Implementation in schools

[Music] I'm delighted to introduce the latest episode of the E.E.F. podcast, evidence interaction. This episode focuses on implementation in schools and it's focusing on a significant update to the implementation gun report which has been a long-standing, very popular resource in the school system. It's been access countless and hundreds of thousands of times and it's now it's used in national qualifications and it's used by research schools and lots of colleagues place it at the center of school improvement. My co-host, if you're going to regular thing, Kirsten, my co-host is Kirsten Maltz. Kirsten, can you introduce yourself? Yeah, thanks Alex, it's great to be back. So, seeing content and engagement manager at E.E.F. I'm really interested to getting into the detail of this updated guidance. It's one I used as a school leader a lot. So it feels really timely to explore how it's changed, how we think about implementation and what it looks like practically for our busy podcast listeners. I know we're going to be starting with one of the authors of the report and then hearing from school leaders from our brilliant research schools. So that will really stimulate our thinking. I'm delighted to introduce our first guest, Professor Jonathan Sharples, esteemed colleague, co-author of the guidance. And Jonathan, I'm not going to try and do your bio because you've got this really rich background and work at the E.E.F. So I'm just going to open up to you and kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to this space surrounding implementation. Yeah, hi Alex, yeah. So, my name's Jonathan Sharples. I'm a professor of research fellow at E.E.F. Saconded from University College London. And I'm going to sit in the murky spaces between research, policy and practice. And I'm interested in how evidence and insights and knowledge moves between those worlds. and I guess my role at EF in Boles, applying the latest thinking around evidence use and research use to get new initiatives upon running. And it's just part of that. I've been leading this work around implementation and this process of making and acting evidence informed decisions since yes, since we began it in 2018. And just to pick up on that. So since 2018, I think it's fair to say that guidance-triident implementation has been a really significant development in the school system. And you know, and now, you know, we see it runs all its way through national qualifications. It's kind of such a well-known aspect of the school landscape in England. Can we talk a bit about why you think that reception was so positive because you've been on the front line of speaking to so many different schools with with the guidance. But then also, what was the necessity for the update to the guidance and tell us a bit about that? So why do we have this strong long-term interest and why was it necessary to update it to? Yeah, I mean, I think those are familiar with the previous guidance report. No, it focused on this process of implementation. Though it suggests this series of practical implementation strategies and activities like planning implementation or more interesting implementation that were kind of organised across four phases really, explore, prepare to do the sustain. And I think that organisation of breaking down that process of implementation into those phases into the activity, I think schools have found useful in that it helps manage and navigate change. I think it's given some license, perhaps, to take a bit more of a thoughtful and structured approach, take time to explore and prepare, think about what you do before you know, rush into delivering things. And I think it's also just provided a common language in a way. I mean, a lot of what we're talking about often is implicit within leadership. But this guidance report kind of unpacking this process of implementation provides a more explicit language and conceptual language. And yeah, there's an able to focus on these processes through which we implement evidence informed approaches. Yeah, so I guess that was the foundation and we didn't want to lose that practical, you know, utility of it. But yeah, we did the original work in 2017 and 18. We wanted to move the guidance forward. This is a fast-moving field, capture the evidence as it's kind of evolving. So we, for this piece of work, commissioned a new review of evidence that looked across a range of different fields at a relevant implementation. So implementation science, behavioral science, school improvement, school leadership, a range of different fields to try and capture a kind of broader view of what drives under pins effect to implementation, as well as at the same time, kind of incorporating insights and feedback from schools. As you're saying, it's been a lot of work working directly with this with schools, our research school network of really, you know, baits into what they're doing. So we wanted to also draw on those insights and feedback that's emerged from the work on the ground as well and integrate it with this evidence from external research. I guess for ultimately produce some, you know, up today and hopefully more useful and powerful guidance out the end of it. I think that's a really helpful update, Jonathan. Can you tell us a little bit about what are the key shifts in that guidance? So from that movement, 2017-18 to now, what do you think of those kind of key things that people need to understand? We've moved forward in the field with. Yeah, yeah. So I guess the way we've been describing it is that the previous guide for court focuses on how to do implementation and that kind of the process of implementation. And really in this update, what we're focusing on now is really how to do that process well, what really underpins kind of effect of implementation. So if you like, we're kind of introducing a conversation around quality and what drives quality implementation. And I guess the reality is that, you know, that implementation process or practical strategies can be done well or badly, which the evidence suggests significantly influences their impacts. So for example, if the responsibility for implementation is handed to an individual, they can make go away and write an implementation plan in isolation. It might improve their understanding. But the evidence suggests that that is unlikely to improve implementation. And likewise, you know, you can set a system to monitor implementation. But if people don't understand why that system's in place and what the purpose of monitoring implementation is, again, it's unlikely to be used and it's likely to be effective. They can kind of hit the mark, but miss the point. So really, I guess that the that's what we're trying to emphasize with this input and within this update is really getting to what drives effective implementation. And I guess at the heart of that and perhaps the biggest change in this guy's report are people. And the implementation needs this social and collaborative process that's driven by how people