A global village

I’ve just returned from the UK where I had been invited to participate in the CSCLeaders conference.  CSC is an annual global conference that brings together about 100 leaders from across the Commonwealth.  The conference is run in partnership between Common Purpose and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conference which began in 1956.

Aside from being a great privilege to participate, the conference was very much PBL for leaders. Here were 100 culturally diverse leaders from all sectors including government, military, police, education, banking and finance, not for profits, religious groups, activists and the arts coming together to tackle a global challenge. This year, the challenge set for participants was how do you get disparate communities spread across the world to become bridge makers in the global networks of the future?

The conference spanned eight days and was structured in three parts.  The first three days we had input from prominent speakers on the political, social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges of the 21st century.  This was followed by discussion within our groups.  The next three days included site visits to one of five cities in the UK which contextualised the challenge by giving us an opportunity to see how local communities were tackling the challenge of becoming ‘bridge-makers’.  Groups were able to then meet with local community, educational, business and faith leaders.  I was fortunate to have spent my study tour in the London borough of Tower Hamlets because Hargreaves and Shirley include it in their book The Fourth Way as a turned-around district for its schools.

Tower Hamlets is one of the most culturally diverse boroughs of London and a stone’s throw away from the financial and media district of Canary Wharf.  There is a huge population of Bangladeshi migrants – the largest community in the UK.  It also has the highest rate of child poverty in London but as Hargreaves and Shirley state the schools in TH were able to dramatically turn around in a decade from one of the worst performing to performing above the national average.  The reason for this dramatic turnaround was the community coming together to create and build new capacity.

According to Hargreaves and Shirley, the schools improved because services were integrated, school leaders were visionary; they were able to attract high performing teachers who stayed and positive partnerships have been developed between schools, business, community and religious organisations. The Tower Hamlets schools became responsible for each other by setting their own ambitious targets for students.  One of the directors quoted in the Fourth Way said “poverty is not an excuse for poor outcomes.”

I spoke to the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman and the head teacher at Swanlea School, Brenda Landers. Swanlea has 1000 students enrolled and was judged by OFSTED to be ‘outstanding in all areas’.  Brenda attributes the school’s success to a sharp focus on the data and an investment in building the capacity of teachers.

The final three days were spent in Oxford where groups shared their reflections of the study tours.  We synthesized ideas and data then tried to identify innovative practices that the Commonwealth nations might adopt to build leadership capacity at local and global level.  We also reflected on how we could collectively try and tackle some of these 21st century challenges.

A major element of the conference was networking opportunities which included lunch and dinner engagements with HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and HRH Princess Royal and business leaders.  These networks aside from creating the opportunity to bring more people into an ever expanding network of critical thinkers, problem-solvers and exceptional leaders will hopefully sustain the work in years to come.  The next part of the conference takes us to Mumbai or Johannesburg in June where we get to explore the challenge in the context of a vastly different city.

In reflecting on this experience, two important things struck me that were neither obvious or explicitly stated.  The first is that CSCLeaders brings together culturally diverse people who share a common purpose of leading  organisations into the 21st century.  Despite the diversity, there are common threads uniting us all. These threads include a passion for the work we do, a drive to seek new ways and solutions to challenges and the recognition that in this century you cannot do this alone, interdependence demands collaboration at every level.

The second is that depending on which nation of the Commonwealth you were born in, your perception of the world is vastly different.  Members from developing nations are looking for the recognition that they have something valuable to contribute. They do not seek “a leg up” but want to be active citizens in building better societies.

The above made me think about how we go about the work we are doing with our school communities here in Parramatta and raised so many questions for me. Have we have tapped into the rich diversity of our school communities and started from where they are rather then where they should be?  Are we stifling innovation or failing to nurture it? What are the new models we need to explore to build leaders capacities and so on.

