The 2009 ASPA Conference was held in Adelaide on 27-30 September at the Adelaide Convention Centre.
Presentations, session notes, and audio recordings are available below. The session notes are written in a dot point format - some older browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer V6) have problems displaying the dots at the start of each new point.
Each of the three Keynote Presenters provided two sessions:
Click here to go to the gallery of 196 photos taken by your conference reporter. In this gallery are the cartoons and collage produced by the two artists-in-residence - the collage is shown in miniature to the right (a larger version is in the gallery).
Click here to go to the gallery of 45 photos of the table groups at the Conference Dinner, taken by the photographer from MSP Photography.
Key Competencies for School Leadership: According to the Evidence - Professor Viviane Robinson, University of Auckland, NZ. Session Notes. Presentation. Audio files - Address (41Mb mp3 file) and Professional Conversation (30.1Mb mp3 file). Extra Article (166Kb pdf file) - Robinson, V. M. J. (in press). From instructional leadership to leadership capabilities: Empirical findings and methodological challenges. Leadership and Policy In Schools. Notes of the professional conversation.
Address -
Conversation -
An Evolution Looking for an R? - Andrew Blair, ASPA President. Presentation. Audio file (12.6Mb mp3 file).
Panel Session:
Professor Peter Høj, Vice Chancellor of the University of South Australia. Address.
Workshops:
Building Trust in Educational Communities - David O'Brien, Assistant Regional Director, Northern Adelaide Region for DECS (Dept Education Children’s Services), South Australia. Presentation (4.31Mb pdf file).
Leading for Creativity - Graham Speight, Principal of Rosetta High School, Tasmania. Presentation (4.24Mb pdf file). Presentation - case study (4.55Mb pdf file). Paper (273Kb pdf file).
Meditations on Pottery, Creativity and Leadership - Jeremy Hurley, Leadership Consultant. Presentation (2.08Mb pdf file).
The Hero Project: Film Making as a Tool for Skill Development and Engagement - Carl Kuddell and Jennifer Lyons-Reid. Annual Report (1.95Mb pdf file). Information Kit 1 (936Kb pdf file). Information Kit 2 (328Kb pdf file).
Next Generation Learning and Learning Devices - Lila Mularczyk, James McAlpine, Christine Cawsey and Andrew Newman. Presentation (5.73Mb pdf file).
Session 1: The Adventure of Leadership - David Hopkins
Will try to make relationship between the two streams of his life more explicit – he is both a government advisor and mountain guide.
Adventure does not = extreme sports = it is a way of seeing the world. The importance of challenge of curiosity, creativity is at the heart of what we do. If those infuse what we do, we can create our preferred futures.
He wants to focus on leadership. It is the only silver bullet that we have in education. He has never seen an effective school which does not have a creative leader.
Will talk about the concept of leadership infused with a spirit of adventure.
Some holiday slides first. Slide 2 - he and his son on the North Col of Mt Everest. Slide 3 - the north face of Mt Everest. He was on Everest because of the young man in slide 4 – Paul Sillitoe – he is autistic, full range. But he lives independently, and he is obsessed with climbing mountains. He climbed a 20,000 feet high peak south of the Himalayas in the mid-1990s. He is fixated with Everest. He did the North Col.
At that point, David Hopkins' mountain life and school life come together. Demonstration that under the right conditions, even someone like Paul can do extraordinary things. Can we create those conditions so they can reach their potential?
3 issues:
As educators, if we are to be successful, our leadership has to be infused with a sense of moral values – values for our school and how to achieve those.
Creating the conditions in which young people and colleagues can succeed and grow.
Spirit of adventure, creativity, inquiry, curiosity is the lodestone for us doing those things. Top-down change has taken us so far but can’t go further. Have to unleash greatness to move from good to great.
Definition of adventure: "If adventure has a final all‐embracing motive it is surely this; we go out because it is our nature to go out, to climb the mountains and sail the seas, to fly to the planets and plunge into the depths of the oceans. By doing these things we make touch with something outside or behind, which strangely seems to approve our doing them. We extend our horizon, we expand our being, we revel in a mastery of ourselves which gives an impression, mainly illusory, that we are masters of our world. In a word we are men, and when man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man." (Wilfred Noyce)
That is an evocative statement. Can see that whenever we move outside out comfort zone. We know all that. Strong tradition in education that has embraced that – spirit of curiosity and creativity. Confrontation with experience is critical.
Adventure education has a long and distinguished tradition. Think of Homer’s Odyssey; Plato’s Republic; and Rousseau’s Emile. The notion of personal development occurring through challenge and adventure resonate with every one of us. So much so that experience has become the central block for many educational philosophers and psychologists such as Dewey, Piaget and Bruner. Adventure education has an enduring relevance in a wide variety of educational contexts.
Framework for adventure: "Adventure is a state of mind that begins with feelings of uncertainty about the outcome of a journey and always ends with feelings of enjoyment, satisfaction, or elation about the successful completion of that journey…. The initial feeling of uncertainty of outcome is fear of physical or psychological harm. There can be no adventure in Outdoor Pursuits without this fear in the mind of the participant. Without the fear there would be no challenge. Fear extended to terror, however, is not adventure. This is misadventure as the journey is psychologically too demanding for the person concerned." (Colin Mortlock)
Journey = any experience that we engage in. We feel apprehensive at first, then becoming competent, then learning new things and a sense of satisfaction.
Arousal curve - see slide 8. Convert it for your classrooms. There is no stimulation for the students if nothing is new in what they are doing. Danger if the change or the knowledge is too complex. Learning occurs when stimulation is enough to arouse curiosity but not great enough to scare them off. Zone of proximal development (work of Vygotsky). Work in the middle zone.
Leadership: "… we need to be skeptical about the 'leadership by adjective' literature. Sometimes these adjectives have real meaning, but sometimes they mask the more important themes common to successful leadership, regardless of the style being advocated." (Ken Leithwood)
it is often more about the religions of leadership, using terms such as dispersed or transformational leadership. Many books are the same. What is important is what is underlying the adjectives. That is something that is true, eternal and generalisable.