think, behave and interact. So yes, you need the right processes, you need the right infrastructure in place. But then I think this new emphasis on the importance of the interactions between people is perhaps the most significant change in subdaing. Can I just probe about a little? Because I think one of the challenges perhaps with any guidance for for busy school leaders is this question of I'm familiar with that. And then I'd be familiar with the original guidance, for example. And it's we do this already. And particularly this point about working with people and those interactions and engaging, uniting. What do you say to that kind of we do this already point? Is there a kind of challenge to that that should be asking? Yeah, I mean, as we get mug into to describing the guys are quite identified and some key behaviors that the evidence just comes of pain effective implementation and it is just in there. These are referred to as engage unite reflect. But I think there's a challenge there because I think these terms are really quite familiar to schools. I think there's something that they feel they're already doing. But they mean something really quite specific here in the context of implementation. They're also covering a range of different dimensions that umbrella term engage covers a whole range of different dimensions of what we mean by effective engagement with an implementation. And also I'd say they're a lot easier to say than they are to do well. We often talk about what implement a lot of it feels like common sense. It feels they're logical. It feels they're sensible and yet the act of pulling this all together and enacting it in the busy challenging world versus schools actually quite difficult. So these perhaps more uncommon common sense actually. So I think these behaviors are quite interesting. I think they feel powerful and they're really key. But I think what I would encourage schools to really do is really get under the skin of what they mean really be honest about how they relate and reflect on how they relate that to their school context and how change is kind of conducted and how people are involved in implementation. Yeah, I love that uncommon common sense. and sense line, Jonathan, it really resonates. And as a kind of previous school leader using this improvement, the previous iteration, that process was really helpful. But let's unpack those behaviors a little bit more that you've just mentioned. And the nature of this update, the recommendations having this kind of cross-cutting nature, just wonder if you can describe a little bit more those behaviors and how they interact with contextual factors. Yeah, yeah. So the first recommendation, just to say, talks about these three behaviors, engage, unite, reflect. Though engage involves, relates to how we provide meaningful opportunities for people, for staff to share their perspectives and insights and collaborate with implementation. That also extends to students, families, other people who can play a valuable role and contribute with that implementation process. So you want these active ways of engaging people, at the same time, engage is also about leaders communicating the direction of travel, making explaining decisions, corralling efforts, and preventing implementation being off track. So again, there's sort of dimensions of engaged that work together. Uniting really gets to the way in which we align people, within implementation. So that can be around what's been implemented, how it'll be implemented, and why it matters. So again, it's covering a spectrum of things. So we need to think about how we unite the kind of values and vision that underpins an approach that we're introducing. But it's also about getting beyond those shared vision, those values to develop a more actionable decision to stand in of what that means day-to-day, what's expected, how is implementation going to happen, what it's going to look like when it's going well. And these activities ensure people are on the same page within implementation, which is really often not the case. There's various degrees of ambiguity play. Reflecting-- and reflect the ways in which people in schools monitor implementation and crucially use those insights to keep improving. That can be reflecting on people needs, come practices, suitability of different options to implement and approaches to implement, but also reflecting on implementation is just progressive to generate insights that enable you to improve and collectively this enables implementation to be this process of ongoing learning and improvement that adapts to the needs of the school. Yeah, so these behaviors are really key. And while the events just they drive effective implementation, also they depend on having a support of infrastructure and context in place. So the second recommendation identifies three key contextual factors which enable or constrain implementation. The first, you can think around the consistent infrastructures which are needed to support implementation. This provides the practical infrastructure that enables implementation to smooth-- to run smoothly. So it might be the time to plan implementation or having the right monitoring systems in place or having the right roles in place or the right policies. Implementation also requires people who can support and lead implementation. So we talk about people who enable change as the range of different actors that can support and enable implementation happily if that happen effectively. So yeah, that definitely includes leaders, implementation leader, school leaders, but it can also include members of implementation teams, it might include early adopters that are really running with something really, really well, support staff, student representatives. So again, thinking a bit more thematically and objectively about who can be brought into support implementation. And then the final contextual factor is a bit different in that it's the thing itself that's been implemented. So if you think about it, the features of an approach will influence how it will be implemented. So if a approach is very complex, that will perhaps more take more effort to unite around what exactly entails. If it's well specified, it's going to be easier to understand what's been implemented. And we suggest that schools should be aiming to select approaches that are evidence informed, right for their setting, and feasible to implement. And the explore things of the process gets into how to do that, how to select approaches that are evidence informed, right for their setting, and feasible to implement. And I guess that's really the role that the process is playing. So the third recommendation describes this kind of structured implementation process that eventually the continuation of the explore prepared to sustain phases from the previous guidance report. And it helps you enact and put these behaviors and content to contextual factors into action. So again, it's essentially a series of different implementation activities and strategies organized