John T's Toolbox

Replacing strategic planning with teacher collaboration

John Travers — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:18:37 +0000

Replacing Strategic Development Planning with Teacher Collaboration, with a little help from online tools

[presented at ACEC08 Conference]

Abstract

School leaders face a daunting task in coming to terms with the digital revolution. A large and diverse set of issues has to be dealt with. The issues are interdependent, the state of play in terms of technology and learning goals is evolving rapidly, the home-school IT interaction is complex, not to mention budget and building issues. Elaborate Strategic Planning has failed to address this task on a school-wide basis. There is a renewed attention to learning-organisation development in which teachers focus on specific learning outcomes, rather than the elements of a complex Strategic Development Plan. In this approach to staff development, teacher collaboration is central. And serendipitously, collaboration is being supported by the wave of new Web 2.0 tools. This presentation discusses these broad issues of school development strategy and then briefly relates these to some grassroots school tactics for development, demonstrating some online tools that are being used to support professional networking among teachers.

Problems in ICT development

Over the last ten to fifteen years ICT development has been a major focus in most Australian schools. Huge amounts of money have been spent, education systems have launched major development programs yet there has been a very mixed bag of results. This is not surprising because the task is exceptionally difficult. The purpose for which schools are engaging in ICT development is not clear. Is it to provide students with a basic set of standardised skills? Is it to provide students with skills they will need in the workforce? Or is it to facilitate a change in the nature of the school curriculum towards a more constructivist problem solving approach to learning?
But possibly the greatest area of confusion is that many of the main players and leaders in this are working towards different purposes. Aviram and Talmi from the Centre for Futurism in Education, Israel, have suggested that two mind-sets dominate the thinking of leaders in ICT development: those of Technocrats and Reformists. Technocrats mainly see the technical aspects of ICT and are in love with the use of technology and see it as an unambiguously good thing, but they see it as simply delivering the traditional curriculum in a more engaging manner, and fail to reflect on whether the nature of knowledge and learning may be changing. Reformists are a smaller group who see technology as a tool that will inevitably transform education in radical ways - an answer to their progressive dreams for education. When reading system-wide plans for the integration of technology in schools it is clear that the Technocrats are in the ascendancy. There is little reference in them to the specific benefits that will flow from the use of the technology. Aviram and Talmi are critical about the Reformists too, who they say are often romantics who believe that powerful technologies like the internet will of themselves sweep away old ways of learning. But as a study by elearning Europa for the European Commission, points out, ICT can be used to reinforce traditional ways or support a change in pedagogical methods. Its reformist influence is not inevitable at all.

Strategic Planning

In this confused environment the first choice of administration has often been Strategic Planning, a logical process where an elaborate cycle of Needs Analysis leading to a Vision, then Goals and Objectives are defined and Action Plans are developed and are followed up by Evaluation. Schmoker and others claim, with considerable support, that Strategic Planning is a costly failure. Because,

‘strategic planning promotes an often thoughtless, hasty commitment to a dizzying abundance of (so-called) goals, initiatives, and projects. This may explain the speculation that less than 10% of what gets planned actually gets implemented.’

Large systems are attracted to Strategic Planning because it deals with, or appears to deal with, very complex systems. However as the evidence Schmoker assembles suggests, and a large amount of anecdotal evidence from principals and teachers says, Strategic Planning overwhelms participants with detail and irrelevant business. As Schmoker bitingly puts it,

‘…strategic planning presumes that the most vital, high-leverage thinking is done primarily by “planners” before the school year begins, rather than by teaching practitioners throughout the school year.’

Staff development under this regime tends to focus on workshops where teachers are trained to use the tools and to apply them. The workshops are often a long way from the classroom in terms of location, control and purpose.

