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

Roland Barth presented the final session of our Leadership Institute and I thought he managed to tie up many threads in his inspired presentation.

In the course of a three hour session he managed to elicit responses from the audience which enabled him to identify the most positive conditions under which we learn.  I’ll try to post later about the variety of presentation styles used in the course of the last ten days but Roland’s was a masterful display of someone who knows his business and knows how to engage an audience.

He started off by asking us to think of a time in our lives when we learned best.

The overwhelming features of our collective experiences were that we learn best:

1. when we take a risk; and
2. when there is a safety strap

Barth suggest that schools don’t take this approach - they play SAFE!!!

He argued that schools are information rich - but - experience poor.

He contrasted this with John Dewey’s assertion that:

We learn from our experience —if we reflect on our experience.

By collating all of the audiences reflctions upon situations when they learned best he separated them into idiosyncratic and generic conditions for learning.

The generic conditions for learning identified from the 150 people on our course were:

• Learn from mistakes
• Risk taking
• Urgency
• Self-reflction
• New experiences
• Emotional investment
• Support
• Fun/humour
• Curiosity
• Challenge
• Feeling respected
• Going into the unknown
• Given a reason for learning

He then asked us to think about how many of these conditions we meet in our schools - the answer was predictably few.

He summarised this by suggesting that learning in school can be:

Informative - (information)

or

Tranformative (changes you for ever)

He encouraged us to go for the GOLD standard which was -of course - the Transformative.

He slipped one little nugget in which I really liked but wonder how well it might go down in Scotland:

One district in the USA issued cards to all teachers and pupils which he described as a Permission to Learn card.

The card read as follows:

On one side : - this card entitles the holder to take one risk in their own learning

On the other side: - Today I took a risk - it didn’t go as well as I had planned but I learned that …………….?

The card does not give the holder the permission to place themselves or others at risk or danger.

Would it work in  Scotland?????

We were privileged to spend an hour with Kurt Fischer Ph. D. who is Charles Bigelow Professor of Human Development & Psychology and Director of the Mind, Brain, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Professor Fischer is exploring the inter-relationships between:

 Education—-Neuroscience—–Cognitive Science

He started out be exploding some of the myths which have built up around Neuroscience and learning.

“There is no such thing as someone who has a dominant side of their brain”

I was amazed to see people who had had one of the brain’s hemisphere’s removed by surgery and that contrary to all predictions for a “left brain” child he had become skilled at drawing.

Professor Fischer’s goal is to put cognitive science, biology and education together to enable optimal learning to take place.

The following video extracts show Prof. Fischer explaining this in more detail: (you will need to download Real Player to access all the videos)

Here Prof. Fischer provides an overview of this work, describing growth spurts in brain and cognitive development that occur within the same age periods during the school years.

Here he elaborates on measuring the growth in brain activity from childhood through early adulthood. He describes how EEG (electroencephalogram) techniques can be used to detect developmental patterns in brain connections.

In this clip, Kurt Fischer uses the example of children’s social role understanding to illustrate how simple representations are reorganized into more complex representations and then into abstract concepts. These new skills that emerge in children’s best performance are closely associated with growth spurts of brain activity. (view text)

Fischer’s point is that we suffer from a pervasive mataphor in our culture for learning and teaching which sees knowledge and ideas as objects  which can be exchanged, “I gave the idea to Sally” and the brain as a container “I can’t get this idea out of my mind”

Professor Fischer’s point is that we need active involvement for learning to take place.

He referred to the PLASTICITY of the brain - “it changes based on active experience” - see this clip where he explores how people are more than just their brains.

“There’s a misconception that we have to get rid of, a prevalent misconception in the English language and culture in general, that we are brains – that we learn with our brains as opposed to being people who have brains that help us learn.  We are not brains disembodied in the bucket sitting in the corner. And likewise, we don’t learn by having information stuck into our brains.

So by one image, I have a port up here on my brain – see that little mark right here on my forehead – and that’s where I plug in every morning, and the computer tells me the knowledge for today.

Well, it doesn’t work that way. We have to learn more actively than that.
So it is not true that you can plug the world into the brain and thereby know everything. Instead, knowledge has to built.”

Kurt Fischer

For me this linked very well with what Richard Elmore had been syaing about the importance of the “instructional task” which must challenge and involve the learner.

This will be a key area of research for me over the coming months - see -http://www.imbes.org/ - for more information

One of the things whch struck me in Professor Richard Elmore’s presentation today was his recurring use of the term “instructional practice”.

