LEARNERS AS EXPLORERS
LEADERS AS CURATORS
Cultivating curious and courageous learners who are committed to improvement
Nyree Wilson - Learning Specialist
Embedded Files
Educational leadership shouldn't be about domination and control - it should inspire motivation, provide guidance and support, and energise others in ways that engage them with learning.
The global knowledge economy began to emerge strongly in the early 2000s. By 2001 Australia was positioning itself as a 'Knowledge Nation' with a focus on Investment in Knowledge, Education Improvement, and Research and Development with a focus on trading in technology.
Investment in education is always promising. However, 20 years on, this investment is mostly referred to as 'spending' and the social good of schools and education appears to have been overshadowed by the commodification of education.
Education as a commodity is now traded in a highly competitive market which amplifies inequality and reduces students and staff to calculations in an economic equation. Doing so undermines the heart and soul of schools.
Cultures of sustained organisational improvement are not achieved through authoritarian, control methods that create deficit narratives of criticism, finger-pointing and the scapegoating of teachers when the economic equations come up for evaluation.
THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOLS
THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOLS
EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL GOOD AND AN INVESTMENT IN OUR NATION'S FUTURE
There is a decidedly insidious game at foot in leadership. Posturing for power, influence, recognition, status, or money is so often for individual gain or self-interest. Such individualism is counterintuitive to the collective purpose of education - the creation of healthy communities through which we collaboratively socialize our nation's young people. I get it, there are values at play here. But surely, in the Australian education system our core focus should be on creating healthy democratic citizens?
Competitive models of leadership and their embedded belief systems around 'strong leadership' are often hierarchical, authoritarian and disciplinarian. They promote fear and control. Top dogs, big dogs, and little dogs all yelping and biting as they fight for a place in the yard, for a scrap of food, or a bright shiny collar.
Such aggressive and psychologically violent leadership based on control, reward and punishment is toxic anywhere. But in schools, it is particularly unethical and dangerous. I don't say this lightly.
Business models that bark orders from Top Dogs to the underlings create climates of competitiveness, performative work, and passive follower behaviour. Passive compliance is counterintuitive to the climate needed to support the implementation of sustained and effective organisational learning cultures and a thriving learning community. It also undermines the strength of our democracy.
Democratic citizens have a right and a responsibility to participate actively in decision making.
The core purpose of schools is to educate our young people, to help them discover their strengths, navigate challenges, find their place in the world, and to become valued thriving members of our community.
Over the past few years, I have been questioning the use of 'consistency' and 'accountability' as terms commonly referenced in our school improvement narratives. The poet in me associates both of these terms with notions of conformity and control - my democratic biases identify them as tools of submission and passivity. Inevitably, this has a flow on effect to how students experience their lives at school and beyond.
The learners in our schools are so often reduced to 'measurable outcomes' and 'data gains', whose shifts in numbers become increments on those nasty league tables that have cemented the educational landscape in Australia as a competitive system.
In complex organisations and society we need people to be working together collaboratively, and we need to ensure they are working towards a shared focus. However, competitive, hierarchical, top down approaches to managing organisations with a fixation on consistency and accountability can have rather negative consequences - particularly in terms of stifling significant and sustainable impacts on positive growth.
The competitive accountability and control narrative insidiously positions our educators and learners as deficits in need of 'improvement'. These perceived deficits are often defined by evaluation methods that overlook the preconditions needed to achieve meaningful outcomes for learners.
The deficit narrative elicits authoritarian structural responses to 'managing' and controlling underperforming schools, teachers and students. There is also something quite unpleasant about the way in which standardised testing reduces learners to 'gains', 'gaps', and 'targets'. These authoritarian lenses and deficit narratives do not energise our State's educators - and we need them to be energised and thriving. If they're not - how can we expect them to energise students and help them thrive?
LEADING TEAMS AND ORGANISATIONS
LEADING TEAMS AND ORGANISATIONS
CHALLENGE DEFICIT VIEWS BY TAKING A POSITIVE AND INCLUSIVE APPROACH
There is great power in challenging deficit narratives and encouraging people to explore new ideas, ways of thinking and working. To do so, we need to understand how powerful existing ideas, perceptions and experiences are in shaping the way people think, and how they see themselves. People subjected to the dog fights of hierarchical systems will tend to position themselves in relation to perceived power and powerlessness.
When people feel connected through a sense of trust, psychological safety, collegiality and respect they are more likely to engage positively with learning. Throw in some fun, play and inclusiveness, and you end up with a thriving learning culture that sustains those who are members of the community that it creates.
In terms of engagement, self-directed and intrinsically motivated teams achieve higher morale, and better results than those managed via top-down methods. A strengths based lens affirms and builds on existing capacity and in doing so bolsters confidence to take on areas of challenge.
There is now significant evidence that appreciating the strengths and hopes of our teachers and students, while resisting a deficit view of their capacity, can promote sustained learning and growth, and improve long term wellbeing outcomes.
Positive relationships, emotional intelligence and collegiality alone do not create more effective learners or teams. However, they do contribute to the creation of a positive climate for learning which, when combined with dialogic approaches to learning, creates powerful improvement.
Leaders set the direction of school goals and they need to create conditions in which people are empowered to recognise how their strengths and attributes can help them pursue these goals. Leaders should also help staff and students to believe in their capacity to contribute meaningfully to the activity of their learning community, to act with autonomy, and to share responsibility for the outcomes of our collective and individual actions.
SUSTAINING ORGANISATIONAL IMPROVEMENT
SUSTAINING ORGANISATIONAL IMPROVEMENT
"WE CAN ALL ARRIVE AT SHARED GOALS IN DIFFERENT WAYS"
John Hattie
If we are clear about the purpose of our learning, the focus of our work, and the goals we are striving for, we can create spaces for people to draw on their strengths, interests and preferred ways of working towards achieving them.
