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Inter-School Collaboration: a Practitioner Perspective

Niall MacKinnon

Head teacher, Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland, UK

ICSEI 3P breakfast network seminar 4 January 2015

28th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement

Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

The ICSEI 3Pi Breakfast Sessions are neither a paper session nor a symposium. Those attending are keen to collaborate and interact in a more intense way than at the main congress. The network theme provides the focus for those attending. For 3P it is accentuating the link between policymakers, politicians and practitioners to the furtherance of school education practice. These three groupings of individuals and organisations associated with education are fairly separate and normally interact in positional stances such as negotiations, or in a directive client type role. I see a space opening up for a more fluid inter-relationship, which is why I am involved in ICSEI and the 3P network. It is also the subject of my paper on the main program of this congress: ‘Schools as agents of system change – a practitioner perspective’ii. The breakfast network sessions attract those most disposed to collaboration and wishing to express thoughts from that stance. I have been involved in a number of inter-school collaborations, some at the initiative of the practitioners concerned, not as part of a directed mandate. I have also been involved in several different types of school linking partnership. I have been involved in many smaller scale collaborations or of short time span, some of which have been intense for their duration. I have also been involved in inter-school working of the directive type. Merely to describe initiatives of an inter-school nature that I have been involved in, including some that I have led/directed, would not of itself be of wider interest. By this I mean that they may have been interesting to those concerned, and enabled positive learning experiences in the schools concerned, which were enhanced through the collaboration. But that alone would not be of broader interest from a conceptual or system-change viewpoint. I regard inter-school collaboration to have greater relevance to the 3P perspective. Scotland is going through a major reform of its education system, as are all national education systems. This is for the reason that our societies are going through intense change – normative, economic, physical and technological. Education has to serve society and thus mediate those changes, whether willingly or reluctantly. Non-change is a non-option. At the ICSEI Congress in 2014 I gave a paper, ‘The Local–National–Global Nexus of Education Change’iii from the perspective of a practitioner living through these changes, taking an active role. I noted the extent of change, for instance that on taking up my present post, from that of a teacher in a nearby school, on the working day before commencing my new post I did not even have a workplace email account. That was in 2001, so post millennium. Since then the school of which I am principal has been at the forefront of e-learning, and many other initiatives in pedagogy stemming from immense social and technological change. More recently the changes have been to the more holistic capacities, experiences and outcomes approach of Scotland's current school education reforms. Perhaps unusually in the international context Scotland has an expressly new curriculum, introduced incrementally since 2004iv. It has founding statements which set it apart from the

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curriculum that preceded it. Thus in this country (Scotland is fully autonomous for education in the UK) education system change is perhaps more abrupt than elsewhere, though that has set up challenges and contradictions. There have been major differences of interpretation of incoming concepts, procedures and pathways of implementation. That is only the backdrop to my theme here, on which I have presented at previous ICSEI congresses. Thus the inter-school partnerships which I have taken part in have been set in a whirlwind of wider change. I emphasise that my professional vantage point is practitioner. As school principal a function of my job is to liaise beyond the school, but that has been to enable school activities to the benefit of learning experience and outcome. Somehow though my role and goal has spread beyond that, because schools are not mere recipients of policy. As we create practice through collaboration then those processes themselves constitute behaviours which are formative to and of the system beyond the specific schools. Forms of inter-school collaboration that I took part in as a participant, some of which I led and served as external grant holder, were:

School led - Four-school four-country Virtual Learning Environment and video-conferencing

initiativev – major project with themed inter-school working – Oracle Education Foundation case studyvi – lasted several years with sustained bursts of projects within the collaboration.

- Three-school digital micro-imaging project – Learning and Teaching Scotland (Scottish curriculum agency) case study and ‘Scottish National Grid for Learning Innovation’ award winner.vii

- Two-school collaborative action implementation project of principles of Scotland’s ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ funded by the then national curriculum agency Learning and Teaching Scotland – focus on linking pedagogic shifts with assessment and development planning using the respective schools’ curriculum and learning and teaching activity to explore procedure and method changes. Creation of new school systems to the incoming principles. Reportviii written for national curriculum agency who provided funding for this competitively bid-for award, with exemplars of planning and assessment to new curriculum guidance for enaction in our context – that of a small rural primary school with multi-composite classes. Short duration

- Collaborative project of two schools using school artwork to create Christmas card pack as professional printed pack

