Conference Agenda

The overarching theme for the symposium, based on the conference sub-theme No 2: Leading Improvement collaboratively and sustainably, is how to strengthen the democracy by capacity building and co-creation: How can we enhance capacity building on a rural early childhood center- and school district?

The objectives are to clarify how networking, cooperation between politicians, leaders and employees, and the use of children’s voices can constitute key elements in capacity building and co-creation. The purpose of the symposium is to illuminate what we have done, our results in a regional network in Norway, and to engage others in reflections and discussions on what to do next.

The issues to be addressed during the symposium is:

• Part 1: What have we done so far?

• Part 2: Findings and results

• Part 3: What are the next steps?

We have based our work on the research Learning from leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning (Louis & Leithwood et al, 2010) and several national and international research and studies on themes like network, capacity building, co-creation and PLC.

We will facilitate processes where the participants can contribute through methods such as round table discussions, Fishbowl, speed dates and word clouds.

This part of the symposium is about our wish to share our work in Network Nordmoere, based on the conference sub-theme No 2: Leading improvement collaboratively and sustainably. We presented our work in ICSEI 2019 in Stavanger and in ICSEI 2020 in Marrakesh and would like to share a follow-up. We have proceeded with the project, and our intention this time is to share the results we have achieved so far. We would like to present our work through an involving method as a symposium under the 3P headline.

Background: Network Nordmoere consists of 8 municipalities in a rural district in the mid-west of Norway. The municipalities vary in size and nature, but they all lack capacity and competence in solving some of the educational issues. To be able to solve these issues they are co-creating in a systematic and broad sense. The network has worked with this development for enhancing education sector (School and early childhood center) to effectiveness and improvement in equal partnership with the university NTNU and college for preschool teachers DMMH in Trondheim. The purpose is to give children and students the best possibilities to become the best editions of themselves.

Objective: This part of the symposium will address how the network have been working to enhance their capacity and competence in three ways:

1. Networking – how can networks help us to build capacity and develop competencies?

2. Children and student voice – how can children help us to understand the possibilities and find solutions?

3. Co-creation between politicians, leaders, employees, and parents – how can we co-create in a systematic and deep way to be able to solve our educational issues by being an active part of the solutions?

Approach: we will describe how the network has been working with the three questions above, and how they have used researchers and established partnerships with universities to enable leaders and teachers to facilitate and organize the network. We will use quotes and photos to illustrate the impact of these activities on leaders, teachers, children, and politicians. The findings will be presented more deeply in part 2 of the symposium.

Educational importance: Democracy is under siege globally and we believe that education is a great part of the solution to strengthen democracy. Children need to experience how their voice can be heard and how they can contribute to society from an early age. They also need co-influence in their own learning process.

In this part of the symposium, we will describe the results and findings. We have used several ways to collect information from all the stakeholders. We will present the results from formative dialogue research showing the impact of values on several levels. Additionally, we will present findings from several focus group interviews with teacher’s union representatives, educational leaders, and politicians. The results and findings will emphasize several perspectives on the three ways of building capacity and competence in Network Nordmoere:

1. Networking – how networks can help us build capacity and develop competence.

One finding in the work so far is that networks help. It helps us to deal with the complexity of education and how to clarify our educational issues and solutions. Network Nordmoere consists of several different sub-networks which all have different purposes and are supporting each other. Networks, if they are well organized and led, can provide a safe and thrusting environment. This can make us all more open to innovative ideas and solutions.

2. Children and student voice – how the children can help us to understand our problems and solutions better.

Another finding in the project is that children’s voice matters. We have systematically involved children in our way of thinking. Initially this wasn’t the case, but we have had a shift of mindset. We see the children’s voice as essential in our development and learning now. Children input makes us think “outside the box” and can find innovative solutions when the grownups can’t see anything but problems.

3. Co-creation between politicians, leaders, employees, and parents – how we can co-create in a systematic and deep way to be able to solve our educational issues.

A third finding in the project is that co-creation between all the stakeholders in our educational systems is necessary to be able to make changes. The Nordic countries have a long tradition and a strong culture in collaboration between unions and leaders. In Network Nordmoere we have taken this one step further by developing a systematic, deep, and profound co-creation between the parents, teacher unions, educational leaders, and politicians.

In this part of the symposium, we will address the overarching theme on building capacity and competence in a rural district to strengthen the democracy. We will present our plans for the future, and we would like to engage the audience in finding possible pathways to be able to continue our good work in Network Nordmoere.

We have been working on this project since 2015 and are now in a phase where several new ways of working have been set. This regards a “web” of networks, systematic collaboration between parents, unions, leaders, and politicians, and formal partnerships with universities on leadership programs and pedagogical programs in core subjects. What now?

We can see that the world is changing rapidly and can detect several threats to our democracy: the Ukrainian war with Russia, which is our neighbor country, emphasizing the importance of freedom and democracy. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning entering educational system all over the world and challenges us on how we understand teaching and learning. This is just to mention a few of the changes and challenges that we are facing now. In Norway we see that the local politics are under pressure. The politicians struggle with “net trolls” and harassment, and we can see that the “ground rules” are changing. Policy making does not mainly happen in the formal arenas anymore, but online and in smaller groups. Sadly, this leads to (as one of the reasons) difficulties in recruiting young politicians. This pressure on politicians also leads to focus on details rather than the big shifts in society.

Network Nordmoere have so far been focusing on networks, children’s voice, and co-creation to strengthen the capacity and competences in early childhood centers and schools. We believe that this still will be important in a future where dramatic and rapid changes are the normal. The children need to experience how they can use their voice to participate in democracy. We all need to co-create better solutions in educational issues contributing to a more positive future.

We believe that the big issues in the future will be to strengthen the democracy, and to strengthen the local societies to counteract the centralization that is happening in the rural parts of Norway. We need to develop solutions to the following bullet points:

• a more inclusive society – to participate and be a part of a democratic society.

• an interdisciplinary effort – co-creation in all sectors of local authorities.

• digital judgement – dealing with SoMe, AI and machine learning.

We would like to facilitate reflections, discussions, and other interactive methods to engage the audience in finding possible pathways to be able to continue our good work in Network Nordmoere.