This conference taught me many things but key was the value of multiple data sets and the evidence it draws as well as the critical need to interrogate the data from several different points of view. Listening to other leaders and hearing what the data and evidence says to them was a real eye-opener and often altered my own understanding.

For me the most important message I can share is that no matter your experience or expertise base, there is always something to learn.  Living in a global village demands that I need to be a life-long learner as well.

It’s a matter of trust

When Billy Joel wrote the lyrics to It’s a Matter of Trust, he probably wasn’t thinking about the Finnish education system.  Yet the more I read the literature on high performing systems, I am convinced that trust is at the core of the cultural change needed to reshape schooling.  It’s not new nor is it rocket science.

Michael Fullan says that you build trust through behaviour.  John Hattie tells us that the ability for teachers to develop trust within the classroom is key to making students feel OK about making mistakes and asking questions.  In Visible Learning, the highest “effect sizes within teacher student relationship came from empathy, warmth and encouragement of higher order thinking.”  A report on a teacher education model for the 21st century by Singapore’s National Institute of Education emphasises the need for teachers to create cultures of care and trust.

As noble a calling as teaching is, the profession has been tarnished by a lack of trust, suspicion of teachers’ work and a top down approach to school improvement.  Richard Elmore wrote in 2007 that a “non-professional teaching force is a compliant and easily managed workforce.”  This view of teaching according to Elmore grew out of the late 19th and 20th century.

What differentiates high performing systems from others is trust.  Trust permeates from the highest to the lowest levels: governments trust schools to deliver quality education, parents trust teachers to meet the learning needs of their children and teachers trust students to set and achieve their own learning goals.

I know Finland is the system du jour and some may be tiring of hearing about the Finnish way but I read a superb reflection in February’s Phi Delta Kappan magazine by its editor in chief, Joan Richardson.  When I re-read the passages I highlighted in the article I am still astounded by the culture of trust that has been built not in one school but in every single school.  How is this done?  By driving responsibility down to the classroom and school level.  This is similar to the principle of subsidiarity and it’s a term we don’t often hear in discussions about school improvement or teacher quality.  Teachers have control over what they teach and how they teach and how they assess students.

The rationale behind Finland’s competitive teacher education program is quite simple: there are no mentoring or teacher evaluation programs and that’s the way they want it. Teachers are trusted to do their best not in their first year of teaching but throughout their careers.  This is a quote from an education official from the Finnish National Board of Education:

We trust our teachers. They will find the best solutions, or they will create their own.  They are doing very well without inspections and testing. If students are not happy, they go home and tell their mothers, and the mothers call the principal. That’s a fine inspection system.”

It exemplifies the level of trust between schools and parents and reinforces the critical role parents play in education.  It is not just the responsibility of teachers or parents or governments – it is a collective responsibility in which the accountability lies with the professionals – teachers and leaders.  Imagine knowing that if you sent your child to any school in Finland they would receive the same level of care and personalised learning regardless of academic ability, learning style or background.

For me, the gold standard is the fact that teachers are free to work from home when they are not teaching.  As Richardson observes, the working conditions of Finnish teachers are closely associated with being professionals instead of the highly regulated working environment of American teachers.  Can you imagine this happening in our schools!

Where does trust begin? With our students; believing that each one is capable of learning and will become life-long learners.  It is on this belief that teaching begins.

If we are to build the same culture of trust then we need to face the facts and look at the evidence.  This is a call to be courageous; to recognise that what was once off limits or sacred is now open to critical reflection and change. All this represents the fact that interdependence has to be the new norm. Isolation and mistrust are death to innovation and change.

To paraphrase an old song, “trust changes everything…..”

Re-phrase it

One of the things that I enjoy when attending conferences is meeting like-minded and passionate teachers.

Last month I presented at the Re-think and Re-imagine Conference at Deakin University and ran into Thom Fraser.  Thom is a Year 6 teacher at Warrnambool Primary in Victoria and has developed a literacy program called Re-phrase it. The program allows students to set and track their own learning goals. Tom says it’s in response to thinking about how 21st century students learn.

