View source for OER4Schools/The power of collective action

{{DISPLAYTITLE: The Power of Collective Action }}

A number of readings from ''Creating Learning Without Limits'', by Maddock, Peacock, Hart & Drummond, Open University Press, Maidenhead.

= Reading 1: Power and leadership: partnership and collaboration (p. 109) = 

This different view of professional learning has important consequences for teachers’ sense of their own power and agency and for the distinctive nature of relationships between school leaders and their teaching teams. The training-delivery model assumes a hierarchy of power; ideas and diktats emanating from centralized agencies are passed down to school managers, frequently via local authorities, and from there disseminated to staff groups in schools by teachers with leadership responsibilities. This hierarchical approach reduces teachers’ role to that of operative of other people’s ideas. It is demeaning of teachers’ expertise and also disempowering. The assumption is that ‘what works’ ''will'' work. But what if it does not? If teachers have been encouraged simply to apply ideas drawn from elsewhere, they do not have full control and ownership of the ideas needed to review and revise their practices and find new ways forward. Even more worryingly, if children do not learn when exposed to ‘quality first teaching’, then it seems logical to assume that the problem must lie with the child; there is no impetus or obligation for teachers to examine and develop their own practice. Hence the proliferation of booster groups and individualized support packages that have been introduced in recent years (e.g. DfES 2003b). At Wroxham, as we have shown, the approach to development ensures that teachers stay in control of their own learning. Their awareness of their own power, through the focus on children’s learning and the cultivation of the seven dispositions, leads teachers to respond to difficulties by seeking to deepen their understanding of what is going on, working out for themselves what scope there is within current practices to lift limits and enhance learning opportunities.

Teachers’ sense of their own agency and power to change things for the better implies the need for a different kind of relationship between head and staff.

= Reading 2 (p. 110) =

Her approach from the outset was to communicate with people that they were invited to work with her in a genuine collaborative partnership, where ideas and insights would flow both ways. In working together, everyone had both power and responsibility. 

<nowiki>[At Wroxham,] accountability is not primarily about </nowiki>''attainment'' or external measures for monitoring school performance… Accountability is intrinsically bound up with teachers’ own intentions as they write their own plans, devise their own resources, introduce their own topics and projects and then monitor rigorously how the children are responding. When the teaching teams decide to make changes in their classroom practices, with a view to enhancing learning capacity, they do not just ‘hope for the best’ and assume that these changes will help the children to become more powerful, committed, enthusiastic learners. On the contrary, they follow up their decisions carefully and consistently, looking for signs that they are being successful, reflecting on what to do next to refine or improve their practice. 

The first ''Learning without Limits'' study drew attention to the potential for using questions based on teachers’ purposes in teaching for transformability as a framework for wider accountability. The list of questions shown in Figure 6.4 could provide criteria for monitoring and evaluation intrinsic to teachers’ own review and reflection process. 

= Reading 3: Using questions as a starting point for monitoring and accountability (p. 111, Figure 6.4) =

{{: OER4Schools/Using questions as a starting point for monitoring and accountability }}

= Reading 4:  Four distinctive features of school development <nowiki>[</nowiki>at Wroxham<nowiki>]</nowiki> (p. 112, Table 6.3) =

{| style="border-spacing:0;"
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| ''Feature''
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| ''Standards agendaPerfectibility approach''
| style="border:0.018cm solid #000000;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| ''Alternative approachTransformability approach''

|-
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Impetus for improvement
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| ExtrinsicExternally exposed pressure
| style="border:0.018cm solid #000000;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| IntrinsicPassion, striving for something you believe in

|-
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Professional development
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Training modelDisseminate known ‘best practice’, downloaded teaching plans, ‘what works’
| style="border:0.018cm solid #000000;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Create conditions for professional learning to flourishStrengthen dispositions of autonomous professional learners

|-
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Power and leadership
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Top-down initiativesInvested in senior leadership teamValue placed on teacher compliance
| style="border:0.018cm solid #000000;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| PartnershipHead as a lead learnerCollaborationValue placed on teacher power, autonomy and creative, collective endeavour

|-
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Monitoring and accountability
| style="border-top:0.018cm solid #000000;border-bottom:0.018cm solid #000000;border-left:0.018cm solid #000000;border-right:none;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Extrinsic criteria based on attainmentsComparison with local and national norms, targetsPerformance managementObservation and grading
| style="border:0.018cm solid #000000;padding-top:0cm;padding-bottom:0cm;padding-left:0.191cm;padding-right:0.191cm;"| Intrinsic criteria based on teachers’ purposesEmbedded in structures and processes to support professional learningShared responsibilityCollaborative learning

|}

= Reading 5: Parallels with the Cambridge Primary Review (p. 113) =

These distinctive features find many parallels with the independent findings of the ''Cambridge Primary Review ''<nowiki>(Alexander, 2010), the most comprehensive study of English primary education [in the last 40 years].</nowiki>

<nowiki>What is needed instead, the Review argues, is an alternative view of professionalism [in which] ‘in relation to anything he or she does, a teacher is able to give a coherent justification citing (i) evidence, (ii) pedagogical principle, and (iii) educational aim’ (p. 308). The Review also notes the importance of </nowiki>re-empowering leaders and teachers who have been subject to centralist control and a regime of high-stakes testing and accountability:

The focus needs to be one which enables school leaders to develop a culture in which internal school accountability for the quality of teaching and learning precedes and shapes external accountability. This rests on the development of trust and openness to collegial support and challenge.

<div align="right">(Alexander, 2010: 507) </div>