NZ Principal Magazine Term 3 2014 by NZ Principal Magazine

September 2014 Volume 29, Number 3

High Flying AT

Newton Central

ducing t o r h t

gal

NZP

t Suppor

• What Matters in the Future? • Introducing Creative Commons • Eight Continuums of School Culture • IES, A Research Perspective featuring • Enacting High Expectations for Students • Using Cognitive Enhancers

Also

CONTENTS

Editor Liz Hawes Executive Officer PO Box 25380 Wellington 6146 Ph: 04 471 2338 Fax: 04 471 2339 Email: esm@nzpf.ac.nz

September 2014

2 EDITORIAL 3 PRESIDENT’S PEN 4 On Using Cognitive Enhancers

to Raise Student Achievement: An Update

Magazine Proof-reader Helen Kinsey-Wightman Editorial Board Philip Harding, NZPF President Geoff Lovegrove, Retired Principal, Feilding Liz Hawes, Editor Advertising For all advertising enquiries contact: Cervin Media Ltd PO Box 68450, Newton, Auckland 1145 Ph: 09 360 8700 or Fax: 09 360 8701

A/Prof John Clark

6 9

What Matters in the Future?

Kelvin Squire

NZPF Legal Support Scheme

Liz Hawes, Editor

11 Enacting High Expectations for all Students

Note The articles in New Zealand Principal do not necessarily reflect the policy of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation. Readers are welcome to use or reprint material if proper acknowledgement is made. Subscription Distributed free to all schools in New Zealand. For individual subscribers, send $40 per year to: New Zealand Principals’ Federation National Office, PO Box 25380, Wellington 6146 New Zealand Principal is published by Cervin Media Ltd on behalf of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation and is issued four times annually. For all enquiries regarding editorial contributions, please contact the editor.

Dr Christine Rubie-Davies

Enacting High Expectations

Introducing Creative Commons

Matt McGregor

18 High Flying at Newton Central Liz Hawes, Editor

23 The Eight Continuums of School Culture David McKenzie, Edendale Primary School

Outside looking in: IES, a research perspective Dr Patty Towl

33 school lines Lester Flockton

A better start in life

Helen Kinsey-Wightman

ibc MARKETPLACE SECTION Profiles from education product and

ISSN 0112-403X (Print) ISSN 1179-4372 (Online)

service providers

PHOTOS FOR THE MAGAZINE: If you have any photos showing ‘New Zealand Schools at Work’, particularly any good shots of pupils, teachers or leadership staff, they would be welcome. The appropriate permission is required before we can print any photos. Technical details: Good-quality original photos can be scanned, and digital photos must be of sufficient resolution for high-quality publishing. (Images should be at least 120 mm (wide) at 300 dpi). Please contact Cervin Media Ltd for further details. Phone: 09 360 8700 or email: education@cervinmedia.co.nz

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High Flying at Newton CentraL

Editorial Liz Hawes

Editor

Our fathers and fore-fathers shed blood for it; our story is quite different. Our democratic participation is on a country was built on it; we continue to vigorously defend it. It is slide, a slippery slide. Our voter turn-out in 2002 dropped to democracy and with it comes the right to be a free citizen in a free 77 per cent, in 2005 it was back up to 80.9 per cent, in 2008 it country. We are proud that democracy is enshrined at all levels dropped again to 79.5 per cent and in 2011 hit an all-time low of New Zealand society. Starting at the top, every eligible voter at a dismal 74.2 per cent. has the right to vote for a party and whomever they think is best We are beginning to shirk our responsibilities. The first sign to represent their electorate in parliament which is aptly called of democratic failure is when a government is elected by a the House of Representatives. We are proud of our forebears diminishing number of voters. This tends to result in elected who fought to establish this right for us and especially proud of representatives taking liberties. Thus we see Government the politically motivated pioneer women, led by Kate Sheppard, implementing policies far outside of the peoples’ wishes. In who battled for two long decades to win women’s suffrage in a low voter turn-out environment, a Government can even New Zealand. These women, in ignore the results of a peoples’ 1893, put New Zealand on the The first sign of democratic failure referendum and proceed with world stage as the first country its plans anyway. We have seen where women had won the is when a government is elected by this already with the asset right to vote. sales programme going ahead, a diminishing number of voters. Along with democracy come despite 67.2 per cent of New other freedoms which we cherish, they are the freedom of the media Zealanders opposing the programme. to inform the public, to seek the truth, and be critical without being If we continue to be irresponsible and disengage with censored; the freedom of religious and political expression; the democracy we will find Governments of any hue will ignore freedom to conduct research and to publish the findings without us. I am not implying a direct cause and effect here, just that fear or favour; the freedom to walk the streets of our towns and there is a strong correlation between a disinterested public and cities without discrimination, regardless of ethnicity. Governments doing as they please. Every day we read reports of countries in which people don’t Too often we as citizens look to blame others for our enjoy these freedoms, where they are treated cruelly by evil complacency or take the attitude that ‘my vote won’t make any despots, where ethnic cleansing can occur without scrutiny and difference’. We pay attention to the polls and say ‘oh the party all manner of discrimination, atrocities and torturous practices I like isn’t high in the polls so I won’t vote.’ What we fail to say abound unchecked. We witness countries where more resource is, if I and all the other non-voters did show more interest, the is poured into censorship of the internet than into extending results might look different. accessibility and where certain ethnic groups are deliberately I saw a video recently, with a very poignant message. It used ten targeted and kept unjustly disenfranchised. We watch as corrupt faces to represent the voters of New Zealand. It then showed how governments steal from their own people, abusing their position we voted in the last election. What it showed was that 3 and a half of power and privilege. faces of the 10 actually voted for the Government. That’s about a Without democracy, this could be our reality. To preserve our third. The non-voters plus those who voted for opposition parties democratic society, we have responsibilities. One of those is to make up the other two thirds. It’s a slightly biased presentation be a good citizen and to participate in democratic processes, the in that it doesn’t show how things would look if the non-voters benefits of which we value so highly. It behoves every one of us had all voted for the parties now in Government. Nevertheless to be watchful and to point out examples of democratic ‘erosion’ it has a good strong message for non-voters. Not voting is antiwhich could lead to ‘anti-democratic creep’ and ultimately democratic. Not voting means Governments can be elected by undermine democracy as we know it. one third of the eligible voters. You can view the video on: https:// When there are no obvious threats, it is easy to become www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lu2FUKFaLE&feature=youtu.be complacent, never imagining that our fortunes could turn. I This is the thin edge of the wedge. As responsible citizens we once studied American Presidential election campaigns and must remember our forebears and how they fought to ensure was astonished to discover that the American President could we could walk and talk freely in our own country. We dishonour be elected by fewer than 50 per cent of the American people. At them if we do not take our democratic responsibilities seriously. the same time, we in New Zealand were recording numbers in If we want to preserve the freedoms we hold so dear for future excess of 90 per cent voter turnout for general elections. generations, encourage New Zealanders, and especially young Fast forward to the most recent four elections and the New Zealanders to get out and vote in this election. 2

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President’s Pen Philip Harding

National President, New Zealand Principals’ Federation

The Education landscape is a little disjointed at the moment, and there is change coming from all directions. Some of the change comes via legislation, and the Surrender, Search, and Retention legislation is a good example of a law that has made things harder for schools. The Ministry responded with guidelines, but principals reacted quickly, to say that the developed protocols would not work in practice, in schools. The Ministry’s response was to quickly convene a new working party of school leaders and ask them to come up with clearer direction that resolved the concerns. The trouble with that is of course, that the law is the law, and no guideline can protect a teacher from a failure to follow the law. Many examples of the challenge have been discussed, but perhaps a good example is when a teacher realises that something “harmful” has been taken from a classroom, and that the thief is one of the class in the room right now. Perhaps it was a craft knife, or maybe a tool taken from the woodwork room, but the teacher simply doesn’t know who may have taken it. Can the teacher demand that every child line up and turn out their pockets? They may ask the question, but if half the children refuse, what then? The answer is that the non-complying children must be dealt with for that non-compliance through the school’s discipline procedures. They can’t be forcibly searched. In the primary school the context may or may not be slightly less dangerous, but the issues are the same. If a game or plaything brought to school goes missing, and the teacher has reason to believe “on reasonable grounds” that Lizzie has taken that toy and stashed it in her bag, can the teacher search Lizzie’s bag? The answer is no, as the child owns the bag and the teacher may not search it unless Lizzie agrees to “surrender” the bag. Once again the non-compliance can be dealt with, but only as a breach of the school’s behaviour expectations. This means that parents might be called to the school, but they too may not be compelled to open the bag! In many of New Zealand’s schools children are supervised and taught at times during the day by support staff. They might have interactions with members of the school’s administration, or the caretaker. Let’s imagine one such hypothetical setting, where a small group is being disrupted by a child who is disrupting the learning of the group by flicking everyone with a ruler. Unless the teacher aide has been formally authorised in writing by the board to take such action, they may not ask the child to surrender the ruler. I won’t even start to describe the situations involving technology, where the harmful item may be stored on a student’s phone as an image, or an email, or a text, or indeed, any digitally stored item. It is further complicated when the harmful item is

hosted somewhere else and only being temporarily viewed on a device. The key question always comes down to this: Is the surrender of the item necessary in the circumstances to protect the safety of students or to remove a negative influence on the learning environment? These requirements came into force at the start of this year. Have you briefed your Board and teachers on the new guidelines? Has the Board authorised and briefed all non-teaching staff who may be working closely with children? The new guidelines offer some clarity to a complex piece of new legislation, which already feels as if it needs to be reviewed. In the meantime all principals need to become well informed, and to ensure that all affected staff are too.

