Intersection Education

Ryan Dunn - Developing Teaching Expertise
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Hello, Corey Haley here. Today I'm bringing you a conversation with Dr. Ryan Dunn. Dr. Dunn was the very first guest on this podcast and I wanted to speak with him again as he recently came out with a new. Dr. Ryan Dunn has considerable experience within education and has advised and collaborated with schools and districts, accost Australia, the United States, and Canada.

He has worked extensively with school leaders in Victoria, south Australia, Queensland, new South Wales, and Alberta to support leadership development at the system, network and school. As a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, his work focuses on teacher professional learning, educational leadership, mathematics, and middle level leadership.

His latest book co-authored with Professor John Hattie, called Developing Teacher Expertise, A Guide to Adaptive Professional Learning Design focuses on the effectiveness of adaptive approaches for school improve. Ryan recently delivered the keynote presentation for the Victorian Department of Education Principle Forums on leading improvement in complex times.

If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others. And without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Ryan Dunn. Ryan Dunn. Welcome back to the podcast. Uh, our, our first guest, our, our, our very, very first guest. You had to go all the way back down to you and I sitting in a room at You Lead and Banff, uh, quite a few years ago now.

Uh, how, how, how are you and how have you. Well, you know, things are really good from my perspective. Uh, we're just coming towards the end of our, our summer vacation, so just sort of getting my head back into work and, and looking forward to, um, the ac academic year ahead. And yeah, it was nice to touch base with you this morning and, and think back to, to being in Banff and looking out at the beautiful Rockies and, and talking about education.

That feels like a lifetime ago. So it'll be good to get back there and actually reengage in some of that. It, it will be. We're looking forward to having you back sometime soon, hopefully. Uh, but you've been busy in the meantime. Uh, the new book, uh, developing teacher expertise, uh, has come out in the interim, uh, both you and John Hattie coming out.

And, and really I wanna talk to you about, about kind of some pieces of that. I mean, we, we spoke before and I think that this really delves into more of, I think, a clear thought around. What we talked about before, which is really developing teacher expertise, and the first question that I have for you comes from the beginning and, and you talk about maybe a, not a new concept, but I like how you, you, you frame it.

And that's the duality of modern teachers, um, having to be both a teacher and a learner. Now usually we think of teachers just as you know, teachers. But, but no, there's this contrast and they have to be, be, be balancing that. And I love how you say that duality. So for you, I'd like to know, maybe start off by what does this mean to you?

What does that duality entail and how do you think that might have changed over time? Do you think this is a new phenomenon or, or how might it have evolv. Well, I'll start with the last question first, and I think it, it's always been there that, um, this duality is something that we might acknowledge more explicitly now.

Um, but it's certainly been in education for a long time that teachers are, are always thinking about not just the content that they're teaching, but also developing the craft of teaching. And so being there for their students and, and supporting their students to learn, um, but also engaging in work that supports them to continually improve in the work that they're undertaking.

And so I think that's always been there. Um, maybe the new aspect is that there's, um, there's more people looking. Um, researching it and, and thinking at what is really high quality teacher learning and what does it look like? And so, um, that's where I've sort of, over the last decade, I, I suppose, um, been working in, in teacher learning and sort of researching it and thinking about it.

I've started to really sort of explore this idea of, of teacher expertise and, and what it actually means and, and what are the sorts of things that we need to have in place to support teachers to continually improve in their craft. Um, and I suppose when I started to look at this, the one thing that I realized was that expertise in education takes a long time to, to develop.

Um, and so when we start to think about the duality of teacher being, teacher and learner, um, we need to understand that. That it's gonna be broader than sort of initial teacher education. And you, you probably can't go and get a degree over three years and learn everything that you need to know about education.

And so a lot of the work that we do is around in-service, education, you know, when you're in the classroom, what are the sorts of things you can have in place to continually get better at what you're doing? Um, what are the structures that we can have in place to support teachers to continually improve?

