inSchool Solutions

Measures of school performance disadvantage more able students

2011-10-30T21:02:00.001+11:00

A recent action learning research project revealed that school performance measures tend to disadvantage our more able students!!

How so? Well, most readers will be familiar with the idea that "Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell you how I will behave". This is the rationale for most performance management systems.

The dominant measure of school performance is the percentage of students achieving benchmarks (and other minimum expectations) according to NAPLAN (in Australia) and similar systemic standardised testing systems.

Investing in better provision for high achieving students will not (directly) increase the percentage of students achieving the benchmarks. Providing for one group of students competes with provision for other groups with different needs. Because of the way school performance is measured it makes sense for schools to give priority to enabling more students to achieve these benchmarks, but who is likely to miss out in this process? Those students whose improved performance will not effect the percentage of students achieving the benchmarks, including our high achieving students!!

Since even young (e.g.,Year 3) high achieving students have already exceeded all existing benchmarks (e.g., Year 9 NAPLAN) it is easy to give a low priority to meeting their needs. And given their intellectual success it is easy to underestimate their other needs. For example the other major outcome from the action learning project is the degree to which provision for high achieving students should address their social and emotional needs in addition to providing intellectual challenges.

Addressing this issue will require more than new or additional policies. It will require changing the dominant measures of school performance so that the measures are about making enabling provision for all students regardless of ability.

School closures[2] - Some next steps

2011-09-30T06:26:00.000+10:00

Why do government and communities need to consider the next steps in relation to school closures? Because our recent experience is only the first wave of on-coming resource-related challenges that face virtually all communities and government world-wide. The biggest, most consistent question facing us is: "How can the system change so that we can all do more and more with less and less??"

Ironically this is emerging at a time when we seem to have lost all touch with systems thinking and change management. It is more common for policy/decision makers to respond as if we are at the edge of chaos [*].

Admittedly, the nature of systems has changed, particularly since the arrival of the internet. Systems are now networks of often largely autonomous agents, They can no longer be treated as production lines with overlaying organisation trees that describe relative status, power and authority of those involved.

Clearly, at least 20 school communities are already better prepared for what is to come. These communities still have Facebook and a whole new set of knowledge, skills, experiences, networks and relationships. They have transformed their initial sense of being at the edge of chaos into something that could be very useful to all concerned is sustained and developed. There is a close link between innovation and being at the edge of chaos.

I cannot think of anything that the policy/decision makers (government and government departments) have to enable them to do what the school communities have done in 18 days!! The old reliable "golden rule" (Those who have the gold make the rules) is not as valid as it used to be.

But what might happen next? So many lessons to be still to be learned!! Here are some possibilities to consider.

School communities
1. Carry out a post-mortem on the last few weeks as soon as convenient
(a) What worked? And why? Be prepared more of the same next time it is needed!!
(b) What didn't? Try to find alternative/better ways to do next time!! It might even work next time!!
(c) What have we discovered about "us"? Attend to the things than need to be attended to in our school and our community!!
(d) What have we discovered about others? What worked for them? What did they learn? ... What are the implications for the future?
(e) What else might we do now? In the near future? Next time?

2. During the past few weeks you have greatly increased your knowledge of what your school really is, in the life and work of your community.
(a) Gather the data:
- Capture 30 to 50 most significant stories that were told. And continue to add to them. These stories might be about students, families, the community itself, education, the local economy, the way in which the school and its community support and nurture people...
- Begin gathering the demographics - be more informed so that you can respond quickly to those who want to do things TO you!! And work with those who want to do things WITH you
- Map the school district showing where families live (big map). It is not the distance between schools that matter. It is the distance for home to the possible next school.
- Involve the students in learning (and teaching others) about their community, its life and work...
- Educate everyone about the school and its community...
(b) Consider small next steps for the school, and other aspects of the community, for example,
- Update the history of school and the community
- Put the school and community on show to passers by
- Develop a shared voice with related schools and communities
- Enhance the presence of the school and its community: use signage, the web, events....
(c) Participate in wider networks
- ....

The Policy/Decision Makers
I am concerned that the decision makers (and their advisers) may be the last to learn and respond constructively. The world has changed. They may be in charge but this does not mean they are in control. Our children teach us this lesson everyday. The failure to close schools is more than a failure of process. It is a failure to understand what is happening and how the world works. Until they really learn the lessons they are unlikely to look around for the tools, processes and strategies to make sense of what is happening and work WITH those involved to make much better responses that will enable us all to navigate future challenges.

[*The sudden decision to finalise the closure 10% of Tasmania's schools within four weeks is a classic response made under is a chaotic situation. It didn't work because only the decision makers were in chaos at the time. The schools and their communities were far from chaos]

What do restorative practices actually restore?

2011-09-29T14:42:00.006+10:00

Recently I have been pondering the question:

What is it that restorative practices actually restore?

Obviously there are lots of possible answers to this question. For example, a school that was using Martin Seligman's approach to Well-Being would use restorative practices to restore the 5 main elements (PERMA) that contribute to success and well-being, namely,

Positive Emotions – experiencing joy and pleasure
- While the outcomes of bad experiences are the opposites of joy or pleasure, it is important for people to ultimately feel more positive after dealing with the bad things that they have done, or have been done to them.
- Unfortunately, some traditional approaches leave people who have caused harm to others in the state of feeling bad (shamed) about what they have done as 'logical consequence'. However this is likely to result in on-going disengagement, resentment and other limiting factors.
- Similarly, traditional approaches often fail to address the emotional needs of the person who has been harmed so that they continue to feel bad about what has been done to them
Engagement (or flow) – being consciously involved in our activities
- Managed disengagement (isolation, suspension...) is also often seen as a 'logical consequence' of doing the wrong thing but this reduces the likelihood of productive engagement
Relationships – having enjoyable and supportive interactions with others
- Damaged relationships are very often a result of wrong doing. Failing to restore damaged relationships is likely to result in a long term state of reduced success and wellbeing
Meaning – creating a purposeful narrative about our lives; being engaged with or serving something larger than ourselves
- Having been harmed, or having caused harm to others, changes our personal narratives for the worse. Experiencing restoration of positive emotions, engagement, relationships... helps to restore constructive meaning in our lives.
Accomplishments – completing our goals and following our core values.
- Those who have been harmed, or caused harm, are likely to experience a sense of failure. If unresolved this is likely to reduce a person's subsequent capacity to achieve and act in ways that better match their own core values.

Clearly restorative practices provide rich ways of restoring each of the five elements of Well-Being.

What is your school's answer to this important question?

The need for co-evolution of schools

2011-09-13T13:08:00.001+10:00

Schools are complex adaptive systems. And the elements (agents) of complex adaptive systems, their interactions, and the system itself all co-evolve. We often experience this as 'everything is connected'.

But this is a big challenge in all attempts to improve education. Failure to understand the implications leads to the failure of most initiatives. Can you think of a recent large scale initiative that was a great success? Did the initiative focus on enabling one aspect of the 'system' (e.g., pedagogy) while constraining other aspects (e.g., structure, or assessment, or...)? Most do and as a result they impede co-evolution.

So many large scale professional learning and school improvement initiatives fail because they attempt to change some agents (staff) but not others (families, students) while keeping the system (especially structures and rules) unchanged. The latter is really preventing co-evolution. And change is emergent - it is not something that is the inevitable linear result of a specific initiative. Change occurs over time.

For example, Tasmania Tomorrow tried to improve the system by imposing structural and organisational change on the system but did not allow sufficient time for the agents (particularly staff and employers) to co-evolve.

In response to resent attempts to close 10% of Tasmanian schools Professor David Adams outlined the need to attend co-evolution of schools and their communities (more...)

The current low-level use of ICT by most teachers and students is another example despite schools having had computers for more than 30 years and numerous major school improvement and professional learning initiatives. My PhD research showed that the schools that were doing best with ICT were clearly co-evolving with it. Staff, students and the community were doing new and higher order things in new and better ways.

BigPicture makes a very interesting case study because to provides the philosophical and systemic requirements for nurturing emergence by addressing and enabling the co-evolution of staff, students, families... as well as the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment...

The people involved in BigPicture all have profound stories about the experience & challenges of co-evolving with BigPicture. At the leadership level, most of the challenges involved in implementing BigPicture are really about supporting and enabling co-evolution.

The "first-fit" error

2011-08-28T15:46:00.006+10:00

We can't possibly process all the data that is available to us at any moment. Evolution's way of solving this dilemma has been to give us a strong preference for responding on the basis "first-fit" rather than "best-fit". Choosing a "best-fit" response to each of the situations that we encounter would simply involve too time and energy.

The compromise of "first-fit" is frequently a satisfactory or good response, especially to critical situations. If we are on the African savannah and observe a very large cat-like creature, with big sharp teeth bounding in our direction it would be wise to start with the assumption that this is a lion, and respond accordingly.

But nor all problems are like an encounter with a lion. For example, not all problematic behaviour is a result of poor social skills, even for those students with poor social skills. Personal circumstances, poor health, misunderstandings, erroneous assumptions... can also play a part.

In one instance, a school had decided that a particular student's problematic behaviour was associated with the student's contact with his father. The school psychologist was uncertain and consulted the student's incident data. As a result she was able show that the school's "first-fit" response to the student's behaviour was not valid. The school then had to look for the "second right answer".

It has been my experience over nearly five decades of working in school education that "first-fit" errors are very common.

The best way to reduce "first-fit" errors is to develop rich conversations with those involved in responding to matters needing to be addressed. Such conversations are based on insightful questions, e.g. the questions of Restorative Practices.

Conversations and supporting students

2011-08-28T15:21:00.007+10:00

BASIC PROPOSITIONS

Perhaps conversations are to people what water is to fish: so ubiquitous and all encompassing that we has lost awareness of the conversations in which we are involved. But with increased awareness we will be able to make improved provision for all students.

The following propositions are worth considering:

Support for students is best constructed in rich conversations between the student, staff, family, stakeholders and/or providers
These conversations are many and varied and occur over a wide range of places and times
The 'data' that informs these conversations comes from many sources
The 'data' that informs these conversations is increasingly unique and idiosyncratic for higher needs students
Capturing and working with key data (data that has the potential to make a difference for the student) requires well matched tools and practices
The conversations, tools and practices need to be consistent and coherent at, and across, all levels: individual student, class, year group, school, .... school system, external support providers and other agencies, ...

Data, sense-making and conversations

2011-08-25T10:38:00.007+10:00

We naturally try to make sense of our experiences and the challenges they contain. In the process, we attempt to construct knowledge that will enable us to make appropriate arrangements and anticipate the likely outcomes of our actions.

Conversations are a form of action learning:

(a) Insightful questions elicit tacit knowledge including hopes, concerns, activity, experiences, observations… from the participants: staff, students, family, stakeholders, support providers…

(b) Additional insightful questions then draw on the tacit knowledge, stored data and existing professional knowledge in an attempt to

· make sense of what is happening, and

· construct explicit knowledge, actions and arrangements in response

(d) Some of the explicit knowledge, actions and arrangements may be captured as stored data for future use and future conversations

Fig. 1 Typical conversations leading to actions

Not all conversations are one-to-one in real-time. We communicate with others in a variety of ways to share our knowledge and make arrangements that enable us to act. The recipients of this “data” then use it to make better sense of their own experiences and to create new knowledge and understandings. These interactive processes are at the heart of the everyday conversations in which we construct the knowledge, arrangements and actions needed to respond to the challenges we face including the needs of the students we support.

Thus conversations are central to the effective use of data to inform action. Having the right conversations with the right people is critical for the effective support of high needs students. These conversations need to be informed by rich data. They also generate new data for current or future use.

School Improvement - one student at a time

2011-08-23T09:45:00.001+10:00

School innovations are often associated with addressing issues such as retention, behaviour, failure to learn well. That is, the leading edges of educational innovation are largely about catering for each and every student.

But why is this an innovation?

Schooling, as we know it, emerged in response to the industrial revolution - perhaps as an aspect of the industrial revolution?

So there is a still widespread use of batch processing: classes, courses, year groups, terms, linear sequenced curriculum and syllabuses, bulk enrolment and examination periods, daily timetables of lessons and other activities....

In fact, here in Tasmania, schools are the only places where more than, say, 200 people start and finish work at the same time. Our schools are the last of our 'factories'!

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with such arrangements for many students.

But what about those students for whom this approach is very difficult, impossible and/or counter-productive? These are the students who fail to get a full and rich education?

I see Solution Focus as being a very useful tool for creating better schools that provide for all students.

Making it explicit that "school improvement is about improving schools one student at a time" can be helpful. It is likely to reduce the tendency to see struggling students as a problem.

Rather, with this change of mindset schools can adopt a more natural solution-focused approach because they know that providing for each student is simultaneously improving the school as a whole.

Cost cutting - a cautionary tale

2011-08-17T10:31:00.001+10:00

There was once a man who became so poor that he thought he could no longer afford to meet the cost of food for his small bird - his only friend in the whole world. He decided he would cut costs by training the bird not to eat.

In this he was very successful. The bird quickly learned not to eat. But then tragedy struck. Shortly after the bird was fully trained it died!!

So sad.

What lessons might we learn from this poor man's experience? For example,

Why did the bird die?
How successful was the man's strategy?
Do a full cost-benefit analysis of what actually happened.
What alternative strategies might the man have considered?
What other insightful questions might be asked?

Yes, it is made up story. So why does it make sense at all? Mainly because it parallels some of our actual lived experience. Worth having in mind in times of austerity.

More with less

2011-07-31T07:54:00.010+10:00

The challenge
How can we make whatever we do in schools

as simple as we can
as functional as we can
as cheap as we can
as freely inter-connectable as we can

Rationale
We need simple ways of doing things: they need to

be functional - simple, reliable, predictable
be cheap - available, easy to do and easy to use in new ways and contexts
be high performance actions returning substantial value
be useful as building blocks, that is,

they connect with other things that we do and
they connect people who share interests and responsibility

Quotes

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" - Einstein
"You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away" - de Sainy-Exupery

Reference:
George Whitesides: Toward a science of simplicity (TED Talks, Apr 2010)

The Purpose of Structure

2011-07-25T21:16:00.004+10:00

The purpose of structure is to support and enhance processes including

bringing the parties together
in a timely fashion
distributing authority and matching responsibility
utilising contributions from all concerned, and
achieving some of the purposes of all parties

That is, the purpose of structure is to create ‘windows of opportunity' that will

enable the process to proceed more easily and more successfully
while meet the various needs of the parties involved

For many people, education cannot be treated as piece-work. It is rarely a simple mechanistic production task as if it was a matter of

Input (teaching) -> Process (learning v.) -> Output (learning n.)

