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The Ever-Changing Role in Digital Leadership (Mentoring and Coaching)

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This blog is the follow on from https://www.iwb.net.au/the-ever-changing-role-in-digital-leadership-kotter-model-unpacked/

and https://www.iwb.net.au/the-ever-changing-role-in-digital-leadership/

Mentoring and Coaching

In my previous blogpost, I took you on a journey of my leadership in moving a school forward into the digital age. By using the John Kotter Model I was able to unpack the steps it took for me to move my sites forward. Today I unpack this further to help you to understand the way in which I utilised coaching and mentoring strategies to guide my staff as I supported them to take their first steps in harnessing digital technologies themselves and also with their students, embedding them within their teaching and learning programs.

First of all let’s unpack Coaching and Mentoring particularly from an Educational Leader’s perspective.

Coaching involves the educational leader and teacher working together to collaboratively look at classroom approaches, interpersonal relationships, or organisational and administrative issues: all of which contribute to the achievement of the whole school improvement plan, and improvements in students’ learning. It is not evaluating and judging teacher performance rather it should be a positive impact on any teacher regardless how long they have been teaching.

Mentoring on the other hand is intended to support the development of all teachers where the leader acts as a support and guides teachers through negotiated/identified issues. This then creates a partnership between the leader and the teacher whereby they work together to achieve the improvements in the classroom practice. Often this occurs through conversations and observations.

In my role as principal and as my site began to lurch forward with technologies it became quite clear that my leadership had to focus on mentoring and coaching of some staff to support them. Through attending the leading a digital school conferences over time I have been able to glean a range of understandings and skills to be able to support my staff with the use of effective digital technologies in their classrooms, specifically ensuring that their purpose was to improve student learning outcomes.

In the early days it was important that I modelled the use of digital technologies in my day to day life at school as well as strategically placing myself in classrooms to observe teacher practice and the inclusiveness or not of digital technologies. This provided me with the opportunity to have open conversations with staff and discuss the range of possibilities and opportunities where digital technologies could enhance the learning for their students within their teaching and learning programs.

I found it extremely positive to sit beside teachers in their classrooms and discuss their teaching and learning programs with them. Through this we were able to identify strategic opportunities where teachers could dabble in digital technologies with their students. This began with the extensive take-aways which were seen and heard at the leading a digital school conferences, not only by myself but the staff which I had previously included and participated in the conferences as well. As a site I encouraged all participants and myself to form a Techie PLC to spend time trialling and sharing the range of new practices learnt from these extensive conferences. Often was the case I would work with teachers in their rooms to model the digital technology tools with their students to begin the first steps forward.

In all good modelling and coaching scenarios it was important for me to learn with and alongside the teachers. This provided the opportunities for rich dialogue to occur and help my staff trust in themselves to take this risk with digital learning, knowing that their leader understood and supported them to ‘give it a go’!

For me as the leader it was and still is an exciting time to be a part of as each staff member trials, implements and later embeds digital technologies in their learning programs. As you can appreciate the journey is never ending as the face of digital technologies continues to evolve at a rapid pace but the great delight is now I have staff who face this challenge head on and continue to evolve themselves.

In summary, the 3 most effective strategies as a leader I have embodied over time have been

  1. A continuing consistent message to staff around the importance of embedding digital tools with students and providing connected professional learning opportunities for staff (Leading a Digital School conference annually)
  2. Modelling and coaching my staff at each point of transition by building a culture of risk taking
  3. Learning with staff and embedding resourcing for digital technologies annually in the school budget.

Once again I will be taking my staff to this year’s ‘Leading a Digital School Conference’ as we continue to enhance our students’ learning through digital technologies. I look forward to seeing you there and would be most happy to have a chat.

Check out the program @ www.iwb.net.au/digital/program

Rick Noack

Learning: Blended? Online? Face to Face? – The importance of pedagogy before technology in a digital landscape

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Many schools are introducing or improving their online offerings in the K-12 education space.  Whilst online and blended programs have been the norm for a significant amount of time in the tertiary sector we are playing catch up in terms of supporting our students to access learning anywhere anytime in the K-12 school environment.

