Teachers’ Training Days: How schools are using inset days for professional development

Author(s):

Sara Bubb(presenting / submitting)Peter Earley(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 11 B, Professional Development Activities - Training Days, Workshops and Research

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-12

17:15-18:45

Room:

B-203

Chair:

Peter Earley

Contribution

As a recent OECD report suggests, ‘The kind of teaching needed today requires teachers to be high-level knowledge workers who constantly advance their own professional knowledge as well as that of their profession’ (Schleicher 2012, 11). Professional development makes a crucial difference to school performance and its importance is frequently noted by researchers (Darling-Hammond and Rothman 2011; Day et al. 2010; Hargreaves, 2012; Schleicher 2012) but finding time is frequently noted as a barrier preventing teachers from taking up professional development opportunities.

The focus of this paper is on a specific time allocation for teachers’ professional development: the days when schools are closed to pupils in order to train staff. Many countries have such days: in England there are five. The countries with the highest numberof such days are Mexico, Bulgaria, Spain, Italy and Korea and those with the lowest are Austria, Belgium and Ireland (OECD 2009). Thus, training days are a significant time resource for professional development and how schools use this time is a crucial matter. However, the limited research on training days has found that they are not always used productively or their impact evaluated systematically (Harland et al. 1999).Over 20 years ago Cowan and Wright (1990) spoke of ‘two million days lost’ to exemplify questions raised about the use and value of training days.

This paper seeks to address two research questions: How are schools using their five training days? What impact are they having?

Method

This paper draws on data from the 2009 Staff Development Outcomes (SDO) (Bubb, et al 2009) study for its foundation. Data were collected by qualitative and quantitative methods: 35 case studies of schools and a questionnaire survey of over 1600 staff from a random sample of over 600 schools. This data is supplemented by case studies of recent training days in Norwegian and English schools.

Expected Outcomes

Our research findings show there is room for improvement in the use of these days, especially in ensuring they are able to meet the needs of both schools and their staff (Opfer, et al, 2010). Around a fifth of primary school teachers said training days in the last 12 months had been ‘very useful’ compared with only a tenth of secondary school teachers. A third of secondary school teachers found them ‘of little use’ and six percent said they were ‘a waste of time’. There has been a move towards disaggregating whole days into twilight sessions. Over half of the survey respondents reported that their school did not use the full five day allocation and this resulted in extra days added to the teachers’ holidays. There are examples of effective use of training days (Couch, 2008; Gibson, 2010) which should be shared but the teachers' year also needs to be considered. Shorter holidays, especially over the summer, could have considerable benefits for teachers’ development and would reduce the damage from ‘learning loss’ which takes place over the long summer break (Moore 2010; Cooper 2008).

References

Bubb, S., Earley, P. and Hempel-Jorgensen, A. 2009. Staff Development Outcomes Study, London: Institute of Education. Cooper, H. (2008). 'Is the School Calendar Dated? Summer Learning Loss and the Achievement Gap'. The Teachers College Record. Cowan, B. and Wright, N. 1990. Two million days lost, Education 175(5): 117-118. Couch, P. 2008. Personalised Professional Development, Professional Development Today, 10(3): 23-26. Darling-Hammond, L. and Rothman, R. 2011. 'Teacher and Leader Effectiveness in High-Performing Education Systems'. Alliance for Excellent Education, 54. Gibson, R. 2010. 'How to ... ensure innovative staff training days'. Professional Development Today, 13(1): 22-25. Harland, J., Ashworth, M., Atkinson, K., Halsey, J., Haynes, H., Moor, A. and Wilkin, A. 1999. Thank you for the days? How schools use their non-contact days, Slough: NFER. Hargreaves, D. 2012. A self-improving school system: towards maturity, Nottingham: NCSL. Moore, C. 2010. The Effects of Summer Vacation on Mathematical Knowledge of Rural Students Transitioning from Third to Fourth Grade. Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 14 (2): 58. OECD. 2009. Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: first results from TALIS, Paris: OECD. OECD. 2010. Teachers’ Professional Development: Europe in international comparison, Paris: OECD. Opfer, V. D., Pedder, D. G. and Lavicza, Z. (2010). The role of teachers' orientation to learning in professional development and change: A national study of teachers in England. Teaching and Teacher Education. Schleicher, A. 2012. Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons from around the World. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Author Information

Sara Bubb (presenting / submitting)

Institute of Education, University of London

Early years and Primary Education

Bromley

Peter Earley (presenting)

Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom

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