BigPicture, action learning.... and similar mediated, iterative approaches incorporate the ongoing construction (and reconstruction) of generous, flexible,managed and negotiated “windows of opportunity”.

From enemies to allies

2011-07-19T10:49:00.004+10:00

In commenting on community responses to proposed closures of 20 small Tasmanian government schools, one observer wrote: What I have noticed more than anything is the strong accord of members of the affected communities; “we need a common enemy to unite us” C.Rice.

And of course this is true - we form alliances to defeat common enenemies. But what of the long term?

The recent defeat of the government by these small school communities is not the end of the matter. And the school communities and government remain in an on-going "relationship". Remaining enemies is not to be recommended as a way forward for winners and/or losers - it will ultimately result in lose:lose outcomes. But how to make sense of the possibilities?

Peter Block, The Empowered Manager provides a simple, but hopefully useful framework: we relate to each other according the our perceptions of each other based on two dimensions:

the extent to which we agree or disagree with each other (especially about purposes)
the extent to which we trust or distrust each other (especially about how to achieve the purposes)

There are some important principles that can be derived on this model:

DON'T confuse enemies with opponents
DON'T confuse bedfellows with allies
AVOID enemies - they may harm you, but LEARN about them and from them if you can
MINIMISE involvement with bedfellows - there are possible hidden costs here and they may disappear at critical moments
VALUE and LEARN FROM one's opponents - they have a different presepective that may include important insghts and distinctions, and they have your best interests at heart
ENJOY your allies - they will voluntarily contribute to your cause
LEARN about yourself - your purposes, values the resources you have available

Changing enemies into allies

To make life more enjoyable (and that includes achieving success and well-being for all) one needs to change one's enemies into one's allies,

The safest, most effective path is to

Change enemies into oponents by building trust
Change opponents into allies by finding agreement on higher purposes and mutually acceptable ways of achieving those purposes

Note: Taking the easy option of involving bedfellows (based on nominal agreements) could be to make the Red Riding Hood error - it didn't turn out well !!

Sun-tzu (~400BC) recommended that we should keep our friends close and our enemies closer. Good advice from ancient times.

Organisation and the emergence of relationships

2011-07-18T11:31:00.004+10:00

About roles

Human beings have evolved to interact with each other. Our social actions are often organised around our culturally enabled and constrained roles. These roles may work quite well or go to extremes in terms of authority (power), responsibility, identity and pre-defined actions required of the role. Roles tend to result in consistent structures and processes. It is not unusual for roles to constrain the many and enable the few: compliance is frequently an emphasised aspect of roles.

Roles can work very satisfactorily to achieve known purposes in well understood and manageable contexts. In the workplace roles are re-enforced through the use of job descriptions and reward (and punishment) systems

But not all situations provide high levels of certainty and clarity. In our increasingly complex world, role descriptions are proving increasingly inadequate to respond to the challenges involved. Under these circumstances, individual "job descriptions" are also proving difficult to create and inadequate to the situations encountered.

About relationships

People also interact in less formal, less pre-defined ways to address shared needs and purposes, and to better deal with uncertainty and unforseen opportunities. These interactions may be fleeting or develop into long-term or short-term relationships. That is, relationships are emergent. Of course, over time, the patterns of interaction may become socially formalised and the parties may adopt specific roles to enable and/or constrain the processes of interaction.

In periods of rapid change, high levels of uncertainty and where existing structures and processes are inadequate, people may draw on and/or quickly create new relationships in order to address the challenges and opportunities involved. Similarly, even within specific roles, people frequently develop and utilise relationships in order to address aspects of the endeavour that are not covered by their role.

Addressing reality

In summary, formal roles may work well for responding to the known and the anticipated. Informal relationships are our everyday strategy for dealing with the complexity of our experience. It seems most people have a preference for interacting on the basis of relationships rather than roles. In recent times this has become increasingly common. Our responses are often enabled by social media through which people collaborate without the existence of any connections between the many roles they may individually have in their lives.

Nurturing the emergence of relationships

It is time for leaders and managers to acknowledge the two ways of interacting and then lead and manage accordingly. For example, a generic ‘job description’ that gets things done and nurtures the emergence of productive working relationships is as follows:

Know what is happening
Work with others to improve what is happening
Make it easier for the next person to do well

How we have changed

2011-07-17T09:27:00.009+10:00

Moving from roles to relationships

It wasn't so long ago that much of our activity was role-based. And this worked well for linear systems (input->process->output). Our respective roles determined who did what, when, how, and with what authority and responsibility. There are pluses in such arrangements. For example, such systems can be very efficient and effective for simple, well defined tasks and standardised activities. At the personal level, if the system fails but we have "done our job" then "we are not to blame". Great!!

But there minuses as well. If the roles are poorly designed and/or some functions are omitted or fail then we may fail to fulfil our role and/or the whole system may fail. Rigid linear systems tend to give the impression of being robust while being inflexible, vulnerable to change, and to lack resilience. A strong focus on roles can promote "either-or" and "us-them" thinking, result in silos and mindless fundamentalism. Not so great!!

But things have changes anyhow. Consider how many of our key activities, ones that make a real difference for us and for those around us, are not role-based. Rather the interactions involved are likely to be based on common interests, purposes, responsibilities, needs...

Rather than being designed, or predefined, our relationships emerge and fade according to the needs of those us involved. Social media provide some of the tools and opportunities that enable and support many of these relationships. Twitter and Facebook (and Google+ ?) are good examples - we use these tools to establish and utilise relationships without any role prescription being placed on any of us.

Relationships can be much more flexible and more resilient than standardised roles. The parties involved adjust their interactions as their needs are met and/or contexts change. In periods of rapid and significant change (including crises) it can be very effective to utilise and reconfigure existing relationships and nuture the emergence of new relationships as the opportunities emerge. In everyday situations, it is common for co-workers to collaborate to in order to save save a system from its inherent shortcomings by developing work-arounds.

Case Study: The recent government proposal to close 10% of Tasmania's schools is a good example. The government imposed very strict role constraints on staff. But the small, mainly rural school communities, distributed across the state, responded quickly and easily. With a central Facebook site and individual school Facebook sites, they quickly established a coherent network with effective working relationships and forced the government to back down in just 18 days. The role-based government, Education Department, teacher union and Parent and Friends Association were unable to match the relationship-based initiatives of the school communities. The school communities now have a new site and a well developed set of on-going relationships and associated knowledge and proven strategies that will serve them well as Tasmania continues to struggle with it budgetary difficulties. Current score: Roles = 0; Relationships = 1.

It is time for the government to understand that the world has changed and that we are co-evolving with the world. It is not just Gen Y and Gen X who place such a high value on relationships. We have all changed because role-based linear systems are working less and less well as the world becomes more complex and interconnected (a tautology?).

It is not a matter of choosing roles or relationships (an "either-or" choice). We need both. When relationships fail badly it can be helpful to have some key roles available to address urgent situations. For example, police interventions may be necessary under certain circumstances.

Cutbacks and metaphors

2011-07-13T10:54:00.007+10:00

The immanent cutbacks to education in Tasmania will create complex and unfamiliar conditions. It will not be possible to analyse all the detail in order to 'calculate' the needs and outcomes. Indeed most of the phenomena involved are emergent anyhow and so cannot be predicted.

So how do people cope with these kinds of situations? One way is to understand the situation is to find suitable metaphors. So in this challenging situation, should one

Batten down the hatches so that we don't sink (we focus on our prime objectives)
Turn out the stock (so that they can find resources that are not provided by the "farmer")
Change the system (so that it works well in the new conditions)
Polish the fruit (so that others don't are not distracted by the flaws)
Develop the school as a network rather than a production line (so that resources can flow more easily to where they are needed)
...????

On the basis that "either-or" questions are usually wrong, the best response will probably be a combination of all the above and whatever you choose as your working metaphors.

Perhaps the most important metaphor is the Holy Grail as understood in the story of the Fisher King. The Fisher King is a local lord who has been wounded in battle (the cutbacks will "wound" schools). He goes to Merlin the wizard and asks what what he must do to be healed. Merlin replies:

"You must find the Holy Grail and ask: Whom does it serve?"

Good advice. Finding your Holy Grail, and asking the question to confirm that you have really found it will serve you well, and it will enable you to serve those with whom you work.

See also the story of the Chinese Farmer

[Note: For me, the Holy Grail of schools is the everyday success of staff and students working together]

The case for innovation

2011-07-12T11:17:00.005+10:00

We are entering an new stormy era. Governments do not have the financial resources to do all the things we want them to do in the way that things have been done in the past. But even this is not fundamentally new:

"The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." - Abraham Lincoln 1 Dec 1862

One of the major constraints is that we are "enthralled" (Lincoln) and/or "entrained" (Snowden) by the past. So we try to improve and reform on the basis of the past. But will this work? Consider this!!

Dave Snowden has proposed that there are three necessary, but not sufficient conditions for innovation to take place. These are:

1. Starvation of familiar resource, forcing you to find new approaches, doing things in a different way;

2. Pressure that forces you to engage in the problem;

3. Perspective Shift to allow different patterns and ideas to be brought into play.

The cutbacks and the need to continue create the first two conditions. The third condition is a matter of choice and opportunity. Some possible perspective shifts available for you to choose are here. The opportunity to choose will be a combination of

your awareness of the possibilities (the cutbacks should generate a steep learning curve)
external constraints imposed by the system and the expectations of stakeholders.

Cutbacks and innovation - doing more with less

2011-07-08T09:16:00.028+10:00

The vast majority of governments need to reduce their spending. Ours is no exception and this is not going to change. It is a world-wide phenomenon. The challenge is how to do more and more with less and less.

The "more" is about providing/adding more value. The "less" about less spending.

Cost and value are connected but their relationship can change and can be changed.The present budgetary difficulties represent an opportunity for real innovation. But the key is to understand the links between costs, activity and value. Finding new and better ways to do what needs to be done (activity) can greatly improve the relationship between cost and value.

Build capacity and resilience

Find the Holy Grail in your situation and ask "Whom does it serve?" (see the Fisher King)
ACT on sound theory, principles & heuristics - needed in periods of rapid change and uncertainty
ALWAYS start by making things easier - reduces costs; releases resources; enables people to more and better
FIX the Broken Windows - tackle the common, important issues collaboratively
LEARN from what happens - do prompt post-mortems and immediately update planning for next time (PDSA)
be business-like - STOP doing things that don't produce value - 100% cost saving; no change to value
DON'T ask permission - just DO IT: if it is the right thing to do, you don't need permission
use focused technology (tools) in new and more productive ways. "Innovation comes from people who are responsible only to themselves."
develop better working relationships: it is everyone's job to

know what is happening
work with others to make sense of, and improve, what is happening
make it easier for the next person to do their work well

reduce waste and rework
make policies and regulations helpful (make things easier)
find or create synergies - break down barriers to collaboration
move from "either-or" (win-lose) thinking to "both-and" (win-win) thinking
improve processes continuously
understand the difference between change and improvement
work towards well understood shared purposes
understand and manage your levels of response
provide flexibility to increase responsiveness and initiative
discover what's already working and support its wider deployment
focus on solutions (not problems)
avoid counter measures - get it right the first time - counter measures are waste
invest in prevention (SWPBS, restorative practices, SEL...
align and improve activity (purposes, processes, systems) before changing structures
reduce multitasking - it slows things down!!
understand and respond according to the phenomena involve

fix the simple things
get good advice about the complicated things
try some safe-fail experiments for complex things
impose order if there is (genuine) chaos

These kinds of development work best as decision making moves away from traditional command and control, production line and linear systems thinking towards more open and flexible arrangements. It works best as decision makers understand their task is to nurture emergence.

The starting point for such a shift in the thinking of policy/decision makers is to acknowledge that

under stress, there is a natural urge for management in increase their use of command and control
while they may be in charge, decision makers are not in control
they are somewhat removed from the action that is the source of real value
no-one has the whole story of what is happening
the staff in the field frequently save an organisation from its own plans and policies (by creating and implementing the necessary workarounds)

The initial steps may be to

revisit and re-affirm core purposes
rethink working relationships
join the dots - understand how and where value is produced, and how value flows, throughout the organisation
reduce spending as required
manage for it is ideal
simplify as much as possible

The implications are that it takes the knowledge and efforts of everyone, working in collaboration, to make the organisation more cost effective. Unilateral decision making by management is unlikely to achieve the best possible outcomes - it is rarely more than tampering. Tampering increases costs and reduces value.

Our world has changed

2011-07-07T07:53:00.001+10:00

Why do government and communities need to consider the next steps in relation to school closures? Because

Our recent experience is only the first of many resource-related challenges that face virtually all communities and governments world-wide.

The biggest, most consistent question facing us is

How can the system change so that we can all do more and more with less and less?

Ironically this is emerging at a time when we seem to have lost all touch with systems thinking and change management. It is more common for policy/decision makers to respond as if we are at the edge of chaos [*].

Admittedly, the nature of systems has changed, particularly since the arrival of the internet. Systems are now networks of often largely autonomous agents, Systems, including school systems, can no longer be treated as production lines (example) with an overlay of organisational trees that describe the relative status, power and authority of those involved.

Clearly, at least 20 Tasmanian school communities are already better prepared for what is to come. These communities still have Facebook and a whole new set of knowledge, skills, experiences, networks and relationships and a clearer sense of their own identities. They have transformed their initial sense of being at the edge of chaos into something that could be very useful to all concerned is sustained and developed. Managed well, there is a close potential link between innovation and being at the edge of chaos, but it does require a change of mindset.

I cannot think of anything that the policy/decision makers (government and government departments) have to enable them to match what the school communities have done in 18 days!! The old "golden rule" (Those who have the gold make the rules) is not as valid as it used to be.

But what might happen next? So many lessons to be still to be learned!!

[*The sudden decision to finalise the closure 10% of Tasmania's schools within four weeks is a classic response made under is a chaotic situation. It didn't work because only the decision makers were in chaos at the time. The schools and their communities were far from chaos]

School closures - some next actions

2011-07-07T07:16:00.008+10:00

Here are some possibilities to consider.