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On Using Cognitive Enhancers to Raise Student Achievement:

An Update

A/Prof John Clark

School of Educational Studies, Massey University, Palmerston North

The September 2013 issue of the New Zealand Principal published my article on ‘Should we use cognitive enhancers to raise student achievement’. This was a controversial proposal and may have drawn the response, ‘No thanks’. In some ways, this would be a quite understandable reaction. But beware! The New Zealand Herald (13 June, 2014) reported the following under the title ‘Students use drugs to boost marks’: New Zealand university students are turning to potentially harmful drugs to get ahead in their studies, new research shows. In a survey of University of Auckland students, 6 per cent said they used ‘cognitive enhancer’ drugs to try to boost their concentration and exam marks. The most commonly reported drug used among the 400 students surveyed was Ritalin, which is prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) . . . When so-called cognitive enhancers are taken

occasionally and in low doses the risk to health is low. However, risks such as cardiovascular complaints and anxiety can increase if the drugs are taken without guidance and above therapeutic levels. Dr Russell (senior lecturer at the University of Auckland school of pharmacy) said he was concerned that ‘people will use cognitive enhancers to the point where they perceive a need for them and then use them in an almost addictive manner’. There are also a range of ethical questions surrounding the use of the drugs, he said, such as . . . Who should have access to them? Should it only be those who can afford them? Universities today; schools tomorrow? If cognitive enhancers do find their way into schools then principals perhaps should consider carefully whether they would adopt the same position as the university; “A spokesperson for the University of Auckland said it had no position about the use of cognitive enhancers by the student population”. I would say not. Hence my proposal to treat the issue seriously and offer a way forward in dealing with it.

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What Matters in the Future? Kelvin Squire Retired Principal

I’m not sure how to define future; what I’ve just said is the past, what I’m about to say is in the future so for me the future is now! There is unequivocal worldwide evidence that a child’s future pathway is to a large degree determined by the gene pool that they, by chance, have swum in; contra to government and political mantra this is not deficit thinking . . . it is reality! We all have to dispense with our historical beliefs and work collaboratively on what matters.

those who strive daily to make a difference; this means listening to (as opposed to simply hearing) and working positively and collaboratively alongside those in our schools who are guided daily by moral purpose. A “more of the same” focus on more cognitive knowledge in our professional learning will continue to reproduce the status quo and in many countries with long tails of underachievement within particular groups, particularly indigenous students, this is neither acceptable nor ethical. Leadership learning experiences that are What matters in the future is where we are relative to transformational, that move leaders out of their current ways of others in our society1 knowing and being – out of their comfort zones –will ensure that We pay doctors and nurses to treat ill-health, police and prisons to reflection on this new learning can occur.4 deal with crime, remedial teachers and educational psychologists to It is essential that all educational leaders (be they in schools, the tackle educational problems, and social workers, drug rehabilitation Ministry of Education, tertiary institutions or political parties) units, psychiatric services and health promotion experts to deal are prepared to work collaboratively to unlearn and relearn; only with a host of other problems. These services are all expensive, then will we be able to work together to make the necessary shifts and none of them is more than to ensure that the equity gap is partially effective . . . all these . . . if the hearts and minds of all narrowed. problems are most common in What Matters in the future the most deprived areas of our in the learning process are not is ensuring that heads and society and are many times captured then the desired changes hearts are connected. more common in more unequal 2 If we look around the developed societies. will not happen. Sadly, the evidence shows world we can see examples of that Godzone is a very unequal society. Schools as the last bastion things that aren’t working. What would lead our political masters of compulsion have been catapulted to the front of the change to think that we will solve a problem by using the same thinking queue and are now seen as the lead agents of change, however that created them. as leaders we have the challenging task of ensuring that the Ken Robinson in his book Out of our Minds – Learning to be heads and hearts of all involved in effecting the desired change Creative develops three key arguments for those who have a are connected. This, whilst our political masters define the art serious interest in developing the whole child. He challenges us form of political spin to advance their own positions – often to reflect on the sustained development of creativity, innovation imposing policy that is contra to that intended. Our challenge and human capability. He suggests: is to coordinate policy to ensure that we all work together to ■■ We are caught up in a social and economic revolution; and reduce inequality. ■■ To survive we need a new conception of human resources; and What Matters in the future is moral purpose! Leadership is to the current decade what standards were to the 1990’s for those interested in large–scale reform. Standards, even when well implemented, can take us only part way to successful large-scale reform. It is only leadership that can take us all the way.3 We are working in an environment with competing tensions often driven by political ideologues whose notion of future is survival at the next election. They therefore tend to be myopic! Their policies are all too frequently based on data and ideas from the past, so not only are they myopic but one can view them as the means to walk backward to the future. The challenge for the policy makers is to truly listen, engage and partner with

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■■

To develop these resources we need radically new strategies5

Sir Ken Robinson believes that the culture of standardised testing or standardisation is counterproductive to that which we are trying to achieve. Too often now we are systematically alienating people from their own talents and, therefore, from the process of education.6 Is this the reason why so many young people are opting out of education at a time when we are desperate to keep them in? Perhaps the systemic things that we value are not as valuable to our young people? For many young people the real learning is taking place outside of school; for them formal education lacks relevance.

Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind explores the change from 20th Century Knowledge Age skillsets based very much on left brain thinking, to the 21st Century Conceptual Age, the age of the right brain, creative thinker. We’ve moved from an economy built on people’s backs to an economy built on people’s left brains to what is emerging today: an economy and society built more and more on people’s right brains.7

1. Ensure that every child is given every opportunity to develop their innate creative talents 2. Ensure that we all work to address the inequalities that currently exist. 3. Ensure that we do not lose sight of the importance of relationships and the importance of connecting heads and hearts.

What Matters is celebrating each individual’s inherent creativity Sector capacity, confidence and competence will not be achieved by centrally imposed benchmarks; giving encouragement to make mistakes, to find solutions in partnership with your colleagues and community, and to try again will . . . if the hearts and minds of all in the learning process are not captured then the desired changes will not happen. Desire cannot be mandated! As Sir Ken Robinson so passionately states, We have a big problem at the moment – education is becoming so dominated by this culture of testing, by a particular view of intelligence and a narrow curriculum and education system, that we’re flattening and stifling some of the basic skills and processes that creative achievement depends on.8 It is a 21st Century imperative that we display the leadership necessary to:

To quote Malcolm Gladwell we are at a global, national, local tipping point. Think globally act locally . . . with moral purpose! References Wilkinson & Pickett; The Spirit Level p.25

Wilkinson & Pickett. The Spirit Level p.26

Fullan: The Moral Imperative of School Leadership. p.16

3 4

Robertson: Leading & Managing, Vol. 19, No.2 2013, pp54–69 learning Leadership

Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds – Learning to be Creative, p. 4.ISBN 1– 84112–125–8

Ken Robinson in ASCD September 2009 Magazine Vol. 67 No.1

Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind, p.50 ISBN 978 1–74114–738–4

7 8

Ken Robinson in ASCD September 2009 Magazine Vol. 67 No.1

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A LEGAL BENEFITS SCHEME FOR PRINCIPALS Liz Hawes

Editor

You don’t have to search widely to find a principal who has experienced conflict with their Board of Trustees. Some cases have been very public, others less so, but without exception they are all stressful, and at times financially draining. The position of principal carries with it a vast array of responsibilities and with that comes a greater risk of conflict. Conflict can derive from many sources including students, caregivers, staff, the community and the Board itself. In the end it is the Board’s responsibility, as employer, to answer allegations from complainants. Whilst the Board will have its own school insurance scheme to cover any legal costs it incurs, the principal may not.

complement the hotline service. The Australian based FAI Insurance Ltd agreed to provide indemnity insurance until their demise when the QBE Insurance Group Ltd took over. By now it had become apparent that the hotline was the key to the scheme’s success rather than the insurance. ‘The hotline was successful because Anderson Lloyd Lawyers were now becoming experts in the types of issues that left principals exposed,’ said Janine. The scheme grew in popularity and given the feedback over time it was decided that a different approach might be more suitable for principals rather than the indemnity insurance option. Besides, the insurance industry was moving towards

Fiona McMillan, senior lawyer for Anderson Lloyd lawyers

Barry Dorking, senior lawyer for Anderson Lloyd Lawyers

The vulnerability of principals was always going to be an issue once the ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ policy of the late 1980s was implemented. In 1994, Nola Hambleton, an NZPF executive member who would later become President, set out to find a solution to protect principals. She first approached Dunedin couple, Alan and Janine Race of Crombie Lockwood, well known in the education sector as school insurers. ‘We recognised there was a big hole for principals, when things went wrong,’ says Janine, who herself had had a career in the teaching profession. ‘Other professions had their own indemnity cover, but not principals,’ she said. Janine and Alan set out to find a solution. They approached Anderson Lloyd Lawyers who were experienced in employment and insurance issues. Anderson Lloyd agreed to set up a hotline advice scheme for principals for a small fee. Nola asked Janine and Alan to also find them an insurance company so that principals could purchase an indemnity insurance to

withdrawing totally from indemnifying principals. ‘At the time there were over 300 principals in the scheme,’ said Janine, ‘so we needed to find alternative cover for them.’ Discussions ensued with Anderson Lloyd Lawyers and eventually a legal benefits scheme for principals known as Principals’ Advice and Support Limited (PASL) was created. ‘The scheme is not an indemnity insurance,’ says Janine. ‘It was clear that what the principals appreciated most was the hotline service and by increasing the fee, they would also be covered for the first $25,000 of any further legal representation,’ she said. For the new scheme to be operational, it was necessary to build a pool of money from scratch. Alan and Janine Race went into partnership with Anderson Lloyd Lawyers and used their Crombie Lockwood business to administer the scheme. The scheme continued to grow in popularity with principals, especially as senior lawyer Barry Dorking and associate Fiona McMillan became more and more familiar with the unique

