taking teaching to the tipping point · 4 microsoft partners in learning schools program 2011...

Microsoft Partners in Learning Schools Program 2011 Program Evaluation Report 2 1 Microsoft Partners in Learning Schools Program 2011 Program Evaluation Report

© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Kodu, OneNote, PowerPoint and Windows Live are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft in the United States and/or other countries. 15669-0612/MS

Taking Teaching to the Tipping PointMicrosoft Partners in Learning Schools Program 2011 Program Evaluation Report

Prepared by Louise Bywaters Principal Consultant The Leadership Practice 2012


Table of ContentsExecutive Summary 3

Introduction 4

How the Partners in Learning schools program worked 5

Building an evidence base to strengthen reform 6

Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program impact 7

Change is about taking the big step into a new way of working 8

Building shared understanding and working towards buy-in 9

Feedback, personalisation and authentic learning 10

Leadership diversity and creativity 11

Authentic learning building engagement and productivity 12

Changing the culture of schools 12

Embedding learning capabilities in the formal curriculum 13

Good schools and colleges in action 14

Introducing leading educators to what is possible 15

Building a sense of urgency 16

Taking a school to the tipping point 17

Drivers towards radical reform 18

Microsoft Partners in Learning 2011 schools 20

References 22

The Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program is a yearly, in-depth Microsoft initiative that brings together a selection of public sector schools, recognised as leaders in using information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate learning.

The schools are invited to work together to advance the professional knowledge and practice of educators in providing state-of-the-art, technology-rich pedagogy. This pedagogy must ensure deeper levels of relevance, engagement and empowerment for students, as well as quality and productive teaching.

Participants in the Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program are challenged to share their school-based innovation and reform projects with each other, and present a report of that work to the group at the conclusion of the program. This is done to encourage educators to work on building a body of compelling evidence that supports the validity and efficacy of 21st century pedagogy.

The program comprises three facilitated workshops, selected school visits, virtual universities and keynote presenters who are international experts in their field. Participants are linked together via Microsoft® Office® OneNote® in the cloud, which they also use as a learning repository, resource bank and reflective journal to document their project and professional learning throughout the year.

An embedded researcher attended all aspects of the program, reviewed every project report and artefact, and evaluated the entire 2011 program.

Each school tells a unique story of challenge, struggle, complexity and leadership as they go about reforming the learning in their institution to suit the expectations, skills and dispositions of young Australians – young people who are impatient for their teachers to stretch them into the future using the best of technology and teaching.

“Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them and they flew.”

Apollinaire

Executive Summary


The Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program brings 20 of Australia’s best government K-12 institutions together into a virtual and real-time innovation hub with opportunities for sharing best practice and formal professional learning. The program, in its current format, has been in place since 2010 – and has been working in collaboration with the Australian public sector state and territory government jurisdictions since its inception.

Participating schools and colleges are selected because they are already showing leadership in the application of learning technologies and are undergoing whole school change and reform. The goal of the program is to take these school leadership teams and work with them over the year to build their capacity as educational leaders.

In 2011, the Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program encouraged 20 leadership teams to engage in deep discussions around the creative integration of technology into the learning space, in order to personalise and contemporise pedagogy for an evolving educational and social milieu.

It also challenged them to address change management; that is, facilitating the move to productive and effective teaching through the artful application of ICT tools and resources. This meant the outcome of each school’s work was twofold: It aimed both to strengthen the quality of learning for students and strengthen the teaching efficacy of the educators who deliver it.

The participants were then asked to document and demonstrate the efficacy of their pioneering work and that of their staff. They were asked to verify better ways of teaching and, in doing so, deliver more successful, more engaging learning.

These leadership teams are an important force of change. They are instrumental in transforming small pockets of influential and courageous early adopters into a whole school movement towards proven changed practice, while developing stronger student capacity and engagement. The program goal was to reach a point where the old orthodoxy was no longer the norm – where new ways of working and learning are the accepted, expected and required approach to teaching.

Malcolm Gladwell (2000) calls that new orthodoxy ‘the tipping point’, and those who have not adopted or embraced the new way of living or working become identified as laggards, resisters or not in keeping with contemporary standards. For the majority of practitioners, the new behaviour, idea, product or process has ‘stuck’.