School communities
1. Carry out a post-mortem on the last few weeks as soon as convenient
(a) What worked? And why? Be prepared more of the same next time it is needed!!
(b) What didn't? Try to find alternative/better ways to do next time!! It might even work next time!!
(c) What have we discovered about "us"? Attend to the things than need to be attended to in our school and our community!!
(d) What have we discovered about others? What worked for them? What did they learn? ... What are the implications for the future?
(e) What else might we do now? In the near future? Next time?

2. Gather the data: During the past few weeks you have greatly increased your knowledge of what your school really is, in the life and work of your community.
(a) Capture 30 to 50 most significant stories that were told. And continue to add to them. These stories might be about students, families, the community itself, education, the local economy, the way in which the school and its community support and nurture people...
(b) Begin gathering the demographics - be more informed so that you can respond quickly to those who want to do things TO you!! And work with those who want to do things WITH you
(c) Map the school district showing where families live (big map). It is not the distance between schools that matter. It is the distance for home to the possible next school.
(d) Involve the students in learning (and teaching others) about their community, its life and work...
(e) Educate everyone about the school and its community...

3. Consider small next steps for the school, and other aspects of the community, for example,
(a) Update the history of school and the community
(b) Put the school and community on show to passers by
(c) Develop a shared voice with related schools and communities
(d) Enhance the presence of the school and its community: use signage, the web, the media, events....

4. Participate in wider networks
(a) Sustain and extend the networks that have served you so well in recent weeks

The Policy/Decision Makers
I am concerned that the decision makers (and their advisers) may be the last to learn and respond constructively. Our world has changed. They may be in charge but this does not mean they are in control. Our children teach us this lesson everyday. The failure to close schools is more than a failure of process. It is a failure to understand what is happening and how the world works. Until they really learn the lessons they are unlikely to look around for the tools, processes and strategies to make sense of what is happening and work WITH those involved to make much better responses that will enable us all to navigate future challenges.

School closures - what happens next

2011-07-06T07:26:00.001+10:00

Recent attempts by the Minister, government and department to close 20 schools have revealed much. The following are just some possible lessons:

Closing a school is not something that can be done one the basis of numbers. It is a complex and uncertain task with broad ramifications

Parents and communities place a very high value on the current well-being and long-term success of their children.

When it comes to success and well-being, parents and communities are confident about their local schools. Their confidence in the Minister, government and department has been severely undermined.

And so on…

School closures failed this time for two reasons: they were based on a very narrow discourse; and they were set up as win-lose and would have resulted in a net loss. The losses to the students, their families and community would have been far greater than the modest financial gains to the government.

The next step is for the lessons to be learned. This means taking advantage of the current situation to learn as much as possible and develop a new sustainable dialogue around all schools: what they are for and how to manage their futures.

The important conversation we need to have is not just between some schools and the government. The fundamental "fight" is about how we as a state understand, talk about, utilise and value our schools and their futures: what they are; what they do; how they make things possible.... And this involves all schools, communities, governments, departments...
The conversation really counts. And it needs to be ongoing, not just when there is an urgent need for the government to reduce spending. The conversation should include the full range of direct and indirect costs, benefits, values, relationships and possibilities associated with schools.

And these are best captured as stories of real people in real contexts as schools have demonstrated. This is what schools have all been gathering and sharing in recent weeks. And it worked so well.

Schools should look after their stories well. There will come a time when they will be needed again... not only for the sake of the school, but also to help the decision makers make better decisions next time. Hopefully the proposed Reference Group will be wise enough to tap into this goldmine before it dissipates. Governments world-wide are having to reducing spending and this will continue.

I hope The Minister gets full credit for correcting the mistake. Clearly he acted on poor advice from others who should have known better - they are the ones who need the stories most.

To be successful the conversation needs to be open, rich and interactive... not constraints by a narrow set of terms of reference with a particular outcome in mind. It needs to lead to innovation and overall win-win outcomes which may or may not result in some actual closures!!

The schools have demonstrated that this can be done. Facebook played a key role. There are tools for enabling even more focused and productive outcomes. Now it is time for the Minister, government and department to catch up.

Perhaps the critical next step is to make the Reference Group about School Futures (not just school closures).

Solutions and "problems"

2011-06-15T22:40:00.003+10:00

The Solution Focus strategy attempts to maximise attention on solutions while minimising attention on problems. I support this orientation but it can be a challenge under certain circumstances.

I have puzzled over the issue of solutions being so strongly linked to problems, especially in most everyday thinking. Many people come for assistance or justice with this mind set. And the situation itself often demands direct attention to a very real existing problem.

My personal response has been to address such 'problematic' situations at three main levels. As much as possible I have worked with those involved to...

Contain the problematic situation so that people and property are safe and the situation does not get any worse
Repair any harm done
Learn and Improve* things in order to reduce the likelihood of the problem recurring and to create a better future for all concerned.

The first two levels of response are clearly 'problem focused'. Perhaps only the third response is genuinely 'solution focused'.

However, containment and repairs can be prerequisites for achieving any desired improvements (sustainable solutions).

[* Notice that the last level is about 'improvement' rather than 'prevention'. Why? Because many initiatives aimed at prevention turn out to be counter-measures (containment, extra work,....) rather than actual solutions.]

Restorative practices is one example of a 'solution focused' strategy that often includes all of the above levels of response.

Over time it is possible for an organisation to become solution focused. When things go wrong (and they will go wrong!!) containment and repairs can be achieved fairly quickly because everyone knows that there is a firm commitment to learning from the situation and achieving solutions (long term improvements) that will reduce the likelihood of the problem recurring. I once had a staff member (Teacher) say to me in a puzzled voice: "We don't seem to have many of the problems we used to have !?!". I think this approach works.

Structures, Process & Windows of Opportunity

2011-06-15T21:41:00.001+10:00

The purpose of structure is to support and enhance process including

bringing the parties together
in a timely fashion
distributing authority and matching responsibility
utilising contributions from all concerned, and
achieving some of the purposes of all parties

That is, the purpose of structure is to create ‘windows of opportunity‘ that will

enable the process to proceed successfully
while meet the various needs of the parties involved

In this sense, for many people, education cannot be treated as piece-work – as simple mechanistic production:

Input -> Process -> Output

In contrast, BigPicture and similar approaches incorporate the ongoing construction (and reconstruction) of generous, flexible,managed and negotiated “windows of opportunity”.

Understanding "solutions"

2011-06-15T11:13:00.006+10:00

Learning takes a lifetime

I came to Solution Focus late via various milestones along the way, including

Quality Management - particularly continuous improvement (more here). This works well for those phenomena in which cause and effect are consistent over time and place
Complexity... encountered while completing a PhD and
Solution Focus - more here. This works well where the relationship between cause and effect are not consistent over time and place...that is, when the outcomes are emergent

It is all very well to be focused on solutions but "solutions" are not always well understood.

Misunderstanding solutions

For many years, as a teacher and Principal, I was good at resolving unhappy everyday situations, particularly those involving poor student behaviour. I was able to come up with "solutions" that enabled those involved to get back to teaching and learning... our core business.

But then I (finally) realised that I was coming up with "solutions" involving the same students in the same same situations every day or so. While I was 'resolving' the situations I was NOT producing a genuine long term solution that made my involvement unnecessary. I needed to understand that what I was doing was actually 're-work' (waste) before the light came on for me.

What are solutions?

Firstly, "real solutions" do more than simply resolve current problems. They also reduce the likelihoods that the problem will recur in the future; and if the problem does recur then it will be easier to resolve it next time.

In addition, genuine solutions are changes that make it easier for people to

Know know what is happening
Work together to improve what is happening
Do their work really well

They also reduce the need for counter-measures and rework

About counter-measures

While counter-measures may be necessary in the short term they represent low order "solutions" since they consume additional resources and have to repeated. For example, supervision, control, checking, repairing errors, redoing tasks... are all forms of waste. These activities are not really doing the core work.

In contrast, real solutions are productive and sustainable, in that solutions

make it easier to do better, and thus
release resources for important activities, and also
reduce waste and the need for rework by making sustainable improvements.

The problem with incentives

2010-08-09T10:21:00.016+10:00

Today's solution can be the basis of tomorrow’s problem.

The Australian Prime Minister has proposed substantial incentive payments to up to 1000 schools which show improvements in student attendance and results (more...). It is generally a good thing to recognise and reward achievements and the intended outcomes of the proposal are highly desirable.

However this is not simply a system-wide recognition and reward arrangement. Offering incentives with a limited number of possible recipients turns it into a competition. Competition can certainly promote improved performance, as in sport.

At the same time, there can be unintended side effects. In any competition there will be winners and losers. Incentives work best for those who are likely to be rewarded and they tend to become less effective over time unless the rewards are increased. Very few of us commit ourselves to winning Olympic medals despite the ever increasing value of doing so.

To be competitive we need to minimise the factors that reduce our likelihood of success while maximising the factors that increase the likelihood of our success. Other than luck, our likelihood of success is associated with factors over which we have some control.

The Prime Minister has promised that national criteria will be developed through consultative processes and measurement of performance will be overseen by an independent body. Fairness is important in any incentive scheme. But is this actually possible?

Student attendance and results are closely associated with many factors well outside the school's control including the natural abilities of individual students; family well-being; levels of parental education; and the families’ access to social capital, community resources and so on. But will the selection processes be able to measure the school’s and teacher’s contributions separately from these non-school factors?

If not, it would make sense for schools and teachers to generally avoid students who have additional needs for support and whose families are in distress; whose parents have low levels of education; and who live in communities with limited services, facilities and social capital.

Conversely it would make sense for schools to attract and retain students who have minimal need for additional individual support; whose families are in great shape; whose parents have high levels education and easy access to material and social resources and services.

The unintended side effect is that the most successful school response to the Prime Minister's proposal could well be to avoid the very students the proposal is intended to assist.

Understanding Data

2010-07-26T11:24:00.001+10:00

Why we need data
Data is used to construct our knowledge, actions and arrangements. In order to gather meaningful data we need matching concepts and some awareness of the context. A height of 170cm may be "tall" or "short" depending on the person's age, gender, race, group....

The application of data may, or may not, be problematic depending on the nature of causal relationships (if any) involved. For many physical phenomena, cause and effect are consistent over place and time. Thus data can be used to make reliable predictions and transfer best practice.

In most social phenomena, the relationships between cause and effect are not consistent over place and time. This fundamental reality is often masked by the fact that some observations can make sense in retrospect (after the event). The thinking error involved is, "because something can now be explained it could have been predicted before it happened".

Rather the following are often true if the phenomena are complex or chaotic:

cause and effect may not be related at all in any meaningful way
cause of effect may be remote from each other in place and time
cause and effect may be related but also inconsistent over place and time - repeated experiments give significantly different results, or small differences result in very different results
despite our best efforts, outcomes are unpredictable, messy

Data and Complex Phenomena

In complex phenomena such as social activity it is common for patterns to emerge in/from the interactions of the agents. That is, the outcomes are better understood as patterns rather than "products".
[Note: It is more appropriate to use the term 'product' in relation to the outputs of a production process, one which can be properly understood in terms of Input-> Process-> Output (product)]

The use of data in relation to complex phenomena is to enable us to identify patterns, trends and opportunities rather than to manage our endeavours as production activities. Understanding the difference between production and emergence is critical in field such as education.

Of course education and similar endeavours uses processes but they are typically iterative rather than linear, as is typical of production processes.

Moving forward and gaining momentum

2010-07-13T09:18:00.006+10:00

Enormous efforts are going into improving schools, schooling and education but most are disruptive, counter-productive and undermine stakeholder commitments to future initiatives.

Here are some basic (but counter-intuitive and very challenging) ideas about the way forward for schools, schooling and education:

Education is NOT a "process/production" activity and cannot be treated, nor modelled as such - A VERY BIG PROBLEM!!! more...
Reality is complex, messy, uncertain and unpredictable - Forrest Gump was right: "Sh-t happens!!"
Certain people may be in charge at various levels, but it is not possible for them to be in control
Hierarchical systems tend to protect senior officers from the inconvenience of knowing about the current reality
Knowledge, not plans and policies, make people responsible (and knowledge can help make people, response-able)
People want to do a good job (unless they are totally discouraged)
We need to reduce the need for counter-measures (re-work) and move directly towards solutions by nurturing the emergence of what is desirable more...
We need much less change but much more improvement
Organisations (including schools) are constructed in the everyday conversations of those involved.
Such situations require a set of agreed and easily retained rules of engagement/interaction (everyone's job description*), e.g.,
- Know what is happening
- Work with others to improve what is happening
- Do your work in a way that makes it easier for the next person to do well
When making changes/improvements always start by making things easier.
As a result of the above, everyone will do more and to do it better!!

That is, ongoing improvement of schools, schooling and education can be achieved quickly and economically

by working together and
by adopting a strategy of Easier First .

[*This 'job description' was used at RPS for the last several years of my time there and was clearly proven to work. In a school of 670 students, I taught 0.4 FTE, the APs taught 0.8 and everyone else taught full-time. That is, 97% of all the available teacher time was spent working directly with students.]

Understanding Social Emotional Learning

2010-07-05T09:52:00.019+10:00

I have been mulling over how to understand the social emotional learning component of School-wide Positive Behaviour Support. The following is a summary of my current thinking

1. SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL)

For me, at this time, I see SEL as

a major component of a school's taught, shared and lived curriculum

complementing the academic curriculum

enabling teaching, learning and belonging by and for all.

From listening to schools in the Network, and monitoring a lot of what is on the net, it seems to me that their are probably three SEL dimensions:

School expectations/rules/agreements - These key school aspects are described and articulated in various ways. They are intended to guide everyone's ongoing actions and interactions but and detailed meanings change from context-to-context, from setting-to-setting. To understand, appreciate, accept and support the school's requirements involves substantial social emotional learning: the expectations have to be met, the rules observed and/or the agreements kept. The capacity to do so involves social skills, habits of mind and emotional literacy.

Social skills - The ability to use verbal and non-verbal communication skills that enable successful interactions between members of the (school) community. That is to meet one's own needs in acceptable ways and to support the needs of others. For example, Teachers frequently use

Attentive listening (from Tribes....)
Active Supervision (SWPBS...)
Restorative Inquiry (Restorative Practices...)
Affective Statements (Tribes, RP...)
Showing appreciation (Tribes, RP...)
...

