Design Thinking - leadership,pedagogies, classroom

This was an interesting presentation around the 'design thinking' process.

The team is very important - you need to make the 5 stages very important.

Some people will want to go straight to the evolution, some will want to be in discovery forever.

Empathy is a big word in Design Thinking  - the momentum of a project maintained by thinking and time to meet

The language of the process needs to be imbedded

The strength of each phase is based on the strength of the phase before

Discovery Phase  

- opportunities and enthusiasm to create new ideas. This includes presaging your research, gathering inspiration 

- always use visual reminders - pin boards, whiteboards 

- whole school perspective -schools often have many big projects - often at different stages of the design thinking process - who has the big picture - a number of projects in evolution stages

- what are your 

Interpretation

- how to look at all the projects through your school's eyes 

- school context essential

- has to be situation based

- perspectives and understandings change

- need to involve a lot of people in this stage 

- lots of questions - how can we support the teachers to make a change...

Ideation

- re technology, not the shiniest objects , but the fit for purpose

- follow on from the Technology curriculum - design process 

- generate and refine ideas - expansive without constraints 

- include experts in this section

- convergent to divergent thinking

- more detailed brief - end product

- documenting the design process 

Experimentation

- run the trials

- stakeholder interest 

- plan to fail and grew 

Evolution

- positive and negative feedback loop 

Games design and development - create an educational game based on indigenous stories 

 

Case Study - Paul Whitehead - letters from a small stage

An fascinating and  interesting look at a small school doing something amazingly different - Bold Park Community School - http://www.boldpark.com/

Philosophy 

Reggio inspired - http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Reggio_Emilia/

100 languages

Environment 

Nature based 

Socio constructivist

Respect ( no discipline policy)

What you'd see at Bold Park

Every class is multi range - 3 levels right up to Yr 12 

No bells

First names - all teachers all students 

40% of class time spent outside

No shoes except for sport and science lab

Outside play spaces  - lots of freedom - fire pits, no internal fences 

Staff write a personalised letter to every student twice a year

Half a day professional development a week - close early every Weds

2 teachers in every room - 1 trained, 1 in training 

'Deep and Wide' projects - https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=221634584522781&story_fbid=881608635192036

Paul recognised that it is Hard to break down the silos of the secondary school - however as a school they were determined to do - this became the forensics unit - including the collaborative writing of a novel over a 3 month period - http://www.boldpark.com/home/?currentPage=2

'Positive Girls' - fabulous Health, Media and English based unit 

Total belief in the need for community involvement! 

Reach every student in every class - Jon Bergmann

One guiding question - what is the best for my students in my classroom?

@jonbergmann   www.FlippedClass.com

His flipped classroom came from necessity - students had to leave to go to various activities. 

What is the best use of your face to face time? 

The connections teachers make in the classroom are what makes great teaching! So how can we rethink schools? The days of teachers holding the knowledge is gone. The world has changed! Relationships focus of everything.

Most teachers grew up in an information scarce world - we live in an information rich world. 

How do we shift the focus from content driven to higher order thinking activities. 

Traditionally we  send the kids home to do the hard stuff - this is wrong! Not all kids grow up educationally privileged. Solution - flip the Blooms classroom - most of the class time should be spent on applicant and analysis. Direct instruction done outside the classroom.

Research shows not only improvement in engagement but also grades. Exhausting for the teacher but best for the kids. 

A common misconception is that it's about the video. It's not about the videos - if the teacher is not interacting with the kids the next day, then the pedagogy is still wrong. 

What are the hurdles?

- Internet capability and access

- What if they don't do it? ( any different to what they don't do now ) 

Biggest mistakes

- length of video - keep them short

- teach them how to watch the video - teach them to take notes 

Curate or Create 

- make your own videos 

- increase active participation with self made content - trust - you are their teacher 

4 key strategies to flip a school 

- flip the thinking of the teacher - flip what school looks like

- it takes time - give the teachers time to do this 

- technology support 

- train ourselves and our students 

What is the best use of face to face class time? 