- Two-week international Weatherwatch projectix. Exemplifies the blend of planning, serendipity and pragmatism. Across the road from the school is a professional weather station which serves as an official recording station. We had been planning to utilise it. Not long after, through various links we have made, a colleague in Kent at the other end of the United Kingdom informed me that they were conducting a two-week weather recording project across schools to a set format of recording and asked if we would like to take part. We did. The curriculum project worker was part of a curriculum agency in Kent. It so happens that only four schools took part – at the two ends of the UK, one in Malaysia and one in Iran. We undertook the tasks diligently and added interpretative material. Virtual Learning Kent then published our work. The linkage here was almost ephemeral, yet I found the school in Iran publishing our results with bilingual commentary on their website. Of course the Scotland, England, Iran and Malaysia data were hugely different. We added interpretative material from our contexts. The essence of this project was that it was real, not simulated. Real linkages emerged, bridging huge environmental, social and political difference. In this case that two-week period was the sole extent of the collaboration, yet I consider that fact to be its beauty, as our work is

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published online with comparative commentary in Farsi. Such linkages help to bridge differences and assumptions with unknowable and yet surely positive implications for the future. Pupils/students take note of the signals of our actions.

External body led

- Multi-school project in a rural area with major tourist industry – environment/heritage body leading a project for schools to research a new tourist walk and create a map and brochure by each schoolx – these then published by the agency – inter-school linkage in comparison, collaboration and also walking each others routes as product consumers.

- National drama organisation regional drama festival occurring annually. In a small rural area strong community identity has found expression in vibrant community drama. Schools around here have a long tradition of entering plays for a professional performance in a competitive festival. Gives major impetus and focus to drama – with major production and very large audiences for primary stage pupils. The organising body provides a professional infrastructure such that a ‘real’ event is constructed. We worked with local playwright on original plays whose content pertained to our context. Our play performed with other schools as an evening event of external drama body. Again: realxi.

- Regional horticulture associations – school gardens awards, horticulture shows – strong school participation and inter-school rivalry perhaps itself a form of dynamic collaboration – but the inter-school aspects creating a real focus and dynamic impetus for major externally mediated curriculum activity of many kinds – from growing and displaying our horticultural products to making a website using Oracle Thinkquest as part of their international competition – real products and real purposes.

I shall set out a few principles which emerged from my perspective of personal involvement of inter-school collaboration, in overview:

- The inter-school partnerships were not separate from wider education changes, even when autonomous or quasi-autonomous. The nature of their linkage and the goals we set were related to change dynamics which the school and school system were in any case undergoing. We added to those.

- The partnerships interpreted change. - The partnerships became part of the wider system changes, some published by national

bodies. They effectively constituted action research reports. - Some of the partnerships arose because funding became available which we bid for.

While there were those which arose specifically because a sponsor made resources available, others were more integral. Thus often the linkage came first, which spawned a theme, which then got those involved seeking out funding and sponsors.

- Some forms of interaction had little ongoing cost beyond initiating linkages and establishing means of communication.

- Those who interacted did so because they got on with each other. A link arose, from however ephemeral an introduction, but the key dynamic agent was that those working together saw a point to do doing so, with a positive interchange of ideas and some commonality of purpose. Basically there had to be bonds of thought from which bonds of practice could emerge.

- Distance did not matter. Connections which were far apart geographically could be more proximate in terms of activities and relationships than nearby links which were not fostered by those enacting them or entered into with enthusiasm

- New technology was not all. Linkages gave rise to interchange using old media too – letters, meeting together, exchanging tangible learning artefacts and so on.

- The linkages created orders of meaning beyond individualised learning. Not only did learning become collaborative within a class or school, it became collaborative across the interchange. A higher order meaning and purpose emerged. Pupils/students and staff came

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to feel a bond of community. For instance for one component of our four-school four-country project we created tourist information posters of each others area, not our own, through remote questioning and data seeking, based on the collaborative interchange.

- The linkages created a sense of identity of those participating, separate to other identities - Purpose creates method. The purpose of the collaboration was not to use new media. New

media gave rise to new potentialities which could be enabled. Those spawned new purposes.

- Partnership and interaction required conceptual adaptation. This did not just pertain to curriculum, but also to assessment, and to development, not just of practice (plans) but of a school (enhancement, partnership, development, leadership).

- Partnership extends beyond inter-school linkage. Thus we formed active links with numerous bodies and organisations, some local, some not so local. Those bodies themselves had school links but those schools were not directly linked with this school. Thus the external non-educational body itself became the mediator brokering inter-school collaboration. This could be relatively local – an environmental body, a local firm, a community organisation – or more distant or international, for instance a charity with a specific theme, an international agency, a multinational company. What made this work was when there was a direct school connection, not just say this issue in this country, but these children in this country doing this or that and thus experiencing something specific through which pupils/students could make a direct connection.