Habits of Mind - Patterns of thinking and acting in one's own best interests and leading to ongoing success. For example, You Can Do It!!proposes several 'habits of mind, including..."
- Accepting Myself
- Taking Risks
- Being Independent
- I Can Do It
- Giving Effort
- Working Tough
- Setting Goals
- Planning My Time
- Being Tolerant of Others
- Thinking First
- Playing by the Rules, and
- Social Responsibility ... seehttp://www.youcandoit.com.au/AboutYouCanDoIt/
- ...
- For a more scholarly list, see alsohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habits_of_mind

Emotional Literacy -
- Identifying, relating and communicating one's (emotional) responses to experience, and
- Understanding and appreciating those of others.

2. Implications arising

It seems to me that there are some major implications from the above:

Firstly, emotional literacy underpins success including the successful use of social skills and the development of useful habits of mind.

Secondly, the key elements of most structured SEL programs include elements from each of the above SEL dimensions. Consider Tribes as simple example. The Tribes elements are

Attentive Listening = habit of mind + social skill + emotional literacy

Showing appreciation / No put-downs = social skill + emotional literacy

Right to pass = emotional literacy + social skill

Mutual respect = emotional literacy + social skill

[Focus on task = habit of mind + emotional literacy]

Thirdly, social skills, habits of mind and emotional literacy are not subject to the law of physics: they are not universals in a determined sense. They are emergent, cultural and situated. This may mean that your school can simply choose its own preferred approach, and if done well, the school will make a profound contribution to the life and work of those involved, both now and in the future.

Fourthly, and keeping this last point in mind, consider your school's key expectations, e.g., "Be Safe, Be Fair and Be a Learner"

3. Discussion Starters

What are the required social skills that will enable all staff and students to meet these expectations?

What are the associated habits of mind that will make meeting the school's expectations natural and easy for staff and students?

What emotional literacy is required of staff and students in order for them to understand, appreciate and achieve the school's expectations.

What educational strategies does your school currently have in place to develop the social skills, habits of mind and emotional literacy required?

What needs are not currently being addressed? That is, what are the gaps in the schools continuum of support in these areas, and how do you know (data)?

Possible next steps?

Changing to a Solution Focus approach

2010-06-29T08:43:00.038+10:00

There is a central issue that has challenged me for years:

Why is it so difficult to get a field like education to adopt a well
demonstrated strategy?

The issue is made all the more puzzling by the fact that there are numerous examples of where a strategy (in this case SF) has been used successfully in the field, yet it remains very difficult to achieve wider and systemic adoption. Here is my latest thinking:

Most schooling is currently dominated by the idea of a simple production system

input -> process -> output
curriculum -> teaching & learning -> knowledge and know-how

Indeed in most places in the world, schools are the last of the great factories. They certainly are here in Tasmania.

On the other hand, SF is based on the idea of a complex adaptive system: one in which

the interactions of those involved result in the emergence (or lack of emergence) of such things as knowledge, relationships, attitudes....

I now believe that the current domination of "production thinking" in education, particularly amongst administrators, makes it very difficult for education to adopt a Solution Focus approach on a large scale.

The production model assumes:

predictability of outputs and outcomes
transferability of processes ('best practices'), and thus
"justifies" decision making that is remote in place and time.

One the other hand, Solution Focus

is a local and real time strategy
with unpredictable outputs and outcomes,
resulting in specific situated responses that are
not readily transferable, and so
highly problematic for administrators and governments responsible for
policy, planning and resource distribution.

Of course, some aspects of schools and schooling can be modelled as production systems. However, most aspects of teaching, learning and improvement are best understood as complex (emergent, unpredictable...).

In such situations it is best to understand that the challenges involved

are complex, and so are
about nurturing the emergence of those things that are desirable in the specific situation
likely to be amenable to complexity-based strategies such as Solution Focus

Almost universally, the world wants teachers to change their practices to improve student learning. But teachers are caught in the middle:

Good teachers understand the complex nature of teaching and learning and usually respond well to SF.
At the same time, teachers are constrained by the erroneous 'production system' thinking of the schools amd schools system in which they work.

That is, the well intentioned policies and accountability requirements based on "production" thinking make it very difficult for teachers and schools and school systems to adopt well demonstrated but less predictable strategies.

IMHO, this is why there are examples of individual schools having great success with SF but no school system has yet adopted it as its improvement strategy.

See also an overview of Solution Focus and Nurturing Emergence

Understanding the "outcomes" of a restorative process

2010-05-07T11:27:00.000+10:00

It seems to me that it would be helpful to encourage people to consider and report the outcomes comprehensively. And it will be helpful if those responsible for implementing RP can articulate the real outcomes - they will need to be able to tell 'the full story' of what was achieved.

From the examples given in the workshop, outcomes can be

actions - "apologise", "shake hands", "make restitution", "forgive", "reconcile", "vent"...
experiences - belonging, being heard
changed relationships - changes in the way in which particular people interact with self and others during and following the meeting
learning and insights - a better understanding of how the world and people are, and how they work: cause and effect, flow-on effects, the experiences of others, similarities, differences, motivations,...
attitudes - beliefs and feelings that guide judgements and actions in relation to self, others and property
life chances - the ability to access opportunities that lead to success and well-being for
... (these are the one I have managed to identify so far)

And outcomes also need to be considered on a timeline:

immediate - e.g., concludes the issue
short-term - e.g., retains student at school, avoid the courts, improves the relationship between the student and others,...
long term - life chances - improved likelihood of success and well being

And finally the outcomes will be unique for each of the parties involved: each offender; victim, supporter.... and all need to be considered and accounted for.

Schools in the Age of Measurement

2010-05-05T08:36:00.002+10:00

The Impact of the Age of Measurement
The Telegraph recently reported: 'Age of Measurement' harming schools, says Eton head (here). Tony Little, the headmaster of Eton has suggested that Boarding schools have entered an 'Age of Measurement' where only results are valuable.

"...the current inspection regime for .... schools is flawed - because it splits schools into parts, judging them separately for different areas of their work... I see teachers becoming averse to risk, naturally concerned about their responsibilities should they offer to take a school trip in their own time, feeling that they are judged most tellingly on the grades their students achieve in public exams, becoming more adept with the jargon and canny about 'delivering the outcome'."

Expensive Bureaucracy
Another report of the same address (here) had the headline Schools 'harassed' by pushy parents, says Eton head. Tony Little's comments included the observation that

... independent school fees had been driven up in recent years because of the “lethal cocktail” of maintaining facilities, meeting competitive staff pay rates and complying with “constant waves of expensive bureaucracy”.(my emphasis)

In the case of public education the "constant waves of expensive bureaucracy" are paid for by taking teachers away from teaching. That is, in our system the cost is paid by those who can least afford it: those students who need the most teaching.

Teaching is the core business of schools. When I was Principal at Riverside Primary (enrolment 670), I taught 0.4FTE, APs taught 0.8 and everyone else taught full-time. I believe that this level of staff engagement in teaching would be impossible today because of the huge increase in demands made on schools by the Department of Education, and State and Federal Governments.

Given that Eton is experiencing the those things reported by Tasmanian schools one might conclude that this is a worldwide phenomenon and we are, indeed in the 'Age of Measurement'

School Improvement - a conversation

2010-04-28T09:14:00.002+10:00

Earlier this year the University of Tasmania advertised several 'New Stars' positions in various disciplines, including one for the Faculty of Education specialising in School Improvement. They couldn't recruit anyone suitable in School Improvement. This would indicate that the lack of expertise in School Improvement may be a much wider issue.

Goldratt has identified a change management strategy based on three simple questions

What to change?
What to change to?
How to cause the change? That is, "By what method?"

Most people are confident about their expertise in relation to Questions 1 & 2, especially in relation to specific changes. The world is full of experts, who know what's wrong and how things should be.

But a gaping void exists in relation to Question 3. This usually leads to attempts to drive school improvement by

focusing on outcomes (MySchool, Tasmania Tomorrow...) and/or
mandating changes to teacher practices (often based on notions of 'best practice')

[The continual search for best practices is based on the largely unexamined assumption that 'best practices' are universally best, and are also readily transferrable]

These approaches tend to make school improvement initiatives

disparate
episodic
inefficient
ineffective ('after the horse has bolted')
lacking in overall coherence
often mutually disruptive: most schools struggle to meet the demands placed upon them

On the other hand, there are a whole range of proven improvement strategies available. However, they seem have little or no traction in the field of Education. Tasmania is ideally situated to redress this situation.

Change management strategies worth considering include

Action Learning* (Revans,...)
Activity Theory (Engestrom,...)
Complexity Theory (Snowden,...)
Theory of Constraints (Goldratt)
Continuous improvement (Deming,...)
Sense Making (Weick, Snowden)
Solution Focus (McKergow,...)
Communities of Practice (Wenger,...)
Knowledge Management (combines with complexity theory and sense making)
Key Factors (Webb)
and even SWPBS (Sugai,...) - as per my recent email
...

The latter two strategies are currently understood to be specific to particular school contexts: the implementation of ICT and student behaviour respectively. In fact, both have the potential to be generalised in such a way that they become applicable and useful in improving most aspects of the life and work of the school.

Interestingly, all of these strategies are constructivist and they boil down to being Action Learning in one form or another - not really surprising!!

Thus, there is an urgent and important conversation to be had around the question

School Improvement - by what method?

And the conversation needs to be fostered at all levels and with all stakeholders.

A Positive Future for Tasmanian Schools

2010-04-27T08:16:00.005+10:00

Deming led the redevelopment of Japan after WWII and was a founding contributor to the quality movement. When people made great claims about about their future achievements ("No child will live in poverty", "No Child Left behind"...) he would ask the question: "By what method?".

He was not asking "What are you going to do?". He was asking "How are those involved going to achieve this desirable thing?".

One way to achieve a positive future for Tasmanian schools would be to adopt, adapt, appropriate and extend the main principles of SWPBS (School-wide Positive Behaviour Support) to address the various aspects of the life and work of the school; not just student behaviour.

What would this mean? It means that is areas such as teaching & learning, behaviour, organisations, community & families... Schools would be purposeful, capable and successful.

That is, in a positive future Tasmanian Schools would

be focused on success and well-being for all (staff, students, families, communities...) in a range of contexts
have clear widely shared hopes and expectations for all
know what was happening
have data to confirm or challenge their knowledge of what was happening
use this data to inform their decision making and responses
continually work towards achieving and improving outcomes consistent with their hopes and expectations
adopt and/or develop evidence-based practices that enable the outcomes to be achieved
apply these practices to provide a continuum of support according to the needs of those involved
develop systems that enable data to be acquired, processed and used in a timely manner,and for practices to be effective, efficient....
focus on improvement, rather than change, and thus
become inclusive (and restorative) communities in their own right

Using SWPBS as a 'platform' would be strategic in that, to a greater or less extent, most schools have some knowledge and experience of PBS. For those schools that already implementing SWPBS well, the extension would be simple and natural. And it would further strengthen the good work they are already doing in SWPBS.

The Immediate Future of Tasmanian Education

2010-04-22T09:01:00.019+10:00

Understanding the current window of opportunity
We are in a period of rapid transition and the critical changes are not being chosen, managed or designed or even predictable - they are simply emerging. So an understanding of complexity will prove to be critical.

The old idea of a system as Input-Process-Output is very much alive but not at all well. That is, this notion is working less and less well as our world becomes more complex, interactive, uncertain and unpredictable.

Many aspects of our daily experience have elements that are at the 'edge of chaos'. While some people may be in charge, no-one is really in control of literacy, numeracy, retention, behaviour... and other critical matters. Still we have to respond and how we respond to these conditions determines our ongoing success or otherwise.

Some key emerging concepts to consider

A system is network of people, tools, policies, facilities, arrangements... that interact with some coherence

And what is basic (literacy, numeracy...) is often not simple.

In complex situations consistency is more meaningful that uniformity

Knowledge, actions and arrangements are continually constructed and reconstructed in everyday interactions (mainly conversations)

So many of the Tasmania education initiatives of recent years have proven to be disruptive and counter productive. While the thinking behind the individual initiatives has often be sound, their effect has been disruptive to other initiatives and thus reduced the overall coherence within the system. Consider the following examples:

SARIS fatally disrupted the ELs and all local reporting arrangements - the ELs were no longer coherent in the light of the SARIS
By defining the outputs (in effect, selecting the inputs) SARIS has also made significant curriculum development and implementation since the ELs virtually impossible
The national curriculum is very likely continue this process
The MySchool website is having similar effects
And many experienced Tasmania Tomorrow as very much less than coherent, especially in terms of its stated aims (retention) and the basis for its structure.

It is interesting that SARIS, the National Curriculum, MySchool... are all strategies based on Input-Process-Output assumptions and they also assume that that uniformity is possible and meaningful.

Increasingly leadership will require very different thinking, starting now. The "edge of chaos" phenomenon is not always bad. It can represent a condition in which significant system change can be achieved very easily and quickly. Thus, a new government and new Minister represent a window of opportunity that will be open for at least the immediate future. The responses made may keep the window open or slam it shut.

The flow of Web 2.0

2010-02-24T07:23:00.007+11:00

It seems that many major organizations are beginning to respond to Web 2.0 in terms of how they operate on a day to day basis.

My impression is that rather than Web 2.0 driving these changes it goes something like this:

Web 2.0 makes new interactions and relationships possible
Individuals and groups explore and use these and begin to think and act differently
This seeps into organisations with which these people are involved
Small parts of these organisations begin to try things with Web 2.0
Some of these work quickly, easily and cheaply - creating a competitive advantage
These are adopted more extensively along with changed rules resulting in a cultural shift and creating a comparative advantage

The overall direction of the shift is

from understanding 'the system' as a classic input-process-output entity
towards understanding the system' as a network of agents (people, tools, ideas,...) that interact with some coherence, that is, as a complex adaptive systems.

The phenomenon seems to be akin to Naisbit's notions of Hi-Tech Hi-Touch. This beginning to emerge in schools and may flow onto to education, per se, soon.

Checking perceptions of justice

2009-12-16T09:38:00.014+11:00

Insights into how we really dispense justice can be powerful and essential contributions to aching change. I suspect that many staff would be surprised at the what they actually practice.

Staff perceptions
One way to bring these out would be to
1. Get several staff members to tell a story of a recent difficult situation and how it was dealt with, then

2. Get them to rate it (putting dots on a triangle) in terms of

retribution,
deterrence and
restoration

I would see such an exercise as being important in the implementation of Restorative Practices in any school.

