No magic bullets

A report titled The Learning Curve, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, states that there are no magic bullets for solving the educational issues / problems we all face. The report uses quantitative and qualitative analysis and draws from a large body of internationally comparable education data. Some important points from the report:

1. There are no magic bullets - 'Strong relationships are few between education inputs and outputs', 'Education requires long-term, coherent and focussed system-wide attention to achieve improvement'.
2. Income matters, but culture matters more - i.e. community and society support for the kind of attitudes, thinking, and behaviours essential to our young people's successful learning and achievement. 
3. There is no substitute for good teachers - we need to value our teachers as professionals (attracting the best people into teaching, getting teacher training right, implementing clear goals and effective oversight, and letting teachers get on with it)
4. Education is local - while a set of principles or key factors can be analysed or applied to any schooling system, it is far more difficult to determine how you might then go about improving it. 

 Worth a look.....

Lest we forget

ANZAC day is on the 25th April. On this day we remember those who fought for Australia and New Zealand. Men and women who fought for a cause bigger than themselves. And although I do not want to romanticize war and its brutal realities, I do recognise the price they paid for those who stayed behind, and the next generations to come - namely us. 


These men and women were truly leaders (although they would probably not thought about themselves in this way). Leaders in that we have followed in their footsteps. Their actions have meant that we live in the NZ we do. That we enjoy the freedoms we do (even though we sometimes take them for granted.)


In John McCrae's poem 'In Flanders fields' (put to song in the video below) we read the lines... 


"take up the quarrel with our foe,
to you from failing hands we throw
the torch - be it yours to hold it high


if you break faith with us who die
we will not sleep though poppies grow
in flanders fields...."

As leaders ANZAC day provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the sacrifice and actions of those who have gone before. It also challenges us as leaders to think beyond ourselves and our own needs. To think about the legacy that we are leaving for those yet to come. In this way we honor those who carried the torch so well.

Overcoming the knowing-doing gap

The flush of new year is now beginning to wear off. New year resolutions (which seemed so right with a glass of red!) now seem to have lost some of their lustre and attractiveness. Left is the uncomfortable feeling that change and achieving goals requires effort and (often) sacrifice.

The same can be said as we begin another year in the world of education. The beginning of the year is a time to re-focus on those things we wish to change and our goals for the year. Our lists can range from simple to complex. From personal to professional. From organisation to team-wide. But how do we ensure they are not just another set of new year resolutions? How can we ensure they get past knowing and into doing?

Pfeffer and Sutton provide some good advice for us in their book The Knowing-Doing Gap. Pfeffer and Sutton describe a range of reasons as to why organisations often under-deliver, or fail to achieve their stated goals. A central premise of the book is that 'there are fewer and smaller differences in what we know than in our ability to act on that knowledge.' i.e. we struggle to transform the wealth of available information outlining what we should do into productive action. 

And at the end of the book the authors offer eight guidelines for action. These guidelines build on the experience of companies which have successfully turned their knowledge into action. I have picked up on four of these which I consider useful 'thought-provokers' for the new year:

1.    Why before how: philosophy is important – successful organisations understand that their people are their greatest asset. As such, they invest time helping these people understand not only what, but why they are doing what they are doing. They embody these understandings in a set of shared principles, guidelines, or values. The best organisations or teams I have been or worked in have taken the time to develop and communicate shared values and direction.

2.    Action counts more than elegant plans and concepts – ‘ready, fire, aim!’ Momentum is critical to success. Small actions informed by evidence and followed by adjustment often lead to change faster than getting stuck in the ‘paralysis by analysis’. Providing an environment where team members can share practical learning and results supports an action focussed culture.

3.    Fear fosters knowing-doing gaps, so drive out fear – there is no learning without mistakes. A culture of rapid improvement requires leaders who encourage risk-taking and avoid a culture of blame and punishment. 'Ako' is a Māori word that describes the state of being a reciprocal learner / inquirer and describes the kind of approach we need as educators if we are going to address some of educations most persistent and resistant problems.

4.    Measure what matters and what can help turn knowledge into action - “The foundation of any successfully run business is a strategy everyone understands coupled with a few key measurements that are routinely tracked.” (Brenneman) 

      As educators we are in the business of human potential. If we are successful our business will provide a secure foundation from which the next generation can step / surge into the future. 

      As leaders we need to consider our role in closing the knowing-doing gap. Others in the organisation will take their lead from what we do, where we spend our time, how we respond to failure, and what is important to us.

      So all the best for the new year. May it be one in which our actions speak louder than our words. 

Just ask the kids

Who is school for?

An easy enough question on the face of it - but if your answer is - "for the students of course" then my next question is - so how do we know it is working for them? Mmmm....

It was asking ourselves these questions that led us out to one of our local schools. And so....

Two weeks ago a couple of us met with 12 students from Hutt Intermediate. We decided we needed to ask the students how they were using e-devices and digital materials to assist their learning. Great kids.

Of little surprise was the ubiquity of the cell phone and it's place as number one gadget for texting and music. Magazines and newspapers seemed to be off the diet (although this group was still reading books), largely replaced by liberal doses of on-line face-booking and to a lesser extent games.

As a result of this meeting we invited the students and their teacher and principal to Learning Media. We were keen for them to have a look at some of the resources we had created and think about how they could be enhanced digitally to support their learning. The students worked in small groups and then shared their thinking with the whole group at the end.

As a result of the students feedback it became clear that they wanted the digital enhancements to do at least 3 things:

- amplify the meaning embedded in the resource through use of video, audio, diagrams, and games

- clarify the words or phrases of the text or diagrams through audio and links to dictionaries or definitions

- support the use of the resources (or parts thereof) in other work the students were involved in (such as projects or presentations)

Now there is nothing here that would possibly stun you as incredibly new or different.But what it is is authentic. It is real. Real in that it represents the actual thoughts and voices of the students.

