How Might We Lead With a Set of Common Beliefs (about learning!)

 

While exploring the Education Leadership group on Linkedin I came across this:

•  "A competent curriculum leader is able to clearly articulate their philosophy on 'how students learn best.' They and their team need to lead with a common belief."

This jumped out at me as I've been spending some time delving into what seems to be the most important factors/principles that determine whether a school is effective or efficient (see previous post). What I have discovered to be one of the most important principles is no surprise as it has driven my work as an educational leader and has been the area where I have been focusing most of my work with schools and organisations with my consultancy HMWLead.

The number one principle seems to be that effective schools have clearly articulated and shared beliefs about learning that are lived in every classroom (Modern Learners). The simple bit might be determining what the shared beliefs about learning should be. Often, the harder bit is ensuring that they are lived in every classroom. The Education Leadership quote above, in my view, is pointing the way towards this happens - it is, in fact, by everyone leading with these common beliefs. If this happens then the practices to ensure it is happening in every classroom will emerge.

The quote also points to the fact that it is important that the core beliefs that drive a school should be about learning and about how people learn. It is all very well to have a set of core beliefs and values that are largely behavioural (eg respect, honesty, integrity etc) but learning beliefs and values should be front and centre in a school.

Determining what these shared beliefs about learning are should start with answering the question:

• "How do children and adults learn most powerfully and deeply in their lives?" (Modern Learners).

The investigation I am carrying out certainly supports the assertion made by Will Richardson and Bruce Dixon from Modern Learners that without a collaboratively created/developed belief system about what makes learning powerful that is lived each day through classroom norms for learning and a common language, schools cannot develop each child to their potential as a learner.

If we accept that being a self-directed and self-determined learner is the most important skill to develop within our learners then it is vital that we take the time to discuss how we can create the conditions in our schools for these skills to develop. And when we have settled on the principles/beliefs that we believe create these conditions we have to make sure that they are visible everywhere in our school, in the language we use and the classroom practices we adopt.

Based on what we see in the research about what makes for powerful learning for today's students what are examples of some elements that could be the core of our beliefs about learning? Here are a few:

• Know your students (Education Leadership, Bishop)
• Learners at the centre (OECD, Innovation Unit)
• Student agency (Education Leadership, Wenmouth)
• Connect learning horizontally and to the real world (Innovation Unit, OECD)
• Inquiry based approaches (OECD, Innovation Unit)
• Experiential learning (Centre for Strategic Education, Innovation Unit)
• Promote collaboration and interaction (Fullan, Education Leadership, OECD)
• Measure what matters/A4L (Innovation Unit, OECD)
• Stretch and support all learners (OECD, Education Leadership)

This is by no means an exhaustive list and cleverer people than I will be able to add to it. It is a good starting point for discussion as groups of teachers interrogate their beliefs and the beliefs of others about what makes for deep learning.

The key, of course, is then to discuss and agree what impacts these beliefs would have on our teaching practice. For example:

• truly knowing my students and how they best learn will mean I'd have to adopt a relationship based approach to my pedagogy and implement culturally sustaining practices
• knowing my students would mean I'd be aware of their needs, interests and passions and would incorporate them into my learning design, and my belief in student agency would have me co-constructing learning and assessment programmes with individual learners
• belief in connected learning (across subjects and with the real world), inquiry-based approaches and experiential learning would have me exploring a relevant project-based learning model
• promoting collaboration and interaction would mean incorporating appropriately organised and structured co-operative group work throughout my learning design
• a belief that we should measure what matters will require me to search for ways to track how well my learners are collaborating, showing self-determination, being resilient in their learning etc. I will also need to ensure that all learners know what is expected of them and why that is expected
• if I'm wishing to stretch and support all learners I will need to be designing learning according to the principles of Universal Design for Learning

In the end, it doesn't matter too much what the core beliefs about learning are (though I'll cover that in another post). What matters is that the core beliefs about learning are known, understood, shared and drive the learning in all classrooms.

I wonder if all schools can say they have a set of clearly articulated and shared beliefs about learning. If they do, I wonder if they know that they are truly lived in every classroom. I also wonder if all leaders lead with those common beliefs. I know that I couldn't have answered 'yes' to those questions throughout much of my leadership.

Once again, this looks like demanding work, but it also looks like rewarding and exciting work.

How Might We Lead for Effectiveness Rather Than Efficiency?

