Curriculum, learning and teaching
Positioning international schools through teaching and pedagogy How can schools focus on the key attributes that parents desire? Stephen Holmes reports More than ever, approaches to teaching pedagogy are being scrutinised by students and parents, yet remain underutilised in the definitive positioning of international schools. Schools are all too often seen as generic or having a sameness around teaching and pedagogy. In no small way, how students and parents choose a school points to a need for more strategic consideration about how teaching and pedagogy should be integrated into positioning. Parents now seek: • Both short term and lifelong benefits linear of a school focus on teaching and pedagogy. • Personalised learning and more broadly a customised (curated) experience – how does teaching and pedagogy play a key role here? • A service and convenience orientation – how can teaching and pedagogy be positioned as supportive of this? • Schools with 21st century ambitions – what is the horizon plan for teaching and pedagogy to fit with known and unknown future requirements? • A consistent (seamless) student/parent journey (preenrolment forward) – how teaching and pedagogy is a consistent theme and authentically delivered across the school.
• A school that can act as a ‘passport’ opportunity (so-called global citizenship) – how the teaching and pedagogy support global perspective, and portable soft skill development. The figure shown is an organising framework for considering the centrality of teaching/pedagogy in aligning with four key attributes among parents to influence their school choice: What is positioning? Positioning, in a school, means designing the offer in order to occupy a distinctive place in the minds of target audiences. It requires a cogent and compelling reason why the target audience should choose your school over other alternatives. Ideally, the aim should be to ‘own’ a word or concept (identity) and to be consistently known for something that it would be hard for others to replicate. My observations of schools over three decades suggest that a more dedicated harnessing and communication of teaching/pedagogy approaches can deliver a cogent and compelling positioning. In relation to teaching and pedagogy, however, the sector is characterised by: • Generally weak and indistinct mission and vision statements. • Not many have defined flagships. • Rarely a conscious, long term investment to elevate differentiating factors. • Most schools try to cover all bases (inclusive) in their positioning – rather than narrow and deep approach to say teaching and pedagogy. • Location and history are over relied upon as primary differentiators – real differences such as teaching/ pedagogy are often buried. The case for a teaching/pedagogy-led positioning Research in many countries consistently shows a central factor in success of schools is quality of teaching, pedagogy and associated services. International schools don’t say enough about it – look at almost any website or brochure! It represents an opportunity in an increasingly crowded
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