He chaired first think tank of the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) in England. Looked at effective leadership in health, civil service, armed forces – found a high correlation with leadership in schools. If we get rid of the rhetoric, we can get to the construct of leadership that is enduring and crosses contexts.
Chris Bonington (slide 10) - 75 but still enthusiastic about climbing mountains. Now he is the global image of a mountaineer. Biggest leadership challenge = he talked about ascent of the south-west face of Everest in the mid-1970s. In the introduction to his book, quote from John Hunt: "Everest imposes enormous emotional strains on the climber. Upon no one was the stress so great and prolonged as on the leader of the expedition. His was the original decision to make the bid; his the choice of companions, the general strategy, the supervision of the whole complex plan and its unfolding on Everest. His was the responsibility for the lives of more than 70 men, exposed to risks of many kinds and for a considerable time … On the leader would be heaped the chorus of criticism, if this expensive venture were to prove to be yet another failure." (John Hunt)
Stress was greatest on the leader. 4 unsuccessful attempts on that climb in the years before their climb. Rock band at 25,500 feet blocked previous attempts.
Showed slides from Chris Bonington (slides 12 to 27) – showed the challenge of leadership. Need to be a strong leader to get people to even agree to try again after all the failures. Then had to choose the right people for the climb. Then had to plan the logistics of getting all the gear to the start point. Started planning a year before the expedition started – produced a computer program for the first time ever. As they got higher, they divided into very small groups to climb and establish camps to get to the bottom of the rock wall. Up to 25,000 feet, the climb could be pre-planned = the top-down process. But how to get up the rock wall = had to unleash the greatness of the team. Partly by selection, by deployment, and by having a clear goal for the whole team – had to have the right small group at the end to get to the final goal. Could not plan for that – had to make the right initial choice for that group.
So what is the connection with school leadership? Some of Bonington’s challenges are similar to those in schools.
On first appearance leading a team up South West Face of Everest may not be similar to leading your school but do you:
Expose yourself to risk and challenge complacency?
Have a clear objective, develop a plan then tell the story?
Carefully allocate roles and develop people within and beyond them?
Manage core purpose and create the conditions where every learner can achieve their potential and achieve high standards?
Have clear operating systems, but being open to innovation?
Set objectives and then trust colleagues?
Cultivate the energy that direct experience and trust generates?
Open yourself up to awareness, adventure and challenge?
Engaging in challenge – overcoming the “impossible” idea. Had a clear objective and plans. Developed a strong narrative about what they were trying to achieve and had a part for everyone – allocated roles, managed the core purpose, created the conditions for final success.
Then he paused and had the audience talk among themselves about leadership and the similarity of the challenges of themselves and of Bonington.
Adventure has a relevance for the way we lead our lives. Leadership = stuff. Now for a leadership model that he has developed. Not about achieving low level targets but about transforming where we are. Then he will unpack what it means in practice = operational.
Model on slide 29. Moral purpose must be at the centre – it drives what we do. It is about the narrative that we create that connects aspirations to behaviours. Metaphor of a journey – we journey as pilgrims, not as nomads. But that is not enough. Have to have way of operationalising that moral purpose.
2 elements:
Personal development of the leader and ability to generate trust; and
Strategic acumen (strategic ability to put things into practice).
Third circle = managing teaching and learning (unrelenting focus on them) + developing organisations (redesigning it) + developing people. Have to send the majority of the time doing these three things. These are the core purposes.
Fourth circle = work as a change agent + act as a community leader + partner another school facing difficulties and improve it + lead and improve a school in challenging circumstances + lead a successful educational improvement partnership. Schools help each other to make the changes. This is about system leadership by school leaders.
Model is informed by adventure.
Moral purpose of schooling – see slide 30.
In 2002, in the UK, the education system had been successful in raising standards; but results were now plateauing + not taking the teachers with them. They had increased their performance as a result of top-down change, but the capacity of the teachers were not being developed to be able to work laterally, just top-down. Same with the kids – respond better to set tasks rather than become more powerful and independent learners. Key was to get a different approach to learning in kids, teachers, and public. Tried to get a notion of learning contexts where everyone was on their own learning journey – needed a different approach to teaching – more emphasis on learning skills not just content.
A group of 100 principals from fourteen countries (G100) met at the National Academy of Education Administration (NAEA) in Beijing, China 16‐19 October 2006 to discuss the transformation of and innovation in the world’s education systems. They concluded their communiqué in this way ‐ "We need to ensure that moral purpose is at the fore of all educational debates with our parents, our students, our teachers, our partners, our policy makers and our wider community. We define moral purpose as a compelling drive to do right for and by students, serving them through professional behaviors that ‘raise the bar and narrow the gap’ and through so doing demonstrate an intent, to learn with and from each other as we live together in this world."
Debating the future of education in cross-cultural working groups.
We all have life scripts, some of us chose to develop it others are forced to do so. Life scripts evolve as the individual confronts direct experience and adapts and assimilates it with their self. Adventure as the purest form of direct experience has the ability to develop ‘life script’ in the most immediate way. ‘Adventure leaders’ create situations where others can develop their own life scripts. As Mahatma Gandhi said – ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world.’
Concept of self-talk. Research in 1970s with Olympic medallists and others. Those who won the medals had very positive self-talk. Same with climbers.
Life script is a very important construct for us. Need very strong and powerful – ourselves, commitment, work, goals. Energizing and inclusive. Help develop the same for others – colleagues and children.
Strategy: Processes of School Improvement:
The journey of school improvement - A clear reform narrative is created, and seen by staff to be consistently applied, with: a vision and urgency that translates into clear principles for action. Notion of journey. Need a strong storyline / narrative. Told be everyone – know the outline and their place in it. Even by the kids. even the taxi driver has read it in the local papers.
