2010 Council Meeting Updated 29 July 2010

Instructional Leadership: A Conversation with Principals

The report from the conference will consist of:

• session notes from the keynote addresses - please read these in conjunction with the presentation file accompanying the address;
• audio recordings of the keynote addresses - streamed (click on the small green arrows to play the audio files online) and downloadable; and
• papers and presentations from the keynote addresses and concurrent sessions (not all have been provided by the presenters) - most are in PDF format; some are in PowerPoint frmat.

The report will be published here progressively during the next week. Please come back from time to time to check for new material.

Keynote Addresses:

• Opening Address - Ms Ho Peng, Director-General of Education, Ministry of Education, Singapore. Session notes. Presentation file. Audio recording (13Mb mp3 file).

• "It's not about the Technology ... It's about the Learning" - Ms T.C. Roekle, President, T.C. Roekle & Associates Inc., U.S.A. Session notes. Audio recording (29.5Mb mp3 file). Presentation. Brochure. Flyer. Website.

• School Innovation, Learning Community - Professor Manabu Sato, Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo, Japan. Session notes. Presentation file (8.38Mb pdf file). Audio recording (36.5Mb mp3 file). Accompanying paper - Retrospect and Prospect of Japanese Lesson Studies.

• Education from the Inside Out - Ms Mia Handshin, Associate Director, Government Relations Australia, Australia. Session notes. Presentation file (PowerPoint file). Audio recording (29.9Mb mp3 file).

• Whither Curriculum? - Mr Peter Hall Jones, Educational Leadership Consultant, The Spiral Partnership, U.K. Session notes. Presentation file (7.86Mb pdf file). Audio recording (29.9Mb mp3 file).

• Closing Address - Mr Wong Siew Hoong, Director, Schools, Ministry of Education, Singapore. Session notes. Audio recording (11.6Mb mp3 file).

Plenary / Panel Sessions:

• Professional Learning Communities (audio recording [35.6Mb mp3 file]):
  • Peter Dudley. Presentation file.
  • Mdm. Tan Bin Eng. Presentation file.
  • Adrian Lim. Presentation file.

• Lesson Study (audio recording [36.2Mb mp3 file]):
  • A/Prof Christine Lee. Presentation file.
  • Dr Priscilla Lo. Presentation file.
  • Clifford Chua.

Concurrent Sessions:

• Action Research and After - Mdm. Veronica Ng. Presentation file.
• E-learning - Francis Foo. Presentation file. File #2.
• Future Problem Solving - Julie Hoo. Presentation file.
• Place-Based Learning - Lim Lai Cheng. Presentation file.
• Teaching for Understanding - Low Eng Teong. Presentation file.
• The Skilful Teacher - Belinda Charles. Presentation file.
• Understanding by Design for Reality Outside Classrooms - Shirleen Ong. Presentation file.
• Lesson Study in the U.S.: Moving from the Algorithms to the Practice of Lesson Study to Daily Instruction - Patsy Wang-Iverson. Presentation file.
• Experience! Lesson Study in Japan ‐ Practical Workshop - Dr Hiroyuki Kuno. Presentation file.
• Lesson Analysis: Purpose, Process, and Product - Professor Masami Matoba. Presentation file.
• Reforming a School through Lesson Study - Eisuke Saito. Presentation file.
• Broadening Teaching and Learning in an Examination-Driven Context Using Understanding by Design - Mdm Liew Wei Li. Presentation file.
• Our UbD Journey - Sara De Souza. Presentation file.
• Developing the Intellectual Climate to Enhance Learning Through Lesson Study - Darren Nonis. Presentation file.
• Odyssey of the Mind - Dr Ong Tek Chin. Presentation.

Session 1: Opening Address - Ms Ho Peng

Session 2: "It's not about the technology ... It's about the learning" - T.C. Roekle

