This paper is a progress report of the first year of an organisational action research project, located in Dubai English Speaking School, to assess the impact of a collaborative action research approach to the continuing professional development (CPD) of the teaching staff for sustainable whole school improvement, with a special focus on encouraging enquiry-based learning through Assessment for Learning (AfL) methods in the classroom. While high quality CPD is recognised as core to sustainable school improvement (e.g. Earley and Porritt, 2009), our research findings suggest that dialogical and relational forms of CPD programmes are key to their sustainability.

The initiative began following a decision by the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to move away from a traditional approach to CPD, where teachers would attend workshops and subsequently apply their learning to their practices, an approach critiqued as encouraging an ethos of ‘doing to’ rather than ‘doing with’ (see OfSTED, 2010); the SLT became concerned that this ethos may also be perceived as a normative leadership style. They therefore decided to undertake their own collaborative action enquiries that focused on questions of the kind, ‘How do we (SLT) help you, the staff, to take ownership of your practices? How do we all develop a collaborative culture of educational enquiry by all for all in our school?’ The aim was to raise standards through involving all staff in their own learning and practices, while also encouraging an emphasis on school-based research (Wilson, 2009) that would encourage critical reflection in the production of personal theories of practice (McNiff, 2013). Each teacher was invited to investigate a particular topic of their choice, and negotiate their decisions as the focus for a year group: thus a body of case study knowledge has since been developed – for example, for Year 1: ‘How can we support children to track their own learning?’ and for Year Group 5: ‘How can questioning techniques improve teaching and learning in guided reading?’

Aware that all projects needed to demonstrate methodological rigour and ethical awareness, the findings from a 2011 school evaluation to assess the use and understanding by children of AfL were used as baseline data to inform the subsequent whole-school action enquiry. Further evaluations were conducted in 2012 to assess whether the collaborative action research approach had influenced the quality of teachers’ professional learning in school. The findings strongly indicated that this was the case: responses focused on how engaging in action research had helped them become more reflective and aware of how their professional learning has influenced their pedagogical practices. Further, an evaluation by the SLT of the effectiveness of their own commitments towards collaborative practices reveals that they can rigorously theorise their work as encouraging egalitarian practices for sustainable learning, as recommended by, among others, Hargreaves and Fink (2006), Kemmis and Smith (2008) and UNESCO (2011).

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