Powering Up Your School E-Book

Jann Robinson

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

< Powering Up Your School: The Learning Power Approach to school leadership - co-authored by Guy Claxton, Jann Robinson, Rachel Macfarlane, Graham Powell, Gemma Goldenberg, and Robert Cleary - is a treasury of top tips on how to embed the Learning Power Approach (LPA) in your school culture and empower your teachers to deliver its benefits to students. The LPA is a way of teaching which aims to develop all students as confident and capable learners ready, willing, and able to choose, design, research, pursue, troubleshoot, and evaluate learning for themselves, alone and with others, in school and out. This approach also affords a clear view of valued, sought-after outcomes of education - such as the development of character strengths and the pursuit of academic success - and Powering Up Your School sets out a detailed explanation of how these can be accomplished. It distils into a series of illuminating case studies the lessons learned by a wide range of pioneering school principals who have successfully undertaken the LPA journey, and presents a variety of practical strategies which will enable school leaders to make a positive impact on the lives of both their staff and their students. These strategies are complemented by a wealth of insights into how school leaders can go about gaining clarity on their vision, achieve buy-in from staff, and foster a collaborative effort towards delivering good outcomes. Together the authors share their tips on how to adapt and refine school structures and teaching practices on a school-wide level, and on how to stimulate and celebrate student progress. They also provide specific ideas for charting and reflecting on the journey towards building a learning-powered culture, framed in an appendix in the form of a detailed self-assessment grid. Suitable for school leaders in both primary and high school settings. Powering Up Your School is the fourth instalment in the Learning Power series.

Leseprobe

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Praise for Powering Up Your School

Powering Up Your School deliberately and proudly conceptualises schools as centres of learning, rejecting all the distracting paraphernalia of narrow metrics and crushing accountability. It’s about how we empower young people as learners ready to take their place in a complex world, and provides a powerful and practical mandate for teachers and leaders to make it happen. The ambition of the book, combined with the credibility of its team of authors, makes it a compelling read.

Geoff Barton, General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders, UK

Energising and refreshing in equal measure, Powering Up Your School is a down-to-earth and practical book for all those school leaders and teachers who want to help their students to become more powerful learners. The insights into how leaders can help to develop an improvement culture among both staff and students are particularly valuable.

Steve Munby, Visiting Professor, University College London, UK

Guy Claxton and his co-authors have written a remarkable book. Drawing on decades of rich learning from approaches such as Building Learning Power, the authors have created a powerful framework within which to think about how create a school culture that promotes what they call “results plus”.

This open, honest, and very personal book is not a one-size-fits-all blueprint of what leaders should do. Nor is it another set of generic leadership attributes or processes. Powering Up Your School is a book firmly rooted in the belief that a culture that enables every adult and child to develop powerful personal habits, can unleash huge potential in our next generation of leaders, teachers, and their students.

Using powerful practical examples that don’t gloss over how hard change can be, the authors set out what an effective change process could look like: developing clarity about the “why”; building buy-in through wide discussion; and creating long-term change that leads to deep, sustainable benefits. But this book is far from being a prescriptive manual. As the authors suggest, think “garden” rather than “model aeroplane kit”. It’s about creating the conditions within which children and adults can all thrive and grow.B

Written by highly respected and successful school leaders, Powering Up Your School is a must-read for anyone who believes our role as educators is to enable each and every pupil to achieve more than just a great set of exam results.

Andy Buck, founder, Leadership Matters, UK

For those seeking to move beyond the paradigm of judging a good education by academic outcomes – and in Australia that would be inclusive of all independent schools that offer a liberal, holistic educational experience – this book provides practical, honest, and realistic insights into the journeys that school leaders have taken to transform their school’s provision and equip students with the dispositions, skills, and knowledge that they will need in order to live fulfilling and satisfying lives.

The authors understand that one size does not fit all, and so while driven by similar educational visions, each leader’s pathway is different – thereby opening up a range of possibilities, approaches, challenges, and solutions for readers. As a result, the book abounds with collective wisdom that is very readable and accessible, and inviting of a collaborative and distributive style of leadership.

I have no doubt that Powering Up Your School will resonate with all school leaders and provide inspiration for determined, resilient, and visionary leadership.

Beth Blackwood, CEO, Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA Ltd)

Educators in many countries and regions buy in to the philosophy of the Learning Power Approach, and the essential message in Powering Up Your School is that school reform is a kind of culture change that should be pursued by all educators who wish for the all-round growth of their students.

From this book, school leaders will obtain detailed ideas about how to achieve sustainable development of their schools for generations to come. Readers will be convinced of the potential of the LPA and, via the various case studies, gain invaluable tips on how to accomplish it. They will also learn how best to cultivate the approach in their own school setting by responding to the invitations to reflect that are scattered throughout.

School leaders worldwide will learn a lot from this book.

Toshiyuki Kihara, Professor of the Graduate School of Professional Teacher Education, Osaka Kyoiku University, JapanC

Grounded in research, rooted in practice, and oriented to the future, Powering Up Your School is an excellent guide to help school leaders bring about much-needed changes in education. In particular, it offers a combination of professional guidance and personal reflections to leaders interested in implementing powerful approaches to learning.

Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas, USA, and Professor in Educational Leadership, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Australia

Powering Up Your School is filled with insights, ideas, wonderings, honest reflections, and useful tools and resources. It is an inspiring read and a valuable practical contribution to current thinking about schools as learning organisations.