In this case, Microsoft invited teams of influential leaders who could encourage that tipping point. They were people who could have maximum impact over the whole school community; people who understood the systems, the culture and the people that formed the school. These leaders were the key to leading a school over the edge of the known and traditional craft of teaching, into a new world supported by deepened understanding of learning, assessment, cognition and technology.

The 2011 Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program had a number of elements. The core program was delivered over three two-day workshops in Melbourne, Gold Coast and Sydney respectively. The theme of the 2011 workshops was student engagement and self-direction. The teams looked at ways to help students exercise their voices, discover personal entry points into learning, co-construct learning pathways, and use technology to present and showcase that learning in new ways.

Participants were encouraged to network formally and informally in and between the sessions. Guest presenters from previous programs, international speakers, Microsoft staff and other presenters all worked together to help them become inspirational leaders driving 21st century reform and innovation.

There were also opportunities to visit schools that had undertaken significant work on pedagogy and integrating technology into their teaching and assessment processes.

Most importantly, the program gave the school leadership teams some focus. With quality time to think about their work, the teams could take in the wider educational context and start to see what was important and what was possible in 21st century pedagogy.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

Bill Gates

IntroductionHow the Partners in Learning schools program worked


In 2011, each Microsoft Partners in Learning school was asked to focus on achieving real change in their school. Where possible and appropriate, they used student learning outcomes to determine whether new pedagogies or reform strategies were actually making a difference.

Many school innovations/reforms are carried along by enthusiastic, connected and highly influential individuals, but it was vital that the schools developed an evidence-based change process. This evidence had to show how the new learning and teaching methods were effective – rather than relying solely on the ‘spin’ that change agents can generate, no matter how motivational.

Education has been criticised for ‘bandwagoning’ – switching from one popular great idea to the next – rather than applying a rigorous and evidence-based approach to change born from research, collaborative dialogue and quality enquiry. The Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program is designed to address this.

At the conclusion of the program, schools were asked to present a project summary with program peers, cognisant of the fact that their ideas will be continued in subsequent years back in schools.

Producing evidence of impact is still a confronting challenge for many educators and teaching communities. Whilst teachers do draw on a wide repertoire of professional or craft knowledge (see Thomas, G. in ‘Evidence-Based Practice in Education’ 2004), it is less common to see formal research approaches to confirm the efficacy of new approaches in their own teaching.

Creating an expectation of best practice based on systematic research and subsequent corroboration of hunches and ideas using both qualitative and quantitative data is still new to teacher methodology which, until recent years, has remained in control of the practitioner. Most teachers have worked with their own craft knowledge and personally preferred teaching methods, rather than using a collectively agreed approach based on robust evidence.

This strategy was adopted with the goal of assisting leadership teams to move innovation from the small group of early adopters to a wider acceptance, based on a body of substantial and incontestable evidence. This evidence was to provide a persuasive and compelling foundation for change for teachers yet to embrace technological innovation in their practice.

“Early adopters are often opinion leaders and serve as role models for many other members of the social system. Early adopters are instrumental in getting an innovation to the point of critical mass, and hence, in the successful diffusion of an innovation.”

(Rogers, E.M. 2011)

Building an evidence base to strengthen reform

Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program impact

Each participating school was asked to reflect on how the Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program helped them achieve the reform goals they set as a result of joining the program. This involved each school presenting a summary report describing their project and associated outcomes to their program peers. This took place in the final session.

These summary presentations produced a broad range of contributions and a varied level of expertise in both documenting projects and assessing their impact over time. The outstanding exemplars should stand as a model for future programs.

Having to present a reform project and engage in the reporting process meant a greater level of participation of school-based staff. Staff contributions towards integrating technologies into their teaching were well documented and demonstrated a real understanding of the concepts like personalisation, as well as assessment for, during and of learning.

Schools also frequently reported on the benefits of having access to inspirational leaders who had previously participated in the Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program.

This, together with the program input, guest speakers, demonstrations and the use of Microsoft® Office OneNote® all provided stimulus for ongoing professional conversations and learning for each team, which naturally spilled into the school setting and helped to drive the projects. In other words, leaders went back to their schools equipped with new language, ideas, examples and proven methodologies that enabled them to show – rather than just talk about – how change was possible.

