation and experience many of the staff noted the i­ mportance of teaching through problem solving. 5. They observed the benefit to student thinking and conversation and experienced the enrichment that it brought to their program. 6. Some students had a hard time working together during the problem solving task. These observations were taken back to the teaching and learning committee who then located and provided academic articles to support the staff in overcoming the hurdles. These articles included ‘Orchestrating productive mathematical discussions: Five practices for helping teachers move beyond show and tell’ by Stein, M. K., Engle, R. A., Smith, M. S., and Hughes, E. K. (2008), Classroom discussions: Using math talk to help students learn, Grades K–6 written by Chapin, S. H., O’Connor, C., O’Connor, M. C., and Anderson, N. C. (2009), and my own research on the impact of teachers’ questions in students’ learning of part-whole relations and benchmark model in fractions (So, 2014). These articles were shared at the division meetings and teachers had time to read and reflect on what was being presented. The final PD session attempted to address the observations and concerns that the staff was having around community building, choosing rich tasks, and assessment. During this meeting the staff had some time to discuss their “post article reading” reflections. Teachers were also given time to co-plan their next lesson5 with a focus on incorporating language or a richer context than the one they used previously. The lesson was then co-taught and debriefed in order to prepare for the next staff meeting discussion. At this staff meeting we once again had an open discussion about our progress, if any. We shared and charted our students’ findings and lessons. The staff participated in a gallery walk moving around the room, looking at all the chart work that had been going on. Here is what we observed: 1. Teachers were once again amazed at the engagement of their students. 2. Teachers commented on how easy it was to integrate literacy into their math program. 3. Teachers felt they had created a more balanced approach to planning and teaching. 4. Students were more engaged with the problem. 5. Students had become better communicators of their strategies. 6. Students were better at working together in partners and learning in groups. Our final step in the project was to conduct a post survey to explore what the staff had learned and how they had changed.

What Our Staff Learned One of the most revealing questions in the post survey was: what did you learn from this process and where would you like to see our learning go? Here is what the staff wrote:

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  1. There is true engagement when students are working with real life problems.   2. How to use questions more effectively to move students forward in their learning.   3. I would say that I’m so proud of how well my students can orally communicate their thinking now and explain their understanding to others.   4. I learned the importance of co-teaching and co-planning and that it is the way to go—loved doing this as a team.   5. I have learned how rich problems and accountable talk created more confidence in my students.   6. My greatest learning has been working with individuals and trying to meet all of the needs of the staff. It has been great to see how people work and how we can meet all of our goals together.   7. I have grown a lot in my understanding of the three-part lesson and the types of rich tasks that are appropriate for this kind of teaching and learning. I learned how to facilitate a math congress effectively in order to consolidate student learning.   8. The greatest experience that I have had is the collaborative aspect of planning and modifying with my teaching partner. I also find it incredible the learning that happens with seven-year-olds. The strategies and discoveries the students make and how they feed off each other is incredible.   9. The greatest experience I have had is in understanding how to pose critical questions during the consolidation phase of lessons in order to enhance the learning experiences of the students and tap into their thinking process. 10. Exploring alternative practices to teaching math and how the students can be challenged more than I would have thought and produce more than I expected. I feel like I have learned more in this year of teaching math than I have in the last several combined! 11. The greatest thing I learned is that even when I use the same lesson with a different set of students it can produce completely different outcomes! As teachers we have to be prepared for these possible outcomes. 12. I learned the importance of following up with my students: to use their conversations as assessment or to clarify what they were trying to communicate with their work. 13. I learned how valuable it is to plan as a team, talk about instructional strategies, how to ensure all students are engaged, and look at assessment as part of the planning. Time to moderate student work is very helpful. It is very effective to hear student reflections on the work and processes as we continue to build strategies. I also think the planning, 3-part lesson, added to the success a great deal.

The Staff’s Next Steps We also collected data on where the staff would like further PD in mathematics. Here are the results:   1. There needs to be more work in understanding how to assess the oral conversations we have with students.

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  2. To continue to learn what teachers need to learn to be effective Math teachers and build a continuum for individual students.   3. I would like to continue growing in my ability to ask effective questions during this process as well as creating detailed observations of students’ thinking during the activity. I would also like to become more confident in assessment.   4. I will keep teaching using this approach and start challenging myself to integrate more technology and a cross-curricular approach to math.   5. Continuing to explore teaching resources that are available.   6. Seek more opportunities for co-teaching (not just co-planning).   7. Continue to work on open-ended questioning.   8. I will continue to build a comprehensive balanced math program allowing for large blocks of time every day if possible, collaboration for students working in pairs, and to try to incorporate rich authentic problem solving tasks more regularly as part of the program.   9. I want to continue to give the students lots of time to learn about how to use manipulatives, to see different ways of recording their solutions, and time to practice and share orally, justifying their work with others. Students will become more proficient at explaining their solution. 10. Creating a bank of questions to probe students’ thinking, broken down by strand. 11. To build good questioning and critical thinking as a staff. 12. Understand how math is developed in students from K–5. 13. Move from first generation reform teachers towards a second generation of reform. 14. Move now from Problem-Based Learning (PBL) sharing to PBL learning. 15. Continue incorporating both technology and social justice into our ­mathematics program. 16. More hands-on workshops that teach us about available resources. 17. More like the TLLP that we did—one of the best things about the TLLP is that it FORCED us out of comfort zones and had us trying new things and exploring things that we did not know before. It was all applicable and useful to the classroom, because it was happening in the classroom! The best PD is useful PD! 18. Continue to keep Math in our SSP (School Success Plan) goals (not just literacy). 19. Helping students extend their understanding of math as it occurs in their ­everyday activities. 20. It would be great if we can continue to build this into our Collaborative Inquiries next year. This year, the gift of time from the project helped us all grow as a school. Maybe Part Two of a grant next year?

Personal Learning and Leadership Growth For me the critical learning was in the process of coming together as a staff to talk about our teaching practice openly and professionally. As teachers we often feel very isolated within our four walls and yes we do have rich staff meetings but rarely is there time for authentic discussion. This actually started to happen during this

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project. In addition, the learning and growth of the teachers was amazing. We went from a school that taught math as individuals to a staff that has a common language, a common purpose, and for the most part, a common practice. The majority of our staff now use problem solving as a primary teaching tool. The students are becoming better problem solvers, communicators, and critical thinkers. My personal learning has been how to clarify a vision and build it within a school community. Before I started this journey I thought that a vision could be communicated easily and then, with careful planning, implemented. I learned it takes more than that. Building connections among staff members is critical, understanding what others think, honoring their opinions, and finding how everyone can fit into the vision is all part of the process. For a school-wide approach to take hold it takes strong individuals to lead but it also takes patience, guidance, and understanding for it to sustain itself. This process was not about bullying my way through people to get the project done but by understanding how to encourage all learners to see the bigger picture. It taught me that a leader needs to have a clear vision but also an understanding heart. A leader needs to see who is on their team, where their understanding is, and how to assist them in their learning and growth. It taught me to always see the good in people, that resistance is not always about not wanting to change but that people don’t know how and it is the job of a leader to understand where they can assist.

Challenges You cannot implement a school-wide focus without thinking you will face challenges. It takes a team (support staff, teacher librarian, various committees, resources teachers, and the board various networks) to make a vision and plan come together. Most of the challenges we faced centered on understanding how to implement these math changes or why they needed to be done. The staff went through PD sessions, where all voices were heard and all ideas were accepted. This led to valuable discussions around why teaching through problem solving was a school-wide goal. There were also challenges in working together as a staff. As a staff we had to do some work around norms of collaboration, building trust with others, and building a community. This was overcome with the help of our principal and dialogue amongst staff. As much as this was a teacher-led initiative it needed the support of our administration as well. Working with your admin team also takes the same patience and understanding as working with your colleagues. I also think that any project on a school-wide scale needs to be supported by the principal as Head Instructional Leader. Having the support and vision of the admin can move certain conflicts along and also help build that sense of community.

Sharing Our Research Since our project has ended, our Board has been implementing Engage Math. This is a district-wide focus on teaching a balanced mathematics program. Using the

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board’s ideas and our own research we have continued to build capacity in our staff. We have had two further PD sessions6 on math and implementing math in the classroom. We have also been sharing any resources that we have created from the project with other school in our network and district. I have also been asked to come out to Waterloo Board and share our journey with them.

Conclusion This project was truly a rich and rewarding opportunity. Overall, there have been two key concluding thoughts from this project: Implementation challenges on a school-wide level, and what the TLLP has allowed our school to accomplish. Implementing a school-wide action plan around a common goal of implementing mathematics takes time. It is only because of the dedication of fantastic staff that this project was possible. However, it can be replicated. Through the use of instructional rounds and building honest dialogue among the staff, schools can create an atmosphere that allows teachers to come together in best teaching practices. However, it does take time. This is a factor that we are still working with. As my principal, Cathy Standring, states: It takes three to five years to build a great school. There needs to be honest reflection about what each member wants and brings to the community. As a Staff we need to revisit this always and remind ourselves why we started the process. If any school is thinking of implementing this type of project it is highly recommended that you talk as a lead team, bring it before your school staff and engage in honest talk around a common goal. Include lots of co-planning, co-teaching, and co-debriefing among grade levels and staff. The more that educators model collaboration among staff, the greater the chance that collaboration will happen amongst students. Learning is contagious and infectious; as the staff learns and grows so will their students’ success. The TLLP has been one of the best learning experiences that the school community and I have participated in. Without the funding, this type of learning would be hard to accomplish. Teachers need the time to collaborate, co-teach, co-debrief, and learn together. It takes time to build trust, capacity, and understanding on a school-wide level. As more people are involved the more time is needed to accomplish this goal. The TLLP allowed us to accomplish this goal. It gave us meaningful time to spend working together to create a better atmosphere for us as a staff and therefore our students. The best news, our school is continuing the project on our own support this year. Jonathan So Ray Lawson Public School Peel Board of Education

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Vignette Two Our TLLP journey—creating trade-focused math lessons Written by Carolyn Crosby

What Did You Do? About five years ago, I had a student in Grade 10 who told me his brother was in a College Carpentry program and the first thing his College teacher said was: “Forget all the Math they taught you in high school—it doesn’t apply here.” I couldn’t refute his statement since I didn’t know the exact skills that were necessary for success in a College Carpentry program. I knew the Ministry of Education’s high school math expectations—but not how they flowed from high school to college. Further, it was obvious that my Grade 10 student didn’t have much confidence in my ability to prepare him for his future career. In this same year, I had a Grade 9 student who definitely knew he wanted to work as a carpenter in the trades. He had his own workshop and made birdhouses. His mother was not sure that St. Luke’s would be able to prepare him for this career choice since they knew our school did not offer applied Math which leads to Grade 11 and 12 College Math. Our school specializes in COOP education and prepares students for the workplace. By Grade 10, students come to school one day, earning 4 credits, and then COOP the next day to earn 4 more credits. I believed that this school was the best fit for this student. He had not mastered the Math skills needed to be successful in a Grade 9 applied Math course. The Locally Developed Grade 9 Math would be his best choice—this course would reinforce all the skills he had not mastered in Grades 6 to 8. However, I was not sure that the Locally Developed Grade 9 Math course which leads to Workplace Grade 11 and 12 Math courses would be accepted for entry into a Carpentry College program. And so a journey began. I started to look for funding to start learning about the prerequisites students needed to take in high school to be accepted into postsecondary programs. I also wanted to know more about the math skills needed for post-secondary education. The Teacher Learning Leadership Program (TLLP) gave me the means for pursuing this research. Before the TLLP began, my school board, Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario (CDSBEO), provided release days through CPLC time to begin connecting with College Professors. After my first meeting with the Automotive Program at Algonquin College I had reason to believe that the Locally Developed/Workplace Math pathway had the potential to prepare students for many Trade programs and also give them access into an Apprenticeship. Knowing this, I decided to write a proposal to connect with College Professors and then design a template for teachers to use to create teaching lessons to showcase the different Trades in Locally Developed Math courses. Using this template our group would also develop three lessons for use as exemplars.

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Who Did You Do This With? I was so fortunate to have had the support of the group of teachers who worked with me on this project. Pat Hogan, Cathy Wyatt, and Kathy Pilon had worked with me on a previous project that involved writing a resource for the Grade 9 Locally Developed Math course. There is not much in terms of resources for this pathway since this pathway is often treated as a last resort for students. It is not a pathway of choice, but one students take when they cannot succeed in the pathways of College and University Math. Our school board has been an advocate of the Locally Developed/Workplace Pathway. Kathy Pilon secured funding for this Grade 9 resource Project in her role of Numeracy Lead. Pat, Cathy, Kathy, and I were among the writers of this resource—giving up much of our time for this project. They knew this TLLP would be much of the same and they still chose to gift their time. For that I am grateful.

What Happened as a Result? Our TLLP group began by meeting with College Professors who teach College Trade programs and Apprenticeships. Algonquin, Loyalist, St. Lawrence, and Kemptville Colleges were kind enough to set up these meetings with their Automotive, Plumbing, HVAC, Oil, and Burner technician, Hair Dressing, Landscaping, and Carpentry programs. We asked a simple question: “What Math skills do you want students to have mastered when they enter into your program?” From these conversations we were able to identify a core of necessary Math skills: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Adding fractions Decimal placement Converting fractions to decimals and decimals to fractions Decimal inches and decimal feet Percent calculations Ratio and rates Pythagorean Theorem Perimeter, area, and volume Imperial and metric measurement Mental math—times tables, adding, and subtracting Estimating Visual recognition of material/tool sizes Order of operations Manipulation and use of formulas specific to the trades Primary trigonometric ratios (for some trades)

It was great talking informally to these College Professors. Our conversations allowed us to understand each other’s challenges and to discuss possible courses of

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action to improve the learning of our students. Our group is grateful for the time these Professors took to meet with us outside of their teaching schedule. Once we learned about the Math skills students needed for success in the Trades, we turned our focus to creating the lesson template. One area of need of College students is their reading comprehension and writing. To help in this area we decided to incorporate a literacy section to our lesson template. Another area of need that came out of our discussions was the inability of students to do ­mental math and estimate so this is also incorporated in our lesson template. Finally, we also knew that students learn best by doing in this pathway so a “hand’s on” task was necessary. After much conversation we came up with a three-part template. The Trade’s Lesson Template • •

•

PART 1: Communication Lesson—this lesson is the hook. It is a lesson that will focus on a literacy skill. PART 2: Knowledge and Skill Development Lesson—this lesson focuses on estimation, mental math, and accurate calculations in the skills needed to complete the hands-on lesson (this helps with questions like “Why do we need to learn this?”). PART 3: Hands-On Learning Lesson—this lesson is a task that students would have to do in the Trade being featured.

