The modern education system requires agile leadership that is capable of responding to an ever-changing landscape. Leaders must be able to build an adaptive, learning culture, build relationships and trust; create an inclusive and collaborative environment; and set a clear vision. This blogpost explores the qualities of successful education leaders in complex times.

Adaptive Leadership

While it used to be adequate for people to do as they were told, today people are needed who understand themselves and their world at a qualitatively higher level of mental complexity. The confusing, changing demands of modern life are developmentally inappropriate for most adults. The bar has been raised so high, so fast that the level of awareness and self-motivation expected today is far greater than anything required of previous generations. We no longer live in a world where we have the right to expect authorities to know the answers.

Complex, adaptive problems are solved with emergent practices, not ready to implement technical solutions. Leaders who thrive in complexity tolerate more uncertainty, ambiguity, and messiness. As the rate of change cycles at faster and faster rates, it requires more of a ‘learner’ and less of an ‘expert’ mindset. Adaptive leadership is about pointing people at the problem and mobilising them to do the work rather than being the one with all the answers. The people with the problem own the problem and the problem solving needs to be transferred to them.

Brian Cook, Social Studies Department Head at Dana Hall School, Boston says, “It’s about nurturing an eco-system rather than sticking to script. It takes time and it is messy and that is part of the process. You have to be OK with making mistakes.”

Psychological Safety

When a team operates in a culture of psychological safety, staff are energised to speak up when they see something going wrong. Leaders model that it is OK to make mistakes and acknowledge that they are likely to miss things. They are intentionally curious about people they disagree with in order to understand them. Differences generate conflict and creativity and help shape new perspectives. Instead of seeing resisters, leaders see people of potential. We can influence people by asking challenging questions and really listening to their answers. Where do they feel that little niggling feeling? What question are they asking that this might be the answer to? What do they want their learners to be like?

Jeff Evancho, Assistant Superintendent Secondary Education at South Fayette School District, Pennsylvania says, “I look for my toughest critics and start to build relationships. You have to be genuine. The art of listening. I set up in the library for a day, emailed all staff and invited them to come and challenge or critique me, whatever they wanted.”

Informal Leadership

80% of learning is informal and we must recognize our dependence on informal networks. Teachers learn more in the staff room, the carpark, and the pub than in any professional development session. They find out how to teach through informal learning: talking, observing others, trial-and-error, and working with experienced mentors. Leaders can identify the “seed carriers”, internal networkers and middle leaders who know how to get people talking to one another and how to build informal communities.

Brian Cook, Social Studies Department Head at Dana Hall School, Boston says, “Most enduring change comes about from middle managers. Every school has the teachers who have been there long enough to cultivate those informal relationships.”

Leadership Stance

Leading complex pedagogical change in schools requires patience for the slow and messy nature of the work, respectful and trusting relationships with people, listening with curiosity and authenticity, and respect for context and history. It isn’t about applying a formula; it is about engaging in a conversation. Effective leaders are intellectually curious, make people feel seen and heard, and invite people into change instead of telling them what they need to change. Too much education leadership focuses on procedural change and does not get to the deep change in teachers’ beliefs required for effective school improvement. Teachers are professionals with agency and teaching is a collaborative enterprise that requires constant reflection, examination, and inquiry.

Our leadership stance determines how we frame problems, see opportunities, and direct our energies. The quotes below are from three transformational education leaders. What can you infer about their collective leadership stance, and their views on learning and education?

“Instilling the same dispositions in the teachers and leadership as you hope to instil in students is one way to ensure that change has legs. It’s so powerful to invite people into change instead of telling them what they need to change.” – Kristen Kullberg, Making and Design Initiatives Coordinator at Washington International School

“If you are doing systemic large-scale change, you have to be focused on the adult learners first, not the children. The biggest mistake is not viewing adults as learners as well. If you don’t treat adults as professionals, you are [in a difficult situation].” – Elise Heil, Principal at Sacred Heart School, Washington DC.

“Have a genuine desire to listen and learn, to see your role as not the authority. Be truly curious about your learners, really care. Desire to listen and connect in an authentic way. See education as truly part of a civic effort. It is beyond passing a test; it’s about creating humans; it is more lifelong. When someone sees you as a human, that is really empowering as learner.” – Nathalie Ryan, Senior Educator at US National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Positive Leadership

Leaders question the status quo. In order to do something, we have to be able to imagine it. Becoming clear about our personal and collective purpose, is how we become leaders. When we know and document our values, and ask others to hold us accountable to them, it draws talented and motivated people to us. Clarifying your unique purpose and writing, distilling, and frequently revising that purpose can be transformational. Try providing your colleagues with a copy of your personal purpose, and ask them to call you on it if they see you not supporting those values.

People and organizations flourish when positive practices are given greater emphasis than negative practices. Ensure that after people interact with you, they have more energy. Three particularly important activities for promoting a positive climate include fostering compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude among employees. Leaders should be a source of life-giving or positive energy.

Erik Lindemann, 3rd Grade Teacher and Facilitator/Leader at Osborne Elementary in Michigan says, “Spend time with people who are the sparklers, the energisers, Spend time with the plusses. The ‘Yes, And…?’ people.”