There was resounding affirmation that the program was inspirational to the school staff involved and that it provided real momentum to undertake radical change.

Information about how other schools worked – and seeing this in action during the site visits to Silverton Primary School, Victoria and Varsity College, Queensland – were genuinely confronting examples of what was possible through sustained, focused and informed leadership. This experience, together with the exchanges during workshops, demonstrations by presenters and the resources provided, was taken back into schools and used to extend professional awareness and learning at a local level.

The relevance and usefulness of visiting Silverton Primary School and Varsity College as exemplars of personalised learning cannot be overstated. The work of the schools had a profound influence on all the participants, including the secondary schools.

The program participants saw schools that had moved away from the traditional ways of organising and begun working in student-centred and individualised ways that required restructuring the whole system of classroom and school organisation.

For instance, the experience of Esperance Primary School is typical of most participants, having undergone an inspirational change towards individualised learning:

“…As a Microsoft Innovative School, Esperance Primary School has had an inspiring journey in 2011. We progressed our vision to a place that far exceeded our expectations and we are motivated to extend and sustain this momentum and passion… With our school’s driver now being pedagogy rather than technology, and our focus always being on student learning, our future as a Microsoft Innovative School is assured.”

Lisa Helenius, Principal, Esperance Primary.


Change is about taking the big step into a new way of workingFor some schools, like Campbell Street Primary, stepping away from their daily reality and looking back with the benefit of the programmed experiences of Partners in Learning led them into areas of school development towards which they had previously not been confident to step.

Inspired by Dan Buckley’s presentation, the project focused on moving from teacher control to a student-driven, personalised learning model.

Campbell Street Primary School described their journey thus:

“The Partners in Learning schools program has given us tremendous support. In the first instance the Partners in Learning schools program gave us time… time to think and reflect on the future we wanted to create for our students. The program gave us quality professional learning to help us grow and think outside of our own context. We have been able to extend our

own thinking and been able to take that back and apply it to Campbell Street as it suits us. The program gave us licence to make the changes we knew needed to happen. The program also allowed us to look at our school in our context and reflect on our direction. It has skilled us up to ask ourselves questions and taught us how much more effective it is to look at what is happening in a school with a lens to guide your thinking. The Partners in Learning schools research survey gave us a credible tool to use with staff – showing a real need to change. The stories that we have heard from other schools showed us the myriad ways that schools have responded to creating rich learning environments. It has been a terrific balance of research, professional learning, sharing stories and reflection. We have certainly moved our teaching forward through the support of Partners in Learning.”

‘From T Route to P Route – the Microsoft Journey at Campbell Street Primary School’

“…As a Microsoft Innovative School, Esperance Primary School has had an inspiring journey in 2011. We progressed our vision to a place that far exceeded our expectations and we are motivated to extend and sustain this momentum and passion… With our school’s driver now being pedagogy rather than technology, and our focus always being on student learning, our future as a Microsoft Innovative School is assured.”

Lisa Helenius, Principal, Esperance Primary.

Building shared understanding and working towards buy-inThe Albury Public School project knitted well into their overall strategic development work for the year. This work centred on authentic assessment of learning in Mathematics and the management of that assessment in OneNote® in the form of e-learning portfolios. Their project supported the strong approach to numeracy improvement taken by the school, but the use of OneNote and the capacity to provide quality feedback to students was a substantial contributor to the overall effect on learning outcomes.

This project was a successful integration of technological resources into the mainstream curriculum. It also allowed teachers a much greater capacity to work individually with each child, as well as a more sophisticated way of monitoring, tracking, scaffolding and assessing children over time.

Feedback of a different kind was the focus of the work of Erindale College. As with all schools in the project, their Microsoft projects were integrated into the ongoing professional improvement processes directed by their strategic whole school plans.

Erindale College teachers developed quality teaching practices and implemented video as a means of visually driven reflection, as well as a vehicle for self-assessment, peer feedback and affirmation. Another project in the college that embraced video was the DeforestACTION project. This helped enable personalised learning, develop stronger affiliation with the school, increase motivation and engagement, and give teachers the confidence to buy into programs with a degree of risk and personalisation.

