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Collaborative PL not only focused on developing teacher practice in alignment with school priorities, but helped to make classroom practice more visible, motivating members of the department to work together more frequently to improve teacher practice and student learning.

Increased reflection and feedback on practice to improve learning.

Development of teachers’ self-awareness about their own teaching practice and impact.

Collective understanding of the issues, formulation of solutions and vision leading to a greater sense of community.

Identification of professional needs.

Supported the development of a common understanding of effective teaching practices.

Promoted the sharing of ideas and expertise including modeling of good practice.

Provided opportunities to discuss challenges and concerns with peers and build whole-school accountability for the quality of teaching and learning occurring.

Collaborative PL strategies implemented have helped to initiate professional conversations outside of scheduled structures. The engagement of existing coaching expertise and partnerships has also helped to strengthen opportunities for professional growth.

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Leadership of the research project has been subject to my ability to influence and redirect others towards the achievement of the vision and goals as well as sustaining learning and improvement.

Leadership has been targeted (instructional, transformational and distributed) and contextual as opposed to leadership in its entirety.

Actively working with and through others, and creating favourable conditions that foster effective teaching have been central and fundamental to influencing the required change and improved performance.

Consideration has been given to the leadership dimensions that foster the 'biggest' impact:

Actively promoting and participating in teacher learning and development

Actively planning, coordinating and evaluating teaching and curriculum.

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Challenges:

Lack of a collaborative culture, professional isolation and variation in teacher efficacy.

Establishing the structures and methodologies that will instil extensive use of successful teaching practices and empower teachers to routinely focus on the impact of practice, engaging systematically in developing knowledge and skills as part of everyday practice.

HPE staff exercising control over who observes them/who they observe and the timing of observations within the cycle. Similarly, the pursuit of instructional coaching.

HPE staff initiating observation with a colleague they feel most comfortable with in the first instance.

Constraints surrounding the timetabling of Health classes coupled with the management of prescribed timeframes.

Staff changes (leadership roles), extended absence (LSL; sick leave) and conflicting professional commitments (Head of Year; Head of Sport - Cocurricular).

Ensuring collegiality, where each participant irrespective of expertise has a voice, fostering open and unconstrained communication.

The qualitative and “statistically unsophisticated” nature of data collection and subjective interpretation of the research project, ensuring objective and defensible generalisations.

Successes:

Created time for the department to be readily available to work collaboratively (rather than in isolation) on targeted College and department initiatives embedded into the timetable and will continue in 2017.

Greater support for new and staff experiencing difficulty.

Reduce and share workload as well as preventing misunderstandings and/or inconsistencies in practice.

Generate new ideas to foster ongoing growth and increase the likeliness of success of initiatives moving forward.

The flexible application of the project within the classroom and school context provided the basis for formulating solutions and servicing as a tool for day-to-day planning.

Teacher-centred, focused on reflection and instructional practices.

Provision for participants to learn and practice the skills of observation, creating time for observation and building opportunities into schedules for participants to work together on common goals and enabling staff to begin observations with others they feel comfortable with in the first instance as well as determining the timing of observations has fostered a supportive environment more conducive of success in the longer term.

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Final collection and compilation of several sources of qualitative/quantitative evidence and data will be a primary focus to maximize the reliability and validity of findings.

Review, code and formulate a presentation of compiled analysis of qualitative data populated capturing key words, general themes around collaboration to the group for further reflection and generation of recommendations for future action 2017.

Embed ongoing and the provision of timely and useful feedback that focuses on improvement.

ALL members of the department actively observing each other’s practice, providing feedback and learning from each other to improve students’ learning both within a Health and PE context.

Acknowledge and offer incentives to participants effecting change and equally important to assist those who resist see what is needed.

Continue to identify short-term wins to ensure ongoing progress and success is visible, and motivation is sustained. Similarly, offering ongoing opportunity to reflect, analyse and make continuous improvements will prompt further change as well as scope to reinvigorate the process.

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Research plan (and progress report), methodological and project literature review completed.

Proposed research project, chosen methodology and associated literature communicated to participants:

Raising collective awareness, urgency and mutual commitment;

Build knowledge and theory surrounding proposed action;

Foster positive, collaborative and uninhibited conditions enabling open and unconstrained communication.

Preparation of supporting documentation to define and direct proposed collaborative professional learning strategies and service the collection and tracking of data to examine existing practice; set targets for ongoing professional growth; and gauge progress and plan further action to achieve identified goals were created.

