Trust – Technology and Learning

Reflections on the Bryanston Edu Summit

Gary Henderson — Sun, 09 Jun 2019 20:47:05 +0000

I recently attended the Bryanston Education Summit, with this being my third visit for what was the third annual education summit. As has been the case in previous years the weather smiled on the event. Having now had a little time to reflect I thought I would share my take away’s from the event.

The need for reflection

Sir Anthony Seldon’s keynote began with a breathing exercise where he encouraged all in attendance to get involved, providing all a moment of mindfulness. This was a bit of a departure from the normal start to a presentation which might highlight the key questions of the session or the key topics. The purpose of this activity was to highlight the need to stop and reflect. Sir Anthony also suggested the need for us to stop and ask “am I being the best I can be?” This message is one I believe strongly in as our fast and frenetic lives often mean we are focussed on getting things done and checking off tasks from our to-do lists, simply moving from one activity to the next. In education things can get particularly busy as is evidenced by the continued discussions as to workload. The issue with this is that we don’t have time to reflect on our core values and on what really matters, on being the best we can be. Without time to reflect we may be very busy however we may be having little impact or may simply be doing the wrong things. In order to address this we need to provide ourselves both the permission and time to stop and reflect. I will admit that finding the time isn’t necessarily easy but we need to prioritise and provide ourselves regular opportunities to reflect. I also think there is value in doing this to model best practice for the students in our care. Otherwise all they will see is their teachers rushing from task to task, forever busy, and for them this will shape their view of what is normal.

Trust

The session on leadership by Michael Buchanan included mention of trust and the need for leaders to provide their teams the “permission to be themselves”. I think this needs to permeate through the culture of a successful school to include formal teams such as departments, but also informal teams and all the way through to how teachers lead the students in their care.

In Alex Beard’s session he referred to the need to try and remove things from teachers where they don’t have an impact on teaching and learning going on to suggest that such time might be used to develop technology skills, understanding of cognitive science and subject expertise. To me this links to trust in that the most obvious thing to remove, or at least the thing which appears most obvious to me, is any task of an administrative nature which is related to accountability. If we trust teachers we wouldn’t need as much of the paperwork and data to prove that what needs to be done was being done.

Professional Learning

Cath Scutt’s session focussed on the status of the teaching profession. She quickly identified her concern with the idea that we need to “raise” the status of the profession in that this creates a “deficit” model. It suggests that there is something wrong or deficient. This is similar to the concept of Professional Development which has always for me suggested a deficit; I have therefore always preferred the term “professional learning”. For me the key issue here is the need for a culture in education similar to the Japanese term Kaizen, or continual improvement, as mentioned by Alex Beard in his presentation. We should be seeking to improve, or better learn, not because there is a deficiency, but because we have to if we want to be the best we can be and if we want to enable our students to be the best they can be.

Networking

The session focussing on Hattie’s research into visible learning highlighted the importance of teacher self efficacy to student outcomes and also on the need for “teachers who are learners.” I believe technology can help with both of these issues. Take for example twitter. It allows for discussion and sharing of ideas, for us to question our own practices and ideas. I think as a tool to both self reflect and also to search out new solutions, twitter is excellent. It also allows us to stretch beyond our own local context and connect with different educational institutions with differing age ranges, focal areas, internal structures and from different parts of the world. This can only help us both in being more self aware and in being learners as well as teachers.

Conclusion

The third annual Bryanston education summit was an interesting and useful event. The above only briefly summarises some of the key points of the pages of notes I found myself coming away with. I suspect as I have more time to reflect other points will likely surface for me. One area which I haven’t mentioned for example is the impact of technology on student outcomes. The provided Hattie data indicates 1:1 laptops only have a minor positive impact on student outcomes however, as was suggested in the session, there is a lot of context to be considered in this. This is something I will likely discuss in a blog post in the near future. For now I will conclude that my key take away wasn’t a particular leadership approach or curriculum model or learning model. The key message I heard from sessions was a need to focus on softer aspects of education, on reflecting, on trusting and on working together to ensure the educational experience we provide is the best it can be.

