19 minute read
Virtual Learning Reflections
EDTHOUGHT International School Leadership During Tough Times: Reflecting on What Matters
It’s not easy being a leader. Of course, anyone involved in school leadership already knows this. But with the many challenges that have confronted us in 2020, this has perhaps become clearer than ever. For many international school leaders, particular issues emerge from the complex transnational spaces in which they operate. In this article, we briefly describe some of these challenges and suggest that this unusually difficult situation has provided an opportunity for school boards and leaders to reflect on some important questions about the nature of their roles.
The impact of Covid-19 on international schools
While Covid-19 has affected school leaders across the world, including those working in local schools with local children, the challenges presented have often been of a different nature for those involved in international school leadership. Leaders of schools that serve families from different parts of the world have encountered a plethora of challenges as a result of the pandemic. Many schools have witnessed a decline in enrolment as families have either been stranded in their home countries due to travel restrictions or have even lost their jobs as multinational employers have reduced or ceased operations. Others have made the decision themselves to take their families back to their home countries, seeking the support of family and the sense of comfort that often comes with being in one’s own country.
Mirroring the reality that the effects of globalization over the past three decades have not been even, Covid-19 has also impacted the world unevenly. Some countries have been affected in large numbers, while others have managed to mostly contain the virus. This has meant that some international schools, depending on their student demographics, have been more impacted than others. It also means that in many international schools with diverse student populations, the challenges and concerns being faced by some families are markedly different to those of others. Some international school leaders are working in countries that have imposed significant border restrictions and conditions for opening schools. For example, here in Hong Kong, the many “cross-border” students who travel each day from the Mainland have been unable to continue their education with their classmates. Under similar conditions, international school leaders across the world have been forced to consider whether they should offer learning that is fully online, offer a hybrid arrangement of asynchronous online and face-to-face lessons, or offer face-to-face lessons where students outside of the country “participate” live from their computer screens, to name just some of the options (you can see a map of school closures from UNESCO at-- https://en.unesco.org/ covid19/educationresponse)
In addition, these leaders have often had to unexpectedly delve much more deeply into their school’s financial position, making predictions about what kinds of operating losses can be sustained and for how long. They have also fielded requests – perhaps demands – from parents for reductions in tuition.
Perhaps some of the hardest decisions have involved staffing. Can we keep paying them? If so, can we do so at full salary? And, boards and leaders in countries where staff have been stranded outside the country, have had to confront the prospect of telling their staff – many of whom have been loyal employees and even friends – that they no longer have a job.
Given the gravity of the events of 2020--and given their particular significance for international schools--we wonder: have international school leaders been adequately prepared for the unique challenges they have now been asked to face? What might 2020 teach us about international school leadership? We offer the following questions and observations for reflection and as an encouragement to share practices and responses. We do not offer anything like an exhaustive list of questions and
issues, but suggest that a focus on the importance of relationships and ethical deliberation, especially in the context of culturally diverse spaces, might be a very good place to start.
What is the focus of school leaders’ work?
There is a lot of varied literature on school leadership out there. But we would suggest that the dominant framework in which educational leadership is conceptualized these days is that of instructional leadership: how to lead school improvement, instructional coaching, staff appraisal, how to use data to inform practice, etc. Yes, there has been an increased focus in recent years on social-emotional learning and wellbeing, but these are often linked, explicitly or implicitly, to improved (academic) outcomes. Educational leaders, of course, ought to be concerned about academic quality, but what are the consequences when instructional leadership and school effectiveness are the key paradigm in which emerging school leaders are trained? Think about your own context. What do leadership meetings and internal professional development sessions suggest about your school’s priorities? To what extent is the focus on trying to understand and support people compared to the analysis of data and discussions about how to meet external requirements or improve ‘performance’? A focus on human being rather than human performance might seem particularly important amidst the present challenges as people struggle with complexity and uncertainty. What about when the pandemic is over? How prominent will the relational focus of leadership be in your school?
How are international school leaders equipped for intercultural understanding?
A distinctive aspect of a more relational leadership focus in international schools ought to include deep thinking on how to approach cultural difference. International schools tend to claim that engagement with cultural diversity and global citizenship are key aspects of the education they offer, but how deep is that engagement? Given all the demands of the job, how tempting is it for international school leaders to simply show that they meet the requirements of authorization and accreditation bodies rather than deeply consider how to think about and practise cultural diversity? If school leaders themselves have not reflected deeply on the ethical and political ambiguities within intercultural understanding, can they reasonably expect this of their school communities? Are school boards and even senior leaders themselves prioritising this aspect of their own learning journeys? What might need to happen for your school to move from the uncritical celebratory approach (food, flags and festivals) to a commitment to confronting the difficulties of difference?
