NLM ICSEI 3P 2014

The Practitioner Policy Interface Perspectives from a Scottish Rural Primary School and The World

Niall MacKinnon Headteacher, Plockton Primary School Highland, Scotland, Great Britain Presentation prepared for the 3P policymakers, practitioners and politicians forum of the International Conference of School Effectiveness and Improvement, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, January 2014 Conference theme: Redefining Education, Learning, and Teaching in the 21st Century

ICSEI 2014 3P Breakfast meeting January 4 2014

Convenors Anton Florek. Virtual Staff College. UK Boudewijn A.M. van Velzen. APS. Netherlands.

Contributors Niall MacKinnon on ‘the practitioner/policy interface’.

Naomi Mertens on ‘Starting up a networked school academy: a practice based story’

Plockton village, Highland, Scotland, Britain

Plockton Primary School

I am giving my presentation here:

Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia

Why am I giving this talk?

I speak to you as a practitioner.

Have I got anything to say of relevance?

I am a small school principal

By relevant I mean relevant to you.

I teach for three quarters of my time commitment

Those here are from all over the world.

My observations may be interesting as a case specific.

But is there more to it than that?

I think there is.

Scottish education is going through system change It has a ‘new’ curriculum I am at the front line Wait, I am the front line

The practitioner policy interface What does that mean?

•Conventionally it means how schools ‘absorb’ policy •It is how a school responds to a change of policy from ‘on high’ •A policy thereby means a template of instructions ‘from above’ •The only autonomy then left is the ‘innovation of the crevices’ •This is not working •We have lost a sense of the big ideas •We have lost pedagogy, theory, and yes therein policy itself •We need to sculpt a new practitioner policy interface

• I started teaching over thirty years ago.

• But I have not only taught. I have worked subsequently in social research in several fields including managing large projects.

• I started as a teacher. I am a teacher now. I have taught for over twenty years • The reason I returned is because it best fitted my learning style. Especially in primary education. I like it. It is (should be) fun! (serious fun if you get what I mean) • I realise now that I am an integral thinker. I think in wholes, in terms of connections.

• I ‘teach’ everything and the students in my care may become anything and many things, and will!

Scotland launched a new curriculum in 2004.

Once a decade is enough! But: http://fkelly.co.uk/2008/05/a-curriculum-for-what-now/ Fearghal Kelly ‘a curriculum for what now?’ 2008 The Curriculum for Excellence website states: “Scotland is currently pursuing its biggest education reform for a generation.” I’m not sure that we’ve all grasped this!

Niall MacKinnon: I’m not sure we have in 2014 either.

Fearghal Kelly: The frames of reference for our young people will be quite different. For example, if they’re in S3 [in 2008] they will have been born at the time Amazon & Yahoo were launched…

S3 – 1995 > Amazon & Yahoo S2 – 1996 > Google S1 – 1997 > Toyota Prius P4 – 2001 > iPod P1 – 2005 > YouTube N2 – 2006 > Facebook N1 – 2007 > Twitter & iPhone

S=secondary P=primary N =nursery/kindergarten

As an illustration of how society is changing, check out this list of twelve Jobs which didn’t exist until recently from Yahoo hotjobs: •Wind farm engineers •Solar thermal technicians •Informatics nurse specialists •Anesthesiologist assistants •Business continuity planners •Spa managers •Distance learning coordinators •Video game designers •User experience designer •Blogger •Director of social media •Social media manager

From: Fearghal Kelly http://fkelly.co.uk/2008/05/a-curriculum-for-what-now/

I put ‘teach’ in inverted commas because I don’t believe in education as transmission, either of knowledge or skills.

Nor do I consider that I can ‘teach’ them for the potentiality of their roles and vocations, even at a young age I regard my role as to enable them to be what they may become.

I wish for them to gain awareness in how they learn and learn as they do so To do that they must learn how to be That is how I have ‘taught’ From 2004-2008 I and we had a really good time Then we had a terrible time. I now see why.

We then had a terrible time because we were having a good time The reason is the policy practice interface It is top down. It has not made explicit its pedagogic assumptions.

It has modelled the curriculum changes for us and to us.

Policy is itself delivered ‘at’ schools The terms are predefined. They are what needs to change.