Education leaders in complex times face a unique set of challenges. They must be open to change, embrace ambiguity, foster relationships, and cultivate a culture of psychological safety. They must also recognize the power of informal learning, understand the importance of a positive leadership stance, and sparkle with energy.

*Quotes in this blogpost are from my Churchill Fellowship.

The following summary is based on the Becoming Who You Really Are executive education course at Michigan Ross.

What is the one thing that is keeping you from becoming a great leader, and what are you doing about it? Leadership is developed through discovery and deliberate practice. Even Gandhi moved from being awkward and ineffective to an expert leader who could change paradigms and behaviours. In order to do something, we have to be able to imagine it. Because Gandhi had spent time with the lower classes, he was able to articulate what was real and important to Indians: salt and bread, basic needs. What is the bread and salt of your school?

Becoming clear about our personal and collective purpose, is how we become leaders. If we know our values, document those values, and allow others to hold us accountable to them, this creates a power that attracts talented and inspired individuals. “I would like you to hold me accountable for these.” What are your deepest beliefs? Do people around you know who you really are and what matters most to you? Exposing who you really are moves people.

Clarifying your unique purpose and writing, refining, updating, and constantly reviewing that purpose can be transformational. Understanding your life’s mission can increase your positive thoughts, help you perform better, and improve your ability to impact the performance of others. Why don’t you give each of your direct reports a copy of your deeply held values and personal highest purpose, and then instruct them that if they ever witness you acting in a way that doesn’t reflect those values, they are to call you on it?

As we become purpose-driven, we begin to use personal stories to convey the higher purpose of the school. These personal stories deliver a level of authenticity that can motivate other members of the team. When we show ourselves to be vulnerable, and speak with authenticity, we build trust and commitment in our teams. Telling authentic stories from our own life can be a source of power.

When purpose is clarified, some people will realise that they don’t belong at your school. This is a good thing. As you replace these individuals, you will be able to attract talented people whose purpose is aligned with the organisation. As a leader, your goal should be to connect your team to the higher purpose that drives the school as a whole. Could you take your strategy and translate it into a few pictures? This helps to convey the school vision in a way that allows everyone in the school to contribute to success. A school doesn’t truly have a purpose until it is clear to everyone.

We can empower people by encouraging them to think about the question, “what result do you want to create?” rather than handing them a solution to a problem. There is tremendous pressure on leaders to be the expert, to have the answers and solve all the problems. Stepping out of the expert role is necessary if team members are to be empowered to think and act for themselves. Leaders should try to act as though they are the dumbest person in the room. You should go into every meeting genuinely trying to learn from the people there. Let others be the experts. Be vulnerable and authentic. Make it possible for other people to grow.

Leaders challenge the status quo. School culture stifles risk-taking. If every year you don’t risk your job, you aren’t doing your job. Schools must choose between deep change or slow death. Leaders must work against the natural school biases toward stability, structure and bureaucracy. School resistance to change is deeply held. As pressure to change builds within a school, the initial reaction is denial. Leaders must expect and confront denial.

Instead of seeing resisters, see people of potential. “Failures” of people are really failures of leadership. When people don’t follow, it’s the leader who is the problem. The best way to create an environment of trust is to listen and be empathetic to those around you. When these things are done effectively, leaders are often amazed by the energy and performance of their teams. In order to convince people that they can do what they know they cannot do, a leader must have their complete trust. A leader helps people do what they think is impossible. We can influence people by asking challenging questions and then truly listening to their answers. Challenging questions can help people to think and to become self-empowered.

Are you willing to invite feedback from others? Have you been explicit about your desire to receive feedback? Have you created an environment that makes it easy for others to approach you and offer this feedback? Feedback is essential to learning. Unfortunately, most people don’t feel comfortable giving or getting feedback. In order to grow, we have to open ourselves to feedback from others.

Schools are in our Kodak/Blockbuster moment and we need to change radically or become irrelevant. Our central learning challenge is helping people cope with a faster rate of change as digitisation and exponential acceleration fundamentally reshape the world. We all need to become more aware of how we are algorithmically shaped by our tools. For the workforce of 2040, the competitive advantage will be the ability to offer value beyond an algorithm. The new world of artificial intelligence, globalisation and flexible work requires people who have the skills, capabilities and mindset to see possibilities, seize opportunities, to make a difference in their communities and be agents of change. Learning is a biological, evolutionary necessity for survival, not an institutionalised practice. Education will be a key driver for the innovation economy and a focus on literacy and numeracy is no longer enough. While writing is still important, it needs to co-exist with the ‘non-text’ media of graphics, colour, lines, animation and sound. I am particularly interested in the gap between schools and learning.

“Every weekday I walk into my first class period exhausted from the previous night’s homework. For 55 minutes my teacher teaches, I take notes, and then the bell rings. I scribble down my homework, get up, and repeat. Seven times. Five days a week for the past six school years.”

Imagine if you had to move to a different office and focus on a new problem every hour, sitting down for the entire time, with repetitive work to do after hours, and to top it off, the managers who supervise your various commitments don’t communicate with each other. This is the daily experience for high school students, and teachers are just as restricted: 25 new people enter the classroom every hour, meetings usurp preparation, and unfinished planning follows them home. Nobody benefits from the frenetic pace.

