Learning about Learning

I was lucky enough to take part in something called CPD challenge run by Con Morris  at LTS on Thursday of last week.  It was an opportunity to try out software applications to help improve the way we work. 

Amongst others I had a go at using Prezi, a dynamic, non-linear presentation tool.  Fantastic!  My first attempt is here, don’t laugh…  I also had a go using CPD Reflect which is essentially a reflective CPD journal but has much more to it than I can possibly describe here.  Check it out on the link, it could prove to be very useful to schools, in making the PRD process more reflective. 

I also made a pledge to start writing my blog again, which is good timing as I am returning to school in August after a year at LTS working in the assessment and recognising achievement teams.  I can’t wait to get my teeth into school life again, although I have had a really interesting year and have learned a great deal during my time with LTS.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend Clackmannanshire Council’s Curriculum for Excellence conference in Stirling yesterday.   Guest speaker was Philip Cam from University of New South Wales.  He talked about philosophical inquiry as a basis for developing communities of inquiry in schools(from a very young age). 

One of the workshops I attended was from Jeremy Morris of Monifieth High School.  He was talking about how they, as a school, had begun to get to grips with CfE.  In short, they had organised their S1 programme around different ‘themes’ which ran for a few weeks at a time.  The ‘core’ was individual, local, national, and global Citizenship and each of the themes related to some aspect of the core(eg Africa, Languages fortnight, health promotion, “Eurofieth”-see website, etc).   Departments working together to deliver agreed outcomes over the course of the school session.

What struck me most was not the ‘what’, the content, but how they had gone about the process.  They had a very large ‘year planner’ prominently displayed in the staffroom (a focal point for much discussion by all accounts!), which could be modified and added to, to reflect changing or shifting priorities, as well as taking all principal teachers out of school for a planning session, to look at the experiences and outcomes and discuss how together they could create a coherent programme.

What came through above all else was that they had engaged staff across the school in professional discussion, dialogue and negotiation which had gone a long way to breaking the subject barriers that can be all too evident in secondary schools.  They had also taken a managable ‘chunk’ of the school timetable to innovate with and will learn from this for future years as CfE develops in the school.  I thought it a very interesting example of a school beginning to experiment with possible models of CfE within its own context, but also in such a manner as to make the ’risks’ managable. 

inspirED is a collection of news and stories to inspire anyone interested in innovative approaches to teaching and learning.  There are some great articles, links and ideas.  Well worth a look.

I have taken the opportunity to be a part of the East Lothian secondary learning team with the hope of improving my classroom practice and learning from others.

First up, improving my learning ’success criteria’ in PSE lessons.  How will youngsters know when they have successfully achieved the aims of each lesson?  The idea is to generate clear success criteria for the main points of the lesson and share these at the beginning and review.

I am hoping to undertake an EEBL placement with the Mercy Corps in the next couple of months.  The focus will be producing a global citizenship CPD resource for teachers, as well as finding out more about the work the Mercy Corps does across the world.  We hope to have some time with a group of teachers from East Timor who are visiting the UK in May so I’m really excited about the prospect of taking part. 

I’ll be writing more when things are firmed up.

Unit 4 of the Scottish Qualification for Headship challenges us to compare our skills and competencies to the Standard for Headship in the context of our progress to date and identify areas of strength and areas for development backed up by appropriate evidence.  As a precursor to my unit 4 submission I’m going to use my blog to help that process along.  The reasoning is twofold, it allows further reflection on my part in relation to my progress towards meeting the Standard for Headship and it affords anyone who wishes, or who has perhaps worked with me, the opportunity to provide feedback on my claims.

The Standard for Headship is comprised of Professional Actions and 3 essential elements of practice:

1.  Strategic Vision, values and aims

2.  Knowledge and Understanding                    

3.  Personal qualities and interpersonal skills

In this post I will begin to deal with the Essential Elements. 

I have explored and discussed my educational values through my blog.  I believe this has helped shape my moral and ethical perspective in relation to education. Reading educational literature as documented on this site has also challenged my thinking, as has engaging with the views of staff members in school, students and ‘bloggers’.

Completing a critical self-evaluation as part of SQH unit 1 allowed me to communicate my vision for an effective school.  Undertaking the 360 degree review as part of SQH unit 1 provided further insight to my current practice, including my ability to articulate and embody my moral and ethical standpoint in relation to education.

My blog provides evidence of professional reflection and review of my own practice.  I have taken part in professional coaching sessions, covering personal development target-setting and values.

The ALPs programme has given me the opportunity to provide a rationale for practice and to be accountable for it, in relation to the way the programme operates and it goals.  On a daily basis I am accountable for the actions I take in relation to my dealings with young people and professionals.  The ALPs programme has also provided the opportunity to encourage critical reflection in others, including young people, as has my blog through comments and interactions with others.

Comlpeting Unit 2 of the SQH, including a school self-evaluation allowed me to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of school improvement.  Developing the S5 Social Education programme and monitoring and evaluating the ALPs programme and Pre-vocational educational programme allows me to employ strategies for improvement. (taking account of pupil voice, using attendance and behaviour statistics, taking account of stakeholder perceptions, recognising achievement)

To be continued at a later date.

I’ve tried to take my notes for Michael Fullan’s Leading in a Culture of Change and summarise them.  It’s still pretty rough and I’ll be trying to tidy it up in the next few days. The essential concepts have been put in bold. 