Organizing the key strategies - Improvement activities are selected and linked together strategically; supported by robust and highly reliable school systems with clear SMT roles in key areas. Organising the key strategies – platform on which the narrative can be built.
Professional learning at the heart of the process - Improvement strategy informs CPD; knowledge is gained, verified & refined by staff to underpin improvement; networking is used to manage risk and discipline practice. Learning communities important – must be aligned inside a core purpose.
Cultures are changed and developed - Professional ethos and values that supports capacity building are initiated, implemented and institutionalized, so that a culture of disciplined action replaces excessive control. Then the school culture is changed and developed. Need the previous 3 processes to be able to do this one – can’t do it directly.
4 strategies that link together to give focus, drive and direction for school improvement. In a particular order.
Have to work with everyone to get them to understand these processes and how they work together. See slide 36.
First core purpose = unrelenting focus on teaching and learning. Slide 34 – monitoring and intervention – Outward Grange School. The young boy – all the predictors showed a lack of passes at matriculation at age 16 – 20 boys. The principal told the boys the story and asked them what they could do about it. Created a curriculum for them – stayed in their zone of proximal development – vocationally-oriented programs – at the end of it, they got their 5 passes that gave them access to higher education or apprenticeships or wherever. So his goal was for all kids to succeed.
Be very explicit what learning looks like in the school. He wrote (with Bruce Joyce) some time ago that: "Learning experiences are composed of content, process and social climate. As teachers we create for and with our children opportunities to explore and build important areas of knowledge, develop powerful tools for learning, and live in humanizing social conditions."
Change instrumental rules (bring your books) to an operational version of that statement – content + process + social climate = what learning looks like.
Most change initiatives do not touch the instructional core. They are all worthwhile, but no change in the students unless the instructional core is affected. Change only one of those three = negligible impact on outcomes.
Unless the interaction of the three elements relate to the tasks that students do, we can’t be confident that students will succeed. Top-down changes do not change these – have to work laterally inside the school.
Intervening in the instructional core: The following principles guide our work on the instructional core:
Increases in student learning occur only as a consequence of improvements in the level of content, teachers’ knowledge and skill and student engagement.
If you change any single element of the instructional core, you have to change the other two to affect student learning.
The tasks students do predict their performance; so the real accountability lies in the tasks the students perform.
We learn to do the work by doing the work: people have to engage in sustained description and analysis of instructional practice before they can acquire either the expertise or the authority to judge it.
In developing a practice around the instructional core ‐ description comes before analysis, analysis before prediction, and prediction before evaluation.
Is working in hackney – among the worst achieving areas in the UK. Observations led to developing their common practice in the school. And a language of practice.
5th point on the slide = principals have to do the work. Don’t delegate it. It is your core work. Only improve the work by doing the work.
Three circles on slide 38 – ways of thinking about teaching. Essential tools for teachers.
Powerful learning is the ability of learners to respond successfully to the tasks they are set, as well as the task they set themselves In particular, to:
Integrate prior and new knowledge
Acquire and use a range of learning skills
Solve problems individually and in groups
Think carefully about their successes and failures
Accept that learning involves uncertainty and difficulty.
All this has been termed “meta‐cognition” – it is the learners’ ability to take control over their own learning processes.
Integrate prior and new knowledge – Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. How many of the teachers engage their kids in their zone at any particular time? Probably not many? Teachers need to use scaffolding to tie new learning to prior learning and not bore them with the old learning again or scaring them off by the new learning being too far outside their comfort zone.
Developing colleagues: system leadership on slide 40. Technical solutions (answer to a problem that we know how to solve; already know how to do a lot of things in education) vs adaptive work/challenges (don’t know how to make the change; can’t use existing repertoires). Have always looked at teaching as being a personal achievement – in the individual classrooms – second most private act and not filmed as much as the most private one!
The Nature of Adaptive Work (at the heart of making deep changes in the school). An adaptive challenge is a problem situation for which solutions lie outside current ways of operating.
Adaptive challenges demand learning, because ‘people are the problem’ and progress requires new ways of thinking & operating.
Mobilising people to meet adaptive challenges, then, is at the heart of leadership practice.
Ultimately, adaptive work requires us to reflect on the moral purpose by which we seek to thrive and demands diagnostic enquiry into the realities we face that threaten the realisation of those purposes. (From Ron Heifetz – ‘Adaptive Work’ in Bentley and Wilsdon 2003)
Educational change:
change takes place over time;
change initially involves anxiety and uncertainty;
technical and psychological support is crucial;
the learning of new skills is incremental and developmental;
successful change involves pressure and support within a collaborative setting;
organisational conditions within and in relation to the school make it more or less likely that the school improvement will occur. [Adapted from Michael Fullan – Change Processes paper, 1986]
Technical support = know-how support. Psychological support = set up a learning environment that allows learning about change to take place.
Joined up learning and teaching … in Schools:
Make space and time for ‘deep learning’ and teacher enquiry.
Use the research on learning and teaching to impact on student achievement.
Studying classroom practice increases the focus on student learning.
Invest in school‐based processes for improving teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge.
By working in small groups the whole school staff can become a nurturing unit.
Structuring staff development slide. Need these for teachers to change their practices and have successful professional learning. Not a top-down learning way. Construct learning together.
Workshop:
Understanding of Key Ideas and Principles
Modelling and Demonstration
Practice in Non‐threatening Situations
Workplace
Immediate and Sustained Practice
Collaboration and Peer
Reflection and Action Research
Instructional rounds process:
The network convenes in a school for a rounds visit hosted by a member or members of the network. The focus of the visit is a problem of practice related to teaching and learning that the school is currently wrestling with.
The network divides into smaller group that visit a rotation of four or five classrooms for approximately thirty minutes. In each classroom network participants collect descriptive evidence related to the focus of the problem of practice.