There have been two major system changes in my teaching career

My teacher training, completed in 1982, emphasised ¾

experiential relevance

¾

getting to know the innate child

¾

integrating learning

Then something changed, here in Scotland circa 1999 It came in through the policy and regulatory interface with schools A deep culture of distrust sprang up as from nowhere Politicians & regulators sought to measure schools in minute detail The criteria of measurement were not those of the qualities I valued and by which my experience told me children developed An obsession with improvement, but of narrow measurement The psychological dispositions of children were edited out

A new ideology arose: Elaborated matrices of (pseudo) measurement Performance is all Delivery is where it is ‘at’ – deliverology Children became target delivery reception sites Learnification (Biesta) ‘Best’ practice was defined from above. Only one ‘right way’.

Schools were judged on pre-set specifications defined by regulators The system goal became excellence Excellence was defined as meeting specification descriptors. Duh! ‘Old school’ kicked in with a vengeance Every micro-measurable facet of being had to be tracked, recorded and placed in targets True learning went underground because true learning is integral

This narrowing of learning (student, educator, institution and system) came to be recognised in Scotland A major report in 2004 signalled a curriculum switch The aim was now to foster ‘four capacities’ of children's potential: Confident Individuals Effective Contributors Responsible Citizens Successful learners Learning was now servant not master This signalled a switch back to the values which underpinned my training, but with the addition of major changes of approach enabled by new media and other emergent technologies We then had a good time.

At that time I saw myself as an innovative practitioner, not a global commentator on pedagogic system change.

That (in my own small way) came about because of what happened.

The policy practitioner interface became a delivery mechanism for fads and half baked ideas.

They weren’t all bad in original intent but only had situational applicability They turned into fixed templates They kept on changing – for no apparent reason Guidance poured in through an electronic soup of PDF attachments All had clearly written on them in invisible electronic ink: “Do now!”

From that came specification From that came stricture That led to hyper-accountability, hyper-measurement, hyper-control To resist was to be portrayed as countering excellence That is how the system ‘got you’ Scotland created its own ‘State Theory of Learning’ (Robin Alexander)

I wrote three major pieces six years ago in our professional journal, The Times Educational Supplement for Scotland countering this approach:

‘Scrutiny on the Bounty’ ‘The Perils of Permanent Perfection’ ‘There is no such thing as the right way’

They seem to have got me into a lot of ‘trouble’

But I wrote some more…which was published!

From: http://www.joebower.org

http://www.joebower.org/2012/11/3-ways-to-sabotage-learning.html

for the love of learning Wednesday, November 21, 2012

3 ways to sabotage learning Want to sabotage learning? Here are three ways: 1. Judge the learner. Whenever the learner does something, make sure to marinate the learner with judgement which includes both praise and punishment. Because grading can only ever be experienced as a reward and punishment, make sure to grade everything...

2. Rush the learner. On the macro level, make the purpose of learning a race to the finish. Convince people that the only reason you go to school is to get a better job than your neighbour in a globally competitive economy. Keep everyone frantically compliant by constantly reminding/threatening them that they might be falling behind‌ In math, be sure to do Mad Minutes!

3. Control the learner. Make sure the school schedule is designed with minimal input from the learner‌ Course outlines and curricula should be published by distant authorities and mailed to the schools. Lesson plans should be standardized by a PLC and laminated‌

If, however, you wish to nurture and encourage learning, then consider all this as the anti-model.

My response as a post on Joe Bower’s website

The “next step” is to do this to the teachers and schools too. Do exactly the same to them. Tie everything down with specifications. Slot every facet of the being and actions of schooling into grades. Impose. Do not discuss. Obliterate originality. Eliminate purpose. Destroy principle.

Inspect. Apply schedules of labyrinthine complexity. Cement in place with absolutist judgementalism. Call this “strong leadership”. Label the alternative “weak leadership”. Don’t discuss – destroy with a grade.

Grade everything. Label attempts to understand and penetrate this process as lack of “self-evaluation” or of “capacity to improve”. Ensure compliance through subjugation, humiliation and fear. Eliminate those who continue to resist. Stand by and watch as the whole education system then ‘paces’ and ‘challenges’ itself into demoralised conformity.

Label this as a “journey” striving to “excellence”.

Young children do not learn like that. Nor do their educators.

So much research and informed professional discourse tells us that.

Children learn, and also, at the same time develop their being by making sense – to and from – by and with – individually and collectively.

They integrate awareness.

Therefore so should we.

‘Teaching’ becomes, prodding, showing, hinting, doing (by example), learning (by example), being taught (by students), backing off but staying aware, enabling, conversing.

The learning is in the gaps.

It is not (or rarely) lecturing and that only in a modular repertoire of approaches.