I see Thom as a teacher who has not only taken up the challenge of improving the learning outcomes for all students but who is learning and sharing about his practice along the way.  He tells me that he has done several radio interviews on how the literacy program works.

What you see when Thom speaks is his passion and his energy for teaching and his commitment to challenging each student. Could Thom could be our benchmark?

Knowledge work

Several years ago I attended a conference where Daniel Pink was one of the keynote speakers.  I had never heard Pink speak before but I remember being impressed by his ideas and thinking.  Not long after that I read ‘A Whole New Mind‘ and to this day it remains one of the books in my professional canon.

It’s hard to believe Pink wrote A Whole New Mind in 2005.  So much in the world has changed in that seemingly short period of time and yet many organisations including schools still seem to operate within an industrial paradigm.  According to Pink (p50):

We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers.  And now we’re progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.

I’ve been reflecting lately on this notion of a knowledge age – are we a knowledge society? Have we really embraced new ways of thinking and working smarter?  If you read job ads for example, it doesn’t look like any significant shifts have been made in the way we recruit, hire and train people.  Using social media to advertise roles that are 20th century in their design is as futile as using iPads to teach a 20th century curriculum.  How many organisations in Australia are redesigning knowledge work but more importantly how many school systems are?  How long before we actually fulfill Pink’s prediction of a conceptual age?

One of the biggest problems as outlined in the article “Redesigning Knowledge Work” is there aren’t enough knowledge workers across the private, public and social sectors.  According to the authors, this is only going to get worse based on research by the McKinsey Global Institute which suggests that by 2020, “the worldwide shortage of highly skilled, college-educated workers could reach 38 million to 40 million.”

The article cites a number of organisations redefining the jobs of experts, transferring lower-skilled work to other people within the organisation.  Reading this article prompted me to think about schools in a knowledge age.  If principals are our most skilled, then what work could they transfer or outsource to enable more time to develop the talent of teachers? Do we see this as the most important task for principals?

Richard Elmore says, a knowledge based economy requires a knowledge based teaching profession.  The way to get there is to invest heavily in the knowledge and skill of all teachers.  And yet in the past, it has been the norm for lower-skilled people (ie teachers aides) to work with students who need the greatest intervention.  We know now that we need our most skilled teachers working with those students to ensure improved learning outcomes.

Historically, we have often begun with the staff and adopted the strategy rather than looking at what critical skills our strategy requires and identifying the best talent to deliver it within classrooms, schools and across systems.  Why can’t schools look beyond their communities for the most skilled teachers?  Shouldn’t we be deploying the best people to get the best results whether it is around a learning strategy or capacity building?

While most education systems want teachers to become knowledge workers, it is much harder to change industrial processes and cultures.  The authors suggest three points that would underpin new ways of working:

1. Excel at attracting, motivating and retaining specialists
2. Develop mechanisms for cultivating specialists who have the potential to take on leadership roles
3. Capture the knowledge so that others can benefit from it

In some ways, our system is working towards these but change doesn’t happen overnight.  The question many educators and systems need to ask is whether we want teachers to have a working knowledge or do we want teachers to be knowledge workers?  If the answer to the latter is yes, then what are we doing about it? Are we that afraid of the possible answers and the need to redefine what it is to be a teacher in today’s world

‘Sew’ your own success

There is a proverb that says ‘borrowed garments never fit well’.  This is particularly apt for education systems on the journey from good to great.  I believe there are two roads that can be travelled when it comes to school improvement – pay someone to do it for you or ‘sew’ your own success.  One of my favourite quotes is from Richard Elmore and co’s book Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning: We learn to do the work by doing the work, not by telling other people to do the work, not by having done the work at some time in the past, and not by hiring experts who can act as proxies for our knowledge about how to do the work.