After completing the classroom observations, the entire group assembles in a common location to work through a process description, analysis and prediction. The group analyses the evidence for patterns and look at how what they have seen explains or not the observable student performance in the school.
Finally the network develops a series of ‘theory of action’ principles from the analysis of the observations and discusses the next level of work recommendations for the school and system to make progress on the problem.
Staff development needs to focus on the instructional core infused with the moral purpose.
Redesigning the school: link idea of adventure with the notions of schooling. Learning through adventure:A new Design for Schools:
"In wildness is the preservation of the world – Henry David Thoreau
Vision is of a network of schools formed on principles related to adventure, the wilderness environment, and experience enhancing personal growth.
Located in areas of high social deprivation with proximity to Areas of Natural Beauty.
These schools will be fully comprehensive and inclusive with a strong focus on personalisation. These are places where young people will thrive irrespective of their background, socio‐economic status or learning needs.
Curriculum and timetable models creating opportunities for learning through adventure – within and outside the classroom.
Current policy trends offer the freedoms and flexibilities in building design, curriculum and timetable models and staffing to deliver the ‘Adventure Learning ’ school.
Have been very good at doing individual things in education (new curriculum; student group size, etc). if we want transformation, must do a whole school re-design.
Certain benchmarks of schooling are cross-culturally valid. It is the way that they are enacted in their own contexts that respects the culture of the setting.
The Adventure Learning Dividend:
Research has shown that Adventure Learning has helped young people to develop greater independence, confidence, self‐esteem, communication skills, group cohesion and teamwork.
Recent OFSTED reports provide the best evidence of the potential impact of Adventure Learning on education. They report that:
Learning outside the classroom improved young people's development in all five of the Every Child Matters outcomes, especially in two areas: enjoying and achieving, and achieving economic well‐being.
Well organised activities outside the classroom contribute much to the quality and depth of learning.
Learners of all ages say they enjoy working away from the classroom. They find it 'exciting', 'practical', 'motivating', 'refreshing' and 'fun'. They make such comments as: 'You see rather than listen', 'We learn in a fun way', 'We like learning by doing.‘
Core elements of the design are on slides 48 to 50. We know the five elements around the outside. Put the notion of adventure learning at the centre of the model. Have to confront their past realities in order to create something new. One way is to do it this way – can also confront the urban wilderness.
Have to address all 5 elements, even if you don’t believe in the adventure idea.
How the model is being taken forward:
The aspiration is a world wide network of Adventure Learning schools, but we are starting small … .
Currently working with half a dozen schools in Cumbria to develop a community of learning and practice within a network committed to Adventure Learning.
The ‘Adventure Learning team’ offers a range of support including:
Access to school designers and curriculum experts who work with schools in developing the different elements of the model.
A website that contains more detailed curricular examples from other schools.
OB schools will be provided with regular opportunities to network with each other.
A regular programme of professional development and workshops.
Adventure Learning Schools are expected to:
Fulfill certain standards and expectations ‐ this is not a pick and mix approach.
Schools entering the network will be asked to sign up to a contract.
Be subject to some form of quality assurance mechanism.
Pay an annual fee which will go towards the costs of the support provided.
Some Questions for ‘Adventure Leaders’:
As you develop the ‘adventure of learning’ in your school, what would you see, hear and feel differently?
How do you respond to the concept of cross ‐ curricular learning expeditions?
How important is the notion of an active pedagogy applied across and beyond the school?
How far is this approach similar and different to the ‘whole school design’ you are implementing in your school?
Towards system wide sustainable reform – see slide 53. Establishing a preferred future. The key idea is a dialectic between national prescription and schools leading reform – top-down vs bottom up. Neither of those works in isolation – have to work in combination. In UK in 1997, when Blair started his educational reforms, they were in the top-down area of change, with a bit of the other. Had an impact on the learning – mistake was to continue to work top-down without moving to schools leading reform. From mandating reform to self-led reform. Schools supporting each other through the process of change.
System Leadership and Adventure: A Proposition: ‘System leaders’ care about and work for the success of other schools as well as their own. They measure their success in terms of improving student learning and increasing achievement, and strive to both raise the bar and narrow the gap (s). Crucially they are willing to shoulder system leadership roles in the belief that in order to change the larger system you have to engage with it in a meaningful way.’
System = internal system of the school + working with others in the locality. Create structures that allow schools to share good practices with each other. See slides 55 and 56 for more detail.
System leadership roles:
A range of emerging roles, including Heads who:
develop and lead a successful educational improvement partnership across local communities to support welfare and potential.
choose to lead and improve a school in extremely challenging circumstances.
partner another school facing difficulties and improve it. This category includes Executive Heads and leaders of more informal improvement arrangements.
act as curriculum and pedagogic innovators who develop and then transfer best practice across the system.
Work as change agents or experts leaders as National Leader of Education, School Improvement Partner, Consultant Leader.
Seeing these roles emerge over time now in the UK.
Segmentation graph on slide 58. In each school, there are good things happening – can we create a system when we encourage schools to learn with and from each other?
Networking and segmentation table on slide 59. Things that schools do to each other, not top-down. Regions get policy structures in place to allow schools to work together.
Segmentation requires a fair degree of boldness …
Schools should take greater responsibility for neighbouring schools so that the move towards networking encourages groups of schools to form collaborative arrangements outside of local control.
All failing and underperforming (and potentially low achieving) schools should have a leading school that works with them in either a formal grouping Federation or in more informal partnership.
The incentives for greater system responsibility should include significantly enhanced funding for students most at risk.
A rationalisation of support agency functions and roles to allow the higher degree of national and regional co‐ordination for this increasingly devolved system.
