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TRANSCRIPT
Rural Learning
Realising our Potential
Becoming our Best
Maggie Farrar
29th May
Welcome
‘There is no power for change greater than a community
discovering what it cares about’
Margaret Wheatley
Today – a spirit of enquiry and curiosity
What gets in the way of real enquiry ?
• Wanting to be ‘right’
• The ‘hurrying mind’
• Caught in our views of what should happen – busy creating the
perfect answer
• Commenting rather than questioning
• Compelled to find ‘ fix it’ solutions
• ‘Too busy to learn’
• Not always trusting our ‘ instincts’
Themes for exploration
What do highly ambitious collaborative partnerships look like ? What do we know ? What does it take ? What helps them thrive? What can get in the way? How do we grow self improving school and community systems ? How do we lead such systems as dynamic learning systems ? How does learning for all become part of our daily routine ?
HOW
•Debate and discussion
•Questioning – professional conversation and dialogue
•Protocols and practice
•Review and reflection
‘ Wisdom banks’ Expert by experience
Find someone who …..
Partnership – underpinning beliefs
• Education is not synonymous with schooling
• Education is a life time process and is provided by the entire community
• There are many groups and individuals with the potential to get involved and every community has an abundance of untapped educational resources
• Education is a communities most valuable resource regardless of other economic and social factors
• Involvement of the community is a community right that results in better decisions and outcomes
• Services should be delivered as close a possible to where people live
• Schooling is a necessary but insufficient component of education From: Creating powerful learning relationships : Otero, Csoti and Rothstadt
If we believe x to be true – what now …….
Three conclusions from research
• Relationships matter
• In its richest and most developed sense learning is a
deeply mutual undertaking
• What is enacted in schools and their surrounding
communities on a daily basis matters and shapes the
personal and social development of young people
Colleen McLaughlin
The Connected School ; National Children’s Bureau & Pearson
2015
Three conclusions from research
Is our community designed for:
Relationship ?
Learning ?
Impact?
Impact Relationship
Learning
Relationships
‘Any reform initiative that improves relationships has a
chance of success. Any that doesn’t is doomed to
failure’ Michael Fullan
Start with ‘why’ – build motivation, ambition, hopes and
dreams
The ‘Golden Circle’
Marketing Method used by Apple
The Why …..
Your statement
We believe ……
To improve - increase connectivity
‘ Isolation is the enemy of improvement’
Michael Fullan
Social capital and trust
‘Social capital appears to have a large impact on educational attainment. On the face of it, and from what we know, the impact of social capital dwarfs that of the factors the Governments and education professionals
normally argue about such as financial resources, class sizes and teachers salaries’
Halpern: Social Capital ( Cambridge Ed Press )
The basis of social capital - Trust
Levels of trust are directly related to an organisations capacity to continue to improve
Participation – who gets involved and who doesn’t Giving and receiving of feedback as part of our everyday work Mutual respect – are we genuinely interested in others - how much time do we give to the ideas and work of others – how far do we acknowledge them publicly Honesty - do we keep our word? Genuine questioning and dialogue – spirit of enquiry
Bryk & Schneider – Trust in Schools
Activity – Trust is the word
A turn taking protocol
I have modelled this when……
The single most important aspect that would make a difference to me and my work now would be ……
Why protocols
1.Tune in
2.Tune up
3.Equity of voice
4.Deliberative process – understood by all
• Scaffolding to help new behaviours – new behaviours require new approaches
• Learning focused – intentional listening
• Value the time spent together – deliberative process to improve our use of the time we spend together
Relationship
Learning
Impact
An effective learning system needs a
good balance between
Autonomy Accountabilit
y
Capacity
Building
CfBT – Learning Centred Leadership – Steve Munby
System autonomy and high accountability without capacity building can lead to four
problems:
• Isolationism. Schools can become closed and insular– either due to over-confidence or due to insecurity or just because they are too busy.
• Competition. A tendency for schools to compete so they are
less likely to share and collaborate and to learn from each other • Stuck schools. Those schools without capacity don’t get
better • Variability. Those with capacity and advantage tend to get
better thus creating a bigger gap between good and not so good schools
CfBT – Learning Centred Leadership – Steve Munby
The heart of learning - adopt a growth mind
set
‘If
parents want to give their children a gift – the best thing they can do is to teach them to love challenge, be intrigued by mistakes,
enjoy effort, and keep on learning’
Carol Dweck Mindset – the new psychology of success
2007
Address mindset challenges
1.Give up working in isolation
2.Move from a find and fix to a predict and prevent approach
3.Understand schools not as institutions but as learning communities – open and adaptable
4.See the purpose of schools to help a community and family raise a child
5.Understand school as a necessary but not sufficient component of education
Learning centred communities
What works for children ….
1.Metacognition
2.Feedback
3.Peer to peer support and review
( John Hattie Visible Learning )
….. also works ( even better ?) for adults ……
Giving and receiving feedback
• What do you see me doing when I am at my
best?
• What do you see me doing when I am limiting
myself and others?
• What else do you want to tell me that might be
useful?
Building capacity
Peer review and scrutiny of practice
• Clusters agree the metrics
• Clusters agree areas of focus
• Builds the technical skills of improvement across
a school and community
• Builds the culture change required for
sustainable improvement
Peer review
• Great professional development
• Professional dialogue and enquiry - not judgment
• Range of perspective & insight
• Highlights great practice ( peer reviewed)
• Built on the principals of coaching – asking great questions and the giving and receiving of feedback
• Builds a culture – ongoing improvement
‘ Peer challenge is possible if sufficient social capital (
mutual trust, transparency and reciprocity) and collective
moral purpose has developed between the partners’
David Hargreaves 2012
To strengthen my learning and the learning of others ….