Many education systems from around the world look to Singapore, South Korea, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Finland for the answers but if it were as simple as borrowing their models, then educational improvement would literally happen overnight.  Countries such as Finland have taken years if not decades to build a high performing education system.  What we can do is look at what works, learn from their success and weave some of these ideas into our own educational narrative.

As Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland? acknowledges that “the Finnish school system cannot be transferred anywhere else in the world.  Many of the successful aspects of Finland’s education system are rooted deep in our culture and values.”  He goes on to say that “what we can do…is take a look and learn from one another.”

Earlier this month Sahlberg was interviewed for the Huffington Post - the responses

were ideas worth thinking about:

1. Primary school teachers put well-being and happiness of their pupils before measured academic progress
2. Urge parents to take more responsibility for their children e.g giving more time and attention to them at home
3. Flexible learning pathways that provide personalised options to study what individuals believe will help them become successful in life
4. A universal standard for financing schools so that resources are channeled to schools according to real needs
5. Align the vocational schools curriculum to the standards of academic high schools
6. Elevate schools as places for social learning and development skills
7. Celebrate national achievements, rather than high rankings in global education league tables
8. Ensure a universal standard for teacher preparation that follows standards in other top professions

Systems around the world can learn from each other about what makes the most difference and while each system reflects its own political, economic and social context, the key driver I think, is a relentless focus on quality learning and teaching. This learning recognises the needs and capabilities of every student and the critical importance of good teaching and teacher capacity building.

We will never bring about the changes required in building quality schooling  by continuing to use the stale rhetoric of the school improvement agenda. With its narrow focus on high stakes test scores, programmatic of the shelf solutions , driving achievement through competition and so on, this agenda ignores the experiences that do make a difference.

The 21st Century Textbook

Don Tapscott’s latest book is not actually a book but an iPad app New Solutions for a Connected Planet.  It was created in partnership with Thinkers50 and sponsored by the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

What makes this app innovative is that it is an evolving ‘book’ full of real-time, rich media content that allows readers (users) to navigate and interact in a way that a hardcopy or even eReader book couldn’t accommodate.

This is the start of a new breed of reference books that shows what you can do to take digital content to the next level. Think of the potential for learning and teaching… a 21^st century textbook that allows the learner to navigate, press, wipe, slide, watch, listen and share all in the one place. It’s served up in a highly interactive and engaging way for a digital savvy generation.

The app itself is well worth a look offering Don’s latest thinking on how we can rebuild 10 institutions, including education, for the networked age.

In his Ted Talk, Four principles for the open world Don talks about the notion of sharing IP (intellectual property) to provide the rising tide in order to ‘lift everyone’s boats’. He sees the potential of the digital, global ecomony as a ‘turning point in human history’ requiring organisations and businesses to become more open, porous and fluid. It’s likely this thinking is the reason why he has made his new book free via iTunes.

There are some tools already available like iBooks Author app for users to create something similar with text enriched by multimedia and the ability to publish/share the book via iTunes and other channels.

I’m sure we can expect to see even more sophisticated ‘books’ like this in the future. I would love to hear your thoughts on the 21^st century textbook?

Bureaucrats rock!

It’s a commonly-held view that bureaucrats block or resist change. When a new government comes to power, the first target is the bureaucrat. They tend to get the blame for any failings in the system and for stifling innovation and change. While I’m sure we have all experienced this first-hand, fortunately not all bureaucrats are made equal. Gregg Betheil, executive director of school programs and partnerships for the New York City Department of Education (DOE) breaks the mould.

Gary Brown, Anna Dickinson, Paul Meldrum and myself on the steps of the DOE in New York City

On meeting Gregg last week, my colleagues and I were impressed to find the DOE is informed by a powerful theory of action that places students’ learning at the centre of their work. They are committed to improving student learning by building the capacity of teachers; ensuring good leadership; and using a range of data sets and evidence to drive change.

