Introduction to OER4Schools

From OER in Education

Review of homework

Activity icon.png Small group activity (11 min).: (25 mins) Get into your small group of last week’s ‘making use of enquiry ideas A-D’ activity to discuss your homework tasks.

All the participants should have tried out a mini-EBL lesson or have organised an extended EBL ‘field or project day’. Check with each other that you have the following documentation that should be included in your portfolio:

1. Students’ recordings (on sheets of paper) of their data collection, analysis, findings and any other presentation documents (e.g. models, charts, pictures) and audio/video recordings of students’ presentations.

2. Your audio reflections of the planning and implementation of all parts of the EBL mini-lesson, field trip or project day.

3. Your written reflections about EBL, major take-away messages (e.g. using PMI to think about the planning and implementation of EBL) and ideas on what you would like to try out for your future planning and implementation of EBL in your class.

4. Questionnaire on how much you have learnt and tried to practise EBL in your classrooms.

Spend about 5 minutes scanning through all the homeworks (in the form of some of the documents listed above) that have been completed by yourself and your colleagues.

Discuss as a small group, what you feel has gone well and what are some areas for improvement in the planning and process of EBL. As far as possible, make use of the evidence in the documents to support your views. Nominate a spokesperson to present to the bigger group your group’s assessment on how successfully you feel you have learnt and tried out EBL in the last three or four weeks. Your group should also provide a recommendation of how you would help OTHER teachers in the school get to know and learn about EBL.


Leadership for Learning – Introduction

Activity icon.png Reading (11 min). (5 mins) Read the following text.

Background reading
LfL photo.jpg
Leadership for Learning (LfL) is a framework of ideas and principles originating in the international Carpe Vitam Leadership for Learning project co-ordinated at the University of Cambridge. The framework has been used for 10 years in different contexts, particularly as a programme for school leadership professional development.

Leadership for Learning is a way of thinking, doing, communicating, working, and reflecting about educational leadership in schools for the singular purpose of promoting the activity of learning.


Five principles of Leadership for Learning are as follows:

  1. Focus on learning
  2. Conditions for learning
  3. Learning Dialogue
  4. Shared Leadership
  5. Shared Accountability

In this unit you will explore the five LfL principles in practice with a view to contributing your own ideas about Leadership for Learning through interactive learning opportunities.

LfL is not something that can be implemented, ‘done-to’ a school or imposed on a person. LfL provides a framework that creates an opportunity for change; for expanding leadership capacity in schools and improving the quality of learning. The OER4schools programme adopts an approach similar to the one in LfL in how it defines professional learning. You will have an opportunity in this unit to reflect further on the application of LfL in every aspect of your own professional learning.

Activity icon.png Small group activity (11 min).: (10 mins) Form a different small group of three to four teachers and discuss these questions:

  • What is your initial impression of the terms ‘leadership’ and ‘learning’?
  • Who are the leaders and learners in your school?
  • Who are the leaders in your school who are responsible for learning within the school?
  • Can you be a leader who promotes learning in your school? Why?
Educator note

Make sure that the participants think about this broadly. For instance, “Who are the leaders and learners in your school?” should include the head teacher, both as a leader and a learner. There may also be others (such as cleaners) who may not seem to play an important teaching or administrative role in the school but there is certainly plenty we could learn from them. (e.g. their stories of the school, their observations, and of course, how they have kept the school clean and tidy in an efficient manner to create a conducive environment of learning for all)

What is LfL? Introduction to LfL: It's all around

Leadership for learning is happening all around you.

If you know what to look for you will see elements of LfL in classrooms and schools, in your own community, and even in the setting in which you might be working through this unit!

You may be wondering, If Leadership for Learning is all around me already, why am I doing this unit? Well … the short answer is that even though the LfL principles describe common attributes of many classrooms and whole schools, they are not present, coordinated or sustained at levels that support consistently positive learning effects.

Objectives

The objectives of this session are to:

  • Identify and explore the 5 LfL principles
  • Develop a personal and professional understanding of leadership practices that support learning and which can be organized within the 5 LfL principles
  • Watch teachers in action, and see if some or all of the 5 LfL principles can be identified.

Practical: Seeing is believing

A critical lense

Let’s start by considering a few ideas about LfL, its 5 principles, and how we might observe and identify these in classrooms and schools.

We like to think about ‘seeing’ the LfL principles by using what we have come to call an ‘LfL Lens’ or set of ‘LfL Lenses’. What do we mean by lens? We use a familiar image of spectacles or glasses to depict or serve as a useful metaphor for clarifying what we mean by an LfL Lens.

