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.
It is essential that you can answer this question prior to introducing the ATLs since some staff may well be resistant to them (see below for possible reasons). It helps you think about your strategy
Watch the following video to focus your thinking.
KNOW OUR WHY
Consider your sense of why as you consider introducing the ATLs. Why do YOU care about the ATLs? Why do the ATLs exist? What's their USP?
Here is one example:
The Why?
To share a belief true to each teacher – that we care about our students learning, that we think about how our students learn, that we want them to become self-regulated learners, to master content and most importantly to become lifelong learners. (Mary Jo West)
- How might you use this approach to introducing the IB approaches to teaching and learning?
- Try branding the ATLs - what would be your marketing narrative? Use a protocol such as Six word memoir or Postcard to clarify your main message. These can evolve as you think more about the ATLs. Alternatively use the Elevator Pitch..
In subject groups discuss WHY ATL is important in your subject area. Illustrate your reasons with examples to illustrate on posters. Ask a member of the group to represent the group and explain to others. Subject groups take turns to understand each other.
Now it is time to consider the HOW of the Approaches to teaching and learning. How do we integrate these approaches in our teaching?
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
Are all your colleagues on board with the IB approaches to teaching and learning? Are some staff resistant to engaging with them? Why?
When introducing colleagues to the approaches to teaching and learning it is important to be aware of 'where they are at'. There may be a number of reasons why some staff will be resistant to them. For example:
Not a priority: what matters is getting through the syllabus and preparing students for the formal assessments. This teacher is focus on finishing the syllabus, drilling students for the external examination and as such see no need to empower students with the ATL skills.
It’s just more content: this is based on a misunderstanding that ATL is content-filled as opposed to being a rich resource of “deliberate strategies, skills and attitudes that permeate the teaching and learning environment”(IB) (the HOW of teaching and learning). “I simply do not have the time to teach extra material like the approaches to teaching and learning.”
Not my subject: a specific teacher may have a personal subject-focused style of teaching as opposed to a skills-based process-oriented style aimed at promoting self-regulation and lifelong learning. They may also have a view of teacher as ‘sage on the stage’ as opposed to ‘meddler in the middle’ helping students become independent and in charge of their own learning.
Why is it important? The teacher may have an incomplete understanding of IB philosophy whereby he may see the IB primarily as challenging programmes detached from the mission-oriented focus of developing young people with a mind-set (international mindedness) and attributes (learner profile) who are inspired to help “create a better more peaceful world.”
I don’t know how to. Some teachers may feel that they have not been prepared to teach skills. They may feel out of their depth and need help in introducing it into their subject. Change can be difficult to embrace since it takes people out of their comfort zone.
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 contextThe 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?
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.
“All IB teachers are responsible for integrating and explicitly teaching ATL skills.” (IB). So how well are you doing?
The IB have produced an ATL Reflection Tool (click HERE) which is very useful to use as a checklist against what you are doing. The introduction to this document suggests three purposes of the tool: (a) to audit current practice; (b) reflect on current practice, and (c) stimulate discussion between colleagues within and across departments.
How can you use the ‘Reflection Tool’?
- Audit and action planning: This tool can be used as an aide memoir. By auditing one becomes aware of those things you may not be paying attention to. It can help you draw up an action plan of where you need to focus your on-going attention as you continually improve the learning experience for students.
- Help curriculum planning: Use this tool inform curriculum planning. For example: which of the approaches to learning skills will be specifically developed in this unit? How will they be developed? This second questions provides a good focus to consider which activities, strategies the teacher will use with students.
- Reflect: This reflection tool provides a very valuable guide in the taxonomy it provides for each of the skills. Use this tool to (a) gain a deeper understanding of what is meant by each of the terms; (b) reflect on the gaps in your teaching of these skills so that more attention can be given to those aspects; (c) as an aide memoir to strategies you could use (e.g. visible thinking routines are mentioned under the thinking skills.
- Stimulate discussion between colleagues: Collaborate together to form an ATL Toolkit of resources and activities that will develop the skills. Use an online platform to put together this ATL toolkit. An excellent example can be found HERE.
- Peer observation is a great way of collaborating and sharing practice. By observing colleagues teach you can become more reflective about your own practice as well as pick up many examples of great practice on how the approaches to learning and teaching are integrated in all subjects.
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?
(Image source: Download Lens, Photography, Photo. Royalty-Free Stock Illustration Image - Pixabay)
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.
Tags: ATL