Why focus on ISTE professional learning and practice?

Inservice teacher educators in New Zealand work in a complex and rapidly changing environment. Within this dynamic setting, ISTEs’ fundamental purpose remains constant: to support teachers to learn and improve their practice in ways that will lead to improved student outcomes. In doing so, ISTEs support the Ministry of Education to achieve its overarching outcome of:

A world-leading education system that equips all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens in the 21st century.

Ministry of Education, 2007

ISTEs are well aware of the central problem in New Zealand education: that while on average New Zealand students perform well by many international measures, there is a persistent pattern of underachievement for some groups of students. This concern has implications for all educators. It is an important aspect of the context in which we work, and it unites and focuses our efforts to learn and improve.

In recent years, the Ministry of Education’s Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme has produced a series of publications that draw together bodies of research evidence to explain what works to improve student outcomes and why. A key finding reported in Alton-Lee’s (2003) synthesis Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling is that:

what happens in classrooms through quality teaching and through the quality of the learning environment generated by the teacher and the students is the key variable in explaining up to 59% or even more of the variance in student scores.

page 2

If teaching is the greatest system influence on student outcomes, then it seems reasonable to assume that effective professional learning opportunities for teachers lead to improved student outcomes. The Teacher Professional Learning and Development: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (TPLD BES – Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, and Fung, 2007) is founded on this assumption. It explores the question “What kinds of professional learning opportunities for teachers result in an impact on student outcomes?” (page 1).

These learning materials rest on a related assumption, one that INSTEP ¹ examined and finally proposed as a principle: Effective ISTE practice and learning lead to improvements in teacher practice and student outcomes. Research evidence from INSTEP (Higgins, 2008) and the TPLD BES supports this principle.

Taken together, these assumptions form a “chain of influence”. This chain links effective professional learning opportunities for ISTEs to effective ISTE practice, which in turn supports ongoing teacher learning and changes in teacher practice, leading to improved student outcomes. However, in suggesting influential relationships between the work of ISTEs, teachers, and students, we must recognise the “black boxes” in the chain.

In education, considerable effort has been directed at understanding the “black box” between acts of teaching and what students learn. There is no direct relationship between teaching inputs and student learning because how students interpret and utilise the available information determines what they learn.

… a second black box is … situated between professional learning opportunities and their impact on teaching practice. Little is known about how teachers interpret the understandings and utilise the particular skills made available through professional learning opportunities, and about the consequent impact on teaching practice, except that the relationship is far from simple. How teachers change their practice, of course, impacts on student outcomes.

Timperley et al., 2007, page 7

Figure 1 below illustrates this discussion.

Figure 1: A chain of influence: ISTE learning to student outcomes ²

Figure 1 text version.

These materials are intended as a resource to help ISTEs address the critical question that arises from this chain of influence: “What are the ways to learn and to improve our practice that will impact deeply on teachers’ practice and lead to improved student outcomes?”

Return to top