The other week I have a discussion on wellbeing in schools with Mark Anderson as part of a recording for Tip Top Tips Edu; you can watch the recording here.  The particular focus was on support staff such as Directors of IT, Network Managers and other IT support based roles.   I therefore thought it would be useful to share some further thoughts from my discussion with Mark and also some thoughts that arose post discussion.

Wellbeing:  What does your school do?

I think one of the first things to note is that wellbeing isn’t about events, such as an end of term staff event or offering yoga classes.   These can help improve peoples wellbeing but wellbeing is more complex than a catalogue of events on offer.  

Stress and Challenge

When we talk about stress we often jump to a negative conclusion, that stress isnt good.   The reality is that stress, at least in my interpretation, can be a good thing as well as a bad thing.     If it relates to an activity which is worthwhile, has some level of difficulty and includes some autonomy of decision making then this will likely cause stress, however it will be positive stress;  it will represent a challenge.    If, however it is not viewed as worthwhile, is busy work, includes monotony rather than autonomy and is too difficult to be achievable given available resources, then this will likely result in negative stress.

So, the question for leaders here is, do we ensure that there is meaning in what we ask our teams to do, do we provide the relevant autonomy, but also support and are we realistic and clear in our expectations of others?

Looking after yourself / Personal wellbeing

We also need to acknowledge that wellbeing for each of us is also a personal responsibility.   Yes, our school has to provide an environment that supports and encourages our wellbeing, however equally we as individuals need to also support our own wellbeing.    For each of us the methods of doing this is likely to be different.   For me it is about reading, particularly reading non-fiction, and about physical exercise in the form of jogging (or maybe lumbering would be more appropriate in my case) and also about contributing back to the Edu world through blogs, etc.  Some people may like gardening or cooking, two things I am pretty hopeless at.   For others it might be long family walks.   We each need to seek to find what works for us as individuals, as families, as friends, etc.

Balance

I often find myself coming back to the importance of balance.   Too much of anything is bad for you and equally too little is often just as bad.   Whether it is exercise, comfort foods, relaxation time, challenge and positive stress, family time, personal reflection time, or a multitude of other things, too little can have a negative impact as can too much.  Its about finding the balance that works for you.

We also need to wrestle with the challenges of time;   Often have I heard and even said that “I don’t have enough time.”   Sadly this is a pointless cry as we will never have any more time than that which we have now (unless we master time travel of course ).    There are 24hrs in the day and 7 days in the week.   This isnt going to change.   As such we need to accept that more time for a given task comes at the expense of less time for something else.   And with this in mind we need to remain balanced;   we cant simply keep providing more time to our work tasks as this will mean less time for our own personal growth and reflection, for family time, etc.   And it is worth noting that in work, we often, as we seek to improve and develop, tend towards adding things, adding tasks, adding processes, adding checks and balances, and adding complexity, all which therefore require more time.   Seldom do we seek to take things away;    Adding, having more, doing more seems logically positive however in reality this can only be guaranteed where resources are limitless.   In the real world where time is limited, everything we add which takes additional time and effort, takes away time and effort from something else.

Conclusion

On reflection, and a key thought, is that wellbeing isnt a thing or an endpoint.   Wellbeing is a road or a process.    It is ongoing and at times things your wellbeing will be challenged when all isnt going well and at other times your wellbeing will be good and all will be progressing as it should.    The key is to find what works for you, to be concious of your wellbeing and to be concious of your actions and plans in relation to wellbeing.   

So for a leader its about yourself as an individual but also about your team as a group;   How can you support wellbeing for yourself but also for those you lead.    As a team member its about yourself as an individual and also about your colleagues and how you can support one another.    Overlayed on this, for those with families, there is the wellbeing of you spouse, your kids and your other family members.  

Wellbeing isnt simple and I don’t think anyone has the answer.    For me it links to organisational culture and climate, which are equally complex and slow to change. If anything, what matters most is that we are at least speaking about and it considering it more than we did in the past, and that’s a good start.

