Harvard Graduate School of Education - Leadership: an Evolving Vision 2007

Here’s my process group who’ve been meeting every evening to review the day’s lectures.

It’s been a privelege to work with such a great group of people.

They are:

 Back row - from the left: Elaine Marshall, Melbourne, Australia; Paddy Mandigo, Tennessee; Lynette Tannis, New Jersey; Steve Lafon; Tennessee; Ruth Vail, Dallas, Texas; Mary Kearney, Chicago; Barbara Burnett Groves, Massachusetts - our leader.

Front Row  -  Robert Drach, New York; Celli Cerra, Miami; Harriet Sklar, New York, Don Ledingham, Scotland.

Yesterday I moved very definitely into my “stretch zone” when I volunteered, in front of over 140 delegates, to participate in a role-play situation with Barry Jentz.

Barry asked me to engage in one of those “difficult conversations” we sometimes have to conduct as leaders. The scenario, in brief, was that I, as the leader, had to share with Barry, the new teacher to the school, that I was unhappy about his conduct in a recent staff meeting.

At the end of the role-play I thought I had done a fairly good job in that I was “cool, calm and collected” and I had also managed to give Barry the bad news.

However I was making these conclusions based on my reflexive thinking i.e. I gave Barry the information I had to share with him BUT I conducted the conversation in a “closed” manner.

With some input from Barry I was able to see that I need to move to a much higher level of engagement and shift my thinking from this reflexive mode to the more open, reflective mode where one is entering into a two way, problem-solving approach.

This reflective mode has far more intellectual rigour and also it is something we ask the people around us to engage in regularly so if we are asking them to do this we must show that we, as leaders, are ready and able to engage in this too.

A reflective skill set is about giving good data i.e. sharing accurate information AND listening. The outcome of this is that we can decrease the amount of defensiveness from the person with whom we are speaking which in turn increases the openness to change. This in turn leads to more opportunities to improve performance.

I found yesterday that, as Jentz says,

“Any information that helps improve your performance will make you sting inside.” 

However I can now see that

“A Reflective Mind is a Learning Mind.”

A challenging day!

Today one of the delegates described this summer school as a united nations of school principals and it certainly fees like that with delegates from many countries across the globe as well as the United States. Understandably the audience is predominantly American as are the speakers. Their work is based on some of the excellent research being undertaken in this country. Despite this, many of the issues raised so far have proven to be common across the world. This has been a unifying factor realising that it doesn’t matter whether you are Head teacher of a small primary school in Scotland, Principal of a large international school in India or Principal of an American high school of 4000 pupils we all face the same leadership challenges. However at times for the international delegates where some difficulties have arisen is in understanding the American school system and the culture within which American schools operate. For some international delegates there has been a feeling that not enough cognisance has been taken of the fact that we may not all have a complete understanding of the American system.

With this in mind I was delighted yesterday afternoon when we went into our discussion groups (mine has 4 international delegates out of 11) and our group leader, Marilynne Smith Quarco a School Principal from Massachusetts acknowledged the international delegates and raised the issue that we may not fully understand some of the issues raised with out having greater information on American school systems. She had handouts for us all on specific American issues and we spent some time discussing these. She then invited the international delegates (1 Scot, 1 Indian and 2 Australians) to share something of the education systems in our countries, the cultures within which we operate and the major issues we are facing.

By doing so we were better able as a group to understand each other, to get a greater understanding of each others perspectives and to look at education in a truly international context. From this discussion came a greater openness and realisation that we can all learn from each other and can all make significant contributions to educational debate. Marilynne truly made us feel valued and gave us all that sense of belonging Norman Kunc spoke of on Saturday.

In the course of Norman Kunc’s thought provoking presentation about Inclusive Education, he described a situation, which is all too familiar, both in school and, in society as a whole.
Often, educators, at all levels, can find themselves, when working with disabled people, involved in providing an “unaccepted attack of help.” This is where the support that someone is offering to a disabled person is very different to that which is actually required – and all because no one has given the disabled person the opportunity to actually outline and detail the help they need.

