Seize the Season!

Image: Photo by Noorulabdeen Ahmad on Unsplash

Why don’t we mark the end of 2022, as the beginning of the resurgence of humanity. Not a guarantee, but a strong probability. We can do it!
Michael Fullan (Twitter)

I was struck the other day by a tweet from #MichaelFullan1 quoted above. As the end of year fatigue gets interrupted by staff Christmas parties and replays of Home Alone on TV, it’s definitely worth taking a moment to look for ways we can end the year with an optimistic perspective ahead of our entry into the new year.

Why is this important?

Humanity is the human race, which includes everyone on Earth. It’s also a word for the qualities that make us human, such as the ability to love and have compassion, be creative, and not be a robot or alien.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/humanity

Consider for a moment the things we see on our screens every evening – reports of war, racism, poverty, crime, financial collapse, political upheaval. And then consider how difficult it is to navigate our way through all of this – challenged with feeling overwhelmed, threatened, isolated, defeated… it’s not pretty.

At a macro level many are concerned that we’re seeing some of the greatest challenges to the stability of our society – globally. The essence of our humanity is being eroded and the behaviours we’re seeing in many quarters serve to remind us of just how fragile our human ecosystem is.

Now consider the possibility that the if the current trends and behaviours continue we’re getting only a glimpse of what the world will be like that the young learners in our classrooms and schools are going to grow up into. The narratives about equipping them to thrive or flourish in the future become stalled when facing a world that may not be at all conducive to thriving or flourishing in!

As educators we must take an active interest in this, and understand that it is entirely in our power to be a part of the solution. In fact, not just a part, but a significant driver. Consider the following quote from a recent UN policy brief written in the context of the impact of COVID on global education systems:

Education is not only a fundamental human right. It is an enabling right with direct impact on the realization of all other human rights. It is a global common good and a primary driver of progress across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a bedrock of just, equal, inclusive peaceful societies. When education systems collapse, peace, prosperous and productive societies cannot be sustained.
From Education during COVID-19 and beyond. United Nations Policy Brief, August 2020

Look for the bright spots

So what could it mean if we were to take Michael’s challenge to us seriously? What would a resurgence of humanity look like, and what could we do to make that a reality?

A useful place to start might be to reflect on the signs we’ve seen of humanity at it’s best in the past year. I know there are countless examples of the darker side of humanity (war, mis-information, poverty, inequity etc.), but in the midst there have been glimmers of hope, some bright spots that give a glimpse of what could be. These are the things that don’t necessarily make the headlines in our national media, but there are plenty of great stories you can access to remind yourself of the good that does exist, including:

the many great stories in the Education Gazette over the past year
those “good sorts” slots at the end of the news each night – so many of which come from education settings
the gems that emerged in your own school context over the year, those small successes that made such a big difference in the lives of individual learners or families/whānau.

As you review some of these things, ponder how they might illustrate the good of humanity – the essence of what makes us human and the qualities we’d expect to see if there were to be the ‘resurgence’ that Michael challenges us about.

Where could you begin?

So how might we demonstrate our humanity to others? Judy Pono offers the follow advice:

Always Look For The Good in People. Just like there are two sides to every story, we all have our good and bad sides too. …
Focus on People’s Potentials. …
Choose to Love. …
Treat Everyone As Equals. …
Love Yourself. …
Love Everyone As You Would Your Brothers and Sisters. …
Forgive. …
Show Compassion.

Displaying this list, or one like it on the wall of your learning environment (staffroom or classroom – or both!) could provide a useful point of reference for your learners whenever there is a discussion being had about a social action project or debating how to resolve a particular social issue.

Using these (all or some) statements as a simple ‘litmus test’ provides a way of reinforcing the values that make us human, and therefore ensuring our decisions and actions will be consistent with what we believe is for the good of humanity.

And it’s not just about the decisions we make in the moment that these prompts can be useful. They are examples of the sorts of things that should be considered when we are designing our curriculum, or developing school policies and procedures for example. They should also inform the things we include in our school mission statements, values, and graduate profiles.

Our students – the Future Makers

As educators we have the opportunity we have to help realise the resurgence of humanity and to create a better future for our learners by investing in them today as Future Makers. But this will require some radical changes to how we currently operate, and to the mindsets that serve to protect the status quo!

In their book Education to Better their World, Marc Prensky and colleagues make a pitch for a new and better approach to education. They argue that..

… at its core, this will be an education whose ends are to empower kids to improve their own world, starting with when they are students.”