I have been delving more deeply into the work of  Modern Learners, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (OECD), Michael Fullan and Chris Leadbetter and their work with the Centre for Strategic Education, Valerie Hannon and her work with the Innovation Unit and Russell Bishop's Teaching/Leading to the North-east which I mentioned in my previous post. I am doing this to attempt to distill the key principles relevant for schooling and learning design that are reflected in their work.

A couple of things have happened.

The first is Agency By Design (Derek Wenmouth et al) has been released and I've taken advantage of the free download. I've skimmed through it once and will soon digest it more thoroughly , but it looks to me as if they have done a great job in distilling those key principles, explaining them clearly and providing a framework for schools and their leaders to use to bring those principles to life. I'm still going to complete my own analysis as described above and take that lens to a deeper dive into their work.

The second is the discovery of a few quotes in the work of those mentioned above which really resonate with me and which capture the lens through which I believe I have operated as a school leader in the past and through which I approach the work I am doing now. Here they are:

• "Modern learners' newfound ability to take full control of their learning is THE educational shift of our times." (Modern Learners)
• "Cannot separate wellbeing and learning." (Fullan)
• "The power of the relationships will always dwarf all other pedagogical strategies." (From an OECD source I can't find, so any help greatly appreciated!)

I also was drawn to the point of difference described in Modern Learners' 10 Principles For Schools of Modern Learning between Efficient Schools and Effective Schools.

Efficient schools are those that prize knowing over the ability to learn while effective schools focus on developing students as learners. Their document references Peter Drucker who reminds us that, "There is a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing." Drucker's colleague, Russell Ackoff goes on to add, "Doing things right is efficiency. Doing the right thing is effectiveness." 

If we accept the quote above, "Modern learners' newfound ability to take full control of their learning is THE educational shift of our times." (Modern Learners) and think about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness then we must ask ourselves if doing things right in the traditional school environment, while may be being efficient, is the right thing to do. I would argue that many of the practices that keep our schools efficient (streaming, learning in subject silos, paradigm of one - one class, one hour, one subject, one teacher, one set of learning activities, one pace of learning, one assessment) do not recognise this important educational shift.

The likely outcome of sticking to these practices of efficiency is that schools will become less effective. This will result in decreased student engagement (attendance, behaviour, motivation to learn) and decreased teacher engagement as it feels more and more like they're pushing it uphill. 

Another danger is that baby boomer politicians who do not understand this new educational shift and the relentlessness of it will impose policies on schools that may have some populist appeal but are simply focusing on efficiency and not effectiveness.

Both of these outcomes/dangers worry me.

It is vital that we interrogate some of these thoughts, be guided by research and evidence, and decide whether the goal for our school is effectiveness or efficiency and whether we embrace the opportunities afforded us by our students' "newfound ability to take full control of their learning." 

This looks like demanding work, but it also looks like rewarding and exciting work.

Dispositional Curriculum: Supporting Young People to Cope/Thrive in a Disrupted World.

 When myself and my 3 DPs first met up to begin work at the start of 2013 we were presented with the following vision from the Establishment Board:

We picked apart every word as we were determined to bring life to it. All of us quickly identified that the last half of the Vision was describing our aspiration for our graduates; that they want to and know how to make the very rapidly changing world better.

This set us off on the pathway of settling on two pathways to Excellence:

We knew that we wouldn't be achieving our vision if our students were 'only' excellent in the field of academics. This did not necessarily mean that these students would be able to thrive in a changing world with a determination to make it better. We needed to ensure we had a curriculum that allowed us to promote the growth of certain dispositions.

This resulted in us settling on a curriculum model that included both academic and dispositional elements:

While we aspire to have the dispositions, listed on the right side of this visual and known as Hobsonville Habits, present throughout all 3 elements of our curriculum model we do locate them, purposefully, within the Learning Hub element.

Each child belongs to a Learning Hub of 16-17 students of mixed year levels and are mentored by a teacher, known as their Learning Coach, to achieve to their potential in both the Academic and Personal Excellence areas. Apart from a daily 10 minute Kitchen Table session at the start of each day which connects and build relationships, Learning Hubs have two 80 minute blocks a week where there is a focus on building the dispositions.

While focusing on a different Strand each term (Whanaungatanga, Huarahi Ako, Manaakitanga, Rangatiratanga), Learning Coaches focus on particular Hobsonville Habits to support the growth of each of their Hublings in these important dispositions.

More recently, once a term all teachers give time for students to make a reflection on their learning from all classes (modules and SPINs, Projects and Hub) and to tag them to the Hobsonville Habits. In this way students are collating a portfolio of evidence of development in the Habits and are able to share this growth when hosting their parents at their Individual Education Meeting. In this way our learners can see that the dispositions are part of everything they do at school.