Student Perceptions

And there is another 'triangle' that could also be useful... in this one students might rate staff in terms of whether they are

controlling (assertive/aggressive)
helpful (altruistic)
just focused on the facts (analytical)

Same technique: get each student to

1. Tell the story of a recent experience then

2. Rate what the staff did (put dots on a triangle) in terms of in terms of the these three possible responses

The Role of the School in Restorative Practices

2009-12-16T09:18:00.016+11:00

Restorative Practices involve a major response from the school itself (over and above the staff response). Staff need PL (knowledge, skills and understanding) but, that is just the beginning...
RP involves a change of culture which requires

engagement of senior staff in the everyday life and work of the school, especially
engagement of senior staff in the everyday conversations
and a change in governance

Associated changes in school governance need to be made and communicated ...

the school accepts responsibility for the use of RP (staff act on behalf of the school)
the school enables staff to use RP - time, provides structures, process, support, back-up, recovery strategies and assistance (it need to be OK to fail, at least in the short-term),
the school monitors the use, costs and contributions of RP (especially to capture the learning and experiences...)
the school genuinely lives the values required at all levels
the school understands RP as an investment (not just a solution), which means,
the school accepts that it is OK to lose time now in order to save time later on

Consequences and our notions of justice

2009-12-10T15:13:00.016+11:00

I came across an interesting study the other day. The study collected stories involving justice issues - what happened and how things were handled.

The study then asked the contributors to tag their stories in terms of the extent to which they were about
1. Retribution (on behalf of the victim???)
2. Deterrence of the offender and others from repeating the offence
3. Restoration of the offender

Lots of food for thought here I think.

I suspect a lot of the use of 'logical' consequences in schools is
  - about retribution
  - justified as a deterrent
  - with an implied 'logical' outcome of 'restoration' of the offender

Of course, our responses are shaped by
  - the significance of what happened, and
  - the offender's response.

And, what we believe others would expect of us is also very powerful. I continue to be amazed at how little awareness many people (not just teachers) have regarding the natural consequences of doing the wrong thing. It is common for the natural consequences to be underestimated or simply disregarded.

Doing the wrong thing is very bad for the offender (Glasser was strong on this).

IMHO, one of the most common reasons kids continue to be difficult after doing the wrong thing is that
  - they are embarrassed - the know they have done the wrong thing and wish they hadn't, and
  - they feel disempowered - it can't be undone, and they don't know how to fix it up.

So to save face they get into denial, blaming, justifying.... It is a very painful to lose face - something I never required of a student. Maybe Restorative Practices is as much about restoring the offender's face as it is about restoring relationships.

After all, face is very much the key element in all relationships.

Nudge - don't shove!!

2009-10-28T08:12:00.004+11:00

A recent posting on the FASTForward blog commented on the Emergent behavior and unintended consequences in social systems.

While the author described emergent behaviours as 'unintended consequences that make you happy', this definition was actually created tongue in cheek. Of course not all emergent things are desirable. So, what to do?

Possible implications include the following

Focus on what is (the future being unpredictable)
Make small (reversible or containable) steps in the preferred direction (the outcomes of large steps being unpredictable and irreversible)
Move to a complexity theory approach and learn to work with emergence, that is,
Apply action learning (insightful questions) to the present in order to move forward

As the shampoo ad says, "it won't happen overnight but it will happen".

More on emergence in schools

2009-10-20T10:10:00.005+11:00

If we are going to help shape the future then we will need some understanding of why things happen (cause and effect). Such understanding will helps us to appreciate our limitations and to make wise choices about the methods we adopt.

Because organisations have conscious entities (people) it is possible to nurture emergence by acting in the organisations environment. For example, at a macro-level, international conventions on arms, trade and human rights are all examples of efforts by the international community (as an environment) to shape the emergence of certain behaviours by, and within, countries Properly understood government and school system policies and plans make similar attempts to prompt and nurture the emergence of certain changes in schools. Plans and policies are generally thought to cause the desired changes and are assumed to do so. However significant changes in schools are emergent and the plans and policies are something less than causal.

The behaviour of entities in complex adaptive systems is largely is response to attractors and boundaries existing within the system. If the plans and policies are linked with meaningful attractors and boundaries then the intended changes may well occur. However, social systems are particularly fraught, because individuals, and/or groups, may or may not respond to, or even acknowledge the intended attractors and boundaries. The 'overloaded curriculum' may be understood as too many attractors and too few boundaries.

For the above reasons, leaders working in the field of complexity suggest modest "try, learn and respond" approaches to organisational, rather like a form of ongoing action learning.

For example, "Pick something small and try it. If it works, extend it. If it doesn't, learn from it. ", David Gurteen, Twitter, Aug. 28 2009. Similarly when working in the complex domain, Snowden recommends undertaking a few small-scale trial initiatives. If the outcomes are desirable then support and extend them. If the outcomes are undesirable then undermine the initiative, and try something different. He also advocates a 'safe-fail' approach rather than a 'fail-safe' approach. In the former, it is OK for the any initiative fail without serious damage to the organisation, hence the use of small scale trials. The latter approach is only suitable for systems where the outcomes can be accurately predicted, e.g., bridge building and other engineering tasks.

Nurturing emergence should not be confused with the more familiar "design, develop and then implement the system it" approach that is form of engineering. Such approaches work well when cause and effect are known and consistent over place and time. Consider the variability in the use of ICT in teaching and learning. This suggests that any cause and effect relationships between ICT and teaching and learning are not consistent over place and time. Rather, the relationships, say, between ICT, teaching and learning emerge locally. A basic principle of complex adaptive systems is that small differences in the starting conditions (and every school is different) can result in very large differences in the outcomes.

As mentioned previously, while developments may be understandable in retrospect they were not predictable at the time of their instigation.

Thus, professional development may really be an exercise in nurturing emergence. Thus, if Rob Paterson at Fast Forward the Blog is correct, then perhaps we might achieve a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved by using this new approach.
[Note: Emergence is also likely to be a more accurate explanation of our previous successes, and failures. One uncomfortable implication is that our heroic leadership in our major successes may not have been as pivotal as we have believed. Everyday leadership may be less about expertise, insight and heroic actions and more about creating conditions that promote and nurture emergence. Of course changing those starting conditions may require insight, strength and courage at times.]

Requirements for emergence - the right starting conditions

1. Some kind of Container - an environment that is optimal for the emergence in question.

The environment contain meaningful attractors and useful boundaries such as suitable purposes, curriculum and pedagogy
The ways and means for activity are available, e.g., reliable and effective infrastructure & technical support
Governance promotes, supports and acknowledges the desired emergent practices
A community of practice contains, enables and/or develops the working knowledge, matching and sustainable practices, and promotes interaction (see 2. below)

Notes:
(a) Many teachers work largely in isolation from their colleagues for the greater part of the day. Implications?
(b) The available technology is changing continually and rapidly and is thus disrupting the match between the technology and its use, and making demands on the infrastructure and technical support

2. A lot of Optimal Contact Points - emergence is all about patterns

A community of practice with an ongoing conversation/discourse sharing knowledge, insights and experience (including stories)
A collaborative culture that increases the number of optimal contact points for members of the group (class, staff, school, community, profession, school system....)
Regular, and frequent interactions (especially in the form of ongoing conversations).

Note: For many high performing practitioners the majority of their optimal contact points are outside their own school.

3. A few Rules that both shape the pattern (e.g., of ICT use in teaching and learning) and also keep it coherent

It can be difficult for many teachers to develop and adopt a set of coherent practices in the context of continual change without a consistent and agreed and endorsed framework.
A few simple rules focusing, endorsing and promoting action and collaboration enable confident, coherent and sustainable interaction even in a changing environment.
For example, Riverside Primary's 'job description' that applied to everyone (staff, students, visitors) proved useful in improving all aspects of the school
- Know what is happening
- Work with others to improve what is happening
- Make it easier for the next person to do well (achieve success and well-being)

Note: The traditional approach to curriculum has been to provide teachers with little detail and much choice, or, a great deal of detail and little choice. Few, if any, curriculum writers have attempted to identify and articulate a few simple rules that are likely to prove effective in enabling staff and students to work together to achieve success in their teaching and learning endeavours

Summary

Baring some dramatic or catastrophic event, we can usually envision the immediate future with some clarity and confidence
Envisaging the longer term future is problematic - the probability of significant unforeseen/unforeseeable changes in the external environment increases rapidly as our timelines extend.
Changes (even small ones) of staff, policies, leadership, resource provision, technologies... may have a profound impact.

For many schools/school systems, a change of Principal may be as profound as the combined effected of the global financial crisis.
And who would have predicted that a global financial crisis would result in major physical development costing $14bn in thousands of Australian schools?
Similarly, "Why I don't believe in 5 yr plans:5 yrs ago, YouTube/Twitter didn't exist, & Facebook was for college kids", johnniemoore, Twitter 18 Oct 2009. And consider the emergence of devices, services and practices associated with YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Professional development in relation to teaching and learning is more about nurturing emergence through understanding, attending to, and bringing together
- the factors involved in teaching and learning (especially governance and collaboration)
- well developed matching pedagogies
- action learning in a range of forms
- the nature and mediation of activity
- communities of practice
- an understandings of cause and effect in its various forms
- knowing what is happening (particularly as the starting point) in order to improve it

Nurturing emergence for a better school

2009-10-13T09:31:00.011+11:00

Schools cannot be managed as machines. Rather schools are complex entities and are therefore largely emergent. For example, over time, particular values, purposes, ways of interacting and practices transform: some emerge while others diminish. Continuity and change are concurrent. These changes are, at least in part, responses (adaptions) to changes in the school's environment. Of course, at any point in time, certain aspects of schools may be treated as simple or complicated and managed using approaches that approximate engineering.

However the complex nature of any school means that development and improvement is really about promoting and nurturing emergence of desirable aspects and constraining other aspects.

But to have Emergence we need 3 elements:

1.Emergence requires some kind of container - an environment that is optimal for the emergence in question. This can be physical and energetic such as the physical and the social environment needed for a baby to be set on her way to reach her potential. For better or worse a school (together with its community and the school system) can be such an environment.

2. Emergence require a lot of optimal contact points. Emergence is all about patterns. To have patterns you need many points of connection. A Human with too small a social world cannot reach her potential. 3 birds cannot make a flock. A few breezes don’t make a hurricane. A few stars do not make a galaxy. No flow in water and you cannot have a vortex. When man had no complex language, he could not communicate widely enough to make much technical progress. He could not create patterns. A father might show his son how to carve a hand axe but an emergent breakthrough like a throwing stick or a bow and arrow would be beyond them. For without complex language enabling abstractions and enabling a large circle of participants the creation of patterns abstract thinking and design cannot happen. For then, if it could not be seen and copied it could not happen. Most schools can meet this requirement, provided the majority of members (staff, students, families...) of the school see themselves as belonging and participating.

3. Emergence requires a few rules that both shape the patterns of interaction and also keep it coherent. As we learn more about complexity, we are astounded by how few the rules are and how often they are so simple. With computers it is easy to model bird flocking now. But, to get the pattern, we also need the process of iteration and we need a computer to do the math. But to model, we need to know the rules.

In the meantime, one school (Riverside Primary School) adopted three simple interactive rules for all of its members: staff, students, families, community members and visitors:

Know what is happening around you
Work with others to improve what is happening
Make it easier for the next person to do well

And it worked well... click here for more information

Acknowledgement to Rob Paterson at the Fast Forward the Blog

Student retention - not a simple matter

2009-09-30T09:06:00.006+10:00

"There is a simple solution to every question - and it is usually wrong" And this certainly applies to the issue of student retention.

In the school context, retention is about constructive engagement in learning and involvement in the life and work of the school community.

Schools begin working on retention well before students start school through 0-4 programs such a

parent-Child Groups,
pre-Kinder sessions,
early intervention
...

And retention means different things for different people. For different students it can be about

getting to school
being in class
staying in class
managing well in the playground
initiating assistance when the going gets tough
coping with the everyday ups and downs as they occur in the life and work of the school
support for the student
support for the family
support for the school
support for the community
...

So for different students, retention can be a matter of

readiness to participate, e.g., 'At school, on time, ready for work'
moment-by-moment participation in the school: getting through
- a lesson
- a break
- a day, a week, a term, a year, K-12, a course
- a transition (making it to high school, post year 10, university, employment, community and society...)
engagement - being there is not enough
attendance - sufficient continuity to ensure success and well-being
enrolment - being in the right place in the system
...

After students begin school there are numerous efforts to retain students according to their needs through

Monitoring and supporting attendance
Provision of quality teaching and curriculum*
Feeding and clothing students
Transport arrangements
Family support programs and services
Other family focused initiatives
The provision of programs to meet special needs
Teacher aide support for special needs
Playground support
Linking to other agencies and support programs
Course counselling and selection services
Alternative (out of school) programs and support
Social skills and intra-personal skills programs
...

Rewards, compliance and the world

2009-09-03T16:00:00.005+10:00

Many young students are reward orientated, as we know. If they remains so, then there is a huge challenge for all concerned:

The world does not give rewards because people need them. It gives rewards because it wants something from them. That means that the recipient of the reward has something to offer, and that the offering will be made in a acceptable form.

Despite our protestation to the contrary, the world does not bother much with getting people to comply.

Certainly there are some rewards for compliance per se, but those that do exist (Rating One on car insurance, for example) are often long term, not immediate.

There are basically two responses the world makes to non-compliance:

punishment, as in demerit points or fines... , or
marginalisation, e.g., when non-complying people are simply overlooked and or ignored.

This could mean that as well as focusing on enabling a student to be successful in school right now we might also need to be

projecting forward several years to what is likely to be working best for him/her then
working out how we can help ensure that he/she will get there

Robustness or Resilience (PBS for example)?

2009-08-31T10:01:00.004+10:00

In developing school-wide systems, it may be important to be explicit about whether you are aiming to make the school's behaviour management systems

robust - unlikely to fail in any of its parts so that problematic behaviour is prevented from occurring
resilient - able to recover quickly and easily from failures (life's ups and downs), even the big ones

Follow the link to a posting on this issue from my favourite blogger (Dave Snowden).

Sometimes, when you are introducing PBS, staff may unwittingly assume that the intention is to make the school's behaviour management robust so that behaviour problems will disappear. Of course, this is unlikely to happen and some staff will then naturally think that "PBS doesn't work".