Learning Communities

The solution that this paper takes up is the notion of learning communities. The concept of a learning community is very simple. Many observers have noted that teachers are highly influenced by their peers. They learn best when they engage in high level discussion, directed towards teaching, that is focused on student performance. Collaboration is certainly not unique to teachers but may be particularly important in teaching which suffers from imprecise goals and imprecise methods of achieving them. It is a messy business. But when teachers focus on what they want students to be able to do, and they compare notes and outcomes with colleagues, they tend to be successful in improving their skills - and in student achievement. Schmoker provides research evidence to support this.  A learning community focus in school development is not a denial of the importance of leadership; in fact it depends on it. There needs to be single-minded leadership focus on student performance and on grass-roots teacher development based on collaboration in learning communities. This grassroots approach to learning is different from workshop learning: the former is focused on the classroom and informal meetings and training while the latter is focused on formal training away from the classroom.

Learning Communities and ICT

So what has this to do with the integration of ICT into the curriculum? The case was made above that ICT is a particularly complex area of development. A particular problem in using ICT is that new users have to learn quite difficult technical skills as well as methodological ones and the former can dominate the latter. Putting the focus on what we want students to be able to do (with the help of technology) can go some way to shifting the balance to the more important issues.

If, for example, some teachers want students to communicate powerful stories about their lives, they can turn to digital storytelling as a good way to achieve this. If they spend time thinking about what makes a powerful film story - images, voice, music etc - they can build a sense of what they are looking for in terms of expression. When they then turn to the ‘how’, the learning about the software is focused on what they want the students to achieve. Students’ first products are views against the teachers’ prior goals. The more the focus is on what student can do rather than how to use the tools the better. This approach contrasts with the workshop approach that tends to focus attention on the technical skills involved. The key process element is collaboration.

Social Networking Tools

If it is accepted that collaboration is an important element of teacher development, there are now some powerful and flexible online tools to support and encourage collaboration among teachers. The Social Networking phenomenon has engaged a large proportion of the young in online networking via sites like MySpace and Facebook. The Horizon Report 2007 on new technology impacting the education sector identified social networking as a major trend that will have a significant impact during 2008. The report Social Software for Learning 2007 said that in relation to the VET sector in Australia, social software is a major opportunity for student and staff learning.   me.edu.au is an adaptation of social networking tools to professional networking. Teachers establish their profile, connect to colleagues with similar interests, join communities of interest, and express themselves via whiteboard and blog entries. A group of people can form a Community for their own specific purposes, share information and observations in a simple and flexible environment. The experience of social networking is that it is not just for maintaining remote networks. It works very well between people who meet each other face to face regularly as well as online. This type of tool seems to offer fruitful ways for teachers to meet and share ideas on their work.

Teaching is unusually isolating work with little time to meet colleagues. The online world offers new ways to do this, reinforcing the success of local learning communities to pursue observable goals rather than pursuing other people’s goals in strategic plans.

Aviram R Talmi, D, 2004 ‘Are you a Technocrat A Reformist or a Holist?’ eLearning Europa, recovered 1/3/05  http://www.elearningeuropa.info/index.php?page=doc&doc_id=4965&doclng=6&menuzone=1  e

Learning Europa, Study of Innovative Learning Environments in School Education, recovered from http://www.elearningeuropa.info/directory/index.php?page=doc&doc_id=5947&doclng=6

Flexible Learning Framework, Social Software for Learning Final Report, 2007, recovered from www.flexiblelearning.net.au/…/Final_Report_Social_Software_for_Learning17April_summ.pdf 23/2/08

me.edu.au, http://me.edu.au  New

Media Consortium, Horizon Report 2007 recovered from http://www.nmc.org/about 23/2/08

Schmoker M, Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement, recovered 18/2/08 from http://mikeschmoker.com/tipping-point.html

‘Improving School Leadership’ through system leadership

John Travers — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:12:35 +0000

A summary of…

Improving School Leadership Volume 2: Case Studies on System Leadership, OECD September 2008 which follows the earlier publication - Improving School Leadership Volume 1: Policy and Practice.