Right from the beginning of our school's journey we were determined that Personal Excellence be as important as Academic Excellence. As a result, at our prizegiving we only acknowledge our Habits and Values. I've blogged about this earlier.

One of the things that the last almost 3 years of disruption has shown us is that those students who are strong in important dispositions (resilient, creative, adventurous, compassionate etc) were best able to cope and keep progressing. This experience now makes us believe that Personal Excellence is more important than Academic Excellence.

With disruption almost certainly continuing with further pandemics and climate disruption I suggest it is vital that all schools explore ways to bring a focus on such dispositions closer to "what we do around here".

Connected Learning Supporting Specialist Knowledge

 Connected Learning

Promoting Specialist Knowledge

David Hood, in his book The Rhetoric and The Reality, which I touched on in a previous post, refers to the paradigm of one.

The Paradigm of One (the traditional secondary school structure)

Students are grouped into one class, based on one age, and for one hour go to one room where one teacher teaches one subject and students, largely, do one set of learning activities and work according to one timeline and at the one same time complete the one assessment activity.

Then the bell goes and they go down the corridor and for one hour go to one room where one teacher teaches one subject and students, largely, do one set of learning activities and work according to one timeline and at the one same time complete the one assessment activity.

Then the bell goes and etc, etc.

And what they learn in each of those one blocks is completely siloed and there are no connections between them.

I remain to be convinced that this is the best way to learn. I suppose it is OK if your definition of learning is limited to the reception and processing of knowledge in isolation from other knowledge, This is, no doubt, a vehicle for a level of learning.

I prefer a model of learning that, without downplaying the importance of specialist subject knowledge, raises the possibility of deeper learning. I believe this deeper learning can come about when we explore the connections between these specialist areas of knowledge.

Connected Learning in Action

While hosting a group of 35 Australian teachers at our school yesterday we spent a lot of time talking with students while they were engaged in learning (in the last block on the last day in the last week of term!). The majority of classes we visited were our Foundation classes (combined Years 9 and 10).

• In one class (combined Visual Arts and English) students spoke confidently about how their exploration and research, involving close reading, comprehension and analysis of visual media (English) of graffitti and research on the topic of the difference between vandalism and art enabled them to produce thoughtful and high quality pieces of graffitti art (Visual Arts) with annotations linking their words and images to what they had learnt from their English.
• Another class (combined Visual Arts and Science) had students who had engaged in microscope use skills to analyse the individual features of a plant so that they could recognise, name and explain their purpose (Science) and were now free-hand sketching the plants to such a level that they would not be out-of-place in a professional botannical sketch publication.
• In another class (Maths and HPE) we came across students who had done some lessons previously on how statistics could be analysed, presented in grapic form, and explained in text. From there they had gone to the gymnasium where they had learned the skills involved in volleyball. At some point they collected data by video and written observation sheets and were now in class using the data to present their findings in graphic form. This class of 40 students were the most engaged I had seen in any Maths lesson

The above are only 3 examples of the numerous connected learning modules our students experience. None of them lack the important content, concepts or skills of any of the individual specialist subjects, but their learning and understanding is deepened when they explore the connections between the disciplines.

The Structure of Connected Learning

There is a bit of a view amongst some academics and commentators that when a school focuses on connected learning, or anything that looks like project based learning, and any model that incorporates student voice and co-construction that students are missing out on that all-important subject specialist knowledge. I do get frustrated by the limited lens that such commentators have with their belief that specialist subject knowledge must always be delivered by subject specialsists through a silo model with little co-construction with students.

At our school we absolutely believe in the importance of subject specialist knowledge delivered by absolutely specialist subject teachers ( we have at least one PHD in their subject area with the vast majority of staff with degrees, mainly at Masters level, in their subject area). We just believe that their are better, more engaging ways to deliver this important knowledge in a way that deepens learning.

When we started our school our specialist subject leads unpacked their curriculum area and backward mapped from a quality NCEA Level 2 what were the key foundational knowledge, concepts and skills students need to be strong in by the end of Year 10 to be successful in qualifications.

We then asked those specialist leads to group this key foundational learning into 8 episodes (1 per term over 2 years) and to identify in which term this learning would occur for our Foundation Learners. We did this so that it didn't matter whether a Science student was studying Science with Visual Art, or with Maths, or with Social Science they were all covering the same foundational learning. This is the case for all Learning Areas and it means students are not left with gaps in this key foundational knowledge.

