Listen in on a conversation as a school leader shares his experiences working with colleagues to continually increase teacher learning for student learning though professional growth plans. The process continually developed from year to year as insights were gained, and hypotheses were formed and implemented.
Follow up with James Penstone on LinkedIn here.
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.590] – Steve
Building professional growth plans that increase learning impact. Joining the podcast today is James Penstone, the secondary principal at ICS Intercommunity School, Zurich, Switzerland. I had the opportunity to have a conversation with James, and he shared the plans and insights that emerged as his leadership team and teachers explored and built a professional growth plan process over several years. I invited James to share his findings with podcast listeners, and I’m glad that he’s here. Welcome, James.
[00:01:05.590] – James
Thank you, Steve. It’s an absolute pleasure and honor to have your company in this podcast today.
[00:01:11.130] – Steve
Thank you. I’m wondering, for a start, would you just share a little bit about ICS and especially the secondary school program?
[00:01:19.740] – James
Sure. So ICS is an independent, not-for-profit, and genuinely international school. I think we have currently circa 60 nationalities. We’re nestled above the hills in Zurich in a beautiful corner of Switzerland. We’re the longest running international school in the Greater Zurich area. We were founded in 1960. And what’s fairly unique to us in this region is we’re an international Baccalaureate school that is a through IB school. So we have the primary years program, the middle years program, and the diploma program. And we’re also non-selective. So we’re striving to be the most inclusive school that we can be under our commitment to to the core notion of belonging. The secondary school has around 520 students. And as I just mentioned, our curriculum is the Middle Years program and also the diploma program. And I have the honor of working alongside around 70 very talented and committed teachers and other colleagues who are all dedicated to providing inspirational teaching and learning. And we’re going through a very exciting phase in our school because we have, as a whole school, just committed to a new set of strategic priorities, and there’s a lot of wonderful energy around that. We are called the Intercommunity School, and I think something I feel very proud of is that strong sense of community at our school.
[00:02:49.610] – Steve
So full disclosure for the listeners, I need to share that my wife is a primary counselor at ICS. James, I know that for many of my listeners, in many of the international school, there’s a fairly routine turnover in staff. People are there for shorter time periods. My guess is I haven’t seen that the case since my wife’s been at ICS. Am I accurate on that?
[00:03:28.660] – James
Yeah. I mean, that That was one of the first things that struck me when I arrived at ICS is that there is a significant commitment to the school. There are many colleagues who’ve had very long tenure at the school. I have a number of colleagues I work closely with who have been at the school for 20 plus years. Of course, any international school has a dynamic element to it where people do come and go, and that’s applicable to both students and families and also staff. And I think that’s very healthy. So it wouldn’t be true to say that we’re a static population. It is also true that on balance, we have a longer than average tenure.
[00:04:09.900] – Steve
So in our early conversations, you mentioned that in the early stages, the PGP plan at the school was highly individualized. And you stated that that had some values and some shortcomings. And your use of both those phrases caught me. Describe that a little in more detail. What were the values? What were the shortcomings?
[00:04:36.150] – James
Okay. So first of all, the time frame. I’ve been here since 2018, so I’m really referring to the past six and a bit years. When I arrived at ICS, I was really impressed by the philosophy of professional growth at ICS. And that philosophy was to invest a really strong sense of agency amongst the teaching faculty in terms of being the architect of their own professional growth plans. And so it was given to the teachers and other colleagues in the teaching space an ability to identify their growth goals and the resources with which they would seek to develop in response to those goals and the growth that would accompany that. So I find that philosophy really compelling. I think there is a lot of research and also a lot of common sense that suggests that the vast majority of educators are highly reflective individuals and are very adept at identifying growth areas for themselves. And I think also in that philosophy is this notion of career long growth. We often talk about students developing a longer term commitment to learning throughout their lives. But it’s really the teaching professionals here who are very focused on what can I strive to strengthen in my repertoire and what can I attempt to get better at?
[00:06:05.480] – James
So I think the philosophy is really strong. Where I saw some shortcomings is it was so individualized in philosophy that it was difficult for an individual to attain a sense of growth if they were doing so in isolation. And so what we really needed was a greater sense of connectivity across colleagues. They needed someone to refer their ideas to to someone to identify any overlap in terms of the themes and goals and priorities of their professional growth. And they needed a sense of how they were connected to a bigger picture, a bigger vision, if you like, of education in school. And we didn’t really have the structures to support that. I’ll give you an example. In the version of professional growth that I first arrived at, it became clear to me that I was to be the direct report of some 70 colleagues in terms of the touch point for their professional growth plans, which was unsustainable in terms of capacity. So what that left was a sense that some colleagues remained very empowered and dedicated to their own professional growth plans, whereas others felt a little disconnected and ultimately deprioritized it for other priorities in their teaching portfolio.