Um, and I really like the Dillon William quote, where he talks, not because you're not good enough, so we're not saying that we need our structures in place to, to fix poor quality teaching. What we're saying is that that every teacher, um, should have an opportunity to, to flourish and, and continually improve in their crafts.

Um, and so what I like to do is explore what are the sorts of things that we have in place that can support teachers to do that? And I think that that's, that's a perfect setup for, for what I want to talk about next. You know, we focus here on school leadership and, and the role that leaders can have in, in ultimately helping students to learn and through.

It is, uh, I agree with you here and, and I think that you would agree with me, is that it's through helping teachers to be better and. When you think of the role that school leaders play in that continued development of teacher expertise, what are some of the most important factors that you would encourage leaders to keep in mind when planning teacher professional learning activities?

So not the actual activities, but you know, what are some of those deep seated foundational values that you think, okay, if you're thinking about this and you're asking yourself these questions, I think you're gonna be on the right path to make sure that you are building up and helping these teachers.

Increase their expertise. Well, yeah, and I think that's the, the tricky thing is there's probably not one answer to that question. Um, and, and what I do is suggest to start with what are you trying to achieve? Um, and then when you can be really clear about what you're trying to achieve, then the learning experiences that we should be putting in place probably flow out of that.

So, to give you an example, uh, if we're thinking about, you know, a school embarking on a new sort of pedagogical journey saying we're going to look at the science of reading, it's quite new for us. Um, we've historically had a balance literacy program. It's gonna be a sort of this transformative experience where it's new knowledge.

Then you'd say, well, it's logical that the professional learning experiences initially should be around how we build teacher. Not necessarily structures that are out, having a bias towards action and deliberate practice in the classroom, but actually having some structures in place that allow teachers to build their knowledge around whatever the science of reading looks like.

Um, and so you say, well, then your structures might be more aligned to whole staff curriculum days where you're coming together. It might be reading groups. We are looking at core things, and so being really clear about, well, what are you trying to achieve at this phase of your improvement cycle? And then matching those professional learning structures to it.

So is it. Building knowledge, um, is it about problem identification and, and, and looking at sort of student data to identify what are the problems of practice? Um, it could be around structures for deliberate practice to say, we've built the knowledge, now we've got a clear sense of what the issues are.

We've got some solutions to that. What we wanna do is embed those practices in the classroom. All right, well, what are the structures that we could put in place that would support. Teachers to be able to do that consistently. And so, you know, there's, there's quite, quite a bit in there, but I, I'd be really thinking about starting with what's the prob problem that you're trying to solve here.

Um, and then one slide that people have seen me, uh, or people that have seen me present will know that one slide that I use quite a lot is a, a David Hopkins quote. Um, a a wonderful academic from the uk. Um, and he also, he, he talks about this idea that you need to define the practice to be able to make it.

So when we get down to the nitty gritty of what we're actually working on, that we need to be really clear about what those practices are. And I think that's a big issue in education, uh, that we often use terms in education that mean different things for different people. Like you walk into a school and people say, We're doing work on formative assessment.

Uh, we're doing work on feedback, student agency, these sorts of terms, and they become these compelling ideas that people say, you know, it sounds like we've got sort of this illusion of specificity. But what happens is when we get into it and say, what does formative assessment mean to you? You might have about 10 different working definitions.

And so it's taking those big ideas. Those compelling sort of research, high probability, uh, strategies that we can be working on, but then taking it down a level and saying, let's define what that actually could look like in our context at this point in time. Uh, so thinking really clearly about what it looks like, defining that practice, making sure the structures that you put in place, like I said earlier, uh, match what you're trying to do.

So if it's a. That you need to build knowledge on, put structures in place where you can build knowledge. If it's a practice that people who've got a good working knowledge of, put structures in place, where it's about embedding practice in the classroom and, and having that support for each other where you can say, let's try things.

Um, let's observe each other. Let's give feedback on how it's going. Um, you know, like a good example is Steve Denim, um, an ex professor. Um, of educational leadership at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, who I was lucky enough to work with. Um, in the last probably three or four years of his, his career at Melbourne University would say that every school has pockets of exceptional practice.