Louise Stoll, Professor of Professional Learning, University College London Institute of Education, UK

When it comes to growing as a professional, the light-bulb moments and the most telling advancements often occur when research collides with practice. Powering Up Your School illustrates the benefits of such a combination, and the fruits of Guy Claxton’s lifelong work are there for all to see in the real-life experiences of a range of school leaders driving their schools onwards and upwards.

The stories which feature throughout the book are strong and are presented in a succinct and targeted way which is easily accessible. Furthermore, readers are given the opportunity to get to know the leaders and their stories over time and in context: the gradual reveal of their full stories is engaging.

Best of all, the book doesn’t simply paint a rosy picture where the world is entirely wonderful; instead, the authors communicate the real work that is involved in changing school cultures, practices, and, ultimately, student learning. It is real work that has its challenges, but we see in Powering Up Your School that it is very possible, in different ways and in different contexts, and exceptionally rewarding.

Darryl Buchanan, education leader in New South Wales, AustraliaD

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POWERING UP YOUR SCHOOL

The Learning Power Approach to School Leadership

Guy Claxton, Jann Robinson, Rachel Macfarlane, Graham Powell, Gemma Goldenberg, and Robert Cleary

Foreword by Michael Fullan

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To all the brave school principals we know, and the many more we don’t, who are forging 21st century education every day in their schools

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The Leader

I wanna be the leader

I wanna be the leader

Can I be the leader?

Can I? I can?

Promise? Promise?

Yippee I’m the leader

I’m the leader

OK what shall we do?

                             Roger McGough

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Foreword by Michael Fullan

The Learning Power Approach (LPA) is a highly beneficial and effective educational idea: one that transforms teaching and learning in schools. And Powering Up Your School shows school leaders exactly what it takes to turn that idea into a living reality that pervades the whole culture of the school. This remarkable, and oh so grounded, book is for those who know that something is wrong with the learning system in their schools but can’t quite put their finger on the problem. Powering Up Your School enables readers not only to identify the problem, but also to use both hands – and their minds – to pursue and eventually grasp the solution.

This book is in my wheelhouse1 because it is rooted in personal, practical experience. Guy Claxton’s co-authors are all doers: school leaders who are already well on their way with the LPA. They take us on a reflective journey that reveals their own commitment in action – a journey that gets deeper and wider – both inside and outside their schools. From the beginning of the book we have the sense that these leaders want to be better than the systems which they inhabit. They are conscious that the big wide world is changing in ways that far outstrip the traditional practices of schools.

Early in the book the authors spell out the challenge they faced: how to design, research, pursue, establish, and evaluate powerful new approaches to learning in their schools. They knew that their model had to be coherent and comprehensive. And they also knew the most important change principle: getting buy-in from all concerned by creating an enterprise of excitement, exploration, and collaborative problem-solving. They knew that their job was to build a team of leader-developers. In my terms, they were working out how to use internal and external pressure to generate the widespread internal commitment that would produce both the solution and the means to get there.

Powering Up Your School poses key questions in every chapter, and offers prompts and suggestions, born of the authors’ own experience, that encourage readers to find ivand formulate their own ways forward. Early on, for example, they focus on how to create a staff culture of learning. The questions they pose are challenging; they get below the surface and stimulate you to understand your own setting more deeply, and to see how to change direction. But the authors also reveal how they grappled with and responded to these questions in their own situations. In so doing they not only leave the reader with some great ideas and insights, but also with the responsibility to address their own situations. Time and again the reader is taken to the key areas of powerful learning, shown the problems and types of solutions, and left with the insight and motivation to create initiatives for themselves that seem both urgent and doable.

What I especially like about this book is that it covers all the bases. For example, there is a strong chapter on how leaders might use external pressures to stimulate growth and change in internal cultures. This discussion is combined with eight powerful strategies for developing those cultures – all of which serve to strengthen teachers’ daily habits and get them interacting in productive ways. The discussions always pinpoint practical strategies to foster focused, specific learning cultures – such as establishing a common shared language, targeting pedagogy, involving students, and much more.

Everything in the school becomes grist to the LPA mill. I could find no key aspect of the culture change process about which the authors didn’t have something useful to say. There is a chapter on making learning stick, with four great ideas on how to use students as carriers of the new culture. The chapter on evidencing progress includes practical suggestions about how to determine impact, and use that information to embed the LPA ever more deeply. Many more specific ideas for charting and reflecting on the journey are presented in the appendix in a detailed self-assessment grid. There is a useful list of “wonderings” at the end of every chapter. Everything in this book resonates strongly with my, and my colleagues’, own ideas about deep learning, and with our experience working to embed them in over 2,000 schools in eight countries so far.2

Throughout the book, we are taken on the authors’ personal “odysseys” – warts and all. We hear them reflecting on the things they tried – their successes, failures, and lessons learned along the way – and constantly witness both their honesty and their vdetermination. When all is said and done, this is a book that shouts out with deep, practical, all-embracing analyses and suggestions, yet always wisely leaves readers – both school leaders and those who might manage clusters of schools or local systems – to make up their own minds in the light of their own unique conditions. In Powering Up Your School we have the information, the personal messages, and, above all, the guided wisdom for making our schools bedrocks of transformation. Guy Claxton and his friends demonstrate convincingly that schools and systems are already capable of transforming themselves into places not just of achievement but of empowerment. And they invite and encourage us to join them on the journey which they have so carefully mapped out. The trip is not without its challenges, but with such strong and experienced guides to lead us, it is surely hard to resist. Time to power up learning in all our schools!

Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Torontovi

1 A North American idiom meaning “very close to one’s own area of interest or expertise”.

2 See www.michaelfullan.ca.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to all those school leaders who participated in our research for this book by agreeing to fill in our survey, take part in interviews, and comment on and correct our transcripts and interpretations. They are: Hugh Bellamy, former head, George Pindar School, former executive principal, South Dartmoor Community College; Jane Bellamy, former head teacher, Leigham Primary School and former CEO of Connect Academy Trust; Gavin Smith, executive principal, John Keohane, deputy principal, Michael Whitworth, former principal, and Will Ponsonby, student voice lead, Wren Academy; Mark Fenton, former head, and Mark Sturgeon, former deputy head, Dr Challoner’s Grammar School; Neil Tetley, former head of Woodbridge School, now principal of Hastings International School, Madrid; Tessa Hodgson, head teacher, Oaklands Primary School; Jonny Spowart, Lee Beskeen, and Rebecca Archer, Heath Mount School; Paul Jensen, head teacher, and Andrea Jensen, head of English and whole-school literacy, Sunnydown School, Hannah Trickett, head teacher, Maple Cross Junior Mixed Infant and Nursery School; Malcolm White, head teacher, Leventhorpe School; Usha Dhorajiwala, head teacher, Christina Anderson, inclusion teacher, Laura Pezeshkpour, deputy head teacher, and Ben Reader, assistant head teacher, Woolenwick Infant and Nursery School; and Jackie Egan, head teacher, Icknield Infant and Nursery School. In addition to the hundreds of innovative and insightful teachers with whom we have worked:

Jann would especially like to thank: Dr James Pietsch, dean of professional development and learning, 2014–2017; Alma Loreaux, current dean of professional development and learning; the other original members of the working group: Jennifer Pollock, Adam Lear, and Jodie Bennett; and Maria Caristo, debating teacher – all at St Luke’s Grammar School; Lorrae Sampson, principal, Nowra Anglican College; Felicity Marlow, principal, Norwest Christian College; Dr Simon Breakspear of Agile Schools; and all the teachers at these schools who have come on this journey.

Rachel would like to thank: Janet Cassford, Laura Fearon, and Sue Milligan from Walthamstow School for Girls; Jo Spencer, head teacher, Tam Broadway, primary head teacher, and Farhana Ali, primary teacher, Isaac Newton Academy; Hannah viiiTrickett, head teacher, Maple Cross Junior Mixed Infant and Nursery School; and Malcolm White, head teacher, Leventhorpe School.

Graham would like to thank: Elizabeth Coffey, former principal of Landau Forte College, now executive head teacher, States of Guernsey; Sue Plant, principal, John Taylor Free School; Barry O’Callaghan of the National Association of Principals and Deputies (Ireland); Tony Barnes, former head teacher of Park High School (now retired); and Keir Smith, principal, William Perkin High School.

Gemma and Robert would like to thank: the governing board of Sandringham Primary School, especially David Hall and the chair of governors, David Curtin; their leadership team colleagues: deputy head teachers Louise Bridge and Becky Reuben, and assistant head teachers Sharon Bridgeman, Tanya Roberts, Katie Bowles, Claire Botterill, and Kate Brennan; the LPA champions: Mariyam Seedat, Bimla Singh, Frazana Shahid, Satty Kudhail, Mark Gunthorp, and K’dee Bernard; and teachers Emma O’Regan and Amy Fisher. Thanks also to Killian Moyles and Alex Handiman from Whole Education; Latifa Akay and Fabiolla Lorusso from Maslaha; Brigitte Boylan, Ben Sperring, and Jo Franklin from the London East Teacher Training Alliance (LETTA); and Owen O’Regan, former Sandringham deputy, now head teacher of Lansbury Lawrence Primary School.

And – in addition to his hard-working and inspiring co-authors – Guy would like to thank Bill Lucas for information about the Expansive Education Network; Dr Judith Mortell, for robust and helpful conversations; TLO Limited for permission to use their materials; and Michael Fullan for his brilliant foreword.