It has been very humbling to read a book like this and measure my own skills and qualities against it.  However, it is a fantastic aspirational tool and like many of the other books I have read so far as part of my SQH reading, one that I will regularly revisit.

Leading in a culture of change  

Moral purpose :

Authentic leaders display character

We have both egoistic and altruistic desires

Culture and core values central to an organisation

Understanding change

Successful leadership styles:

Authoritative - “come with me” enthusiastic, self-confident,optimistic 

Affiliative - “people come first”Democratic - “what do you think?”

Coaching - “try this”

Unsuccessful leadership styles with a negative impact on climate

Coercive - “do what I tell you” -resentment & resistance

Pacesetting “do as I do, now” - burnout & overwhelmed staff (I was particularly interested by this section) 

The goal is not to innovate the most

Appreciate the implementation dip

Listen to, and work with resisters

Reculturing - changing the way we do things around here

Leadership is by its nature complex  

Relationships

Seven essentials to developing relationships :

Setting clear standards

Expecting the best

Paying attention

Personalising recognition

Telling the story

Celebrating together

Setting the example 

Good leaders inspire by;

Selectively showing their weaknesses

Relying on intuition

Managing with tough empathy

Showing what is unique about themselves   

School capacity is the key to success:

Teachers knowledge, skills and dispositions

Professional community

Programme(curriculum) coherence

Appropriate technical resources

Headteacher leadership   

Every school needs a strong professional learning community

Emotional quotient/Emotional intelligence is vital.

Intrapersonal - self awareness

Interpersonal - empathy, social responsbility

Adaptability

Stress management

Mood - happiness, optimistic  

Build knowledge and capacity

Information is only valuable in a social context

Explicit knowledge - words and numbers that can be communicated in the fom of data and information

Tacit knowledge - skills, beliefs and understandings below the level of awareness.  It is highly personal

Coherence from complexity

We got wind of an excellent opportunity today for all schools and teachers in East Lothian.  It was from Learning and Teaching Scotland on the Scottish Continuing International Professional Development Programme (SCIPD).  It is for international exchange and visits for teachers.

More information here. 

I’ve just had a weekend off, completely, for the first time in a while.  Not even a cursory glance at the computer on Saturday and Sunday.  It was definitely needed.

Tonight I’ve just finished three out of four pre-course tasks for my SQH Unit 4 taught days at Peebles Hydro this week, Wednesday to Friday.  All that remains is my final formal presentation, on my learning to date with my school improvement project,  and my preparation for the programme review group meeting on Wednesday evening that I’ve agreed to be a part of.

I must admit this term has been an absolute marathon with everything that the SQH brings on top of the normal ‘everyday’ workload.  The great thing is that I have come through intact, just about!

I also have my swimathon on Sunday night, swimming 2.5km for Marie Curie Cancer research.  My training has faltered badly recently under the pressure of everything else, so I  think I might need the maximum 2 hours allowed to finish it!

Sleep required.

I had my first telephone coaching session today.  It was made available to the wider teaching population after depute heads and heads had the opportunity to take part, as far as I understand it.  I think it is going to be some of the best money I’ve never spent!  Taking the time to really explore important issues in relation to effectiveness at work and future possibilities I’m sure will be an invaluable piece of personal development.  Reflecting with immediate feedback, great stuff! 

I have six sessions over the next few weeks and we’ve set out a few markers on what I’m hoping to gain from the session.  The first is a ‘nuts and bolts’, operational target, improving my efficiency in dealing with the large amounts of information you are faced (bombarded?) with as a Pupil Support teacher.  To that end I’m meeting with Rob Jones, an information officer at ELC, this week. I’ll no doubt be blogging more about the sessions as the weeks go by.

I also had a great lesson with my S4 PSE class today.  We were discussing what a Curriculum for Excellence is and what it may mean for future generations of school children.  I asked the question, “What would happen if we abolished exams?” and sought feedback from the class.  Exams are obviously close to their hearts at this time so we had an interesting discussion.  Here is a selection of their responses.

Plus Points of abolishing external exams

Less stress for students

More prepared for working life (comment based on a change in curriculum structure)

Less time spent revising and ‘regurgitating’

Your teacher could assess you (This was seen as both positive and negative!)

Minus points

No evidence of qualifications or skills

Harder for employers, colleges and universities to select the ‘right’ people

Students might not know what they are good at

There is no ‘proof’ of what you’re good at for others

We also tried to think of alternatives and I was surprised by how difficult the students found it to perceive of a different way of doing things.  I suppose in some respects it says a lot for how clearly they identify with the current system and how and where they fit in to it.

Suggestions were things like an online ‘evidence bank’ detailing work they had done and skills they had obtained with evidence.  This was seen as a multimedia ‘package’.  Similar to this was the idea of a skills ‘passport’ (rings a bell with something I heard at the PT Conference).  Finally, the idea of teacher assessment/endorsement was strong, but beyond that not much else.  It made me think what a lot we have to change even in relation to youngsters really understanding and engaging with things like peer and self assessment and how this embeds itself in the curriculum. 

It’s great fun having these sort of discussions with the youngsters and I was interested that many of the themes that emerged were along the lines of current educational debate.  Out of the mouths of babes and all that!

We have our next SQH residential next week.  It is going to probably be the most intensive yet, and certainly will be the most taxing in terms of preparation.  We have to prepare four different pieces of work , three informal, small group presentations and one formal presentation in front of the larger group. In addition to that I’m out of school for three days, so organising three days worth of classes does not fill me with unbridled joy!