Time is the most controlling structure and the scarcest commodity in schools, and the traditional school schedule is the greatest impediment to educational innovation. Any attempt to redesign the schedule runs up against the intricate constraints of parental custodial expectations, teacher comfort in the known, part-time staff, curriculum mandates, bus schedules, sports schedules, objections from unions, and high-stakes tests. Teachers are held hostage by the sacred timetable, warned that one small change will cause a disastrous cascade.

While flexibility in time and space will define the workplace in this century, students get little experience deciding how to learn, where to learn, and when to learn, because schools account for every minute. Schooling is predicated on the perception that busyness is good. Treadmill schedules leave little time for deep learning, quietude, or human connections.

• What does our allocation of time say about what we value in the teaching and learning process?
• How can we provide time to enable young people to take more personal responsibility for their own learning, in line with the adolescent predisposition to begin taking charge of their lives?
• If flexibility in time and space will define living and working this century, how can school best prepare young people for this?

Stephen Covey wrote about Big Rocks, the things we value and feel are truly important. Big rocks are our priorities, the things we want to make room for. If school schedules reflect values and priorities, then we currently value speed, uniformity, and quantity over depth, individuality, and quality.

In Finland, students only spend about five hours a day in classrooms and they have little to no homework. The rule of thumb is 15 minutes of recess per hour of work. Deeper learning advocates recommend daily schedules where students study three or four subjects for around 90 minutes at a time, rather than the usual six 50-minute blocks. Steiner’s model of a deep learning period, where students focus on a single subject for at least two hours, is another way of shaking up the traditional school day. However, there is no optimal class length. The best length of a class period will be different depending on the age of the students, the culture, the number of students, and the experience of the teacher. How teachers use the time they are allocated is more important than the length of the lesson. It is not about how long we teach for but how well we teach with the time we have.

Australian teachers are doing more face-to-face teaching than the OECD average, yet Australia’s performance in PISA has been steadily declining. Countries with higher-performing students give teachers more planning time. Teachers in Shanghai have much more planning time than Australian and US teachers. Planning and collaboration time is critical to teacher job satisfaction and we should make it a priority, a big rock that we put in first.

Some students (and teachers) discovered a new sense of autonomy and flexibility during Covid-imposed remote learning, relishing the loss of early start times and being able to choose when to eat or move instead of responding to bells. Shifts in thinking about time ground evolving educational practices like flipped classrooms, blended learning, and block scheduling. In Australia, Simon Beaumont leads a school which uses a self-directed learning model that needs less face to face class time and builds independent learning habits. Andrew Beitsch wonders, “if we could start the concept of the ‘senior study period’ earlier in secondary schooling as a first step and maybe provide some space for educators to collaborate at the same time?”

At St Luke’s Catholic College high school students can opt for a supervised study session at 8:30 am three mornings a week, or they can sleep in and start at 10 am – a decision guided by research into sleep and teenage brains. Sir Joseph Banks High restructured timetables to allow senior students half days. Trinity Grammar School has a fortnightly lesson-free ay for Grade 12. At Element College, families are able to choose when they take their 12 weeks of holidays per year, without any disruption to their child’s learning or anyone else’s learning.

In a century that is being defined by flexibility in time, we no longer need to be held hostage by sacred school timetables. If we value deep learning and human connection, then this should be explicitly built into the school schedule. Cutting back on sitting, listening, and repetition, will result in more engaged, thoughtful, and creative learners.

This week I’m doing some school visits and talking with counterparts. Here are the questions I have come up with to ask:

1. What are you doing to break the cycle of deliver and test?
2. How are you developing students’ abilities to cope with increasing independence as they become older?
3. Where are you tinkering with your timetable?
4. What are you doing about staff workload pressures?
5. How are you building capacity in your middle leaders?
6. How are you challenging traditional notions of schooling?

A few years ago, I attended a Critical Thinking conference at Berkeley University. It was a fascinating event, particularly memorable for two key reasons. Firstly, it was not just a conference for educators. I was grouped with members of the US intelligence service, who pointed out how crucial critical thinking is to their roles. Secondly, I have a vivid recollection of a presenter claiming that teachers are guilty of doing far too much thinking for students.

On the trip home, I found myself wondering what students could take responsibility for that teachers tend to do for them; what learning experiences are we depriving them of? The most obvious response is grading/marking, the bane of a teacher’s life, but there is no way that students could do a teacher’s grading, it is a professional responsibility. Or are we being too precious? There is a large research body supporting the benefits of peer feedback and self-assessment. If you ever believe that kids are too young to provide each other with effective feedback, watch Austin’s Butterfly. Two particularly helpful peer feedback approaches are: Ron Berger’s KiSH (Kind, Specific, Helpful) framework for modeling feedback and the concept of radical revision from the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, where students pair up and discuss what they feel good about in a written draft and what they think they will need to work on, followed by reading their drafts out loud to each other and engaging in a conversation about their work. Grade 9 student Hamish comments, “I have learned how to provide better feedback to my peers. When I read their work, I learn how I can improve my own writing and this helps me take more responsibility for my own learning.”