The pandemic, in my eyes, has very much helped globalisation in relation to education.   We particularly saw teacher influencers or teacher content creators, etc sharing their ideas and resources with large numbers of teachers and even larger numbers of students.    Their resources helped many continue teaching and learning through the lockdown periods while face to face teaching and learning was impossible.    They represented the opportunity for a few people to put together resources and lessons which could then be consumed by the masses across the world.

But, if we accept most things work in balance, what might we be losing out on where we push more towards this globalised approach?

The thing about the content being pushed out is that it had to be able to be used across the world, and in doing so it needed to be independent of the differing contexts in different parts of the world.   If we accept that the best learning experiences don’t exist in a vacuum, and that they need some context, something in the real world to link them to, we realise that something designed for a school in the UAE would be different to something in the UK which in turn would be different to something designed with China in mind.    And this challenge isnt limited to national level, it also exists more locally at regional level or even smaller.    I remember as a young teacher seeing differences in language and viewpoints when moving between teaching in a school on the outskirts of Glasgow and one in Stirling, approx. 25 miles away.

So, these global resources either must relate to universal truths which are true across contexts, need to include their own context, or involve abstraction of the concepts being covered to a point where context is less consequential.    

What we are losing here, is the local learning and the local context.    The things that make us a Glaswegian in my case, as things are not being taught within the local context, within the framework of the local community, habits, traditions, etc.    The learning is not being linked to my local community.  Now this might be a good thing as more and more people migrate away from where they are born, including emigrating to work in other countries however I believe it also could have a negative impact on students as they may not develop their individual identity in the way they might have in the past.   

This also links nicely to educational research.   Where we look for generalisable, global solutions which have the research backing to show they tend to work anywhere and have a replicable impact, are we losing out on solutions and approaches which might simply work in our local context, in our school or even in our own classroom?

If I am being honest, we cannot approach this problem as a binary.   Although my discussion has approached the issue as a binary, globalisation or localisation, you will notice my title is “globalisation AND localisation.”    We need to have a balance of both, making use of resources, ideas, etc which work at a high level, on the global education stage, while also making use of things, or customising things to fit with our local context. 

If anything, I worry that maybe we are increasingly focussing less on the local context, local solutions, at a time where maybe there are solutions to some of our global problems to be found there.

“If your weeks been incredibly busy then it’s more than likely to have been super busy for a colleague or two of yours. End the week by sending them an email to say thank you. You don’t need to be their line manager. Just a friendly face. It’ll make a difference.“

This however got me thinking about the prevailing narrative around education and why it might often be seen as negative.

Lets first consider education theories and practices.  It takes a lot of effort to come up with an educational theory or practice.   This might be through action research efforts or through conventional research.   A teacher might first think up a new idea then might develop resources and content.  They then have to try out their practice with students.   This however isn’t enough as they either need to repeat this with the same students or ideally with different groups of students to check that their initial findings and beliefs hold true.   The issue is that it takes significantly less effort to prove a theory to be flawed.   This is the same for a lot of things.    Creating takes time and effort, however criticizing and identifying error and fault takes less.

The next issue we have is that when we remember things we tend to overweight the negatives.   This is likely a result of human survival instincts.    For our ancestors, the fact a particular fruit tasted very nice was less important to remember than the negative fact that the lions on the horizon consider us to be a key item on the lunch menu.     The result from this is that when we read reports online or watch reports on TV we will tend to remember the negative reports more than the positive reports.   This in turn builds up a negative picture in our minds even where we are exposed to equal number of positive and negative stories.

The above are just two reasons I believe that the narrative around schools and education is becoming negative.    The focus is on declining results, struggles recruiting teachers, lack of basic Maths and English skills along with other negative stories.   These stories all came readily to my mind.   I am sure I have seen lots of positive stories too however these don’t occur to me quite so easily.

This is why I really liked the tweet from Amjad.   It is time we started to change the narrative starting in our schools and among our hardworking educators.    If we each made an effort to thank someone in our school for their efforts, someone not necessarily within our line management, we might be able to start building more positivity.   We might start remembering all the excellent work done on a day to day basis.  The small achievements with individual students.    The moment of inspiration or the moment of intense engagement by a student which are often forgotten in the hard work of a term or an academic year.  We will need to work hard at this.   As I have suggested the negative memories and stories are stronger than the positive ones so we will need to share more positives than negatives even to achieve a balance.   But if we all commit to little things, often, like thanking our colleagues and also our students we might bring about a significant change.

