This week I worked as a facilitator at the Harvard Principals’ Centre for their first course in Australia – Leadership for School Excellence. My role was to facilitate the learning of a group of 11 participants at the end of each day and lead them through the consultancy protocol on the last day, as well as assisting in the running of the institute.

The 170 participants gained a deeper understanding of: leadership skills for teaching and learning and school culture, approaches to creating change, developing a leadership strategy informed by data, and improving student achievement by increasing family engagement. The faculty for the institute were Kay Merseth (I regret not taking her class on school reform when I was a HGSE student), Matthew Miller, Liz City, and Karen Mapp. A large number of participants received scholarships to attend, financed by the Harvard Club of Australia. The diversity of participants was impressive, from every state and New Zealand. It was inspiring to witness school leaders displaying such vulnerability and trust with each other. The learning design of the four days was really impressive.

Matt Miller commenced by introducing Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames for organisations and then applied this to a case study of Lithgow High School.

Liz City introduced the instructional core and then Kay Merseth linked this to Australia’s declining PISA results in Maths.

Australian students can typically describe procedures, but struggle to work in more complex situations. It is common for Australian students to answer 20 routine questions in a class, whereas in high-performing countries students might typically wrestle with only one, more complex problem. Kay argued that Maths is too often taught as a set of routines to be followed rather than fostering understanding of fundamental mathematical concepts, and this is why many students dislike studying Maths. She spoke about the importance of productive struggle, allowing students to explore, to think outside the box, and to build new knowledge. Custom places high value on right answers instead of understanding in Maths teaching. Maths teachers think it is cruel to ask students to struggle, to think, to explore. She concluded by stating that engagement in cognitively challenging mathematical tasks leads to the greatest learning gains for students and professional development is needed to help teachers build their capacity for this.

Kay also spoke about school culture and leading change, asking participants to reflect on the purpose of school. She commenced each of her sessions with a music clip and I loved All the Scholar Ladies.

She referenced Ron Heifitz’s research on adaptive change, Bob Kegan’s research on developmental cultures, John Kotter’s research on leading change, and Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety and teaming. Is the team safe for interpersonal risk taking? Who is on a team matters less than how the members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions. The simple repeated practice in teams of sharing a risk taken in the previous week leads to increases in measures of psychological safety and structure and clarity.

Liz City spoke about strategy as “placing bets” and the importance of describing strategy in an elevator speech. She asked whether we could describe the level and type of learning in our school without using test scores? When she spoke about a theory of action she mentioned a brutally honest truth that strong senior leaders can possess big picture thinking skills and teaching and learning expertise but lack a shared, school-wide image of what good teaching looks like and don’t hold one another accountable (this has given me much to reflect on). Her presentation on continuous improvement and rapid cycle testing grounded in prediction and measurement with a Mr Potato Head task was powerful. She also spoke about ensuring that meetings are more effective using this checklist:

A real highlight for me was listening to Karen Mapp talk about the difference between parent involvement and family engagement. She argued that due to the diversity of families nowadays it is more inclusive to talk about families rather than parents, and that parent involvement in schools should move beyond the bake sale to more interaction around learning and developmental goals, and tools for parents to support these goals. A good question to ask parents is, “What is something you would like me to know about your son?”

This institute was outstanding and it will have a positive impact on Australian education.