Session 3:  School Innovation, Learning Community - Professor Manabu Sato

• The title of the presentation file is: "School Reform toward Learning Community： In Defense of Public Education against Neo-Liberal Policies".
• This presentation displays a vision, strategy and philosophy of school as learning community in Japan. – slide 2.He has worked for 30 years with schools and innovation. "It is hard for schools to innovate."
• "The network of school as learning community I designed, is currently constituted 200 pilot schools nationwide and more than 3,000 public schools have joined it, to struggle against the neo-liberal policies in defense of public education."
• A brief on Neo-Liberal policies: rapid change of schooling
• School choice system has been introduced by 287 local governments (8% of the total) during the past 10 years. Ability group has spread among 73% of elementary schools and 67% of junior secondary schools just from 2001 to 2004. Teachers’ salary has substantially declined by nearly 20% during the past 20 years. More than 90% of prefecture boards of education have introduced “Standardized Tests” to plunge schools into “ranking game” since 2001. As a result, national test was launched in 2007. In this outcome-based administration, everything is counted. All schools had to set objectives about the % of improvement that they would achieve.
• Teachers have become scapegoats of the political situation.
• Most schools have now introduced streaming system because of the mass hysteria and cries for national improvement.
• Collapse of lifeline and safety net of public education: 30% children in Tokyo and Osaka live in poor families or borderline. (Nearly two times more than 10 years ago.) 40% of senior high students in Osaka suffer from a difficulty to pay school tuition because of poverty. 90% of the youth labour market has disappeared from 1992 to today (mainly part-time jobs for these young people now). In the case of poor families, (annual income below $30,000), educational expenditure occupies 60% of their housekeeping money. This can not continue, so most can not continue the education of their kids.
• Reaction of students is to escape from learning: 30% of junior high students and 40% of senior high students spend no time for learning and reading outside school. Teacher burn-out by at-risk students. The retirement age of teacher is 60 years, but currently only 40% reach that age; they burn out. Most women teachers in Tokyo and Osaka retire at age 50, 10 years earlier, because of health reasons. Average working time totals 52 hours per week without additional pay for weekend work on extra-curricular and curricular work at school. Trust between teachers and parents is seriously destroyed under the neo-liberal policies, with which teacher work is changed from “responsibility based on public mission” to accountable “service” for “tax payers” or educational “consumers”. Public education is not a service but a responsibility for local society; if teachers and parents can not share the responsibility for the education of their kids, then it won’t work – it must be a social responsibility. There is a crisis of dignity of the teaching profession and the humiliation of teachers. Teaching profession / principal – metaphor = street performer, juggler. They complain about the number of things that they are forced to do by pressures coming from outside the school – too many reform issues. Priority of innovation = if the principal does not have a future vision of school reform, they can not continue to juggle so many things. Teachers suffer from confusion; they must have a vision of the future for their profession or their teaching. This is not the case only in Japan. The numbers game of accountability.
• Democratic renovation of schools: renovation movement of school as learning community is based on the traditions of progressive education and social democracy since 1998. Centring on 200 pilot schools, 2,000 elementary schools and 1,000 junior secondary schools (10% of all the public schools) developed a grassroots network. Question is why have so many schools joined the network for school as learning community?
• Retrospect of school as learning community in Japan: John Dewey: "Chicago laboratory School" (1898-1904) – "School and Society" (1899) was translated into Japanese in 1900. The progressive education movement in Japan (Taisho liberal education) was active in the 1920s. The post-war progressive education movement was spread in the late 1940s and early 1950s. School renovation toward learning community derived from my proposal is the third tide of progressive education in Japan and a new stream searching for the 21st century school, in other words, school in knowledge based society.
• Definition and vision of school as learning community: School as learning community is a place where children learn together, teachers also learn together as educational professionals, and even parents and citizens learn together through participating in school renovation. Collaborative learning at classrooms, collegiality at staffrooms, and cooperation of parents with teachers, are 3 fundamental components of it.
• Priority is the vision: what is the school? The mission and responsibility of public schools (and teachers) are to realise human right of learning of every child and to pursue possible excellence in their learning. School should be a place where every teacher learns to be an autonomous professional through opening classrooms and through building collegiality from within. School should provide ample opportunities for parents to cooperate with teachers and to join school renovation. This is easy to say; it is difficult to manage. Teachers should be learning professionals – how to do this is the problem.
• Three canons of school as learning community: (1) public philosophy, (2) democracy, and (3) excellence are the three canons of school as learning community. Publicness is a spatial concept. School should be opened both inside and outside to exchange different voices for dialogic communication.
• Opening classrooms is the first step. I would not employ a public teacher who does not open the classroom at least once a year, even if he/she performs as an excellent practising teacher. He/she makes the students, classroom, school and teaching profession private, so this must be the starting point of any kind of school reform. Reform can happen in the school only if there is reform in the classroom. School is a public space for the whole community.
• Democracy: a main mission of public education is to prepare a democratic society, so school should also be a democratic society. Democracy is not a political procedure, but a way of “associated living”. (John Dewey). At the democratic school, students, teachers, parents and principals are all protagonists who participate in school management with different responsibilities. Teacher voice is mainly monologue in most schools, not a dialogue. We need to add other voices.
• Pursuit of excellence: Teaching and learning are essentially demand  the pursuit of excellence. The excellence in this context does not mean advantage in competititon, but doing best in a given situation. Excellence of doing best procreates modesty; that is the most significant trait for learner. I propose “learning as jumping” in pursuit of this excellence.
• Listening pedagogy: Listening to another’s voice is the first priority in my approach of constructing a learning community. Learning starts from listening to another’s voice. As Debby Meier described: “Teaching is not telling but mostly listening.” An old proverb of the Ainu (an ethnic minority in Japan) says: “God created two ears and one mouth.”
• Redefinition of learning: learning as dialogic communication. Three aspects of learning practice:
  
