1. Joint Practice Development:
how to combine CPD with innovation
Professor David Hargreaves
(Wolfson College, Cambridge)
Challenge Partners 9 July 2013
Part One

2. The problem: knowledge transfer
...from one person to another
...from one situation to another
...from one school to another
...from one country to another

3. SHARING GOOD PRACTICE
JOINT PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT
= haphazard scattering of pre-defined and
well-honed practice to possible adopters
= teachers working closely together to
improve their practice beyond present quality,
all within a far better distribution system
versus

4. What causes many attempts
at knowledge transfer to fail?
✤ Too little account it taken of the culture in which
the practice is embedded, often quite deeply
✤ The practice has to be learned afresh
✤ It is often not a transfer but a transplant or graft

5. Teachers’ learning a new practice...
is slow
requires trial & errer
needs
needs
so no quick fixes!
so a partner/coach/mentor
so opportunity to fail
so a partner/coach/mentor
Is this built into your school’s CPD?
error
feedback
support

6. Under what conditions is
SGP most likely to work?
✤ When the innovation is easily added to existing
practice rather than being a replacement of it
✤ When acceptance of the innovation demands
little abandonment of an existing practice
✤ When the introduction of the innovation is
supported by mentoring and/or coaching

7. SGP - largely unilateral, rarely interactive
JPD - always interactive, often bilateral
SGP - rarely innovative for both parties
JPD - always innovative for both parties
Sharing Good Practice versus Joint Practice Development
SGP - supposedly runs down from success
JPD - builds up from what is not working

8. Discontent is the first necessity of progress
I have not failed: I have just found ten
thousand ways that won’t work
You must learn to fail intelligently. Failing
is one of the greatest arts in the world.
One fails forward towards success.
In the words of the great innovator, Thomas Edison:

9. The plan for teaching and learning
Monitor and improvise where the plan doesn't work
Personal tinkering
Tinkering with partners
Systematic innovation with partners
Distributed innovation to partner schools
From common practice to full JPD
A self-improving school system?
...for the rest of one's career
on a systematic basis

10. Remember...
Being presented with the ‘best practice’
of another teacher or school can easily
intimidate and provoke defensiveness
A group of teachers facing up to where
they would like to be better practitioners
can fire their imagination and empower

11. What can I offer to someone else?
What do I want to learn from someone else?
Establish pairs/trios for common pursuits/interests
or for complementary skills/expertise
How do you initiate and then embed JPD?
Build on reciprocity, not deficit
Conduct audits for JPD matching
What can our school offer to a partner school?
What do I want to learn from a partner school?
What aspect of teaching/learning am I not content with?
What aspect of teaching/learning are we not content with?

12. In England, for more than two decades,
teachers have been required to participate
in five in-service training days per year.
The research evidence demonstrates that
these are rarely well organised, are seen
as of little use by participating teachers,
and represent a wasted resource.
Brighouse & Moon, 2013

13. 1. Joint professional training day
3. Complementary reciprocal closure
2. Unbundle the day for twilights
Implications for
Professional Development Days?
In what ways do you think you need to
change how you use CPD or training days?

14. How do you initiate and then embed JPD?
★ Work with the natural grain - build on
individual tinkering and gossip
★ Research Lesson Study - Pete Dudley
www.lessonstudy.co.uk
www.lessonresearch.net
★ Slide from SGP to JPD - by coaching!
★ Build a culture of everybody learning

15. Suggested process for JPD
Select a priority area for development
Select an aspect that is NOT working well
Brainstorm possible repair work
Consult students and recruit to the work
Fail until some breakthrough reached
Challenge to push to further innovation
Transfer through new JPD pods
Create an innovation network

16. Joint Practice Development:
how to combine CPD with innovation
Professor David Hargreaves
(Wolfson College, Cambridge)
Challenge Partners 9 July 2013
Part Two

17. The nature of innovation
Close to
existing
practice
Far from
existing
practice
Minor change Major change
Incremental
change
Radical
change

18. How do you initiate and then embed JPD
at student level?
Students as
co-constructors and co-innovators
for better learning and teaching?
Have you developed student voice?
Students as Web 2.0 innovators?
Students as digital mentors and coaches?