across these four phases. I've filled the bulk of the report, actually. But I think it's-- if schools feel comfortable staffing with that process, I think it's OK to do that. I think it's still a really practical way of thinking about all of this. But as you're doing that, I'd encourage you to really keep an eye on these behaviors and contextual factors and think about how you can draw on these to optimize what you're doing within that process. Because essentially, the kind of what we're saying is that this process can help you do implementation. But these cross-cutting behaviors, these cross-cutting to contextual factors help you do it well. That's a really helpful overview, Jonathan. Thank you. And I wonder if we can dig in a little bit more to that reflect. Is something that we hear from busy school leaders around that time in a really fast-moving environment, really busy? You talk about involvement of people, just whether you've got some concrete examples or conversations that you've had with school leaders over the last month or so where you can pick up particularly on that one. Yeah. I mean, as you're saying, what I was thinking about, we've done over the years quite a lot of work around teaching and assistant deployment based on the making best use of teaching assistant guidance report and worked with, I mean, I probably over 1,000 schools now over the years around that. And it's a really not the implementation challenge changing to a deployment. In that, it requires engaging so many different people across the school. There's the pupils, the TA, the teachers, the Vancouver, the Middle Leaders, the school leaders, the governance issues, the resource issues. And it's a really good example of why we need to think about the kind of interactions between people within that. And I remember we've just done a project in Bristol over the last couple of years working with a great group of schools and leaders on that project. And we had a group of what were called regional implementation leads. And one of them, Pippa Holt, I wish I had the quote in front of me, but she was just as we got into, we did a lot of the exploration, we did a lot of the kind of preparation work. And we started getting into delivery and talking about more and for implementation. And she went, let's be honest, this is often where we kind of turn away, take our eye off the ball, move on to the next kind of project. And don't really think about how we kind of monitor what's happening, really capture the changes just they're occurring, and really recycle and reuse those insights to keep improving the adapting over time. And I think, yeah, she really kind of, she expressed it so kind of well. But I think that, again, the busy challenge here, we're all busy, we have multiple priorities. And I think it's we move on to the next priority. That kind of, this is often more gets lost, that kind of reflective, adaptive kind of improving aspect of implementation. Yeah, can I just pick up on that last part? I was really interested in that point about recycling. Because in many ways, that feels like the challenge of sustaining any work in an environment. And again, just in terms of the school leaders, it feels like maybe that kind of that last mile of sustaining this work after the initial engagement, the initial excitement, feels just really difficult. And you've got often school plans, which are on annual cycles. And there's a demand to move on to the next problem. How just based on kind of the evidence and based on your work with the guidance, how do we get people to support them, to recycle, to sustain when things are trying to push forward, trying to move on to that next thing? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I would say in some ways, this is one of the bits of the guidance report that's moved on perhaps the most. And there's quite a lot of evidence came out of this review that pin to what enables sustainability. And in many ways, what really supports sustainability, the seed sustainability, a phone, throughout the implementation process. So really what the evidence suggests is, what you do before that, the way in which people are involved in implementation, the way in which you use planning, the way in which you set up monitoring systems. In other words, the things you do in the explore prepared deliver system, if you do those well, and you enact these behaviors, then the evidence for suggests them that, is that that really underpins the inability of implementation. There are some specific things that I think are worth focusing on here about what do you mean by sustained support from leadership? How do we kind of keep it present? How do we keep it as a focus about refreshing and revisiting professional development, about making outcomes visible, making sure that people can see changes in its occurring so that they can see those signs of success. So it creates that kind of motivation to keep doing something. So there's something about maintaining the effort, but perhaps the biggest change I think for sustained phase was this, I mean, even calling sustained almost assumes that you should sustain something. And we did actually think about changing the name to review or something like that, but I think there's value in keeping sustained in there, but I think the big change to the sustained phase is this pause to stop, pause, reflect on what's happened, review what's been taking place in implementation. By, for example, going back to the kind of needs that you're originally trying to address, think about review, how practice has changed, revisit your implementation to plan to see whether or not, it's achieved what you intended to do, whether or not the intervention has been adapted. So take stock, essentially, and then use that information, that reflection to inform a real explicit decision to either sustain it. You might want to embed it within the life of school, you might want to scale it up, it might move it from a department to more wider across the school. Or you may decide that it's served its purpose, it's done its job, the need has been met, and you may decide to stop it de-implemented. Or you may find out it's not been effective, or it's not worked as intended. So it's just been a bit purposeful about the decisions that are made to sustain something. Otherwise, we end up with this situation where things just allow, and we end up with a kind of ghost initiative, sort of walking the corridors at the school, sort of, still there, and stuff like that. And it's just been a bit more purposeful about the decisions to sustain and, and really does pin into the reflect behavior, that you need to reflect on what's happened, and really using that to make that decision. - Yeah, that's really helpful. And that the ghosts of kind of implementation plans pass feels very, very real. I can remember, you're in a school and you're thinking, well, we've got our new September development. And then it's often attached to people, and kind of, you know, they're driving a new exciting thing. But