Students need help with the hard stuff!

www.mrrbrown.org

Information is cheap today.

Bergmann - 'Flipping the classroom allows me to talk every student every day' 

http://flippedclass.com/about-m/

Leading innovative change - Simon Breakspear

Why do we need to change?

Many of us are on the ground doing it now - we don't need to know why we need to change, we've had a few years if this! We need to know the how! 

How are we going to do this? Everyone is having the same conversations.

We need to .....

Defer judgements

Encourage wild ideas

Take risks and be curious 

How can we make a measurable impact in the 20% of time we have to make a change!

Students and parents don't always respond to the desire for change.

Schools are unique contexts -.they are complex and adaptive - they generate unexpected outcomes

Don't delay the change!!

We need to accept that there are done things we are stuck with - play the game, but run another system - agile leaderships

Key messages 

Better all the time - keep trying to get better - always looking for the next level

Always keep building - take from everyone and personalise to your own place. 

Honour the past - and move your school on a journey towards a compelling learning future. 

Relationships are still the killer app for learning 

Join the evolution - embrace the creative tensions of living in two systems 

How do teachers find the time to actually change their pedagogy? Time to unlearn and learn - when do we get time for this?

Agile Leadership

Clarify - if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself - worldwide shared vision for learning -what will be different in  practice in 2017 ; less is better - too many short lived with little impact ; change one thing - what would you change? Do one thing well, for two years  - don't just add something else. Change the practice, not the person.

Mobilise - how do we change old practice to new practice - how do we make it work for us? What is working  for whom under what set of conditions? Give teachers a licence to create, to solve the problems themselves. Work in the 'white spaces' with the people who 'already believe' - start with minimal changes- think about inquiry- think about a frugal way of testing your assumption 

Amplify - spread what works and accelerate through partners - feedback on your own practices - how do you spread effective practice? Spread with the speed of trust! How we need work with staff that we are not aligned with? Always reference the work of other people's gifts.

Never stop the learning......

Students shaping their education and igniting innovation - Ricky Campbell-Allen

Interesting presentation from the 'Foundation for Young Australians' -   acting for educational change.

How can students not just benefit from education, but have a say in what it looks like? 

Use of social media platform to collect data - Student 'shout out' - what happens when you ask students what matters in their education-http://www.cnpe.org.au/our-work/sso/

Why wouldn't you give the students a voice - there are 3 and a half million of them in NSW!! Competitions ran on social networks to garner information. So far behind NZ on this! 

From here a group of students went to ACT to speak to Senators. Lots of learning around how to engage students in school governance and decision making?

Data showed that young people wanted to be engaged - 34% of respondents saw engagement as most important compared to 3% saw literacy and numeracy as important. Equity also a key concern - 25%.

Parents, governments and teachers hardly registered student engagement - they saw literacy and numeracy as most important. Student views are not represented by the other stakeholders, clearly. 

Globally there is a move to include stakeholder views in education policy. 

Interestingly - when used alone, student surveys are more reliable than observations. Also the lowest cost form of teacher evaluation. Observations, surveys and test data slightly higher when combined.

#voicematters -  student voice matters because the students know what needs to be discussed in schools

Create the future - nothing is impossible - J Goh and L Sov

John Goh is an amazing leader - listening to his school and community's story was inspiring - looking forward to visiting there Friday (very early!!!) 

My conversation with John Goh began on Twitter - https://twitter.com/alisoncleary/status/575473007080026113

So it was great to hear him present in our session today. 

Merrylands East - 90% non English speaking, 20% refugees so it is impossible to run an homogenous programme - the students come in at so many levels - how could you possibly follow an aged based curriculum?

It was clear that cultural capital needed to be taken into account. Changes were made to school day based on extensive community consultation - parents do not work 9-5. There was no model for this - Merrylands became the researchers. Teachers become the researchers - a research paradigm. Really clear that John 

Is prepared to challenge the status quo to get the best possible outcomes for his students. School now starts at 7am

http://m.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/parramatta/early-start-and-finish-times-work-at-merrylands-east-public-school/story-fngr8huy-1226844807512

He asked us a fundamental  question - What can the children do at school that they cannot do at home - if they can learn it outside school, why do they need to be there??? 

