Indeed, one gain from the QLC intervention has been the way it has confronted teachers with features missing from their usual professional development experiences. Here one major difference has been that the teachers were able to choose their own focus for improvement and how this would be structured. While this element of choice was initially rather overwhelming, the teachers soon learnt that there were advantages in being able to shape and pace discussions to suit their needs and not be tied to someone else’s imposed agenda and timeframe. There was also less pressure with the QLC model because the end point had not been determined in advance. The teachers knew that they were on a journey and would support each other no matter which direction it took.

The QLC teachers responded well when they were actively involved in the learning process. In particular, having time to talk with one another about their practice meant they could discover that their colleagues were additional sources of learning. Ball and Cohen (1999) argue that such discussions and teaching of each other “about practice in practice” are invaluable (pp.11-12). It was also interesting to see how the QLC teachers’ experiences matched Ball and Cohen’s view that discussions “centred in practice” did not necessarily require classroom situations in real time. While the QLC teachers shared several classroom visits with one another, they agreed that these had been useful but not essential to their learning. What they did value were the samples of work that the other teachers brought along when discussing their NEMP trialing. This matched Ball and Cohen’s suggestion that better learning opportunities can be created by using strategic documentation, copies of students’ work, videotapes of classroom lessons, curriculum materials and teachers’ notes. For the QLC teachers, such sharing had motivated them to explore similar activities themselves and then report their findings back to the group. Sadly, such sharing time was often not able to be included in their usual staff meetings because the dissemination of features of new curriculum documents dominated meeting times, leaving little or no time for discussion.

While schools tend to operate under “cultures of separation”, the QLC model encouraged “cultures of connection and integration” (Day, 1999, p.79). Here the QLC teachers welcomed opportunities for networking with colleagues and showed a clear preference for what Argyris and Schon cited by Day (1999), call double-loop learning. It is argued that there is better learning when others are involved in the learning loop because they can influence the direction of the learning by asking questions and challenging assumptions held by individuals. Single-loop learning is considered to be less effective because it occurs without the involvement of other learners. Day argues that this more radical approach to learning and the evaluation of one’s practice is extremely difficult to achieve on one’s own, and learning actually deepens with this added loop.

Such a preference for more collegial approaches, where teachers spend time talking, planning and evaluating as a team, is currently hard to achieve in schools, given the pressures of time and quantity of learning required. Darling-Hammond (1996) is adamant that schools are currently structured for failure because of this isolation and privacy from colleagues who might be able to help teacher learning. She maintains:

Today’s schools are organized in ways that support neither student learning nor teacher learning well. Teachers are isolated from one another so that they cannot share knowledge or take responsibility for overall student learning (p.195).

The QLC model has also highlighted the need for schools to change structures to enable quality learning to occur. For example, the provision of teacher release to allow the teachers to work together in school-time produced a greater learning productivity. Even the teachers themselves were conscious of their increased energy levels because the meetings were held within the school day and not in their usual ‘tired’ time after school. Day (1999) suggests that in supporting a learner-focused perspective rather than a training-focused perspective, there is a need to reconsider the time allowance and organisational structures underpinning provisions for teacher learning and development.

Similarly, Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin (1995) maintain that professional development is about providing occasions when teachers can reflect on their work and reassess and reshape their beliefs about content, pedagogy and learners. This requires settings that support teacher inquiry and collaboration and strategies grounded in teachers’ questions and concerns. More specifically this involves:

Crea[ting] new images of what, when and how teachers learn, and these new images require a corresponding shift from policies that seek to control or direct the work of teachers to strategies intended to develop schools’ and teachers’ capacity to be responsible for student learning (p.598).

The QLC model offers such a setting for effective teacher learning because it addresses concerns about how and when teachers learn as well as identifying the conditions which promote teacher learning. While admittedly the QLC model is an expensive option with its teacher release costs, it does provide teachers with the quality time they so desperately need for learning, one with another sharing ideas and concerns about their teaching practices. Since meetings held after school cannot easily include this element of sharing, it is important to create other opportunities for this to occur. If this means bringing teachers together within the school day and paying for teacher release, then this is the price we must pay for quality learning. A continuation of current practice is a bigger waste of money if teachers are not benefiting from their learning time.

