Reflective Teacher

Dominick Gray, Head Teacher at the Beacon Centre, a pupil referral unit in South Shields, is constantly looking for ways that technology can improve the functioning of his school. “If there’s an IT solution to a problem, then I love it,” he says.

One area that he’d always found challenging was managing teacher performance and assessments, particularly because of the amount of administrative time and paperwork required.

He was also looking to introduce greater consistency of teacher assessments across the school, particularly as the Beacon Centre is on two sites.

The solution

When Dominick first heard about ReflectiveTeacher, he was keen to give it a trial, as he quickly saw its potential for helping to solve the challenges outlined above.

The app allows senior leaders to quickly and easily make a digital record of all their learning walks, observations and performance reviews, while removing the need for paper and keeping everything stored in one place.

Dominick was particularly interested in the ways that ReflectiveTeacher could make the process of appraising teachers less formal and daunting for all concerned – with a view to making improvements to his teachers’ working lives and giving them the ability to focus on improving the quality of their teaching.

He signed up for a two-week trial, leading up to the Easter holiday this year; and the team from Beezapps, who produce ReflectiveTeacher, had the system up and running in just a few working days. By the end of the summer term, Dominick was already starting to see some major benefits for the teachers and the school as a whole.

The system has been made available to all staff, initially on an optional basis. Take-up has been high, says Dominick, largely because of its ease-of-use, as well as the fact that staff at all levels are quickly able to see the benefits it delivers to them.

The outcomes

Although it’s still early days, here are seven positive outcomes that Dominick has seen so far:

1. Teacher assessment is less formal and less intimidating
“We’re now doing fewer observations with staff, and can focus on things like learning walks,” says Dominick. That doesn’t mean the school is paying less attention to teacher performance, of course, but rather that assessments are happening on a more on-going basis – instead of giving teachers one formal lesson observation – and can easily be recorded on ReflectiveTeacher for all the relevant people to see.

2. Teachers know exactly what they need to do to improve

“The parameters we’re looking for are now very clear to teachers,” says Dominick. So, rather than worrying about dozens of particular aspects of teaching practice, teachers are now able to focus on the few specific areas that they need to improve on. ReflectiveTeacher helps to make it clear what they are.

3. Assessment is more flexible and transparent

“ReflectiveTeacher means we now have a system in place that ties everything together – appraisals, lesson observations, learning walks, CPD, and so on,” says Dominick. “And it gives us the ability to share good ideas and collaborate with other people in the school, via the journal and message posts.”

4. Senior leaders can access the data they need quickly

Dominick gives an example: “I recently had a meeting with my school improvement adviser. She asked about CPD and how I knew what we’d planned for next year was relevant to the staff. I was able to quickly produce a chart, using ReflectiveTeacher, that showed the key areas for improvement that we were seeing when observing staff – such as differentiation, behaviour for learning, and a variety of tasks. She was immediately satisfied with that.”

5. There is greater consistency of assessment across the school

Because everyone is using a single system, across the school’s two sites, there is greater uniformity in the way teachers are being assessed and the data that Dominick and his senior team are able to access. “I wanted a universal system that we could use across both sites that would allow us to have instant feedback. It’s consistent because the templates are all the same. And it’s very clear for monitoring where the issues are, and where the strengths are, in teaching and learning.”

6. The app is easy to use, can be customised to suit the school’s needs – and there’s great technical support when needed.

“It’s easy to modify and I don’t always have to call someone if we need to make changes to things like headings and success criteria,” says Dominick. But when support is required, he’s found the ReflectiveTeacher team have been quick to respond. “They’ve been really good at coming back to me whenever I’ve had feedback,” he says. “There have been a few times when I needed an instant solution, and the guys would just send me a quick meeting invite, and then it’d be resolved within five minutes. That’s just brilliant.”

7. Alongside other technology, it’s had a positive effect on the school budget

ReflectiveTeacher – as part of a suite of smart tech solutions across the school – is creating a virtuous circle. Firstly, it’s helping to improve teachers’ working lives. That, in turn, is having a positive effect on staff-pupil relations, says Dominick. As a result, the demand for places in the school has risen, meaning more money has flowed into the school. “That’s allowed me to employ more staff – and therefore everyone’s workload is reduced,” he says. “It’s got the potential to just make things better and better.”

How ReflectiveTeacher has enhanced teacher performance

In summary, Dominick believes that ReflectiveTeacher has already made a significant difference to the performance of the school as a whole and is looking forward to further rolling out its usage at the start of the new school year in September 2022. “ReflectiveTeacher matches our needs perfectly,” he says. “I’m confident there’s nothing else like this around, in terms of what it does, but also how it’s able to align to the way our school system is set up.”

To find out more about how ReflectiveTeacher can deliver rapid benefits for your school, get in touch now.

Duke’s Secondary School is in Ashington, Northumberland has approximately 80 teachers and 1,000 pupils. It was the first school to adopt ReflectiveTeacher, at the start of the 2021-22 academic year, having played a key role in its development.