Assessment is usually something that is done to students so an empowering shift is to co-construct assessment rubric criteria with students. This puts assessment criteria into student-friendly language rather than teacher-designed robot-speak. Grade 9 student Spencer notes, “We designed the marking guide as a class. It helped us know what was needed before we did the task, instead of being told what we did wrong when it was too late.” 

This made me start wondering about writing student reports, which are so time-consuming for teachers. While many schools have moved to continuous reporting, lots have not made the shift and continue to write lengthy comments to parents several times a year. Surely students cannot write their own reports. Or can they? Here are some simple self-appraisal questions for students:

•   How do you rate your effort? Why?
•   What have you done well?
•   How could you improve?
•   What should your report say?

I preface this self-assessment process by telling students that I need their help to get their report right, and I want to astound their parents/guardians by how well I know them and their progress. I keep the completed self-appraisal in front of me while I type each student report, and I reflect the student’s ideas and language back in the report. It halved my workload, showed that I really knew my students, and it felt more beneficial. Students were pretty much always honest, sometimes scarily so, and on the odd occasion that a student wrote something I did not agree with, it led to a very constructive conversation with them. Win-win.

If students can do their own grading/marking and write their own reports, what else could they do? I wondered if they could actually teach the class themselves. I had my Grade 12 students each select a topic from the detailed mandated syllabus and accept responsibility for leading a 10-minute seminar when we got to that topic in class. Some of the seminars were outstanding, but a couple were not, and I needed to be ready to jump in and pick up the slack when the rest of the class felt they had been short-changed or when a presenting student was absent. Grade 12 student Tom comments, “The best way to learn something is to teach it to others. This approach works well when the students prepare thoroughly, but when a presentation isn’t very good, we feel that our time has been wasted.”

Another useful habit is to toss the whiteboard marker to a student on the first day of class and have that student scribe key points on the whiteboard. Students can then rotate this responsibility between each other for the rest of the year. Presto, the teacher never again turns their back on a class when writing on a whiteboard and they can devote their attention to facilitating the class. It is a nicer way to teach. 

The last class of the year is now a chance for me to bring in multiple copies of all my lesson planning documentation. We spend the final class with students in small groups leaving warm and cool feedback post-it note comments over everything. I have changed so much of my teaching based on these thoughtful feedback sessions with students. They help me co-construct what my class for the next year will look like. They are particularly helpful with framing questions and projects more effectively.

Can students set their own classroom rules? Of course they can. What about behavior management and discipline? Restorative practices solve that one. Almost anything that a teacher can think to complain about, can be solved by empowering young people. Most of the workload concerns that teachers grumble about are learning experiences that we deprive our students of, because we like to think they are not sufficiently capable; it boosts our sense of professional identity. This is supported by plenty of other assertions that teachers should never work harder than students and whoever is doing the work is doing the learning.

Teachers do too much of the learning and thinking for students. It does not have to be this way. When teachers work harder than students, young people become inculcated into coming to school to watch the adults work. If we want them to learn; if we want them to think, this is not something that can be outsourced. And if we want them to take responsibility for the culture and feel of the classroom and school, we need to invite them into the conversation, and even step away and let them take the lead. What do you complain about having to do that your students could do tomorrow?

As global disquiet mounts about the way schools evaluate the education of young people, it is clear that the school system is too narrowly fixated on test results as a measure of achievement. Learning is a biological, evolutionary necessity for survival, as opposed to an institutionalised practice. Unlearning requires challenging our ingrained assumptions and sense of identity, around narrow notions of assessment. Small acts of pedagogical disobedience can support the professional academic freedom of teachers. The following eight small acts of assessment disobedience can help teachers to focus on learning, not doing school.

Ungrading as Assessment Disobedience

Obsessively grading and marking student work doesn’t make you a better teacher. Grading is the most expensive public relations exercise in history. It serves as a mask which teachers can hide behind. Any teacher knows that as soon as a grade appears on student work, all the student is interested in is how they compare with their peers. “What was the average?”, “Was my grade a good grade?” When student work is numerically graded, interest in learning diminishes and the thinking becomes more superficial. Why are we even talking about grading instead of feedback? Distinguish between task-related feedback and ego-related feedback.

Peer Feedback as Assessment Disobedience

Students can provide each other with very effective feedback, and this squarely places the responsibility for learning onto them. Students need to be explicitly taught how to give each other feedback and how to receive it. They tend to want to avoid offending their peers and their feedback can lack specificity. Simply pointing this out can significantly improve the quality of the feedback that they provide to each other. Students need to be taught to ask clarifying questions, to focus on what they value in each other’s work, and to suggest clear ways that work can be improved. It is part of human nature that we defend ourselves when we perceive a threat. Lowering the guard so that we learn to value and accept feedback from others takes self-awareness. Knowing how to provide others with appropriate feedback is a powerful skill to learn. ‘Austin’s butterfly’ demonstrates the power of developing a classroom culture of critique.

Questions as Assessment Disobedience

In the 1970s, Seymour Sarason noted:

•         Teachers ask between 45-120 questions per half-hour.
•         The same teachers estimate that they ask between 12-20 questions per half-hour.
•         Between 67 to 95% of all teacher questions require straight recall from the student.
•         Every half an hour two questions are typically asked by children in the class.
•         The greater the tendency for a teacher to ask straight recall questions, the fewer the questions initiated by children.
•         The more a teacher asks personally relevant questions, the more questions students ask in class.