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Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphForeword by Michael FullanAcknowledgementsIntroductionResults PlusValues Precede StyleCulture Eats StrategyStability and MoralePrincipals for the FutureNot a RecipeAbout This BookChapter 1. Getting the BugJann’s StoryRobert and Gemma’s StoryGavin and John’s StoryConcerns Over Existing Ways of Doing ThingsDissatisfactions with Existing Ways of Doing ThingsCritical Events and EncountersSummaryChapter 2. Learning Power: The Facts at Your FingertipsWhat Are the Values Behind the LPA?What Exactly Is the LPA?Why Is the LPA Needed?What Is the Research Evidence Behind the LPA?Where Does the LPA Come From and Who Is Behind It?How Does the LPA Look at the Classroom?xWhat Practical Resources Does the LPA Offer Teachers?Getting Her Head Around the LPA: Jann’s StoryWhat Should We Be Reading and Watching?SummaryChapter 3. Getting Buy-In: Onboarding All the StakeholdersWhat Leader Behaviours Are Most Effective for Engaging Others with the LPA?How Might You Get Staff on Board?Is It Important to Have a Strategic Plan or Can the LPA Grow Organically?Who Should Lead the LPA At Your School?How Should You Deal with Any Sceptics, Cynics, and Blockers?How Might You Introduce the LPA to Students?How Can You Ensure That Everyone Is on Board?SummaryChapter 4. Creating a Staff Culture of LearningHow Do School Leaders Cope with Balancing “Tight” and “Loose” in Building the Learning Culture?What Are the Characteristics of Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs)?How Is A Staffroom Culture of Openness, Experimentation, and Support Built?How Might the Traditional Walls That Isolate Practice Be Broken Down?How Can Teachers Share Their Practice?How Might Leaders Use External Pressures to Build Culture?SummaryChapter 5. A Language for LearningWhy Is Having a Common Language for Learning Important?How Can You Open Up a Debate About Students’ Learning Habits?xiHow Can the Vocabulary and Concepts of Learning Power Be Introduced to Students?How Do You Keep the LPA Language Alive and Fresh?How Do You Talk About Learning with Parents?How Do You Weave Learning Power Language into Everyday Talk?SummaryChapter 6. Targeting Pedagogy: The Design Principles of Learning Power TeachingWhat, Exactly, Should You Ask Teachers to Do, Change, and Adapt?How Do You Share Practice to Support Change, without It Feeling Like a High-Stakes Monitoring Exercise?How Can You Distil Your Collective Experience and Pass It On?SummaryChapter 7. Beyond the Classroom: Changing Structures and Practices on a Wider ScaleWhich of the School’s Structural Features Might Leaders Need to Reconsider?How Can You Involve Students More Directly in the Leadership of Learning?Are Your Methods of Reporting, Record-Keeping, and Nurturing Relationships with Parents Fit for LPA Purpose?Can Leaders Design or Modify School Buildings to Enhance Learning Opportunities?SummaryChapter 8. Making It Stick: SustainabilityWhat Might Leaders Do to Ensure That the LPA Persists After They Leave?How Do Leaders Keep the LPA Fresh and Sustain It Over Time?How Can You Develop and Distribute Leadership Capacity in Other Members of Staff?xiiHow Can Students Become the Carriers of the LPA Culture?SummaryChapter 9. Evidencing Progress and ProgressionWhat Is It Appropriate to “Assess” and Which Methods of “Measurement” Are Valid?How Can Learning Power Be Evidenced in Learners?How Can You Engage the Learners Themselves in Assessing the Development of Their Learning Power?How Can You Measure the Impact on Staff?How Can You Evidence the Impact on Parents?How Can You Know That Your School Has a Well-Embedded LPA Culture?SummaryChapter 10. Connecting with the Wider WorldHow Can You Make Best Use of LPA-Minded Professional Development Organisations?How Should You Go About Building Your Own LPA-Focused Network?How Can You Build an LPA Alliance with Parents?SummaryChapter 11. Some Tentative ConclusionsAppendix: A Self-Assessment Grid for School LeadersWhere Am I Heading?How Are Things Going So Far?Further ReadingAbout the AuthorsCopyright

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Introduction

Welcome to Powering Up Your School. We hope that you will enjoy it and find it useful. But it is worth saying up front who this book is for and what it contains – so, if you are just browsing at the moment, you can save your time and money if it is not for you. Because it isn’t for every school leader, and it is not like the shelf-fuls of other books on educational leadership with which you might be familiar.

Results Plus

This book is about how to develop the culture of your school in a particular direction. It is for leaders who know in their hearts that 21st century education has to be about more than good examination results, good inspection reports, the trophies displayed in the foyer, and tidy, polite youngsters. It is for people who are not satisfied with a few vague platitudes on the website about “helping all our students fulfil their potential”, or with earnest but empty protestations that “we are not an exam factory, you know”. It is for school principals and head teachers who know that the “examination game” is rigged to produce losers as well as winners, and who lose sleep wondering how to provide a genuinely useful education for the inevitable “losers”. It is for leaders who are actively searching for a way to tee all their students up for a fulfilling and satisfying life, not just for the next stage of formal education – as well as (not instead of) helping them learn to read, write, calculate, and get the grades. It is for those who have as much concern for the “far horizon” of a successful life as they do for the “near horizon” of exams.1

2This book is for those who have come to suspect that the key to a fulfilling life lies in the attitudes that people develop while they are young: principally, their attitudes to other people, and to difficulty and uncertainty. Put bluntly, you have a better chance of feeling good about your life if you are resilient, adventurous, and self-aware, and if you are a good partner, parent, friend, and neighbour. This book is for those who believe that school has the potential to influence the development of these attitudes – that education is about growing dispositions as well as knowledge and expertise.

So the Learning Power Approach (LPA) aims to develop a culture in which a clear and collective understanding of the valued, sought-after outcomes of education – of character strengths developed as well as academic successes achieved, what we call results plus – drive everything in the school: the curriculum content, the structure of the timetable, the forms of assessment and record-keeping, the degree to which students are involved in the running of the school, communication with parents,2 and – most important of all – the pedagogical style of every member of staff. It is the LPA leader’s job to orchestrate change in all these different aspects of school life, so that they become ever more aligned around the core vision. The LPA is a way of facilitating culture change throughout the school and habit change in the style and focus of individual teachers.

