3 Signs of System and Organisational Distress

It seems to me that the sea of opportunity in education is littered with shipwrecks. Each represents a particular change initiative or strategy implementation that has foundered or sunk before reaching its destination. Each has set off with the best of intentions and sights fixed on the distant horizon, only to find themselves beaten back by relentless waves of resistance, merciless winds of discontent, a craft that is not fit-for-purpose or a crew that is inadequately prepared or trained for the journey.

Sound familiar?

So what are the signs we could be looking for as warnings of another shipwreck likely to happen?

On a morning bike ride I was pondering my experience in education over several decades and the reasons so many change efforts fail. The point of my reflection is that, despite the most obvious lessons from the past, organisations and systems continue to pursue the same (unsuccessful) strategies for change.

As I contemplated the myriad of reasons for this I ended up identifying three that came to the top of my list based on personal experience and observation (and, yes, there are definitely more that can be considered). Here, then, are three signs that almost certainly lead to a failure at either an organisational or system level. (Please excuse my playful experimentation with alliteration in the titles 🙂

1. Deficit-thinking Determines Direction

For so long our approach to strategic planning has involved focusing on the problem areas and planning to address them. Literacy rates are falling, so we focus narrowly on programmes to address that. Truancy rates are rising, so we create positions for people to coerce students back into classrooms. Engagement in classrooms is a problem, so we endeavour to ‘spice things up’ with rewards and games.

None of these things, in and of themselves, are bad. The problem lies with how focusing myopically on a problem results inevitably in a deficit-mindset – where everything becomes a problem to be solved, and we begin to see problem behaviours as a characteristic of certain students or groups of students.

Deficit thinking sets a low bar for strategy. It robs it of its future-focused potential, and of its optimism for better outcomes. We begin to mistake equity for ‘sameness’, and

I’m not saying we should ignore the problems – quite the opposite. I am an advocate for implementing strategies for using data to identify areas we need to address to improve outcomes for learners.

If, however, we allow our problem-solving mindset to descend into deficit thinking, then we will find ourselves constrained when it comes to future-focused, strategic planning, and instead of liberating learners to realise the potential that lies within, our programmes of learning will focus increasingly on ensuring the fit the box of expectation that has been set for them.

A useful litmus test here is to examine the strategic goals in a school’s plan – or do the same with government policy for that matter – and ask ‘what’s the emphasis here? Is the focus on ‘fixing’ a problem, or is there evidence of a BHAG (big, hairy audacious goal) driving this?

The answer will suggest what is determining the direction being taken.

2. Inertia Inhibits Innovation

The biggest impediment to transformational changes is inertia. This involves the strong persistence of existing practices, functions, beliefs, processes etc. that defines the organisation.

Consider the response in a school community when even the smallest changes are made – a change in uniform expectation met with cries of ‘but we’ve always had green as our uniform colour!’, or when moving to an open learning environment – “where will I put my desk, and which wall will my whiteboard go on?” etc.

These responses can become the cause of significant inertia – to the point where they can become full-blown resistance – generally of the passive, ‘I’m simply going to keep doing it my way’ variety, more than the active ‘I’m going to protest violently’ nature.

The fact is that for the vast majority of people, having routines and commonly understood ways of working are what provide a sense of personal security and can, collectively, enable things to run more smoothly. These individual and collective norms help us maintain what makes for a well functioning society.

The problem occurs when we are forced to make change because, ultimately, the way we are doing things currently are no longer efficient, effective or are unlikely to sustain us (and future generations) into the future.

An organisation in distress is one that has failed to take account of the degree to which organisational norms influence behaviour, and have therefore failed to take into account the need to address these things early on in any change process. Simply tolerating the ‘cynics’ in the back row of staff meetings is a sure-fire way of ensuring any change effort will be undermined and ultimately fail.

Further, if we’re serious about creating a culture of innovation in our organisations, then we must work hard, with all of our staff, to create an innovation mindset, where it’s OK to talk openly about the systems/structures/processes that are being challenged and understand why.

Innovation can only thrive when there is openness to change, and an openness to change will only develop when there everyone is involved in the conversations around what is happening, including how it is going to affect them personally.

Innovation affects the whole system, and cannot be conceived of as simply ‘adding another layer’ to an already overwhelmed way of working.

3. Restructures Result in Resistance

There’s an oft-quoted phrase; “Organisations don’t change, people change”. When said aloud in any context this statement will usually be accepted with the nodding of heads in general agreement.

In practice, however, people are often the last to be considered. Sure, there may be lots of consultation and communication – but how much of that is to do with changing minds and winning buy-in? More often it’s about conveying information about new ways of working, new processes and new structures – and the people are left to figure out how they fit.

In the past few decades it seems that we’ve seen a common pattern of activity in large organisations – including schools. When looking to improve organisational effectiveness, the leaders pick up the phone and call a big consulting firm, and upon their advice embark on a major restructure.

The problem is, restructures don’t always work. For example, a Bain & Company study of 57 reorganisations between 2000 and 2006 found that fewer than one-third produced any meaningful improvement in performance. Most had no effect, and some actually destroyed value.

This is not to say there’s not a place for any form of re-structuring an organisation. If the current systems, processes and structures are no longer fit for purpose, then they need to be changed. The problem arises, however, when the concept of a blanket restructure is used to increase organisational effectiveness and outcomes without first, more deeply understanding the root causes of the ineffectiveness and poor outcomes in the first place. Sometimes that may be due to the poor performance or decision-making of a particular staff member or team. A re-structure may simply end up moving the problem behaviours to a different part of the organisation, rather than address the problem or issue directly.

