Induction session 8.1 - A workshop for school leaders
The OER4Schools Professional Learning Resource
Learning intentions and objectives.
Success criteria.
ICT components.
Interactive teaching and learning
Interactive teaching is becoming more and more popular internationally. Research evidence from different countries shows that this kind of active learning is both motivating and far more effective for learning than direct instruction (“chalk-and-talk” or lecturing).
In particular independent, collaborative or oral work, as well as questioning and whole-class discussion that encourage pupils to grapple with ideas, are effective. They lead to long-term and deeper learning rather than memorising facts (resulting in short-term, superficial learning).
The key to interactive teaching is teachers shifting “from telling to listening” and learners shifting from receiving information to making sense of it for themselves.
The OER4Schools programme explores how we can “listen” to and support learners and what that means in practice.
An example of interactive teaching in Zambia
Many African teachers aspire to be interactive teachers. Yet, interactive teaching is not common in the African classroom. However, it can work in this context!
The following clip shows Eness, a teacher in a community school near Lusaka interacting with a Grade 3 class. Watch the clip of her class discussion about Is a bat a bird?
Observing, thinking, reflecting (5 min): Watch a video of a whole class discussion. Read the following questions for reflection, and then watch the video.
- What have you noticed?
- How are the learners taught?
- How do you think they will react to the homework task?
- Is this classroom different from yours?
- What is interactive teaching?
VIDEO
Whole class discussion
Whole class discussion of ‘Is a bat a bird?' Teacher sets unresolved problem as homework
Video/Eness vertebrates 12.mp4, https://oer.opendeved.net/wiki/Video/Eness_vertebrates_12.mp4,This video is available on your memory stick in the video/Eness Vertebrates folder. Duration: 4:19 watch on YouTube, local play / download options / download from dropbox)(Series: Eness Vertebrates, episode 12)(Transcript available here or via YouTube captions.)
Whole class dialogue (10 min): Whole group discussion on the whole class discussion video. We asked you look at the following questions:
- What have you noticed?
- How are the learners taught?
- How do you think they will react to the homework task?
- Is this classroom different from yours?
- What is interactive teaching?
Now discuss these questions as a group.
Whole class dialogue (10 min) using PMI In this activity called “PMI” - “Positives, Minuses, Interesting” there are no correct answers.The PMI involves considering the positive, negative and interesting points related to a specific scenario. It was originally developed by Edward de Bono, father of the “thinking skills” movement. It encourages learners to look at both sides of a situation and also to be creative when considering the interesting possibilities.
The structure of a workshop session
If there is interest in how a workshop session progresses (consisting of a range of activities), you may now want to review Session 1.1, drawing out the generic features of a workshop session. Alternatively, you may want to continue on to the values discussion.
Observing, thinking, reflecting (15 min) on the structure of a session Go through the structure of a workshop session:
- Review of follow up activities. At the beginning of each session, you should review the previous session (if you are running more than one session).
- Session activitiy 1: e.g. Brainstorm on interactive teaching (new topic)
- Session activity 2: Brainstorming in the classroom (new topic)
- Session activity 3: ICT-based activity
- Session activity 4: Planning
- Discussion of LfL or MSC
- Connecting with overarching goals of the programme
- Agreement of Follow-up activities
Values at your school
In order to support interactive teaching at your school, it is important to create a supportive climate at the school. School leaders have a primary role to play in creating the right conditions for learning. We start by looking at the conditions for learning by looking at the values at your school.
Whole group dialogue (30 min) on school values
“Talking points” are deliberately thought-provoking statements for discussion and reasoning in small groups. Research shows that using these is an effective strategy to promote conceptual learning in a target area because
- it helps to structure the group task yet keeps the discussion open-ended. This is because pupils discuss the points but are free to contribute their own understanding /opinion about the point. In other words, the task is well-defined as well as interactive!
- it helps pupils to discuss different aspects of a concept by providing cues and a focus for discussion.