Volume 1 addresses a range of factors influencing school leadership such as preparation, training, compensation and support. It pays significant attention to the importance of collaboration between school leaders.

This issue is taken up in more detail in Volume 2 which focuses on what it calls system leadership, in which school leaders take on responsibility to support leadership in other school apart from their own.

The book is largely a set of case studies in Europe and Australia where this practice is developing. Other sections are written by individuals under their names.

‘System leaders’ are those head teachers willing to shoulder system leadership roles. (Hopkins) Systems leadership as adaptive work, contrasting with technical solutions which are more of a management issue. Hopkins uses the diagram below to illustrate the transition from prescription to professionalism, and emphasises the importance of capacity building

The transition from prescription to professionalism is a theme of the book: that prescription has a role but is supplanted by professionalism.

Hopkins uses Elmore’s abbreviated list of principles for large scale improvement:

Maintain a tight instructional focus sustained over time.

Routinise accountability for practice and performance in face-to-face relationships.

Reduce isolation and open practice up to direct observation, analysis and criticism.

Exercise differential treatment based on performance and capacity, not volunteerism.

Devolve increased discretion based on practice and performance.

The approach is one of autonomy, learning focus and accountability - in other words, professionalism.

Richard Elmore’s chapter: Leadership as the Practice of Improvement, continues this theme with evidence from numerous school reform programs in which he has participated. He severely criticises testing and compliance based approaches to school improvement, saying, “In fact, people in schools are working pretty reliably at the limit of their existing knowledge and skill. Giving them information about the effects of their practice, other things being equal, does not improve their practice.” They need new ideas and approaches. He outlines an approach which demanding, personal and focused on the principles listed above. A major problem is that, “the default culture in most schools is one on which practice is atomised, school organisation reinforces this atomisation by minimising occasions for collective work on common problems, so the school lacks the basic organisational capacity to use any kind of external knowledge or skill to improve practice.” Leaders can help work on these problems by building communication, sharing, and relentless attention to student outcomes. “Leaders in these settings succed to the degree that they engage in more or less continuous learning, and model that learning for others in the organisation.”

On professional development, Elmore’s second law is: “the effect of professional development on practice and performance is invers to the square of its distance from the classroom.”

Approaches to systems leadership: lessons learned and policy pointers written by Pont and Hopkins brings together the main directions suggested in the book. They refer to prominent writers in organisation reform including Fullan and Senge to justify the broad concept of ‘adaptive leadership’ and the development of ‘learning organisations’. The diagram sums up their conclusions.
Their empasis is on schools moving from an environement influence strongly by prescription to one that has a professional focus, which is adaptive - always learning.

The need for such leadership and self improvement is because they see a need for more creative and felxible responses to new situations facing schools. They acknowledge that this is not stratightforward because as Fullan (2007, p. 7) “it takes capacity to build capacity.”

They emphasise that they are not just talking about leaders who are constantly learning, but for the culture of the school to be one that supports and requires learning by everyone.

Leadership for ICT development
This report seems to be highly relevant to leadership in ICT development. It suggest that adaptive solutions are more important than technical ones, in the long run, and that the development of a learning organisation is crucial to achieving that adaptability. This is highly relevant to ICT development which is frustrated by an extremely fast evolution of technologies. These in turn provide tools to allow major change to teaching methodologies which require constant learning and adaptation by teachers and leaders.

Their single-minded focus on student outcomes is also highly relevant because the introduction of ICT to the curriculum has placed such a burden on developing teachers’ technical skills that there is sometimes litttle attention to the impact of ICT on student outcomes. The focus within ICT development on student outcomes can be captured by the development of skills in using ICT, which is merely a stepping stone to broad curriculum outcomes

The approach in Improving School Leadership, applied to ICT school development would seem to be:

focus on student outcomes related to broad curricula, not to just use of ICT as such,

build leadership depth and capacity for all staff to be part of an adaptive learning culture,

provide professional development close to the classroom,

help teachers experiment with new technologies and apply their use to identified student outcomes,

build collaboration within the school and between schools via system leadership.

