Embedding Collaborative Learning Teams to Build a Culture of Professional Learning on School Campuses

One of the most common barriers to teachers embracing professional development is when teachers believe a school’s professional learning system is isolated. This occurs when professional development is provided on an in-service or early release day without monitoring for implementation and instructional coaching to foster teachers’ mastery of skills and knowledge presented in the professional development session. It happens when a school’s professional learning system is not teacher-centered, teacher-led, and not embedded in a school’s daily work.  Enter collaborative learning teams (CLTs).

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According to research conducted by the National Institute for School Leadership (NISL) and the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), the highest performing school systems in the United States and world share the common thread of teacher-led professional development systems in which teachers are empowered to develop into experts of their content and evidence-based pedagogy. John Hattie, one of the most universally respected educational researchers, found that, “teacher collective efficacy,” has one of the strongest effects on positively increasing student achievement. During CLTs, teachers can work in grade-level or subject-area teams to align instructional planning, analyze student products that exhibit standards mastery, create assessments aligned to the depth required of the standard, evaluate student data collected from a deliberate monitoring process, and differentiate instruction to ensure equity for all students. CLTs provide the foundation and platform for teachers to grow as professionals while forming a team with colleagues across a school’s campus.  

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CLTs revolve around a cycle of work that includes:

1) Identification of target standards, unwrapping of standards, and development of a unit scale based on a taxonomy of thinking. For example, Marzano’s taxonomy provides a learning progression that guides students from the lower levels of knowledge retrieval and comprehension into the deeper levels of analytical thinking and finally knowledge utilization. 

2) Strategic unit development around target standards, daily monitoring and formative assessment questions, and plans for intervention and enrichment.  A key here is to develop unit plans that strategically account for a learning progression anchored around a taxonomy of thinking. This structure provides for opportunities to differentiate instruction throughout a unit based on daily monitoring of student progression according to the unit scale. The traditional methodology of teachers writing daily lesson plans has become counter-productive as we ask teachers to track student progress daily and to allow that data to guide our instruction moving forward.

3) Development of Common Formative Assessments (CFAs), analysis of CFA data and creation of interventions and enrichments accordingly.  

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In creating a CLT system, schools’ teachers form a strong professional bond as a team while becoming experts on all CLT elements which allows for tremendous professional growth. Teachers run the process and collaborate as a team that assumes ownership for ALL students’ learning progression and mastery of standards. In a collaborative learning team system, teachers work together to truly master the depths called for by standards and to build a system that allows for differentiated instruction to support ALL students’ pursuit of mastery of standards. 

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Logistics

To be effective, CLTs need to be held 3-5 scheduled times per week. Research actually shows that for any Professional Learning Community, the work needs to be embedded and valued as part of a school’s daily commitments. Time needs to be set aside to prioritize the critical CLT work. Ideally, all teachers meet in a single, centralized work area so that administrators and instructional coaches can visit a school’s CLTs to provide support as teachers work in the CLT cycle. Administrators and coaches should not take CLT time for “meeting” items or hi-jack CLT sessions. This is the teachers’ time to collaborate and complete work in the CLT cycle, thereby deepening their mastery of content included in their CLT cycle. This is a time for teacher-centered, teacher-led professional learning and should be protected as the vital system it needs to be. 

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Introducing Crafted Course of Study when Student Data says it’s Needed

In addition to the routine CLT cycle of work, teachers should consistently analyze formative and summative data from their students. When student proficiency rates and trends in student growth rates form concerning trends, it’s time for a “Crafted Course of Study,” a system that Boston Public Schools mastered and took from the NCEE’s research on our world’s top performing school systems. 

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In a “Crafted Course of Study,” CLTs identify a specific strand of data that reflects a negative trend. Then, the CLT researches schools across the country and/or world that have similar demographics to its own but significantly outperforms its school in that particular strand of student data. The CLT investigates what higher-performing schools do differently as well as successful evidence-based practices in terms of instruction with regard to skills and knowledge in that strand of data. Then, the CLT creates a plan to implement the evidence and research-based instructional strategies with the goal of increasing student proficiency in the targeted strand. The CLT then schedules times over a several-week period to take turns serving as the “demonstration teacher,” as their CLT teammates, the school’s instructional coaches, and the school’s administration visits each classroom and observes each teacher taking his/her turn at modeling the implementation of the chosen strategy. After observing the demonstration teacher’s implementation, the observing team should quickly sit down with the teacher to reflect on how the teacher used the targeted strategy and to provide actionable feedback to help the demonstration continue to grow in his/her application of the strategy. These debrief sessions also help other members of the CLT to grow as they learn from their teammates. 

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Ultimately, the CLT needs to monitor the impact that the strategy has on student outcomes. The CLT needs to create common formative assessments as well as use summative assessments to monitor students’ levels of mastery with the targeted standard or strand and make adjustments as dictated by the data.  Once the implementation is refined and delivers the desired effect on student learning, the CLT works to create a plan of sustainability to make the strategy a permanent part of their work as well as a plan to share with teachers across the campus who could benefit from the CLT’s findings and plan for sustainability. The CLT becomes an internal source of evidence-based expertise from which a school’s entire staff can learn and emulate.

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Monitoring and Actionable Feedback to Facilitate Metacognition

For a school’s administrative team, instructional coaches, and members of a guiding coalition of teachers who compose the school’s instructional leadership team, it is critical to monitor artifacts submitted by CLTs. Just as is the case with student monitoring and providing feedback to students, we all learn from this same process. Teachers need feedback and most importantly actionable feedback to continue growth and to revise thinking. A school’s instructional leaders must routinely review and provide feedback to all CLTs to ensure the CLT process is being completed with fidelity and ultimately results in teachers’ professional growth and increases in students’ mastery of standards.