All of these projects achieved significant reflection from teachers. Where students were directly involved, the learning outcomes were demonstrably improved, affirming teacher buy-in.

Each of the projects was part of a greater school development process. Microsoft Partners in Learning pushed the educators to buy into new behaviours around building evidence of effectiveness, as well as use learning technologies to improve productivity and performance in both learning and teaching.


Feedback, personalisation and authentic learningCampbelltown Performing Arts High School developed a wide variety of creative ways to use technology for learning feedback. Their pedagogical reform focused on deploying e-learning – particularly for a more democratic, more mutual approach between the teacher and the learner.

The school embarked on a multifaceted program that built staff capacity for ICT applications while deepening their pedagogical expertise in relation to assessment.

A number of projects resulted from this. Each demonstrated the value of being able to access learning performances via video in order to provide direct feedback, assist with a student’s own private reflection, and facilitate peer discussions.

The positive impact of this work was clear in the teacher comments from the project report. Teachers described significant changes in the way they programmed learning and in the design of the assessment processes.

Teachers also praised the value of having tools that build collaboration between teachers. They appreciated the technology used to capture learning performances that they could use for shared discussions and performance improvement. For Campbelltown Performing Arts High School teachers, this was the first time they could really see that genuine learning was occurring and that a more mutual process of assessment between teacher and learner was taking place.

“The greatest benefit (of being involved in the project) was seeing the results and knowing that students really do have a great understanding of the concepts that have been taught…This will definitely change my practice. I intend on using the peer and self-assessment tools that I have learnt with all classes… I feel like I’m actually doing my job the way I should have been all along but didn’t have the skills to do so before this point.”

Classroom teacher comments Campbelltown Performing Arts High School report, 2011

Leadership diversity and creativityLeading teachers are the pearls in the oyster. They keep advocating for change, experimenting with new ideas and resources, and seek to influence others in the way they undertake their work.

The Esperance Primary School team report echoed a number of other schools in reporting the level, distribution and quality of educational leadership they were able to exercise. Their leadership density and capacity changed exponentially. They described strong Principal leadership, a stronger collective focus for 2011, lead work being taken on by a broader range of teachers, higher levels of collaboration between staff, and stronger learning teams focusing on the integration of ICT into programs.

There were also many unanticipated outcomes described by the team at Esperance Primary, including a greater commitment to accountability (given the time and resources that were being put into the program, and their desire to get value for money and good results). Most importantly, Esperance Primary described a ‘push’ in awareness of their Global Classroom Principles and the momentum they got from the program to take this into every classroom.

Somerville Secondary College described their participation as having “a dramatic impact on our school and its staff and students in a relatively short period of time…Our involvement in this project has been a catalyst for a substantial increase in the number of staff members who are trialling a wide variety of learning technologies in a range of different forums… We are truly moving beyond the traditional classroom walls and engaging and connecting our students with their learning in a vibrant, dynamic and authentic manner.”

Somerville Secondary College Report, 2011

Somerville High also reported significant improvement in teachers’ personal capacity, as well as improvements in the quality of curriculum development through the shared use of resources like OneNote®. They were able to report that 83% of staff documented their Professional Development in OneNote, increased numbers of staff attended ‘Net-café’, and staff explored a wide variety of new technologies and skills. Student feedback indicated that 90% felt that having greater choice and increased personal decision-making meant they could present their learning more effectively.

Perhaps the most poignant reflection was the struggle described by one teacher of his efforts to change practice, in terms of challenging ingrained student habits. He discovered that, despite his best efforts to contemporise his teaching, the students were less enthusiastic about taking risks. He described the low student take-up of alternative methods of presenting learning and their reluctance to move away from the comfort of known tools such as Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® into more adventurous ways of presenting their learning for assessment.

The long-term socialisation from traditional teaching approaches had trained students to prefer ‘safe’ assessment presentations that did not risk their overall result. This indicated a long climb to change the learning culture within the student population – not just within teachers.


Authentic learning building engagement and productivityPartners in Learning schools also made multiple citations of the impact of parallel programs like DeforestACTION in bringing to schools a new level of social engagement and community action. Buckley

Park College used this as impetus to strengthen their work in their ‘Making a Difference’ program, a cross-curricula program that challenges students to explore cultural, social, political or economic issues beyond their immediate environment and to develop learning activities that use social media.

