Thursday, March 31, 2011

Professional Development of Teachers

This week, I will attempt to speak on what I perceived to be my role in the professional development of teachers in ICT implementation.

As part of my contribution to affecting learning on students, my role include encouraging fellow teachers to try something new such as designing ICT based on pedagogy, reexamine assumptions, i.e. drill and practice may not be the best way, look at their teaching from different perspectives namely conceptual understanding versus mere manipulating, rethink how teaching can be better enhanced using ICT. Hence, my role in professional development is part of a set of practices as a leader, and they are especially important at this early stage of ICT implementation. But such development occurs in informal as well as formal ways. This really depends on the teachers’ current understanding of learning.

I believed that to get ICT implementation going, I need to purposely build and strengthen the teachers by providing appropriate professional development opportunities, in-service training, workshops, peer observation and learning.

I also believe that it is critical to respect the teachers’ autonomy and support them in their professional development. More importantly, I need to ensure that the teachers have a reasonable amount of time to participate in professional development. I have invited outside expert advisors such as AsknLearn and Ace Learning to deliver in-service training in the school. More such experts will be invited to help the teachers. Moreover, when teachers want to attempt to use ICT in their lessons, these teachers were offered expert’s help to find best ways to do so. Workshops and seminars were also offered along with an individualized approach to meet the teachers’ learning needs as well.

Such training must be practical so that the teachers will find such intellectual stimulation valuable. So I need to note that, for example, “the experts should run in-services on “What is using ICT for collaborative and self-directed learning all about? What does it look like? What will be look it without ICT?” This is to address the teachers’ concerns about “never even seen CoL and SDL and so does not know what to prepare the students for.” At the same time, the ICT mentors need to be involved in coaching to help teachers deliver a ICT program. This is the informal help which I believed the teachers will find more valuable. The ICT mentors need to be given time for this. Currently, they are heavily loaded with other duties. Together with the external experts in providing in-service for teachers, the ICT mentors will be one of the important pillars who can plan ICT integration with IP Head as well as support the teachers around subject instructions and facilitate discussions with teachers at the department level.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Conditions to Improving Teaching and Learning

Last week, I reflected on the setting and helping teachers achieve expectations. This week, I will attempt to speak on how I hope to improve such conditions for improved teaching and learning.

In my opinion, the condition here should refer to the knowledge and skills of teachers about curriculum, instruction and learning for the students. And exercising a positive influence on these variables calls on me to know the technical core of schooling, extend my problem solving capacities and review my knowledge of effective instruction.

And since a considerable amount of evidence is available in literature about the effects on student learning stemming from such conditions, it is my responsibility to help prioritize those known conditions to have the greatest chance of improving students’ learning. Already our school on classroom level had focus on assessment for learning (AfL) and the use of ICT as two long term strategic thrusts in our improvement efforts where, for example, on the extent to which teachers are providing students with immediate and formative feedback and pedagogical technology instructions

Simply knowing which conditions hold the greatest promise for improving student learning may not be enough. But it serves as a starting point where every one of us leaders discovers the core conditions for ourselves. After that it still leaves me with the problem of figuring out how to improve the actual status of those conditions in the school. So the key question following discovery and selecting of core variables for action is “What do I do?”

From my past reflections, I had emphasized that as educators, we must place teaching and learning at the heart of improvement efforts and so our relentless pursue ways is to improve the instructional core. Building instructional capacity of teachers requires shifting beliefs and cultures, adopting views that all students regarding of streams can learning, and coupling the need of high expectations. But in order to build up such capacity, I must first understand the definition of quality instruction and pedagogy. After which it is important to be able to strategically implement a plan that addresses capability building among teachers within our departments while other building trust. Investment in teachers’ continuous professional development can increase student achievement. However, such importance should be emphasized by placing a premium on teachers’ professional development as a route to improving instructional outcomes. Professional development should not be just a teacher attending a course and reflecting. The “learned-teacher” should be encouraged to form professional leaning communities to support inquiry and development of pedagogical practices.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Practices to Achieve Teachers’ Expectations

Last week, I reflected on the setting of teachers’ expectations. This week, I will attempt to speak on the practices which I believe may help teachers achieve their expectations.

