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IntroductionOne of my favourite leadership articles is Teaching Smart People How to Learn by Chris Argyris. Whilst this article is over 20 years old, what Argyris wrote still res-onates powerfully with me today: “Those members of the organization that many assume to be the best at learning are, in fact, not very good at it” (Argyris, 1991 p.6).

My real, lived experiences as a leader

mirror Argyris’s findings. Collectively our teachers, entrusted in assisting children’s learning, were not very good at engaging deeply in learning themselves. Subse-quently our methods of professional de-velopment were having a limited effect on teacher practice. Bluntly, we were failing the very people that we were meant to be developing – our teachers.

The processes that I will outline in this article arose out of the ashes of our

experiences in a school that was failing to effectively teach smart people how to learn. As leaders we had to re-think the concept of professional development from both a philosophical and cognitive viewpoint. This has entailed abandon-ing many of the traditional professional development methods that we once uti-lised. In their place we have slowly, and over time, developed and implemented a knowledge development, capture and

A new face on the old: teaching smart people how to learnMr Mike Gillatt, Principal, Hutt Intermediate School, New Zealand

Re-printed with permission from the Australian Educational Leader: Journal of the Australian Coucil for Educational Leaders, Volume 36, Issue 2, July 2014

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re-use approach to professional learning. This approach is not a quick fix, and cur-rently comprises six key mental models. This unfinished journey, informed by on-going reflection and action, is producing sustainable changes in teacher practice. These changes, supported by norm-ref-erenced test results and anecdotal data, have led to:• Improved student learning outcomes

in Reading, Writing and Mathematics across the school in general;

• Specifically improved student learn-ing outcomes in Reading, Writing and Mathematics for priority learners;

• Effective engagement in the use of In-formation Technology as a support for teaching and learning by teachers and students; and

• A move from a teacher dominated ap-proach to learning to a socially con-structed approach to learning.

Part A: The role of a leader in teaching smart people how to learnMy leadership philosophy is based on the Learning Organisation theories and concepts promoted by Peter Senge. Fun-damentally, leading a Learning Organisa-tion requires a significant re-conceptuali-sation of the role of the leader and of the structures that support the organisation. This is particularly so when it comes to the professional development of teachers. Within the learning organisation frame-work, learning is promoted as being, “the continuous testing of experience, and the transformation of that experience into knowledge – accessible to the whole orga-nization, and relevant to its core purpose” (Senge, 1994 p. 49). It is important to ex-amine the role of the leader within this context, as it has significant relevance to the ongoing professional development of teachers.

Much of the literature and dialogue that occurs around educational leadership promotes the principal as the ‘pedagogical leader’ of the school. But if we examine the title ‘pedagogical leader’ more closely, it does not apply to the role of principal. Central to my argument is that pedagogy is the art and craft of teaching children. It is made up of a complex set of skills such as lesson design and implementation, as-sessment, and evaluation, questioning and motivating. It also involves the art of being reflective – thoughtful and inven-tive - about teaching (McInerney & McIn-erney, 1998 p.16).

I am not the pedagogical leader of our school. Due to the nature of my role, I am no longer directly involved in the teach-ing and learning of students. As a result of being out of the classroom, time has significantly de-skilled me as a classroom teacher. The pedagogical leaders are our teachers; the people, who on a daily ba-sis, are entrusted with the learning of our students.

My role is to facilitate the learning of the adults in my school in alignment with our vision and strategic direction. This process of adult teaching and learning is known as andragogy. So rather than be-ing a pedagogical leader, as much of the literature would have me be, I am in fact an andragogical leader. This is a signifi-cant shift away from the pedagogical lead-ership paradigm that is more commonly espoused. Put simply, my role is to teach smart adults how to learn.

Part B: Early attempts at trying to get smart people to learnA crucial part of my leadership journey has centred on a number of mental mod-els. Mental models are the powerful driv-ers of our thinking, behaviours and ac-tions. My initial attempts at trying to get smart people to learn were based around the mental model that learning was a mat-ter of motivation, attitude and commit-ment (Argyris, 1991).