I will focus on ………..
Because I believe the impact it will have is …….
A ‘ listen and repeat’ protocol
Relationship
Learning
Impact
From effective to ambitious collaboration
Ambitious collaboration
=
High ambition + deep partnership
Tight
Controlled
Delivery
Programmatic
Long term
Inclusive
Shared accountability
for outcomes
Strong
governance
Short term
Tinkering
Project focused
Sporadic ££
Inauthentic
Self serving
Deluded
Closed
Identity
Learning focused
Collaborative culture
Relational
Trust
High
Low
AMBITION
Shallow Deep PARTNERSHIP
What does it take ?
High ambition / deep partnership
Vision
How will we be ? VALUES / BEHAVIOURS / PROCESSES
What we will do ? PROGRAMMES / PRIORITIES
What will we not do /not tolerate
A ruthless commitment to priorities
What will we not do ?
An articulated belief, promise and commitment – simple compelling and
ambitious, shared and owned
A focus on joint accountability for outcomes
Assessing your collaborative strength
1.Where would you place your partnership - in which quadrant ?
2.Where are your strengths and how have you developed them ?
3.Where are your areas for development and what help do you need ?
Work in pairs – ideally with someone you don’t yet know
Take it in turns
Look for points of connection
Sure glad the hole
isn’t at our end
• Agreed performance metrics which all clusters
report to each other
• Shared review framework with peer scrutiny
(including external element)
• Agreed triggers for schools & communities being
required to accept support
• Mechanisms for learning together – joint practice
development; and assessing impact
• Evaluation of partnership impact
Mutual accountability – it makes a difference
What could it look like ?
The building blocks of a self improving system
•Collective responsibility – shared success
•A culture shift from ‘ my school & community ‘ to ‘ our schools
& communities ‘ and a governance model that supports this
•Great use of data – the best bits & mechanism for moving the
best bits to where they are most needed
•Engagement in research and ‘joint practice development’
•Joint accountability – peer scrutiny and review ; transparency
•Professional generosity, reciprocity and collective moral
purpose
•Capacity building for a new generation of integrated and
system leaders
Accountability
3 simple questions
1. What have we done
2. How well have we done it
3. Is anyone any better off ?
Assessing our impact
• Appreciate time delays • Avoid over promising and under delivering • Avoid jumping to early conclusions – the ‘trap’ of
managerial control systems • Learn to recognise and record progress as it occurs –
help people feel they are really making progress ; use data and stories
• Assessment in the service of learning - research, enquiry and curiosity
• Nurture the ‘ informal’ carriers of perception and information
• Train students in deep dive reviews • Welcome and invite external scrutiny • Know your ‘ red alerts’ and your ‘ green shoots’
Accountability: multi-facted
Accountability to improve not accountability to prove
1.Personal ( to self – a commitment to learning and growth)
2.Moral accountability (to students/parents/the community).
3.Professional accountability (to colleagues).
4.Contractual accountability (to employers/government).
5.System accountability (to the wider system).
Community based accountability in India
‘The core of the project focuses on work with local women to
assess the quality of basic education provision in government
schools through the use of school scorecards. We empower the
most marginalised community members to hold their local schools
to account through regular face-to-face ‘inspection’ visits to collect
the scorecard data. The results are subsequently published at the
local School Management Committee and at the local self-help
groups.’
500 schools over seven local mandal areas in Anantapur through
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
CfBT; Community based accountability in India 2013
Relationship
Learning
Impact
Leadership
‘ Becoming a community of leaders requires leading
and learning. Becoming a community of leaders
requires learning together. And learning together
requires that the responsibilities of leadership be
shared’
Building community in schools
Thomas Sergiovanni 1993
Energy and empowerment
Student engagement and leadership
• Student as data source / expert by experience – widening
the ‘lens’
• Student involvement in decisions ; staff appointments
• Students as co enquirers; ‘ improvement partners’
• Students as knowledge creators – for other students
• Students as mentors – new teachers / community groups
• Students as action researchers
• Invest in leadership development: local talent – leadership as a
function / an act – not a role
• Build wisdom banks – know who, know what, know how, know
why
• Invest in long term relationships – trust
• Maximise resource, time and effort – how we come together ,
what we focus on, how we move our best resource around for
maximum impact
• Community data – confront the facts / build data on what works
/ curiosity / questioning
Community leadership in action – National College for School Leadership
Building our leadership
Developing our charter
What are your core beliefs about leadership in your
context ?
What would be in your charter ?
It’s up to us
‘Our leadership must t be active, passionate, ethical and driven by our collective dedication and effort. We need to break the “mind-forged manacles” that chain us to accept certain beliefs or ways of
doing things.’
ASCL England : A blue print for a self improving system 2014
Organisations and communities of
courage
•TRY courage; start something new ‘ step up to the plate’
•TRUST courage; offer trust and step back as a leader, ask for
help,
•TELL courage; authentic ‘ voice’, practice giving and receiving
feedback, practice open communication – who do we over listen
to and who do we under listen to ?
•TIME courage: space for reflection and contemplation – built into
the fabric of your day
It starts now, with us ……
Start close in, don't take the second stepor the third, start with the firstthingclose in,the stepyou don't want to take. Start withthe groundyou know,the pale groundbeneath your feet,your ownway of startingthe conversation. Excerpt from: David Whyte
Start right nowtake a small stepyou can call your
ownstart close in,don't mistakeanother’s actions
for your own.
Start close in,don't takethe second stepor the third,start with the
firstthingclose in,the stepyou don’t want to take