One of our big success stories this year has been the turnaround of our IBDP High Level Business Management results. At the beginning of the year, our data showed that a number of our second year students (DP2) across four classes were at risk of underperforming in the final exams. My role was to lead the teaching team through a process to get our results back on track by putting together and implementing an action plan. The following is my reflection of the process and an attempt to explain why this process was effective.
The starting point for this school improvement journey was a collaborative process of gathering rich information about the factors impacting on students’ outcomes – the scan and assess stage. We examined what had happened (the past) and what is currently happening (the present) in order to set expectations/targets (envisioning the future). We examined the results, breaking down into components, looking at the cohort as a whole, individual classes and drilling down to each student. We looked for patterns and in/consistencies in areas such as teaching teams, resources, work programs, delivery of program, diversity of learners.
From this we the prioritised and determined what practices and actions needed. We were very clear to understand WHY, before we moved to the WHAT and the HOW.
A summary of the actions taken were:
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Identifying individuals in the team to take responsibility for various actions, for example, one teacher took responsibility for monitoring attendance of students attending our Learning Enhancement program (LE) which is a 2:1 alumni tutoring program to follow up student attendance.
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Increasing support for lift students (students performing at a low level 4 or below) through the LE program, for example on teacher observed the alumni tutors in LE program and then provided guidance for the tutors to enhance the effectiveness of the tutorial sessions
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Analysis and review of formative assessments and work programs to determine strengths and areas for development. For example, introducing a rigorous and reliable moderation process for the internal assessment to ensure consistency across all classes.
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Working with students to develop their own Personal Learning Programs (PLPs) allowing for a narrow and sharp focus on their learning (increasing student efficacy)
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Using PLPs and results from student feedback surveys (known as student voice) to developing specific plans, know as Subject Development Action Plans (SDAPS) for each of the four classes to differentiate and accomodate the learning needs of individual students, for example, for students who struggled with the content, developing personalised exam techniques such as revising definitions and content to maximise achievement by focusing on knowledge & understanding style questions before attempting the more complex extended responses that required synthesis and evaluation.
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Based on the PLPs and SDAPS, researching and implementing differentiated pedagogical strategies such as grouping of students in collaborative activities to leverage the expertise of the stretch students (high performing students) to support/coach/aid lift students.
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Empowering Senior Teachers to mentoring colleagues new to the IB through team seating, opportunities for collaboration to enhance team building and co-planning to ensure consistency between classes leading to the development of differentiated strategies for lift (students performing at a low level 4 or below) and stretch (students performing at a level 6 or 7) students.
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Effective analysis of data with continual review of walls and headline indicators, tracking cohorts and individual students triangulated with data and information recorded in the students information system (OneSchool) to find general patterns and stories of each student. For example, by identifying a number of students with English as a Second language who were underperforming, we were able to identify learning strategies to support their needs such as use of ‘traffic lighting’ vocabulary lists.
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Prioritising time to review, reflect and update action plan through allocation of time in faculty (Synergy) sessions and organisation of meetings during non-contact times leading to extensive documentation of process and is as a valuable resource for developing/sharing practices within and beyond the team.
Results:
Our aspirational target for the cohort is a GPA 5.69 (out of 7).
Term 4 2017 Results: GPA 4.82; Stretch 31%; lift 82%Term 1 2018 Results: 4.90; Stretch 33%; lift 86% (commencement of the Action Plan)Term 2 2018 Results: 5.35; Stretch 48%; lift 94%Term 3 2018 Results: 5:49; Stretch 62%; lift 87%
Going into the November examinations, 16% above our target for Stretch, on track for the aspirational GPA target (5.69) and with the individualised student action plans, we are aiming for 100% lift in line with our EIA target (100% of graduating students will achieve a minimum or 12 points across HL).
Analysis:
Why or to what extend was the plan effective? As a team, we have been discussing these questions at length and we have currently highlighted two key factors/influences that have high effect sizes as measured by Hattie.
Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE ) is the belief that it is us, the teachers, that make a difference. The concept was introduced in the 1990s by Albert Bandura which he defines as “a group’s shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment.” Hattie emphasises, as does Bandura, that the positive effects of CTE on learning outcomes far outweigh the negative effects of low socioeconomic status of students. As Hattie ranks CTE at the top with an effect size of 1.57 (with 0.4 being the hinge point), this may explain why our action plan was so effective (see here for a more detailed account).
Teacher Credibility which, according to Hattie, is vital to learning as students are very perceptive about knowing which teachers can make a difference (0.90). Hattie defines credibility as trust, competence, dynamism and immediacy. As a team, we were all responsible for each of our BM students no matter what class they were in and throughout the year, as we all knew the students (made visible through our data walls, and through co-planning & co-teaching), we were all able to make emotional deposits with individual students and build trusting relationships so they knew we cared about them personally and about how they learn. The team developed as an expert teaching team, competent with the subject matter and managing class behaviour. and through the team’s passion about the subject, about teaching and most importantly helping students to succeed.
Our task now is to collect evidence/data other than our own professional observations and anecdotal interactions with students to determine if our analysis is valid.
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