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 challenges are challenges that build on from what is already
happening, but tweak practice in some way. Adaptive challenges are asking
teachers to think and act completely differently from how they have in the
past. Acknowledging the different types
of challenge and providing individualised support for teachers is one of the
ways we can ensure that we support change at our schools. We also need to
personalise the support we are giving teachers, just like we would with the
learners in our class. One teacher may
see a change as technical while another may see the same change as
adaptive. The levels of support that
each teacher requires will be different.
If we think back to how most of the teachers in New
Zealand’s current workforce were trained then we know that this was more of an
industrial model approach. As leaders we should be asking teachers to
think about what we now know about how the brain works and how students learn
and exploring how this is reflected, or not reflected, in how we are currently
teaching. This can provoke teachers to think about adaptive challenge and
change.
But with adaptive challenge and change comes a
sense of unease. We are asking teachers to get in The Learning Pit
(Nottingham). As leaders we need to
understand and acknowledge what it takes to learn something new. How it
feels to try something that we may be unsure about and find out why something
works or does not work. We need to
support and encourage teachers to be in the pit, empathize with them about
their challenges and feelings, challenge and motivate them to push through as
well as provide a listening ear.
One of the key ways to support teachers who are in
the learning pit is when you have strong relationships. Creating whanau
like relationships with staff can support teachers to reach their full
potential, just like when whanau like relationships are formed with students
(Bishop, 2017). Genuinely caring for staff, helping them to pursue their
interests, encouraging them to have a work life balance and providing social
and emotional support is one of the ways that we can develop these whanau like
relationships. Encouraging a culture of collegiality where teachers are encouraged
to observe each other, give each other feedback and feedforward and have
academic conversations builds teachers capabilities and supports and extends
relationships with staff (Barth, 2006).
Knowing the difference between leadership and
management is also key to supporting change in a school setting. Jeremy
Kedian describes management as the cogs that keep the place running and
leadership as keeping the place running somewhere. Working with your
leadership team in understanding the differences between leadership and
management can enable your leadership team to ensure that they balance their
time around management and leadership tasks. It is also about maximising
your leadership time, ensuring that you are taking the time to lead and not
getting bogged down by management or administration tasks which can happen so
easily in leadership.
We know that when people are emotionally and
socially invested in change, the change is more likely to be embedded.
When leadership teams and teachers collaborate around change from the
beginning this helps teachers to become emotionally invested in, and committed
to ensuring change is successful (Osborne, 2014). This also helps to show
leaders as learners, in the learning pit alongside staff so that there is the
sense that ‘we are all in this together’ not that this is something else being
done to them. Leaders involved in
professional development and working alongside teachers with their own
inquiries is hugely important to the success of school wide change.
In order to address the underachievement and create
truly innovative change to our schools, leaders must be aware of how to lead
and manage change. We have to provide personalised support for teachers
and acknowledge technical and adaptive challenges. Leaders must acknowledge the learning pit and
support teachers through this. We also need to have increasingly strong
relationships with staff and maximise our leadership time by knowing the
differences between leadership and management.
By including teachers at the beginning of the change process we are also
able to better ensure that change is embedded and successful. I have done
my research around managing change, I am sharing this with our leadership team
shortly and I am excited to be taking part in some major change at our
school. I feel prepared, I feel ready
but most of all I feel excited about all of the possibilities ahead of me!
Reference List
Barth, R. (2006). Improving relationships within
the schoolhouse. ASCD, Vol 63 P8-13.
Bishop, R. (2017). Relationships are Fundamental to
Learning. Principal Connections, Vol 20, issue 3.
Kedian, J. (2018). Professional Conversations.
Nottingham, J. The Learning Challenge. Retrieved
from https://www.jamesnottingham.co.uk/learning-pit/
Osborne, M. (2014). Leading meaningful change in schools. Set,
2.
Comments
Post a Comment