Nancy
15-07-2008, 02:41 PM
Project overview:
Our overall aim was to enhance the learning culture across a secondary school of 1500 staff and students. The project took 9 months and we did pre-project and post project evaluation. The project took 12 modellers from a variety of disciplines but all with NLP and Clean Language training.
We established the base line criteria for our evaluation beforehand, with support from Yale University Child Study Centre.
We noticed on arrival that the corridors were noisy with teachers and pupils shouting and swearing. Classrooms were unruly and students often entered and left classes throughout lessons. The discipline in the school was unsystematic and many classrooms were out of control.
We spent about a month ‘modelling’ the system. Hanging out in corridors, sitting in the staffroom, chatting to different people in the school. As we built up an idea of patterns running throughout the school we identified agents of change in the school – influential individuals/groups. If their behaviour changed they could influence a large number of others. We also identified other programmes operating in the school that we could ‘clean up’. Only now did we start to design the interventions.
· We trained 9 ‘super coaches’, a diagonal slice of influential staff, in clean set-up, clean feedback and the drama karma triangle. These people subsequently put new, effective behaviour policies into place and also were in charge of coaching other members of staff and thereby passing on their skills.
· We delivered a collaborative learning programme with a number of whole classes in years 7, 8 and 9 to bring these skills and ideas to the pupil population.
· We ran a transition project with year 8/9 pupils so that they could mentor next year’s year 7’s and help reduce bullying.
· We worked extensively with the leadership team, coaching them in how to conduct productive meetings and in personal development.
· We worked as behaviour management coaches throughout the school, going into any classroom required but only on the specific invitation of the teacher rather than when asked by managers.
· We worked with the attendance team on open days to improve their relationships with parents
· We ran specific coaching projects for some groups of pupils that were identified as being key to the culture change – year 11 pupils who’s academic performance was key to bringing in good results and younger pupils whose behaviour was identified as critical.
· In all these interventions we invited members of staff to observe and participate to ensure we were passing on the skills and creating resources to sustain after we had gone.
The project was our biggest to date and took huge resources to coordinate. There were many mistakes and learnings along the way and we have streamlined our processes as a result of what we learned.
However the evaluation we carried out a year later was very positive and the atmosphere in the school is tangibly different as were reports from staff and pupils. We’re taking the learning from this project and are now using it to develop a learning to learn culture within Liverpool John Moores University.
Evaluation:
The evaluation we carried out resulted in a 100 page document. Below is a summary of the key findings that are of interest at a systemic level, and more objective in that they are quantitative ‘hard’ data. If you want to know more about the discourse from members of the school, their individual feedback and themes across different groups, please contact nancy@trainingattention.co.uk (nancy@trainingattention.co.uk)
Example 1
Structured classroom observations – repeating the observations undertaken in 2005 to form the baseline criteria by which we could judge our impact.
These observations were carried out by one of the associates who carried out observations in 2005, but who had not taken part in any intervention work during the project. The exercise collected data about language patterns used by teachers, which were summarised numerically and compared to those collected in 2005.
We sorted the observations into groups:
· Teachers who had received a great deal of training with us, in groups (Lots)
· Teachers who had had no direct contact with us (ND)
Questions asked, by teachers, in class
Lots 2005
Lots 2006
ND 2005
ND 2006
Open
27%
73%
36%
79%
Closed
73%
27%
64%
21%
As you can see, the pattern of change remained as strong for the teachers with whom we had had no direct contact. We interpret this as a shift in the teaching culture in the school, made possible by the improvement in discipline and sharing of good practice between teachers.
Example 2: GCSEs
Is the school performing better in terms of the LEA and national criteria?
2004
2005
2006
GCSEs A - C
26%
31%
43.90%
This significant improvement during the year we worked with the school (from 26% to 31%) was further improved the following year, demonstrating the school’s ability to learn, develop and innovate independently of intervention.
Example 3: Truancy
2004
2005
2006
Authorised Absence
10%
9.79%
7.8%
Unauthorised Absence
2%
2.66%
3.7%
We worked with the attendance team on their main point of engaging the parents, who were obstructive towards the school and behaved a little like naughty children when engaging with the headmistress!
These figures show authorised (i.e. parental approval gained) absence decreasing. We interpret this to mean that the parents are less likely to authorise their children’s time off. However, un-authorised absence has increased, showing that the children had other ideas! The overall figure remains a modest decrease and truancy within the school is still an issue.
These results are an interesting look at what happens when an intervention focuses on one part of the problem and does not take a systemic view.
Example 4: Exclusions
2004
2005
2006
No. of exclusions - perm
0
0
1
No. of exclusions - temp
21
69
84
The number of exclusions rose sharply in our absence. The feedback from the teachers has a strong theme of ‘taking control’ and ‘discipline becoming more consistent’ after the project as opposed to ‘no control’ and ‘discipline being the main problem’ beforehand. These numbers represent the taking of control, and illustrate that for pupils there are now consequences to bad behaviour where previously there were none.
So, on the face of it the numbers might indicate a rise in poor behaviour, they do in fact represent a rise in managing poor behaviour.
