JULY 2018

THE
TREASURE
HUNT 
HOW ONE SCHOOL CREATED A CULTURE OF
CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT

Prepared by: EI Pty Limited

(c) 2018
contact: hello@educatorimpact.com
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Background
School leadership is a top priority in education policy
around the world. Leadership is crucial to improving
school outcomes, and the effectiveness and equity of
schooling across the board. Australia faces many
serious educational challenges, from raising the status
of the teaching profession itself to reducing disparities
between Australian schools.  

So how can school leaders improve overall student

outcomes, especially while serving diverse student
populations? What evidence-based practices can
leaders adopt to meet the challenges they face?  

In some Australian schools, innovative leaders are

tackling these challenges head on by deploying a
whole-of-school approach to teacher development.
Such an approach helps them to create a culture of
continual improvement among their staff and to
leverage the strengths of teachers across their school,
benefitting the whole school community.  

Educator Impact shares the vision of better student

outcomes through better educators. We believe that a
whole-of-school approach to collecting feedback,
setting development goals and planning and tracking
development activities can have a transformative
impact on school culture and student outcomes. We
have partnered with hundreds of Australian Schools in
pursuit of this goal.

This is the story of one school’s experience.

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The school
St Philip’s Christian College Cessnock (SPCC) is a vibrant,
innovative school set on 100 acres in the heart of the
Hunter Valley

The solution
Educator Impact can help improve your school’s
outcomes by implementing strategies that boost teacher
effectiveness and foster a culture of continual
improvement.

The Principal

Darren says the school is “on a

treasure hunt, not a witch hunt.”

Darren Cox (BEd, Med)

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Key takeaway:
Find inspiration in what Principal Darren Cox (BEd, Med) calls
“hidden treasures”: the teaching insights you can discover - and
leverage across the school - when you embrace formative
feedback and iterative development.

A key benefit of a school-wide approach to feedback is the

insight gained from aggregate data.

Key discoveries:
Improving teacher effectiveness is the key to improving
student outcomes
Quality teacher feedback can drive as much as a 30%
improvement in teaching effectiveness.
A whole of school approach creates a culture of continual
improvement and helps leaders leverage the strengths of
their teachers

Key solution:
Use feedback to improve student outcomes and create a culture
of continual improvement.
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Professional
Development as a
Treasure Hunt
All growing schools deal with the challenges of creating and maintaining culture
and ongoing staff effectiveness. At SPCC, growth has been rapid under Darren’s
watch and after just 13 years, the small country school is now one of the most
sought-after schools in the region.

A passionate and innovative leader, Darren has created a successful culture of

professional learning and leadership development. Darren likes to say that the
school is “going on a treasure hunt, not a witch hunt.” It’s a mindset that’s
imperative if you want to create a collaborative and supportive school culture.

SPCC’s 900 students range in age from infants through Year 12. The school’s
mission is to provide an enriching and liberating education that not only teaches
but transcends the discipline of learning and the acquisition of competencies -
 one that helps students acquire a deep sense of the greatness of life and learning.

This emphasis on discovering the greatness in life is reflected in SPCC’s approach

to teacher development. The focus of that approach is:

 - To discover the richness of existing teaching practice.

 - To share these riches across the entire school.

In other words, rather than emphasising what's wrong, what needs to be fixed or
what isn't happening, Darren and his staff focus on the great things that are
happening across the school, and how those things might be amplified.

The question is: how can these riches - these ‘hidden treasures’ - be uncovered
and shared? A whole-of-school approach to formative feedback and development
has been central to this goal.
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A Whole-of-School
Approach
Student outcomes are front and centre for all schools. We know that outside of
natural ability, there is no greater driver of student achievement than teacher
quality. And experience has shown that quality teacher feedback can drive as
much as a 30% improvement in teacher effectiveness.

Yet 63% of educators report that teaching evaluations are still done for
administrative reasons alone, with no real focus on improvement and behaviour
change.

Despite countless iterations of frameworks and professional standards telling

people how best to teach, many teachers across Australia still do not have access
to evidence-based, real-time, competency-driven feedback about the quality of
their practice. They certainly do not get feedback that’s structured in a way to
effect real behaviour change.

Bucking the trend, SPCC has constructed a framework based on our EI for
Teachers program. The combination of self-reflection and 360-degree feedback
from students and classroom observers helps educators develop their teaching
practice and provides a place for them to set and track their goals and progress.