They add …

This emerging education benefits all of us – far more than the education of today. It benefits our kids more by enabling them to think more effectively (and far more practically), than our current education does, and, in addition, it empowers our ids to act, relate, and accomplish effectively in the world. It offers young people not just the pride and joy of real-world accomplishment, but all the self-confidence that comes with it.”

This is where our approach to curriculum becomes so important. The need to engage learners in authentic contexts, to find local solutions to real-world problems, to be risk-takers, collaborators and problem solvers etc. There are so many opportunities to do this that schools and educators can explore – right on their doorstep. In addition, the educational resources supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals provide some excellent starting points for projects and inquiries.

When does the future start?

For many people, including educators, the concept of the future is simply too difficult to imagine. The everyday pressures on schools to improve outcomes (i.e. grades) and the myriad of other issues facing teachers on a daily basis demands most of our attention, with little space left for meaningful engagement with larger issues. To do that we need to work with tools that enable us to rise above the tyranny of the urgent and free our minds for at least a while to focus on what matters.

Jane McGonigal uses the following questions as a starter when working with groups in her futures-thinking workshops:

Question 1: When you think about the next ten years, do you think things will stay mostly stay the same and go on as normal, or do you expect that ost of us will dramatically rethingk and reinvent how we do things?

Question 2: When you think about how the world and your life will change over the next ten years are you mostly worried or mostly optimistic?

Question 3: How much control or influence do you feel you personally have in determining how the world and your life change over the next ten years?”
Jane McGonigal in Imaginable

Jane invites her workshop attendees to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 in response to each of these questions, where one is low and ten is high. She then explains in her book, in much more detail, how you might unpack the responses of a group and work with them to create an ‘imaginable’ future which they can then commit to working towards.

Such questions (and the other tools Jane introduces in her book) are worth considering to use in staff meetings, with senior students and with parent groups as you seek to imagine a more positive, optimistic, future-focused view of how we operate as a school community and as an education system.

Seize the season!

It seems appropriate that this post is being written as the images of Christmas are appearing across our screens and shop front advertising. It always seems ironic to me that the messages of Christmas that I remember as a child (Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all) are becoming increasingly subsumed by the lust of materialism, individualism and consumerism – the very things that represent a threat to our humanity into the future.

That’s why I think Michael has a point – perhaps we can use this moment in time to imagine a different future, one where our humanity triumphs over the despair we see around us. This isn’t such a lofty thought that it is beyond the control of individuals in our system. If we all seized the season and determined to make just some changes in the way we think, speak or act – and in the way we design our curriculum and organise learning in our spaces – perhaps we could see a resurgence of humanity in our classrooms, schools and communities.

Tags education leadership, educational transformation

3 Signs of System and Organisational Distress

Photo by Michael on Unsplash

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

Lessons on strategy from riding a bike

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”
Albert Einstein

Riding a bike is something I’ve been doing since I was very young. It’s still something I do by choice to simply get around the place when the weather and time permit, and I enjoy it as a way of getting exercise by taking long rides along the river trails or, occasionally, up the hills around where I live.

As I was out on my bike yesterday my mind wandered back to when I learned to ride, and some of the lessons that enabled me to finally achieve my goal. As I was navigating my way along a rough part of the riverbank journey, I reflected on the turbulence we’re all experiencing at the moment, particularly in our education system, and how those simple lessons from learning to ride a bike may be useful to us now.

Here are just a couple of those lessons together with some implications for how we might use these lessons to inform our approach as leaders…

LESSON 1: Keep your eyes up and always look ahead instead of down

The first piece of advice I recall which, at the time seemed counter-intuitive, but in the long run proved really effective. I was trying so hard to focus on keeping my balance and ride in a straight line, my eyes fixed completely on the front wheel and my hands making repeated adjustments to the direction of travel as the wheel swerved one way then the other. No matter how hard I tried I never seemed to be able to stay ‘true’ to the line I was trying to follow.

It was my mother, patiently standing behind me on my bike, who suggested that, instead of focusing on the wheel in front of me, I fix my gaze on the point ahead – the place I was intending to travel to. Despite initially thinking that was a crazy idea, and that I’d lose the focus on my wheel and where I needed to steer, I followed his advice.

The change was instantaneous! Instead of swerving all over the place as a result of the constantly ‘over-compensating’ movement of the handlebars, I was able to ride with more confidence in a straight line towards the place I was looking ahead to.

It’s a lesson that’s stuck with me as I’ve continued to “ride my bike” through my life – but has also resonated as a key life lesson when it comes to pursuing my goals and longer term objectives – and for those in leadership, charged with helping ‘steer the organisational bike’ if you like.

