Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

I’ve spent another fruitful and hectic day working towards the SQH comparative study today.  Firstly I interviewed a number of staff at John Muir House about their impressions of the ‘climate for creativity’ within their working environment.  I was delighted that as we chatted a number of themes appeared to be emerging, in relation to the perceived culture of the working environment.  People were using similar language to describe processes and feelings about their working environment. I won’t pre-empt the report by going into any detail here, but I’ll be interested to back through the interviews and pull out these themes. 

I then went up to Moray House for a SQH Unit 3 seminar.  Our tutors were checking that things were going OK and no-one was falling to pieces under the strain!  I thought I’d had a fairly hard time managing to secure a suitable host organisation after being turned down by a couple of companies, but by all accounts I got off lightly.  There were a couple of horror stories of people being let down by businesses at the 11th hour after all the preparation work had been done.  They have had to go back to the drawing board, so I’m now counting my blessings about how relatively smoothly things have gone for me. 

It’s back to school tomorrow to catch up as best as is possible after being out two days in the last three, that’s the pay back for having access to such great experiences elsewhere I suppose.

I’ve a busy week of planning for our ALPs meeting on Friday.  I’d like to present everyone with a finalised programme and selected students as well as having an idea of what we’d like to achieve at our induction day on 16th February.  Having started to read ‘The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook’ by Peter Senge, it has further developed my thinking already in relation to why, what and how we are going to achieve our goals for ALPs. I think I’ll be blogging much more about this book in the future. 

Today I spent the day at John Muir House shadowing Don Ledingham as part of my SQH comparative study.  I’m comparing the climate for innovation and creativity between ELC Education Department and Preston Lodge HS.  It was fascinating to see at first hand how the different/competing interests and demands of so many stakeholders are balanced and how they connect with one another.  Getting such a strategic view of things really helped me gain a much clearer appreciation of the nature and notion of Integrated Children’s Services.   

Not having had the opportunity to take time out from the daily business in school to experience the work that goes on within the Education Department previously, I think I had a less than complete picture of what goes on day-to-day.  From that point of view I regard myself extremely lucky to have had such open access.  I can see how the barriers are being broken down through the blogging phenomenon and by the way innovative practice is becoming policy, helping things develop at the classroom level and at a more strategic level. 

Not only did I achieve my goal as regards my study, but I also had a fantastic CPD session.  Without going into detail that may not make the most stimulating post, I was able to sit in on and contribute (a very small amount) to several meetings ranging from a regular LNCT meeting to one involving a discussion with the Scottish Executive regarding P.E. provision in East Lothian schools.  I’m going to look into the ‘Getting Things Done‘ approach to managing workload after having spoken to Rob Lewis, an information officer at John Muir House.

I finished off with a real boost, meeting with David Gilmour late in the day to discuss the ALPs site. He has put together a fantastic model for us to start and tinker with before the start of the programme in mid February.

All that and we managed to discuss the meaning of life over lunch.  I didn’t pay but I’m told it might mean a pound of flesh in the future!

We are embarking upon a cross curricular project called the Rhythm of Life to follow up last year’s hugely successful Japan project.

With my love for djembe drumming and African Music and Culture I decided that my contribution would be to try and get some drums and create a piece with some of our youngsters for performance.

I applied to Awards for All a couple of months ago and found out today that the bid has been successful. We will now be able to purchase djembe and dundun(base) drums and have a master drummer come and teach two sessions. I’m really excited at what we’ll be able to put together, so watch this space! Preston Lodge HS African Drumming group is on its way!

The ALPs programme now seems to be in a solid position as far as funding is concerned so I am very excited about that too. This was the main stumbling block in my own mind but I have had some encouraging discussions in and out of school this week which seem to have confirmed that it’s full steam ahead! We’ve had great interest from the local community police regarding the mentoring aspect of the programme as well as some interesting ideas about their possible input. It feels like we are beginning to create real partnerships with many different community organisations which has always been one of our main targets.

I also attended our Pre-vocational strategy group meeting today, things are moving along really positively for the coming year’s pre-vocational college opportunities. It is a credit to the work of Kay Affleck.

All in all a fantastic end to the week.

I have been working on my SQH unit 3 comparative study this weekend.  We have to compare an aspect of leadership and management in our school with that of another organisation.  I am fortunate to be visiting ELC Education department HQ, with the focus of my study being the climate for innovation and creativity within each organisation.  I think it will be interesting to compare the responses between the organisations, not least because Preston Lodge is technically a subset of John Muir house!

I have been reading about Goran Erkvall’s research  on the significant factors affecting the climate for innovation within an organisation.  This area of research is particularly relevant for Scottish schools at present in light of a Curriculum for Excellence and the changes we all face through the ongoing development and use of ICT in all aspects of education.  I am basing my comparative study questions on the ten Climatic factors said to be significant in establishing a climate of innovation. 