then when do you stop that exciting thing, if it's not working, I think that point around not just trying to keep on going, keep on going regardless of the evidence, you know, kind of, I think that's a really helpful insight. That's sometimes you need to stop and de-implement. I'm interested in that de-implementation point though, because there's actually quite a lot of information encased in there. And there's an assumption that stopping something is the easy road, and that, you know, kind of, well, we just stop it and we move on to something better. But actually, is there something, and I think this is in the guidance as well, is there something about the effortful attention needed to stop something? Well, just think about anything in your other light, just trying to stop a habit or change a habit or break something as easily as it's said been done. And people get, feel comfort in the ways things are. People get emotionally invested in approaches. So, you know, just saying we're going to stop, for example, triple marketing, which is, you know, something that we sort of school tried to implement, it doesn't mean it necessarily happened. So, and a pragmatic ways of approaching that is, is, again, almost think about a de-implementation project, if you like. So, in a way, I think you could use a lot of these guidance to think about stopping something just as much as you could about starting something. So, you could write, for example, a de-implementation plan that would set out, why are we going to stop something? What exactly are we stopping? How are we going to stop it? How are we going to know it's not happening? And why are ultimately, you know, looking to get to stop doing it? And so, I think you can turn this on this head. Interestingly, the Guards Report is used in Australia and looking at the Northern territories, right up in the Northern Darwin. They, the state there, rather, use the guidance to run a de-implementation project across the state. So, they did exactly that. They, they ran, you know, an explicit effort to think about what they were going to stop doing and, and run through these de-implementation processes, essentially. Can I reflect in there on the power of the guidance worldwide, North and South. And just that, that point you made about triple-marking that's a good example were, are, remember being a middle leader of a large industry department trying to shift the dialogue marking. And, and ironically, we were trying to do less marking, but it was really hard to do that. And that was a, a very surprising thing for me as a leader. It was counter-intuitive that people would want to reduce some of these habits, but they become so part of ingrained in who you are, what you do, there's beliefs attached to it. So, I think this, that intentional approach you're describing is really powerful. And again, it might feel like, oh, that's taking more time and time we don't have, but, but actually we don't have that time if we're not intentional about this and about what we're stopping and how things are changing. So, there's a bit of a paradox at the heart of doing implementation well is thorough, but it actually doing it well up, frees up that capacity to stop doing some things and to do other things and better and more effectively. I'm going to do, I always do this as a final question on podcasts and it can be frustrating and difficult for people who recognise the complexity of school leadership and the work we're trying to do, but I'm going to ask it anyway, of all of the insights from the significant review that you've done on the guidance that we've produced and all the things that we want to say in addition to that. What would be the one key insight you'd want policy, school leaders, the wider system to consider when approaching the challenge of implementing change in schools? So, yes, out of this piece of work, there's clear evidence that implementation matters, but it's also the case that what you implement also matters. You just need to look at across the F evaluations, many, most in fact, robust evaluations of education to interventions show little on the impact on pupil outcomes, compared to existing practices. And if we're going to put this extra effort into implementation, it matters even more that it's going in the right direction. So, our definition of implementation is perhaps a bit unusual and it's called, we talk about implementation as making and acting on evidence informed decisions. And we think it's really important not to decouple the process of enacting the decisions that we've been talking about from also deciding what to do. And I think, as an evidence organisation, we would say that. But I think if you look across the EF's work and successful project, I think it comes down to doing a good thing well. And really, I guess I'd encourage people to see these two things as really, really linked. And then the explore phase is really trying to help schools select evidence informed approaches that are right for their needs and are right for their setting. And I would encourage you to kind of see the decision-making bit as perhaps integral to implementation and kind of part of that. Yeah, thank you. That's really helpful. And a good place to end doing a good thing well. And all the challenges that come alongside that. Thank you, Jonathan, for your time. And for this really excellent update to the guidance that I know is being well received and really powerful and useful for school leaders. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. Thanks for that. [MUSIC PLAYING] And I wanted to introduce my second guest. It's Phil Stock, who's director of Greenshore Research School. Phil, can you talk a little bit about yourself, your background in teaching and how you've come to this podcast today? Thank you, Alex. So yeah, I'm director of Greenshore Research School here in South London, Sutton. And I'm also the deputy head teacher of Greenshore High School, which has got about 1900 Pew Pools days between 11 and 18. And my responsibilities are many, but chiefly include teaching learning, pupil premium, literacy, which we call language here at Greenshore, professional development, and line managing some of the core departments, such as SEND. I've been working on trying to work that out earlier, about 20 years in three different secondary schools. And very much kind of worked my way towards this role at the moment through different avenues, firstly, through curriculum, was head of English, then became a assistant head teacher and then gravitated towards deputy head teacher. And joined the network, I think it's about four or five years ago, and really kind of driven, I suppose, by the core message around disadvantaged. What we can do to support our most vulnerable pupils in schools and seeing research evidence, not as the panacea for that, but certainly is one of the most promising avenues to begin to address some of those. inequalities and imbalances and that's kind of really what I suppose drives me at the moment. Yeah thanks Phil. In