Our overall aim was to enhance the learning culture across a secondary school of 1500 staff and students. The project took 9 months and we did pre-project and post project evaluation. The project took 12 modellers from a variety of disciplines but all with NLP and Clean Language training.
We established the base line criteria for our evaluation beforehand, with support from Yale University Child Study Centre.
We noticed on arrival that the corridors were noisy with teachers and pupils shouting and swearing. Classrooms were unruly and students often entered and left classes throughout lessons. The discipline in the school was unsystematic and many classrooms were out of control.
We spent about a month ‘modelling’ the system. Hanging out in corridors, sitting in the staffroom, chatting to different people in the school. As we built up an idea of patterns running throughout the school we identified agents of change in the school – influential individuals/groups. If their behaviour changed they could influence a large number of others. We also identified other programmes operating in the school that we could ‘clean up’. Only now did we start to design the interventions.
· We trained 9 ‘super coaches’, a diagonal slice of influential staff, in clean set-up, clean feedback and the drama karma triangle. These people subsequently put new, effective behaviour policies into place and also were in charge of coaching other members of staff and thereby passing on their skills.
· We delivered a collaborative learning programme with a number of whole classes in years 7, 8 and 9 to bring these skills and ideas to the pupil population.
· We ran a transition project with year 8/9 pupils so that they could mentor next year’s year 7’s and help reduce bullying.
· We worked extensively with the leadership team, coaching them in how to conduct productive meetings and in personal development.
· We worked as behaviour management coaches throughout the school, going into any classroom required but only on the specific invitation of the teacher rather than when asked by managers.
· We worked with the attendance team on open days to improve their relationships with parents
· We ran specific coaching projects for some groups of pupils that were identified as being key to the culture change – year 11 pupils who’s academic performance was key to bringing in good results and younger pupils whose behaviour was identified as critical.
· In all these interventions we invited members of staff to observe and participate to ensure we were passing on the skills and creating resources to sustain after we had gone.
The project was our biggest to date and took huge resources to coordinate. There were many mistakes and learnings along the way and we have streamlined our processes as a result of what we learned.
However the evaluation we carried out a year later was very positive and the atmosphere in the school is tangibly different as were reports from staff and pupils. We’re taking the learning from this project and are now using it to develop a learning to learn culture within Liverpool John Moores University.
Evaluation:
The evaluation we carried out resulted in a 100 page document. Below is a summary of the key findings that are of interest at a systemic level, and more objective in that they are quantitative ‘hard’ data. If you want to know more about the discourse from members of the school, their individual feedback and themes across different groups, please contact nancy@trainingattention.co.uk (nancy@trainingattention.co.uk)
Example 1
Structured classroom observations – repeating the observations undertaken in 2005 to form the baseline criteria by which we could judge our impact.
These observations were carried out by one of the associates who carried out observations in 2005, but who had not taken part in any intervention work during the project. The exercise collected data about language patterns used by teachers, which were summarised numerically and compared to those collected in 2005.
We sorted the observations into groups:
· Teachers who had received a great deal of training with us, in groups (Lots)
· Teachers who had had no direct contact with us (ND)
Questions asked, by teachers, in class
Lots 2005
Lots 2006
ND 2005
ND 2006
Open
27%
73%
36%
79%
Closed
73%
27%
64%
21%
As you can see, the pattern of change remained as strong for the teachers with whom we had had no direct contact. We interpret this as a shift in the teaching culture in the school, made possible by the improvement in discipline and sharing of good practice between teachers.
Example 2: GCSEs
Is the school performing better in terms of the LEA and national criteria?
2004
2005
2006
GCSEs A - C
26%
31%
43.90%
This significant improvement during the year we worked with the school (from 26% to 31%) was further improved the following year, demonstrating the school’s ability to learn, develop and innovate independently of intervention.
Example 3: Truancy
2004
2005
2006
Authorised Absence
10%
9.79%
7.8%
Unauthorised Absence
2%
2.66%
3.7%
We worked with the attendance team on their main point of engaging the parents, who were obstructive towards the school and behaved a little like naughty children when engaging with the headmistress!
These figures show authorised (i.e. parental approval gained) absence decreasing. We interpret this to mean that the parents are less likely to authorise their children’s time off. However, un-authorised absence has increased, showing that the children had other ideas! The overall figure remains a modest decrease and truancy within the school is still an issue.
These results are an interesting look at what happens when an intervention focuses on one part of the problem and does not take a systemic view.
Example 4: Exclusions
2004
2005
2006
No. of exclusions - perm
0
0
1
No. of exclusions - temp
21
69
84
The number of exclusions rose sharply in our absence. The feedback from the teachers has a strong theme of ‘taking control’ and ‘discipline becoming more consistent’ after the project as opposed to ‘no control’ and ‘discipline being the main problem’ beforehand. These numbers represent the taking of control, and illustrate that for pupils there are now consequences to bad behaviour where previously there were none.
So, on the face of it the numbers might indicate a rise in poor behaviour, they do in fact represent a rise in managing poor behaviour.