I think it would be challenging to actually see what this looked like if we 'mapped' the answers at RHS.

5 key principles 

- real world authentic problem solving

- driving questions

- personalised learning

- backward mapping of outcomes

- technology as a process tool

- ongoing assessment 

Teachers live collaboration - teams  of 3 teachers in shared spaces and interestingly  students have become owners of their own spaces - they decide which furniture is best for which year level or work plan. 

EdVenture Time 

Developed on the back of Google 'genius hour' - scaffolded 'passion learning'

Students drive the process and the learning.

Low academic students are performing well in this model. Students bring their own devices - learning is seamless from home to school - and  reflection a key part of the learning ( another common theme in innovative schools)

Students are exposed to the syllabus it's not a secret - the curriculum is not limited - but rather selective!!  The students have become the teacher in a number of instances - especially around new technologies. 

John's statement - Don't let standardised assessment drive what you do received a large round of applause. 

Where have we learnt? 

Student data shows a lot more engagement. 

Boys in yr 4-6 engaged in reverse of national trends.

Bottom 10% literacy has been reduced. 

PBL- as a  key to engagement 

Driving question followed by aspects of learning, team jobs had to be applied for - team managers have become school leaders.

What's my paradigm?

Have you changed as a teacher from when you graduated?

He has no office - the school has no bells

'Somehow they know when it's time.' They can eat whenever - why do we eat to a bell? The staff never say 'time to pack up' if the kids are engaged in learning!

'The more I let go, the more my teachers create, the more my teachers let go, the more the students create'

Inspired leadership 

John's Blog is here -

http://mepsprincipal.edublogs.org/

YouTube here - http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zrBpcIaha6M

You'll be able to read more about his school after we visit there on Friday. 

 

Where's my space - learning and teaching in an MLE

Stonefields Primary School - 4 years old -  growing - passionate about driving change in learning

Theme - Trying  to replicate anything is difficult - complexity theory - you may not have all the 'ingredients' 

Theory - Cynefin Change Framework - levels of leadership - change is complex, because relationships are complex

Open space learning is about negotiating  the relationships in the spaces - not just student teacher / teacher teacher. Generally classrooms became a 'Kingdom' ( my classroom, my kids). Teacher training needs to change to address this - very soon.

These new buildings create new affordances - a fundamental shift in the way we navigate spaces and negotiate relationships.

Question - Will we ever be in our own classroom on our own in 10 years time?

The complex domain - constant change constant flux - unknown unknowns - innovative and imaginative possibilities. 

Chris called his staff brave, as did Stacey Quince - teachers need to be brave to make changes.

School Vision - 

Build learning capacity

Collaboration - students who are willing to work together when needed

Break through - spend time working on what they are good at - know what they are good at!

Why shared spaces ? What is the OECD view of the benefits? 

Professional growth

Professional development model

Differentiation 

Deprivatisation?

Inquiry?

No fluffy notion of what teachers do - if we are not creating learning then we need to know what to do.

BUT teachers need TIME to 

- meet

- plan

- reflect

- analyse

- think alone 

Even in our small model at RHS we are struggling with this.

The teacher team has many dichotomies to address - private/ public ; walled/ transparent.

What are we learning?

A real growth in incidental professional development - professional learning communitiesc are geographically located and happening in real time all the time. This has a significant impact on student learning.

Challenges

'Being in a arranged marriage' - collaboration involves some risk - the greater good 'we go' not 'ego'.

Group mind - mindset actively interrogates what is being done - always discuss them elephant in the room - tidiness, timeliness (!!!) 

What sort of teachers?

Lone star - own thing ! 

Butterfly - collaborate over everything!

T shaped worker - can do both - benefit learners.

'We not me' - our kids, not my kids - our space, not my space!

Is it working?

Feedback from students, parents, community suggest so. Student engagement suggests so.

What works together? 

Really enjoyed Chris' presentation today - lots to think about re our own building