So, so quite often the challenge is not to introduce new practices to school or to schools. The leadership challenge is actually how can we scale the already great things that are happen? So if you, you are saying, yeah, well that's, that's my school. I know that I've got pockets of exceptional practice and that's not pockets of exceptional teachers.

This is, every teacher has got some really cool things that they do. That other teachers would benefit from seeing you say, well, if that's your challenge is to scale some of the great things that already happened, then something like a learning walk could be a really good structure to use where you say, let's actually go in with a group of teachers and observe the cool things that this teacher is doing.

And then our debrief is not giving them feedback on that practice. Our debrief is actually, what does this mean for us in our classroom? So just being really clear about, you know, what are you setting out to. Um, defining the practices, um, making sure that the structures match, um, what you're setting out to do becomes critically important.

So it's, it's a hard one to answer. It's a good question. Um, but it's, it's, that's, I think, you know, the leadership challenge I is. He's working through that sort of complexity to go what will work for us at this point in time? No, I I, I really actually appreciate that answer because it's not a cookie cutter approach.

You need to know your building, you need to know your teachers, you need to know your students, and you need to, uh, as you said, identify, uh, where perhaps some of the great areas are and where they need to work on and where they're at. So, no, I, I really do like that. And the next question is slightly related to that.

a lot of people, and I think a lot of systems are focused on the evaluation of that, whether it's an improvement plan or whether it's teachers individually as part of a, a teacher evaluation. But we know that evaluating the learning of adults can be difficult. I, I wanna, I wanna kind of put this as a, as a large scale question to you.

How, how does your work help us in evaluating whether the learning activities that we're putting in place to help teachers build this expertise? Are effective, um, maybe how, how what you have seen in your work and research to say, okay, how do we know when we're getting it right? And, and I realize you may reference your last, uh, your last answer in this one as well.

Yeah. And I'd, I'd start by saying that it's not just evaluation of adult learning. That's difficult. It's evaluation of learning I is a difficult concept. Um, and quite often we have proxy measures to get a sense of, well, how well have students learned, um, key aspects that we're looking at. So, um, it's something that we grapple with constantly in a classroom and it's, it's something that, that leaders are then grappling with to think about, well, how am I actually getting a sense of whether I've been supporting the expertise to develop of my teachers?

And so, I mean, the first thing I'd start with is, is saying, My co-author John Hattie, I think, um, his mantra of Novi Impact, which is, you know, sort of this, this global thing that people talk about and that he was, you know, very big on teachers, making sure that they think about knowing their impact on students.

Um, on one level, I, you know, I agree with John and I think it's a really nice thing to look at that we should be making sure that, you know, if we change our teaching practices, we wanna, wanna make sure that they've improved. So we should be getting a sense of has that improved the outcomes of our students.

But the other thing that John and I will talk about is to say that that's had some unintended consequences. And so when we're thinking at, you know, an implementation strategy, if the only thing that we're collecting evidence of is whether it's improved student outcomes, that can be a really lag indicator, like something that's a long way down the path.

And so I agree and you know, I agree with John and, and would say that it's an important line of sight to have. And I'm not saying don't have that line of sight, but if you are just starting out on an improvement journey around a new pedagogical approach, it might be 12 months, 18 months, 24 months before you start to see any changes, um, in academic outcomes.

And so we wanna make sure that we. A more robust evaluation framework around what we're looking at. And so that's what I would advocate to say sort of that if we think about, um, you know, the question before, when I was saying match the structure to what you're trying to achieve, I would also say match the evaluation technique to what you're trying to achieve.

And so if you are in this phase of improvement, working to build the knowledge of teachers, then think what would be a logical way of how we could actually get a sense of whether we have built the knowledge of teacher. So you can be safe to then move forward and say, yeah, no, we know we've built the knowledge of the teachers because we've got some sort of metric, which means that then we can move forward with the next phase of our improvement, which might be then starting to, to think about how can we embed some practices based on that knowledge building.

