Best Practices to Next Practices: A Different Kind of Thinking Ray McNulty, President To hear this...
Transcript of Best Practices to Next Practices: A Different Kind of Thinking Ray McNulty, President To hear this...
Best Practices to Next Practices: A Different Kind of Thinking
Ray McNulty, President
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Best Practices to Next Practices:A Different Kind of Thinking
Raymond J. McNultyPresident
International Center for Leadership in EducationFebruary, 2011
Setting the stage for the content of this webinar…..
The Boston Globe
Ray, reading the paper on your “Kindle” or online just
isn’t the same!
Almost everyone wants schools to be better,
but almost no one wants them to be different.
Teacher – Student Comparisons
T – I make learning exciting for my students.
86%
S – My teachers make learning fun.
41%
“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we (you) are creating. The paths are not found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”
-John Schaar
WE all need to become the AGENTS of change.
The Horse
The Automobile
First different then better.
Henry Ford quote…
• “If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Current System
Something Different
Transformation # 1• Leadership today requires a balance of
traditional skills mixed with innovation skills
• Stability, control and standardization mixed with uncertainty, ambiguity and disruptive thinking
Transformation # 2• Making a better 20th Century School is not
the answer
• It is about becoming different not just better
• Using researched based best practices important, but for true transformation you need a mixture of BEST and NEXT practices.
• 70 – 30 or 80 - 20
Transformation # 3• Collaboration is essential for success today
• Cooperation won’t get you the results you need
• Collaboration is mutual engagement to solve the challenge (21st Century)
• Cooperation is a division of labor approach (20th Century)
So what’s stopping us?
How do we get ahead?
THEMES• Change
• Strategic Plan and Strategy
• Empowerment
• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation
• Closing Thoughts
THEME• Change
• Why is it so hard to change?
Mental Locks
• We don’t need to be creative for most of what we do (driving, shopping, business of living). So staying on routine thought paths enables us to do many things without having to think about it.
Why is it so hard to change?
• The more successful a system is, the more difficult it is to recognize when it must change. By example, market leaders are the last ones to transform.
• The American Education System, “The market leader during the industrial era!”
Market Leader Thinking• Dominant logic: “That’s the way we do
things here.”
• The Right Answer
The Second Right Answer
• What is the answer?
• What are the answers?
• The Right Answer
• That’s not logical
• SOFT • HARD
• Logic• Dream• Reason• Precision• Humor• Consistency• Ambiguity• Play• Work• Approximate
• Focused• Fantasy• Reality• Diffuse• Analysis• Hunch• Generalization• Specifics• Child• Adult
• SOFT• Dream• Humor• Ambiguity• Play• Approximate• Fantasy• Diffuse• Hunch• Generalization• Child
• HARD• Logic• Reason• Precision• Consistency• Work• Reality• Focused• Analysis• Specific• Adult
• SOFT
• Shades of gray
• Hard to pick up
• Many answers
• Flood light, diffused
• HARD
• Black and white
• Easy to pick up
• Right answer
• Focused like a spot light
Cat - Refrigerator
THEME• Strategic Plan and Strategy
Just because you have the word strategic in your plan, it doesn’t mean you have a strategy.
The work becomes more difficult.
• Education improvement is a process of uncovering and solving progressively more difficult challenges around student learning
(low hanging fruit theory)
This requires new learning from the adults.
Detecting improvement
• Changes in student performance lag behind changes in the quality of instructional practices. Changes in the classrooms are visible before you see them in external measures.
Strategic Planning v. Strategy
• Strategic plans are designed around large numbers of goals and initiatives. (usually too many)
• Strategy is a set of actions an organization chooses to pursue in order to achieve its objectives.
Strategic Planning v. Strategy
• Strategic planning is intended to be the vehicle for developing strategy.
• Strategy is about filtering the noise in these complex systems and deciding what must be done on behalf of the students and learning.
Strategic Plan -- -- Strategy
• Takes a broad incremental approach
• Includes discrete, unrelated initiatives
• Addresses an external audience
• Focuses on doing a few things well
• Integrates a few key initiatives
• Addresses an internal audience
THEME• Empowerment
We live in a world obsessed with science, predictability and control.
Some people believe if we can’t measure something, it must not count!
We must consider the possibility that if we can’t purely measure something, it might be the very most important thing!
Talking with kids…
It’s not us against them!
CULTURE DRIVES STRATEGY
THEME
• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation
AYP
Research Based Successful PracticesTight Tight
Critical PointRemain Tight TightEmpowerTight Loose
Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing a little better.
Best Practices
• Research Based
• Replication
• 70 to 80 % of all activity should be
“Research Based Best Practice”
NEXT PRACTICES
Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing a little better,
while next practices increase your organization’s capability to do things that it has never
done before.
AYP
AYP
AYP
College and Career Readiness Defined• Cognitive strategies: Intellectual openness; inquisitiveness;
analysis; interpretation; precision and accuracy; problem solving; and reasoning, argumentation, and proof.
• Content knowledge: Understanding the structures and large organizing concepts of the academic disciplines, resting upon strong research and writing abilities.
• Academic behaviors: Self-management, time management, strategic study skills, accurate perceptions of one’s true performance, persistence, ability to utilize study groups, self-awareness, self-control, and intentionality.
• Contextual skills and knowledge: Facility with application and financial-aid processes and the ability to acculturate to college.
David Conley
Common Core State Standards• In ELA… literacy will be a shared responsibility• In ELA… students will read more complex text• In ELA… more informational text will be read• In ELA… more writing and research• In ELA… speaking and listening
• In Math… focus on conceptual understanding• In Math… more modeling of math in real world
Expertise (the way we do things around here) can sometimes be a road block to problem solving and the development of “Next Practices”.
System Innovation
Sustaining Innovation
Next Practice
Disruptive Innovation
Marshmallow Challenge
NEXT PRACTICE THINKING
• The Iterative Process
• Versions
• Create a disciplined, managed space for development of new ways to accomplish difficult tasks
THEME• Closing Thoughts
ADULT LEARNING
TEXAS STORY
We can rationalize the failures of the past -----
or we can learn from them.
We can complain about the troubling inadequacies of the present ----
or we can face them.
We can talk and dream about educating our children for the future ---
OR TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT!
That takes having educators developing next practices that will lead us to “new and different” best practices.
Q & A with Ray McNulty
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For more information www.LeaderEd.com
19th Annual Model Schools Conference
From Theory to Reality:
Creating the Schools We Need Now
NASHVILLE
June
26-29
2011www.modelschoolsconference.com
International Center for Leadership in Education is honored to collaborate with NASSP
to support and empower school leaders.
Join Bill Daggett, Ray McNulty, ICLE senior consultants
and other national education leaders at
The NASSP Annual ConferenceFebruary 24-27San Francisco
http://www.nasspconference.org/
Join NASSP executive leadership and Breaking Ranks® schools for the
official launch of:
Breaking Ranks®A Comprehensive Framework for
School Improvement
19th Annual Model Schools Conference
June 26-29, Nashvillewww.modelschoolsconference.com
Breaking Ranks® is owned by NASSP
Best Practices to Next Practices:A Different Kind of Thinking
Raymond J. McNultyPresident
International Center for Leadership in EducationFebruary, 2011