The sooner we start the better………

And on that note, thank you for reading this and also thank you for the work you do in which ever school or educational capacity you work in.

The other day on the way home though I came to think about balance and I realised that my viewpoint maybe wasn’t as acceptable as I had thought it was.    The issue which came to me as I drove home was the fact that my view of balance puts two concepts at opposite ends.   For example, incremental improvement and disruptive innovation.    The two concepts are not opposites so why would they be at opposite ends of a continuum?    The reason I suspect is that in a discussion between two parties each will adopt a position, or end, and the negotiation that follows will either lead to an agreed disagreement or to a compromise or point in between.  As such from the point of view of a discussion between two people with differing viewpoints the model of a continuum and balance makes sense but maybe it doesn’t make sense as much when looking at the concepts themselves or their implementation.

In the case of incremental improvement and disruptive innovation, does more of one result in less of the other?     Maybe from the point of view of time available to undertake the process of change, it might be a case of more of one and less of the other.    Other than this could we not seek to be both incremental and disruptive?    If we were half way between incremental and disruptive what does this mean?   Does it mean spending half of our time being incremental and half of our time being disruptive and if so, how do we transition from one to the other?    Or if not related to time, what would being half way disruptive look like?     Can I be incremental but also also introduce a disruptive innovation, or could a disruptive innovation by incremental?   Are all increments necessarily equal and in which case is a disruptive innovation possible just a large incremental change?

I realise now that my use of balance hadn’t really advanced me away from the idea of binary concepts.   Having a continuum between two points isn’t that much better than having two points, especially where the concepts or points of view aren’t clearly opposites.    This all stems out of our looking for the “right” answer and as Ken Robinson said in his famous Changing Paradigms speech, “there can only be one and its at the back of the book”.   De Bono makes a similar observation in his book which is aptly titled “I’m right, you’re wrong”.    The reality is that we can actually all be right (or wrong come to think about it).    We could be iterative in our change however also be disruptively innovating as well.   There is no requirement to do one or the other, beyond the requirement which we imply in our discussions of differing viewpoints.   This extends for most binary discussions (or arguments) both online and offline.

I feel we all need to take more care in pitting viewpoints against each other.    Maybe the biggest benefit might come from accepting that differing viewpoints may all be correct, from looking for commonalities as opposed to stressing the differences.

I have found myself repeatedly mentioning the importance of schools in general having an open culture and a positive climate.   My intention with such comments was specifically to address culture and climate at the organisational level, looking at each individual school as the whole unit however I have had cause to reflect on this and consider a more macro viewpoint.

What would the culture and climate of “schools” in general be?

What I mean by this, is that if we were to consider all the schools and all educational staff, including leaders, teachers and support staff, as the scope of analysis and as a single unit of study what would the culture and climate be.

The first issue I have with the above is the question is the evidence which is used in such a judgement.   Thinking about education and schools in general and the things which come to mind as possible evidence the various comments on social media including twitter, facebook and LinkedIn are first to stir in my conscious thoughts.    The television and printed news would also serve as evidence which is quick to present itself.     The issue I instantly have with this is that these are things which come easily to mind as they are most easily accessible in my memory, not that they are most representative of the truth, however my perception as directed by my memories is my truth.

As such my truth with regards how I perceive the culture and climate of schools in general could be shaped by the below:

• Teachers Strike: Hundreds of school to close across England.
• ‘Disaster’ SATs results will have ‘serious consequences’ for schools warns Labour
• School’s out for ever: A tale of two teachers

Having read the above, how do you yourself feel about schools?

I don’t feel quite as negative as I possibly should based on the examples above and the many similar posts, articles and stories however this is due to being conscious of the fact that these items only way readily on my mind not due to be fact but due to just being readily available.    That they are readily available is partly related to the media and the need for a good story along with the tendency to report the extremes as opposed to the everyday, the more mundane and also the more representative.   This in turn leads to retweets and responses to articles which emphasise these reported extremes, in turn reinforcing stories like those mentioned above.