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requirements of schools, Board processes and procedures, and issues that affect principals. Having worked with the scheme since its inception, Barry doesn’t think there would be too many situations that would now test him. ‘I think I’ve probably covered most things that can go wrong for principals,’ he says with a wry smile. ‘The first step is always to try and deescalate the issue,’ he says, ‘and many cases are resolved at the lowest level. That’s not to say we don’t also get the curly ones that can go right through to the Employment Relations Authority,’ he said. More and more, the cases coming to the hotline involve teachers claiming they ‘do not feel safe’ either in the presence of another teacher or with the principal. In some cases this Alan and Janine Race at their Dunedin Crombie Lockwood Offices may simply mean that the teacher is not getting their own way, but whatever has motivated the initial complaint, be vulnerable. ‘If staff have been used to an ‘authoritarian’ style of it requires resolution. leadership and a new principal brings a more collegial approach, ‘This reaction when a principal attempts to manage poor that may be seen as a weakness,’ he said. ‘The opposite scenario performance is becoming more pervasive and may in part be can also bring discontent.’ due to the collegial nature of teaching,’ says Barry. Sometimes on-going legal support is better delivered locally Fiona, a former educator herself, who carries a significant rather than through Dunedin based Anderson Lloyd. In such proportion of the scheme’s workload would concur with Barry’s cases Anderson Lloyd will appoint a lawyer with significant analysis. Fiona had just returned from representing a principal employment law experience, preferably in the education sector, in a case which had progressed all the way to the Employment to provide the necessary legal support. It is statistically unlikely Relations Authority, but which had at its core disaffected teachers that a principal’s own lawyer would meet the criteria and the who ‘did not feel safe’. scheme only covers PASL appointed lawyers. Fiona says, ‘Issues become unnecessarily difficult to resolve Principals can join the scheme either in their own name or in when Boards do not follow the processes set out in the principals’ the name of their school. employment agreement and in employment law which requires Janine Race says, ‘It’s not unusual for a recently appointed open communication.’ principal to be unaware that the school already subscribes to Barry and Fiona are happy to run seminars to explain to PASL, so it’s always a good idea to phone and check. Don’t wait principals why legal protection is important. ‘We call it Tales before it’s too late,’ she says, ‘and use your own cell phone as the from the Dark Side,’ says Barry with a chuckle. ‘We present contact number, not the school’s office phone.’ ‘anonymised’ cases which can sometimes shock, especially when More recently Janine and Alan Race decided to retire and a principal has been treated unjustly and where processes have offered their shares in the PASL business to NZPF. President been blatantly ignored,’ he said. Philip Harding said, ‘We were thrilled to have the opportunity Some principals seem to be more at risk than others. ‘Principals to buy a stake in this scheme which has stood the test of time in smaller areas can be at higher risk,’ says Barry, ‘because smaller and is currently serving 900 principals. We intend to support it communities tend to be more tightly connected and the principal well into the future,’ he said. Crombie Lockwood will continue could find themselves isolated,’ he said. to administer the scheme, which is unique to principals in New principals bringing a different style of leadership can also New Zealand.

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Enacting High Expectations for all Students Dr Christine Rubie-Davies PhD, Associate Professor, School of Learning Development & Professional Practice

Teacher Expectation and Student Achievement

We frequently hear cries from policy makers and those within the Ministry of Education that teachers need to have high expectations for all their students. This implies that currently teachers do not have high enough expectations and they ought to. However, this seemingly simple demand carries with it many questions which appear to go unanswered by those making the statements: What do high expectations look like in classrooms? Should expectations be high and equally high for all students? How would teachers know if their expectations are too low or high enough? Does holding high expectations for students miraculously lead to enhanced achievement? The conception that some teachers hold high expectations Teacher number for all their students while others do not is something that has fascinated me for a number of years now and has its genesis in Figure 1. Graph showing the expectations of six high and three low Figure 1. Graph showing the expectations of six high and three low expectation teachers in my own teaching experience. I witnessed that teachers who I expectation teachers in relation to achievement perceived had high expectations for all their students, appeared relation to achievement to have a huge positive effect on, not only their students’ low expectation teachers whereby it can be seen that the achievement, but also their self-belief. My research career expectations of high expectation teachers do vary across has involved identifying teachers who have high expectations classes but nevertheless are very high relative to achievement. for all their students (high expectation teachers) versus those For low expectation teachers, the opposite is depicted. The whose expectations are low for all (low expectation teachers), conception that expectations are relative to achievement means discovering whether having high expectations for all students that expectations for individual students will vary. Among predicts student achievement gains, investigating what high high expectation teachers, their expectations will be high and expectation teachers do differently from other teachers and, challenging for all students but achievable. The point is that high latterly, teaching regular teachers in regular classrooms the expectation teachers expect all the students in their classes to make large learning gains – and the students do. In one of my pedagogical practices and beliefs of high expectation teachers. I define high expectation teachers as those who have high studies (Rubie-Davies, 2007), the mean effect size gain in reading expectations for all their students relative to achievement. for students with high expectation teachers over one year was The graph (right) illustrates this point for six high and three d = 1.01 whereas for students with low expectation teachers, the Mean expectation and achievement

Mean expectation and achievement

Reading exp Reading ach 1

5 Teacher number

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gain was only d = 0.05 (effect sizes tell us how important the impact is of one thing on another). In John Hattie’s terms (2009) any intervention, teaching strategy and so on with an effect size above 0.4 is well worth implementing. Therefore, we should be cloning high expectation teachers! Clearly expectations in and of themselves are not magical. So what is it that high expectation teachers do which results in their students increasing their achievement by far more than might be anticipated? Several studies have shown that high expectation teachers differ from low expectation teachers in three key areas: they do not ability group, they create a warm class climate for all students, and they set clear learning goals with their students. At the heart of these differences, in my opinion, is the use of flexible grouping rather than ability grouping. Class climate and goal-setting emanate from this key difference. Why is ability grouping important? We have been told, often, that New Zealand has one of the highest disparities between our highest and lowest achievers in the PISA and PIRLS results. A consideration is that many students are ability-grouped throughout schooling. Using John Hattie’s figures again, within-class ability grouping has a d = 0.16 effect on achievement while streaming or banding has a d = 0.12 effect. Clearly these are practices that are not worth investing in and yet they are not only prevalent but mandated in many schools. Worse, an enormous body of research demonstrates the negative equity effects of streaming and ability grouping. As a secondary school teacher recently said to me, “As you move down the streams, the students get browner.” The major problem with ability grouping is that it results in differential opportunity to learn and therefore differential learning. Students learn what they are given the opportunity to learn. Students arrive at school at 5 years old, and within a week or two they find themselves in the Red group, or the Tigers group, or whatever group name teachers think disguises the hierarchy that represents ability grouping. As a result, students in one group are given different learning experiences to those in another group and, not surprisingly then, those considered to have more ability learn more because they are given the opportunity to do so. Students are placed in what becomes not only an academic hierarchy but also a social hierarchy. There are studies (e.g., Good, 1987) that have shown that even controlling for ability, the within-class ability group that students are placed into in their first year of school predicts the stream they will be placed in at secondary school. There are studies (e.g., Mason, Schroeter, Combs, & Washington, 1992) that have shown that if students from so-called low achieving groups are placed in average or

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even high achieving groups, they quickly begin achieving at the same level as their peers (sometimes they outdo them). There are studies (e.g., Ireson, Hallam, & Hurley, 2005) that have shown how inaccurate student group assignment actually is. There are studies that have shown the pernicious effects of ability grouping on student self-beliefs (e.g. Weinstein, 2002) because students can accurately determine where they are in class and what their teachers expect of them. There is even a very recent study (Liem, Marsh, Martin, Mcinerney, & Yeung, 2013) that shows the detrimental effects of streaming on the self-concept of high achieving students. There are no studies to my knowledge that show that ability grouping is wonderful! And yet the overwhelming research evidence of these many, many studies is ignored in our schools and in many of our teacher education programmes, and the practice of ability grouping, in one shape or another, persists throughout schooling. Questions then arise about why there is such a discrepancy in achievement outcomes between our highest and lowest achievers. I fully accept that ability grouping is not the only answer, that there are complex social and economic issues to be considered. Nevertheless, ability grouping is certainly a contributing factor and is something that could be rectified in schools by providing more equitable opportunities for students. Ability grouping categorises and sorts our young people almost from the moment they enter our schools. Finland is often hailed as having a high quality schooling system and consistently performs very well in the PISA and PIRLS tests. Interestingly, and certainly worth considering, is the fact that Finland has a policy throughout schooling of only using heterogeneous grouping and they have one of the smallest disparities between their highest and lowest achievers (OECD, 2007). Again, I concede that there may be other explanations for Finland’s lack of achievement disparity. Nevertheless, their policy of heterogeneous grouping versus ours of homogeneous ability grouping is worth considering as one potential explanation for the large gap and tail that exists in New Zealand when there is no such large variance in Finland. High expectation teachers (often contrary to their own school policy) do not ability group for learning experiences. Instead those I have studied in-depth use mixed ability grouping arrangements, particularly for students’ learning activities, whereby students can choose the activities that they complete, or higher and lower achievers are paired, or students are socially grouped, or students choose who they will work with, or students work in assigned mixed ability groupings. Some high expectation teachers still instruct students in ability

groups but more pull out students to teach particular skills such that the salience of ability is diffused. As a teacher in a project I recently completed described, “I’ve done away with ability groups and have a range of activities to choose from, but I still pull out targeted students for guided lessons, focussing on gaps.” And as another teacher said, “My students are much more engaged in their reading and maths since I introduced flexible grouping. Students no longer worry about what group they are in.” Students can concentrate on their learning rather than on their place in the hierarchy. A further aspect of flexible grouping is that students form relationships across the classroom rather than just with those

students in their group because their seating groups and who they work with are regularly changing. This results in a sense of class community; students are more connected to each other as outlined by this teacher who also took part in the project described below, “The biggest difference I’ve noticed is in my classroom climate . . . every two weeks the children move desks and it means they have all got to know one another and there is more harmony in the classroom.” Perhaps not surprisingly, high expectation teachers also create positive relationships with all their students, manage behaviour positively and most often pre-emptively, and show all students that they care about them and their learning.

