School Lines - New Zealand Principal Magazine

School Lines Upbeats and Downbeats – Moot Points! Lester Flockton

feedback, feedforward, Feedup, feeddown lester.flockton@otago.ac.nz

We were told that the mood of this year’s NZPF Moot in Wellington (a meeting of branch presidents) was upbeat. We are upbeat when we feel confident, bouyed, energised and optimistic. The state of up-beatedness can be short-lived and euphoric (a ‘high’) or longer lived, depending on prevailing circumstances. It is seldom a permanent state, since circumstances giving rise or fall are variable and often unpredictable, so we typically move back and forth along a continuum of up and down. For the most part, the ideal is probably some steady-state midpoint. After all, highs are hard to sustain whereas lows are bad for the psyche – and productivity. The state of up-beatedness is seldom universally shared. More often it is confined to a particular group, usually under the influence of a cheer leader of some kind who, paradoxicially, can simultaneously succeed in causing others to become distinctly downbeat. For example, I have observed on a number of occasions the Minister of Education putting on a show of flambouyantly voluble and theatrical up-beatedness with predictable nods and smiles from her entourage of officials and believers, while at the same time many of those subjected to these displays (disbelievers?) show all the signs of bemusement and frustration, or downright down-beatedness. The last time I got a strong sense of near universal upbeatedness throughout the teaching profession and many of the communities they serve, was during the development and introduction of The New Zealand Curriculum, which became mandatory from 2010 – the same year when a changed Government forced the introduction of National Standards for 5 year-olds through to the end of the primary years. Hence, belief and disbelief, up-beatedness and down-beatedness collided. And so the rise and rise of The New Zealand Curriculum was countermanded by the rise and rise of National Standards. The result has been no winners. The New Zealand Curriculum was robbed of the concentrated investment in professional learning and development needed to activate its full potential, while all the evidence shows that after nearly five years of National Standards, they have failed to achieve what the Government said they would. The disbelievers proved to be the most believable. It’s not rocket science to work out the underlying causes of the conflicting states of productive up-beatedness and unproductive down-beatedness in education. Recall, for example, that the hugely successful uptake of The New Zealand Curriculum was in no small part due to the process of its development and acceptance. To use the official terminology, it was developed through processes of ‘co-construction’, or to use today’s jargon, ‘collaboration’. Between 2004 and 2007 more than 15,000 students, teachers, principals, advisers, and academics

contributed to developing the draft New Zealand curriculum, building on the recommendations from the New Zealand Curriculum Stocktake Report that was published in April 2003. Clearly, the inclusive, open and respectful approach, while requiring trust and more time than that afforded through the expedience typical of political decree, succeeds in producing a productive commitment and a constructive outcome. This illustration of the virtues of collaborative policy and programme development is in sharp contrast to the methods used to enforce politically motivated Government policies such as National Standards, Investing in Education Success, Charter Schools, and EDUCANZ. For example, it is a blatant hypocrisy layered with arrogance to announce, deem or decree a policy mechanism that extols collaboration, without any true collaboration in the formation of that policy in the first place – regardless of subsequent meetings with a bunch of sector

representatives who had to maintain secrecy over meeting proceedings. Disbelief aside about the policy achieving its espoused purposes (do you really fall for the promises of Fullan, who has been a key player?), this is no way to capture the favour and support of those who are supposed to implement the latest figment announced from on high. The whole notion of collaboration is far from new, as numerous commentaries are currently illustrating, it has been at the heart of good professional practice since Adam was a cowboy. But whether it has a credible ‘effect size’ on student learning is yet to be properly proven (it certainly doesn’t appear in Hattie’s Visible Learning – a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement). Moreover, there is little if any evidence to show that one collaborative ‘arrangement’ is better than another. Harking back to my down days as a school principal, I was clearly of the mind that I needed to be quite discerning about who I chose to collaborate with when it came to matters of teaching and learning. I certainly wasn’t interested in the show ponies, and at best a meeting with a local cluster was a damned good social occasion. Then there is the example of an exemplary principal in a high performing Auckland school whose main collaborative arrangement is with another such principal at a Christchurch school. He maintains, and with good reason, that this is a more impactful collaboration than one tied to local geography. And so it goes on.

School principals can have many good and genuine reasons to feel upbeat from time to time, and they have a rightful role in enjoining their colleagues and communities in the positive feelings that come from recognising the good things that are happening as a result of the school’s own ideas and initiatives. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t read or hear about something happening in a school that is of truly great educational value for its students. So, school leaders, try to exercise a power of influence by regularly making known those things that children are doing in your place that are genuinely good and great for their learning. And they should be much more colourful than national standards data. Even the Government seldom mentions them now! Reference Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning. A synthesis of over 800 metaanalyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge.

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