Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

Have just finished two incredibly inspirational SQH taught days at Moray House. The focus was our Unit 3 Comparative Study(CS). We have to take some facet of leadership and management and compare our school situation with that of another organisation, either a business, public body, school from a different sector or not-for-profit organisation. The aim being to highlight similarities and differences and see what we can learn from one another.

We had the privilege of listening to Joan Stead, senior research fellow at Moray House who gave us a fascinating insight into the ‘messy’ world of
qualitative research. Whereas
quantitative research by its nature is generally easily measured, recorded and analysed, the world of qualitative research is a whole lot more ‘organic’, messy and less easily ‘boxed’, therefore tending generate data on a much smaller scale. Joan described having to battle against the mindset which dictates that anything which is not easily measured and cannot generate a large amount of data is not valid in the world of research. We have to ask what inference can we draw from the subtle nuances of semi-structured and unstructured interviews, as opposed to vast amounts of numerical data where the set of responses is known before the outset?

A quote Joan used that I think I’m going comandeer is, “Say a lot about a little rather than a little about a lot”, a great way to describe being focussed and aiming your sights on a smaller target rather than using a ’scattergun’ approach.

We had a fantastic input from Derek Walker, a director of
The Tree of Knowledge, who described the benefits to business of becoming involved in an SQH comparitor study and also gave some extremely useful tips on ’selling’ your research idea to a prospective partner. Derek was both animated and realistic in his description of the potential PR gains for businesses of becoming involved in an Education-Business partership as well as the possibility of a reciprocal study being set up in the future and how that may strengthen links between business and schools. It throws up many interesting questions.

The Value Creation Process is a kind of SWOT analysis which outlines Dangers, Opportunities, Credentials,Plan and Path and the Evolution of an idea, in this case a partnership, which the Tree of Knowledge and other businesses use widely. Derek encouraged us to open up a dialogue with our prospective CS partner about the dangers they saw in having an outsider come and do research in their organisation. In this way we could then go back with the opportunities or solutions to those dangers, thus removing the barriers to the collaboration taking place. I have taken note and will go to my potential CS partner armed and ready!

I am trying to reduce the scope of my initial idea, which was to compare change management in my school with a technologies business, such as a mobile phone company who, by their very nature, must continually change if they are to keep up with the technology that drives the business.

How is the management of change embedded in their processes and in the mindset of employees? How can teachers suffer from ‘change/initiative fatigue’ and other professions cope well? Is it a cultural, process or management issue or a combination of them all? These questions are far too big for my purposes so hopefully I can strip them down to something manageable. So many ideas so little time!