From Founding Documents to Guiding Frameworks: Innovation at HPSS (Part 1)

In my last post I talked about the 'Founding Documents' (Vision, Pathways to Excellence, Mission, Principles, Values and Dispositions) which drive innovation at our school. These are the 'Big Rocks' of our organisation's foundations upon which we build our practices and processes. To ensure these elements are alive and strongly present in our school we have adopted, adapted and/or created a number of frameworks to operate within.

GPILSEO

The GPILSEO Model, which has emerged from Russell Bishop and his team's work with Te Kotahitanga, has become my go-to Change Leadership model. This particular visual captures the importance of the flow of ripples from the original goal to ensure spread and ownership.

Goal setting means that you are aspiring for things to be different and, hopefully, improved. What this model says to me is that if you have a goal about improving teaching and learning (can't think of any other focus for a school) then you need to investigate and plan for changes in the P, I and L ripples. When you set a goal for improving learning one of the first things you need to establish is what changes to pedagogy are going to be required. Too many goals have floundered because there hasn't been a realisation by leaders and teachers that this requires a change in the way we teach.

The next ripple requires us to look at the Institutions we have in our school (the way we do things around here) and see what changes have to be made to them to achieve the goal. There is little point in declaring a particular goal to improve teaching and learning without checking whether the way we do things around here (timetable, class composition, time allocation, meeting structures and timetables, responsibility allocation, communication methods etc) are suitable for the changed state we wish to be in. If I had a $ for every time I've heard over the last 4 decades, "We'd love to do that but our timetable won't allow it."........

As well we need to investigate whether the ways we lead, who leads and the structures we have in our school that drive leadership are the most appropriate to achieve our goal. If they're not, then if we don't change them then we will not be able to achieve our goal.

Then the resourcing and the professional learning needs to be planned for and delivered so that the support for and the implementation of the new pedagogies, new institutions and new leadership structures can spread thoughout the school.

All of these ripples, along with the collection of evidence to show progress towards achieving the goal, then move us to the state of full ownership of the goal and commitment to its achievement.

A recent example for us has been our goal to support the achievement of Maori as Maori. This required us to investigate and research culturally sustainable practices to incorporate within our pedagogy (this is an on-going journey over many months and years and certainly not the result of one or two professional learning sessions), modifying our spirals of inquiry processes (institutions) to focus on culturally sustainable practices, amending our programme planning practices (institutions) to include aspects of Te Ao Maori, embedding the promotion of culturally sustainable practices as an SLT leadership responsibility, forming a staff leadership group

GROWTH MINDSET

Carol Dweck's work on Growth Mindset has been an important framework for us in recruiting and developing staff. As well, we use the simple continuum's below for staff to self-assess and then know which element to focus on. We'll often ask staff to share their lowest score to see if there is a common element. This year the favourite is "ignores useful negative feedback/learns from criticism"!

Next post I will focus on some frameworks that build on Restorative Practice/Warm and Demanding/Teaching to the North East.