Figure 4: Conceptualising Teacher Learning and Development (Click on figure for enlargement)

I was careful to consider the possible impact of my actions when determining how to introduce the quality learning circle approach to the teachers. This was described as a journey which was a deliberate metaphor to convey from the outset that the journey had no set destination and would evolve in response to the needs of the circle’s membership. I was completely honest with the teachers that I did not have pre-conceived outcomes in mind and was prepared to follow whichever direction the journey took. This was problematic for the teachers, who saw the lack of structure as a possible time waster and were keen to get on with the task of learning about the NEMP reports. Their initial responses indicated strong preferences and histories of working with very structured approaches which I interpreted as being an acceptance that others could determine the nature of their learning rather than the teachers sharing responsibility for shaping learning agendas themselves.

I gave special consideration to the merging of these two approaches because I was aware from the conversations with the teachers that the quality learning circle required more active participation and was vastly different from the teachers’ usual pattern of professional development. I sensed that the teachers needed to be reassured that their journeys would be meaningful, relevant and satisfying for them to remain committed to the project. In particular, they needed to know that I would be responsive to their concerns and that the quality learning circle approach could cater for this flexibility. It was in this way that the principle of reciprocity influenced my actions and shaped the way we worked together and made decisions about how and when we would share ideas of practice and make classroom visits. This reciprocity also impacted on the questions I developed for the interview schedules which were designed to capture the teachers’ interpretations of their experience with the quality learning circle. I used the interviews as a time to check on the issues that were both helping and hindering learning for each individual and for the circle as a collective entity. Thus each interview round informed the next stage of development in the quality learning experience and determined the manner in which we worked together.

The quality learning circle was an ideal tool for creating regular opportunities for teachers to reflect on their work and consider alternative practices. Such reflexivity made it possible for the teachers to examine their own practices with the help of significant others who were members of the quality learning circle. The importance of teachers devoting time to talk and share aspects of their practice, concerns and strategies was an indication that teachers benefited from professional interactions about their work as teachers.

However, it is also acknowledged that there are problems associated with the notion of teachers as inquirers. Day (1999) raises two problems that have relevance for the quality learning experience. Firstly, inquiring into one’s own practice requires a certain measure of self-confrontation and depends on the extent to which an individual can engage in this activity. Then secondly, there is the issue of whether teachers have the ability to cope with the consequences of that self-confrontation by themselves. Day writes:

If teachers are to extend their knowledge about practice over a career, (and thus gain the possibility of increasing their professional effectiveness), they will need to engage alone and with others in different kinds of reflection on both their own thinking, the values which underpin this and the contexts in which they work. To do this they will need intellectual and affective support. They will need to be both individual and collective inquirers (p.26).

This discussion leads me to wonder whether the quality learning circle approach can be sustained without the help of an outsider for either content knowledge or, more particularly, process skills so that teachers develop the capacity and capability to help themselves in the future. I would argue that there is potential for the quality learning circle approach to improve teachers’ learning and development if it can be linked to the growing professionalism of teachers as researchers. It is in this way that the quality learning circle approach can address Darling-Hammond’s concern of teachers not knowing how to help themselves. Day (1999) cites Stenhouse (1975), and suggests four points should be noted. These are:

1. Commitment to systematic questioning of one’s own teaching as a basis for development
2. Commitment and the skills to study one’s own teaching
3. Concern to question and to test theory in practice by the use of those skills
4. Readiness to allow other teachers to observe your work – directly or through recordings – and to discuss it with them on an honest basis (p.22).

These points highlight the need for teachers to form communities of learners for the purpose of joint reflection, inquiry and support so that teachers draw on their collective strengths and cooperate as staff developers for one another.

This project, despite its challenge and expense of bringing together a very diverse group of teachers has shown that learning communities are important for teacher learning. Interview data has shown that as individual learners, teachers can only get so far without the collective wisdom of colleagues and significant others to take them to the next step. This also highlights the need for professional conversations to provide opportunities for questions to be raised and concerns discussed as well as affirmation of existing practice. When this happens teachers’ report greater satisfaction and commitment to their learning. This view supports Adair’s (1986) three circle model and also Bell and Gilbert’s (1993) overview of teacher development which similarly argue that teachers’ learning must extend beyond a task focus to meet teachers’ social, and personal development needs at the same time. While professional development has traditionally focussed on what teachers need to know and do and supplied programme ideas and opportunities for teachers to try out new ideas, this has been a short-term measure. Top-down initiatives have typically not shared the same success as those which have been able to combine initiatives planned from the local level. My findings have shown that for sustained learning, teachers must combine their own learning needs alongside mandates for external reform.