I know teachers in Scotland would be horrified by such a term - “we are not technicians” would be their immediate response. The other difficulty in the term is its association with the verb to “instruct “- to tell/direct, which for many teacher smacks of didactic and authoritarian methodologies.- “instructions are something that you get when you board a plane”

Yet one of the themes which have jumped out for me over the duration of the course has been the need to separate the classroom practice from the person if we are going to be able to have a true dialogue about the quality of that practice.

The problem with the word teaching is that is is associated with the noun - teacher, i.e. if you comment on my “teaching” you are commenting upon me as a person.

If we take heed of Elmore’s words there is an undeniable need to clarify a body of knowledge and skills associated with teaching - perhaps by using the concept of instructional practice it might be possible to step back from evaluation of the person - to an evaluation of the practice -which is surely where we want to be?

Professor Richard Elmore claims that “education is a profession without a practice”.

He justifies his assertion through reference to an absence of a clear body of knowledge and a clear body of practice.

For Elmore the weakness of the profession is the mistaken notion that:

autonomy = professionalism

Yet such a relationship is essentially anti-professional - “Within a true profession an individual does not have autonomy over it’s body of knowledge and it’s practice” - which would appear to be the case for education. Yet other professions such as medicine, law, dentistry or accountancy have a body of practice and knowledge, which must be learned, mastered and implemented within agreed and non-negotiable norms.

Professor Elmore proposes that there is no unified agreement on what constitutes high performance/high quality instructional practice. Such a situation results in “the deep and central pathology” which afflicts education i.e. we change “readily and promiscuously in response to the environment”. Yet surgeons don’t change the way they carry out a heart bypass operation because the government has changed - so why do we in education change our practice everytime we face a shift in political administration - the differnce is that surgeons’ practice changes in response to research - wheras the majority of teachers are essentially divorced from research and are quite happy to support such an assertion..

Elmore went on to call for the profession to begin to take control over its practice and knowledge. The however, is that IF we were to agree a body of practice and knowledge then, just as with other professions, there would have to be an expectation that there would be less varation in practice from one classroom to another.

The reality, however, is that there is enormous variation from one classroom to another. In fact research proves that the major factor in determining pupil success is the difference between the teachers. For example, if a pupil has one teacher who has poor instructional skills - the pupil will take over 3 years to recover; of the same pupil has two consecutive years of being taught by a teacher with poor instructional skills they will take 5 years to recover; and if they have three consecutive years they will never recover.

So how do Head Teachers currently address such problems?:

They either move teachers around to ensure that pupils don’t get two consecutive years of poor instruction; or

they attempt - all to rarely - to remove such teachers from the system;

Elmore expanded upon these when he suggested there were only three ways to improve the quality:

1. Change the role of the student;
2. Raise complexity of content through more challenging instructional tasks; or
3. Increase the knowledge and skills of the teachers; this would necessitate

*you cannot do one without the other

I’m certainly taken by these ideas, particularly the notion of establishing unambiguous, consistent, shared and rigorously upheld norms of instructional practice which permeate a school and an educational system.

Inspirational!

This will be the first of three posts which will explore the themes emerging from the Institute over the last 7 days.

The groupings emerged in the course of an exercise with our process group: 

Please feel free to leave comments and make suggestions for amendements or additions

INSTRUCTIONAL FOCUS
Promoting academic proficiency should be our central goal
Improve instructional tasks
Purposeful Observation - makes a difference
Teaching matters!
Inspect what you expect
Command presence – be where the game’s happening
Feedback – tell them how their doing
What does engagement look like?
Keep an instructional focus
Reduce the variance in the quality of the instructional process
Set clear and unambiguous proficiency targets for learners
The teacher makes the difference
Identify a body of knowledge about instructional practice
Increase the knowledge skills of teachers
Believe that teachers can learn
Change the role of the student
Raise the content – more complex tasks

THE HURT OF CHANGE
Inner work - what’s going on inside people’s heads?
“Cherished Theories” – reluctant to let go
“Circle the Wagons” – them against us
Remember that allegiance fills the a void of belonging
We all have an emotional attachment to practice
Emotional response to change
Displacing responsibility to others
“That’s not my swing”
Experiencing loss in the process of change
Limited through the presumption of competence
Conflict has to do with underlying change
It’s human nature to resist change
Hurt people hurt people
Reflective listening – not reflexive
Honesty – are we prepared to have the uncomfortable conversations?
Always proceed with valid data
Believe that teachers can get smart
Separate a teacher’s practice/professional behaviour from the person