To give you an idea of the DOE context – here are some key numbers:

• 1,800 schools across the five Burroughs that make up NYC – Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island
• 1.1 million students
• 75,000 staff
• $23 billion operating budget
• The ratio of students in the US who attend school in NYC is 1:50
• In the last 10 years, there has been an 80 per cent turnover in principal positions

For several decades, graduation rates in NYC schools had stagnated – only 50 per cent of students were graduating and in the lowest 50 schools, only 1 in 4 students. Today, the graduation rate is up around 67 per cent and the lowest performing school graduates 50 per cent of its cohort. This is a remarkable result which looks set to improve further.

The context Gregg is working in now is referred to as the ‘post Joel Klein era,’ because much of the work started under Klein’s leadership (2002-2011) continues today. Leaving aside some of the more controversial aspects of the Klein agenda, central to the work of improving schooling in the US is a commitment, to not only build a robust school system, but a robust system of great schools.

The DOE recognises the school’s central role in ringing in education innovation and change and as such, gives schools the freedom to innovate and change as they do the work. The role of the DOE then lies in articulating the expectations and, as an accountability measure, in defining standards for school performance. The work of Robert McClintock (1996) helps inform the work of the DOE.

McClintock argues that it is the teachers taking advantage of the digital tools in doing the work where innovative practice can emerge and spread.

As new communications technologies take hold in practice, educators sense that new developments become feasible through them. As diverse educators act in diverse ways on the basis of this shared sense of new potential, they begin to change the character of general practice. (McClintock, 1996)

McClintock also makes the point that with technological innovation basic skills that were once an outcome of education – such as to calculate, spell, remember, visualise, compare and select – are now a given at the outset making for an ‘epistemologically interesting cultural development’.

Knowledge consists primarily of cultural resources that people can store and retrieve on demand, as the need for it arises… People can use digital media both to acquire ideas and to express their thoughts in these diverse ways. As a result, educators will find it increasingly difficult to favour the linguistic modality over all others and they will need to broaden the norms of academic excellence. (Robert McClintock, 1996)

Given the digital revolution is rapidly changing the way people live and work, it is essential for schooling to keep pace with these developments. It was good to see that the essential nature of ICT is recognised in NYC schools as a powerful tool and enabler for learning and teaching. A lot of this work is being implemented using a range of mobile devices but, like all of us, the DOE face similar challenges around vendors, copyright, business models and digital ecosystems.

We found plenty of common ground in meeting with Gregg, the key themes being:
• Building great schools relies on the schools themselves
• Innovation is the lifeblood pumping through quality schools that leads to improvement
• The system has a responsibility for disruptive innovations – i.e. innovations that change the paradigm
• Systems need to remove the blockers for change

It is great to see there are educational institutions with the commitment and intent to drive innovation and change in schooling and a bureaucrat who is leading the way.

Another revolution?

The Third Industrial Revolution is underway – manufacturing is going digital.  A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article in The Economist revealing manufacturers of the future will focus on mass customisation – tailoring products to our individual needs and specifications.   The revolution will not only affect how things are made – but where, and, importantly – the skills set required to deliver products to the hands of the consumer. This is yet another example of how our future workforce will be required to constantly shift to meet the needs of an ever-evolving economy.

As The Economist’s Paul Markillie reflects, with the revolution firmly underway it is timely for us to consider how we will capitalise on the opportunities this digital revolution presents in order to prepare all students for work in today’s world.  As educators, how do we ensure schooling remains relevant and reflective of the changes happening in the world?  More importantly, how can we respond to trends that have not yet evolved? And how do we deliver ‘mass education’ in order to meet individual needs?