The LPA is a school of thought about teaching and learning that has emerged over the last twenty years or so in a variety of research and practitioner groups around the world. You may recognise the LPA in other pedagogical approaches such as New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, Visible Thinking, Building Learning Power (BLP), 3Habits of Mind, Expeditionary Learning, Learning without Limits, Challenging Learning, or a variety of others. Its champions include David Perkins, Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, Ron Berger, Ron Ritchhart, Michael Fullan, and a host of others. It doesn’t matter what label a school uses, or whether it has a label at all. What matters is the whole-hearted attempt to adjust classroom teaching and whole-school culture so that students do as well in exams as they can and, at the same time, a clearly articulated set of “independent learning strengths” are being deliberately, consciously, and systematically cultivated – this is what we mean when we refer to “the LPA”.3

Values Precede Style

So Powering Up Your School assumes that the roles and responsibilities of school leaders are contingent on this heartfelt sense of moral purpose. Some approaches to school leadership seem to assume that leadership styles are value-free: that is, ways of leading – authoritarian, democratic, transformational, or whatever – can be appraised as good or bad regardless of the underlying vision and principles. We disagree. We think that both leadership style and practice depend critically on where you are heading. Take, for example, the issue of the school principal being some sort of role model for staff and students alike. If the goal is just “better results”, there is no strong image for leaders to aspire to – other than a model of efficiency and mutual respect, maybe.

But if the vision is of what we call the LPA – of a school that is dedicated to getting good results, not at any price, but in a way that builds student’ confidence, capability, and relish for taking charge of their own learning lives – then, clearly, the principal needs to know what the character traits of the powerful learner are, and take every 4opportunity to show colleagues and students that they possess and cherish those traits themselves. They need to model thinking aloud about tricky issues; having the confidence to express uncertainty and ask for help; keeping their own plans and suggestions under review; and owning up quickly when things are not going as they had hoped. One of the best ways to make a school a safe place for both students and teachers to be real learners – to venture, explore, discuss, and experiment – is for the principal to be willing to inhabit that “learning mode” themselves – frequently and visibly. This is just one small example of how the fundamental nature of leadership tasks and roles are critically dependent on the direction and clarity of the school’s specific vision for a better future.

It follows that we aren’t much concerned about general models or theories of leadership in this book. We will not be discussing academic notions of “professional capital” or the “transactional leadership style”. They seem to us to be too abstract to be of much real use. Instead, this book draws on the lessons learned by a wide range of school principals who have successfully undertaken the LPA journey. Their experiences of “what worked well”, “how we had to adapt”, and “what we would do differently next time” are distilled into a series of detailed case studies, from which we draw out the leadership lessons learned, and offer a compendium of detailed advice.4 We very much hope that you will see your own ideals, as well as the realities of your school, mirrored in these stories, and that you will find inspiration and guidance here. We want this book to be extremely practical, brimming with guidance about concrete things you can try out to make this culture shift a lived reality in your school. In the chapters that follow you’ll find lots of practical ideas and suggestions that are specifically tailored to the job of building a learning-powered culture. We hope that this style, and the vision behind it, will appeal to you. If not, fare thee well on your own chosen course.

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Culture Eats Strategy

Management guru Peter Drucker is famously supposed to have said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. He meant that in organisations (like businesses or schools) deliberate, explicit action plans often fail to create the shift in attitudes and behaviours that were intended. Why? Because they fall foul of underlying assumptions which are often not articulated but, nevertheless, generate a strong, invisible web of habits that determine “the way we do things around here”. More precisely, we think of culture as “the way in which we talk and act as if we believe and value”. Strategy represents what we say we value. Culture is a whole collection of habits of speaking, writing, organising, and reacting which implicitly convey our actual beliefs.

For example, a teacher can talk to their students about the importance of having a growth mindset, and put up colourful displays exhorting them not to say “I can’t do it” but, instead, “I can’t do it yet.” The teacher consciously wants them to try harder and to not give up so easily when faced with difficulty. Yet other aspects of the way they react to students’ questions or performance may still be carrying the message that “Bright students understand and get things right quickly and don’t make mistakes”, the corollary of which is “If you have to struggle and make use of trial-and-error to get it right, that means you aren’t very intelligent.” They may be encouraging the students to keep their books neat and tidy, and to rub out mistakes so they seem not to have happened. They may look relieved and happy when one of the usual suspects quickly volunteers the “right answer”, the one that they were looking for, while ignoring other answers that weren’t what they wanted. And they may be unaware that things like this may be sending strong messages that neutralise the looked-for effect of the growth mindset posters.

Changing the culture of a school as a whole doesn’t happen just by creating new policies and delivering exhortations. With the best will in the world, teachers may try to conform to the letter of the new policy, but fail to instil its spirit into their classrooms. We have seen lots of schools where the students can parrot back the key “learning dispositions” – or list Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences”, or whatever the prevalent model happens to be – without any evidence that they really have become any more powerful as learners, or multiply intelligent in the way in which they respond to challenges. It takes time, continual encouragement and 6conversation, and coaching and modelling for a new way of being in the classroom to become second nature.

Leading for culture change means having realistic expectations about how long it takes people to change their habits. It means leading a relentless school-wide conversation about what the LPA really means, and why we are doing it. It means working to win hearts and minds, as well as compliant hands. It means identifying your champions and pioneers, and setting up ways in which they can coach and mentor other colleagues who are more cautious or entrenched. It means finding ways to showcase examples of good practice, and to allow good ideas to percolate quickly across the different age phases, subjects, and silos of the school. It might mean reassuring the staff that this is not just another passing fad, perhaps – as Jann Robinson did – by committing yourself to adopting no other initiatives or innovations for the next five years. It might mean thinking about changing the length of lessons, so that students have time to grapple, discuss, and really think about what they are learning. It might mean designing a new system of peer-to-peer professional development within the school. It surely means constantly affirming the value of the approach in meetings with parents, governors or boards of trustees, and inspectors. It means (as we have already argued) walking the talk of powerful learning yourself. And it certainly means finding ways to build the capacity and desire to lead the LPA way in colleagues, so that, when you move on or retire, there is no risk that the LPA will fizzle out and teachers revert to type.