Professional Learning Community (PLC) Meetings - opportunity to come together to share and critically review practice, and together, learn and apply new and better approaches to enhance student learning.

Peer Observation - involving teachers observing each other’s practice and learning from each other, enabling opportunities for teachers to give and receive feedback about teaching practice and develop awareness about their own teaching.

Instructional Coaching - geared to establish collaborative partnerships, using research-informed teaching practices to support goal-setting with a focus on stimulating professional growth of individual teachers through modelling practice, classroom observation and reflection, joint-problem-solving, and conversations about teaching practice.

Defining proposed collaborative PL strategies, along with preparation of guidelines and protocols was pivotal in directing participants and justifying planned action linked to research.

Project documentation included:

PLC meeting agendas and minute templates

Peer observation and instructional coaching guidelines and protocols

Observation, feedback, reflection and goal setting templates

Professional conversations journal; and

Student work samples.

Supportive structures were established by:

Providing opportunity for staff to learn and practice the skills of observation before participating in a formal observation process

Creating time within the timetable for observation and building opportunities into schedules for participants to work together on common goals

Enabling staff to begin observations with others they feel comfortable with in the first instance as well as determining the timing of observations

Forming smaller collaborative groups to initiate professional conversations

Engaging existing coaching expertise and partnerships.

Participants engaging in a series of action, observation and reflection cycles involving:

Five (5) fortnightly timetabled periods (55-60 minutes), featuring peer observation (pre-observation meeting; classroom observation and post-observation debrief) and/or instructional coaching (reflection and goal setting; professional practice and learning, and ongoing feedback, reflection and review),

Three (3) scheduled PLC meetings (each 90 minutes).

Sought out existing qualitative and quantitative data from earlier school and department engagement in the AITSL Professional Conversations Project.

Collection, compilation and theming of qualitative data taken from PLC meetings, peer observation, instructional coaching, professional conversations journal and student work samples.

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Research Project Context - Needs Analysis:

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Research Project Context - Needs Analysis:

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Collaborative professional learning (PL) permits teachers to engage in frequent, ongoing conversation and reflection about pedagogy and teaching practice. Discussion of specific teaching practices within the HPE Department generally occur in context to questions raised with evidence highlighting an in-balance and variance of teaching methods, effective and efficient pedagogical practices. Opportunity for staff to work together to research, plan and design as well as engage in professional dialogue to evaluate and modify teaching strategies and programs needs to be created, and should not be isolated to a select few.

Regular peer and classroom observation, and feedback, collective ownership of learning outcomes and goals, embracing leadership opportunities that involve initiating and leading professional discussions with peers to evaluate practice needs to be fostered across the department.

Steps have been taken to actively introduce the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) to support strategic priorities within the College and specifically the advancement of teaching and learning within Health. The department actively seeks out the expertise of the College Technology Coach and Director of Digital Learning and Innovation to support engagement and effective use of ICT. Digital resources are readily available

In context to the department advancing with the use of ICT, particularly the use of OneNote Class Notebooks in 2016, and the need to meet as a collectively group to discuss progress, challenges, growth areas, opportunities and successes etc. and action/support any advancements in this area, it is was viewed important to meet routinely and work collaboratively.

Recognition that highly effective teaching is key to improving student learning (d=1.57), College leadership has made a commitment to driving improvements in teaching, with priority given to evidence-based teaching strategies to ensure student engagement and learning; and embedding 'Peer Observation'', which now takes place across the College.

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The initial research question focused around the ‘impact of building a professional learning community (PLC) on collaborative practices and collective teacher efficacy’, and was intended to explore the effect of collaborative professional learning in developing shared practices with the intent to enhance collective teacher efficacy (identified issue and intervention associated with instructional practice that would lead to improvements in teacher quality and student learning/achievement).

The detailing of a research plan (and progress report), methodological and project literature review, revealed that this was a ‘BIG’ question that required some refinement.

Tweaking the question enabled clearer boundaries to be established (E.g. area of focus – in the Health classroom); offered a greater connection to the actions already taken and the tools used, whilst also addressed the identified limitations the projected data to be collected would offer in ‘measuring collective teacher efficacy’. Consequently, and without changing the core focus of the project, the research question was changed to: 'What is the impact of building a PLC on teacher collaboration practices in the Health classroom?'.