At the start of my time as a principal I allowed my teachers access (within a substantial, but not unlimited, budget) to attend any external professional develop-ment course they wanted. In-house pro-fessional development consisted of bring-ing in carefully chosen researchers and consultants to impart their knowledge to the teachers. My expectation was that our well-motivated, positive and committed teachers would then take the pearls of wisdom from these courses and imple-ment them into our teaching and learning programmes. In most cases some changes were made but these changes soon wore off. The day-to-day reality and demands of class life caused our teachers to mostly slip back to past practices. Our early expe-riences embedded the first two key mental models in our current approach:1 Professional learning must be based on

reflection on our own practice; and2 Our professional learning must be un-

dertaken with our fellow teachers as we are the only ones who deeply under-stand our own context.Our next attempts involved a shared vi-

sioning journey. This process involved the teachers, students and school community in designing a powerful vision of how we wanted our school to be. From this shared vision came our strategic direction into the future. In conjunction with this process we made a deliberate move away from an ad hoc approach to professional development, to an aligned approach. All of our profes-sional development was focussed firmly on achieving our strategic direction and vision.

To enhance the alignment between vision, strategic direction and teacher ac-tion I began to focus strongly on my own role. I began to engage in what I believe is the real work of a principal, andragogical leadership. This ‘real work’ of a principal is focussed on tapping into and harness-ing the rich contextual knowledge held by staff, and then by consensus, agreeing what our collective actions will be. My role

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shifted considerably from sourcing professional development to facilitating it. Our shared visioning experiences embedded our third key mental model:3 We must generate a shared vision around which we align our

professional learning.This approach had much greater impact but what we experi-

enced over several years directly mirrored the findings of Argyris (1991, p.6):• As long as efforts at learning and change focussed on external

organizational factors…the professionals were enthusiastic par-ticipants; and

• [When] the quest for continuous improvement turned to the professionals’ own performance, something went wrong.Through our collaborative and consensus-building ap-

proaches our teachers became very skilled at designing and re-designing the systemic structures that helped the school run smoothly. Not only were they very skilled at this design work, by and large they adhered to the structures that they designed. On the other hand when it came to implementing shared ap-proaches to their own teaching and learning – something in-deed went wrong! Our teachers as a group, in both the short term and over time, failed to adhere to and implement the very practices that they identified as aligning with our vision and strategic direction. They would not engage deeply in their own learning.

In the quest for continuous improvement in teacher practice what was it that impacted on our ability to engage our staff deep-ly in their learning? Our experiences reflected the adult learning research of Knowles (1986).The following three key points from Knowles’ research impacted on us:• Adults, as a result of their hard earned learning are less open

to new ideas presented to them. Many of our teachers viewed their years of experience as equating to expertise.

• [Adults] have been conditioned by their own educational ex-periences to see learning as a process of acquiring the subject matter necessary to pass tests. This does not necessarily involve turning that subject matter into action. Our teachers viewed learning as acquiring information, information that was not necessarily translated into practice.

• When adults enter a program labelled education or training they hark back to their conditioning in school and tertiary train-ing. [They] put on their hats of dependency, fold their arms, sit back and say teach me. Our teachers preferred a cognitively soft approach – let the information wash over me and be ab-sorbed (the osmosis effect).To help address these issues we use the action learning princi-

ples of Revans (1988). Action learning is an iterative process that entails working in ongoing cycles of action, data gathering, reflec-tion and design. This is our fourth crucial mental model:4 We must action learn together about the issues in our own

adult learning.Over time we learned that each of these four mental models

in isolation does not significantly influence teacher professional learning. Their real power lies in an organisation’s (and a lead-er’s) ability to harness them all together. Yet to harness them all together requires a powerful binding force, a “theory building process to challenge mental models and provide staff with the reflection and feedback necessary for professional growth” (Ar-gyris, 1991, p.6). This “theory building process” was a missing link in our quest to teach smart people how to learn.

Part C: Our learning infrastructure – a powerful binding forceI first read about learning infrastructures in Daniel H. Kim’s book, Organizing for Learning. Learning infrastructures are, “a process through which the assumptions of an organization are continually surfaced, challenged, and (if necessary) changed” (Kim 2001, p.43). Kim’s concepts were the missing link which helped transform our professional development from an ideas collection process – to a theory building process. This became our fifth mental model:5 We must shift our professional learning from information ac-

quisition to theory building.At the cornerstone of Senge’s, and most other organisational

theorists’ work, is the concept of shared vision, “[the] shared im-ages of the future we want to create, and the principles and guid-ing practices by which we hope to get there” (Senge, 1994 p.6). In order to maximise motivation, attitude and commitment across the organisation, alignment around a powerful shared vision and a shared strategic direction helps mobilise people towards action. While our shared vision is the glue that binds us together, as a learning organisation our shared strategic direction is the compass that keeps us heading on the right course. Whilst on this course we all learn together in alignment with what we aspire to create.