For example: An Automotive Lesson—Reading the numbers on a tire to determine the diameter of a tire •

•

•

PART 1: Should Snow Tires Be Mandatory in Ontario? This lesson will focus on the literacy skill of finding the main idea and three supports from articles and videos. Students will then write an opinion paragraph. PART 2: Students will use mental math and estimate how many milli­ meters are in an inch. They will then calculate this conversion accurately using ­calculators. PART 3: Students were given tires and had to use the numbers to determine the overall diameter of the tire. They checked their calculations by ­measuring.

Pat developed a lesson for Carpentry that had students investigating the rise and run of stairs. Cathy developed a lesson for the Pastry Arts where students had to make apple strudel. The last stage of our TLLP was to pilot these lessons. We were only able to pilot the tire activity. The other two activities will be piloted this year. Due to many high schools not running these courses both semesters, it was hard to pilot them.

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What Did We Learn? Informal conversation is powerful. Informal conversations with College Professors allowed for honest views to be presented. Our group was then able to discuss our learning from these meetings at a later date. We each came to this project with different perspectives about the purpose and potential of the Locally Developed Pathway. It was great that we did not always agree and felt safe to voice our concerns and beliefs. This only strengthened the outcome of our project which was far more than just creating a lesson template. Real life Math skills are important for many college programs. About 33 percent of College students fail their College programs due to their Math skills. This is from the final report of the College Math Project done by Seneca College. The Math skills needed for success in College programs listed in the CMP report closely matches the core of skills our research determined. One of our discussion points from our TLLP meetings is that the Applied/College Math pathway covers many Math skills—more than is needed in many College programs. Students do not have time to truly master their basic Math skills. Quite often, students are focusing on more abstract concepts such as linear, quadratic, and exponential ­relations. The Locally Developed/Workplace Pathway can prepare students for post-secondary education. By the end of our project we came to understand the possibility of this pathway. The entire core list of Math skills mentioned at the beginning of this writing can be taught in the Locally Developed/Workplace Pathway. The issue with this pathway is the stigma attached to it. However, we had many discussions as to how to make this an authentic pathway. These discussions have led to a second TLLP for this year. The focus of this TLLP will be to create a guidance document for parents, students, and staff to explain the potential of each pathway in our high school system.

What Did I Learn about Leadership? Patience is key to progress. There are many times when we get excited about the work that we do. This motivates us to get things done. However, what needs to be realized is that other people have other priorities that we are not aware of. There were many times when someone would not answer an email and I would reach a dead-end concerning this project. I would get disappointed or feel that maybe this project is not as important as I believe it to be. I learned to adopt the mantra of “it will be, what it will be.” I had to realize that people lead busy lives and do the best they can. Just because someone did not respond or connect to this project, did not mean it was an unworthy project. And this leads me to the most important thing I learned about leading. Trying to effect change on your own is impossible. I am not comfortable with being a leader. The motivation of this project is for my students and ­others like

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them. Quite often I had to stop and make sure that I am continuing on this journey for the right reasons. As I mentioned before, there were times that I became ­frustrated and thought, “well maybe this is all I can do.” And that was quite often when someone, a colleague, my principal, a student, a friend or family member would encourage me or make a connection for me that allowed this journey to continue. I would not have had the success so far of this project had it not been for the people who surround me in my workplace, community, and home. It is only because of their support that I believe we will be able to create an authentic learning environment for all High School students. To be a good presenter you need to draw on your “center.” I have often listened to presenters who can use humor as an effective presenting tool and wished I could present like them. I am not humorous—it is not part of my character—it is not my center. What I learned about myself is that I am a passionate person when it comes to helping others. I have used this as my center during my presentations. This passion comes through as I talk and so far, it has captured the attention of others.

How Are We Sharing Our Knowledge? The Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario has established two Numeracy Networks. One is for High School Math leads and Elementary School grade 7/8 Math teachers from all of our schools in our school board. The other Numeracy Network is just for teachers of the Locally Developed Grade 9 and 10 Math courses. We were able to share our research with these networks in our own school board. During one of our Locally Developed Math Network meetings, a guidance counselor who was new to teaching these Math courses wanted to learn more about this pathway. We put together a second TLLP proposal to create a guidance resource document for parents, teachers, and students to better understand the potential of each of our high school Math pathways. I am happy to write that it has been approved and the journey continues. As I mentioned above, I am always amazed at those people along the way that certainly championed this project. The OYAP lead in our school board connected me to RPT9 which is the 9th Regional Planning Group of Ontario that consists of Algonquin College, Loyalist College, St. Lawrence College, and the nine local school boards surrounding these Colleges. I was invited to present our research to this planning group and it was well received. From this presentation I was invited to be a presenter at a provincial symposium for School College Work Initiative (SCWI) at Humber College to share our TLLP research. An academic consultant from the Dufferin-Peel school board attended this presentation and asked me to present at Centennial College in Toronto as part of their “Focus on the Trades Day” for their local high schools. So it seems that our research resonates with many people who feel it is an important perspective.

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I also had the opportunity, again thanks to the chair of RPT9, to represent this group at a CSAP provincial forum in Toronto. CSAP is the College Student Achievement Project which analyses the data of College and High School students in both Math and Language to improve retention rates in Colleges. I was able to share the research of our group at this forum.

Final Thoughts We are fortunate in Ontario to have an opportunity to pursue teacher learning for the benefit of our students. The TLLP funding has certainly improved the learning of my students and the culture at our school. I can now look a student in the eye and tell them exactly what Math skills they need to master to be successful in many post-secondary programs. I can tell my students who want to become Trades people that the pathway they are in is the best pathway to prepare them for their post-secondary programs. I now see confident students who are starting to believe in our program, in our school, and in themselves. We have other high schools interested in creating a similar culture of learning for their Locally Developed/ Workplace pathway. I hope this journey will continue in years to come, either by my actions or the actions of someone else touched by this research until all high school students feel good in the pathway they have chosen. Carolyn Crosby St. Luke Catholic High School Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario

Figure 4.1  Lessons Learned: Teacher Leadership in the TLLP 1. With government and teachers’ unions’ support, teachers can be enabled to lead professional development efforts. 2. Learning to collaborate appears to be critical in learning teacher leadership whether formally or informally. 3. Teachers learned to share leadership in the process of developing professional development for others. 4. As well as in-person collaboration and connections, technology helps teachers learn how to communicate and develop professional learning and student learning in new ways.

Notes 1 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qyANR7norrHT9ivLrc-UsAWZzm7gAlY UwQPVB5BJbeE/present?pli=1&ueb=true&slide=id.p 2 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eJlA0bZTRb-JaZcSb3KrmmEC3NL0tK 9pQWBMRryeygE/edit?pli=1

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3 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Soc-tkGgHtgFZeS227HviCssD0qpHpKvg 0BVmZ-c7tc/edit?pli=1 4 https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4245QONE7HaT0dSQXlPelRNMEk&u sp=sharing 5 https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4245QONE7HaZ01sOXlZVW9LUXM& usp=sharing 6 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gDtE6nlQSEWLRGhtt4BHZaFLrKuuG4q ATnoycCqksaw/present?pli=1&ueb=true&slide=id.p

5 Teachers’ Knowledge Exchange and Sharing of Practices through the TLLP

One of the main goals of the TLLP is “to facilitate knowledge exchange” for the sharing and sustainability of innovative and effective practices. There is l­ ong-standing interest in how to develop, share, and spread professional knowledge in ways that can contribute to improvements in practice. Often traditional approaches to professional development programs have focused on transmitting information and developing the knowledge and practices of individual teachers. Notions of human capital emphasize developing the talent of individuals within their careers (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012). With growing evidence about the importance of collaborative professional learning, professional learning groups have become commonplace. TLLP involves attention to individual teachers’ development and to TLLP teams working together. However, TLLP goes further—it asks teachers to make their knowledge explicit, to de-privatize their practices and learning, to (co-)develop new knowledge with other teachers, and to share not only within pre-identified groups, but to engage across groups in online and in person professional networks to reach out beyond their immediate professional community or workplace setting to share and exchange knowledge widely.

Knowledge and Action: From Teachers as Recipients to Mobilizers of Knowledge Writing in the field of healthcare, Best and Holmes (2010) summarized the evolution of three generations of thinking about knowledge to action processes. In the first generation, linear models dominated with the assumption that knowledge is produced by external experts—usually through external research—and then this knowledge is disseminated for practitioners to implement. Generally, a linear oneway relationship of research-to-practice is assumed. Such thinking and approaches can be clearly identified in professional development programs that seek to ­produce

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and package external “expert” knowledge for teachers. In Best and Holmes’s (2010) second generation of thinking about knowledge-to-action processes, relationship models become important where there are opportunities for networks, partnerships, and interactions between researchers and practitioners. Such models are an improvement; however, they may still function on an assumption that the main relationship is research to practice, rather than importantly also valuing and enabling practice to research knowledge exchange led by teachers (Tseng, 2012). Therefore, the third generation of thinking proposed by Best and Holmes (2010) is systems models which involve mutual interaction, knowledge co-creation, and knowledge application holds the most promise. Valuing and supporting interactive processes for knowledge (co-)creation, (co-)learning, and implementation is central to the TLLP approaches.

Supporting a System of Knowledge Exchange Of, By, and For Teachers The TLLP provides a system designed on the belief and evidence that teachers are—and should be—the mobilizers of their knowledge and action rather than being primarily the recipients of “outside” expertise when approaching educational change. TLLP teachers were not left entirely “to go it alone” to figure out how to share their knowledge through their TLLP projects. The OTF and the Ministry recognized from the outset that if moving to innovation through professional knowledge exchange was a priority goal, teachers would need support in developing this way of working and in their capacity to reach out to wider professional and public communities beyond their classroom and school. When the OTF and Ministry reviewed TLLP applications, careful attention was paid to how teachers propose to develop their own learning and knowledge and how they will also develop other teachers’ learning for shared knowledge and to spread practices. As an OTF provincial interviewee explained, TLLP teachers are asked to go beyond being “expert teachers” to being “expert” leaders of professional learning: Your application’s here because we know you’re good with your students; what is your learning going to be? How are you going to push it?… how do you transfer that learning to other adults? And that’s where the training comes in as well, because a lot of them would be so focused on their kids and their class that they’d say, “I can do a way better job!” Well that’s great, but we’re asking you how you’re going to transfer that to other adults. That’s a different thing. Supporting teachers to be mobilizers and leaders of knowledge requires explicit and careful attention to each teacher’s own knowledge and learning and also how to lead peers’ professional learning. As one TLLP teacher leader explained:

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But participating in TLLP, having to write the proposal, I think shifted my perception or my understanding or my view even of what professional development is. So if I think it had a significant impact on my understanding of the content level that I was researching around elementary Math pedagogy, familiarity with the research; also, the biggest shift that I would not have engaged in thinking about are issues related to teacher learning—other teachers’ learning, related to the content. This shift to teachers as mobilizers of professional learning, knowledge, and p­ ractices is important for both teachers and formal school leaders. In Robinson et al.’s (2009) best evidence synthesis to examine School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying what works and why, the most important factor was for school leaders to develop their “pedagogical leadership” through promoting and participating in teacher learning and development. However, TLLP goes further by also indicating the importance of teachers themselves developing pedagogical leadership, which combines teachers’ expertise for classroom practices and students’ learning, with a wider leadership role of (co-)developing other teachers’ professional learning and sharing knowledge to inform improved educational practices. As discussed previously, developing teachers’ leadership involves learning new ways of working. The infrastructure of OTF and Ministry supported training in person and online networking are important supports for TLLP teachers’ knowledge exchange. The Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers initial training includes attention to ways to identify, mobilize, share, and report knowledge and practices gained throughout the TLLP, for example, there is training on collecting, monitoring, and reporting data concerning the benefits, impact, and challenges experienced in the TLLP project, and on ways of communicating their TLLP including presentation skills for engaging with professionals and use of social media. In addition, at the end of their formal TLLP project funding, TLLP teacher leaders and team members are required to attend a Sharing the Learning Summit to celebrate completed projects, to strengthen networking within the TLLP community and beyond, and to inspire teachers to share their learning and success even further. As one TLLP teacher leader commented: Honestly, the sharing at the end [Sharing the Learning Summit] was the most amazing PD… that’s how PD should be run for everybody, because it was completely differentiated and customized. I went to what I needed. Say if I was a primary teacher and I needed help with my literacy, then I can go there. It was just the most authentic PD, and it was teachers talking to teachers; there was no sense of… you know, consultants often get the reputation of talking down to teachers, and sometimes they do, I don’t think they mean to, but I think that comes across. It [TLLP] wasn’t like that because people were all on equal playing fields. When you do that… it’s distributing your leadership… I learned so much.

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School and system supports are important for providing an enabling culture and infrastructure for teachers’ knowledge exchange, including provision of funding and resources to support knowledge exchange, training on skills to support this form of leadership, and opportunities to facilitate sharing online and in-person. TLLP is teacher-led but it is not about isolated, individual teachers acting autonomously.