Discuss the following talking points and how true you think they are in the context of your school. For each item give both (a) reasons for your views and (b) concrete examples of how you implement this. For instance, regarding “Everyone in the school has a voice that is heard”, give examples of how children make input. Also give examples of how you are not implementing this. For instance, you could list ways in which you do not (yet) involve children in decision making and how you might do in future.
In our school:
- Some children or teachers are not treated fairly and do not feel part of a community.
- Everyone in the school has a voice that is heard – senior leaders and administrators, classroom teachers and children themselves share decision making in the school and take responsibility for learning.
- It is important that teachers learn from children.
- We sort out problems by listening to each other and finding solutions together. We speak up when we see that something is wrong.
(Adapted from Index for inclusion, p. 27, Figure 3)
Leadership for Learning activities
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. Leadership for Learning is based on five principles, which are:
- Focus on learning
- Conditions for learning
- Learning Dialogue
- Shared Leadership
- Shared Accountability
We now reflect further on the five principles of LfL with a view to contributing your own ideas about Leadership for Learning through interactive learning opportunities. 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 the programme!
(See Leadership for Learning for more information. Some of the text below draws on the five LfL principles with questions.)
Focus on Learning
Observing, thinking, reflecting (10 min): Focus on Learning Read the text below, in conjunction with the questions for "Focus on Learning" following the text, and then do the activity below.
The first principle is ‘a focus on learning’. The two key words are ‘focus’ and ‘learning’. To focus means to pay close attention to, to select what is important and to keep it in the foreground. Those who exercise leadership have at times to pay attention to things other than learning. Managing a school requires attention to a host of priorities and it is easy to be distracted by constant demands and other peoples’ urgencies. However, while a focus on learning always remains in the background of thinking, whenever possible it has to be brought into the foreground. It comes into the foreground when leadership is able to discriminate between the important and the urgent and knows where the priorities lie. (Adapted from "Leadership for learning: concepts, principles and practice", John MacBeath, April 2010, http://www.leadershipforlearning.org.uk)
To reflect further on the "Focus on Learning", consider the following questions:
- Are students the only learners in our school? How about the teachers? Parents? Headteachers?
- Do we think about what is learning about? Is it about memorising and applying certain facts?
- Are we given the opportunities to make decisions on our learning?
Same-task group work (15 min) on looking at school issues. Now consider a number of issues at your school. What issues have recently arisen? What issues have been discussed in recent teacher meetings? Perhaps brainstorm and make a list of them, or write them on small cards. Now decide how how these issues relate to "Focus on Learning", and regarding "Focus on Learning" decide whether they are important and/or urgent. Go through some of the issues you came up with, and place them into these categories:
| Important and urgent | Important but not urgent |
| Urgent but not important | Not urgent, and not important |
You could write this out on a piece of paper, and if you made cards above, they could be placed into this grid. Does everybody agree on where the cards are placed? Remember that we are looking at the issues through the lens of "Focus on Learning", so when we say that something is "important and urgent" we mean "important and urgent with regard to learning at the school".
Conditions for Learning
Observing, thinking, reflecting (10 min): Conditions for Learning Read the text below, in conjunction with the questions for "Conditions on Learning" below.
How can you focus on learning when conditions are so bad that simply getting children, and teachers to school is both urgent and important? How can you focus on learning when the priority is to find and manage accommodation, space, resources and contingencies of food, health, weather, and respond to unexpected crises? How can you focus on learning when you have 60 or more children in a class? How can you focus on learning when many teaching staff have little background knowledge of pedagogy?
The physical conditions for learning vary widely in schools, in cities, suburbs, villages and rural areas. Demands, expectations and resourcing also vary widely. The principle, however, remains the same. Leadership in every circumstance has to try to optimise the physical, social and emotional conditions which hinder learning, and has to try and seek out the ‘wiggle room’ for creating a greater learning focus. In this respect the force field tool can be used to analyse what helps and hinders and what may be possible. (Adapted from "Leadership for learning: concepts, principles and practice", John MacBeath, April 2010, http://www.leadershipforlearning.org.uk)
Here are some questions you can ask yourself about the conditions for learning:
- What kind of background (e.g. families, age, interests) would be most helpful to support learning?