Could it be that we are in a cycle of negativity?

I hasten to add that I am not suggesting with the above question that all is perfect in the world of education and that we should stop moaning and get on with it, far from this.    Education the world over has many issues, with each individual country and education system with its own demons to wrestle.   Some countries are making better progress than others, and some other countries are suffering a quicker or lesser decline than their neighbours.   We need to address the issues in hand and this requires making them known and discussing them in a hope to find solutions.

But wouldn’t it be nice if in all of this teachers had at least a few thoughts which came easily to mind which were positive about the work we do.     Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a positive cycle of news relating to successes, ideas, etc.

As the 2015/16 year draws to a close wouldn’t it be nice to show the world that there is a culture of working to make things better, of positivity, of sharing, of openness………..hold on, would it be nice to show the world the face we show our students every day we are with them!

P.s. Following writing this I observed #teacher5aday and calls for tweachers to tweet thanks to other educators who have inspired them.

This and the resulting stream of thank you tweets flying around twitter is exactly the positivity that I was referring to above, and the kind of example which I would like to see come easily to mind among teachers and also the general public.   This is the culture and climate we want to seek to encourage.

The article also identified that countries in Asia were inclined to be reluctant adopters of computers use in classrooms while achieving excellent PISA results.    The fact that these specific schools exist within a given geographical location and that this may in fact be related to the high results as opposed to any specific reluctance to adopt technology should have been identified.   Sally Weale in her article suggested that the high PISA scores for schools within Asia may not just be related to specific teaching styles in the region but may relate to the prevalent culture in the region and in schools in the region.     Their study didn’t even make any mention of technology or the slow adoption of technology as a potential factor impacting on high PISA results.

Moving away from the research side of things there is also the issue of what computers are used for in the classroom.    Computers and technology in a wider sense are just tools to be used in the classroom by the teacher much in the same way as a whiteboard, pens and paper.   How they are used depends very much on the teacher.    Some may use it a way that adds value to teaching and learning while others may use it in a way which detracts from the potential learning experience.    So maybe the issue isn’t as simple as looking at technology in isolation but instead should focus more on how technology is used.   Other aspects worthy of consideration include technology professional development and sharing or collaboration among teachers with regards technology usage as each of these may have a significant impact on the success of technology usage.

There is also the issue of why we are educating students however I will only briefly mention that as I suspect it will be a post in itself in the not too distant future.   The BBC article looks at PISA results as the outcome, suggesting that education is all about student results however as a teacher education is about more.   It is about shaping students in adults prepared for the world with the skills and characteristics to survive and thrive in the world they find themselves in beyond school.   No we all know that the world they go to will be very much a technological world beyond the current already technological world we live in.     So how can anyone think that taking technology out of classrooms or banning it from classrooms is a good idea?

Sources:

Computers ‘do not improve’ pupil results, says OECD,   Sept 2015, BBC, Sean Coughlan

‘Culture, not just curriculum’, determines east Asian school success, Oct 2014, Guardian, Sally, Weale,

In Sir Bransons book the focus on financial targets is identified as an error contributing to losses in the financial results which are being examined.   He suggested that the finances are a bi-product of the business as opposed to its sole aim, indicating that within his organisations the aim is to deliver excellent customer service and to look after the customers first.   He goes on to explain that if he looks after his customers, they will look after him and that positive financial outcomes will be a bi-product of this.

Drawing comparisons between Sir Branson’s comments with regards business and education I would suggest that the financial results examined to assess the success of businesses may be similar in nature to the standardised test results being examined to assess the success of schools.    Within education in recent times there has been a significant amount said and a significant focus put on standardised test scores.  Based on PISA results for example, Finland has been proclaimed by some to be the best education system in the world.

The question is whether education, like the businesses which suffered significant losses, is too focused on these specific standardised measures of educational performance at the expense of the culture of schools or the good of education in general.     Has education lost its focus on why education, schools and teachers exists;  Our purpose?