So what is the alternative to a restructure? Many writers are now suggesting that such an approach is out of date in today’s world as the thinking is premised on the idea that there is an ‘ideal structure’ and that if it can be achieved things will run more smoothly. Such thinking assumes that the ideal state will somehow be a stable one, where future change is unnecessary.

One alternative is to consider an organisation in a state of constant change, where everyone is continually re-assessing the ‘fit-for-purpose’ thinking behind how things are working. This is what has become commonly referred to as characteristic of a Learning Organisation. Peter Senge, in his book The Fifth Discipline, defines a “Learning Organization” as one “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”

Seems to me that operating as a learning organisation is far preferable to the restructure route – particularly as it places emphasis on people being actively a part of all decision making, and thus mitigating the level of resistance experiences when change is ‘done to’ them.

Tags education leadership, educational transformation

Why is transformation difficult?

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

“Transformation is a process, and as life happens there are tons of ups and downs. It’s a journey of discovery – there are moments on mountaintops and moments in deep valleys of despair.”
Rick Warren

My previous post on transformation vs reform has attracted lots of feedback in a variety of forums, so I thought I’d follow up with this one, posing the question, ‘why is transformation so difficult?’

On the face of it there appears to be growing agreement around the need for transformation in education. The UN Transforming Education Summit in New York last month brought people together from around the world to work on ensuring that education can be, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it, “a source of personal dignity and empowerment and a driving force for the advancement of social, economic, political, and cultural development.” The five themes for action emerging from this conference will resonate with education leaders at the school and system level, and should be the focus of our current efforts in educational transformation.

Another international initiative, launched by Big Change UK, the Brookings Institution, and the Lego Foundation is asking people to join the Big Education Conversation which aims to stimulate millions of conversations globally to transform education.

Despite such calls it would appear that in a number of jurisdictions (including New Zealand) the focus remains on activity designed to improve or reform the existing structures and ways of doing things rather than transformation. This approach appears to be driven by the need to remediate what the data reveals as falling and/or highly variable levels of achievement among learners. Now on this I agree. It should indeed be a focus of any education system, and I fully support that. Both system and school leaders should be concerned about the impact they are having on learners and their learning – and this will mean looking at the evidence of test scores among other things.

The cause of such declines is a matter of intense debate. Lack of investment is one argument put forward – World Bank recently reporting that two thirds of poorer countries are cutting education budgets due to COVID-19. In developing countries such as New Zealand there are frequent calls for higher pay for teachers in recognition of their workload.

On the other hand we see blame laid at the feet of teachers, with calls for improving the quality of pre-service teacher education programmes and changes to pedagogical practice – often resulting in a greater emphasis on direct instruction and prescriptive teaching methods in an attempt to remediate what is perceived to be a lack of trust in the professionalism of individual educators. Aside from the concerns about teacher quality, it would seem that the expectations of the job now exceed the ability of most teachers to deliver on, with reports of increasing teacher shortages as teaching becomes a less attractive profession.

The there are examples of decisions being made about the future of schools based on their impact on the economy, such as in Australia where there are calls for education to be made a national priority, based on the argument that education is the most important key to sustainable recovery from current global crises.

Other forms of political idealism can also come to play. For example, in Ontario, Canada, a release from the Chiefs of Ontario reveals cuts to Ontario’s new elementary science curriculum where Indigenous science and technology has been struck from the curriculum for the 2022 school year.

These are just some examples of the things that demand change in our education system. The challenge comes with how they are addressed. Simply improving or reforming the current state may not be sufficient – particularly given the the fact that it is the current state that presents us with the concerns we see escalating. With the exception, perhaps, of some tried and true, ultra-traditional schools who have the privilege of serving a select group of students, the evidence suggests that the challenges across our education system have become increasingly complex and not easily be resolved by simply doing better what we’ve always done.

Here are five reasons I can see that make the pursuit of a transformation agenda difficult:

1. The end-game isn’t certain

A programme of transformation isn’t about steadfastly pursuing a pre-determined ‘future state’. Rather, it’s about setting a trajectory towards a desired end-state, and being prepared to adapt to and leverage the things that work and/or emerge in the process. It requires short cycles of experimentation with a rigorous process of evaluation and sharing of ideas. And it can’t be captured in the ‘box’ of a typical politically-determined change cycle. Our traditional approach to large-scale change programmes so often follows the conventional process of determining the future state, establishing goals, defining outcomes and then working in defined ways to achieve this. Transformation doesn’t work this way. The future state is less clear when you begin, and is determined through trial and error as new information is gathered.

2. It is difficult to measure.

It can take a long time for substantive change (higher level results) to materialize and we don’t necessarily know exactly what it will look like, how to measure it and, indeed, how to capture our contribution to it. Measuring system transformation and the path towards it is really difficult. Furthermore, the paths towards deep and broad change in a system are rarely clear (and never linear), and this makes it difficult to know if we are on the right track and whether activities and early results (e.g. tangible products and new skills) may generate substantive change further down the road.

3. It challenges the status quo.

Humans, by nature, are creatures of habit. We are most comfortable working and living where things are familiar and (relatively) predictable. This helps to conserve our brain energy by putting certain parts of our brains on autopilot. Breaking these habits requires energy, and we are hardwired to manage our energy very carefully. Life is hard, so once we have achieved some form of stability, status, material belongings and predictability, most people generally want to keep hold of it. The future state is usually so radically different to the current state that the people and culture must change to implement it successfully.