As individuals it is very easy to become focused on the wheel in front of us, instead of holding our head up and keeping eyes fixed on the road ahead. This is particularly true when we’re faced with uncertainty and disruption such as we’re all facing currently. It brings about a sense of panic, an urgency of focus on the ‘now’, driven by the demands of the seemingly insurmountable problems threatening the basis of the things that familiar to us and within which we are able to operate with comfort.

I’ve recognised this in many settings recently – from school settings where principals and staff are so busy focusing on ’emergency measures’ that they no longer have time any the ‘big picture’ or strategic thinking, through to our political leaders calling for a time to ‘take stock’ and allow time for some relief from the relentless pressures we’re facing.

All of this I completely understand. There’s a feeling of exhaustion across almost every part of our society at present – so it makes sense to create space for our wellbeing and ensure we take time to care for ourselves and those around us.

But we can’t afford to ride the bike for long by simply looking at the front wheel as sooner or later we’ll find ourselves becoming incredibly wobbly, over-compensating when obstacles appear unexpectedly and eventually falling over because we’ve become completely un-balanced.

This is where leaders need to step up and ensure they have their eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead, and that they convey a sense of purpose, direction and hope in those who are with them on the journey, even if at the time the only focus those people can have is the wheel before them.

Just like learning to ride a bike, lifting your head to view the road ahead when everything in your being is telling you to look down at the wheel can be a challenging exercise – but it is so important! And for the experienced cyclist, looking to the road ahead is common practice, and the thought of looking down at the front tyre as you ride an act inviting almost certain disaster.

So… just like the youngster learning to ride a bike, we have to overcome the tendency to absorb our minds with a focus on the front wheel. With our head up and a clear-ish picture of the road ahead, we’re in a far better position to anticipate the corners, potholes and stones on the road, and our reflexes will ensure the front wheel is turned just enough to navigate through or around these things, and not veer so wildly that we’re thrown off balance and fall off.

LESSON 2: The physics of cycling makes it easier to stay upright when you’re going faster

In the process of learning to ride a bike there is a certain point where you realise how fruitless it is to keep trying to get onto the saddle, grip the handlebars and place feet on the pedals before starting to move forward. I still have memories of my own experience in learning to ride, over and over I persisted in trying to first get myself positioned on the saddle with everything in place before starting to move forward. Like lesson #1, this seems counter-intuitive, but the fact is that the forward motion is actually what enables us to find our balance and succeed in maintaining the appropriate posture for riding. Without the forward momentum we’ll inevitably fall over.

Further, as we experience the success of doing this, and as our confidence grows, we discover that the faster we go, the more control we actually have to navigate the sudden twists and turns or rugged terrain we’re travelling on. Of course, there’s a limit to just how fast you can go which correlates directly to the amount of experience and confidence you have gained.

From a strategic perspective, speed isn’t about being hasty and progressing with reckless abandonment, it’s about having the thinking, processes and systems in place that allow your organisation to progress with speed, while at the same time allowing time for reflection, relaxation and recovery along the way.

It’s these things that provide the forward momentum in any organisation and ensure it is travelling forward rather than slowing down – which so often occurs during times of disruption and the uncertainty that this causes.

Without the confidence the members of an orgnisation have in their collective vision and the processes, systems and structures that support that, eyes will inevitably focus more on the front wheel than on the horizon.

The point here is that strategic speed isn’t about reckless abandonment and going flat out – think more about a long distance cycle race than a downhill mountain bike event. It’s about having the things in place that will ensure strategic speed – the momentum toward strategic goals – is maintained, instead of wearing everyone in the organisation out by trying simply to peddle faster!

Back in 2010, Jocelyn R. Davis and Tom Atkinson wrote in the Harvard Business Review an article titled Need Speed? Slow Down, which captures a lot of this thinking really well in my view. They include a useful table that compares strategically fast organisations with strategically slow ones as shown below:

From Need Speed? Slow Down by Davis and Atkinson

The study by Davis and Atkinson revealed that..

..higher-performing companies with strategic speed made alignment a priority. They became more open to ideas and discussion. They encouraged innovative thinking. And they allowed time to reflect and learn. By contrast, performance suffered at firms that moved fast all the time, focused too much on maximizing efficiency, stuck to tested methods, didn’t foster employee collaboration, and weren’t overly concerned about alignment.
From Need Speed Slow Down by Jocelyn R. Davis and Tom Atkinson

This is the challenge I see facing education leaders in the current milieu. Instead of hunkering down and focusing on using tested methods (which haven’t worked in the past, so why should they suddenly provide results now?) we need to foster a climate of experimentation, exploration, reflection etc. – all of which is undergirded by a collective commitment to strategic direction and purpose.