And so they're, the sorts of things that I'd be getting you to think about is, um, what phase of improvement you're up to with your professional learning and your expertise development. Um, then starting to think about logically what would fall out of that in terms. Um, a metric that you could be measuring to get a sense of, uh, whether it's improved or not, because you might find, oh, we haven't built the knowledge.

We might need to do more work there before we move forward. Um, so they're the sorts of things that I'd think about. And I mean, in the book, I, I talk about guskey's five levels of evaluating professional learning. Um, I think they're a really useful tool. And he talks about that at each level, it gets progressively more difficult.

Um, but moving sort of ultimately from student outcomes and sort of back mapping and going well, uh, has that changed teaching practices? Um, you know, is is there observable evidence that it's made a difference on? The organizational structures and perhaps routines that you've got in place, is there evidence that the leadership practices have changed?

So really getting a sense of sort of all of the five levels are important and realizing that academic outcomes are going to be critically important at some stage, um, but it might be a lag indicator that takes a while to bubble up to the surface. And I suppose the other thing I'd even say in terms of, um, student outcomes, You know, when I'm doing research projects and my background's obviously professional learning, um, but the, and general pedagogy.

But before that it was, it was mainly mathematics. Uh, when we were doing research projects around mathematics, we would definitely have academic outcomes that we were looking to improve in the research projects, but we would also have student outcomes in the effective domain that we might look at prior to those academic outcomes.

So, to give you an example, we're doing some sort of intervention around mathematics. One of the first things that we might look for is, you know, the teaching practices have. But then the student outcomes might be, are we seeing that the, the attitude attitudes towards mathematics have changed? Are students more confident in their mathematics?

And so that's a bit of a precursor to go, yeah. If we're seeing a difference in that, that'll probably end up leading to a, a change in student outcomes. Uh, so just thinking through those things and saying what's important at this point in time, um, is really sort of critical to think about not just going that student academic outcomes is the only measure.

There's lots of different things and, and then I'd sort of go back to a colleague that I, I work closely with Simon Speare and, and, and he talks about the Goldilocks principle of just enough data as well. Um, you know, lean monitoring is sort of what Simon would acknowledge to say, I'm not, you know, saying go off and collect huge amounts.

Dylan, William would say, you know, schools are a wash with data collecting more's, not necessarily what we need to do. Um, what Simon would be advocating, and I totally agree with him, is just be really precise about what are we currently. What would be a good way to collect evidence of that? Um, so you're not drowning and Darty just saying, we wanna get a sense of whether the teachers have built their knowledge.

All right. Well, how would we do that? Is that, uh, a pulse check survey? Uh, is that a focus group with sort of a cross section of teachers just to get a sense of how they've understood things, but just. Short, sharp. Let's be really clear. I appreciate that because I think that we can get bogged down in that data.

Now, I know here in Canada, we haven't had the, the data walls that, uh, that Australia has been known for at times, I think previously. Uh, but, but yeah, it can be overwhelming and sometimes, uh, we can just get, get caught up on it and are we actually doing the correct thing? Are we measuring the right thing?

And that's why I like your idea about being precise and then also measuring the affective domains. That, that brings me to another larger question, and I've been wrestling with this a lot. Um, and that is around collaboration. I mean, we, we talk about that in a lot in educational circles, and I know, you know, some of the work that's come out of, um, PLCs, uh, now it's getting a little bit older.

But I think that there's been a lot of, um, refinement of the idea of collaboration. And, and I'd like for your perspective on what you've learned about collaboration between teachers and how this. Team atmosphere can increase student learning. But also, I wouldn't mind you maybe pointing out where collaboration falls down.

Um, so collaboration, how can we actually use that to have better teacher and student outcomes? And how are we perhaps misusing that term? Yeah, and I think if you, if you look at the Education Endowment Foundation that have just released a report, a guidance report, sort of late last year on professional learning led by Sam Sims, and it's a, it's a really nice piece of work.