4. It requires different skills and methodologies

A part of our comfort with the status-quo is the fact that we can are able to use the knowledge and skills that have served us well to date. When involved in transformation we have to learn different ways of doing what we need to do. This is because the methods we are familiar and comfortable with no longer achieve what’s required, or worse, they become a ‘handbrake’ to what we’re doing. We have to embrace different approaches to change, and value and learn different skills on the how skilled are we, as a collective, to deliver transformations. In particular, we have to understand the power of the collective, and embrace short-cycle, experimental approaches to exploring solutions that work. This requires letting go of the traditional hierarchical approaches to leadership and ways of working and recognising the power of distributed and networked leadership. Everyone has transformation potential however, who has the “playbook” and are we taught it through our careers?

5. It’s a long game

Transformation requires a commitment to achieving a long-term aspiration. Disruptions may accelerate the process, and even reveal or create new opportunities, but we need to be always driven by the aspirational end-state that is based on principles to do with the benefits for humanity and our planet. Transformational thinking and activity is difficult to sustain in an environment where short term results are prioritised over long term gains, where leaders are incentivised to deliver short term results over long term growth. It takes a strong sense of collective commitment to break this pattern of activity which has become prominent in our modern societies where short-term, personal gain is prioritised over the good of the collective and of future generations.

Tags education leadership, educational transformation

Courage and collectivity

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“
Albert Einstein.

Educational change has been a hot topic across the globe over the past decade or so. There are now libraries of books on the subject, and post-graduate degrees specialising the area. But despite all of this, achieving change seems a daunting task.

There are a couple of important things to consider here. What change are we trying to achieve, and (more importantly) why?

A quick look at the discourse around change in many countries (including NZ) would suggest that a key driver is improving the outcomes for learners – arguably a fundamental goal of any education system. The logic seems to run along the lines of… “national or international data suggests our kids are falling behind (in math, science, insert own topic here) so we must change things up in order to get better results.”

A typical response to how we can achieve what is required might involve one or more of the following:

increasing teacher professional development – to make our teachers better, so they teach more effectively.
provide better resources and better assessment approaches so that we are measuring progress better.
introduce a new (better?) curriculum with clearly identified standards that ‘raise the bar’ and help hold teachers and schools accountable for meeting these expectations.
provide more specialist teachers and assistance to support those who aren’t doing as well.
etc.

Such responses are all too familiar to those of us who have worked in the education system for a while. All too often they come with expectations of seeing improvement in very short time-frames (usually associated with the term of political office). All very unfortunate as the problems being addressed have often taken a generation or two to develop, so solving them is not likely to happen quickly. (Consider the issue with mathematics teaching over many generations for example.)

It’s not as if this is the first time we’ve faced such demand for change. Our educational system has responded to great challenges in the past. It has navigated the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society. It has responded to the challenges of the digital age the increasingly futures that young learners will face. But no matter how much effort we put into making this change happen, it never seems to be sufficient, or happening fast enough. Probably because the drivers are relentlessly changing is scope and scale!

The global COVID-19 pandemic has pulled back the curtain on what our students are doing at school and exposed weaknesses in many of the philosophical understandings that guide our work (both explicitly and implicitly), and in the structures and processes that define how we work with our students, and the expectations we have of them as learners.

While some are expecting a ‘return to normal’, others argue that we must use this opportunity to critically examine some of the deeply held beliefs and traditions of our schooling system. How might we need to think differently about how schools are organised? About the curriculum we provide? About the roles of teachers and learners? How do concepts such as learner agency, learner voice and transferrable skills fit within our vision of education for the future?

One area for certain would be a rigrous examination of our curriculum, to ensure that the emphasis on what we are teaching is indeed aligned with what our young learners need in order to prepare them for the future – a point well made by the OECD’s Andeas Schleicher in a recent interview:

TeacherMagazine: Preparing learners for a pandemic, and a more uncertain world

But here’s the issue – our current system isn’t particularly well designed for this sort of approach. We’re much more comfortable with the ‘stable state’, where the future is more predictable and the outcomes we aspire to more determined. So while we may celebrate wonderfully aspirational vision and mission statements adorning our school charters, the actual work on the ground often fails to live up to these things – particularly at secondary school where meeting the demands of high stakes assessment so quickly displaces any future focused aspiration for many teachers.

Th importance of taking a transformative approach is captured well in a report from the Education Review office that emphasises the role of leaders in this:

Effective leaders have a clear vision of the transformation they wish to bring about, identifying what the key skills and learnings are that will best equip their learners for their future. They are effective change managers, managing the significant change necessitated to transform pedagogy and maximise the benefits offered by modern learning environments and digital technology. Leaders have to take their school community with them, so they appreciate why change is happening and can support it, and make sure the change is sustained.
ERO – Innovative learning in NZ schools (2018)

The key thing about this statement is the emphasis on taking the school community with you – that includes everyone; staff, students, parents/whānau – and anyone else that has a stake in the outcomes of the school and its operation. Leading change cannot be left to individuals – it is a collective enterprise. Whether you are a positional leader (e.g. principal, head of department, chair of a BoT etc.) or leading by virtue of the responsibilities you hold in guiding and nurturing our young people (e.g. teacher, parent, teacher’s aide etc.) you are involved and need to be included in this collective endeavour.

