John West Burnam... · Web viewa school almost never exceeds the quality of its leadership and...
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Forbairt 2015. . . the overall performance ofa school almost never exceeds the quality of its leadership and management. For every 100 schools that have good leadership and management, 93 will have good standards of student achievement. For every 100 schools that do not have good leadership and management, only one will have good standards of achievement.
A large number of quantitative studies in North America . . . show that school leadership influences performance more than any other variable except socio-economic background and the quality of teaching.
A major study of improving schools found that “there are statistically significant empirical and qualitatively robust associations between heads’ educational values, qualities, and their strategic actions and improvement in school conditions leading to improvements in student outcomes.” Barber, Whelan and Clark (2010)
John West-Burnham
Shared Values &common
purpose
Trust & quality
relationships
Professional Learning
Learning centred
leadership
Preventing failure
Collaboration
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The conceptual frame for education
19th Century Educational Imaginary 21st Century Educational Imaginary
Students are prepared for a fixed situation in life/ career progression.
Students’ identities and destinations are fluid – multiple career pathways.
Schools ignore social and economic factors
Schools are active in family and community engagement
Intelligence is fixed. Intelligence is multi-dimensional and can be developed.
The curriculum is a body of definitive knowledge
Knowledge is co created and widely distributed
Access to quality teaching and learning is variable. Automatic, chronological cohort progression.
Schooling provides personalized learning for all.
Assessment is summative, prescribed and monotechnic
Assessment is formative, negotiated and multi-media
Schools work on the factory model. Any time, any place learning.
The nature of education is defined by educational institutions
The nature of education is defined by democratic communities
Schools, teachers and learners work autonomously.
Schools educators and learners work collaboratively in complex, multi-media, networks.
Schooling is provider led. Schools have rigid and clear boundaries and outcomes.
Education is user led and life-long for every student.
Education Imaginaries (after Hargreaves 2004 p30-32)
Taylor (2004:23) defines a social imaginary as:
. . . the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.
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1. Effective leadership: values and purpose
The leadership characteristics of schools in Tower Hamlets:
• They have consistent, high expectations and are very ambitious for the success of their pupils.
• They constantly demonstrate that disadvantage need not be a barrier to achievement.
• They focus relentlessly on improving teaching and learning with very effective professional development of all staff.
• They are expert at assessment and the tracking of pupil progress with appropriate support and intervention based upon a detailed knowledge of individual pupils.
• They are highly inclusive, having complete regard for the progress and personal development of every pupil.
• They develop individual students through promoting rich opportunities for learning both within and out of the classroom.
• They cultivate a range of partnerships particularly with parents, business and the community to support pupil learning and progress.
• They are robust and rigorous in terms of self-evaluation and data analysis with clear strategies for improvement.
(Transforming Education for All: the Tower Hamlets Story)
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Leadership Management Administration
Principle Doing the right
things
Doing things right Doing things
Purpose Path making Path following Path tidying
People Engaging with
complexity
Creating clarity Securing
consistency
People Purpose
Principle
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The urgent and the important
A = Administration
A
Leadership/Strategic
Management/operational
Urgent/Important
Crises, deadlines, external
pressures MANAGE
Not-urgent/Important
Relationships, planning, values
FOCUS
Not important/Urgent Interruptions,
distractions, administrivia
CONTROL
Not important/not
urgent Distractions, escape, time-
wasters AVOID
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2. Distributing and sharing leadership through trust
In their research into high performing elementary schools in Chicago, Bryk and
Schneider found a high correlation between the levels of trust in a school and its
capacity to improve. Schools with a high level of trust at the outset of a programme to
improve maths and reading had a 1in 2 chance of improving. Schools with relatively
low levels of trust had only a 1 in 7 chance of improving. Schools in the latter
category that did improve made significant gains in their levels of trust as a pre-
requisite to raising attainment.
If you want to change any relationship you have to behave your way into it. Trust comes after good experiences. (Fullan 2010:97)
These ‘good experiences’ might be said to include empathy, goodwill, openness,
honesty, respect, reliability and reciprocity – there are plenty of words to describe the
emotional responses that seem to capture the essence of trust.