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Goal-setting also arises from flexible grouping. In many of the classes of high expectation teachers, the students were choosing their activities from a range at various achievement levels. This fostering of student autonomy meant that high expectation teachers were not as aware of where their students were up to as they would be if they made all the decisions. Also, the students were advancing quickly in their learning. For both these reasons, the teachers regularly monitored student learning and co-constructed clear goals with students for their next steps. This was motivating for students. Having clear goals, knowing what they would achieve next, and having clear feedback from teachers on their progress meant that students were challenged and engaged in their learning. There were few behavioural issues in these classes. My earlier work resulted in the Teacher Expectation Project (http:// www.education.auckland.ac.nz/ en/about/schools-departments/ ldpp/ldpp-research/ldpp-researchprojects/teacher-expectation.html) which was funded by a Marsden Fast Start Grant and a grant from the Cognition Trust. In brief, the project consisted of training a group of randomly assigned teachers (intervention group) in the practices of high expectation teachers. They learnt what high expectations look like in the classroom. The intervention group attended four workshops where they learnt how expectations are portrayed and learnt about the practices of high expectation teachers. They learnt to self-analyse their non-verbal behaviour from videos of them teaching. They also planned together how to implement the practices of high expectation teachers into their own classes. We measured student achievement and changes in their beliefs, teacher expectations, and changes in teacher beliefs. The project ran over three years (2011–2013). In the second year the intervention group trained the control group and we monitored the student and teacher changes. We also tracked the students with intervention teachers from the first to the second to the third year so that we could measure whether the achievement gains they made from being with intervention teachers were sustained once they went into new classes. There was a direct association between how much intervention teachers engaged in the project and how much their students gained in achievement. This shows that the more teachers employed the practices of high expectation teachers, the more their students benefitted. Further, overall students with intervention teachers gained 28 per cent additional learning in mathematics above what control group students learnt in the first year of the project, a sizeable effect. All students gained – and, perhaps, importantly, that disparity between the highest and lowest achievers diminished in the intervention group but increased in the control group.

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All students come to school enthusiastic about learning and the adventures that lie in store. Many leave school several years later disillusioned, disappointed and dispirited. From an economic standpoint alone we need a skilled workforce; “We cannot afford to waste even a single drop of academic talent” (Weinstein 2002, p.292). From an equity perspective, all students deserve the opportunity to achieve to their highest potential. High expectation teachers recognise the possibilities in all their students and work to ensure that all students achieve at the highest levels they can. It is teachers who foster student talent and who can help every child to love learning, to challenge themselves, and to achieve more than others might have thought possible. References Good, T. L. (1987). Teacher expectations. In D. C. Berliner and B. V. Rosenshine (Eds.) Talks to Teachers. New York: Random House. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, England: Routledge. Ireson, J., Hallam, S. and Hurley, C. (2005). What are the effects of ability grouping in GCSE attainment? British Educational Research Journal, 31, 443–458. Liem, G.A.D., Marsh, H.W., Martin, A.J., Mcinerney, D.M., & Yeung, A. S. (2013) ‘The big-fish-little-pond effect and a national policy of within-school ability streaming: alternative frames of reference’, American Educational Research Journal, 50, 326–370. Mason, D.A., Schroeter, D.D., Combs, R.K. & Washington, K. (1992). Assigning average-achieving eighth graders to advanced mathematics classes in urban junior high. Elementary School Journal, 92, 587–599. OECD (2007) ‘PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World, Volume 1-Analysis, Paris, France: OECD. Rubie-Davies, C. M. (2007). Classroom interactions: Exploring the practices of high and low expectation teachers. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 289–306. Weinstein, R.S. (2002). Reaching higher: The power of expectations in schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. About the Author Christine Rubie-Davies (PhD) Associate Professor, Head of School, School of Learning Development and Professional Practice, Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland. Private Bag 92601, Auckland 1150, Ph: (+649) 3737 599 extn. 82974, Fax: (+649) 623 8827

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Introducing Creative Commons Matt McGregor

Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand

Max Riley is a maths teacher at Nayland College in Nelson If schools address the issue of copyright in advance – rather whose website, Nayland Mathematics, provides a range of high than after the fact – they can ensure that everyone knows quality resources that are reused by teachers all over the country. their rights and responsibilities. This has the twin benefits of As of July 2014, the website has received over 1.5 million hits – a preventing potential disputes and encouraging greater resource truly extraordinary number for a school’s department homepage. sharing and collaboration, with all the attendant professional It’s worth pausing to consider the amount of time and energy benefits this provides. that Max’s website has saved maths teachers across New Zealand. Here’s the solution: Over the last two years, over fifty New The teachers using the resources on Nayland Mathematics – Zealand schools have adopted a Creative Commons policy, unlike many of their colleagues in other subjects – no longer enabling their teachers to legally share their resources for need to reinvent the wheel; they can, instead, spend their time adaptation and reuse. These schools, including Taupaki School, adapting and improving Max’s resources to meet the needs of Albany Senior High School and Hutt Valley High School, passed their own specific classrooms. their policy to address some Even if Max’s website saved of the thorny legal and moral The more we share the more only a few hundred teachers a issues of sharing copyright few hours a month, this adds resources there will be for all. works. up to thousands of teacher These schools are well placed hours every year. under current Government There is, of course, only one Max Riley. But there are many policy. Boards of Trustees are encouraged to consider using thousands of New Zealand teachers who have spent their Creative Commons licences for their teaching resources, using careers developing a range of high quality resources. And there the New Zealand Government’s Open Access and Licensing are many more thousands of teachers who would benefit from framework, approved by Cabinet in 2010. The recent Future being able to easily find, use and adapt these resources, without Focused Learning in Connected Communities report, put out by having to worry about legal or technical restrictions. With over Associate Education Minister Nikki Kaye’s 21st Century Learning 50,000 teachers in the compulsory education sector, the potential Reference Group, supported this by encouraging schools to savings in time and energy are enormous. enable teachers to use Creative Commons licensing to share Here’s the good news: There’s no longer any technical reason their resources. why every school in New Zealand can’t replicate the success of A Creative Commons policy provides a clear statement of a Nayland Mathematics. With the increasing availability of digital school’s position on copyright resources produced by teachers technologies and the rise of centralised resource sharing portals employed at the school. Simply put, the policy allows teachers to like the Network for Learning portal, Pond, it is now trivially easy use Creative Commons licensing to share their work for reuse. to share resources for reuse by every other teacher in the country. The policy ensures that when teachers leave, both the teacher and But here’s the rub: under New Zealand copyright law, the school retain access to all teaching resources. It also ensures employers have first ownership to copyright works produced in that teachers will be free to make the most of the Network for the course of a teacher’s employment. This means that teachers Learning sharing portal, Pond. who share copyright resources outside of the school are legally But what is Creative Commons licensing? CC licensing is a infringing their school’s intellectual property. As more sharing free and easy way for copyright holders to give permission to takes place online, copyright will become harder and harder to others to share and reuse their work. Each licence comes in both ignore, and is likely to cause teachers considerable uncertainty. human and lawyer readable versions, meaning that everyone No teacher, after all, wishes to break the law. will understand exactly what permissions have been granted. To head off this uncertainty, I believe that schools need to Creative Commons licensing has been used by organisations clearly state their position on intellectual property and resource all over the world – including the White House, the New Zealand sharing. At the moment, schools tend to only think about Government and MIT – to enable resources to be shared and copyright when problems arise, such as when teachers change reused, for the benefit of everyone. In New Zealand, the licences schools and take their resources with them (leaving the school are supported by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand, with an empty cupboard) or when teachers wish to monetise which supports licence users and provides a range of free their resources (by, for example, writing and selling textbooks). supplementary resources.

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As more New Zealand schools start using Pond, Creative Commons licence will ensure that every teacher is able to share and collaborate, confidently and legally. Simply put, digital technologies and Pond make sharing resources easy; CC licences make sharing resources legal. With CC licensing and great online sharing portals, New Zealand has the opportunity to ensure that all teachers, no matter the subject or year level, have access to the best resources produced by their colleagues in other schools around the country – without having to worry about any technical or legal restrictions. As Max Riley puts it, “The more we share, the more resources there will be for all.” Schools looking to adopt Creative Commons licensing can visit creativecommons.org.nz/ccinschools for a range of resources,

including a link to an off-the-shelf policy produced by Albany Senior High School. Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand is also willing to provide free workshops to schools and principals’ organisations. These can be arranged at creativecommons.org.nz/ workshops or by emailing matt@creativecommons.org.nz. Bio: Matt McGregor is the Public Lead of Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand, a project hosted by the Open Education Resource Foundation. Prior to CC, Matt taught English at the State University of New York; he also taught literature and literacy at an academy in Vancouver, Canada, and has worked in the technology sector in Wellington.

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High Flying at Newton Central Liz Hawes Editor

Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei Aspire to great heights, should you bow down let it be to a lofty mountain It’s hard to imagine that surrounded by the brassy buzz of motorway madness in Auckland’s inner city suburb of Grey Lynn, a hillside of wooded wonderland cossets a little school, a learning sanctuary for 270 children. The children are mostly of Māori (46 per cent) and Pākehā (36 per cent) descent enriched by a smaller eclectic mix of cultures including Pacific Island, Indian and other Asian cultures. Newton Central School is led by Tumuaki Hoana Pearson, whose descendants include Māori, Liverpudlian, Polish and Scots. She wears her heart on her sleeve in the form of a beautifully constructed kōtuku (white heron) tattoo, stretching the length of her arm and illustrating her multiple whakapapa.

She proudly explains the intricacies of the design showing how her Liverpudlian, Celtic, Polish and Māori roots combine to shape who she is and what makes her tick. She is a woman very comfortable in her own skin, secure in the knowledge of where she’s from and where she’s going. We settle down to talk. My first impressions are of an intense, stern and determined woman on a mission. Hoana doesn’t engage in trivial niceties but drives straight to the heart of what motivates her and that is, ‘ . . . the children in this school will not experience the kind of education that I endured.’ ‘My reality is deeply embedded,’ she said. ‘The education system failed me and failed many like me . . . I learned at school that I was dumb and couldn’t learn. It was only in adulthood that I learned about embedded racism, and I wanted to change that story.’ According to Hoana, understanding how we impose values,

Children clamber for Tumuaki Hoana’s attentions the moment she walks into the room

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assumptions, beliefs and world views on others is the key to Māori concept of leadership, ‘Rangatira’, which she describes as unlocking the barely acknowledged but deeply entrenched ‘taking the different strands and weaving them together.’ ‘It’s all prejudices that have negatively affected Māori for so long. about the interconnectedness of everything,’ she says, ‘and the ‘Pākehā culture with its own values and world view is the child is right at the centre of it all.’ accepted norm. It is so ingrained it is invisible,’ says Hoana. ‘You Her sense of interconnectedness is so strong she is even only see the effects of Pākehā cultural dominance when different reluctant to allow me to take a photograph of her on her own. She cultures are treated as ‘other’,’ she explains. insists that even though our schedule does not allow for a whole Her passion centres on changing attitudes so that we can live in staff photograph, she will send one later. Her actions breathe life a society where it is normal to have many different world views into the Māori proverb ‘Ehara taku toa, he toa takatahi, engari rather than one dominant world view to which all others must be he toa takatini’, which translates as ‘My success should not be compared making them ‘other’, ‘fringe’ or ‘marginal’. The idea that Māori is seen as ‘other’ is an abhorrent concept to Hoana and she will have none of it at her school. ‘What we do here at Newton is not normal,’ she says, ‘but it should be.’ What happens at Newton Central School is that all cultures are embraced and celebrated. It is one school that gives active expression to the Māori Education Strategy, Ka Hikitia, which aims to change how the system performs and give all Māori children the opportunities to enjoy achievement and success as Māori. Goran (2009) in a review of Ka Hikitia, talked about the importance of changing hearts and minds. It’s about whanaungatanga; it’s about a holistic curriculum; it’s about empowering children. To achieve the Hoana describes this little corner by the staff room as the ‘de-stressing’ corner where you can be soothed by the little waterfall and the calm green colours aims of Ka Hikitia, Hoana adopts the NZ Principal | S e p t e m b e r 2 0 14

Rurea taitea kia toitu ko taikaka anake . . . Strip away the bark. Expose the heartwood. Get to the heart of the matter.