- Are we providing a safe environment for learners to take risks, cope with failure and respond positively to challenges? How are we doing that?
Whole class brainstorm (30 min) on barriers, resources and support.
Brainstorm about the following questions regarding barriers, resources and support. Record answers on board or on a large sheet of paper.
- What barriers to learning and participation arise within the school and its communities (including who they affect)?
- How can barriers to learning and participation be minimised?
- Are any additional resources needed to support learning and participation? If so how can these be mobilised and deployed?
(Adapted from Index for inclusion, p. 40, Figure 12)
Observing, thinking, reflecting (15 min): Conditions for learning in action In this clip, the teacher (Abel) gives an introduction to group work task (on area and perimeter with GeoGebra), then students do group work. The teacher support students in group work, but the students find it difficult to follow the teachers explanations. Towards the end of the clip, the teacher then asks some students to come over, to explain the issue to the group in their own words.
In Abels' class, peer learning takes place spontaneously, because he has set up the conditions for learning, and in particular a safe environment, enabling children to help each other. In his class, during group work, children often get up and help their peers.
VIDEO
Students collaborate on GeoGebra investigation on area and perimeter
Introduction to group work, then students doing group work. The teacher supports students in group work, but the students find it difficult to follow the teacher's explanations. Towards the end of the clip, the teacher then asks some students to come over, to explain the issue to the group in their own words.
Video/New Abel clip 4.m4v, https://oer.opendeved.net/wiki/Video/New_Abel_clip_4.m4v,This video is available on your memory stick in the video/Abel rectangles folder. Duration: 6:56 watch on YouTube, local play / download options / download from dropbox)(Series: Abel rectangles, episode 05)
Learning Dialogue
Observing, thinking, reflecting (10 min): Learning Dialogue Read the text below, in conjunction with the questions for "Learning Dialogue" below.
The force field can be used by any individual to think through the forces acting against you and the assets you have, or the potential assets still unexploited. Even in the most dire of circumstances the best resources are likely to be people. The force field comes into its own as a tool, a ‘tin opener’ for opening up the dialogue, for extending and challenging the status quo, for trying to think ‘outside the box’. It may reveal the hidden resources of staff or of children which have remained untapped and uncelebrated.
"Your school is a place for children to learn. If they do not learn much, you have not fulfilled your first priority. How can you, as headteacher, make sure that the children in your school are learning something new every day?" (Headteachers’ Handbook, Ghana Education Service) (Adapted from "Leadership for learning: concepts, principles and practice", John MacBeath, April 2010, http://www.leadershipforlearning.org.uk)
Here are some questions about learning dialogue:
- Do we talk about learning? Are we able to discuss it and reflect on it fruitfully? How do we do that?
- Do we discuss and find out how we can take the lead to decide what learning should be like in our school? How can we go about doing that?
- Do we discuss and share the values and understanding of the ways we learn and teach? What are they?
Same-task group work (15 min) with force-field analysis. Use the "force-field analysis" technique to look at the things that support or hinder learning dialogue. Leaning on a metaphor from physics, force-field analysis is a useful technique for looking at facilitating and constraining forces. Identify the issue, then write down three things that help on the left, and three things that hinder on the right.
| --> | <-- | |
| Help | The Issue | Hinder |
| --> | <-- |
The technique can be extended by
- (a) initially listing all the factors that help and hinder, then identifying the three most important of each,
- (b) showing the strength of the forces by assigning a score to each, from 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).
The next stage is to consider what can be done to
- Add momentum to and capitalise on the favourable forces
- Minimise or overcome the obstacles.
Options for action can be considered in how effective they will be in shifting the balance in favour of the positive forces. (Adapted from the "Blue Book" of the Leadership for Learning project.)
Observing, thinking, reflecting (10 min): Shared Leadership Read the text below, in conjunction with the questions for "Shared Leadership" below.