Adventure in leadership quotes:
‘Vision, values, determination and uncertainty are all to be found in the best leaders. Good management skills are essential, but can also leave one in the comfort zone. Good leadership should be a bit scary and is what we need most in our schools’. (Sir Alan Steer)
‘Never fully knowing how much further you can go; how much more can be achieved alongside the adults and young people you lead and share leadership with; and where any path may take you, but being open to all the possibilities along the journey. Like a life well lived you should never feel all is achieved but rather there’s still a place left to visit, another book to read and so much more to experience’. (Vanessa Wiseman)
‘The adventure of leadership is the challenge of releasing the potential of others‘. (Sir Dexter Hutt)
‘Every interaction is an opportunity to share the vision and explore new ways of encouraging both staff and students to strive for bigger and better things. Leadership is all consuming and brings immense satisfaction as you observe your developing leaders, particularly young leaders, break new ground whilst keeping their focus firmly on putting students first. The adventure comes from challenging the process, from taking small risks and sometimes questioning received wisdom if you are convinced there is a better way to meet students needs. It's about not having all the answers at the beginning but pursuing the goal with 'confident uncertainty', sure that celebration will follow!’ (Michael Wilkins)
The Nature of Adventure:
You cannot stay on the summit forever: you have to come down again…. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, But what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees, one descends, one sees no longer. But one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one has seen higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
Session 2: Leadership for Radical Educational Change: Creating spaces for restless encounter – Michael Fielding
Emphasis on creativity is exciting and appropriate for these times.
Couple of themes from David Hopkins – life scripts. How do you make sense of your work over time? Notion of adventure – connect with that by the notion of ‘restless encounter’. Creating circumstances in which young people and adults see each other differently.
Honour the centrality of relationships in education. Worked in a school that restructured along those lines.
Outline of this session:
Working with innovative school principals.
Beyond the public face of educational leadership.
Dialogic approaches to student voice.
On the poverty of high performance schooling: retrieving education as human flourishing. (what is wrong with current schooling)
Innovation is not enough: why we need our radical traditions.
Creating spaces for restless encounter. (create restless spaces out of your comfort zone – not all the time)
Dialogic … = about what that might mean – beyond the OFSTED requirement.
1. Working with innovative school principals: see slide 3 for information about the two projects.
West Sussex: reasonable size district in south of England. Have read about system leadership – but what does it actually mean for a principal who starts to work in this way – not just in your school, but am imperative to work with the community and other schools. How to encourage principals to work in this way, and how can we learn from them – challenge for the local authority. What helped their learning and what were the issues? Could you draw a diagram and on it plot your journey as a leader? Then asked them to tell their story – very successful and creative. Important to have space to think about their work and what they were trying to do – in the longer term. Seldom the time available. 6 – importance of networks and narrative and of notions like wisdom.
EF Foundation: 3 primary and 3 secondary principals who were pushing the boundaries. Action learning model at the core of the project. Learning driven by the people in the group, not by an external person. Structured conversations. Over time, developed great emotional commitment to one another – could talk openly.
2 key issues from both projects:
The necessity of narrative: Reflection + mutual learning; Connecting with principals’ own personal and professional narratives.
Developing deep student voice: Dialogic, inclusive approaches to student voice.
2. Beyond the public face of educational leadership: principals making meaning of their work.
Affirmation, confidence + courage: Affirmation important. Confidence hard won, seldom constant, always open to challenge.
Wisdom: Wisdom more important than knowledge in promoting the right kind of innovation.
Mutual learning amongst principals: Win-wins - how colleagues approach similar issues. Informal coaching on difficult issues. Also, over time, often began to address longstanding, persistently difficult matters.
Principals are assumed by non-principals to be very confident people – they are not like that at all really – just like anyone else – they need affirmation, like anyone else. They are required to show confidence in public – where does the affirmation come from? Wisdom is not the same as know-how. Reassuring to hear about others' experiences.
Shared values: beyond networks - ‘It was the shared values of the group that helped particularly. This is not something you would get with fellow principals with the (District)’.
The necessity of narrative - ‘Personal histories are tremendously important – giving yourself permission to have conversations with yourself. Keeping a handle on the past and what is right.’
Radical traditions + communal narratives - Intellectual + moral stubbornness, cumulative tenacity bound up with wider narratives of radical traditions of state education. ‘They expect it of me’.
it is really important to network with other principals who share the same values. Not always good to have all schools different – need sometimes to work with ‘like’ people. Important to hang on to what you believe in – develop a moral stubbornness – tenacity. ‘This matters to me. I owe it allegiance.’
New contexts for leadership learning:
New ways of working demand new practical contexts + supportive arrangements for principals’ learning.
New learning challenges likely to be met more surely + more wisely through peer-led, mutually supportive, appropriately challenging cycle of reflection on and in action.
Such learning linked, not just to present + future, but also to a past in which our stories + collective commitments are given meaning + purpose.
Narrative learning a key pre-condition and vital enabler of ‘New Leadership’.
It is important within any system that you provide a context where principals can revisit these issues. Learn from each other.
Task: how do you make meaning of your work? What kinds of interpersonal spaces allow you to write your narrative / life script?
Student Voice: Lots of work on this over a long period of time – not just in modern times. Australia is a leader in this field. Pat Thomson, from South Australia, is in Nottingham now. Roger Holdsworth (Victoria) – ‘Connect’ magazine. Pip Field and her colleagues in Adelaide.
Examples of student voice: how do we make sense of this?
Peer support - Buddying systems; Peer tutoring / listening; Peer teaching; Peer mediator; Circle time (same year / mixed age).
Organisational reflection + renewal - School / student councils; Ideas booths; Graffiti wall; Listening posts; Mixed-age Circle Time; Student teams; Working party reps; Student governors; Student ambassadors; Tour guides; Appointment panels; Junior Leadership Team; School Improvement Plans / policy writing.
Teaching & Learning - Assessment for Learning; Lead-learners; Students as Learning Partners (SALPs); Students as co-researchers; Students as researchers; Student-led learning walks; Evaluating work units; Dept / Unit development plans.