Collaborative ways of relating to other teachers present a further, often forgotten, dimension of teachers’ learning. This is about teachers needing each other and gaining support and reassurance from the company of other learners. While teachers joining the QLC had initially been attracted to the group because it offered a new network, it was not until they experienced the depth of their QLC professional conversations that they realised how disappointing their own schools’ offerings were. They considered that regular sharing with other learners in the QLC gave them the support they needed to develop as learners. Once they had established a rapport and trust within the QLC, new risks were taken which allowed even bolder experimentation with new approaches, resources and ideas. This confirms Argyris and Schon’s notion of double loop learning where professional conversations create a framework for reflection both on and in practice. It also supports two elements from Joyce and Shower’s model of staff development, namely the need for feedback and follow-through support to show that teachers benefit from on-going support which is centered in practice. While Joyce and Shower’s model also included the elements of demonstration and practice, the QLC teachers felt that classroom observations were not absolutely essential, provided that teachers talked and shared examples of children’s work which then became a focus for discussion.

I argue that the requirements for quality teacher learning should not be restricted to one model. Rather what is needed is an awareness of the principles that guide effective teacher learning and development. These include accepting a menu of approaches which would acknowledge schools’ flexibility of circumstance and experience levels of teachers. A single approach to teachers’ professional development, while meeting some teachers’ needs, will frustrate others. Time for teachers’ learning should not be wasted for the sake of coverage, quality is also important.

If teachers are to realise the benefit of professional dialogue, they also need to see each other as equal partners in their learning. This requires a different way of working, where agendas are not determined by others but are developed by the teachers themselves. Where schools can create the conditions that make it possible for teachers to connect and interact, they will be more likely to be collaborative and collegial.

While much of my project confirms the international literature, practices in New Zealand have seemingly ignored these messages. I consider that my efforts to explore teacher learning and development within the New Zealand context have served a very valuable purpose in attempting to understand why New Zealand has not realised the messages conveyed in the international literature on teacher learning and development. The QLC has been an extremely effective approach for teacher learning and development for a number of reasons. One of these is that the QLC teachers have been confronted with the notion that their schools’ existing practices have not resulted in high quality learning outcomes for those involved. As an alternative approach the QLC has provided a much deeper and more satisfying learning experience. The next challenge is how to convince other teachers that their current learning and development could similarly be improved if they adopted or were offered an approach like the QLC.

Secondly, the QLC approach challenges the notion of teachers’ dependency on others to decide both what and how they will learn. As a vehicle for enhancing teachers’ capacity and capability, the QLC has considerable potential because it supports teachers to inquire and reflect on their practice with the help of their colleagues. This support assists teachers to refocus their work with clearer learning purposes in mind.

Thirdly, the QLC approach is an acknowledgement that leadership exists across all levels of the school and teachers can be leaders for one another. However, it cannot be assumed that teachers automatically possess the necessary leadership skills for this role of supporting their colleagues’ learning. Successful leadership extends beyond the introduction of new learning content to teachers and accommodates the unique needs, attitudes and skills of teachers. Thus, teacher leaders who understand the principles of adult learning, management of change and school improvement theories are better equipped for their leadership roles. Schools also need to encourage teachers to develop this knowledge and skill base by supporting study in educational leadership courses. Schools should not be thinking that they can rely on teachers’ initial teacher education qualifications to equip them for teacher leadership roles as well. Classroom teaching and leadership require different sets of skills and knowledge.

Evidence gathered in this study has clearly demonstrated the strength of alternative learning possibilities provided by initiatives such as the QLC which addresses the key principles articulated in Figure 3. While it is tempting for ease of management to continue treating teachers as ‘empty vessels’ to be filled with new knowledge, this is not desirable for the long-term quality and morale of teaching. Teachers must want to learn of their own accord throughout their careers if they are to remain as committed and enthusiastic teachers. While teachers can be guided by others in their choice of learning experiences, dependence on others should not dominate their learning agendas. Teachers must aim to be agents of change who share the philosophy of:

Ma te mohio ka ora
Te ora ka mohio
Through learning there is life
Through life there is learning.