Just like in a team cycling event, it’s the longer term goal that is always in sight, and this, in turn, enables decisions made along the way that ensure the speed towards that goal can be achieved. In other words – eyes up instead of on the front wheel.

Tags educational transformation, strategic planning

We all want trees – now!

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Chinese Proverb

Whether we’re talking about climate change, the health system, education or environmental issues, a common refrain in much of the current rhetoric is the urgent need for action. This sense of urgency belies the fact that what needs to be done should have been started a long time ago, but by ignoring the signs, we’re now faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges in terms of the scale and complexity of the problems that lie before us – and our children.

Consider the following:

Climate Change: extreme weather events affecting our ability to sustain food supplies, erosion of our coastlines and rising sea levels, rising temperatures making parts of the planet uninhabitable – these are just some of the signs of the impact of climate change. Experts in the field are warning that we may have less than ten years to put in place measures that will mitigate these things happening. Warnings of this change have been sounded for well over a century now.
Health: Increasing demand for health services, an ageing population, advances in care and many more people having chronic (long-term) health conditions combined with a shortage of medical professionals and the growing inequity of provision for Māori and low socio-economic groups. This 2004 paper highlights these issues being raised nearly two decades ago.
Environment: The environment that sustains our life on this planet is under significant threat from things such as pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, plastics and soil erosion and degradation to name a few. These things haven’t just happened overnight – but the significance of the impact is escalating. While there have been occasions through the history of the planet involving environmental degradation caused by purely natural reasons, what we are facing now is an escalation due to the impact of human behaviour, referred to by many as the Anthropocene.
Education: The already existing challenges within education have become a lot more visible with the global pandemic. The outdated educational approaches, growing rates of truancy, lack of qualified teachers, and widespread inequity in terms of access to digital technologies are suddenly out in the open. The downward trends in achievement in critical areas such as literacy and widely observed lack of engagement are key indicators of the problems we’re facing here. This recent Forbes article on the education crisis summarises the issues well, and provides some useful advice for action regarding teacher recruitment and retention for example.

Our biggest challenge is that, as these problems are now reaching crisis levels, we want to see solutions immediately. We’re wanting to see a forest before us, but we should have begun by planting the seeds 20 years ago, as the Chinese proverb says.

We’re wanting to see a forest before us, but we should have begun by planting the seeds 20 years ago.
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While the problems may seem quite daunting (and they are), our most responsible actions must be on planting the seeds today that will become the full solution into the future. Otherwise we’re simply adding to the overhead of responsibility that our children and their children will face – and the prospect of them looking up at me in my old age and asking ‘why didn’t you do something back then?’ doesn’t excite me.

Increasingly I am concerned (and frustrated) by the huge inertia and lack of action at all levels. It’s easy to point the finger at governments and Ministries, and blame their lack of effective strategy and action, and use that as an excuse as to why we can’t do anything at the local level. While I’m not excusing governments and Ministries – they certainly are culpable – we can’t use that as an excuse for a lack of action in any way with things that are within our own locus of control.

Consider, for example about the issue of plastic pollution and its rapidly escalating threat to our environment. When you think about the pressure there is now on supermarkets and product suppliers to cease using single-use plastics, and the successes seen over a relatively short period of time, we can take at least a modicum of encouragement. It wasn’t governments or even the supermarkets that lead this change – it was the people, everyday individuals who exercised their voice and changed their behaviours because of the conviction of belief they hold. As a result, we’re seeing a response from supermarkets, suppliers and government (albeit timid) to introduce changes in policy, process and structures to ‘normalise’ the use of materials other than plastic in the bags, containers and wrappings used. Not a forest yet, but seeds germinating?

So what about education? Everyday we are bombarded via the media with stories of the numbers of kids not attending school (almost 50% in some of our main centres at present); the drop in literacy levels, problems with retaining good quality teachers in our school, issues of inequity and racism to name just a few areas of concern!

From the perspective of our bureaucracies it’s not for lack of trying. A quick skim of the Ministry of Education’s website reveals a portfolio of initiatives that address all of these things (and more) – and includes the full agenda of recommendations that were made in the Tomorrows Schools Review! So why so little change – or at least, why such slow change?