Um, and sort of leading up to that, Sam released, um, a couple of pieces where he was questioning collaboration. And I think it's a really critical thing to think about that. You know, when we're looking at the professional learning literature, um, historically people would say that collaboration is a really important part of professional learning.

And so he was questioning this saying, well, you know, collaboration could sometimes work but doesn't. Is it really a key mechanism, uh, for it? So I think it's something that we should be questioning, um, that just putting people in a room together doesn't necessarily mean they're collaborating. And I, and I can remember when I was, um, a coach, an instructional coach, uh, that I, I, when I'd observe lessons that, that sometimes I'd say to teachers, You know, you'd walk into the room and, and the, the desks were set up so the kids could do group work.

Um, and one of the pieces of feedback that I found I was consistently giving at one phase of my career was the students are working in a group. They're not necessarily working as a group. And so just because they had geographic proximity to each other, they were working next to each other. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're working as a group.

And so I think when we start to look at collaboration, um, in teacher learning, it's the same. Just because we've got teachers in a room together, uh, doesn't necessarily mean that they're working as a group. And, and if we look at the, the literature and the research that sits behind collaboration, there are some issues.

Um, and we do need to talk about it. And so, you know, in the book we, we explore, um, you know, this idea of social loafing, that there's key reasons that, um, when people come together as a group, they actually lower the amount of work that they would put into something. So they'd actually do more if they were doing it by themselves.

But then when they get into group work, they actually lower, uh, the amount of effort that they put into things. And there's a few reasons for it. Um, and, and I, you know, and it's not because they're bad people, it's just because we're human. Like we all do this. Um, and so we're not being presenting, and I've sort of talking about this, I, I, I sort of use an anecdote for my life when, you know, we, we, one of the sort of key bits of literature is this dependability of effort.

So saying, You realize that if you don't pull your weight in the group, it's actually not gonna affect the group at all. The, the group will still function. Okay. And so the example that I use is, um, I've got two older sisters, so I'm the youngest. Um, and when my older sister started to, to have children, um, I was at a different phase in my life where I was single, you know, probably staying up too late on weekends and things like that.

And so my sister invited me. To my niece's birthday. Um, and it was, you know, to make things easier, everyone was to, to cook a plate of food and sort of, you know, the emails or the text messages went around to everyone to decide on what they're doing. And I had good intentions that I would make this plate of food that I'd agreed to do.

Um, but then stayed out too late on the Saturday night, woke up, didn't have enough time to prepare the food. And what do you do as a human? You go, is it gonna matter if I, is it really going to matter? Is it going to ruin my niece's birthday if I don't bring that plate of food? And the answer is no. That you, you realize that, you know, I'm just gonna turn, I, you know, probably bought a bottle of wine on the way or something like that and said, sorry, Natasha, you know, didn't get it, but here's the bottle of wine.

Didn't bring the food, but here's the bottle of wine. And so we realized that it's not going to ruin the day. And then, you know, what happens in that scenario? Um, other people over time probably pick up the slack as well. Like, my mom knows they're not, I'm, I'm quite hopeless. So then she'll probably say, well, the next time something like this happens, I'm gonna actually make Ryan's plate of food because he probably won't do it.

So then once again, I even lower my. Because I know that the expectation's not there. So when we think about collaboration, there are legitimate reasons why people actually don't engage in group exercises. And it's something that we do need to think about just putting people in a room together. Um, and making them sort of, not making them, but, but thinking that will lead to, to improved outcomes is, is fraught with danger.

And so what we want to do is make sure that when we've got teachers collaborating on meaningful things, and I think that's a really critical point, is that things need to be meaningful. It's gotta be, this is in the wheelhouse of what I, I need to work on and improve that. That we can actually move through and we can counter social loafing.

So some of the things that we should be doing to counter that social loafing, um, is, is to make sure that we develop shared direction, genuine shared direction, that the work that we are doing is seen as being really worthwhile. Um, and, and then it's agreed upon by the group. And this sort of comes back to the point that I missed when we were talking about the critical things for leadership.