Technology, like educational theories, continually evolve with time. This evolution creates opportunities for improvement in classroom practice for the betterment of the students in our care.

One such opportunity is online learning. An online learning approach allows students to access learning resources in an online environment and while this approach has some benefits for Haileybury students, it lacks one key feature; regular face to face interactions with an experienced teacher.

A blended learning approach combines tradition face to face teaching and learning with the directed use of online resources. Blended learning describes a learning environment that uses a range of learning activities and resources to enable the students to achieve their academic potential.[i]

Features of a blended learning environment include, but are not limited to, face to face teaching, pencil and paper, hands on materials, individual activities, group work and online resources and activities and resources. When a teacher combines these approaches, they are utilising blended learning with their students. It does not mean that effective teaching practice should be ignored in favour of moving students to an online environment if it is not appropriate.

As a blended learning approach can be make use of a variety approaches it is important to note that it is not a one size fits all model. An institution will need to decide what features they wish to incorporate into their approach.

So where do you start defining what blended learning means for your institution?

The golden rule with this is to start with the user not with the technology! Far too often when looking at technology we start with the tool instead of the user and the intended outcome.  If we start with the technology what we end up with is digitising education and learning instead of what we want to achieve which is the digitalisation of education and learning with view to a digital transformation of education and learning.

However what is the difference between digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation?

In moving between these areas there are many models we can use to frame this up such as SAMR Model, Florida Technology Integration Matrix, and the TPACK model however it is imperative that we work with the students/users to ensure that we get honest feedback as to where we currently are along our digital pathway as a school.

I suggest the best place to start along this pathway is to shadow your students for a week.  During that week write down every time they interact with traditional and digital learning materials and note down how they interact with these.  This will begin to give a strong picture as to where your currently are and what the opportunities are at the different levels of digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation.  I have included below and example of a shadowing exercise I did a few years ago.

Once we shadowed and interviewed our users we found that there was quite a lot of digitisation and not a large amount of digitalisation or digital transformation.  What was plainly obvious was the opportunity to link many of the digitised processes that we in place into one platform that enabled productivity and the user experience for students to be a lot cleaner and simplified.

This led us down the path of setting goals for our learning management system in conjunction with our users.  The biggest aspiration was that the platform was much more than a dropbox of files where students could access digitised handouts in one place.  We wanted the platform to a place where students could engage with learning whilst collaborating and communicating with each other and their teachers in a safe environment.

So once we had a vision we needed to build it… However we knew that whilst Kevin Costner truly believed that

“if you build it they will come”

            this is not always the case with technology adoption.

 We needed to ensure we designed with our students and teachers not for our students and teachers.

Design sessions were held with students and teachers and templates were made for each department based on their student and teacher needs.  What was clear from these design sessions was that students like a cohesive clear user experience.  Students wanted to know where to get resources easily and they wanted to see their teachers in educational resources.

What became very apparent was that students and teachers wanted their online space to be a social utility.  Our students knew that the internet is full of great “stuff” but they wanted resources to be curated to them.

In relatable terms this meant that we had to create the Michelin Guide for learning to our students.  In 1920 Michelin offered a guide that gave users the best restaurants and hotels on a given pathway.  In 2019 we had to do the same for learning with our students.

So we began the journey of working in teams to design this.  This meant mapping out what the learning experience looked like for each learning objective not just in a face to face model but in a blended model as well.  It involved the digital transformation of mindset to define learning as something that happens beyond face to face four walls model and into a anywhere anytime model.

In my next blog post I will write further about what we created and collated and the importance of clever curation and strong creation of resources by all users, students and teachers.

Please join me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will present a Keynote on this subject.

[i] https://www.education.vic.gov.au/documents/about/research/blendedlearning.pdf

Over the edge…transforming teachers with mind-body PL

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“Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.”