When there is a dialogue around the need to ensure that children are learning something new every day learning can become the first priority. When there is dialogue around securing resources and managing change, the capacity for hidden leadership can come to the fore. ‘This thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone’. It is said that a burden shared is a burden halved. It is also said that 1 and 1 can make 3, that is, my idea and your idea when put together can produce a third idea which neither of us had thought of. Another popular saying which strikes the same note - ‘All of us is better than one of us’ – is a more folksy way of describing the technical term ‘synergy’ which means ‘energy with’. School leaders expend a lot of energy sometimes just to stand still but can replenish and even gain energy through working collaboratively with trusted others.
(Adapted from "Leadership for learning: concepts, principles and practice", John MacBeath, April 2010, http://www.leadershipforlearning.org.uk)
Some questions about shared leadership at your school:
- Are there ways we can participate in learning within the school?
- Can we see leadership being shared? E.g. by various colleagues and students in the day-to-day running of the school?
- Do we ourselves take the initiative to take a lead in various learning or research projects? What kind or projects or research can we embark on?
Whole group dialogue (15 min) on command, consultation, consensus. Discuss the meaning of command, consultation, consensus, and give examples how these occur in the day-to-day activities of the school. Now imagine a pie. It can be divided into three quadrants to represent the balance of three decision-making processes in your school, district office or circuit supervision. What percentage of those decisions are Command, Consultation, or Consensus?
Mutual Accountability
Observing, thinking, reflecting (10 min): Mutual accountability Read the text below, in conjunction with the questions for "Mutual Accountability" below.
When leadership is shared so is accountability. Those in leadership positions (‘where the buck stops’ as Harry Truman said) are, in some sense, accountable for every action taken, every decision made. Nine times out of ten decisions are never explained or accounted for as that would paralyse initiatives whether in the headteacher’s office, the teacher’s classroom, the regional headquarters or the Ministry. But where there is an ongoing dialogue and when there is shared leadership, decisions can be reviewed in retrospect and discussed in prospect, so that what one is accountable for, and to whom, and in what way is open to discussion. This strengthens a sense of ownership of staff, creates a feeling of reciprocity and is in itself an important source of professional development. (Adapted from "Leadership for learning: concepts, principles and practice", John MacBeath, April 2010, http://www.leadershipforlearning.org.uk)
Some questions about mutual accountability at your school:
- Do you evaluate yourself?
- Is the teaching and learning documented in some way?
- Do we take the initiative to be accountable to ourselves? For instance in ensuring the quality of teaching and learning?
Whole class dialogue (15 min) with questions starters Use the 'question starters' below, to investigate scenarios that have various degrees of shared accountability.
Activities and techniques for teacher meetings
Question starts
Dialogue (30 min) using question starts Question starts are explained below. Use question starts to initiate some discussion to explore a topic in the teacher meeting.
Question Starts (A Visible Thinking routine) - A routine for creating thought-provoking questions
Brainstorm a list of at least 12 questions about the topic, concept or object. Use these question-starts to help you think of interesting questions:
- Why...?
- How would it be different if...?
- What are the reasons...?
- Suppose that...?
- What if...?
- What if we knew...?
- What is the purpose of...?
- What would change if...?
Review the brainstormed list and star the questions that seem most interesting. Then, select one or more of the starred questions to discuss for a few moments.
Reflect: What new ideas do you have about the topic, concept or object that you didn't have before?
(Adapted from the "Blue Book" of the Leadership for Learning project.)
Increasing participation through handsignals
Read the text below about hand signals. Through hand signals, communication and participation in teachers meetings will be increased. Introduce and explain the hand signals in a teachers' meeting. Practice it for a few weeks, until it becomes second nature.
Handsignals can make meetings run more smoothly and help the facilitator see emerging agreements. Three simple signals should suffice:
- Raise a hand when you wish to contribute to the discussion with a general point.