Like one of the things that I'm, I'm currently doing as we set out on our academic year here in Australia is working with groups. And saying that we've gotta have a moral imperative behind this improvement. There's gotta be a reason that we're embarking on this improvement journey. It's not just, oh, the system told us that we have to have numeracy as a focus, or we have to have student agency, or whatever it is that these things have to be owned in your context at this point in time to say, this is worthwhile.

Say, look, we're we're doing work around, let's develop, develop a shared direction that that has this moral imperative that this is important work for us to be doing. Um, because if it's not, when things get busy, um, when the external complexity that we've dealt with over the last couple of years with Covid heightens again, um, if we don't have a moral, moral imperative behind the work, people will, will tend to let it go.

And so developing that shared direction becomes real important when we're working in groups. Um, but you can't just always judge the group. And so one of the reasons that we have social loafing is because people don't think that they. And evaluate. It's probably a little bit strong, but recognized individually is a better way of putting it.

So we wanna make sure that we also establish that individual agency as well. And so while when we're giving feedback or we're working with a group, it's good to give feedback to a group, but we wanna also have individual. Opportunities for feedback and recognition, um, so that individuals are actually, you know, can say, well, I'm contributing to the, the group, but it's also being recognized by my peers, um, over or by other people in the school.

And so those sort of things become really important when we are starting to think about really making sure collaboration does lead to meaningful improvement as opposed to just being, well, we're sort of put in a group with no real clear sort of, Definition about what we're setting out to do, um, with no real role clarity about what might the expectation is with what I need to bring to the group and contribute.

Um, and, and so I, I'd go back to Sam, um, Sam Sims, uh, uh, the report that he wrote for the Education Endowment Foundation and say that I think he's raised some really interesting points. And they are things that we do need to consider. Uh, and the research would, would suggest that there are some things that we can put in place to move through it.

And, and, and the other, the, the final sort of point I'd make on collaboration is, well, cuz you could say, well, why collaborate then if there are issues? Uh, for me, I think collaboration's really important that you have that social support, um, that you are working through things together. Um, I think teaching is incredibly complex and so we don't want people to be working in isolation.

Um, you do want them to have a trusted community that they can draw on for advice and guidance and to get feedback on so that social support becomes really, Important. And, and I think secondary also is that, that as a school leader, it, it's a really great way to scale practices, is if we've got people working on things together, um, making decisions, trialing things out in the classroom, giving feedback to each other is, is a necessary way that we can actually start to scale things across the school.

Um, and you won't get to that if you're. With individuals. So, you know, you might introduce some, some nice practices, but to get it to scale across the school is gonna be quite difficult to do unless you've got some sort of, um, collaborative structures happening within your school. I feel like I've waffled a little bit on that, but it's a, it's, um, it is an interesting one and I think it's something that we, we do need to think about is that social oping is, is a human thing.

Um, we're all inclined to do it and we're probably all done it in our, in our personal. Um, not because we're bad people, or you might say I am because I didn't bring food to my, my niece's birthday, but you know, it's, it's not because we're bad, it's because we're human. And so, even in a professional context, um, there will be reasons that, that people won't engage as much.

Like one of the reasons social opening occurs is matching effort to the group. And so you might come into a meeting really engaged to sort of do the work and then realize really quickly that everyone else is sort of just going through the motions, the human responses that we actually then, The rest of the group.

And so while we might have been highly motivated and engaged, we very quickly then go, well, the way to actually get through this is just to match the rest of the group. So go, all right, well, what can we do to move through that to make sure that's not happening? Does that answer your question? I'm not sure I did.

I think it does. I think it does. I, uh, I, I would totally agree with you, and I think that we've just lived. Uh, an interesting, um, experience. Uh, I've been speaking about collaboration and, and I think that, uh, as you said, putting a bunch of people in a room does not lead to collaboration or improved outcomes.

But one of the things that we have just lived is this unpredictable, constantly changing environment. And I am interested to see what research will say because my anecdotal experience is people who had good teams, who trusted the team that they were working with, who knew that the work that they were doing made a difference.

