Thursday, December 16, 2010
Reflections Week Seven
The transformation process in education as we discussed it has three component parts, or blocks. We can look at the leadership, the organization and management practices as the first block, and at this level buy in is the critical element for successful change. Buy in will come primarily from the involvement of all individuals at every level of the organization. Further along, the second block is the actual teaching practices, and we must strive to train our teachers through continuous professional development to meet the challenges of change. The final component or block needed for successful change implementaion is to create links with universities or businesses, the wider community. For these links to work, there has to be a constancy of relationship building and partnerships will be a key element of this success. Please post reflections here, Thanks, and again Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to All of You. God Bless, Dr. Andy
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Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteThe last Thursday class ,discussed on Transformation and Collaboration for Student Success is attractive me to see the school picture wider and influence me to give more large picture to continue improve the school to be better and more quality and benefit more high standard student standard achievement as a whole. Dr.Fullan thought “ The four keys of managing change” these will be more effective if we apply his thought to develop the management process, teaching culture, provide more teacher development , create collaboration with both in the school and outside school. At the end of the class, Dr. Andy gave us the conclusion, there were three main pieces of a school; leadership on management and organization, teaching transformation, and linkage and he pointed out that how these three pieces important, transformation, and collaboration for student success. His thought gives me more clearly about what we gained the knowledge from this material given. To apply the thought, the following are some of my point of view to share.
1) Change the management system from Top down management to more collaborative approach, focus on teamwork collaboration, sharing decisions making with teachers and staff, change the leadership style to match the situation, different situation and people must use different style of leadership.
2) Change teacher-teaching culture. The teacher preparation system should focus on diversity so that new teachers are able to gain experience in multiple settings and that continuous development of models for all levels of teachers should occur.
3) Continue providing teacher training to improve their knowledge skills in order to fulfill their career advancement and improve their teaching performance as a student learning quality while involves offering intellectual stimulation, providing individualized support, and providing an appropriate model.
4) Creating network to exchange the knowledge base and resources from other schools, which is different perspective and the best practice model to improve the school. For example creates connection with other school as a brother and sister school to share teachers such as the career and technology subject and visit the company that related to the unit lesson and create connection with the temple for Social and Buddhism subject.
5) Creating connection, there must be an effective communication between the higher education and the public school regarding mutual needs and preparation student for their higher education.
6) Developing and executing strategic plans, management accountability to transform a change a school to a better and more effective as a whole.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2011 to all – Jackie-
The leadership, management and the organization are three in one for the school leader who hast to work on it at school. Also , the leader should work as instructional leadership too and contribute continuously learning to teacher and everyone in the workplace plus, getting to know from new resources that would help organization go successfully. So ,As a teacher and a future leader I can apply those idea in the following ways:
ReplyDelete1. The leader have to work in a complex network of relationship and connect the community toward the school.
2. Collaborative and partnership is a big agenda which the leader must emphasize in organization.
3. The leader have got to create the learning organization environment in the school and support all the staff for learning.
Aey
I think what we talking in the class about the 3 component of the transformation process of education perfectly summarize the 21 responsibilities and quality we expected teachers and head teachers to carry and conduct.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when we talking about the school leadership, which require everyone from the whole organization's participation, we might need the responsibilities for a visionary leader who acts like a "change agent" who is willing to challenge and actively challenges the status quo. He or she may also needs the show the responsibility in affirmation and establish a contingent rewards to recognize the individual accomplishments. At the same time, the discipline cannot be ignored just as the flexibility in leadership style must enable him or her to adapts his or her leadership behavior to the needs of the current situation. When this leader can share this vision with other people involved, focus on their common goal and make it a belief by communication, operating process,and create the ordering guidelines,supporting the teachers and students with utilizing and providing the resources, demonstrates an awareness of personal aspects of their relationships and more interactions by visibility to be more situational awareness and more constantly monitoring/evaluation that inspires and leads new challenging innovations, he or she already had successfully building up a strong base for the new school culture.
The next step is how we prepare our most important input "teachers" to adjust to transfer into this new culture and willing to carry more responsibilities in both academic area and administrative area. In 21 responsibilities, I found that communication between teachers and students, intellectual stimulations, involvement in curriculum, instruction and assessment from teachers's perspectives and most important of all, the knowledge of curriculum, instruction and assessment practices all strongly emphasized in teachers' continuous professional development program. Only through the CPD life long learning and development, our teachers can continuously update themselves and improving the professional performance and ultimately, facilitate and guide students to achieve the maximum success by bring out their different potential and giving the best opportunities equally.