It is more realistic to aim for school-wide systems that are resilient. This will achieve three major outcomes:

school-wide systems will cope better with the ups and downs involved
recovery by the school, staff and students will be easier and faster, e.g., restorative practices, and, as a result,
behaviour problems will reduce (even if they don't disappear altogether)

And this reminds me of the three measure of progress in relation to a problematic student behaviour:

Are the incidents getting fewer, that is,further apart? - "Yes" indicates the students behaviour is more 'robust' and that the student has more resilience
Is the recovery time getting shorter? "Yes" indicates the student has improved resilience
Are the the incidents getting less severe? "Yes" indicates improvements in both robustness of behaviour and personal resilience)

Problematic behaviour tends to improve in the above order. A "Yes" answer to any of the above questions indicates progress , even if, the last thing that improves is the actual incidents themselves. When a serious incident occurs it does not always mean that "We are back to square one!!!" or "All our work has been in vain!!"

It may be useful to get any staff and the student involved to answer these questions for themselves. In this way you are helping them to building resilience.

League tables, their use and limitations

2009-08-29T09:13:00.005+10:00

What are the benefits of school league tables? And for whom? People need information for making decisions. Schools want to do well, and parents want to send their children to good schools. But are league tables likely to be helpful?

The tables do not contain measures of school performance. They contain measures of student performance. No one would deny that there is a link between school performance and student performance. However, it is just not that simple.

Only part of any student’s performance is attributable to the school. Other contributing factors include

the student’s natural ability
the student's effort,
his or her family,
his or her friends
and the wider community.

It is not possible to isolate and measure the school contribution separately from all these other contributions. Even in the twenty-first century it still ‘takes a village to raise a child’. If the tables report anything then it is the success of the combined contributions . As a result, the tables frequently do serious injustice to many schools, particularly in high needs areas – those areas where families and communities have significantly less to contribute.

The data in league tables are something less than what the labels suggest. For example, the literacy and numeracy data is derived from narrow measures of certain aspects of the students’ actual literacy and numeracy. But even this can be useful. Such measures can act as a ‘flag’ and draw attention to matters that might warrant further consideration, especially by those, such as the school, who can put the data into context and make improvements.

Public reporting pressures schools into giving undue attention to certain aspects of the curriculum at the cost of other very worthwhile learning. That is, pressure to improve the school’s contribution can distort and narrow a sound curriculum and thus be counter productive.

Finally, the question of parent choice. I support the right of parents to choose but choice comes at a cost. Schools that are low on a league table are likely to suffer most. Hard working and very capable staff may feel undervalued and unfairly treated. Parents who cannot move their children to a higher school may feel a little guilty and disappointed with the school. Parents who do move their children usually take with them valuable resources. League tables can promote the movement of social capital away from where it is needed most, towards where there is already a plentiful supply.

Fortunately, the vast majority of schools and families quickly realise the limitations of league table information and adjust their judgements and decisions accordingly. Most schools and communities survive the immediate collateral damage that occurs. Curricula narrow and distort. The life and work of schools go on.

What is not negotiable in a school?

2009-08-18T09:09:00.005+10:00

Are there any things that are not negotiable in a school?

For me, there are three things that are not negotiable,

No harm to self, others or property (aka care, safety,...)
No disruption to work or safe play (consideration, learning...)
No offense to other members of the school community* (courtesy, respect, friendship....)

(* Includes neighbours and visitors)

In fact, these are the three school rules. These rules are derived directly from the rules that apply in our society - the school does not invent these. And they related directly to the two key outcomes

success
well-being

There are several supportive ways in which we interact with students. The main ways include

coaching
negotiating
mediating
befriending
advocating
...

In fact when it comes to the not negotiable three school rules, the bottom line is that at times we will just need to be assertive. Of course there are children who, based on their other life experiences, expect all things to be negotiable. And others who dismiss all support other than befriending... And yet others who simply don't understand. But these things don't change the rules.

It is best to achieve as much s possible on the basis of our working relationships with students (coach, friend, mediator...). However, when our working relationships break down, we may need to be assertive and our right to do so comes from our role: Principal, Class Teacher, Duty Teacher, Teacher Aide...

Making the role explicit while being assertive can help reduce the student's confusion.

__,_._,___

Improve the system to offset spending reductions

2009-05-26T07:00:00.011+10:00

The global financial crisis is forcing governments world-wide to reduce spending as an alleged strategy for 'cost saving'. An earlier blog showed that this is a false claim. Reducing spending without system improvement is simply cost shifting. And the shift tends to be towards those who can least afford the cost.

Cost savings are achieved by improving the system so that

the system is more efficient = uses less resources
the system is more effective and hence, there is less rework = uses less resources

There are numerous valid strategies for improving the system using small changes

Start with Easier First - releases resources quickly and easily (minimum change)
Then Reduce rework - reduces resources consumed and hence releases resources
Build in Continuous improvement - releases resources through improved processes
And always Focus on solutions - doing more of what works, and less of what doesn't work, rather than developing counter measures (rework = uses more resources)
Big improvements from small changes are achieved by addressing the constraints - only introduce changes (differences) that make a difference.

The latter strategy does not assume that the way to maintain outcomes (e.g. student learning) is to increase the focus on what appear to be core activities (e.g., classroom teaching). Making such an assumption usually leads to cutting resources for things other than classroom teaching.

Reducing the cost of poor student behaviour

Each year, inappropriate student behaviour costs the Tasmanian education system tens of millions of dollars worth of staff time, energy and commitment that would otherwise be applied to the core task of educating students. In many cases poor behaviour is the major constraint on achieving and maintaining learning outcomes.

The irony is that, in order to maintain resourcing for core activities (especially staff:student ratios in classrooms) the system is cutting 'non-core' activities such as support services, professional development, school development and the provision of tools. There is little regard to the cost effectiveness of such decisions.

The development of a system-wide student support information system (estimated cost $300 000) was abandoned as a very early 'cost saving' despite the fact that it would have returned many times its cost in actual savings, and helped to improve key outcomes and core activities. These improvements would have allowed some slight reduction in resourcing for core activities across the entire system which in turn would have resulted in actual cost savings in cold hard cash.

And this is just one example.

Challenges as opportunities

2009-05-15T09:02:00.004+10:00

The global finacial crisis is presenting challenges across the board. Many of these challenges are urgent as resources are lost, or simply not available. If financial resources are inadequate the first response is to stop spending in an attempt to 'reduce costs'. But this strategy does not actually reduce costs... it just changes who pays the cost, and usually, this becomes those who can least afford it (The Myth of cost saving by cutting spending).

The only way to reduce costs is to improve the system - to reduce waste starting with rework. The best way to do that is to ensure that

Goals and purposes are clear and shared
Commitments are feasible (and/or safe)
Processes are efficient and effective (reduce rework - releases resources)
Improvement is continuous
Everyone is a contributor and beneficiary
The initial focus is on making things easier first (releases resources)

NOTE: the above list are core tasks - they do not really represent anything new. The small change is to actually attend to these matters on a moment by moment basis and to integrate them into everyday practice. They are not (and cannot be) separate from doing what needs to be done.

Improving the system is a key response to the urgent challenges we face. But the challenegs also represent an opportunity is (at least two ways):

The harsh reality we face forces up to reflect on what really matters - we have an opportunity to ensure that our goals and purposes are clear and shared
The unfamiliar difficulties we face brings our systems to the 'edge of chaos' under which conditions the system may be vulnerable but it is also easier to change.

IKEA as role model

2009-04-28T07:04:00.006+10:00

Recently, members of a staff group expressed some of the challenges they faced in carrying out their work. Their concerns and the possible improvement strategies that they had identified were summarised by a third party in an email to the Principal. The email was intended to be a starting point for discussing the situation.

In response the Principal provided the members of the team with a comprehensive email containing several key documents and advice and instructions. The Principal's email was rather like something from IKEA. It was presented as having all the required bits and pieces (information) and a set of matching instructions.

While some specific aspects of schools can be improved using the IKEA method, the 'constructivist' notions of IKEA are fundamentally different from those involved in constructing the knowledge, arrangements and actions required to make a school effective.

For example, the construction of an IKEA item is a generally a once-only task and most customers would produce very similar items. In addition, the item is largely independent of the context in which it is constructed and the use to which it will be put. Also, the construction of one IKEA item does not impact on the effectiveness of other IKEA items even if they are same room.

In contrast, the aspects of a school are in a continual state of flux... the knowledge, arrangements and actions need to be continually constructed and reconstructed. And no one have the full set of instructions. In this information age, information and instructions are not enough. IKEA is great at furniture but it is not a suitable role for dealing with the complexity of schools.

Dealing with complexity requires on-going conversations in which experiences and insights are shared, and knowledge, arrangements and actions are co-constructed. Rather than trying to produce fail-safe kits (a la IKEA) it is wiser to undertake small safe-fail experiments to find out what works and what doesn't and then respond to the results: nurture and extend what is useful and curtail what is unhelpful. And the time, incorporating the best as part of 'our story'.

Monitoring school (system) capacity

2009-04-27T09:12:00.005+10:00

One of the reasons that this blog focuses on small changes is because schools do not have an unlimited capacity to do good things. At the same time the number of good things that schools could being doing is almost unlimited, especially if one considers all the desirable and effective approaches that already exist for improving school performance.

One of the differences between implementing solutions and fixing problems is that the former tends top lead to low cost, sustainable arrangements. The later tends to lead to counter measures which usually require additional resources... time, efforts, $, arrangements...

It is true that many decisions about what to improve arise from the need to address problems that already exist. However, addressing an existing problem thoroughly can significantly reduce recurrent costs. The following guidelines may be useful

An identified problem represents an opportunity for improvement
An identified problem may require containment and resolution in the short term
Understanding how the problem arose may enable arrangements to be improved so that the problem is less likely to recur
Such improvements may require very little change: many problems can be reduced and even solved by ensuring that things get done on time, by the right people...
While counter measures may be still be required they need to be understood as an additional cost and not an improvement

It is wise to assume that the school is already near capacity. Thus, preferred improvement strategies are those that release resources rather than incur recurrent costs. Indeed, releasing resources is the key to increasing a school's capacity:

Attention to small everyday things and, everyone making it easier for the next person can be powerful ways to increase the school's capacity. The resources released are then available for higher order endeavours.

The myth of cost savings by cutting spending

2009-04-25T07:49:00.007+10:00

In response to the global financial crisis many governments are trying to reduce costs by cutting back on services. This is described as cutting costs although it is actually simply cutting spending. The spin is based on the implication that cutting costs is both necessary and desirable...whereas, cutting spending might mean that someone misses out. And they probably will.

While it is true that such a strategy reduces the cost to government (at least in the short term) it almost never reduces the total cost. There are two common outcomes from such a flawed strategy:

The total cost increases because
- Processes become less efficient since they have to be developed using different arrangements and this may not happen (efficiency = 0%, effectiveness = 0%)
- Actually require more resources - new arrangements have to be established
- Processes become less effective creating backlogs, rework and deficiencies
The cost moves towards those who can least afford it - those who have the least resources

The only way to genuinely reduce costs is to improve the systems involved.

Note: A new improved system may emerge spontaneously as a side effect of cost cutting - the edge of chaos phenomenon - however this is a very risky and unpredictable strategy.

Misconceptions of change management

2008-12-27T16:23:00.005+11:00

Two major themes permeate much of change management. The heroic enlightenment of managers and leaders as the proponents of change and the undermining resistance of staff as the opponents of change.

Firstly, management and leadership are two different and disparate functions. Management is largely based on authority associated with a delegated role whereas leadership is usually based on (working) relationships. Few managers are actually leaders because of the likely conflict between role and relationship. Similarly few leaders are actually managers.

So how do those in charge (those with authority) change organisations? The most common approach is to produce a plan and communicate it to staff. The 'short-cut' version of this approach is simply to use direct force, often in the form of changed policies and structures.

Sometimes this approach seems to work, at least in part. Of course, this implies that the plan was, to a certain extent, well thought out and comprehensive, and hence. The manager is, usually to a greater extent, a heroic and insightful leader.

Closer examination will usually show that the outcome differs significantly from the plan. What has emerged is different from what was initially proposed, due to unforeseen circumstances or the resistance of those who are required to implement the plan.

In reality, it is not possible to predict what will emerge from a change initiative. Afterwards, the difference between intensions and outcomes are often readily explainable through 'retrospective coherence'.

Student at the Centre: student as client?

2008-12-11T07:30:00.011+11:00

Most organisations tend to identify their clients as those people and groups outside the organisation who use the services or products that the organisation produces.

Student at the Centre is a good example. Paradoxically, Student at the Centre actually places the student outside the Department (and even schools) as shown by the lack of student voice in the everyday conversations from which the Department emerges. This paradox creates a dilemma for schools as reflected in their need to serve (educate), train, manage and report on students. So despite everyone's best hopes and intentions, it is possible that 'Student at the Centre' is like a nicely labelled but empty paper bag.

The client as an external role arises from the almost universal production paradigm that has the organisation as 'factory'. A more aggressive form of the production paradigm might be the organisation as 'army'. In either case command and control are frequently in use.

Minimal examination will show that it is clearly a nonsense to assign a fixed role of 'client' to particular persons , groups or other organisations. It just isn't that simple. In any organization, the best interactions occur within working-learning relationships. Everyone is both a client and a provider and these 'aspects of any working-learning relationship change from moment to moment in everyday interactions. Consider another example: the patient provides the doctor with information that he/she then uses to make a diagnosis and design a response. And this not really a linear process, rather it is an iterative process in which each party moves from provider to recipient on a moment by moment basis. 'Patient' and 'doctor' refer respectively to particular needs and specialist capacity within the working-learning relationship.

Thus ‘client’ is better understood as a momentary ‘role’ within dynamic working-learning relationships. It is not a fixed personal role, the 'client' is simply the next person,… in the process.

Clients and providers may exchange ‘roles’ from moment to moment as in the doctor-patient example above. This iterative movement occurs in everyday conversations in which knowledge, arrangements and actions are constructed. The collaboration of teachers and learners is another prime example. Rather than 'Student at the Centre' we need to make the success of teachers and learners working and learning together the centre of the Department.

Top down approaches

2008-12-02T09:29:00.008+11:00

One of my sad experiences this year came from a conversation I overheard in a school. A parent asked about a minor aspect of the school's future arrangements. The senior staff member replied: "We don't know ... the Department hasn't decided yet."

This informal exchange illustrated the extent to which the Tasmanian education system has become a top down system. In earlier times, such minor matters would have been decided by the school as a matter of course.

