What happens when teachers participate in teacher rounds?

Abstract

This study explores what happened when teachers in three London schools participated in Teacher Rounds (Del Prete, 2013) as a collaborative professional learning activity. It seeks to understand if and how the Rounds’ protocols supported teachers’ professional learning and helped them improve their practice. In a climate where teachers’ response to traditional CPD and feedback from formal observations is often “passive” (Danielson, 2009, p.4), I argue that Teacher Rounds are an innovative form of professional learning where teachers can take ownership of learning from each other. The Teacher Round protocols ensure a safe environment for teachers to work together in a collaborative way and helps them develop a language to talk about teaching and learning and have professional dialogue with each other. I suggest that professional learning that takes place in the “authentic world” (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 2011, p.82) of the classroom is more effective than traditional CPD in improving the practice of teaching. This study is primarily a participatory action research (MacDonald, 2012, Chevalier and Buckles, 2013) project, which works with teachers rather than on them. Teacher Rounds are similar in many ways to Instructional Rounds (City, Elmore, Fiarman, and Teitel, 2009) and are based on the practice of teaching hospitals where trainee doctors learn around a hospital bed. Participants in Teacher Rounds used the Round protocols, which included identifying their problem of practice, inviting the Round group into their classrooms, and gathering evidence without attempting to interpret or judge what they see and hear. Following each Round a post- Round discussion was held where teachers reflected on their own practice and the practice they had seen in the classroom. This thesis makes a unique contribution to the literature and research around professional learning and performance cultures and offers Teacher Rounds as an alternative approach to teacher development.