Practising what we preach: The links between learning cultures for teachers and pupils, and school improvement

For teachers as well as students, actions speak louder than words. A learning culture means practising what we preach and paying careful attention to how our aspirations are operationalised in the real world. This article describes a research-based approach to building a learning culture for school improvement among schools serving disadvantaged students. The focus was on building a stronger, more research-informed approach to continuing professional development and learning (CPDL). The approach draws on the evidence from CUREE’s research for Teach First (Bell and Cordingley, 2014; Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE), 2016), to identify the specific challenges experienced by schools at all points of the development journey and the way in which exceptional schools overcome these. The design and analysis of evidence in this case study are organised around the key characteristics of the leadership of CPDL for school improvement in exceptional schools,