The Newton Central School Staff

bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective.’ The relationships between her staff and their willingness to do things differently are the key to the school’s success. All of the staff place a high value on nurturing the identity and connections of the children through language, culture and creating a supportive environment. There is a high level of professional trust, mutual respect and willingness to teach and learn from each other, which extends to the wider Māori community with whom the school engages. Care is taken that engagement is conducted in an authentic way so that there is a full sharing of the community’s aspirations for their tamariki. These aspirations are reflected in the school’s educational provision which includes a wide range of Māori medium pathways. As Hoana says, ‘Building whānau and community capability is central to all we do at Newton Central School.’ Hoana operates a distributive leadership structure which recognises the mana and the dignity of all staff. It is an empowering arrangement and not an easy option. The commitment of staff to her vision has to be all encompassing. Her expectations are high. She presumes staff to be at all times reflective and taking action, because these are the two things that will change the reality. Much of her approach is grounded in the thinking of the Brazilian educational philosopher Paulo Freire and his concept of ‘conscientization’ which is ‘a process of developing a critical awareness of one’s social reality through reflection and action.’ Conscientization leads to learning as a critical process of uncovering real problems and actual needs. A Māori proverb neatly sums up the concept:

Year six children write what they think about ‘Parihaka’

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Freire is well known for his publication ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ in which he writes, ‘No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.’ (Freire, 1970, p. 54). Hoana takes this message very seriously. Newton Central School has its own distinct model of pedagogy, management and governance. The school curriculum is bicultural. Speaking Māori alongside English is quite normal and children flick from one language to the other with consummate ease. There are total Māori immersion classes, bilingual classes and classes conducted in English. We hear so much about the low achievement of Māori children and the importance of lifting their success rates it creates a sense that there is something lacking in Māori children. Hoana disagrees and insists that Māori children simply haven’t been given equal opportunities. The difference between her children and those not yet experiencing success is that her children’s world view, cultural values and aspirations are accepted as the norm. She talks very little about measures of achievement such as national standards but if you want to know about Newton Central School’s achievement rates you will find they sit well above the national average in reading, writing and maths. Her children in total Māori immersion classes are also high achievers and when assessed in their second language, English, they out-perform their English only speaking peers. Being bilingual obviously has distinct academic advantages. Walking about the school is a very pleasant experience. The connecting pathways, the lush native vegetation and the beautifully appointed gardens and grottos create a feeling of visiting a close knit village rather than a school. The strong connections amongst the children and between the staff and children soon become obvious. Children moving about the school stop to greet you. They want to know who you are where you are from, what you are doing there and if they can help you find where you’re going. You feel at once included and important. Meeting a classroom teacher is a bit like visiting an old neighbour you haven’t seen in a while. No one is a stranger in this school and as a visitor you are quickly ‘brought into the fold’. I immediately become Whaea Liz. All teachers in the school are known by their first names, creating an intimate ‘family’ atmosphere. The whole

Children work together, helping and supporting one another

school community is indeed one big family. The children are proud of their classrooms and want to show you their work. They are also quick to praise each other’s work as if they have a stake in it themselves. When Hoana enters the class room they welcome her excitedly. It’s as if Father Christmas just arrived. Children rush to her side for a hug. She generously responds. They clamber to tell her of their latest discoveries, what they are doing and what they are learning. She is instantly engaged and like the children slips easily from speaking English to Māori and back again. We visit the Māori immersion year two class learning about Tudor England and the Vikings, in Māori. It’s pyjama day and the children have enthusiastically embraced the chance to come to school in their nightwear. My eye wanders to the elaborate

This class photo signifies the focus on ‘family’, strength in working together, and respecting each other

to inequities for Māori which persist today. Hoana is proud of the rich heritage the children acquire at school. Not only do they learn their history as Māori, they learn to question it, to reflect on the decisions made at the time and think about what those decisions might look like in a fair and just society. Like the younger children, these students are welcoming, engaging and eager to share what they have learnt. I am shown the comments that they have written in response to their recent study of Parihaka and the invasion by the troops, the looting, and the destruction. They use words like mean, unfair, crazy, in relation to the troops and suggested that they could have talked about it instead of attacking the Māori people and their children. These are thinking children who have developed a social conscience to be proud of.

Studying the Treaty of Waitangi

Smoking, alcohol, animals and Christmas are all things the British early settlers brought

picture and story displayed on the wall. It reads : Ko Bloody Mary tēnei. Kāore pai ki a ia ngā tangata a whakapono ki nā whakapono rerekē. Six year olds in their pyjamas writing about Queen Mary’s (bloody) reign of terror, in Māori, is not what I usually experience on school visits, but then this is no usual school. We move on to a year six class where the children are learning New Zealand history. They learn about colonisation and how it resulted in negative outcomes for Māori. They study the Treaty of Waitangi, learn and write reports about the Native Schools Act of 1867 and the land marches. They study Parihaka and how Māori used passive resistance to oppose the Crown’s attempts to buy up land for Pākehā. They also carefully examine the 1981 Springbok Tour, and the 2007 Tuhoe raids. The children discuss and reflect on these events to understand the elements of injustice, of racism and deliberate oppression which have led

But you don’t have to wait till you are year six to learn about history. Children are introduced to the settlers of New Zealand as soon as they enter school. We visit a year two class that has been thinking about what the first British settlers brought to Aotearoa. The children have pictorially listed their suggestions. Cigarettes, alcohol, farm animals, guns, Christmas and the Queen all feature. They are also prompted to think about what they might have packed in their trunk if they were early settlers. Hoana will be pleased to see books feature along with musical instruments, tools, blankets and toys. The children learn that connecting with the past is important in order to understand how they got to where they are. Their knowledge of history gives them strength in making decisions about the future. They work together as one harmonious family, respectful of each other and like their teachers, are taught to reflect on their work and their actions.

The year six children reflect on the 1981 Tour by creating models

The Treaty of Waitangi is a seminal document of study for the year six children

NZ Principal | S e p t e m b e r 2 0 14

The governance of the school follows a Treaty of Waitangi structure. It is a power sharing and consensus decision making partnership structure between the Board and the community which is represented by a Māori education committee, Te Whao Urutaki. The model is not usual for a school’s governance structure but that is no deterrent to Tumuaki Hoana Pearson who would like to see such a structure adopted nationwide. With her own school providing such a biculturally successful example, Hoana wanted to expand her horizons and share her experience for the good of Māori learners in other schools. S h e j u mp e d at t h e Making models and writing about opportunity to become the Tuhoi Raids of 2007 a facilitator for a local Te Ara Hou or Māori Achievement Collaborative (MAC). The MACs are an initiative to raise Māori student achievement, led by Peter Witana, of Te Akatea and the NZPF executive. They operate in partnership with the Ministry of Education. The MACs take a cluster approach and have the broad aim of changing the hearts and minds of principals so that they can begin the journey of strengthening

relationships and engagement with their Māori students, whānau, iwi and hapū and build strong relationships between Māori and non-Māori principals. It is a journey first of self-development then planning how to change the attitudes which are barriers to Māori student development and success in our schools. The MACs help to breathe life into the Ka Hikitia strategy by advocating a shift in thinking and behaviour, a change in attitudes and expectations. They are about personal responsibility and collective accountability. Like Hoana’s own philosophy of life, the MACs draw on Freire’s notion of conscientization. The principals are engaged in a process of critically reflecting on their own social reality to uncover the real problems and actual needs of their students and communities. Hoana is very clear about her future intentions. She is in education to make a difference for Māori and wants Māori educational success to be the norm. She will work to eradicate the idea that Māori language and culture is ‘other’ compared to the dominant Pākehā culture. Her aim is for society to change its ethnocentric attitudes and accept a Māori world view as completely normal and enriching for us all. Only then will our Māori children have the freedom to fully realise their potential and know they can reach for the sky. References Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Goran, P.D. (2009). How Policy Travels: Making Sense of Ka Hikitia – Managing for Success: The Māori Education Strategy 2008 – 2012. Fulbright (NZ)

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The Eight Continuums of School Culture David J. C. McKenzie Principal, Edendale Primary School (Southland)

Emotionality

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Values

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Cohesive School Staff Culture

• Values vs. Emotionality Values – the creative force. When decisions and interactions between people operate around a core set of known and agreed values then human beings are operating at one of the deepest and highest levels possible. When values such as humility, self-control, integrity

Emotionality – the destructive force. Emotionality is when emotions are contorted by personal insecurities, frustrations and unhealthy obsessions. Effectively there are no values moderating an emotional reaction. When decisions and interactions between people are dominated by emotionality then relationships become unpredictable, unreliable and fragile. Angry volatile flare-ups produce fear, butt covering and ducking for cover. Sullenness produces negativity, walking on egg shells and energy depletion. Emotionality is sapping and destructive. The caveat here is that emotions are not wrong. Emotions in and of themselves are neutral. When emotions are aligned around values they are incredibly powerful. It is emotionality that is a negative tension, not emotions.

Others

Let us proceed to look at each continuum and how they work.

and grace flow and are reciprocated between each other a positive staff culture is created. Values are sturdy, foundational and predictable.