Now I know the above is very much general in nature and therefore does not apply to all schools or education systems.   My point is that in general I believe we need to step back and relook at what is important and our overall reason for teaching.     We need to look at the cultures of schools rather than standardised test results.    Sir Richard repeatedly discusses the importance of a focus on customer service.    Should we do the same and re-evaluate what we see as most important, maybe showing a little less attention to the standardised test results and a little more to our customers; The students!

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The EdTech presenters at these events often present some very good examples of approaches they are using within classrooms or schools.   The use of iPads has been a central theme across a number of presentations I have seen over the last year or so.   The discussion of EdTech as a disruptive force operating on education to bring about change has also been discussed on numerous occasions.     The issue is that these presentations although sometimes excellent are not mirrored in the average practice I see within schools even where schools have the equipment.    Added to this is the issue that not all schools have the equipment as evidenced by one attendee at a session I ran recently who pointed out all my web app ideas were great however wouldn’t work in his school as there was no Wifi capabilities in classrooms.     As such should we be spending so much time discussing EdTech and how it can improve learning?

I suggest that the answer is that we shouldn’t be spending quite so much time on EdTech and that we should re-examine the balance of our educational discussing.    For me the answer might lie in those schools where EdTech is being used very successfully to encourage and support collaboration, communication, etc.   The successful use of EdTech did not come about because of the introduction of the Tech.  A school culture which encourages creativity, collaboration and the valuing of ideas within a supportive environment plays a large part in making successful use of EdTech.   Teachers need to feel they can try new things, even where they fail, that they can seek support from others and that they can share ideas.    This is all to do with an open or healthy school culture.   So a school effectively using EdTech is likely to have an open and healthy culture.

Considering a school with an open or healthy school culture but without the EdTech resources or with limited EdTech resources again we would expect sharing and collaboration.   Again this would be expected to lead to positive learning experiences for students as teachers discuss and share ideas to ensure students receive the best experience possible.   Where a limited amount of Tech was available it should also lead to the creative and effective use of this tech to leverage the maximum impact possible from it. So an effective school, whether not it is using EdTech effectively, is likely to have an open and healthy culture.

So if the culture of a school is so important to schools in general as well as to schools engaged in using EdTech why is so very much of the educational conference time spent on discussing EdTech?     Should we not be spending less time discussing EdTech and much more time on discussing creating open, positive and healthy school cultures?   Now it may be that culture, as a very intangible trait of schools, may be more difficult to discuss and therefore we are choosing the easy option in the tangible EdTech or it could be related to the many vendors trying to sell us the latest tech?    Either way I think we need to relook at the balance of our educational discussions.

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In an earlier post I mentioned about the importance of relationships; well these relationships and how people interact, share, discuss and even argue provides us some insight into the culture within a school.   If all interactions are open, positive and focussed on continual improvement and on learning, then the culture is likely to be of the positive open type.    If discussions and interactions are undermined with selfish motivations or if staff discussions are polarised by individual points of views then the likelihood is that the culture will be closed and negative, assuming such motivations and opinionated points of view permeate the whole organisation.

So the next time I am having a conversation I need to be wary of how my interaction paints the organisational culture to others who are watching.    Now this suggests the self fulfilling nature of organisational culture.    A closed negative culture will result in negative interactions between staff and even students.   These negative interactions will result in negativity growing within the school which will result in further negative interactions and so on and so forth.    If a positive open culture exists then the positive interactions between staff will create a positive open environment which will result in more positive interactions.    Now here I am looking very much at the overall school culture as it is possible that a school with an overall negative culture may have positive sub-cultures existing within it, and vice versa.

Culture therefore is a powerful feature of an organisation in its ability to encourage positivity which in turn will increase motivation and ultimately student outcomes.    The issue is that we very seldom look at the culture of a school instead choosing to look at the measurable aspects of school performance such as standardised test results.    Seldom do we stop and look at the traditions symbols, history, stories and routines which go to establishing, as well as providing us a window on, a schools culture.

Now the issue of stories strikes a cord with me after a recent training session.   At the end of the session the attendees stated that they had very much enjoyed the session, stating that they particularly enjoyed the stories and anecdotes I had used throughout the session.  So my question to school leaders at the moment would be:  What are the stories of your school and what do they tell people about the school and its culture?