Developing and Sharing Knowledge: Individuals, Groups, and ­Networks While TLLP is about supporting individuals to make explicit their knowledge and share their learning, TLLP goes beyond calls to develop teachers as “individually gifted pedagogues” (Crowther, 2015, p. 7) to the development of collective professional working through teachers’ leading and learning together for teacher-initiated change involving teachers’ professional judgment (Evers and Kneyber, 2015). For individuals, developing knowledge exchange strategies involve reflecting on and making their own tacit knowledge explicit and gaining the confidence to de-privatize their practices. Daly (2010) comments “given the often isolated nature of the education endeavour, expertise is often hidden in plain sight” (p. 265). Indeed, Baker-Doyle and Yoon’s (2010) study of high school teachers in a science professional development program uncovered that professional networks formed around existing relationships rather than any explicit sharing or understanding of who actually held what expertise that could be shared with others. To share an individual’s knowledge, first, requires them to reflect on and make explicit their tacit knowledge. This is a complex process requiring individuals to share their professional background and expertise, to engage in collaboration to surface and share expertise, and to develop an intentional and explicit approach. One TLLP teacher leader shared how she developed making her knowledge more explicit: My teaching practice shifted significantly because I think I was doing a lot of the things already fairly intuitively, but because our TLLP was focused on coaching each other, I now had a coach to support me in my own practice, but more, she was supporting me in coaching. So, I’ve already talked about being meta-cognitive, but really, that’s what it was—I started being aware of the decisions that I made that had an impact and maybe why they had an impact, and then once I knew that, then I could make the decisions more consciously, strategically and deliberately… I think that that had the biggest impact on my practice. While making tacit knowledge explicit requires inward reflection and external discussion, a second element of individuals’ knowledge exchange is about going public with their teaching practices. As discussed in Chapter 3, this can be risky but ultimately rewarding as part of professional learning and leadership development. De-privatizing practices is a central feature of TLLP; as an OTF interviewee commented on a pivotal discussion with an originator of networked learning ­community ideas:

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He said to me: “Every day in classrooms, there are miracles happening, absolute miracles. Teachers are doing fantastic things. And the teacher in the classroom next door has no idea about the miraculous things that the teacher next to him/her is doing; the teacher in the next school doesn’t know it, and the teacher in the next district certainly doesn’t know it. How do we take those miracles and share them?” What they had done was this notion of networked learning communities, and in what he showed me, they had taken teachers and allowed them to go into each other’s schools. What a concept—imagine going into another teacher’s school?… So, this whole concept of sort of coming out of your classroom, and the fact that you’ve done fantastic work that has worked really well with your students, how do you then share it in a non-threatening way, but in a really good way with other teachers? That, for me, was very key in what we thought about what the TLLP would be. An essential element of knowledge exchange is to share individual knowledge to (co-)develop collective knowledge. Concepts of “social capital”—involving the power of relationships in which resources flow between individuals—has become promoted in approaches to teachers’ professionalism, learning, and development (Daly, 2010; Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012, 2013). Hargreaves and Fullan summarize the power of “social capital” as being “the collaborative power of the group” (2013, p. 27). The importance of groups of teachers learning together through collaborative, job-embedded professional learning has become highly valued. In our interviews with TLLP teacher leaders, they spoke positively about the innovative opportunities for generating and sharing knowledge through opportunities for discussion and action among TLLP project team members: There is kind of a dichotomy in terms of the challenge within the practice, I guess, where there is this extra amount of work on top of your regular job. But on the other hand, we were trying to identify descriptive words that the work was, and the connection, the collaboration, the brainstorming, and the creative sort of outlet was rejuvenating for us. It was rewarding, enriching, inspiring, invigorating, captivating, so that the three of us on the core team would just sort of feed off one another and just dream big thoughts that normally we would never have the time to do, nor offered the opportunity. In contrast to some forms of professional learning communities where the member­ ship and purpose are mandated or required by formal district or school leaders, TLLP teams were teacher-initiated, teacher-formed, and teacher-developed. ­Furthermore, generally concepts of “professional learning communities” or “communities of practice” involve a defined set of individual members working within a group and usually within one school. TLLP involved working between and across, as well as within, groups to further knowledge exchange and sharing of practices. Daly (2010) pointed to the importance of interaction between groups or sub-groups for increasing reciprocal processes for providing, taking in, and using information from

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other groups. Teachers’ knowledge and sharing of practices flow through networks of relationships and interactions, rather than being constrained or restricted to formally established organizational boundaries. As Judith Warren Little (2010, p. xi) commented: With the introduction of social network theory, we find a shift in gaze from formal organization—to the networks of actors engaged with one another in various ways and degrees. Social network theorists suspend or challenge assumptions about the meaningfulness of organizational boundaries and forms, asking instead how patterns of stability and change might be explained by the web of relations through which ideas, information, resources, and influence flow. Concepts of “Personal and Professional Learning Networks” (P²LN) (Whitaker, Zoul, and Casas, 2015) involve teachers becoming “connected” through online networks and collaborations to extend the scope and reach of the professional ­connections. TLLP teacher leaders sought to develop, share, and apply knowledge within their own classrooms and schools and also to extend their professional networks beyond their organizations to a wider community. In our research, over three quarters (77 percent) of the TLLP projects shared their learning within their own school(s); and 88 percent of those projects shared outside their schools as well, including with other schools, local communities, their own or other school districts, and across Ontario. Ten percent of projects shared their knowledge, practices, and/or resources nationally and/or internationally. To support knowledge exchange, there is an infrastructure to enable TLLP ­sharing across the province of Ontario. TLLP teacher leaders are expected to post artifacts/resources from their TLLP on an online website, Mentoring Moments NING, at least twice during the duration of their TLLP. Over time, the level of posting of resources, blogging, and online interaction has increased considerably. This is important as a source for sharing and mobilizing teachers’ knowledge. More recently, TLLP teacher leaders have been integral to the design, testing, and development of “Teach Ontario” (https://www.teachontario.ca/welcome), an online platform developed by Television Ontario (TVO) to support teachers’ professional learning, collaboration, and sharing of knowledge and practices.

Teachers’ Sharing and Applying Knowledge for Improved Practices The main audience for TLLP teachers seeking to share their knowledge was with other teachers. The majority of TLLP projects also involved a wider audience, for example school, district, and government leaders, other educational staff, professional associations and unions, parents, researchers, universities, and the general public. A key consideration for knowledge exchange was to identify the intended ­priority

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audience(s) and how they prefer to be communicated with. Almost all TLLP ­projects (94 percent) used more than one method to share their learning and/or practices. Broadly speaking, two main strategies were prevalent. First, the provision of events and opportunities for professional learning collaborations to occur including workshops and professional development sessions, teacher learning communities/ groups, modeling practices and classroom visits, and mentoring teachers. Second, TLLP teachers engage in communication to share knowledge: in person within their school (for example, staff meetings) or with a wider audience (for example, conference presentations); through online communication and collaboration (for example, websites, blogs, and Twitter); and in print forms of communication within school (newsletters), locally (such as newspapers), or more widely (including journals and books). The combination of opportunities to collaborate to engage with new learning and practices, plus the provision of information through communication strategies for a wider audience are both important for sharing knowledge and spreading practices. Opportunities to engage a wider group of educators and students in i­nnovating and learning are helpful for knowledge exchange, for example (as discussed in Chapter 2) in one project that involved multiple teacher professional learning communities plus student learning communities working together. In other examples, TLLP teacher leaders engaged school and district administrators in collaborative learning and sharing opportunities and/or opportunities for parents and community members to come together on a priority local need. The use of online resources and social media has become increasingly prevalent. People have differing levels of expertise and confidence in using social media. Part of the initial TLLP “Classroom Skills for Experienced Teachers” involves training and support in the use of social media differentiated to new and experienced users. Over time, the use of technology for both professional learning and student learning has grown substantially in the TLLP projects. TLLP teacher leaders used social media as a form of encouraging TLLP participants to take the risk of de-privatizing their practices and sharing more widely. In the words of one TLLP teacher leader: Part of the TLLP was to teach people how to network and how to be transparent; how to add what they’re doing in a more public sense, instead of just hiding behind their classroom walls and doing their stuff, right? So I think that when I first started the TLLP and said, “OK, we’re all going to blog”… huge learning curve for them to now put their words in a public setting and take that risk of having people read, can be pretty overwhelming at first, for people. But as the TLLP went on and we all agreed we’d blog once every two weeks… what happened was that the other TLLP members in our group all opened their own personal blogs. The use of blogging, Twitter, and other interactive online forums can contribute to expanding collaboration and sharing with a wider—potentially global—network beyond that feasible in person or within a school alone. As described by another TLLP teacher leader:

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It’s humbling to say (the project website)… alone has reached a cycle of counting hits… It’s at 12,000–13,000… the blog alone and the content of the blog has been reached by educators from all over the world. So it’s incredible… we extended the project beyond the school or the classroom and we’re very transparent in presenting, using tools like Twitter and Facebook and that kind of thing as well… It totally was by strategy. The more people I could get to blog… So we had our initial core group that would facilitate or mediate this blog, but everyone would talk to somebody… even on Twitter. Or I’d meet someone at a conference in California or wherever, and I’d ask them, “Hey, would you be a guest blogger?” and then they would sign up. Now I have, say, thirty guest bloggers on this blog, and they’re all these high-end educators from around the world, and the blog is just this living entity… And so I think that it was more that you just encouraged other people and saying, “Your voice matters, and that’s amazing; what you have to say matters,” because people don’t think it matters. Teachers are doing amazing things and think nobody cares or that nobody wants to hear about it. As indicated in the quotes from a TLLP teacher leader above, collaborating and sharing teachers’ voices and actions online can be empowering for the teachers involved; it is also an important method of knowledge exchange to communicate and share practices with other teachers: Our website receives between 8,000 to 10,000 visits per month. We were shocked by the response and it really did feel like we were helping other teachers. Research on professional learning is beginning to indicate the potential—if used appropriately and effectively—for online professional networks to support teachers’ professional learning to share knowledge and spread practices (for example, Lieberman and Miller, 2014; Lieberman and Pointer-Mace, 2010; Whitaker, Zoul, and Casas, 2015).

Quality Content in Actionable Resources Matter Of course, collaboration and communication is insufficient—and can even have negative consequences—if the professional learning and interactions do not include appropriate and substantive content that can inform professional knowledge and practice. It may seem obvious but quality content that blends and connects theory and practice for teachers’ professional development to support valued student outcomes matters (CUREE, 2012; Darling-Hammond et al., 2009; Garet et al., 2001; Timperley et al., 2007). TLLP teachers develop and share relevant and substantive professional development content through creation and/or identification of resources that can be applied—or adapted—in classrooms and schools. In the majority (73 percent) of the TLLP projects, TLLP members developed materials for use directly in class,

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such as sample lessons, lesson plans, assessment tasks, and teaching strategies. TLLP members also compiled kits with recommended resources, prepared workshops, created videos of teachers demonstrating practices and students talking about the effects of those practices, wrote research and literature review reports, developed communication tools such as blogs and websites, developed an entire program or a framework, and wrote tutorials. Other artifacts included writing a book, developing an online course on the topic, creating a magazine, creating art pieces, making accessible equipment, and developing project promotional materials such as ­booklets, posters, and book marks. The development of instructional or project materials supported the spread of practices. For example, one project in a special education school focused on assessment of early reading for students. The team members consequently developed an assessment tool for use with children who have severe speech and physical impairments and this tool is being adopted by teachers across the school. In another example, a TLLP teacher leader developed math problems and puzzles for use by teachers and students: I took it upon myself to provide each teacher with packages for each child in each grade with math problems… I went into classrooms and introduced the math problem of the day… And got people who were not comfortable to become comfortable… We have over 700 students in our school, so I provided a lot of math puzzles. Resources were developed for direct use by students—for example, one TLLP teacher wrote and published a graphic novel to engage students in learning. Resources also facilitated sharing of professional learning among teachers; for example, a project on teaching visual arts which involved creating the Art Smart blog for sharing educational resources. The overall twin strategies of developing professional collaboration and of ­developing practical resources for use by teachers appear to be both the most prevalent and impactful approaches to sharing learning through TLLP projects. To further knowledge exchange, former TLLP projects can apply to become a Provincial Knowledge Exchange (PKE) with funding provided to the school district to support the wider sharing of TLLP professional learning and practices across schools and with other districts, including release time for teacher leaders to provide professional learning and to engage in learning activities. In proposals for PKE funding, and in final reports from successful PKE projects, applicants are asked to: outline the key learning goals of your PKE proposal? How do they align with the goals for your school and/or board? Describe the professional learning plan for your PKE proposal? Please include timelines and specific learning designs; and how will you share the learning by making project artefacts available to all school boards and the Ministry (e.g. online examples of student work, teacher reflections in a blog etc.). Successful applicants are also asked to report on how the TLLP/PKE has impacted teaching practice and student learning. As the PKE is larger scale, funding flows to

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the school board (whereas TLLP funding is for teacher-led projects) and involves substantial release time for sharing practices. In our research with PKE projects, as the project expands in scale and scope, the need for teacher-leaders to take on a formal leadership position, for example within the district office or in a school, plus work closely with district and school leaders has become prevalent. While TLLP values informal teacher leadership, taking on a district or province-wide knowledge exchange project does require increased attention to formal roles and additional resources. We provide two PKE case studies at the end of this chapter as examples of knowledge exchange.

Challenges and Benefits for Teachers’ Leading Knowledge ­Exchange and Sharing Practices There remain challenges to advancing knowledge exchange, including: planning and allocating sufficient time and balancing workload; introduction of new technology; project scope being too large to manage and/or too small to effect anticipated change; gaining commitment and overcoming resistance; budget allocation and management; managing TLLP team dynamics; and logistical issues. Teachers seeking to embark on such work should be forewarned to anticipate and plan for potential challenges. For example, in their vignettes, many TLLP teacher leaders commented on dealing with challenges associated with building and leading a team. Some teachers learned that “patience” in leadership is critical as other people have their own priorities. Others called attention to the fact that they “can’t do it alone,” so they must learn to take time and develop a team where everyone feels “comfortable” and “heard,” learn to work for “buy-in” but be ready to accept various levels of commitment, and learn to appreciate differences and capitalize on strengths. In our analyses of a sample of Final Reports, TLLP teachers indicated the importance of appropriate budgets and the careful use of release time to enable co-planning for TLLP projects and participation in collaborative learning opportunities. Technological issues could be alleviated by identifying key people with relevant expertise and/or equipment to support TLLP projects. An encouraging finding across our research is that TLLP teacher leaders generally find a way and that the process of overcoming or navigating challenges contributed to their leadership learning, development, and skills. A further highly encouraging finding is that the majority of TLLP project report important benefits of sharing knowledge with people beyond the immediate TLLP team. In our analysis of a sample of Final Reports from TLLP projects, 94 percent of projects reported benefits of improved knowledge and understanding for people who had received and/or engaged with knowledge and practices being shared by the TLLP projects. The wider sharing of learning had supported almost a third (30 percent) of people to implement changes in their practices; a similar proportion (30 percent) of people were inspired to make future changes. Additional benefits of knowledge exchange for shared learning were increased self-efficacy and development of a stronger sense of community.

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Lessons Learned This chapter has highlighted five big ideas to support teachers seeking to develop, lead, and contribute to sharing knowledge and practices across a wider network of people. First, TLLP flips the idea that teachers are mainly the recipients of “external” expertise for new knowledge; instead teachers can be the leaders and mobilizers of interactive (co-)development and sharing of knowledge and practices. Second, while TLLP involves teacher-led change, system supports are helpful for providing training, resources, and access to online and in-person opportunities to facilitate mobilizing knowledge more widely. Third, sharing knowledge requires development for individuals’ making their tacit knowledge explicit and de-privatizing practices; the formation of teacher-initiated groups working as teams and to share knowledge among and between other groups of teachers; and the development of relationships and interactions for professional networks that extend knowledge and practices beyond individual classrooms and schools. Fourth, approaches to knowledge exchange involve attention to collaboration for professional learning and to communication to share information in person, online, and in print. Finally, the substance of knowledge exchange counts. The development and sharing of quality content integrated into actionable resources, particularly classroom materials, supports the application and adaption of knowledge and practices by and for other teachers. This is complex and challenging work, but teacher leaders find a way and in doing so they benefit professionally and a wider network of people engaged and affected benefit from improvements in their knowledge, understanding, skills, and practices.

