How to engage staff with approaches to learning?

How do you engage staff colleagues with the IB approaches to teaching and approaches to learning?

Whilst the IB approaches to teaching and learning are central to IB pedagogy they may not be foremost in the minds of colleagues who are more concerned about teaching their syllabus and preparing students for assessment. So how do you engage reluctant or skeptical colleagues with the IB approaches to teaching and learning? How do you encourage all colleagues to see the approaches as a vehicle for whole school improvement? How can you encourage colleagues to see the ATLs as a whole-school narrative of how they do teaching and learning in their school?

This page explores how an ATL Coordinator may work with staff to embed the approaches to teaching and learning skills in the Diploma Programme.

Introducing ATL Skills - Advice from ATL Coordinators

How do you introduce ATL skills to teachers. The following pieces of advice were collected from ATL Coordinators.

  • Carry out an ATL Audit – use an appreciative inquiry approach to gather information of where your school is at in embedding the ATL skills.Focus on the general impression of lessons in your school rather than your own specific lessons. You could use the IB's self-reflection tool which can be found on the IB Portal and website to carry out your audit. Then decide what to do next.
  • Identify your champions who are already practicing many of the skills - e.g. Visual Arts teachers and PYP teachers often use many of the ATL skills in organizing the learning of their students.
  • Individually get to know each of your staff and where they are at in using the ATL skills. There could be a high degree of differentiation among staff in the staff room.
  • Work with subject groups and not necessarily whole staff in one go. Different groups will have different starting points and strengths (i.e. a differentiated approach).
  • Prepare some experiential learning opportunities - immersion experiences - e.g. carry out a collaborative inquiry outside the school.
  • Let staff lead professional development wherever possible using a show and share method.
  • Make skills visible (visible thinking). Allow students to highlight the skills that are already using. This makes it authentic. Use protocols such as Photo Montage to collect evidence.
  • Keep training in ATL informal as far as possible. (E.g. unit planners not compulsory). Imposing structures and specific ways of doing things is likely to cause resistance. Use a bottom up model of development if at all possible.
  • Take individual responsibility for modeling ATL skills in the work that you do with staff, using collaborative facilitation methods. Your modeling makes the skills visible.
  • Ask everyone to keep records - you find an organizational way of collecting it (intranet). Use collaborative tools such as padlet.
  • Identify YOUR toolkit of collaborative protocols and strategies you wish staff to practice and use. See the screenshot of one such toolkit printed above. This has been developed by the English College in Prague. This link will take you to the school site (referencing) but will not give you access to their internal resources.

Establishing your ATL principles

Case Study

Consider the following case study from a school in South America.  It raises issues around how to get teaching staff 'on board' with the IB approaches to teaching and learning.

As you read the case study consider key issues that need to be addressed and potential strategies you could use to address them.

The context

The College is a Northern-European school in a South American city.  Students study four languages (Spanish, English, French and German) before taking the IB Diploma in English.  IB results are good in comparison with global averages.  It´s also a happy school with warm student-teacher and teacher-teacher relationships.

The teams

Management – mostly Northern European.  They usually stay for 2-3 years before moving on.

Teachers – mostly South American.  IB Diploma teachers are post-graduate qualified and in their early 20s/30s; Primary and Middle School teachers are less well qualified, older and expensive to replace (and they get paid less).

The problem…

…is Pedagogy.

The management team have a more-or-less explicit model of pedagogy, closely related to the IB´s Approaches to Teaching and Learning: constructivist, collaborative, differentiated, student-centred.  The teachers tend to adopt a more teacher-centered approach, focused on content, knowledge and testing.

Management seek to promote their ideology through professional development activities.  For example, a team from a North European University visits for two days to promote interactive learning, complete with pairs-to-fours, placemats and padlets™.  Teachers enjoy this and demonstrate their positive engagement.  Teams are formed for mutual lesson observations to focus on implementing these interactive strategies.  But after 18 months not much has changed and lessons continue to be traditional. 

Friendly, passive resistance[1] has successfully resisted over 10 years of attempted pedagogic change.

Diagnosis and Question

Reskilling is not working; reculturing[2] is needed.  But how?

[1] ´Just smile and wave boys – smile and wave´ (the penguins from Madagascar)

[2] Michael Fullan: Leading in a culture of change

Emily Rankin is the Assistant Head of Teaching and Learning at an international school in the Czech Republic. Check out her website by clicking here. It describes the process their teaching and learning team went through to establish their school principles on ATL.

Collaborative Inquiry

Schools do not always find it easy to provide evidence of collaboration amongst and between staff when it comes to filling in their school self-reviews. Why not introduce or develop ATL skills amongst staff by carrying out a collaborative inquiry. This could take place within the school or - in my opinion it is better for it to take place out of the school (e.g. within the town). Here is a scaffold for carrying out such an inquiry.

Collaborative Inquiry Field Trip

The rules ...

  • Choose a concept to inquire into. It could be anything. Make it generic (e.g. time).
  • You are to work in teams of no less than three people - but there are no maximum numbers. This is to ensure that the inquiry is collaborative. The more voices the better!
  • Identify your key inquiry questions (i.e. research questions).
  • Discuss your inquiry approach - how will you carry it out? where will you go? who will do what? etc.
  • Which ATL skills will your team use to carry out the inquiry?
  • Consider which protocols / strategies may be useful e.g. collecting visual evidence using, e.g. Photo Montage or See, Think, Wonder or See, Hear, Feel

Reflection

It is key to reflect on the process more than the results of the inquiry.

  • Which ATL skills were most used? Are the skills interconnected or silos? How well did the skills work? Any other skills?
  • What would you modify for next time?
  • How did you feel doing conducting inquiry?
  • What can you now impart to your students and teaching peers?
  • Other thoughts?

Resources

  • All Things PLC is a website which you can create a free account and find many tools for running collaborative inquiry staff groups.
  • Make our own AFL box - a rich resource by Mike Gershon, free to download. Click here to access the website.
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