Research School Network: Implementing Change in Mathematics: 3 lessons mostly learned the hard way Sam Shutkever, Assistant Maths Hub Lead at the West Yorkshire Maths Hub, on his use of the EEF Implementation guidance report

I would like to ask you a question before I proceed with the rest of the article. How you answer it may depend on your role and experience, but I would imagine it would resonate with most teachers.

How often have you had a significant school-wide change to classroom practice communicated through e‑mail or a single staff meeting?

As the title of this article suggests, I have been guilty of this sort of thing far too often. Over the past number of years, I have been fortunate to have worked with hundreds of school teachers and leaders on improving the teaching of mathematics – but it is only recently that I have given serious thought to implementation of change. I hope to share some of these harshly learned lessons and discuss how the EEF’s Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation has been crucial in addressing my own shortcomings.

Lesson 1: Getting the foundations right

At the start of any change, whether in mathematics or any subject, leaders should ask themselves:

Where are we now?

To explain a bit further, many subject leaders are extremely enthusiastic about their area, but from my own experience, they are often trying to piece together an understanding of what practice looks like in their school from snippets of overheard conversations or from once-a-year formal observations. It is really important for maths leaders to be able to visualise what an ​‘average’ maths lesson looks like in their school: is there a set structure? Are there any consistencies across school? This shouldn’t be achieved through formal scrutiny, but much rather quick glimpses.

Once this understanding is attained, it’s very tempting to think ​‘I’m worried about the quality of teaching in classroom X’ or ​‘What a lovely lesson that was in classroom Y’. It’s then quite normal to think of focussing all the attention on improving classroom X. I would propose that this can be a time-consuming activity and can quite often be unproductive in the long-term. From my experience, singling out individuals for improvement can overwhelm unless it’s done really deliberately (Adam Boxer delivered a fantastic talk around this, see the link: https://bit.ly/37vaLUG)

All this understanding is building to a bigger picture to answer questions like: Do we have enough capacity for change? Are we still doing the things we worked on before? Do we have the right conditions to change anything right now?

The EEF’s guidance gives much more detail around this (recommendations 1 and 2), and before thinking of changing anything, just spend some time looking around and getting a feel.

Lesson 2: Doing the right thing at the right time

In my first year of maths subject leadership, I implemented a whole-school programme named ​‘Same-day intervention’ (SDI). I had heard of its impact from my head teacher and deputy head teacher, who were wowed with it after coming back from an event in the Summer term where it was showcased. So, it was decided that this was how we were going to run our maths lessons whole-school starting from September and I, a fresh-faced maths lead, was to implement this change.

There were two key mistakes here, perhaps you can spot them!

1) I had never seen the programme myself, yet I was expected to lead whole-school training around this.
2) I had not assessed whether this change fitted with the school’s position.

As figure 1 shows above, we had chosen to adopt a practice, but not explored the fit of the programme in school. What worked in the school where SDI was being modelled wasn’t currently right for my school without training – for myself and staff. In retrospect, I should have trialled the approach in one classroom and assessed its practicalities. If it was a success, then the question could have been asked:

What has caused this programme to be successful in this classroom? What things had to happen beforehand?

Lesson 3: Getting the ​‘why’ right

Going back to the question at the start of this article, it is really important that change is given alongside the bigger picture. Quite often, the answer to the why behind most school change tends to be ​‘because the senior leadership team told me to’.

The EEF implementation guidance mentions: ​‘Leaders set the stage for good implementation by defining both a vision for, and standards of, desirable implementation practices in their school.’ I’ve highlighted the word ​‘vision’ as I believe this holds a crucial role in implementing successful change. The vision doesn’t have to be the sole-responsibility of the subject leader; teachers have strong beliefs about how they would want children to be taught. Ultimately, this vision needs to be consistent throughout school, especially amongst the senior leadership team. Quite often, I have worked with teachers who have a vision for maths at the school which clashes with the senior leadership team, in this case, change is unlikely to succeed.

Now I want to come back to my original question:

How often have you had a significant school-wide change to classroom practice communicated through e‑mail or a single staff meeting?

Let’s hope that from now on, the answer to this question is ​‘never’.

At the West Yorkshire Maths Hub, our Teaching for Mastery work groups involve supporting the maths leader in developing an approach and vision to mathematics. If you would like to know more about these work groups, you can visit: https://wymathshub.co.uk/work-groups/