Digital quality teaching rounds: Strengths, challenges and opportunities

Quality Teaching Rounds as a school-based professional learning initiative have achieved national and international recognition for their measurable impact on teaching and learning growth and feelings of teacher positive collaboration within a professional learning community. Through successful implementation in a small rural New South Wales high school, the evidence of improved teaching practice through collaboration was recognised. So much so, that when a small group of existing teachers moved on to employment at other school settings, they wanted to continue working within the same professional learning community. Digital collaboration tools provided a space to overcome geographical barriers, but as adaptations were made to facilitate online teamwork, unexpected challenges and barriers arose and required critical and creative thinking to foster ongoing productivity and impact on teaching practice. This paper tells the story of our experience of using quality teaching rounds.

About quality teaching

The Quality Teaching Framework (QTF) is a pedagogical model that combines the theoretical and practical development, and evaluation, of quality teaching and supports capacity building for teachers of all career stages. The framework promotes the analysis of teaching practice through an objective lens and is discussed through a professionally agreed discourse that supports and challenges teachers to engage, evaluate and reflect on practice across three dimensions of pedagogy; intellectual quality, quality learning environment and significance (New South Wales [NSW] Department of Education, 2022). The QTF provides structure and direction for teachers to authentically integrate intellectual, emotional and social learning opportunities into everyday practice to improve student outcomes. Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR) utilise a professional learning community (PLC) to analyse peer teaching using the QTF as a scaffold for shared pedagogical language during instructional rounds (Gore et al., 2010). The purpose is for a small group of teachers to both improve their professional knowledge and their collective ability to analyse teaching practice (Gore et al., 2010). Quality teaching rounds are appealing as not only do they take into account the local context of the school, but also they build and use teacher collaboration and focus on analysing practice within the timeframe of the school day (Gore & Bowe, 2015). The success of QTR is generally attributed to the power of the professional dialogue (reflective conversation) following peer teaching (Gore et al., 2010).

Professional learning (PL) is the experience of learning about practice and applying this learning on a daily basis in an authentic and meaningful way (Parker et al., 2012). Parker et al. note that PL is more dynamic and influential when the learning occurs in a community, resulting in the formation of a successful Professional Learning Community (PLC). PLC’s support collaborative learning and the most effective learning happens when the team engages in regular and ongoing professional discourse. Lave and Wenger (1991) note that over time it is expected that PLCs will evolve in predictable and unpredictable ways and this evolution is viewed as a success in the PLC remaining progressive. PLCs are integral to the success of quality teaching rounds. Committing to QTR over time improves the whole group’s skills for giving and receiving feedback by developing a deeper understanding of the QTF, professional trust and mutual respect for colleagues.

History of QTR at our school

Gundagai High School is a small rural co-educational low SES facility with a substantial history of a stable workforce until recent times when there was a period of staff movement, particularly from 2014 onwards. The school has four faculties with Head Teachers which were geographically widespread across the school campus making collaboration physically difficult, until 2021 when staffrooms were relocated resulting in a much closer proximity. Following data analysis, specifically of the 2019 NSW Government People Matter survey, (NSW Public Service Commission, 2019) the new Principal and Deputy Principal were keen to create change in order to build trust and collaboration among staff. A number of teachers completed all stages of the teaching and learning cycle independently due to being the sole subject specialist at the school. For long standing staff, working independently had become commonplace and, over time, our teaching and learning routines were established and reinforced without regular discourse focusing on collaborative reflection of practice. As a result, the notion of professional observation was mostly connected to mandatory observation requirements and professional practice judgement, rather than as an opportunity to collaboratively reflect on practice through a learning team.

Quality Teaching Rounds, introduced by the Deputy Principal, presented an opportunity to support small groups of teachers to work together during the school day while building a shared language of pedagogy. The process began as recommended with two staff attending QTR training. These teachers (one an author of this paper) each co-opted a further staff member to join in the first PLC. Following this first full round, this PLC split into pairs and two further PLCs began by each staff member bringing on a new teacher to form two new groups of four. By the end of the first nine months, around 50% of staff had completed at least one round and the school was on track to meet its 2024 School Improvement Plan target. This initial flush of enthusiasm slowed once the supply of “innovators,” “early adopters” and “early majority” (Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971) were exhausted. Staffing changes meant a loss of QTR experience across the school at the same time as casual staffing shortages and COVID related restrictions compounded to cause the cessation of QTR for the next few months.

Four staff who had changed schools after successful implementation at Gundagai High School were keen to continue their QTR journey as there were limited options at their new workplaces. Initial brainstorming and discussion for ways to do this produced a range of ideas. As the scope for this cross-school project, co-led by both authors, would be completed outside regular school hours, and to keep the time burden to a minimum, the final agreed format was digital collaboration that involved one team member videoing one lesson in their allocated school term and then sharing their lesson with the team. The team would code individually after viewing the video content and then meet for discussion as per QTR norms at a mutually agreed time. The following school term, a different PLC member would conduct their round by videoing and sharing online. As it turned out the collaborative discussion meetings were able to be held face to face as team members agreed to time them for school holiday periods which dismissed the need for an online format for this part of the round. Although this did not align with the importance of immediacy for viewing, coding and discussing all happening on the same day, as specified in the traditional QTR format, our adapted format was the most workable alternative for our PLC to continue.

