Monthly Archives: September 2016

Politicking School Evolution

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

On first glance this might appear to be an unusual topic to include in the digital evolution of schooling. You’ll not see mention of it in any school planning document.

But the reality is that every school, small and large and indeed every organisation seeking to evolve digitally needs leaders skilled in the politicking of change, ready to apply those skills whenever the opportunity arises. The organisational change literature (Kanter, et.al, 1992) suggests up to 20% of a leader’s time can be spent directly or indirectly in politicking the desired change. It could be much more.

In most instances one is looking at small ‘p’ internal politicking but there could well be times – quite pronounced in some settings – where the school leadership needs to astutely engage in large ‘P’ politicking and to work with the professional politicians in advancing the school’s evolution.

It is appreciated state school leaders across the Western world as public servants are invariably prohibited from the latter type of ‘collaboration’ but as any who have worked in school administration for some time appreciate there are ways of safely activating supportive politicians as sponsors of a change.

If one is to successfully lead the digital evolution of a school, either as principal or as a member of the leadership team one needs to be skilled in the art of politicking the desired change and the protection of one’s back. The latter is important.

It is critical the leader secures the requisite support and endorsement at each key stage of the evolutionary journey and nips in the bud any moves that could distract the school from realising its shaping vision.

That entails very good people skills, astute social networking, the securing of sponsors and promoters of the change, the generation of a strong reserve of social capital, respect, the close daily monitoring of the school’s total operations and an appreciation of when it is necessary to secure the endorsement of various parts of the school’s community before making the next step. That endorsement doesn’t always have to be formally minuted but it is always helpful to have at least an email record of any agreements for possible future reference.

It also entails – when the circumstances dictate – the principal being willing to make unilateral decisions. Hansen in his excellent study on Collaboration (2009) talks of ‘disciplined collaboration’ and the necessity of leaders ‘assessing when to collaborate (and when not to)…stressing the ‘goal of collaboration is not collaboration, but better results (Hansen, p15, 2009).’

The latter is often forgotten.

It becomes particularly pertinent as the pace of the digital evolution accelerates, natural nonlinear growth impacts and the school realises ever more unintended benefits.   There is scant time or indeed interest in scrutinising every step and a willingness to let those at responsible make the decisions provided they are consonant with the school’s shaping vision.

The pathfinder school experience strongly suggests, particularly in the early stages, the evolution can be two steps forward and one step back. One is most assuredly not looking at a clear linear, A to B to C evolutionary path even with the best of planning and politicking.

It is easy to forget that in going digital schooling is embarking on one of its most momentous historical changes, and is doing so in a historically remarkably short period. It is very likely that none of the school staff or parents has ever had a digital schooling, and as such has a clear understanding of what is entailed.

It is an immense change to politick, to manage and have accepted as the new norm.

It is thus imperative that one sell the school’s evolution not only with the staff and the educational decision makers but also with the school’s student, parent and wider school community – with one’s clients –and ensure as best one can the clients are supportive of the school’s evolution and growth.

Virtually all the parents have only known the traditional paper based mode of schooling and while generally supportive of the digital they will retain a degree of ‘digital paranoia’, will at times default to the traditional ways and interestingly will likely expect the school to ‘fix the problem’ even when the responsibility has supposedly been shifted to the parents. In brief even when giving an endorsement, such as supporting BYOT many parents will not grasp the full implications of that approval.

The challenge is amplified when each year the school takes on a new student parent cohort.

You’ll soon find the students, even the very young will be your greatest political allies, particularly when you empower and collaborate with them, and ensure they are taught how the 24/7/365 use of their digital technologies can enhance their holistic education. There are few things more powerful politically than having a total student group able to articulate to parents and visitors how the digital is improving their learning.

Experience suggests it will take time for the digital transformation of schooling to be fully accepted, but that acceptance can likely be accelerated by genuinely collaborating with all the ‘teachers’ of the young – the staff, the students, their families and the wider school community – respecting and recognising their contribution, empowering them and having all appreciate the macro workings and aspirations of the school such that all can assist with politicking the evolution.

