Quality, equality and creative leadership

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Quality, equality
and creative leadership
Louise Stoll Visiting Professor London Centre
for Leadership in Learning Institute of
Education, University of London louise_at_louisestoll
.com
ICSEI 2009 Vancouver, British Columbia
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• Outline
• Summary of historical perspectives on school
  effectiveness and improvement
• Challenges for school effectiveness and
  improvement
• A response creative leadership

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The purpose of ICSEI is to enhance the quality
and equity of education for all students in
elementary (primary) and secondary schools. .
. . achieved through the acquisition and
dissemination of information in a co-ordinated
effort amongst policy makers, practitioners and
scholars, using the Annual Conference, the
Congresss related journals, the website and any
other appropriate methods. . . . efforts to
achieve this purpose are made in diverse settings
by many individuals and organisations employing a
variety of perspectives.
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• School Effectiveness
• focus on students progress and development
  value added
• progress for all students, not just a few
  
  differential effectiveness
• contextual differences
• nested levels
• effect sizes
• added value sustained over time stability
  of effects
• factors within control of leaders and teachers
  identified as statistically related to greater
  student progress, summarised in lists
  of effective schools characteristics
• orientation to quantitative methodology

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• School improvement
• focus on process (journey) as well as outcomes
• identifying necessary teaching and learning and
  other conditions to support successful change
• considering capacity to engage in and implement
  significant change
• increasing interest in sustainability
• contextually differences one size doesnt fit
  all
• initially qualitative methodologies, increasing
  use of mixed methodological approaches
• RD projects
•  

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Challenges Quality and equality Global and
local Now and the future
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Relationship above OECD average impact
Relationship not different from OECD average
impact
Relationship below OECD average impact
PISA 2006 Performance in science at age 15
and impact of
socio-economic background
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UNICEF child well-being in rich countries
(2007) Average rankings on 6 dimensions Av
ranking Av ranking 1. Netherlands 4.2 12.
Canada 11.8 2. Sweden 5.0 12. Greece
11.8 3. Denmark 7.2 14. Poland 12.3
4. Finland 7.5 15. Czech Republic 12.5 5.
Spain 8.0 16. France 13.0 6.
Switzerland 8.3 17. Portugal 13.7 7.
Norway 8.7 18. Austria 13.8 8. Italy
10.0 19. Hungary 14.5 9. Ireland
10.2 20. USA 18.0 10. Belgium
10.7 21. UK 18.2 11. Germany
11.2
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United Nations Education for All UNESCO 2000 6
goals 1. Expand improve comprehensive early
childhood care education 2. Ensure by 2015
all children have access to complete free,
compulsory, high quality education 3. Ensure
learning needs of all young people adults met
through equitable access to learning
life-skills programs 4. Achieve 50 improvement
in adult literacy levels equitable access to
basic and continuing education 5. Eliminate
gender disparities in primary secondary
education by 2005 achieve gender equality by
2015 6. Improve all aspects of quality of
education ensure excellence of all to achieve
learning outcomes, especially literacy, numeracy
essential life skills
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National Council for Curriculum and Assessment,
Ireland Key Skills
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The four pillars of learning Learning to
know Learning to do Learning to live
together Learning to be
UNESCO (1996)
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A response
Creative leadership
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• Four characteristics of
  creative processes
• They all involve thinking or
  behaving imaginatively
• Overall, this imaginative activity is
  purposeful
• These processes must generate something original
• The outcomes must be of value in relation to the
  objective
• K Robinson et al for DfESS (1999)
  All Our
  Futures Creativity, Culture Education
  

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Creative leadership

• . . . collaborative, imaginative and
  thought through responses to
  opportunities and challenging issues that inhibit
  learning at all levels. Its about seeing,
  thinking and doing things differently in order to
  improve the life chances of all students.
• Creative leadership is both
• being creative leaders yourselves
• providing the conditions and opportunities
  for others to be creative
  
  Stoll and Temperley (2009)