terms of, so this episode is about implementation in schools. So you've just described there kind of a role that's diverse, that's challenging and a background that's being kind of at this work for a long period of time. My first question then is about we've got implementation guidance out there and now we've kind of got a new iteration of it but it's the original guide for being out there in the system. I just wanted to get your reflections on, you know, because as an experienced teacher and leader, you're first kind of getting getting a sense of this new guidance and then how that's evolved over the time and potentially your user, the update and how that's kind of brought your thinking to where we are now. I think both iterations of the implementation guidance report have helped to kind of fill a part of the sector that was missing beforehand, helping people to zoom in on not necessarily the thing itself, the actual strategy or the actual idea but more the manner in which those ideas can become effective within schools and make a difference, particularly over the longer term. And again I'm talking from my own personal experience as a leader and if I was to probably capture the difference between where I was and where I am now and then relate to the back to your question very much that I would focus more on what's the actual thing that's likely to improve the outcomes and I've alluded to disadvantaged pupils being a key focus for that. But then over time realizing that these things come and go and it's not so much whether they're effective or not effective, it's more about how those things are implemented within that particular setting that makes the world a difference. And what I think both guidance reports have done in their way is wrestle with the complexity of implementation but present it in such a way that feels like it's manageable, feels like it's supportive of introducing new ideas, changing those over time, setting up measures to evaluate, to refine and so on. And really thinking about how you sustain that over the longer term and in both reports in different ways, thinking about how it's the culture, the environment and the people that are the central components and drivers of that change. I think why engagement has been so high is because it, however much you know about leadership and change in implementation, there's something extra for you in the guidance reports. So the more that you know, the more you get out of it, the more nuanced that you see. So relatively the new guidance reports quite new and I've probably read it covered to cover about three times and each time I've seen or understood something a little bit differently. And as you will know from the role, one of the things that we do is use the guidance reports in our training with school leaders. And again, when you're enacting that and talking about it, you see things that you hadn't really realised were there or how much complexity is sitting behind some of the tools and resources in the guidance report. For me, the big thing about the most recent one that I think helps really me to understand what makes good implementation is the diagram at the beginning that combines the three recommendations. That must have taken a bit of time to think through, but that complex interplay between the behaviours, the context and the process has given, as retain the idea of a process which I think most people get the idea that it's messy, it's iterative, but there is nevertheless a sense of progression, but framed it within the wider contextual factors of school structures, organisation, time, people. And then within that, the behaviours of the people enacting those changes on the ground in schools. So I think really it's given school leaders something they didn't have before and something that isn't just a kind of one-off solution, but a road map for thinking through particularly large scale change over time. Thanks Phil. I'd love to zoom into something that you said there about the manner of an idea, becoming effective over longer term and picking up the culture environment people. Yes, that diagram did take a lot of getting to, you're right, in the guidance report and there's a lot behind that. I'd love to dig into that social process a little bit more and you wrote recently and will attach this to the show notes and the podcast, but you wrote about kind of moving from buy-in to being in and I just wonder if you can talk us through your observations of changing school over the years and your thoughts behind that piece. I think as you all know anyone knows that writes blogs or, thinks through writing, it was through the process of writing that blog that I really understood something, it's been bothering me for a number of years now and it is around this idea of buy-in and I've never really been comfortable with that for it. I don't really know why until I started writing this blog and then it became really clear to me and effectively I think the problem with buy-in is two major things that I see with the two issues with it. The first is it subtly implies that all the important decisions around implementation in a school have already been taken by the leader and that if you use the phrase buy-in all that's really required is for the staff whether it be teachers or wider support staff to somehow be enlightened or persuaded into the leaders way of doing things. Now definitely there are some contexts in schools and some themes that that approach might be necessary or even desirable. I'm thinking here maybe as schools in particularly early stages of their development with particularly immediate priorities around student conduct, welfare, safety, those kinds of things but on the whole that phrase buy-in to me feels a bit tokenistic at best and can be quite dismissive towards the value of an expertise of others and I've really honed in on that myself. I think even recently in the last four or five years that understanding that your value is the people that can offer you insights into your blind spots that help you miss things that can critique something in a way that makes it more productive. So that's the first issue I have with that term. The other is I think that it cheapens the whole idea of school collaboration and removes any kind of agency on the part of the teachers and staff because it kind of leaves you either you're either in agreement or in disagreement with the ideas and initiatives and you might be familiar with that horrible phrase that's quite big in education isn't it? You're either on the bus or you're not and again it's another phrase that doesn't sit very easily with me it makes it seem like the person driving at the leader is in charge of the implementation and can somehow foresee all of the issues all of the complexity and if you don't subscribe to that you're somehow not buying into that vision. So I guess if you're going to go with the idea of financial metaphor to describe the role of teachers and staff within that implementation process I think you're better off going with