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It ' s time to find out what students really think about what we are doing in schools. This paper will set out a process for the employment of a system of recursive evaluation at St Mary Star of the Sea College, in New South Wales, Australia.
This system of evaluation is based on action research, as described in Groundwater-Smith ' s book, A Corporate Learning Portfolio (1999 & 2004). Our plan is to conduct a school-wide, whole-of-curriculum review, which will form the basis of planning for the future. As the College ' s mission and values have already been established and owned by the teaching staff, it will be important that the process of review has, at its heart, a number of assumptions:
The above assumptions will underpin the leadership of the review process and, hopefully, will allow for the long-term application of action research in the evaluation and improvement cycle. The assumptions are also in harmony with what teachers already value about the College: the students, the sense of community and the desire to offer the best education with the available resources. However, in most other ways, the nature and philosophy of the review we plan to undertake represents a radical departure from custom and practice.
In its 131 years of operation, St Mary Star of the Sea College has had only one strategic plan published for the information of the school community. This was completed in 2001, and was given a lifespan of four years. Its title, Higher Things, reflected aspirations derived from the College motto.
This first strategic plan was developed entirely by the teaching staff. There was no reference to parents, students or the Board of Directors. It was based solely on the experience of teachers, and comprised their perceptions and deeply held beliefs about the vision, values and goals of the College. As our first foray into long-term, enterprise-wide planning, Higher Things became a valuable document, expressing a shared vision of what is important and treasured about the College, its Catholic culture and its provision of education.
As a concept, the strategic plan fitted well within the definition provided to Catholic schools by the Catholic Education Office, in Wollongong. This stated that ' Strategic planning is a process to provide direction and meaning to day-to-day activities. It examines an organisation ' s values, current status and environment, and relates those factors to the organisation ' s desired future state… '
The first strategic plan has been useful, but only to a point. There is now a need for a more critical and objective evaluation of the College and its practice. The Board of Directors have since published their Strategic Plan for St Mary ' s which sets out, in broad terms, the goals to be operationalised by the College leaders over the next three years. And so it once again time to imagine where we are heading as a learning community.
The first strategic plan set out a strong foundation of values and shared beliefs, and this will inform the next cycle of planning. However, our plan for the future will rest more strongly on quality evidence that is drawn from the breadth of the life of the College. The purpose of the current review is to set in place curriculum-wide targets for improvement and to inform and, if necessary, change professional practice.
Our students spend their days in our care, and their experience is the richest form of data we have available. In a presentation to Masters of Education al Leadership students at the University of Wollongong (Davies, 2003), Dr Owen Davies spoke about the process of turning data into wisdom. He summarised this process in the following way. Data with no context is simply data. However, data seen in its context is information. Information in its context is knowledge, and knowledge in its context is wisdom.
Although Dr Davies presents the notion in a pithy way, it is a long journey for schools to travel from data to wisdom. When one considers the richness of data that could be the fuel for research, schools have such an advantage over many other organisations. They generally have large populations, regular patterns of behaviour, standardised tests, opportunities for measuring longitudinal change, trained leaders for research, high degrees of trust and a shared desire for improvement. All of these factors provide fertile ground for the collection of data, and for that data to be evaluated and fed into improvement. Unfortunately, schools are often data rich, yet poor in wisdom. What most often happens is that we jump from data to assumption.
McLaughlin et al. (2000, p.13) suggest that action research needs to be seen as a natural part of what teachers do. ' Part of our job as educators should be to expand the idea of teacher and administrator ' practice ' to include collaborative research…Because they see the problems first-hand, they are familiar with what programs or areas need to be evaluated, and they know what questions seem to be the most important to ask. '
Professor Susan Groundwater-Smith, of the Division of Professional Learning, at the University of Sydney, has accepted the role of critical friend for the College ' s review process. Her work in the area of practitioner enquiry and the development of organisational learning is seen as most valuable for the type of review being contemplated for the College. One of her penchants in research has been to ' listen for the silences ' , that is, to discern what it is that is not being said in an organisation.
The College ' s original strategic plan suffered from a deafening silence when it came to the area of student voice in the reflection and planning cycle. The other silence that could not be ignored was the critical evaluation of objective evidence. These two areas became the natural starting points for our action research.
In Learning to Listen - Listening to Learn (Groundwater-Smith and Molick, 2002),the authors share their experience of working with the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, which is a loose, cross-sectoral amalgamation of schools in Sydney that are working together to develop Learning Portfolios as their school improvement strategy. Action research and practitioner enquiry lead to powerful statements about a school ' s ability to authentically meet the needs of its key stakeholders. As an impetus to change, these portfolios leave schools in no doubt as to where the improvements must be made, and even how they should be made.
As a researcher, and as a critical friend, Professor Groundwater-Smith highly values the work of teachers. ' They are charged with the responsibility of developing knowledge, skill, judgment, imagination, competence and empathy in today ' s students, in preparation for them becoming the citizens of tomorrow. To reiterate: for teachers to undertake this work, in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment, it is essential that they themselves are career-long learners about the nature of their professional work ' (2004, p.3). But more than this, Professor Groundwater-Smith holds that schools, as communities of learning, should be able to learn about their learning. Just as we recognise that students need time for reflection in order to be transformed by their learning, so do schools need opportunities to reflect on themselves in order to be transformed by their own organisational learning.