- Raise both hands if your point is a direct response to the current discussion. This allows you to jump to the head of the queue, so use it wisely and discourage overuse!
- Silent applause - when you hear an opinion that you agree with, wave a hand with your fingers pointing upwards. This saves a lot of time as people don't need to chip in to say "I'd just like to add that I agree with..."
(c.f. Facilitation)
Critical incident analysis
Dialogue (30 min): Resolve an issue at school using critical incident analysis. The idea of critical incident analysis is explained below. Read the technique below, and use it to resolve an issue in a teacher meeting using the technique.
Critical Incident Analysis is a way of analysing a recent event significant event in order to examine it in detail and learn from the experience.
The group of people involved sit in a circle and firstly go back over the incident in descriptive detail. The aim is to recall the event in terms of what happened, the context, the key players, what preceded and what followed. Everyone will have different perceptions, recollections and angles. This is an important aspect of the exercise and should be recorded in some way. It may hold the key to the way in which people respond, allocate responsibility and decide on a course of action.
- Suspend judgement. Don’t allocate blame.
- Don’t argue for your construction of the event. Listen to others
- Describe from an objective, disinterested, viewpoint what happened.
- Try to remember the conditions – eg time of day, the weather (was it raining? hot? etc), preceding events
- Who was involved?
- What did different people do? And not do?
- What was said?
Having agreed, as far as possible, what happened, now reflect on questions such as:
- What might have been done differently?
- What were the possible options? (allow for wild ideas)
- Who held the options?
- Why were they not used? (still avoiding blame or judgement)
- What have we learned from the incident?
- What might we do differently next time?
(Adapted from the "Blue Book" of the Leadership for Learning project.)
Sample activities
Introducing cumulative talk - creating a story together
Cumulative talk (10 min): Creating a story together All the participants get up to rearrange the seating. Arrange the group in a horse-shoe seating arrangement(a) if there is room. If not choose another arrangement allowing participants to see each other. Facilitator starts a story by saying one sentence. All participants then contribute to the story by adding sentences; these must build on what the previous person has said.
A good story would:
- be contextually appropriate: for example, use common names of characters and a setting familiar to participants.
- have a theme relevant for participants such as education (girl-child receiving schooling later supports family), importance of forests and wild-life (saving a snake later becomes useful for invention of new medicine), treatment of diseases (steps taken by a family to treat an ill person) etc.,
- be short and have few characters, and
- have a problem which is collectively resolved in the end.
For instance, you could create a story about welcoming a new child to the school, perhaps a child with an impairment or some kind. Tthe facilitator starts by saying: "The other day, I heard my neighbours talking about whether their child should be starting school, because their child has difficulty walking, and they were not sure whether children like that should go to school." (Relates to Index for Inclusion, A1.1 Everyone is welcomed.)
The activity we just did is example of “cumulative talk” where participants build on what the previous person has said (“cumulative talk” is one example of whole class dialogue).
Same-task group work (10 min) in pairs: Planning cumulative talk in the classroom Now pair up, and come up with ideas for cumulative talk in the classroom.
- Consider that when this activity is done in the classroom with pupils, themes should be chosen from the curriculum.
- Also consider that the seating arrangement can be modified according to teachers’ classrooms such that pupils see each other. Pupils can leave their tables and just move their chairs (or sit outside if the grounds are suitable).
As you are planning this activity, ask youself the following questions:
- Do your students find it easy to talk?
- How can you encourage students to talk?
- Are some students likely to laugh at other students contributions? How can you create safe environments that enable students to take risks?(Relates to: LfL, 2.4)
Whole class dialogue (10 min) on the previous activity Because we have done the above activity as part of this facilitators workshop, now come back together as a group and discuss how the activity went. You could e.g. use PMI to say some plusses, minuses, and interesting things. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? What questions can you ask, to find out whether the activity was conducted in an interactive way?
Reflecting on current questioning practice
Same-task group work (5 min) in pairs: Coming up with some questions. Choose a topic from the board. Write five questions on mini-blackboards or paper that you normally ask/would ask the pupils in class?