Why is this approach so important? Experts at the Grattan Institute believe that
schools perform better when groups of teachers or whole schools identify and
implement great practices in a consistent fashion. When your entire school is
involved there is a shared commitment to improvement. And when schools utilise
a common framework the collective efficacy is reinforced through a shared lexicon
and experience.

Culture can be most simply understood as “what we do around here.” All SPCC
teachers actively participate in the feedback process, making a significant
contribution to the school’s culture and improving student outcomes along the
way.
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And the results are clear. Darren reports that the framework has become part of
the teachers’ common language. Teachers in the staffroom reflect on surveys and
feedback they’ve received from colleagues and students. They routinely encourage
one another and help each other develop new skills. Everyone embraces the “we’re
all in this together” mindset and are committed to supporting each other in the
practice.

For Darren, EI has removed the guesswork surrounding ‘how to do instructional

leadership’ by enabling him to:
Get into classrooms to talk with staff about their practice.
Support school leadership and guide them on setting, reviewing and sharing
evidence-based development goals.

But growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Key to the success of a school-wide

approach is active adoption by staff.
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Staff embrace the

program
As the Kaizen saying goes,

“If change is hard, you’re

doing it wrong.”
Change is always challenging, but too often what stands in the way is a quest for
perfection. You might even say that perfection is the enemy of progress. When
schools focus on building the perfect system, they often end up creating
complex and too-hard solutions.

When it comes to solution design, the question should not be, “what is perfect?”.
It should rather be: “what is easy to get going?” If schools can make the desired
change easier than the status quo, then they don’t need to convince anyone of
anything.

Think about it. No one needed to run a culture change program to get people
onto Facebook. It was such an easy process. In fact, it made staying in touch with
friends so much easier than the status quo that people flocked to the system.

Likewise, if schools can make doing feedback easier than not doing it, the same
will apply. One way to make it easy to say “yes” is by making it hard to say “no.”
That is, feedback should be an expectation, not an option. There is no such thing
as an ‘opt-in’ culture.

At SPCC, adopting a framework for all teachers and a tool to do the heavy lifting
was crucial to staff adoption. Deputy principal Marty Telford is convinced it
would have been harder to create a whole school cultural shift if the school
wasn’t using a tool like EI.
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Despite countless
iterations of frameworks
and professional
standards telling people
how best to teach, many
teachers across Australia
still do not have access to
evidence-based, real-time,
competency-driven
feedback about the quality
of their practice.
Grattan Institute
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It falls to school leadership to articulate an inspiring and emotionally engaging

vision of the destination – one that makes people want to go on the journey.

SPCC’s ‘treasure hunt’ is such a vision. School leaders made it clear from the
outset why all staff should embrace a new way of doing things: to help uncover
the great things happening in the school. As the school embarked on a goal to
collectively improve a particular teaching competency, the “treasure hunt”
unearthed hidden talents in the school. Teachers who excelled at a specific
competency were then able to use that strength to the help the rest of the team
improve.

Aaron, a teacher at SPCC, really enjoys the way EI has framed the feedback in
such a positive way. It allows him to give and receive constructive feedback and
it helps improve his practice without it being an overwhelming challenge.

And teachers like Aaron appreciate that goal setting and achievement is built
into their daily life. No more thinking “it’s PD week” or “PD day” at the start of a
term. Every day is spent looking at dynamic and innovative strategies that enable
them to develop new ways to achieve their goals, improve their confidence and
improve their kids’ results.
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Data Drives
Opportunity
For leaders, one of the greatest benefits of having a school-wide approach is the
insights gained from the aggregate data. Over the years, aggregate data has
helped SPCC’s leadership team guide professional development in ways that
matter most to the school. Sometimes the data simply backs-up the intuition you
have as a leader. Aggregate data, especially when it includes student feedback,
means that “the student voice” can be heard loud and clear.

SPCC began using EI in 2013. Since then, the school has collected nearly 14,000
data points from 12,400 student surveys, 400 self-reflections, and 750 formal
classroom observations. A total of 302 evidence and feedback-based
development goals have been worked on by the teaching staff during the same
time.