It seems our ability to respond quickly and appropriately is hampered by several factors:

a fundamental lack of belief among some (many?) of the scale and potential impact of these problems. Often these things are regarded as someone else’s problem and don’t apply in ‘my context’. Further, this results in actions that are continually responsive rather than pro-active.
a lack of clear identification of the problem, its causes and the ways in which it might be addressed.
lack of goal clarity – with so many issues confronting us we can end up setting too many goals which leads to ‘goal juggling’, and the result that with so many goals to pursue nothing actually gets done.
a lack of a clearly understood (and adhered to) change process. Instead, we have change that is directed and implemented from the top down, without sufficient ‘buy-in’ and where the significant barriers to implementation haven’t been identified and addressed. (This applies within institutions as much as it does in systems as a whole).
poor models of leadership at all levels of the system – not speaking here of individuals, but of the leadership paradigm(s) that we operate within.
lack of future-focused thinking – and where this does exist, it quickly gets subsumed within the tyranny of the urgent, the things that are demanding our urgent attention, but whose impact is short term compared to the long game here. Quick-wins, fire-fighting and keeping people happy all seem to be the dominant drivers.
established patterns of behaviour that are simply too hard to shift – and so they become self-reinforcing. “It worked for me, so why shouldn’t it work for my kid?” etc.
bureaucratic structures that simply aren’t designed to be agile and responsive – their focus is on ensuring success, not innovation. They’re structured for risk aversion, rather than experimentation. For example, a five year programme to design a new curriculum may have served us well in the past, but represents the lifetime of an entire generation of students in a secondary school, and thus, if our current curriculum needs to change and isn’t sufficient, we are failing them while waiting for the ‘complete’ curriculum to emerge.
competing political agendas, driven by the desire to remain in power over the drive to actually make a difference – resulting in lots of ‘dry-run’ change, addressing the cosmetic/surface issues and short-term gains, aimed and winning voter approval over long-term success for learners and for our education system.

If you’ve read this far it may all sound a little gloomy – but this is our present reality. It’s my grand-kids I’m thinking of here – and already the eldest of those are at secondary school with only another three years before they graduate!

Could a ‘citizens revolt’ (from educators) contribute to turning around some of these escalating issues we face? What might that involve, and how could it be managed to ensure equitable and sustainable outcomes? And what, then, might (or should) be the response of governments, educational institutions and the Ministry?

Call to action

There are a number of things that I feel worth considering in light of this dilemma, none of which are solutions in themselves, but all of which are pre-requisites for at least starting to plant the seeds we need to grow into trees. In making these suggestions I’m thinking about the response of individuals – like you – whether that be teachers, parents, principals, system leaders… the change begins with each of us.

Be informed – it staggers me just how many educators and in particular, educational leaders I interact with who are so poorly informed about some of these issues. Knowledge is power, and without that you’re conceding that power to others. As recently as this week I heard an education leader explain to me she was simply too busy to keep up to date with this stuff. While I can certainly understand the pressures she may feel, it is disappointing to hear. When this is the case it actually adds to the stress being felt, because every new thing that emerges comes as a surprise and can’t be anticipated.
We can’t rely solely on the evening updates on the TV news to keep abreast of the issues we need to be engaged with. And we most certainly need to engage widely, be informed of a broad range of perspectives, and apply the critical thinking capability we believe to be so important for our learners to the process of forming our own views and thinking. The environment scan on the FutureMakers website might be a useful start – it has dozens of links to other authoritative sources of information, including the OECD, UNESCO, World Bank etc.
Collaborate – don’t take this journey alone! Find your tribe and become engaged in conversations about these things. Find a safe environment in which these ideas can be unpacked, challenged and new thinking emerge. A professional learning group provides an ideal context here – best if there are a variety of voices and perspectives at the table, so it’s not just a group of like-minded ‘yes’ people. Consider also subscribing to some online news feeds and/or Twitter feeds for example, as a way of connecting to the thinking of others. This can be especially useful when you feel confident enough to hit the ‘reply’ button to ask a question or pose an alternative viewpoint.
Identify your theory of change – If your approach to change, whether in your classroom, your institution or agency, isn’t founded on a clearly understood and articulated theory of change, then it will fail. This will happen because you’ll simply go about it the way you have experienced in the past – and that is likely to have failed also! Most often we see change happen as a result of someone or group having a ‘good idea’ or coming up with a ‘plan’ for doing something different – then ‘imposing’ that on those who are expected to embrace the change. A good change strategy will include ways of building buy-in and bringing people (including the difficult ones) onside. It will also address the potential barriers and roadblocks, identifying ways of removing them or at least mitigating their impact. And then comes the interesting part – instead of simply expecting the change to be implemented according to some pre-determined plan, the approach should involve a culture of experimentation, with a higher tolerance of risk and mechanisms for spreading the successful ideas that emerge from this.
Be the change you want to see – before imposing what you feel needs to be changed on others consider what you need to do to change personally. To use the plastics example earlier, it’s pointless undertaking a crusade to end the use of single use plastics if you continue to be a high user of single use plastics yourself!
As an educator, don’t expect others to engage critically with information you pass on to them unless you’ve cultivated that capability yourself. You’re unlikely to succeed in helping your students to become more self-managing if you don’t possess those skills. And you’re unlikely to create the conditions for collaboration if you haven’t committed to working collaboratively with others yourself – and that includes working alongside those you find difficult to work with!
Experiment!! – don’t just wait for someone else to do something, commit to giving something a go – and ensure you learn from the experience. Truth is that we learn from experience – not data. Data can inform our decisions and also validate the results of our experience, but it is a poor teacher. There’s a popular phrase used within the innovation sector – ‘fail fast, fix fast’. The challenge is to start by trying something that will address a particular problem or concern you have, be intentional about how you approach it and keep short accounts so you are constantly reviewing and refining the solution you have created – and be prepared to accept that sometimes you’ll fail. There’s no shame in walking away from something you’ve tried – as long as you’ve learned from that and can carry that learning into the next experiment you try.