- Some partnerships were enforced through a school clustering where a specific policy or initiative was enforced – a term often used being that of ‘rolled-out’. The groupings of schools and forms of collaboration were mandated. Quite simply I found these not to work. Educators have to want to achieve something which they have ownership of, and actively seek out partners to enable this. Without this key dynamic, linkages do not work. If forced, when resources were scarce, particularly time, resentment would arise. What did work was when the external agency set out a goal or principle and invited applications to explore that goal or principle but allowed practitioners to interpret it to their context.

Emergent insight In a rural primary school context the curriculum has to be dynamically created. I find that I basically do new things every year. This also arose from a small school dynamic where having the same children in a class for several years required lack of repetition of content. This formed a teacher learning style. Once school learning became a set of unique occurrences then the planning load had to be taken off staff to prevent burnout. We did not so much write and prepare courses as enable opportunities. This disposes to collaboration. That set me to thinking of new learning opportunities as constellations of purpose. Pupils/students had to come to own them. Thus we (staff here and pupils/students here) were always on the look out for new things to do which disposes to networking. These were matched to the framework of our national curriculum, which in its new form in its first few years was a set of principles, rather than mandated content, thus making this approach more suitable. Real purposes dispose to seeking patterns, which paves the way for collaboration. Collaboration thus turns into a philosophy and becomes a way of being. I found my management-leadership-teaching style moved in this direction. But that was not without problems, for it fits with certain forms of education philosophy and not others. It set itself against what Finnish educationalist Pasi Sahlberg calls a ‘product model' of curriculumxii and towards other models of curriculum, even the awareness that there are (can be) others. That then leads into the world of audit and direction, for which certain pedagogic assumptions tended to mitigate against an approach such as this, yet others were disposed to it. This set me on a conceptual journey, seeking out theoretical and operational frameworks which concorded with our philosophy and which also guided ours, but also to serve as protection, to be able to justify what we were doing against those who preferred other modes of operation. There is a need for these to be more explicit so that innovations such as inter-school collaboration can be set within

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these models. There are conceptual hooks attached to these different models and pathways of development and practice within education reforms. Most recently I have become acquainted with Knowledge Building. I presented a paper on pedagogy at the International Knowledge Building Forum in Quebec in summer 2014xiii based on this school’s pedagogic rationale as it linked to Knowledge Building, utilising practice to exemplify rationales and conceptualisations of philosophy in education. I presented aspects of practice which fitted the Knowledge Building philosophy but which had arisen specifically through inter-school collaboration. This becomes not so much about collaboration per se, but about a difference of approach to teaching and to school curriculum organisation. Basically I found that what started off as inter-school collaboration as a few one-offs which took us away from fixed plans for a while, came to replace the fixed plans. I then sought new systems which ensured breadth, balance and coverage but did not lock the practice into fixed cycles and fixed content. A core focus was the wider capacities of our incoming school reform. This is a complex blend, requiring ‘Professional Capital’xiv. Without such an ethos an approach such as this cannot proceed. We came to re-write school planning and administration guidance to this new approach. It fitted with one interpretation of our new national curriculum framework guidance. Some countervailing forces There are certain forms of audit-management which stifle and degrade this approach or can even kill it stone dead. Others promote and foster it. Both have been at play here, sometimes both at once. These forces are wielded by individuals and institutions, who are influential and indeed sometimes domineering. Thus power is a major factor in mediating education change and diversity of education practice. Interpersonal and positional power relations associated with conceptual schemas operating within education systems become a major mediating factor. Implicit conceptualisation is particularly important if new forms of interaction ratchet up against assumptions of mediating persons and bodies whose world-views of education differxv. The process of mediating inter-school dynamics is not just that of enabling and maintaining links at an operational level between those involved, but involves brokering with other players – those who sanction and permit initiatives – that which has been articulated in the ICSEI 3P discourse as the ‘authorising environment’. The linkages become forms of education practice. Indeed they may come to define a form of education practice. For this reason I came to feel a closer affinity with those schools with whom we had operational collaboration than with some nearby whose management and pedagogy style differed. This is not to make value judgements but just to accept differences of approach. Wider significanceWhat I am getting at is the wider significance of practice-based collaboration, which is often practitioner led, and thus pointing to a need to give greater focus to practitioner dynamism and innovation, within more overarching frameworks of policy and system change. I was keen on practice-based collaboration because it made life more interesting. I found distance not to be a factor, in fact which came to make life yet more interesting. The linkages formed dynamic entities through we articulated meaning. Inter-school collaboration can become a way of being. A school can become linked and networked but this transcends a school, which is a physical location. It became more to do with people, groups of people, within and across schools. Forms of collaboration link practitioners at all scales across distance. I found this then to move on to theory and practice models. For instance forms of communication spawned new forms of media literacy. In this way a school can become more linked to and relevant to the world beyond school. Inter-school collaboration is a means to that. Somehow that took me on to other forms of collaboration, of which ICSEI and then 3P has been for me a natural progression, if unorthodox in my job role. I did not pre-plan that. Yet this is what the ICSEI 3P network is all about. That is a consequence of a culture of collaboration. I want to see more dynamic, integral and cross-sectoral linkage in school education. We are greater than the sum of our parts.