There is this saying “knowing your followers’ needs and raising them to more mature levels ….” One way is by the use of delegation to provide the teacher opportunity to self-actualize and to attain higher standards of development. In my opinion, this delegation must be a behavior which should communicates respect for the teacher, as well as show concerns about the teachers’ feelings and needs. Delegation should not be just passing on of responsibilities from the leader! Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

To me, the practice of this sort needs to include task orientation such as the actual responsibility and consideration for people namely their ability, their aspiration, their potential. In addition, there is a need to “support” and “recognize and reward” teachers as well. With these practices, I hope to build the confidence, resilience and persistence of teachers to face the challenges of ICT implementation – is really the goal I intend to achieve.

I believe that providing professional support and encouragement for teachers’ personal growth such be done, even for teachers who face immediate challenges of their classrooms or instructions (sometimes there are questions from others why “a particular teacher” is allowed to go for this, that training while he/she is already facing difficulties in this, that…). Instead, as leaders we need to monitor teachers on a more regular basis and provide them with supports through one-to-one meetings, and more importantly be able to give them advice for improvements. Monitoring alone is not the way. I urged for more time to be set aside for leaders (some are over-bagged) to lend support and encourage their teachers (that is why the leader also need to be competent first) to raise their self-esteem and self-image, and to influence their belief in their professional ability. By and large, these indicate that school leaders are more facilitators, mentors and coaches.

Evidences from last Friday’s management meeting showed questions been raised about relating instruction practices with theory. Literature reviews showed contributing forces on the role of theory, especially those emerged from the observation of students at work can play on instructional practices. These theories will help shed light on learning difficulties which students had. Leaders already involved in such practices would best use the collaborative session such as our PLC, the department meeting to address the teachers’ individual concerns about their instruction and what student improvement the theory will serve. Otherwise, leaders could also seek advice from consultants from recognized institutions.

However, I personally feel that teachers often find it more effective to get help from their colleagues with whom they are now collaborating in teams and through regular department meetings where theoretical based instructions could be emphasized than through external sources. Thus, there is a need to highlight the role of the leader in creating such collaboration within the department (Again, leaders need the competence). When teachers grew more comfortable collaborating with colleagues, consultations among teachers becomes a natural approach to any problem solving in school Luckily, this is a culture the school is slowing building.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Teachers’ Expectations

This week, I will attempt on parts of the 4-stage cyclical process of reflective practice to help facilitate my reflection on setting of teachers’ expectation.

Faith in us Teachers

Setting high expectations is part of direction setting because it has to be closely aligned with our school’s goal. Although high performance expectations cannot be the only substance of our school’s goal, they do demonstrate to the teachers “the expectations of excellence, quality and/or high performance in teaching and learning for the students”. I think that this is central behavior associated with leading of team or school (Just look at the outcomes of events with low or no clear set expectations).

How to go about setting expectations?

One example which I did with the ICT PLC was to “enlarge” the teachers’ capacity to imagine what might be achieved, and “increase” their sense of accountability for bringing this about (through their individual ICT action plan). As the starting point of ICT implementation in the school this year, the emphasis is to establish a culture of high expectations, high collaboration, and mutual respect among the members of the team. For my part, I need to be able to set the tone for the shared ICT goals, high standards, and high expectations (during reviews during ICT PLC meetings) and to provide the necessary support to teachers in order to turn high expectations into high performance (through training based on individual teacher's needs, sharing of implementation processes, ICT resources).

I also see the need to establish appropriate, measurable, and agreed-on indicators and targets. Some of these are already been set by the Ministry level (such as the ICT baseline standards, BYiTES 3.0) while others need to be set based on the agreement between teachers (among teachers within departments on their ICT action plans, teachers agreeing to becoming ICT mentors, teachers willingly sharing of ICT practices). As mentioned during last Friday’s management meeting, the performances of the teacher are based on their own belief, combined with either optimism or pessimism and in this case, on the use of ICT in their teaching and learning. However, as leaders, I believe that our expectations for high performance of teachers should be based on the belief, with considerable optimism, about the untapped potential of teachers for growth and development.

