Where to start? Extend What you Value!

I always remember reading in one of Fullan's leadership article "Visions That Blind" the statement,  "Extend what you value".

Fullan quotes Shein, (1985) observation "The process of developing collaborative work cultures is complex. It requires great sophistication for school leaders: to express their own values without being imposing; to draw out other peoples values and concerns; to manage conflict and problem solving; to give direction and to be open at the same time".

I often think we feel locked into organisational systems in terms of the way that we do things, and that these ways often go back to how schools were organised in the 1960s or back in even further. We need to rethink last years  organisational structures in our schools to align with what we want to happen today, to drive our vision around personalizing learning to a reality.

In the article above Fullan expresses the need  to have recruitment action to allow for the development of leading collaborative culture in schools. He contends that teacher professional development based on collaboratively developing the school vision is required in the short and long term. This will allow the development of a collective understanding of the learning vision of the school. The areas of focus he suggests are:

• collaborative inquiry
• reflective practice
• growing technical expertise
• restructuring 

A key organisational event that ticked the boxes above that we employed was to create a new leadership position where the school leader, with prestige of salary and release from classroom teaching would lead professional learning and e-learning (blended learning) throughout the school. Effectively this school leader would map the professional learning, curriculum and ICT use in the school. This was an unusual move for a school in New Zealand of under 400 students at the time. It was pivotal to the first restructure of our infrastructure to support strengthening collaboration and personalising learning and coherence around our vision development. 

We decided a good place to start was to define what we want in terms of teaching and learning. What would that look like if it was in place in every learning area of our school. 

This professional learning collaborative inquiry is ongoing.  The model involves collaborative inquiry, reflective practice, growing technical expertise and restructuring. This professional learning model has developed a strong sense of purposeful teaching and learning practice which has led to new ways of organising teaching and learning. This has supported the process of redesigning old spaces, structures and practices that support our vision of "Engage, Enrich and Empower".

This infrastructure change and inquiry based professional learning is a strong transition component for readiness to move into our new buildings in the future. It also led to other innovative organisational and physical changes that support  transition and coherence of our school vision. These I will explore in the next few posts. I look forward to your thoughts.

  

Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view, by Edgar H. Schein. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1985,