Christopher Logue – New Numbers

A new era

More than ever before we are asking teachers to step out of their comfort zones. 20 years ago, most PL meant tweaking existing practices in known content areas.  A chalk and talk session where teachers could sit and listen, and take notes on new ideas was a perfectly appropriate and effective forum.  Soon, the buzz of collaborative teams began to infiltrate PL, and the power of teacher voice meant we could learn from each other, not just the sage on the stage. In reality though, pedagogies and content areas in PL still sat neatly within the paradigms of teachers’ own educational experiences as a student.

With the ubiquitous nature of digital technologies in our students’ lives, we are, in a comparatively short time frame, asking teachers to make monumental shifts into areas that appear quite foreign.

  • Let the students lead the learning What?!
  • Integrate digital technologies Sorry, I’m just not good with all this techy stuff…
  • Move from the safety of the classroom into authentic real world learning But I won’t be able to cover the curriculum!

Like an abseil, these big conceptual leaps about how teachers perceive their role in a school often evoke fear and anxiety, resulting in either active resistance or passive avoidance.

PL that acknowledges fear and uncertainty as legitimate starting points, that embraces risk, and guides and celebrates learning through vulnerability.

It is clear that leaders who are committed to advancing cultures of innovation need to be intentional in providing PL that addresses not only content and pedagogies, but also supports teachers’ emotional growth. PL that acknowledges fear and uncertainty as legitimate starting points, that embraces risk, and guides and celebrates learning through vulnerability.

A fresh lens

In the past 18 months, I have sat through too many PL sessions (sat being the operative word) about emotional connection to learning, student centred learning, active and inquiry based approaches and found that 50 minutes in we are all still sitting in our chairs, digesting a PowerPoint of words, without having had an opportunity to share, experience, reflect or challenge our assumptions with our peers.

Let’s add a fresh lens to PL.  A lens that is unashamedly intentional about modelling the very ways in which we are wanting students to learn.

A time for doing

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”  Benjamin Franklin

We know learners need to do.  We know learners need multiple avenues to explore new ideas and connect to existing knowledge.  It may be do first, reflect later. It may be think first, do later.  It may be thinking and doing concurrently.  Irrespective of the order, for something to become deeply understood, a learner must have the opportunity to engage in the body-mind connection, and develop meta-cognitive awareness about their own learning experiences.  Mindset alone is not enough.  Teachers need to know their competencies in teaching in a new and exciting way.

Last year I took my 14 year old daughter climbing on the Organ Pipes – large dolorite cliffs over 120 metres tall, on the eastern face of Mt Wellington.

After climbing two 30 metre pitches, she looked down and was hit by the reality of the 50 metre rockface we had to abseil.  I’d told her about it, so it was in her mindset before we started the day “yes, I’m going to abseil down that cliff”.  Sitting on top of the cliff, knowing it was the only way down she frantically sought both active and passive avoidance “I’ll pay for a helicopter” or “I’ll just sleep up here”.

 

Talking about abseiling and actually leaning backwards over the edge are two completely different things. In theory you can know that it will be safe but scary. Experiencing abseiling is completely different. Heart racing, palms sweating, legs shaking, the internal dialogue of the mind “I’m gonna die!”.  The complex emotions involved in knowing these feelings of uncomfortableness, of fear, and feeling out of control, YET pursuing it anyway, and the subsequent elation and pride are things that can only be felt and experienced, not taught.

Teaching in scary territory

We are asking teachers to take a leap into scary territory.

