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So far MakeDo_Admin has created 6 blog entries.

Part 2: Making the difference – Professional Learning Communities

2020-07-02T06:15:46+00:00July 2nd, 2020|Categories: Towards Collective Teacher Efficacy|

With a new way of looking at how we teach, one that is evidence-based and embedded in student learning progress, teacher communities are positioned to make powerful and informed decisions about teaching pedagogy. In Part 1 of our series, Towards collective teacher efficacy, we considered the construct of building relational trust as fundamental to any success in achieving sustained and improved student learning outcomes. Whilst researching for the article, Without relational trust, innovation is lost, it became abundantly clear that without genuine trust, and the commitment and collaboration that it fosters amongst leaders and teachers alike, [...]

Capabilities of Instructional Leadership

2020-07-02T06:18:08+00:00July 2nd, 2020|Categories: School Improvement|

Three capabilities capture the essence of instructional leadership and its actions; building relational trust, leader content knowledge and complex problem solving. When skilfully integrated they position leaders as active contributors to teacher development which leverages improved student learning outcomes. Our friends at Google tells us that leadership is ‘a process by which an executive can direct, guide and influence the behaviour and work of others towards accomplishment of specific goals in a given situation’. For those of us who find ourselves leading we know our role is inherently social in nature, a true human endeavour, where [...]

Ensuring teaching innovation clarity, teacher commitment and school improvement

2020-07-02T02:28:20+00:00July 2nd, 2020|Categories: School Improvement|

“…one of the major reasons why change does not lead to improvement, is that there is too much focus on future practice, and not enough on the forces that explain and sustain current practice…” (Robinson, 2017) Viviane Robinson, in Reducing change to increase improvement (2017), promotes a new paradigm of change. She challenges the endless pursuit of change, questioning whether this change actually makes a difference to student learning outcomes. Instead, she believes “…it is time to stop talking about change and innovation and to focus on the far more ambitious goal of achieving improvement”. Formal [...]

So, what’s the thing with innovation?

2020-03-04T06:08:45+00:00January 30th, 2020|Categories: Innovation|

This is true innovation, because it makes a difference to how teachers teach, and it makes a difference for learners as their success is amplified. It moves beyond change for the sake of change which rarely ever made any demonstrable difference to learners. Often we are asked, ‘What do you do? How do you do it?’ These are big questions in education. What do we do? More correctly, what are the things we do? If we are savvy, if we are strategic, then there are a select number of things that we identify and intentionally do, [...]

Seeing the forest and the trees

2020-03-04T06:07:49+00:00January 30th, 2020|Categories: School Improvement|

The value of an external set of eyes. The road map to success must be clear, you cannot plot a course to your destination if you don’t know where you already are. Admittedly, there is a small percentage of people in our schools who are not there for the right reasons; for the kids, but they are few. This minority have lost sight of the very reason they chose to enter teaching in the first place, even if it was the holidays, because the demands of modern and effective teaching are such that you rarely switch off. [...]

Part 1: Without relational trust, innovation is lost

2020-03-04T06:07:08+00:00January 30th, 2020|Categories: Towards Collective Teacher Efficacy|

Trust is key. Relational trust. The professional respect that it fosters enables colleagues to question, and be questioned, and it is this questioning, and the reflection that it stimulates, which drives teacher development and improved student learning outcomes. Effective education no longer happens in isolation, whether you find yourself in the classroom, or in leadership. Working alone, and without the input of colleagues, results in our impact being significantly diminished. There is an old saying, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, and when you sit this beside another, ‘two heads are better than one’ then we [...]

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