TLLP Project Examples: PKE Case Studies The PKE provides an opportunity to research approaches to knowledge exchange, sharing of learning and practices, and prospects for wider impact and longer-term sustainability. The case studies below examine the experience and impact of TLLP projects that developed into PKE projects with the goals of wider sharing of professional learning for increased impact and sustainability of improvements in professional practices and students’ learning.

PKE Case Study 1 Through their eyes: Documenting literacy and learning in kindergarten Renfrew County Catholic District School Board PKE case study written by Joelle Rodway In the spring of 2015, I travelled to Pembroke—a small city of approximately 24,000 people located in the Ottawa Valley region of eastern Ontario—to meet with Julia Graydon, Alison Radley-Walters, and Kyle Gleason—the teacher leaders of the TLLP Provincial Knowledge Exchange project profiled for the 2014–15 academic year. Over the course of two trips to the area, I spent a total of three

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days with these teacher leaders and their colleagues in an effort to learn about their program. I interviewed Julia, Alison, and Kyle as well as the two superintendents whose portfolios included this project, the school principal who originally supported (and continued to support) this initiative from its first year, as well as a group of teachers and early childhood educators who were participating in the program. During the interviews, I focused the questions on three areas: (1) what were the impacts of participation on teachers’ professional learning, leadership skills and experiences, as well as those for other members of the school community (i.e. parents and students); (2) how they shared their learning across the schools, including what approaches were used and with what success and/or challenge; and, (3) what were the long-term impacts for the TLLP leaders, participants, schools, district, and wider community in addition to issues pertaining to the sustainability of their work. About five hours of conversation were recorded and transcribed to facilitate our learning about the successes, challenges, and overall learning within this professional learning endeavor. In addition to the interviews, I attended and observed two full-day workshops that were led by Julia, Alison, and Kyle (and included more than 50 educators who were in attendance) where I took detailed field notes that were also used to inform this study. These transcripts and field notes were then analyzed using holistic and descriptive coding methods (Saldaña, 2013) and the results of these analyses comprise this chapter.

Context The Renfrew County Catholic District School Board (RCCDSB) is one of 29 publically funded Catholic school districts in Ontario (RCCDSB, n.d.). It is located in eastern Ontario, about a couple of hours west of Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. RCCDSB is considered a small school district because it serves a student population of about 4,600 children and adolescents who live in mostly rural communities situated across a wide geographical area of 7,851 square kilometers. Like many Ontario school districts, RCCDSB serves a diverse student population, and this district has a notable proportion of military families within its community. It is not uncommon for many of these households to be temporary single-parent homes as a result of parental deployment (often overseas) as part of their military service—a characteristic that brings with it its own unique challenges. In total, there are 22 schools (19 elementary schools, two secondary schools, and one alternative secondary school site), in addition to one young parent support program and three section 23 classroom communities for students with special needs (e.g. mental health, behavioral issues) that extend beyond those that can be addressed in a typical school setting. Full implementation of Ontario’s Full Day Kindergarten Program was achieved in the 2014–15 school year during which time there were approximately 350 junior kindergarten students and 386 senior kindergarten students supported by 26 Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) and 35 kindergarten teachers. Several projects covering a range of topics (e.g. technology in the classroom, primary mathematics) have been funded by the TLLP in Renfrew County

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Catholic DSB since 2010; however, the Through Their Eyes: Documenting literacy and learning in kindergarten project (referred to from here on in as DLLK) is the first project to receive funding through the TLLP PKE.

Program Description The Through Their Eyes: Documenting literacy and learning in kindergarten project focused on integrating technology into kindergarten classrooms for the purpose of documenting and supporting student learning. It centered on building educators’ (i.e. teachers and ECEs) capacity to use digital technologies to create electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) as a means of pedagogical documentation. The goal was to have students use iPads at various times throughout the day to take photos, and make videos and/or audio recordings about activities that they have engaged in as part of their learning centers; these artefacts would then become a part of each student’s ePortfolio. Because teachers and students were able to easily share their work with the class in real time using Apple TVs (or other “smart” TV technologies), these “documentations” of student learning were shared daily with classmates as prompts to encourage reflection on previous learning and in setting future directions and learning goals. The use of ePortfolios allowed students to: (1) reflect on their own work and learning; (2) take an active role in documenting their success; (3) examine their growth and learning over time; and, (4) make decisions about the future based on evidence and criteria (Teach Ontario, 2015). The original TLLP project that spurred the DLLK PKE was initiated by four teachers (including Julia, Alison, and Kyle) at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Elementary school in response to a problem of practice that they were experiencing: “So we were trying to make sure that nobody was going to be forgotten in the crazy busy schedule because some days our kids [students] who were 3 to 5-years-old, had four teachers: music teacher, French teacher, Extended French teacher, and the regular classroom teacher. We were all just trying to stay on the same page. And the technology seemed to be the answer for us” (TLLP/PKE teacher leader). The use of technology and creation of ePortfolios provided an effective way to establish and maintain consistent communication in response to these challenges. Using Desire2Learn, an online learning platform available through the Ontario Ministry of Education, these teachers were able to use the images and videos captured daily within their classrooms to create password-protected electronic portfolios for each student, which could be accessed from anywhere in the world where the internet was available. Consequently, this blended learning environment (classroom and online) opened up pathways for parents, educators, and students to engage with each other to support student success. Based on the success of the original TLLP project, the project team applied for and was awarded a PKE grant to support sharing their learning with many of their kindergarten colleagues from other schools within RCCDSB. The intent was to build capacity to integrate digital technology as pedagogical tools within other kindergarten classrooms for the purpose of documenting student learning. The

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project coordinators organized four professional development sessions to support their colleagues’ learning. Funding for this PKE activity allowed for the teacher leaders to facilitate their colleagues’ exploration and learning about pedagogical documentation through full-day, face-to-face professional development workshops that also provided valuable time for networking and collaboration among the 65 RCCDSB faculty and administrators involved in this initiative. In addition, an online repository was created where teachers and ECEs continued to share resources with each other.

Sharing the Learning The DLLK project’s approach to sharing learning is very much rooted in the development of networked learning communities. The leadership team ensured that groups of participants from individual schools (e.g. groups of 3–4 teachers and ECEs from one school) were involved in the PKE initiative. The intent was to develop individual, school-level learning communities where the teachers and ECEs could work together and turn to each other for assistance on leveraging digital technologies to support pedagogical documentation practices within their home school contexts. In addition, these school-level groups would come together as one learning community at the scheduled PKE workshops that were scheduled throughout the year. As one TLLP/PKE teacher leader commented: When you are trying to learn this new stuff, if you have someone to do it with or to say, “Do you remember when so-and-so said…” or “do you remember how to do this?” It just makes the learning that much more fun and interactive and it gets more exciting when you can share it with somebody who cares. The PKE’s approach developed the capacity both within and between schools for teachers to support each other in their journey. Teachers reported turning to each other for expertise and advice about how to address issues they may be experiencing before reaching out to school district special assignment teachers (called SPATs): If we have an issue, we go to the ones we know who have been to these workshops and that are using this first, before going to [the Special Assignment Teachers]. We try to figure out on our own with the knowledge we’ve been given first, and that’s usually been good enough. (Teacher participant) There was a real benefit to developing a community both within schools and also between kindergarten classrooms across schools where teachers and ECEs felt that they could “send an email or pick up the phone” (teacher participant), reflecting the overarching idea that “there [would] always be at least a few people in every school that know how to do this” (teacher leader).

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There is a pervasive culture of co-learning within these learning communities. Regardless of position within the wider system (i.e. teacher, ECE, SPAT, school or district administrator), there is a shared ethos that everyone is learning from and with each other within a context where failure is acceptable (and even encouraged) and where people “have the time to practice and play” (TLLP/PKE teacher leader) without fear of judgment. Groups of teachers who are working on addressing their individual problems of practice come together during dedicated PKE time to share their learning with the group and to learn from their colleagues’ experiences as well. As one teacher noted, “It was just coming here and sharing and learning from everyone else.” An ECE aptly noted that the DLLK PKE project is “really by us, for us.” The leadership team emphasized that, although they were there to share their initial learning through their TLLP project, the goal of the PKE was to expand ideas around the importance of collective knowledge sharing, ensuring that everyone in the group understood that their knowledge and experiences were valued and worth sharing with the whole group. One of the teacher leaders expressly noted that the leadership team “tried to go with a co-learning stance, [saying] ‘You guys are all doing wonderful things in your room that we can learn and benefit from’.” The PKE dedicated sessions provided the space and time necessary for educators to engage with each other and practice what they were doing (or were planning to do) in the classroom with each other. Importantly, it provided a space for community sense-making and support in a continuous learning cycle—critical elements in the success of bringing this initiative to scale across (nearly) all kindergarten classrooms. The school district was credited with providing many supports that ensured the success of the DLLK initiative. Initially, “a few system [district] highlights in terms of the work that was happening… spread the word quite a bit” (superintendent), helping to generate interest in the good work that was happening prior to the PKE through the initial TLLP project. The school district was also an important ­supporter of the PKE project: I think our board (school district) has been a huge support. They recognize the value in what we’re doing and they recognize the expertise of our educators… There is a solid support system to say, “What can we do to make TLLP run? To make this PKE run?” (TLLP/PKE teacher leader) District-level leadership has also supported the educators’ learning by taking a ­co-learning stance in terms of their role in this process; this was not a top-down model of school program implementation. School district administrators have championed and encouraged the teacher leaders in their quest to develop meaningful professional learning for kindergarten faculty. They have supported the group’s focus on building a depth of knowledge (as opposed to breadth) that responds to the unique learning needs of the various types of schools that exist within the district. They have embraced a step-by-step approach, allowing teachers and ECEs

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to “take one thing and try one thing… [and] slowly practice and build upon those steps” (teacher). Teachers and ECEs report that they are grateful that they can focus on experimenting with the technology as they shift their perspectives “from using technology in classrooms as game apps and things like that… [to] turning it into using it as a tool for your students to use, to document, for documentation and things” (ECE). Most importantly, they appreciate the freedom to practice and play without fear of evaluation: “There’s no checklist at the end; you can do this and you can do that because you’re not being reported on” (teacher). The openness of this learning environment appeared to have enabled the participants to engage with the learning much more freely than if there were a formal assessment of their progress at the end of the initiative. The system-level support for this type of professional learning was recognized and appreciated by all TLLP/PKE participants. Despite these supports and structures, the team did experience some challenges in sharing the learning within the DLLK PKE project. Time was identified as a major hurdle to get over in order to develop and organize effective PKE ­workshops: Time… was the big one. We were saying that it would have been extraordinarily challenging for us to have done as good a job or as comprehensive a job as we did if [her teacher leader colleague] didn’t have the position that she had. (TLLP/PKE teacher leader) The fact that one of the original TLLP project teacher leaders had moved on to a Special Assignment Teacher role at the school district office was identified as the primary means of mediating the group’s struggles with finding the time to organize events of this magnitude. She was now in a position where she was free from teaching duties and in regular contact with schools around the district, and this flexibility and access helped the team to organize effective PKE sessions that were responsive to the needs identified by participants from around the district. As is often the case, money also posed a challenge to the work of the group, particularly because so many educators wanted to participate in the program. One superintendent noted that “We had to find other funding when people [faculty] were begging [to participate]… So I talked to [a superintendent colleague] and we found other sources of money and there were still some [people] we couldn’t bring in.” Additional funding was required to cover costs associated with supply teacher coverage, travel expenses for faculty members coming from schools in more rural communities, hotel conference facilities to accommodate for the space and technological needs required to host the PKE workshop, and to pay for everyone who was interested in participating (e.g. supply teacher coverage). Despite the funding received for this PKE project, the demand exceeded the available funding; however, the district was able to reallocate some other funds to support the professional learning of most of the educators who expressed interest in this PKE initiative. There were also some challenges associated with misconceptions about what the DLLK PKE project was really about. Many people, including the media who reported on this project within the local and wider provincial communities,

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thought that the primary focus of this project was developing twenty-first-century learning skills as they relate to students’ abilities to use digital technologies. This is not entirely untrue; however, from the perspectives of the practitioners involved in the project, the real emphasis was on developing students’ capacities to document and understand their own learning processes (foreground) and digital technologies were tools that could be used in these pedagogical documentation processes (background). In addition, some educators who were trying to implement this learning in their own schools were surrounded by skeptical colleagues who viewed this as the current fad or latest trend in education and not as tools that could help them address problems of practice that they were experiencing in their classrooms. An ECE said: I think there are two sides. There’s one side that says, “There’s just going to be more for us to do” and there’s the other side, which I think is all of us, [who are] saying that this is going to make things easier. We just need to keep driving forward and figure it out. There are still lots of stuff to figure out, but we still need to keep going because it’s going to make things a little more time efficient for us. It’s going to make things easier for us to document student learning. Ultimately, teachers and ECEs were able to mitigate these circumstances by showing their colleagues exactly what they were doing (breaking it down into clear steps aligned with classroom pedagogy), bringing their colleagues to related professional development events where possible, and maintaining their own commitment to what this learning will bring to their own professional practice. Despite these challenges (which ultimately were overcome), the spread of the knowledge expanded outside of the formal boundaries of the PKE. The DLLK project catalyzed a culture of sharing within schools, and many teachers were sharing their learning with colleagues who weren’t formally involved in the PKE. One teacher commented: Other teachers were so motivated by what they saw and then they wanted to do it on their own… We’ve helped out so many others who have just had the initial interest, and showed them how to get started and it’s really branching out just from word of mouth. Another teacher stated, “when you see [what the students] can do as a teacher, it’s really hard not to tell people about it.” The enthusiasm for sharing was not just bound to other educators. Teachers were equally as excited about being able to share students’ learning with their families: For me, one of the biggest hooks is the sharing piece. What the students can take home and share with their parents, because I always feel that parents are wondering, “What’s my child doing during the day?” As a parent I wonder

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that, and when they [the children] come home and share those things… [They] can also show me. (Teacher) The enthusiasm and excitement about sharing was a centerpiece of this learning, especially with parents. Overall, teachers spoke passionately about their appreciation for the level of responsiveness to teacher needs in the PKE workshops. They appreciated the time that the PKE leadership team took in soliciting continuous feedback from all members of the learning community (teachers and ECEs) and using that to inform the organization of subsequent PKE workshops. One teacher explained positively: Well, they ask that question a lot, “what would you like to see at the next PKE session? What would you like to learn more about?” They really do look at that [feedback from surveys] and follow up with it. Another teacher highlighted her gratitude for the co-learning structure of the PKE sessions where teachers and ECEs were learning from and with each other as opposed to traditional top-down, stand and deliver models of professional ­development: Usually at professional development things, the presenter presents and all the teachers sit together… Most of the time we learn from [quietly] talking to one another about what we’re doing in the classroom [on the side], whereas this way here, we’re allowed to talk out loud. Yeah, we learn so much from each other and we don’t have that much opportunity to do that. (Teacher) Participants consistently spoke about the benefits of learning alongside one another: “And [one of the teacher leaders] has people go up [in front of the group] and talk about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. To me, that’s the best learning” (teacher), and “I like that they’re [the leadership team] including people from the room to present to each other” (teacher). There was widespread acknowledgement among the participants that the DLLK PKE workshops were among the best professional development opportunities in which many of these educators had ever participated.