Credibility + consistency + competence = confidence = trustIn their most recent work Bryk and his colleagues (2010:45-46) report on a detailed
and systematic longitudinal study carried out since 1989 looking at over 100 schools
that have improved compared with over 100 schools that have declined. The key
Competenc
Confiden
Consistency
Credibility
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differences between the schools has enabled the identification of a key element of
improvement
. . trust represents the social energy, or the “oven’s heat,” necessary for transforming these basic ingredients into comprehensive school change. Absent the social energy provided by trust, improvement initiatives are unlikely to culminate in meaningful change, regardless of their intrinsic merit. (2010:1
Immature
Personal Power
Hierarchy
Low trust
Dependency
Mature
Shared authority
Teams
High trust
Interdependency
Control Delegation Empowerment Subsidiarity
This diagram shows the stages in moving from the immature organization based on
control to the fully mature one based on subsidiarity; the movement away from
control is characterised by a growth in trust.
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3. Effective professional learning
Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development.
Effect size 0.84
The leader participates in the learning as leader, learner or both. The contexts for such learning are both formal and informal.
Establishing goals and expectations
Effect size 0.42
Leadership makes a difference to students through its emphasis on clear academic and learning goals. In a work environment where multiple conflicting demands can make everything seem equally important, goals establish what is relatively more or less important
Planning, coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum
Effect size 0.42
1 Involving staff in discussions of teaching
2 Working with staff to coordinate and review the curriculum
3 Providing feedback to teachers, based on classroom observations that they report as useful in improving their teaching;
4 Systematic monitoring of student progress for the purpose of improvement at school department and class level
Strategic resourcing
Effect size 0.31
This leadership dimension is about securing and allocating material and staffing resources that are aligned to pedagogical purposes.
Ensuring an orderly and supportive environment
Effect size 0.27
This dimension describes those leadership practices that ensure that teachers can focus on teaching and students can focus on learning
Robinson’s conclusion provides a powerful vindication of the refocusing of leadership that is taking place in many education systems:
The main conclusion to be drawn from the present analyses is that particular types of school leadership have substantial impacts on student outcomes. The more leaders focus their influence, their learning, and their relationships with teachers on the core business of teaching and learning, the greater their likely influence on student outcomes.
Robinson V M J (2011) Student-Centered Leadership San Francisco Jossey-Bass
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The relative impact of learning strategies
Non-directive
Directive
Where would you place each of the following on the diagram above going
from bottom left to top right in terms of personal impact and deep learning?
Experiential learning, teaching, facilitation, coaching and mentoring,
friendship, training, action learning.
Mentoring and Coaching
Generic Personal
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Coaching Mentoring Counselling
- a short-term intervention to provide explicit support in developing specific skills, techniques and strategies
- a sustained, one-to-one relationship based in trust in which the mentor actively supports the learner to build capacity to enhance personal effectiveness
- a therapeutic relationship which is designed to support personal change and enhance well-being
The impact of coaching/mentoring can be demonstrated by reference to the work of
Joyce and Showers:
5% of learners will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory.
10% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory and demonstration.
20% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory, demonstration and practice.
25% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory, demonstration, practice and feedback.
90% will transfer a new skill into their practice as a result of theory, demonstration, practice, feedback and coaching.
Joyce, B.R. & Showers, B. (1983:9)
One of the key insights in learning theory is Benjamin Bloom’s (1964) discussion of
solutions to what he calls ‘the two sigma’ problem. Bloom shows that students
provided with individual tutors typically perform at a level about two standard
deviations (two sigma) above where they would perform with standard group
instruction. This means that a person who would score at the 50th percentile on a
standardized test after regular group instruction would score at the 98th percentile if
personalized tutoring replaced group instruction.
Comparing and contrasting CPD and JPD
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Characteristics CPD JPD
Type Presentations and ‘talk and discuss” mode. 40-60 teachers from random backgrounds not always linked to alliances or partnerships
2 teachers from each of 7 alliance schools undertake an action-learning project to develop and research through lesson study
Duration 1 day event 1 introductory day, regular meetings e.g.4 twilight sessions, classroom observations and time to plan and review
Delivery Expert presenters from LA, HEI or commercial provider present knowledge and provide resources.
2 expert teachers facilitate programme and provide coaching. A Lesson study approach is adopted to apply and refine the approach.Teachers work in groups to review outcomes of observations.Successful strategies are identified, refined and agreed
Outcomes Perhaps a presentation or summary at a staff meeting or school based CPD event when materials are shared.
Findings are embedded into a school strategy and the learning process is adapted as the means of implementation
Impact and implications for practice
Uncertain and tentative.
Uncertain cost-effectiveness
Potential to have a direct bearing on school policies and strategiesHigh credibility and likelihood of acceptance.