Observing, thinking, reflecting (5 min) Facilitator talk on open and close questions. Briefly state what open and closed questions are.
Game (5 min) on open and closed questions. Categorise your questions as closed and open questions. For each question, you move to the side of the room marked OPEN if their question is open or to the side marked CLOSED if their question is closed.
Whole class dialogue (10 min): Reflecting on current practice. Where are you standing? Is your current practice of generating questions more open or more closed?
Whole class dialogue (10 min) on the previous activity Because we have done the above activity as part of this facilitators workshop, now come back together as a group and discuss how the activity went. You could e.g. use PMI to say some plusses, minuses, and interesting things. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? What questions can you ask, to find out whether the activity was conducted in an interactive way?
Developing my practice: Planning an activity
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Different-tasks group work (15 min): Planning in pairs for an activity with open-ended questions. In the activity template, plan for questioning as part of a lesson that participants will teach in the coming week; the questions will follow the ICT pictures activity. They should list some open and deep questions to ask in the class in order to challenge pupils and get them thinking! Try out some of the points mentioned in page 3 of the handout. Record specific questions on the template.
Whole class dialogue (10 min) on the previous activity Because we have done the above activity as part of this facilitators workshop, now come back together as a group and discuss how the activity went. You could e.g. use PMI to say some plusses, minuses, and interesting things. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? What questions can you ask, to find out whether the activity was conducted in an interactive way?
Talking points on statements about Leadership for Learning
[Repeat above background text on Talking Points]
Whole class dialogue(a) with talking points(a) (15 min): Discussing statements about Leadership for Learning Discuss in a small group whether the following statements about Leadership for Learning (talking points) are ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘not sure’. Explain your reasoning in each case. Then tick (“✔”) if your group agrees that they are true, cross (“X”) if your group agrees that they are false and question mark (“?”) if your group is not sure.
- The purpose of a school is for children to learn.
- Learning is about memorising facts.
- When learning, the background of students is unimportant: Because facts are universally true, so learning of facts does not depend on students' backgrounds.
- If parents do not encourage their children to learn, children will not learn anything in school.
- Teachers should have low expectations of students' ability: It is not good for students to be challenged in lessons, because it will make them unhappy. It is better for students to work on very simple problems, that they can solve easily.
- The head teacher knows what's best for the school, and therefore does not need to consult teachers, parents, or students.
- Students do not know what's best for them, so they do not need to be consulted regarding learning or school leadership.
Discuss each talking point mentioned above. Each group should explain their stance on the point, giving their reasons.
Whole class dialogue (10 min) on the previous activity Because we have done the above activity as part of this facilitators workshop, now come back together as a group and discuss how the activity went. You could e.g. use PMI to say some plusses, minuses, and interesting things. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? What questions can you ask, to find out whether the activity was conducted in an interactive way?
Childrens' ability to learn independently
Observing, thinking, reflecting (5 min) on group work In this clip, and group of students jointly solve a problem using GeoGebra. The children did not have a lot of experience of using netbooks, and had just been introduced to the software (GeoGebra) a few lesson ago. They. (Note that time in this clip has been condensed, and the clip is taken from about 10 minutes of interaction. The children thus had a lot more thinking time than what is show in the clip.) Watch the video, and reflect on the following:
- How are the children interacting?
- Do you think the children are learning?
- What are the conditions for learning that enable such an interaction to take place?
- Does it surprise you that the students had not used GeoGebra much before? Does this tell you something about your expectations of childrens' abilities to learn independently, and with ICT?
VIDEO
Geogebra group work
A group of students jointly progress on their task to investigate the relationship between area and perimeter of rectangles.
Video/Geogebra-group-interaction.m4v, https://oer.opendeved.net/wiki/Video/Geogebra-group-interaction.m4v,This video is available on your memory stick in the video/Abel rectangles folder. Duration: 2:03 watch on YouTube, local play / download options / download from dropbox)(Series: Abel rectangles, episode 06)