The depth and range of topics explored was diverse. Evaluation revealed substantial success in terms of student engagement, integrity of work quality and increased student learning capacity – particularly in communication and self-expression. It also gave the staff a space in which to explore the risks and issues associated with social media sites and gave the students strategies for personal risk management.

A number of schools indicated that they would like to stay in touch with the other schools that were part of the Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program. They saw value in changing their own behaviour in terms of their professional learning, valuing the connectivity the program had enabled and the benefit of accessing discussions and visits to institutions outside their own immediate area.

Changing the culture of schoolsChanging culture, teaching approaches and teacher-student relationships in schools is a difficult process. Having a small group of lead practitioners who want to work differently is inspiring to others. However, school cultures have a way of pulling even the most innovative people into line, especially if the routines and rules are broken, timetables aren’t adhered to, or teacher-student power relationships are not sustained in a manner that is traditional to the school.

There is a very strong and prevailing normative process in many schools, particularly secondary schools, in which “this is the way we do things around here” is the dominating mantra that pulls newcomers towards existing and conservative behaviour. This can be a strong influence on commencing educators or those who have not had profound professional insight into how to change their practice.

Hamilton Senior High School worked on a multi-layered approach to their pedagogy. They first refined a digital literacy professional development program for staff. They then studied their context and demographic data, examined their pedagogical approaches, and reviewed management and resource policies in order to re-culture and restructure the school’s approach to teaching and learning.

“Every member of staff was accountable for using co-operative learning strategies in their classroom and we began a whole school journey into cultural change and increasing our digital literacy along with the effective use of digital devices in the classroom.”

Donna McDonald, Principal, Hamilton Senior High School, 2011

Systems are very hard to change. Some theory and practical examples of school reform that draw on School Effectiveness, Systems Theory and Innovation Theory literature would be a valuable foundation for leaders who are genuinely serious about whole school change. This theory has to be applied if leaders are to move educators from their preferred and inferred pedagogy to a more rigorous and explicit pedagogy based on whole school enculturation and practice change.

Embedding learning capabilities in the formal curriculumA critical element in the school reform process is understanding what a 21st century student requires and how to embed this in the teaching, learning and assessment programs of the formal curriculum.

The eight groups of skills described in the CISCO paper The Learning Society (CISCO, 2010) and The Five Dimensions of 21st Century Learning presented in the ITL research: Innovative Teaching and Learning, (Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum Notes, 2011), as well as the learning skill elements

in Personalisation by Pieces program, (Buckley, Dan, 2011) and the capabilities framework outlined by Joan Dalton 2011, all contribute to a very different demand on teachers to undertake radical redesign of both their learning programs, their relationships with students and their pedagogical approaches in class and across the whole school.

The Australian curriculum also assumes that there is explicit teaching done, as well as assessment of particular learning capabilities.

An examination of these sets of capabilities and a way of synthesising them into an agreed collection that meets requirements and strengthens learning outcomes is vital.

As a unique national program (not driven by jurisdiction interests or funding ties) Microsoft Partners in Learning may be the only initiative that can make sense of how these various sets of capabilities could be integrated into the curriculum in a coherent and rigorous way.


Good schools in actionThe 2011 ‘school visits’ scheme was one of the most popular parts of Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program – and had a profound, documented effect on each participating school. In particular, it improved the way each school reflected on its own progress and dealt with the challenge of getting an entire school working on an agreed approach. It has become an important way for principals and leaders to understand the total leadership strategy for whole school reform, together with its rationale and processes, so they can enact systemic change. Tuggerah Lakes Secondary commented:

“The Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program has been instrumental in leveraging positive change in teaching and learning at Tuggerah Lakes Secondary College (Tumbi Umbi Campus.) Not only has the program provided direct collaboration opportunities and access to the best educational minds through the forums and virtual university, it has also provided financial support to enable engagement and exploration of new learning. It has been an outstanding model for effective change… Exposure to practical examples like Silverton and Varsity showcased the do-able face of educational reform.”

‘Time and tide wait for no-one: Embracing whatever, whenever wherever’: Tuggerah Lakes Secondary Report, 2011.