Impacts and Outcomes Professional learning is an important piece of an educator’s practice, and participation in the DLLK project through the TLLP and PKE has had some beneficial impacts on the learning of kindergarten teachers and ECEs in the school district. Initially, the teacher leaders “were faced with the reality that, [although they wanted it] to be about professional development and pedagogy… at some point there still needs to be some instruction. And they wanted instruction on the technology” (superintendent). The PKE workshops combined learning about leveraging digital

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technologies for the purpose of pedagogical documentation with direct instruction about how to use the various apps that the educators now had access to in their classrooms. Although the content of the professional learning was important, teachers spoke frequently about how sharing and learning from each other’s experiences and expertise encouraged dialogue as well as knowledge sharing and creation: “we can come together and learn from each other” (teacher). This sharing and learning resulted in a de-privatization of practice, opening up new learning spaces that emphasized the human and social capital within and between the schools themselves. The freedom to explore without penalty and the continuous messaging that failure was okay resulted in participants who engaged with the technology on their own terms, seeking out the knowledge and experiences of their colleagues to help them develop their own expertise. This approach to learning made it relevant to everyone and highlighted the “do-ability” of using digital technology to document student learning with individual classrooms regardless of what stage individuals were at in terms of their own knowledge. The educators recognized that although participation “is voluntary… it’s beyond that. It is desired” (teacher). The intentional inclusion of multiple teachers and ECEs from each school participating in the PKE workshops continued to cultivate the culture of co-learning that existed among and between all members of the group. Throughout the year, they were supporting each other, inside and outside the PKE workshops: “It’s a good model too. To have… [a] team of open classroom teachers to be able to dip in and get some work or ideas and go back out. I think that works too” (teacher leader). Most importantly, the teachers were beginning to speak about the ways in which the PKE participants were starting to influence the learning of their colleagues within their home schools. One teacher described her experience with a colleague who initially did not want anything to do with technology in the beginning, but who changed her mind after witnessing what was happening in this teacher’s kindergarten classroom: So it’s just that little spark, and now in her classroom, she’s equipped and she’s using it. And she’s a teacher who has taught for at least 15 years and was against the tech piece, and now tech is essential in her classroom. (Teacher) The impacts of the PKE project on teachers’ and ECEs’ professional learning include: (a) making public the knowledge and expertise of the individual participants; (b) creating learning environments that openly encourage learning from each other rather than the “expert” at the front of the room (which the teachers identify as ineffective); (c) making individual practice more visible among colleagues with invitations for feedback within a culture of trial and error; and, (d) extending the professional learning occurring within the PKE workshops to the broader context of the home schools, where participating educators modeled and coached their colleagues in incorporating technology into their classroom practice. With regards to the knowledge, skills and practices of teachers, the greatest shift as a result of their participation in the DLLK PKE was in teachers’ use of digital

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technologies from a “delivery system” (e.g. for game apps, projecting materials) to the use of technology as a pedagogical tool that supports student learning. As one teacher elaborated: What I liked about the focus of these guys [TLLP teacher leadership team] when they first started, their TLLP was turning the tide from using technology in classrooms as game apps and things… turning it into using it as a tool for your students to use, to document, for documentation and things. (Teacher) Participants spoke about their old habits of using technology as reinforcements of classroom instruction—that is, using various learning apps to practice what they were covering in class. However, after their engagement in the DLLK workshops, and in particular, after learning and developing their technology skills within a collaborative learning community, technology is now being used “as a learning tool where the kids are actively engaged in using it to learn” (teacher). Furthermore, they began to speak about identifying and addressing problems of practice that they were encountering in their own daily work. As they became more comfortable with their own knowledge and skills in addition to becoming more aware of to whom they could turn for assistance when needed, teaching teams were more often using technology to address these challenges. Indeed, this was the impetus for the original TLLP project where the teacher leaders “went searching [for] ways to solve our challenges that we were having with the new information we were gathering, and how we were going to share it” (TLLP/PKE teacher leader). In similar ways, as the participating teachers and ECEs began developing their own skills and recognizing their own expertise, they also began turning to technology to address their own problems of practice. Furthermore, the increased recognition both within and outside the school district for their work prompted further learning across the group (extending beyond the PKE workshop participants) as the educators felt an increasing sense of value with the broader community. A school principal describes how the success of one group of teachers encouraged others to embark on similar learning journeys: So there was lots of attention being paid to these teachers and ECEs, and the other teachers saw it and they kind of [say], “hey, if they can do it, we can do this too,” and there’s value in that. (School principal) Both the original TLLP and the subsequent PKE experiences have had positive effects on both the originating TLLP/PKE teacher leaders and the broader group of participants in the PKE workshops. One teacher leader attributes her participation to leading her to pursue a graduate degree and to take on a position of responsibility (special assignment teacher) at the district level, explaining: “Honestly, without this TLLP, I don’t think I would be in the role that I’m in. I think the TLLP led to this position.” Others spoke about the TLLP and PKE projects giving them new opportunities to be impactful teacher leaders within their own schools. The

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project’s other teacher leaders spoke about how her TLLP involvement impacted her professional practice: [It] gave me the opportunity to be a leader without having to change my job… I don’t have to seek out an admin role to feel that I’m a leader. For me, that is a really nice feeling or sentiment; that’s something that the Ministry and the Board has acknowledged. It doesn’t mean that at some point I might not change my mind, but I’m happy to stay in the role that I’m in for a while. (TLLP/PKE Teacher leader) Beyond the formal teacher leadership position attributed by leading the TLLP and PKE, other teachers also spoke about similar experiences of feeling like a “teacher leader” in their own school contexts. An individual who described herself as a “leave me in my classroom doing my thing” (teacher) kind of teacher who didn’t “want to talk to big groups of people” speaks of the transformational experience that her involvement in the PKE had on developing her own identity as a teacher leader. She says: Then this year, because I did a very short ten-minute thing on blended learning here [at a PKE workshop], which I was very, very nervous for… honestly, I’m not a sharer… and so I did that and I ended up… I presented at the EOCCC [Eastern Ontario Catholic Curriculum Corporation] and then another conference in Ottawa, and even just talking here. So definitely I’ve become a leader from all these things we’ve come to. (Teacher) Overall, participants were reporting that through their experiences with TLLP and PKE, they were coming to “feel very valued as a professional” (TLLP/PKE teacher leader). Through their shared learning with each other, the teachers and ECEs were developing their own knowledge and expertise, which one teacher explained was a key aspect of his view of what being a leader means: “I think being a leader is being confident in your knowledge and knowing what you’re doing” (teacher), which another teacher confirmed was what had been occurring through her experience “over the months” (teacher). As a result of their feelings of empowerment and being valued in a climate of high trust, the teachers were experiencing what a principal described as “a level of professionalism that, generally speaking, we’ve never had before prior to maybe four or five years ago.” The benefits of the DLLK project were not only experienced by educators. The use of digital technologies in the classroom had positive impacts on student engagement and learning as well. As quickly as the teachers were catching on to using technology as a learning tool within their classrooms, “even the students [were] utilizing the technology in the room to document their own learning, and it’s almost seamless” (superintendent). Teachers, ECEs, and district leadership reported increased student engagement in class with enthusiasm and greater independence. A teacher leader describes her view of student engagement:

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The kids love to share their learning. When they see a picture of themselves on the TV or a picture of something they’ve done, they think that is terrific and they love explaining to the kids… most of the students love explaining why that picture is important or how they’ve made that structure or whatever the picture might be. (Teacher leader) Another teacher situates her learning through recognizing the importance of ­technology in the lives of today’s students: And for me, this is where we’re at with technology, and so I want to know what are the new things that I can be doing with my students in the classroom because their lives are so technology based. They know so much already. (Teacher) There was consistent reporting of increased student engagement across all participants. Witnessing student success and engagement increased teacher engagement and excitement as well. Parents were also frequently identified as beneficiaries of teachers’ use of learning technologies to document student learning. One participating teacher spoke about her experience as a parent of students whose teachers were leveraging digital in their classrooms: I am also a parent of students in the school that have these online classes and everything, and to see their excitement to say “and the teacher said it’s on the online classroom tonight, we can look at [it],” and for me as a parent from the other side, to see their excitement at home… It’s really neat for me to see both sides. (Teacher) However, balancing parental expectations with the capacity of the system has been a challenge related to this and other initiatives that see increased use of technology in classrooms. There is not a uniform expectation for teachers to be using learning technologies in these ways across the school district; teachers have the choice to use technological tools as part of their daily practice or not. Consequently, the district has had to deal with the expectations of parents who are expecting to continue to see this level of technology use in the classroom as their children progress. Teachers also spoke about their increased levels of communication/interaction with parents as a result of incorporating digital technology into their daily practice. In particular, they report being able to engage in more detailed communication, which often clarifies parents’ understanding of what’s happening at school: “I find that I even talk to parents more now… once the kids get on the bus, I can sit down and send an actual well thought out note to parents” (Teacher). Another teacher elaborates, “That’s been a big change [parent communication]. There might have been a lot more questions before, whereas now they have a lot more knowledge.” Another

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teacher speaks to the ability of parents to reinforce their child’s learning at home as a result of this increased knowledge: I think it helps the parents reinforce, too, the learning that’s going on at school because they watch the same videos that we watched in class. The kids, for some reason, love to show those videos on the online classroom to their parents. Technology also helped develop special connections for the military families that make up a significant proportion of the district’s community. Many of the students in this school district find themselves with one parent at home whilst the other parent is deployed as part of his or her military service. These parents, in particular, have spoken about the ways in which the use of technology in the classroom is allowing them to stay connected to their children’s lives during their absence. For example, one TLLP/PKE teacher leader shared, “She [a deployed parent] said that actually receiving those updates and pictures actually helped her get through living so far away from her kids.” Similarly, another teacher spoke about an email she had recently received: “I just got an email the other day… a dad who’s away right now, just saying ‘thanks for sending all these things. When I’m missing my kids, I go back and look at the pictures and they’re great’.” The use of digital learning technologies are creating new spaces for parents to engage in their children’s learning, offering new ways for parents to become involved in their children’s education. Ultimately, parents “like to have that digital window into their child’s daily life… So that’s been a real positive benefit” (superintendent).

Long-Term Impacts and Sustainability At the level of teacher leadership, the DLLK project has been a powerful example of the ability of a small group of teachers to initiate positive change across the entire school district. As one of the original TLLP teacher leaders explained: It’s amazing how that [TLLP] project started with four teachers before we were in the FDK program [Full Day Kindergarten], because it was four of us on our own, and now how it’s gone through our school, and now I feel what we see and how it’s gone through the Board… it’s amazing to see all that. (Teacher) The success of this TLLP group has also encouraged their colleagues to apply for (and begin) TLLP projects of their own. The principal of the original TLLP school recognized the value of this work, acknowledging the ripple effects the success of this group has had on other educators in the board: “… other teachers saw it, and they kind of [said], ‘hey, if they can do it, we can do it too’… I like the energy that it is causing and continues to cause around the school.” (principal)

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Across the teaching population involved in this study (both classroom teachers and ECEs), there has been a growth in understanding of the potential of technology as a pedagogical tool, positively affecting the ways in which they carry out their work. The educators’ learning and the concomitant rise in confidence, in some cases, has led to greater decision-making power at the school level, which has continued to fuel teacher motivation and feelings of efficacy. One teacher recounts when her school principal: left [a decision about technology in the school] with us for a couple of weeks, and we sat down and talked about it rather than her saying, “Okay, this is what our school needs” and not knowing that much. So it was really kind of nice that she gave up some of that ownership. (Teacher) Instances such as this one enabled teachers to begin shifting their stance in regards to viewing themselves as decision-makers within the school. As the teachers and ECEs began to feel more confident in their work with technology in their classrooms, they also began to view their knowledge and expertise as being valuable within the broader school context and were beginning to take some steps to becoming teacher leaders themselves in their own schools. The increased positive public profile of the teachers’ work both within and outside the board has also had other positive impacts for the schools. Not only are teachers becoming mentors in their home schools for other teachers who are looking to leverage digital technologies as a tool for pedagogical documentation (i.e., those not involved in the TLLP/PKE), but the attention garnered by this work is providing ways for the school to be able to acquire more technology resources to facilitate the spread of these practices schoolwide. For example, one teacher describes how her involvement in the PKE has allowed the school to build upon the technological infrastructure that is being built within her school: We were worried about [the unequal distribution of technology resources] in our school because, last year with the CODE [Council of Ontario Directors of Education] project, the kindergartens were given all of this technology, and then we found when they [students] moved up to Grades 1, 2, or 3, they didn’t have a lot. But now with [the TLLP]… we find that the School Council is on board, the principal’s on board, and they have really helped get that for all the other grades too. It really does benefit the whole school. (Teacher) Nevertheless, at the school district level, there remains the challenge of ensuring that the focus remains on pedagogy and how technology can be used as a learning tool given the susceptibility of technology to be sought out without necessarily being explicitly linked to pedagogical goals: The real power here is the pedagogy behind it, so how do you make sure that next year the people that want in want in… because they want in on

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the ­pedagogical learning, not just the “send me the flat screen and four iPads and I’ll be set.” (Superintendent) The positive experiences of educators within initiatives such as the TLLP and PKE create pressure on school districts to find future funding to ensure the spread and maintenance of the work across the system. In addition to concerns around the funding of these sorts of initiatives, the superintendents also identified the challenge of keeping principals aware and understanding of what is happening through initiatives of this sort: “[There’s the] issue of how to keep our principals abreast of what our teachers are doing with this or any other initiative. It’s how to keep them in the loop as well” (superintendent). Thus, funding and knowledge sharing within the administrative structures are challenges that need to be overcome when addressing the sustainability of this work. The increased enthusiasm and greater involvement of parents in children’s learning is an important outcome of the TLLP/PKE. Teachers report much more consistent interaction with parents, which results in families having greater access to and understanding of children’s learning in schools: It’s no longer when it’s parent/teacher night… It’s regular involvement, and that eliminates the surprise factor when report cards come. I find there are no longer any big surprises because the communication piece is there with these pictures and these little notes. And a picture is worth a thousand words, and then with the little caption, you are really seeing where your child is at. So I find the parent involvement piece is excellent… you’re having that instant information. In this way, “parents get to see a lot more than they ever have before” (teacher). Parents who are witnessing the benefits of techology as a pedagogical documentation tool are keen to ensure its continuation throughout the school district because “it really is a virtual window into the classroom” (teacher). The result is increased parent participation in the schooling of their own children and within the broader school community, which hopefully will continue to fuel the legacy of the DLLK initiative as it spreads throughout other grade levels within the district. The Through Their Eyes: Documenting literacy and learning in kindergarten project provides an exemplary demonstration of the TLLP in action. From the initial project where a small group of teachers in one school developed their own expertise and capacity to use digital technology to address their challenges in documenting their students learning through to the four-part workshop series offered to kindergarten educators across nearly the entire school district, the DLLK project clearly exemplifies the goals for the TLLP program for professional learning, teacher leadership, and knowledge exchange. In this project, there is ample evidence of ongoing teachers’ professional learning. As is presented here in their own words, many of the teachers and early childhood educators interviewed for this study identified their participation as among the most valuable professional learning

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experiences that they have ever had during their career. They identified being able to share existing knowledge in addition to creating expertise of their own as invaluable aspects of this professional development opportunity. Furthermore, the educators and administrators involved in this work spoke consistently about the value of sharing the exemplary practice of teachers and ECEs within this school district as the source of a newfound energy and enthusiasm not only among school faculty, but also within parent communities, and most importantly among the students themselves. And lastly, the DLLK project has given voice not only to the teacher leaders involved in the design and implementation of this project, but also to those participants who because of their own learning began to take steps towards becoming teacher leaders in their own right. The Documenting Literacy and Learning in Kindergarten project in the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board shows how opening up spaces for teachers to take control of their own practice provides opportunities to tap into the collective intelligence and expertise of the group as a community, empowering them as professionals to take risks in their classrooms and to explore their own identities as learners and leaders.