Michael Fullan has led the thinking and action about change in education for more than two decades now, emphasising the importance of collectivity in all of this if we are to achieve what we want or indeed, need to achieve…

‘The interface between individual and collective meaning and action in everyday situations is where change stands or falls.’
(F ullan, 2006)

The fact is that no government, Ministry of Education or even private corporation can effect meaningful, sustainable, scalable change as a matter of decree and ‘top down’ decision making. Sure, these groups are vitally important in creating and supporting the conditions for change, but the real work happens at the ‘chalk face’, the daily interactions within schools – between and among teachers, students and parents/whānau. That is where the magic happens – but it’s also where things can become ‘choked’ by the lack of collective buy-in to a mutually agreed vision and purpose and by the overwhelming-ness of the need to meet the ever increasing demands of a bureaucracy that is attempting to compensate for a perceived lack of movement towards some of its goals.

There’s the impasse – and it’s not new. Too much being ‘done to’ and not enough ‘doing with’.

We all have to see addressing change as a part of the responsibility we share – and not leave it to someone else to figure out. It’s all about having courage, and demonstrating collectivity.

Tags collaborative teaching, education leadership, school leadership

Building – and sustaining – innovation

With nearly 45 years of experience working in education, I find myself reflecting on exactly what it is I have achieved in that time. With each of my own kids now pursuing their own life ambitions, and now my eldest grand-kids at the age where they’re thinking about the ways they might contribute to society – there are often times we find ourselves discussing exactly what’s important in life. Generally we arrive back at the same place – we all want to have ‘made a difference’ in some way.

I didn’t really think of doing anything but becoming a teacher when I was young. There was something that appealed to me about the opportunities that teachers have to make a difference – remembering particularly some special teachers I’d had who made a difference for me.

From the start of my career I relished the freedom and opportunity I had to do different things, try different approaches. I was always the one who was first to embrace the new technology as it arrived (which led to a stint as an Ed Tech lecturer some years later), and was constantly trying different layouts in my classroom and using the outdoors as a learning environment (which explains my interest in MLE/ILE configurations later on).

In my educational career I’ve been blessed to have had the guidance and support of some extremely good leaders, who have given me permission to ‘stretch’ and try new ideas. I’ve never been satisfied with simply accepting the status quo – especially when the status quo isn’t working.

I’ve had the privilege of being involved in some wonderfully ground-breaking initiatives in my career which, on reflection, have allowed me to pursue my passion for ensuring our approach to education is future-focused and addressing areas of inequity caused by the present systems and structures that constrain us. As I reflect back I can think of…

POLO – (the Primary Open Learning Option – CHCH College of Education, started 1995) – a distance education initial teacher education programme providing opportunities for people to complete their initial teacher education regardless of where they live in NZ. Included here were some highly successful regional initiatives in Pangaru, Rotorua, Tairawhiti and Te Araroa.
Technology curriculum PD – (1996-7) – a distance ed professional learning programme to introduce the new technology curriculum in the mid 1990s – quite radical in its time!
The Virtual Learning Network – started with CASAtech in 1994, and growing to include schools across New Zealand as a way of providing access to a breadth of curriculum for students, particularly in rural and remote parts of New Zealand.
The Global Classroom (CHCH College of Education, started in 1993) – a distance ed course for teachers introducing them to the ways telecommunications technologies could be used to expand the concept of the classroom to create authentic learning experiences at a global level (another 1990s project – started pre-WWW!)
GlobalNet2000 – an online millennium project supported by the Christchurch City Council. Established in 1999 to run through 2000, involving schools and students in NZ and internationally.
South Learning Centre – 1999, reconceptualising the role and structure of a community library with a learning centre included in the design – together with a cafe, meeting rooms and other features making it more of a community hub than simply a place for books.
GCSN – the Greater Christchurch Schools Network – established to support schools as they connected to the city’s ultra-fast broadband, but playing an important role in post-earthquake Christchurch, with a particular focus on closing the digital divide.
EIT teacher ed programme – in 2011 I was contracted by the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) to lead the development of a differently designed initial teacher education programme in the Hawkes Bay region, based on a partnership model between schools, EIT and the candidate teachers. It has become one of the most effective models of initial teacher education we currently have in NZ, based on graduation and retention data.
CORE Education – (started 2003) – a not-for-profit professional services organisation, with a national presence and responsible for some significant developments in the NZ education system, including the ICTPD cluster programme, Early Years ICT PD and the annual ULearn conference. I stepped back from my role there in 2018 and started FutureMakers.

I’m not sharing this in an effort to claim personal recognition, and I’m certainly not claiming that all of these things were my idea only, or that I was the only person responsible. Each was the result of a team effort. It’s simply that they are all examples of innovations in education that I have been very closely associated with at the start-up stage.

As I reflect back now, I have had the opportunity to see the cycles of innovation that are written about by so many others, and what makes some things sustainable, while others work for only a short period of time. Here are some of the things I have noted:

Vision – One of the things that is common across all of the things on my list is the concept of the vision that inspired them – how the vision was articulated and became owned by the wider group of people coming to be involved. Most of the things on my list required a significant shift in behaviour and establishing new ways of working. This doesn’t happen by chance, and requires a coherent vision as the centre-piece of action to galvanise the passion and commitment of others.
Leadership – Don Hanna, co-author of the book ‘leadership for 21st century learning‘ defines a leader as someone who has vision, is able to articulate that vision and who inspires the trust of others to follow that vision. Again, that is a characteristic I note in the majority of these projects. Each involved a courageous shift in behaviours and the people who became involved did so because of the trust they had in the leadership. Further, the project could only grow when there was a team working together on it, and where that team could grow as the project grew, with a sense of distributed leadership that allowed the project to remain responsive and agile.
Culture – when there is a purposeful and collaboratively owned vision, together with a set of guiding values/principles, the culture that develops within the group becomes a powerful enabler in confronting and addressing the changes that may occur within the environment in which the organisation operates. A strong culture provides the ‘glue’ that gives confidence to those working in the group in the face of change, and a shared ownership in terms of what is being achieved – it provides ‘skin in the game’ for everyone. Looking back however, I note that, as powerful as it is, the culture of an organisation can be crushed if it is not continually being fed by the leadership as they reinforce the vision and values in they ways they operate.
Sustainability – it is of immense satisfaction to me that most of the projects listed above continued for a good number of years and were successful in meeting their objectives. Some, like the Technology Curriculum PD and GlobalNet were always intended to be for a fixed period of time, while others, such as the GCSN and EIT Teacher Ed programme have become self-sustaining even as key people and leadership within them changes. The key here seems to involve the commitment to the establishment vision and guiding principles, the ongoing support for the culture that sustains this. Some appear to have a life-cyle that sees them end – like the POLO programme which ran for more than 20 years before being closed down. Others, like the South Learning Centre and the Virtual Learning Network have morphed over time to reflect changes in the environment, resourcing levels and the vision of those in leadership.

So what are the negatives? Here are just three key things that negatively impact the ability to sustain innovation based on my reflections of these projects:

The vision vanishes – a good vision sets point on the horizon to aim for. It isn’t a fixed state or achievable goal, but rather a spot on the horizon that we set our trajectory towards. As circumstances change and people come and go eyes can shift from the horizon to the things that demand immediate attention, particularly as the project grows and more is required to ‘keep the wheels’ oiled. This often results in more attention being placed on introducing systems and processes that enable this to happen – but that can be a problem if the implementation of those things displaces the focus on vision as the key driver at the senior leadership level. If that happens, it’s not long before the success of the project becomes measured in terms of chargeable hours, production of widgets and contracts completed etc. Decisions about where to focus energy become based purely on financial return rather than alignment with values and whether the vision is being realised. When that happens the project becomes terminal.
The culture is crushed – management consultant Peter Druker is famously quoted for saying ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. This doesn’t mean that strategy is unimportant – rather that a powerful and empowering culture was a surer route to organisational success. Organisational culture develops as a result of the buy-in of participants to the vision of the organisation and the leadership provided to pursue it. Johnson and Scholes’ cultural web provides a useful way of understanding the dimensions involved in understanding organisational culture. The critical thing to understand here is that each of these things needs to be ‘fed’ and kept alive for the culture to flourish. Neglect them, or worse, override them by introducing changes that run counter to the cultural mores, and the culture is crushed.
The leadership loses touch – last on my list, and sadly, often the case, is where the leadership loses touch with the vision and mission of the organisation – and with the people in it. It becomes just another job, with the need to focus on process, systems and structures etc. This is a frequently told story in start-up culture, where the founders are replaced by leaders who adopt more traditional leadership and management approaches. This is no better illustrated than in the experience of Jim Clark, renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of three billion dollar companies. The first of these, Silicon Graphics, rose to fame in the 1980s and had a stranglehold on the computer industry because of the processing chip they produced which was, at that time, unrivalled for speed and performance. As the company grew it was suggested to Clark that he created a management team to look after the leadership of the company, to allow him more time to stay focused on what he was good at – innovating. Being such a successful company the management team could enjoy the benefits of high profitability based on their position in the market. When Clark repeatedly came to them with insights about the rise of competitors in their niche in the market and insisting on changes that needed to be made, they refused to listen and eventually fired him from his own company. Within two years Silicon Graphics had lost so much market share it ended up reincorporating as a different entity in 1990 and by the end of the 90s filed for bankruptcy after a series of failed ventures.
Not only is it essential that leaders exhibit the right leadership styles and relationships with staff etc. – they cannot afford to lose touch with the essence of what makes the organisation successful in the first place – as framed in its vision, values and culture.
Sustainability succumbs to short-termism – When all of the previous three points occur, the emphasis on sustainability diminishes and organisations become consumed instead by the tyranny of the urgent, striving to meet the immediate needs before them but without thought or emphasis being given to what this means in the longer term and whether what is being decided will be sustainable into the future.

Tags education leadership

Feet of Clay

Image source: Two Clay-baked feet via Wikimedia Commons CC4.0

“The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history… The crisis is exacerbating pre-existing education disparities by reducing the opportunities for many of the most vulnerable children, youth, and adults…. On the other hand, this crisis has stimulated innovation within the education sector”.
UN Policy Brief August 2020

Many of us are familiar with the phrase ‘feet of clay’ – referring to a fundamental flaw or weakness in a person who may be otherwise revered. The phrase originates from the book of Daniel in the Bible where Daniel interprets a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In that dream, a magnificent statue is seen with a head of gold, but weaker and less valuable metals beneath, until finally having feet of clay mixed with iron. I can’t help but wonder if this metaphor may have significance for us as we seek to resolve the issues facing our education system.

Much has been written in the past couple of years about the impact of the COVID-19 school lockdowns and the lessons we have learned from those experiences. As noted in the UN Policy Brief quoted above, there is overwhelming evidence of how this disruption has exposed some fundamental weaknesses in our system – most of which already existed, but became exposed once the traditional veneer of place-based learning environments was removed.