Questions build classroom culture, linking students, teachers and content. All teachers would like to ask good questions, the sort that drive learning and stimulate deep thinking. When questioning swings away from the most prevalent lower procedural and review questions – towards the higher generative and facilitative and constructive questions that push student thinking – student learning improves. Given the importance of curiosity to learning, perhaps the only assessment we really need is to analyse the frequency and types of questions that students are asking in class. When students ask generative, facilitative, and constructive questions, learning improves.

Documentation as Assessment Disobedience

Documentation is a process of reciprocal learning and institutional memory. Reggio educators refer to documentation as “visible listening.” When we listen to in order to make student thinking visible, it is like putting a dipstick in to check the oil. We can immediately see what students do and do not understand, and it is a cue to what we need to do next. Documentation expert Mara Krechevsky calls assessment, “an act of love”.

Simple strategies for commencing the practice of documentation are:

•   Noticing moments when things are going poorly or well and stepping back to closely observe.
•   Taking a photograph of an especially powerful learning moment to revisit with students.
•   Jotting down a provocative or insightful quote from a student and sharing it with the class or writing it directly onto a laminated speech bubble.

Public Audience as Assessment Disobedience

Ron Berger writes about the importance of students producing beautiful work, “Students crank out endless final products every day and night. Teachers correct volumes of such low-quality work; it’s returned to the students and often tossed in the wastebasket. Little in it is memorable or significant, and little engenders personal or community pride.”

An authentic public audience is powerful for learners and it is built into project-based learning approaches, neatly captured in the film, Most Likely to Succeed. Technology now enables us to use the world as our refrigerator. A few years ago, my Grade 9 History class wrote stories about World War One for a kindergarten class in Australia’s Northern Territory, who then illustrated the stories, and we made it up into an audio e-book. My teenage students arrived early to class and stayed behind, because they wanted “to get it right for the little kids”.

Another form of public audience is a Presentation of Learning which involves students in presenting their learning to an audience, in order to demonstrate that they are ready to progress. Effective Presentations of Learning include both academic content and reflection on growth, and they can be significant rites of passage for students.

The walls of schools also send messages about what we value. In many schools, the only representations of learning made public are grades and marks. However, quantification is not the only way to share evidence of learning. Qualitative forms of sharing evidence like student work, photographs, and video are powerful ways to provide a more complete picture of both the process and product of learning. We publicly display what we value, and students pay attention to this.

Rubric Criteria as Assessment Disobedience

Assessment is usually something that is done to students. An empowering shift is to co-construct assessment rubric criteria with students. This puts assessment criteria into student-friendly language rather than teacher-designed robot-speak. Simple prompts for students might include columns for ‘Haves’ and ‘Amazing’ or for ‘Awesome’ and ‘Junk’. When combined with time to explore samples of exemplar work from previous years, students can end up doing much of the assessment process themselves. They learn what quality work looks like and they have input into designing how they will be assessed.

Reflective Conversations as Assessment Disobedience

The Latin root word for assessment is ‘assidere’, which means “to sit beside” (although in all honesty, from its early origins in Greek law courts, there was an element of judgement involved as well). Joe Bower was a leading light for ungrading in schools, arguing, “assessment is not a spreadsheet — it’s a conversation.” Individual Feedback Sessions and one on one conferencing center on discussions with students about their thinking, rather than lengthy written comments on their work that are often not read despite the hours put into them by teachers. Reflective conversations enhance student ownership of their learning, while teachers model the attitudes and abilities they want to see in their students and build stronger teacher-student relationships. This can be time-consuming, however it is possible to get through a whole regular class with speed coaching-style questions. I ask students to write responses to four questions and then bring their answers to me for a speed interview:

•         How is this class going?
•         What is your biggest challenge?
•         What do you want to get better at?
•         How can the teacher help?

It is an easy way to get a personalized snapshot of each student’s learning and for the teacher to know what to do next to move the learning forward.

Feedback to Teachers as Assessment Disobedience

Perhaps the best form of assessment is when it is from student to teacher, rather than from teacher to student. The greatest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, when teachers become students of their students. I can pretty much guarantee that your teaching will improve if you ask your students the following questions and then discuss their responses with them and act on their advice.

•         What do you wish teachers knew about you as a learner?
•         What are the things teachers do that let you know they respect and value you?
•         What advice would you give teachers to bring out the best in students?

Yesterday our staff heard from Professor Yong Zhao as he interacted with three students around the concept of ‘agency’. He was nicely irreverent and provocative. It was a fantastic way to start the term.

Yong argued, “Schools can never prepare children for their future because that future is made by the students. Our job as educators is to prepare students to become better makers of their future.” He claimed that learning has escaped from the learning system.

“If every child comes to school with the idea that they want to make an impact on other people’s lives, and all of our teachers help students grow in this way, we will have a better education system and a better world.”

Yong spoke about jagged profiles, student voice, choice, agency, and self-determination. How can we help students be unique and avoid school just being a game? Could we develop a strength profile and an assigned strength mentor for each student?

Existing systems cannot change without new possibilities. We have a default image of what schools should be.