  • Hansen M.T (2009) Collaboration: How to Avoid the Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results, Boston, Harvard Business School Publishing
  • Kanter, R.M., Stein, B.A. and Jick, T.D (1992) The Challenge of Organisational Change NY Free Press

 

The School ‘Chief Digital Officer’

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Every digital school needs a senior staff member responsible for daily providing the school community the digital ecosystem that will enable it to realise its shaping educational and digital vision.

It is not a job for a committee.

It is a task for a high level professional educator.

It doesn’t matter what title the position carries – be it deputy head, e-learning coordinator, director of information services, digital technology or CDO – what is important is to have a person with operational responsibility for all facets of the school’s digital operations.

What is critical is that the school has an astute, visionary senior educator with good people skills and a high degree of digital expertise responsible for shaping, operating and growing the school’s digital ecosystem.

Business and many large public sector organisations are appointing high-level, very well paid chief digital officers (CDOs) to shape and coordinate all the digital operations of the organisation and to ensure all are directed to assisting realise the desired vision (Lee, 2016).

Tellingly all the successful pathfinder schools unwittingly have had such a person, albeit under different titles, with all having long abandoned the reliance on the part time ICT committee.

The provision of an apposite, ever evolving, increasingly powerful and productive school digital ecosystem that meets the particular needs of the school is a highly challenging task. It requires a leader and a team willing to actively support the distributed control of teaching, learning and resourcing that can provide the desired digital expertise, direction setting, infrastructure, services and support.

What is critical is having an educator who shares the principal’s digital vision and macro understanding of the workings of the school, with a strong awareness of the digital, able to work collaboratively with an empowered staff in providing the apposite tightly integrated digital platform.

The position requires an appreciation of the school’s shaping educational vision, the kind of digitally based ecosystem and school culture that will best realise that vision and the facility to provide the total digitally empowered school community the apposite, ever evolving, seamlessly integrated digital ecosystem.

It most assuredly does not require an ‘ICT expert’ who unilaterally decides what technology all in the school will use.

Critically it needs a visionary educator able to collaborate with a digitally empowered staff, students and parents, ensuring all are provided with the opportunity to fly with the digital, who can simultaneously govern the school’s use of the digital and ensure multiple systems and offerings are appropriately integrated and refreshed.

It should go without saying schools won’t evolve digitally and be able to govern the astute whole of school community use of the digital with a part time, invariably ‘bolt-on’ ICT committee. It is a job for the professionals with the time needed to fulfil this critical role.

If you still have an ICT committee get rid of it ‘tomorrow’, appoint the requisite professionals and integrate all matters digital into the everyday workings and growth of the school.

The role of ‘CDO’ is – as elaborated upon in The Chief Digital Officer and the Governance of the School Digital Ecosystem (Lee, 2016) – and the now many business management publications – is a demanding job, requiring a special talent and a skill set rarely if ever taught at the postgraduate level in education faculties.

Most in the role have like the digital leaders learnt on the job, invariably supported by astute heads.

It is highly likely at this point in time that you too will need to grow such a person. Look to mentors who can assist that growth.

We’ve gone out on a limb and stressed the school CDO needs first and foremost to be an educator, with a strong understanding of the total workings of the school, very good people skills and a high level understanding of the digital. One can readily grow the digital understanding but not the high level educational.

Our message for all school leaders embarking on the digital evolutionary journey is to find very early in the piece a ‘chief digital officer’ who can translate the vision into reality.

Bibliography

 

Pathfinder Schools Enter the New Frontier

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

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The first of the pathfinder schools are entering a new historic frontier, taking schooling into the world of the unknown.

Importantly they are very well prepared to make that move and thrive with the on-going uncertainty, evolution and organisational transformation.

It is a development that governments and education’s decision makers would do well to recognise and to build upon.

One is talking about those as yet rare schools that have moved beyond the Digital Normalisation stage where they normalised the whole of school community use of the digital and which are building upon that digital platform to provide an as yet embryonic 24/7/365 mode of schooling (Lee and Broadie, 2016).

In so doing they are entering a world where no schools have entered and which from hereon the early adopter schools, as self regulating units, will be obliged to continually shape their desired future.