BELONGING
Have high expectations – for all
Giving children a hand up – not a hand out
Advocate for children
There is no such thing as potential
Kids can get smart
Promoting tenacious engagement
Be aware of unwitting segregation
Our mantra must be “Think you can”
“Believe that it is possible”
Promote a confidence to learn
Interrupting children who are on the journey to failure
 Everyone must say “These are MY children”
Commit to children
Avoid symbiotic dependency
Identify factors that erode belonging in school
Ability groupings don’t work

ADAPTIVE/CULTURAL LEADERSHIP
Develop a sense of common purpose
Move the school culture through critical mass
Concentrate on adaptive (cultural) challenges
Trust – comes only comes through consistency between action and practice
Create and sustain norms of behaviour
Manage your time to create space for our real business
Open source leadership – encourage contribution
Transparency  - don’t hide behind supposed confidentiality
Underpin your actions through - rigor, relationships, relevance
Seek out and use valid data
Authenticity – be who you who say you are?
Work “on” the system – don’t be “in” the system

THE LEADER’S LEARNING
Leaders must be prepared to learn from the ‘”sting” of negative feedback
Confidence – take risks  and learn
Be flexible with the leadership styles you adopt
Express a comfort with confusion
Challenge the concept of presumed competence
We can learn the most from those who are moving from “low performing” to “high performing”
Don’t expect others to go where you won’t go
Technical duties – master and deliver
Demonstrate a commitment to the instructional process above all else
Expect and support administrator proficiency
Get things done through people

ARE YOU MAKING AN IMPACT?
Social return on investment – what’s in it for society?
Effective effort – are you focussed on the right things?
Always be clear about the impact of your actions
Can you demonstrate impact in concrete ways?
Face up to uncomfortable truths if actions are not resulting in improvements

BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY
Present “yesable” propositions
Build a coherent organisation
Be flexible with all but belonging and instructional focus
Be willing to negotiate
Build a consensus
Promote collective responsibility
Build a sustainable community, which extends beyond your presence
Develop partnerships
There can be no such thing as professional autonomy
Be aware that you inherit from others and leave a legacy to other leaders
Work to prevent atomised classrooms

DEVELOPING THE TEACHING PROCESS
 “Teaching without content – is not teaching”
Expect and support adult proficiency
Encourage people to reach into their “stretch zone”
Challenge through choice
Education must define and take control of its practice
Focus on improvement – not change
Create a sense of urgency
Develop networks of practice
Support teacher collaboration

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.

Once upon a time a high heid yin from East Lothian was called upon to accompany five beautiful, highly intelligent, vivacious, drop dead gorgeous, head teachers on their journey to excellence. Despite his small goods, Don chose to accept this mission and he began to impart his passion and wisdom surrounding the mysterious world of blogging at Glasgow airport departure lounge. To ensure a sense of belonging, Don issued top of the range celtic toories to establish open source leadership (WHIT?).

His relentless nagging (hold on to that - write it down, write it down!) of these five beautiful, highly intelligent, vivacious, drop dead gorgeous, head teachers on their journey to excellence, ensured that they blogged and reflected and blogged and reflected and blogged and reflected and blogged so much that they got blogged off!

Don is a net worker par excellence. During a visit down under to the Charles, Don’s ingenious non verbal communication skills (sign language) impressed the international audience so much that they have been used frequently in all lectures. In addition his entrepreneurial skills have funded his remaining stay in the Big Apple. (Has he mentioned Broadway!?).  Who else could have been in charge of the kitty?
Don peerie goods introduced the five beautiful, highly intelligent, vivacious, drop dead gorgeous, head teachers on their journey to excellence to raspberry martinis, purple rain, Fred and Gingers and the world of fine dining – they did draw the line at sushi!
Upon reflection as the five beautiful, highly intelligent, vivacious, drop dead gorgeous, head teachers on their journey to excellence neared the end of their journey they realised that they had learned the importance of invitational/ distributed/ adaptive/ collaborative/ reflective/ open source/ instructional/ value added/ blogging leadership and the impact this will have on their return.

Don’s girls would like to say thank you for this CPD experience.

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!!!!!   OOPS WATCH THIS BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

link

Jim Honan led this morning’s session on “Change That Leads to Improvement”.

He explored how there is growing interest in the social return we gain from the investment we make in the education system.

The model he shared was the “Program Logic Model” derived from the Kellog Foundation.

The model goes as follows:

1. Resources —-2. Activities—-3. Outputs—-4. Outcomes—-5. Impact

I was particularly interested in stages 3, 4 and 5.

Outputs are the descriptive statistics, e.g. % attendance; courses run; number of participants; hours spent on an activity.

Outcomes describe what changed, e.g. attainment went up from x% to y%; attendance decreased; bullying incidents went up.

