At the excellent SCEL inaugural Teacher
Leadership conference the keynote in the afternoon was given by Carol Campbell who
hails all the way from Argyll and Bute via Canada. As Gillian Hamilton (@CEOScel)
said in her introduction, it is good to break free from the well-kent faces and
bring in new ones. Carol was fantastic and inspiring, her presentation really
resonated with me, the messages being very similar to the messages from the PU
evaluation, thoughts on practitioner enquiry from the PL network, from the
‘Kelly report’ and through talking with teachers across Scotland.
Although the focus of the conference was
on teacher leadership, I thought that Carol widened the scope to teacher
professionalism, how this is situated in policy and practice and what this
means to teachers across the country in terms of their leadership and
professionalism. The following discussion is based on the tweets I tweeted out
during the keynote.
How do we keep people at the centre of
our education system?
Carol argued that humanity should be at
the heart of any education system, the reason for our existence is to support,
develop, and educate young people to improve their life changes. Carole asked “What
are you passionate about in and for education?” My own view resonates with hers,
in that I believe education is a people industry and as such is built on
relationships, how we interact with each other. Our purpose is to support
teacher to be the best they can be, so kids get best chances. Within this, it
is critical that we create the conditions for all to be learning, I love
the tweet from @robfmac who tweeted that “Teachers working conditions are
children’s learning conditions”. I know I am probably altering the original
intention of the tweet but changing the word working to learning and then I
think it becomes even more powerful, as we explicitly link professional
learning to pupil learning.
Teacher leadership - go public with your
teaching and learning
Although formal leaders are key to
supporting and promoting teacher leadership, leadership can be defined as the
exercise of influence. Influence is not a matter of formal position or status. Informal
leader are those who can have influence without position, as it is more about
professional learning and knowledge. Teacher leadership influences through
professional learning; having a vision for your learning journey, reflecting on
where you have been and what you have learned, sharing your experiences and knowledge,
challenging and being challenged to improve you professional practice.
Teacher Leadership needs to be evidence
enriched and supported by professional judgement
The next message that resonated with me
was the positive response from teachers who engage in enquiry. Carol discussed
how this model of professional learning, due to its impact, becomes a sustained
model for teacher learning and can help building capability in teachers. Teacher
focused on their own learning and students learning leads to “awesome teachers”.
This raises the question as to what supports are in place to help experienced
teacher to undertake self-directed professional learning, like enquiry. GTCS
has lots of resources on the GTCS website and are supporting local authorities
to engage all teachers, not just probationer teachers. Teacher leadership
through enquiry can support professional capital and decision making. Professional
judgement has been highlighted in the OECD report (2015) where it was discussed
as “Effective
professional judgment……..results from deliberate processes and structures of
preparation, continuous learning, and collegial interaction in communities of
learning. Professional judgement is established and improved through investing
in teachers’ professional capital.” The report goes on to describe professional
capital being composed of
human capital,
decisional capital and social capital (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012).
Knowledge exchange - how can we share
better, more often, make it meaningful?
Teacher agency is about using past
experiences, envisaging future possibilities and is enacted through
professional actions, professional learning and teacher leadership. Teacher
agency matters if we are to re-conceptualise what it means to be a teacher in
Scotland and move to a more research enriched, enquiry based profession. Carol
discussed how this works best through professional networks and collaborative
communities of learning, where teachers are supported to become both creator
and consumer of research. Through collaboration practical things can be shared
which improves teacher practice and has a positive impact on pupil outcomes.
There will always be the challenges of
time/workload and other priorities, these things don’t go away but have to be
managed to support teachers to develop leadership as part of their professional
identify, it won’t be easy but is do-able or as Carol finished off by saying
“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can”
Wise
words indeed.
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