Pke Case Study 2 Balanced Math PKE Simcoe County District School Board PKE case study written by Sofya Malik About the PKE Case Study This case study integrates observations of two professional learning sessions; interviews with teachers (5 participants), a principal, Superintendent, and the PKE team (3 participants), and a review of program documentation and resources.

Context The Balanced Math (BM) program began as part of a TLLP project at Fieldcrest Elementary School (E.S.), located in the municipality of Bradford, Ontario, in the Simcoe County District School Board (SCDSB). Situated in south-central Ontario, the SCDSB is a mix of urban and rural schools within a geographic span of 4,800 kilometers. The SCDSB is comprised of 85 elementary schools, 17 secondary schools, 7 learning centers, over 6,000 employees and approximately 50,000 ­students (SCDSB, 2014, paragraph 1). As a Grade 6 teacher at Fieldcrest Elementary School (E.S.) in 2012, Kristen Muscat-Fennell led the TLLP and then PKE projects. Kristen’s passion for math encouraged her to bring the BM program to her classroom and the school. She traces this interest back to 2005 when Lee Sparling’s teaching methods ignited her interest in BM. At the time, Lee, a SCDSB teacher, had recently created and published a resource called Balanced Math. Kristen had great success with her students

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in the primary grades between 2006–2009 and wanted to share this with others. The BM program eventually grew from a smaller TLLP project to a PKE involving eight schools in the SCDSB. By the 2013 school year, there were a total of 15 elementary and secondary school teachers participating in the BM program. Schools and teachers were selected based on their willingness and “readiness” to participate as agreed upon by administrators at the school and district levels. In 2013, Kristen Muscat-Fennell led the PKE team with support from her colleagues Darrell Bax, a Special Education Resource Teacher (SERT), and Stephanie Skelton, a Grade 8 teacher at Fieldcrest E.S. Each team member brought complementary skills to the program such as technology, pedagogy, leadership, and project management. In addition to operating as a cohesive team, the project team cited receiving strong support from current and past school principals as well as a Superintendent of Education. A pivotal moment in the BM program’s implementation occurred after Kristen’s presentation at the 2013–14 TLLP Summit when the SCDSB noted the successes and wanted to support the BM program implementation in more schools’ boardwide. As Superintendent Anita Simpson recalled: We were seeing some really great uptake and positive feedback and really engaged teachers and students, so we decided as a senior team we were going to involve some of our schools that were leading in the area of mathematics because the whole three-part math lesson is the foundational piece of math learning. As part of their interest in supporting the BM approach to mathematics, the school district committed to building capacity in schools. Superintendent Simpson explained that they were intentional about selecting schools in the 2013–14 school year, at which point 45 teachers were involved, with a total of 15 schools, including a couple of secondary schools. Upon applying for the PKE the subsequent year, the BM program’s focus grew two-fold: (1) incorporating teacher mentorship, and; (2) including kindergarten to Grade 1. Superintendent Simpson attributed the program’s success in implementation to its gradual phasing in: “And so it continued every year, a nice gradual evolution. So we were achieving spread, slow but sure. Nothing radical from year to year, but an intentional pathway that really built capacity over time.” As of the 2014–15 school year, 18 schools participated in the BM Mentor PKE and 16 schools participated in the BM kindergarten to Grade 1 PKE. Notwithstanding the program’s success, there were a range of social and p­ olitical challenges encountered during its implementation. First, a school’s readiness to participate in BM could be a challenge. As a way to mitigate this challenge, the PKE team supported the schools in need by co-facilitating lessons with the staff. Second, in some schools a lack of resources posed challenges, which the PKE team supported by sharing resources and ordering extra resources as needed. As part of the resourcing challenge, technological problems arose at times with the iPads. The PKE project team accessed supports such as Apple Care in order to fix technological issues.

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Program Description BM provides opportunities for modeled, guided, shared, and independent math experiences in an engaging, interactive learning community. The use of the threepart lesson, including open questions and parallel tasks are essential practices within the SCDSB, and often represent approximately 60–70 minutes of mathematics instruction. Those classrooms using the BM program as a further consolidation and practice strategy often do so in an additional 20–30 minutes per day. In some classrooms, typically Intermediate, BM happens once per week during a 100-min. instructional block. One example: 1. Whole group instruction (60–70 min.) New concepts taught in a three-part lesson (using open questions and parallel tasks). Consolidation task assigned and/or completed. 2. BM rotation (20–30 min.) Students are directed to their next BM rotation and proceed independently. 3. Optional follow-up work time (15–20 min.) Students begin work independently on lesson consolidation task if not completed during three-part lesson. Based on a five- or six-day rotation, students are placed into groups of four to six. Each day, groups typically participate in one of the following BM activities: • • • • • • •

Guided Math/Problem Solving Shared Problem Solving Independent Problem Solving Math Journal Math Games Math Facts “Share the Wealth”—Whole group consolidation

Teachers have the option of incorporating BM rotations in their weekly lesson plans. These rotations include the components of the differentiated instructional program. The key learning goals of this PKE include growth in student achievement in mathematics through additional opportunities for consolidation of learning with a balanced focus on procedural fluency and problem-solving, learning through the mathematical processes, and digitally-supported differentiated instruction and assessment from kindergarten to Grade 9. The SCDSB’s Learning Plan includes essential practices which focus on reaching every student through differentiated instruction and assessment, the use of technology to enable and enhance student learning, teaching through the mathematical processes, and the use of triangulated assessment for, as, and of learning.

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Sharing the Learning We examine the BM PKE’s approaches to professional learning, teacher leadership, and knowledge exchange.

Professional Learning In the 2012–13 school year, the BM PKE team shared their model with SCDSB teachers through a three-part series (2.5 days) of professional development that align the project’s goals with district and school improvement plan priorities. The first professional development session introduced teachers, coaches, and administrators to the PKE project and learning goals that could culminate into a plan for implementation. The second professional development session included opportunities for sharing successes and challenges, a demonstration and moderation of student work, and a collaboration on additional strategies. The final professional development session involved a culmination of the program including moderation of student work, a survey to measure the program’s success, and plans for further sharing. As part of the final session, each teacher was asked to bring a sample lesson plan for the collective BM resource binder. During the sessions, the teacher participants were also encouraged to create the materials that they would be using to facilitate these workshops with their staff. The sessions were based on the premise that teacher learning occurs through collaboration. Building on the model initiated by the PKE team in 2013, a similar session was held in the 2014–15 school year. Each session builds in time for the exchange of ideas and the co-planning of lessons. The project team values these opportunities, as they believed that teachers often lack opportunities to discuss ideas with their colleagues amidst their daily routines. Teachers act as leaders, facilitators, and resources, sharing the knowledge with other staff at their school.

Teacher Leadership The most evident examples of teacher leadership emerged within the project team, particularly the PKE project lead. Since the implementation of the BM program at Fieldcrest E.S., Kristen was seconded to the central board office as a kindergarten to Grade 8 Math Facilitator/Instructional Resource Teacher. However, Fieldcrest E.S. continued to act as “home base” for professional development workshops, including demonstration classrooms. The demonstration classrooms served as examples where teachers shared their learning with other teachers, showing BM lessons in action. In 2015, Kristen was appointed vice-principal at Ernest ­Cumberland Elementary School. During this time, she continued her involvement in BM. In 2015, the Canadian Education Association (CEA) acknowledged Fieldcrest E.S. for the school’s BM program with an Honorable Mention for the Ken Spencer Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.

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Although the leadership development was obvious within the core PKE team, a model for “distributive leadership” was a central principle guiding the BM program. The PKE leader explained the team’s vision for growing teacher leadership beyond the core team: So what we realized is for this to continue to grow and for each of us to grow in some of our own ways and step back from Balanced Math, we need to build more system leaders. We had 18 schools involved in that last year. What happened is the mentors were selected because they were teachers that had already been part of the learning with us through Balanced Math, and they had shown a real keen interest, had some success in their class, and were quite excited about the framework. As the BM program expanded, the project team assumed a multi-tiered approach to distributed leadership through mentor programs. The project team’s approach to distributive leadership resulted in several professional learning opportunities. While the two-day BM sessions were a part of this approach, the project team also conducted training and facilitation to foster leadership skills in teacher mentors. Teachers developed training modules that could be used district-wide. Superintendent Simpson described the project team’s approach to developing mentorship beyond their own school by going to other schools “depending on who volunteered across the board.” She also noted that, “The element of choice is a key guiding principle in all professional learning plans.”

Knowledge Exchange Knowledge exchange was evident for teachers within their own schools, nearby schools, and their own school district. In most instances, other teachers were the audience for knowledge sharing activities. The core PKE claimed to share their TLLP-related learning or practice predominantly across nearby schools or families of schools and within their own school district. Beyond the school district, the PKE team shared their work during presentations at conferences such as the Ontario Association for Mathematics Education (OAME) and Connect, a national conference for learning and technology. The primary knowledge exchange method occurred through the district’s BM professional development workshops and sessions for teachers from the 18 participating schools. The PKE team led facilitation training for mentors and designed sessions where mentors collaborated to create a BM digital tool kit to use and share with colleagues back in their home schools. The use of apps, including Google Apps for Education (Google Classroom, Forms, Sheets, Docs) was embedded in these training and planning sessions. The PKE team used a variety of approaches to encourage teacher mentors to share their learning during Professional Activity days in their school or “Lunch and Learns.” Digital platforms were used to share the learning. Other means of sharing

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were occurring through broader networks such as Teach Ontario, an online platform for teachers developed by the public broadcaster Television Ontario (TVO). Superintendent Simpson explained the use of technology was an essential part of engaging teachers across the district: “Leveraging the technology to build community and create community was something else that we really focused on.” Additionally, the project team shared their learning using online methods such as a Wikispace which was used originally during the TLLP and then Google Drive throughout the PKE to highlight a variety of instructional strategies and resources linked to the school district’s instructional practices. The team observed that they had much success with their TLLP Wikispace, which was being accessed provincewide by approximately 100 teachers and administrators at the time of the case study research. Since the creation of the Google folders and the team’s presentations at the 2015 Connect and OAME conferences, many more teachers district- and province-wide have been able to access the BM resources. These resources include videos, sample rotations, learning goals and success criteria, assessment ideas, tip sheets, and student work. Furthermore, resources have been curated on Pinterest and shared under the BM heading. Teachers are now encouraged to share their learning through the Twitter hashtag #balancedmath and by sharing rotations and resources which will be uploaded into the Google Drive folders. The materials and resources created and shared by the PKE team, teacher ­mentors and other SCDSB educators are available at the links below: Websites: TLLP/PKE Balanced Mathematics Program Page BM Resources http://bit.ly/balancedmath http://tllpbalancedmath.wikispaces.com/ http://www.pinterest.com/prd2bcdn77/balanced-math-resources/ Videos: Introduction to Balanced Math http://bit.ly/BalancedMath Math Games and Math Facts http://bit.ly/BalancedMathGamesFactsvideo Independent Problem Solving http://bit.ly/BalancedMathIndependentPSvideo Shared Problem Solving http://bit.ly/BalancedMathSharedPSvideo Guided Math http://bit.ly/BalancedMathGuidedvideo Math Journal http://bit.ly/BalancedMathJournalvideo

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Text: Lee Sparling’s Balanced Math http://www.teacheasy.net/c378000396p17673259.2.html The PKE team encouraged teachers and teacher mentors to use a Balanced Math hashtag on Twitter, #balancedmath. The PKE project leader described the use of Twitter as a tool for increasing engagement and building capacity across the school district: We were using Storify to capture and share student and teacher learning stories. If you go back to that hashtag, we had Kindergarten to Grade 8 classroom teachers and kids tweeting out what they were doing for Balanced Math. Our goal was to, again, not only build capacity within our Board, but also to share that out beyond our Board… to share our learning and to get ideas from others. The PKE team saw Twitter as a means of supplementing the other approaches being used to facilitate the use of BM across the school district. The PKE team also engaged students in kindergarten to Grade 1 classes in the use of Twitter and other technological approaches to support knowledge sharing among the students. Using a program called Easy Blogger Junior, teachers gave students an open journal question to record responses either by video or in written form. In some cases, students would audio record their description of solving the math problem. In other cases, students wrote blogs in their math journals describing their thinking about particular math problems. The PKE project leader believed that through these programs, students were able to “make their math thinking visible.”