Activity icon.png Stimulus (11 min). (10 mins) What do you think we mean by an LfL lens as illustrated by the spectacles or glasses metaphor?


Educator note

Pedagogy: Think, Pair, Share

THINK: Suggest each person works independently for 1 minute and identifies/thinks of 1 -3 responses/contributions. Participants make a note of each (mentally, or preferably, written down to support recall and reference).

PAIR: In pairs, participants discuss and compare ideas.

SHARE: The whole group comes together, with each pair contributing one or two ideas from their discussion.

Sample responses: “It helps you see things differently”, “An LfL lens makes you focus on LfL”, “It’s a way of describing how we look at the world differently depending on our attention or interests.”

Practical: The five lenses

The five lenses

Let’s take our metaphor of the LfL lens a step further, and suggest that there are 5 different LfL lenses (spectacles) needed in order to ‘see’ all 5 LfL principles:

  1. Focus on learning
  2. Conditions for learning
  3. Learning Dialogue
  4. Shared Leadership
  5. Shared Accountability

Consider the 5 LfL Lenses and their usefulness for focusing on learning practices.

  • What are the kinds of things you might see in a classroom if you were looking through the LfL lens ‘Focus on Learning’?
  • What are the kinds of things you might see in a classroom if you were looking through the LfL lens ‘Conditions for Learning’?
  • What are the kinds of things you might see in a classroom if you were looking through the LfL lens ‘Learning Dialogue’?
  • What are the kinds of things you might see in a classroom if you were looking through the LfL lens ‘Shared Leadership'?
  • What are the kinds of things you might see in a classroom if you were looking through the LfL lens ‘Shared Accountability’?

Activity icon.png Small group activity (11 min). (25 mins)

Your facilitator will explain to you how to go about this group activity. Before that, you may like to take some time to refer to the background reading to help you understand all the 5 LfL principles.

Educator note

Pedagogy: Plenary session or Jigsaw

Extending the use of lens metaphor from the previous think-pair-share exercise, the facilitator can suggest one the following group activity to help the participants make further use of the LfL lens.

Plenary Activity

  1. Ensure that the participants are in five different groups.
  2. Assign each group to one particular lens to discuss what are the kind of things they may look out in the classrooms using that one particular lens. This should take at least 10 minutes.
  3. One member from each group will share with everyone in a plenary format. (ie. each person to take turn to share what they have discussed in the group)
  4. The rest of the participants can ask questions for clarification or raise comments on the overlaps and links across the 5 LfL principles. This should take another 15 minutes.
  5. Remind the participants that this is a purely exploratory exercise, with no incorrect answers.

Jigsaw Activity

  1. Ensure that the participants are in at least two groups of 5 participants each.
  2. Assign each member in each group to one particular lens to think about what are the kind of things that he/she may look out in the classrooms using that one particular lens. This should take at least 5 minutes.
  3. The members who are assigned to the same lens from the different groups will meet together as a temporary ‘expert’ group to exchange ideas. This should take another 5 minutes or so.
  4. The members return back to their original group and share their findings to the rest of the members. Each person will have about 2 minutes to share their findings.
  5. Remind the participants that this is a purely exploratory exercise, with no incorrect answers.

Use the background reading to explain the terms. There is another educator note below this background reading, that gives further details for each point in turn. Make sure that you have spent time reading and thinking about this before the session as the participants may need your prompting to help them ‘see’ through each of the lens.

Background reading

Focus on Learning

  1. Everyone is a learner
  2. Learning relies on the effective interplay of social, emotional and cognitive processes
  3. The efficacy of learning is highly sensitive to context and to the differing ways in which people learn
  4. The capacity for leadership arises out of powerful learning experiences
  5. Opportunities for leadership enhance learning


Conditions for Learning

  1. Cultures nurture the learning of everyone
  2. Everyone has opportunities to reflect on the nature, skills and processes of learning
  3. Physical and social spaces stimulate and celebrate learning
  4. Safe and secure environments enable everyone to take risks, cope with failure and respond positively to challenges
  5. Tools and strategies are used to enhance thinking about learning and the practice of teaching

Learning Dialogue

  1. Practice made explicit, discussable and transferable
  2. Active, collegial inquiry focussing on the link between learning and leadership
  3. Coherence through sharing of values, understandings and practices
  4. Factors that inhibit and promote learning are examined and addressed
  5. Link between leadership and learning is a concern for everyone
  6. Different perspectives explored through networking with researchers and practitioners