Classroom consultation (with your own class + throughout the school) - Classroom observation (including SALPs); Video recording; Drama / role-play; Questionnaires; Logs / scrapbooks; ‘Transforming learning’; Drawings; Focus groups; Interviews; Suggestion boxes; Diaries; Photos; Collage; Learning Review Meetings.
Community engagement / citizenship - RRR (Rights Respect Responsibility): commitment to international work; whole community involvement in Student Action Teams, Learning & Teaching, Environment, Citizenship / Political Voice, Student Health & Welfare; + Student reps in Town Council, District Youth Council, Regional Youth Council, Youth Council /Parliament, and Child-to-Child projects.
Trained as a teacher in mid-1960s. Notion of what it was to teach then was about engaging with students as persons, as it is now. But fallen away now – teachers are amazed by what young people can do, but why should they be?
Range of activities: Under the heading of student voice, there are several things that fit – from consulting young people at one end to co-construction (worried about that term) at the other.
Organisational reflection and renewal: school / student councils. Views of young people can be expressed in many ways. Middle class female students are the ones that are most commonly involved. How can we be more inclusive? Appointment panels for new staff positions – controversial – some people feel that. If approached in a professional way, insights of young people are very useful. Kate Griffin (Greenford High School, London) – junior leadership team – training, expectations, twinning with assistant principal, etc.
Teaching and learning: see slide. Lead learner = 3 or 4 students who take a joint responsibility with the teacher for the exploration and teaching of the lesson.
Classroom consultation: Don’t stray from the classroom too much – can do all sorts of things involving young people, but the most important bit of the school is the classroom. Learning review meeting – parent consultation evenings need to be changed – should be an evening in which the student should lead a review of her work. Have worked in several schools on that. Changing the structures does not necessarily change things – who talks the most in the review is most important.
Community engagement / citizenship – how young people engage with the community.
Tables (slides 15 and 16) showing from audience to author, from data to dialogue. Hart’s Ladder of Participation. Issues in inquiry come from the student, not the teacher. Participatory democracy – very rare in practice, but worth pursuing.
Mick Waters – Head of the QCA in England until fairly recently. Newspaper article about his dislike of the new national curriculum and its negative effects on schools and kids:
Pupils are being deprived of a 'joyful childhood' by a target driven education system that treats them like 'currency', according to the architect of the new national curriculum. Mick Waters warned that children are having their school years 'spoiled' by the 'over emphasis on the narrow diet' of national curriculum tests. They are at risk of being viewed solely as commodities who exist to bring schools 'scores', according to the former head of curriculum at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Mr Waters' comments will come as an embarrassment to the Government. He was speaking for the first time since leaving the QCA in May to take up a post as professor of education at Wolverhampton University. Speaking to the Teacher magazine, he said that the 'accountability framework' around test results and league tables led to schools being 'pitched against each other'. He said: 'The danger is that the children become a 'currency' that can bring us 'scores'. We all know of children who have their last year in primary school spoiled by over emphasis on the narrow diet of the tests. Children should go places, make things, sing, play, look closely at the world, meet fascinating people and learn about themselves. We risk preparing for the future to the extent we overlook the present that all children deserve...a joyful childhood.' Mr Waters was the architect of the new secondary curriculum, which led to a paring down of subject content and encouraged teachers to make links between subjects. The move angered some teachers who believed that the emphasis on cross-curricular work watered down their specialisms in subjects such as history and geography. He was also involved in recent primary curriculum reforms. Meanwhile, a recent damning report by Unicef found that Britain's children were the unhappiest in Europe. They were among the least likely to enjoy school or to rate their happiness levels as above average. Overall they felt left out, awkward and even lonely. Experts have blamed the problems on a number of factors including the breakdown of traditional family life. But researchers from the Institute for Education at London University have claimed that children's emotional well-being could also be suffering because teachers pay too much attention to tests and not enough to the children themselves. Pressure on teachers to make their pupils achieve national standards causes them to focus their lessons on how to pass tests. This makes children anxious and fearful, stifles their creativity and ruins their confidence in their ability to judge their own work, according to their research. Nansi Ellis, head of education policy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said yesterday: 'Children should not leave primary school stressed and tested to within an inch of their lives.' But Children's Minister Baroness Morgan said: 'We do not subscribe to the view that testing is ruining childhood. We are making huge strides in building a fully rounded education that looks at the whole child.'
Dialogic approaches to student voice:
Openness towards each other, an interested + attentive reciprocity.
Pervasive, rather than a compartmentalised approach. Daily opportunities for these kinds of encounter with all young people.
Gets things done, but always devotes time to make meaning together, to understanding the significance of current work and future aspirations.
How to get away from a tick-the-box method as required by OFSTED. About a genuine ongoing conversation in formal and informal spaces between and among young people and adults. Informal is really powerful. Permanent provision of the spaces.
4. Poverty of high performance schooling: one must not belittle the educational changes that are going on. Need to go back to what education is about, not what schooling is about. Ask the question: what it is to be and become a person, to flourish as a human being. John McMurray – Scottish philosopher – 2 different kinds of human relationships – functional (things we do to achieve daily tasks and relationships with those people – e.g. airport security people) and personal (friendship – not instrumental; expressions of our care and choose to do in each other’s company) – what is the relationship between those two type of relationships?
Table of organisational and communal orientation of schools (slide 20) – typology of relationships. At the moment, England is at the stage of the personal is for the sake of the functional. He is arguing for a person-centred approach – that the functional and the personal are both important – morally and functionally satisfying. Example: development of sub-schools – allows teachers to have relationships with a smaller group of young people.
What are we trying to do – see slides 21 and 22.
5. Innovation is not enough: why we need our radical traditions:
"Society remembers less and less faster and faster. The sign of the times is thought that has succumbed to fashion; it scorns the past as antiquated while touting the present as the best. Society has lost its memory, and with it, its mind. The inability or refusal to think back takes its toll in the inability to think." (Social Amnesia: a critique of conformist psychology, Russell Jacoby, 1996.)