 

Shortly after leaving high school as a student, I was bantering with some friends about our teachers and someone remarked about Stan, a gnarly old poetry teacher. The comment was that Stan had “really taught them how to think”. As I considered a career in education, I reflected that it would be pretty cool to be remembered for teaching someone “how to think”.

Fast-forward about ten years into my teaching career, I attended a conference on the Australian Gold Coast, with keynotes from David Perkins, Ron Ritchhart, and Mark Church. As they addressed the assembled crowd about visible thinking and teaching for understanding, I felt goose bumps. I felt like I had found my people. Since that moment I have immersed myself in Project Zero and I even lived in the US for a year to study at Harvard. Project Zero is globally renowned for research in thinking, understanding, and creativity. I now instruct in Project Zero online courses and collaborate with various Project Zero researchers. Project Zero research has influenced my work and identity in profound ways. Central to all of this has been Ron Ritchhart’s research into thinking and I have recently completed a Churchill Fellowship studying his Cultures of Thinking approach/framework.

Three core ideas are the foundation of Ron’s work:

• Schools must be about developing students’ thinking dispositions
• We need to make students’ thinking visible
• Classroom culture plays a crucial role in supporting and shaping learning.

Ron argues that a quality education is one where students are engaged and active thinkers, able to communicate, innovate, collaborate, and problem-solve. These ‘dispositions’ describe our patterns of interaction with the world. Dispositions are part of our individual character. They cannot be directly taught or tested; only enculturated. He envisages schooling as an enculturative process that cultivates dispositions of thinking. Lev Vygotsy (1979) stated, “Children grow into the intellectual life of those around them”. This perfectly encapsulates the concept of enculturation. It is how we internalise the ideas and the beliefs that we frequently interact with.

Learning happens when students connect with ideas, when they ask questions, and create meaning with our guidance and support. A culture of thinking sends a message to students that thinking is valued and infused in the fabric of the classroom. Ritchhart argues that we must work to change the messages being sent by timetables, exams, university entrance requirements, 50-minute periods, and parental expectations, to “…enculturate students into a new story of learning where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the ongoing, day-to-day experience of all group members” (Ritchhart, 2016).

Ron identifies eight cultural forces that represent the tools or levers for transforming school and classroom culture. Classroom culture sends messages about what learning is and how it happens. Understanding this process and how teachers might more directly influence it, as well as having the language to talk about classroom culture, helps to demystifying teaching. Awareness of the presence of the cultural forces in any group context helps educators take a more active role in shaping culture.

My Fellowship focused on teachers, school leaders, and researchers who have an excellent understanding of the Cultures of Thinking approach and who have been utilising it for some time. My interest was not so much in understanding and explaining the approach/framework, but in exploring the leadership of difficult pedagogical change in schools. What works, what does not work, and what does effective leadership for complex school pedagogical change look like?

Leading complex pedagogical change in schools requires patience for the slow and messy nature of the work; respectful and trusting relationships with people; listening with curiosity and authenticity; and respect for context and history. My key takeaway is that paying close attention to the design of the learning culture for teachers might be the most important step we can take to build a culture of thinking for our students. If we want a culture of thinking for students, then we need a culture of thinking for teachers. When teachers are involved in active discussion, problem-solving, learning from colleagues, questioning practices, trying things and reflecting, then student learning improves. Developing a community in which rich discussions about teaching, learning, and thinking are a fundamental part of teachers’ ongoing experience provides the foundation for nurturing students’ thinking and learning.

Teachers are driven by their instincts, beliefs, and mindsets. The only way that we can understand what teachers do is to understand their beliefs and values. Most professional development is about giving teachers new ideas to implement. However, giving teachers new ideas without first understanding their beliefs and mindsets is a waste of time.

It is not about applying a formula; it is about engaging in a conversation.

The following sections summarise some of the takeaways from my Churchill Fellowship – each supported by a relevant quote from an interviewee – how the Cultures of Thinking approach changes teaching and schools, how to lead this sort of change in schools, how hesitant teachers can be supported, what the biggest mistakes are, the hidden ingredients of success, and some key takeaways.

What does a Cultures of Thinking approach look like?

When teachers adopt a culture of thinking, they become more attentive to thinking and more precise in the way that they think. They become better listeners, and this leads to them becoming more responsive and flexible in how they teach. The language they use about teaching and learning changes, and the physical classroom environment displays what students are thinking about. Elise Heil (Principal of Sacred Heart School in Washington DC) captures the shift teachers make from delivering content to facilitating thinking through a less controlling approach:

“It’s the shift from teacher as giver of information to teacher as facilitator. Teachers now listen more than they speak. It’s made teaching more interesting and more enjoyable. Teachers don’t feel like they constantly have to perform. They don’t have to plan every minute detail. Teachers are more relaxed and happier. We have to unlearn the desire for control.”