If a teacher hasn’t recently experienced learning in an experiential, inquiry based way, how can they possibly trust that the chaos that they see in front of their eyes will in fact lead to deeper learning?  The confusion, frustrations of problem solving with technology, heated discussions, multiple dead ends that they see their students go through as they try to navigate complex learning may well turn a teacher off rethinking the ways in which they teach.  But having experienced and reflected on learning like this themselves in PL, teachers will recognise that their students are not only learning about content, but about learning itself, and specifically, about their personal capabilities as a learner.

teachers and students are learning about their personal capabilities as a learner

Are we, as leaders, empowering, trusting and supporting teachers to work through challenging emotions in order to grow themselves firstly as learners, and then as teachers? PL needs to be carefully planned so that the risk is calculated, and perceived risk only.  In the same way I wouldn’t send my daughter off a 50m cliff with a 30 metre rope or a frayed harness, leaders need to make sure teachers are provided with the right tools and guidance to ensure their own, and consequently their students’, success.

Our Leadership Challenge

The challenge in encouraging teachers to integrate Digital Technologies into teaching is not addressing the question “is this possible?” coz we see it around us all the time, on every innovate teacher’s YouTube channel, Tweet or Facebook feed – of course it’s possible! At the heart of Digital Technologies PL in regular schools with regular educators is getting teachers to answer “can I do this?”  And the answer is undoubtedly yes –  if equipped with the right resources, mindset and competencies, and the FEELING of having moved through the unknown and the challenge themselves.

As leaders, if we allow teachers to take the helicopter and neverexperience and reflect on the feelings associated with learning in a risky way, it is unfair to expect huge shifts in practice.  We can’t impose our redefinition of the role of educators without firstly guiding teachers to understand their own competencies in teaching in a new and exciting way.

Plan to Pump PL:

  1. Be clear about intended emotional outcomes of the PL. Is it to generate enthusiasm, build teams, push into new areas, challenge assumptions, consolidate understanding?
  2. Guide learners to make body-mind connection (meta-cognition)
  3. Include reflection time to connect teachers’ own learning experiences to student learning
  4. Be transparent about the intentional structuring of the PL
  5. Plan appropriate scaffolds to ensure success

I am presenting at the Leading a Digital School Conference in August in Melbourne and would love to see you there. One of my sessions is under the Mega Theme of Advancing Cultures of Innovation and the Sub Theme of Rethinking the Role of Teachers.

Session: Pump your PL

Why mindset alone is not enough for teacher transformation – a practical workshop on how to use digital tools to pump teacher PL. More than just novelty, each of these strategies models intentional pedagogies that has teachers firstly ‘doing’, then reflecting on their own engagement as a learner in order to transfer progressive learning experiences for their students. Flipped learning using AR, peardeck, 365, secret pedagogy missions, solving complex problems, flipgrid, mission impossible, YouTube, Padlet, virtual wellbeing gallery. Feedback from teachers – this is PL that sticks and initiates action…in fact it was named up in school data as positively contributing to teacher wellbeing!

Promoting engagement and more importantly retention of girls in STEM

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To reshape and better up skill the future workforce, the focus must begin with education, as “STEM education underpins innovation and plays a critical role in economic and business growth” (PwC, 2015). Further, education in STEM is recommended as being the key to broadening community understandings of what STEM is saying and doing about the complex problems facing society, now and in the future (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2013).

Young people need to be digitally competent, adaptable and adopt core competencies that will enable them to respond to the ever-changing workforce (CEDA, 2015). STEM is a key driver of innovation and entrepreneurship that can significantly impact on the economy (PwC, 2015) and 21st century skills are recognised as a key component within a STEM skills set that enable young people to achieve success in our evolving workforce (World Economic Forum, 2016).

Increasing the engagement of young people in STEM will enable the building of aspirations for a lifelong journey in STEM. There are currently inequities that exist in STEM in Australia. Girls, students from low socio-economic status backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students from non-metropolitan areas are currently less likely to engage in STEM education and are at higher risk of not developing high capabilities in STEM-related skills (Education Council, 2015). As a result, these groups are more likely to miss out on the opportunities STEM-related occupations can offer.

To increase our STEM workforce, a priority needs to be made to harness the STEM talents within these groups. Currently, only 16% of STEM qualified people in Australia are female (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2016). Besides there being the requirement for equity in the workforce in terms of pay and career progression for women (Prinsley, et.al., 2016), a significant priority needs to made to promote the engagement and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM.