It is a new reality that the digital masters in business have learned to thrive within but it is something very new – and possibly very scary – for traditionally risk adverse education policy makers. Digitally evolved organisations exchange the certainty of hierarchical control for trusting relationships where improvement is devolved by empowering staff, with apparently more scope for failure but in reality far more success, from the breadth and depth of innovation well outweighing the risks

What lies ahead for those schools, what form the schools, as ever evolving complex adaptive systems, that are interfacing with all manner of other digital ecosystems within an increasingly socially networked world will take no one knows. The futurists can make their guesses but that is all they can do. Yes the schools will be able to benefit from some research on specific teaching initiatives but always the research’s relevance will need to be adjudged in context.

Significantly the pathfinder schools in their shaping of their digitally based socially networked ecosystems have unwittingly readied themselves to thrive in the unknown.

The pathfinder schools have positioned themselves to continually thrive and take advantage of the virtually endless educational options opened by the Digital Revolution by;

  • taking control of their own growth,
  • embracing a culture of change,
  • empowering their communities,
  • identifying and focussing on the desired shaping educational vision,
  • collaborating closely with and listening to their clients,
  • distributing the control of the teaching,
  • learning and resourcing,
  • building a strong underpinning digital base
  • and normalising the whole of school community use of the digital.

The schools are by virtue of their digital normalisation free of most of the constructs of the paper based world and its strong ‘site’ based thinking (Lipnack and Stamps, 1994) and are of a mind to continually attune their operations to the changing environment.

They are finally in the position, as largely autonomous self regulating units, to exercise considerable control in shaping the mode of schooling – the school ecosystem – that they believe will best meet the needs of their students in an increasingly sophisticated digital and socially networked society.

We say ‘considerable control’ advisedly because although the pathfinders are developmentally years ahead of the government decision makers and have in many areas become the de facto policy makers they, like all other schools are obliged to work with a suit of givens. All for example will be constrained by the resourcing, staffing agreements, physical plant, the obligation to care for the students within a specified time and the laws of the land, to name but a few of those givens.

We also say ‘considerable control’ because the schools are very much part of a wider continually evolving digital and socially networked society, impacted by all the forces at play in the society. They are also complex adaptive systems that will experience considerable and likely increasing natural growth and transformation – much of which will be common of schools at this evolutionary stage globally (Lee and Broadie, 2016).

That said the pathfinders have shown their ability to shed the ways of the traditional paper based school and to shape increasingly sophisticated digitally based school ecosystems with the agility to thrive in the seeming chaos of the frontier. They have become the type of self-regulating unit that Helbing (2014) has flagged as being essential to future organisational growth and evolution in the Digital Revolution, where the pace of change and degree of uncertainty renders the traditional centrally controlled bureaucracy archaic.

The key is for all to recognise that the pathfinder schools, like their counterparts in business will from hereon – largely regardless of the dictates of government – work in unchartered territory, taking charge of their own growth and evolution, heavily dependent on the professional staff collaborating closely with an empowered community in identifying the best way forward.

It also important that governments in particular appreciate that these schools are well prepared to continually thrive within the unchartered frontier and that government instead of relying on the traditional ‘expert’ committee that invariably identifies the way forward by looking through the rear vision mirror would do well to learn from and actively support the pathfinders.

What is clearly apparent is that the schools and their communities have through astute leadership been readied to enter the new frontier with their minds open, accepting of on –going change and evolution, with an organisational form and culture that allows them to readily adjust course when required.

They are not aberrant outliers but a vital insight into how all schools can be readied to continually thrive in a rapidly evolving digital and networked society, where no one can tell with certainty what lies ahead.

In many respects the pathfinders in schooling are no different to their counterparts in architecture or engineering in that they provide the later adopter organisations an important understanding of the evolutionary path ahead.

  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2016) A Taxonomy of School Evolutionary Stages: Evolution within the Threads, Armidale, Australia, Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com
  • Lipnack, J & Stamps, J 1994, The age of the network: Organizing principles for the 21st century, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.

 

 

Teaching in a Digital School: the Differences and Attributes Needed 2.00

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

(This is an updated version of our 2014 article, with the same title)

Teaching in schools that have moved to a digital operational mode – schools that have gone digital – is appreciably different to teaching in the traditional paper based school, and is on trend to become evermore so.

