What are the learning needs of the teachers/school leaders?
It is important that the teachers/school leaders develop the knowledge and skills they need to continue to examine the impact of their teaching on their students’ learning after the withdrawal of intensive ISTE support.
ISTEs promote valued student outcomes through working with the students’ teachers and school leaders. If they are to plan professional learning opportunities that will improve student learning, ISTEs need information about the teachers’/school leaders’ learning needs. They need to understand the sociocultural context in which the teachers/school leaders work and the beliefs, values, and assumptions that shape their current practices.
It is important that the teachers/school leaders develop the knowledge and skills they need in order to continue to examine the impact of their teaching on their students’ learning after the withdrawal of intensive ISTE support. This means that ISTEs must ensure that members of school communities learn how to use information about their students’ learning needs to identify and address their own learning and improvement goals. This includes reflecting on how they have contributed to the current patterns of student learning and achievement and what they need to learn and do differently to better meet their students’ learning needs or further accelerate student progress.
The tools and approaches ISTEs select to inquire into teacher/school leader learning needs will be similar to those that they will later use to inquire into the impact of changed practice. This makes it easier to monitor the impact of the changed practice. The information about teacher/school leader learning needs should be summarised in a way that makes it easy to notice and record changes. It is also important to reference the desired change to some form of external benchmark. The literature on effective teaching practice is an important source for this.1
The key questions that guide teachers/school leaders and ISTEs in this part of the inquiry are similar to those used to identify student learning needs. They are:
- What do the teachers/school leaders already know and do?
- What sources of evidence will we use to determine this?
- What do the teachers/school leaders need to learn and do?
- How will we build on what the teachers/school leaders already know?
- How will we measure improvement?
1 For example, the handbooks on Effective Literacy Practice (Ministry of Education, 2003 and 2006) and the Best Evidence Synthesis iterations.
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