The Corporate Learning Portfolio can be seen as the vehicle by which teachers see the evidence of their current practice and can discern the steps to improved practice. The process comprises a number of stages, which we will modify and implement for our own review:
Stage 1: Discernment. As a learning organisation we need to know where to start looking. For this to happen, a small group of researchers (eight teachers), in consultation with the executive team, will suggest the areas for consideration. Some areas may include middle school, assessment, student engagement, differentiated curriculum, the learning environment, integration of technology and the timetable. These areas will be published and modified until a consensus is reached among staff. At all times, these areas will be viewed within the context of the three principle values of the College: Sacredness, Care and Learning.
Stage 2: Data Collection. Learning to Listen - Listening to Learn (Groundwater-Smith and Mockler, 2003) contains a wealth of examples of how data may be validly collected in a school setting. Some of the strategies that I find exciting and applicable to our situation include student-led focus groups, student photo and film essays, recorded self-interviews, as well as the more tradition Likert scale surveys in response to statements. The data will be drawn from students, staff, parents, and possibly clergy and business leaders.
The student-led focus groups, in particular, will present us with a powerful opportunity to work with unfiltered insights into our effectiveness. It is my hope that these focus groups will become a feature of our recursive planning. At every practical stage, parents and students will be engaged, both as the subject and the agents of the research.
Stage 3: Data Analysis. The research team will work with their processed data in order to make some summative comments and initial judgements about the wisdom within the data.
Stage 4: Publication. Each researcher will share his or her findings in person, and in writing, at a staff development day this year. Student leaders and some parents will be invited to this day to participate in the conversation about the research. The teachers, students and parents will be present to hear the reports and to respond to the reports using a silent conversation - a strategy whereby written comments are attached to the report summary on post-it notes, in public and in silence. These comments feed back into the report.
These reports and the raw data that fuelled them are, together, the Corporate Learning Portfolio. The contents, in an appropriate form, can, and should, be shared with the community as a rigorous and valid assessment of our College as a learning organisation.
Stage 5: The Development of a Management Plan. Using the qualified research reports, a management plan for 2005-2006 will be produced by the Senior Management Team, in cooperation with the research team. This will, once more, be available to the entire staff for comment and criticism.
Teaching has been described as ' the lonely profession ' . A teacher ' s practice as a professional, in a tradition school classroom, is rarely, if ever, available to others for observation, scrutiny, praise or criticism. The result can be, at worst, students being taught by people whose practice has never been shaped by the current needs of the students in the class. On the other hand, I may be teaching the same subject as the teacher next door, yet I may never know what it is about her style or strategies that make such a profound difference to her students.
Most other professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and politicians, make their practice transparent enough so that it can, at least, be evaluated by their peers and clients. Yet the classroom remains a sacred reserve where resources, strategies and teacher-student interactions are closely guarded objects and rituals. It is this notion of teaching that prevents some schools from becoming vibrant learning organisations.
For St Mary Star of the Sea College to engage in a cycle of improvement and transformative teacher professional learning, we have had to be open to the idea that evidence and critical reflection are the stuff that improvement is made of. No doubt here are obstacles we will need to overcome through compassionate and spirit-filled leadership.
First, we will need to overcome the natural defensiveness that opening our doors and day books to research will evoke. Second, we will have to find ways of critiquing practice that preserve the dignity of teachers and recognise the wealth of their experience. Third, we will need to train and reward teachers who can embrace action research as another skill in their professional repertoire. Fourth, we will need to communicate with our wider community so that they can see this critical reflection as a valid use of the College ' s resources. Finally, we will need to prepare ourselves to listen with open minds to gathered evidence that will shed a new and stronger light on the education we provide for our students.
Catholic Education Office, Wollongong (2002). Strategic Planning for School Principals.
Davies, O. (2003). Using Evidence to Inform Decisions about Learning. (Presentation to Masters of Educational Leadership Students. UOW. October 2003.
Fullan, M.G. (1991). The New Meaning of Educational Change 2nd Edition. London. Cassel.
Groundwater-Smith, S. (2004). School Learning Portfolios, Workshop Presented at Leading , Planning & Learning in School Communities Conference. Faculty of Education and Social Work. University of Sydney, 1 March 2004.
Groundwater-Smith, S. (1999). ' Work Matters: The Professional Learning Portfolio ' , in International Journal of Practical Experience in Professional Education (PEPE), 3(1), 27-54.
Groundwater-Smith, S. and Mockler, N. (2003). Learning to Listen - Listening to Learn. University of Sydney.
McLaughlin, H., Watts, C. and Beard, M. (2000). ' Just because it ' s happening doesn ' t mean it ' s working: Using action research to improve practice in middle schools ' , in Phi Delta Kappan, 82 (4), pp.284-290.
Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation. Random House. Australia
St Mary Star of the Sea College, Wollongong (2002). Strategic Plan - Higher Things.
Zemke, R., (1999). ' Why organisations still aren ' t learning ' , in Training. Volume 36, No. 9, pp. 40-49.
Mr Greg Elliott is currently Dean of Community Development at St Mary Star of the Sea College, in Wollongong, New South Wales (NSW) Australia. He is responsible for Professional Development, Strategic Planning, Education in Faith and Leadership of Special Programs. His studies in educational leadership include student engagement in the middle years and the use of technology to amplify learning and professional development. Mr Elliott has particular interest in middle school pedagogy and the development of a rich curriculum that incorporates life-centred, rich tasks with authentic assessment. He led the team that developed the first middle school situated within a comprehensive Year 7-12 high school in NSW.
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