Facilitating a professional learning session

This module's resources will help you to facilitate a session on the concepts of teaching effectiveness:

There are many ways to use these resources to stimulate teacher discussion about teaching effectiveness. For example, you could begin with the Breeze presentation and support this with the background paper; or work in the opposite direction. Or you may prefer to take the staff through the PowerPoint slides, having first listened to or viewed the Breeze presentation.

The sequence you use will depend on the context in which you introduce the materials. An approach is suggested below.

An approach to running the session

1. Give out the case study to staff.

Ask them to read the two scenarios, then discuss and defend the one they prefer. The point here is that neither approach is more or less effective than the other, because effectiveness depends on content and intention – there is no single appropriate style of teaching. For some students, in relation to some outcomes, Louise is effective. Likewise, so is Len, but for different outcomes and, possibly, for different students.

2. Look at the PowerPoint presentation.

  • You might like to pause for discussion before slide 5, "The style view", and slide 12, "The outcomes approach" so that teachers can anticipate the discussion of problems with the two methods.
  • Remember that these flaws relate to using the approaches (style and outcomes) as a basis for assessing effectiveness. The presentation is not arguing that the approaches (especially the style view) do not offer sound advice. However, sound advice is different from assessing whether teachers are following the advice.
  • The critical point argued here is that the assessment of teaching effectiveness needs to be based on the quality of inquiry into the relationship between the advice and the outcomes for students. You might like to pause before slide 19 so that teachers have the opportunity to derive this conclusion for themselves.

3. Hand out the background paper to staff for follow-up reading.

Extend your knowledge

This material establishes a conceptual basis for thinking about teaching effectiveness, but does not cover how this conceptual approach can be implemented.

If you are interested in taking the ideas introduced here to the implementation stage, the First-time Principals Residential Programme has a workshop on Collecting and Using Information About Teaching Effectiveness, which:

  • discusses the conditions that support the development of an inquiry attitude towards teaching
  • develops a set of productive questions to guide Inquiry 1
  • outlines ways of collecting data and analysing examples of such data
  • discusses the qualities of evidence associated with Inquiry 2.

The aim of the workshop is to help you articulate a clearer conception of teaching effectiveness and to help you enact it.

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