To give even more coherence to their learning we settled on a big school-wide concept for each of the 8 terms which is addressed that term by each Learning Area.

 

This means that in the semester that is focusing on Identity  and Space and Place Social Science students might be focusing on Community/Migration, Science students might be focusing on DNA/Outer Space, English on how cultures and societies express themselves in and through Creative Writing etc, etc., while Maths students will be developing key mathematical competencies using the related learnig area as the context in which to apply their learning and develop their understanding.

Our approach certainly does not downplay the importance of specialist knowledge, in fact it increases its importance as we discover important connections with other specialist knowledge. It has the added bonus of having interesting contexts for learning that seem to engage our learners.

Get in touch if you'd like to explore how a focus on connected learning can happen in your school without any other changes to a school's way of structuring learning.

Time to Question Calendar Year Qualifications - relieve stress and workload and deepen learning

Last year I published a post entitled How to Manage NCEA in a Covid Affected 2020. At that time (April 2020) there was a lot of uncertainty, but by year's end NZQA had responded with a delayed start to examinations, Recognition of Learning Credits and an amended UE requirement. Also, some universities were open to allowing Principal recommendation for UE. As a result, I know that for our school, achievement levels were strong and that students were not disadvantaged. This is not to say, however, that it wasn't a big struggle for teachers and many students.

A lightbulb moment for many of my Year 12 students was when I gathered them all together on return from the first long lockdown and asked them to raise their hand if they were returning in 2021. As expected, in excess of 90% raised their hands. That's when I told them that since they were returning they had no need to be anxious about NCEA L2 because they only needed to focus on their graduation qualification and that they had a further year to gain that. I pointed out that if, as a result of their year being affected by Covid, that after doing their best they had achieved only 65 of their 80 credits by year's end, they would simply return the next year, undertake a Level 3 programme and that when they earned their first 15 credits they would be awarded their NCEA L2 and be 15 credits on their way to the 60 they needed for Level 3.

The advantages from them having this understanding included reducing their levels of anxiety and allowing us to focus on those students who were graduating at the end of 2020 (our Year 13s and a small number of Year 12s). This relieved a lot of workload and stress for my staff. Of course, it was also important to communicate this to our parents.

We have always said at our school that we have no interest in calendar year qualifications, especially a structure that builds them in over a very stressful final 3 years of secondary school. Of course, there is always some sort of 'cost' for this. This year I have already had to wade in and defend our school from an ignorant Linkedin post from an academic who saw that we had close to 100% non-achievement at NCEA L1 which meant that our 'experiment' with a different pedagogical approach was an absolute failure and that myself and the Board needed to be held to account. A quick analysis of our leavers' qualifications and very high levels of Excellence and Merit Endorsed qualifications at Level 2 and 3 would have saved him his embarrassment.

It is our firm view that 3 years of calendar year qualifications do not lead to deep and engaged learning and do not contribute to positive student wellbeing. That is why we have never offered NCEA L1 as a Year 11 qualification. Rather our Year 11 students start out on their first year of a 2 to 3 year journey to get their quality graduation qualification. During 2020 it was a huge relief to not have to drive a whole cohort (Year 11) towards a meaningless qualification while trying to do our best for our graduating cohort. For our Year 11s we just stuck with our existing target of 20 quality credits towards their quality Level 2 qualification.

I encourage schools once again to revisit how they manage qualifications because our new and once again Covid-affected reality means we should look at things differently.

Up here in Auckland we don't know when we will be returning to on-site school. We do know that NZQA and MOE will create processes once again to allow for the interruptions to on-site learning such as a delayed start to NCEA, Recognition of Learning credits and amendments to UE requirements. That helps put us at ease. 

At some point we will return to our physical schools and our students and staff will return to our sites affected by a number of issues: 

• some will be grieving
• many whānau will be affected by health issues
• many students' whānau will be facing employment uncertainty
• most whānau will be faced with financial hardship
• all students will be spread across the full range on the continuum of what learning progress they made while off-site. Some may have flourished and soared, many may have managed to just keep up, and many more will have struggled

Areas we will need to focus on

• Whakawhanaunga - welcoming our staff and students back into the physical space and re-inducting into how we now work in our kura

• Accommodating the full range of well-being situations all will be in

• Establishing the full range of learning progressions and differentiating so that we can accelerate those who have struggled while maintaining the momentum of all