How important is the consideration of values?
School leaders manage organizations, but they lead people. To take the leadership of people seriously requires a deep commitment to ethical reflection as well as asking questions about who we are. This doesn’t require formal training in ethics. Instead, it is about being intentional about asking questions such as: what do the policies and practices of the school suggest about what we most value? How has the school responded to the challenges of 2020 and what this might say about how the teachers, non-teaching staff, parents, and students are understood and valued? Is there anyone on the school board or senior leadership team who regularly asks the group for an ethical justification of a decision? How often are market-based decisions that might negatively impact people questioned? How highly valued are humility and integrity within the board and leadership team? If ethical and human-based discussions have become more common at board and leadership meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic, has there been any discussion about ensuring that this continues as a standard approach to the consideration of school policies and practices?
How can cooperation and sharing be facilitated between international schools?
Covid-19 has facilitated a shift towards countries looking to protect national concerns. Of course, this is quite appropriate as states seek to look after their citizens’ welfare. But might it be possible that a strong commitment to global cooperation could best serve national interests? While we might be seeing a shift in international relations, what about international school relations? International schools tend to affirm the idea of global mindedness and citizenship. These notions assume interdependent relations between various actors. We began by stating that leadership is not easy. It can also be lonely. We believe, then, that international school leaders need the support of other international school leaders. And yet, in an increasingly competitive and marketized environment, how often do international schools cooperate and collaborate amongst themselves? When you think of your school, how do you imagine its place within the broader context? If you imagine your school schools as existing within a market, however true that may be, you are perhaps more likely to see other schools as competition. If you imagine, instead, your school as part of an international school movement, sector, or community, you may think about how these schools can cooperate. Many schools did cooperate on how to respond to the pandemic. If this working together was new for your school, what might you be able to do to keep these mutually beneficial relationships of trust and support going into the future?
Concluding thoughts
While there have been plenty of fire drills in schools over the years, few schools will have been planning for a pandemic. This year has been tough. We have been confronted with unprececdented circumstances and confrontation is, for most of us, uncomfortable. Yet being forced out of our comfort zone is sometimes just what we need to assess the way things have been and think about where we might be headed. In doing so, we have an opportunity to pause and wonder if there might be another way.
Some of the questions and reflections we have put forward here may have also been a little discomforting, but we offer them in the hope that they might be useful as a way of facilitating reflection on what you and your school consider to be important. Particularly, we think it is an ideal time for international school leaders to be thinking about the priority they give to human beings and their relationships, and to the place of intercultural understanding as a distinctive feature of international education. And it is a good time to be thinking about how these priorities might affect the school’s policies and practices. Doing this well, we suggest, is not about applying a formula or model. Instead, it is about genuinely asking the questions and grappling with them in all their complexity. Did we mention, it’s not easy being a leader?
About the Authors Stephen Chatelier, Elke Van dermijnsbrugge and Mark Harrison have all been teachers and leaders in international schools, including in Asia. They work in the Department of International Education at The Education University of Hong Kong where they teach and conduct research on critical aspects of international schooling.
EDTHOUGHT Psychological Safety: What It Is, and Why You Should Care About It
By Ashley G. Parker, Ph.D. and Terence J. Bostic, Ph.D.
Why are some teams just more effective at exchanging ideas with each other, welcoming diverse thinking, and in general coming up with and following through on better plans? This has been a research question that applied psychologists have eagerly studied for years. Findings indicate that a team dynamic referred to as “psychological safety” is a critical component. This concept is important not only for team performance generally, but also in building and sustaining an inclusive multi-cultural environment in international settings. This article explores findings in this area and what can be done to apply these findings to you and your teams.
In general, most groups want to be able to have hard conversations with each other and bring up different points of view. What gets in the way here, however, is that human beings tend not to like conflict. We tend to want to maintain a positive self-image in front of other people, and power differentials in the room, either spoken or unspoken, can get in the way of bringing up our best ideas. The key to battling this is psychological safety. Psychological safety is the shared belief that team members feel safe to be themselves, to speak up, and to take smart risks without the fear of negative consequence.