something like invest because what it does it recognizes a longer term commitment to the cause rather than I suppose more of a kind of commercial transactional relationship. I love those I love those mesophobic offers they're really nice and actually getting those really concrete examples of how that feels for that being in it's very difficult to get across isn't it in a guidance report as it is and I wonder whether in that piece you talk about that collaborative approach you talk about the people the teachers the support staff the people so ultimately make that biggest difference and I wonder where effective professional development comes into that what role does that play how does that interact with implementation your thoughts around that would be would be great film. Professional development as I see it doesn't matter how good an individual session or or program is it's always going to be part of a wider implementation process. So for example leaders need to think about structural or cultural factors that enable an embed change that might be things around time I mean there's never enough time in education but also opportunities for staff to implement new ideas appropriate behavioral levers and nudges to help teachers develop new habits routines thinking about being upfront with what the short term medium and long term evaluated measures to check progress identify priorities and pivot and change direction if necessary even things like mandating change motivating staff reviewing progress these are all part of the implementation process and professional development whilst a huge chunk of that is only one part of it I think probably the best thing way of understanding this if I give an example. of from my school setting, of what I think is, I would say that because I learned on it, but what I think is being the most successful professional development program that I'd be responsible for. And it's around our work with people premier over the last few years. And a core part of our argument around what's the best way to address this advantage is language. A language is the thing we can control the most. Therefore, if we improve the language about pupils, that it's going to help them wrestle and engage and be active in their learning, but also to be able to communicate that in oral and written pieces. And so if we push hard on language, we'll make a big big difference with the outcomes of all our pupils, but particularly for our most vulnerable. So a huge part of the training or the program, rather, the professional development was around developing reading instruction. So that's kind of two years worth we've done of developing mental models of reading, practical strategy in the classroom, and so on. But before we even did that, we spent the best part of the year developing people's understanding of disadvantage itself, contextually within our school, but more broadly within society, where some common myths around people premium might come in and things like the role of motivation. And we all want motivation, but can it be tackled directly? And I guess what I'm saying is the training element was part of a wide around, wrap around part of implementation, where we worked with in small workshops with middle leaders and they delivered these sessions. So there was content, but it was also collaborative. And that involved shaping and understanding of our strategy, why we were investing heavily in things like languages I've just described, but also addressing misconceptions that they occurred. So there wasn't training as such. There were a few input to that, but it was drawing people into a collaborative process, recognizing their views and opinions, and then having a framework that addressed that before we actually got into the stage of a work around reading. And then whilst we've done that, we've also used more public spaces, such as briefings, bulletins, to continue to dive into what people's values and beliefs are and how they change over time, and to respond in briefing sessions to that emerging picture. And I think most of that's planned, but some of it was responsive. So if you were to kind of break down the teaching and the training and those more visible components, they were merely a part of a much broader approach around implementation towards our long-term vision for reducing the attainment gap and raising the profile and attainment of all our pupils. It's a really helpful example, Phil. I think the detail and complexity you've just given there is super helpful. In terms of what the updated guidance was there anything in that you thought, I'm really glad that that's in the update, that's a new insight, because that's gonna help both me and kind of the colleagues that you described working with, perhaps in other settings as well as your own schools, or anything that struck you as kind of, given all this complexity, this is useful to help our thinking. (laughs) Definitely the diagram I described earlier, because the how it reaches all the components that go into effective implementation. I think for me to honestly answer your question, there's one phrase in there, and I feel like I'm reducing this huge body of work to one phrase, but for me, it's simultaneously profound, but also incredibly obvious, and it's the phrase, and I'm probably gonna get it wrong now, but people value what they feel part of, and that's under one of the behaviors, and it's so obvious, but I think it's also has the potential to be quite transformative, because if you really embrace that idea, it cascades outwards to what does that actually mean, and how do you actually mobilize that in a school setting? It doesn't matter whether you're a one-form entry primary school, or much larger secondary school, such as what we have here at Greenshore. Time is a premium. Yes, you want to canvas people's views, you want to understand people's values, you want to engage with what people think, and to draw them genuinely into collaborative process. How you actually do that in the male stroma things that we have to do on a daily basis is hard and a huge challenge for leaders, but I think a necessary one if you want to make big changes. And so for me, that one phrase, really, if you own that phrase properly, that will give you a strong steer for school development, effective implementation over the long term. Yeah, I think that's a really great insight. I love that description of being profound and obvious. I think a lot of the work on implementations been described in similar ways, where that common sense, that isn't that common, and sometimes these insights just do kind of scratch the surface, but when you really think about the implications, they're quite significant. I'm going to try and push now for final answer, which is always the kind of, the attempt to be really short and punchy and reduce everything down to a nice, pithy, short statement again. So what one key insight would you want school leaders to consider when approaching the challenge of implementing change in school settings? And this might