Leaders with deep knowledge of their staff, who provide a strong direction, and build staff capacity through a strengths based approach are more likely to sustain professional learning and school improvement.
Too often schools suffer 'switching costs' as teachers are swung from one initiative to the next. It is important to create clear pathways that allow staff to engage with the school's key goals in ways that are relevant to their work, their interests, and the cohorts they support. Yes, there will be times that we need to enter our zones of challenge, but we do so more confidently when we are achieving success in other areas and being energised by our passion projects!
Set the direction and entice others along for the ride!
Leaders are able to see the 'big picture' and make decisions about the best way forward. However, not everyone will be equipped with the equivalent skills and knowledge that the leader brings to this vision. Dragging people into deficit spaces to learn how to emulate these skills and knowledge causes them to become more reliant on procedural methods of learning - they are more likely to tick off checklists, rigidly follow steps and become anxious about doing things a 'right' way.
However, if school leaders make the goals clear, and encourage people to see how their existing skills and knowledge align with these goals, people can lead the curation of their own paths towards them, and we are more likely to see sustained progress and motivation to pursue set goals. People may need a little guidance and redirection along the way, but they should be given the respect to bring to the table their own exploration and discoveries as part of the larger journey.
POSITIVE AND PRODUCTIVE ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
POSITIVE AND PRODUCTIVE ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
PROMOTE TRUST - BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
Our focus should be on creating organisational cultures that invite belonging, being known and valued, connected and able to contribute to a common goal in ways that empower us to activate our strengths and interests.
Formal management procedures and processes can have a stifling and demotivating effect on teachers. Classrooms in which teachers control the activity and flow of all learning can be equally languid and passive for the students in them.
Taking the time as a leader to identify staff and student perceptions, and to understand how they are positioning themselves within the organisation and in relationship to others, can provide significant insights into the climate of your organisation. It can also reveal who feels empowered or disempowered.
Sadly, even when it is not the case, school leaders or 'upper management' are often perceived as a controlling and limiting force that restricts teachers' ability to craft responses to the needs they identify. Leaders need to be aware of these perceptions, and actively challenge them.
When individuals and teams are not empowered to self-direct responses to school goals, they tend to wait to be told what to do, and position themselves as disempowered, compliant and performative enactors of top-down directives. They do as they are told, but they are less likely to buy-in or genuinely value the practices they perform. Students in classrooms can be equally passive. Sadly, this passivity is often viewed as being 'good', but we aren't getting the best of our people.
We need to take time to understand the members of our learning communities, to build relationships between expert and novice learners, and to recognise that we all have strengths and areas to work on. We need to recognise the power of our collective knowledge rather than relying on individual expertise. We also need to take responsibility for how we contribute to the health and vitality of our community and our democracy.
When leaders know their core purpose, recognise and focus on the assets available to them, and understand how to direct these resources towards key goals, they are better able to curate experiences that foster trusting, productive, inclusive and respectful relationships.
Trusting, mutually supportive relationships are a core underpinning of a successful organisational learning culture, and helps promote collective responsibility for pursuing goals.
We need to get people 'all in'. Formal power and authority might 'make them do it' but that doesn't mean you're getting the best outcomes, or doing the best for your people.
WORKING WITH YOUR CONTEXT
WORKING WITH YOUR CONTEXT
KNOW YOUR PEOPLE
Every workplace, school, classroom and team is unique. This is much of the fun of humanity. Sadly, people seem to spend a lot of time trying to homogenise the distinctive features and attributes of this uniqueness in the name of consistency and compliance. Yes, there are core practices that have a strong evidence base for their effectiveness. However, the effectiveness of these practices relies on how well those required to enact them are able to do so. This is where contextual knowledge and awareness are critical.
When teams pursue intrinsic motivations, and empower themselves to self-direct methods of action, they are more likely to influence the sustained engagement with learning and improvement strategies. We must ask questions about where we direct staff energy:
What is our number one priority and how can we communicate this simply and clearly?
Have we created spaces for people to pursue this priority using their existing strengths and interests?
What are people doing already that we can build on?
If we are going to take energy away from one focus to another, how do we make sure that the investment has long-term gains?
What do we lose by directing energy towards a 'new thing'?
I have developed a situational analysis strategy to help support a strengths based evaluation of the organisational context in which we wish to see change or improvement. You may find a similar tool useful.
In addition to evaluating the context I work in, I also take time to get to know the people I work with. This can be challenging when we often find ourselves in teams that have a bias towards action, or quickly getting onto implementation. For this reason, leaders can also be hesitant about bringing in wider consultation or empowering smaller teams of individuals to develop and pursue goals in their own ways, because that feels a bit too loose and wild! Especially when your own supervisors are tapping their clip-board of checks and balances.
When individuals feel compelled to 'take ownership of a brief' or to 'drive whole school consistency', they need to be aware of who this includes and excludes. The pursuit of whole school consistency is a wonderful thing when the consistency components are accessible for everyone - it is not when people are dragged by an authority into deficit spaces to pursue this consistency. Briefs for implementing improvement strategies are also great when teams take shared ownership for them - drawing on multiple perspectives and ways of working means we can connect more fully with all members of our organisation. Putting on a show for an elite few is more likely to create cynicism than celebration.
An organisational culture that lays power at the feet of a chosen few is more likely to experience a disempowered climate of passive and performative compliance. Our kids need better. They need teachers in their classrooms who feel empowered by their belonging and contribution to a greater good than ladder climbing. That greater good is creating healthy communities in which we all feel valued, connected and able to thrive.
READINGS & FURTHER RESOURCES
READINGS & FURTHER RESOURCES
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