Schools are constellations of a wide variety of structures, practices, ways of doing things, and ways of talking that have usually accreted over time. How timetables are designed and decided; how new staff are interviewed and inducted; how noisy a classroom can be before someone intervenes; how reports are designed and written; how parent–teacher and student–teacher conversations are designed and framed; the extent to which students are involved in thinking about teaching and learning; how often tests and homework are set, what the purpose is, and how the work is marked – all of these, and dozens more aspects of the way in which the school runs, carry messages about how students are supposed to learn and behave. These messages may or may not be congruent with the LPA’s overriding intention to build students’ capacity for independent thought and learning. A principal won’t be able to get all these different aspects aligned overnight. They will need to think carefully about which aspects to tackle when, and how to go about making progress on multiple 7fronts. The campaign will need planning, prioritising, and coordinating. All of these elements are going to be discussed and detailed, with test-driven suggestions made, in the chapters that follow.

Stability and Morale

Our experience is that having a strong, clear vision for your school reduces stress. Given all the other pressures on schools, it may sound paradoxical to suggest that taking on the task of implementing your own vision can make life easier – but we think that it does. It is like a sailing boat out on the ocean: if it isn’t going anywhere, the winds and waves just rock it about. If we, in schools, are just trying to react to and manage all the forces that are impinging on us – budget cuts, government directives, upcoming inspections, parental expectations, and so on – things feel very unstable and difficult. But if the boat has a direction of travel – if a skilful sailor knows where they are heading and are trying to get there – then many of those forces can be harnessed and used to impel forward motion. And this brings a greater feeling of both purpose and stability. Even contrary winds can help to drive you forward. This sense of pride and synergy is transferred to the crew. So too can a clear, explicit sense of moral purpose – of how we want our school to be better – create energy, excitement, and satisfaction among the staff.

This is not for one minute to deny that there are enormous pressures on schools, many of which may be unwelcome. It is only to say that we always have the choice, as Edward de Bono puts it, to be water thinkers rather than rock thinkers.5 If you are a rock thinker, what grabs your attention is all the rocks that surround you: all the things you can’t do that you would like to, or all the things you have to do that you don’t want to. But if you think like water, you don’t waste energy worrying about the rocks; it’s the gaps that you are after. If there are gaps, water will find them, and it will be on its way. Your goal is to run “downhill” like water: that’s the direction of your vision. And then, no matter how many rocks surround you, if you are alert to all the little things that you can do to progress your vision, and not preoccupied by all the things that you can’t, then you will find those chinks and opportunities, and you will 8turn them to your own ends. Here’s a well-known quote, often attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, that make the same point more poetically:

Concerning all acts of creation, there is one elementary truth, ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.6

Goethe is right. Half-hearted leadership sets itself up to have only partial success. But of course, what Goethe is talking about isn’t really magic. The world does not reorganise itself the minute you commit yourself to something. But your world does, because the commitment changes the way in which you perceive it and so act. Lots of things that would have previously passed you by – a chance encounter at a party; an article in a newspaper; a blog post skim read – now look like opportunities to forge a new alliance, find support, pursue funding, or try out a new idea. Both your actions and your words speak loudly to your staff – and, of course, to students and to their parents – about the vision and values you have for the school, and you are constantly refining ways to express your passionate commitment so that they “get it”.

Principals for the Future

It is not just for the benefit of ourselves, our schools, and our students that we need to have our own vision. The future of education more generally depends upon it. School leaders are the key to system-wide changes in education. It is our impression that the vast majority of educators know that schools need to change to catch up with the demands, the resources, and the opportunities of the 21st century. The Internet 9is here, and has democratised and globalised learning to an extraordinary degree.7 In their out-of-school lives, probably unbeknownst to their teachers, young people are learning complicated things with and from each other. Children are downloading apps to their smartphones to teach themselves Japanese, law, orthopaedic procedures, and goodness knows what else. Professor of educational technology Sugata Mitra’s experiments have forced us to radically rethink our ideas about the extent to which groups of children can self-organise their learning.8

Meanwhile, the world of work has dramatically shifted from predominantly “going to a place of work every day and getting a salary” to “posting your skills on a global website such as upwork.com and making deals project by project with a range of employers”.9 Global employers such as Google, PwC, and Pearson are even experimenting with ways of recruiting that do not allow applicants to show off the class of their degree or where it was from, as they find that academic qualifications do not predict the kind of fluid intelligence that they are seeking. It is a whole different ball game out there, and schools must adapt or become a dying anachronism.

In the face of these seismic shifts, the responses of politicians, policymakers, and academics are, as usual, disappointing. What needs to happen is too fine-grain, too subtle, too personal, and too radical to engage the interest of educational bureaucrats who think in terms of pulling the big levers of structural change: curriculum content, forms of assessment, governance, and funding. Tinkering with the structure of education – championing charter schools (in the United States) or academies (in the UK), for example – usually turns out to be an expensive way of having little overall effect. Such structural change does not reach down into the mechanics of teaching and learning, where you find the things that really matter. Also, many policy people have the mindset of an economist: they think in terms of fiscal wealth, not quality of life. Or they focus on raising conventional indicators of school performance – “getting more poor kids into good universities”, for example – rather than thinking carefully about the well-being of all those who will not get into university, or who may not want 10to go. They like to focus on things that are easy to count. And politicians, with a few honourable exceptions, are prevented by the tribal nature of party politics and the overriding need to win frequent elections from doing anything other than too little, too late.