Shared Leadership

  1. Structures support participation in developing learning communities
  2. Shared leadership symbolised in day-to-day flow of activities
  3. Everyone encouraged to take a lead as appropriate to task and context
  4. Everyone’s experience and expertise is valued and drawn upon as resources
  5. Collaborative activity across boundaries of subject, role and status are valued and promoted


Mutual Accountability

  1. Systematic approach to self-evaluation embedded at every level
  2. Focus on evidence and its congruence with core values
  3. Shared approach to internal accountability is a precondition of external accountability
  4. National policies recast in accordance with school's core values
  5. Choosing how to tell own story while taking account of political realities
  6. Continuing focus on sustainability, succession and leaving a legacy
Educator note

This educator note is meant to be read in conjunction with the above background reading. It provides additional prompts for each of the points above.

Focus on Learning

  1. Everyone is a learner. Are students the only learners in our school? How about the teachers? Parents? Headteachers?
  2. Learning relies on the effective interplay of social, emotional and cognitive processes. Do we think about what is learning about? Is it about memorising and applying certain facts? Managing emotions? Being able to make friends with one another? Making good decisions?
  3. The efficacy of learning is highly sensitive to context and to the differing ways in which people learn. Are we aware about the differences in ways which people learn and to what extent their background (e.g. family, age, interests) will influence the way they learn?
  4. The capacity for leadership arises out of powerful learning experiences. Who are some of the most influential teachers in my life? When did we encounter such teachers and why did they create such powerful learning experiences for ourselves? How can we do the same for others?
  5. Opportunities for leadership enhance learning. Are we given the opportunities to make decisions on our learning?

Conditions for Learning

  1. Cultures nurture the learning of everyone. What kind of background (e.g. families, age, interests) would be most helpful to support learning?
  2. Everyone has opportunities to reflect on the nature, skills and processes of learning. Are there opportunities for everyone to reflect on the nature, skills and processes involve in learning? What are they?
  3. Physical and social spaces stimulate and celebrate learning. Are the physical facilities and other form of support (e.g. the community and family support) able to support learning? What are these facilities and support?
  4. Safe and secure environments enable everyone to take risks, cope with failure and respond positively to challenges. Are we providing a safe environment for learners to take risks, cope with failure and respond positively to challenges? How are we doing that?
  5. Tools and strategies are used to enhance thinking about learning and the practice of teaching. Are we updating ourselves and reflecting about the various tools and strategies to enhance the way we teach and learn? How are we doing that?


Learning Dialogue

  1. Practice made explicit, discussable and transferable. Do we have the language to talk about learning so that we can discuss and reflect about it more fruitfully? How do we do that?
  2. Active, collegial inquiry focussing on the link between learning and leadership. Do we discuss and find out how we can take the lead to decide what learning should be like in our school (and not just be directed by the authority?) How can we go about doing that?
  3. Coherence through sharing of values, understandings and practices. Do we discuss and share the values and understanding of the ways we learn and teach? What are they?
  4. Factors that inhibit and promote learning are examined and addressed. Do we examine and address the factors and inhibit and promote learning? What are they?
  5. Link between leadership and learning is a concern for everyone. Do we prioritise the link between leadership and learning? What kind of concerns on learning do we raise and act upon?
  6. Different perspectives explored through networking with researchers and practitioners. Do we network with researchers and other practitioners to explore different perspectives of learning and leadership? How do we do that?


Shared Leadership


  1. Structures support participation in developing learning communities. Are there ways we can participate in learning or be involved in starting learning communities within the school?
  2. Shared leadership symbolised in day-to-day flow of activities. Can we see leadership being shared by various colleagues and students in the day-to-day flow of activities in the school? How is that like?
  3. Everyone encouraged to take a lead as appropriate to task and context. Do we take the initiative to take a lead in various learning or research projects in accordance to what we are interested in and capable of? What kind or projects or research can we embark on?
  4. Everyone’s experience and expertise is valued and drawn upon as resources. Do we draw on everyone’s experience and expertise as we value all of them as important resources to support learning? How do we do that?
  5. Collaborative activity across boundaries of subject, role and status are valued and promoted. Do we value and promote collaborative activities across subject, levels and roles within the school?

