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By The British College of Brazil
How can cross-phase professional learning facilitate collaboration and meaningful professional development in an International Primary & Secondary school, aligning Diverse Practice with a Shared Vision?
The brief
As international schools grow and evolve, so too does the challenge of creating professional learning that feels both meaningful and manageable for staff. In through schools like ours, spanning Pre-Nursery to Year 13, this challenge can be particularly pronounced. Colleagues work within different age groups, curricular frameworks and utilise a range of pedagogical approaches, yet are united by a shared commitment to the school vision and mission.
Learning Trios at The British College of Brazil
This case study reflects on the use of ‘learning trios’: groups of three colleagues working together towards a shared professional development goal as part of a whole-school professional learning approach. The initiative was deliberately framed using the International Curriculum Association’s Process to Facilitate Learning, helping to create a common language for learning across the group of educators. Rather than offering a step-by-step account of what happened, this case study focuses on what we learned from the process: what worked well, where challenges emerged and what this might suggest for future processes.
Why learning trios?
The decision to use learning trios grew out of a desire to strike a better balance between individual goals and collective learning. Like many schools, we recognised that large group professional development sessions can sometimes feel too broad, while individual performance targets can unintentionally lead to isolation for staff. There was also an acknowledged need at the school to bring the Primary and Secondary sections closer together and it was felt that professional development offered a means for achieving this.
As part of the first round of performance management meetings in September, teachers and assistant teachers identified their own professional development priorities. Line managers then collated these targets, and the Head of Primary and Head of Secondary worked together to look for areas of shared interest across the school. In some cases, strong and specific links emerged, for example, more effectively supporting students who were new to learning English or making better use of group-wide digital learning platforms.
Bringing colleagues together across Key Stages was a deliberate and important choice. It reflected the reality of a through school, where students’ learning journeys do not sit neatly within Key Stage boundaries, and it encouraged professional relationships and conversations that might not otherwise take place.
Using the ICA Process to Facilitate Learning
A central feature of the initiative was its connection to the ICA’s Process to Facilitate Learning. This framework, most often used to support student learning, was applied to teacher professional learning to promote coherence across the trios.
At the whole-school launch meeting, colleagues were invited to think of themselves as learners moving through the stages of the process: identifying an Entry Point, Knowledge Harvest, explaining and applying learning, reflecting on progress and considering next steps, and engaging in an Exit Point through a learning exhibition.
Using the process was effective in two ways. Firstly, it helped normalise professional learning as an ongoing, reflective process rather than a fixed outcome linked solely to the performance management cycle. Secondly, it reinforced the idea that the ways we support teachers’ professional learning should mirror the practices we promote in classrooms.
How the trios worked in practice
Each trio was asked to hold an initial planning meeting to agree on what they hoped to achieve together, ‘ground rules’ for how they would work collaboratively and independently and decide how often they would meet over the following seven weeks. While no fixed meeting structure was imposed, trios were encouraged to keep brief minutes to capture key discussion points, decisions and reflections. This supported both continuity of meetings and shared accountability to the process.
Autonomy was an important feature of the approach. Trios were free to shape their own process in ways that felt relevant and practical, drawing on research, classroom experimentation or peer observation as appropriate. This flexibility aligned with the ICA emphasis on learner agency, although it also meant that the trios progressed at different speeds and to different depths.
The process concluded with a learning exhibition at the end of term. Each trio chose how to share its learning, resulting in a range of engaging formats including presentations, videos, posters and live discussions. The celebratory sharing of practice helped position the process as something to be valued and learned from collectively.
What did we find?
Engagement data and staff feedback suggest that the learning trios had a positive impact overall:
- Around three-quarters of trios met between three and five times during the seven-week period.
- Two-thirds of staff visited three to four exhibition stands, indicating strong engagement with colleagues’ learning.
- More than half of respondents felt that the learning trios had positively supported their professional development during the term.
Given the relatively short timeframe and the fact that this was a new approach for many colleagues, these outcomes were encouraging. The exhibition in particular appeared to support accountability and encourage curiosity, therefore extending learning beyond individual trios.
Strengths of the approach
Several clear benefits emerged from the process. As the focus areas came directly from colleagues’ own development goals, the learning felt purposeful and closely connected to day-to-day practice. Where objectives were well matched, the trios approach created meaningful opportunities for colleagues from different Key Stages to learn from one another and gain new perspectives. The combination of meeting notes and public sharing encouraged participation without feeling overbearing. Using the ICA learning process with staff reinforced the idea that everyone in the school community is a learner, regardless of their role or experience.
Lessons learned
The process also brought to light some important areas for refinement. Where trios were formed around broader themes, a side effect of a wide range of professional development targets, colleagues found it harder to sustain depth. Several colleagues provided feedback that further input on the research underpinning collaborative professional learning like this would have supported their confidence and buy-in. While autonomy was appreciated, clearer expectations around meeting frequency may have helped ensure more consistent engagement across trios. As ever, workload pressure limited how deeply some trios were able to explore their focus areas.
Looking ahead
Overall, this experience suggested to us that learning trios can be a valuable professional learning approach in through schools, particularly when they are aligned with professional targets, well supported by research and expectations are clearly structured by the leadership team. We found that the Process to Facilitate Learning offers an effective way to connect teacher development with day-to-day classroom practice and the school’s shared values. We concluded that future processes could be strengthened by tightening up the grouping process to avoid loosely connected trios, offering a clear research grounding at the introductory stage and aiming for more explicit links between the professional learning taking place and the impact on student learning.
Learning trios offered us a constructive way to bring colleagues from across the school together around shared goals, encouraging collaboration, reflection and professional curiosity. While not without its challenges, the approach supported a sense of collective responsibility for learning and reinforced the idea that professional development, like student learning, is most impactful when it is purposeful, collaborative and reflective.
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