Part 2: Making the difference – Professional Learning Communities
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 [...]
Capabilities of Instructional Leadership
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 [...]
Ensuring teaching innovation clarity, teacher commitment and 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 [...]
So, what’s the thing with 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 [...]
Seeing the forest and the trees
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 [...]
Part 1: Without relational trust, innovation is lost
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 [...]
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