And the third step as most initiated by the head teachers but can be participated by everyone is building up the "learning society", where no matter the local schools, educational institute, government policies, cooperation between universities and research organization or business partners, are joined hand in hand by outreach the "partnership" either in a business manner or academic form. As long as it benefits the whole education industry's healthy cooperation and development from principal to administrative staff or from teachers to students and parents, a wider community by all levels communication and cooperations shall be encouraged and enhanced to secure the overall success during the transformational process.
As i said in the classroom, ABAC already had a joint venture plan with CP, one of the most successful international and domestic organization in the cooperation business, which will send the qualified candidates to be the trainee, get a chance to work overseas and experience some thing that cannot be taught in the classroom environment only.
-Kris
I think for educational system in Thailand, with the word "collaboration" we are on the process of "trying." The old tradition of teaching or even working system, hierarchy system, remains effective in Thais' thinking. However, many organizations have changed and open mind to receive the new idea of working as a team, such as some private schools, ABAC, or other universities. I have red about how to develop the academic system in China. In their research had said like we learned in the class.
ReplyDeleteFor me to apply in my work
1. Collaborative approach is my attend to do.
2. Looks for the outside resources not only in Thailand but also out of country.
3. My school have never thought about developing the foreigner staffs, because we just think that we have hired them in high salary already, they must be "super hero" means can do anything that we need them to do. In fact is they don't. Now it's time to think about a plan to have them develop abilities in their pedagogy.
TOM
I really enjoy reading these summary articles as they are covered most of the current concerns of educational leaders to deal with. In that order I decided to share a short overview of the managing change by Michael Fullan which can be the respond to Q1, 3 and 5 of Dr. Andy.
ReplyDeleteSuccessful school improvement in the process of change requires establishing a clear educational vision and a shared institutional mission, knowing how well the school is accomplishing that mission, identifying areas for improvement, developing plans to change educational activities and programs, and implementing those plans or new programs effectively. It is essential that leaders of school improvement link to others in the school and district and connect the school's goals to the broader and deeper mission of providing high-quality learning for all students. Leaders also must consider equity issues when developing and implementing change initiatives by asking themselves, for example, whether a proposed program will improve access to higher-order learning tasks for marginalized students. For school improvement efforts to be successful, teachers, parents, community and business partners, administrators, and students must share leadership functions. Likewise, the principal's role must change from that of a top-down supervisor to a facilitator, architect, steward, instructional leader, coach, and strategic teacher. Therefore, educational leaders should adapt the systemic change to create a better educational system than what currently exists. Systemic change as it mentioned in the article could be defined as an approach to:
• recognizes the interrelationships and interdependencies among the parts of the educational system, with the consequence that desired changes in one part of the system are accompanied by changes in other parts that are necessary to support those desired changes, and
• recognizes the interrelationships and interdependencies between the educational system and its community, including parents, employers, social service agencies, religious organizations, governments and much more, with the consequence that all those stakeholders are given active ownership over the change effort.
Our mission as educational leaders is to facilitate a change effort to create feasible strategies for successful school achievement though re-structuring, re-culturing and re-timing; in order to sustain systemic change in the educational system so as to prepare ourselves for future.
A well laid out, thoughtful, cogent and concise response, Fatima! Andy
ReplyDeleteWell…it has been a while since the last class, I need to recall some information here. From the reading I found some positive aspects, such as --- Restructuring on professional community and pedagogical practice, Re-culturing on professional community (how teachers can work together) and pedagogical practice (how to improve instruction that impacts student learning), Retiming - Conflicts, diversity and resistance are essential components to the success of the change process; it is only by focusing on difficulties and solving them, viewing diversity as a positive force in the change process, and capturing objections more constructively that new breakthroughs occur in teacher education reform. The single most important factor related to successful change is whether relationships improve.
ReplyDeleteIf these are positive aspects, then in our school we are “transforming” - we are trying to restructure, re-culture and retime, such as:
* Restructuring - centralization to decentralization, from top-down management to team management.
* Re-culturing – moving from negative to positive, catching the good deeds of the students’, encouraging people to share and work collaboratively, going through the right channel (some protocols set-up this year), and so on.
* Retiming – applying block schedule on the alternative day of the week and Department meeting once a month.
It’s happening, so guys keeping up the good work, and be positive.
Shira
Jerome said---
ReplyDeleteIn the article, “Teachers For the 21st Century,” it states that teachers will need to create learning environments that engages diversity to complete tasks. CPD is required for all teachers to develop the necessary training to implement strategies and interventions. International schools can do this by:
1. Implementing Jerome’s International Character Education Program which will be available Jan. 2011
2.Invite Jerome to your international school to present his leadership model for admins. to use to intentionally implement an effective character education program.
3.Invite Jerome to do a SWOT analysis of your school’s culture and create a strategic plan to improve your school’s culture as a paid consultant.