While data is invaluable when it comes to teaching practices, it’s also extremely
effective in identifying talent. SPCC used it to identify which teachers in the
school were calibrating difficulty in ways that were truly effective for their
students. Other teachers were then encouraged to observe their peers to learn
what they could do in their own classrooms.
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Marty Telfer - Deputy Principal

"The aggregate data EI supplies has allowed students to have a
voice. Twice a year they get a chance to talk about their
experience of the classroom. And teachers and leadership are
listening. Based on student feedback, the teaching cohort as a
group decided to focus on Calibrating Difficulty/Differentiated
Learning. School-wide feedback from students had shown this
was the area with the least positive feedback, and it clearly
showed where the group could focus improvement measures."
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Key result:
“Since embarking on a focus on calibrating difficulty there has
been, on average, a 13% increase in positive student feedback of
teachers’ effectiveness in this competency.”

Results
Improvements as perceived by students

Calibrating Difficulty 13.6%

Building Relavance 11%

Setting Objectives 8.2%

Driving Surface and

Deep Learning
8%
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Calibrating Difficulty
Although student feedback across all the competencies in the framework
improved over time, calibrating difficulty or differentiated learning saw the
greatest growth.

For SPCC teachers, this was a chance to reflect on both their own and the
school’s journeys. It was an opportunity to open up their classrooms to
other colleagues who could support and assist them in a common goal.

For principal Darren Cox, what’s been pleasing from a school perspective is
knowing that there has been significant improvement and that the
differentiated approach to learning is occurring in classes across the
school and faculties.

When Darren first became principal at SPCC, the school’s results were very
concerning. Many students were performing below minimum standards.
And the school had to change its teaching practice to focus on those
students, bringing them up to where they needed to be. But the subsequent
data also demonstrated that many of the students were quite capable. The
problem was that the classrooms weren’t meeting their needs. 

EI helped SPCC find a solution that would help teachers:

 - Understand their practice.

- See how they were progressing in their journey as a classroom

practitioner.

 - Open up their classroom so that others could share the journey with them.

The results have been very encouraging for staff, teachers and leaders
alike. Applied professional learning sessions, coaching conversations and
student feedback have made a significant difference to students’
engagement with the learning process, and to the way they’re being
challenged in the classroom.
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Conclusion
Improving teacher effectiveness remains the
primary focus for improving student
outcomes. Using systems of feedback like
those developed by EI have shown that an
improvement of up to 30% in teacher
effectiveness can be achieved (Grattan
Institute)

SPCC is a great example of a school that has

wholeheartedly embraced the idea of using
feedback to create a culture of continual
improvement. For individuals, it has helped
improve their everyday practice. For leaders
it’s been crucial for instructional leadership
and creating culture. And for the school
itself, it’s had a direct impact on student
outcomes. The treasure hunt has paid
dividends, over and over.
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Principal
Recommendations
- Darren Cox
"Success depends on a positive school
culture that focuses on continued
improvement and development of self as
well as the college. My goals are to
ensure a collaborative and supportive
culture where students feel they are
engaged in the process, and teachers are
enthusiastically developing their practice
and setting ever greater goals for
themselves."
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Deputy Principal
Recommendations
- Marty Telfer
"A big part of schooling these days is
collaboration – teachers working
together, sharing ideas, problems, and
practices. EI as a valuable tool for
creating communities within the school
that encourage a culture of honest
feedback. Teachers use EI’s data to
coach each other through their goals.
And conversations are at a much deeper
and richer level."
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Teacher
Recommendations
- Amanda
"Teachers doing EI for the first time
should take full advantage of everything
the program has to offer. The feedback
you get is very specific and it helps you to
work on the areas and identify areas
where you can improve. It’s not as scary
as you think it is!”
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Teacher
Recommendations
- Aaron
"While many teachers might be tentative
about having someone come through
their class, the process opens up
opportunities for growth and risk taking.
See it as a wonderful motivator for
deconstructing practices in teaching and
extending those areas that they may be
lacking in."
Educator Impact is a powerful evidence-based behaviour change
tool that is built specifically for schools. It’s designed to help
educators improve their practice, and therefore student outcomes,
by providing meaningful feedback, evidence-based goal setting, and
the means to achieve those goals.

With a focus on growth, the company offers three programs for

teachers, leaders, and support staff that assess strengths and
weaknesses in schools, and where strategic goals need to be set to
improve. Our unique 360 reflect tool takes you through four phases
developed to enhance feedback, set goals, create effective PD
plans, and set development goals.

We’re trusted by over 400 Australian and New Zealand schools who
all agree that Educator Impact supports educators. Let us show you
how EI can empower your school to grow professionally in an
environment that is safe, simple and supportive. 

www.educatorimpact.com
hello@educatorimpact.com