Fife Pedagogy Team, Fife Council

The Fife Pedagogy Team was established in 2013 and consists of 10 teachers and three pupil assistants who have been seconded to work full-time on the project.

Their aim is to go into schools serving the most disadvantaged communities and help to build support and capacity for teaching and support staff to enable them and their school leaders to reduce the attainment gap across the region. The team has developed professional learning training in literacy, numeracy and nurturing.  The foundation stone of all this work is nurture.

The Fife Pedagogy Team approach is unique in Scotland, and is a powerful agent for change because of the one-to-one training and support teachers and other school staff receive. This approach enables them to support teachers to understand the progress of children and young people and the relationship between and impact of teachers’ professional learning on outcomes for children. The GTCS panel who visited the school found The Fife Pedagogy Team to be a great example of a learning community that has been established to support and lead the learning of other teachers.

“Learning as collaborative is a critical strand of the success of the Pedagogy Team and it is evident the principles of collaboration and partnership are key:

• The collaborative, co-teaching and ‘learning partner’ approach is exemplary. The Pedagogy Team are able to develop significant credibility, trust and create meaningful space to support and promote participants to take risks in their learning and practice. The team really ‘walk in the shoes’ of participant teachers and learn with them allowing for meaningful and genuine collaborative learning.
• Rich dialogue about learning, both the learning of participants and learning of children, is prioritised and central.”   (extract from GTCS panel report 2017)