Main Contributors:

Professor David Hopkins, Chair in International Leadership, University of London; formerly Chief Adviser on School Standards at Dept Education and Skills UK.
Professor Richard Elmore, Gregory Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a senior research fellow at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE)
Beatrice Pont is a Policy Analyst in the Education and Training Policy divisionof OECD’s Directorate for Education and was project Leader for the Improving School Leadership activity.

‘Leading a Digital School’ - a useful book for ICT leaders

John Travers — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:00:38 +0000

Leading a digital school , edited by Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney, published by ACER 2008 is a very useful collection of essays on the full range of issues related to this much discussed topic. Naturally, among the fifteen chapters there are some I really liked and some that I had doubts about. I apply a personal ruler to new material about the use of ICT in schools, based on an article I read a while ago and return to regularly by Aviram and Talmi. In short, they suggest there are two main groups involved in the use of ICT in education: the largest group they call Technocrats, who are fascinated by the technology and see great benefit in its use and see it as relatively unproblematic. The Technocrats tend to do the same old teaching using fancy new tools. The other main group, Reformists are somewhat romantic and see ICT as a tool that will almost inevitably bring education to a constructivist paradise. My view is more aligned with the Reformists but recognising that there is nothing inevitable about a change in learning styles. ICT can help achieve more open learning but the technology itself will not make it happen. That makes me a Realistic Reformist I guess.

So, like Goldilocks, I found Roger Hayward’s case study of his school St Leonard’s College ‘just right’, and almost reason enough alone to get this book. St Leonards is a very affluent school and Dr Hayward is very committed to the us of computers in education. But he offers very salutary observations. “…our efforts to use ICT well are , in my opinion, disappointing” and “…I cannot shake off a feeling akin to driving around in an Aston Martin in first gear with the handbrake on…”. He is critical of initiatives to use laptops as a Trojan horse to force a more constructivist learning methodolgy and says, “Schools change pedagogy by changing pedagogy, not by changing technology.” But he is not a pessimist, and has a lot of positive ideas on how to apply technology to support good learning.

I liked David O’Brien’s case study of his pioneering work in us of IWBs and interestingly talks a lot about the successful use of video games to point to how they have employed good learning principles. Greg Whitby’s excellent essay on staffing the digital school barely mentions technology and is all about creating a good learning environment for staff so they will use the technology, and all their other resources, to achieve good learning by students. David Ingvarson and Michael Gaffney provide a detailed overview of the confusing world of learning management systems and online environments including the burgeoning Web 2.0 world.

My Reformist alarms went off in some of the essays. Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney’s introduction recognises that changing methodologies are needed but contrasted a Paper-Based Schooling with Digitally Based Schooling. The implication is that the dominance of paper causes one style of teaching and learning while digital technology causes a more open and progressive approach. There is a lot of evidence from digitally enhanced schools that the latter is not necessarily so. I don’t think they intended this implication and the selection of essays in the book suggests the view that pedagogy is the main issue and technology provides powerful tools.

A valuable and timely book for school leaders.

iPhone for schools?

John Travers — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:55:48 +0000

Are mobile phones legitimate tools for school education. A month ago I would have said, “Not yet.” But not anymore.I think they are ready right now.
The icons on the main screen of the iPhone give a hint of what is to offer. From the top: Photos can be a large image collection, Camera is modes but effective - inserting images into your large photo collection, and they can be emailed immediately too. Maps provides satellite views and maps of the whole world. App Store is the magic feature. Here you can find a quickly growing collection of free or cheap applications that do everything immaginable and some that are not. SpeakEasy is a very simple and powerful voice recorder that can attache images from your photo collection! Reader is a link to your collection of RSS feeds to whaterver you are tracking. FileMagnet is a storage place for Word, PDF, Excel files: small view but readable. Molecules is an example of the Apps that are coming on stream. Drag your finger across the screen and you rotate and maginfy the image of DNA. More protein molecules can be downloaded.

