Encapsulates the shift needed:
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach then to yearn for the vast and endless seas - (Atoine de Saint Exupery)
With the new curriculum we can see radical changes in education take fruition - this is where leading becomes cruicial (leading vs managing). "Manus" - hand; on the horse; change the name "Management Team" to "Leadership Team". In the old traditional model: coverage driven by teaching; new model: discovering, uncovering - driven by a focus ON Learning.
Where is our school model at NOW - I think "we are somewhere in the middle of static and flying", still discovering and uncovering. We need to be careful we don't just put new names on old model. Teachers spoke about how we need to not get too caught up in the model too much. That every component of our inquiry model is important.
What are our navigation aids? Our values, beliefs about leadership and learning, clarity of purpose, open mindedness imagination, critical reflection, dialogue- Julie talked about trusting in others to help lead learning.
Phases of Development - (a poutama model); tacit knowledge; by chance, hit or miss, accidental success; explicit knowledge strategies; by plan, recipe, understanding, open, makes sense, came from other knowledge; Deliberate conscious; be design, imaginative, insights, experimenting, experts success, the ouch step, their own learning; reflective inventive; invents, creates, critical reflection, refining, doesn't notice success.
Get stuck on the "guru loop" - tacit knowledge & explicit knowledge only. We can recognise some of us in this loop. We discussed how powerful our values and beliefs are, we also discussed what we don't believe is even more powerful.
Reconceptualising Leadership - transactional (actions, management, functional. maintenance) OR transformational (spirit, energy, shared excitement of school, life-world, vitality, development, learning). Note to self: rewrite our job descriptions, check curriculum guidelines we have developed and make sure first statements talk about the vision, transformational development within the curriculum area.
Models of leadership: We mostly grew up in hierarchical model of leadership; one command, industrial age, factory floor model, totally inappropriate in any organic (living) model. How do we conceptualise a model that is not hierarchical and autocratic? (hiero-holy, sacred, high priests, need a term for interdependence - "heterarchy" - networking, self-organising (Stanford) , (assembly vs morphogenesis). Collaborative/ Transformative/ Distributed; people, values and beliefs, purposes in the centre and people around the outside. The centre determines the direction....the anointed leader, e.g. Principal has the ultimate accountability to ensure direction from the centre is enacted. Have to have centre well-formed and well-articulated. Partnership, shared vision, understanding, engaging in co-creating, collaborative leadership.
How does our school relate to this model? Well as the current leader of our school I know we are enacting a model of collaborative leadership as this is how I lead. I value what staff have to offer and particular strengths - I believe in letting others lead and learning from each other. Julia's last words were: Trust in the group.
No comments:
Post a Comment