Practical insights for implementing STEM programs: targeting girls

There are a diverse range of barriers and drivers that inhibit or enhance the engagement and retainment of girls in STEM-related pathways. The drivers often vary depending on the barriers that arise. The diversity of these barriers vary from country to country and for girls of different backgrounds. This issue deserves dedicated research to be completed within the Australian context to best identify the specific barriers that exist for girls in this country, and the key drivers for engaging Australian girls. Through the Fellowship research, observations were made around the key challenges and strategies required to engage girls from the perspective of the organisations visited in different countries.

Challenges/Barriers observed for girls engaging with STEM

  • The fear of failure and lack of confidence of young girls in STEM
  • The lack of relevance to everyday life, STEM being an abstract construct
  • Lack of links to the ‘humanness’ around STEM
  • Parents/Caregivers lack of understanding and therefore lack of support towards STEM pathways
  • Misconceptions and stereotypes perceptions around STEM industries and professions
  • Lack of funds to access opportunities for disadvantaged girls
  • Lack of role models in STEM industries and post-secondary education, particularly in leadership positions
  • Challenges around the culture of STEM industries and support for women to thrive
  • Lack of clarity on STEM careers (including job titles) and professional activities.

Messaging: Effective messaging can attract girls to consider STEM and help girls to envision themselves as STEM professionals, as well as help to support their key influencers. This includes the consideration of effective messaging strategies from marketing to role model interactions.

Key tips for effective messaging:

  • Use adjectives to describe and characterise STEM professional roles and activities.
  • Have role models and volunteers share their interests and activities outside of their STEM-related activities.
  • Develop resources for individual STEM fields for targeted messaging and information.
  • Evaluate STEM program and organisation media for unconscious bias, and ensure diverse representation in media.

Girls-only opportunities: Offering girls-only experiences and learning spaces provides the opportunity for girls to be empowered and feel comfortable to question, experiment and lead in STEM. By structuring these safe environments girls are more willing to try and experiment with STEM.

Key tips to design positive girls-only opportunities and spaces:

  • Provide a comfortable and safe learning environment.
  • Create a gender-neutral environment, free of “STEM stereotypes”.
  • Provide opportunities for girls to connect with female mentors in STEM.
  • Ensure the environment supports girls to try, play and fail without judgement.

Family involvement: The involvement of family, especially parents, in STEM learning experiences is invaluable in providing support for girls engaging in STEM experiences. Parents are role models and key influencers of a girl’s career pathway considerations. Involving family in STEM, not only enriches a girl’s experiences, it also connects STEM into the home.

Key tips to promote family involvement:

  • Host orientation and family evenings that family members can be involved in.
  • Provide updates for family members on achievements and opportunities Authentic connections: Connecting with real world experiences that make an impact and diverse female experts for support and inspiration, can provide girls with authentic STEM connections and opportunities that promote sustained engagement.

Authentic Connections: Connecting young people with real world experiences that make an impact and diverse female experts for support and inspiration, can provide girls with authentic STEM connections and opportunities that promote sustained engagement.

Key tips to enable girls to build authentic connections:

  • Industry visits and experiences.
  • STEM projects that solve compelling problems, with real life contexts for ‘social good’.
  • Mentorship programs where girls link with diverse female STEM experts.

This blog includes excerpts from Engaging the Future of STEM. Authors: Ms Sarah Chapman & Dr Rebecca Vivian. A study of international best practice for promoting the participation of young people, particularly girls, in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). This research was conducted as part of the 2016 Barbara Cail STEM Fellowship and funded by the Australian Government (Office for Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet), in partnership with the Chief Executive Women (CEW) Ltd.

Come and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will be providing authentic international and national examples that exemplify the promotion of engagement and retention of girls in STEM.