As we see a range of actions being taken in response to this, I can’t help but wonder about the extent to which much of the focus is on simply ‘polishing up the gold and silver’ at the top of the system, and avoiding the fact that the ‘feet of clay’ have been severely damaged.

Here’s an example…

Consider, for example, the current level of concern about students who are not attending school – the rise of absenteeism. This was certainly a rising area of concern before COVID, but has been brought into sharp focus since the 2020 lockdowns and subsequent pandemic disruptions with reports now of attendance in some areas dropping below 50% – some of which is related to student health and the impact of Omicron, while some sheets back to many of our learners simply becoming ‘disinterested’ in continuing to attend school due to a variety of factors.

The government response has been to release a new school Attendance and Engagement Strategy that sets expectations and targets to turn around these years of dropping attendance rates. This is a perfectly understandable response given the government’s investment in an education system that is premised on having learners gather together in a physical place to receive instruction and engage in learning.

In this rhetoric we see that ‘attendance’ is taken as a proxy for ‘engagement’ – i.e.” if you are physically present then you are engaged in learning, but if you are absent, you are not.” This emphasis on physical participation in or at school is reinforced in a recent PISA report that states…”

“…engagement is characterised by factors such as school and class attendance, being prepared for class, completing homework, attending lessons, and being involved in extra-curricular sports or hobby clubs.”
OECD (2020) Student Engagement at School

This explanation clearly links all aspects of attending school in person with the concept of engagement – which is certainly valid if we’re talking about engagement with school – but does that automatically correlate to engagement in learning?

The responses seen so far to the issue of absenteeism include a lot of ‘polishing the golden head’ in the form of increasing truancy services, implementation of better attendance tracking and monitoring systems, making school more ‘attractive’ through provision of lunches, wellbeing services and even some ‘edutainment’ approaches. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these initiatives in and of themselves, but do they really address the foundational issues leading to this dilemma? Could we instead (or in addition) more deeply and genuinely engage with questions such as…

is physical attendance at a place called ‘school’ a requirement for learning for every learner?
are schools (as we know them) still the best model of education provision in the 21st century?
how could we better factor in the home circumstances of individuals, different cultural and religious needs/requirements, as well as different learning needs and preferences?
is our current expectation of full-time attendance across a week, a term, a year, the most suitable or appropriate way of accommodating the needs of all learners – or teachers?
how might we differentiate between engagement in school and engagement in learning – what new measures might be required?
what sort of support needs to be provided in cases where learners may engage in learning from places other than ‘school’? And how do we then ‘support the supporters?’

These questions are often posed at conferences I attend or online communities I participate in, but are seldom followed through because they become ‘too hard’ to do anything about – they challenge the foundations of our system (the clay feet) which becomes simply too difficult to do anything about.

But what happens when those ‘clay feet’ show signs of crumbling as a result of the ‘shaking’ experienced in times of disruption? Do we wait for the whole structure to fall, or should we be looking to reconstruct those foundations?

Other examples…

I’ve focused on absenteeism as just one example of where the focus needs to be on the ‘feet’ rather than the ‘head’ of our system – but there are countless others, all of which are, arguably, things that have been exposed as weaknesses during the past few years of COVID disruption. These include (for example)…

evidence of structural inequity across so many parts of our education system – strongly correlated with structural inequities across other parts of society (health, law, welfare etc.) which means that tackling it alone within education becomes impossible.
identification of new measures of success that challenge our existing assumptions about assessment and achievement, and require structural re-alignment of things such as curriculum, pedagogy, learner-agency, role of teachers etc.
participation of parents/whānau and community in the process of ‘raising the child’, creating new forms of partnership that enable this to occur and new forms of ‘social contract’ to ensure responsibilities are understood and followed through on.
legislative, funding, resourcing and policy frameworks and structures that fail to offer flexibility to recognise leaners and teachers that operate outside of the bounds of a traditional school setting, and so deprive the system as a whole of the benefit of their expertise and experience.

So what can I do?

If you’ve read this far and feel, like many I imagine, that this is something that can only be addressed ‘at the top‘ (i.e. by the Ministry or Government), and that there’s nothing you can do from your position as a teacher, parent or even as a student, then don’t despair, you’re not alone. Truth is, any system depends on the stability of its foundations and is effective in ensuring they remain in tact and unquestioned as bureaucracies work to establish their services upon them. Add to that the impact of short-term political cycles and its inevitable that the ‘big issues’ seldom get addressed.

But don’t despair altogether – I strongly believe that it is possible for educators to begin to make the changes that matter, even when the ‘bigger picture’ can feel overwhelming. In fact, there are plenty of examples of individual educators, leaders and schools that are already ‘bucking the system’ to ensure the programmes they offer, the services they provide and the relationships they establish are not dependent on the ‘feet of clay’ foundations that exist.

As you set about designing the settings and experiences to engage your learners in learning (not schooling), consider some of the questions below to guide your thinking and challenge yourself to engage in some radical experimentation that will benefit your learners in the long term.

Who is ‘driving the learning’ in my context? Who is involved in making the decisions about what is learned, how it is learned and who the learning is done with?
What is informing the decisions made in my context about how learners are organised, who is responsible for them and how their time is organised and managed?
How authentic are my relationships with parents/whānau and community? Is there a genuine sense of partnership involved? If so, what sustains this?
What does success in learning look like for my learners? Who decides? Is the process understood by everyone involved? Who is responsible for the measures of success, and for maintaining a record of learning for each learner?
If I’m not physically present (in my school/classroom) for a period of time, who takes responsibility for continuing the teaching and learning? How do they know what is involved and what needs to be done? How do I design learning to account for this?