And Yes, we will be pleasantly surprised at what our teachers will be able to accomplished (… all 7 departments had come out with their ICT action plans for 2011! …was told of a collaboration project between humanities and science department, an initiative by the teachers themselves!). Teachers are able to motivate each other (I hear of heads encouraging themselves to continuously write their weekly journals) and more importantly, to shift their expectations of themselves (many teachers asking for professional development in ICT). The students too can cause the teachers to shift the expectations for them, thus enabling the initiation processing of ICT implementation to begin. What I hope to see? That there is an opportunity to say, “You know what about designing and developing ICT implementation. If we approach this properly, we realize that everyone is in this together. We start as low as single building blocks, then we work together upwards and so we are not going to tumble as we progress.”

I also need to take the responsibility for communicating these expectations for teachers and then followed through to make sure the expectations are met. For this to happen, I really need to be personally involved at the start with the teachers. Preaching just won’t make these happen. Moreover, I feel that this responsibility must be enacted uniformly. Treating some teachers differently will be counter-productive. Teachers’ Expectations

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Processes on Achieving Sustainability

Riding on the comment made in the last reflection on sustaining teachers in school, this week I will reflect on the processes I believe may aid in achieving sustainability in the school.

Sustainability

There are competing interpretations of the word “sustainability”. I believe that sustainability is not about the environmental sustainability, not about better classrooms, not about faster wireless connections. Neither is it about prolonging specific teachers’ interventions or innovations, not about standardized teaching strategies or methods, not about specific departmental programs or packages. And neither is it about the durability of an organization to withstand external pressures, not about long serving leaders or teachers, not about age old norms of the school. Sustainability in education, I think is about establishing the conditions for high student performance over time. And what do I mean by performance? In order to move towards sustainability, I think that there must be a widely shared “moral” purpose, a point mentioned to me earlier which prompted me to this idea. So, in my opinion the performance in the case of education will be concerned with students’ learning. Below are two considerations which I think will enable sustainability in the school.

This year in particular, there are already fundamental changes to the schools’ internal processes (strong focus of AfL, embedding ICT to support learning, meeting of deadlines, better monitoring processes, new heads) and organizational culture (such as collaborations, openness towards feedbacks, accountability). These changes are unlikely to be linear. I already observed ebbs and flows, setbacks and successes. This is the natural flow. Although I know that progression may not be certain, some backing and forwarding is more likely. But with strong leadership, the school will be brought through this difficult period to the point of sustainability. Indeed, persistence and resilience (core values we hold) tend to be the hallmarks of teachers and schools that demonstrate high performance over time.

I foresee many processes and programs changing in the school, however there are two approaches I think will always continue to be focused on. They are the focus on “academic value” and “organizational capabilities and culture”.

The first focus on “academic value” is a no-nonsense measure for the students’ learning. It should reflect a zero-tolerance approach to the teaching and learning of students, which combines intense pressure with intervention to tackle “students-at-risk”. These include greater accountability of leaders and teachers, continuous school improvements, implementation of evidence based teaching, and development of capable teachers. However, I feel that if this measure is to be used on teachers continuously, success will often be short-lived. In addition, the imposition of a timescale on improvements by others may not be achievable all the time.

So the second focus on building deeply rooted “organizational and culture change” is more effective in implementing sustainability in the school. The focus here is on both the individual and collective capacity development. The only sure way that we are certain to sustain improvement is to build capacity in the school “to provide smart, strong leadership, staff who are intensely focused on students’ learning, highly competent committed teachers, clear lines of responsibilities(I am highlighting), and an environment that emphasize on collaboration, trust, and continuous learning and improvements.

I believe that in order to sustain improvements, leaders must purposefully create such organizational and cultural environment. Securing long term changes I know remains a challenge, considering that every change of principals, the school and the culture will change. Nevertheless, I believe that such dynamic change in organization and culture will be more successful compared to remaining at status quo.