Present and Continuous

Pastitis

The culture of the staff in a school can often seem amorphous. It exists but it feels like an enigma. It seems fluid and shapeless presiding, as if in a science fiction movie, in another dimension. The development of a staff culture can feel like chance and time are the fulcrum forces, yet this is not the case. When unravelling the DNA of staff culture it is clear that it is complex but there are distinct design features, which once understood and brought to light, can help us as we work consciously to grow and then protect a cohesive, constructive, positive, staff culture. Before I proceed I would like to lay two foundational understandings. The first is that culture exists within relationships. When you have two people, on site, at any given time, there is a professional relationship. Staff culture lives in those microscopic, every day, seemingly insignificant conversations and interactions. The second foundational understanding around staff culture 2 is that the primary transmitters of it are those in leadership. We as Principals are chief transmitters but also our Deputy and Assistant Principals and our Board of Trustees. How we as leaders act and react sets a cultural tone. That tone rings out and is heard at a deep and often unconscious level by the rest of the staff. More times than not, they begin humming along to the tune that we have been playing. I would like to propose that this cultural tune, existing between relationships, is sung across eight distinct continuums. Each continuum is like a magnet with polar opposites. At one end there is a destructive, erosive force, which pushes away and destroys. At the other end there is the constructive, genesis force, which draws in and creates. (Figure 1, right)

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Careerity

(Figure 1) (Figure 1) NZ Principal | S e p t e m b e r 2 0 14

• Solutions vs. Blame Solutions – the creative force. Schools are full of people. We make mistakes and things go wrong. How are these mistakes dealt with? A solutions focus acknowledges the problem, dissects it and seeks learning from it, so that the possibility of the mistake happening again is minimised. With a solutions approach the problem is the problem – crucially the person is not the problem. When a solutions focus is part of school culture people know they are valued and supported. They feel secure and accepted even when they make mistakes. Blame – the destructive force. When things go wrong and a blame strategy is used then negative cultural forces come into play. Blame focuses on the person, not the problem. This subtle shift in focus is debilitating for staff. They don’t want to be part of it. Blame, by its nature, grows thorns of shame in a staff member’s life. It erodes confidence and diminishes discretionary work input. What staff member would want to take on something new if they know that getting it wrong would end in being blamed and shamed? • Others vs. Ego Others – the creative force. When relationships are ‘others’ focused they are outward focused. Other people’s needs are considered. Other people’s desires are taken into account. Other people’s opinions are valued. Other people’s suggestions are taken on board. An ‘others’ focus is enriching for growth, positive for progress and motivating for momentum.

Ego – the destructive force. Ego is ‘I’ focused. Ego is selfish and ‘me’ orientated. A person who is ‘ego’ focused is in it for themselves. They are not team players. They are not co-operative. They don’t contribute. They don’t go the extra mile for others. Ego devalues collegiality. • Giving vs. Getting Giving – the creative force. Giving involves understanding the needs of others and actively working to meet their needs. Inherent within a giving focus is sacrifice. It may take time, money and energy to meet the needs of others. It may feel inconvenient and outside of the scope of a job description, but that’s what makes it giving – going beyond the call of duty. A giving force is thoughtful and will publicly acknowledge work well done. It will celebrate a staff member’s achievement. Getting – the destructive force. A getting relationship is one sided. Getting people always want resources, money or courses just for them. They are like black holes sucking it all in. Yet, they seldom seem satisfied or content. A getting person wants all the praise, recognition, mana and acknowledgement to be theirs and theirs alone. They struggle to share the stage. They may even steal someone else’s achievements and pass them off for their own glory. They can be very critical when they do not get what they want. They are emotionally needy, draining energy out of staff for their own perceived needs. • Community vs. Careerity Community – the creative force. The ‘community’ force is an awareness that we are not in a social vacuum. That there are ripples that occur across the staff ‘pond’ when certain actions are taken and decisions are made. It is an understanding that when we join a school we join a community of people all working for a common goal and vision. It is team. It is togetherness. It is unity. Our work means something to others. Our contributions are joint with others creating synergy. There is a Xhosa word called ubuntu which means ‘I am because we are’. Community is a oneity. Careerity – the destructive force. We should all have dreams and ambitions to grow and become better at what we do. Careerity is not that. I define ‘careerity’ as an unhealthy obsession with a personal career trajectory. Burnt on the altar of careerity are patience, people and place. Schools, and the people within them, are stepping stones, to be used to get to some predetermined destination that, within the mind of the person, is their nirvana of success. Outcomes, actions and ‘looking good’ become hugely important. Pity the staff member who gets in the way of a person obsessed with their own career.

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• Investment vs. Costicity Investment – the creative force. An investment focus is a focus upon potential. It sees the future rewards and is not out for instant gains. An investment focus is growth focused. An investment focus sees staff members as the most important assets that the school has to complete its core function of raising student achievement. An investment focus is geared towards a staff member’s professional learning. An investment focus considers all staff as highly worthwhile ventures.

Costicity – the destructive force. There is a healthy aspect to paying attention to cost. It ensures value for money and reduces wastage. However, when a cost focus goes too far it becomes what I call ‘costicity’. When people are seen as a cost to a school, then the focus is negative. It begins to be about minimising that cost, reducing that expense and extracting every last drop of effort out of a person through any means necessary. Costicity can overly distort accountability and overplay outcomes beyond what is feasibly achievable. An excessive cost focus is morale destroying and can remove the zing and effervescent fizz in a school culture.

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• Present & Continuous vs. Pastitis Present & Continuous – the creative force. It is a time thing. It is a ‘tense’ thing. What ‘tense’ does the school staff culture desire to live within. Greek literature has a beautiful tense that is called ‘present and continuous’. It is a today, tomorrow and into the future focus. It is one built on hope, expectation and the positive dynamic of embracing change. Living in this dynamic and having relationships infused with this vibrancy is empowering and energising. Schools who are cognisant of this present-continuous tense have strong communication and organisation systems for ‘the now’ and are continually forecasting forward with plans based upon reflection of what works and what did not.

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Pastitis – the destructive force. The past is there; it informs our present and provides a context for understanding our world. It is important to have a healthy perspective on the past and learn from it. An unhealthy perspective on the past I call ‘Pastitis’. When a person is infected with ‘pastitis’ they are living in the past tense. It is their groove and sadly this groove has become a rut which they want to drag others into. Progress is thwarted with killer statements like ‘We’ve done this before and it didn’t work’. Sacred cows graze the pedagogical prairies. Pastitis infects a person’s teachability and is tinged with a dose of arrogance. Work becomes a ‘going through the motions’ experience of replication year on year. Pastitis means that schools and classrooms can become museums holding onto systems, practises and resources that are out dated. • Cognitive Listening vs. Talkism Cognitive Listening – the creative force. Listening is not just hearing. Hearing is a biological process, listening is cognitive process. Cognitive listening is putting what is heard into context, extracting the learning, seeing the opportunity and then acting at the appropriate time. Cognitive listening is very powerful. Opportunities for positive growth and dynamic step-change come from cognitive listening. The big question is who to listen to? In the context of this discussion it is staff. When staff are cognitively listening to each other a powerful force is let loose – dreaming. Schools can only grow as big as the dreams of those that are in them. When leadership allows dreams to flow the sky is the limit and staff feel empowered.

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• Talkism – the destructive force. Talkism has two aspects. •

Firstly it is talking designed to impress and let everyone within hearing range know how wonderful that person is. Talkism dominates discussions, over-rides discourse and sucks opportunities away from other people to contribute. They are orally selfish. Staff meetings become stages to impress others. They are so busy talking they have no time for listening.

NZ Principal | S e p t e m b e r 2 0 14

•

e second aspect to Talkism is a lot quieter but potentially Th more destructive and I call them ‘wasp statements’. It is those staff members who shoot in jabbing, snarky remarks that are sharp and hurting. You don’t expect them and before you know it you are rubbing a sore spot looking for the reason why you were jabbed. These people either have over-inflated opinions of themselves or have very low self-esteems and seek to lift themselves up by pushing someone ‘above’ them down.

Talkism people are always trying to promote themselves or demote others. When talkism dominates, innovation and ideas struggle to survive. The quieter precise and peaceful personalities wilt away into the background not wanting to poke their necks out for fear of being over-ridden or receiving snarky comments. A school goes a lot further and faster without talkism personalities dominating the staff culture. Creative Forces Values Solutions Others Giving Community Investment Present and Continuous Cognitive Listening (Figure 2)

Destructive Forces Emotionality Blame Ego Gain Careerity Costitis Pastivity Talkism

Here is a summary (Figure 2) of the two forces and the eight continuum components that make them up. When you look down each force you can see very clearly how the combination contributes to a positive or negative staff culture. It is possible to quantify, (all be it rather subjectively), a staff culture through an assessment tool (figure 3). This assessment tool allows staff to rate the culture on a scale between the two forces. This tool can be used in a variety of ways. ■■

■■

It could be a self-assessment reflection tool to help you personally and honestly assess your own impact on staff culture. It could be used sensitively and professionally amongst the leadership team to get a perspective on how staff culture is going. It could go wider and be used for all staff members at the beginning of the year to get a feel for current culture. From there the information could be analysed, a plan put into action and then, at the end of the year, the tool could be used again to see if there had been any progress. You could total each staff member’s scores out of 56. From there you could average all staff ’s score to get a school average. The higher the number the stronger the school staff culture. You could draw your own school’s octagonal star for school culture by plotting results on the tool and joining them from one continuum to the other. Remember the tighter and smaller the shape the more positive the school staff culture is.

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Emotionality

(Figure 3)

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Present and Continuous

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Others

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Whatever way you use it, be sensitive, considerate and professional. It has the potential to be very deep and revealing and some personalities could struggle with the results. It will generate a lot of thought and discussion, and when that is handled well it will help move school staff culture forward. To conclude, we spend a lot of our time at work. Making the school staff culture as positive as possible contributes towards a professional workplace. It will be one of dignity, unity and integrity. It will be positive, cohesive and harmonious. It will enable a school to achieve more, progress further and faster and attract the right staff. It will be noticed by the community. Ultimately it grows a school. As leaders we are in the conductor’s seat for school staff culture. Let’s conduct a great symphony!