The responses to each of these questions will inevitably lead to an examination of motive, and the need to answer “am I simply conforming to established practice, or am I pushing the boundaries and challenging the traditional foundations of practice in ways that need to be challenged?” In this way each of us can take responsibility for things that will, in their own way, contribute to a strengthening and eventual re-casting of the foundations of our practice and of our system as a whole.

Tags education leadership, educational transformation, learner engagement

Designing an effective experimental PLD approach

Over the past few months I’ve spoken with a number of educational leaders who are looking at how they can best implement some of the changes they believe should be happening in their schools as a result of COVID-19 and the introduction of hybrid learning approaches.

The start point for such efforts must be on working with staff to include them fully in the process and to ensure they have the appropriate level of support and access to professional learning and development to enable them to participate.

Building, sustaining and leveraging the capability of staff should be high priority for any organisation. Research shows that within any group there will be a range of learning needs that exist, each requiring a different response. The CBAM[1] research identifies three key areas of need:

Personal – “What are the new skills, knowledge and capabilities I need?”
Task – “What do I need to do/know to be make this work in my context?”
Impact – “How do I know it’s working? What new things could I try? Who can I work with to make this happen?”

While the first two phases are important in terms of ensuring staff develop the capability and capacity to contribute effectively to the work of the organisation, the focus in the third phase is where an organisation builds the capacity to grow, to innovate and to remain future focused in their practice.

While the needs of staff in the first phase can be addressed by providing access to and passing on existing knowledge and skills, the need for more adaptive, inquiry-led and exploratory approaches increases through the next two phases.

Experimentation: the key to achieving transformation through PLD

Ultimately, PLD should be seen as the key strategy in achieving any form of change or transformation within the organisation as a whole. This is where a culture of experimentation is required.

A culture of experimentation involves:

Permission-giving leadership – means letting go and empowering staff to perform their own experiments, not telling them what to do or presenting pre-determined actions to follow.
Organisational commitment to an agreed vision or purpose– provides the focus for testing any hypothesis and for understanding where the impact must be seen.
Appetite for risk – many education organisations are too conservative in their approach to transformation. Need to ‘think big’ and regard failures as ‘first attempts in learning’.
On-demand resource and support – available to support experiments as required. Must allow for variability here and the emergent needs/demands/opportunities that occur.
Collaborative effort – staff working in teams to provide support, feedback, critical oversight etc. Requires commitment to mutually agreed ways of working and accountabilities.
Short accounts – pursuing short cycles of experimentation, pursuing well-defined hypotheses and reflecting on results on regular basis.
Focus on impact – a commitment to data-informed decision-making – use of data must trump opinions. Be prepared to stop things that don’t work.

Conditions required

Creating the conditions for an effective, experimental PLD process requires thinking differently about the way programmes and support are established. The table below illustrates what some of the most effective strategies are:

Focus	Most effective	Least effective
Participation	Collaborative teams Democratised participation	Individual focus Selected participation
Motivation	Pursuing communally-agreed goals and purpose	Pursuing individually identified goals or purpose
Leadership	Permission giving	Directive
Resources	Allocated to meet identified needs/opportunities Able to provide for time, purchase of specific resources Rapid access on the basis of application based on agreed purpose	Allocated to individuals in the form of release or salary increment Centrally decided provision of resources and/or support
Support	Allows for use of internal and external expertise – building collective efficacy Personal and team mentoring support included Ability to access support with specific expertise as required	Relying exclusively on internal expertise/support Relying exclusively on external expertise/support
Timing and accountability	Ongoing, short cycles of experimentation with regular review and sharing	Pre-set timeframes determined by project schedules or deadlines. End-of project reporting/celebration only

Conclusion

Experimentation is a powerful strategy for achieving transformational change in an organisation. When the intent is to explore new ways of working or to pursue innovative ideas, traditional forms of PLD won’t be sufficient when it comes to balancing the need for building capability alongside releasing the creative energy and ideas of staff.

To achieve this requires thinking differently about the traditional structures, systems and processes used to support professional learning and development. The key here is agility, providing the ability for teams to achieve their goals with the provision of support (time, resources, expertise) that is ‘just in time’ rather than ‘just in case’.

Participation in a culture of experimentation should involve everyone, with the allocation of resources being available based on needs that are identified and which align with the agreed purpose and shared vision of the organisation.

[1] https://www.air.org/resource/cbam-concerns-based-adoption-model

Tags education leadership, educational transformation, hybrid learning, PLD, school leadership

Taking it in our stride

In my previous post titled ‘caught by surprise‘ I reflected on how, despite all of the signals, so many schools and businesses appear not to have been as prepared as they might be for the eventuality of another lockdown. I received a significant amount of feedback in the various forums I shared my post on – many giving personal anecdotes to illustrate agreement with what I was saying, but several pointing out that there were also schools and students who had a far better experience, and who were better prepared for the current lockdown.

In my post I did acknowledge that there are schools out there that have been working strategically to be prepared, and so in this post I thought I’d reflect a little more on what it means to be able to take the eventuality of another school closure ‘in our stride’ – for whatever the reason, be it another pandemic response, or a natural disaster, or a significant weather event.

This post is also prompted, in part, by another conversation I had this week with a colleague who’d been asked to gather together some advice for schools and teachers on how to cope during periods of remote teaching. It wasn’t hard to find online a slew of pages offering tips and tricks for teachers during periods of remote learning. Here are just a few I found in a brief ten minute search…

If you dig a little deeper you’ll find some gems in there – ideas for how to keep your students engaged, making sure you maintain a focus on wellbeing, consider ways to involve parents etc.