When Cultures of Thinking becomes a part of a whole-school approach, we see the power of shared language and common terminology. Student-teacher relationships change and there is a transformation in student agency, which leads to a more positive tone within the school. Teachers’ perspectives on their role change; they become students of their students. There is public documentation and open sharing of student learning on classroom walls, and student thinking moves into hallways and other places. There is a notable decrease in stress. People become calmer and happier; best described as a “culture of kindness”. Kristen Kullberg (Making and Design Initiatives Coordinator at Washington International School) reinforces that this is not another PD fad; it is a fundamental mindset shift within a school, about transferring agency to students:

“This is not a boxed curriculum. This isn’t another PD fad. You can’t mask authentic thinking, you can only invite it into the light. It shifted the agency from top-down to student.”

Leading the change in schools

My real interest was in how to lead this sort of change in schools. Every single school context is widely different. Leaders should step back, observe the culture and listen. It is slow work, needing patience. The most common response from interviewees was that “It takes time.” Leaders should start small and not play into the quick fix. It is an ongoing drip-feed which creates a ripple effect. Build trust and slowly build circles of influence. The entry point for where people are at is different, go into the zone of proximal development, build capacity, and introduce a common language. Use teacher champions; recognise that teachers are experts and professionals who want to develop their practice. It is about asking the right questions. Be comfortable with the fact that not everyone will join you. Jim Reese (Director of the Professional Development Collaborative, Washington International School) reinforces the importance of being flexible, earning trust, and providing various ways for teachers to participate:

“You have to be flexible with participation. You have got to do a lot of forgiving of teachers in terms of their busy lives. Cultivate trust, build relationships. Once they dip their toe in the water, hold them accountable. Build up a stable of really good practitioners. Give people different options for how they participate.”

For classrooms to be cultures of thinking for students, school must be cultures of thinking for teachers. Build teacher leaders, involve them in planning, and provide ongoing opportunities to get into each other’s classrooms. Bring it back to the teachers and have them lead the charge. Play to intrinsic motivation, go slowly, see the bigger picture, and make it fun. Get it in your mission and budget. You are investing in a culture of thinking. Institutionalise it, make part of the DNA of the school. Carole Geneix (Director of Teaching and Learning, Washington International School) sees it as a process of empowerment and unveiling talent, noting that providing teachers with choices assists:

“You have to empower all the people around you. See talent as opportunities. Offer options. It doesn’t appeal to everyone. Choice is really important.”

Supporting hesitant teachers

It is crucial to meet hesitant or resistant teachers where they are. We can do this by showing non-judgemental interest in their practice and “listening them into clarity”. Instead of trying to give them the answer, try to help them find the answer themselves by asking lots of questions. Where do they feel that little niggling feeling? What question are they asking that this might be the answer to? What do they want their learners to be like? Give them agency and get them to share their practice in order to help you understand. Look for the toughest critics and build relationships by showing genuine passion for their art. This approach cannot be forced, so cast the net towards the ones who are interested. Make it an invitation, an open circle. Joel Bevans (Vice Principal, Canadian International School, Singapore) emphasises the importance of building strong relational connections, listening, persisting, and staying positive:

“Listen. Put the coaching hat on. Coaching conversations are really important. How do you listen and give a little nudge? It comes down to relationships. You can’t have these coaching conversations unless you really know who they are. It is a slow burner process. Keep on trying and keep on smiling.”

Biggest mistakes

The biggest mistake that leaders tend to make when attempting to develop this culture is to give up if it does not work the first time. It is an ongoing investment, a multi-year commitment. It will evolve and develop, it requires patience, and it will take time. It is not a panacea or a quick fix. It is not a one-off; you are not going to get it the first time. It is sensible to pick just one idea and focus on it until it becomes a habit. Lauren Childs (Clinical Faculty, Oakland University, Michigan) notes that we are not talking about implementation, we are talking about a cultural mind-shift:

“This is not just a program. Program implementation is so ingrained. It is a cultural shift not the implementation of a program.”

Hidden ingredients

Ron recommended that I ask a question about the hidden ingredients of leading this work. This question elicited two key ingredients, the secret sauce if you like. These two keys are: being truly intellectually curious, and making people feel seen and heard. Nathalie Ryan (Senior Educator, Department of Gallery and Studio Learning, National Gallery of Art) beautifully captures the essence of this as she describes the role of education as a civic effort which goes beyond passing tests:

“Have a genuine desire to listen and learn, to see your role as not the authority. Be truly curious about your learners, really care. Desire to listen and connect in an authentic way. See education as truly part of a civic effort. It is beyond passing a test; it’s about creating humans; it is more lifelong. When someone sees you as a human, that is really empowering as learner.”

Best takeaways

Jessica Ross (Senior Practitioner Specialist, Project Zero) spoke about keeping the focus on thinking and learning as the main game in schools as opposed to everything else that can crowd the agenda:

“It is about cognition and thinking and learning. Schools can lose sight of this. There is always more to do – healthcare, physical care. But cognition, thinking and learning is what we should be expert in.’

Brian Cook (Social Studies Department Head, Dana Hall School, Boston) used the helpful metaphor of nurturing an eco-system rather than following a script:

“It is about nurturing an eco-system rather than sticking to a script. It takes time and it is messy and that is part of the process. You have to be OK with making mistakes. That is OK when the senior administration is on-board.” 

Tina Blythe (Project Director, Project Zero and Senior Manager Special Projects) spoke about trusting colleagues and valuing relationship because it is only in relationship to others that we can see our own biases:

“Trust your learners. Trust your colleagues. Value relationship. It all comes down to relationship. It is only in relationship with others that I can really hear another perspective. It’s almost impossible for me to see my own biases. Others can help me see them. That is why we set up groups.”