(NCTL 2014)
“Lesson Study is a breathtakingly simple and common sense way of developing
teachers’ practice knowledge: i.e. teachers’ knowledge of how best to teach X to
pupils like Y. In a lesson study, a group of teachers work together to plan, deliver and
analyse a series of ‘research lessons’ or ‘study lessons’ devised to improve the way
they teach something or the way particular learners learn something. They record
what they discover or develop and pass this knowledge on to others by inviting
people to watch them demonstrate the approach in a public research lesson – or by
writing it up and publishing it online.
Pete Dudley www.teacherdevelopmenttrust.org/lessonstudy/
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4. The Leadership of Learning
Southworth (2004) defines three of the elements in the following terms:
Modelling
Modelling is concerned with the power of example. Teachers and headteachers believe in setting an example because they know this influences pupils and colleagues alike. Research shows that teachers watch their leaders closely. And teachers watch what their leaders do in order to check if leaders’ actions are consistent over time and to test whether leaders do as they say. Teachers do not follow leaders who cannot ‘walk the talk’.
Monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring includes analysing and acting on pupil progress and outcome data (e.g. assessment and test scores, evaluation data, school performance trends, parental opinion surveys, pupil attendance data, pupil interview information). Leadership is stronger and more effective when it is informed by data on pupils’ learning, progress and achievements as will as by direct knowledge of all teaching practices and classroom dynamics. The outcomes of monitoring need to be synthesised and evaluated against the school’s planning in order to inform judgements and identify future priorities.
Dialogue
Dialogue in this context is about creating opportunities for teachers to talk with their colleagues about learning and teaching. The kinds of dialogues that influence what happens in classrooms are focused on learning and teaching. Leaders create the circumstances to meet with colleagues and discuss pedagogy and pupil learning.
Coaching
Monitoring
ModellingDialogue
Review
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Coaching and mentoring
(See above)
Review
Purpose and outcomes
Evidence and data
Review and judgements
Consideration of alternatives
Implementation strategy
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5. Securing improvement by preventing failure and marginal gains
Predict and prevent is essentially the same as ‘prevention is better than cure’
– it involves moving the culture of a team or department from reaction to
anticipation and intervention, crucially the willingness to intervene. There are
numerous examples of this approach from everyday life – the best way to
avoid a heart attack is to stop smoking, not to invest in more cardiac
surgeons, the most effective way to maintain your car’s efficiency is to have it
regularly serviced.
The ‘Checklist Manifesto’ is a book by Atul Gawande, a surgeon who was
concerned that so many patients seemed to suffer serious complications or
die unexpectedly in the days after their operation. His analysis led to the
conclusion that many of these problems were caused by operating staff failing
to follow basic procedures. Gawande developed a 19-point checklist to be
read out before and during each operation to ensure that all of the simple, but
essential procedures were followed. The outcome was a marked decrease
(30%) in the number of patients becoming seriously ill or dying after surgery.
In his book Gawande makes the distinction between errors of ignorance
(mistakes we make because we don’t know enough), and errors of ineptitude
(mistakes we made because we don’t make proper use of what we know).
Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these
errors, and he shows how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so
incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually
inevitable: it’s just too easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step,
or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment,
to fail to plan properly for every eventuality. This is exactly the point about
effective management, however inspirational the leadership of a surgeon
hands must be washed and swabs counted!
The best way to close the gap is to prevent children failing and that means
actively challenging poor and inappropriate performance and that in turn
means identifying, defining and embedding appropriate performance. While
there are a range of strategies and techniques that can help to manage the
problem of variation it is important that such interventions are reinforced and
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corroborated by a culture of prevention – in other words it is not just what we
do, it is the way that things are done.
The theory of Marginal Learning Gains is inspired by the philosophy that
underpinned the extraordinary success of Team GB Cycling at the Beijing and
London Olympics and of the Team Sky Pro Cycling Team at the 2012 Tour de
France. When Sir Dave Brailsford became performance director of British
Cycling, he set about breaking down the objective of winning races into its
component parts. The philosophy is simple: focus on doing a number of few
small things really well. Once you do this, aggregating the gains you make will
become part of a bigger impact on learning.
The doctrine of marginal gains is all about small incremental improvements in
any process adding up to a significant improvement when they are all added
together. It is perhaps most easy to understand by considering the approach
of Sir Dave Brailsford. Brailsford believed that if it was possible to make a 1%
improvement in a whole host of areas, the cumulative gains would end up
being hugely significant.