Pros and cons

Pivoting from an on-site learning team to the digital PLC landscape was relatively straightforward. After periods of working remotely during 2020 and 2021, it was evident that the team’s online collaboration skills were well-developed. We reflected on the positive impact that QTR had on our existing practice and professional relationships, and were invested to continue, despite the challenge of no longer working together in the same physical school setting.

Principals across two schools were supportive of the initiative. Lesson filming occurred during a regular timetabled class period, and this was the only part of the initiative that occurred during the regular school day. The digital PLC was established and maintained through Google Drive. There was no school time needed to complete QTR coding or discussion activities due to teachers working across different school settings and the digital content being accessible online. New team members could easily be added as needed and there were few digital or technological barriers for member participation. This also allowed for the possibility of QTR to continue across schools and potentially widen the impact across new educational settings with new members.

Our project culminated in a presentation delivered at the Quality Teaching in Practice (QTiP) conference in May 2022 (see photo). We delivered a workshop sharing our QTR journey and received positive feedback from our session participants who indicated that our ability to transform quite seamlessly from one format to another was innovative and inspiring. At this time we also gained the attention of other conference attendees who expressed interest in participating in our online PLC to widen their own QTR networks beyond school based colleagues.

What we identified as exciting possibilities also proved to be unexpected challenges. Due to team members being required to code lessons and participate in coding discussions outside of traditional work hours we struggled to retain existing members and attract new ones. Initially we were excited by the prospect of collaborating with like-minded colleagues with investment in the professional learning opportunities of QTR but, over time, we reflected that the homogeneity of the group was not providing us with the rigorous discussion we needed to improve reflection on existing practice. Although we piqued interest amongst teachers within our professional networks we were unable to transform this into a commitment.

Lesson filming provided an additional challenge that was refined through trial and error. Different filming techniques gave different results. One teacher used an artificial intelligence device, called a Pivo, to film her lessons. The Pivo is a motion tracker that senses body movement and voice command, but in busy classrooms the auto tracking capability could not maintain sole focus on the teacher. Another participant trialled a responsible student to film her lesson. The lesson delivery was mostly captured, although audio social content between the class members and the filming student was recorded through the camera’s microphone. Next time, this same teacher asked a Head Teacher to film the lesson. The students were aware of the Head Teacher being present for the whole lesson and classroom interaction and discussion was unusually formal, and again not a true reflection of everyday lesson interaction between the classroom teacher and students.

Coding discussions brought new highlights and insights. In previous coding discussions held face to face, the team had developed to a point where results were closely aligned. However, it became clear that the consistent coding of the important QTR elements, inclusivity and engagement, were very difficult through the third-person viewing of video content. The coding of engagement and inclusivity differed greatly between the teacher delivering the lesson and the lesson observers. Video content was mostly focused on capturing the teacher in the classroom throughout the lesson and we tried to minimise capturing students’ faces on the footage for increased student privacy. Engagement behaviours such as sustained interest, attentiveness, enthusiasm and seriousness for completing the learning activities in the lesson were minimally, or not at all, captured through the camera lens. Similarly, inclusivity was a challenge to code. This element is usually gauged through being present in the learning environment for the duration of the lesson, and feelings of inclusivity did not readily transfer in film content. In most cases the coding and discussion of engagement and inclusivity was ineffective due to being undetectable in film footage.

Recommendations

The digital experience with QTR with this PLC worked extremely well overall, showing the versatility of being involved in this type of professional learning for continued professional growth. The quality of discussion was deep, perhaps enhanced by continuing to complete this section of the QTR norm in a face-to-face format. The success was no doubt also related to the team members being considered as “innovators” or “early adopters” (Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971). The willingness of staff to engage and the depth of the discussions realised from the project outweighed the negatives associated with attracting new PLC members, filming issues and problems with not being able to observe the full classroom for some elements of the QTF. After presenting at the QTiP conference in May 2022, a small number of workshop participants expressed interest in joining our team, however, despite gaining some traction through this conference we were unable to transfer this to a commitment for joining our PLC. All contacts cited time constraints as their barrier to joining a PLC that collaborated outside of regular school hours.  To overcome the challenge of our current PLC becoming static, the co-leaders have committed to working with the QTR framework in innovative ways and are currently mapping teaching strategies to the QTR elements to support teachers with opportunities to diversify their ongoing coding and feedback.

About the authors

Allison Lloyd is Deputy Principal at Gundagai High School. She has progressed from classroom teacher through Head Teacher to Deputy and after completing the Aspiring Principals’ Leadership Program has now also facilitated the Middle Leaders Development Program. She has a passionate interest in improving student outcomes through engaging students in learning which meets their needs.