Institution:  Avonbourne School and the Shadows Professional Development Project

Context
The Shadows Professional Development project enables teachers from across Europe to experience day to day life, teaching and learning at Avonbourne School and to gain an insight into the British educational system generally. The scheme is also open to Avonbourne teachers shadowing abroad in Europe.

Avonbourne is an 11-16 girls’ secondary school located in the south east part of the town of Bournemouth. At present there are 1063 students on role.

How the programme is organised
“Shadowing" involves a visiting teacher being attached as an assistant to a class teacher / head teacher. Course components include language preparation, methodology and shadowing, with supportive tutorials, guided observations, observed teaching practice, directed tasks, team teaching and assignments.

Most teachers living in the European Union are eligible to apply for funding to cover course fees, flights, airport transfers, accommodation and subsistence.

In the spirit of fostering closer ties with other educational professionals around the world, and to promote the development of student-student, teacher-teacher and school-school links, the teachers believe that they can learn and develop pedagogically through the sharing of ideas and best practice.

The collaboration with Shadows began in January 2009 with the visit of a teacher from Germany who joined the Geography department at the school for one week. During the last academic year, the school hosted further visits from another six teachers from across Europe- from Portugal, Estonia, Spain, Poland, Romania and Hungary. Each visit lasted from between one and three weeks.

This academic year, another 13 visits are planned with the tally of countries involved including Turkey, Italy and Bulgaria.

The Subject Leader is responsible for drawing up the initial programme for the visiting teacher. To begin with, this involves shadowing members of the department to get a “feel” for what goes on in a typical English classroom. How this develops is determined through a dialogue between the visiting teacher and the subject leader. The school tries to set up what the visitor would like to see or to arrange interviews with different members of staff with other specific roles and responsibilities.

The visitors have:

• shadowed particular students for a day
• observed lessons in other departments outside their main specialism.
• team taught lessons
• spoken to other colleagues about, for example, curriculum planning, PSHE delivery, use of ICT, Special Education Needs etc
• visited other establishments. (feeder primaries, etc)
• been a teaching resource (the Spanish visitors were amazing in KS3 and KS4 Spanish lessons)

Impact on learners
Students in language lessons derived great benefit from the input of native speakers. In general terms, they were fascinated to meet the wide range of different teachers from across Europe.

Impact on teachers
Most departments across the school have hosted a visitor. The overwhelming impact has been very positive. Colleagues have been able to pick up tips from our visitors and gain insight onto how different aspects of education are addressed in different parts of Europe. The fact that staff have been “on show” when visitors have been at the school has made staff all aware that of the need to be "on top of their game”.

What the visiting teachers thought
Ozlem Nemutlu from Turkey - visiting in September 2009
First impressions: Avonbourne has a lovely atmosphere, with all staff and students. The quality of teaching is very good and I'm happy to be here.

What do you hope to achieve from this visit? Each day is exciting and new for me. I hope to improve my teaching skills and learn new things while refreshing my knowledge. I hope to have a better idea of teaching methods and approaches of the UK after and adopt them into my own classroom.

Marga Artigao from Spain – visiting in November 2009
First impressions: It seems a great school with very qualified staff. I’m impressed by the facilities (computers, language labs, classrooms) and the discipline.

What to you hope to achieve from this visit? I’d like to compare the Spanish educational system with the British and learn different ways to improve our teaching.

Issues and tips

• It has been decided not  to ask any one department to host more than one visitor each academic year
• Visiting teachers wanted to take lots of photos, which caused a few headaches and raised eyebrows!

Future developments

The aim is to continue with the programme. This year the Science department is helping to develop teaching materials to be used in Spanish schools. These materials will deliver science topics to Spanish students using the English language. In the future, it is hoped to be able to use these at Avonbourne to deliver the same topics to our students using the Spanish language.

Author:  Mike Shapcott, Avonburne School