It is not leading children through a lesson stepped assault course of regurgitated pre-expectation: “feeding back to the teacher the same marbles that the teacher handed out to the class” (Rothman).

It is not the three-part lesson.

I can’t think of any policy initiative which has said any of what I have said

Therefore: Policy has to be driven from the front line.

It must penetrate awareness.

The skill set needed is that of anthropologist and barrister.

Policy as diktat fails – always.

For me the ‘answer’ lies in system awareness founded in empirical knowledge.

The question is: How do we best assist and prepare students to prepare themselves as successful 21st century citizens in all future life roles.

Some question!

Do I know?

No!!!

That thinking did not come from school education.

But it may as well have, given what we did to schooling in the UK. It is from Vanguard Consulting who are pioneering systems thinking approaches to service improvement.

It has been given other terms, which are closely related, most notably by Pasi Sahlberg as The ‘Global Education Reform Movement’ in his book Finnish Lessons which won the prestigious $100,000 Grawemayer award for education of 2013.

Somehow Plockton Primary School found its way in there.

That surprised me, but what surprised me more was my own journey of what took us to be in there.

As we set out on a new journey ‘old school’ took over again, and it certainly took over us.

Old school:

We tried something else: to make school look a little less like school

We took the signal of Scotland’s curriculum switch of 2004 to seek: integrated learning Contextual relevance Embedding in local community Also reaching out to global relevance and ‘real’ involvement Active involvement of pupils Being beyond learning (i.e. 3 capacities of confidence, responsibility and contribution beyond ‘successful learners’) Purpose replacing targets Starting with the child Emergent curriculum themes within a loose framework Deep personalisation All forms of collaboration

I could touch on so much: Four country four school collaborative 21st skills with Oracle Foundation Three local schools collaborative project in IT microworlds Productions of all kinds. Then on to animation (pupil created) Professional horticulture and cuisine Malaya, Iran, Scotland joint IT weather recording project Computer coding for infants for real ‘products’ – stories, animations Literacy and math as servants of purpose not targets Bilingual animations Scotland-France to from partner school in full native French and English Active multilingual school website – pupil written Real events of all kinds, real audiences, major pupils responsibility Using real opportunities – of all kinds – solar eclipses, new local archaeological dig, lifecycle of salmon (and in the classroom) and in the burn (river) – real, caring for our village – plant tubs, ecoschool, links near and far, exploring international conflict from personal linkages

Collaboration reigned supreme New enthusiasms, even of those who didn’t ‘like writing’ or were ‘no good’ at math (Nor am I, in terms of computational prowess, but I am in terms of awareness and that is the point.)

Beyond ‘bedrock’ levels for given purposes extra ‘attainment’ may be a waste of time. No, it is a waste of time.

The vast array of professional and social roles require a vast integration of skill and awareness sets, conjoined in new ways.

The students are doing it anyway – so go with it!

Over-focus on ‘attainment’ in a narrow sense is stifling creativity Opening up creativity leads to the enthusiasms via which increased attainment (linked to real purposes) do prosper New communication forms open up new pedagogies (instructional modes for our North American friends)

The old and the new

Pedagogy not performance

Commissioned and published as a case study by 2Simple Software

Making a ‘real’ iron age axe, in situ, on a newly discovered iron age site now being excavated

Inter-school collaboration, online, lots! From 2002: 21st century skills Commissioned and published as a case study by The Oracle Foundation

Weatherwatch November 2009 Scotland Iran Malaysia

(Wikipedia 2012)

The current policy practitioner interface in school education Policy makers and regulators have placed themselves at the centre of the pedagogic universe. We swirl.

This has had cultural affects, exacerbating the process

From ‘for the love of learning by Joe Bower

The practitioner policy interface is the front line Theory is the conceptualisation of empirical knowledge. It ever changes. It varies by context.

Policy must be guided by theory and knowledge Politicians cannot drive policy. Regulators cannot drive policy.

Knowledge must drive policy.

A wise politician steers that. No ‘dreamers’ = pedagogic quackery Same true for regulators. Need to be stripped back to probity – only!

The knowledge required of system change is ‘how the works works’ 1.

We must learn integrally – as a system. We must ‘absorb variety’ 2.

Improvement lies in flow, not challenge Flow derives from meaning and insight, at the practitioner policy interface – the front line This is a lesson which extends far beyond education Switch from accountability to ‘account ability’ 1. See John Seddon and Vanguard Consulting.

Something has to change. Or else!