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i The ICSEI forum for policymakers, politicians and practitioners http://www.icsei.net/index.php?id=549

ii MacKinnon, N., (2015). Schools as agents of system change – a practitioner perspective, 28th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement. Cincinnati, Ohio, USA http://www.icsei.net/conference2015/

iii MacKinnon, N., (2014). The Local–National–Global Nexus of Education Change – Action Research Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School, 27th International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia https://secure.icsei.net/membership/papers/141_34kwj_141.pdf

iv Scottish Executive (2004). A Curriculum for Excellence, Report of The Curriculum Review Group. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/11/20178/45862

v SOLACE (2008). Adding extra value – schools unite to create the Perfect Place using Think.com, Steelstown Primary School, Derry, Northern Ireland. Birchley St Mary’s Primary School, St. Helens, Lancashire, England. Plockton Primary School, Plockton, Highland, Scotland. St John Paul II Primary School, Twardogora, Poland, Focus – the electronic newsletter of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, http://www.solace.org.uk/library_documents/SOLACEFocus-April08.pdf (p. 40)

vi Oracle Education Foundation (2007). The Perfect Place – schools unite to create the perfect place, Oracle Foundation explanatory publicity leaflet of collaborative on-line project using Think.com virtual learning environment 2006-07 for the Thinklinks Project: The joint work and joint working of: Steelstown Primary School, Derry, Northern Ireland. Birchley St Mary’s Primary School, St. Helens, Lancashire, England. Plockton Primary School, Plockton, Highland, Scotland. St John Paul II Primary School, Twardogora, Poland. http://issuu.com/rissui/docs/oracle_report_thinklinks_2007/0

vii MacKinnon, Niall (2004). Microworlds, in: Connected, Learning and Teaching Scotland http://wayback.archive-it.org/1961/20121215223030/http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/Connected11Autumn04_tcm4-121481.pdf BECTA (2005). Transforming Inclusion – Highlights from the 2004 ICT in Practice Awards http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/15143.pdf (Plockton Primary School p6)

viii MacKinnon, N., (2007). Formative Fun at the Heart of Learning: approaches to integrating A Curriculum for Excellence and Assessment is for Learning at school level, Assessment is for Learning Project report July 2007 to Learning and Teaching Scotland as funding body. Plockton and Elgol Primary Schools http://www.youblisher.com/p/768007-Plockton-Elgol-Primary-School-AifL-project-report-July-2007/

ix Virtual Learning Kent (2009). Weather Watch November 2009, Plockton Primary School, Ross-shire, Scotland / Kherad School, Tehran, Iran / Delat School, Penang Malaysia, November http://www.youblisher.com/p/792864-Plockton-International-Weather-Watch-2009/; http://microsites2.segfl.org.uk/archive.php?id=95

x National Trust for Scotland, (2008). Pupils on Paths, Plockton Primary School component of interschool project creating a local path brochure for national conservation body http://www.highland.gov.uk/meetings/meeting/932/skye_and_lochalsh_local_access_forum/attachment/13809 (point 7) http://www.plockton.com/primary_archive/reports/webreports_07-08_winter_spring.shtml (April)

xi e.g. Plockton Primary School (2010). Books and Crooks, play production brochure as part of Lochalsh Scottish Community Drama Association festival http://issuu.com/rissui/docs/books_and_crooks_plockton_primary_2/0 Plockton Primary School (2012). Birthday Surprise, play production brochure as part of Lochalsh Scottish Community Drama Association festival http://issuu.com/rissui/docs/birthday_surprise_plockton_primary_

xii Sahlberg, P., (2005). ‘Curriculum Change As Learning – in Search Of Better Implementation’ in: Curriculum Reform and Implementation in the 21st Century – Policies, Perspectives and Implementation. International Conference on Curriculum Reform and Implementation in the 21st Century: Policies, Perspectives and Implementation, June 8-10, 2005 Istanbul, Turkey http://issuu.com/rissui/docs/turkey_icc_2005_proceedings/0 (pp18-30)