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Given what you have heard at this conference
about new departures for a learning world, does
the concept of creative leadership resonate with
you?
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Promoting creative leadership Providing time and
space
physical and emotional
External challenge and
stimulation Taking people out
of their
comfort zones Promoting risk
taking Regular experience
Locating within a
supportive learning

community
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When adult relationships in schools are
characterized by trust, the stories about change
shift from indifference or negativity to
possibility and hope.
Kaser and Halbert (2009, in press)
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• Demonstrating creative leadership in action
  school and district projects
• Curriculum innovation
• Internal and/or external
  capacity building
• Extending the use of
  data and evidence
•  

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• Demonstrating creative leadership
• 
  Three examples
• Capacity building
• 2. Methodologies
• 3. Knowledge animation

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1.
Capacity . . . allows people, organisations or
entire systems routinely to learn from the world
around them and apply their learning to new . . .
situations so that they continue on a path toward
their goals, even though the context is
ever-changing. Stoll and
Earl (2003)
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Capacity building
Before Now the future
Differentiated and contextualised
One size fits all
Instructional improvement
Authentic and deep learning
Creativity, innovation and next practice
Current best practice
Lateral networked, international
Top-down
Dependence
Habit of mind
Leadership capacity, including students
Principalship
Individual school
Systemic capacity, including family and wider
community
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Harts ladder of participation
8. Child initiated, shared decisions with adults
7. Child initiated and directed
Degrees of participation
6. Adult initiated, shared decisions with children
5. Consulted and informed
4. Assigned but informed
Non participation
3. Tokenism
2. Decoration
1. Manipulation
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Austrian Leadership Academy (LEA)

Involves all
types of schools and all levels of the system
(connect horizontal and vertical system levels)
traditional system
ministry
inspectors
dynamic system
dynamic system
heads
hierarchical system
NEW ENERGY
Schratz and Schley (2007)
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• New Methodologies
• Robust measures of 21st Century outcomes
• Extending development of
• multi-level analyses to include different
  parts of the system
• methodologies to explore intercultural
  similarities and differences
• methodologies to assess processes of
  improvement
• school, district and system
  self-evaluation
• participatory evaluation methodologies
• Methodologies to capture innovation
• Accountability systems and methodologies to
  capture new ways of working eg networking and
  collaboration

2.
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3.
Knowledge Animation Ways of making knowledge
accessible and mobile to fuel dialogue that
promotes learning connections and use

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Bridging research and practice is harder than it
looks. Simply communicating information may help
to raise awareness but it is unlikely to
stimulate behaviour change. The mediation
infrastructure . . . Involves a raft of
resources that are crafted with as much attention
to pedagogy to the needs of the professional
learner as to the quality and relevance of the
research CUREE (2007) Mediation infrastructure
Hillage et al (1998)
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Which of these strategies have you found most
powerful in helping promote learning connections
and use of external research findings?
self-evaluation instrument
seminar
trainer of trainer
materials
book
web resource
keynote speech
professional article
newsletter
course
higher degree teaching
game
simulation
coaching/mentoring
video/film
learning conversation
audio resource
workshop
guide to practice
Research and development project
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Which 2 of the following strategies have you
found most powerful in helping teachers share
their knowledge and ideas? Please rank your top 2
in order of priority Learning
conversation 36 Coaching/mentoring 31 Netw
orking 12 Videos of practice/audio
examples 7 Verbal presentations
6 Teacher designed materials 4 Written
stories and reflections 2 Web
resources 2
Responses from GTC Teacher Learning Academy March
2008
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.
. . . knowledge is created through dialogue or
conversations that make presuppositions, ideas,
beliefs and feelings explicit and available for
exploration. It is in these conversations
that
new ideas, tools, and practices are created, and
the initial knowledge is either substantially
enriched or transformed during the process. Earl
and Timperley (2008)
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Three fields of knowledge
NCSL Networked Learning Communities (2003)
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In what ways could you and your
colleagues/peers powerfully demonstrate
creative leadership to respond to the improvement
and effectiveness opportunities challenges facing
your system?