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.

Coherence and Cohesion: Driving Innovation at HPSS

I don't know why I was a bit nervous prior to our ERO visit near the end of last year. I think it was down to me not being confident that a team of people with little knowledge of what we were trying to do would be able to "get us". Would they be able to accept that there's more than one way to skin the NZC cat? Would they really understand our determination to broaden the definition of success for a school well beyond academic measures?

At their final meeting with us they stated that when they first arrived and met with us they struggled with the seeming complexity of our approach but that they very quickly realised there was a strong thread of coherence and cohesion throughout; that all participants in our school were strongly aware of the key frameworks that supported our learning design and our pedagogy. They referred to what they called our 'Founding Documents' as underpinning and driving learning design at our school. After seeking clarification from them we realised that they meant the Vision, Pathways of Excellence, Mission, Principles, Values and Dispositions, which are perpetually visible throughout our school (both on walls and embedded within planning documents and a wide range of templates).

It was hugely affirming to be told that these key frameworks, which we had all help create and to which we are all committed, were clearly the drivers of effective innovation at our school. See our ERO Report here.

HPSS 'Founding Documents'

Our Vision

Like a lot of statements like this it could also be seen as just a bunch of words with little actual meaning and I agree that you have to work hard to ensure such statements are continually brought to life in a school. I love this statement because the last bit describes the graduate we wish to aspire to. For us to achieve our vision we need to develop and support young people to be true life-long learners and who have the dispositions and skills to make the world a better place and to thrive in the rapidly changing environment ("to contribute confidently and responsibly in our changing world.")

Two Pathways to Excellence

As soon as we commit to the above vision we need to move beyond just academic excellence as our sole major focus. The best academic students in the country would not help us achieve our vision if they did not know how to, or even want to, contribute to a world in which everyone of us can thrive. This is why, early on, we settled on 2 Pathways to Excellence.

While there exists some strong frameworks for Academic Excellence (NZC and NCEA), we could not discover any such frameworks for what we meant by Personal Excellence.We have spent 7 years progressing this work and, while we still have much to do, we are proud of the work we have done so far in building these frameworks.

I used to profess that the development in the areas of Personal Excellence was as important as in the areas of Academic Excellence. I now firmly believe that they are more important.

Hobsonville Habits

We settled on the above 10 dispositions, known as the Hobsonville Habits, to be the core elements of Personal Excellence in much the same way Learning Areas are the core elements of Academic Excellence.

It is our view that if young people are strong in these dispositions, as well as developing their Academic Excellence, then they are more likely to be empowered learners who "contribute confidently and responsibly in a changing world."

To be true to this aspiration we have been determined to devote the same commitment and rigour to the exploration of each of these dispositions as we do to the Learning Areas of the NZC.

Mission and Principles

We have also worked hard to bring our Mission Statement Innovate  Engage  Inspire to life as well, as we didn't want it to be just a collection of words that fade into the background. We did this by fleshing them out to a set of Principles; principles that drive all decision-making in our school.

For a secondary school, which is largely a one-size-fits-all, to always be looking to personalise learning then, in our view, that would be innovative. So we continually test that aspect of our Mission by checking how personalised learning is.

As well, we believe that students become more engaged if their learning is as authentic, to them, as possible. We find a great way to do this is to continually seek partners beyond the school for students to connect their learning with. I have certainly seen levels of engagement and accountability rise when others, in the real world, are relying on learners for their learning.

In reflecting on the 3rd aspect of our Mission, Inspire, it wasn't difficult to flesh that out into the principle of deep challenge and inquiry. In my 39 years in the profession I haven't seen many young people truly inspired by surface learning and chasing credits. However, every young person I have come across has been truly inspired when they have the opportunity, and the skills, to delve deeply into issues of relevance and concern to them.

Values

Once you pronounce a set of Values it is vital that they become the most important thing you focus on as you are declaring them to be the most valuable thing. Too often institutions profess a set of values that are not evident in the operation of that institution. We were and are determined to keep our values at front and centre.

Because we say we value these we have included them in some key elements of our school. First of all, they are the means by which we assess our Big and Impact Projects. We have developed rubrics for students and teachers to use to see how strongly the values are developed in their project learning. Secondly, the top level of awards at our annual prizegiving are awarded to those who have developed these values the most throughout the year. And thirdly, in the development of our Graduate Profile we have decided that our Values will be the key elements of that Profile.

Our current work on Graduate Profile with Values at the centre

And of course none of this is rocket science. Research around effective schools and effective leadership talks about the importance of a strong, clear and shared vision. Bit it's been real affirming to see that the elements captured in the first visual are driving the innovation at our school and resulting in a strong and effective learning and teaching environment.

Where, I think, our school has been quite unique is with our strong focus on the dispositional curriculum (Hobsonville Habits) and our Values. Our experience has convinced me that if our graduates develop strength in our Habits and Values then the Academics largely look after themselves.

I hope this is useful in your thinking about how to drive innovation and disruption in your own setting.