Elise Heil (Principal of Sacred Heart School in Washington DC) emphasised the importance of modelling from leaders and prioritising adult learning:

“As a school leader, I’m most proud that I can use these routines myself with parents. Being able to model and facilitate is crucial. If this is something that the school leadership values, then they have to use the routines. They can’t just tell others to use them. If you are doing systemic large-scale change, you have to be focused on the adult learners first, not the children.”

Conclusion

It turns out that that we can’t teach people to think after all, but we can enculturate the dispositions which enable thinking. Educators who succeed in developing a culture of thinking value the process of learning over the product of learning; they seek deeper learning rather than just the acquisition of knowledge. Leadership of this pedagogical approach requires patience, and valuing, respecting, and trusting people. Leadership matters immensely and models that this is not “flavour of the month”, it is who we are, and it is what we are about. It requires an invitational approach. An invitation is extraordinarily powerful. Invite people into change instead of telling them what they need to change.

 

References

Ritchhart, R., 2015. Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 forces we must master to truly transform our classrooms. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass.

Vygotsky, L., 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

“A cold sweat shivered on my skin. This is it, I thought. This isn’t teaching. I’m not a teacher anymore… There’s something sinister happening to this profession that I loved. And it breaks my heart. We don’t trust our teachers anymore.”

In her book Teacher, Australian author Gabbie Stroud beautifully encapsulates what is happening by stealth to the teaching profession around the world. She continues, 

“Good teaching …comes from teachers who know their students, who build relationships, who meet learners at their point of need and who recognise that there’s nothing standard about the journey of learning. We cannot forget the art of teaching – without it, schools become factories, students become products and teachers: nothing more than machinery.”

There have been profound changes in the work and workload of teachers. School education is becoming a much more bureaucratized system, asking more of teachers and getting less in return. The current workload is unsustainable and the pandemic is exacerbating teachers’ feelings of being silenced. A lack of respect, staffing challenges, low pay, high workload, conflicting demands and now the pandemic, have conspired to generate a perfect storm. 30% of Australia’s teachers are over 50. Education applications have plummeted by 20%. 48% of teachers are thinking of leaving the profession. Teacher workloads are “massive” and “unrealistic” (even though 87% of teachers still find teaching rewarding).

Schools now need to be run as if every teacher has one foot out the door. During remote learning, both teachers and students discovered a new sense of autonomy. Few lamented the loss of restrictive practices like early start times or only being able to eat or move when bells ring. Workers now have a sense of mobility they have never had before. In the United States over 3 million people per month are walking away from their jobs and the same is occurring in Europe. These competitive labour market conditions and the ‘war for talent’ amplify the necessity for educational leaders to adopt innovative strategies to dynamically recruit and retain excellent teachers. We must rethink the entire way we staff and manage schools.

We should not be surprised if teachers are escaping from an education system that is milking them to serve a purpose that is not aligned with the reasons that they entered the profession to start with. Perhaps we are talking less about ‘burn-out’ and more about ‘moral injury’ – when people see that the systems they are in are not designed to properly support the people they are meant to serve.

Reprioritising the work of teachers so that their focus is on actual teaching is critical to the success of schools and this is a crucial conversation for education leaders. The less meaningful and frustrating elements of teaching must be actively cleaned off the plate by targeting anything that reduces workload.

• Cancel meetings if they can be done by email instead. Many schools have moved information dissemination to asynchronous bulletins and recordings. When digital summaries are shared with teachers, it makes face to face conversations more effective (and staff happier). 
• Can the requirements of the marking policy be reduced while still meeting its aims? Kat Howard writes about how whole class feedback is now an established feature in some school feedback policies, and is a way of approaching feedback with the time/value cost mantra in mind.
• Lighten teachers’ lesson planning load by making sure teachers have shared, high-quality common instructional resources across subjects and/or year levels. Natasha Mercer uses a shared Google drive of lessons and has brought in Edrolo and Atomi as resources for flipped learning or as a backup tool if students or teachers are on extended sick leave.
• Arrange for non-teaching staff to cover extra-curricular and yard-duty responsibilities.
• Trial innovative timetable models. There are plenty of examples of systems which have less face-to-face teaching time and higher performance. In Finland, students start school days later and finish earlier. They usually have 3-4 x 75-minute classes with 15-20 minute breaks to digest learning, use muscles, stretch legs, get fresh air and let out the “wiggles.”

If you have leadership responsibility in 2022, it is hard to overstate the depth of the disruption we are facing. We are witnessing the end of the “command and control” structures that have dominated management since the Industrial Revolution. Teachers should be treated like adult professionals who can manage their own lives and time. This system cannot come at a cost to students; but if we don’t figure out how to do it, the cost may be the teaching profession as we know it. Fundamental transformation of the entire one-size-fits-all schooling model is needed to build a more potent and fulfilled profession – one in which educators are empowered as design thinkers. If we want people in classrooms teaching kids, let’s press the pedal on creative possibilities, pull the reins back on the crushing bureaucracy, and trust and support teachers to be the outstanding professionals that they are.