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xiii MacKinnon, N., (2014). Innovative Practice in Modern Languages – a Flavour of Knowledge Building, Knowledge Building Summer Institute, Université Laval, Ville de Québec, Canada http://ikit.org/summerinstitute2014/papers (pp 48-56)

xiv Fullan, M., and Hargreaves, A., (2012). Professional Capital – transforming teaching in every school. Routledge: London & New York

xv For a brief account of these forces and factors as they play out through organisational and interpersonal dynamics in school education reform see separate articles in ICSEI Express, May 2012, by Kathryn Sallis and Niall MacKinnon commentating on various presentations at the 2012 ICSEI Malmö Congress: Sallis, K., (2012). A Reflection on the Malmö Congress, ICSEI Express and Digest, The International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, May http://www.icsei.net/index.php?id=1592 ; MacKinnon, N., (2012). A Scottish Headteacher’s View of the Effectiveness Challenge, ICSEI Express and Digest, The International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, May http://www.icsei.net/index.php?id=1592

Inter-school collaboration – a Inter-school collaboration – a practitioner perspectivepractitioner perspective

Niall MacKinnonHeadteacher, Plockton Primary SchoolHighland, Scotland

3P seminar, 4 January 2015

International Conference of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Conference theme: Think Globally, Act Locally and Educate All Children to Their Full Potential

Plockton Primary School and settingPlockton Primary School and setting

My role as a practitioner – a class-committed rural primary school head teacher.

Plockton Primary School – extensively involved in altering approaches and methods

Incorporation of new technologies and other innovations such as assessment.

Not merely technical changes – new modes of presenting, thinking and communicating.

A new directionA new direction The 2004 ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’

report founded a new curriculum direction for Scottish education

An immense realignment of pedagogic approach

Opening up capacitiesOpening up capacities conceptualisation of

‘four capacities’ of children’s learning and personal growth

effective contributors

responsible citizens

confident individuals

successful learners

Inter-school collaborationInter-school collaboration Set in a whirlwind of wider change Started off as fun Became something more We came to create practice through

collaboration No longer an extra or 'one-offs'

Going beyond: Going beyond: School led Teacher led Pupil led Ongoing Long duration Short duration Partnerships with other organisations External body led – opting in Mandated – enforced togethering

Collaboration as formative Collaboration as formative Constitutes new forms of behaviour Different expectations Open up a new space Distance does not matter New media new literacies

Large scale or long duration Large scale or long duration 4-school 4-country 4-year VLE & VC Projects within projects 3-school digital micro-imaging 2-school new formative planning Highland drama festival – annual Horticulture – shows & festivals Musical productions Competitions

Short scale yet intense Short scale yet intense 4-school multinational weatherwatch 2-school art & Christmas cards Animated films in 2create Animated bilingual stories Internet safety Face Britain – national art display Salmon in the classroom Pupils on Paths Investigative archaeology

Emergent Principles Emergent Principles Partnerships interpreted change Became part of wider system changes Some needed funding, some did not Links arose from those who wished it Needed conceptual adaptation Needs a permissive space – 3P link Creates new forms of planning One thing leads to another Builds knowledge

Emergent Insight Emergent Insight Curriculum to be dynamically created Dependent on notions of curriculum Real purposes dispose to collaboration Turns into a mode of practice Becomes a way of being Moves beyond collaboration Becomes its own approach to teaching Turns into a mode of curriculum

Role of wider system Role of wider system Permissive or constraining Mandated or opportunistic Constructivism Deliverology Data driven or knowledge based Meaning or metrics Professional Capital

The Bogside Murals!

The Bogside murals started off in anger and frustration. But to me they are a thing the remember about someone or something from the past. However the last mural is of a large dove of peace. It is painted along with the other murals!

So much happened that never started from a plan

Yet it fitted in a framework

It did have structure

It had purpose

It was coherent

It fitted the 'curriculum':

Contribution, responsibility, confidence & learning

It felt real because we made it so

It formed through external linkage