Rural Learning

Realising our Potential

Becoming our Best

Maggie Farrar

29th May

Welcome

‘There is no power for change greater than a community

discovering what it cares about’

Margaret Wheatley

Today – a spirit of enquiry and curiosity

What gets in the way of real enquiry ?

• Wanting to be ‘right’

• The ‘hurrying mind’

• Caught in our views of what should happen – busy creating the

perfect answer

• Commenting rather than questioning

• Compelled to find ‘ fix it’ solutions

• ‘Too busy to learn’

• Not always trusting our ‘ instincts’

Themes for exploration

What do highly ambitious collaborative partnerships look like ? What do we know ? What does it take ? What helps them thrive? What can get in the way? How do we grow self improving school and community systems ? How do we lead such systems as dynamic learning systems ? How does learning for all become part of our daily routine ?

HOW

•Debate and discussion

•Questioning – professional conversation and dialogue

•Protocols and practice

•Review and reflection

‘ Wisdom banks’ Expert by experience

Find someone who …..

Partnership – underpinning beliefs

• Education is not synonymous with schooling

• Education is a life time process and is provided by the entire community

• There are many groups and individuals with the potential to get involved and every community has an abundance of untapped educational resources

• Education is a communities most valuable resource regardless of other economic and social factors

• Involvement of the community is a community right that results in better decisions and outcomes

• Services should be delivered as close a possible to where people live

• Schooling is a necessary but insufficient component of education From: Creating powerful learning relationships : Otero, Csoti and Rothstadt

If we believe x to be true – what now …….

Three conclusions from research

• Relationships matter

• In its richest and most developed sense learning is a

deeply mutual undertaking

• What is enacted in schools and their surrounding

communities on a daily basis matters and shapes the

personal and social development of young people

Colleen McLaughlin

The Connected School ; National Children’s Bureau & Pearson

2015

Three conclusions from research

Is our community designed for:

Relationship ?

Learning ?

Impact?

Impact Relationship

Learning

Relationships

‘Any reform initiative that improves relationships has a

chance of success. Any that doesn’t is doomed to

failure’ Michael Fullan

Start with ‘why’ – build motivation, ambition, hopes and

dreams

The ‘Golden Circle’

Marketing Method used by Apple

The Why …..

Your statement

We believe ……

To improve - increase connectivity

‘ Isolation is the enemy of improvement’

Michael Fullan

Social capital and trust

‘Social capital appears to have a large impact on educational attainment. On the face of it, and from what we know, the impact of social capital dwarfs that of the factors the Governments and education professionals

normally argue about such as financial resources, class sizes and teachers salaries’

Halpern: Social Capital ( Cambridge Ed Press )

The basis of social capital - Trust

Levels of trust are directly related to an organisations capacity to continue to improve

Participation – who gets involved and who doesn’t Giving and receiving of feedback as part of our everyday work Mutual respect – are we genuinely interested in others - how much time do we give to the ideas and work of others – how far do we acknowledge them publicly Honesty - do we keep our word? Genuine questioning and dialogue – spirit of enquiry

Bryk & Schneider – Trust in Schools

Activity – Trust is the word

A turn taking protocol

I have modelled this when……

The single most important aspect that would make a difference to me and my work now would be ……

Why protocols

1.Tune in

2.Tune up

3.Equity of voice

4.Deliberative process – understood by all

• Scaffolding to help new behaviours – new behaviours require new approaches

• Learning focused – intentional listening

• Value the time spent together – deliberative process to improve our use of the time we spend together

Relationship

Learning

Impact

An effective learning system needs a

good balance between

Autonomy Accountabilit

y

Capacity

Building

CfBT – Learning Centred Leadership – Steve Munby

System autonomy and high accountability without capacity building can lead to four

problems:

• Isolationism. Schools can become closed and insular– either due to over-confidence or due to insecurity or just because they are too busy.

• Competition. A tendency for schools to compete so they are

less likely to share and collaborate and to learn from each other • Stuck schools. Those schools without capacity don’t get

better • Variability. Those with capacity and advantage tend to get

better thus creating a bigger gap between good and not so good schools

CfBT – Learning Centred Leadership – Steve Munby

The heart of learning - adopt a growth mind

set

‘If

parents want to give their children a gift – the best thing they can do is to teach them to love challenge, be intrigued by mistakes,

enjoy effort, and keep on learning’

Carol Dweck Mindset – the new psychology of success

2007

Address mindset challenges

1.Give up working in isolation

2.Move from a find and fix to a predict and prevent approach

3.Understand schools not as institutions but as learning communities – open and adaptable

4.See the purpose of schools to help a community and family raise a child

5.Understand school as a necessary but not sufficient component of education

Learning centred communities

What works for children ….

1.Metacognition

2.Feedback

3.Peer to peer support and review

( John Hattie Visible Learning )

….. also works ( even better ?) for adults ……

Giving and receiving feedback

• What do you see me doing when I am at my

best?

• What do you see me doing when I am limiting

myself and others?

• What else do you want to tell me that might be

useful?

Building capacity

Peer review and scrutiny of practice

• Clusters agree the metrics

• Clusters agree areas of focus

• Builds the technical skills of improvement across

a school and community

• Builds the culture change required for

sustainable improvement

Peer review

• Great professional development

• Professional dialogue and enquiry - not judgment

• Range of perspective & insight

• Highlights great practice ( peer reviewed)

• Built on the principals of coaching – asking great questions and the giving and receiving of feedback

• Builds a culture – ongoing improvement

‘ Peer challenge is possible if sufficient social capital (

mutual trust, transparency and reciprocity) and collective

moral purpose has developed between the partners’

David Hargreaves 2012

To strengthen my learning and the learning of others ….