And not only their students, but on other teachers. Those teams seemed to weather the. The pandemic better than people who didn't have that. We're talking right now about, uh, teacher burnout and, and workload issues. And, and, and part of that is just because of this constantly evolving, um, environment. And, and I actually think that we will see, like I said, those that had a good collaborative structure in place where they were looking at these changes and addressing these changes in a team atmosphere and didn't have to go it alone.

I think we're gonna see that they, they've weathered the storm a bit better, but yet to be seen, I guess I, I, I don't know. Have you seen anything in regards to that? I know it's so early, but not in terms of research, but in terms of anecdotal, just with the schools that I work with, that I totally agree with you.

That if you, if there was a solid sort of collaborative structure in place where, and, and it might even just be a rhythm of a, of meetings, um, that was occurring, I think that, um, you were in a better place and, and what I, what I would, what I noticed. Schools that had a really strong psychological safety.

So where people were more inclined to, to share problems of practice openly and say, I'm, I'm not sure here, um, when we consistently had six lockdowns in, uh, in Melbourne, in the part of Victoria that I lived. So we were sort of in and outta lockdown for two years. Um, so going into remote learning consistently.

Back to face to face, back into remote learning. Like that's been our life for two years. So the schools that had a strong psychological safety where a teacher could say, Hey, look, I know we've talked about this, but I'm still floundering on A, B, and C really helped schools and leaders to be able to be more responsive in, in their approach to saying, oh, we're getting consistent feedback that these aspects of practice are still really challenging in remote learning.

Um, so they could put a package of support around it, say, look, we're gonna run, um, an after school. Uh, it'll be short and sharp. If you can come to it live, great. If you can't, we'll record it so you can watch it in your own time, but it's in response to the challenges that we're seeing. So yeah, I found that schools, that, that had a strong psychological safety where people were more likely, um, to actually talk about challenges without the fear of sort of being persecuted.

Um, if they had a good collaborative structure where they would have more exploratory conversations rather than, I'm sitting and listing and we're actually debating ideas, um, that, that really did help. Move through some of the challenges. Uh, no doubt that that was anecdotally, like I said, not research, but anecdotally, there's no doubt that those schools were, were in a better place.

And it's just as you said, I mean, I think that the part that I said is, and we, we can talk about it as psychological safety, but you know, that's social support and that trusted community I think was, was huge. But also knowing that what you were doing was making a big impact. Um, that, that was, that was the other big one.

I mean, uh, and that changed a lot. But you know what, I just wanna finish up talking a little bit about the book here. I've got it in my hand right here. Um, developing teaching expertise out right now, uh, a Guide to Adaptive Professional Learning Design. Tell us a little bit about that writing process. I mean, Where, where did this start?

Um, uh, I have a sneaking suspicion from our previous, uh, conversations where it kind of started and, and what did that process look like? Was that, was that new for the whole book idea or was it hard, was it different, um, than maybe some of the previous writing that you've done? Well, well, it was different.

So I suppose working as a, as an academic at, at Melbourne University, um, you do start to to write for academic journals and there's a very sort of specific genre. Um, that you're producing work for. And so really what this book was, was trying to do was to take my PhD, um, so John Hatty was my supervisor.

Um, and we worked really closely through that, that PhD journey, and sort of finishing that about three or four years ago. Um, we had the opportunity to say, to, to turn it into a book and to say, well, let's not make it this sort of academic piece. And I know it's academic in its research base, but what we wanted to do was, was to try to translate it into something that was useful for, for school leaders, um, and mid-level leaders at a school.

Anyone that's sort of leading a faculty or a group of teachers through. Some teacher professional learning. So, um, it was a different way of writing. Um, I think it, it it's, um, it was fun to do. Uh, it was written in, in and out of lockdown, so John and I weren't necessarily in the room together. Um, but that was, that wasn't such a big deal.

Like when I did my PhD with John, I was based in New York City. Um, so most of our sort of collaboration through the initial parts of. My PhD the first three years actually, um, were spent sort of working over Skype at the time, before Zoom, we used to use Skype, uh, and, and sort of sharing things online. So it, it was, it was fun to do.