[00:07:24.950] – James
And we shifted our focus and we realized we needed to create that sense of connectivity. And initially, that sense of focus was to build a team focus, a team priority, a team conversation around growth. And that was a major pivot for the school around the year 2021, ’22.
[00:07:45.310] – Steve
It’s interesting – as I was listening to you, the phrase that was going through my head is that learning is a social activity. And that was a missing element when everybody was going in their own direction.
[00:08:01.570] – James
I mean, it’s become quite a well-used phrase, but it’s an important phrase to talk in terms of teacher efficacy or collective efficacy. And that’s what we realized was the ingredient that needed to be inserted into this model.
[00:08:16.530] – Steve
So I had the opportunity to share my hypothesis approach to PGPs with your team. And I’m wondering what made that approach of interest to you and your team, and how did you initially move in that direction?
[00:08:35.690] – James
So at the same time that we were setting up this concept of a team goal, and by the way, what that would involve would be a team coming together to find a collective umbrella focus of growth, and then for each individual within that team to identify how they could contribute towards that goal within their own remit, within their own needs, within their own growth and strengths. But at the same time, we were really aware that any professional growth, whether that’s at the school level or at an individual level amongst teaching faculty, should be always considering what are we here for, and that’s to have a positive impact on learning. So we really knew that we had to have evidence-based conversations at the heart of our professional growth plans. And the hypothesis approach which introduced us to, is perfect for reframing a goal towards the intended impacts on learning. It invites the educator or a team of educators to consider the impact with two levels of input. So we appreciated the backwards planning that it invites. So simply, if students are going to achieve X learning outcomes, they themselves need to develop Y learning behaviors. And for students to learn those, the teacher or teachers, they need to commit to specific teaching strategies that will ideally nurture the same student learning behaviors.
[00:10:08.510] – James
And of course, those in turn lead to the desired learning outcomes. So the hypothesis has this, if you like, an embedded imperative to collect data and evidence by which to check whether or not the hypothesis is proven correct or not. It’s an excellent vehicle for action research. And the other beautiful thing about the hypothesis approach is that it’s a test of assumptions which may or may not be proven correct. So we’ve been really keen to emphasize to all the participants that it’s okay to try something that you subsequently learn doesn’t lead to the desired outcomes. So in that case, we encourage individuals or teams to modify the hypothesis in response. It becomes an iterative approach, and it nurture an acceptance that short term mistakes or dead ends are okay, so long as they don’t have a detrimental impact on student learning and that we learn from them. And I’d say one more thing, Steve. I think what I’ve learned, now we’re in our fourth year of embedding this approach through a conversation around a hypothesis, is it really does inspire conversations around some of the essential elements of good learning and teaching. So it invites questions such as, what do I intend my students to learn?
[00:11:36.250] – James
What might such learning look like in practice? How will I accompany this learning as a teacher facilitator? And how will I know that they have learned what I intended? All of that is packaged into the hypothesis. And I’m really seeing that we had teams meeting just yesterday, starting to construct new hypotheses for this year. But this is what I noticed was it was a very learning-focused conversation throughout.
[00:12:03.060] – Steve
That word evidence became a big piece for me. Just today, I’m coaching two folks who are facilitating a group of international school educators looking at evaluating professional development. I told them it’s an extremely challenging task because nobody wants to collect the evidence that you got to collect along the way to tell whether or not the professional development that you provided, first, did people who attended the professional development change? And if they did, what change did their change have on students? And then lastly, did that change lead to increased student learning, which is what you made your investment in professional development for. It’s a very challenging area. And I think keeping it focused as an action research so that you’re continually learning, figuring out something, and that’s modifying your next hypothesis.
[00:13:16.480] – James
Right. And I think you’ve raised a really good point about evidence by which to gage the impact of school-wide professional development opportunities. And this is what this is. So this commitment to professional growth plans, we’ve morphed that into professional learning communities in the most recent iteration, but always with this central notion of a hypothesis. The same approach should be applied to that. So whilst individual teachers or teams of teachers are trying out teacher strategies to lead to student behaviors, to lead to desired outcomes, we are trying something out. And we’ve modified it over the last four years, and we’ve collected evidence and feedback. And it’s very important to have those feedback loops so that we continue to adapt it. And in a way, what happens at the individual level needs to be mirrored at the whole school level.
