Leadership and Change - a reflective memo

TASK: Write a reflective memo on 3 readings related to leadership and change, and introduce the focus of your case study and the models you have chosen to apply. 

What? 

A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning - Fullan & Langworthy.

This report discusses three new forces impacting on education today and going forward into the future.  The first force is 'new pedagogies' and relates to the new learning partnerships that develop between and among students and teachers when resources and digital tools become ‘pervasive’. The second force is 'new change leadership' which 'merges top-down, bottom-up and sideways energies to generate change faster and easier than anything seen in past efforts at reform'.  The third force is 'new system economics' where the essential and powerful learning resources and tools, which accelerate the first 2 forces, become more affordable for all.  The report gives the background to why change is happening globally, what the new pedagogies are all about, how they can be viewed in modern education and what the possibilities are if the new pedagogies model is developed in schools.

This report is an excellent resource for anyone in education.  It comes from a well respected and internationally known educator (Fullan) who has numerous highly regarded books and papers published in relation to key educational concepts within future-focused learning like change management, leadership, collaboration, digital tools etc.  The report is well structured and references a huge amount of research, both from international experts as well as New Zealand experts, which I found reassuring, to know there were links to our education system.  One of the most beneficial aspects of this report was the numerous school stories, including teacher quotes, statistics & data, tables of relevant information etc. as I was able to directly link and substitute these examples with some of our own information in relation to my school context.  I believe this report is an essential resource for education leaders and all teachers to read as it is engaging, informative and very motivating.  You come away for a better sense of the immediate need for change and the possibilities the new pedagogies model could provide us with.

Leading Quality Change - Fullan

This Core-Ed EdTalk video was filmed in March 2015 and is a recording of the presentation Michael Fullan gave to Canterbury leaders. During the presentation Fullan goes into detail about what quality change processes look like and links this to the international project he is involved in which includes clusters of schools from around the globe, including New Zealand.  The clusters are a part of a global collaboration called New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, which has the objective of bringing to life the new pedagogies model as described in 'A Rich Seam', in a variety of schools all over the world "creating a coherent suite of sustainable educational solutions, designed to achieve and support the strategic outcome of students reaching education success enabled by a technologically advanced society". 

I was lucky enough to actually attend this presentation in person. One of his key points is that the glue for successful change needs to come from leadership from the middle, where our principals and school leaders are participating and driving the change collaboratively - they should be a force for change but they must be a learner as well, where they can influence the climate of the school and create a non-judgmental culture, demonstrating how we are all learners, who make mistakes but value learning and are transparent about their own learning.  Fullan also shares the three keys to maximising impact, referencing Robinson's BES (2009) work and how leaders need to be moving towards the right drivers of capacity building, systems, pedagogy and collaboration. 

He acknowledges the unique context of education renewal in Christchurch as a result of the earthquakes and how the Ministry of Education's Investing in Educational Success initiative could dramatically change the landscape of education in our city.  He acknowledges that the key component of increasing collaboration and sharing expertise across a wider community of schools is a positive step and it will create many exciting benefits for our students however there are still things that need more thought and our leaders should be helping to collaboratively shape the best pathway forward wherever possible.

Positive Change Processes - Jansen

This video of Chris Jansen, a lecturer at the University of Canterbury was recorded at the Educational Leaders Forum 2011.  Chris explores the change process, and how to make this more of a positive experience. He describes the process of Appreciative Inquiry, which maintains a positive focus.  He shares the 4 Ds of appreciative inquiry and what the focus is for each step.  The first step is Discover - where leaders pair up, record a positive story from their own experiences and then share it with their partner.  Next is Dream - where the pairs now articulate their stories to the wider group, and all the participants pull together the themes. Following that is Design - which is where the strategic planning occurs, building on from the previous steps where the themes were identified of things that worked well and the final step is Deliver - which includes sequenced action planning, operational goals being established and the vision becoming grounded in the process.  

Chris shares examples of Canterbury schools and clusters that have used the Appreciative Inquiry process successfully and have also included the wider school community as part of this process.  This allows leaders to collaboratively take ownership and more importantly, 'authorship' (Breakspear, Sheahan, Thurbon, 2008) and has enabled leaders to collaboratively work on and implement a shared vision for their cluster of schools when they could be considered, in some aspects, competitors.

This video is a very easy watch and Chris explains things clearly and succinctly.  I particularly connected to what he was saying as I have a personal connection to both Chris and his work.  Chris is one of my lecturers for another course I am taking this year, EDEM682, and I have also been following the clusters and schools he discusses in the video so was already familiar with how they had been using the Appreciative Inquiry model to collaborate at leadership level.  This links beautifully with the Fullan video above 'Leading Quality Change' as it also references the need for inquiry and collaboration at a leadership level and how this can impact on the success and sustainability of change in schools.

So What?