If we lose our connection with our professional heritage, and say it is all bout the future, that is disgraceful and a waste of creative resource. Our approaches to innovation are flawed because there is not interest in the past – it makes it appear as if innovation is only just starting.
Prefigurative Practice: ‘rather than waiting until all the necessary social engineering has been done … this approach … suggests that education through its processes, the experiences it offers, and the expectations it makes, should prefigure, in microcosm, the more equal, just and fulfilling society … Schools should not merely reflect the world of which they are a part, but be critical of it, and show in their own processes that its shortcomings are not inevitable, but can be changed.
"They aim to show that society can be characterised by communal as well as individual values, that all people merit equal treatment and equal dignity, that academic ability is not the only measure of a person, that racism and sexism are neither inevitable nor acceptable." Roger Dale ‘Comprehensive education’ Talk to Madrid Conference (April 1988)(unpublished).
There might be only a few schools in a position to do this – constrained by community, staff, traditions of the school, etc. We must exemplify and practise what we do in a different way.
6. Creating spaces for restless encounter: Innovation is important, but we need to spend some time and in some spaces to think about it differently.
Students As Learning Partners (SALP):
Voluntary scheme.
Teacher invites (via the school coordinator) 2 or 3 students she normally teaches to work with her.
Students trained in observation techniques, interpersonal skills and inducted into the values of the scheme.
Focus on learning not teaching:
Phase 1 - Usually 3 observations + debriefing.
Phase 2 – further observations on new strategies.
Fresh insights from both perspectives.
Depth and range of mutuality.
Students as advocates:
Example A - Considerable research / secondary learning; Create worksheets and suggest new ideas.
Example B - Small focus group + after lesson dialogue; Students engage others in class especially those having difficulty / disaffected; Led to much more exploratory pedagogy.
Key is the focus on learning not teaching. Very strong mutuality. Students become advocates for the teacher.
Generations in dialogue about the future: the hopes + fears of young Australians:
Project involved staff + students from a Melbourne High School + other adults:
Aim: improve understanding of young people’s sense of what the future holds for them.
Workshop on challenges of 21st century.
‘importance of developing processes that enable .. intergenerational dialogue .. that promotes active listening, the recognition of shared concerns + collective responsibility for developing solutions’.
Q. ‘How does society generally provide the spaces within which older and younger people can engage in meaningful dialogue?’
Seven recommendations for education include:
3 Greater intergenerational dialogue could be fostered explicitly within a range of curricula and be of mutual value to youth and adults alike. In (important) arguments about the need to hear ‘youth voices’, other important notions of context, relationship + dialogue can be lost. Young people have highlighted the value not only of speaking directly with adults, but also hearing adults’ thoughts’.
4 Narratives + stories are important tools for making sense of the past, for envisioning likely + alternative futures, for identifying what is of value, + for devising ways to act.’
Task: secondary schooling in Australia 1945-1955 – what kinds of things would have been going on about curriculum, relationships and structures?
Example of a school in Stepney – St George-in-the-East School (slides 32 to 36) – Alex Bloom – 1945-1955. Died in the school – reported in the Times, double page spread of his wake moving through Stepney in the popular press, and in the anarchist press – remarkable man. Democratic public spaces – prefigurative. Space where staff and students sit down and say: what have we been trying to do in our work together? Students were able to challenge the teachers and vice versa without restraint, in a deep, rich moral sense. Lots of story, not just the one narrative. Table showing democratic structures. Regular operation. Won’t work unless the relationships are right. Personalisation does not get near these notions of the common good. Fear is the main thing that gets in the way of human flourishing.
Mixed age choices about they did each day. Relationships with class teacher was hugely important. The book “To Sir with Love” was sort of based on it, but it is a distortion of what happened. Chapter 17 is a description of one of the weekly meetings – one young guy, a boxer, asked why they had to do PE. Slide 3 is about the weekly meeting.
If we could provide spaces like that, as a normal part of the school’s operations, it would be great – hard to do but exciting.
No competitive testing in the school: ‘Because there are neither carrots nor goads, there will be no donkeys.’
Session 3: Key Competencies for School Leadership: According to the Evidence – Viviane Robinson
Capabilities could be substituted for competencies. They are a set of integrated knowledge skills and dispositions – not behavioural bullet points.
Governments have been investing heavily in principals' development. Lots of activity around the Australian states, but all the work is being done separately - no national cohesion.
Purpose is to develop a framework and then align development programs to that framework. NZ has a national framework.
Two approaches in developing:
Practitioner oriented process of consultation with stakeholders.
A research process of trying to uncover and synthesise all the published evidence about what is known about various types of leadership and their link to student outcomes. Evidence-based links. Social and cultural outcomes as well as academic. Her team did this work.
Big research message: The more leaders focus their relationships, their work and their learning on the core business of teaching and learning, the greater their influence on student outcomes.
That conclusion was arrived at from a range of approaches and methodologies.
First implication = need leadership that is deeply immersed in the core business of teaching and learning – lots of different names around the world. As reported by teachers. The more they did this, the more students achieved, all things being equal.
The notion of transformational leadership came from the business world. Charisma, inspiration, vision, mission, intellectual stimulation. Measures are very generic, not about teaching and learning. Impact of that type of leadership is 3 to 4 times less than leadership embedded in the core business.
Relative impact of leadership dimensions – slide 3 with the graph (small version to the right). Takes the evidence from her meta-study and put them on a ruler called Effect Size. Lot of consensus around the relative effect of these things. Never meta-analysed before. 0.84 = huge impact. 0.42 = moderate impact.
She is not positive about vision and mission. Does not show up as having an impact in the graph. Could be embedded in the ones on the graph, e.g. 1. Also teachers go past the vision and mission. Lots of leaders verbalise the vision and mission. But if it is not anchored in those 5 things, then it does not drive anything. These are not a checklist or things to be held accountable against. Can not be done by themselves – have to know how to do these 5 things together – can make them worse.