He was on the look-out for all the weaknesses in the team's assumptions, all
the latent problems, so he could improve on each of them.
By experimenting in a wind tunnel, he noted that the bike was not
sufficiently aerodynamic.
By analysing the mechanics area in the team truck, he discovered that
dust was accumulating on the floor, undermining bike maintenance. So
he had the floor painted pristine white, in order to spot any impurities.
The team started to use antibacterial hand gel to cut down on
infections.
When he became general manager of Team Sky, he redesigned the
team bus to improve comfort and recuperation.
They started to probe deeper into untested assumptions, such as the
dynamic relationship between the intensity of the warm-down and
speed of recovery.
6. Collaboration
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There is evidence that the process of change is more resilient and improvement more sustainable when school collaborate and learn from other schools. Schools that sustain improvement are usually well networked and have a good structure of internal support.
While such schools may be considered to be leading the way for others to follow, the reciprocal nature of the relationship and the opportunities for schools to innovate together means there is added value in both directions from these forms of collaboration. (Leithwood et al 2010: 238)
David Hargreaves (2011:17) provides a powerful and graphic example of the
potential of collaboration by comparing two centres of innovation in the information
science industries – Silicon Valley and Route 128 near Boston quoting Saxenian
(1994) Hargreaves demonstrates the differences between the two centres. Route
128:
. . . is based on independent firms that internalise a wide range of productive activities. Practices of secrecy and corporate loyalty govern relations between firms and their customers, suppliers and competitors, reinforcing a regional culture that encourages stability and self-reliance. Corporate hierarchies ensure that authority remains centralised and information tends to flow vertically. The boundaries between and within firms and between firms and local institutions thus remain... distinct in this independent firm-based system (Saxenian, 1994: 3).
Silicon Valley, by contrast, works by being:
. . . a regional network-based industrial system that promotes collective learning and flexible adjustment among specialist producers of a complex of related technologies. The region’s dense social networks and open labour markets encourage experimentation and entrepreneurship. Companies compete intensely while at the same time learning from one another about changing markets and technologies through informal communication and collaborative practices; and loosely linked team structures encourage horizontal communication among firm divisions and with outside suppliers and customers. The functional boundaries within firms are porous in a network system, as are the boundaries between firms themselves and between firms and local institutions such as trade associations and universities. (Saxenian, 1994: 2)
The differences between Silicon Valley and Route 128 are a graphic illustration of
one of the most powerful ways of understanding the differences between autonomy
and collaboration – the concept of bonding and bridging social capital. Successful
teams, schools, families, clans – in fact almost any sort of human engagement need
to bond. At the same time, in varying degrees according to context, they also need to
bridge. Route 128 companies are not as successful as Silicon Valley for the simple
reason that they are more disposed to bonding than bridging.
Bonding - Autonomy Bridging - Interdependency
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Inward looking
Potentially exclusive
Self-reinforcing and legitimating
Homogeneous
Route 128
Outward looking
Inclusive
Pluralist and consensual
Heterogeneous
Silicon Valley
In very practical terms it seems reasonable to argue for the following potential
benefits of collaboration between schools:
1. Standards are likely to rise as the result of the dissemination of best practice
across schools and between schools – ‘closing the gap’ is more achievable
through collaboration and the ‘deprivatisation’ of successful practice.
2. There is the potential for significant economies of scale in economic terms –
notably in terms of learning resources and materials.
3. Shared CPD has the potential to enhance consistent practice and embed
improvement and cross-fertilise good ideas and the best practice.
4. Strategic planning is more likely to be effective through collaborative
governance.
5. Integration across phases and primary-secondary transfer is likely to enhance
the learning experience of pupils through integrated and collective
approaches.
6. Intervention to support pupils would be more effective with consistent record
keeping, monitoring and use of data.
7. Deployment of staff could be more flexible and effective.
8. The potential for successful collaboration with other agencies would be
significantly enhanced.
(Robins D and West-Burnham J 2011 Leadership for Collaboration SELT)
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Reviewing strategic leadership
Current status Action required
Articulate values and
purpose, set direction
Ensure achievement,
progress and consistency
Build trust and high quality relationships
Reshape the conditions for teaching and learning, enhance the quality of teaching and learning
Develop and sustain a high performance culture
Monitor, review and evaluate performance against agreed outcomes
Build collaboration internally
Build strong relationships outside the school community.
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