Digging deep into these three excellent readings/resources, amongst many more and drawing on the findings of my review of the two change models; Davis' 'Arena of Change' (2008) and the Hall and Hord's CBAM model (1987), I have decided that the focus of my academic case study for assignment 3 of EDEM630 will be "What have been the benefits and challenges of implementing BYOD across Cobham Intermediate?  

As part of this case study, I will look closely at what the role of leadership has been throughout the pilot and whole school implementation phases and how this has impacted on what challenges and benefits have arisen for both staff and students at Cobham Intermediate.

I believe I will find strong links between the successes we have experienced and Fullan's findings in terms of what quality change processes look like, for example one huge success we have experienced has been the shift to using Google Apps for Education and Hapara Teacher Dashboard, an effective online tool to manage and monitor Google Apps for Education student activity.  One of the reasons this has been so successful is that it has direct links to many of the key drivers for successful change like enabling improved systems, increased blended (online and face to face) collaboration between staff and students, building capacity in terms of all staff being able to access and manage online student work and finally and most excitingly, this has been a learning experience for our teachers and leaders.  They were, and are still, all in the learners seat with this move and have been very transparent about how new this is for them, what challenges they are facing, what professional development they need and how they can tap into the strengths and expertise that their students may have to learn from them.  The Māori concept of Ako is common place throughout all of our BYOD journey.  Ako means both to teach and to learn and it recognises and values the knowledge that both teachers and learners bring to learning experiences.  This has been extremely prevalent in the area of learning with digital devices and it is exciting to see some of our teachers let go of their need to be in the dominant teacher role and embrace the learner role, while our kids lead the way forward!

Now What?

Being a part of the leadership team at Cobham, I want to look closely at how leadership has influenced the outcomes of our BYOD journey - what worked or did not work, how could things have been improved if different decisions had been made at leadership level and how has leadership decision making influenced other ecologies (Davis, 2008) within our context.

I would also like to examine what concerns were identified by staff in the early stages of moving to BYOD, if or how these were addressed and what their concerns are now, aligned to CBAM (1987), as we move towards the end of our first year as a BYOD school.

As part of my learning tasks and to assist with my case study research for assignment three, I would like to interview my principal with 3-5 carefully selected questions related to the BYOD journey at Cobham so I can apply the learnings from the interview to my findings for my case study.  This is particularly important as I only begun my job at Cobham in January this year and as with any major change to practice, the move to BYOD has been several years in the making, with several more to come I imagine.  The more we learn and discover about what benefits our students and staff are experiencing versus what challenges are being faced, the more leadership want to improve the current systems and processes in our BYOD strategy to ensure we are providing the very best BYOD experience our school community deserves.

I believe it would be valuable as part of my case study to draw parallels, where possible, between the successful elements of our BYOD journey and the links to the three forces with 'A Rich Seam' (2014).  I believe the three forces - 'new pedagogies', 'new change leadership' and 'new system economics' are intertwined with the rationale for BYOD and if we get BYOD right, it will be a great example of the new pedagogies in action.

REFERENCES:

Breakspear, S., Sheahan, P., Thurbon, D. (2008). Talent Magnets. Retrieved from http://www.simonbreakspear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Talent-Magnets.pdf 

Fullan, Michael. (2015). Leading quality change. EdTalk in Canterbury at CORE, April 2015.

Fullan, M. & Langworthy, M. (2014). A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning, London: Pearson.

Hall, G. E., & Hord, S. M. (1987). Change in schools: Facilitating the process. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Jansen, Chris. (2011). Positive change processes. Educational Leaders Forum 2011, Christchurch.

Robinson, V., Hōhepa, M., & Lloyd, C. (2009). School leadership and student outcomes:  

Identifying what works and why. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.

Arena of Change at Cobham

e-Activity 2.1

• An introduction of your central topic of research, that is, your identified change with digital technology in education.
• A description of the ecology which identifies the relationships between your change and the wider ecosystem

Figure 1. The arena of change with a successful BYOD classroom programme at Cobham Intermediate at it's centre.

What?
My topic of research is "What support needs to be provided to ensure a successful BYOD programme?"

The change at our school in relation to this topic is that our school went BYOD at the start of Term 2 this year (2015).  We now allow and encourage all students to bring a device of their choice, that they own, to school to be used as a learning tool, when and where appropriate.  We also provide 5 iPad minis and 5 Chromebooks in every class to top up the amount of devices available for student use.

We believe that moving towards a 1:1 digital device, or at the very least 1:2 programme will enable access to technology anywhere, anytime within the school environment and beyond for our students and that this will enhance their learning experiences and enable learning activities that were previously not possible.

Figure 1 is the artifact that I am reflecting upon.  The 'arena of change' model above is created in relation to my own school context, Cobham Intermediate and is based on the work of N. Davis, 2015 and her arena of change with digital technologies.  I created this model using Google Drawings.

