Better school improvement?

I've been contemplating how we could do better at school improvement in Aotearoa NZ. That train of thought tends to take me down the 'well of despair'. It seems to be fraught. 

In case you missed the memo, I am a confirmed believer in the benefits of embedding creativity in all schools. Remember: that doesn't just mean the creative arts, although it does include them. I believe in the benefits of creativity in all areas of the curriculum, and in all aspects of school operation. I had the privilege of working with a Head of Maths who pioneered a 'creative maths' week. It can happen in every learning area.

And of course I really like the Manaiakalani concept of creativity that sits at the centre of the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy.

Is it ever possible for a Tumuaki to ensure that the vision she/he has led is sustained once they leave?  In this thought piece I want to focus the issue of sustainable change management. Once change has begun, how do you ensure that there is continuity? What are the obstacles to embedding change? How do you ensure that change endures?  Short answer.. I don't have the answers.. here though is a slightly longer answer to a little of that kōrero.

My first port of call is Vivian Robinson's Student Centred Leadership model.

This overview informs a lot of what it takes to lead, and where necessary to create and embed change that benefits learners. Be present, be a leader of learning alongside your team, put your money and resources (well the school's money and resources) where your mouth is, manage the environment around everything to do with student to staff behaviour. Detail matters!!! Staff and students pay attention to what you do, not what you say. They will quickly spot hypocrisy when you say one thing and do another, and they will watch where you spend your time, because that is what signals more clearly than anything what you think is important. And leaders have to constantly articulate what they want, what they think is important.

The Knoster model is a useful tool for considering the essential elements of change, and perhaps how to recognise what is missing.

For example, when we lead change we have to ask if our team members have the skill set to implement what we want. If they don't we need to give them that skillset. Otherwise we get an anxiety response.

I do however feel that there are other subtleties at play. One is ego. I fear that all too often new principals feel the need to change simply because it's their show. To adapt an old saying, they may well be saying 'it IS my circus, these ARE my monkeys'. The problem here is that they forget the need to be kaitiaki of what has gone before, to respect the achievements of their predecessors.  Things evolve, the world changes. Nothing stays still. I get that. But I have often seen those situations where an incoming Principal feels the need to make rapid, often ill-considered, changes .. and just for the sake of saying 'I'm here, this IS my circus'. 

Yes our individual and inevitable biases play a part. We all carry with us our own  'confirmation bias'. We think, if my current evidence, and opinion, support a different way of doing things, then we are quite likely to ignore evidence to the contrary, we are likely to persist with our current paradigm, ignoring that evidence that does not support our paradigm. With incoming Principals this may take the form of 'this worked in my last school, so that's what we'll do here'.

I was talking with Dr Kevin Knight, NZ Graduate School of Education. He observed that getting external facilitators in to support change is useful, but has minimal impact unless at least one internal staff member is completely onboard, in the school all the time, and continues to act as a change champion, once the external facilitation has finished. Ouch!!!

This all leads me to consider the work that continues to go on across the Manaiakalani network. Each Manaiakalani cluster employs an EPL (Education Programme Leader), someone who works alongside staff to develop skills, and to be the voice of coherence and consistency with the kaupapa, to be the change champion within schools. I asked Kevin if he thought that counted. He noted that the person has to be 'internal'. So the EPL? He said, do you invite the EPL to the staff Christmas function? If so, then yes. What a great 'acid test'.

I asked Dorothy Burt whether or not she thought that creativity was well embedded across schools in the network, and if not why not. Her response was (as always) insightful. Amongst other comments she said:

"The key drivers for delivering TMP are regularly ‘cherry picked’ by school leaders:
• In class facilitation
• Staff Meeting delivered by a Manaiakalani staff member once a term
• The Digital Fluency Intensive - all staff participate over time
• School Leaders and Principal hui on a regular basis, including annual attendance at the Wānanga
• Participation in the Research and Development content"

Given that schools are self managing, one cannot mandate change for school leaders, one cannot insist on adherence 'chapter and verse' to any initiatives. A shame when Dorothy also made this comment:

"We do know that where our programme is most faithfully adhered to and social circumstances are settled we see this and we know how to get there."

As I said, evidence that is contrary to our paradigm is often rejected. Yet gathering evidence, and taking action, lies at the heart of the inquiry cycle that is expected of every teacher, every SLT member, every Tumuaki, in the country.

The key questions are:

• What am I doing?
• Why that way?
• What difference is it making?
• How do I know?

This is powerful stuff and it ought to be taking place with every individual teacher, and with SL team members and Tumuaki, creating positive change at the micro level. I am a fan of the current ERO model (will it survive the latest political dogma?) that supports capability building in whole school inquiry. 

What then happens if you have this happening across kāhui ako or larger groups of schools? Again my 'gold standard' is the Manaiakalani network which runs the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme in which it resources selected teachers from across the network to engage in the inquiry cycle. The difference is that their findings are shared across the whole network. This is evidence based, and means that effective strategies are shared across the 130 kura currently in the network. MIT helps to create more 'change champions' within each school, again helping to build sustainability within each kura.

And then, what if you could take recordings of teachers implementing their inquiry informed best practice and share THAT across your network? That is the Manaiakalani 'Class on Air' programme, a large and ever growing resource bank of recordings of teachers' practice.

Now, THAT is leveraging inquiry to improve outcomes for learners, provided of course that it permeates down and impacts teacher practice at the individual teacher level. This is 'holy grail' type stuff, and it is the stuff of real change .... PROVIDED Tumuaki believe it is important, and provided they continually say in a loud voice that they think it is important, in which case their teams will also believe it is import

The secret is to embed inquiry into the school culture, to arrive at that point where inquiry is simply 'the way we do things here'. 

Why is this so hard for teachers? We have a best practice model that I'll share in a further post.