The challenge

Over the last few years, Duke’s Secondary School has transitioned from the traditional systems of teacher observations and learning walks to a system of reflective practice. The aim has been to develop methods of facilitating teacher development and sharing best practice, without ‘judging’ teachers.

“We wanted to move away from ‘old-school’ monitoring, where we did an observation, went away to write up what we saw and then organise a feedback session with the teacher,” says Rachel Chima, Assistant Principal for Teaching and Learning. “We found it wasn’t having an impact on anything. Instead of monitoring the quality of teaching, we wanted to start developing the quality.”

That meant collaboratively focusing on specific areas for improvement, rather than judging teachers on a one-off lesson, as well as getting everyone involved in the process.

However, she and the school Principal, Russ Atkinson, also realised that moving to a more reflective approach would be challenging without quick and simple ways of recording drop-ins and generating developmental feedback. “At the time, we had observations recorded on various documents and spreadsheets,” says Rachel. “It was inefficient and hard to find the information you needed when you needed it.”

Instead, the school was looking for a simple, easy way of recording “everything in one place” that would support the vision and make it possible to implement.

The solution

This is when Duke’s first started having conversations with Beezapps, the developers of what became ReflectiveTeacher. They collaborated to build a cloud-hosted software system that makes it possible to record lesson drop-ins. It uses the eight strands of the school’s specific teaching and learning policy as a focus and generates immediate reflective feedback.

“We call that policy our ‘DNA’,” says Rachel. “The strands include collaboration, resilience, reflection and so on, and we have specific statements about what each one should look like in the classroom. In effect, it’s our learning walk ‘crib sheet’.”

Beezapps created the ReflectiveTeacher software to match this structure, making it quick and simple for all teachers to complete a drop in, and to provide an opportunity for reflection on the various DNA strands, using a mobile device.

After a year of development, it was ready to roll out at the start of the 2021-22 academic year, following a launch event the previous term where it was introduced to all staff.

The benefits

The adoption of ReflectiveTeacher has made a significant positive impact on teaching and learning throughout the school, has helped to raise standards overall, and has allowed everyone to share best practice, says Rachel.

Here are some of the specific benefits:

• A big uplift in the number of lesson drop-ins – and visibility of how many have happened. “Last year, we did more than 200 drop ins, which was great,” says Rachel. “That was a lot more than in previous years, when it was much more difficult to collate.”

• Making it easier for teachers to work in partnerships, where they watch each other and give feedback. “We could quickly see that there was clear evidence of this happening,” says Rachel. “And that level of reflection triggered conversations with people about how they could develop certain areas of our teaching and learning policy.”

• Improved sharing of best practice between teachers. “We’ve seen teachers going into each other’s lessons more often to see what works,” says Rachel. “People have been saying: ‘I’d really like to develop this area of my practice – can I see how you do it and have a discussion with you about it?’”

• It’s helped the senior leadership team to develop their teaching and learning strategy. “When I looked at possible categories for ‘professional development’ this year to find out if anyone wanted support to understand our ‘DNA’ strategy, I could immediately see that no one needed it – which proves the effectiveness of ReflectiveTeacher,” says Rachel. “It’s also allowing us to see what areas may need more focus, what else needs to be embedded, and so on.”

• It’s helping the SLT to save a lot of time, as the feedback is instantly available to everyone who needs to see it – particularly the teacher themselves. It also means the team can quickly and easily aggregate data to see crucial patterns that will help to inform their teaching and learning strategy. “When somebody asks, ‘Can we have an overview of the DNA in lessons, I can go on ReflectiveTeacher and give them an answer in minutes,” says Rachel. Previously, this would have taken several hours to collate.

• The time saved is allowing teachers to spend time on more valuable activities – “things that actually work, rather than things you’ve just been told to do,” as Rachel puts it. “And that impacts on everything.” Including, she adds, teacher wellbeing.

• Wellbeing has also improved because the stress of ‘being observed’ has gone away. “Teachers no longer have that worry of someone coming to watch them,” says Rachel. “Instead, it’s now an open, honest reflection that’s supported by the ReflectiveTeacher technology, enabling everyone to reflect on what happens in the classroom.”

• Feedback has a stronger impact, as it’s recorded ‘in the moment’, rather than written up the next day or even later. “We can have a conversation within a half-hour to discuss feedback, as it’s already in Reflective Teacher and visible to the teacher,” says Rachel. “And it can give heads of faculty an overview of teaching and learning in their department within minutes.”

“Overall,” says Rachel, “I feel like teaching and learning at Duke’s has moved from an era of black and white to colour. The conversations we’re having and the sharing of best practice have completely changed for the better.”

She adds: “If a school wants to improve outcomes, improve workload and improve morale, this a very, very effective way of doing it. For us, ReflectiveTeacher just works. It’s now part of the heart and soul of our teaching and learning.”

If you’d like to find out more about how ReflectiveTeacher can support your school’s teaching and learning, get in touch now.