The intention in a situation like this is well meaning. However people without a disability see things through their lack of disability and, as such, they do not always see things accurately. As Norman, a disabled person himself outlined, very often the disabled person does not require or indeed want the help, which is forced upon them.
We, as educators, need to be mindful of this and take account of it when engaging with disabled pupils in our schools. Such imposed, unnecessary help can actually do more harm than good in that it can inhibit the development of independence in a young person. Also it can be detrimental in allowing them to exist in as inclusive an environment as possible i.e. they can be made to feel unnecessarily different due to input which does nothing more than “single them out.” This can lead to stigma being attached to the disabled person and this goes against all we are trying to create in our schools in terms of inclusion for all pupils.
Norman Kunc feels that it is, more often than not, fairly straightforward, in avoiding such unacceptable attacks of help. The person who has the most relevant and accurate information about a child, his/her disability and the help he/she does actually require is the child themselves and/or their family. We need to ask them about the appropriate help and support that is required. Yes, other agencies can and should be involved but the child and their family should be central to the process wherever possible.
Kunc issues a warning in that, as practitioners we should never see expertise in working with disabled pupils and their families as giving us the power to decide upon the help they require. He says that this leads to generalisation and it often actually leads to the practitioner taking over and this undermines a child’s authority.   We should always “trust the experience over the expertise.” It is only the experience in working with each and every individual youngster and their family that then gives us the information required to make available the correct support for that person.
Kunc gives a very interesting example of approach in the “October Rule.” If a child enters school at the start of the session discussions regarding a support / help package should not take place until October. The reason for this is that the period between August and October should be used as a time of evaluation where a pupil and their family are able to assess the actual support they are going to need – an interesting consideration!
Kunc is of the view that we live in a society which values perfection and that this must change. I share his thinking here. Life is supposed to be messy and ambiguous and we, as practitioners, need to continue to try and assist all pupils, disabled or not, in finding those magical moments of learning where we all achieve our potential.
In Scotland, recent developments in terms of meeting the needs of all, are very encouraging. With the introduction of the Additional Support for Learning Act, each and every child is at the centre of all discussions about their needs and any additional help they may require. I emphasise here again the need to support and help every child - every child may, at some time in their development, require some additional support and the new Act allows us to take account of this and the wide and varied needs that may be involved here. This for me is what we mean by a real, inclusive approach to education!
 

When I learned that I was going out to Harvard with five female colleagues I have to admit to some trepidation:

• What would my wife say?
• Would I feel out on a limb?
• Would they drive me nuts?

Well my experience so far - Day 5 - has been exceptional.  What a great group of people they are but perhaps more importantly I think I have gained an insight into what it is to “be one the girls”.

So what’s different from being “one of the boys”?

That’s actually more difficult to answer than you might think but there is definitely something.  The obvious answer would be to say that they are more caring, consensual and supportive and I suppose that these are characteristics that I have observed. However, it’s more subtle than that - and I think it’s got something to do with the way that they carry out conversations.

I know I shouldn’t generalise from my experience but I think they listen and want to hear from each other - rather than just always wanting to contribute or push their own ideas.  I wonder if male conversations aren’t just a little bit more ‘competitive’ i.e. I listen and then I want to top it by recounting my experience or idea.  The women don’t seem to work that way the conversations are all the more enjoyable and possibly productive for that. Now I know my presence is corrupting that true “girls” environment but at least I’ve been given an insight into a very different world.  Thanks Girls.

Oh and my wife - well I think I now understand why she likes a night out with the girls - she joins me out here on Thursday - so I’m looking forward to her meeting my “girls”

I thought I had a good handle on Inclusive Education - how wrong could I have been?!

Norman Kunc is a formidable personality who negotiated his own way into mainstream education at the age of the 13 having been educationally segregated from birth due to cerebral palsy.

My colleagues will focus on other aspects of his presentation but I thought I ‘d concentrate on how inclusive education relates to school culture for all.

Norman’s main premise is that the debate is not around the principle of inclusion - it’s about where that “line of inclusion” is - “we can take this child but we can’t take that child.” 

“But if there is a line you’d expect it to be the same everywhere” the reality is that this line varies hugely from school to school. 

 So Norman posed the $64,000 question

“Why do schools vary so much in the way in which they deal with variation?”

For Norman Kunc the answer is simple - Inclusion is about school culture “a school has to commit to all of it’s kids”

He wasn’t talking here about “benevolence” or “social kindness” but about a proactive commitment to promote a sense of belonging - for all children. Some schools have ot some don’t.

He used Maslow’s hierarchy to explore the relationship between self esteem  and belonging  i.e. we can only experience self esteem if we belong. Yet Norman Kunc would argue that our society reverses this by valuing self esteem - which relates to mastery and in turn such things as attainment - above belonging.  The extent to which we therefore feel a sense of belonging is therefore conditional upon how well we display mastery over the things which society values - his paper sets out more clearly

I was really taken by Norman’s assertion that we often replace belonging with allegiance - which is usually held together by focussing upon a common enemy - all to often leaders at all levels create a common enemy to build allegance but not belonging “it’s us against them” - whoever “they” might be.

So how do you go about build  a sense of belonging in your school? - for Norman Kunc you do it by asking yourself two questions:

Where does belonging get eroded in my school? and

What can I do about it?

For me it keeps coming back to unconditional positive regard - for every member of our school communities - so easy to say so difficult to achieve.

Last point - but as a consequence of this presentation I feel I need to come off the fence about one thing which I believe destroys a sense of belonging in many schools - and that’s setting or ability grouping - which we do to promote (without any evidence) academic attainment - i.e. valuing mastery over belonging.