This document provides an overview of protocols for professional conversations and how they can be used. It defines protocols as structured guides for conversations that help focus discussions and deepen understanding. Several specific protocols are described, including the microlab protocol for examining questions in small groups, the tuning protocol for analyzing student or adult work, and the consultancy protocol for exploring dilemmas. The document emphasizes that protocols provide routines to support reflective, equitable conversations among educators and allocate time for essential discussions about teaching and learning. When used appropriately, protocols can enhance clarity, safety, equity and learning in professional interactions.

1. Protocols for Professional Conversations:
A User’s Guide
The Project Zero Classroom
Cameron Paterson
cpaterson@shore.nsw.edu.au
Twitter: @cpaterso

3. Understanding Goals
• What are protocols?
• How can protocols help us to deepen
our understanding of teaching and
learning?
• How can protocols be used to improve
our skill and focus in working with
students and colleagues?

5. Spirit in which you participate

6. “Protocol”
A structure
(or a series of steps)
for guiding a conversation

7. Your questions……
Why did you choose this mini-course?
What do you hope to learn?

8. The Question(s):
Think of the professional conversation in which you
learned the most.
 What did you learn in the course of the
conversation?
 What made it powerful?
What was the least productive professional
conversation you’ve ever had?
 What made it so difficult?

9. Microlab Protocol
Purpose:
To address a specific sequence of questions in a
structured format with small groups, using
active listening skills
What’s Examined and Discussed:
Usually a question or text.

10. Essential Qualities of a Professional
Learning Conversation
• CLARITY of purpose
• SAFETY that supports trust and risk taking
• EQUITY for all participants
• (LEVITY—because joy is important, too!)
Protocols can help with these . . . .
Tina Blythe, 2016

11. Essential Opportunities of a
Professional Learning Conversation
• Attending
• Reflecting
• Connecting
• Questioning
• Extending
Protocols can help with these, too . . .
Tina Blythe, 2016

12. Features of Protocols
• Roles
• Norms
• Purpose
• Steps
• Facilitation
• Reflection
Tina Blythe, 2016

13. Collaborative Assessment Conference
A structure by which teachers come together to look
at a piece of work, first to determine what it reveals
about the student and the issues she/he cares about,
and then to consider how the student's issues and
concerns relate to the teacher's goals for the student.
The last part of the conversation the - discussion of
classroom practice - grows out of these initial
considerations.

14. Tuning Protocol
Widely used and adapted for looking at
both student and adult work in and among
schools across the country

15. The Consultancy Protocol
- A protocol for allowing a group to analyze a
dilemma that an individual or the group is
experiencing in order to understand the dilemma
more deeply.
- Exploring a dilemma – not solving it!
- Understanding it in a different way opens up new
ways of moving forward.

16. 5 Minute
Stretch
Break

17. For presenting your dilemma

19. Using Protocols
 They are tools for the work of supporting teacher
and student learning (not the work itself).
 They must be chosen with a specific purpose in
mind.
 It takes some practice before they can be used
most effectively.

20. How do protocols help?
 Help create opportunities for and allocate time to
essential conversations about teaching and
learning.
 Provide routines and structures to scaffold
collaborative analysis and planning.
 Support interactions that enable us to develop and
demonstrate our understanding of and respect for
the variety of perspectives and experiences by our
colleagues.

21. Protocols
(Almost) all protocols will enhance:
Clarity (making the purpose explicit)
Safety (creating clear expectations for roles and participation)
Equity (enabling/encouraging everyone to participate)

22. Some Protocols Do More
Especially protocols that emphasise…
 Observing
 Listening
 Asking questions about what one observes and
hears
 Using conditional language (wondering,
considering)
 Question-finding and question-refining (as
opposed to problem-solving)
 Learning (as opposed to task accomplishment)

23. Challenges of Using Protocols Well
 Weathering the “learning curve.”
 Deciding when to use a protocol.
 Choosing the appropriate protocols for the
purposes.
 Resisting the impulse to problem-solve (at least for
a time)
 Documenting learning and building on previous
discussions.
 Facilitation.
 Time, time, time.

24. Undergraduate Professional Graduate Advice from
Courses Reading Courses Colleague
What Influences Teacher
Professional Practice?
1=“Notinfluential”4=“Veryinfluential”
1.8
2.3
2.6
3.6
0
1
2
3
4
Dr Douglas Reeves, The Leadership and Learning Center

25. The extent of trust among adults in schools strongly predicts positive student learning
outcomes (Bryk, 2002).

26. “Professional capital is not driven
by a top-down model dictated by
senior leaders fulfilling their own
agendas but is facilitated by
senior leaders giving teacher
groups the space to exercise their
own professional judgement.”
Phil Wood

28. “They constrain
participation in order
to heighten it.”

29. Credit:
Tina Blythe

30. Return to
questions

31. Final whip reflections

33. Final written reflections

34. Protocols for Professional Conversations:
A User’s Guide
The Project Zero Classroom
Cameron Paterson
cpaterson@shore.nsw.edu.au
Twitter: @cpaterso