These are just some of the seeds you can start sowing straight away – the forest will grow, but we have to start planting today!

E tu kahikatea
Hei whakapae ururoa
Awhi mai awhi atu
Tatou tatou e

Stand like the kahikatea (tree)
To brave the storms
Embrace and receive
We are one together

Tags collaborative teaching, educational change, educational transformation, environment scan

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

Pivot

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
Peter Druker

The announcement of the closure of the Ministry of Education’s head office in Wellington, Mātauranga House, due to earthquake risk came as a big surprise to everyone – in particular, the 1000 employees for whom that is their regular place of work. They were given just a few days to retrieve what they need and prepare to work from home for an unspecified period of time.

Déjà vu the 2020 lockdown! We all remember the sudden changes in our lives at that time which required us all to immediately find new ways of working. A new word was added to our vocabulary as we learned to pivot from one way of doing things to another.

The idea of pivoting isn’t unfamiliar – it’s likely that most of us have had some sort of experience in life that has caused us to do so, a change in career, a redundancy, birth of a first child etc. Each of these experiences forces us to ‘change direction’ in at least some way as we adapt to and embrace the change we’re in.

The sudden closure of Mātauranga House is a salient reminder that disruptive events are increasingly likely to impact our ability to continue as we have. The OECD identified this in a table titled Potential future shocks and surprises, plausibility and impact taken from their Trends Shaping Education 2019 document (pre-COVID!) as illustrated below (cited in their more recent publication on scenarios for the future of education).

More recently McKinsey published an article titled The resilience imperative: Succeeding in uncertain times, in which they demonstrate a number of ways in which disruption is becoming more frequent and more severe, including a dramatic 300% increase in reported natural disasters over the past 40 years.

Such evidence must inform the thinking we are doing about how best we prepared ourselves for this highly disrupted future. Being unprepared is without doubt a significant cause of stress and decline in wellbeing as we continually find ourselves ‘reacting’ to what is happening rather than having a resilience plan in place for the increasingly likelihood of such events occurring. A pro-active response is always best.

Which has me reflecting on the current situation as we navigate our way through the uncharted waters of change in what some refer to as the post-COVID times. Much of the rhetoric reflects an assumption that we’re only have a short time to persevere here and that there’s a time coming when COVID will be ‘over’ and we’ll be able to get back to normal.

The concept of post-COVID could be further away than we think according to a report released last week by New Zealand’s former chief scientist, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman titled Unprecedented and Unfinished.

In the report an international group of researchers outline the drivers and possible outcomes of the pandemic over a five-year horizon. The team used over 50 ‘vectors of uncertainty’ to identify three scenarios for the future illustrated here.

Long story short – the current pandemic situation isn’t going away any time soon, and the degree to which its impact is felt depends entirely on the extent to which we see a global collaboration around vaccinations and putting in place preventative measures.

“It’s fair to say that it’d be very foolish of governments within the multilateral system to see this pandemic as a single, exceptional event.”
Sir Peter Gluckman

So what does this mean for education? Sir Peter Gluckman’s quote above could apply equally for our education system and its leaders – at the national, regional and local level. We have to see this as more than simply a single, exception event that we can simply ‘get through’ and come out the other side. We see this sort of response so often – a school and community impacted by flooding, an earthquake, or other natural disaster for example. We respond as if we hadn’t expected it, and each time we’re challenged to find ways of catering for our learners while they can’t attend school – always as a short-term measure until they can return to school and ‘get back to normal’.