Uh, I hope it's useful. It's one of those things that when you get into it, you realize that there's. There's so much in there that you, you don't wanna overwhelm people, but you do have to make some choices about, well, what are the key things that are gonna be included? Um, we could probably write a follow up book with the bits that we've cut out on some other aspects of, of leadership and expertise that, that we think are really pertinent for leaders, but just wanted to make it useful.

Um, it was really fun to sort of be challenged by John, uh, uh, who's not just a, a a, you know, like I think some people think of him as his sort of educational guru, but he, he's so well-read that you can't really get anything past him. And so the great thing of working with John and, and I've been lucky enough, To be working with him for over a decade now, which seems crazy to think of, but is that he's so well-read that, that anything you put down, he, he can sort of go, well, have you thought about this?

There's a counter-argument for that. Does this, does fit with that? Um, and so it's, it's always a privilege to sort of sit down and try to nut something like this out with him. Um, and hopefully get something that that's worthwhile for, for school leaders and people working in supporting teachers to develop the craft of teaching, which is not easy to do, like.

Looking at, um, at Twitter this morning, and, and there was a great quote that, that I saw some people put up there from Shoreman that talks about that, that teaching is, is one of the most complex and frightening activities that our species has ever invented. And so, I think we don't often get that narrative when we're working in schools that, you know, if you look at the media, the mass media, they'll probably say that, you know, teachers don't work that hard and it's a pretty cruisy job.

You get lots of vacation time and time off. But it's not the reality. The reality is that it's a really complex job. Um, what we've tried to do is, is really explore expertise in saying that. You know, there's elements of routine expertise in what we do in schools where you do the same thing over and over.

But by and large, the type of expertise we need is adaptive expertise. Um, we have this human relational element that we're constantly dealing with. We've got, you know, 20 plus students in front of us. And so to become expert means that we need to be quite, um, adaptive in our approach. And to say that just because we taught a lesson to a, a group of year nine students before recess, And it went really well, doesn't necessarily mean that that same lesson is going to work perfectly after recess.

Um, and that's not because we lose our expertise at recess time. That's just because that we work in a really complex setting, um, and we need to be an adaptive in our approach. So we've tried to explore that. How do you develop adaptive experts, not just routine experts that do the same thing over and over again?

And that's a challenge, and that's not easy to do. And there's, there's a lot in that to unpack, I would. I would say that adaptive expertise, as you were talking about, was probably focused around teacher, but I see the same types of phenomenon with leadership, just as you said in in earlier in the, in the answer to question two, I mean, there's no.

Cookie cutter answer for putting in place good professional learning. Uh, just like there's no good cookie cutter answer for putting in place great learning for students. We need to be adaptive. We need to have a range of possibilities and research based strategies, and we need to evaluate what's going on and put it in place.

And I think that that shines through, uh, not only in the book, but in our conversations. And the last thing I'll say about this book is I found it. Extremely useful. Um, really approachable. If, if there's anyone out there that's kind of scared of academic research and, and think it's gonna be reading like a an academic journal, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised.

And, um, I really liked how there were a lot of aha moments pretty much on every page. You know, you could see, oh no, that's, that's actually relevant to what we're doing. And, and that explains some things, or that's an idea to think about. So, uh, I, I re. A lot. And, uh, I want to just thank you for writing the book and for taking a little bit of time outta your day to, to speak to, to me and to everyone listening and, and wish you all the best.

And you know, hopefully we'll have you on a third time. Maybe you'll be our first, uh, third time guest on the, on the pod. My pleasure. And I appreciate the invitation to come on and, and chat through a few of the ideas. Um, it's, it's, it was really fun to do. If we do a third time, we've gotta make sure that it's, it's in Banff again.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. All right. Thanks so much, Ryan. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this edition of the Intersection Education Podcast. Please make sure that you subscribe to ensure you don't miss out on future episodes. Another great resources to sign up for our newsletter on the website, intersection education.com.