19. Wikipedia
Fanfiction
Web 2.0
User-created content

20. Harry Potter (635,353)
Twilight (207,939)
Lord of the Rings (48,276)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians (36,519)
Hunger Games (30,081)
Maximum Ride (17,274)
Warriors (15,230)
Phantom of the Opera (10,645)
Chronicles of Narnia (10,275)
Gossip Girl (9,821)
Song of the Lioness (8,111)
Outsiders (7,642)
Mortal Instruments (6,979)
Vampire Academy (6,790)
Inheritance Cycle (5,442)
Artemis Fowl (5,084)
Animorphs (4,984)
Fairy Tales (4,707)
Gallagher Girls (3,766)
Clique (3,651)
Vampires (3,623)

21. What will happen when they all have
constant access to the internet?
Aged 12-15: 43% have internet access in the bedroom
Aged 8-11: 14% have internet access in the bedroom
Cloud computingUniversal handhelds with Net access
tv versus the internet
Aged 4-15 weekly time spent watching TV
15 Hours 37 Minutes - 2007
17 Hours 34 Minutes - 2011
Aged 5-15 - 91% have home access to the internet

22. 22
Increase in computer and video gaming among 8-11s
While 12-15s are using the internet for social
networking sites, 8-11s are more likely to use it for
gaming, with 51 per cent saying they play games
online on a weekly basis, up from 44 per cent in 2010.
8-11s are also spending more time playing on games
players/ consoles compared with 2010 (9 hours 48
minutes – an increase of nearly 2 hours).
Taking computer and video games together, seven in
ten (68 per cent) 8-11s say they play games almost
every day, up from 59 per cent in 2010.

23. Computer games Conventional classroom
Activity is usually chosen by learner Activity is rarely chosen by learner
Learner is usually highly active Learner is usually relatively passive
Learner is highly motivated to engage
Collaboration among learners usual
Learner motivation is variable
Increasing level of difficulty sought
Feedback is regular and impersonal
Learner is emotionally involved
Failure is a spur to renewed effort
Competition with others is enjoyable
Collaboration among learners is rare
Increasing level of difficulty avoided
Feedback is irregular and personal
Learner is emotionally uninvolved
Failure is dreaded as demotivating
Competition enjoyed only by winners
Consequential decision making vital Student decision making rarely vital
Can you make classroom activity more like a computer game?

24. Students as
co-constructors and co-innovators
for better learning and teaching?
Would the development of pupil
voice, and the use of the new
technologies, and the recruitment of
pupils as co-innovators affect how
you establish and sustain JPD
groups within your school
and then across partner schools?

25. Jean Rudduck et al (eds) School Improvement:
what can pupils tell us, Fulton, 1988
Michael Fielding & Sara Bragg, Students as
Researchers, Pearson, 2003
John MacBeath et al, Consulting Pupils,
Pearson, 2003

26. What is the state of the foundations of JPD
in your school/department at present?
What steps do you need to take to improve
JPD within your school/department?
What steps do you need to take to improve
JPD across partner schools?
Do you know how to re-culture your school
so that every teacher sees JPD as a natural
way in which to exercise their profession?
JPD built into a teacher’s DNA?
JPD teams for school leaders?

27. Evidence-based practice
Evidence-informed practice
Evidence-generating practice
Three possibilities

28. In obstetrics… if a new strategy seemed worth
trying, doctors did not wait for research trials to tell
them if it was all right. They just went ahead and
tried it, then looked to see if results improved.
Obstetrics went about improving the same way
Toyota and General Electric went about improving
on the fly, but always paying attention to the results
and trying to better them. And that approach worked.
Whether all the adjustments and innovation of the
obstetrics package are necessary and beneficial may
remain unclear… But the package as a whole has
made child delivery demonstrably safer and it has
done so despite the increasing age, obesity and
consequent health problems of pregnant mothers
Atul Gawande, Better: a surgeon’s note on performance, 2007

29. JPD checklist
1. How many JPD pairs, trios etc now established, and how?
5. How are JPD teams being monitored and evaluated?
6. How do professional training days support JPD teams?
9. How innovative have the JPD teams become?
2. How were JPD topics/themes decided?
4. How were JPD success criteria devised?
8. Is evaluation and challenge an element of JPD work?
10. Are innovation processes and outcomes distributed
among partners?
3. Are you building from what is not working/needs to be better?
7. Are pupils contributing to the work of JPD teams?

30. Dynamic governments remain porous. Renewal rarely
comes from within. One of the optical illusions of
government is that those inside of it think of themselves
as the drivers of change…Yet most far-reaching ideas
and changes come from outside… Governments are
more often vehicles than initiators. They play a role in
embedding these changes but typically they get involved
only at a late stage…
Geoff Mulgan
The smarter governments around the world realise that
they need to build innovation into their everyday
working: through experimental zones and pilots,
competitive funds and rewards for promising ideas. And
new ideas need time to evolve - preferably away from the
spotlight… Most radical change has to start outside
government, usually from the bottom rather than the top.

31. Most innovations are not disruptive. Many of
the most important…are sustaining
innovations that take a good product or
service and make it better.
Clayton Christensen
Failures should not be confused with
mistakes.
Stefan Thomke
Management practices that work for
incremental innovation often deter radical
innovation.
Wolfgang Grulke

32. The challenge is not to avoid taking risks,
but to get much, much smarter about
how to de-risk grand aspirations.
Gary Hamel
All processes designed to generate new
ideas begin with information from users.
Eric von Hippel
Most radical projects were driven by
inspired and determined people who often
had to swim against a tide of corporate
indifference.
Richard Leifer