Learning about Learning

I am trying to find out if anyone in East Lothian has experience of using Youth Achievement Awards.   These are awards run by Youth Scotland and offer  “an innovative approach to recognising and accrediting young people’s achievement within schools colleges and wider communities”.

If you are reading this and you have any experience of these or know of anyone, either in schools or youth work who is already delivering(or planning to) these in East Lothian I’d be keen to have a chat so please get in touch.

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. 

I was looking back at some of the old posts I had written and came across one I wrote not long after I had started blogging entitled Lies, damned lies, and statistics.  I was discussing the use of MidYis testing in our school and as I now am much more focused upon understanding the uses of assessment, it was interesting to read my thoughts and try an gauge my thinking process at that point.   

The main point that I have begun to explore further is that of the uses made of such testing at an individual level.  Standardised tests have (varying degrees of) predictive validity when used at a cohort level, ie when making predictions about achievement for year groups, but at the individual level there is too great a degree of variability to predict anything about a particular student’s future achievement. 

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter and is where schools who use tests such as MidYis and CAT face their greatest challenge.  How can we make best use of such instruments of assessment? How can we come to a fuller understanding of their limitations, as well as their uses, when using them to inform our practice and judgements about youngsters?  

Teacher and students expectations and beliefs about themselves as learners, as research has shown, are a significant factor in the achievement of youngsters, so using the information in an approriate way is absolutely vital.  What ways can schools use these summative assessments in a formative way to inform planning and practice? Are the assessments themselves key, or is it the use to which we put them? 

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.

Summary of my notes from the event on Jan 17th

Keynote : Sir Robert Smith(Scottish and Southern Energy) - Smith Group

Self appointed, business and entrepreneurs group.  Interested in supporting MCMC youngsters.

Only Turkey and Mexico have worse stats  for OECD countries for NEET 16-19 year olds (35000)

Key to have college/school/business triangle of provision.

Smith group offering work experience placements, being rolled out across Scotland this year.

Using federation of small businesses, providing vocational ed opportunities and work experience for youngsters.

Keynote: Graham Hollowell

NEET Strategy Coventry & Warwickshire

Government strategy

Careful tracking

Range of voc ed programmes

Personalised support & guidance for youngsters

September Guarantee is a guarantee that every youngster who applies for a learning opportunity will get one

Early identification / indicators

Workshop 2

Glasgow’s vocational education.

All under one central group including training for work, apprenticeships etc

Special Programme for looked aftger youngsters : EVIP

Programmes include recognised qualifications like lifeguarding and CITB

Referrer (school) will decide who goes on the course, not the college or central agency group

In S4 they have an employability day, with a mock interview from an employer

Co-ordinated support plan is in place for every young person taking part in vocational courses

Opportunities:

EVIP(enhanced vocational inclusion programme)

YOUTH START

SOCCER SUCCESS

WINTER LEAVERS

Development of alternative curricula

EVIP (full-time programme)

Vocational coach

CSP

Intensive employability input

Development and recognition of soft skills(Step it up) youthlink website : (it is an evaluation tool)

Transition planning and support

Funded (until end of financial year)by external funding from Scottish Government, european funding etc

Glasgow City Council have one round of ‘corporate’ recruitment for which every youngster who is on a vocational programme is guaranteed a first level  interview and prepare for this with their vocational coach

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.

As we are on the home stretch of SQH I am now focussing upon meeting all the elements of the standard for headship.  It has thrown up an interesting challenge for me and no doubt for other participants.  As a principal teacher of pupil support I have responsibility for managing projects but not for managing people directly, i.e. it is not part of my immediate remit and I do not conduct EDR or have any responsibility for the appointment of staff.   Obviously on a day-to-day basis, deploying excellent people management skills are essential, but this is not quite the same as having direct responsibility for staff. 

Therefore, I have been presented with a challenge is in evidencing a knowledge and understanding of the recruitment and selection process.  Yes, I have had my training and understand the theoretical aspects and possible pitfalls involved, but without actually taking part in a ‘live’ recruitment and selection process my skills remain purely theoretical.  It has become necessary to seek an opportunity through my headteacher to be involved in the appointments procedure.

