Mindlab Leadership Assignment 1 - Michael Cunliffe, Sam Harliwich and Kayla Jones
A previous change initiative was about developing our teachers so that they became improved critical thinkers that are more self-regulated, more deeply reflective about their practice, and more prepared to modify their pedagogy for purpose and act upon their learning. The purpose for this change initiative was to support teachers in becoming more responsive to the students’ learning needs, strengths and learning styles in order to promote accelerated progress, especially with writing.
In order to achieve this change the school’s approach to Teaching as Inquiry (T.A.I.) was adapted to ensure that the focus was on how teachers reflect on their actions and assumptions as teachers and how this can support improved pedagogy to help meet the needs of our students. The teacher inquiry model was changed and a scaffold, in the way of a structured document, was provided by senior management. After professional development across the school, team leaders and teachers were supported with guidelines in how they could flexibly use the structure to empower themself as a teacher and provide improved learning for students. Additionally to this, staff meetings were adapted as the teaching inquiry had a far more collaborative base to it in which teachers were encouraged and expected to share, debate, problem solve and celebrate learning, changed pedagogy and achieved outcomes. In these staff meetings teachers worked in vertically aligned groups and collaborated intensively to shift teaching practice. Staff meetings also included professional readings and learning opportunities for teachers. Furthermore, classroom observations and appraisal documents worked alongside the inquiry model to support teachers with their own inquiry focus. This included teacher reflections, triple loop questioning and coaching points specific to the request of the teacher..
The leadership roles that were involved in this change initiative were widespread. The change itself was lead by senior management, which included the deputy principal and our two assistant principals. Whilst leading this shift schoolwide, their role was also to support their assigned team leaders with their inquiries as well as helping them to support their teachers. These senior management members also supported and facilitated the vertical professional learning group (P.L.G.) meetings and ran professional learning sessions. While senior management were present in most observations, observations were too set up to be collaborative in nature as these were always done in pairs in order to aid improved reflective discussion. Team leaders were instrumental in this system as they lead the inquiry on a day-to-day basis, both informally through convivial discussion and formally through collaborative team meetings discussing learning needs, teacher learning and applied pedagogy. Lastly, teachers in their own right had to lead not only their own inquiry, and teaching practice shifts but they also had the role in collaborating and engaging in professional discussions with their colleagues about their own and others’ teaching practice.
Through this initiative there were a number of strengths and weaknesses within the leadership of this change that we would like to highlight. Firstly there was a fundamental requirement of building a relational trust between teachers, middle leaders and senior management to support increased collaboration, mentoring and coaching that was a part of this T.A.I. structure (Robinson, 2007). Developing relational trust was a positive strength of the leadership to this initiative. This enabled for a more distributed model to be employed which Fowler (2012) suggests is vital, particularly when implementing inquiry processes with middle leaders that are not familary to teaching as inquiry practices. This also enabled a more supportive and responsive situational leadership style. The strength of this style encouraged teachers to be coached and supported in a way that suited their own individual needs. There were big benefits with this; as support became more responsive, teachers began to grow as risk takers in order to improve outcomes with their students. This clearly shows evidence of the situational leadership model whereby “...personalising the way we support people, and by offering the right mix of change leadership and change management, we can help people to adapt, enhance and embrace change” (Osborne, 2014).
This situational leadership model also provided a particular issue that McCleskey (2014) also mentions; both middle and senior leaders found it difficult to achieve conformity and consistency with how they responsively supported others. A clear weakness of the leadership style.
A transformative leadership style was successfully utilised, although this provided the difficulty of leading differing minds across the school, as seen in the ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ theory (Robinson, 2009). By using the ‘Spirals of Inquiry’ in the scaffolded TAI, it enabled the staff as a collective to empower each other to bring about pedagogical change and entrusting the teachers with ownership of their own inquiry. Teachers became self-regulated thinkers and learners who took responsibility for their ongoing learning. As individuals they monitored their own work, and utilised feedback to develop and improve their pedagogy (ITL Research, 2012). We feel this was a strength of the change initiative. Each teacher, when sharing questions and queries, were encouraged by the collective underpinning the principles of distributed leadership, to create a depth of critical thinking and more responsiveness to the needs of their students. By including benchmarks for assessment, student voice and video evidence of change in practice, quantitative and qualitative data was captured, as mentioned by Bass & Riggio (2006). Also, teachers that struggled to show a growth mindset and/or adaptive confidence or may have been more successful within a more transactional model.
Tū Rangatira: Māori Medium Educational Leadership model was utilised through this change initiative as it built staff capability by raising the standard of teaching and learning, as seen in the concept of Mana Mokopuna (Ministry of Education, 2010), which is integral to the improvement of all learners. Another weakness of the initiative, however, was the lack of specific focus of strengthening school-wide capability in the teaching and learning in te reo Māori, which supports Mana Reo, and the development of Māori pedagogical practices, which is strongly influenced by Mana Matauranga Maori (Ministry of Education, 2010). Another area of need within this change initiative would be to utilise the strengths of our wider community and increase the participation of all major stakeholders including a broader range of learners, whanau, iwi, and the wider community agencies that can support success for Māori students; this clearly identifies a greater need for the concept of Mana Tangata (Ministry of Education, 2010). There were glimpses of this occurring within this change initiative, however it would be greatly improved through more substantial collaboration with all stakeholders.
