The influence of a Teaching School Alliance on classroom staff's professional development

Teaching Schools are an innovation in system-level leadership for educational improvement. Launched in 2010, they are intended to form partnerships or ‘alliances’ with other schools and providers to share learning, excellent practice and innovative ideas, principally in teacher education and development. But there has been, to date, no detailed, critical, empirical research into the influence of Teaching Schools on teachers’ attitudes and practice. Specifically, I raise the problem of whether this voluntary, multi-school collaborative grouping can reach the classroom staff who, policy-makers, practitioners and scholars agree, are the people who really matter in improving outcomes for pupils. This thesis uses a change management perspective to investigate the influence of a large Teaching School Alliance on the continuing professional development (CPD) of serving classroom staff in its member schools. I report on the findings from a longitudinal, collective case study of eight sample schools, which employed a multi-strand, sequential, mixed-methods research design over three years. This study reveals that, while a large majority of respondents say that they support change in principle, there is a fundamental gap between aspiration and practice which presents significant challenges for a Teaching School Alliance. The decision of classroom staff whether to adopt or not to adopt the innovation of collaborative CPD is shown to depend on their attitudes to their own professional development; and on their attitudes to change as it occurs in their workplaces; and on their attitudes to collaboration at system level. My research develops a new understanding of the complex ‘change ecology’ that classroom staff experience when faced with an innovation to their practice. I provide a robust analysis of why collaborative development work might be confined to relatively few early adopters. The key insights of my work will be useful to practitioners who are currently leading school systems; to policy-makers who are planning future collaborative action for improvement, both in England and around the world; and to researchers with a focus on change management in educational settings.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Dowling, Simon

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Antoniou, Panayiotis

• network
• collaboration
• school improvement
• teaching school
• alliance
• professional development
• teachers
• classroom staff
• innovation
• SISS
• self-improving school system
• change management
• leadership
• education policy
• mixed methods
• longitudinal
• insider research
• change
• ecology
• change ecology
• system
• schools
• diffusion
• attitudes to change

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/a3ea0c1b-93f7-4767-84d5-531e36733b60/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.20942

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/273867