At the centre of this arena of change is our classroom environment, where the biggest change is visible-children coming to school with their own devices on a day-to-day basis.  We have all teachers and students, in ever class affected by this but to differing levels.  Some classes have a very high uptake, with almost 1:1, where others have less than 1/4 of students bring a device to class.  This, along with teacher confidence and competence, is enabling different degrees of device use in class. Less devices available has hindered some teachers from implementing activities that require or could benefit from device use.

Moving outwards within the arena, to a school level, the level of support provided by the leadership team, parents, BoT and PTA has had a direct impact on the BYOD programme as well.  The PTA, along with funds from community charities, have provided funding to purchase additional devices to cater for equity issues. Our BoT has supported the move to BYOD and developed sound policies and strategic planning around the roll out. Parents have been consulted with and communicated to throughout the whole process.  The leadership team is integral to planning and providing the necessary professional development needed for both staff and students to ensure new knowledge and skills are being developed.  This should also be in conjunction with what is happening in the BLCC - Burnside Learning Community Cluster, as many of these schools feed into our intermediate school or our kids move into theirs.  It is important to maximise the opportunities to collaborate and grow professionally as a staff internally and externally, across our wider PD networks, such as the cluster and online professional learning groups (PLGs) open to us, such as on Google +, Twitter, Facebook and the VLN, drawing on the expertise and knowledge of others with BYOD experience and skills.
"PD opportunities within and across schools often support change with ICT-related PD within the school and/or across it's networks of overlapping ecologies" (Davis et. al. 2013.)

In terms of the bureaucratic and political influences, the current Government has huge influence of what is happening within our school environment.  The Ministry of Education has fully supported and encouraged the effective use of digital technologies to support learning and the New Zealand curriculum gives us great scope for developing programmes that support the effective use of digital devices for learning.  "Schools should explore not only how ICT can supplement traditional ways of teaching but also how it can open up new and different ways of learning." (MoE, 2007, p. 36).

Teachers may have the scope to innovate in their teaching and learning programmes but are still accountable in terms of reporting against the national standards and meeting school student and E.R.O targets, which can influence when, what and why the incorporate the use of digital technologies into their classroom programme.  This has been been influenced hugely however since the government invested in the school network upgrade programme (SNUP), ultra-fast broadband in schools (UFBiS) and the Network for Learning (N4L).  Having the much needed infrastructure in place was critical in terms of the timing for when our school was finally in a position to move to BYOD.

Finally, the services available also contributed to whether we would go BYOD and of course, of successful the implementation of the BYOD programme will be.  When Cobham trialled BYOD in a small amount of classes last year, we also trialled GAFE accounts for all of the staff in the school and just the students in those classes and use of the Hapara Teacher Dashboard for managing the google account in those classes.  The success of both of these initiatives was such, it went without saying that when we rolled out BYOD across the whole school this year, all students now would move to GAFE accounts and all classes would use Hapara Teacher Dashboard to manage student work, with Rev It supporting us with the management of our network and hardware.

So What?
Seeing the ecosystem clearly identified and visible has been an affirming moment, as well as being able to articulate how the relationships between each layer has impacted on the change taking place within the classroom, or more specifically, impacting on how successful the change has, or has not been implemented and managed within our school and for our students.  Seeing the layers of change and how they interact developed my own understanding of the domino effect of change across the ecosystems-you can't get change happening in isolation, "Systems don't change because only one party takes action" (Fullan, 2014, p. 76).

Upon reflecting on how the ecologies exist and interact with each other in relation to my own school environment, it is apparent that our teachers are at the heart of the model and therefore at the 'coalface' for the change.  This is where the ultimate success of BYOD will be measured, in terms of what our teachers feedback about how the devices are being used, the uptake of BYOD and most importantly, the impact of student engagement and achievement.  This being said, the teachers would not have necessarily been able to make this whole school change without the support and direction from leadership.  Fullan (2011) comments that "...for a system to develop it must be led.  Supportive leaders become an essential component" (p. 3).  In our case, leadership has been driving this change from the outset, allowing for consultation with all key stakeholders,  professional development opportunities for staff, providing ample funding for school devices to top up availability in classes and ensure equity for all, as well as implementing a pilot programme so we could slowly introduce the change and evaluate its impact for our staff, students and whānau before making a decision about rolling this out across the whole school.  This meant that we were confident that we were making the right decision, based on what our teachers and students wanted and based on evidence gathered around an increase in engagement.  We are still investigating any direct links to an increase in student achievement results as this is harder to prove. In my opinion, the leadership support to make this change, for the right reasons and through a systematic, deliberate and well-timed approach has meant the initial stages of the change process has been successful so far.

Now What?
I would like to encourage others to view and reflect upon my arena of change.  I would love to receive some feedback as to other perspectives in relation to my model and any similarities or differences other school contexts face in relation to the implementation of BYOD at their schools.