For reference list please refer to: Engaging the Future of STEM
 

Barefoot Learner Capabilities: How we are developing competencies for the real world

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As with many educators I have grappled with the purpose of assessment for some time. It often feels as though we are subjecting our learners to tests and assessments that serve no purpose other than to generate an arbitrary score that could be quite different if they sat the test tomorrow, and yet these situations induce anxiety and stress for teachers, learners, and families.

So a burning question for me is around the issue of assessment and measurement. Are we measuring the things that we value? Do we value that which we are measuring?

For 9 years New Zealand teachers have been required to measure students in relation to ‘national standards’ for reading, writing, and maths. This information was then required to be reported to parents, the Board of Trustees of each school and the Ministry of Education using language such as ‘below standard’, ‘at standard’, or ‘above standard’. Many educators and researchers (Ken Robinson, Tony Wagner, Guy Claxton) in the field of education have shown us that the skills and capabilities our students need for their futures are much broader than the national standards focus we have had in New Zealand for the past decade. This narrow focus created a difficult environment for teachers who worked hard to ‘shift’ students in relation to these standards very often at the expense of sciences, arts, technology, sports, etc. Whilst at the same time creating angst for the learner, families and indeed themselves.

Late in 2017 New Zealand teachers and leaders were given an opportunity to rethink ‘assessment’ in our schools. With a change of government came a change in the legislation governing schools and we are no longer required to measure or report student progress in relation to the ‘national standards’.  This has given leaders and teachers at Paekākāriki School the scope to move forward with a skills and competencies based curriculum that was, in 2017, in its early stages of development.

The process of developing the skills and competencies based curriculum began with extensive community consultation in 2016 as it was clear to the Board of Trustees that a strong vision for learning at Paekākāriki School was needed. Paekākāriki is a small village and it was important to us that our school reflected the village values and philosophies. The community consultation in 2016 provided us with great information about what our community wanted for their children at our school, we began to see a clear picture of the experiences, skills, and capabilities that were valued by our community. By the end of 2016, we had disseminated this rich information into 4 guiding principles and had established a new vision for ourselves as the Home of the Barefoot Learner.

During 2017 we took the 4 guiding principles of belonging, connecting, exploring and thriving, and broke them down into key skills and capabilities for our learners. We were able to align these with the New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies.  This, in effect, gave us our ‘graduate profile’ and has enabled us to develop our own local curriculum based around these.

The capabilities are outlined as a series of progressions in our Barefoot Learner matrix against which we measure and report on student progress. These progressions were collaboratively developed with teachers and students. These capabilities have signalled a shift to students taking ownership of their learning – learner agency and responsibility are frequent conversations. They also give us a meaningful tool for measuring and reporting on the things that our community values for their children’s education. Student’s use the progressions to self assess, teachers use them to measure progress and our next step is to ensure that quality evidence is shared for each progression with families. We have a digital platform that allows a range of evidence to be shared in real time, and seeking family feedback on this evidence is a next step for us.

These capabilities are more far reaching than the traditional reading, writing, math achievement data and so we are still in the process of refining our systems to measure and report on these. Informing parents of this process is also important. We have developed a curriculum where we focus on the skills and qualities they identified as being important, our next challenge is to be able to demonstrate progress against these things.

As with any programme of change we needed to consider how  we deliver this strong and clear vision to our community. We’ve been pleased with the reaction from the community to our Home of the Barefoot Learner vision and it seems to ring true with our community and visitors to our village. It is a continuing journey for us to embed this vision and a common language across the school, in all that we do so that everyone knows and understands us. Making the guiding principles known and understood widely, and making explicit the links to the curriculum is an ongoing process for us.

After a period of implementation, we will need to re-evaluate. As part of our self review process we need to ask questions of our students, teachers, board and families;

Have we considered everything that is important for our student’s futures?

Do we value the things we are measuring?

Or, are we still assessing that which we don’t value?

I’d love the chance to chat with you about this and other topics during my presentations at the Leading a Digital School Conference.