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Showing posts from August, 2018

Leading and Managing Change

We know that there have been substantial changes to schooling over the past decade.  We are moving from an industrial one size fits all approach to education to a neurolinguistic sociocultural individualised approach.  In New Zealand in particular there is a constant call to address the underachievement of our most vulnerable learners.   We cannot keep doing what we have done and expect different results.  We must change.   Osborne (2014) backs this up when he said that education “require schools to make significant changes to behaviours and norms that have endured for decades if not centuries” (p.3).  But not everyone manages change well.   With the increase in need for change, how can we lead and manage change effectively without teachers crumbling around us?   As leaders there are many ways in which we can ensure that change is led and managed well.  Osborne (2014) talks about adaptive and technical challenges.   Technical cha...

What should we be teaching our students?

Learning is not solely about reading, writing and maths.  We know this, yet our education system seems to continue to go back to testing and reporting against those subject areas.  So what should we be teaching our students? What should we be focusing on? Dweck’s notion of a growth mindset is something which has gained a huge amount of traction in education of late.  Dweck talks about a fixed mindset, being that intelligence is something you are born with and either have or dont and a growth mindset that intelligence is a quality that you can change and adapt.   The notion of a growth mindset is infact backed up by a range of neuroscientists. Uncapher (2018) talks about how teaching and encouraging the notion that your brain is a muscle and stretching and growing your brain is possible is the key to making growth mindset interventions sustainable.   I wonder how shifting our focus as teachers from academic achievement to a growth mindset will impact on ...