It is a difference requiring of the teachers a suite of skills and mindset that few teaching institutes, national teaching standards or indeed teacher education organisations appear to recognise as being required. Explore the work of the teachers in the digital schools in the US, UK, NZ or Australia and you’ll see they are all of their own volition developing a suite of distinct attributes to assist them thrive and grow professionally in a rapidly evolving digital and socially networked society.

Critically it is the schools and the teachers therein, and not the authorities that have recognised the need and nurtured the growth of the new attributes. Once again it is the early adopter schools and not those charged with the job that are acting as the policy developers in this area (Lee and Broadie, 2016…..).

Globally there is still within most education authorities and teacher training bodies the all-pervasive sense that all schools are the same, and will remain so and that the teaching skills of the past will continue to be appropriate, possibly with small amendments like the embrace of TPACK (Mishra and Koehler, 2006).

Digitally evolving schools, as we have underscored, are fundamentally different to the traditional paper based school. Where the latter has been characterised by their:

  • constancy, continuity and inflexibility
  • adverseness to risk and change
  • insularity
  • fixation on the teaching within the physical place called school
  • unilateral control of the teaching
  • solitary teachers teaching class groups, invariably behind closed doors, for X hours a week for Y days a year

the digital

  • are increasingly socially networked 24/7/365 operations
  • are ever evolving, highly agile, embracing a culture of change and willing to take risks
  • have distributed the control of the teaching and learning
  • are beginning to genuinely collaborate with all the teachers of the young – the parents, grandparents, carers, community organisations and the children themselves – from birth onwards in the provision of an increasingly personalised apposite 21st century holistic education.

The traditional is about solitary teachers, working with mass groups of children, moving along a clearly defined linear teaching path, while the digital and socially networked (Lee and Finger, 2010) is working towards ever greater collaboration, marrying the teaching of the school with that of the home, becoming increasingly personalised and understanding that learning and teaching can occur anywhere, anytime 24/7/365, with much non-linear in nature.

Vitally the mindset and expectations of the teachers are fundamentally different. The traditional teaching is inward looking, concerned with only that within the school walls, in the operational hours, often within one’s own silo, where it is a given that the teachers will control what will be taught and assessed and work only with the resources provided.

The teacher’s thinking in the digital is networked, flexible, outward looking, accepting of change, seeking to draw upon the apposite local and global community resources, highly collaborative and yet tightly integrated where the teachers, while playing a lead role, understand the benefits of distributing the control of the teaching and learning and genuinely trusting the other teachers of the young (Lee and Ward, 2013).

Where teachers with an analogue mindset (Bhaduri and Fischer, 2015) believe their job is to dutifully follow the established ways and focus on their part of the production line those with a digital mindset believe anything is possible educationally in a rapidly evolving world and that they should as professionals strive to continually provide each child an ever better education.

Teachers thriving in the digital and socially networked schools

  • possess many of the attributes that have always distinguished good teachers
  • have skills which while always important have taken on a heightened significance
  • are developing a suite of new attributes for ever-evolving, more tightly integrated digitally based school ecosystems.

Conscious of the volumes already written on traditional attributes our focus is on those that have assumed greater importance and the new. Mishra and Koehler’s work in their on TPACK (http://www.tpck.org) (Finger and Jamison-Proctor, 2010) succinctly encapsulate the ‘traditional’ attributes that will always be required of good teachers. Teachers have to know the pertinent content, require excellent pedagogy, relate well with the young and have very good people skills. But as the research attests teachers in digital and socially networked schools have decided they need additional attributes, to place greater store on some of the old and to shed the dated (Lee and Broadie, 2016).

Most of the attributes, as one could surmise, relate to working within a digital and socially networked rather than an insular paper based operational paradigm, and thriving in a world of on-going and often uncertain evolution.

Perhaps the greatest change is attitudinal with the teachers globally adopting a mindset that will enable them to provide an apposite, ever better education while the nature of schooling is continually evolving and being transformed.