[00:14:14.200] – Steve
So what role did your middle-level leaders, and I guess for you, is that department chairs? What role did they play in your rollout?
[00:14:25.780] – James
So when we initially rolled this out in the secondary school, and I just want to add that the primary school were also committed to the vehicle of professional growth plans, team goals, and team hypotheses. But I can speak more closely in terms of what we were doing in the secondary school. In the first two years, this was based around a departmental priority, which itself was a response to one of our strategic goals in the secondary school. And that essentially was a focus on how can we do assessment and feedback even better to lead to better outcomes for students. And so the heads of department were the ones who were supporting their teams to identify a team-wide hypothesis, a response to that sphere of assessment and feedback, and then facilitate opportunities for the individuals within their teams to adapt that team hypothesis to one that suited their own circumstances, to to be very specific about a particular class that they were teaching. And so the heads of department were…two things were taking place – they were leading within departmental meetings, and they were facilitating these conversations organizations. And they were, for example, generated – they generated a peer mentoring opportunity.
[00:15:53.720] – James
So in most departments, they subdivided into partnerships of peers who would then consult with one another over the progress they were making with fulfilling their hypothesis or otherwise. And at the same time, we were connecting as a leadership team with heads of department on a frequent basis to review this rollout and to create an open conversation about what’s working, what could be enhanced, how could we communicate certain aspects better. So there was a good leadership growth that was going on alongside the actual facilitation of these conversations. And so heads department essentially were role modeling. Obviously, they were applying the hypothesis approach to their own practice. They were facilitating, as I just outlined. But they were also learning. And I think that’s really important, and sharing their learning openly with one another. And that’s what I’ve really enjoyed about this process. Those who lead a team or a professional learning community are also benefiting from that leadership strengthening and reflection. How can we make this work for the individuals in our team?
[00:17:09.700] – Steve
I frequently recommend that peer coaching can be added as an extra element of the PGP. One of my reasonings is it’s a great way for the teacher to collect evidence of what’s happening, the idea of having another set of eyes in the classroom from time to time. It sounds like your peer experience, you think, added to what folks were doing.
[00:17:37.990] – James
Oh, absolutely. I think peer interactions, as you call it, that’s where the gold is. And that’s what I was referring to in the potential shortcomings of the original model. As soon as you create opportunities for colleagues to talk to one another about their practice openly and to confer with one another, then you are developing developing and generating a growth-oriented culture. And that’s where a professional learning community, and there are many schools that have invested in some form of professional learning community, that’s what it’s really trying to achieve, is generate these conversations and these shared learnings. But what we did, interestingly, in the first couple of years in the secondary school, is we asked the head of department to create these partnerships, I refer to these pairings within their department. And then one And one of the facets of that was this expectation to peer observe. And when we say a peer observation, that wasn’t to be an evaluative observation. That was for each person to be effectively a research assistant to the observee. And so someone would welcome their colleague into their class and say, I’m trying out these strategies. I hope that you would see these learning behaviors amongst my students.
[00:18:56.350] – James
Please, can you check whether that’s happening? By all means, speak to the students as well to check their understanding. And then that generated a sense of really rich and authentic data to reflect back to the observee. And of course, it was an exchange. And then I found it became really interesting in the second semester of the year, where we would then open things up and we would partner people up across departments. So we would identify departments that had similar hypotheses, and therefore individuals that had similar hypotheses. And then the peer observations were taking place between the art department and the PE department, for example. And I’ve always maintained, if an individual teacher visits another teacher’s classroom, they cannot fail to learn something. So there’s always something to take away from that. But with this very clear focus in mind, it did create a lot of mutual understanding across the school, a lot of inquiry, a lot of follow-up conversations. This year and last year, but particularly this year, we’ve adapted the model so that professional learning communities, they’re no longer hosted by a department head. Last year, we opened it up to people to volunteer to be the leader of a PLC.