As I become more knowledgeable about correct APA referencing and annotated bibliographies I may need to edit this post and correct any errors I may have made.

I have aspirations to share this model with the staff and leadership team at my school, or perhaps even better, work through a collaborative activity where groups, which could include staff, leadership, governance, parents, students etc could create their own change arena for our school.  Having mixed groups could broaden the perspectives brought to the table and identify different influences the others may not have considered.  We could then share the change arenas and identify the similarities and/or differences as well as the possible implications and opportunities.


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Davis, N., Eickelmann, B. and Zaka, P. (2013), Restructuring of educational systems in the digital age from a co-evolutionary perspective. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29: 438–450. doi: 10.1111/jcal.12032. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/doi/10.1111/jcal.12032/epdf

Description: This article recognises the increasing range of radical restructuring resulting from the co-evolution of education and digital technologies in school systems and related activity in the global ecosystem. It explains the co-evolutionary perspective of ICT in education, sharing learning from a case study of a rural secondary school in New Zealand and explores resistance to restructuring with ICT, the co-evolution of virtual schooling in the U.S and summarises the restructuring of schooling systems in the 21st century.

Evaluation: An excellent article that uses a wide range of evidence informed research to supports its statements. It clearly articulates and defines the relevant terms and describes how the interconnected ecosystems relate to each other however I also found it to be written to a high academic level, therefore it takes careful thought and consideration to be able to process and understand the concepts. This article has been essential to supporting my topic of research as I have used the arena of change model as the basis for understanding my own school context and the various ecologies and influences surrounding and impacting on my own school perspective.




Fullan, M. (2011). Learning is the work. Unpublished manuscript. Retrieved from http://www.michaelfullan.ca/media/13396087260.pdf

Description: This paper outlines some of the traditional forms for teacher development and the lack of success these have had in terms of making a real difference to improving teacher practice. The overall theme for the paper is how collaboration is the key to substantial and effective teacher development and that this collaboration occurs regularly and across various levels. It is in the day-to-day conversations, support systems, feedback and feed-forward and professional conversations that happen between and across staff, leaders, students and parents. This also extends outwards to between and across other schools, networks, organisations and collaborative networks. It details how innovation will come from teachers working in collaboration and leaders developing an interactive system.
Evaluation: This paper comes from a well respected and internationally known educator (one of my favourite experts to learn from). It is short and succinct, making it easy to read and process. The results are linked to Canadian and American examples but I still found the information relevant and applicable to my own experiences within the New Zealand education system. The key concept of collaboration is extremely relevant to our school context as it is a key focus across the school to develop and enhance student and staff collaboration. This also is very relevant given the move to Learning Community Clusters (LCC) and the Investing in Educational Success (IES) policy where our schools is now needing to collaborate across several schools within the Burnside LCC.





Fullan, M., & Langworthy, M. (2014). A Rich Seam: How new pedagogies find deep learning. Retrieved from http://www.michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3897.Rich_Seam_web.pdf

Description: This report discusses three new forces impacting on education today and going forward into the future. The first force is 'new pedagogies' and relates to the new learning partnerships that develop between and among students and teachers when resources and digital tools become 'pervasive' The second force is 'new change leadership' which 'merges top-down, bottom-up and sideways energies to generate change faster and easier than anything seen in past efforts at reform'. The third force is 'new system economics' where the essential and powerful learning resources and tools which accelerate the first 2 forces become more affordable for all. The report gives the background to why change is happening globally, what the new pedagogies are all about, how they can be viewed in modern education and what the possibilities are if the new pedagogies model is developed in schools.

Evaluation: This report is an excellent resource for anyone in education. It comes from a well respected and internationally known educator (Fullan) who has numerous highly regarded books and papers published in relation to key educational concepts within future-focused learning like change management, leadership, collaboration, digital tools etc. The report is well structured and references a huge amount of research, both from international experts as well as New Zealand experts, which I found reassuring to know there were links to our education system. One of the most beneficial aspects of this report was the numerous school stories, including teacher quotes, statistics & data, tables of relevant information etc as I was able to directly link and substitute these examples with some of our own information in relation to my school context. I believe this report is an essential resource for education leaders and all teachers to read as it is engaging, informative and very motivating. You come away for a better sense of the immediate need for change and the possibilities the new pedagogies model could provide us with.





Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.

Description: The New Zealand Curriculum document, alongside Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, is the key document which sets the direction for student learning in primary and secondary schools throughout New Zealand. It provides essential information and guidance schools need when designing and/or reviewing their school curriculum.

Evaluation: The New Zealand Curriculum document is viewed positively by many and is widely considered as flexible, practical, more child-centered and an improvement on its predecessor. Some express uncertainty due to the reduced prescription and increased professional autonomy.