It bears underscoring for those embarking on the digital evolutionary journey that the following are the main attributes that those within the pathfinder schools globally have chosen to develop, and to develop primarily on the job, in context.

They are not the construct of government or the educational bureaucracy, but rather what has emerged in mature digital schools. Intriguingly the below are attributes evidenced in the case study schools globally and which have in the main been developed in the schools in their evolutionary journey.

You’ll note many of the attributes, like those of the principal are antithetical to those evidenced in the traditional school.

  • * Digital and socially networked mindset

This outlook is core to successful teaching in a socially networked school community.

The having of a networked, a digital mindset (Bhaduri and Fischer, 2015), of seeking solutions in and for a networked organisation and society rather than simply seeking the answer or resources in-house is one of the attribute that sets the teachers apart from colleagues in traditional schools (Lee and Ward, 2013). It is mode of thinking that appears to emerge primarily from working within a digitally based and socially networked culture, where the leadership, the teachers and the wider school community work naturally in a networked paradigm.

  • Thriving on chaos and change

The schooling of the young in an ever evolving at times uncertain and seemingly chaotic world has obliged the teachers to embrace and to thrive upon the excitement of on-going evolution and the opening of new, as yet unseen vistas. It requires them to better understand the evolution of schools as complex adaptive systems, the natural growth, the uncertainty, the seeming mess and chaos, and to grasp the opportunities continually being opened.

This becomes particular important when the early adopter schools move beyond the Digital Normalisation evolutionary stage and operate, like the digital masters in industry, in unchartered waters.

  • Empowered professional

The new environment requires teachers to be empowered professionals, capable of taking charge of their own teaching and growth, able to contribute to the workings and evolution of higher order, increasingly integrated and complex schools, while also assisting empower and grow all within the school’s community (Lee and Broadie, 2016).

The teachers are longer underused micro managed line workers.

  • Macro understanding of school evolution

Integrated ecosystems have meant all the teachers, and not simply those atop the apex need to understand the purpose and macro workings of the total operation, as well as being expert in their designated area/s of responsibility.

That expectation applies from day one.

  • Independent risk taker

It has slowly but surely become apparent the teachers need to be independent thinkers, willing and able to take advantage of the rapidly evolving scene to try new ways of teaching, singly, with other colleagues, or as part of a team.

Vitally they have had to be willing to take risks in their quest to enhance the teaching, understanding that at times mistakes will be made and that they will learn from that experience. This as you’ll appreciate is antithetical to the traditional approach but as the literature on networked organisations suggested twenty years ago (Lipnack and Stamps, 1994) will be increasingly vital.

  • Willingness to question

Allied has been the willingness and confidence of empowered staff to question every school practise and operation – particularly those of the paper based school – and to regularly ask if there are not better, more effective, efficient and productive ways.

  • Networker

Related has been the importance of teachers being able to network, to use one’s social networks, contacts and social capital. While that has always been an important skill that rarely rated a mention in the traditional teaching standards the ability is vital in socially networked school communities where the teachers are daily be collaborating with all manner of people and groups.

  • Collaborator

While good people skills and the ability to work with moderate needs in teams have always been important the facility for teachers to collaborate aptly with all within the school’s community has become essential. As Lee and Ward reveal in their study on Collaboration in learning (2013) while that is so most teachers have in their teaching worked alone and have some distance to travel before they to develop the sophisticated kind of collaboration found in many other organisations (Hansen, 2009).

  • Digital teaching base

All the teachers – permanent and casual – have had to normalise the use of the apposite digital technology in their everyday teaching and administration, and to continually update their operational proficiency.

It is not an option.

That said, the teachers like the students and the parents, will work increasingly within a technology agnostic environment, where all within the school community are able to work with their preferred ever evolving suite of digital technologies.

  • Politically aware

The rapidly evolving, ever changing, increasingly integrated school ecosystems where the staff is empowered and encouraged to ‘fly’, and where there is extensive daily collaboration, social networking and on-going planned and natural organisational evolution teachers has highlighted the importance of all teachers being small ‘p’ politically aware. They have recognised that they need not only to be aware of the sensitivities associated with organisational growth and change, and of pursuing the school’s shaping vision but of being able to politic their own initiatives with their colleagues.