There’s nothing at all wrong with considering our young people attending a physical setting called school as the ‘normal’ we might aspire to. The problem is that this ideal is likely to be disrupted all too frequently, and we should be doing more to reconceptualise how we might operate as centres of learning so that each time such a disruption affects us, we are not thrown into a tail-spin, with systems and processes designed only for the on-site, in-person settings we’re used to. We need to pro-actively plan how we might pivot when the need arises.

This is where the focus on hybrid approaches is so important – not as an end in itself, but as a strategy for building resilience in our schools and our education system. Working to design and implement the elements of a hybrid teaching and learning approach is an effective way of ensuring that when the next disruption occurs, we’re better prepared to respond pro-actively, with strategies and mechanisms in place that can actioned as required.

Of course, there are lot of other benefits of putting the time into designing and implementing such hybrid approaches, besides being prepared for future disruption. These include:

Achieving greater coherence across a school and the system
Addressing systemic issues re equity and inclusion through learning design that is focused more intentionally on meeting the needs of all learners
Increasing transparency of systems and processes – for teachers, students and parents/whānau
Increasing professional collaboration to focus on what is important for student learning
Increasing the focus on developing learner agency and self-management
Improving links with parents/whānau and community as partners in the design of learning and support of learners
Reviewing what counts as success in learning, with more transparency in the assessment process
Taking a ‘systems’ view of our use of digital technologies to support and enable quality teaching and learning that is truly boundary-less

If the challenge of responding to disruptive events isn’t motivation enough for us to be exploring the hybrid learning alternatives, then surely the outcomes in the list above are?

Give a S***!

I am in the habit of riding my bike along the local river trail as regularly as I can. It’s a shared trail that is used by other cyclists, walkers, runners and those walking their dogs – everyone appreciating the opportunity this great community asset provides.

Cycling is one of those activities that provides me with thinking time. This morning my thoughts were on the many dogs I pass on this trail each time I ride it, the different types there are, and the different owners I observe.

This morning I was reflecting on the inevitability of these animals taking a moment to relieve themselves at some point during their morning walk, and the responsibility that falls on these owners to deal with that.

My observations today led me to the conclusion that there are actually three types of dog owner. There are those who are diligent when it comes to scooping up the small piles of excrement their beloved pet deposits and there are those who simply look the other way and ignore that it has happened.

Then, this morning, I became aware of a third group. This group give the appearance of doing the right thing – they scoop it up in a plastic bag and tie the ends, but then, at some point along the way they simply place it on the side of the path – presumably hoping someone else might collect it and dispose of it for them I can only imagine.

I refer to ‘group’ here as it’s certainly more than one. In a 10km stretch I cycled this morning I spotted four such bags, so there were at least four people who fall into this category. Two of the bags were actually within 50 metres of a special ‘dog poo’ collection bin placed on the side of the track by the local council to encourage responsible dog owners to do the right thing.

So why use my blog to today to write about this? Well, because it its own small way, the way these dog owners deal with the inconvenience of having to clean up after their pets provides a small window of reflection about the things that bind us as a community, as a society. The social norms and mores we observe and adhere to that we might enjoy the benefits of a healthy, cohesive and sustainable social ecosystem. A place where everyone can thrive and enjoy the benefits that accrue from our collective endeavours.

Healthy, thriving, sustainable communities have always been characterised by a strong emphasis on complying with a set of behaviours that have come to be recognised and agreed upon as being important to the collective as a whole. Sometimes these behaviours have to be spelled out in the form of ‘rules’ or ‘reminders’ so there’s no confusion about what is expected. Whether the result of compliance with rules or driven by some sort of social altruism, this is how healthy democracies work. While there have always been a minority who choose not to observe these behaviours, they are generally far outweighed by those who do.

But what about this ‘third group’? Is this a more recent phenomena, or has there always been this group in our midst? These are the people who, while not wanting to be seen to be not complying, are actually just as disinterested and deflecting of their personal responsibility in all of this as the group who outrightly say ‘no’.

So what are the possible drivers for someone to act like this? Certainly there’s a driver for social acceptance – they don’t want to be identified as a ‘rule breaker’ because of their actions – thus they at least go through the motions of scooping up the excrement. But why not complete the task of then carrying it to the bin? It seems the reasons that lie behind this rule have completely escaped them – it’s something that applies to everyone else, but not them. The driver to actually do the right thing appears to be superseded by the driver to be giving the appearance of doing the right thing.