Impact is where we make some judgement about how successful our original vision might have been - the “so what question”

I recall a very interesting meeting I had with Rick Segal - a Canadian Venture Capitalist - back in October, where he had interrogated me by constantly drilling into the outcomes and impact of my practice in a very uncomfortable manner.

It was whilst listening to Jim Honan that I was struck by the possibility of reframing how we consider impact and how we might better link actions and measures of success.

The typical planning  process in Scottish education goes something like this:

1. AIM  e.g. Improve the health of young people 

2. ACTION  2 hours of weekly PE

3. MEASURE Provide 2 hours of PE each week

The problem with this approach is that our measures - which are derived from the action - can be disconnected from the aim, i.e. PE does not necessarily mean that health is improved - even if it’s high quality PE. The other problem associated with this example is that the measure is an output not an outcome

If I was funder and was putting money into the system to fulfil my aim, i.e. to improve health - then being told that all kids were now doing 2 hours of PE each week would not convince me that I’m getting a good social return on my investment.

So what if we considered an alternative relationship between these three factors?

1. Aim - Improve health

3. Measure - Children can run for 12 minutes without stopping

2. Action - Design and implement programmes which will improve children’s CV fitness.

By selecting a much more specific measure and linking it with the aim - prior to deciding upon what the action might be - we come up with a potentially more powerful change model which is very much directed towards IMPACT.

If you want to try this challenge have go at providing me with an aim, measure and action for making children more responsible citizens - remember your measure must be able to answer the funders’ “so what” question about any actions you take, i.e. can you demonstrate impact (not just an output)

“Managers are paid to talk not to do” - sounds like an unlikely combination but that’s what Malachi Pancoast reckons to be the role of school leaders.

He took this even further when he suggested that our aim should be to become superfluous to the operation.

It struck me listening to this that there are many out there who might already that to be the case!!! - but then it that might be due to us not managing our workload effectively.

The Scottish work ethic can sometimes become a liability - how hard we work and the number of hours we put in can sometimes appear to be a series of medals we metaphorically wear on our chests.  Just imagine how a group of Head Teachers would react to a colleague who said “I don’t do any work at home at nights or the weekend and I leave work every night at 5.00pm” - I think I can say that without exception that we would make an immediate judgement about that person’s  commitment and effectiveness. So hard work becomes a prerequisite for Headship/Principalship. 

The point I’m driving at here is that we (educational leaders) are stakeholders in the orthodoxy that long hours and effectiveness are inextricably connected.

The key stage for us before seeking to implement some of the strategies which Malachi outlined in the course of his presentation is to recognise that it is possible to be effective without having to “work” as hard. 

I was struck by his concluding comment:

“Our job is to produce results - not to make friends”

I believe that so much of the “hard work” we engage in is to do with “impressing others” and to be valued for being last out of the car park!

One of the features of American education about which I have been suprised in the number of High School Principals who started their management careers in Elementary (Primary) schools.

One of the reasons that I’m so surprised is that the system here is so performance measurement oriented - in other words if something doesn’t improve the numbers it won’t be continued.  Yet there is no apparent difference in the performance of schools led by leaders who have only worked in the High School setting and those who are led by leaders who were first in the Elementary setting.

So where does that leave us in Scotland?

Well is doesn’t happen! - so why not? One of the reasons often given is that “Primary schools are so different from Secondary (High) schools “the examination system, the timetable,  pupil behaviour, structure of departments, and often the difference in the number of pupils “- yet one could argue that such elements are all at the techinical end of the spectrum - they can be learned.

What’s been reinforced to me here is that the big management issues - i.e. people and culture are completely the same between primary and secondary.

When I moved from being a High School Principal to being Head of Education - no one batted an eyelid - yet no one could have suggested that I had all the technical knowledge necessary for me to do the job. The reality is that I had developed a set of transferable leadership and management skills  which allowed me to take up my post and the rest I’ve had to learn on the job.

So why couldn’t an outstanding Primary Head Teacher be considered for a position as Head Teacher of a secondary school - especially when we are experiencing such a shortage of high quality candidates for such posts.

As the size issue - that would mean that any Head Teacher of a small secondary school could never be considered for the post of Head Teacher of a large secondary school - which would never happen.

I’d like to explore this further when I get home - no doubt teachers’ unions might have issues and parents might have concerns but I don’t think either are insurmountable - perhaps the greatest shift would have to come in the in the minds of people like me.

Mind you - if we did go  for such a shift, the direction of travel would have to be both ways.

Would I do it?  -  you betcha!!!