And so my challenge is for us to consider how, when, to what extent, and in what ways are we engaging with students to understand their perspectives and lived experiences of learning, school and the classroom. Great initiatives, such as Te Kotahitanga, have emerged from such humble beginnings.

the three laws of performance

Transformation in education will require some new ways of doing things. We will need to be open to looking at old problems in new ways.

An old Sufi parable (told by Zaffron and Logan in their book 'the three laws of performance') describes a man searching for his keys one night. A friend of his arrives to find him on his knees under a streetlamp. The friend joins him and starts searching. After a while the friend turns to the man and asks him where exactly he dropped the keys. The man points into the darkness and responds "over there". To which the friend asks why he is searching here. "Because this is where the light is."

This certainly rang a few bells for me. How much time do we spend searching for new solutions in the same old places? Hoping that we will get to a new place while walking the well trod path?

The three laws of performance sheds some light on how we can address some of the old leadership challenges in new ways. In particular it suggests that we (as individuals and organisations) get tied up in 'language knots' that need to resolved and replaced with future based or generative language. The three laws are:

1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them

2. How a situation occurs arises in language

3. Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people

According to Zaffron and Logan the challenge for leaders is to listen for what is not being said. To be willing to explore the 'unsaid'. In this way you shed light on areas often left in the dark. Organisational blind-spots.

It also provides leaders with a framework for thinking about their own or their teams performance. Taking the time to consider how the team is perceiving situations becomes time well spent, as does listening to the type of language that is being used. Is the team stuck in descriptive language of how things 'have always been around here', or is future based language transforming perceptions and releasing hope and motivation?

Why is this important? 

Because as leaders we are only as good as our teams. And our teams deserve work-places that draw out the best from them in order to give the best to our young people.

So.... how are you using words to shape your organisation's future?

The Power of Feedback

Last fathers day my kids gave me a heart rate monitor. As per usual I thanked them for their thoughtfulness. The fascinating thing (since I started wearing it!) has been the impact it has had on my exercise regime. Once I was aware of my heart rate I was able to adjust the intensity of my exercise to keep it within my target zone (go here for a cool little target heart rate calculator). As a result my exercise has been more focussed and I have got fitter faster.

Feedback is critical to anyone (or any group) who seeks to improve or change.

Hattie and Timperley in their paper The Power of Feedback provide a model of feedback for student learning. Their model suggests that there are 3 questions central to effective feedback:

• Where am I going? (a goal focus)
• How am I going? (progress)
• Where to next? (feedforward or next steps)

These questions work at four levels:

• task level (how well are the tasks performed or understood)
• process level (the processes required to achieve the tasks)
• self-regulation level (my growth as an independent learner)
• self level (personal evaluations of my worth in relation to the above)

The level at which feedback is applied is critical to its effectiveness. In general the best feedback moves from task to process to self-regulation level, and praise at a self level is often of little effect and sometimes has a negative effect on improvement. Other factors for effective feedback include timing, clarity, amount, compatibility with students prior knowledge, and level of threat (best when low) to the students sense of self.

I am sure that this model does not only apply to students. It is a useful model for all of us regarding the feedback we give and receive. The big idea is that are energised when we are able to identify the discrepancy between our performance and our target and know how to close the gap (or at least a part of it). We get hooked on improvement. Feedback is that critical piece that enables us to 'grasp' the discrepancy and put pressure on it.

Doing the basics well is a critical part of sound leadership. Providing and receiving effective feedback to and from members of our team is one of those basics.

So....when did you last give or receive some effective feedback?

Using your brain

"Use your brain!"I do recall my Dad giving me this instruction on the odd occasion (usually the message being that I was not!) However, the difficulty (as with many other things in life) is that the brain does not come with an instruction manual. It does not have a help menu that you can search, or an 'Idiots Guide' that helps you solve your latest problem quickly and efficiently. Rather, you find yourself drawing upon a series of strategies that you have imported from youth, which may or may not be relevant to the problem at hand.

But things have changed.

Last week I attended the ULearn conference. During the conference I listened to Mark Treadwell who was speaking on brain research and the light it sheds upon teaching and learning. It was fascinating to learn about our different memory systems and how they interact together.

But what captured me the most was Mark's notion of a conceptual curriculum. A curriculum that focusses upon the 'big ideas'. One that builds on the way the brain works and is explicit in supporting learners in understanding and applying these big ideas across a range of contexts using relevant and engaging content. A curriculum that has the potential to accelerate students learning, and support enhanced self-regulation, engagement and creativity.

The Ministry of Education is doing something similar. It is developing a series of Secondary Teacher and Learning Guides. These guides are / have been developed by experienced teachers and subject experts. They have been written to support teachers to develop quality teaching and learning programmes at levels 6 - 8 of the New Zealand Curriculum. An important part of these guides is pulling together the 'big ideas' or key concepts of each subject area. A great example of this is the key concepts for physics.

So why should leaders be interested in brain research? My reason is simple. We need to accelerate the progress and achievement of our young people. And particularly those who have consistently struggled in our classrooms.  Such acceleration will require innovative ways of teaching and learning drawing upon the best evidence and research available to us. Brain research provides a potentially 'rich vein' of knowledge for achieving these ambitious goals. Organising knowledge around concepts (rather than disconnected facts) appears to be another high potential area for further exploration.

P.S. Turns out there IS an idiots guide to the brain!!

Artist's rendering of neurons. (Credit: iStockphoto)

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