Mutual Accountability

  1. Systematic approach to self-evaluation embedded at every level. Is there a systematic approach to self-evaluation that is evident at all aspects of our works?
  2. Focus on evidence and its congruence with core values. Is there a focus on documentation of teaching and learning that would be consistent with our beliefs on the values of education?
  3. Shared approach to internal accountability is a precondition of external accountability. Do we take the initiative to be accountable to ourselves in ensuring the quality of teaching and learning, rather than to be dependent on an external authority?
  4. National policies recast in accordance with school's core values. Do we critically examine the national policies and how they are relevant with the school’s core values?
  5. Choosing how to tell own story while taking account of political realities. Do we maintain an individual stance of our own views of teaching and learning, while being very cognisant of the political realities that we are living in?
  6. Continuing focus on sustainability, succession and leaving a legacy. Do we try to look forward towards the future, on how we can sustain our current efforts and to be able to leave a legacy for our future generations?

Application of LfL lenses to a classroom situation

Activity icon.png Small group activity (11 min). (30 mins) Let’s try putting this idea of looking at classroom teaching and learning through an LfL lens into practice.

We are going to watch a short teaching/classroom video.

Before we do, choose only 1 LfL lens that you will use as your ‘critical lens’ to ‘see’ the practices in this classroom. By choosing your 1 LfL lens, you should only ‘see’ and note down those things that your lens helps you to focus on. Decide as a group, what exactly you want to look out for based on the lens that you have chosen.

For example, if you choose, ‘Conditions for Learning’, then try looking only for those things that you believe contribute to promoting conditions for learning in the video.

Educator note

It is helpful if different participants choose different lenses so at least two, ideally more, are represented.

Pedagogy: ‘Table mats’ to record observation and reflection (2s or 3s)

Invite participants to work in 2s or 3s, and prepare a ‘table mat’ for recording. Each group has a large piece of paper, in the middle of which they draw a quadrant (if pairs) or a triangle (if 3s) big enough to record the outcomes of the group discussion. Divide the outside area of the paper into half or third (to match the group size).

Agree which LfL principle each group will adopt as their critical lens for watching the video.

As they watch the video, participants make notes in their outside area of the table mat.

After watching, participants share their observations and reflections, and together agree the salient points of the lesson from the perspective of their chosen LfL principle to record in the central area of the table mat.

Emphasise that there are no wrong answers, and groups should try their best to focus their attention using their chosen LfL lens.

Extension: The table mats could be collected and displayed for whole group, firstly comparing any that focused on the same LfL principle, then comparing those that used differing lenses. Exploration of the similarities and differences is likely to reinforce the understanding that using a single lens brings specific aspects of a lesson into sharper focus, and that the five principles are interrelated and overlap.

OK, watch the video now, wearing your chosen LfL spectacles!

This video clip shows the highlights of a lesson study (also known as research study) going on in an American primary school classroom. Lesson study is another form of ongoing professional development activity whereby teachers come together to decide on an area of teaching or learning that they would like to understand and improve on, in order to help students learn better. The teachers observe learners in a class being taught by one of their colleagues and collect specific, detailed data for discussion with the lesson study group later. In this video clip, the teachers want to find out whether the students are able to recall and retell the sequence of a story read to them by their teacher.

Educator note

The facilitator could suggest these following prompts if the participants appear to be uncertain of what to look out for (but do not give them straight away!). Each should address only one lens and set of prompts of course, not all of them.

  • Focus on learning - what aspect of teaching and learning did the teacher want to focus on understanding and improving? How did they go about collecting data on it? What did they learn from the data?
  • Conditions for learning - did all the teachers have an opportunity to share what they have learnt? Did the teacher who was observed, appear to be nervous? Did all the teachers feel ‘safe’ to share their opinions and to listen to one another? How much time did they have to set aside for meeting together? Would it be easy to set aside time to observe their colleague teaching?

(NB: Please highlight to the participants that the purpose of peer lesson observation is NOT to find faults, judge or criticise the teacher’s teaching. Rather, it is an opportunity to discuss what is the learning that has taken place by observing the students’ responses. Based on the observations and discussions, teachers can suggest what they may like to try out differently or similarly in the next lesson study. It is not unusual to re-teach the same topic in another class, if the teachers feel that will be a helpful follow-up.)

  • Learning Dialogue - did all the teachers have the language to discuss the particular aspect of teaching and learning they have chosen to focus on? Were they able to come to any conclusion about what were some problems they had identified and how they could improve on it? Was the dialogue between the teachers a helpful one in advancing their professional learning? Why?
  • Shared leadership - did it appear that there was one leader who ‘directed’ the teachers on what to do? Did every teacher have a part in contributing to the research lesson? Why do you think the teachers were committed to coming together for this research lesson?
  • Shared accountability - did it appear that all the teachers had a stake in trying to find out how they could all learn from this research study? (or did they leave it to just one teacher to do all the work?) How did they ensure that every teacher could learn by being an active participant in this research study? How did they substantiate their comments by drawing from evidence of their observations?