The bottom row, Phone, Email, Web and a complete iPod for audio and video. Storage for the small one is 8Gb - enough for thousands of images and hundreds of audio files.

With wirelss internet access it is a fast and cheap web browser, giving access out of the pocket. I think this is the most impressive aspect of mobile devices, that they can be operated immidiately, from anywhere. Navigation is the second key feature. The touch screen means that manipulating the image, Zoom in and Zoom out are intuitive. I regularly read the New York Times on my iPhone and all in all it is a better expereince than from my laptop, becuase it is discrete, and drops into the pocket when I want to do something else.

Another free app is an eBook reader, and downloading War and Peace took about 30 sec. The actual size is slightly smaller than this image. The screen is more then double the resolution of a normal computer screen so it is a quite good eBook format.

Navigation is again by touching the screen to the right or left. It is not as convenient as having paper, but is is more convenient than having a 2 Kg folder in on’es bag.

The view of my blog shows that the mini screen is quite readable, and one can zoom in for a closer look.

The iPhone is a fully fledged computer with navigation and viewing affected by the small size. Typing is on an on-screen keyboard and as one types away with big thumbs making a lot of mistakes, 90% of these are corrected by the predictive text. Correction is easy with the use of an amazing maginfying glass.

I think tools like this will be front and centre in the classroom within a year or two. By the way, they are cheap and about $230 nominal price. If students/parents are responsible for phone costs and home and school provide wireless access, these are very practical learning tools.

iClass - a new generation of learning system?

John Travers — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:46:22 +0000

iClass is a new type of online learning system that is a major break from Learner Management Systems LMS like Blackboard and Moodle. It is under development in Europe by a consortium of educational organisations, universities and IT industry companies. It is a sort of amalgamation of a journal, social networking and an LMS. It has a planning component (to plan your learning) a learning area and a reflection area. There is a good overview of iClass here.

The quite different elements are in planning and reflection. The student is prodded to justify and reflect on their thinking. iClass does some magical things like Google in monitoring what the user is typing, and suggest links to the contributions of others - but not advertising like Google.

The goal of iClass is to manage or rather, support “self regulated personalized learning”. It is based on some strong theory led by the very interesting Roni Aviram who is an educational philosopher. I have been very impressed by him for some years following an article he jointly wrote a while ago which claimed that there are three main groups of people leading ICT development and that they act in ignorance of each other. Technocrats who think technology is great and just dandy, Reformists who think technilogy will improve the world by forcing constructivist methods of learning, and a far smaller group of ‘Holists’ who are a more skeptical bunch. Some are anti technology, and others see a positive side, but are skeptical of the two larger groups.

Aviram and the people behind iClass believe that things are not going well with ICT integration in learning, and that we are going to have to work hard to develop new methodologies to create the wonderful world of student centred learning.

iClass web site

What is the ICT experience of “digital natives’?

jtravers — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:14:24 +0000

The graph below is a summary of the experience of a number of university students in using a range of common ICT tools. These students have chosen to do a topic on current technologies for teaching and presumably have a greater interest in the field that the average student. The responses are interesting because they do not indicate that the so-called digital natives are heavily engaged in the technologies. There is high level experience with email and with social networking, presumably because these are powerful communication tools. But quite valuable information management tools like delicious and rss are little used. The question on YouTube needs another: ‘have you uploaded videos to YouTube or similar. I suspect that the response would be quite low. The low use of Flickr type photo sharing is surprising.

Low use of blog is to be expected since one really needs a purpose to be a blog user. The overall impression I get is that this small and very informal survey shows what we can expect: that young people in tertiary education are mainstream users of ICT, but only in fields that have immediate relevance. Tools to leverage some of the big advantages of the information society have yet to prove themselves.