Amy Edmondson of Harvard is one of the leading researchers on this topic. She refers to psychological safety as “a shared belief that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” This is an easy concept to describe, but a challenging one to build inside a team where there are complex organizational dynamics, power struggles, and an organizational history that can all get in the way.
Some of the most powerful research on this was conducted by Google. They undertook a huge project called Project Aristotle. In this, they analyzed over 180 teams at Google in search for the holy grail of organizational behavior—what does the most highly functioning team look like? What do they do? What are the characteristics of their team members? This four-year study looked at several individual factors--everything from personality types, to backgrounds, to education. Somewhat surprisingly, they did not find any significant impact from individual factors on team functioning. The “who” in terms of the make-up of the teams did not predict team effectiveness. Manager ability was also not predictive.
What emerged as most predictive of team success was psychological safety: the shared sense that team members felt safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. Groups that had high levels of psychological safety also had higher levels of dependability (team members getting things done and meeting Google’s high bar for excellence), structure/clarity (understanding around plans, goals, and members’ roles), meaning (a deep connection between the people and their work), and impact (a sense that their work matters and creates sustainable change). The creation of this psychological safety, therefore, appears to be associated with all sorts of both positive human and positive business outcomes. critical to organizational results.
Psychological safety also underpins all conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion. While many organizations try to go right at these diversity issues head-on (e.g., discussing how racism can show up at work), it can often have unintended consequences that reduce people’s engagement in the tough topic because the people on teams are not ready to have these conversations in a safe way. The creation of psychological safety allows for real conversations around these issues. The absence of psychological safety only allows for education around these issues, not change.
So, what do we do to create psychological safety in teams? More specifically, what can you do as a leader to create organizations that have high levels of psychological safety? Fortunately, there appear to be several key factors. While none of them are easy, the literature does point to a number of key areas for focus.
1. Replace blame with curiosity. John Gottman’s research at the University of Washington shows that blame and criticism reliably escalate conflict, which is the opposite of psychological safety. Working with the team to create curiosity, especially around mistakes, misfires, or misunderstanding/miscommunications, appears to be the first key step.
2. Honing your sensitivity and empathy is important.
The power of using the right words matters in creation of psychological safety. As a leader, helping people distinguish between “I’m angry and having a bad day” and “I’m pretty pessimistic today because of my upcoming meeting” is important. Building up people’s emotional vocabulary is also important. Likewise, helping people understand that
“different” and “difficult” are not the same thing. Not having the same opinion is not the same as misaligned. This is especially challenging right now in our world struggling from compassion fatigue. We invite you to share the great things going on at your school with the other schools in the EARCOS region. Deadline for the following ET Journal Issues Spring Issue - April 1, 2021 Fall Issue - September 1, 2021 Winter Issue - December 1, 2021 What can be Contributed? Here are some of the features in the next issue: Faces of EARCOS – Promotions, retirements, honors, etc. Campus Development – New building plans, under construction, just completed. Curriculum Initiatives – New and exciting adoption efforts, and creative teacher ideas. Green and Sustainable – Related to campus development and/or curriculum. 3. Respect is paramount. As a part of respect being important, the impact you have needs to be seen as more important than the intent you have. Being open to feedback, even if you don’t agree with it, and being grateful for it, appears to be very helpful in the creation of psychological safety.
4. Adopting a growth-mindset. Fortunately, this one is a natural for educators and educational leaders. Psychological safety is really a process of growth, and growth is a function of making mistakes. Helping people know that creating psychological safety is a process and not an end state is key for the conversations to be ongoing.
5. Equality and conversational turn-taking. Despite all of the efforts here, conversations still tend to be dominated by extroverted people, and they still tend to be dominated by men. Efforts to ensure that everyone in the group shares in the conversation, in an equal fashion, appears to be key to creating psychological safety. This means those in leadership roles need to look out for the more introverted people and invite them in and invite the more extroverted people to be more thoughtful or to be more reflective before speaking.
Talking about psychological safety is, at some level, like describing being in love. This is, talking about it does not create it. However, the five steps outlined here do show real promise in terms of helping leaders create higher levels of psychological safety inside of organizations. We encourage you to think about what small steps you can make individually and with your immediate team to help promote this throughout
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Welcome New Head of School
Service Learning Projects Action Research Reports - Summaries of approved action research projects Student Art – We will highlight ES art in Fall issue, MS art in Winter issue, and HS art in Spring issue. Student Writing – Original short stories, poetry, scholarly writing.
