My+Context

The seeds for my project grew out of a team teaching situation in which I worked in 2008. Throughout that year, I built a strong and trusting relationship with my teaching partner. In term 3, an email from my Principal went out to all staff about finalising the Professional Review Process. A requirement of this process was to complete a peer observation. It became clear that neither of us had completed this, although we had watched each other teach on a daily basis. We felt we had not strategically approached anyone to improve our practices. This led to us quickly finding someone to complete the peer observation and completing the required documentation. As I reflect on this incident now and through my informal professional discussions with staff from other schools, it seems common practice to just complete a process (the minimal requirement - a formality only) rather than undertaking any meaningful professional development.

I also reflected that as teachers we conduct ‘conventional’ professional development experiences such as workshops etc with no real follow up or feedback. Corcoran (1999) suggested that “workshops may be valuable for promoting awareness of new practices or curricula and provide opportunities for teachers to network and share but there is little evidence of outcomes of the process”. Miller (1995) takes this idea further and states that “the old model of staff development survives in a world where everything else has changed”. I feel these sentiments sum up the way we do things currently at my school.

Taking this further and looking at the School Level Report, I believe the low staff morale data clearly demonstrates that what we currently are doing does not value reflection and teacher development highly enough. It is my contention that our school culture has evolved in this way for a variety of reasons. Firstly, my school has a history of a really stable long term staff. While there are many benefits to stability, a side effect has been that the experienced teachers do not feel the need to share their practices. Secondly, the school is housed in a heritage listed building which means there are limited facilities for team teaching. The result is that over time the culture of the school has became extremely insular. Staff work in isolation and while data analysis was considered a high priority, the insular culture has been allowed to continue and grow. In fact, other than one peer observation per year there is no expectation for staff to share or observe practice.

The staff profile of the school has changed dramatically in the past four years, including a change of Principal, however the insular and individual culture has remained. This year 20% of our classroom teaching staff are graduates. I feel they are missing valuable support and development that we should be offering them in their formative years. As Beatty stated, “Collaborative reflective practice is relational, authentic and culture building. It is the guts of school improvement, at every level. We need to learn to do this. We need to learn to do it regularly, and to do it well, as a natural part of our professional day” (Brenda Beatty, 2009).