The demand for tools that enable mass personalisation of education is evident in the success of researchers like Ramona Pierson who have made it their core focus to provide educators across the globe with tools to tailor instruction to meet the needs of students and teachers.  It evolves the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to teaching into a differentiated approach that adjusts content and instruction to ensure every student’s voice is heard through tools which focus on the elements of:

-    Real-time assessment;
-    Simplifying lesson planning;
-    Connecting with diverse learners – supporting visual, auditory and kinaesthetic instruction in individual, group and whole-class learning environments;
-    Encouraging participation via an interactive environment;
-    Providing the structure, tools and resources the whole class needs for success while providing individual guidance to students and small groups as they work to overcome challenges

I believe that combining this approach with a focus on refining online teaching access, open content, real time web delivery, independent course-wear provision and virtual learning environments will provide schools with great opportunities to ensure learning not only meets the needs of every student but is in sync with what is happening in today’s world.

These avenues by their nature exponentially build on accessibility. Students who may be based in remote and regional locations now have the greatest level of access to information and support that they have ever had. Retention of students in the education system who are geographically challenged will vastly improve over coming decades as we integrate these tools into all elements of our lives – and also enables the broader population to embrace life-long learning.

Delivery of content using today’s tools also enables niche course delivery – none of us are confined to 9-3pm learning. The opportunity to deliver a course relevant to hundreds of students across Australia that may have only been sought by a handful of students within an individual school means students are better able to ensure their schooling experience is customised to meet their future goals. It also provides a tailored support and like-minded network for each student to tap into – broadening horizons and perspectives beyond local geography.

I came across a relevant quote by Seymour Papert in his essay Education’s 19th Century Thinking in a 21st Century world:

The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill – the one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school.  We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.

How will instruction adapt to this “megachange” if we’re not using all the available things that the technology hands out? Demonstrating that education is now as much about partnerships, innovation and engagement as about the traditional training grounds, the New York Times has enjoyed significant success with its New York Times Knowledge Network. The network offers a wide range of distinctive adult and continuing education opportunities, including online courses, programs and Webcasts.  Also tapping into the revolution are Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The universities have announced a new non-profit partnership – known as edX – to offer free online courses from both universities.

Technology for online education, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental. The new platforms present dual opportunities – to build a global community of online learners and to research teaching methods and technologies. Additionally, the barriers to education which define people’s ability to mould their futures will be broken down.

How will educational leaders become active drivers and leaders of this ever-shifting environment to ensure our students enjoy the greatest of these opportunities?

Putting a face to data

I believe data is critical to the work of improving schooling and how well we use data to improve student outcomes and teacher learning is a challenge that some of the best performing systems have had to address.  I sometimes think the fear we have in using data stems from the fact that we aren’t trained in how to use it effectively or systematically as part of our practice and planning.

As Lyn Sharratt and Michael Fullan say in their new book Putting Faces on Data – ‘ some educators are really good at breaking down the data, but most are not trained or experienced at chipping away the marble in their system-reports.’  They argue that in order to build success in schools, we need to see the data not as numbers but as the names and faces of every single student. Simple concept with powerful outcomes.

Lyn Sharratt spent two days in Parramatta with our leaders during the school holidays discussing how we go about doing this. Lyn was the former superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Services in the York Region District School Board, Canada so she understands the challenges at every level: classroom, school and district.

According to Lyn, systems have great visions on paper but most don’t have a strategy for getting there.  In their 2009 book ‘Realization‘, they  identified the 14 parameters that made a difference to school and student improvement. These are:

1. shared beliefs and understandings among all staff
2. designated staff member for literacy/numeracy
3. daily sustained focus on literacy/numeracy instruction
4. principal as literacy/numeracy leader
5. early and ongoing intervention
6. case management approach to monitoring student progress
7. job-embedded professional learning
8. in school team meetings as an example of collaborative examination of student work
9. literacy/numeracy resources located in a designated area
10. commitment of school budget to these priorities
11. action research – staff committed to learning
12. parental involvement in supporting literacy/numeracy
13. appropriate  instruction in all areas of the curriculum
14. shared responsibility and accountability

The only parameter Lyn says is prioritised is the fundamental belief that all learners can learn.  If we share this belief, then we share the responsibility and accountability for our students’ learning. I’m still not sure why this belief is not universally shared by all teachers but as John Hattie says it requires us to believe ‘that intelligence is changeable rather than fixed.’  If we believe intelligence is changeable, then we are empowered to look for better ways of continually moving students forward on the learning journey. Surely this is at the heart of our work as teachers?