Impact and Outcomes The PKE project team reported on classroom impacts based on observational data. These included improved student engagement in math, strengthened differentiated instructional practice, greater confidence and capacity for teacher math instruction, and a wider integration of technology in the classroom. A school principal described the impact of BM on the students, drawing a connection between student abilities and their perceptions about learning math: The impact in terms of Balanced Math on the kids has been huge. They have developed a sense of confidence in their ability in numeracy, which is huge. They’ve developed an enthusiasm to do Balanced Math… I mean you hear kids asking whether they are going to have Balanced Math in that day and get to do the activities on that particular day, the activities and the centers and obviously numeracy is a focus in the province right now and to have kids that motivated to do math is always a good thing. I personally believe there

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is a little bit of a correlation between a student’s belief in their ability to do something and their actual performance of that. So having them believe that they can do well in math is translating into their achievement scores. As evidenced by the principal’s perspective on the impacts of BM, the program’s impact moves beyond what was necessarily measurable in terms of test scores. Overall, teachers reported high levels of student engagement in math learning with BM activities. Interviewees also reported high levels of engagement in schools participating in the BM program. The principal of Fieldcrest E.S., David Brownlee, commented on the culture in the school during BM’s initial implementation: Kids are engaged. Teachers are engaged. When there’s an engaged staff, there’s a momentum in the school—not only for BM but everywhere else. It’s a lot more enjoyable to come into work when there’s motivated staff. Superintendent Simpson echoed similar sentiments about the impact of BM on student learning, engagement, and achievement: It’s fun, and that’s what I hear from kids over and over again, ‘This is so fun, I love math.’ They don’t even want to go outside when it’s a nutrition break. They want to keep playing. They’re just happy and that’s just a joy to see when you are visiting classrooms and you’re seeing kids engaged in math and having fun. And we know from the EQAO (Ontario provincial student achievement tests), and report card data from the participating schools… that there seems to be an improvement in student achievement when the strategy is implemented, as well. So they are not only enjoying math, but they are actually learning it more effectively. Several teachers expressed similar views about the BM PKE benefiting student interest and engagement. Since 2013, the PKE project team has used the results of various data sources, including surveys, provincial and local student achievement results, and evaluation forms and feedback from teachers participating in the BM professional development activities to learn about impacts and inform next steps. The project leader cited successes such as the widespread use of practical resources, including “Bump it Up” boards, a strategy for encouraging students to move up a level as part of the four assessment stages (e.g. levels 1 to 4). Furthermore, the project team pointed to the three-part lesson as being essential to teaching practice where BM supplements and supports consolidation of the existing math program. Many teacher interviewees expressed feeling more comfortable with their three-part lessons because of the BM professional development and supports. The PKE project leader believed that the impact lies in seeing evidence that the BM program is strengthening existing teaching practice and student learning outcomes.

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Furthermore, interviewees expounded on the program’s ability to build teacher capacity through the gradual release of responsibility, and an increased sense of ownership over classroom resources and practice. Teacher participants called BM PD sessions “practical.” Teachers pointed to the immediate applicability and usefulness of resources provided. These resources include a binder with rubrics and Blackline Masters (reproducible handouts), links to Apps, Pinterest and the Wikispace. Superintendent Simpson noted that the professional development offered through the BM PKE was different because it encourages innovation and is teacher-driven, in alignment with the department’s intentional focus on innovation. When it comes to understanding teacher collaboration, Superintendent Simpson also reported that they have gathered informal feedback from teachers about their experience with BM and mentorship. She acknowledged that although they have not conducted formal assessments, the informal feedback was useful: So, we have not done any attitudinal work around their pre- and postexperience, not formally, but the informal feedback that we have had from teachers is how wonderful it is to be able to work with other teachers, how wonderful to have a mentor, how wonderful to have somebody to connect with, to talk to about my math programming in a very public, open way and I think that’s to be celebrated, because too often it’s a closed door. In this way, mentorship was a key component of teacher collaboration in the math programming. Teachers reported positive feedback about the opportunity to share and learn with a mentor. The program fills an important need, where math is known to be a priority area for development in the province of Ontario. The majority of teachers identified Guided Math a means of supporting their students who benefit from small-group, focused instruction. Some teachers have worked with gifted students in the classroom to help with planning math rotations. Participating teachers identified other contributing success factors as the project team’s ability to be approachable, accessible and available to support teachers whenever they need it. Technology continues to play a significant role in the BM program implementation for students, teachers, and schools. However, some teachers reported limitations in the availability of technology resources (e.g. student to iPad ratio). Although technology is often leveraged to support student achievement, there are many opportunities to facilitate a BM program without technology. The program is flexible based on the needs of the students and resources available. Time was also cited as another challenge faced by many teachers trying to balance their math program with regular instruction. As a whole the main impacts and outcomes of BM were evident in reported high levels of student engagement in math, evidence of increased student math achievement scores, the development of practical math resources and strategies, and increased teacher collaboration.

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Finally, the BM program continues to expand. As of the 2015–16 school year, the SCDSB has engaged in talks with at least two other school districts interested in using the BM program.

Sustainability Measuring long-term impacts and ensuring program sustainability are key areas that require development. However, to date there have been three primary factors which supported BM’s sustainability: Ministry funding, school district support, and teacher leadership. First, the PKE team acknowledged that the TLLP and PKE funding from the Ministry not only enabled the BM program to exist, but also to span kindergarten to Grade 9 schools across the district. The wider reach, which also includes some secondary schools, allows for program consistency between different grade levels. Second, the SCDSB has integrated the BM program into the Board Learning Plan. Superintendent Simpson explained that “We’ve called it a Board Learning Plan because we are intentional about growing a culture of learning and in that Board Learning Plan, BM is an option for schools to choose, and it’s an interactive plan.” As part of this integration, the district has funded BM as a professional learning opportunity available for teachers to select. The integration of the BM option is one way that the district aims to support program sustainability. Third, the models of distributive leadership and mentorship are keys to ensuring sustainability. Because leadership development occurred beyond the PKE team, it made it easier to build on the program’s strengths, even beyond the inevitable changes in roles and responsibilities amongst staff. In particular, the emphasis on building teacher mentors encouraged the spread and reach of the program in schools across the district. While the above factors contribute to sustainability, ongoing support is required in order to ensure the BM program’s implementation and consistency of practice across the district.

Conclusions from the Case Study In sum, the BM PKE at the SCDSB provides a model of collaboration, teacher leadership, and mentorship with many key ingredients that can contribute to future success. The use of technology was noted throughout the sharing and the learning sessions, ranging from the early use Wikispaces to growth through Google Apps for Education, iPads, videos, and other digital tools. With strong support from district leadership, the BM program has made inroads throughout its schools, becoming supported by the Board Learning Plan. The BM program exemplifies leadership and collaboration at every level: student, teacher, principal, parent, and school board. The flexibility and adaptability of the BM program to meet diverse student needs is a significant contributor to its success. Another key factor is the collaborative nature of the PKE model of learning and sharing.

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The SCDSB seeks innovative approaches to leveraging digital resources to engage students and improve learning. The team continues to integrate new learning and technologies as they become available to support student achievement in mathematics and to integrate the best practices of BM into the play-based classroom.

figure 5.1  Lessons Learned: Teachers’ Knowledge ­Exchange and Sharing of Practices through the tllp 1. Teachers can be the leaders and mobilizers of interactive (co-)development and sharing of knowledge and practices. 2. While TLLP involves teacher-led change, system supports are helpful for providing training, resources, and access to online and in-person opportunities to facilitate mobilizing knowledge more widely. 3. Sharing knowledge requires development for: individuals making their tacit knowledge explicit and de-privatizing practices; the formation of teacher-initiated groups working as teams and to share knowledge among and between other groups of teachers; and the development of relationships and interactions for professional networks that extend knowledge and practices beyond individual classrooms and schools. 4. Approaches to knowledge exchange involve attention to collaboration for professional learning and to communication to share information in ­person, online, and in print. 5. The substance of knowledge exchange counts and benefits from the ­sharing of quality content integrated into actionable resources.

6 What We Have Learned So Far

We began our research for the TLLP by asking the question: “If experienced teachers were supported to be leaders of learning—their own learning, the professional learning of other teachers, and their students’ learning—what would these teacher leaders do and what would be the challenges and benefits?” (Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2013, p. 1). From our initial TLLP research, we concluded: The evidence is clear: these teacher leaders will do amazing things; they will initiate, innovate, implement and share a wide range of projects which can develop collaborative professional learning, improve practice and support student learning; they will experience success in tangible outcomes—such as changes in professional practice for instruction and assessment—and also importantly in the sometimes immeasurable benefits of being empowered, enabled and valued; they will navigate personal, interpersonal and practical challenges as their leadership is tested and grows; they will learn how to collaborate and share to spread knowledge and sustain improvements in practices; and they will demonstrate the professional, educational and financial value of self-directed, teacher-led innovative and effective practices. (Campbell, Lieberman, and Yashkina, 2013, p. 52) Now, after working with nine cohorts of teachers totaling 4,300 educators and 840 professional development projects, our evidence and experiences of engaging with the TLLP further our enthusiasm and deep appreciation for this approach to valuing and supporting teachers’ professional learning, leadership, and knowledge exchange. We have learned a great deal about what teachers learn, what they come to know about leadership, and how they share their knowledge with their peers inside and outside their school when they are in charge of professional development of, by, and for teachers. Our evidence is clear that there are strong benefits from TLLP for teachers’ knowledge, skills, and practices, and also for a wider group

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of adults engaged in the learning and practices from TLLP projects. Importantly, students’ engagement, attitudes, behavior, and learning improve also. We have enough data to identify main themes that emerge across the work of these teachers. These themes help us to see not only the strength of the TLLP specifically, but also the complex nature and wider lessons for professional development organized in this way. Enabling teachers to choose, organize, and lead professional development of, by, and for teachers turns out to create the possibilities of many positive themes about learning, leading, collaborating, sharing, spreading, and sustaining new knowledge, skills, and practices. Our evidence overwhelmingly shows the power of teachers leading their own and other teachers’ professional learning and sharing their knowledge and practices to support wider learning and improvement across education systems. These findings do not deny the role and importance of the knowledge of researchers, educators, leaders, and experts from outside the classroom; they do, however, demonstrate the kind of evidence developed and applied when learning starts with those who do the work of teaching and is embedded in the development of, with, and by teachers.

Learning from the TLLP We highlight five key lessons learned from the TLLP for approaches to a new model of professional development.

1. Prioritizing teachers’ learning and leadership of, by, and for teachers requires shifts in the substance and style of policy-making and educational changes for teachers’ work The policy emphasis on teachers and teaching has been a mixed blessing. Recognizing, respecting, and valuing the importance of teachers is vital; however, attempts to design and mandate reforms to teachers’ work by governments acting independently of a serious collaboration and engagement with the teaching profession is inappropriate and ineffective. Through the TLLP, we learn the importance of governments, the teaching profession, teachers, and district and school leaders working together to develop a collaborative professionalism in which the design and implementation of educational improvement is shared and owned. Teachers—and other educators—need to be enabled as the agents in the middle of action for educational equity and excellence. Teacher leadership encompasses opportunities for formal leadership and importantly the emergence of informal leadership of professional learning, knowledge, and practices where leadership is learned by doing leadership!

2. Professional collaboration benefits from appropriate partnerships and an enabling system with conditions and support for teachers’ learning and leadership From the chaos of a previous government hostile to teachers and to the p­ ublic sector, the new government elected from 2003 onwards put in place a series of

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changes to engage professionals as partners in educational improvement. Over time, trust grew as did the relationships between those who created the policies and those who did the work of teaching. Through a Working Table on Teacher Development, the Ministry, OTF, and affiliate unions became now collaborators in designing improvement strategies and partners in a variety of programs of which TLLP stands now in its tenth year. Nevertheless, it requires constant and vigilant attention to ensure continued mutual support and ongoing professional working relationships. While the TLLP projects are teacher-led, system supports at the national/state/ provincial level and in districts and schools are important for providing an enabling culture and infrastructure for teachers’ professional and leadership development and knowledge mobilization. Supports for doing the work of a TLLP project come from both the Ministry and the OTF, from the initial design of a TLLP informed by research on appropriate and effective professional learning, through to the detail of the applications, proposals, and supports provided for TLLP teacher leaders ­during and beyond their projects. Through training events, online networking, and the TLLP community, teachers learn quickly from others who have had proposals accepted, but they also have both the Ministry and the OTF who are there to help in any way that they can. So TLLP differs from many development projects as there is always a system-level team to help teachers when needed. This provides teachers with a strong sense of being in a community to support them in any way possible or necessary. Teachers also know and see that both the Ministry and OTF work hand-in-hand to make the program work. This kind of commitment on the part of the program provincial partners is telling the teachers that both the policy-makers and their peers have tremendous confidence in them to organize and lead important learning work and suggesting that they are in it all together. Locally, TLLP projects—and particularly the larger PKE projects intended to share at a larger scale—benefit from the active support and engagement of school and district leaders. This kind of system partnership, support, and commitment are rare (if not unique), but we believe are essential in professional development programs.

3. Valuing and supporting teachers taking charge of their own ­professional learning is integral TLLP recognizes teachers as leaders of their own professional development and supports them in setting their own learning goals and experimenting with their own ideas, evidence, and practices. Teachers select a priority topic that they are passionate about, connected also to educational priorities in the wider education system and their school and to their students’ particular needs. Giving teachers a choice in their professional development is powerful, as it makes the content and the process of learning more relevant and context-sensitive. Twenty-first century skills of inquiry, digital citizenship, and higher-order and ­critical thinking all have become a part of TLLP as teachers have chosen a variety of learning tools in their professional development projects. It appears to make a

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difference when teachers themselves decide to take risks, rather than being told from the outside that they must. Here teachers get an opportunity to develop new skills with their peers, learning and teaching together, making mistakes, picking up the pieces, and putting things back together again often in innovative and effective ways. This kind of freedom gives teachers strength and confidence to try new areas of learning, new tools, and new ways of thinking, pushing themselves, rather than being pushed from the outside. Innovative approaches to teachers’ professional learning also benefits students engaging in new, innovative, and sometimes exciting projects with opportunities for students to inquire, to think critically about complex problems, and for students to also become leaders of learning—all of these new ideas are being tried in TLLP as professional and collaborative learning is taking the stage. There is a lot of evidence that much professional development organized and delivered in a more traditional way—from the outside—is often not successful precisely because it might not be what is needed, might have too little support, and often does not get practiced long enough to actually change teacher practice even when it is a good and needed idea. On the other hand, professional development organized with teachers at the helm appears to provide a big impetus for improvement in teacher knowledge, skill, and practice, as our research suggests. The TLLP embodies research-informed principles of effective professional learning and expands these practices through the actions of system leaders and teacher ­leaders working together.

4. Developing teachers as leaders of their peers’ learning and ­educational improvements is vital In addition to developing teachers’ professional knowledge base and improving teaching practices, TLLP creates conditions for developing teachers’ leadership capacity. What we learn from TLLP is that when teachers volunteer to lead a project, it is suggested that they work with others, manage money and time, and implement some kind of professional development; they learn leadership by doing leadership in authentic ways rather than through imposed programs or formalized responsibilities. Teacher leaders in the TLLP immediately find themselves in a situation where they go public with their own teaching, try out new ways of thinking about teaching and learning, learn to build a team and share their leadership, manage a project, deal with tension and conflict when problems arise, keep everyone moving, learning, and engaged as the work moves forward. TLLP members are also expected to share their learning and practice outside of their team, so they learn how to present their ideas to strangers, how to prepare and conduct workshops, how to train and mentor other teachers, how to write and engage with online communities, and how to build connections and expand their networks. Working through the discomfort of change has been studied and written about for years (Deutsch, 2000; Lieberman, 1988; Talbert, 2010; Sarason, 1971). The new challenges of leading a TLLP project, the lessons of the discomfort

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of change, the tensions of leadership, and the work of resolving these tensions are given a new form for resolution and learning in TLLP. Perhaps the biggest idea repeated in different ways by those who wrote vignettes was the recognition that TLLP allowed (and even encouraged) the idea that working together showed that teachers had different strengths and that working together gave them a tremendous force for change. For TLLP teachers, being leaders and developing a community turned out to be rewarding, at times stressful, but in the end an incredible learning experience.