Academics, too, are unlikely to change the world. Very few, it seems, have the willingness to think big about education while also understanding the constraints, pressures, and possibilities of real schools. Scholarly research is vital, but it has no effect if it falls on deaf or timid ears, or if it is couched in terms that are too abstract or abstruse for busy teachers and principals to make use of. And much educational research punches well below its weight because it is driven by purely academic criteria or by intellectual fashion, and not by the needs of the next generation and the realities of schools. Harvard University’s Project Zero has been so influential because its researchers have put as much energy into developing practical suggestions – and communicating them widely and accessibly – as they have into writing scholarly papers.10

The future of education lies in the hands of imaginative, courageous, resourceful school leaders – the people on the ground who can orchestrate the necessary kinds of debate, experimentation, and habit change. Though they are constantly buffeted by the whims and diktats of politicians and bureaucrats, it is they who set the cultural tone in schools, and mediate the way in which external policies and pressures are responded to. If schools are to send young people out into the world with minds that are strong and supple enough to cope with the demands of 21st century life – and not just with a clutch of grades and certificates – it will be committed and courageous school principals who must make it happen.

There are thousands of such school principals, in hundreds of countries around the world, who are working hard and smart to develop their school cultures. But there are many others who would like to be doing more, but who need ideas about exactly where they are heading and how to get there. This book distils the wisdom and experience of a handful of those successful pioneers into a guidebook for their fellow leaders. It provides ideas that are certainly grounded in high-quality research, but which are translated into usable, accessible, and adaptable guidelines.

11Not a Recipe

What the LPA offers, though, is not a pre-processed package to be bought lock, stock, and barrel and implemented according to the instructions on the box. It is a philosophy: a set of values about education as a preparation for the tests of life. If you think this is desirable, and are serious about offering such an education, then the LPA gives you the scientific rationale for believing that it is possible. There are a set of habits of mind that underpin both objectives (academic success and character development), and they can indeed be moulded and strengthened through experience at school. And having ticked both the “desirable” and “possible” boxes, the LPA offers a set of frameworks, design principles, illustrations, and practical “tweaks” and “seeds” that any teacher in any school can begin to implant in their practice.

So to understand the LPA, think “garden” rather than “model aeroplane kit”. The seeds will only grow if they are embedded in the soil of your existing culture and connect with the needs and beliefs of your community. The LPA requires school leaders not just to impose a new set of ideas on their school, but to experiment, customise, discuss, reflect, and change tack – to be the leaders of a growing, thinking, learning culture. As with a garden, it takes time, thought, and effort to bring it to fruition. As you will see from some of the stories in this book, what worked seamlessly in one school sometimes turns out to be problematic in another. So if you are looking for a magic bullet, a flat-pack, or even just a new badge to put on the school website or notepaper, then the LPA is not for you. It is harder, slower, and infinitely more rewarding than bolting on shiny new initiatives like “flipped classrooms” or a “knowledge-rich curriculum”.

To engage with the LPA, you have to accept that culture change in an organisation involves habit change in people. Teachers, like everyone, are creatures of habit. We get so used to doing things “our way” that it feels awkward, unnatural, or even plain stupid to try doing them differently. Changing habits requires efforts of will and awareness. The psychological research shows that we are unlikely to succeed without at least the following ingredients: real commitment to the benefits of “being different”; forgiving ourselves when we forget and back-slide; becoming sensitised to what triggers the habit; and having the kinship of friends, mentors, and role models who can support 12us during the transition.11 Think organisations that help you lose weight or stop smoking, for example. Principals need to invest in creating such a culture of support, experimentation, and mentoring among their staff – and that takes time and skill. It won’t happen just because a superintendent of schools or a secretary of state for education says so. If they are to change, teachers need to be inspired by a vision, fed with practical ideas, supported by colleagues, and guided by a mentor. Officials can’t do that – but school principals can.

Leading a school to become an ever-stronger incubator of learning power is a complicated business. It requires a deep understanding of what matters and of what is possible, as well as patient, skilful attention paid to how to get there. Take heart: the LPA does deliver many quick wins in terms of students’ engagement and achievement. But shifting deeply engrained habits, in both teachers and students – that can take months of patient watching, talking, and coaching. A principal has to think like Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps’s swimming coach: keeping the long game constantly in mind while looking for those precious marginal gains every day.12

About This Book

This book is the fourth in a series of books about the LPA. Ideally, it should be read in conjunction with the others. The first, The Learning Power Approach, explains the LPA in some detail, goes into the reasons why it is important and timely, and provides the research basis on which it rests.13 It is very helpful in giving school leaders the confidence and information they need to get buy-in from others (though Chapter 2 in this book offers you a highly condensed version to get you going). The second and third books are written for primary and high school classroom teachers respectively.

13They are Powering Up Children and Powering Up Students.14 They provide masses of examples and ideas about how to implement the LPA in any classroom. If school leaders are to adopt the important role of head pedagogical coach, they need to get their heads around whichever of these two books is relevant to their school. And it will be useful if there are copies for teachers to consult as well.