Few Tasmanian schools are the purposeful creative places they used to be before the system became the client. This latter development is the inevitable outcome of the recent unchallenged top down approaches.

Despite their rhetoric, top down systems do not support leaders at all well. They may talk 'leadership' but the system constraints reduce leadership to management (implementing the system's decisions) and compliance. But there are still leaders in spite of this. And the leaders are paying a very high price in those schools that are trying so hard to be purposeful and creative. Many school leaders are quite exhausted by the competing demands of the Department and governments and the needs of the staff and students. An indicator and outcome is the low and shrinking number of applicants for Principals' positions.

And then there is the paradoxical phenomenon in top down systems that

The less well top down interventions work, the more likely they will be applied and increased.

The common flaw in top down approaches is that they treat most things as simple when in reality most are not. See It is not personal and it is not simple below.

It is not personal and it is not simple

2008-11-26T09:14:00.019+11:00

Promoting change from outside a system is fraught with difficulties for at least two main reasons.

Firstly, it is NOT NECESSARILY PERSONAL, but those who are responsible for the current situation naturally tend to experience proposals for change as (implied and) personal criticism. Our identity is closely link to what we do especially if we adopt an erroneous assumption that we are in control. Those responsible may be in charge but they are almost certainly not in control. Any situation is very largely the result of its history and prevailing culture. History and culture both enable and constrain what is possible. History includes factors well outside the immediate situation. Culture is reflected in the patterns of 'how we do things around here' and these are not easily changed. They have to be continually constructed and reconstructed. It is much easier to reconstruct the familiar than it is to construct something new.

Secondly, it is NOT SIMPLE. Changing a complex situation is never a simple endeavour. At best, those in charge may be able to moderate the direction in which things are moving. Attempting to just change to a different steady state is unrealistic. Being able to articulate such a state (as policy attempts to do) is not the same as causing the state to exist. When complex ideas are summarised they can sound simple and easy. The truth can be very different. Bureaucrats, proponents and the media have a real dilemma in this regard. They need to get the message across quickly and easily but the key understandings may be complex. and very difficult (perhaps impossible) to articulate briefly in simple terms.

I am involved in a classic example. An article in today's 'The Examiner' (local newspaper) has the headline "Ex-principal slams huge bureaucracy". In a conversation with the journalist I certainly criticised the thinking behind how the bureaucracy currently operates. But this thinking is the result of historical and cultural factors. The thinking is not isolated to the Tasmanian education bureaucracy - indeed it is almost universal. I was not aware that I 'slammed' the size of the bureaucracy. Proposing that a bureaucracy should be larger or smaller is usually a simplistic approach and therefore needs to be considered carefully. For what reasons might the bureaucracy be larger of smaller? What value would such a change add to the effectiveness of schools? At what cost (money, opportunity...)? On the other hand, it is true that the larger the bureaucracy the more officers there are in intervene (for better or worse) in what schools do. "Ex-principal questions bureaucracy" may have been a more valid headline.

And I did not 'slam' the people who work in the bureaucracy. I have worked with a large number of them over many years and I know the majority to be competent dedicated professionals, albeit working in difficult (perhaps impossible) circumstances. They are expected to 'be in control' and they are expected to implement 'simple' responses to the complex situations at hand. Like everyone else, they are caught in the middle. The impossibility of these terms of reference frequently results in simply requiring compliance, regardless of the best interests of those involved. In NSW, professional development for Principals is called 'compliance training'... at least they are explicit!!

The impact of the bureaucracy on the day to day operation of Tasmanian schools is certainly one of my major concerns. The last decade has seen continual intervention in the areas of system structure, curriculum, assessment and reporting. The cost has been huge in terms of time, energy, money, disruption, distraction, dislocation, disaffection, loss of knowledge and loss of social capital... The benefits are far less certain (see change and improvement). And the less certain the outcomes, the more likely the interventions will continue and increase.

Very few people apply for principal positions these days. Could this be a significant indicator of the poor health of the system? If so, then it ‘slams’ the current situation much more powerfully than I could, or would want to. It is important to start with a sound understanding of the current reality (good, bad or indifferent). As one of my mentors used to say, "There is a simple answer to every question and it is usually wrong".

Changing complex systems

2008-11-17T13:47:00.009+11:00

It is best to think in terms of aspects of systems rather than systems per se. Indeed systems may not really exist but under certain conditions it is reasonable to think of the situation as being or containing 'systems'. That is, while systems thinking may be valid, systems may really be products of our thinking. That is, we can treat certain aspects of the situation 'as if' they were systems.

In the Cynefin framework, Dave Snowden suggests five types of of 'systems' according to the relationship between cause and effect phenomena occuring in the context.

Ordered (predictable)

Simple - cause and effect are widely known and understood
Complicated - cause and effect are knowable (with expert assistance)

Unordered (unpredictable)

Complex - retrospective coherence may be discernable
Chaotic - no coherence

Disordered (or perhaps undifferentiated)

In addition the framework provides guidance as to the appropriate change strategy according to the cause and effect relationships involved.

While most human activity is largely complex or chaotic there are times and places where it may be valid to respond 'as if' the situation is a complicated system or even a simple system. This is largely dependent on the consistency of human activity and interactivity.

Such consistency may emerge in complex systems from two main factors in the situation:

attractors such as shared values, purposes.... around which activity and interactivity continue and emerge (change)
boundaries such as rules and policies together with knowledge, artefacts...that constrain the activity and interactivity

Attractors and boundaries are sometimes confused or conflicting. Frequently, boundaries are used to control and to extract compliance, while attractors are used to inspire and motivate. Unfortunately, having established a (personal) image of what is to be achieved, it is common for management to see its initiatives as 'leadership' and the situation as an 'ordered system':

either simple: "If only people would do as expected..."
or perhaps complicated: "The experts know what needs to be done...."

The flaw in such thinking is that people cannot be simply instructed. Rather each one needs to (re)construct their knowledge, activities and arrangements in order to act 'as expected' or to do "what needs to be done". And this endeavour is enabled or constrained by attractors and boundaries both within the situation and elsewhere. They contribute to (enhance/constrain) the capacity of the system.

Thus it is wise to consider the matter of attractors and boundaries carefully in any change process. Simple attractors are potentially very powerful in fostering the emergence of new approaches and greater effectiveness and efficiency. At the same time boundaries may reveal the true purpsoes of the organisation and in so doing completely over-ride the attractors eg, the Tasmanian education's "Student at the Center" (intended attractor) has been annihilated by the Department's focus on structure, curriculum, assessment and reporting policies (actual boundaries).

Fallout from School Report Cards

2008-11-13T10:51:00.006+11:00

It looks like the whole school report card thing will be a fizzer . I certainly hope so.

Nothing in the local paper except for my article. It is so easy to discredit the process as at least one Principal has done. Each school can cite many instances of nonsense from the reports hence the meed for sense making to be applied to the data (see my previous posts). For example, in one school the Staff Attendance was deemed to be "Trend Down" largely as the result of a staff member with cancer. No reasonable person would accept this data accurately reflected a decline in school performance.

My recommendation would be to promote as little interest as possible (at least one other principal has adopted this strategy) . And this is not simply to avoid the difficulties of the School report Cards. Rather it enables the school to devote its energies to the real task... dealing with the everyday things that are impeding the achievement of success and well-being for all. That is, genuinely placing the 'student at the centre'.

The main outcome of the school report cards process is likely to be significant underlying damage to the working relationship between schools and the Department (and Government) . This seems to be part of a very confused notion of 'Learning Services' that has emerged from the current Department structure and arrangements... it combines resourcing, supervision, compliance enforcement and well as professional learning... This complex mix of centrally controlled interactions with schools based on various 'carrots and sticks' is of concern in terms of its impact on

the effectiveness of the schools
the long term interactions between schools and the Department (and Government) and
(psychological) OH&S for Principals (and staff), as reflected in the very small number of applicants for Principal positions

The OH&S issue arises from the fact that Principals frequently try to absorb the tension between

the demands of the system / government, and
the needs of the school and its people.

This phenomenon has been verified in research across the world. See also my previous posting on 'Schooling is not a service'

Schooling is NOT a service

2008-11-08T06:41:00.005+11:00

In recent years the Tasmanian Department of Education has adopted a 'service' orientation. It has sections such as Learning Services - the section that supports, directs and supervises schools and colleges; and School Performance Services that monitors and reports on various aspects of schools. And then there is Adult and Community Learning Services, and so on.

Providing facilities, staff, other resources associated with education, and even programs, may well be deemed to be services. However this does not mean that education, especially in the form of schooling, is a service for at least two reasons:

Firstly, schooling is compulsory whereas in service industries the clients of the service chooses whether or not to receive the service
Secondly, education (the aim of schooling) is not simply the result of the services being provided - the 'recipient' is also a major contributor (perhaps the major contributor)

While clean offices and tattoos are frequently produced by service providers with minimal contributions from their clients the same cannot be said for schooling. At its educational best, schooling is a highly complex and collaborative endeavour involving much more that the programs (services) provided by the teacher on the behalf of the teacher's employer.

If this is so, then it is time to revisit the service oriented organisational culture that has been adopted by the Tasmanian Education Deportment. There are huge implications for authority and responsibility, leadership and supervision. change management, policy making, innovation... This means that better working relationships, shared knowledge and understanding schools as purposeful communities are the keys to school improvement.

Improve the improvement process

2008-11-06T15:36:00.012+11:00

The recent Tasmanian School Report Cards attempted to accurately communicate school improvement but failed on at least three points

The community read the reports as being measures of performance (see the previous posting), and thus
Excellent performance was hidden by results of "Trend Downward' when a performance indicator had declined slightly (a fraction of a percent)
And the reports focused on 'measurable' items without fully explaining

That the improvements were based on measures of different cohorts, eg, this year's Kinder group is different from last year's, however
That the different cohorts were presumably assumed to be equivalent (which is highly unlikely in small cohorts such a staff (Staff Attendance) and Kinder (School Readiness)
The statistical limitations arising from small samples sizes in many schools, particularly in small schools
Why the measures were individually and collectively valid for inclusion in the school report card (staff attendance?)
Why the things measured were sufficiently significant to be included (staff attendance?)
The quality (how current, comprehensive, and complete) of the data and the limitations on the data available

Staff attendance was measured as a percentage of total staff attendance in only two successive years.
Presumably a single staff member with a emerging chronic health problem could 'cause' a significant decrease in staff attendance.

The highly specific (narrow) nature of the data used in some measures.

Readiness for school was only measured for late Kinder students whereas readiness for school is an ongoing and daily for issue in relation to some students

The interaction of most of the indicators

attendance, retention, literacy, numeracy, student satisfaction, parent satisfaction and readiness for school all interact with each reinforcing the positive or negative effects that emerge for individual students.

What other measures were not included (and perhaps why)

The Report Cards did not include any information on the schools' (improving?) provision for students with special needs, disabilities, disorders... in the cohorts being reported.
Similarly they did not include the school's provision for students with behaviours of concern and for families in distress (thus requiring support) were not reported yet these are some of the major constraints on schools and on student and staff success and well-being.
The need to deal with problematic student behaviour is such that it determines aspects of the actual organisation of many schools. It may also consume a large proportion of the resources available ... resources that could be used to provide higher quality education.
Certainly problematic student behaviour is far more significant than staff attendance in every school with which I am familiar. And some limited data is available in this area. Why as it not included?
The report cards did not contain any contextual information related to, say, the percentages of students with additional needs (behavioural or special needs)

Since the School Report Cards will become the direct focus of initiatives to achieve real improvements, it is important that the data reported is comprehensive, valid and useful in relation to the overall success of the school, its students, staff and community. With questions over the current form (language, content...) of the Report Cards and the possibility that key data has been omitted, the next step must be to learn from this experience and act quickly on what that learning reveals.

There is clearly a need to improve the improvement process. By doing so, the system will model the very actions and strategies that it is hoping to promote in its schools. If it fails to do so, it runs the risk of alienating the very people upon whom it is dependent for achieving the improvements it desires.

Useful starting points for improving the improvement process might include

Collating, summarising and reporting the same data at various departmental levels: cluster; learning service, whole of system
Inviting schools to respond by reporting how, and to what extent, they make sense of their own report cards. As one recent corespondent wrote:

"We spent some time y'day on our school report, personally I don't think they're going to be a big deal. It's too hard to draw worthwhile conclusion about your own school from them, let alone any real comparisons with other schools."

The performance- improvement trap

2008-11-05T08:59:00.005+11:00

The Tasmanian School Report Cards strategy may have fallen into the performance - improvement trap in several ways.

The message communicated is always the message received. The Department/Government has attempted to report on school improvement but the School Report cards have been widely received as reporting on school performance. This makes sense, since student 'report cards have always reported student performance (albeit with some comments on improvement or otherwise).

The relationship between performance and improvement is an interesting one. While performance and improvement are directly related there are some subtleties requiring attention:

measures of performance are used to to calculate improvement (or otherwise)
measures of improvement do not indicate actual performance
isolated measures of performance do not indicate improvement
similar levels of performance may be part of very different degrees of improvement
similar degrees of improvement may be part of very different levels of improvement
the ease of improvement is (generally) inversely proportional to the level of performance
too few measures of performance may not provide valid indications of improvement
improvement is usually less likely (and more difficult) with better performances
a perfect performance will result in either no improvement or deterioration
poor performances are often very easy to improve
to understand performance and improvement one first needs to understand variation
- there is always some variation in any system
- some variation is a result of the system
- some variation comes from outside the system
- variation in performance may not be an indication of improvement or deterioration at all... just variation
one also needs to understand both change and improvement

Reporting performance is personal for those involved. In the book "The Greening of America" the author suggested that to 'assess another person is an act of violence'. Misreporting or misrepresenting performance is even more an 'act of violence'. The damage may be done to individuals, their confidence in themselves and each other and to their relationships.

The current School Report Cards strategy has already done considerable 'violence' in some schools. In its present form the costs involved are likely to greatly exceed the value added.

Repairing the damage done will not be simple. First impressions tend to last and some of the information contained in the Report Cards is clearly invalid or simply not relevant for particular students and their families. For example, I understand that a Kinder student who cannot stand on one leg for 10 seconds is deemed not ready for school. Does this mean that a student with cerebral palsy will never be ready for school? A school with significant improvement in an area may be rated Excellent while performing much less well than another school whose performance in the same area has declined slightly hence being rated as Trend.Down. The impression given by the Report Card contradict its intent. The gold medal goes to the athlete who wins the race not the one who achieves their personal best.

