I have been really enjoying the Harvard Leadership Blog, detailing the learning experiences from the perspective of a group of Scottish educators participating in a 10 day summer leadership institute at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The reflections on the blog are coming thick and fast and collectively they have given me the experience of participation in the institute albeit in a vicarious sense. A number of the postings have prompted personal reflection on my own personal practice eg Great Boss? Great Leader?

Great Boss? Great Leader?
July 14th, 2007
How do you lead your organisation? Does everyone look to you to solve the current problem? Do you jump in and use your ‘leadership position’ to solve every query no matter how small?
Are you a great boss or great leader?

The questions I ask myself are ‘Do I foster a culture of dependency where I have to have the final say on everything as the Principal/Boss?’ or ‘Do I try to build a culture of inclusivity and interdependency and involve all as a Principal/Leader?’ Also ‘How do I regularly elicit quality feedback from others on my Boss/Leader traits and behaviours?’

Another posting that interested me was the reflection on Millie Pierce’s presentation on the purpose of public schooling. The concept of the new ‘Three Rs - relevance, rigour and relationships’ in the curriculum and indeed all facets of school life resonated strongly. These three Rs are, I believe, articulated strongly in the NSW Quality Teaching Framework and also in the Sydney Catholic Schools Learning Framework. The QT framework is underpinned by three pillars or principles, Intellectual Quality, Quality Learning Environment and Significance.

Rigour, as I see it, relates to Intellectual Quality - a pedagogy focused on producing deep understanding, deep knowledge and higher order thinking.

Relatonships relates to Quality Learning Environment - classrooms where students and teachers work productively, where there is mutual respect and there are no negative personal comments or put downs.

Relevance relates to Significance - where learning activities include and value the participation of all students, where the activities are related to real-life contexts and where there are opportunities for students to share their work with audiences beyond the classroom and school.

The successful integration of learning technologies and associated web 2.0 applications into schools will be a significant factor in making the schooling experience relevant for today’s students.

It’s been quite some time since I last posted - the busyness of the last couple of weeks of term with countless student reports to read and sign, celebrations of student learning, parent meetings, staffing to organise and so on leaving little time for writing. Added to this was the fact that I was preparing for an interview for a new position - Principal at Sacred Heart School, Mosman, in the Sydney Archdiocese. The last time I was interviewed for such a position was over 8 years ago when I was successful in gaining my present position at St Clare’s.

Despite being like a boxer who has not been in the ring for some time the panel nonetheless invited me back for a second round the following evening where much to my relief I was offered the position. In somewhat of a daze I was invited along to Sacred Heart the following morning where the Executive Director of Schools made the announcement to the staff and gave me a welcome to Sydney. I was presented with a bottle of champagne and a bunch of flowers - a nice touch I thought and much appreciated. I take up the position at Sacred Heart in January so now I am feeling a bit like Tony Blair with six months to make my departure from St Clare’s.

Since my last posting a couple of my colleagues, St Clare’s teacher librarian Colleen Collins and Wollongong Learning Technologies Senior Education Officer, Gary Brown have both attended conferences in the US, Colleen attending the Educomm Conference in Anaheim and Gary the NECC Conference in Atlanta. It was great that they kept in contact with me during their time away and it was an amazing feeling for me to be able to straightaway download podcasts from both conferences and listen to sessions that they had both attended courtesy of Wesley Fryer at Moving at the Speed of Creativity. I am finding more and more that reading blogs and listening to podcasts created by people with a passion for learning in today’s world is an effective way of keeping up to speed with what is happening in the world of schooling, learning and education. Right now I am following with a great deal of interest the Harvard Leadership Blog of Don Ledingham and a number of other Scottish educators who are currently attending a 10 day Leadership Course at Harvard Graduate School of Education. I was fortunate enough to attend the Project Zero Classroom at Harvard in 2004 and can attest to the quality of this experience. One of the great things about reading quality blogs such as the Harvard Leadership Blog is the quality of the comments that they provoke - take a look at Ewan McIntosh’s comment and link to his own posting on July 12th - really powerful stuff as he lays out the challenges for all leaders who seek to make the schooling experiences relevant for those they seek to serve.

I am looking forward intensely to the challenges of working in a new system next year and in a new school community next year. I was interested to note that Sacred Heart School, like a number of Sydney CEO schools, is using interactive whiteboards in an increasing number of classes. Coming from an Apple school with approximately 90 laptops and teachers and students clamouring for more all the time this will be an interesting learning experience for me and I am keen to see the level of ‘interactivity’ in the use of whiteboards and to explore what the research says about good practice in their use. Ewan McIntosh noted the following in a posting last year:

“I don’t like interactive whiteboard use. Interactive whiteboards I like, but the way they are used by 90% of the teachers is uninteractive. With the new tool old teaching is reinforced, with more teachers leading lessons from the front and children using the interactive nature for barely 5 minutes a day. It’s like giving someone a shiny whiteboard and telling them to continue using their chalk on it: we don’t see where it’s going, we can’t learn.

So give more training, pay for teachers’ cover so that they can observe good use of this ubiquitous tool, film lessons and put it on the web! These are all great potential solutions, and we’ve made a start on the MFLE, but I wonder how much more can really be done to improve on a pedagogy that has been labouring for around six years to get to a decent benchmark. While keeping boards for those who use them well, the vast sums spent on renewing poorly used IWBs could be money spent on devices such as iRivers, video and sound-editing software, cameras and Bluetooth adaptors for aged school machines would mean a lot more varied resources and activities that lead in an easier way to more engaging collaborative learning. Am I off the mark here?”

No argument with the technology here, just the way it is often uncritically used as a 21st century blackboard to support a 19th century (or 20th at best) pedagogical framework. At the end of the day, computer technology aside, I firmly believe that the abilities of thinking and questioning, the software of the human mind if you like, are the most powerful of all ‘technologies’ and no amount of money spent on interactive boards or laptops will compensate for schools that fail to focus on developing these ‘habits of mind’ in our students.