#rED15 – Information, inspiration and empowerment!

When I tell people that I will be spending my Saturday at ‘yet another education conference’, I tend to get one of two responses.  Either people tell me they are jealous and would love to hear about it on my return or I get mocked.  So every now and then I wonder why I do it.  Why give up precious time, my time, to go and think about school?  And then I go to #rED15 and I feel inspired by the speakers.  And my brain starts imagining all of the great things we can do.  And I meet people who think the things that I think.  And I learn so much, and meet so many incredible educators that it is all worth it.  And then I start looking for the next one.

But before I start looking for the next one, a moment please just to reflect on this one.  Because #rED15 might be the best Research Ed event I have attended yet.  I do not know how Helene and Tom do it but every time they exceed my expectations.  As always, the worst thing about the conference was the impossibility of choosing the right sessions because there were so many good ones to choose from.  Although there are some I am disappointed I missed (Eric Kalenze and Claire Waghorn especially), all of the sessions I attended were great. So here’s a little summary of key points of some of the sessions and some personal takeaways.

I have read a lot of Laura McInerney’s work on twitter so thought I would take the opportunity to hear her speak – and she is brilliant.  Laura spoke about psychological research with a particular focus on social psychology and research into group dynamics.  The rationale for this was clear – much of the research banded about for teachers finds its basis in cognitive psychology, where studies and research are conducted on individuals.  Whilst this research is of course valuable, it has its limits for teachers because teachers do not teach individuals, they teach classes and groups.  Therefore the findings of cognitive research will often be negated by what we know about the behaviour of people in groups.  Laura started off by presenting three experiments we should all be familiar with (fortunately I was).  In summary these studies teach us that when people change their minds/conform to the behaviour of others, it is either because they don’t want to look stupid or think they might be wrong (important implications for the classroom environment).  We also learned that coackroaches and people perform better when being watched by others (but only on simple or practical tasks) and that group identity and formation can be a powerful thing, introducing competition will almost certainly encourage a group to work together BUT it can also go a bit hinky (particularly if knife-based rewards are offered) leading to conflict and resentment.  Food for thought when thinking about group work scenarios (which Laura also went on to discuss later on in the session).  The next bit of Laura’s presentation was quite frankly mind-changing.  Laura explained that there are six sources of power for a person to hold, whoever in the classroom holds these powers also holds the authority and control in the situation.  In a nutshell, these powers are the power to reward, the power to punish, the power of legitimate responsibility, the power of the expert, the power of reverence and informational power.  So last year, when I as an Assistant Head and RE teacher was asked to teach a GCSE year 11 English class, I was in an interesting position.  I had the legitimate authority bit (job titles will do that) but being year 11 they questioned whether I had the knowledge (informational power) and whilst they believed I had superior skills to them (expert), I was not the person they admired the most (reverence) and although I could reward and punish, the person they admired the most (let’s call him Spike) could reward and punish his peers in a very different way, and honestly his opinion mattered far more than mine. Now I found this particular group of students very difficult.  Very, very difficult.  And I hated how they made me feel – I was an AHT and I could not get these kids.  But now I understand.  It is because I did not have the power.  This teaches me an important lesson as a teacher and as a leader.  If I ask one of my teachers to do something which takes away any of their power bases, I am setting them up to be unsuccessful but worse, I am setting them up to feel like they are not in control in their own classroom.  Ultimately this is why strategies that work for one teacher may not work for another – if a teacher is empowered by a strategy it will be successful, but if they are disempowered, it will be unsuccessful.  I think there are also some lessons to be learned here for classroom management but will maybe save those for another day.  

The next session that I attended was with Frank Cornellisen who talked about the importance of leveraging relationships when developing professional practice.  Frank was incredibly engaging and I cannot hope to do justice to everything he discussed in this summary but there were some really salient points that I hope to act on in my own role. He showed us a typical school hierarchy and then compared this to a teacher’s social reality.  He explained that whilst we may perceive that when teachers need support they would go to SLT, in reality this is not the case.  In fact SLT are least likely to be sought out by teachers seeking advice.  This hidden social reality (where teachers connect with teachers) is where 80% of development is done.  What we need to do is utilise and learn from this social reality and there are three reasons for this.  Firstly we become smarter when we are in a network, particularly when we are in the ‘sweet spot’ (neither isolated nor in the echo chamber).  We need to enable staff to network so that they are working in the ‘sweet spot’.  Secondly we become smarter when we understand the networks – people take a sense of identity or belonging from the network they are part of, by understanding the network, we understand how the person feels and what they need.  Finally we become smarter when we build networks. When teachers have the opportunity to learn from other teachers and engage with research and collaborate with researchers then the solutions teaching needs will be found that much faster.  Frank finished by reminding us of the value of being part of a network – there is immediate value, potential value, applied value, realised value but most importantly, transformative value.  So we as leaders need to enable this networking to happen.  Because teachers need it.  

I suspect that my summary of Nick Martin and Claire Hood’s presentation will be far briefer than the impact that the presentation had on me.  They had me at hello when they told us that they achieved a ‘good’ from Oftsed but that they don’t strive to be Ofsted ‘outstanding’ because that isn’t enough, rather to be the best that they can be – exceptional and beyond!  Their session on lesson study left me feeling entirely enthused and excited.  I had the ‘lightbulb’ moment and I cannot thank them enough for that.  They took us through the work they have done on becoming a research engaged school and I liked this a lot.  By their own admission they may have sacrificed high quality research in exchange for high levels of engagement with research and this is how I too am planning to get started so it was reassuring to hear from someone who had made this work.  One of the most refreshing things about their approach was the synergy and coherence to it.  Everything linked together in a way that made sense.  It began with a whole school SEF which informed a departmental SEF. From the departmental SEF, every member of staff then had a target set.  Except instead of a target, the member of staff is encouraged to set a research question that they will research throughout the year through the medium of lesson study.  When it comes to assessing whether or not they have been successful, it is less about ‘yes it worked or no it didn’t’ and more about providing evidence that shows what they have been working on.  It is powerful because every member of staff is doing it.  It is powerful because the use of ungraded lesson observations is used to support the research question throughout the year and it is powerful because it is supported by an appraisal system that embeds the teaching standards and takes account of all elements of teacher performance.  When it comes to evidencing standards in lessons, Ofsted style judgements are gone in favour of a ‘met, not met, good enough to share’ approach.  I was also impressed with the fact that their lesson study programme was true to the best practice I have read about and incorporated student voice – something I would be keen to find out more about.

I finished the day with David McQueen who I have followed on twitter for some time and always wanted to hear speak.  His presentation was perfect for the last session of the day and I took a number of key messages away from it.  He talked about research and his insights on this were important but it was some of his other messages that resonated most with me.  I liked his perception of leadership – he believes that you don’t need a title to lead, if others are empowered by you, you are a leader.  He believes that teachers need to look after themselves and celebrate their successes far more frequently than we do.  He believes that people with titles need to ensure that their staff feel safe and healthy.  He believes that teachers are like conductors and that if we are to manage the children and our peers and the processes around us, we have to start by managing ourselves and that means looking after ourselves.  And just like the conductor, we sometimes need to take a metaphorical bow to the audience and feel rightly proud of our achievements.  He reminded us of the importance of reflecting on our own visions and values (a sentiment echoed by Harry Fletcher-Wood’s superb talk on TeachFirst earlier in the day) and even set us a wee challenge to empower ourselves!  It was the perfect end to an inspiring day.