[00:20:16.470] – James
The difference being that the PLCs right from the outset, were not department-based. They were theme-based. And so we had, for example, some folks who were inquiring into the appropriate deployment of artificial intelligence and learning. Some folks were committed to a more inclusive classroom. Some were looking at an inquiry-based learning model within the classroom. And there were eight themes that different colleagues from different departments were combining together. And we restored that sense of agency that had started to feel like it was missing from the team-based approach where everyone was doing something around assessment. So that was a key reflection. Now, this year, we’ve taken the same model, but I’ve partnered with my primary colleagues, we’ve partnered with our primary colleagues, and we’ve gone whole school. So we’ve got a new strategy. We’ve got various, very compelling pillars within that strategy, such as a focus on belonging, a focus on student-directed learning, a focus on a commitment to sustainability. And then all colleagues across the whole school, primary and secondary, have decided which of those those themes that they would like to join this year. And we will have similar aspects and elements upcoming in October, November, where we’ll have the peer observations and the peer conversations.
[00:21:43.800] – James
But that would be not just department to department and Secretary, it’s all school interactions, which is a really powerful community building exercise. The other thing that I would just add on that is we have committed to a leadership training program over the last year and this year, we’ve partnered with ECIS, and they’re supporting us with a program for middle leadership development, and also our senior leaders are participating in this. And so we’re deploying the tools of leadership we’re learning through that program in this PLC model. And the way we’re doing that is that we’ve now got a small group of middle leaders who are leading each of the PLC. But those middle leaders represent a span across the primary and secondary school. And now we’ve got middle leaders working alongside in a unique context that they wouldn’t necessarily have worked alongside each other before. So at the leadership level, you’ve got these opportunities for peer coaching, peer interaction and then within the teams, you’ve got these very rich opportunities for whole school peer interactions as well.
[00:22:53.480] – Steve
Before we wrap up, one of the values of a hypothesis approach is the opportunity the opportunity that it creates for organizational and systems learning. And I think I’m hearing that you’re describing that as being present in what you’re finding.
[00:23:12.500] – James
Yeah. There’s so much to learn at a whole school level and organizational level from this commitment. I think I mentioned earlier that there should be a replication of formative life in terms of, let’s try something out and then let’s look for the impact it’s having on learning. And that’s at the micro level within the classroom with the hypotheses. It’s at the meso level within the PLCs who are all combined around a similar theme. But it’s also at the at the level of the school, how is this an engine for professional growth and development? And what evidence do we have surfacing from all of this action research that we’re able to make a difference? And I think it’s really teaching us about where we can go with collective efficacy, but also respecting that individual agency that I referred to at the very beginning. So it’s important that individuals are able to tailor their investment in the PLC and the hypotheses to their needs, but at the same time to feel that they’re connected to something that is a whole school vision, and in our case, a whole school strategy that has just rolled out for the next five years.
[00:24:27.740] – James
So that’s really exciting. I think we’ve learned that you do need to have intentional training and professional learning around this model, this approach to professional learning communities, and the hypotheses that are at the center of this. So that’s why I say we’ve reverted back to our middle leaders currently who are leading the PLCs. And as I say, that creates a meta-conversation around leadership as those middle leaders exchange ideas on how to continue to lead a PLC. And what transferable learning do they get from that to their own actual teams, their normal teams? And we think that’s rich. And we’re also learning it’s really important, Steve, to pace the conversations and the touch points very carefully through the course of a school year so that it’s manageable and productive. So we’re being very careful about where we schedule these meetings across the calendar, where do we give it a sense of conclusion and wrap up, which we’ve given a lot of thought to. And I think lastly, we also thought very carefully that we are going to modify as we go. So it’s really important to have a sense of feedback loop. So we’re consulting with the middle leaders leading.
[00:25:45.550] – James
We have senior leaders also supporting middle leaders with this vehicle of professional growth. And there’s a constant reflection moment that’s being built into this. What did we notice about the last conversations? Where could we refocus things? How could we ensure that everyone is feeling invested? How can we support? What are the resources we could put into it? So it’s excellent for a reflection on school-wide implementation.
[00:26:11.220] – Steve
Well, James, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your insights. If listeners wanted to follow up with you, what’s the best way that they may be able to reach out to you?
[00:26:24.470] – James
Thanks, Steve. I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed the conversation. I think for me, probably the best vehicle for getting in touch with me would be LinkedIn. So I think if we share my LinkedIn contacts, then that would be the easiest way at this point in time.
[00:26:39.420] – Steve
We’ll post that in the lead-in to the podcast. Thank you so much.
[00:26:44.550] – James
Thanks a lot, Steve. Much appreciated.
[00:26:48.570] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