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if you would like to submit an article please email Bill Oldread at boldread@earcos.org OR Edzel Drilo at edrilo@earcos.org
Ryan Godlewski, Head of School Access International Academy Ningbo
GREEN & SUSTAINABLE Sustainability Summit: Changemakers of Today
By Anna Seipelt Goco, Director of Advancement International School Manila
“The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for.” From the words of Ernest Hemingway – the place we all call home certainly deserves our protection. Sustainability is the answer but how can we continue to create awareness and make change during a time when we all feel powerless?
Last October 17, 2020, the Sustainability Council at International School Manila (ISM) partnered with Make a Difference (MAD) Travel to host the Sustainability Summit. Together with Sustainability Coordinators Kathryn Govier and Lindsay Mould, the summit was organized and headed by students from the ISM High School Sustainability Council. This virtual event brought together student changemakers to learn and discuss how to make a positive change online.
With over 60 delegates in attendance from schools across Manila, including Brent International School, British School Manila (BSM), Chinese International School Manila (CISM), Everest Academy, and Xavier School, the half day digital summit consisted of two keynote speakers and three virtual workshops. Participants were divided into three breakout rooms with workshop leaders rotating every 45 minutes. This provided an interactive element allowing for the delegates to engage and inquire.
The summit opened with keynote speaker, Meggie Ochoa. Meggie is a Jiu Jitsu world champion and applies the empowerment she gained from this sport to reach out and help support survivors of child sexual violence in the Philippines, through her Non-Government Organization (NGO), ‘Fight to Protect’.
The first workshop of the morning was dedicated to supporting local industries led by Raf Dionisio, co-founder of MAD Travel. As a social entrepreneurship focused on finding ways to connect indigenous and rural communities to profitable markets in order to help protect the environment, MAD ventured into new initiatives such as MAD Market due to the Metro Manila quarantine. Originally, the group concentrated on Eco-tourism projects but have recently taken this online to support ISM’s Service Learning Program to make it equally as meaningful despite the extraordinary circumstances we are currently facing.
ISM’s very own High School students Marny Rosette F. Abao and Raina Hwang headed the second workshop of the summit entitled “Navigating Online News and Activism.” Marny used a socratic-style seminar approach to get students discovering and sharing their insights on the pitfalls of social media activism, how to avoid ‘performative activism’ and how to spot fake or misleading news. Meanwhile, Raina discussed the Four Pillars of Sustainability: Planet, Profit, People and Policy, which she has applied within her work with the youth-led NGO, ‘Bye Bye Plastic Bags Philippines’ along with their journey on this global activism project.
“How to Design for Activism” was the final workshop of the virtual event. This was led by two University of the Philippines (UP) students, who were recognized for their activism campaigns online. They discussed top tips on how to make online campaigns more impactful and led the delegates through activities that analyze and look at how to improve visual media messages.
Tom Graham, also a co-founder of MAD Travel, ended the Summit with the keynote topic “Be the Change Online and Discover your ‘Ikigai’”. Tom shared his experience with insights on how to successfully launch a social enterprise and encouraged delegates to ‘discover your Ikigai’ and transform actions into something that makes a bigger impact in making lives more meaningful and fulfilling.
Building a sustainable world takes one step at a time, starting with creating awareness to inspire changemakers and instilling upon community members, the importance of living sustainably and practicing being sustainable together. The summit was just one aspect of ISM’s school-wide priority on Sustainability where students are taking initiative to learn and make change.
For the school year 2019-2020, ISM also saw the implementation of Bring Your Own Container (BYOC). This encouraged community members to bring reusable containers, cutlery and cups even for food purchased in the cafeteria. This initiative not only helped to raise awareness school wide, but also greatly reduced cafeteria waste brought on by disposable meal packages. In an effort to raise further awareness, for the school year 2020-2021, selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the United Nations were assigned to each month of the school year. These goals are discussed with students every month, accompanied by sustainable activities related to the theme.
Sustainability continues to be a school wide priority at ISM as together, we create awareness and do our parts in saving our home, one step at a time. “In recognition of our responsibilities as citizens of the world, our community of adults and children will commit to playing an active part in caring for the environment – on campus and beyond.”