They are:

1. Challenge (How challenged, emotionally involved,and committed are employees to the work )
2. Freedom (How free is the staff to decide how to do their job?)
3. Idea time (Do employees have time to think things through before having to act?)
4. Dynamism (The eventfulness of life in the organisation)
5. Idea support (Are there resources to give new ideas a try?)
6. Trust and openness (Do people feel safe speaking their minds and offering different points of view?)
7. Playfulness and humour (How relaxed is the workplace-is it okay to have fun. )
8. Conflicts (To what degree do people engage in interpersonal conflict or ‘warfare?”)
9. Debates (To what degree do people engage in lively debates about the issues’)
10. Risk-taking (Is it okay to fail?)

Individual perceptions of the above come together to create the overall organisational climate, positive or negative, in relation to innovative practice, therefore creating at either extreme a totally dynamic or stagnant organisation. 

I’ve put a draft copy of my survey questions on a wiki.  It would be great to get some feedback from people on their appropriateness, wording etc.

I’ve started the big push towards the 2.5km swimathon, I had forgotten just how unfit I am. First 20 length swim under my belt, 10x breast stroke, 10x front crawl.  Oof. Very sorry state of affairs.  On the teetotal front it’s all go, another weekend passes without any close shaves bar my wife brandishing a glass of white wine gleefully at me!

<a href=”http://www.technorati.com/claim/pqydycernk” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Have just ‘claimed’ my blog on Technorati thanks to the jonesieblog.

I have recently been trying to find more about the creative process both in education and in business.  Creativity is gold dust in the world of commerce.  New ideas and new ways of looking at old problems can mean the difference between success and failure, boom or bust.  With the generation of profit being the key driver in (most) commercial creative processes, companies are prepared to speculate to accumulate; both in terms of new ideas and the best creative brains. 

In my experience, and I hope I am wrong, creativity is not viewed in the same light in education.  New ideas are hard pressed to see the light of day and experimentation is not generally (again I emphasise this is only in my experience) seen as a sensible way to progress.  I understand that there are very good reasons for wild, untested, irresponsible experimentation being frowned upon, especially in senior years of secondary when national qualifications prescribe to an extent what must be taught and perhaps how.  However, I believe that there is much scope for advancement of teaching and learning through thinking creatively, teaching thinking skills explicitly and applying creative techniques such as the six thinking hats in primary and early secondary school.

I subcribe to an interesting blog called creativity and innovation driving business in which there is a post catchily titled Five takeaways stimulating Innovation.

They are as follows:

 1. “Give it a try–and quick!” - Essentially echoing on having a process to try out a lot of stuff, and keeping what really works. The key here is to do something. Keep on trying something new.

2. “Accept that mistakes will be made.” - Learn from the mistakes quickly, and move on. Failures are part and parcel of what creates new innovation. Don’t repeat the same mistakes.

3. “Take small steps.” - Experiment, but on a small scale. When something looks promising, go all out and seize the opportunity. This way one can do plenty of inexpensive experiments that create a funnel of would-be innovations.

4. “Give people the room they need.” - Without entrepreneurship, there is no experiment. Without experiment there is no success or failure. People need some time, incentives, job security and room to experiment.

5. “Mechanisms - build that ticking clock!” - How do you harness creativity and build innovation? It cannot happen simply by chance. Companies need to create practices and tangible mechanisms to experiment, try out new ideas and innovate.
It has just struck me as I have written this blog that Exc-el is a fine example of these principles.  The question I have is how can we transfer this to schools, if indeed we should?  I’d be interested in hearing a counter argument because what I’ve written I know is terribly simplistic, especially bearing in mind the caution which is required when we are dealing with youngsters’ futures. 

Maybe that is the answer in itself, it is such an important endeavour in which we are employed that we are, at times, paralysed by the fear of failure or at least that fear builds a great deal of inertia in to the system.  There are obvious constraints built in at Government and Local Authority level and there is rightly a high degree of accountability.  I think my real concern is that the line between being held accountable and blamed is a fine one.  I know Don has blogged at length on the subject of accountability and the model of “accountability as personal commitment/competence” he espouses is one I concur with.  I wonder how pervasive and how well understood that model of accountability is.  How much room is there in education for error/mistakes, even though some (most?) of our best/deepest learning and creativity is experienced is through making mistakes. 

I don’t know the answers as usual and I’m thinking out loud as I write and it leads me back to something my brother mentioned to me about my previous blog.   He quoted Steven Covey about security coming from a centre based on principles.  If you have clear principles, making decisions and being accountable is much ‘easier’. Clearly defining your ‘principle centre’ is a challenge which faces us all I suppose.