School visits are an opportunity to understand the key ideas driving the pedagogy and the associated research base they come from. They allow visitors to see in-school data around efficacy, the staff development program undertaken to achieve it and the ongoing induction, supervision appraisal and mentoring required to sustain it. Schools visits are also an opportunity for visitors to pose specific questions, questions that shape a deep inquiry and reflection process in relation to their own school.

After making OneNote® the requisite tool for preparing and sharing professional learning plans, Somerville Secondary College implemented performance expectations for its adoption and practice. Embedding OneNote into a supervision routine meant it was not a choice but an expectation. It had sound results, with the school reporting high levels of take-up and satisfaction.

“The concept of using performance and development planning and documentation as an authentic learning task for engaging staff with OneNote is clearly a success with 77% of staff indicating that the sharing of plans via OneNote has assisted them with the development of their own plan. It was also pleasing to see that 85% of staff have received some level of support with the implementation of proposed changes in their planning and teaching.”

Somerville Secondary College report, 2011

Introducing leading educators to what is possibleIt is clear from the excitement generated in demo sessions that showcased new ways of applying technology that these elements of the program are motivating and inspiring. There are numerous ways that everyday, accessible resources can be used in creative ways, but the time to think these out, experiment with them or even learn how to use some of them is limited.

Many educators don’t have a good understanding of what is available to them as teachers or how to access those resources. They don’t know what they don’t know.

For some participants, the program was an eye-opening experience, with new possibilities for reform unfolding in front of them in every workshop or school visit.

Reports from schools gave examples of teachers introducing students to creative ways of engaging in learning, as well as presenting their learning for assessment. Just a few of these included Microsoft products like Kodu®, AutoCollage, Windows Live® Movie Maker, OneNote® and Photostory, and a range of Web 2.0 & cloud applications.

It was interesting to see the range of applications used in the actual reports from schools at the end of the 2011 program. Some courageous school leaders have even begun using technology in their own leadership work. Keeping leaders up to date with the latest in applications is an important element of the program in that it allows leaders to take new ideas back to their own school.

Also important were the 2011 teaching demonstrations that captured the use of new tools and resources that enhance learning or assist in its authenticity, for assessment purposes. This should be retained as a regular feature of the program.


Building a sense of urgencyHaving a project that had to be conceptualised, acted upon and reported about in the short time frame of a year was the program challenge for Partners in Learning participants.

Princes Primary School saw this as an opportunity to build an awareness of the time imperative facing educators for pedagogical change. They called it ‘dog time’. The team turned the pressure of the project into a sense of urgency to do in just one year what they would normally take seven years to achieve. There was no time to waste. For their school, change was not an option.

This imperative was represented in a number of formal ways with jurisdictions requiring schools to have explicit site development plans, with targets declared and processes defined. The difficulty with having set strategic plans in place was both helpful and, in some cases, limiting as awareness grew and the schools realised that their priorities were either pitched at levels too low or that they were focusing on hardware and teacher ICT competency rather than the bigger issue of teaching reform for more authentic and skilled learning.

The experience of Lockleys North Primary School described experiencing this kind of epiphany after working with one of their peer schools at the Sydney workshop.

“After working with Campbell Street Primary School staff at the Sydney forum we were enthused by their success with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and the culture of trust in their school that has supported this.”

The Lockleys North team described the rapid redesign of their school’s reform approach as it took on a new focus. They moved away from worrying about the number and type of computers the school could provide to a more responsive way of working with what they and the students already had.

They took on a new focus. They shared the forum resources with staff and parents; audited the technology students already had; redesigned the distribution of technology, resources and staff support; developed safety and responsible use guidelines; improved communication within the school and with parents; invited staff to buy into projects; and encouraged staff to lead collaboration with others.

“Our involvement in the Partners in Learning schools program was essential for us in the process of thinking about one-to-one because we were able to keep our thinking open and learn from colleagues around Australia who were also trying new ways of using technology as an integral tool in teaching and learning. The processes used by Joan and Cheryl were really useful. We will build on our learning talk protocol this year as part of our essential agreements for 2012….”

Ann O’Callaghan, Principal, Lockleys North Primary School, 2011

Each Partners in Learning schools program develops a collective awareness about challenges educators face in providing quality learning experiences to young people. The challenge to each leadership team is to bring key ideas to their own community with a view to moving Australian schools and colleges towards a new, productive and more engaging way of working with students.