  • cognitive practice - dialogue with objective world (content, subject matter);
  • social practice - dialogue with others; and
  • existential or ethical practice - dialogue with oneself.
• Learning is the retexturing of meaning and relationships. Active, collaborative and reflective learning should be organised in all classrooms.
• Strategies: activity system of a learning community:
  
  • Active, collaborative and reflective learning by small mixed groups – 4 students.
  • Lesson study (usually one hour observation and 2 hour discussion by colleagues) should be organised at least 30 times per year as a core of school management.
  • Ample opportunity for parents to cooperate with teachers ("learning participation").
• Slide 17 with photographs of the landscape of collaborative learning. Teacher is the facilitator of the students’ work. Other teachers watch what happens.
• Case Study 1: Hamanogo Elementary School was the first pilot school. Slides 18-22. Learning communities are also caring communities.
• (Note: Coral = common community, all the same. Orchestra = different voices but working together.)
• Less is more. Simple is better. School is a place for learning together. According to this simple doctrine, activities of children are simplified. There is no time for school assembly, principal’s talk, extra-curriculum and other rituals. Time allotment is also simplified. Two lessons of 95 minutes are allotted in the morning, which enable children to pursue high quality of learning, and for teachers to develop project-oriented curriculum and plan well together.
• Small is sensible. Hamanogo School is a large school, with 800 students and 40 teachers, but it is subdivided into 6 mini-schools. Teachers of a “mini school” share responsibility beyond the walls of their classrooms. The activities of the teachers are also simplified, centering on collegiality. The simplified organization enables teachers to cooperate with each other and concentrate on their professional work.
• The case conference is placed at the core of school management. It is composed of 1 hour of classroom observation and a 2 hour case discussion. The school sets up more than 100 times of such case conferences in a year. The central focus of the case conference is not teaching skills but the lived experience of learning. The main purpose of it is not searching for “one best method” but becoming more sensitive to the learning of children.
• Case Study 2: Gakuyo Junior Secondary School. First pilot school in secondary education. The school reform started in 2001. For the previous 10 years, the school had been a well-known school with low achievement, vandalism, school refusal, and serious troubles with parents. It ranked at the worst position in any criterion among the 18 junior secondary schools in the city, so that most teachers did not stay at the school more than 2 years.
• No teachers believed that it could change.
• He proposed: Every classroom lesson should include three aspects of learning, such as “activity”, “collaboration by small groups” and “reflection”. Reduce teacher’s tension and listen to the student voice. Case conferences by all the teachers should be arranged beyond subject "Balkanization" at least 40 times per year.
• One year later, when all the teachers changed the desk arrangement to promote student collaboration, there was no student who escaped from learning. Every student was sincerely involved in learning. Amazing! No vandalism, no arrested student and no problem behavior at school, and 80% of school refusals disappeared (from 36 to 6). Two years later, the school obtained the top position of achievement test among the 18 schools in the city. It is a miracle.
• Grassroots movement: became well-known nationwide. Now 1,000 schools are working to implement the same model. Not  a short-term challenge but a long revolution.
• Lots of visitors join the case conferences to watch so that they can learn for their schools.
• Grassroots movement of school as learning community has been advocated among social democrat educationists not only in Japan but also in Asian countries, such as Korea, China, Mexico, USA, Indonesia and Vietnam.
• Research Institute of Learning Community was established in Korea (2002), in China (2006).
• School reform is a silent revolution. The principal is most critical element.

• Long-term successful school reform requires significant investment in professional learning for teachers. What have you been saying about best practice for professional learning for teachers?
• Surveyed Japanese teachers about best mentor for improving their practice, and asked what is the best place for professional learning? Best mentors are their own colleagues (in their own grade in elementary school; in the same subject area in junior secondary); the 2nd one is the principal; the 3rd is the local supervisor of the board of education; 4th is the teacher’s union; 5th is a university professor. So the best place is their own school; 2nd is a local study group with neighbouring teachers; 3rd is a research project; 4th is a lecture by university professor (only 3 people mentioned the last one). Teacher professional learning is a concentric circle model. At the centre is their teaching practice. Japanese educational system administrations strengthened professional learning outside the school - that was the wrong way to do it. Schools as learning communities should be built from within.

• You mention protagonists. Who are the antagonists in your model of school as learning community?
• There are many antagonists. It can be very hard to collaborate with parents firstly, also with bureaucrats, and even harder with university professors. But the central antagonist is oneself. The school is not "my school"; it is "their school". It is my responsibility to reflect on "their needs". My enemy is always me.