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Outside looking in:

IES, a research perspective Dr Patty Towl PhD

I was relieved to hear the concern raised by the primary its home environment. Finally there is no obvious, rigorous school sector about the proposed Investing in Education Success research evidence that IES actually raises student achievement; Initiative. I am a retired high school principal and special not even in Singapore or Hong Kong. Essentially, therefore, education needs coordinator. I have recently completed a PhD what is the actual evidence and what still needs to be done to on school exclusion and, currently, work as an independent ensure that IES is likely to result in continuous improvement researcher and writer. My position, therefore, is as an outsider in student achievement especially for priority students? If the looking in. From this perspective IES looks like a student’s draft Minister’s mind is dead set on IES, I would like to see a delay assignment; something that needs a lot more work before you until the beginning of 2016. This delay could assure teachers can give it a mark. Yet here it is; coming ready or not. From and families that the strategy is ready, a quality management the start of 2015, IES will begin to unpick the self-managing system in place and any obvious problems have been worked schools model we have worked with for the last 25 years. The through and resolved. sudden appearance of IES on the education scene, however, presents a more important dilemma than whether we are Improving achievement for priority children Recently there has been a decline in ready to move from competition to New Zealand’s educational outcomes in collaboration. IES raises a question From the start of 2015, international comparisons like PISA. While of process. Should the Minister of our high achieving students continue do Education cherry pick strategies from IES will begin to as well as children anywhere else in the overseas or should robust research unpick the selfworld Māori, Pasifika, low income and method and best practice construct special education needs students continue New Zealand solutions to the problems managing schools to fare poorly. The IES initiative appears that hobble quality service delivery. An to be targeted specifically to improve the informed and planned answer to this model we have worked education outcomes for these priority groups dilemma is never more important than with for the last 25 of students. The problem of embedded when we are seeking solutions for our bias against these priority learners is also most vulnerable children. years. as evident in school exclusion statistics Late in 2013 Minister Parata sent eight representatives from the education sector to Singapore (MOE, 2013) as it is for other measures of poor outcomes for and Hong Kong to; “to investigate the characteristics of these young people in education. These uncomfortable statistics are top performing systems, and report on what can be learned common to other education systems with similar diverse social [ . . . ] in anticipation of hosting the 4th International Summit on and cultural mixes. We need to address this disparity and this the Teaching Profession in 2014” (Parata, 2013). The outcome allocated funding provides an opportunity. How do we know, of this visit was the IES initiative. It has a generous price tag though, that removing ‘high performing’ teachers from the of $359 million and claims to be a strategy that will raise classroom to work with ‘other’ teachers will be an effective use achievement for priority children in Aotearoa. To achieve this of this money? New Zealand based research evidence, even that supported our ‘best’ teachers and principals will leave their classrooms and offices two days a week to lead collaborative professional by the Ministry of Education, suggests improving outcomes development in clusters of schools. I can see a number of for children comes through enhancing the most basic teaching problems inherent to the plan even if the initiative is ready in unit: the child and the teacher in the classroom with the time. One is the existing research evidence that priority learners support of the family (Bull, Brooking & Campbell, 2008). The may be disadvantaged by the strategy. Another problem is that, Tomorrow’s Schools model is predicated on this philosophy while there are difficulties in extracting any strategy from one of partnership yet where are the family and the student in the place and expecting it to work elsewhere, in funding IES, the IES initiative? Children at risk of poor education outcomes and government has ignored two factors critical to its success in early exit benefit from stable, warm, productive teacher-student

NZ Principal | S e p t e m b e r 2 0 14

relationships (Towl, 2012). At points of crisis, like stand-down, the deciding factor in an enduring return to school is not the demographic but the robustness of the working relationship between home and school (Towl, 2012). Children who begin their progression towards exclusion and early exit at primary are those most at risk (Towl, 2012) and, therefore, most in need of teachers having time to build and sustain these warm relationships. The IES initiative takes identified highly competent teachers out of the classroom for two days a week. While this may not be such a problem in high school, at primary school these priority students may have to cope with two teachers and, at crisis points, two principals as well. I believe this could seriously disadvantage our most at risk children. What is the whole picture of all existing roles tasked with improving student achievement as they interact, intersect and overlap with IES? Over the past three years there have been a number of initiatives which have a specific focus in raising achievement for priority students. There are the SAF practitioners, for example, and a number of new positions at the Ministry of Education which also have a specific emphasis in this area. From outside it is hard both to evaluate the effectiveness of these appointments and to understand how they either overlap with or complement the IES initiative. Is there a plan? Is it rooted in robust research method and evidence of best practice from New Zealand and overseas? How are these positions/ initiatives evaluated and how do their outcomes contribute to our knowledge of what actually works to improve the lives of children? How do already existing roles like SCT and RTLB complement IES? The SCT role appears similar to that of the

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lead teacher and RTLB have a valuable and established role and reputation for improving learning outcomes for priority students. I believe there are still too many unanswered questions about the role of IES in raising achievement in New Zealand to make it a valid starter for the beginning of 2015. IES and teacher workload One of the factors critical to the success of the strategy in Singapore is the generous provision of non-contact time for teachers. In Singapore basic scale teachers have 14 hours a week class contact with the balance as professional learning time (MOE, 2013a). Teachers, therefore, would not have to leave their classes for professional development. In New Zealand basic scale teachers have on average around 20 hours a week class contact and IES specifically states that teachers will be taken out of their classes for IES. From the outside it appears unfair that our teachers will be expected to perform well without a reasonable allocation of non-contact time. Hattie’s (1999) report on quality outcomes for NZ children in education emphasises the importance of quality classroom time as one of the key determinants of student achievement. Evidence based research identifies an intricate relationship between teacher work load and teacher performance (Jepson & Forrest, 2006). The last few years have seen a number of initiatives from the Ministry of Education without a commensurate allocation of time to compensate teachers’ workload. National standards and PB4L, for example, require extra administration and meeting time. The casualty of this is preparation time and teachers say that this has an impact on the quality of their classroom delivery (Towl, 2012). Principals, for obvious reasons, tend to place their most vulnerable students with their most competent teachers. These teachers, especially in primary schools, report being overstretched and under resourced already (Towl, 2012). Despite the compensation of ‘inquiry time’ there are only a set number of hours in a day and inevitably the time teachers have available to do their core business may be affected by the imposition of yet another Ministry initiative. I would like to see a workload impact report that assesses teacher workload currently and extrapolates the potential impact on teacher preparation and classroom time of the IES initiative. Collaboration? Coming ready or not. The second factor critical to the success of IES overseas is the centralised nature of service delivery in Singapore and Hong Kong. In New Zealand our self-managing schools are competitive and our service delivery decentralised. The management structures and philosophies of competition and collaboration are significantly different yet the stated purpose of the IES initiative is to introduce a collaborative model into what has been a competitive model for 25 years. From the outside there doesn’t appear to have been any consideration either of the use of change models or that the personnel selected to work with communities of schools will be experienced and supported in facilitating and managing very complex and difficult change. According to the Minister (Parata, 2014) many schools already team teach and many schools are already working collaboratively. These assertions also prompt questions. Where is the research evidence of team teaching and collaboration in New Zealand schools? What change modelling did these schools use and can this help other communities of schools to move towards what has so suddenly

become a desirable model? Research that addresses these two questions could assist people skilled in change modelling and quality management systems (QMS) construct and trial models that have a greater likelihood both of success and of evaluating and understanding any evidence of failure. Finally, if so many schools have already moved towards a collaborative model why do we need IES anyway? Why does the Minister need to throw money away on getting schools to talk to each other and work together if this is already happening? Final words The elephant in the room of course is performance pay; a philosophy we have struggled against since it was first mooted in the 1990s. While the catch cry is raising student achievement the subtext is about establishing a competitive career structure for the teaching profession. I am uneasy that the stated outcome of this highly competitive process is collaborative schools. This appears to be not only a philosophical but also a practical anomaly. If the Minister is set on IES let us continue to push for a delay. An extra year would enable more work on lining up the research evidence and, perhaps, widening the field to include investigations of successful education change – including school management philosophy and structure change – in countries where there are similar institutional, social and cultural mixes to our own. We could identify and address the potential work load issues and run pilot studies in sentinel areas e.g. low income, high Māori and Pasifika, rural and remote communities. In these pilot studies the QMS requirements of clear starting points, strategies

and evaluation for continuous improvement could be identified, trialled and evaluated. References Bull, A., Brooking, K. & Campbell, R. (2008). Successful Home-school Partnerships: a Report to the Ministry of Education. Wellington. Hattie, J. (1999). Influences on Student Learning. Inaugural Professorial Lecture. University of Auckland. Jepson, E & Forrest, S. (2006). Individual contributory factors in teacher stress: the role of achievement striving and occupational commitment. British Journal of Educational Psychology. 76, 1. 183–197. MOE (2013). Stand-downs, Suspensions and Exclusions from school. Retrieved at http://educationcounts.govt.nz/indicators/student MOE. (2013a). Ministry Cross-sector Forum on Raising Achievement: Summary Record Friday 1 November 2013. Retrieved at http://minedu. govt.nz Parata, H. (2013). Education Delegation to Travel to Asia. Retrieved at: https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/ detail/2013/09/27/education-delegation-to-travel-to-asia Parata, H, (2014) Morning report: National radio. Radio New Zealand. 7 July, 2014. Towl, P. (2012). I Am Bad Apparently: the Role of Stand-down to Manage Behaviour in Communities of Practice. Unpublished doctoral thesis. The University of Otago.

