Partnering FOR Education: Cross-Sector Collaboration - An Untapped Resource.
Dianne Smardon, Dale Bailey
Springboard Trust, New Zealand
The purpose of this session is to explore the potential of expanding horizons for school leadership professional learning through business leadership collaborations.
The educational importance of this innovative practice lies in the potential of utilising a readily available resource to build school leadership capability. Principals are appointed for the leadership of learning; how might they be supported in their strategic leadership? Aotearoa | New Zealand’s Springboard Trust has for 15 years scaffolded school leader’s learning. By partnering with key corporate organisations across New Zealand, principals have strengthened their leadership practice to lift student outcomes.
Over this time learning has been transferred between the education system and the business world. Volunteer business leaders gain an understanding of what drives schools and school leaders. Learning is reciprocal. This collaborative partnership provides a large volunteer pool, extending our organisation’s reach.
To clarify the context, New Zealand's 2850 primary and secondary schools are self-managing entities, with the principal answerable to their Board of Trustees and responding to national Ministry of Education policy decisions. The wide geographic distribution of schools across the country also means there are huge differences between schools, from small, rurally remote schools with rolls sometimes less than eight students, to large campuses catering for more than 2,500 students. Each of these schools is governed by a Board of Trustees, elected from the local community, who appoint the principal. For principals, leading in this context requires skills in effective strategic leadership, building partnerships with their communities and having a strong focus on equity.
Understanding what it means to lead strategically through the knowledge and resources of their business leader counterparts has enabled school leaders to gain confidence and courage in their leadership decision making. Guided by their business partner, school leaders use specific tools and resources which they adapt to their specific educational context. The role of the business partner is interchangeably coach and mentor, while the principal leads the education approach. Business partners in turn gain real insights into the way schools operate and focus on community. Their partnership focus is upon developing the principal’s strategic leadership skills and knowledge, and supporting clear, insightful planning for schools, in doing so school effectiveness improves.
The session format includes sharing of slides that briefly describe the collaborative partnership model as well as viewing short video clips where the perspectives of the cross- sector volunteers and the school principals respond to the question “What was the impact for you working/learning in a cross-sector collaboration?”
Conversation will be generated through the initial information shared and the video clips of school and business leaders speaking about the impact of the cross-sector partnership. The following questions may be used to structure conversation:
• What risks does this model raise for you?
• What do you see as the advantages of this approach for your context?
Transformation for Equity: Redesigning a Master of Education in Educational Leadership Around Leadership Competencies.
Paige Fisher, Rachel Moll, Marian Riedel, Leah Taylor, Lawrence Tarasoff, Deborah Koehn
Vancouver Island University, Canada
Purposes of the session:
The purpose is to explore the implementation of leadership competencies within a Master of Education in Educational Leadership (MEDL) program at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia (BC), Canada and articulate how these guide the program redesign, implementation, and assessment.
The goal was to redesign the program to build graduate students’ capacity to know themselves as learners and leaders, and to participate in actions that contribute to educational change.
To support this process, faculty co-created a curriculum that included Big Ideas and Competencies that reflect the transformation in curriculum in K-12 systems in local jurisdictions (BCME, 2017; BCPVPA, 2019) and worldwide (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009; Voogt & Pareja, 2012; OECD, 2018b; European Commission, 2018).
Examples include, “Leadership is ethical, urgent & courageous in ambiguous, dissonant environments” and “Influencer: Acknowledges the influence of power and privilege; actively works towards greater equity”. Graduate students are required to use these competencies as a reflection tool. A further step that supports learning is the development of an ePortfolio incorporating scholarly writing and artifacts of learning and leadership. As a result, learning progression shifts from a static linear perspective to a dynamic model with students on their own path with “different types of assessments for different purposes” (OECD, 2019).
The intention is for graduates to leave the program as educational leaders who are deeply reflective, agentic, transformational leaders with strong skills in utilizing research for school improvement, equity and inclusion.