• Progress towards qualifications 

Our approach in any year, Covid-affected or not, results in the following

• on average, students at the end of Year 11 have 20 Level 1 credits and 10 at Level 2
• during their Year 12 year, after picking up a further 50 credits (usually at Level 2), they are awarded Level 1 and are close to achieving Level 2
• at the end of Year 12 many students may well not have met the requirements for Level 2 (though we ensure those graduating at the end of Year 12 achieve Level 1 or 2 - whatever is appropriate for them). This is not a concern for us because on their return the following year as a Year 13 student they meet the requirements of Level 2 (usually early in the year) and most go on to achieve Level 3.
• very high levels of Excellence and Merit Endorsed qualifications

Positive outcomes are the reduction in teacher workload (setting, marking, moderating, resubmitting), the creation of more time to focus on learning, a reduction (though not complete elimination) of student stress and anxiety in relation to assessment and qualifications, the uncoupling of the assessment 'tail' waving the learning 'dog', and an increase in the quality of qualifications achieved.

More and more schools are moving towards not offering NCEA Level 1 as a full year Year 11 qualification and I know for many school leaders that they see this as a step too far for them as they worry about their staff and parent reaction. I'm happy to talk with any leader/teacher about these issues.

What I do encourage school leaders to consider is the focus on calendar year qualifications. Simply by moving your focus to graduate qualifications you free up the yoke of assessment overload for students, assessment overload for staff and the pressure of league tables as they are not relevant for schools who do not aim for calendar year qualifications.

Such a strategy slows the assessment journey down which allows for learning to go more deeply.

I'm always happy to be contacted to discuss how these ideas work in reality.

Wellbeing is Learning!

More and more in my leadership growth journey I have come to realise the importance of wellbeing in learning. 

It began with delving into the principles of restorative practice and realising that all behavioural issues harm a relationship so the focus, when there has been misbehaviour, should be on repairing the harm to the relationship rather than on punishing the wrongdoing.

Then my involvement with the Te Kotahitanga programme exposed me to the thinking that for teachers to be effective, particularly for Maori but therefore all students then they need to demonstrate on a daily basis that they care for their students as culturally located individuals and that they have high expectations of the learning for all students. Such thinking placing the importance of relationships at the centre. And, of course, positive relationships depend on the wellbeing of all involved in the relationship to be nurtured.

The combination of exploring relationship-based behaviour management with the Te Kotahitanga inspired pedagogical approach got me thinking of what makes an effective relationship-based approach to curriculum and pedagogy.

I settled on a framework built around the concept of effective teachers being both warm and  demanding at the same time. By this I meant that students had to see very clearly that their teachers cared for them as learners and that those teachers not only had high expectations for them as learners but that they also had high expectations of themselves as teachers to support all students to learn. Such a construct requires a clear focus on the wellbeing of both student and teacher.

I have blogged before on Bishop's book, Teaching to the North East, which captures wonderfully that combination of warm and demanding. He talks of teachers and schools developing a family-like context for learning. And, of course, such a context requires a focus on wellbeing.

Belief in such principles have played a key role in the development of Hobsonville Point Secondary School. Structures and processes such as our Learning Hub structure and dispositional curriculum, as represented by our Hobsonville Habits, have relationships and wellbeing firmly at the core. This is one reason why when the pandemic struck we didn't have to pivot too far to ensure our approach around learning progress, student engagement and qualification preparation was based on focusing on the wellbeing of students and staff.

In between the 2 Auckland lockdowns I received a copy of Michael Fullan's The right drivers for whole school system success (CSE, Feb 2021). In this he talks about 4 "right drivers" to replace 4 "wrong drivers". The right drivers (with the corresponding wrong driver in brackets) are:

• Wellbeing and Learning (Academics Obsession)
• Social Intelligence (Machine Intelligence)
• Equality Investments (Austerity)
• Systemness (Fragmentation)

So far, I have only read the section on Wellbeing and Learning vs Academic Obsession. It has really resonated with me as I reflect on the first 3 days of our new Alert Level 3 and realise everything I have done since the Saturday night announcement has been focused on ensuring the wellbeing of students (delivering and issuing laptops and other resources) and staff (clear and, hopefully, compassionate communication re doing our best). Here is my summary of the main points:

Academic Obsession

He begins by arguing that the focus entirely on academic grades and degrees is damaging for learning and learners. He argues this focus results in narrow learning "that severely distorts what people learn and need in the 21st century." He says that despite the privileged students who succeed to gain the high grades there are no winners. He labels these students as 'wounded winners' and quotes research which concludes:

"In spite of their economic and social advantages, they experience among the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorder, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of any group of children in this country."