My thought drift here isn’t really about categorising dog owners. That was simply the catalyst for a wider reflection – back into the world of education and schools that I inhabit for much of my working existence. There we have the same concerns when it comes to both learners and their parents and whānau.

The recent government announcement to add a significant amount of money to help schools battle truancy is but the tip of this iceberg. In his press release for this, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said:

“Some of what the regional response fund will be used for is ensuring pathways are there for disengaged youth alongside iwi, schools, councils and community groups and providers. It can be used to support whānau-led responses to break the cycle of disengagement, or brokering services with other agencies to ensure students have the level of support they need to stay in school. It’s important and complicated work,”

The focus on an ecosystem response (multiple agencies/organisations/family/whānau engagement) hinted at here is extremely encouraging – but might it end up being like the dog owners who simply place their bags of excrement along the track after appearing to do the right thing. “Oh well, we gave it our best shot!” they say.

The reality is that any solution to this problem must be an ecosystem response – no single entity (e.g. a school or a truancy service) is going to be able to address the escalating issue there is with non-engagement. Particularly when the measure of non-engagement is non-attendance. What about the increasing levels of non-engagement among students who are actually attending, but simply not engaged with what’s happening?

There are a myriad of reasons for this non-engagement becoming an issue – and a plethora of solutions to be considered. Schools could work to make their programmes more authentic, purposeful and interesting – that could be a start. The curriculum could be more current, relevant, inter-disciplinary – that would help. The Ministry of Education could provide more support, better resources and more expertise – there’s certainly been a decline there. These things fall within the locus of control of those within the education system – but what about those things outside of that? These students each come from a family/whānau context that may or may not be upholding the same expectations, they spend time in their communities where patterns of behaviour and expectations of their peers may have different drivers etc. etc.

We live in a VUCA world – this is the complexity we must grapple with if we are to resolve challenges such as the engagement one. We must work to establish meaningful and mutually beneficial ways of working, living and loving alongside each other.

We can’t allow this ‘third group’ mindset to grow – where the appearance of doing things right matters more than actually doing the right things! We’ve got to stop leaving our bags of s*** on the side of the road for someone else to deal with!

Tags democracy, educational change, 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

Education Environment Scan

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
Peter Drucker

We live in an era of accelerating change, affecting every sphere of human existence – including education. Our education system is facing challenges from a number of directions, including poor literacy and numeracy results, increasing truancy, and teacher workload for example. In recent years this has resulted in review after review and waves of ‘new thinking’ in an attempt to mitigate these concerns.

Globally we are faced with unprecedented challenges including climate change, environmental degradation, global pandemics, poverty, political instability, and acts of terrorism for example. While the impact of these things on education may not be as immediate as some of the ‘internal’ drivers, they have the potential to be just as impactful and so deserve our attention as leaders and planners in the education system.

The ability to look long and wide with a future focus, while also keeping a ‘hand on the wheel’ to maintain what needs to be done in the present is a rare talent. And yet it is essential that as leaders in the system, we are paying attention to these things and planning strategically how they might be addressed. Otherwise we are doomed to be continually operating in a ‘response’ mode. The major concern here is that when acting in a ‘responsive’ mode the actions taken are invariably anchored in old ways of thinking and acting.

Often, when I share this thinking with schools, school leaders and teachers I hear feedback highlighting how difficult it can be to keep up with what’s happening and the impact it might have on education.

This has prompted me to undertake an education environment scan, using information from a wide range of sources and representing it in a way that can be used by education leaders to inform conversations and decisions about the future direction of their organisations and the system as a whole.

In this document I’ve explored a range of ‘internal’ change drivers, and a variety of ‘external’ change drivers, using a modified version of a PESTLE analysis to organise the information and create a framework for meaningful engagement and provoke conversations.

This document has been worked on in the background for some months now. As can be imagined, it was easy to keep on growing as I came across new ideas and information. But I’ve decided to halt things here and release it for wider circulation and feedback, in the hope that some might find it helpful at this point in time when so much change appears to be happening, and the need for critically minded, future-focused leadership has never been so important.

The environment scan is available on the FutureMakers website, and is listed under the Thought Pieces link under the resources tab for future reference.

Tags educational transformation, environment scan, future focus, school leadership

Why is this important?

Look for the bright spots

Where could you begin?

Our students – the Future Makers

When does the future start?

Seize the season!

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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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LESSON 1: Keep your eyes up and always look ahead instead of down

LESSON 2: The physics of cycling makes it easier to stay upright when you’re going faster

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Call to action

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Here’s an example…

Other examples…

So what can I do?

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Related Reading

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Experimentation: the key to achieving transformation through PLD

Conditions required

Conclusion

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