Reflection on own leadership / followership Michael Within the context of our change initiative I was largely involved in leading the initiative. There were a number of leadership theories that I deliberately employed as part of this initiative. In true transformational style, I deliberately provided moral purpose for taking a more rigorous inquiry practice by explicitly sharing the current picture of underachievement and providing a clear vision and target to strive for through greater critical thinking and robust teacher inquiry (McCleskey, 2014). This helped promote a need for purposeful change. I deliberately scaffolded the initiative with a situational Leadership style (Blanchard, 2008). In my role, I supported each team leader to help get momentum into the initiative. This meant that I attempted to match the amount of direction and support I provided to the level of the team leader. For some this meant I gave specific feedback, and for others I provided time, examples and regular coaching as they inquired into their practice. At times, this involved a transactional style with step-by-step instructions as well as a reward of school wide acknowledgement. Looking back I can see that some of the support I provided worked well, yet at times I may have mismatched the style of leadership as one of the team leaders actually required more direction. I see that this was a weakness of my leadership in this initiative.
Sam Being always willing to please the powers that be, and inclined to be an early adopter at new initiatives, I quickly followed the template and filled in the required fields, including my our version of tracking the data. The template helped me to become more reflective about my practice as a whole, as the
questions encouraged me to act on my research and be more responsive to the children’s needs. A transformative leadership style works initially and then support is needed in a variety of ways when my thinking is challenged. One of the disadvantages to this style for me is that initially I struggled to know what was required of me as some of the questions were very open ended which created some confusion. Situational leadership uses a more supportive approach when I doubt my abilities and can direct me to follow my hunches, while still encouraging me to critically reflect on my pedagogy. When discussing and sharing my journey with others, I understood the weakness in this style as we weren’t all given the same level of support. Acknowledging the students’ learning needs, strengths and learning styles are essential way to the way I plan for teaching and learning now.
Kayla I believe that I am generally an early adopter when it comes to change and trialling something new. This initiative was no different and I feel that the transformational style of leadership that was initially used was perfect to get me started as it gave me the structure I required. Being scaffolded with a clear pathway and template was exactly what I needed to get motivated. I had previously been reflecting on my practice and was using a blog to present this however it was inconsistent and often I would forget to document my findings, evidence and learning so this change initiative worked well for me and my needs. When reporting back to our vertical group, situational leadership was needed as we had a variety of different personalities. Senior leadership were great at responding to individual needs and ensuring everyone felt supported and respected when sharing. In reflection I feel that, as my confidence developed and time went on, I personally required more of a distributed leadership style to enable me to be able to make changes to my inquiry, such as choosing my own focus rather than sticking to our team focus. Therefore this would have allowed me to use what I was passionate about in my inquiry and have more control over my own inquiry process.
In planning for success we have identified a number of stakeholders, grouped them into adoption stages based on ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ theory (Robinson, 2009) and developed a leadership plan. For early adopters we have identified two of our teachers, two of our senior management team, some of our students and the minority of our parents. The common characteristics of these groups include motivation and willingness to learn, growth mindset, adaptive confidence, previous technology experience and those that are enthusiastic to strategic innovations that make a difference. For our early majority we have identified another two teachers, one of our senior management team and a larger group of students and parents. The common characteristics of this group include a keenness for new learning, positive attitude but seem to have a need for a proven ready to implement ideas.
With our early adopting teachers and students that are keen and motivated to learn, we will be using Blanchard’s situational leadership theory (2008), by largely coaching and/or delegating this group as they are very enthusiastic to the change and little motivation is required for this redesigned approach to blended learning. By modifying our leadership to this group within this context we will provide the appropriate face-to-face support and clear feedback on their implementation. They will be used as a positive exemplar and celebrated, as well as to help lead and support others. With regards to the early adopting parents we will seek to get their presence and support them in how they can work with their children in the initiative. Further into the initiative these parents will be used alongside their children to showcase their success with other students and whanau. This will also be showcased on our class blogs. As early adopters, a transformative style of leadership (McCleskey, 2014) will also be very powerful as we will develop a common vision and provide flexibility for this teaching and learning approach; this will help incentivise their actions.
With our early majority teachers and students, we will again adopt a situational leadership approach, however this will be more of a directive style to the leadership as the early majority require a more extrinsic motivation by seeing evidence of success in the concept and they will appreciate a more step-by-step methodology to achieving the same success. This will include the modelling and face-to-face support from ourselves as well as our early adopters. In many ways this requires a transactional leadership approach (McCleskey, 2014) as we will provide structure as well as competition and
reward. As this group will want to see that this initiative will improve teaching practice and learning, we will also be using a pedagogical leadership approach by showcasing evidence and research of successful blended learning initiatives, such as the TPACK model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). In order to showcase evidence of success we will host a whanau hui where the early adopting students and parents will share their success and evidence of the blended learning approach. The early adopting teachers will also showcase, alongside the innovators, deeper research and evidence of blended learning.
With success breeding success we aim to allow the later adopters to join the revolution.
Reference List:
Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership
. Psychology Press.
Blanchard, K. (2008). Situational Leadership-Adjust your style to suit the development level. Leadership Excellence
, 25
(5), 19.
Fowler, M. (2012).
Leading inquiry at a teacher level: It's all about mentorship. Set: Research Information for Teachers,
(3), 2.
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development.
Journal of Business Studies Quarterly,
5
(4), 117-130.
Ministry of Education. (2010). T ū Rangatira: M ā ori Medium Educational Leadership
. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Key-leadership-documents/Tu-rangatira-English
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for integrating technology in teachers’ knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108 (6)
, 1017–1054 Osborne, Mark (2014). Inviting Innovation: Leading meaningful change in schools.
In set: Research Information for Teachers, 2,
NZCER PRESS, Wellington.
Robinson, L. (2009). A summary of Diffusion of Innovations. Changeology.
Retrieved from http://www.enablingchange.com.au/Summary_Diffusion…
Robinson, V. M., (2007). School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why
(Vol. 41). Winmalee: Australian Council for Educational Leaders.