He then moves onto his case for arguing why Wellbeing and Learning is a more appropriate driver and starts with:

"In our ever-complex and contentious world we can no longer afford to separate wellbeing and learning. For one thing wellbeing is learning. As complexity in the world has evolved, Wellbeing and Learning represent an integrated concept. You cannot be successful in one without the other."

He also shares a definition of wellbeing:

"People become good at life when they feel safe, valued and have a sense of purpose and meaning. There is a need to be engaged in meaningful activities that contribute to the wellbeing of others. In the face of adversity, being able to navigate to the resources that you need to get out of the situation - known as resilience - is an essential component. To get there one needs to identify values, goals and needs as well as personal strengths. The competencies you need to achieve this, I think are the 6 Cs [Character, Citizenship, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity and Critical Thinking] as long as compassion and empathy are emphasised."

In exploring this driver he concludes that there is a huge gap between how schools are organised and how young people learn so fall well short of ensuring the wellbeing of these young people.

He proposes a Learning Design Model which combines 4 elements that lead to deep learning and incorporates Wellbeing and Learning as an integrated concept.

This model builds on what is known about the neuroscience of learning such as:

• student as inquirer and knowledge builder
• learning connects meaningfully to student interest and voice
• connects students to the world with authentic problem solving
• making mistakes and learning from them strengthens learning
• collaboration and other forms of connecting with other people and ideas

More detail on how this model operates, particularly in relation to the global competencies, in a way that a model focusing on Academic Obsession cannot is included on pages 17 - 19 of the publication.

Note: no one is arguing that there is no focus at all on academic success. If the main driver is Wellbeing and Learning then academic success which supports young people to thrive in a complex world is more likely to occur.

I'm looking forward to reading and blogging on Social Intelligence vs Machine Intelligence.

Kia kaha. Kia ora.

Tuesdays with Maurie: Warm and Demanding to start the year

 

Every second Tuesday I get to host a morning Kitchen Table (Staff Hui) for our staff from 8 30 - 9 00am so obviously it's called Tuesdays with Maurie. Tomorrow is our first day with the whole school and we have a full day of Learning Hub based activities planned focusing on whanaungatanga and building relationships. As well, we have 14 new or returning staff so such a focus is crucial. The last thing they need to hear from me is 30 minutes of "do this, do that" so I've decided to leave them with one message.

I've never believed in the "Don't smile before Easter" advice many of us used to get when setting out on a new year. I am, however, a firm believer in setting the foundations of an effective and positive teacher/student relationship right from the first minute. So, I thought I'd just speak to these two slides to build on my message at our Noho to start the year and what I covered in my last post.

Right from the very beginning when we are building relationships and then when we move into delivering our curriculum, both academic and dispositional, and while we interact throughout our kura and building in so many ways we have to ensure we are warm AND demanding. Russel Bishop describes this as teaching to the North-East - high relationships AND high teaching skills. He calls upon us to create a family- like context for learning, interact in that environment in ways that we know promote learning and monitor learners' progress. This is a great model of pedagogy for all schools to adopt.

We don't kick off with academic classes until the end of the week as we concentrate on building relationships. But the advice is the same - be warm AND demanding even as we are focusing on whanaungatanga. The Thorsborne and Blood model below is my go-to and is similar to Bishop's. This model supports the operation of restorative practice principles in a school when dealing with misbehaviour or, more accurately, harmed relationships, but is valid for all interactions in a school.

The optimal place to be, on both models, is the top right corner (the north-east). It's too easy to sit in the bottom right corner and go soft on the high expectations and the demandingness. It is my view that staying there is just as ineffective as being in any of the two left quadrants.

My message is that by starting and staying with being warm and demanding is the best strategy, is fairer on the students, and gives them the best opportunity to engage effectively with you. Starting anywhere else makes it tougher to get to the north-east later.

Have a great start to the year.

How to Manage NCEA in Covid-affected 2020

A Rider
I want to start by saying that I have no ulterior motive for putting forward the following suggested strategy. My focus is entirely on the well-being of students and staff and strongly believe the positive outcomes would easily outweigh any perceived negative outcomes. As well, I can't help but draw on our experience at Hobsonville Point Secondary School over the last 7 years where I have witnessed a deep engagement with learning and high quality qualification achievement by our learners, But, also, I cannot help but draw on my previous 20 years experience as a school leader in a decile 1 school (where, by the way, I would be implementing a strategy similar to that described here).

Covid-affected 2020
At some point we will return to our physical schools. At this stage we are not sure whether our students would have missed out on 3, 4 or more weeks of on-site, physical school. It is very important to remember that whatever that time of off-site is, the actual lost time to that important on-site face-to-face learning will be much longer.

