I do preface the question with an explanation of what leadership is, and what it isn’t. Leadership isn’t about a position. Just because a person has a leadership position doesn’t automatically mean that they are a leader. Leadership begins with a dream, a hope-filled dream, and then is followed by action.
My favourite definition of leadership is by leadership guru Ken Blanchard, author of the best seller, “One Minute Manager”. He says that leadership is about influence. When you seek to influence another person, or group of people, to do something different, you are leading them. This means that every person acts as a leader. When you ask someone to go out to the movies, or you ask the students in your class to try something new, or influence the behaviour of your children at home, you are leading. You are fulfilling your dream for them.
Many people in leadership roles don’t lead, they manage. Nothing wrong with management. We need good managers, particularly in schools, but managing and leading are different things.
Building on Blanchard’s definition, leadership is about imagining something new, something better. It is about having a dream for your own child, your class, or your school. It is about having a vision and then inspiring people to put in the extra effort to go on the journey to achieve that dream with you.
When I ask current principals and aspiring principals to dream dreams for their school, I am inviting them to imagine something different, perhaps a solution to a problem they are trying to solve; a hope-filled vision.
In all the conversations I have had with educators, people acknowledge that schools aren’t really working well. They aren’t really fit for purpose; in that, they aren’t really preparing our young people for their futures. We deliver content well, but we aren’t very good at developing character, or the skills and dispositions young people need to have for their future employment. We aren’t very good at wellbeing, both for teachers and students.
From the list of choices offered to principals the top three things they would like to achieve in their school include:
- Finding a sustainable way of supporting every teacher’s professional growth.
- Becoming an innovative school.
- Preparing young people for the AI era.
When I push principals to explain what they mean by “a sustainable approach to professional growth” everyone can see the problems but can’t see a solution. They have a dream but no plan. Principals know that the biggest effect they can have on student learning is the quality of teaching, but current approaches to professional growth (sending teachers out on teaching practice workshops every now and again) is not only very expensive but is also very ineffectual. In fact, principals don’t have any way of measuring the impact of professional development so they can’t do a cost-benefit analysis, they just hope it improves practice. Even staff appraisal systems are problematic. With the introduction of the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching schools still haven’t been able to find a sustainable way of giving teachers feedback on their practice that promotes growth without putting huge resources to the task.
When I ask what principals mean by becoming “an innovative school” principals can’t really put their finger on it. Innovation for some is viewed with scepticism. They want to be seen as being innovative because it is the marketing buzz word driven by things like The Educator’s Innovative Schools’ Award. Others view innovation much more deeply, realising that the current system of education needs significant overhaul if we are going to retain teachers and deliver an education that is relevant to the current and emerging era.
The responses to the AI question are worrying. When I ask the room to share how often they personally use AI the responses range from, “Never, and I won’t. It is detrimental to us, a conspiracy”, to, “I use it to research, to create documents, compile emails and letters”. A significant number of participants express having confidence in using ChatGPT or other LLMs. And yet, all schools are clamouring to revise assessment policies to ensure students don’t cheat.
Dr Timothy Hor, Design Scientist at the University of Newcastle provokes educators by pointing out some uncomfortable truths:
The education sector’s response to AI is to:
- polish plagiarism policies (instead of rethinking assessment);
- write five-year “AI strategies” (when students use CHATGPT daily);
- build guardrails (instead of teaching students how to drive).
Meanwhile:
- employers demand AI literacy;
- students hack outdated systems; and,
- classrooms ban/control the use of tools that the real world requires.
All the attendees at the leadership workshops have dreams for their schools. They know what the current problems are in our schools and want to do something about it, but the question is, “how?” We have been doing the same things in schools for well over a century. It is hard to break tradition. There are so many barriers preventing change, even though we know that something has to give, not the least for the future of our profession.
I don’t want to just contribute to the conversation by pointing out the obvious, again. I don’t want to just add to the same cacophony of voices saying that schools are broken. My dream is to do something about the problems. My dream is to make schools better, for everyone. My dream for schools is not to, “burn the whole institution down and start again” (Tim Logan, good Impact Labs, France), but to innovate on what we currently have, to work within the parameters required of schools. Schools are about the public good. They are legislated to deliver the curriculum and to assess academic growth. They have a structure to them, for very good reasons. But,
- if we leveraged AI we can give every teacher their own pedagogical coach to grow their capacity while they work instead of sending them off on a PD day once in a blue moon;
- if we could align practice across the school we could provide an approach to learning to prepare young people for the AI era;
- if we build proper systems to automate the out-of-control administrative requirements we could improve teacher wellbeing and avoid burnout;
- if we had access to data about what is being taught and assessed we could find efficiencies to improve the wellbeing and outcomes of students;
- if we had the pedagogies and assessment tools to teach soft skills we could also teach and assess the key capabilities that are listed in the national curriculum in addition to content knowledge.
My dream for schools is to innovate on what we currently have, to make it better, for everyone, without significant disruption.
My dream is realised in Vivedus. This is what Vivedus does for education, for schools, for teachers and for students. It makes what is, even better, for everyone, without having to ‘burn the whole thing down and start again’. The dream can be realised by simply giving your teachers the tool to achieve it: the Vivedus Platform.
