PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN ICT FOR

SCHOOL LEADERS

Ken Walsh

Associate Director

Specialist Schools Trust

IcT’S ABOUT LEARNINGNCSL Practitioner Enquiry, K Walsh 2002

• Integrating ICT into a school involves a paradigm shift

• Integrating ICT implies an embedding in the school’s structures and the organisation of learning

• ICT concerns puts the learning agenda firmly into the hands of the student

• “Technology is available to develop either independence and learning or bureaucracy and teaching” (Illich, Deschooling Society,1973)

• Teacher students relationships cannot be the same again

• Integrating ICT makes the headteacher the lead learner

LESSONS FOR HEADS

• “I think we need heads who are fascinated by ICT, who have some skills, but it is more important that the head knows what constitutes good teaching and learning” (Mike Woods, Cornwallis School, Maidenhead)

Heads need to keep up to date, but…• “The real issue is the degree to which, after acquisition, ICT

enhances learning and makes a difference to learning styles” (Tom Clark, George Spencer School, Nottingham)

• “The Principal’s role is paramount. Everyone knows that I am totally committed to it. When we started in 1995 we tool an enormous risk, as a government school, going down this path (of asking parents to fund laptops).” (Ken Rowe, Frankston High School, Melbourne)

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT LEADING ICT DEVELOPMENTS?

“The head cannot, as a rule, do the work of the teachers any more than the conductor of an orchestra can play the tuba. In turn, the teacher is dependent on the head to give direction and, above all, to define what the ‘score’ is for the entire organisation”

Peter Drucker; Management Challenges for the 21st Century

DEVELOPING INDEPENDENT AND INTERDEPENDENT

LEARNERS• The teacher’s role is one of learning designer

and facilitator, a teacher of the essential skills needed by students to access, analyse and synthesise information in the search for knowledge and understanding.

• The Head’s role is to enable teachers to develop the necessary skills to become learning facilitators and to back up the work of teachers with suitable resources, management and systems support structures.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT LEADING AND MANAGING ICT?

Look at three areas: • People• Process• Resources

THE KEY PERSONNEL ISSUE

“Personnel redesign for organisational and classroom efficiency requires insightful leadership, skilful position analysis, reorganisation and training”

(Bywaters and Watts, 2001)

WHO LEADS AND WHO MANAGES?

• The workforce re-modelling agenda

• The leadership of adults other than teachers

• Technical and learning support overlap

CHANGING LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES

• Learning-centered and transformational• Wider and flatter leadership teams• Leading from the middle• No IT departments: “The first thing I tell

people about ICT is to get the nerds and the laboratories out of the system and hand the teaching and learning over to the educators” (Ken Rowe, Frankston High School, Melbourne)

PROCESS

“Developments such as the focus on Strategic Leadership in ICT have helped considerably, but the importance of supporting changes from the school level up, as well as from the centre, is vital if hearts, minds and behaviours are to change as radically as is required in these action areas.”

(DfES e-Learning Think-TankDec.2003, E-Learning Foundation)

RESPONSIBILITY FOR E-LEARNING

“In some schools much of the ICT investment has been focussed on technology and resources, and there has yet been little development of teaching and learning, and new pedagogy. Provision of content and tools alone will not bridge the gap, and the amount of staff development and cultural shift remaining to be undertaken should not be underestimated.”

(DfES Think Tank, Dec. 2003)

TRAINING AND RE-TRAINING

• Training on demand in school

• Accreditation?

• ECDL, Intel

• Cisco

• SST CPD Centres

• Training teams

PERSONALISATION

“Transfer of responsibility down to learners, to schools, and other organisations is a vital part of developing a sustainable framework for e-learning, and a withdrawal of dependency culture.”

(DfES Think Tank, Dec.2003)

THE “E-CONFIDENT” SCHOOL

10 key features

1. High levels of staff confidence, competence and leadership

2. Re-engineered teaching, learning and assessment, integrating effective use

3. Leading and managing distributed and concurrent learning

4. Effective application within organisational and management processes

THE “E-CONFIDENT” SCHOOL

5. Secure, informed professional judgement6. Appropriate resource allocation to ensure

sustainable development7. Coherent personal learning development, support

and access – for all leaders, teaching and non-teaching staff

8. Availability, access and technical support9. Pupils/students with high ICT capability10. School as the lead community learning and

information hub

CONFIDENCE TO TAKE RISKS

The genie is out of the bottle. There is no turning back.• “This is not just a change from inputs (teaching)

to outputs (learning). Rather it is a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of the school, where everyone is a learner and even the organization is allowed to make mistakes and be a learner” (David Loader, Principal, Wesley College, Melbourne in “The Inner Principal”, 1997

RESOURCES - COLLABORATION

“In the current situation there are a handful of schools racing ahead with a very long tail behind them. Collaboration with other schools, with other players in the local community and with industry is vital if we are to accelerate the process and avoid the huge levels of duplication inherent in the way schools work.”

(DfES E-Learning Think Tank, Dec. 2003)

“It is known that knowledge transfer is best carried out not by an outstanding expert but by the person who has recently implemented the new practice and is therefore familiar with the obstacles to transfer, the “stickiness” that must be overcome through adaptation and learning during the transfer process…

… By engaging peer-to peer self-organizing systems, the support mechanisms can be changed dramatically.”

 (David Hargreaves, Education Epidemic: Transforming secondary schools through innovation

networks, Demos 2003)

NATIONAL ICT REGISTERwww.ict-register.net

LAUNCHING OCTOBER 2004

Ken Walsh kenw@specialistschoolstrust.org.uk

By Schools, For Schools