Here's why:
Our students (and staff) will return to our sites affected by a number of issues:

• some will be grieving
• many whānau will be affected by health issues
• many students' whānau will be facing employment uncertainty
• most whānau will be faced with financial hardship
• all students will be spread across the full range on the continuum of what learning progress they made while off-site. Some may have flourished and soared, many may have managed to just keep up, and many more will have struggled

Areas we will need to focus on

• Whakawhanaunga - welcoming our staff and students back into the physical space and re-inducting into how we now work in our kura

• Accommodating the full range of well-being situations all will be in

• Establishing the full range of learning progressions and differentiating so that we can accelerate those who have struggled while maintaining the momentum of all

• Progress towards qualifications

As far as 2020 qualifications are concerned we must have the time and energy to focus on those students who are graduating this year, while ensuring we keep building the foundations for quality qualifications for those students not graduating this year.

In devising our strategies for how we navigate our way through the reality of what impact Covid 19 has had on our schools and learners, and will continue to do so, and which allow us to have the focus described above we may need to be reminded of the following points made in the latest NZQA Update which included a slide show (unfortunately these important points were buried as bullet point 4 on slide 8 under the heading NZQA advises you consider):

• using the flexibility of the qualification. 
• Students don't need to complete a lower level qualification before moving to the next level. If students don't manage to achieve sufficient credits, those they subsequently achieve from a higher level can fill any gaps in achievement at a lower level.
  
• Students can catch up and be awarded their certificate in 2021 if they are returning to school.

These points are a reminder that

• students do not need to achieve Level 1 to gain Level 2 or Level 3 and, in fact, don't need L2 to get L3. 
• on the way to achieving their final qualification students do not need to complete each lower level in a calendar year

HPSS example of the above in practice

• on average, students at the end of Year 11 have 20 Level 1 credits and 10 at Level 2
• during their Year 12 year, after picking up a further 50 credits (usually at Level 2), they are awarded Level 1 and are close to achieving Level 2
• at the end of Year 12 many students may well not have met the requirements for Level 2 (though we ensure those graduating at the end of Year 12 achieve Level 1 or 2 - whatever is appropriate for them). This is not a concern for us because on their return the following year as a Year 13 student they meet the requirements of Level 2 (usually early in the year) and most go on to achieve Level 3.

All such an approach takes is an acceptance of the NZQA advice above, a mindset that rejects calendar year achievement of each qualification level and a lack of concern for league tables. At our school, we believe the most important measure is the quality of qualifications of leavers, not the steps along the way.

Positive outcomes are the reduction in teacher workload (setting, marking, moderating, resubmitting), the creation of more time to focus on learning, a reduction (though not complete elimination) of student stress and anxiety in relation to assessment and qualifications, the uncoupling of the assessment 'tail' waving the learning 'dog', and an increase in the quality of qualifications achieved.

What about those who only achieve Level 1?

Once again I can only call on my last 7 years at HPSS and the 20 years in my previous decile 1 school.

The latest statistics I can find are as follows:

• 10% of students leave school without at least Level 1
• 10% leave school with Level 1 as their highest qualification

At least we know that by doing things differently we can't have a more negative impact on the first group than we are already having. (I do believe, however, that with a much less focus on NCEA in Year 11 eg not exposing struggling learners to a year of 100-120 credits, then we have more chance in engaging them in school and learning and increasing the possibility they might return for a 4th year and have more chance of gaining their Level 1. That is certainly my current experience). However, in the meantime let's accept at least we won't be making their situation worse.

Quite rightly, the focus is on the second group and the actual percentage will differ across schools. I encourage schools to examine the pathways of those students who have left to determine whether Level 1 was necessary for them to be on that pathway. We have students who leave our school with Level 1 as their highest qualification, most of them on appropriate pathways, but none of them actually needed Level 1 to get onto that pathway, so they would not have been disadvantaged without achieving Level 1. As well, it is my experience that many of the students who currently leave with just Level 1, if they are on a slower assessment journey, largely focused on their intended pathway, actually end up achieving Level 2 after the end of 4 years at school.

A Strategy Worth Considering? - Slow it down and go more deeply

I shudder to think what the reduced 2020 school year will look like for our Year 11 learners if they are still faced with programmes based on assessing them against 120 credits. So I suggest the following as worthy of consideration:

1. Depending on a school's particular context it considers suspending NCEA Level 1 as a full qualification for its Year 11 learners for 2020.