5. Enabling teachers as developers and mobilizers of actionable knowledge is powerful for sharing and spreading improvements in practices TLLP recognizes teachers as developers and mobilizers of knowledge and provides teachers with a system to support their individual and collective learning for developing and sharing professional knowledge and practices. TLLP believes that, instead of being simply “recipients” of outside expertise, teachers are and should be active learners, researchers, experimenters, and innovators. TLLP encourages teachers to open their classrooms to others and to reflect and learn together. Because the conditions are there for learning, part of the work is figuring out how to get along with others, appreciate each other’s strengths, deepen the work, learn, and share leadership as well as deepen their pedagogical content knowledge. In the process, many teachers learn to trust one another, learn from each other, and build ideas together. Collaboration in TLLP appears to be inherent in providing teachers with a choice of working with others as they work on their own development as well as the development of collective professional knowledge. TLLP helps spread the knowledge and ready-to-use resources developed as part of TLLP projects across Ontario and beyond. In addition to a TLLPorganized sharing event held after the completion of the project and an online space designated for exchange of project-related learning and materials, teachers conduct workshops, develop websites, blog, publish articles, and find multiple other ways to reach vast audiences outside of their classrooms, schools, even country. This knowledge sharing has been an extraordinary addition to what we all expect from professional development as it calls upon the teachers to explain in some way both the processes and the products of their learning. Some teachers become expert speakers, others gain leadership experience which takes them to new positions, and still others begin to use technological tools they have just learned. But perhaps one of the most important ideas is that learning and new knowledge becomes an important public idea nurtured by a teacher or a group of teachers. The combination of professional collaboration, communication in person, online and in-print, and the co-development, sharing and spread of practical resources and products for use in schools and classrooms are powerful methods for knowledge exchange applied to sustainable changes in practices.

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Conclusions With several years of evidence of its success in benefiting learning, leadership, and sharing the knowledge for educators, students, and communities, the TLLP has shown the world a new model of professional development. For teachers seeking to develop their leadership to support other teachers’ ­professional learning and practices, we suggest the importance of: • •

• • •

identifying a priority area of professional practice that they are passionate about improving; considering how they are going to learn to improve their own practice and how they are going to collaborate with others to co-learn and share professional learning; being intentional about how they will develop their leadership practices to engage other teachers in collaborative professional learning and sharing of practices; contributing to collaborative professional learning activities and seeking to connect with and expand their networks (in person and online); utilizing practical resources to support sharing, spread, and implementation of new practices.

However, while TLLP is teacher-led, it is not about isolated or individualized teacher autonomy. TLLP is part of a wider system for teachers’ collective and collaborative professional development. The TLLP model makes some important assumptions that are highly important for its success and for other education systems—countries, states/provinces, districts—seeking to create a similar professional development model. These assumptions and related principles and practices are: •

•

•

•

•

respect, genuine collaboration, and open communication between the organized teaching profession and the policy making group are essential, including the need for open communication for continuous development of supports for teachers’ professional learning. approaches to designing and developing professional learning and teacher leadership benefit from being based on research-informed principles, policy and practice partnerships, and realistic approaches that integrate and continue to adapt from the experiences of teachers over time. a shared strong belief that organizing the “conditions for learning” is important for providing teachers with a unique opportunity to engage in professional development in which they have the choice, freedom, and opportunity to ­create the ideas and lead the project is vital. opportunities and encouragement for teacher-led professional development that is connected to system or school goals and students’ needs are important at system, district, and school levels, as well as through teacher-led networks. system-level support is required to enable teacher-led professional development, particularly the allocation of budget, practical support for teacher l­eaders, training, and access to in-person and online resources and networking.

What We Have Learned So Far  127  

•

•

•

•

system and school conditions need to be cultivated to enable teachers to learn leadership by doing leadership with an emphasis on developing project ­management, collaboration, and interpersonal skills. district and school leaders are important in facilitating, enabling, and engaging in a school culture, routines, and experiences that value, support, and share teachers’ individual and collaborative professional learning to benefit changes in practices and students’ learning outcomes. experienced teachers benefit from opportunities to lead their own and their peers’ learning through informal teacher leadership of projects, teams, and practices rather than formally designated or distributed organizational responsibilities. teachers can, with support, de-privatize their practice, co-develop new knowledge, skills, and practice, and commit to sharing, spreading, and sustaining this knowledge and practices through collaboration, communication, and development of products/resources.

TLLP is a powerful, purposeful, and professional way for teachers to grow, learn, and lead! We are grateful for the amazing opportunity to be involved in co-learning with all involved in the TLLP. Hopefully the lessons learned here will encourage government policy-makers, union leaders, district administrators, school principals, and teachers to organize the conditions for learning that have shown tremendous power and participation of teachers as well as important lessons in teacher leadership and collaboration that have enabled widespread professional development of, by, and for teachers. Our goal in writing this book was not only to provide evidence from the TLLP. We also sought to provide big ideas and lessons to support educators, policy makers, and researchers seeking to improve knowledge and practices for educational improvement. The power of TLLP involves collaboration between and among educators, policy makers, researchers, and other partners focused on enabling teachers’ professional learning and leadership for developing and sharing improvements in knowledge, skills, and practices with benefits for students’ learning and success. When educators’, policy makers’, and researchers’ voices are heard and when these groups learn to work together, there is tremendous potential for the good of students and the professionalization of teaching.

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Index

aboriginal education 40, 55–7 action research 40 Apple Care 111 Apple Configurator software 53 Apple TV 38 Art Smart blog 93 autistic students 53–4 Balanced Math 110 blog 28, 57, 65, 92 Board Learning Plan 119 BYOD policy 57 Canadian Education Association (CEA) 113 Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario (CDSBEO) 77, 81, 82 Change Capacity Decade 14 collaboration 21–31; administrator reinvention of roles 29; benefit of 122–3; best educational experience for students 28; changing political context 21; characteristics of effective professional learning 25; core principles of TLLP 28–9; disputes 22; educational context 21–2; effective professional learning, characteristics of 25–6; essential partnership 30; 4C model 52; goals 37; history 22; “human capital” 24; importance of working as a team 29; instructional leaders in schools 29; lessons learned 30, 31; model of 119; new government 22–4; online environment 40; professional development program, creation of 25–6; project support 27–8;

publicly funded school system 22; respect for teacher professionalism 24; student population 21–2; teacher leadership 63–4; theory of action, elements of 23; “truism” in education 28; Working Table on Teacher Development 24; writing a proposal 27 collaborative learning 35, 39–40 complexities of teaching 14 CORE tasks 52 Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE) 12 de-privatizing of practices 91 digital citizenship 56 distributive leadership, model for 114, 119 DLLK (Through their Eyes: Documenting literacy and learning in kindergarten project) 97; impacts and outcomes 102; shared learning, approach to 98; workshops 104 documentations of student learning 97 domains of teacher leadership 16 Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) 96 Easy Blogger Junior 116 Education Quality and Accountability Office 43 English Language Learners 52 ePortfolios 97 First Way of state support and professional freedom 6 “flip the system,” approach to 13, 60

138  Index

4C model of collaboration 52 Four Ways of educational change 6 French immersion, oral language and phonological awareness in 54–5 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers 22

collaboration 122–3; teacher leadership 68; teacher learning 46–7, 57; teachers taking charge of their own professional learning 123–4 Locally Developed/Workplace Pathway 80

Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) 12, 46 “grassroots leadership” 65 “human capital” 24

Math Fairs (elementary school) 43 Math skills: core 78; real life 80 Meaning Decade 14 Mentoring Moments NING 28 Moodle LMS 45

“if–then” statement 71 Implementation Decade 14 “individually gifted pedagogues,” teachers as 88 inquiry-based learning 41 iPads 38, 53, 55

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) 15 National Writing Project (NWP) 16 network flexibility 15 networking skills 64 New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) 24

job-embedded learning 15, 34–5

online collaborative environment 40 Ontario Association for Mathematics Education (OAME) 114 Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF) 1; infrastructure 87; partnership 21, 26; provincial interviewee 60, 61, 86; website 3

Ken Spencer Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning 113 knowledge exchange 85–120; Balanced Math 110; Board Learning Plan 119; challenges and benefits 94; communication 91; de-privatizing of practices 91; developing and sharing knowledge 88–90; distributive leadership, model for 114, 119; documentations of student learning 97; ePortfolios 97; essential element of 89; improved practices 90–2; “individually gifted pedagogues,” teachers as 88; knowledge to action processes 85–6; lessons learned 95; pedagogical leadership 87; quality content 92–4; research-to-practice, oneway relationship of 85; “social capital” 89; social media 91; special assignment teachers 98; system support 86–8; tacit knowledge 88; TLLP project examples 95–115 Leadership from the Middle (LftM) 12 Leadership Skills for Classroom Teachers training session 27, 39, 43 Learning Management System (LMS) platform 45 lessons learned 121–7; collaboration 30, 31; developing teachers’ leadership capacity 124–5; enabling teachers as developers and mobilizers of actionable knowledge 125; knowledge exchange 95; policies and practices 18–19; prioritizing teachers’ learning and leadership 122; professional

pedagogical leadership 87 Personal and Professional Learning Networks (P²LN) 90 policies and practices 5–19; area of debate 11; Change Capacity Decade 14; collaborative professionalism 11–13; complexities of teaching 14; development 13–16; domains of teacher leadership 16; educational change 6–11; embedding professional learning in practice 15; “flip the system,” approach to 13; Four Ways of educational change 6; growth of teacher leadership as a concept 16–18; Implementation Decade 14; “inside writing” 18; job-embedded learning 15; Leadership from the Middle 12; lessons learned 18–19; Meaning Decade 14; network flexibility 15; opposing views 13; partners 5; professional capital 12; School Effectiveness Research 7; social practices 16–17; system leadership 11; teacher effectiveness, key lessons of 10; “theories in use” 14; “umbrella phrase” 18; “Whole System” educational improvement 9 professional capital 12, 24 Professional Development (PD) sessions 70

Index  139  

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 9 project examples: career cruising and the use of the educational portfolio 49–50; costs 36; family of schools collaborates to make problem-solving visible in transitional math classrooms 52–3; integrating iPads and SAMR into secondary classrooms to engage aboriginal students and applied-level boys 55–7; linking boys’ literacy achievement and interactive white board technology 49; Matter U Matter 50–1; oral language and phonological awareness in French immersion early years 54–5; parents as partners (volunteer literacy program) 48; PKE case studies 95–115; teaching leadership 68–82; teaching and learning of measurement 47–8; using Apple iPads and iPod Touches to enhance the learning of autistic students 53–4; using the arts to address issues of social justice, equity, and inclusive education 51–2; vignette writing 68–9 Provincial Knowledge Exchange (PKE) funding 2, 93 Renfrew County Catholic District School Board (RCDDSB) 96 research-to-practice, one-way relationship of 85 research questions 3 SAMR model 56 School College Work Initiative (SCWI) 81 School Effectiveness Research (SER) 7 Second Way 6, 7 Sharing the Learning Summit 36 SMART Boards™ 38 “social capital” 89 social media 91 special assignment teachers (SPATs) 98, 100 Special Education Resource Teacher (SERT) 111 SSP (School Success Plan) 74 student learning: benefits 42–4; documentations of 97; impact of BM on 117; teachers improving 10, 35 system leadership 11 teacher effectiveness, key lessons of 10 teacher leadership 59–83; benefits of learning leadership 65–6; challenges 67; collaboration 63–4; conditions

for learning leadership 67–8; connection between leadership and community 63; definition 60; distributed leadership 60; diversity of teacher-led learning 61; experiences 62; “flip the system,” approach to 60; “if–then” statement 71; leadership “know how” 64–5; lessons learned 68; Locally Developed/ Workplace Pathway 80; networking skills 64; observations 71–2; sharing leadership 64; staff lessons learned 72–3; team significance 64; technology 65; TLLP project examples 68–82; unexpected learning 63; vignettes 62 teacher learning 33–57; action research 40; benefits 40–2; BYOD policy 57; collaborative learning 35; CORE tasks 52; empowerment 47; inquirybased learning 41; job-embedded learning 34–5; Learning Management System platform 45; lessons learned 46–7, 57; necessary supports 35–6; online collaborative environment 40; professional development goals 37–8; professional learning activities 39; questions 52; SAMR model 56; Sharing the Learning Summit 36; student learning benefits 42–4; sustaining innovation and 44–7; Teacher Math Quest Planning Teams 39; teacherstudent connections 41; teacher voice 33–4; teaching collaborative learning 39–40; technology 38, 40; TLLP projects 36–7, 47–57 Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP), projects: assumptions 126; career cruising and the use of the educational portfolio 49–50; challenges of 66–7; commitment 123; core principles 28–9; costs 36; description 1–3; de-privatizing of practices 91; description of 1; family of schools collaborates to make problem-solving visible in transitional math classrooms 52–3; force for change 125; integrating iPads and SAMR into secondary classrooms to engage aboriginal students and applied-level boys 55–7; introduction to 1–4; key goal of 37; lessons learned 18, 19, 122; linking boys’ literacy achievement and interactive white board technology 49; Matter U Matter 50–1; oral language and phonological awareness in French immersion early years 54–5; parents as partners (volunteer literacy program) 48;

140  Index

partnerships 26; PKE case studies 95–115; Program Guideline 34; projects 2, 27, 36, 47; research 3–4, 121; surveys 4; teacher learning 36–7, 47–57; teaching leadership 68–82; teaching and learning of measurement 47–8; uniqueness of 1; using Apple iPads and iPod Touches to enhance the learning of autistic students 53–4; using the arts to address issues of social justice, equity, and inclusive education 51–2; vignette writing 68–9 Teacher Math Buddies 39 Teacher Math Quest Planning Teams 39

teacher-student connections 41 team significance 64 Television Ontario (TVO) 90 Third Way of educational change 6 “truism” in education 28 Twitter feed 28, 65, 116 vignettes 62, 68 Volunteers Supporting Literacy Learning program 48 “Whole System” educational change 9 Working Table on Teacher Development 24, 123