Can’t do 2 unless you have 1. Goals tell you what is less or more important – in education, everything is important to someone. Goal setting is about setting the relative importance. Until that is done, you can’t be strategic.
3 = coordination within and across year levels. Give feedback. Evaluating teaching in more than a tick the box manner.
5 - add “a supportive and” to the "orderly environment" phrase. Work of Bill Mulford is the only Australian work that linked leadership to outcomes. Closely linked to Leithwood in Canada. Had to use quantitative studies – very few of them. Mainly qualitative.
That tells you the 'what' of leadership in terms of impact on student outcomes.
Two research questions:
What competencies do leadership teams need to engage confidently in these dimensions?
What conditions help leaders learn these competencies?
Task: write down the answer to the question on slide 5 – name 3 competencies you believe are most important for engaging in these leadership dimensions.
“According to the evidence” slide 6. Wordsmithing by groups of principals sitting around is useful but not sufficient – what about the evidence? Not a lot of research that answers the question, but some went some of the way. See the arrow pathways on the slide. 3 main types of research programs.
Her three competencies are:
Integrate pedagogical knowledge. Deep knowledge of assessment, pedagogy and curriculum and using it in the leadership and decision making – not just the first part = doing the course or reading the book.
Analyse and solve complex problems. Context. Not social class or sector or …, but what it means in terms of constraints on particular problems.
Build relational trust. Relationship dimension.
1. Integrate pedagogical knowledge: see slide 8. Used improving mathematics reasoning and problem solving as an example. Slide 9 gives an example of the question asked in the third box on slide 8. Changed from the behavioural checklist to an observation tool. Then ask the questions on slide 10.
How much knowledge do leaders need? Sufficient to:
know how to align school administrative and organisational routines e.g., classroom observation, to the intended change.
know how to judge the progress being made by those who are accountable to you for the change.
be able to have knowledgeable conversations with your teachers about the change – linked to your credibility.
Challenges:
We greatly underestimate the depth of educational knowledge required to meet our new ambitious goals for the learning of all students.
Educational leaders need to be experienced teachers and have high quality opportunities to gain deeper pedagogical content knowledge.
These are new goals, at least as they are articulated by governments. All trying to reduce the tail of low achievers. Learning how to meet that challenge is rocket science. Our profession is as complex as medicine, but we don’t have the protocols, etc, that medicine has.
Can’t be left to each school to invent it. Who has the responsibility to work it out and share it around? NZ schools are isolates. Ontario – you are part of a school district, with support services provided on an ongoing basis. It should be a shared challenge – you as principal and the region.
More challenges:
How do we make this knowledge available to all schools? Where should it reside?
In heads of principals?
In leadership teams?
In teams plus smart tools?
In teams and smart tools plus permanently available regional expertise?
Found examples of templates and software and policy guidelines that schools had picked up and used. Some tools were very dumb, old or unvalidated. Most were not about teaching. Need research and development around tools, templates, benchmarks, guidelines that are valid and known to work and that teachers can sued in ways that they can adapt to their own context.
2. Second competency = see slide 13 on complex problem solving. Process of discerning the relevant conditions and how to change, revise, overcome, integrate them is the context for problem solving and decision making. Can’t talk about the goal without talking about the constraints – put them both together and then you have the start of problem solving. See slide 14 = funnel diagram.
Imagine a principal wants his Heads of Department to set more specific academic targets but:
Some are reacting defensively.
Some don’t know what are reasonable targets in some subject areas.
The school lacks good data management systems.
Some heads of department are not confident they can get agreement with their staff on the importance of targets Resolving this issue requires complex problem solving.
Why are so many schools solving problems other schools have already solved?
How can we ensure more systematic identification and use of high quality solutions?
Conversation about bullying: see slide 17.
3. Build relational trust: Relationship competency: huge evidence base. See slide 18 on building it. List of the questions asked of teachers about their principal.
What are teachers noticing when they report on the trust of their leaders?
Slide 19 - determinants of relational trust – interpersonally respectful = norms of civility and politeness. Even with teachers who don’t do it back, that is what they want. Then the personal regard for others (someone knows them and their family). Do not trust leaders that they do not see as competent – one of the main ones is that the principal knows how to deal with in competence and conflict in a timely manner. Personal integrity – more than walking the talk – demonstrate caring about the whole school (moral purpose) and not giving in to lobby groups.
Consequences of high trust – work embraces the trust among all groups in the community.
Showed a video. Background to the video on slide 21. Video analysis on slide 22.
Slide 23 = a set of skills and associated values that inform what she did in the video. The slide shows the skills but not the values. Which skill was the one that happened the least often – summarise and check what the other person is saying. Why don’t we do paraphrasing and summarising when we hear things that we don’t agree with and want to change?
What leads to the difficulty? Because we are judging as we are listening. That stops the deep listening that is needed to paraphrase.
The learning is the work - slide 25. Can not create the reflective spaces if you are not focused on a few things at a time and being strategic about the other things.
Leadership development happens in two spaces – contrived spaces like conferences and in our school.
Slide 26 – 3 capabilities are all inter-related – in order to do those three, you need to know and do a whole lot of other stuff.
Problem solvers deeply know the content of the thing they are working with.
Kochanek, J. R. (2005). Building trust for better schools. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. (The book can be read online using the link to Google Books.)
Nelson, B. S., & Sassi, A. (2005). The effective principal: Instructional leadership for high quality learning. Columbia, NY: Teachers College Press.
Robinson, V. M. J. (2007). School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why. Winmalee, NSW Australia: Australian Council for Educational Leaders (Reprinted in SPANZ: The Journal of the Secondary Principals Association of New Zealand, December 2008). (The pdf file can be downloaded from the website by following the link.)
The 2009 ASPA Conference was held in Adelaide on 27-30 September at the Adelaide Convention Centre.