There are others taking part in SQH who are in a similar position to myself, primary teachers and other PT Guidance/Pupil Support.  I have found myself asking the question, is it the right time for me to be undertaking SQH if I will have difficulty evidencing one of the fundamental aspects of the course?  I understand that the participants are selected based on both their experience and potential and perhaps part of the challenge is to ensure that you can be resourceful enough to engineer opportunities to fulfil all of the criteria.  Or maybe the course itself does not fully reflect the experience of participants from a pupil support background, where the ‘flatter’ structure can mean no direct responsibilty for managing staff until reaching the position of SMT.  The diversity of the structure of pupil support teams throughout the country means that people have a very different experience of pupil support from authority to authority.

This may feed the criticism I have heard levelled by some that the course is too heavily based in theory, too academic, and doesn’t fully prepare applicants for the reality of the job.  I have thought about this a great deal since starting the course in April ‘05 and my conculsion is that the academic rigour is fundamental to the qualification.  Headteachers are now expected to have a ‘vision’ for their school which is based on sound judgement.  I would argue that such judgement be based upon evidence from current research and academic thinking as well as the context in which he or she works.  

An unfortunate consequence of this  is the incredible expectations we have of the knowledge and abilities of the headteacher.  I say unfortunate because it can drive headteachers to work increasingly long hours to ’stay on top’ of things.  It is not possible for any person to ‘know all’ and ‘be all’ but we seem to expect this from from those charged with running schools. 

When I discuss working hours with colleagues who are on SQH, very long hours can be seen as a ‘badge of honour’ by some and this seems, in some instances, to be coming ‘from the top’.  A culture of working incredibly long hours exists in some schools and there may be a perception that progression is predicated upon fitting into this mode of working.  I do not believe this is healthy and I am glad I do not experience it in my own school.  It is one thing to have a calling and be committed to the work you do,  entirely another to be consumed by it.

However I digress from my initial point, the challenge of being fully conversant and experienced in the recruitment and selection process.  I am concerned that in becoming invoved in and R&S process it may be seen as tokenistic and may feel that way too.  But in order to fulfil the criteria for attaining the Standard for Headship it is a neccessity.  So I will seek opportunities to increase my working knowledge in this area, while having one eye on what is acceptable and reasonable in terms of my time commitment.

I also think my time of life has a significant bearing on my view.  At the moment I am in a very ‘busy’ time in terms of my home life and perhaps in a few years I’ll see things differently and want and need to commit more time to the job.

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

I took a good deal from what May Sweeney had to say in her presentation to the conference on Friday.  To summarise, the message I got (feel free to correct me if you were there and I’m wrong!) was that the curriculum is opening up to allow activities previously viewed as extra curricular becoming an integral part.  For example, clubs and interest groups, tying in with the ideas of personalisation and choice.

Literacy, Numeracy and aspects of the Health curriculum are very clearly the responsibility of all teachers, not just subject specialists.

In new ACE ‘levels’ 1 to 4, breadth is the key element, organised through curricular areas: Health and wellbeing, languages, mathematics, sciences, social studies, expressive arts, technologies and Religious and moral education.  Specialisation comes after levels 1 to 4. (There is debate as to whether the word ‘level’ will be used because of the connections to 5-14)  There is to be consultation over the structure of Standard grade and Higher still this summer.

Pupil voice = co-creation of the curriculum :  Leading to more personalisation and choice.

Building resilience in to the ‘pupil’s toolkit’ is seen as essential.  The ability to meet novel situations with confidence and stick at any given task.  Quick to say but perhaps on of the biggest challenges.

Assessment is for Learning techniques should be more than ‘using traffic lights’ in classrooms.  Deeper consideration of AiFL is needed.

A study of interdisciplinary learning (by Siskin?) has suggested that interdisciplinary learning is vital in helping young people to connect to more specialised, discrete learning.  I think that we are organised in almost the opposite manner in secondary schools at the moment.

Deliberately mixing age groups is encouraged for some activities, with a view to challenging negative peer group influences and encourage leadership roles amongst students.

Opportunities for reflection, both personal and collective, are built in to the teaching and learning experience.

There are still many questions to be answered in all of the areas mentioned above, not least how achievement is recorded and progression is ensured within the more flexible learning structure. 

It was clear that in East Lothian there is certainly action taking place.   In my experience, initiatives like Extreme Learning, cross-curricular projects like those happening at Preston Lodge High School (more about our most recent, The Rhythm of Life, coming soon) and new curricular structures are beginning to be tested and are presenting an early picture of how ACE is developing.