LfL across the OER4schools programme

Activity icon.png Reading (11 min). (5 mins)

LfL is not only an effective framework for exploring others’ teaching and learning, it is also very useful for reflecting upon your own learning pathways. Teachers, student teachers and other participants are autonomous thinkers and learners, doing their own learning both individually and collectively. We hope that the new (and familiar) ideas presented in all the past units and the supporting resources are feeding into your understanding of learning, classroom conditions and your leadership role, impact on student learning and what you can do to enrich and enhance learning opportunities.

There are no "right ways" but lots of possibilities to explore; in this sense you always a "leader" – leading learning in your classroom. Hopefully you can also share the responsibility for leading learning within your school or institution. We will explore this in 6.2 and 6.3.

Adapted from "Creating Learning Without Limits", by Maddock, Peacock, Hart & Drummond, p.108-9. OUP, Maidenhead."


Activity icon.png Think-Pair-Share (11 min). (10 mins)

Consider all of what you have learned in the sessions leading up to this point in the programme. Did your workshop facilitator and/or the materials ‘focus on learning’, create the ‘conditions for learning’, promote and enable ‘learning dialogue’, provide opportunities for ‘shared leadership’ and ‘mutual accountability’? Also, using the 5 principles, why not consider evaluating yourself, your own involvement and contribution to increasing the learning capacity throughout the programme for you and your colleagues? LfL is an effective way thinking about your learning, the learning around you, and how you can go about improving learning capacity.

Think about these questions and pair up with one other colleague to share your ideas.

Reflecting and Sharing your Learning

You now understand that LfL is about a journey on learning. In this journey, you have seen and responded to many different ways of what learning, teaching and leadership can be about. We have given you many ‘big pictures’ and also concrete examples of how the different aspects of teaching, learning and leadership can be like in the classrooms, schools and communities.

By seeing things differently, through the 5 LfL lenses (or all at once with a combined lens when you are ready to give it a try) we hope you are able to better understand what a teacher-leader should do to support the activity of learning within and outside the classrooms. The knowledge and insights of the leadership for learning principles challenge your previous views of learning, teaching and leadership. It helps you to reflect upon and share your current learning and teaching experiences with your colleagues, school leaders and parents. We will explore all these in greater details in 6.2 and 6.3.


HOMEWORK

We would like you to practice using the LfL lenses when you are back in your own classroom settings, or even when you are watching others in the act of teaching and learning.

1. Take time to think about the course, your own learning and how you contributed to and were supported in your learning. Use the LfL framework to organize your mental and audio reflections, enabling you to return to our next session ready to discuss your own teaching, teaching you have witnessed, and ideas about learning through the framework of the 5 LfL lenses. This will help us to focus our discussions and thinking about teaching and learning in a way that is that will help you develop your discussions with your peers.

2. Please undertake a 30-minute peer observation, where you observe student learning in a colleague’s classroom using the LfL lenses. You can choose to use just one lens, or more than one – whichever you feel is most appropriate for the exercise. It will be helpful to have a pre-lesson discussion prior to the peer observation lesson, to agree on what the lens means, what the observer could potentially be looking for and other ground rules of etiquette. (e.g. the observer should not unnecessarily interfere with the classroom activities, remain quiet etc.) The teacher may like to brief the observer on the profile of his/her class. There may be particular students the observer would need to pay more attention to due to various reasons (e.g. learning difficulties).

We suggest that if both of you agree to use more than one lens, then the observer can configure his/her notes in sections – perhaps even dividing your note taking paper into labelled, headed sections prior to the observation. That way he/she can jot down elements he/she observe under each heading in the prepared framework. It is important for the observer to remember that he/she is observing practices, not people.

If possible, conduct a quick post-lesson discussion as soon as possible. Try to ensure that the discussion focuses on observations about practices and contextualise comments by framing the observations as ‘ I noticed pupils...’ or ‘When you supported pupils to... I noticed...’. Remember, the observer is not reporting what he/she THINKS he/she should have seen in a lesson, but what him/her DID see. By doing this, the discussion can avoid problems of possible unhelpful critique of peer professional practices.

We would not be surprised if both of you report back that certain LfL principles are observed more often than others. If you find this to be true, consider proposing an explanation for this to your colleagues at our next session and what you might suggest we can learn from your findings.

Acknowledgement

This page was authored primarily by Stephen Jull, drawing on collaborative work with Sue Swaffield and John MacBeath of the Centre for Commonwealth Education, University of Cambridge.

http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/cce/ccepeople/staff.html

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