Educational importance for theory, policy, research, and/or practice
A shift towards equity-oriented, competency-based education is one of the main responses (Schuwirth & Ash, 2013) to calls for educational transformation in order to prepare students for the 21st century (i.e., OECD, 2016, 2018a, 2018b; Phillips & Schneider, 2016). The shift is widespread in Canada, and elsewhere (CMEC, 2018, 2020). Competencies are defined as “related sets of skills, knowledge and dispositions” (CMEC, 2020, p. 2) and competency-based education is a “system that focuses on competencies as educational aims that can be reached and assessed” (CMEC, 2020, p. 2). Recently the OECD has developed the Learning Compass (2019) which defines three “transformative competencies” that students need to “thrive in our world, and shape a better future” (p. 16).
Format or Approaches:
To engage participants in rich conversations around the notion of developing leadership competencies by sharing successes and challenges, exploring student artifacts, and inviting critical feedback.
Connection to the conference theme
In recognizing the important link between school improvement, effectiveness and professional development for teachers and leaders, redesigning a MEDL program around leadership competencies addresses insight and innovation by shifting “attention away from “time on subject” or “process of instruction”” (CMEC 2020, p. 2). The redesign is an innovation in current leadership education that aligns with the current movement towards competency-based education that includes global awareness, citizenship, and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education (UN, n.d.), by building capacity that supports teacher and school leader development, and by extension educational system change, that promotes equity, inclusion, belonging, diversity, and social justice.
Building and Rebuilding Education Systems for Equitable Teaching and Learning: What We Can Learn from Comparing Across the Globe
Amanda Datnow1, Thomas Hatch2, Dennis Kwek3, Amelia Peterson4, Donald Peurach5, Tine Prøitz.6, James Spillane7, Thomas Walsh8, Vicki Park9
1University of California, San Diego, USA; 2Teachers College Columbia University, USA; 3National Institute of Education, Singapore; 4The London Interdisciplinary School, UK; 5University of Michigan, USA; 6University of South-Eastern Norway; 7Northwestern University, USA; 8Maynooth University, Ireland; 9San Diego State University, USA
Objectives
Reckoning with glaring inequities and injustices in student opportunities to learn uncovered by the pandemic, scholars argue that we seize the moment as an opportunity to reimagine public education for all students globally (Nasir, Bang, & Yoshikawa, 2021). The challenge for education systems is that they are working from structural arrangements that created and reproduced the very inequities they now seek to redress, and any change efforts from outside of systems must play out in interaction with these same structural arrangements. Employing imagination as a research method (Levitas, 2013), this Innovate session will examine opportunities for building capacity for equitable teaching and learning by comparing system (re)building across several countries. Nine panelists, all part of a global network focused on systems and equity, studying several different countries (Canada, England, Iceland, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the United States) will deliberate and debate around three core questions:
1. How are education systems defining equity and social justice, and which stakeholders have a voice in these deliberations?
2. What system and non-system strategies motivate and mobilize education system (re)building for equity and social justice?
3. How is capacity for equitable teaching and learning constituted/defined similarly and differently both within and among education systems globally?
By systematically comparing similarities and differences across systems in different countries in their efforts to build more equitable opportunities for children to learn and develop, this panel will imagine new ways of how systems might build capacity for more equitable teaching and learning for all children.
Importance
The goal of this panel is to generate multiple ideas and conceptions of education system building for equitable access to ambitious learning and holistic development that can inform the work globally. Together, the panelists will expand theoretical frameworks and reimagine methodological approaches for research on education system (re)building for equity, as well as guiding policy and practice. Panelists will strive to ensure that emerging frameworks from their deliberations will be sensitive to the unique circumstances of education systems globally rather than imposing Western-centric models.
Format
The panel will be organized so that each of the panelists will have the opportunity to provide a brief response to the questions. This will be followed by a brief reflection by each panelist focused on one key cross-system comparison suggested by the comments of other panelists. The remainder of the session will involve a structured engagement of the audience with the ideas presented by panelists. Rather than an open Question and Answer session for panelists, the session chair will pose a focused question based on the deliberations among panelists, that will invite audience members to respond to a particular issue(s), that emerged from deliberations among panelists, using their own work in a particular education system. This organization will allow for a more focused engagement with the audience.
Connection to Conference Theme
This session directly connects with the conference sub-theme of leading schools and education systems that promote equity, diversity, and social justice.
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