I enjoyed this years event and now hope to be able to put in practice some of what I have learned. I look forward to next years Bryanston Education Summit.

To trust or not to trust

Gary Henderson — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 15:51:19 +0000

Have been reading and have finished Stephen Coveys Speed of Trust recently. I have found the book to be very interesting and very much in line with my thinking with regards having a growth mindset and focussing on solutions rather than problems plus on the need to acknowledge the humanistic side of education rather than focussing purely on data such as standardised tests. It is my belief in the need to trust people and act with trust as a default condition as opposed to assuming distrust and acting accordingly. The Speed of Trust focuses on this although it also goes on to discuss “Smart Trust” such that we take care on exercising trust where previous events or the situation dictate it. The book discusses a predisposition towards either trust or distrust, which I think is the key feature of the book. It suggests the need to encourage a predisposition towards trust. I have found myself having to defend this position during the last six months having been told that I shouldn’t be open with how I feel to my team and colleagues. Leaders apparently need to be totally positive even when the situation, either professionally or personally is not, or at least this is what I was told. For me I believe, and according act, in a way as to display trust in my colleagues and staff and as such I communicate how I feel to them. I am, after all, a human, a person like everyone else and therefore I have good days and not so good days. This is not to say that I necessarily have negative days, more a case that I have days when I find positivity and the act of working with a growth mindset more difficult than normal. During a period of time recently my wife had damaged ligaments in her knee which limited her ability to move, leading to time off work and myself having to take on more duties around the house and with our family as a whole. As such my ability to remain positive while at work was more difficult than normal and in phone calls or in discussions my tone of voice and body language may have conveyed this. I was open with people as to the prevailing situation yet I was told that my openness with my emotional status and feelings was a negative thing and something unwanted in senior managers.

Now let us consider the alternative here; A leader consistently comes across as positive both in terms of beliefs and emotion despite the prevailing situation. I have worked with people like this and over time you start of lose your trust in them as they repeatedly underplay the humanistic side of life and also the challenges which particular jobs, tasks or activities may present. They also tend to underplay or fail to acknowledge the culture and climate within the organisation, department or team. Imagine the boss who you have plainly made aware of personal or professional difficulties who makes light of it rather than engaging you as a person, looking to provide support and arrive at a solution. “Its going to be fine, just keep at it and focus on solutions”. I think the reason this constant positivity is stated as positive lies in the hope that positivity will rub off on those you lead and work with however this underplays trust. Constant positivity both in belief and in emotion suggests a constant level of effort however this is not the case. Some professional situations require more effort or, as in my situation where my wife was injured, some personal situations result in the need for more effort professionally in order to maintain the normal level of positivity. As such a consistent “things will get better” approach to positivity may not always work as it fails to recognise the personal effort, commitment or resilience required. If a leader fails to recognise and acknowledge how a static level of positivity may require varying levels of effort, commitment and resilience then trust may be lost as they more and more appear to be disconnected with a team members reality (Note: I am considering reality as subjective with the only reality which exists to a colleague or team member being their own reality).

Covey puts so much stake in the importance of trust and I cannot help but agree. Education is more and more focussing on data and standardised testing while ignoring the softer data of what school leaders see and hear on a daily basis. Trust may steadily be in process of being eroded and teachers more and more see themselves being judged based on data which very often lacks any context. This is especially evident in terms of a focus on achievement. Here in the UAE not all students will do Kindergarten so would it be fair to compare two teachers where one has a class of students who did not do kindergarten against a teacher of a class which did, where the later teacher benefits from a class who have two additional years of schooling despite being the same age as the students in the former class; I would suggest not.

Data is going to continue to be an integral part of education systems as is accountability. I believe we need to also make some room for trust. We need to develop the predisposition towards trust as suggested by Covey. Professional development for example should not be focussed on the needs of the weakest staff at the expense of those who have highly developed skills. Education often talks of distributed leadership and of empowerment however both of these concepts cannot operate without a level of trust.

I write this in following one of Coveys initial points in his book which is to trust yourself and in writing this I am trusting that my beliefs and ideas are worthy of sharing and consideration. I trust that you will feel free to share your thoughts whether they be in agreement or disagreement.