go a bit broader than the guidance just in terms of that experience, that work you've done with lots of school leaders. One key insight. I'm going to say to be disciplined, because the reason why, because I think that's much harder to do than it sounds. But if you want to think about effective change or that there be in the department or across the school, you could be disciplined in the way that you think about what the needs are. So what are the actual needs I'm trying to address? And again, there's lots of noise and competing factors. What's the things that's most amenable to change? What's the thing that's going to give it, the biggest leverage point in the school that makes the greatest difference? But discipline also thinks about time. How much time can you fall to this aspect of change? How long is this going to take? And then that leads you to the idea of opportunity cost, that notion that whatever you do, it's at the cost of something else. And that applies whether you're thinking about, how do I begin my lesson here with a series of retrieval questions or more open and de-question? And there isn't a right answer, but there's definitely advantages and disadvantages each approach and the same is true of leading a school. And there are times, and again, this is reflecting on my own experiences, where if I probably hadn't done anything, it would have been as good if not better. Because what you're doing, if we agree that the guidance report in its second iteration really is spotlighting the value of people and people as part of that process, if you implement bad change, you run the risk of corrupting that. And it's not irreparable, but it just makes it harder when you want to do something, you know, next time round. If you've got a kind of track record of implement or trying to implement things that fall along kind of deaf ears. And the other thing about being disciplined is seeing the process through to, and I mentioned earlier briefly, but evaluation. And it's the kind of thing that used to feel like at something that's tacked on at the end. If you were to go back seven or eight years, when we would evaluate the impact of our people pre-minute strategies, there'd probably be about 30 or 40 different entries on there and someone would be scrambling around trying to backtrack some evaluative measures that were never put in place. And usually just to wave something through as being universally brilliant when in reality nothing's really changed. But you've got to think hard about what is, what I want to see happening next week, two months down the line, six months down the line, and even two years down the line. And that is quite brave, but it's also super disciplined because you're saying if something isn't successful, doesn't matter how much me personally, I've invested in that, emotionally, intellectually, reputationally, I've got to be prepared to roll back on that or pivot or drop something entirely if it's not working. But if you don't adhere to that principle, I don't really think that you're gonna see the benefits of what it really means to engage us called community in change. - Wow, that's a brilliant response, Phil, thank you. I think everything that comes through in your answers is that critical perspective that you bring the discipline, kind of focus that you've brought. I know that comes from lots of hard one experience. So thank you, really value being part of this podcast and the work that you do. Thank you for all your time. - Thank you both. - I'm delighted to introduce our third and final guest of this podcast, it's Laura Spence, director of Gloucestershire Research School. Laura, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your backgrounds and your school work place? - Of course, thank you, Alex. So as well as being the director of Gloucestershire Research School and also the director of research in development in the Gloucestershire Learning Alliance, which is a small trust of primary schools based in Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire. I've been an education from the age of four, right up to the age that I am now, worked in East London and predominantly Gloucestershire. cho y dwi i fyハ Chyd y fyraf ar an imperialib yn un Dw Anywayulech yn fwy hyn ei plстанов cyfar. Rydych chi wedi wir entwyt…! derm yw'r adread Rutig condor str yn dar gamerhow ar ym N Y Sefano whisch ni'n c a slewng hengers i ingredientsol gwll coughaw llol, ch跳na job加入 this through Covid-19. G💀 Derek Cynidaeth yn gofnwyr i pwedeau wedi rod e lebyadde jegg Sharon언aedd a hyn i'r ffelly macamiaeth Fantastic CSS o'r gwaith mentorio failiddff handlediff. Mae hyn y ch teawgorfnej yr scenicodor i'r hynnyn affック corsawr i hyn yn ytern wedifredoel yn gwynas fod yn gwynas yrgymnu dd slip eftar'ch, gyda mewn ac gywaith yn moeffogi Ryda Cynidaeth g imageio gydw i gwasch i ffelly. Mae hynny'n gwasch i ffelly. confident with the problem and you've explored what you feel could be the strategy. Again, thinking of our experience, I think then a key element is not to do the planning in isolation. We were really intentional about making sure we had people supporting the planning that were absolute advocates and supporters, but also were critical friends. And they enabled us to think about things in a different way where there might be particularly the challenges for instance or where there might be a limitation that we hadn't foreseen. So I think that that critical feedback is key and really important. And then it was getting proper time to the narrative and understanding the barriers and ableers. I'm a big fan of pre-mortems and risk mitigation and I think that allows you to unite people because you can really honestly and openly say to the where do you think this might work, where do you think it might not work. But also inevitably there will be things that crop up as you implement. So it enables you to challenge and to overcome those more successfully because you've already mitigated some of the other things along the way that you knew might come up. And we also made it really clear when we'd be planning and monitoring, but also that actually for us the focus really was coaching and mentoring. So we weren't only explicit about when and why we were monitoring, but also what that would look like and what we wanted people to get from it as well as ourselves as leaders. It wasn't applicable exercise and I think that's really really important. And then for me it was celebrating quick wins. I think that's definitely a kind of suggestion that I will put out there for leaders to consider. Because implementation is hard. And we're asking people to change habits and we're asking people to invest time. And I think where you can see things that are those quick wins early on. When I think about EYF, for example, with our phonics approach, they struggled more initially as a group to buy into this idea of a structured phonics process. And we did a lot of work with engaging in uniting the team and we put an additional CPD opportunities, additional reflection points