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School Lines Education's Latest Love Words from the Theory Fairies Lester Flockton

feedback, feedforward, Feedup, feeddown lester.flockton@otago.ac.nz

Systemness – Collaboration – Communities of Schools – Teaching as Inquiry – Raising Achievement Has it ever struck you, dear reader, that education and those who work in education are victims of relentlessly robotic rounds of new jargon, new panaceas, new fix-its, new initiatives, new spinoramas, new “love words”? And have you ever noticed how readily, how acceptingly, how indiscriminately, so many vulnerable education workers allow themselves to be willingly seduced into having these freely admitted and drilled into their personal mindsets, vocabularies and behaviours? Or equally disturbing, if they are resistant, being at risk of derision as “unionists” rather than being regarded as well informed critical analytic thinkers and evaluators. If you are a truly inquiring educator you might well ask who manufactures all of this, who buys into it, why does it happen, and why should I buy into it? Very simply, the main manufacturers are the theory fairies, and the main sponsors and promulgators are policy purveyors and puppets. Let’s take “systemness”, collaboration, and communities of schools. Who are the leading impresarios drumming up and conducting this lot, with considerable success in shaping the minds of impressionable policy puppets? Theorist Michael “panaceatic” Fullan, a man with a gift for clever crafting of words and a wealth of hyperbolic theoretical remedies for fixing schools and teachers takes centre stage! In his (not recommended) book, The Principal – Three Keys to Maximizing Impact, he claims that connecting learning within and across schools and systems is the only way for whole systems to improve and keep improving (p. 42). In short, here is his latest panacea: In short, if you place primary emphasis on capacity building, collaborative effort, pedagogy, and systemness, and integrate

accountability, human resource policies, technology, and specific policies as part of the overall strategy, you will achieve greater success overall. (Fullan, pp. 37–38) The evidence in support of the theory relative to New Zealand’s situation is at best underwhelming, but he pushes on. “The opportunity to recast the role of the principal should not be missed. It is a matter of “urgency”. And why? Because he repeatedly and misleadingly tells readers that principals, next to teachers, have the greatest influence on student learning – a view quite clearly at odds with heaps of credible research. As Berliner et al (2014) make crystal clear, it is a well-orchestrated myth that principals, let alone teachers, are the most important influence on a child’s education. As obvious as it is to note the importance of good teaching, research makes it equally clear that teachers are not the most important influence on a child’s education. In fact, most research indicates that less than 30 per cent of a student’s academic success in school is attributable to schools, and teachers are only part of that overall school effect . . . (Berliner, et al, p. 51) I expect that many in our primary and intermediate schools would also want to emphatically dispute the relevance to New Zealand of Fullan’s many Canadian-American centric viewpoints. For example: The learning fates of principals, teachers, and students are intimately interrelated – and in the past decade, the conditions for mutual learning in schools have been seriously eroding. Students are bored, to put it mildly. (Fullan, p. 5)

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There is a lot more in Fullan’s generalised worldview of education, schools, principals, teachers and children that should be challenged rather than swooned over. In common with some notable academics here and abroad, his well spun remedies and panaceas are largely theoretical but based on very limited practical knowledge of curriculum (the substance of teaching and learning), or sufficient understanding and acknowledgement of the irregular, often untidy and unpredictable day-to-day realities for schools and classrooms. But don’t get me wrong. Theories and theorists have their place. They can sometimes be useful in stimulating ideas, but without being properly “earthed” in reality and experience in areas over which they presume expertise, they invariably spark off harmful policy combustions when favoured by policy puppets – as we are witnessing in New Zealand over and over again. Then there are the large scatterings of theory dust from production lines of canisters labelled “Raising Achievement – Teaching as Inquiry”. Good teachers have always engaged in critical evaluative processes as a natural and ongoing feature of their pedagogical processes. They plan and think about what and how they will teach in consideration of what they come to know about children’s needs, abilities and dispositions from a range of valid information, including repeated in situ observations of their day-by-day responses and work. Good teachers have always modified and adjusted their strategies and approaches in light of children’s responses, and always with the goal of continually advancing learning. This is not science. It is not research. It is not a “project”. It is a sensibly and intuitively crafted mix of the objective and the subjective that reflects the reality of teaching

children. Yet current packaging of “Teaching as Inquiry” assumes formalities of measurement and objectivity from data analyses as the evidential pivots necessary for raising achievement. The section in The New Zealand Curriculum on effective pedagogy (pp. 34–35) gives an eminently sensible description of good teaching and an uncomplicated schema for teaching as inquiry. It’s nothing new. It’s not rocket science. It doesn’t require a consultant or an adviser. It doesn’t need a course. It doesn’t warrant case studies or portfolio pontification. It is plain English. It doesn’t require elaboration. It doesn’t need fancification. It most certainly doesn’t require embellishment by academics, senior management, or staff word-knitting clubs. If a teacher cannot understand and follow the approach as it is described, then retraining or some other career pathway is clearly needed! But a word of caution: where the schema says “Teaching Inquiry – what strategies (evidence-based) are most likely to help my student learn?”, please, please understand that “evidence-based” means a whole lot of highly valid information that the teacher obtains formally and informally (mainly through listening and observation) throughout the course of interactions with children during teaching and learning, within and across day-to-day contexts of the classroom. Data from tests is only a small fraction of the information that constitutes “evidence-based”. To suggest otherwise is pure theory fairy dust, so keep it pure! Reference (Recommended) Berliner, D.C., Glass, G.V., and Associates. (2014). 50 Myths & Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

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A better start in life Helen Kinsey-Wightman

As parents we endeavour to give our children a better start in life than we remember having. The danger is, that when we feel we have achieved this, we constantly berate our children with tales of our own hard upbringing. In my house this goes along the lines of . . .

Whilst there is no doubt that materially, most young people have much more “stuff ” than the wealthiest children 35 years ago, six months into my move to secondary education I am questioning whether I felt as much pressure during my teenage years as I see placed on young women today. NCEA undoubtedly provides an enviable range of subjects Son: Mum, I’ve been thinking that if I had a cellphone you – the breadth and depth of knowledge and skills on offer to wouldn’t need to worry about me because today’s students is far greater than that you would know where I am all the Access to the internet available to me in a UK high school time and our communication would be of similar size. A mix of internal and so much better . . . (glances at mother’s also provides an enviable external assessment also seems to offer unyielding expression and voice takes on a less focus on rote learning and greater slightly desperate edge) Mum, I’m 12 years source of knowledge fairness than performance assessed in old and I’m the only one in my class who – 35 years ago access to a single examination week. However, doesn’t have a cellphone! looking at the assessment calendar Mother: (adopts appalling version of knowledge depended on and the pressure to keep accruing Northern English accent) Eeh by gum lad, credits (preferably at excellence level) that’s nothing . . . when I were young we the skills and budget I wonder whether the result isn’t more were the only house on our street without allocation of my school pressure all the time? a telephone, if I needed to talk to me mam Access to the internet also provides I had to ride 5 miles through the snow librarian. an enviable source of knowledge – on a bike with a saddle so hard me bum 35 years ago access to knowledge would be numb for a week afterwards . . . depended on the skills and budget allocation of my school Son: Yeah OK Mum, before you get to the bit about climbing librarian. You can debate whether Wikipedia is reliable if you on your sister’s shoulders to look through the window and watch like but I know it is preferable in both content and accessibility the next door neighbour’s colour TV, does that mean I’m not to the slightly out of date Encyclopaedia Brittanica I shared with getting a cellphone yet? 1200 other students – until the library closed at 4.30pm of course! Mother: Yes. But along with the benefits of Google and Wikipedia comes Son: (in world weary tone) What’s for dinner? the insecurity inducing Ask FM and the pressure to get sufficient ‘likes’ on every witty (or not) Facebook posting. Looking back,

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the height of my giving in to the need to conform was tweaking my answers to Jackie Magazine’s Quiz “Tom boy or Boy magnet?” to get Mostly B’s (You are a fun girl and boys just love spending time with you but you’re not so drop dead gorgeous that you make the boys tongue tied!) We impress on girls the need to have a career plan and to achieve University Entrance, we also tell them that academics alone are not sufficient and they must display a broad range of interests ideally showing a balance of sport and arts and of course incorporating service to the community. At a recent workshop on teenage suicide I attended, guidance counsellors universally reported that anxiety levels amongst teens seemed to be increasing rapidly. Should the wellbeing of our students concern me as much as their academic performance? All of the students at my school perform well above average for their decile and 50 per cent of them go on to University – again well above average. We are a successful educational institution – isn’t that enough? Yet everything that I know about learning tells me it is more likely to happen when students are happy. Should we be running classes in happiness then? Don’t laugh – only last night there was a slightly mocking report on One News that schools in the UK are doing just that. The more serious background to this story comes from a report just published which found that: “Approximately 10 per cent of children in the UK currently have a mental health disorder and that since 2009 the life satisfaction of Britain’s young people had stopped improving and could have even begun to decline. According to the report, this could be due to factors such

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as pressure to have access to money, have the perfect body and lifestyle or to achieve in school and university.” (THE INDEPENDENT Friday 18 July 2014.) To give credit where credit is due we are ahead of the game here in New Zealand. In May 2011 Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, published a report commissioned in 2009 stating that, “Adolescents in New Zealand relative to those in other developed countries have a high rate of social morbidity. While most adolescents are resilient to the complexities of the social milieu in which they live, at least 20 per cent of young New Zealanders will exhibit behaviours and emotions or have experiences that lead to long-term consequences affecting the rest of their lives.” The statistics behind this summary can be summarised as follows: “By international standards, risk-taking among New Zealand adolescents is high. Excessive alcohol use is common; 70 per cent of New Zealand 12– to 17–year olds report that they have no problem accessing alcohol and 30 per cent of teenagers report that they made no attempt to control their drinking in order to avoid memory confusion or loss. New Zealand ranks fifth among OECD countries for rates of teenage pregnancy. New Zealand youth are at a high risk of sexually transmitted infections, those under 25 years having the highest rates of Chlamydia infection, gonorrhoea, genital herpes and genital warts. Finally, New Zealand has the highest rate of teenage suicide among OECD countries. (Improving the Transition: Reducing Social and Psychological Morbidity During Adolescence A report from the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor May 2011) The Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project, set up in 2012 in response to this report has resulted in ERO publishing ‘Wellbeing for Success: draft evaluation indicators for student wellbeing.’ The report is based on the research base premise that: “Student wellbeing is strongly linked to learning . . . Optimal student wellbeing is a sustainable state, characterised by predominantly positive feelings and attitude, positive relationships at school, resilience, self-optimism and a high level of satisfaction with learning experiences.” (Noble et al 2008) The tool identifies nine desired outcomes for student wellbeing shown in the diagram. One of my goals this term is to look at how we can use these to evaluate and then improve the wellbeing of the girls at our school. Will there be happiness classes? Who knows!

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