But what would their year, and the year of the teacher look like?

• Teachers would not have to amend their programmes. They would still teach the full important concepts, skills and knowledge of their specialist subject, laying strong foundations for success in the following year at Level 2
• The large amount of time usually dedicated to the assessment of NCEA standards would be freed up for more learning
• Schools could decide that each subject can offer a maximum of 2 standards per subject so that students are still progressing the qualification ladder (or whatever maximum suits them best in consultation with each Learning Area).
• Because of more time allowing for deeper learning, schools may find that they can offer some of their Year 11 students assessment pitched at Level 2.
• Feedback and reporting to students and parents could be as it currently is for Years 9 and 10 - against Level 6 of the NZC

2. Ease up on the credit chase for Level 2 for students in Year 12 who you know will be returning in 2021 as they will gain Level 2 during their Year 13 year.

Issues

There are lots, but the biggest shift is a mindset shift from school leaders, who then lead the mindset shift for their staff, students and parents. Putting a well-being lens over such a strategy is hard to argue against.

As well, if you are considering such a strategy it's good to know you are not alone. Over the last 10 days I have hosted 2 Zui (Zoom Hui) with 30 secondary school leaders who are seriously exploring suspending NCEA Level 1 as a full qualification this year and I want to thank them for sharpening my thinking and giving more detail to this proposed strategy.

It seems to me that the Ministry and NZQA are reluctant to message that a valid strategy for schools to consider, depending on their context, the suspension of Level 1 as a full year qualification in 2020. The closest to that we can get is the NZQA message above.

If you want to explore this type of strategy further, make contact and I can link a few people together.

From Founding Documents to Guiding Frameworks: Innovation at HPSS (Part 2)

In last week's post I described 2 of the main frameworks, supported by our 'founding documents', that have driven innovation at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. Those frameworks were the Te Kotahitanga change model of GPILSEO and Carol Dweck's concept of Growth Mindset.

In this post I will discuss a series of matrices that supports teacher mindset and drives relationship management and pedagogy at our school.

RESTORATIVE PRACTICE
The first matrix is from the work I have been exposed to by Margaret Thorsborne in exploring the principles of restorative practice as the foundations of how we deal with behaviour issues in our school.

We have used this matrix to guide our development of processes and procedures when dealing with the inevitable 'bad behaviour' that young people will get up to from time to time. Our aspiration is to be always operating in the green quadrant in the top right. When you are operating there you are displaying a strong sense of care for the learner (warm) while maintaining high expectations for the learner in both learning and behaviour (demanding). This concept of warm and demanding is pervasive throughout our school.

In my experience in working in the restorative practice area many teachers believe they are being called upon to operate in the bottom right. They become very successful at being warm, but don't combine that with high expectations of the learner and of themselves. A teacher who operates in the Permissive quadrant is just as ineffective in managing classroom relationships and promoting learning as is a teacher in the Punitive or Neglectful quadrants. It is the combination of both warm AND demanding which brings about successful behaviour management and engaged learners.

TEACHING TO THE NORTH EAST

I have just finished reading Russell Bishop's (of Te Kotahitanga fame) book, Teaching to the North East and I had the privilege of hearing him talk about the concepts covered in the book at the start of 2019.

Russell's matrix has really resonated with me. In the above version of the matrix I have overlayed the concepts of warm and demanding as I believe they are a strong fit. This matrix captures the essence of the Thorsborne one above (which has a focus on relationship management) with the elements of High/Low Relationships and incorporates the pedagogical elements of High/Low Teaching Skills. Once again we are aspiring to the top right or the North East. It is here that we are the most effective as a teacher. As in the previous matrix it is only here in the North East that we have a true impact on student engagement and achievement. Once again, if we remain in the bottom right quadrant (South East) with High Relationships and Low Teaching Skills we are as ineffective as if we are operating in the North West/South West.

I love his summary of create a family-like context (warm/relationships), interact within the family-like context in ways we know promote learning (demanding/pedagogy) and monitor progress and the process of learning (demanding/pedagogy).

This year we will continue to spend some of our professional learning time on building strong, positive relationships (warm) but will unpack and explore what is meant by High Teaching Skills (demanding) in our context.

We have already done some work on exploring what it means to be a warm and demanding teacher:

what it means to be a warm and demanding colleague:

and a warm and demanding leader:

SUMMARY
It is the combination of a suite of a strong, visible and shared vision, set of values, principles, dispositions and twin pathways of excellence (founding documents) and frameworks that drive our teaching practice which is driving innovation at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

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.