I will focus on ………..

Because I believe the impact it will have is …….

A ‘ listen and repeat’ protocol

Relationship

Learning

Impact

From effective to ambitious collaboration

Ambitious collaboration

=

High ambition + deep partnership

Tight

Controlled

Delivery

Programmatic

Long term

Inclusive

Shared accountability

for outcomes

Strong

governance

Short term

Tinkering

Project focused

Sporadic ££

Inauthentic

Self serving

Deluded

Closed

Identity

Learning focused

Collaborative culture

Relational

Trust

High

Low

AMBITION

Shallow Deep PARTNERSHIP

What does it take ?

High ambition / deep partnership

Vision

How will we be ? VALUES / BEHAVIOURS / PROCESSES

What we will do ? PROGRAMMES / PRIORITIES

What will we not do /not tolerate

A ruthless commitment to priorities

What will we not do ?

An articulated belief, promise and commitment – simple compelling and

ambitious, shared and owned

A focus on joint accountability for outcomes

Assessing your collaborative strength

1.Where would you place your partnership - in which quadrant ?

2.Where are your strengths and how have you developed them ?

3.Where are your areas for development and what help do you need ?

Work in pairs – ideally with someone you don’t yet know

Take it in turns

Look for points of connection

Sure glad the hole

isn’t at our end

• Agreed performance metrics which all clusters

report to each other

• Shared review framework with peer scrutiny

(including external element)

• Agreed triggers for schools & communities being

required to accept support

• Mechanisms for learning together – joint practice

development; and assessing impact

• Evaluation of partnership impact

Mutual accountability – it makes a difference

What could it look like ?

The building blocks of a self improving system

•Collective responsibility – shared success

•A culture shift from ‘ my school & community ‘ to ‘ our schools

& communities ‘ and a governance model that supports this

•Great use of data – the best bits & mechanism for moving the

best bits to where they are most needed

•Engagement in research and ‘joint practice development’

•Joint accountability – peer scrutiny and review ; transparency

•Professional generosity, reciprocity and collective moral

purpose

•Capacity building for a new generation of integrated and

system leaders

Accountability

3 simple questions

1. What have we done

2. How well have we done it

3. Is anyone any better off ?

Assessing our impact

• Appreciate time delays • Avoid over promising and under delivering • Avoid jumping to early conclusions – the ‘trap’ of

managerial control systems • Learn to recognise and record progress as it occurs –

help people feel they are really making progress ; use data and stories

• Assessment in the service of learning - research, enquiry and curiosity

• Nurture the ‘ informal’ carriers of perception and information

• Train students in deep dive reviews • Welcome and invite external scrutiny • Know your ‘ red alerts’ and your ‘ green shoots’

Accountability: multi-facted

Accountability to improve not accountability to prove

1.Personal ( to self – a commitment to learning and growth)

2.Moral accountability (to students/parents/the community).

3.Professional accountability (to colleagues).

4.Contractual accountability (to employers/government).

5.System accountability (to the wider system).

Community based accountability in India

‘The core of the project focuses on work with local women to

assess the quality of basic education provision in government

schools through the use of school scorecards. We empower the

most marginalised community members to hold their local schools

to account through regular face-to-face ‘inspection’ visits to collect

the scorecard data. The results are subsequently published at the

local School Management Committee and at the local self-help

groups.’

500 schools over seven local mandal areas in Anantapur through

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

CfBT; Community based accountability in India 2013

Relationship

Learning

Impact

Leadership

‘ Becoming a community of leaders requires leading

and learning. Becoming a community of leaders

requires learning together. And learning together

requires that the responsibilities of leadership be

shared’

Building community in schools

Thomas Sergiovanni 1993

Energy and empowerment

Student engagement and leadership

• Student as data source / expert by experience – widening

the ‘lens’

• Student involvement in decisions ; staff appointments

• Students as co enquirers; ‘ improvement partners’

• Students as knowledge creators – for other students

• Students as mentors – new teachers / community groups

• Students as action researchers

• Invest in leadership development: local talent – leadership as a

function / an act – not a role

• Build wisdom banks – know who, know what, know how, know

why

• Invest in long term relationships – trust

• Maximise resource, time and effort – how we come together ,

what we focus on, how we move our best resource around for

maximum impact

• Community data – confront the facts / build data on what works

/ curiosity / questioning

Community leadership in action – National College for School Leadership

Building our leadership

Developing our charter

What are your core beliefs about leadership in your

context ?

What would be in your charter ?

It’s up to us

‘Our leadership must t be active, passionate, ethical and driven by our collective dedication and effort. We need to break the “mind-forged manacles” that chain us to accept certain beliefs or ways of

doing things.’

ASCL England : A blue print for a self improving system 2014

Organisations and communities of

courage

•TRY courage; start something new ‘ step up to the plate’

•TRUST courage; offer trust and step back as a leader, ask for

help,

•TELL courage; authentic ‘ voice’, practice giving and receiving

feedback, practice open communication – who do we over listen

to and who do we under listen to ?

•TIME courage: space for reflection and contemplation – built into

the fabric of your day

It starts now, with us ……

Start close in, don't take the second stepor the third, start with the firstthingclose in,the stepyou don't want to take. Start withthe groundyou know,the pale groundbeneath your feet,your ownway of startingthe conversation. Excerpt from: David Whyte

Start right nowtake a small stepyou can call your

ownstart close in,don't mistakeanother’s actions

for your own.

Start close in,don't takethe second stepor the third,start with the

firstthingclose in,the stepyou don’t want to take