Albany Senior High School/Professional Learning and Appraisal Overview

Overview
Inquiry is at the centre of professional learning and Albany Senior High School. Inquiry enables you to learn about students and learning from students about the effectiveness of your teaching.

What is Professional Inquiry?
Inquiry is:
 * Agentic (you are in charge of your research)
 * Collaborative (you share your knowledge with teachers and students)
 * Embedded (part of your teaching practice)
 * Timely (so that it makes a difference to student learning)
 * Iterative (for ongoing learning)

An e-portfolio template (mahara) is available here to record and reflect on the different stages of this process.

Focussing Inquiry

 * Always use data from classes as your starting point. Where is the underachievement? Who are the actual students. Export data from Kamar. (ASHS login required). What current information do you have on these students? How did these students perform in this subject or similar subjects last year? What other kinds of data are your 'critical friends' encouraging you to explore. What theories are you developing to explain why the under performance has happened?
 * Our first attempt to explain any under-performance we are seeing will often be inadequate in describing the complexity of the situation. How are you developing multiple theories to explain what you are seeing? Collaboration is an essential step here - using your colleagues to question and challenge and to provide alternative theories. Refer Timperly and Robinson's | paper on schema.
 * Who are the students you are focusing on? What are others suggesting about what has caused the underachievement? Triangulate between conversation, observation and products. Talk to students. Use these feedback tools to get their comments on what worked and didn't work for them.
 * Identify the real cause of the problem. Are you using single loop or double-loop learning? [[Image:Double loop learning.png|left|400px]] Inquiry is underpinned by the process of 'double-loop' learning. This requires practitioners to question underlying assumptions and beliefs as part of their decision-making process. Single loop learning has often been compared to a thermostat in that it makes a "decision" to either turn off or on. Double loop learning is like a thermostat that asks "why" - is this a good time to switch settings? Are there people in the room? Do they all have coats on? Is it 40 degrees outside? Double loop learning looks at context and questions its own underlying assumptions in order to make the wisest decision. For instance if your inquiry is about homework, single loop learning would look at strategies to increase homework completion, but double loop learning would look at whether students are engaged with, or understand the material being covered in the homework.
 * Given the theory you eventually settle on, identify the particular learning needs of the students. This ensures that the interventions will be useful for them.

Teaching Inquiry
It is vital to ensure that the strategies we are employing have a sound, peer-reviewed research base. There are a wealth of different databases you can use to research strategies. For instance, contain Sources of evidence-based strategies:


 * The EPIC databases (particularly Educator's Reference Complete, Masterfile and Onefile). These require a username and password which is on the Library Intranet page.
 * ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre
 * Google Scholar (Try this sample search in Google Scholar.)
 * NZ Educational Theses Database. This requires a username and password which is on the Library Intranet page.
 * Consider also using the ideas in Strategy Central
 * As well as your SSL and TL, who else did you seek challenge, questions and/or critique from and what input did they provide?
 * How will you measure the outcomes later in your learning inquiry?

Teaching and Learning

 * You will have one appraiser each year although each professional inquiry should have multiple collaborators and sources of feedback, data and guidance. These may be colleagues, SSLs, TLs, students the SCT and members of SLT.
 * Observations. If you need time to observe other teachers using strategies you would like to learn more about, use this calendar to book a member of SLT to come in and cover 30 minutes of a class. What feedback did you get from your observation?

Learning Inquiry
What happened for the students as a result of your inquiry? Did the chosen intervention(s) raise outcomes? How do you know? Have you used triangulated evidence to assess outcomes? (Conversation, observation and products.) The implications  Your reflections on your inquiries and what you have learned from them should be recorded in your (e) portfolio. What are the sustained changes you will take into your future practice? How might this impact on your next inquiry?

How can you share your learnings with internal and external colleagues?