Given the multi-layered approach to learning through the variety of different activities undertaken during the year, it is important to synthesise the Partners in Learning schools program messages. It is also necessary to extrapolate the profound shifts in understanding made through the collective experience and present these back to the group as the anchors with which they firmly secure their reform process.

Having a strong sense of intent, a strongly supported theory for new practice and a multi-layered, context-sensitive approach to sustainable change is the work of reform leaders. The workshop program, between-session activities and the projects undertaken during the 2011 program all contributed richly to the push for classroom-based teaching and pedagogical reform.

In 2010 the Microsoft Partners in Learning schools program evaluation resulted in a set of nine propositions that characterised all participating schools in the context of innovation:

• Innovative schools are productive schools.

• Innovative schools are staffed by high-performing teachers and support staff.

• Innovative schools have redefined the students’ role and power in negotiating their learning.

• Innovative schools are relationship-driven.

• Innovative schools are efficient schools.

• Innovative schools have a relentless focus on learning to learn.

• Innovative schools enable networking with other schools and communities.

• Innovative schools are active in ensuring sustainability.

• Innovative schools have active, creative and courageous leaders working at all levels of the school and are inspiring, encouraging and expectant about pedagogical reform.

The 2011 schools took a deeper look at the nature of pedagogy required to achieve these propositions and, subsequently, a new set of understandings has been added to address the push necessary to take a school towards the tipping point. That point is a whole school pedagogical reform requiring the redesign of learning processes, as well as radically new relationships and resources that empower both students and teachers to achieve the quantum leaps in learning that are necessary to deliver 21st century education.

The 2011 year’s evaluation builds on the propositions for innovative schools from 2010 and presents the drivers towards the tipping point for change in Partners in Learning schools. These are key learnings around essential moves, actions or conditions that are necessary to move people away from the equilibrium of the old age and into the new one with such resolute force that there is no going back.

Taking a school to the tipping point


The following drivers are the elements of a multi-level push that will assist in achieving a school-wide pedagogical approach that enables each student to work at their personal best with a range of new resources that facilitate richer access to learning, as well as a more creative execution of that learning.

These drivers are as follows:

• Students and teachers will be inspired by best practice experiences. They need to see and experience best practice in high-quality, personalised learning in an atmosphere of challenge, trust, mutual obligation and responsibility for learning design and activities. Students and teachers see examples of high-quality learning programs that draw on a range of new technology resources that assist students to undertake their learning and assessment in rich and challenging ways.

• Standards and processes encourage educators to be their best. There is strong, explicit and shared leadership around contemporary learning. This is based on research and inquiry, with high expectations for meeting contemporary standards of teaching performance, guided by strong processes for monitoring and improving teaching.

• A whole school strategy fosters a culture of best practice. The strategic planning work of the school or college drives learning improvement, curriculum development and fosters a culture of skilled teaching – based on agreements about best pedagogy for the learning context and the needs of students. It embeds these agreements into the culture of the school, as well as its standard operating procedures for all staff.

• There is skilled dialogue to achieve a school-wide, shared understanding of what constitutes quality pedagogy for the 21st century student and high expectations for achieving widespread teacher buy-in for more productive pedagogy across the school against a set of indicators of quality teaching.

• Curriculum guidelines, unit plans and program guides all focus teachers and students to work within an ordered and scaffolded learning program with appropriate explicit teaching sessions, guided projects and personalised assessment.

• Authentic assessment is an integral part of the planning and negotiation for learning as well as of learning, and is a process that is continually moderated in staff teams for consistency and efficacy using state-of-the-art technology applications for the capture and analysis of student learning progress.

• Teachers work together to co-construct a new vision of what constitutes the real and virtual learning spaces, putting the protocols and arrangements in place to enable students to access the 21st century classroom safely and successfully. Risk management and social responsibility in relation to learning in the networked world are part of the explicit curriculum and behaviour codes of schools and colleges.

• Parents are educated and engaged in the reform work of the school, with information, programs and communication systems deepening their engagement with the school and giving them a much more intimate understanding of their own children’s learning, capacity and progress.