But simply correcting or discrediting the School Reports is a low level response strategy. It will be important to raise the level of the conversation around this matter. Quality data that is comprehensive, current, accurate and valid will be required but it will not be sufficient. And it is not yet clear that the data in the recent School Improvement Reports meets these criteria.

Fundamentally, it is about constructive, collaborative change management in order to achieve ongoing and sustainable improvement. Now there's a challenge!!

School performance - everyone's responsibility (no bystanders)

2008-11-04T14:31:00.012+11:00

The recent Tasmanian School Improvement Report Cards are definitely about school performance. They were published online by the School Performance Services unit of the Department of Education.

And they were effectively league tables. The report cards were published in local newspapers as tables that facilitated comparisons between schools. This immediately confirmed the fears of many people involved with schools and contradicted the Minister's claims that the publishing the report cards would not result in league tables.

School improvement means improved school performance. But 'school performance' is actually the performance of all those involved: staff, students, their families, the community, the related professions, academia, the Department and the Government. It takes everyone working (and learning) together to make a school great.

Great schools help those involved to meet many of their needs, especially needs related to learning and being members of a community. In this sense, schools are best understood as purposeful communities in their own right. They are not 'numeracy and literacy factories' even though literacy and numeracy are very important.

In purposeful communities,

members interact on the basis of shared purposes (derived from shared values)

the community includes all those involved

roles provide some useful structure

everyday working relationships are the foundation for achievement

members contribute according to their respective capacities

responsibility and authority are dynamic

the community is connected beyond its immediate locality

…

I find the ideas implied by the School Improvement Reports somewhat confusing. In fact, I have been trying to analyse how 'schools' are being understood in this context. Who or what is a school? Is it a 'factory'? An institution? Is it the school staff? Is it the Department in a particular locality?

Measures such as staff, student, and parent satisfaction and staff attendance included in the School Improvement Report may imply that ‘the school’ is the Principal. But this is inconsistent with other measures such as student attendance, early school readiness and reporting to parents. School readiness and attendance are primarily outcomes of the family and reporting is highly prescribed by governments. I wonder if this inconsistency could be contributing to the current low levels of interest in principal positions?

The major educational initiatives in recent years have been focused on the structure of the Department, the curriculum, and assessment and reporting. It has been a long time (last century, in fact) since in-depth consideration was given to the nature of schools. This is not surprising given the current dominance of psychological thinking in both education and management. The nature and performance of schools also need to be considered in sociological terms - something sadly lacking in the current context.

What next? Clarifying the above issues will be a major challenge and a genuine opportunity for real gains. Failing to accept the challenge is likely to result in even greater polarisation of positions.

It would be easy to overlook the implications of using data extensively. Using data can be a double edged sword. Data does not have any meaning in its own right. The task is to construct useful knowledge from valid data and this means:

checking concepts and assumptions (see above)

understanding the current cultural and historical context in relation to the data

using these to making sense of the data in order to construct the knowledge required for

developing responses (actions and arrangements) that are likely to achieve sustainable improvements

And there are no guarantees. The task of improving school performance is not an engineering task – cause and effect are not often consistent over time and place. Similarly solutions may not be directly connected to the causes of problems. Contrary to everyday thinking, what works well in one school may not be all that useful in another. School Report Cards may be dramatically different but it is not always clear which school deserves the greater recognition for its actual achievements ('performance').

School improvement can only be achieved one school at a time and it takes everyone involved, working together to see that it happens. No-one can be a bystander.

Butterflies and storms

2008-10-29T08:25:00.007+11:00

One of the key ideas of chaos theory is that small changes (a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon) can have a big impact (a storm in New York).

In a school with which I am associated, there has been a total turnover of staff in the office area (edge of chaos?) and several small but significant changes have occurred quite rapidly. The office now opens at 8.30,

Previously some office/admin people had been arriving earlier and the office had been informally open prior to 8.30 and they dealt with early bird parents (and other visitors) and students, and teaching staff who need to be in their classrooms by 8.30.... On any day, there were only a few of these early-bird 'customers' and for some of them the new arrangement can be 'catastrophic'.

For the rest of the school, it appears to be business as usual, except for the disruptive consequences of what might flow from the new arrangements.

Thus this small change (the butterfly) results in

(a) No consequences for most members of the school community

(b) Minor inconvenience for some, but...

(d) Occasionally, large scale disruption in terms of being catastrophic for all concerned and organisation as a whole.

On a small scale, the organisation is often rescued from the above by individuals and small groups (communities of practice) who absorb, contain and/or develop workarounds to deal with the disruptions and overcome the dysfunctions.

Not opening the school office until 8.30 is the butterfly that causes some storms (problems) for some people in other places and at other times . It is true that many of the problems arising are simply minor disruptions and/or some dysfunctions in other parts of the school throughout the school day. Many are hardly noticed. And there are also resultant storms in other places well beyond the school. Examples include: parents are late for work; misunderstanding occur; important matters not addressed because of the lack of an opportunity to communicate;...etc.

Whose performance?

2008-10-23T07:35:00.000+11:00

Increasingly, education systems worldwide are reporting public school performance based on measures of student performance. In some countries this practice includes serious consequences for under-performance, e.g, closures, mergers, staff sackings...*

Most of the discussion on 'school performance' misses the main point. It is the government's responsibility to provide good quality public education for all its communities. Schools simply act on behalf of the government. Individual schools are directly guided and constrained by the government's policies and practices. Individual 'school performance' is actually government performance in that locality. In releasing the data, the government is actually reporting on the effectiveness of its own policies and practices. Viewed in this was the data is always interesting.

(*) One can only presume that these consequences are intended to imply the existence of strong committed leadership by those with responsible. But that begs the question: If those leading the system are so committed and strong, how is it possible for schools in the system to under-achieve?

More Emperor's New Clothes

2008-10-07T07:30:00.017+11:00

Australian state and federal governments are keen to publish performance comparisons between like schools. But one has to wonder...

"Why are parents so concerned about comparing their own school with like schools?"

Of course they are not!! When was the last time anyone heard a parent wanting to compare like schools? .
The approach is widely understood as an attempt by governments to put all schools under pressure to improve by publicly identifying those that are 'under performing'. Publishing the results is based on a rationale of 'transparency'. But the rationale of transparency is patently false in a number ways :

The approach actually hides the limited ability on the part of the education systems to promote and manage school change and improvement in more effective and constructive ways
By focusing on 'school performance' the approach also hides the damaging effect of governments and education systems as they continually tamper with schools through demonstrable policy change rather than by supporting sustainable school improvement
The approach also hides the differences between unlike schools, many of which are critical. And many of the root causes of these differences are beyond the capacity of the school to redress (in the short term): material resources, facilities, social capital and levels of crime, domestic violence, mental illness....

Most parents are not interested in comparisons of like schools at all. They do want to know how good their school is because they simply want a good education for their children. For example, when parents move their children from one school to another they don't search for like schools... they simply look for a good or better school in a manageable location.

To publish actual differences between all schools and the related contextual factors is almost certainly too problematic for any government and/or school system. The distribution of (dis)advantage and the difficulties of addressing the inherent injustices represent an (as yet) unmanageable challenge and a political powder keg.

That is, publishing league tables is a simplistic, low level approach to school improvement. Structuring the tables around 'like schools' is a deceptive and issue-avoiding approach that is likely to be ineffective and counter-productive. And this is a pity when there are a number of complexity-based approaches that offer genuine possibilities for rapid and sustainable gains through making sense of what is currently happening and identifying realistic opportunities for improvement.

Risking experts

2008-09-30T07:47:00.005+10:00

Based on a current Tasmania initiative to improve student literacy rates it seems that experts generally propose a four part strategy::

Assess the performance of the subjects (in this case, students)
Respond by developing and applying resources (usually based on programs with which the expert has been deemed successful)
Provide training for staff (in order to ensure compliance)
Prove that the strategy works by running pilot studies (the easy part)

But as Myron Tribus says, "There is a simple answer to every question, and it is usually wrong". For example, such proposals generally involve serious 'misinformation', especially for the clients. Common misinformation includes

The expert's recommendations are innovative and somehow 'visionary' (rare in education)
The recommended practices are not currently in use (they usually are to a greater ot lesser extent)
The strategy will solve the problem (education is a complex endeavour and does not have simple solutions)
If it fails the blame should go to those who failed to implement the strategy properly (however, managers are responsible for the effectiveness of the system).

When staff accept this misinformation as valid, there are likely to be serious OH&S issues around stress and and mental health.

Perhaps as a result of the 'feel-good' vibes of the strategy, those charged with stewardship of the system generally fail to give careful consideration to the possible dangers involved, including

grossly misrepresenting the current practices
repeating previous practices in the hope of achieving different outcomes
alienating those responsible for achieving the intended outcomes
damaging the credibility of those responsible for achieving the intended outcomes
making it harder for parties (in this case, schools, families and communities) to work together
grossly over estimating the transferability of 'best practices'

Most pilot studies are usually quite successful, not so much because they demonstrate the veracity of a strategy but because of the Hawthorne effect.

The intentions may be right, the 'experts' may make their very best contributions. However, such strategies are fundamentally flawed if they are not based on a sound understanding of the current reality, the history of the local situation, and initiatives that nurture the emergence of more effective and sustainable local actions and arrangements.

Signals and use of data

2008-09-23T09:01:00.002+10:00

Some parties would like education to be 'data driven', which is OK if one has a good understanding of data, and the complexity of the phenomena represented by the data.

But there are dangers in taking a simplistic approach to the use of data including

the critical factors are often unknown and even unknowable (Deming)
cause and effect are frequently separated in place and time
we naturally give more attention to strong signals and than weak signals
most recorded data relates only to strong signals
clues for achieving progress are very often hidden in weak signals

For example, there are three useful signs of progress in relation to problematic student behaviour. In the usual order of progress, they are

incidents are becoming less frequent
recovery time is being shorter
incidents are becoming less severe

All of these signals are weaker than specific incidents themselves. thus we continue to record incidents, and while we may observe incidents becoming less frequent, we are less inclined to actually record these kinds of observations. Of these three, most significant and the weakest indicator (signal) of progress is the second one: incidents are resolved more easily and quickly.

Unfortunately this sign of progress is frequently obscured by subsequent incidents, particularly because they may be as serious are earlier incidents. And this tends to imply 'no progress at all'. Worth considering? I think so.

Check out the Support Planner website for more on Signals.

Schools are for people

2008-09-20T08:16:00.001+10:00

What if this was really true? What would if take for this to be true for your school?

I know you want your school to be for its people: students, staff, families, the local community. But I also know that the official version (teachers teaching students in class) is really quite simplistic and often naive. The real stories tell something more.

Would you like to take part in a blog experiment? Instead of using the Comments to debate my attempts to make sense of schools maybe you could make a brief comment and then illustrate it with a story from your own (recent) activity and experience - good, bad or indifferent.

Let's start by gathering the range of things that people like you do in connection with schools.

What is one of the things that you have done recently that needs to be better and more widely understood?

As the themes become clearer we can focus on particular aspects and learn together.

Worth a try? I think so... it seems to me that the present orthodoxies are not serving anyone very well.

Looking forward to learning with/from you and your stories.

Implementation

2008-09-18T08:46:00.007+10:00

I have long used the working definition that

Something is only implemented when it becomes part of the organisational culture.

That is, it has become part of 'the way we do things around here to achieve our core purposes'. The advantage of such an approach is that, once achieved, it requires minimal support and direction... it is genuinely sustainable at minimal cost ($, time, disruption... Such an approach also links the implementation directly to purposes (actual values) and everyday practices.

One key indicator of whether something has been implemented (or not) is the existence of a related organisation-wide on-going conversation.

This means that getting something operational is only an early stage in the implementation: devices are deployed, policies are published, people are trained, compliance processes are in place... and so on.

Implementation requires the continuing construction and reconstruction of purposes, knowledge, arrangements and actions... and these can only occur in conversations between those involved. As these conversations mature, patterns of thought and activity emerge such that they become part of the culture... 'the way we do things around here'.

Most organisations are littered with things that were operational but never fully implemented.

Systems - components, links & applications

2008-09-07T06:43:00.001+10:00

Effective systems are not built simply by acquiring or creating components - the components and their uses have to be linked in the most productive ways. That is, in ways that enhance people's activities (easier, better...). And the linking occurs in everyday conversations between those involved. In these conversations the knowledge, activities and arrangements are continually constructed and reconstructed.

What about plans and policies? They can help or hinder these constructive conversations. At worst they result in barriers that divide attention (and systems) and make activities and arrangements episodic. At best they enhance sense making and provide high level attractors that stimulate and inform the conversations that are at the heart of most healthy (and some unhealthy) purposeful endeavours.

How mistakes are made

2008-09-03T07:22:00.013+10:00

There are numerous serious mistakes currently being made in relation to schools. As these prove ineffective the pressure for measurement and compliance will increase and more errors will be made. Some of the common mistakes are included in the following list

Lack of attention to one's underlying assumptions
An emphasis on problem solving and change (rather than on solutions and improvement)
A preference for simple 'reasonable' responses in the face of a complex and uncertain day-to day reality
Poor and confused use of language, e.g., failure to distinguish between 'teaching' and 'learning', 'schooling' and 'education'
A lack of attention to the nature of schools by academics (the dominance of psychology over sociology)
A lack of attention to the nature of schools by governments and administrations resulting in
The belief that those who attempt to explain the complexity of problems are being 'defensive'
The use of a 'production' discourse for the management of schooling
Treating education as if it was a 'scratch race'
Assuming cultural differences and cultural change are not of major significance

Typical errors that result

An almost 'autistic' obsession with teachers as the starting point for all change management initiatives
Performance management systems for (senior) staff that focus on tampering with the performance of others
Attempting to create a schooling mono-culture for a pluralistic society
Treating parents as the clients (thus reducing children into objects to be processed)
Unrealistic expectations of plans and policies in the light of recent unsuccedssful experiences
...

So how to proceed?
The most reliable method is to focus on (achieving) local solutions - the things that will help those involved to achieve success and well-being. And to understand these as emerging from patterns of interaction in everyday conversations around shared purposes, rather than simplistic mechanisms based on direction and compliance.

There are numerous approaches that (properly managed) can avoid the kinds of mistakes listed above . The challenge is that they are often counter intuitive and contrary to much of contemporary 'heroic' organisational thinking.