Finally, allow Guy to briefly introduce the team behind this book. (Fuller biographies can be found at the end.) Jann Robinson is the principal of St Luke’s Grammar School in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. St Luke’s is an independent Anglican all-through school that teaches 1,000 boys and girls aged 4 to 18. Rachel Macfarlane has been head teacher of Walthamstow School for Girls and principal of Isaac Newton Academy, both in North-East London, England. Both are state comprehensive schools in a highly multicultural area of the city. Walthamstow has 900 girls between the ages of 11 and 16 on roll. Isaac Newton is a brand-new co-educational all-through school for students aged 4 to 19. Rachel is now director of education services at Herts for Learning Ltd.

Graham Powell has worked at all levels across the UK education system. As well as being a schools inspector and secondary phase advisor for a local authority, he was head of an 11–18 comprehensive school in Wiltshire, England. He went on to become a principal consultant on BLP at TLO Limited, and has worked with hundreds of leadership teams in schools throughout the UK, Ireland, and latterly Spain.

Robert Cleary is head teacher of Sandringham Primary School in Newham, a deprived borough in East London. Sandringham has nearly 1,000 students aged 2 to 11 on roll. Gemma Goldenberg was, until 2019, Robert’s deputy in charge of professional development at Sandringham. She is now studying full-time for a PhD.

And Guy is a theoretical cognitive and life scientist with a special passion for education and a deeply held conviction about the learnability of learning. He has been professor of the learning sciences at the University of Bristol Graduate School of Education, and co-founder (with his friend Bill Lucas) and research director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester.

14In addition to the experiences of the authors, the book draws on the learning power journeys of a wide range of other schools, from a special school for autistic adolescent boys and nursery, primary, and high schools in England, to international schools in Madrid and private colleges in Australia. From such a variety of establishments, we have distilled many of the common issues faced by innovative leaders, and tried to identify the range of smart, successful strategies which they have used to grow an LPA culture in their schools.15 As we have said, schools are really complicated places, and culture change leadership relies on being sensitive to the assumptions and pressures that characterise the specific place in which you work. If “one size fits no one” applies to the classroom, it applies all the more to a whole school. Schools are, to put it technically, complex, dynamic systems. When you poke a system, one of three things can happen – and it is not easy to tell ahead of time which kind of response you will get. First, it can wobble and then settle back into “business as usual”. Second, it can shudder and then reorganise itself into a new, often more complex arrangement. Or, third, it can disintegrate. Our job is to find the smart pokes that will cause the second type of response, and create an embedded, sustained culture change that aligns better with our vision and values.

So while we will try to draw out common issues and promising methods that might apply to your school, their success will always depend on issues of timing, prioritisation, and nuance that only you can judge. And even then, you – just like the pioneering principals in this book – will get it wrong sometimes, and will have to rethink and rework your approach. Occasionally, good principals (with good principles) with the best of intentions get it so wrong that the system hardens itself against them, and the only solution may be to move on and start afresh. We hope this book will ensure that such a fate does not befall you and your current school. You won’t find recipes here. But you will, we hope, find lots of stories and good ideas for smart pokes that ring bells with your own situation, and prompt you to be adventurous, and to avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls that our pioneers have mapped out for you.

And with that, let’s begin the learning power journey, and tackle the first challenge: beginning to get the feeling that the LPA is something important, well-founded, and doable.

1 By the way, this book is for anyone who wants to take a lead on bringing this approach to life in their school. We will use terms like “head teacher”, “principal”, “school leader”, and “member of the senior leadership team (SLT)”, but if none of those describes your role accurately, just insert a different form of words in your own head as you read. We do, however, frequently refer to features within the English system, such as: SATs, GCSEs, and A levels (all high-stakes exams, taken at ages 11, 16, and 18 respectively); Ofsted (the body that inspects and judges schools); and Years and Key Stages (into which high school education is divided). The UK primary school system runs from “Reception” (which children enter at age 4, roughly) through Years 1 (5–6-year-olds), 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (10–11-year-olds). Often these are divided into two “Key Stages”: Key Stage 1 comprises Years 1 and 2; Key Stage 2 comprises Years 3 to 6. Key Stage 3 comprises the first three years of high school education (Years 7–9, during which children are aged 11–14). Key Stage 4 comprises the final two years of compulsory schooling (Years 10–11, educating 14–16-year-olds). In the United States, school years are called “grades”, and they tend to be one year “behind” the English years, so tenth grade corresponds roughly to Year 11. Post-compulsory education for 16–18-year-olds is usually delivered in sixth forms or colleges, and is sometimes referred to as Key Stage 5. Some of our examples are from Australia, where the year system parallels that of the UK. High school ends with high-stakes exams that have different names in different states (for example, the Higher School Certificate (HSC), in New South Wales), but all are converted into an Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) score which is used to determine university and college admissions.

2 By “parents” we, of course, also mean guardians and caregivers of any sort. In the interests of concision, we hope you’ll forgive our use of the term – we don’t intend to downplay the role of other carers.

3 You might be wondering about the relationship between the LPA and BLP, an approach with which several of the authors have been associated, and one that we will mention throughout the book. Our hope is that this book speaks on behalf of the generic school of thought, rather than any particular version or “brand” of the LPA. Inevitably, a good many of our contributors draw on their experience with BLP, but when we discuss this, we really see it only as one version of the LPA: what we are really talking about is the common underlying philosophy and pedagogy.

4 Some of our “case study principals” co-authored this book: Jann, Rachel, Gemma, and Robert. Others kindly contributed their reflections and are introduced as we go along.

5 Edward de Bono, I Am Right, You Are Wrong (London: Viking, 1990).