• Staff engage in skilled and rigorous research methods that produce compelling evidence that the new pedagogy is effective, engaging and gets better results for all students. Colleges and schools abandon the habit of ‘jumping on bandwagons’ and embrace a more peer-moderated approach to instructional effectiveness.

• Democratic and empowering relationships are developed between teacher and child based on personalisation and mutual negotiation, while remaining characteristic of the culture of the school or college.

• Students are able to engage with community organisations, other people and resources outside the school as members of the global community, forming the characteristics and capabilities of responsible, culturally aware and open-minded citizenship.

• Technology and other learning resources are readily available and accessible to students as they negotiate their programs, equipment is in good order, and is maintained and stored in ways that allow easy access, just-in-time training for use, security of use and fitness for purpose.

• The administration, communications systems and professional learning programs of the sites demonstrate the leading edge of information and communication technologies and are used to demonstrate applications and resources in creative ways.

• There is a breakthrough in understanding that technology in teaching is not about every student having a computer; rather, that technology permeates every aspect of school and classroom life and is to be exploited creatively.

• Curriculum is defined in both content and process terms, with the development of a set of explicit learning capabilities as an integral part of the core that allows students to develop and demonstrate capabilities for learning as they form themselves as highly skilled learners.

• High expectations of teachers are actively called for and supervision and support are in place to ensure that every teacher is able to demonstrate that their pedagogy is state-of-the-art, effective and engaging for students.

Reform does not mean a simple rearrangement of timetables, a redesigning of the types of learning activities undertaken or a more liberal approach to the way students are able to present their work for assessment. It is a deep shift in school culture, relationships and power, applied with new awareness about authentic learning, cognition and the assessment of that learning in ways that allow students to work towards their own personal achievements and demonstrate their capabilities.

Genuine reform demands intensive specialist knowledge and rigorous professional learning, not only about programs, tools, resources and equipment, but also about the process of teaching in a vastly more sophisticated learning environment with students who are much more skilled and able to use the resources around them than we as educators ever anticipated.

Equally, reform requires a new level of personal and professional understanding on the part of the teacher, the student and the parents. It demands a new level of professionalism in the relationships between those partners in learning. It calls for a new level of sophistication in the way teachers work with each student in order to tailor their learning to maximum potential. All of these things involve intelligence, rigorous routines, discipline and finely nuanced explicit teaching on the part of the teacher at a level that has never been demanded before.

Once the tipping point is reached, teaching and teachers move into a high-performance zone that students will expect and demand from all teachers thereafter. There is no retreat from the new learning frontiers required in the technological age.

Reform is not a choice.

Drivers towards radical reform


s

Australian Capital Territory

Erindale College

New South Wales

Albury Public SchoolCampbelltown Performing Arts High SchoolSydney Distance Education High SchoolTuggerah Lakes Secondary College (Tumbi Umbi Campus)

Northern Territory

Rosebery Middle School

Queensland

Coomera Springs State SchoolKirwan State High SchoolStanthorpe State School

South Australia

Charles Campbell Secondary SchoolLockleys North Primary School

Tasmania

Campbell Street Primary SchoolPrinces Street Primary School

Victoria

Belmont High SchoolBuckley Park CollegeMooroolbark CollegeSomerville Secondary College

Western Australia

Esperance Primary SchoolHamilton Senior High SchoolTom Price Primary School

Microsoft Partners in Learning 2011 schools


CISCO Systems Inc.

‘The Learning Society’ 2010

Buckley, Dan.

Session handouts ‘PbyP Personalisation by pieces’ Version 2.0Cambridge Education, 2011

Dalton, J. and Anderson, D.

‘Learning Talk: Build Capabilities’www.leadingadultlearners.com

Gladwell, M. ‘The Tipping Point’Abacus Press, 2000, London, UK.

ITL Research

Innovative Teaching and LearningMicrosoft Partners in Learning Global Forum program notes 7-10 Nov. 2011SRI International.

Rogers, E.M.

http://nnlm.gov/pnr/eval/rogers/html

Thomas R. and Pring, R.

‘Evidence-Based Practice in Education’Open University Press, 2004.

References

taking teaching to the tipping point · 4 microsoft partners in learning schools program 2011...

Documents