  • Learner focus

A socially networked school community where each child can learn anywhere anytime 24/7/365, and where there is far greater collaboration between all the teachers of the young unwittingly obliges the teachers to focus increasingly on the learner, to recognise the learning occurring with each child in all manner of situations and to employ a more individualised mode of teaching.

  • Distributor of educational control

Another major difference between the teaching in the digital and paper based mode is the teacher’s willingness to distribute the control of the teaching and learning process; to cede some of their traditional power and rely increasingly on their educational expertise and leadership rather than their position in the hierarchy. It is an attribute; a mindset that some teachers appear to have struggled to accept or develop, particularly in school cultures where the teacher’s ‘word has always been final.

  • Preparedness to trust

That delegation of responsibility has seen the teachers work increasingly from a position of trust, trust in and respect for colleagues, the parents, carers, grandparents and community mentors and vitally the children, and the recognition that virtually every parent – regardless of their situation – has worked from birth onwards providing the best educationally for their children.

Interestingly the history of the use of electronic and digital instructional technology in schools over the last century has been characterised by distrust, of the children, their parents and in many instances the vast majority of teachers (Lee and Winzenried, 2009).

It is now clear trust is core to digital evolution of schooling (Lee and Broadie, 2016).

  • Lead teacher

All teachers, and not just the experienced need in tightly integrated school ecosystems to play a lead teacher role from the first day in the school, and contribute to the on-going evolution of the school’s ecology.

  • Eternal quest for the ideal

This has been evident in good teachers for thousands of years, but it has become ever more important as the schools moved from their world of constancy to become ever evolving, ever transforming higher order schools.

There is the belief that anything is possible educationally. The teachers have thrown off the old straight jackets and embraced the trust shown in them.

  • Unerring focus on the desired educational benefits

Linked has been the imperative of all teachers focussing in all they do to on assisting realise the school’s shaping education vision.

Where traditionally that vision had had a backseat to the external exams as the schools evolve and integrate operations so the vision and the attainment of the desired learning benefits takes greater prominence.

  • Flexible and agile

In evolving schools where there are often no maps to show the way the and the teachers collectively need collaborate to shape the path ahead the teachers appreciate the need to soon be flexible, agile, and willing to try alternative routes.

  • Reflective practitioner

While this attribute has long been expected of school leaders (Schon, 1987) with all staff empowered and expected to lead so what we see emerging is all teachers becoming reflective practitioners.

  • Networked and connected learner

This ability ties closely with the reflection, for in an ever-evolving scene while the schools have demonstrated the need at times to address personal development as a group it is also apparent that individually teachers as professionals have taken prime responsibility for their on-going professional learning, by making astute use of the networked world, and the many national and international online professional learning communities.

  • Time smart and efficient

Lastly but by no means least is the growing recognition by teachers in schools awash with information and educational opportunities of the imperative of working smartly and taking advantage of the many efficiencies and economies accorded by the digital technology.

Conclusion

A study of the digital transformation literature, be it in relation to the private or the public sector will affirm the universality of all the above attributes, and the need in shaping your school’s digital evolution and selecting the desired staff to bear all in mind.

It is appreciated many could differ from those identified by your local authorities, particularly if that authority wants to micro manage its teachers, but the message coming very clearly from the pathfinder schools globally if you want your school to evolve and grow successfully you’ll need support the development of these attributes.

Bibliography

Finger, G and Jamison-Proctor, R (2010) ‘Teacher readiness: TPACK capabilities and redesigning working conditions’ in Lee, M and Finger, G (eds) 2010 Developing a Networked School Community Melbourne ACER Press

Hansen, M.T (2009) Collaboration Boston Harvard Business Press

Lee, M & Winzenried, A 2009, The use of instructional technology in schools: Lessons to be learned, ACER Press, Melbourne.

Lee, M and Finger, G (eds) 2010 Developing a Networked School Community Melbourne ACER Press

Lee, M and Ward, L (2013) Collaboration in learning: transcending the classroom walls Melbourne ACER Press

Lipnack, J & Stamps, J 1994, The age of the network: Organizing principles for the 21st century, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.

Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.