However, as alluded to earlier, what we aspire to create does not involve outside experts coming in to tell us what to do. Why? Because individually and collectively, our teachers have a broad base of hard won, experiential Personal Practical Knowledge or PPK (Edwards, 2001). Due to the vast PPK held by our staff we know the professional knowledge we need is always in the room. As an andragogical leader my key role in this process is to fa-cilitate the drawing out of that knowledge via collaboration and consensus building into a usable plan of action.

In our learning infrastructure the reflection and design phases are the most crucial. Our reflective and design sessions utilise a rich dialogic methodology to surface, challenge, and (if neces-sary) change assumptions. This methodology balances inquiry and advocacy, is socially constructive, highly reflective and taps into the collective PPK of the group.

All of this reflective and design work is carried out in specially timetabled afterschool sessions. Why? Schools are inherently busy organisations; there is always something to do. Without time our teachers cannot or do not find the space to undertake the deep thinking and reflection that is essential to drive their learning. As andragogical leaders we had to take cognisance of this inherent busy-ness by creating a parallel process that takes us out of day-to-day pressure into a different kind of space in which we can prac-tise and learn. We create the time to work “on the system”, so that teachers can develop their pedagogy to work effectively “in the system”- their classrooms. This is our next and final mental model:6 We must create safe and effective professional learning envi-

ronments where staff can explore and test their own learning together.

Part D: Emergent characteristics of this form of professional learningThere have been many changes in teacher attitude to their own learning and to our staff culture as a result of our approach. In se-lecting which changes to share I consulted with my staff, as they know the context for their own learning and our culture best. These are the changes that they identified as being most import-ant. These changes cohere around five emergent characteristics:

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1 Personal power• I have a voice as to how I’m going to do our work• I feel like I am part of the place• Our practice and our learning is now de-privatised which has

led to greater ownership of what we do• We can now acknowledge the individual and collective exper-

tise in the room because we know it exists• The processes we use help surface the real expertise that lies

within us all.

2 Alignment• The systems and structure around our professional learning

provide clarity and purpose to our work• It helps us meet the needs of our students within our own class

context rather than a broad brush approach which profession-al development has traditionally been

• It helps align us all with our shared vision and strategic direc-tion – we don’t go off on tangents

• Our learning no longer stops and moves on to the next new thing. We have the time to get better at what we have identi-fied as a staff are our development priorities.

3 Improved quality of communication• We now have higher quality conversations with each other –

stuff you wouldn’t normally talk about• We are starting to develop a shared language about student

learning and what we are trying to achieve as a group of people

• Helps you consider others’ points of view• People are much more comfortable in sharing with each other

– we are non-judgemental• We socially construct with each other rather than trying to

figure it out by ourselves.

4 Personal and shared accountability• There is much more accountability to yourself and others –

you can’t renege on what you said you were going to do• People not achieving or struggling with aspects of their prac-

tice now get the support of their peers.

5 Culture creation• It has changed the culture of the school in both a tangible and

non-tangible way• Teaching is less isolated• We are enabled to try new stuff without fear of failure or not

doing it right.

ConclusionOur teachers are smart people who have neglected a focus on their own, deep learning in favour of the learning of their stu-dents. My role as principal is to focus on my class, the most chal-lenging in the school, the 33 teachers with whom I work. The six key mental models highlighted within this article are what we now use to impact on teacher learning. By actively engaging our teachers in these processes they are, “…laying the framework for continuous improvement that is truly continuous. They are learning how to learn” (Argyris, 1991 p.14).

ReferencesArgyris, C 1991, ‘Teaching smart people how to learn’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 4–15Edwards, J 2001, ‘Learning and thinking in the workplace’, in A Costa (ed) Developing Minds, ASCD, Alexandria, Virginia.Kim, DH, Organizing for Learning, Strategies for knowledge creation and enduring change, Pegasus Communications, Waltham MA.Knowles, MS 1986, Using learning contracts (1st ed.), Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.McInerney, D, McInerney, V 1998, Educational psychology: Constructing learning, Prentice Hall, Sydney.Senge, PM, Kleiner, A, Roberts, C, Ross, R, Smith, B 1994, The fifth dis-cipline fieldbook: strategies and tools for building a learning organization, Currency Doubleday, New York.

About the author

Mike Gillatt is an educator with over 20 years’ teaching and leadership experience. He is currently the Principal of Hutt Intermediate School, located in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. He is passionate about leadership from an organisational learning and systems thinking perspective. Aside from co-leading his school, Mike provides one to one coaching and leadership development for aspiring and established leaders.

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