But I couldn’t help thinking that, for the schools I’m aware of that were able to take things in their stride with this lockdown, these lists of “tips and tricks” wouldn’t really be all that helpful. They’d be unlikely to be looking for ideas to implement that weren’t already an established part of their practice.

This is because so many of the strategies that work are already in place and are a part of ‘how they operate’ on a day to day basis, meaning, that when the lockdown was announced, learners and teachers didn’t have to make such a huge adjustment in the way they engaged in their learning – and with each other.

This was what I was getting at with my list of suggestions at the end of my caught by surprise post. Those weren’t a list of tips and tricks, rather, they were a set of suggestions for how individual teachers or whole schools might transform the way teaching and learning occurs, making use of the affordances of digital technologies to enable, enhance and accelerate learning regardless of location.

Over the weekend I reviewed an article from the McKinsey Institute that provides their perspective on this. Titled Reimagining a more equitab le and resilient K-12 education system, the authors suggest that school systems recommit to four basic principles and consider eight ideas for innovation. Although it may seem overwhelming, the time to start reimagining the future of education is now.

Their list of priorities is:

Recommit to what works: Get the basics right – a reminder not to get distracted with lots of things to simply keep kids occupied. That may be OK as a stop-gap, but when faced with the prospect of regular periods of school closure, we must ensure we are addressing the things that, as educational providers, we are charged with doing.
Harness technology to scale access – reminding us that simply handing out devices doesn’t improve learning. The patterns and expectations of use must be in place and well established well before the sudden lockdown, otherwise you’re simply adding to the complexity of the change that needs to happen.
Move towards mastery based learning – this isn’t advocating for lots of online quizzes and ‘drill and fill’ types of activities. It’s about using technology to create compelling, enabling personalisation at a level not previously possible in a traditional classroom.
Support children holistically – while there’s been plenty of research and insights about the importance of a well-being focus during lockdown, in the longer term we can serve our learners much better by helping them become “inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective.” Learners who are capable of this are less likely to fall prey to the sorts of self-doubt and anxiety reported by some during lockdown as they are more likely to feel in control and empowered in how they respond
Help students adapt to the future of work – a focus on preparation for the world of work has always been an important part of our education system, particularly at senior levels. But it’s important to understand just how significantly that world is changing, and how we need to be reflecting this in our curriculum as well as the way we teach and interact with our students.
Invest in new models of teacher preparation and development – this one concerns me greatly as someone who has devoted a significant part of my career to both areas. There’s no shortage of people with strong ideas about how to solve this problem, but few have the breadth or depth of understanding of what is involved. As a result we’ve seen a plethora of small-scale programmes emerge, some last, some don’t, but none are capable of being scaled and accelerated to the extent that is required. In addition, there’s the issue of what is considered important for a teacher to know and do. For example, in the digital era, educators need to expand their understanding of what it means to be literate in the 21st century: not replacing traditional learning but complementing it.
Unbundle the role of the teacher – teacher stress and workload become issues as we perpetuate the one-teacher-one-class model, placing unrealistic burdens of expectation on individual teachers to take responsibility for an every increasing number of tasks. We need to free them to focus time on high-value activities that require deep teaching expertise and relationships. Making better use of and expanding the number of ancillary staff is one way of achieving this. Another is to work more in teams, make best use of differentiated sills and abilities, and incorporate a greater focus on student agency in the classroom, utilise peer support models, and access to multiple forms of support (including online).
Allocate resources equitably to support every student – remote learning simply fails to kick in if teachers and learners don’t have what’s required of them to work from their home contexts. I’ve covered a lot of this in my closing the divide post and elsewhere on my blog. There’s no quick fix, but it cannot be left to chance either. A determined effort with everyone playing their part is required.
Rethink school structures and policies – another area I’ve blogged about repeatedly. As long as we remain committed to the current structures in our schooling system we’re under-serving so many of our learners – and teachers. Sure, these structures have served us well int eh past, and some may well serve us well in the present when in-person learning takes place. But what we need more of is the ability to experiment with more agile, research-informed approaches that will allow us to cope better in times of change. Instead of being focused exclusively on the notion of school as a physical place, on seat-time and attendance, on the timing of the school day or the school year etc. we need to be able to accommodate different ways of thinking and working where these models are no longer fit for purpose.

I’m sure that if those teachers and schools that were able to transition more seamlessly to working remotely were to reflect on these things they’d find they are exactly what they’ve been focusing on – to some extent or another. The challenge is for us as a system to find ways of achieving this, so that it isn’t just the privileged few in the schools fortunate enough to have great leadership, innovative teachers and the resources to achieve this – but that it is happening everywhere, in every school and for every learner.

Imagine if, when faced with the next event that forces the closure of schools we’re able to look back and say, “No sweat, we’ve got this. We’ll take it in our stride!”

We simply have to do this.

Tags covid, education leadership, educational transformation, remote learning

1. Deficit-thinking Determines Direction

2. Inertia Inhibits Innovation

3. Restructures Result in Resistance

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1. The end-game isn’t certain

2. It is difficult to measure.

3. It challenges the status quo.

4. It requires different skills and methodologies

5. It’s a long game

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Here’s an example…

Other examples…

So what can I do?

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Experimentation: the key to achieving transformation through PLD

Conditions required

Conclusion

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