Moving students forward is about knowing them as individuals through the use of data walls. Lyn provided some excellent examples of schools using data walls such as Park Manor Public School.  Its principal set up a small private room enabling teachers to see and collaboratively discuss the progress of every student.  The data wall allowed them to ‘narrow their focus to the key areas for effective countermeasures, or instructional interventions, and then to verify all students’ improvement through data.’ (p85) It is critical to identify the point of need for the learner if we are to design learning experiences targetted at student improvement.

The data wall is a powerful strategy for empowering and enabling teachers.  It places them in a position where they are supported by the wisdom and experience of their colleagues; where they are encouraged to reflect on their own practice and where they can recognise their own weaknesses in terms of the skills and instructional strategies needed to address a particular learning problem. As Lyn points out, teacher learning needs to be differentiated within and across schools based on the data.  Not only must we personalise student learning, we also need to personalise teacher learning if we are to continually improve the quality of learning and teaching for every student that comes through our system.

For me, the message of our work is simple – it’s not about making assumptions but how we can improve lives through learning. It’s about recognising that behind every data set there is a unique and diverse individual eager to learn.

Learning from Jobs

Steve Jobs had a profound influence on the world of technology.  One could argue that under his leadership Apple redefined the user experience so much so that technology has seamlessly integrated with every aspect of our lives.

Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson has written a concise piece in this month’s Harvard Business Review on the Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs. While it relates to Jobs’ business philosophy, I think there are always valuable lessons for educational leaders and teachers.

According to Issacson, ‘focus was ingrained in Jobs’ personality’ and he would often ask his top employees to identify 10 things that Apple should be doing.  When the list was complete, he would cut it back to just three ideas. Jobs believed that “deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” How many of those ‘additions’ to the curriculum or classroom over the years have had a positive impact on student learning? Michael Fullan has often told us that when schools/systems focus on three goals and commit to achieving them, you get results.

The second is simplify.  Jobs aimed for the ‘simplicity that comes from conquering, rather than merely ignoring, complexity.”  He regcongised the importance of understanding the role ‘each element’ plays.  Expert teachers ‘simplify’ the complex in the way they organise and use content knowledge.  As John Hattie says, expert teachers understand the various elements that promote or restrict student success and respond accordingly.

The third is engage face to face.  Jobs believed in the spontanaeity of face to face meetings.  The article states that Jobs even designed the Pixar building to promote ‘unplanned encounters and collaborations.’  This is why the way we design schools and learning spaces is critical.  We know that stimulus rich environments stimulate learning.  Secondly, agile learning spaces offer opportunities for teachers and students to work, plan and learn together. I saw this in action recently when I visited Parramatta Marist as boys sat around a table working on project based learning.  Jobs recognised the creative possibilities when people engage to solve problems.

The fourth is combine humanities with science.  Isaacson says the essence of Jobs’ life was bringing humanities and science together.  This is what a 21st century curriculum aims to do – the integration of everything intended to promote students’ critical thinking and learning.  It balances the various aspects of learning by focussing on the practical, social, aesthetic and creative aspects of human endeavour.   Isaacson predicts that the key to building innovative economies will be the intersection of humanities and science.

The last is stay hungry, stay foolish.  Jobs was a perfectionist who continually pushed the boundaries.  Good teachers continually push the boundaries because they are passionate about their work.  Thinking differently and taking risks are the norm if it means understanding how to teach more effectively.  At a system level, staying hungry is about keeping the momentum going – the desire to continually improve the quality of learning and teaching even if it challenges the status quo.