so they could feel heard. We consider what we could thoughtfully adapt to versus what we needed to stick to in terms of core components. But actually, when then by October, they had children reading in their class that perhaps weren't reading before. And we put in the initial first data and we were able to look at the impact on disadvantaged pupils, particularly in our schools, where that was a challenge. We made sure we celebrated that with the team loudly and I think that for us absolutely then united that team. That was what we thought we'd really started to get some traction and success. That's lovely to hear about detailed example Laura. And it requires the detail and depth, doesn't it? Because it's multifaceted, as you say, it's people, but it's lots of people. With different starting points. And so the words like unite can feel a bit lofty and a bit vague, but when you start to make it concrete and specific like that, it's a set of really important intentional behaviors. That school leaders are often an acting, but it gives that shared language for it. Speaking of the complexity and breadth, so what I try and do with the final question is do that real difficult thing and try to shrink it down to one kind of actual piece of advice. So what would be your one, the insight, you'd want busy school leaders to consider first when approaching the challenge of implementing change? Okay, really good one. I think it's tricky to think of just one. I think these, I've got one here that I think probably has a few different layers to it, but still is ultimately the same key message. And I think for me, that is the effective change takes time. You cannot rush it. My school improvement role, and considering that there are times when you can feel that you need to rush something. You can potentially have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. And I think that actually taking time initially saves time in the long run. Whenever we have rushed, we've always had to go back and we've always lost more time than we've gained. So I think for me, it's actually about taking the time prioritising, because again, there are lots of things within that time that you could say that you need to work on an improved or developed in a school, but what is it that's going to have the biggest difference for your pupils? And then one of the things we've just learnt is this idea of avoiding the end of year scenario. I think we feel like we have to have things finished and tied up with a bow by July. And then we lift everything off in September. But actually, if we just stop and pause and reflect for a moment ourselves, actually in September teachers are focused on their new children. You've got new cohorts that they can often be changing needs. So I think don't be afraid of things not being finished by the end of the year. And don't be afraid of not starting new things in September. I think there's a learning there for us all. I think it's in Tringsick that we feel that we need to work that way. Thank you, Lord. That's a great final answer. And I think that point about time, it's often described as the greatest barrier to effectively engaging with implementation. There's too little of it. But actually that point around, you need some of that investment in time to explore the problem, which ultimately saves you time. It's that real tricky balancing act. I also like, you know, we're at that point of the year where school leaders are all thinking about the year ahead and you're just describing that, you know, we don't have to have everything tied up. And sometimes the school year can feel a little bit like a train that drives everything. And actually some of this work around sustaining, sometimes it's over these transition points. Sometimes it's monitoring outside of this kind of terminally loop and the kind of data collection and deadline. So that feels like a really powerful insight as well. Really appreciate your time giving over to this podcast and the brilliant work that you do in Gloucester. So a big thank you for all your work and your time on the podcast. Thank you, Laura. So, Kirsten, it's time for some quick final reflections. What your biggest takeaway from this podcast on the implementation guidance update and broadly implementation in schools? You know, we always need to remember the busyness in school and all of those people, I think all of our guests mentioned planning in isolation and actually challenging that. And yeah, the people, the environment, the culture, Sean through for me, I think Phil quoting that bit of the guidance that says people ultimately value what they feel part of. And where do we find those implementation leaders from all sorts of different areas that maybe we haven't considered before and different groups of people in our schools, the pupils of the parents, the staff. Yeah, I think that's what Sean through and those behaviors, living those behaviors, I guess, with the people in school. It's the people, isn't it? I mean, that really shines through in terms of all the colleagues on this podcast, but it comes through so many times, you know, you can have a good program, you can have a really good set of practices. However, you know, this emphasis on the people that are not just, we need people, we can talk about having enough teachers, but reality of that, but actually the unite and the reflect and those structures that foster that togetherness, that sense of belonging that came through. I think to speak to that time point as well, I think Jonathan talked a bit about sustain and how that's always been a bit of a skin-peerian, a bit of a challenging area and probably every school leader would admit. It's the area that falls off a little bit, you know, Laura's point about the reality of the end of the school year and sustain does mind her, might happen despite our best intentions. I was really taken by some of the points Jonathan made about de-implementation and the effort needed to stop things and how, you know, we don't need to sustain everything and keep everything going. In fact, we need to have those points to reflect the changed direction and most importantly to stop. You know, this isn't schools and not Mary Poppins back, you can't constantly put more and more, you know, strategies in, you know, improvement programmes and everything else and expectations on schools. So, so much in there, but it's the people, it's finding the time, it's constructing that support of environment and sometimes they need to sustain it for the long term, but sometimes they need to stop. And that feels like it's time to stop, sorry for the cheesy end down. Big thank you to every listener, to the podcast, and we're now getting lots of engagement from teachers and leaders and colleagues interested in education and England, but also around the world. Really appreciate that engagement. Do press the subscribe button, share the podcast, check the show notes for interesting resources and links to all the people speaking, and we'll see you again next time. Thank you. [Music]